Recent UK immigration politics has focused largely on ‘getting numbers down’ by reducing the number of so-called ‘illegal’ entries, which usually involve people crossing the channel on small boats or on the backs of lorries. The government often refuses to acknowledge that the high number of ‘illegal’ entries is intrinsically linked to the lack of official routes provided for coming to the UK to claim asylum. And whilst those travelling by unofficial means may not abide by UK immigration law and documentation processes, international law states that asylum seekers cannot be punished or criminalised for the way they enter.
The 1951 Refugee Convention states that asylum seekers should not be discriminated against for their mode of entry into another country. People fleeing persecution have the right to travel to any country via any route possible in order to claim asylum, provided they inform the authorities of their presence upon arrival and have a good reason for seeking asylum.
Despite this, arrival in the UK by small boat crossings or other ‘clandestine’ routes across the Channel are frequently referred to as ‘illegal’ because the person entering does not have a valid visa in place. This is where the UK asylum system is deeply contradictory: it is not possible to claim asylum from outside the UK, and it is also not possible to obtain a visa before travelling to the UK to claim asylum.
dizzy: I suggest that people referring to small boat migrants as being illegal reflects more on their intolerance and prejudices that anything else.
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.
A court has ruled that the raid and resulting seizure of my devices that British “counter-terror” police carried out on my home in October were unlawful.
The most senior judge at London’s Central Criminal Court ruled on 13 May that the search warrants used in the raid were unlawfully issued and said the police must hand back all the computers, phones and other devices that they took that day.
The police have today handed back all seven seized items.
The dawn raid happened in the early hours of 17 October 2024.
As my colleague at The Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah reported at the time: “Approximately 10 officers arrived at [Asa] Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorising them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.”
Police have now admitted these warrants were improperly obtained and therefore illegal.
In his ruling the Recorder of London, Mark Lucraft KC (the Old Bailey’s highest circuit judge) wrote that he was “very troubled by the way in which the search warrant was drafted, approved and granted where items were to be seized from a journalist”.
Emissions are seen from a smoke stack at the Phillips 66 Refinery on February 6, 2024, in Linden, New Jersey. (Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)
“This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court,” said one advocate.
Numerous environmental protection groups were preparing to file lawsuits Friday after President Donald Trumpdirected federal agencies to repeal what he called “unlawful regulations” aimed at protecting the public from pollution, oil spills, and other harms—sharply curtailing the process through which rules are changed as he ordered agencies to “sunset” major regulations.
The order was issued a week-and-a-half before the deadline set by another presidential action in February, when Trump required agencies to identify “unconstitutional” and “unlawful” regulations for elimination or modification within 60 days.
Those restrictions, under Wednesday evening’s order, can be repealed without being subject to a typical notice-and-comment period.
Trump named the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement among several agencies affected by the order, and listed more than two dozen laws containing regulations that must incorporate a sunset provision for no later than September 30, 2025.
The laws include the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act of 1987, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, suggested the order was Trump’s latest push to benefit corporate polluters.
The Trump corporate regime orders agencies to ‘sunset’ environmental protections, as part of an effort to make it easier for industry to pollute. thehill.com/policy/energ…
Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was “beyond delusional” for Trump to attempt to repeal “every environmental safeguard enacted over the past 50 years with an executive order.”
“Trump’s farcical directive aims to kill measures that protect endangered whales, prevent oil spills, and reduce the risk of a nuclear accident,” said Hartl. “This chaotic administration is obviously desperate to smash through every environmental guardrail that protects people or preserves wildlife, but steps like this will be laughed out of court.”
In a memo, the White House wrote that “in effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is consistent with the ‘good cause’ exception in the Administrative Procedure Act.”
“That exception allows agencies to dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be ‘impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest,'” said the White House.
As climate advocates scoffed at the suggestion that regulating nuclear power and pollution-causing energy infrastructure is “contrary to the public interest,” legal experts questioned the legality of Trump’s order.
“If this action were upheld, it would be a significant change to the way regulation is typically done, which is through notice and comment,” Roger Nober, director of George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center, toldGovernment Executive. “If the agencies determine that a rule is contrary to the Supreme Court’s current jurisprudence, then [this order says they] have good cause to remove it and [they] can get around notice and comment. That’s certainly an untested and untried way of implementing the Administrative Procedure Act.”
