Protests in Indonesia sparked by economic hardship have elicited a heavy-handed response from police, triggering concerns that the Southeast Asian nation could be returning to its authoritarian past.
As police trucks have been spray-painted with anti-law enforcement slogans, President Prabowo Subianto has denounced the demonstrations as “treason and terrorism” while seeking to assuage wide-ranging discontent.
Thousands have taken to the streets in major cities in the last week, joined at times by rioters setting fire to government buildings and looters ransacking the homes of politicians. At least 10 people have died and hundreds have been injured in the ensuing unrest.
On Wednesday, a coalition of student unions met with lawmakers and demanded an independent investigation into the police violence, portending further protests.
Frustrations in the world’s third-largest democracy have been building since Prabowo, a former military general and businessman, took power last year, implementing austerity measures that have cut billions from public services such as healthcare and education.
Many ordinary Indonesians criticize the government for primarily serving the interests of the wealthy elite even as youth unemployment soars and wages stagnate.
The initial wave of demonstrations began Aug. 25, with thousands gathering outside the country’s parliament to decry one stark example of such inequality: a $3,000 housing allowance for lawmakers that was nearly 10 times the minimum wage in Jakarta.
The discontent escalated into violence when a 21-year-old motorcycle taxi driver was fatally struck by an armored police vehicle speeding through the crowd.
Prabowo and his police chief have apologized for the incident, and one of the officers involved in the crash has been fired.
At a televised news conference, Prabowo stressed that the right to peaceful assembly should be protected but that “the state must step in to protect its citizens.”
Neither these measures, nor the president’s promise to scale back the lawmakers’ perks, have quelled the outpouring of public anger, which has been met with a police response that human rights groups have decried as excessive.
“Nobody should die while exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty International’s regional research director for East and Southeast Asia.
On Monday, the United Nations called for an investigation into the “alleged use of unnecessary or disproportionate force by security forces.”
Since the demonstrations began, Indonesian police have used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against protesters, some of whom have lobbed back Molotov cocktails and rocks. Authorities have arrested over 3,000 people.
Two deaths have been attributed to the police crackdown: a pedicab driver in the city of Solo who died last week while being treated for tear gas exposure, and a college student who died Sunday after apparently being beaten by police.
Such incidents have resurfaced the Indonesian public’s festering distrust of the police force, said Jacqui Baker, a scholar of Indonesian security and policing at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.
“Ordinary people have long repeated a saying ‘report a chicken, lose a buffalo,’ meaning if you engage the police in routine law enforcement … you are likely to suffer more material loss than the original theft,” she said.
In recent years, civic groups have accused police of dozens of extrajudicial killings and torture.
Many of the country’s policing problems stem from a three-decade-long period of authoritarian rule under then-President Suharto that ended in 1998.
With the police remaining wedded to political interests even after the country’s democratization, Baker said, the “historical sense of entitlement has generated a deeply corrupt, violent and predatory force that is widely hated by ordinary people.”
President Prabowo himself is accused of human rights abuses, such as the abduction of dissidents, under Suharto’s rule. Critics say he is now pulling the country back into authoritarianism by expanding the military’s involvement in civilian institutions. Prabowo denies these claims.
The U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Italy have moved to bolster police protection of Jewish communities following the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel and the ensuing escalating conflict.
Governments across Europe fear an increase in antisemitic acts as the fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza unfolds, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring it a “war.”
In London, Palestinian supporters were spotted celebrating on Saturday, prompting the police to create “reassurance patrols.”
London’s Metropolitan Police added that the conflict might lead to protests over the coming days. “We will ensure that an appropriate policing plan is in place in order to balance the right to protest against any disruption to Londoners,” they wrote in a statement.
Tensions between Israel and the Arab world are running high, as Netanyahu vowed to take “mighty vengeance” on Saturday, after over 350 Israelis were killed by the Hamas attacks on Israel. Netanyahu already started launching retaliatory air strikes on targets in Gaza early Saturday, killing around 200 Palestinians.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Saturday that he asked prefects across France to boost security for the Jewish community and that there were “no threats” so far, according to the Huffington Post, but that he’ll call a meeting to assess the situation.
This comes as French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called the French far-left La France Insoumise party harbored “a form of antisemitism” after it published a press release calling for “the end of [Israeli] colonization.”
Berlin’s police said they’ve “increased protective measures at Jewish and Israeli institutions” following the Hamas attacks, according to the Tagesspiegel.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany wrote that they’re “in intensive contact” with the authorities. “The following also applies: No violence, no riots and no hatred on German streets,” it said.
