The measure would expand the sanctions under a previous law to include actions like forced family separations and organ harvesting. It would also deny entry to the U.S. for people found to have participated in forced abortions or sterilizations. In interviews with RFA Uyghur, Uyghur women have detailed birth control procedures they say were forced on them by authorities in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The bill would bar the U.S. military from buying Chinese seafood out of concern that Uyghur and North Korean forced labor is used in its production.

It would direct the State Department to create a plan for countering Chinese propaganda that denies “the genocide, crimes against humanity, and other egregious human rights abusese experienced by Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethic groups” in Xinjiang. It would also appropriate $2 million for the Smithsonian to create research and programs that would preserve Uyghur language and culture threatened by the Chinese government.

“The evidence is clear. The Chinese Communist Party has waged a deliberate and systematic campaign to destroy the Uyghur people through forced sterilization, mass internment, and forced labor,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), the chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a statement. “This legislation ensures the United States holds accountable not only the perpetrators of these horrific crimes but also those who support or profit from them.”

Joining Sullivan in co-sponsoring the bill are Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), and Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.).

Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, a U.S.-based nonprofit advocacy group, and the chairwoman of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress, an international organization promoting Uyghur rights, said the measure’s introduction is “a critical step toward dismantling the systems of control and repression that have enabled genocide and devastated Uyghur families and communities.”

“For Uyghurs who have endured years of silence and separation, this bill represents a meaningful step toward exposing the truth, advancing justice, and creating pathways to family reunification,” Abbas told RFA.

U.S. lawmakers this week also planned to release a bill that would aim to help Taiwan and support countries that maintain official diplomatic relations with its government, as well as a measure to combat efforts by any foreign government to reach beyond its borders to intimidate, harass or harm activists, dissidents or journalists.

In response to the bills, China’s foreign ministry on Tuesday rejected U.S. accusations on Xinjiang and Taiwan.

“The related accusations are entirely fabricated and are malicious slander,” the ministry said.

The measures come as an Aug. 12 deadline looms for a durable trade deal between the U.S. and China. A U.S. official told reporters that progress is being made toward a deal, Reuters reported Friday.

Includes reporting by Reuters.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

New York Times (7/22/25)

This week on CounterSpin: The mainstream US media debate on the starvation and violence and war crimes in Gaza still, in July 2025, makes room for Bret Stephens, who explains in the country’s paper of record that Israel can’t be committing genocide as rights groups claim, because if they were, they’d be much better at it. Says Stephens:

It may seem harsh to say, but there is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal—if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans—why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly?

“It may seem harsh to say” is a time-honored line from those who want to note but justify human suffering, or excuse the crimes of the powerful. It looks bad to you, is the message, because you’re stupid. If you were smart, like me, you’d understand that your empathy is misplaced; these people suffering need to suffer in order to…. Well, they don’t seem to feel a need to fully explain that part. Something about democracy and freeing the world from, like, suffering.

It’s true that corporate media are now gesturing toward engaging questions of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. But what does that amount to at this late date? We’ll talk about corporate media’s Gaza coverage with independent reporter and frequent FAIR.org contributor Ari Paul.

Disability Scoop (8/1/25)

Also on the show: The Americans with Disabilities Act is generally acknowledged in July, with a lot of anodyne “come a long way, still a long way to go” type of reporting. There’s an opening for a different sort of coverage this month, as the Trump administration is actively taking apart laws that protect disabled people in the workplace, and cutting off healthcare benefits, and disabled kids’ educational rights, and rescinding an order that would have moved disabled workers to at least the federal minimum wage; and, with a recent executive order, calling on localities to forcibly institutionalize any unhoused people someone decides is mentally ill or drug-addicted or just living on the street.

Does that serve the hedge funds pricing homes out of reach of even full-time workers? Yes. Does it undercut years of evidence-based work about moving people into homes and services? Absolutely. Does it aim to rocket us back to a dark era of criminalizing illness and disability and poverty? Of course. But Trump calls it “ending crime and disorder,” so you can bet elite media will honor that viewpoint in their reporting. We’ll get a different view from Scout Katovich, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

The way the world is going, she and her children might be the precursor of the dwelling habits of the future generations, those who manage to survive the coming nuclear war between the rising bloc of rising nations and decaying bloc of decaying nations, the war between the BRICS and the Pricks.

The BRICS ─ Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and five new members — have no “biggest BRIC,” each Bric nation relishes its independence and the group is cemented by their distaste for the offensive Pricks. Fortunately, for the BRICS, their entourage contains China, the new superpower that encourages cooperation rather than domination and has initiated a “Belt and Road” that facilitates free trade throughout the world.

The Pricks — United States, Great Britain, and the European Union — have the United States as their power Prick, which is led by their president, the biggest Prick. In slavish obedience to genocide Israel, the U.S. identifies itself as the Super Prick. This bloc has recently featured severe discord, lack of cooperation, and inauguration of high tariffs that impede global trade. Domination is its focus. with cooperation a temporary means to enable domination.

For one simple reason, the Pricks are finding it difficult to control and use the BRICS for their personal gain ─ the BRICS have economic dominance.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
GDP PPP, Int$: 2025

Coming into 2025, the BRICS have a greater share of the economic pie, six times the population digesting the pie, and are growing in principal categories — GDP/PPP, population, and adherents at a faster rate.

The Pricks devalue the Brics by claiming they are a loose and uncoordinated confederation, unable to agree on vital issues. Brazil is accused of harassing former President Jair Messias Bolsonaro and may be subjected to sanctions; Russia is led by an irresponsible tyrant and is heavily sanctioned; India gets a pass despite the heavy-handed tactics toward its Muslim community; China is led by a despotic dictator, and South Africa is guilty of genocide toward its white population.

The Pricks pose themselves as a model of decency and decorum. They have ballot boxes and freedom of speech, which enables their citizens to elect the biggest pricks and then freely criticize their selections by vocal erections. In the U.S. the next presidential election process — fund raising, organization, public relations, the “eye on the prize”— starts shortly after a new president takes office. Winning candidates in elections expend more time and energy in gaining victory and preparing for their next victory than performing their duties during their term in office.

The economic, social, and political advancements of their principal superpowers, China for the BRICS and the United States for the Pricks, determine the success of the BRICS and the Pricks. A brief examination of each nation’s potential to rise in the firmament or descend into chaos tells the story.

The Trump administration shows the hidden failures of the United States pluralistic democracy. The past has no continuity; just the opposite, many of the legislations from previous administrations are discarded. and the country, rather than advancing to a progressed new, returns to a rejected old. One example from Understanding AI:

…. Sen. Hawley asked Donald Trump to cancel a federal loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, an $11 billion transmission line that is supposed to carry electricity from Kansas wind farms to homes in Illinois and Indiana. The proposed line would pass through Hawley’s state of Missouri, annoying farmers whose land would be taken by eminent domain.

According to the New York Times, Hawley “explained his concerns to the president, who has repeatedly expressed his distaste for wind power, saying he would not permit any new wind projects during his administration.” Trump then called Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who agreed to cancel a federal loan guarantee for the project, throwing its viability into question.

Impulse overrides soul searching, allegiance to leader is more important than professional education and experience; rash and subjective action replaces careful thought. The America of 2025, with its decaying infrastructure, troubled inner cities, dependence on fossil fuels, continuous problems of crime, drug addiction, health care, and immigration, closely resembles the America of 2010. One big difference ─ adversity and polarization of the population has increased, Americans are at the breaking point with one another. The country, which is rich in resources, has extensive farmland, enjoys suitable and varied climates, and contains an educated and diligent population, is not well managed; it is mismanaged.

The Xi JInping administration shows the hidden success of China’s people’s democracy. The past has continuity; legislations and plans from previous administrations are massaged and enhanced, and the country, rather than remaining stagnant, advances to a new level. Soul searching from millions of cadres provides suggestions for millions of improvements. All leaders have professional education and experience; careful thought displaces rash and subjective action.

The China of 2025, with its continually increasing infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, superhighways, high speed trains, and airline routes that link every remote place in China with central cores, with modern building complexes that replace the shanty towns and provide agreeable living space for an aging population and marginalized rural farmers, with its expanded megacities that are considered technology and planning marvels, and with a unified and obedient population ─ no adversity or polarization here ─ has only a fleeting resemblance to the China of 2010.

Dubbed an engineering marvel, the highly anticipated Raffles City Chongqing project is nearly complete. CapitaLand Group

Sheltering their deficiencies, the Western democracies shift the critical analysis to public relations stunts that highlight the supposed and exaggerated deficiencies of the Chinese system. The Westerners make no effort to learn and understand the workings of China’s political, social, and economic systems. Fabrications are added to the limited “don’t care to know” and conveyed to the public as authorized knowledge. One example is the “debt trap” verbiage, applied to Chinese lending, which began during Sri Lanka’s first debt crisis and has stuck around as an effective means to vilify the PRC.

We have the falsehood. Washington Post (WAPO), “This China has a hand in Sri Lanka’s economic calamity,” analysis by Ishaan Tharoor, July 20, 2022:

One of the major players in Sri Lanka’s calamity is China. Beijing is Sri Lanka’s lone biggest creditor, accounting for some 10 percent of the country’s foreign debt. Between 2000 and 2020, it extended close to $12 billion in loans to the Sri Lankan government, largely for a slate of major infrastructure projects that turned into white elephants — including a costly port facility in the Rajapaksas’ hometown of Hambantota, which was effectively ceded to Chinese control half a decade ago after Sri Lankan authorities recognized they could no longer pay off the loans.

Examination of the Sri Lanka debt crisis exposes the mendacity and viciousness of the WAPO report. Almost every sentence is spurious; China does not engage in “debt trap diplomacy” and has been one lender who makes financial sacrifices that rescues nations from debilitating borrowing.

We have the truth. The Atlantic, “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth,” by Deborah Brautigam and Meg Rithmire, February 6, 2021, had already contradicted WAPO statements.

Steep payments on international sovereign bonds, which comprised nearly 40 percent of the country’s external debt, put Sirisena’s government in dire fiscal straits almost immediately. When Sirisena took office, Sri Lanka owed more to Japan, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank than to China. Of the $4.5 billion in debt service Sri Lanka would pay in 2017, only 5 percent was because of Hambantota. The Central Bank governors under both Rajapaksa and Sirisena do not agree on much, but they both told us that Hambantota, and Chinese finance in general, was not the source of the country’s financial distress.

There was also never a default. Colombo arranged a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and decided to raise much-needed dollars by leasing out the underperforming Hambantota Port to an experienced company—just as the Canadians had recommended. There was not an open tender, and the only two bids came from China Merchants and China Harbor. Sri Lanka chose China Merchants, making it the majority shareholder with a 99-year lease, and used the $1.12 billion cash infusion to bolster its foreign reserves, not to pay off China Eximbank. The China impressed on our minds is not the China that exists.

The United States moves on fumes, on the energies of its past without renewable energies for an improved future. China moves on constantly reinforced energy, all engines operating at top speed, each day becoming a new future. The Pricks know they will not be able to compete economically with the BRICS. They have a choice of consolidating and working together and maintaining reduced economies, cooperating with the Brics in mutual agreements, or, by the usual United States method, resolving the situation by military action.

The threat of military force alarms and subdues the BRICS. They may be compelled to yield much in order to save all. China, guided by its Mandate of Heaven, “a political and religious doctrine that justifies the rule of an emperor based on virtue and ability to govern,” and which it has extended to relations between all nations, might do what it did in the fifteenth century. At that time, China was, by far, the leading commercial power in the world, and huge Chinese fleets sailed the world for markets for its surplus products. After meeting the imperial powers of France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands and observing their nefarious methods in subduing the Africa and Indian peoples, stripping them of resources, and forcing upon them the products manufactured from the resources, China scuttled its fleet and went into solitary confinement.

The reason for Xi Jinping’s self-sufficiency drive is clear. Save the world from nuclear conflagration and let the rest of the world rot. Pricks always lose and always think they have won.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, addressing the UN Conference on The Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, said it was “660 days since the Israeli hostages were first cruelly taken by Hamas terrorists. There is no possible justification for this suffering.” Lammy had spent most of that time deliberately misinterpreting the Genocide Convention and insisting that no genocide was being committed.

“Our support for Israel, its right to exist and the security of its people is steadfast,” he said. Considering Israel’s massacres and other crimes against humanity since the first day of its statehood in 1948 this frequently repeated statement has never convinced anyone.

“However, the Balfour declaration came with the solemn promise ‘that nothing shall be done, nothing which may prejudice the civil and religious rights’ of the Palestinian people’…. This has not been upheld and it is a historical injustice which continues to unfold.” True, but he misquotes Balfour even here. That part of the declaration actually reads: “… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine….”

The Balfour declaration also came with dire warnings. Lord Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the Cabinet at the time, called Zionism “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”. Lord Sydenham remarked: “What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

Well, we know now. And it will stain Britain’s reputation forever.

Lammy continued: “Hamas must never be rewarded for its monstrous attack on October 7.” Of course, he said nothing about Israel having been continuously rewarded for its monstrous attacks on Palestinians over the last 77 years and will likely be rewarded again for its genocide.

“It [Hamas] must immediately release the hostages, agree to an immediate ceasefire, accept it will have no role in governing Gaza and commit to disarmament.” Coincidentally Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also called on Hamas to disband. Along with a number of other countries they’ve just signed a statement saying, “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.” Quite how this squares with international law isn’t clear, and no-one explains. It is for the Palestinian people to decide who governs their sovereign state.

Lammy: “His Majesty’s Government therefore intends to recognise the State of Palestine when the UN General Assembly gathers in September…. unless the Israeli government acts to end the appalling situation in Gaza, ends its military campaign and commits to a long-term sustainable peace based on a two-state solution. Our demands on Hamas also remain absolute and unwavering.” So what happens if Israel actually complies, or appears to comply? Does HMG then see no reason to recognise statehood? That would suit Israel very well. Note that there’s no requirement in all this for Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, which is central to the whole problem. So the Starmer-Lammy proposal purposely misses the point.