Georgetown University law professor William Buzbee toldThe Hill that the Supreme Court “has repeatedly reaffirmed that agencies seeking to change a policy set forth in a regulation have to go through a new notice-and-comment proceeding for each regulation, offer ‘good reasons’ for the change, and address changing facts and reliance interests developed in light of the earlier regulation.”
“Adding a sunset provision without going through a full notice-and-comment proceedings for each regulation to be newly subject to a sunset provision seems intended to skirt the vetting and public accountability required by consistency doctrine,” he said. “Like many other attempted regulatory shortcuts of the first and second Trump administration, this [executive order] seems likely to prompt legally vulnerable agency actions.”
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert suggested that the executive order is the latest example of Trump’s push to govern the U.S. as “a king.”
“He cannot simply roll back regulations that protect the public without going through the legally required process,” Gilbert told Government Executive. “We will challenge this blatantly unlawful deregulatory effort at every step to ensure it doesn’t hurt workers, consumers, and families.”
Michael Wall, chief litigation officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the order “a blatant attempt to blow away hundreds of protections for the public and nature, giving polluters permission to ignore whatever is coming out of their smokestacks while developers disregard endangered species protections and Big Oil no longer heeds the reforms put in place after the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”
“This executive order is illegal,” he said. “Congress passed these laws, and the president’s constitutional duty is to carry out those statutes; he has zero power to rewrite them.”
“There’s no magic wand the administration might wave to sweep away multiple rules on a White House whim,” Wall added. “Any changes to the rules the president wants rescinded would have to be justified, rule by rule, with facts, evidence, and analysis specific to that rule. He cannot do this by fiat.”
Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
dizzy: There are other demands on my life dragging me away dear audience. There are always good articles at Common Dreams.
Israeli troops and military vehicles cross in and out of Syria through a gate in the boundary fence near the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on December 15, 2024. (Photo: Mati Milstein/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Turkey’s foreign ministry condemned the plan as “a new stage in Israel’s goal of expanding its borders through occupation.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel would move to expand settlements in the occupied and illegally annexed Golan Heights, exploiting the collapse of the Assad government to further entrench its control of Syrian land.
Netanyahu said in a statement Sunday that “strengthening” the Golan Heights is synonymous with “strengthening the state of Israel” and declared that “we will continue to hold onto it, make it flourish, and settle in it.”
According to Netanyahu’s office, the Israeli government “unanimously approved” the prime minister’s push to double the settler population in the Golan Heights.
There are currently dozens of Israeli settlements housing roughly 20,000 people in the territory, the bulk of which Israel unlawfully annexed in 1981 after occupying it during the 1967 war.
Israel’s settlement expansion plan sparked outrage from countries in the region, with Turkey’s foreign ministry condemning the decision Sunday as “a new stage in Israel’s goal of expanding its borders through occupation.”
The foreign ministry of Saudi Arabiaaccused Israel of “sabotaging” Syria’s “prospects for restoring its security and stability.”
“The kingdom reaffirms that the occupied Golan is Syrian, Arab land,” the ministry added.
Israel’s military has wasted no time advancing on Syrian territory in the wake of Assad’s fall. As Drop Site noted over the weekend, “Israeli tanks have advanced into villages and towns in Syria’s Quneitra governorate, across from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, damaging streets, cutting down trees, and destroying electricity poles.”
“Israel ordered residents to evacuate their homes. When many refused, Israeli forces destroyed water supply networks and power lines in an attempt to force them out,” the outlet added.
On Saturday, as The Guardian reported, “Israel struck dozens of sites in Syria overnight with airstrikes” after the Israeli defense minister announced the country’s forces “would remain for the winter on Mount Hermon—known to Syrians as Jabel Sheikh—in positions they occupied last week.”
Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the rebel group that helped drive Assad from power, denounced Israel’s “uncalculated military adventures” but said that “the priority at this stage is reconstruction and stability, not being drawn into disputes that could lead to further destruction.”
“Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations,” he said.
Israel’s push for settlement expansion in the Golan Heights comes amid the country’s large-scale, catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip, which Israeli forces are preparing to occupy indefinitely.
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States is expected to embolden the far-right forces in Netanyahu’s government that are seeking to return settlements to Gaza and annex the West Bank.
Netanyahu said in a video statement that he had “a very friendly, warm, and important discussion” with Trump late Saturday about the future of the Middle East.
“I said we would change the Middle East and we are doing so,” the prime minister said. “I discussed with President-elect Trump the need to complete the victory.”