Jewish NGO the Anti-Defamation League wrote that “our data show extremists appear to be emboldened by the Hamas attack, and have increased their violent rhetoric, posting hate-filled messages and calls for further aggression against Israel and its supporters,” hinting at a potential rise in antisemitic violence.
Similar protective measures for the Jewish community were adopted in Spain and Italy.
LONDON — The gloves are off in the U.K. government’s deepening spat with tech giant Meta.
On Wednesday, Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman unveiled a fresh campaign aimed at making the Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant rethink its plan to roll out end-to-end encryption on Facebook and Instagram — a move she says will hamper the police’s ability to catch pedophiles.
At a background briefing for reporters on Tuesday, Home Office officials used graphic language to describe the types of child sexual abuse material that they say risks going undetected if Meta goes ahead with its plans. A video put together as part of the campaign features a victim of child sex abuse appealing directly to Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg to rethink plans to roll out encryption.
The National Crime Agency has estimated that making messages on Facebook Messenger and Instagram end-to-end encrypted will wipe out more than 85 percent of the platforms’ reports of online child sexual abuse material.
Meta, which aims to finalize the encryption rollout by the end of the year, has said it plan to continue policing its platforms for grooming and the sharing of child abuse content. It will do this by, for example, watching for suspicious behavior from accounts and providing a range of controls to help kids avoid harm.
But Braverman said she’s not yet been convinced that these measures will make up for the shortfall in reports that the encryption changes are expected to bring about, prompting her to write to the tech giant in July asking it to stop its encryption rollout if it can’t give stronger assurances.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers,” Braverman said in a press release. “They must develop appropriate safeguards to sit alongside their plans for end-to-end encryption.”
“We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security,” said a Meta spokesperson.
The company on Wednesday also published an updated report setting out these measures, such as restricting people over 19 from messaging teens who don’t follow them and using technology to identify and take action against malicious behaviour.
The bill, which passed its final parliamentary hurdle Tuesday, would empower Britain’s comms regulator Ofcom to force tech companies to monitor messenger apps for illegal child abuse content. That’s proven controversial, with dozens of cryptography experts saying that the powers would effectively undermine end-to-end encryption — tech that enables only the sender and receiver to view messages.
Tech execs like Signal’s Meredith Whittaker and WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart have suggested they’d rather have their encrypted services blocked in the U.K. than undermine privacy for millions of users on their apps.
But Ofcom officials have previously said there’d be a high bar for them to mandate monitoring on encrypted apps, while any order for Meta to scan its messenger apps for content would prove highly contentious for the regulator.
That’s what’s prompted the U.K. government to lobby for Meta to rethink its plans in the first place.
“We urge companies looking to introduce end-to-end encryption to their services to think carefully about the impact on younger, vulnerable users,” said Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of child protection group the Internet Watch Foundation in a statement.
LA VERNE, Calif., August 25, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– AARDVARK Tactical CEO, Jon Becker, will present two seminars during the upcoming Law Enforcement Operations Conference and Tradeshow, presented by the National Tactical Officers Association. The seminars are titled “Leadership Principles of Elite Units” and “Equipping Your Team: Lessons Learned.” In addition to these classes, Becker will moderate a panel discussion on “Contemporary Issues & Concerns in the SWAT Community.”
“I am very honored to be moderating a fantastic panel discussion as well as teaching at the NTOA conference this year,” said Jon Becker. “My relationship with NTOA dates back to the origin story of AARDVARK, and the effect the association and its founder, John Kolman, have on our culture is hard to overstate.”
In the first seminar, “Leadership Principles of Elite Units,” Becker will lead interactive discussions on the core concepts of leading elite units. Identifying team member motivations, and creating a strong team culture will be included in the range of topics this seminar explores. The seminar showcases Becker’s unique perspective and will share the insights he has gained from three decades of experience equipping tactical teams.
The second seminar, “Equipping your Team: Lessons Learned,” will highlight the crucial needs for developing an equipment plan for tactical teams. The seminar will include a discussion about the impact equipment has on field capabilities and outcomes, and how to spearhead the equipment procurement process. The goal of the presentation is to demystify equipment logistics and procurement processes to ensure teams have the gear they need.
The panel discussion, “Contemporary Issues & Concerns in the SWAT Community,” will cover topics ranging from no-knock warrants to the role of culture in teams. Panelists will include representatives from the Rocky Mountain Tactical Team Association (RMTTA), the California Association of Tactical Officers (CATO), the Florida SWAT Association (FSA), the Texas Tactical Officers Association (TTPOA), and the NTOA. Becker’s experience working with a variety of tactical teams throughout the country makes him an excellent fit to facilitate this discussion.