Lammy maintains “there is no better vision for the future of the region than two states. Israelis living within secure borders, recognised and at peace with their neighbours, free from the threat of terrorism. And Palestinians living in their own state, in dignity and security, free of occupation.” Just a minute: how about Palestinians, whose land this is, “living within secure borders, free from the threat of Israeli terrorism and occupation”, the terrorists being (as if he didn’t know) the Israelis and their backers the US? Furthermore, UK leaders have banged the drum about a two-state solution for decades without ever describing what it would look like – especially now that Israel has been allowed to establish irreversible ‘facts on the ground’ that make a proper, workable Palestinian state almost impossible.

“The decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians cannot be managed or contained,” he says. True, and that’s been obvious for decades.

“It must now be resolved.” True, and that too has been obvious for decades.

That same day, 29 July, Prime Minister Starmer was delivering “words on Gaza” from Downing Street.

“On the 7th of October 2023 Hamas perpetrated the worst massacre in Israel’s history. Every day since then, the horror has continued.” He makes it sound like the 660 days of horror have been Hamas’s doing.

“Ceasefire must be sustainable and it must lead to a wider peace plan, which we are developing with our international partners. This plan will deliver security and proper governance in Gaza and pave the way for negotiations on a Two State Solution”. Yes, but under international law Palestinians should not have to ‘negotiate’ their freedom and independence, it’s theirs by right regardless of what other nations think or say.

“Our goal remains a safe and secure Israel, alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.” Oh dear, the same old lopsided spiel. Parity isn’t on the West’s agenda.

“Now, in Gaza because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand: Images that will stay with us for a lifetime.” The horror is not due to “a catastrophic failure of aid” but failure over the years to end Israel’s illegal occupation and, in particular, its cruel 18-year siege and blockade of Gaza and the sickening practice of ‘mowing the grass’. The UK especially has been complicit in enabling Israel to maintain its stranglehold.

Starmer: “I’ve always said we will recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to a proper peace process, at the moment of maximum impact for the Two State Solution.” UK governments have been saying that for years. Britain was supposed to grant Palestinians provisional statehood under its Mandate responsibilities back in 1923 and failed to do so. We’ve been ducking the issue ever since while eagerly recognising Israeli statehood with their terrorist militia and Ben-Gurion’s plan to take over the entire Holy Land by force.

“This is the moment to act,” Starmer continued. “So today – as part of this process towards peace I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two State Solution. And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid, and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank.” This is unbelievable vague and gives Israel endless wriggle-room. Much of the West Bank, of course, is already annexed. To give peace any kind of chance conditions must include Israel withdrawing its squatters, quitting all annexed lands and ending its illegal military occupation forthwith.

Starmer ends with the familiar mantra: “Our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal. They must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza.” No mention of the Israeli terrorists disarming and no ban on Likud (Netanyahu’s demented party) from any future government of Israel.

Starmer and Lammy never use the terms ‘international law’ or ‘justice’. Don’t they understand that there can be no peace without justice? Perhaps they do but won’t admit it because their friends and allies Israel and the US, for selfish strategic reasons, don’t want peace and never have.

Starmer and Lammy compromised and untrustworthy

Starmer told The Times of Israel, “I support Zionism without qualification”. Lammy has made similar declarations. The Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life state very clearly (seer ‘Integrity’): “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.” How do they get away with it?

So it’s hardly surprising that Lammy and Starmer show no concern for the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, held in Israeli jails on 7 October under appalling conditions. Over 1,200 were under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’. Or the fact that in the 23 years up to October 7 Israel had been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women. Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem). Were they and their friends in Israel expecting Palestinians to take all that lying down?

Our dynamic duo were not so appalled by the sight of “starving babies and children too weak to stand” that they provided protection for the British-flagged aid vessel Madleen and the Handala bringing much-needed supplies to Gaza. They allowed these vessels to be hijacked in international waters, their cargo stolen and crews abducted by Israel’s thugs, just as the Mavi Marmara, the Al-Awda and other mercy ships had been similarly assaulted. Israeli piracy is the new normal in the eastern Mediterranean and Western nations don’t give a damn. The British government are more than happy, though, to instruct the RAF to fly surveillance missions over Gaza in support of Israel’s genocide programme and to continue sharing intelligence with the apartheid regime.

And if their concerns about the suffering and devastation were ever genuine, why didn’t they proposed forming a UN multi-nation intervention force to take over the Gaza crossings to ensure aid gets through as it should? They have now been shamed and their ‘no genocide’ stance utterly discredited by two of Israel’s own human rights organisations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – who declare that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza and its Western allies have a legal and moral duty to put a stop to it. B’Tselem’s summing-up of the situation is worth sharing:

Since October 2023, Israel has shifted its policy toward the Palestinians. Its military onslaught on Gaza, underway for more than 21 months, has included mass killing, both directly and through creating unlivable conditions, serious bodily or mental harm to an entire population, decimation of basic infrastructure throughout the Strip, and forcible displacement on a huge scale, with ethnic cleansing added to the list of official war objectives.

This is compounded by mass arrests and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, which have effectively become torture camps, and tearing apart the social fabric of Gaza, including the destruction of Palestinian educational and cultural institutions. The campaign is also an assault on Palestinian identity itself, through the deliberate destruction of refugee camps and attempts to undermine the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The term genocide refers to a socio-historical and political phenomenon involving acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Both morally and legally, genocide cannot be justified under any circumstance, including as an act of self-defense.

Genocide always occurs within a context: there are conditions that enable it, triggering events, and a guiding ideology. The current onslaught on the Palestinian people, including in the Gaza Strip, must be understood in the context of more than seventy years in which Israel has imposed a violent and discriminatory regime on the Palestinians, taking its most extreme form against those living in the Gaza Strip. Since the State of Israel was established, the apartheid and occupation regime has institutionalized and systematically employed mechanisms of violent control, demographic engineering, discrimination, and fragmentation of the Palestinian collective. These foundations laid by the regime are what made it possible to launch a genocidal attack on the Palestinians immediately after the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.

The assault on Palestinians in Gaza cannot be separated from the escalating violence being inflicted, at varying levels and in different forms, on Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the West Bank and within Israel. The violence and destruction in these areas is intensifying over time, with no effective domestic or international mechanism acting to halt them. We warn of the clear and present danger that the genocide will not remain confined to the Gaza Strip, and that the actions and underlying mindset driving it may be extended to other areas as well.

The recognition that the Israeli regime is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the deep concern that it may expand to other areas where Palestinians live under Israeli rule, demand urgent and unequivocal action from both Israeli society and the international community, and use of every means available under international law to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

“There are already a dozen cases piling up against me,” she said. “I’m a journalist. One murder case is enough to frame me.”

Rupa, a former chief correspondent at privately owned broadcaster Ekattor TV, now faces nine murder cases. Her husband, Shakil Ahmed, the channel’s former head of news, is named in eight.  

A year ago, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh’s interim government after Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following weeks of student-led protests, during which two journalists were killed.

Yunus promised media reform and repealed the Cyber Security Act, a law used to target journalists under Hasina. But in a November 2024 interview with newspaper The Daily Star, Yunus said that murder accusations against journalists were being made hastily. He said the government had since halted such actions and that a committee had been formed to review the cases.

Still, nearly a year later, Rupa, Ahmed, Shyamal Dutta and Mozammel Haque Babu, arrested on accusations of instigating murders in separate cases, remain behind bars. The repeated use of such charges against journalists who are widely seen as sympathetic to the former regime appear to be politically motivated censorship.

In addition to such legal charges, CPJ has documented physical attacks against journalists, threats from political activists, and exile. At least 25 journalists are under investigation for genocide by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal – a charge that has been used to target figures linked to the former Hasina government. 

“Keeping four journalists behind bars without credible evidence a year on undermines the interim government’s stated commitment to protect press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Beh Lih Yi. “Real reform means breaking from the past, not replicating its abuses. All political parties must respect journalists’ right to report as the country is set for polls in coming months.”

A CPJ review of legal documents and reports found that journalists are often added to First Information Reports (FIRs) – documents that open an investigation – long after they are filed. In May, UN experts raised concern that over 140 journalists had been charged with murder following last year’s protests.

Shyamal Dutta’s daughter, Shashi, told CPJ the family has lost track of how many cases he now faces. They are aware of at least six murder cases in which he is named, while Babu’s family is aware of 10. Rupa and Ahmed’s family told CPJ that they haven’t received FIRs for five cases in which one or the other journalist has been named, which means that neither can apply for bail.

Shafiqul Alam, Yunus’s press secretary, and police spokesperson Enamul Haque Sagor did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment. 

Violence and threats

In 2025, reporters across Bangladesh have faced violence and harassment while covering political events, with CPJ documenting at least 10 such incidents, most of which were carried out by members or affiliates of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its student wing, Chhatra Dal. In several instances, journalists sustained serious injuries or were prevented from reporting after footage was deleted or phones seized, including Bahar Raihan, Abdullah Al Mahmud, and Rocky Hossain.

Responding to the allegations, Mahdi Amin, adviser to Acting BNP Chair Tarique Rahman, told CPJ that while isolated misconduct may occur in a party of BNP’s size, the party does not protect wrongdoers. 

Others have faced threats from supporters of different political parties and the student groups that led the protests against Hasina. Reporters covering opposition groups like Jamaat-e-Islami or its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, have come under particular pressure. On June 9, Hasanat Kamal, editor of EyeNews.news, told CPJ he’d fled to the United Kingdom after being falsely accused by Islami Chhatra Shibir of participating in a violent student protest. Anwar Hossain, a journalist for the local daily Dabanol, told CPJ he’d been threatened by Jamaat supporters after publishing negative reports about a local party leader. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to Abdus Sattar Sumon, a spokesperson for Jamaat-e-Islami, but received no response.

Since Hasina’s ouster, student protesters from the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement (ADSM) have increasinglytargeted journalists they accuse of supporting the former regime, which in one case led to the firing of five journalists. Student-led mobs have also besieged outlets like Prothom Alo and The Daily Star. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to ADSM leader Rifat Rashid but received no response.

On July 14, exiled investigative journalist Zulkarnain Saer Khan, who fled Bangladesh after exposing alleged high-level corruption under Hasina and receiving threats from Awami League officials, posted on X about the repression of the media: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Representative.

“It is outrageous that journalist Sneha Barve, who was nearly killed for exposing wrongdoing, has been threatened once again, while the main suspect in her assault walks free,” said Kunāl Majumder, CPJ’s India representative. “Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis must urgently guarantee Sneha Barve’s safety to send a clear message that attacks on the press will not be tolerated and ensure those responsible are swiftly prosecuted.”

Barve told CPJ that on July 24, Prashant Pandurang Morde – who was arrested for his role in the earlier attack on the journalist – accosted her outside her office in the town of Manchar and threatened her, saying, “This time, we should finish the matter for good.”

On July 4, Barve, founder of the Samarth Bharat Pariwar YouTube-based news channel, was attacked by a group of men while reporting on alleged illegal construction on disputed land in Manchar, Pune district. A video of the attack shows a man striking Barwe with a wooden rod before she loses consciousness.

Five suspects were arrested but released on bail three days later.

The man accused of wielding the rod, Pandurang Sakharam Morde, a businessman with alleged political connections, was named in the First Information Report opening the investigation, but has not been arrested.

On July 18, Prashant Morde, son of Pandurang Sakharam Morde, went to Barve’s father’s office and threatened to harm the entire family, the journalist told CPJ. In a complaint to police, reviewed by CPJ, Barve said the three suspects had been collecting information about her family and requested police protection.

CPJ’s WhatsApp messages requesting comment from Fadnavis’ media advisor, Ketan Pathak, did not receive any reply. Pune Rural Superintendent of Police Sandeep Gill told CPJ by WhatsApp that he would reply, but did not immediately respond to queries. CPJ was unable to immediately source contact information for Morde.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

True to the words of the legendary 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert, “there is no truth. There is only perception”. The truth may sound or taste bitter. But in reality, there is no singular truth and perception about anything and everything in this divine universe, even about the most abstract ones. Inherent truth is subjective, which lies in the hands of an individual’s interpretation. Together, they have a profound influence on shaping people’s views.

Its real-life exponent is none other than the dictator Hitler⸺thanks to his exceptional oratory skills, once dangerous and fascinating. On the other side of the coin lies the legacy of the great American social and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. His non-violent liberal views on racial equality echoed deeply. Both historical figures left an indelible mark on the world courtesy of their respective mindsets strategically manifested, intertwined with truth and perception.

To shape public perception, key news sources include print and electronic media. These include newspapers, television, books, magazines, and radio. Newspapers and television are naturally the most widely ubiquitous, commanding massive audience coverage and deep penetration.

India has one of the largest newspaper circulations in the world. It endures and reveres the media, but here is the catch. According to media literacy index data, our homeland, India, ranked at a very low level globally. The magnitude of freedom is handy to the journalists at large, and it is alarming! Sadly, in India’s context, it is directionless. Ultimately, it is a wake-up call. The freedom of the press is inextricably linked to the democracy of a country. Apart from this, news channels on television are not behind in the rat race with their contemporaries. Selling content to the audience instead of ensuring quality content that informs them the most. Running for TRP, the real news gets diluted. The essence of informing and information gets killed long before through various media.

India’s complex emotional landscape

In a country as emotionally vulnerable and socially heterogeneous — as India. The longstanding challenges, such as Hindu-Muslim tensions, population explosion, poverty, illiteracy, and more. Labyrinths of other enigmas are often engulfed, which causes reactive, colloquial responses. They manifest vividly during nightmarish, complex — Kafkaesque episodes. Numerous instances of public unrest like riots, rapes, suicides, and more are evidence to it. Such emotionally charged reactions complicate the government’s ability to implement and administer policies in a consistent, transformative manner. This is where the truth and the press hold a critical role. In these complexities, the leakages of the internal machinery get highlighted.