The NTOA Law Enforcement Operations Conference is an annual six-day event, held this year in Aurora, CO, from August 27 to September 1. The event includes over 100 seminars and incident debriefs aimed at providing meaningful and high-quality training to help enhance officer tactics, leadership, and professionalism.
About AARDVARK:
Founded in 1987, AARDVARK is a leading distributor and system integrator specializing in the protection of tactical operators from Local, State, Federal, and Military Units. AARDVARK is headquartered in La Verne, CA.
About NTOA:
The National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the law enforcement community. The NTOA currently has more than 40,000 members from specialties that include patrol, TEMS, crisis negotiations, canine, corrections, sniper, protective operations, explosives, command, tactical dispatchers, behavioral sciences and more.
STRASBOURG — The European Parliament’s response to Qatargate: Fight corruption with paperwork.
When Belgian police made sweeping arrests and recovered €1.5 million from Parliament members in a cash-for-influence probe last December, it sparked mass clamoring for a deep clean of the institution, which has long languished with lax ethics and transparency rules, and even weaker enforcement.
Seven months later, the Parliament and its president, Roberta Metsola, can certainly claim to have tightened some rules — but the results are not much to shout about. With accused MEPs Eva Kaili and Marc Tarabella back in the Parliament and even voting on ethics changes themselves, the reforms lack the political punch to take the sting out of a scandal that Euroskeptic forces have leaped on ahead of the EU election next year.
“Judge us on what we’ve done rather [than] on what we didn’t,” Metsola told journalists earlier this month, arguing that Parliament has acted swiftly where it could.
While the Parliament can claim some limited improvements, calls for a more profound overhaul in the EU’s only directly elected institution — including more serious enforcement of existing rules — have been met with finger-pointing, blame-shifting and bureaucratic slow-walking.
The Parliament dodged some headline-worthy proposals in the process. It declined to launch its own inquiry into what really happened, it decided not to force MEPs to declare their assets and it won’t be stripping any convicted MEPs of their gold-plated pensions.
Instead, the institution favored more minimal nips and tucks. The rule changes amount to much more bureaucracy and more potential alarm bells to spot malfeasance sooner — but little in the way of stronger enforcement of ethics rules for MEPs.
EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, who investigates complaints about EU administration lamented that the initial sense of urgency to adopt strict reforms had “dissipated.” After handing the EU a reputational blow, she argued, the scandal’s aftermath offered a pre-election chance, “to show that lessons have been learned and safeguards have been put in place.”
Former MEP Richard Corbett, who co-wrote the Socialists & Democrats group’s own inquiry into Qatargate and favors more aggressive reforms, admitted he isn’t sure whether Parliament will get there.
“The Parliament is getting to grips with this gradually, muddling its way through the complex field, but it’s too early to say whether it will do what it should,” he said.
Bags of cash
The sense of resignation that criminals will be criminals was only one of the starting points that shaped the Parliament’s response.
“We will never be able to prevent people taking bags of cash. This is human nature. What we have to do is create a protection network,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a French MEP who sketched out some longer-term recommendations he hopes the Parliament will take up.
Another is that the Belgian authorities’ painstaking judicial investigation is still ongoing, with three MEPs charged and a fourth facing imminent questioning. Much is unknown about how the alleged bribery ring really operated, or what the countries Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania really got for their bribes.
On top of that, Parliament was occasionally looking outward rather than inward for people to blame.
Metsola’s message in the wake of the scandal was that EU democracy was “under attack” by foreign forces. The emphasis on “malign actors, linked to autocratic third countries” set the stage for the Parliament’s response to Qatargate: blame foreign interference, not an integrity deficit.
Instead of creating a new panel to investigate how corruption might have steered Parliament’s work, Parliament repurposed an existing committee on foreign interference and misinformation to probe the matter. The result was a set of medium- and long-term recommendations that focus as much on blocking IT contractors from Russia and China as they do on holding MEPs accountable — and they remain merely recommendations.
Metsola did also turn inward, presenting a 14-point plan in January she labeled as “first steps” of a promised ethics overhaul. The measures are a finely tailored lattice-work of technical measures that could make it harder for Qatargate to happen again, primarily by making it harder to lobby the Parliament undetected.
The central figure in Qatargate, an Italian ex-MEP called Pier Antonio Panzeri, enjoyed unfettered access to the Parliament, using it to give prominence to his human rights NGO Fight Impunity, which held events and even struck a collaboration deal with the institution.
This 14-point package, which Metsola declared is now “done,” includes a new entry register, a six-month cooling-off period banning ex-MEPs from lobbying their colleagues, tighter rules for events, stricter scrutiny of human rights work — all tailored to ensure a future Panzeri hits a tripwire and can be spotted sooner.
Notably, however, an initial idea to ban former MEPs from lobbying for two years after leaving office — which would mirror the European Commission’s rules — instead turned into just a six-month “cooling off” period.
Internal divisions
Behind the scenes, the house remains sharply divided over just how much change is needed. Many MEPs resisted bigger changes to how they conduct their work, despite Metsola’s promise in December that there would be “no business as usual,” which she repeated in July.
The limited ambition reflects an argument — pushed by a powerful subset of MEPs, primarily in Metsola’s large, center-right European People’s Party group — that changing that “business as usual” will only tie the hands of innocent politicians while doing little to stop the few with criminal intent. They’re bolstered by the fact that the Socialists & Democrats remain the only group touched by the scandal.
“There were voices in this house who said, ‘Do nothing, these things will always happen, things are fine as they are,’” Metsola said. Some of the changes, she said, had been “resisted for decades” before Qatargate momentum pushed them through.
The Parliament already has some of the Continent’s highest standards for legislative bodies, said Rainer Wieland, a long-serving EPP member from Germany who sits on the several key rule-making committees: “I don’t think anyone can hold a candle to us.”
MEP Rainer Wieland holds lots of sway over the reforms | Patrick Seeger/EFE via EPA
Those who are still complaining, he added in a debate last week, “are living in wonderland.”
Wieland holds lots of sway over the reforms. He chairs an internal working group on the Parliament’s rules that feeds into the Parliament’s powerful Committee on Constitutional Affairs, where Metsola’s 14-point plan will be translated into cold, hard rules.
Those rule changes are expected to be adopted by the full Parliament in September.
The measures will boost existing transparency rules significantly. The lead MEP on a legislative file will soon have to declare (and deal with) potential conflicts of interest, including those coming from their “emotional life.” And more MEPs will have to publish their meetings related to parliamentary business, including those with representatives from outside the EU.
Members will also have to disclose outside income over €5,000 — with additional details about the sector if they work in something like law or consulting.
Negotiators also agreed to double potential penalties for breaches: MEPs can lose their daily allowance and be barred from most parliamentary work for up to 60 days.
Yet the Parliament’s track record punishing MEPs who break the rules is virtually nonexistent.
As it stands, an internal advisory committee can recommend a punishment, but it’s up to the president to impose it. Of 26 breaches of transparency rules identified over the years, not one MEP has been punished. (Metsola has imposed penalties for things like harassment and hate speech.)
And hopes for an outside integrity cop to help with enforcement were dashed when a long-delayed Commission proposal for an EU-wide independent ethics body was scaled back.
Stymied by legal constraints and left-right divides within the Parliament, the Commission opted for suggesting a standards-setting panel that, at best, would pressure institutions into better policing their own rules.
“I really hate listening to some, especially members of the European Parliament, who say that ‘Without having the ethics body, we cannot behave ethical[ly],’” Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová lamented in June.
Metsola, for her part, has pledged to adhere to the advisory committee’s recommendations going forward. But MEPs from across the political spectrum flagged the president’s complete discretion to mete out punishments as unsustainable.
“The problem was not (and never really was) [so] much the details of the rules!!! But the enforcement,” French Green MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield — who sits in the working group — wrote to POLITICO.
Wieland, the German EPP member on the rule-making committees, presented the situation more matter-of-factly: Parliament had done what it said it would do.
“We fully delivered” on Metsola’s plan, Wieland told POLITICO in an interview. “Not more than that.”
Lionel Barber is former editor of the Financial Times (2005-20) and Brussels bureau chief (1992-98)
Nobody does “No” better than the French. Charles De Gaulle said “Non” twice to Britain’s bid to join the European Economic Community; Jacques Chirac said “Non” to the Iraq war; and Emmanuel Macron this week gave a thumbs down to Fiona Scott Morton, the American Yale academic selected for the post of top economist at the EU’s powerful competition directorate in Brussels.
L’affaire Scott Morton may seem trivial in comparison to the (still unresolved) debate over Britain’s place in Europe or armed conflict in the Middle East, but the French veto of the first foreigner to take up the post says an awful lot about the European Union’s current paranoia about America’s influence and power.
As Macron has pushed a vision of Europe that stands up to the U.S., resisting pressure to become “America’s followers,” as he put it in April, such thinking has strengthened in Brussels.