A Press Under Siege

Having such a media state has major concerns and equally questionable consequences. They often tend to leave a painful scar later in the long term. On the contrary, the case is very different in countries as Russia, China, the US, and the U.K. They usually have concrete, strong, hassle-free, definite political motives and policies. They refrain from the ways India often tends to follow. The typical Indian answer to our emotional country goes back to our heated history textbooks. There have been countless deliberate attempts the whole world has made to conquer the roots of our ‘bhāratavarṣa’. It was not only for centuries but for millennia indeed. Starting from the advent of Alexander the Great in 326 BCE to the British Empire in 1947. The continual cycle of ‘sought and fought’ had fragmented and fractured the internal cohesion. This legacy left the nation in a difficult yet diverse situation. Still, it often backfires, creating an ironic, complicated situation of unity in diversity. Unlike other countries, the US and Russia. Unfortunately, India hasn’t enjoyed an uninterrupted political lineage with a uniform singularity of purpose. In our case, the press doesn’t report the truth. It often has to wrestle for it amid the noise of unresolved historical background, painstakingly.

Indispensable, twin forces — the truth is an expression, the press is the medium. Shaping and reshaping our views, then our beliefs. Eventually, it solidifies respective ideologies. The media are the purveyors of truth and freedom. Conveying information concisely under the instructions of the government. With such a vital authority and verdict resting on the press, it is a transparent, crystal-clear mirror of the country. It is a double-edged sword, bridging the supreme authority with the assurance of the people. Just exactly like Snow White’s enchanted mirror, today’s press undergoes examination, “Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who tells the truth among us all”? Publicly, things get amplified and complicated with social media. It affects the scenario, which itself is in an uneasy, lopsided state.

Social Media Perils and Content Pollution

True to the words of the legendary English poet Alexander Pope, the warmth of his lines is produced in his thought-provoking work, ‘An Essay on Criticism’. The lines “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” These are so apt to the complex content we consume today. The essence of the magnum opus is deeply felt even today in the 21st-century modern world.

In the essence of the digital age today, Social Media is the online medium that makes shallow learning among the masses a dangerous thing! It has a profound impact and internal pressure on one’s daily life. The ignorance of countless posts on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and so on, will undoubtedly be bliss. In shades of innumerable benefits, it often results in ruining one’s privacy. Social media validation and accumulating more and more followers are blinding. It is infused with overloaded fake news, intense addiction, and the urge to form opinions and criticism (trolling). Everyone wants to express something without having the real knowledge about it. With this huge confusion and anxiety, it has emerged everywhere like wildfire. All of this has created misconceptions, prejudice, manipulation, censorship, ambiguity, rumours, and misuse. This mess is one of the major grey shades of social media.

Content is not just consumed; it is exaggerated, engineered, and fabricated. All this is exercised under legitimate knowledge claims. Ultimately, this flooding mechanism has blurred the line between what is reel and what the actual reality is. It has adulterated information to an unprecedented level. India itself produces a large number of content creators globally. In turn, Indians also tend to consume a huge volume of content. Thanks to insanely addictive reels and posts on apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and more. As a result, India also leads in average mobile screen time. The estimated screen time is more than 5 hours daily. Even sometimes creating obscene content for the sake of likes and comments is considered normal! At least for disseminating genuine content, social media proves to be an easy yet complex option. Consequently, it has driven the Indian media into peril.

The Collapse of Free Speech

Unearthing the truth in the crossword and its clues embedded in a web of lies is hard. It has paradoxically suffocated the very freedom of speech within the compound chaos altogether. Truth is born out of freedom and courage. The press, which once investigated the unknown, unbelievable, and the unthinkable, now tirelessly circles. Just hunting for the truth for the sake of real, meaningful truth. But alas, today, there is both speech and courage immersed deep. The axis of profoundly malicious, politically motivated actions and intentions is strongly holding it. Both truth and press now operate in a system they once sought to expose. Here, language often bought through bribes speaks loudly and boldly to rule over everyone. Often, institutions buy and sell the freedom of speech, putting their agenda forward to the masses. This dirty, unethical transaction not only trades monetary value but also corrupts the system. It hollows the society morally, emotionally, and socially, both intentionally and unintentionally, like a parasite.

The voice of the innocent (media professionals), who dare to speak the truth, often embraces unjust retribution and tyrannical faith. Their remarkable efforts peel back those thick layers of deception, corruption, and bribery, but go in vain. Pressure groups and others often bury uneasy truths and astonishing facts under the guise of national interest and public welfare. The beautiful irony is just showcased as normal in thin air! The menace is that it is paraded to the audience as a sideshow spectacle. Such skillful, shrewd wordplay and rhetorical acrobatics contribute significantly to it. As a result, even the sharpest person in the room can’t pose a question. This puppetry media manipulation in a performative democracy becomes art, not for informing, but for controlling.

The Legal Lens: Indian Constitution and the Press

Laws and the press share a valiant, intertwined relationship where both have the power and potential in society. The law acts as a watchdog over the duty of both the people and the press. The freedom of the media is not only linked to journalism but to the vocal freedom of a country. Leaving it in a deadly dilemma of oblivion if left unchecked.

Resorting to legal methods for a hand-to-hand confrontation and cleansing it eventually may be the tedious yet best remedy. Highlighting the pitfalls and sorting them to the roots, as there is no smoke without fire. Although this is an even bigger headache since the magnitude of the Indian media industry is a whopping amount of more than a billion dollars.

By turning through the pages of the most voluminous rulebook of the world, the Indian Constitution. It offers us both a better, comprehensive, and far-sighted view. Indian law is just and faithful enough to meet both ends and refine its application by drawing the light of wisdom over the respective case.

Article 19(1)(a) relates to the independent freedom of voice and their respective opinions against the actions of the government. The media is legally backed up to highlight the plight of truth ‘lying’ beneath the surface and above it. Likewise, some notable eye-opening cases include the Romesh Thappar vs State of Madras and the Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) (P) Ltd. vs Union of India. These astounding cases had thrust the freedom of the press and media into the limelight, concreting their status even more. These cases and many more are at the confluence of the political and social environment. The emancipation to advance facts and reports without any intervention, but with reasonable restrictions behind the fences.

Freedom and truth in the press should be carried sensibly within the thin line of legal demarcation relative to the audience. Sensitive news often triggers harmful ideas, and it can lead to both psychological and mental pain directly. Avoiding the spread of any fake news, defamation, contempt of court, blasphemy, voyeurism, and any threat to the sovereignty and integrity of India is of utmost national significance. There has been some progress over time to overcome the stagnant debacle; there is a long road to travel.

Press, Sacrifice, and Political Ironies

Dubbed as the 4th pillar of democracy, the press and media enjoy an ironic status owing to their gullible volatility. There remain shining examples of fearless Indian journalism that delivered the truth at the right place and at the right time, undeterred by mental pressure. But ironically, the most staggering report gathered is that our motherland, India, stands amongst the top countries to have the most journalist deaths.

Renowned cases of such ill-fated scapegoats include Gauri Lankesh, J.Dey, and Daniel Pearl; the list goes on. Their “sacrifice” bears a thought-provoking lesson. These media professionals fearlessly tried to unmask the bitter truth of the wrongdoers and guilty minds. To combat such authoritarian regimes, often influential political ideals march forward carrying the baton, calling for a major upheaval or revolution. In the process, this leads to doublespeak from the other side in a counterreaction. Often, when things take a U-turn, these political ideals later turn into political prisoners! Eventually, their descendants find their lives embroiled, burdened with defining and redefining their ideologies and legacy.

Such a misuse or mistake can lead to an Orwellian dystopia in a totalitarian manner, as pointed out by the great 20th-century English author George Orwell. In his magnum opus novel, 1984, he showcases the political nightmare the caged media and press cast upon it.

In the dynamics of India, the silver lining is certainly visible. The architectural Gandhian values of truth and freedom will be followed and resonate. Both the sanguine prospects and outputs of journalism will emerge rooted in integrity and moral duty, without fleeting urgency. But rather with an imperative role, a pillar of democracy, not with transience but with transparency.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Prabhav Khandelwal.

President Trump is pushing for a major redrawing of Texas’s congressional districts to favor Republicans and shape the outcome of future elections, including next year’s midterms. Voting rights expert Ari Berman says this “unprecedented” Republican gerrymandering scheme manipulates an already-gerrymandered map that “limits democratic representation. It already limits representation for communities of color, and now that would be much worse.” The map was released this week, and a hearing is underway today as Republicans try to ram it through.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We’re joined by a mother-daughter duo from Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” Roishetta and Kamea Ozane are part of a group of environmental activists on a national tour to confront the financial backers of destructive natural gas projects that have devastated their community. The “Toxic Billionaire Tour” is targeting the offices of major banks and the homes of executives, who “sit here in New York and in offices in D.C. [and] make decisions for our community, decisions that are killing our children, decisions that are harming our air, our water and our life.” Roishetta Ozane is the founder and director of environmental justice organization The Vessel Project. Her 12-year-old daughter Kamea, like many residents of “Cancer Alley,” lives with asthma that is exacerbated by the polluted air and water around her home. “Right as soon as you walk outside of my house, if you look over, you can see the industries from right outside of my front yard, and from the industries you can see the bulging fires, and you can smell this really toxic air.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Trump administration is attempting to revoke a landmark rule that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants and other sources under the authority of the Clean Air Act. For over a decade, what is known as the “endangerment finding” has been one of the most important legal underpinnings in the federal effort to combat climate change. Since it was instituted, says David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council, “we’ve made a lot of progress” in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “But now [EPA Administrator Lee] Zeldin is attempting, against the science, to revoke the determination that this stuff is dangerous.” This comes as communities across the United States deal with the effects of increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters, from floods to heat waves to major storms. “What we’re seeing play out, these extreme weather events, are a demonstration that carbon emissions do pose a danger to our health — in fact, to the health of the planet,” says climate scientist Michael Mann.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A former senior UN aid official has condemned the bloodshed at the notorious US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid food depots, describing the distribition system as having turned into a “catastrophe”.

The number of aid seekers killed continues to climb daily beyond 1000.

Martin Griffiths, director of Mediation Group International and the former Under Secretary General of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, said: “I think when many of us saw the first plans of the GHF to launch this operation in Gaza, we were immediately appalled by the way they were proposing to manage it.”

• READ MORE: US envoy visits Gaza as Israeli forces kill starving Palestinians
• NZ ‘lagging behind’ world by failing to recognise Palestinian statehood, says former PM Helen Clark
• What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

“It was clearly militarised. They’d have their own security contractors,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They’d have [Israeli military] camps placed right beside them. We know now that they are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military].

“All of this is a crime. All of this is a deep betrayal of humanitarian values.

“But what I at least did not sufficiently anticipate was the killing and was the absolutely critical result of this operation, this sole humanitarian operation allowed by Israel in Gaza,” Griffiths added.

“The 1000 killed are an incredible statistic. I had no idea it would go that high and it’s going on daily. It’s not stopping.

“I think it’s a catastrophe more than a disappointment,” he said. “I think it’s a great sin. I think it’s a great crime.”

However, he acknowledged it was still an “important form of witness”.

“I’m glad that they’re going,” Griffiths said.

“Maybe they will see things that are unexpected. I can’t imagine because we’ve seen so much. But I don’t see it leading to a major change.

“If I was one of the two million Gazans starving to death, this is a day I would like to go to an aid distribution point,” Griffiths added.

“There’s slightly less risk probably than any other day.”

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with KYUK Public Media and NPR’s Station Investigations Team. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

When Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon toured the public school in Sleetmute last fall, he called the building “the poster child” for what’s wrong with the way the state pays to build and maintain schools. The tiny community 240 miles west of Anchorage had begged Alaska’s education department for nearly two decades for money to repair a leaky roof that over time had left part of the school on the verge of collapse.

Seated at a cafeteria table after the tour, Edgmon, a veteran independent lawmaker, told a Yup’ik elder he planned to “start raising a little bit of Cain” when he returned to the Capitol in Juneau for the 2025 legislative session.

Other lawmakers said similar things after an investigation by KYUK Public Media, ProPublica and NPR earlier this year found that the state has largely ignored hundreds of requests from rural school districts to fix deteriorating buildings, including the Sleetmute school. Because of the funding failures, students and teachers in some of Alaska’s most remote villages face serious health and safety risks, the news organizations found.

Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, an Anchorage Democrat, called the investigation’s findings “heartbreaking” and said in an email during the legislative session earlier this year that “the current state of these schools is unacceptable.” Sen. Scott Kawasaki, a Fairbanks Democrat, wrote to say that the “responsibility lies squarely on the legislature” and acknowledged “we do not do enough.” Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, a Republican from Fairbanks, wrote, “We are working to right the ship!”

Yet during a legislative session where money for education was front and center, lawmakers were only able to pass $40 million in school construction and maintenance funding, about 5% of the nearly $800 million that districts say they need to keep their buildings safe and operating.

In June, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed more than two-thirds of that, nearly $28 million.

“Basically, we don’t have enough money to pay for all of our obligations,” Dunleavy explained in a video posted on YouTube.

In the video, seated at an empty table in a darkened room and flanked by U.S. and Alaska flags, Dunleavy, a Republican, painted a grim picture of the state’s future. “The price of oil has gone down; therefore our revenue is going down,” he said.

The crisis Dunleavy described isn’t just a short-term problem. State officials have known for decades that relying on oil to fund the budget is risky as prices and production have declined. But year after year, they have failed to agree on a solution to finance school repairs and renovations. Alaska is one of only two states without an income tax or statewide sales tax.

Average annual spending on education facilities declined by nearly 60% after 2014, the year oil prices plummeted, according to a 2021 report by the University of Alaska Anchorage. Overall spending on rural facilities is now less than half of what the National Council on School Facilities recommends.

Sen. Löki Tobin, a Democrat from Anchorage who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said it’s hard to get “momentum” around various ideas to fund education, “let alone just getting folks to realize that we have been by attrition defunding our schools.”

Alaska’s Legislature seemed primed this year to address education funding. Several new candidates from both parties campaigned on education and won seats in November’s statewide election.

“We flipped an entire statehouse,” said Tobin, who was elected to the Legislature in 2022, “based on the question of adequate school funding.”

Lawmakers filed a bill to fund education before the session even began. And in the first months of the year, dozens of superintendents, students and school board members traveled to Juneau to testify before lawmakers and urge them to increase funding for curriculum, teacher salaries and other costs.

During one Senate Finance Committee hearing, panel co-chair Lyman Hoffman, who has represented rural Alaskan school districts for 38 years, raised the specter of a civil rights lawsuit similar to those the state has faced in the past over education in primarily Indigenous communities.