The Scott Morton fiasco brings back memories of a lunch in Brussels exactly 30 years ago when some officials suspected the U.S. was engaged in an Anglo-Saxon plot to sabotage their plans for economic and monetary union. “Remember James Jesus Angleton,” said a stone-faced Belgian bureaucrat, invoking the name of the legendary, obsessive CIA counterintelligence officer at the height of the Cold War.
Professor Scott Morton was selected as the best candidate in open competition. She enjoyed the backing of Margrethe Vestager, the Danish EU competition commissioner often described as the most powerful antitrust regulator in the world. She also had support from Ursula von der Leyen, German president of the European Commission, whose leadership during the Ukraine war and the COVID pandemic has won widespread praise on both sides of the Atlantic.
All this counted for naught. Despite her distinguished academic pedigree, Scott Morton, a former Obama administration antitrust official, worked for Apple, Amazon and Microsoft in competition cases in the U.S. The notion her background somehow disqualified her for the job shows George W. Bush was wrong when he complained the French had no word for “entrepreneur.” Today’s problem is that Paris has no understanding of the term “poacher turned gamekeeper.”
As Carl Bildt, former Swedish prime minister, tweeted: “Regrettable that narrow-minded opposition in some EU countries has led to this. She was reportedly the most competent candidate, and a knowledge of the U.S. and its antitrust policies should certainly not have been a disadvantage.”
Now, President Macron’s opposition to the appointment has attracted a good deal of support in the Commission, in the European Parliament and among European trade unions. Cristiano Sebastiani, head of Renouveau & Démocratie, a trade union representing EU employees, said senior EU officials should “be invested, believe and contribute towards the European project. The very logic of our statute is that an EU official can never go back to being an ordinary citizen.”
France’s veto of Professor Scott Morton is de facto a veto of Vestager, who was almost untouchable during her first term as competition commissioner between 2014-19. She won kudos for investigating, fining and bringing lawsuits against major multinationals including Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Qualcomm, and Gazprom. More controversially, at least in Paris and Berlin, she vetoed the planned merger between Alstom and Siemens, two industrial giants intent on creating a European champion.
Vestager’s second term has been a different story. She has suffered reverses in the courts which overturned punitive fines against Apple and Qualcomm. Then, although she ranks as a vice-president of the Commission, Vestager found herself challenged by a nominal underling in the shape of Thierry Breton, a former top French industrialist put in charge of the EU’s internal market.
Both have battled over the policing of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and over policy on artificial intelligence, a proxy fight for influence overall in Brussels.
Vestager and Breton have battled over the policing of the EU’s Digital Markets Act and over policy on artificial intelligence | Olivier Hoslet/EPA/AFP via Getty Images
Breton favors the so-called AI Pact, an effort to bring forward parts of the EU’s draft Artificial Intelligence Act. This would ban some AI cases, curb “high-risk” applications, and impose checks on how Google, Microsoft and others develop the emerging technology.
By contrast, Vestager favors a voluntary code of conduct focused on generative AI such as ChatGPT. This could be developed at a global level, in partnership with the U.S., rather than waiting for the two years it will take to secure legislative passage of Breton’s AI Pact.
So what’s the solution? If Europe is to have any chance of prevailing, so the argument goes, member states must take a far harder-nosed attitude to competition policy. This leads in turn to the creation of national or pan-European champions at the expense of crackdowns on subsidies and other anti-competitive behavior. In short, the very liberal policies designed to protect the single market’s level playing field and embodied by the fighting Viking.
For those who occasionally wonder how power has shifted inside the EU since Brexit took the U.K. out of the equation, it is proof indeed that “liberal Europe” is on a losing streak.
PARIS — France is slowly catching its breath after days of large-scale urban unrest but a greater challenge looms for President Emmanuel Macron: How to tackle the root problems the riots have exposed.
Macron has walked a thin line between showing empathy and sending out a message of toughness after a police officer shot and killed teenager Nahel M. last week, leading to days of riots. He flooded the streets with police officers in an effort to contain the violence.
This weekend there were fewer arrests than on previous nights and the unrest appears to be waning, at least temporarily.
But the series of incidents have fanned the flames around police brutality and the treatment of racial minorities into a broader, violent rejection of French institutions.
Overnight on Saturday, attackers rammed a car into the house of the local mayor in L’Haÿ-les-Roses,a suburb south of Paris, injuring the official’s wife as she tried to flee with her young children.
Elsewhere in France, the violence triggered by the teenager’s death has targeted many symbols of the French Republic: schools, police stations, libraries and other public buildings.