The prospect, he said, could be “more costly to the state than if we came forward and tried to do something about the condition of these schools.”

In April, Alaska’s House and Senate passed a bipartisan bill that would have offered the largest increase in nearly a decade in what the state spends on each student annually. It did not include capital funds for school construction or maintenance.

Days later, Dunleavy, a former superintendent and school board member, vetoed it. He said it didn’t include enough support for homeschooling and charter schools — policy changes that he’s long pushed for.

Before the legislative session adjourned in May, lawmakers passed a compromise bill that included less spending and eased regulations for charter schools. Dunleavy again vetoed it, but lawmakers overrode the veto. The next month, Dunleavy used his line-item veto power to slash 3% from the education budget, the largest cut to any department in the state.

This year’s total state budget came to $14.7 billion, about $1 billion less than the previous year. Some lawmakers have described it as “bare bones” and “flat funded.”

Among Dunleavy’s cuts was more than $25 million that was supposed to pay for school construction and maintenance. School districts have to apply to the state for those funds each year, and their proposed projects are then ranked. The reduction doesn’t leave enough money this year to pay for even the top three projects among the 84 maintenance proposals school districts submitted. Seventeen major construction projects, including the replacement of five rural schools, received no funding at all.

One of those projects is a new school in Stebbins, a Yup’ik village on the coast of the Norton Sound and the Bering Sea where the building burned down last year. More than 200 K-12 students now attend classes in about a dozen small temporary buildings. Mayor Sharon Snowball said several students left the community after the fire to attend boarding school or live with family in other communities.

Two hundred miles southwest in Mertarvik, a village that recently relocated due to climate change, the school district did not receive the funds it applied for to build a wastewater system for a school that’s set to open in 2026. The district said it couldn’t answer questions about how it will move forward with the project.

Dunleavy has called lawmakers back to Juneau on Aug. 2 for a special session to discuss reforming the state’s education system. It’s unclear whether maintenance and construction funds will be part of those discussions.

Alaska’s budget crisis has been detrimental to the state’s rural school districts, which rely almost entirely on the annual budget for funding to fix and maintain buildings because they serve unincorporated communities that don’t have the power to levy taxes.

The budget depends heavily on profits from the production and sale of crude oil, which go into the state’s Permanent Fund, a state-owned investment fund. Returns on those investments pay for more than half of Alaska’s operational needs each year.

Prices of crude oil from Alaska’s North Slope dropped by more than a third from 2014 to this spring, according to the Alaska Department of Revenue. The result is a budget deficit that some economists say will exceed $1 billion by next year.

State lawmakers have failed to address the warning signs of a budget crisis for decades. By the early 2000s, Alaska’s daily oil production had fallen by half from its peak in the 1980s. Last year, it was a quarter of that.

But for a time, high oil prices allowed Alaska to make it work. When Edgmon came into office in 2007, he said every day was a windfall.

“We put a ton of money into schools both operationally and capital budgetwise,” he said.

Legislators have weighed numerous options to fund the budget. They’ve considered whether to trim the annual dividend checks that Alaska pays to its year-round residents from the return on Permanent Fund investments. Last year, Alaskans received just over $1,700. Cutting payments is wildly unpopular, in part because research has shown the money reduces the number of Alaskans in poverty by up to 40%.

Lawmakers have dipped into the state’s dwindling savings accounts to cover the deficit, said Matt Berman, a University of Alaska Anchorage economics professor who co-authored a 2016 report that examined various deficit-reduction methods.

“The fact that the study was done 10 years ago and that absolutely no action has taken place since then speaks for itself,” Berman wrote in an email.

Some lawmakers have long called for Alaska to adopt a statewide income or sales tax, but neither idea has gained much traction. A bipartisan working group studied the possibility of enacting taxes in 2021. After a year on the working group, state Rep. Kevin McCabe, a Republican from north of Anchorage, said he wasn’t convinced taxes were the answer.

“We experimented with sales tax, maybe a seasonal sales tax, we tried an income tax, progressive income tax,” he said. “It’s just not gonna bring in the money that we need for all of our infrastructure deficit.”

Alaska used to have a special tax on every employed resident to help pay for education. But it was repealed in 1980 after the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which allowed the state to sell more oil from North Slope.

“I’ll never forget my first payroll check,” said Click Bishop, a former six-term Republican senator from Fairbanks. He said his boss went through the statement with him. “He gets down here on this line, and it says ‘education head tax $5,’ and he said, ‘Kid, that $5 is going to the state to help you get your education,’” he recalled.

Bishop, who is exploring a run for governor, has proposed reinstating an annual education tax. But his proposal would only raise about $14 million each year, hardly enough to scratch the surface on the state’s school maintenance needs.

Instead of taxes, McCabe and other lawmakers say a more long-term solution for both schools and Alaska’s overall budget would be to build a natural gas pipeline that would raise money from gas sales.

Estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey show the state is home to more than a hundred trillion cubic feet of untapped natural gas, but there’s no way to bring it to market.

Described by the industry as “big, expensive and complex,” the pipeline project has been in discussions for at least 50 years. In 2020, the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., an independent state corporation tasked with developing the infrastructure, estimated construction could cost close to $40 billion. Though an energy developer recently announced interest from dozens of international customers, it’s unclear who would foot that bill.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Emily Schwing, KYUK.

The exchange is one of many moves by the Trump administration to privatize public land and roll back climate and environmental protections. In just six months the White House has announced plans to shrink iconic national monuments, reopened oil and gas leasing, rescinded watershed protections to pave the way for mining, and opened millions of acres of national forest to logging. These decisions have been joined by a broader dismantling of climate and environmental regulations, including efforts to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to curb greenhouse gases. 

Even as he continued upending how the country’s natural resources are managed, President Trump signed an executive order vowing to “Make America Beautiful Again.” His directive, issued July 3, called for balancing environmental stewardship with economic growth, and established a commission to “advise and assist the President regarding how best to responsibly conserve America’s national treasures and natural resources.” It is unclear what policies this commission might develop or how much authority it will hold. 

Benji Backer, a 27-year-old conservative conservationist, hopes to influence some of those details. He has built a national platform around the idea that caring about the environment and climate change is a bipartisan issue. After founding the non-profit American Conservation Coalition, or ACC, eight years ago, Backer launched Nature is Nonpartisan this spring. While ACC was “strictly meant for conservatives, by conservatives,” he sees the new organization transcending partisanship, pursuing environmental action regardless of who holds political power. “If there’s a future for our environment, there has to be a center voice that’s willing to call balls and strikes, and not care about who they could potentially piss off,” he said.

The group’s board includes notable conservative figures like David Bernhardt, a lawyer who served as interior secretary during the first Trump administration and was investigated for failing to recuse himself from decisions affecting Halliburton, a former client. He now consults for oil and gas firms. Other advisors include Chris LaCivita Jr., a political consultant and son of the president’s 2024 campaign manager, as well as more centrist figures like Van Jones and David Livingston. 

Shortly after the president took office Backer delivered a draft order to the White House containing a list of policy goals he’d developed in consultation with groups like Ducks Unlimited and the National Wildlife Federation. These included goals like restoring forests and combating plastic pollution. Though the final order, announced at the Iowa State Fair, does not explicitly mention climate change, Backer says it helps the EPA administrator and Interior Secretary “move in the right direction.” Based on his conversations with them, Backer says, “They’ve been focused on cutting. It’s my hope that they start building soon.”

Though the Trump administration’s revisions substantially altered the order, Backer was quick to celebrate it. “Working with the White House on this EO for the past six months has been an honor,” he posted on X shortly after Trump signed the document. “This is an incredible step that will leave a positive mark for our environment for generations!”

Backer’s optimistic tone marks a shift from a letter he co-signed with nine other Republican leaders in December, stating that Trump’s win “raises serious questions about both the durability of recent climate gains and the prospects for future progress.” At that time, the coalition statement focused on the election of climate-engaged Republicans like Reps. John Curtis and Marianette Miller-Meeks, both members of the Conservative Climate Caucus. Like many liberal organizations preparing for a Trump administration, the letter also discussed shifting focus to state and local climate action. 

Read Next

Trump’s environmental policies are reshaping everyday life. Here’s how.

Grist staff

Lobbying efforts by the American Conservation Coalition and its advocacy arm have met mixed success with the Trump administration. They appear to have spent $2.65 million trying to preserve key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, particularly clean energy tax credits. “The tax credits empower the private sector to invest in clean, reliable energy,” Danielle Franz, ACC’s chief executive officer, told Grist, “It’s important to use our resources to reward innovation, and to have those free market or market-based incentives.” She added that the document Grist obtained that outlines the lobbying effort was a “leaked, outdated draft that was never finalized or published,” and “appears to conflate” ACC and its advocacy group’s work.” Those efforts ultimately failed: The reconciliation bill made significant cuts to clean energy policy, effectively halting federal incentives for wind, solar, and other renewable energy projects. The bill did retain some support for nuclear and geothermal power. Franz declined to criticize the decision or discuss specific energy policies, saying “in any bill you’re going to have give and take.” 

The budget bill debate also demonstrated how effective conservative voices can be in shaping environmental policy. When Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee proposed requiring the sale of millions of acres of federal land, it sparked swift and broad backlash, including from hunters, anglers, and right-leaning influencers like Joe Rogan. After widespread conservative criticism, Lee scaled back the bill, then withdrew it — underscoring the significant influence GOP conservation groups like ACC can have in determining environmental policy. 

It was, Backer says, “a perfect example of what is possible. It basically just allowed us to go out there and show that millions of Americans are willing to stand together for the same environmental outcome.” He hopes to build on that momentum with practical goals: Nature Is Nonpartisan is developing a short list of priorities he believes are politically feasible, including providing more funding for easing water pollution, reforming the Endangered Species Act, and tackling the backlog of maintenance in the nation’s 63 National Parks. (His list made no mention of climate change.) To garner support, Backer recently organized a coalition meeting of conservation groups, including right-leaning organizations like American Forests and Safari Club International, as well as more liberal conservation groups like The Nature Conservancy. 

It’s part of a broader effort to tap into what he and others see as a growing awareness among conservatives. As Franz puts it, if you asked most conservatives if “climate change is real, they would say yes.” She points out conservation has deep roots in the Republican party, from Teddy Roosevelt championing the creation of national parks to Ronald Reagan approving the Montreal Protocol to address the ozone hole. 

Public opinion has shifted sharply since then, however. According to a 2024 Gallup poll, only 11 percent of Republicans consider climate change a great personal threat, down from 29 percent a decade ago. A Pew Research Center survey reveals that while a majority of Republicans support concrete policies like expanding solar farms and joining international climate agreements, only 12 percent say climate change should be a top national priority — underscoring how political polarization shapes broader attitudes. Though there may be pragmatic support for specific policies, Republicans still consistently prioritize consumer costs, and fossil fuels over renewable energy. “Most conservatives understand the issue,” Franz says. “They’re just tired of the moralism and want solutions aligned with their values.”

In the past, ACC has advocated for streamlining permitting and boosting nuclear energy, promoting an “all‑of‑the‑above” strategy that includes renewables. Franz says ACC is happy with Trump’s “energy abundance” strategy, arguing that traditional energy produced in the United States has “a net reduction for global emissions” because “American-made fossil fuels are cleaner than some other countries.” 

The data tell a different story. The International Energy Agency has been unequivocal: To stay within global climate goals, no new fossil fuel development can move forward. Studies show U.S. methane emissions are severely undercounted, especially from shale gas fields, and claims of American fossil fuels being cleaner obscure the urgent need to shift away from them altogether. “Look, I’m not here to defend what Trump’s done on the environment over the last six months,” Backer said. “This is not a black or white thing. This is a four year administration, and we’re trying to shift them in the direction towards conservation as much as we possibly can.” 

But hoping for a gradual course correction is at odds with the urgency of the crisis and the need for swift action, said Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who led the EPA under President George W. Bush. She is upset by the Trump administration’s dismantling of that agency, saying the president “has no respect for science.”

Read Next

Why the federal government is making climate data disappear

Kate Yoder

In the absence of climate leadership from Washington, Whitman said states will have to step up with their own agreements, like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a coalition of 11 eastern states that aims to limit and reduce  emissions from the power sector. Although each of those states is currently led by a Democrat, several of them have had Republican governors since the coalition’s inception in 2005. “There are Republicans that really care about the environment and are doing work,” Whitman said. But while she agrees bipartisan advocacy is essential, she says there’s a clear disconnect between the rhetoric in Make America Beautiful Again and the administration’s policies. “You’ve got to watch what they’re doing, not just what they’re saying,” she added. The gap, she said, “is pretty stark.”

Still, Franz is optimistic about building conservative consensus around a sustainable future. “Our message to conservatives is that this country is worth protecting,” she says. 

In its first six months, the Trump administration has aggressively expanded oil and gas leasing, rolled back critical environmental regulations, and weakened methane emissions, reversing previous conservation protections and U.S. progress on global climate commitments. Asked about these policies, Franz said, “I think oftentimes these pieces want to relitigate and relitigate and relitigate the past, instead of talking about the future that conservatives see.”

Franz and Backer see themselves as guardians of a tradition that protects a natural heritage alongside economic freedom. They don’t see a gulf between a livable future and the reality unfolding in Washington — a White House that praises abundance while leasing away the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; an administration that talks about stewardship while gutting the laws that made it possible. 

Franz recently became a parent, an experience that’s deepened her commitment to her work. She wants her four-month-old son to grow up seeing the north woods of Minnesota the way she did — deer tracks in the snow, the bite of a November wind, the smell of rifle oil. Franz talks about caring about outcomes, not performative belief tests, how conservatives are tired of virtue signaling, and focusing on solutions. She doesn’t see a tension between supporting oil and gas and promoting conservation at the same time. “It assumes a binary choice between use and between care, and I think that we can do both.”

Whether that’s true is no longer just an ideological debate. It’s a matter of time. As Franz says, “It’s not really a question of, ‘Do you believe in climate change?” anymore. It’s more a question of, ‘What do you want to do about it?’