“An unprecedented movement has hit territories that were not previously affected [by violence]. Public buildings were damaged which was not the case during the last wave of protests in 2005,” said a French government official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues more openly, referring to an outbreak of violencethat rocked France’s banlieues for weeks in 2005.
Over the past few days, Macron has sought to strike a delicate balance between showing compassion and resolve. He has described the shooting of 17-year-old Nahel M. as he was fleeing the police last week as “inexcusable” and “inexplicable.” But Macron has slammed the riots as “the unacceptable manipulation of a death of a teenager,” as well.
On Tuesday, he is expected to meet mayors from more than 200 towns and cities hit by violence. The aim of the meeting is to gather first-hand accounts from local officials, work on solutions and relay that the government is backing local officials.
“The president wants to listen,” the French official said.
After cutting short his visit to a European summit last week, Macron tried to show he is at the helm of the country, regularly calling crisis cabinet meetings, and issuing orders to his prime minister and ministers. On Saturday, he called off a long-planned state visit to Germany.
Permanently in crisis mode
The roster of meetings at the Elysée Palace is a familiar sight and a sign that the government is in crisis mode — once again.
The French president has barely emerged from a deep political crisis over pension reforms this spring and his government now is faced with more turmoil. Macron’s first term was equally rocky, as he faced Yellow Jackets protests, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ever-present threat of terrorism in France.
Macron has accumulated “difficult, painful crisis situations” that have “perplexed” the outside world, said Bruno Cautrès, a politics researcher with the Sciences Po institute.
“It’s as if France was a pressure cooker, [each crisis] reveals tensions, a conflict in society, tensions over the respect owed to our institutions … Our country is constantly invoking Republican values, but it appears entire segments of the population don’t feel this matters to them,” he said.
The outpouring of shock and anger over the death of Nahel M., who was of North African descent, has also forced many in France to do some soul-searching over issues of discrimination, integration, and crime in immigrant-heavy suburbs around French cities.
Public pressure to more closely examine French policing practices and allegations of racism in the security forces beyond re-examining rules of engagement is mounting. In 2017, for example, police officers were given the right to shoot in several hypothetical scenarios, including when a driver refuses to stop and is deemed a risk to life.
Beyond alleged discrimination by the police, fixing the growing rift between the suburbs’ disadvantaged youth and French institutions will likely require more money forpolicies aimed at addressing root causes and reducing social inequalities in areas such as education and social housing.
But addressing issues in the banlieues is difficult at a time when the government is attempting to reduce spending. After resisting calls to back down in the face of peaceful protests over his flagship pensions reforms, Macron reaching for the checkbook shortly after the recent days’ protests might be seen as rewarding rioters.
The need to reconcile the country and embody law and order at a time when his margins for maneuver are limited after losing a parliamentary majority last year is no small task for Macron.
He will have to keep a sharp eye on opposition parties as crime, identity and immigration — long issues the far-right has campaigned on — take center stage. If far-right leader Marine Le Pen has held back from fueling a backlash against rioters, sticking to her strategy of embracing mainstream politics, her trusted lieutenant Jordan Bardella has led the charge against “criminals” who owe “everything to the Republic.”
The recent unrest had exposed “frailties” that could “encourage a populist discourse,” the same government official admitted.
“[Our] political response must be a reasonable one, that addresses the reality and daily lives of the French,” he added. That’s easier said than done.
LA VERNE, Calif., May 17, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– The newly released External Patrol Vest (XPV) from AARDVARK Tactical’s PROJECT7 Armor is a revolutionary platform built to reimagine how police officers, detectives, K-9s, firefighters, and paramedics are armored. Featuring a four-panel design, similar to a tactical vest, it offers a better fit and greater coverage all without sacrificing mobility. Compared to traditional two-piece armor systems, the XPV’s four-piece platform and cummerbund mitigate the risk of coverage gaps due to misaligned panels, small weight fluctuations or poor-fitting vests.
The XPV consists of an external carrier, an optional internal concealable carrier, and four soft ballistic panels. The vest offers multiple configurations to fit the mission of the individual officer. The XPV can be worn with its external carrier and ballistics alone or for missions that require concealment or when wearing a Class A uniform, the optional internal concealable carrier can be worn with soft ballistic panels alone.
This platform features internal radio channels for cable routing and a concealed magnet pouch for simple attachment of an Axon body-worn camera.
Asked about this groundbreaking product, PROJECT 7’s founder Jon Becker said, “The XPV is the product of years of frustration with patrol armor systems and two-panel carrier systems. We started with the goal of providing better coverage, greater accuracy in sizing, better protection, and a strong desire to build something new and better. I am very proud of our design and manufacturing teams. They truly delivered a product we can be proud of.”
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PARIS — Vegetarian sushi and rugby brought the leaders of Britain and France together after years of Brexit rows.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday held the two countries’ first bilateral summit in five years, amid warm words and wishes for closer post-Brexit cooperation.
“This is an exceptional summit, a moment of reunion and reconnection, that illustrates that we want to better speak to each other,” Macron told a joint press conference afterward. “We have the will to work together in a Europe that has new responsibilities.”
Most notably from London’s perspective, the pair agreed a new multi-annual financial framework to jointly tackle the arrival of undocumented migrants on small boats through the English Channel — in part funding a new detention center in France.
“The U.K. and France share a special bond and a special responsibility,” Sunak said. “When the security of our Continent is threatened, we will always be at the forefront of its defense.”
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission, putting an end to a long U.K.-EU row over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland, and stressing it marks a “new beginning of working more closely with the EU.”
“I feel very fortunate to be serving alongside you and incredibly excited about the future we can build together. Merci mon ami,” Sunak said.
It has been many years since the leaders of Britain and France were so publicly at ease with each other.
Sunak and Macron bonded over rugby, ahead of Saturday’s match between England and France, and exchanged T-shirts signed by their respective teams.
Later, they met alone at the Élysée Palace for more than an hour, only being joined by their chiefs of staff at the very end of the meeting, described as “warm and productive” by Sunak’s official spokesman. The pair, who spoke English, had planned to hold a shorter one-to-one session, but they decided to extend it, the spokesman said.
They later met with their respective ministers for a lunch comprising vegetarian sushi, turbot, artichokes and praline tart.
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
Speaking on the Eurostar en route to Paris, Sunak told reporters this was the beginning of a “new chapter” in the Franco-British relationship.
“It’s been great to get to know Emmanuel over the last two months. There’s a shared desire to strengthen the relationship,” he said. “I really believe that the range of things that we can do together is quite significant.”
In a show of goodwill from the French, who pushed energetically for a hard line during Brexit talks, Macron said he wanted to “fix the consequences of Brexit” and opened the door to closer cooperation with the Brits in the future.
“It’s my wish and it’s in our interests to have closest possible alliance. It will depend on our commitment and willingness but I am sure we will do it,” he said alongside Sunak.
Tackling small boats
Under the terms of the new migration deal, Britain will pay €141 million to France in 2023-24, €191 million in 2024-25 and €209 million in 2025-26.
This money will come in installments and go toward funding a new detention center in France, a new Franco-British command centre, an extra 500 law enforcement officers on French beaches and better technology to patrol them, including more drones and surveillance aircraft.
The new detention center, located in the Dunkirk area, would be funded by the British and run by the French and help compensate for the lack of space in other detention centers in northern France, according to one of Macron’s aides.
According to U.K. and French officials, France is expected to contribute significantly more funding — up to five times the amount the British are contributing — toward the plan although the Elysée has refused to give exact figures.
A new, permanent French mobile policing unit will join the efforts to tackle small boats. This work will be overseen by a new zonal coordination center, where U.K. liaison officers will be permanently based working with French counterparts.
Sunak stressed U.K.-French cooperation on small boats since November has made a significant difference, and defended the decision to hand more British money to France to help patrol the French northern shores. Irregular migration, he stressed, is a “joint problem.”
Ukraine unity
Sunak and Macron also made a show of unity on the war in Ukraine, agreeing that their priority would be to continue to support the country in its war against Russian aggression.
The French president said the “ambition short-term is to help Ukraine to resist and to build counter-offensives.”
“The priority is military,” he said. “We want a lasting peace, when Ukraine wants it and in the conditions that it wants and our will is to put it in position to do so.”
The West’s top priority should remain helping Ukrainians achieve “a decisive battlefield advantage” that later allows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin from a stronger position, Sunak said en route to the summit.
“That should be everyone’s focus,” he added. “Of course, this will end as all conflicts do, at the negotiating table. But that’s a decision for Ukraine to make. And what we need to do is put them in the best possible place to have those talks at an appropriate moment that makes sense for them.”
The two leaders also announced they would start joint training operations of Ukrainian marines.
German police arrested a 32-year-old Iranian man suspected of plotting a chemical attack.
The Iranian national was arrested in the town of Castrop-Rauxel, near Dortmund, on suspicion of procuring toxins including cyanide and ricin in order to commit a terror attack inspired by Islamic extremism, German authorities said on Sunday. Another person was detained during the operation, they said.