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Can protecting nature be nonpartisan? on Aug 1, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lois Parshley.

Kerr County’s emergency management coordinator, William B. Thomas IV, spoke publicly for the first time at the hearing, noting that he was sick on July 3, the day before the floods, and had informed supervisors that he wouldn’t be able to participate in coordination meetings. He slept through most of the day and learned of the devastating floods the morning of July 4 when his wife woke him up at 5:30 am. Thomas then went on to reflect on what he could have done differently. 

“The honest answer is that based on the data we had at the time, there was no clear indicator that a catastrophic flood was imminent,” he said, noting that forecasts from the National Weather Service the day before had not been materially different from previous forecasts that had not resulted in flooding.

More significantly, perhaps, the day’s torrential rain had fallen in locations where limited data could be gathered from the half dozen flood gauges along the Guadalupe River. Those gauges provide critical data for monitoring river flows and, during floods, can provide advance warning that can save lives. But the U.S. has a shortage of such gauges, particularly in rural, tribal, and low-income communities. While the U.S. Geological Survey maintains a nationwide network of more than 12,000 gauges in partnership with local agencies, persistent funding shortfalls have limited their maintenance and operation. As of October 2024, more than 4,750 locations met the criteria for inclusion in the network — but only about 3,400 gauges are active due to budget constraints.  

“We need real-time monitoring of rainfall and river gauges, especially in upstream headwaters and watershed zones,” Thomas told lawmakers. “We cannot rely solely on radar or traditional forecasting from the National Weather Service. We need systems that detect what’s happening on the ground minute by minute.”

More gauges may have helped save lives on July 4. Between 2 am and 5 am, the heaviest rain fell on the south fork of the river before it converged with the north fork by the town of Hunt. 

“If there had been more gauges up closer to where the rain started and where the flood started, where those two forks were coming together, that would have been helpful,” said James Goss-Dollin, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. “We want to have as many [gauges] as possible so you can see where the water is and how fast it is coming towards you. There’s a huge need to better monitor rivers.”

At the Thursday hearing, residents shared their accounts braving the floods, as well as their experiences of the recovery process so far. An army of volunteers descended on Kerr County and neighboring areas in the first few weeks after the floods, but as national interest fades, residents are beginning to grapple with the reality of rebuilding. Many have turned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, for help. The agency offers financial aid to help survivors recover in the wake of disasters. Those funds can cover rent for temporary housing, trailers for those whose homes are uninhabitable, and assistance to cover the cost of funerals.

A new analysis by Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that advocates for fair housing and post-disaster recovery, shows that FEMA has conducted more than 3,100 inspections of Central Texas homes affected by flooding since July 4 — and rejected more than 1,100 of those applications. Among those approved, funding levels have been modest. The agency has provided an average of roughly $8,600 in assistance to repair homes and $34,000 to those who have to rebuild homes entirely, as of July 26. Despite the modest totals, the aid appears to be in line with that provided during previous disasters.

“Low acceptance rates are not uncommon after any given storm,” said Meg Duffy, a senior policy analyst at Texas Appleseed and one of the researchers who conducted the analysis. “Part of that reflects the difficulty involved in applying for FEMA assistance.”

FEMA assistance was never meant to make disaster survivors financially whole again. Instead, FEMA aid is intended to supplement insurance, loans, state and local assistance, and personal savings. The agency’s grants are capped for the current fiscal year at a maximum of $87,200 per grantee for home repairs and other essential needs.

But most residents in rural Central Texas don’t have flood insurance. (Flood damages are not covered by standard homeowner’s insurance.) In Kerr County, a little more than 2 percent of residents have flood coverage. In fact, Duffy’s research found that about three-fourths of local FEMA applicants didn’t have any home insurance at all. It also found that about two-thirds of those applicants made less than $60,000 a year. 

A number of bureaucratic and logistical hurdles can slow down how quickly aid is distributed. If an applicant has insurance, FEMA requires that they first secure documentation from the insurance company stating how much it is willing to cover. That process can sometimes take weeks, if not months. The agency also tries to meet with individual homeowners to inspect their homes and verify ownership before granting aid. If a resident does not have transportation to meet with FEMA personnel or is unable to secure documentation to prove ownership — because, say, the paperwork has washed away in a flood — the agency will deny applications. In those cases, residents can appeal and provide the missing information, but that can take weeks or months to process. Speeding up that timeline is a key improvement that FEMA should make, according to Duffy.

Grist has a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster.

Explore the full Disaster 101 resource guide for more on your rights and options when disaster hits.

Are you affected by the flooding in Texas and North Carolina? Learn how to navigate disaster relief and response.

Get prepared. Learn how to be ready for a disaster before you’re affected.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Texas lawmakers grill Kerr County officials as flood recovery plods on on Aug 1, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

Climate-driven calamities are becoming more frequent and severe, as shown by last month’s devastating floods in Texas. Twenty-eight disasters nationwide caused $93 billion in damage in 2023 — a price tag the country has exceeded in the first half of 2025. Yet more than 70% of Americans lack a detailed safety plan. 

A study published last month in Public Health Reports provides some insight into who those people are. Researchers surveyed nearly 3,000 adults in the United States and found that those who previously experienced a natural disaster were more likely to have emergency supplies and evacuation plans in place. Men and those with jobs more often said they were prepared, while women and unemployed people often were not. Importantly, adults over 55 were 63% more likely to say they knew how to stay safe and access emergency information. 

That finding was striking in part because older adults often comprise the majority of victims when disasters hit, said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder. “Older adults are saying they know what to do, they understand what to do. But then there’s an additional body of research on specific disaster events showing the older adults are actually, in many ways, the ones most at risk to death, injury and other forms of harm,” she said. 

The study also found political affiliation plays a role in how someone might respond in a crisis, with Democrats expressing greater confidence in their ability to access emergency information. “This raises questions about whether this finding relates more to a lack of knowledge or to a lack of trust in information sources, and we encourage future research on this given its implications for messaging in disaster preparedness and response efforts,” said Christine Crudo Blackburn, the lead author of the study conducted by Texas A&M University.

People who have experienced a disaster were more than three times as likely to have an evacuation plan, and more than twice as likely to have an emergency kit. That preparedness might not extend to those who narrowly avoid being hit by, say, a hurricane, said Jennifer Horney, a disaster epidemiologist at the University of Delaware. She calls this the false expectations paradox: If someone is told to evacuate, and then the hurricane doesn’t come, they’re more likely to ignore official warnings next time. 

“There’s been a good bit of research on people trusting messages from friends and family over authorities,” she said. “So in terms of making an evacuation decision, people will end up doing what their friends and neighbors are doing,” Horney said. During Hurricane Harvey, people trusted their neighborhood Facebook groups – but didn’t necessarily heed government warnings, she said. 

Blackburn’s findings raise urgent questions about how local authorities, public health officials, and federal agencies can more effectively communicate and build trust, particularly among populations that are less likely to prepare. Individual readiness only goes so far without governmental or agency intervention. “These intense storms require agency and organizational and governmental preparedness,” Horney said. “It’s not just one person or one family.” 

The challenge is, the agencies doing that work tend to be underfunded, with high turnover, said Samantha Montano, an associate professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Her book Disasterology chronicles the nation’s inadequate preparation for climate disasters. “Most local emergency management agencies, if they’re doing preparedness, are doing things like posting information about how to make an emergency kit on their website. Maybe they’re handing out flyers or pamphlets at a local farmer’s market. If you’re lucky, they’re partnered with the local schools and send something home in the mail with the kids.”

Still, local emergency managers understand they aren’t reaching everyone, said David Abramson, who studies disaster response at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. “They know that they’ve got to figure out ways to reach people, and I think in the past, the answer has been using their networks of community based providers to reach out to particularly vulnerable groups and populations,” he said. 

One way they might bridge the political divide is by enlisting local Republican party officials to assist in reaching their own community, he said. Such thinking, and data from studies like the one Blackburn led, can lead to other effective solutions — like working on disaster preparedness in schools, or engaging other community groups.  

“My hope is that our data can be useful to the people on the ground who are helping communities and individuals prepare for disasters,” said Blackburn. “By understanding how individuals prepare, we can actually tailor policies to the needs of people.

Grist has a comprehensive guide to help you stay ready and informed before, during, and after a disaster.

Explore the full Disaster 101 resource guide for more on your rights and options when disaster hits.

Are you affected by the flooding in Texas and North Carolina? Learn how to navigate disaster relief and response.

Get prepared. Learn how to be ready for a disaster before you’re affected.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Floods, fires and false confidence: America’s disaster problem is personal on Aug 1, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sophie Hurwitz.

My mom actually took singing lessons when she was pregnant with me. I don’t have a scientific basis for how that might’ve affected me, but come on, to live in the sort of resonating chamber of her body… I can only imagine that that left its impression. [Growing up in that kind of household] felt so comforting. There’s something about practicing that I love. Whether my dad was practicing a piece on the piano, and my mom was going through vocal exercises, whatever, I find that one of the most reassuring sounds in the world.

Did you think that you would be a musician? Was that an expectation?

I wanted to maybe go into law, medicine, Russian, or piano, or maybe dance. I was very obsessed with ballet. My mom actually said an interesting thing. She was like, “If you love your art form, don’t do it.” Because when you make it your profession, all the bullshit that comes with professions will be a part of your love of music or love of dance, and you will have to deal with egos, and you will have to deal with favoritism and worries about money and… you’ll have to do things or play games that kind of diminish the pleasure. So I really took that to heart, and went and studied Russian and Russian literature. A very practical degree. [laughs]

Was that her kind of admitting that she felt that way?

Oh, yeah. She told me that even when she would go to a concert, she would just be listening technically, like how is this person shaping their mouth? How are they projecting? And she just said, “I can’t turn that off anymore.”

I’m so interested in what drives someone’s creative practice and what proximity does. Sometimes when you’re too technical, you’re too close. It gets rid of this kind of spaciousness that you need for it to feel really imaginative.

I’ve always wanted to do so many things [but] was always very confused about, what should I actually focus on? Dance, writing, and music…I realized at some point that even though I loved all three an outrageous amount, there was none of them really, but writing most of all, that I liked the unglamorous part of actually doing it. Actually learning it, not just the result. I love music so much that I feel sometimes, “I would die for music,” if that was a thing. But I don’t want to do the exercises. I don’t want to. That’s so boring to me. With audio [production], that’s when I knew I’d found my thing. I love every bloody minutiae of it.

I started to realize a few years ago that, though there are lots of great podcasts in this world, some of them, especially post-podcast-boom, followed a very typical pattern or arc. Whereas in the Paris Review Podcast, you keep elements, like the set-up to an interview or a bird in the background, that in other shows would be removed and considered unnecessary. You’re using the world to score the world. It really transports me. Like in the [“Scenes from Open Marriage” episode, an essay written and read by Jean Garnett], where you hear her taking breaks and the tension between her performative “reading” voice and her sitting-back voice.

In a way, for me, it always feels like love. You might not really pay attention to that when you are around and about in the world and there’s a bird, “Okay, whatever, I’ve heard birds before.” But all of a sudden in this context, where it is carefully edited, and kind of curated, it serves a sort of a purpose. You are there with [Jean] as she drinks her tea and then puts the mug on the table. All of a sudden everything is sort of imbued with a shimmer. It’s elevated in some way. And so to me it’s almost like an ode to banal stuff of the world.

It reminded me of Svetlana Alexievich, [a Belarusian oral historian who documented the Soviet and post-Soviet period], whose work I know you love, and something you’ve said about how “history is in the heart.” I was reading more about her work and it being composed of so many interviews, and it strikes me that there’s a difference between “these are a bunch of facts” and “this is the felt experience of someone in this situation at this time.” And that felt experience is this really particular chemistry each time.

That’s why I love her so much. You don’t hear it. You don’t get to hear the tea mug, but you hear the effects of it. You hear the fact that someone is comfortable at their kitchen table, not speaking from the position of an expert who has studied the thing, but just like someone who’s remembering falling in love or gathering strawberries and their mom slapping them because they did something and their dad being carted off to the Gulag [under Stalin]. And then it’s so different… than when you just read a book written about the Gulag. [In the latter] it always feels like these people had no lives before or after or outside of that.

When did you encounter her work for the first time?

I don’t remember exactly when, but… I think I just saw the book at a bookstore.…Now I’ve read pretty much everything by her. I mean, I get very emotional when I think about her. I don’t know why there are not thousands of people doing what she does. I mean, not that anyone can do it as she does, everyone would do it in their different way, exactly as you’re talking about, this specific alchemy.

But I am so interested in history because history is nothing but life, right? It’s not different from now, it’s just life that happened a little bit ago or a lot ago. And when people are able to capture that life with all of its texture, it’s like an ode… It makes me appreciate actual life more, the one I’m living. I don’t need a big arc. I don’t need to do something important… And meaning is everywhere, if only you care to look or notice, pay attention.

Did reading her inform your approach to interviewing people?

I want to say yes, but I can’t be sure that that’s the correct cause and effect. I never thought about it practically. [Though] in the past few years I’ve been exchanging a lot of voice messages with friends. Some of them just because they don’t live in New York and I can’t see them. And when you have to come up with a time to call like, “Oh my god, no, I’m busy, and actually it’s not a good time anymore,” blah, blah. So we just record voice messages and send them and [they] are routinely like 30, 40 minutes long. And the beautiful thing about these is that you can notice the movements of someone’s mind because you’re not interrupting them, you’re not asking follow-up questions. So they get to just jump from thing to thing. You can hear them free-associate. It’s very moving because you get to know your friends in such a different way than if you would actually be with them and talk and interact. And that reminds me of [Svetlana]. She does ask questions, 100 percent, but I think she is silent a lot. I think she does do that thing where she asks one question and then just listens. And that is something that I’m learning to do. It’s awkward. We don’t like silence. Nobody likes silence, but they will fill it because they don’t like it. So just zip it.

What else have you noticed over time, doing interviews?

The main thing that has changed is I have willed myself to be less afraid to ask really difficult questions. I was so terrified. Aren’t we all? Because an interview is very much not like a normal conversation. You do things you would never do in a normal conversation, that would be considered rude and overstepping. And in an interview that is not out of the bounds of the expected or accepted.

I found it really hard, but I learned by listening to interviews that I’d done because I was transcribing them and editing them and being like, “Man, I left that on the table. Why did I decide for them that they probably wouldn’t want to go there? Why?” And it made me think, how often do people get the gift of being listened to? Especially say, when a loved one died? People are so awkward around death that if your loved one died, people will be like, “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s sad,” for a few months. And then they expect you to get over it, and then they will not ask you about it anymore. To the extent that they ever did.

I remember I interviewed a poet [for Poetry Off The Shelf] whose dad died when she was really young, maybe she was seven or eight… And she has written so many books about the death of her father. So she’s also interviewed about that a lot. And I asked her, “What was your dad like?” And she took a beat and she was like, “Nobody has ever asked me that.” Can you believe it? This is not a very spectacular question. This is not my genius coming up with the smartest thing to say, but people do not ask each other the most basic stuff because they’re afraid.

Now I know that I have to do it, and they want it, and I want it, and the listener wants it. And I tell them every time before the interview, “When I’m about to ask something hard, you are in charge. If you don’t want to answer, you’re good. If you want to… I have other questions.” And I can’t think of a single time where people have been like, “Can you take it out?” Sometimes they’re like, “Can you leave out that one comment that I made about my dad?” But [not] the whole thing, no.

What to you is the purpose of creativity, or maybe your particular questions when it comes to it? It seems like in this case it’s, “What is it like to be this person in this particular moment in time?” And maybe documenting something that would otherwise go unnoticed.

I’m less interested in the record-keeping part of it where it’s like if you don’t write it down, it will be gone forever. That of course is a big part of it. But what I’m interested in or what drives my curiosity is how does the world, the facts of the world, filter through each individual consciousness? What are the things that you specifically notice and get irritated about and get swoony about that [other people] don’t notice and get obsessed about? And how do you metabolize it? That is what I’m interested in.

I am working on a kind of memoir project right now. It’s the first time that I’ve done anything that is focused on me. It’s very uncomfortable. I am so curious about other people, and I cannot do the same thing for me. So I have had friends interview me. I’ve done that so that I can sidestep that problem.

Is this Creation Myth?

Yes.

Are you done with the show?

Oh no. Oh man… It’s going, but it’s very, I don’t want to say laborious. It’s way too fun for that. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun in my life.

What has made it so different?

One part of it is, you know how there’s things that you always feel like you should or want to be doing, but for some reason you’re not doing that? Because you don’t feel ready. Because you feel like nobody’s waiting for that or wants that. Because yeah, something about it intimidates you, because you don’t have the time, because any number of things. But it’s the thing that you want to make. It’s the thing that is resting on your heart like a brick and whatever you do and however many cool projects you do, you’re always like, “I’m not doing that thing. And when am I ever going to do it? And can I even? Is this for me? Am I busy because then I have the valid excuse to not do the thing?”

And for me, doing the thing was always having my own project, a project that nobody asked for. Now I’m doing that.

[Something else] that is so much fun is I have an editor. I’ve never worked with an editor so the first meeting where I was supposed to share a thing, I was terrified. Like sweaty hands, racing heart. I felt like, “Now it’s going to come out. Now she will know that all of the stuff that she thinks that I’m good at, I’m not. I’m a fraud.” I was so terrified. And of course it was great. I trust her completely. I know that we both want the same thing, for the show to be good. And having someone who’s not you but likes what you’re doing, help you is such a relief for how my brain works. [She] looks at it and she’s like, “This is great. This part was confusing. I think maybe we can start right there and cut that perfect part.”[Or]“This is great. We can work with it.” Whereas if I would be on my own, I would be like, “This is shit. I feel so ashamed that I did this. Why am I even bothering?” So that’s another really, really, really fun thing that makes me feel more free to play.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Alesandra C. Tejeda.

My mom actually took singing lessons when she was pregnant with me. I don’t have a scientific basis for how that might’ve affected me, but come on, to live in the sort of resonating chamber of her body… I can only imagine that that left its impression. [Growing up in that kind of household] felt so comforting. There’s something about practicing that I love. Whether my dad was practicing a piece on the piano, and my mom was going through vocal exercises, whatever, I find that one of the most reassuring sounds in the world.

Did you think that you would be a musician? Was that an expectation?

I wanted to maybe go into law, medicine, Russian, or piano, or maybe dance. I was very obsessed with ballet. My mom actually said an interesting thing. She was like, “If you love your art form, don’t do it.” Because when you make it your profession, all the bullshit that comes with professions will be a part of your love of music or love of dance, and you will have to deal with egos, and you will have to deal with favoritism and worries about money and… you’ll have to do things or play games that kind of diminish the pleasure. So I really took that to heart, and went and studied Russian and Russian literature. A very practical degree. [laughs]

Was that her kind of admitting that she felt that way?

Oh, yeah. She told me that even when she would go to a concert, she would just be listening technically, like how is this person shaping their mouth? How are they projecting? And she just said, “I can’t turn that off anymore.”

I’m so interested in what drives someone’s creative practice and what proximity does. Sometimes when you’re too technical, you’re too close. It gets rid of this kind of spaciousness that you need for it to feel really imaginative.

I’ve always wanted to do so many things [but] was always very confused about, what should I actually focus on? Dance, writing, and music…I realized at some point that even though I loved all three an outrageous amount, there was none of them really, but writing most of all, that I liked the unglamorous part of actually doing it. Actually learning it, not just the result. I love music so much that I feel sometimes, “I would die for music,” if that was a thing. But I don’t want to do the exercises. I don’t want to. That’s so boring to me. With audio [production], that’s when I knew I’d found my thing. I love every bloody minutiae of it.

I started to realize a few years ago that, though there are lots of great podcasts in this world, some of them, especially post-podcast-boom, followed a very typical pattern or arc. Whereas in the Paris Review Podcast, you keep elements, like the set-up to an interview or a bird in the background, that in other shows would be removed and considered unnecessary. You’re using the world to score the world. It really transports me. Like in the [“Scenes from Open Marriage” episode, an essay written and read by Jean Garnett], where you hear her taking breaks and the tension between her performative “reading” voice and her sitting-back voice.

In a way, for me, it always feels like love. You might not really pay attention to that when you are around and about in the world and there’s a bird, “Okay, whatever, I’ve heard birds before.” But all of a sudden in this context, where it is carefully edited, and kind of curated, it serves a sort of a purpose. You are there with [Jean] as she drinks her tea and then puts the mug on the table. All of a sudden everything is sort of imbued with a shimmer. It’s elevated in some way. And so to me it’s almost like an ode to banal stuff of the world.

It reminded me of Svetlana Alexievich, [a Belarusian oral historian who documented the Soviet and post-Soviet period], whose work I know you love, and something you’ve said about how “history is in the heart.” I was reading more about her work and it being composed of so many interviews, and it strikes me that there’s a difference between “these are a bunch of facts” and “this is the felt experience of someone in this situation at this time.” And that felt experience is this really particular chemistry each time.

That’s why I love her so much. You don’t hear it. You don’t get to hear the tea mug, but you hear the effects of it. You hear the fact that someone is comfortable at their kitchen table, not speaking from the position of an expert who has studied the thing, but just like someone who’s remembering falling in love or gathering strawberries and their mom slapping them because they did something and their dad being carted off to the Gulag [under Stalin]. And then it’s so different… than when you just read a book written about the Gulag. [In the latter] it always feels like these people had no lives before or after or outside of that.

When did you encounter her work for the first time?

I don’t remember exactly when, but… I think I just saw the book at a bookstore.…Now I’ve read pretty much everything by her. I mean, I get very emotional when I think about her. I don’t know why there are not thousands of people doing what she does. I mean, not that anyone can do it as she does, everyone would do it in their different way, exactly as you’re talking about, this specific alchemy.

But I am so interested in history because history is nothing but life, right? It’s not different from now, it’s just life that happened a little bit ago or a lot ago. And when people are able to capture that life with all of its texture, it’s like an ode… It makes me appreciate actual life more, the one I’m living. I don’t need a big arc. I don’t need to do something important… And meaning is everywhere, if only you care to look or notice, pay attention.

Did reading her inform your approach to interviewing people?

I want to say yes, but I can’t be sure that that’s the correct cause and effect. I never thought about it practically. [Though] in the past few years I’ve been exchanging a lot of voice messages with friends. Some of them just because they don’t live in New York and I can’t see them. And when you have to come up with a time to call like, “Oh my god, no, I’m busy, and actually it’s not a good time anymore,” blah, blah. So we just record voice messages and send them and [they] are routinely like 30, 40 minutes long. And the beautiful thing about these is that you can notice the movements of someone’s mind because you’re not interrupting them, you’re not asking follow-up questions. So they get to just jump from thing to thing. You can hear them free-associate. It’s very moving because you get to know your friends in such a different way than if you would actually be with them and talk and interact. And that reminds me of [Svetlana]. She does ask questions, 100 percent, but I think she is silent a lot. I think she does do that thing where she asks one question and then just listens. And that is something that I’m learning to do. It’s awkward. We don’t like silence. Nobody likes silence, but they will fill it because they don’t like it. So just zip it.

What else have you noticed over time, doing interviews?

The main thing that has changed is I have willed myself to be less afraid to ask really difficult questions. I was so terrified. Aren’t we all? Because an interview is very much not like a normal conversation. You do things you would never do in a normal conversation, that would be considered rude and overstepping. And in an interview that is not out of the bounds of the expected or accepted.

I found it really hard, but I learned by listening to interviews that I’d done because I was transcribing them and editing them and being like, “Man, I left that on the table. Why did I decide for them that they probably wouldn’t want to go there? Why?” And it made me think, how often do people get the gift of being listened to? Especially say, when a loved one died? People are so awkward around death that if your loved one died, people will be like, “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s sad,” for a few months. And then they expect you to get over it, and then they will not ask you about it anymore. To the extent that they ever did.

I remember I interviewed a poet [for Poetry Off The Shelf] whose dad died when she was really young, maybe she was seven or eight… And she has written so many books about the death of her father. So she’s also interviewed about that a lot. And I asked her, “What was your dad like?” And she took a beat and she was like, “Nobody has ever asked me that.” Can you believe it? This is not a very spectacular question. This is not my genius coming up with the smartest thing to say, but people do not ask each other the most basic stuff because they’re afraid.

Now I know that I have to do it, and they want it, and I want it, and the listener wants it. And I tell them every time before the interview, “When I’m about to ask something hard, you are in charge. If you don’t want to answer, you’re good. If you want to… I have other questions.” And I can’t think of a single time where people have been like, “Can you take it out?” Sometimes they’re like, “Can you leave out that one comment that I made about my dad?” But [not] the whole thing, no.

What to you is the purpose of creativity, or maybe your particular questions when it comes to it? It seems like in this case it’s, “What is it like to be this person in this particular moment in time?” And maybe documenting something that would otherwise go unnoticed.

I’m less interested in the record-keeping part of it where it’s like if you don’t write it down, it will be gone forever. That of course is a big part of it. But what I’m interested in or what drives my curiosity is how does the world, the facts of the world, filter through each individual consciousness? What are the things that you specifically notice and get irritated about and get swoony about that [other people] don’t notice and get obsessed about? And how do you metabolize it? That is what I’m interested in.

I am working on a kind of memoir project right now. It’s the first time that I’ve done anything that is focused on me. It’s very uncomfortable. I am so curious about other people, and I cannot do the same thing for me. So I have had friends interview me. I’ve done that so that I can sidestep that problem.

Is this Creation Myth?

Yes.

Are you done with the show?

Oh no. Oh man… It’s going, but it’s very, I don’t want to say laborious. It’s way too fun for that. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun in my life.

What has made it so different?

One part of it is, you know how there’s things that you always feel like you should or want to be doing, but for some reason you’re not doing that? Because you don’t feel ready. Because you feel like nobody’s waiting for that or wants that. Because yeah, something about it intimidates you, because you don’t have the time, because any number of things. But it’s the thing that you want to make. It’s the thing that is resting on your heart like a brick and whatever you do and however many cool projects you do, you’re always like, “I’m not doing that thing. And when am I ever going to do it? And can I even? Is this for me? Am I busy because then I have the valid excuse to not do the thing?”

And for me, doing the thing was always having my own project, a project that nobody asked for. Now I’m doing that.

[Something else] that is so much fun is I have an editor. I’ve never worked with an editor so the first meeting where I was supposed to share a thing, I was terrified. Like sweaty hands, racing heart. I felt like, “Now it’s going to come out. Now she will know that all of the stuff that she thinks that I’m good at, I’m not. I’m a fraud.” I was so terrified. And of course it was great. I trust her completely. I know that we both want the same thing, for the show to be good. And having someone who’s not you but likes what you’re doing, help you is such a relief for how my brain works. [She] looks at it and she’s like, “This is great. This part was confusing. I think maybe we can start right there and cut that perfect part.”[Or]“This is great. We can work with it.” Whereas if I would be on my own, I would be like, “This is shit. I feel so ashamed that I did this. Why am I even bothering?” So that’s another really, really, really fun thing that makes me feel more free to play.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Alesandra C. Tejeda.

A former New Caledonia Congress president says there are “not enough” benefits for Kanaks in a new “draft” agreement he signed alongside pro and anti-independence stakeholders in France last month.

Roch Wamytan said that, after 10 days of deadlock discussions in Paris, he failed to secure the pro-independence mandate.

He told RNZ Pacific that he refused to sign a “final agreement”.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia’s oldest party for independence rejects ‘Bougival’ deal
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia politics

Instead, he said, he opted for a “draft” agreement, which is what he signed. It has been hailed as “historic” by all parties involved.

While France maintains its “neutrality”, Wamytan said that at the negotiating table it was two (France and New Caledonia’s pro-France bloc) against one (pro-Kanaky).

A main point of tension was the electoral law changes, which sparked last year’s civil unrest.

“We call on France to respect the provisions of international law, which remains our main protective shield until the process of decolonisation and emancipation is completed. Hence, our incessant interventions during negotiations on this subject [electoral law changes],” Wamytan told RNZ Pacific.

He said it was difficult to understand whether France wanted to decolonise New Caledonia or not.