The Iranian’s house was cordoned off and searched in order to secure further evidence, with German media reporting that several officers and emergency workers in full protective suits were present at the scene.
A joint statement by Düsseldorf’s public prosecutor and the police forces of the cities of Recklinghausen and Münster said that the arrest was the result of an investigation by the region of North Rhine-Westphalia’s anti-terrorism office. German tabloid Bildreported that Germany’s law enforcement was tipped off by a foreign intelligence agency about the man’s plan.
Preparing a serious act of violence is punishable with a prison sentence of six months to 10 years under German law, according to the police statement.
Two Alabama women have been convicted of multiple charges related to their efforts to feed stray and feral cats on public property and get them spayed and neutered.
Beverly Roberts, 85, and Mary Alston, 61, had been feeding and trapping cats on the grounds of the Elmore County Courthouse in the city of Wetumpka, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. When they trapped cats, they would pay to get them spayed or neutered and adopt or return them to the area.
Trapping, neutering and returning cats to their former location is a common technique aimed at reducing the outdoor cat population, typically in cases where the cats are too feral to adjust to an indoor home.
Beverly Roberts, 85, and Mary Alston, 61, were arrested after they were caught feeding and trapping cats on the grounds of the Elmore County Courthouse in Alabama.
Alberto Case via Getty Images
Roberts told the Washington Post that she had trapped at least 23 cats over the past year, and all but two were adopted into new homes.
But some local officials said that the food set out for the felines simply attracted more cats, as well as other animals, including buzzards. Richard Beyer, chief operations officer for Elmore County, testified that the cats and buzzards had caused damage to vehicles in the courthouse parking lot.
In March, county officials warned Roberts to stop feeding cats on courthouse property. And in June, both she and Alston were arrested on county-owned property near the courthouse. There, AL.com wrote, an officer “found Alston in possession of Fancy Feast.”
Bodycam footage published by AL.com showed a Wetumpka police officer approaching Alston on the morning of June 25 as she reacted with disbelief. “Y’all have three cop cars because I’m feeding cats?” she asked. The officer then warned Alston that she could go to jail if she returned.
Footage from less than an hour later showed the officers coming back to find Alston still there and Roberts with her. The officers ultimately handcuffed and arrested both women. After one officer threatened that things could “get ugly” if Roberts didn’t follow instructions, she called him a “son of a bitch.”
At a bench trial on Tuesday, Wetumpka Municipal Judge Jeff Courtney found Roberts guilty of criminal trespassing and disorderly conduct and Alston guilty of criminal trespassing and interfering with governmental operations.
Defense lawyers for Alston and Roberts told the Montgomery Advisor that they plan to appeal the decision and demand a jury trial for the two women.
INDIANAPOLIS, November 2, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Chuqlab, the developer of CrimeMiner, the industry-leading audio and video processing platform for law enforcement, is now an AWS Public Sector Partner (PSP) within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN).
The AWS PSP program recognizes AWS Partners with cloud-based solutions that can support public sector industries, such as government and law enforcement.
Chuqlab’s acceptance in the PSP program reflects the dedication of their technical team and their partner, Trek10, to complete AWS Foundational Technical Review (FTR).
Completing the AWS FTR requires an AWS Partner Solutions Architect (PSA) to review solutions against a defined set of requirements around security, reliability, and operational excellence aligned to the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
As an AWS Public Sector Partner, Chuqlab can provide law enforcement with a one-of-a-kind solution that allows government agencies and investigators to reliably find key evidence in copious amounts of audio/video files, as well as provide transcriptions of those files within minutes.
“As law enforcement agencies and leadership begin adopting cloud-native technologies, building on AWS allows us to be part of the largest cloud community in the world and gives us access to cutting-edge capabilities so that we are able to solve the problems faced by members of law enforcement,” stated Chuqlab’s CEO Cornelius George.
“Being an AWS Partner gives us access to training, development resources, and insights that will allow us to efficiently and effectively develop features that create more value,” added Chuqlab’s CTO Blaine Dirker.
Chuqlab looks forward to its continued growth and success with AWS.
About Chuqlab:
Chuqlab is backed by a passionate group who are dedicated partners in stopping crime. Chuqlab’s CrimeMiner solution enables the processing of thousands of hours of audio and video files relevant to criminal investigations so that law enforcement professionals can solve past and current crimes, as well as prevent future ones.
With CrimeMiner, analysts and investigators no longer need to spend hundreds of hours sifting through all the audio and video files manually for critical pieces of conversation.
Instead, CrimeMiner will – within minutes – search through the files, find all necessary evidence, and provide transcripts of every file.