Concrete measures
“We have a lot of concrete measures in this proposed agreement, but the main question is a political question. Where are you [France] going with this? Independence or integration with France?”

The document, signed in the city of Bougival, involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” as well as dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.

But this week, New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), officially rejected the political agreement signed in Paris.

Wamytan maintains New Caledonia is not France. But the French ambassador to the Pacific has previously told RNZ Pacific New Caledonia is France.

However, Sonia Backès, the leader of the Caledonian Republicans Party and the president of the Provincial Assembly of Southern Province, says the agreement signed in France is “final”.

“Roch Wamytan and the pro-independence delegation signed an agreement in Bougival. Since their return to New Caledonia, their political supports have been fiercely critical of the agreement,” her office said via a statement.

“As a result, radical pro-independence leaders like Roch Wamytan have chosen to renege on their commitment and withdraw their signature. This agreement is final; there is no other viable political balance outside of it.”

“We told them that we [didn’t have] the mandate of our parties to sign an agreement, but only a ‘project’ or ‘draft’.

“It was important for us to return with a paper and to show, to explain, to present, to debate, for the debate of our political party. This is the stage where we are at now, but for the moment, we do not agree with that.

“We [tried] to explain to [France and pro-France bloc] that we have a problem [with electoral law change being included].

“This is our problem. So we signed only for one reason . . . that we have to return back home and to explain where we are now, after 10 days of negotiation. [Did we] achieve the objectives, the mandate given by our political parties?”

He said one thing he wanted to make clear was that what he had signed was not definitive and was now up for negotiation.

An FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) Congress meeting is set down for this weekend with the Union Calédonienne Congress meeting held a weekend prior.

Wamytan said that it was now up to the FLNKS members to have their say and decide where to next.

“They will decide if we accept this draft agreement or we reject,” he said.

“We have two options: we accept with certain conditions, for example, on the question of the right to vote on the electoral rule. Or for the question of the trajectory from here to independence, through a referendum or the framework proposed by President Macron.”

“This is an important element to discuss with France, but after this round of discussions.”

He expected further meetings with France after community consultations.

He said after signing the document, President Macron and the pro-France signatories were quick to communicate to the media and their supporters — and the messages filtered to his supporters resulting in anger and frustrations.

He said the anger has mostly been around the signing itself, with people mistaking the draft proposal as final.

“The political, pro-Kanaky party were very, very, very angry against us. We did not communicate and this I think is our problem.”

Bribery allegations
Wamytan has also dismissed unconfirmed reports that negotiators were bribed to sign a historic deal in Paris.

He said he was aware of people “chucking accusations of bribery” around, but said they were false.

“It has never been in the minds of Kanak independence leaders doing such practices,” he said.

“After the signature of the Matignon Accord 37 years ago, with [FLNKS leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou] and with us after the signature of Nouméa accord in 1998, we heard about the same allegation and some rumours like this.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The sisters running Auckland’s first authentic Polynesian show for tourists say it’s not just for visitors, but also to help uplift Pacific people.

Louisa Tipene Opetaia and Ama Mosese’s Glorious Tours was pooled as one of 10 new “Treasures of Tāmaki Makaurau”: a go-to guide by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited (TAU) for local Māori tourism.

Their tour tells the story of how Auckland became the biggest Polynesian city in the world, and often starts with a drop in at a Pacific or Māori-owned cafe, a guided hīkoi up the Māngere mountain, hangi lunch, a haka show at the museum, then end with a kava-drinking experience.

• READ MORE: Other tourism reports

The tour, which has been running for a year, aims to give visitors an Auckland experience through local eyes, with Māori-led journeys and dining events.

Opetaia said before they started their tour, tourists were travelling to Rotorua for a Pacific cultural experience.

The only other regular Polynesian show for tourists in Auckland was at Auckland Museum, where there was a daily haka show.

“We have rich culture gold in south Auckland,” she said.

“All tourists fly here, in our backyard and we wanted to offer them something right here.”

The sisters, who are of Māori and Samoan heritage, call themselves “cultural connectors”.

‘The space was lacking’
“We’ve been working for these other companies for some time, some of them not even New Zealand-owned. And we felt we were the face of these companies but behind the scenes it wasn’t a local or Māori or indigenous business.

“We decided to step into this space that we saw was lacking, and offer authentic indigenous cultural experiences here in Tāmaki Makaurau — the biggest Polynesian city in the world.”

Glorious Tours is based out of Naumi Hotel, near the Auckland Airport in Māngere.

“We tailor it to what they want, so if they like shopping we take them to places where they can buy authentic Pacific goods, or we take them to our local gallery in Māngere.

This month, the sisters will launch a Polynesian dinner and dance show in Māngere, featuring local schools.

“It’s not just for the tourists, it’s for our own people. Our kaupapa is to uplift our local people, especially our rangatahi.”

TAU director of Māori outcomes Helen Te Hira said Treasures of Tāmaki Makaurau plays a vital role in ensuring Māori culture, businesses and leadership are central to the way Tāmaki Makaurau is experienced by visitors.

“Every business on this platform brings something unique — a sense of purpose, cultural depth and creative excellence.”

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a partner.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), has officially rejected a political agreement on the Pacific territory’s political future signed in Paris last month.

The text, bearing the signatures of all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented in the local Congress — a total of 18 leaders, both pro-France and pro-independence — is described as a “project” for an agreement that would shape politics.

Since it was signed in the city of Bougival, west of Paris, on July 12, after 10 days of intense negotiations, it has been dubbed a “bet on trust” and has been described by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls as a commitment from all signing parties to report to their respective bases and explain its contents.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia politics

The Bougival document involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” which could become empowered with its own international relations and foreign affairs, provided they do not contradict France’s key interests.

It also envisages dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.

It also describes a future devolution of stronger powers for each of the three provinces (North, South and Loyalty Islands), especially in terms of tax collection.

Since it was published, the document, bearing a commitment to defend the text “as is”, was hailed as “innovative” and “historic”.

New Caledonia’s leaders have started to hold regular meetings — sometimes daily — and sessions with their respective supporters and militants, mostly to explain the contents of what they have signed.

The meetings were held by most pro-France parties and within the pro-independence camp, the two main moderate parties, UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) and PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party).

Over the past two weeks, all of these parties have strived to defend the agreement, which is sometimes described as a Memorandum of Agreement or a roadmap for future changes in New Caledonia.

Most of the leaders who have inked the text have also held lengthy interviews with local media.

Parties who have unreservedly pledged their support to and signed the Bougival document are:

Pro-France side: Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble

Pro-independence: UNI-FLNKS (which comprises UPM and PALIKA).

But one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — as its main pillar — the Union Calédonienne, has held a series of meetings indicating their resentment at their negotiators for having signed the contested document.

UC held its executive committee on July 21, its steering committee on July 26, and FLNKS convened its political bureau on July 23.

A ‘lure of sovereignty’
All of these meetings concluded with an increasingly clear rejection of the Bougival document.

Speaking at a news conference in Nouméa yesterday, UC leaders made it clear that they “formally reject” the agreement because they regard it as a “lure of sovereignty” and does not guarantee either real sovereignty or political balance.

FLNKS chief negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou, who is also UC’s chair, told local reporters he understood his signature on the document meant a commitment to return to New Caledonia, explain the text and obtain the approval of the political base.

“I didn’t have a mandate to sign a political agreement, my mandate was to register the talks and bring them back to our people so that a decision can be made . . . it didn’t mean an acceptance on our part,” he said, mentioning it was a “temporary” document subject to further discussions.

Tjibaou said some amendments his delegation had put on the table in Bougival “went missing” in the final text.

‘Bougival, it’s over’
“As far as we’re concerned, Bougival, it’s over”, UC vice-president Mickaël Forrest said.

He said it was now time to move onto a “post-Bougival phase”.

Meanwhile, the FLNKS also consulted its own “constitutionalists” to obtain legal advice and interpretation of the document.

In a release about yesterday’s media conference, UC stated that the Bougival text could not be regarded as a balance between two “visions” for Kanaky New Caledonia, but rather a way of “maintaining New Caledonia as French”.

The text, UC said, had led the political dialogue into a “new impasse” and it left several questions unanswered.

“With the denomination of a ‘State’, a fundamental law (a de facto Constitution), the capacity to self-organise, and international recognition, this document is perceived as a project for an agreement to integrate (New Caledonia) into France under the guise of a decolonisation”.

“The FLNKS has never accepted a status of autonomy within France, but an external decolonisation by means of accession to full sovereignty [which] grants us the right to choose our inter-dependencies,” the media release stated.

The pro-independence party also criticised plans to enlarge the list of people entitled to vote at New Caledonia’s local elections — the very issue that triggered deadly and destructive riots in May 2024.

It is also critical of a proposed mechanism that would require a vote at the Congress with a minimum majority of 64 percent (two thirds) before any future powers can be requested for transfer from France to New Caledonia.

Assuming that current population trends and a fresh system of representation at the Congress will allow more representatives from the Southern province (about three quarters of New Caledonia’s population), UC said “in other words, it would be the non-independence [camp] who will have the power to authorise us — or not — to ask for our sovereignty”.

They party confirmed that it had “formally rejected the Bougival project of agreement as it stands” following a decision made by its steering committee on July 26 “since the fundamentals of our struggle and the principles of decolonisation are not there”.

Negotiators no longer mandated
The decision also means that every member of its negotiating team who signed the document on July 12 is now de facto demoted and no longer mandated by the party until a new negotiating team is appointed, if required.

“Union Calédonienne remains mobilised to arrive at a political agreement that takes into account the achievement of a trajectory towards full sovereignty”.

On Tuesday, FLNKS president Christian Téin, as an invited guest of Corsica’s “Nazione” pro-independence movement, told French media he declared himself “individually against” the Bougival document, adding this was “far from being akin to full sovereignty”.

Téin said that during the days that led to the signing of the document in Bougival “the pressure” exerted on negotiators was “terrible”.

He said the result was that due to “excessive force” applied by “France’s representatives”, the final text’s content “looks like it is the French State and right-wing people who will decide the (indigenous) Kanak people’s future”.

Facing crime-related charges, Téin is awaiting his trial, but was released from jail, under the condition that he does not return to New Caledonia.

The leader of a CCAT (field action coordinating cell) created by Union Calédonienne late in 2023 to protest against a proposed French Constitutional amendment to alter voters’ rules of eligibility at local elections, was jailed for one year in mainland France. However, he was elected president of FLNKS in absentia in late August 2024.

CCAT, meanwhile, was admitted as one of the new components of FLNKS.

In a de facto split, the two main moderate pillars of FLNKS, UPM and PALIKA, at the same time, distanced themselves from the pro-independence UC-dominated platform, opening a rift within the pro-independence umbrella.

The FLNKS is scheduled to hold an extraordinary meeting on August 9 (it was initially scheduled to be held on August 2), to “highlight the prospects of the pursuit of dialogue through a repositioning of the pro-independence movement’s political orientations”.

Valls: ‘I’m not giving up’
Reacting to the latest UC statements, Valls told French media he called on UC to have “a great sense of responsibility”.

“If tomorrow there was to be no agreement, it would mean the future, hope, would be put into question. Investment, including for the nickel mining industry, would no longer be possible.”

“I’m not giving up. Union Calédonienne has chosen to reject, as it stands, the Bougival accord project. I take note of this, but I profoundly regret this position.

“An institutional void would be a disaster for [New Caledonia]. It would be a prolonged uncertainty, the risk of further instability, the return of violence,” he said.

“But my door is not closed and I remain available for dialogue at all times. Impasse is not an option.”

Valls said the Bougival document was “‘neither someone’s victory on another one, nor an imposed text: it was built day after day with partners around the table following months of long discussions.”

In a recent letter specifically sent to Union Calédonienne, the French former Prime Minister suggested the creation of an editorial committee to start drafting future-shaping documents for New Caledonia, such as its “fundamental law”, akin to a Constitution for New Caledonia.

Valls also stressed France’s financial assistance to New Caledonia, which last year totalled around 3 billion euros because of the costs associated to the May 2024 riots.

The riots caused 14 dead, hundreds of injured and an estimated financial cost of more than 2 billion euros (NZ$5.8 billion) in damage.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

In recent months, attacks on Kyiv have become more frequent. Since the full-scale invasion by Russian forces in 2022, many people have come to this city seeking safety — now, even here, they are at risk.

Shattered glass and a broken window form part of the damage at a maternity hospital following shelling and strikes on Kyiv, Ukraine, July 2025. (Photo: MSF)

“MSF in Ukraine is witnessing the devastating, continuous impact of intensified airstrikes on cities and residential areas across the country,” says Ainur Absemetova, MSF’s Head of Mission. “These attacks not only destroy homes and essential infrastructure like schools, hospitals, power and water systems — they also undermine people’s sense of safety and dignity, leaving them in a constant state of fear and uncertainty.”

Kyiv is also home to major hospitals that provide specialised care. Patients with serious or complex medical needs are often transferred here from other parts of the country. Attacks on the city put both this care and the people who depend on it in danger.

“This ongoing terror intensifies existing trauma, deepens insecurity and anxiety, and increases the urgent need for emergency medical and psychological support,” says Absemetova.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Today’s vote follows the New Zealand government’s June exit from the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international coalition working together for a managed phaseout of oil and gas production

David Tong, Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International said:

“Just days ago, the highest court in the world affirmed that every country has a legal duty to act in line with the 1.5ºC survival limit - a threshold that demands, at minimum, an immediate end to new oil, gas, and coal expansion. Yet today, the New Zealand government has raced in the opposite direction, recklessly overturning the ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration, after conducting an underhanded process that blocked public participation.

“The current retrograde government has once again exposed its loyalty to fossil fuel companies, but the reality is that no matter how deep Minister Shane Jones tries to dig, the oil and gas industry has no future in New Zealand.

“Next year’s election must deliver a government that not only restores the ban, but goes further to end all new fossil fuel extraction, onshore and offshore, once and for all.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Steve Knievel, Public Citizen Access to Medicines advocate, issued the following statement in response to the announcement:

“Actions speak louder than words, and despite President Trump’s crocodile tears about high drug prices, so far he has signed one multi-billion dollar giveaway to drug corporations and called on Congress to give them $10 billion more out of the pockets of seniors and people with disabilities by undermining Medicare drug price negotiations.

“Instead of letters we need legislation. If President Trump was serious about lowering drug prices for Americans, instead of promising to help drug corporations profiteer in other countries, he would work with Congress to pass legislation to lower prices here so Big Pharma can no longer charge U.S. patients and taxpayers the highest prices in the world.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The following is a statement from Demand Progress Senior Policy Advisor Cavan Kharrazian:

“Not long ago, just a few senators voting to limit arms to Israel felt like a moral victory. Today, 27 votes against sending more weapons, more than half of the Senate Democratic caucus, marks a political turning point. The days when politicians could turn a blind eye to the horror in Gaza and continue to hand the Israeli government a blank check is coming to an end. American weapons have enabled Israel’s brutal assault on the starving and besieged civilians in Gaza. The American people have long understood this. Now, the Senate is finally beginning to catch up. This fight is far from over, but the tide is clearly turning. History will remember who used their power to confront injustice, and who enabled it. We will not stop holding them accountable.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“Hunger and malnutrition are taking hold of innocent people caught up in vicious conflict. Unaccompanied children are arriving alone in East Darfur, starving, and deeply traumatized,” said Abdirahman Ali, CARE Sudan’s Country Director. “Conflict, access challenges, and now severe funding cuts are worsening the catastrophe. Response services are collapsing, and the Nutrition sector, responsible for coordinating lifesaving efforts across Sudan, remains chronically underfunded. This means that the children who need help the most are receiving almost nothing. If the world continues to look away, more and more lives will slip away.”

Currently, the nutrition sector response is only 12% funded. Over 637,000 people are experiencing catastrophic, life-threatening hunger, which is the worst level possible on the global scale for measuring hunger crises.

The sharp drop in international funding has only worsened the crisis. Major cuts have forced agencies and local organizations to reduce or suspend operations in many areas. This has meant less food, fewer therapeutic nutrition programs for the severely malnourished, and no safety net for the increasing number of displaced children arriving daily. In East Darfur, the number of severely malnourished children has soared. These children, already weak from hunger and mental turmoil, struggle to fight off deadly diseases like cholera, which is spreading across the country.

Fatima*, a 45-year-old mother of five, fled the conflict in Nyala, South Darfur, and sought refuge in Alnaeem IDP camp in East Darfur. “After the long, painful journey, the community kitchen gave us comfort, as now my children were finally able to get a meal,” she said. But when the kitchen shut down due to funding cuts, everything changed. Families began skipping meals, eating late, and watching their children grow weak and sick. We started suffering again,” she added.

CARE Sudan, alongside local partner Emergency Response Rooms, is responding through three community kitchens run by community volunteers in Alnaeem camp, which shelters displaced people and families. These kitchens are a vital lifeline, serving hot meals to 18,000 people, mostly women and children. At the same time, families receive a food basket that contains sugar, lentils, oil, flour, and salt, which should be enough for one month. But without adequate and consistent funding, even these services are at risk of ceasing, just like many others that already have.

“We are calling on donors and governments to honor pledges and increase much-needed funding to the Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan,” Ali said. “These children are our collective responsibility. Every day that passes without food, clean water, and much-needed nutritional supplements brings them closer to death. We need immediate and sustained investment in nutrition and food to protect and save these lives today and in the difficult weeks ahead.”

CARE Sudan urges immediate restoration and increased support for the nutrition response. The children displaced by conflict in Sudan did not choose war, hunger, or fear.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“It is a grave injustice that Sandra Muhoza remains behind bars two months after an appeal court effectively invalidated her earlier trial and conviction,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities must do the right thing and release Muhoza without further delay.”

In December 2024, Mukaza High Court, in eastern Bujumbura province, convicted Muhoza of undermining the integrity of Burundi’s national territory and inciting ethnic hatred, in connection with comments she made in a journalists’ WhatsApp group, and sentenced her 21 months in prison.

The Bujumbura Mairie Court of Appeal, in a May 30, 2025judgment reviewed by CPJ, said that it and the lower court lacked the jurisdiction to hear Muhoza’s case. It cited a law on judicial procedures, which stipulates that a defendant should be tried by a court in the region where they were arrested, live, or where the crime was allegedly committed. 

Muhoza was arrested in the northern Ngozi region where she lived. The appeal court ordered that the case be referred to a competent court.

Burundian authorities have previously convicted other journalists for anti-state crimes, such as Floriane Irangabiye, who in 2023 was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of undermining the integrity of the national territory. She was released in August 2024, following a presidential pardon.

CPJ’s emails to the justice ministry, and text messages to justice minister Domine Banyankimbona, interior ministry spokesperson Pierre Nkurikiye, Prosecutor General’s Office spokesperson Agnès Bagiricenge, and government spokesperson Jérôme Niyonzima did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

President Donald Trump on July 4 signed into law an omnibus reconciliation bill, branded in MAGA propaganda (and much of corporate media) as the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The legislation scraped up just enough votes to narrowly pass in both chambers of the Republican-controlled Congress, with 51 to 50 votes in the Senate and 218 to 214 in the House.

The focal point of the bill is a $4.5 trillion tax cut, partly paid for by unprecedented slashes in funding for healthcare and food assistance. The wealthiest 10% will gain $12,000 a year from the legislation, while it will cost the lowest-earning 10% of families $1,600 annually. Media addressed the fiscal aspects of the bill, though more often through a fixation on the federal debt rather than looking at the effect of the budget on inequality (FAIR.org, 7/17/25).

But it’s not just a question of money. Many of the bill’s key provisions—including Medicaid, SNAP and clean energy cuts, as well as handouts to the fossil fuel, military and detention industries—will be literally deadly for people in the US and abroad, in both the near and long term.

FAIR’s Belén Fernandez (7/9/25) closely examined the dramatic lack of coverage of the vast expansion of the government’s anti-immigrant capacities. But the deadly consequences of the other aspects of the bill were also remarkably underexplained to the public.

To see how major media explained the contents and consequences of the reconciliation bill to the public before its enactment, FAIR surveyed New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and NPR news coverage from the Senate’s passage of the final version of the bill on July 1 through July 4, the day Trump signed the bill into law. This time frame, when the actual contents of the bill were known and the House was deliberating on giving it an up or down vote, was arguably the moment when media attention was most critical to the democratic process.

‘We all are going to die’

This USA Today article (7/1/25) was one of the more informative in detailing the impact of the bill, but it still fell short of detailing the projected cost in human lives.

While corporate media reported that the finalized bill with the Senate’s revisions would significantly cut healthcare funding to subsidize the tax breaks, they rarely explained the social consequences of such cuts. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill will reduce $1.04 trillion in funding for Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next decade. This will strip health insurance from 11.8 million people.

The New York Times (7/1/25), acknowledging these statistics, quoted Democrats who opposed the bill due to “the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid,” and who noted that people will soon “see the damage that is done as hospitals close, as people are laid off, as costs go up, as the debt increases.”

But the outlets in our sample, at this crucial time of heightened attention, failed to mention the most significant consequence of cutting Medicaid: death.

These outlets (New York Times, 5/30/25; NPR, 5/31/25; CNN, 5/31/25;  Washington Post, 6/1/25) had all earlier acknowledged what the Times called Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) “morbid” response to her constituents’ concerns about deaths from Medicaid cuts: “Well, we all are going to die.”

But as the House deliberated on whether these cuts would become law, these outlets failed to reference credible research that projected that the large-scale loss of health insurance envisioned by the bill would have an annual death toll in the tens of thousands. One USA Today piece (7/1/25) did headline that “Trump’s Tax Bill Could Cut Medicaid for Millions of Americans,” but didn’t spell out the potential cost in human lives.

Before the Senate’s revisions, researchers from Yale’s School of Public Health and UPenn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Penn LDI, 6/3/25) projected that such massive cuts to healthcare would result in 51,000 deaths annually. That number is expected to be even higher now, as the calculation was based on an earlier CBO estimate of 7.7 million people losing coverage over the next decade (CBO, 5/11/25).

‘Harms to healthcare’—not to people

CNN (7/4/25) euphemized life-threatening withdrawal of care as “harm to the healthcare system.”

CNN (7/4/25), in a piece on “Who Stands to Gain From the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill.’ And Who May Struggle,” similarly failed to spell out the dire consequences of the Medicaid cuts. It wrote that low-income Americans would be “worse off” thanks to those cuts, yet it extensively described only the fiscal impacts, as opposed to the costs in life and health, on lower- and middle-class families.

Hospitals would also be “worse off” due to the bill, as it would “leave them with more uncompensated care costs for treating uninsured patients.” This rhetorically rendered the patient, made uninsured by legislation, a burden.

The article quoted American Hospital Association CEO Rick Pollack, who said that

the real-life consequences…will result in irreparable harm to our healthcare system, reducing access to care for all Americans and severely undermining the ability of hospitals and health systems to care for our most vulnerable patients.

But CNN refused to spell out to readers what that “harm to the healthcare system” would mean: beyond “reducing access,” it would cause people to die preventable deaths.

Outlets often seemed more concerned with the impact of the bill on lawmakers’ political survival than its impact on their low-income constituents’ actual survival. The Washington Post (7/4/25), though acknowledging that their poll revealed that “two-thirds [of Americans] said they had heard either little or nothing about [the bill],” made little or no effort to contribute to an informed public. Instead, it focused on analyzing the “Six Ways Trump’s Tax Bill Could Shape the Battle for Control of Congress.”

The New York Times (7/1/25) similarly observed that the Senate Republicans’ “hard-fought legislative win came at considerable risk to their party’s political futures and fiscal legacy.” In another article (7/1/25), they noticed that it was the “more moderate and politically vulnerable Republicans” who “repeated their opposition to [the bill’s] cuts to Medicaid.”

‘Winners and losers’

“Opponents of the bill say the proposed cuts will leave millions of adults and children hungry”; the New York Times (7/1/25) apparently doesn’t know whether that’s true or not.

The Medicaid cuts aren’t the only part of the bill that will result in unnecessary deaths. The bill will cut $186 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a program that helps low-income individuals and families buy food. CBO (5/22/25) estimated that 3.2 million people under the age of 65 will lose food assistance. This contraction is expected to be even more deadly than the healthcare cutbacks: The same researchers from UPenn (7/2/25), along with NYU Langone Health, projected that losing SNAP benefits will result in 93,000 premature deaths between now and 2039.

SNAP cuts were mostly only mentioned alongside Medicaid, if at all (Washington Post, 7/3/25; New York Times, 7/3/25; CNN, 7/4/25). And when they did decide to dedicate a whole article to the singular provision, they rarely ventured beyond the fiscal impacts of such cuts into real, tangible consequences, such as food insecurity, hunger and death. The New York Times (7/1/25) asked “how many people will be affected,” but didn’t bother to ask “how will people be affected?”

What’s more, according to the Center for American Progress (7/7/25), the bill’s repeal of incentives for energy efficiency and improved air quality “will likely lead to 430 avoidable deaths every year by 2030 and 930 by 2035.”

The New York Times (7/3/25), however, analyzed this outcome as a changing landscape with “energy winners and losers.” It described how the bill will eliminate tax credits that have encouraged the electrification of homes and alleviated energy costs for millions of families. Somehow, the “loser” here (and all throughout the article) is the abstract concept of “energy efficiency” and private companies, not actual US families.

Another little-discussed provision in the bill is the funding for the Golden Dome, an anti-missile system named for and modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome. The bill set aside $25 billion for its development, along with another $128 billion for military initiatives like expanding the naval fleet and nuclear arsenal.

Media, though, did little more than report these numbers, when they weren’t ignored entirely (CBS, 7/4/25; CNN, 7/4/25). The New York Times (7/1/25) characterized these measures to strengthen the military/industrial complex as “the least controversial in the legislative package”; they were “meant to entice Republicans to vote for it.” In utterly failing to challenge $153 billion in spending on a military that is currently being deployed to bomb other countries in wars of aggression and to suppress protests against authoritarianism at home, the media manufacture consent for militarism as a necessity and an inevitability.

Ignorance a journalistic fail

The Washington Post’s headline and article (7/3/25) perfectly exemplified the paradox with today’s media—calling out how “The Big Problem With Trump’s Bill [Is That] Many Voters Don’t Know What’s in It.” Yet it tosses in an unsubstantial explanation about how “it deals with tax policy, border security, restocking the military/industrial complex, slashing spending on health and food programs for the poor—as well as many, many other programs.”

By reducing sweeping legislative consequences to vague generalities and by positioning ignorance as a voter issue rather than journalistic failure, media outlets maintain a veneer of critique while sidestepping accountability.

Featured image: PBS  depiction (7/30/25) of President Donald Trump signing the reconciliation bill. (photo: Alex Brandon/Pool via Reuters.)

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Shirlynn Chan.

New Zealand is lagging behind the rest of the world through its failure to recognise Palestinian statehood, says Former Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Canada yesterday became the latest country to announce it would formally recognise the state of Palestine when world leaders met at the UN General Assembly in September.

It follows recent similar commitments from the France and the United Kingdom.

• READ MORE: What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon suggested the discussion was a distraction and said the immediate focus should be on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.

But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.

“We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.

“If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”

Elders call for recognition
“The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.

Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.

“That is no longer tenable,” she said.

“New Zealand really is lagging behind.”

Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.

Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.

“When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.

“At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”

Surprised over Peters
Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.

On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.

However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.

“If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.

Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.

Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.

“We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.

“You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – July 31, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

“Iranian authorities must immediately clarify the legal basis for this mass detention of its citizens and cease treating those who communicate with the media as criminals,” said CPJ Chief Programs Officer Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Labeling ordinary Iranians as ‘operational agents’ simply for their association with a news outlet is a dangerous tactic of intimidation and a blatant escalation in Iran’s violations of press freedom.

Iran’s intelligence ministry had been monitoring “the so-called citizen-journalists of the Zionist-Terrorist International Network” – a term the government uses to describe London-based Iran International – during the June 13 to 24 Iran-Israel war, state-owned Mehr News Agency reported. The ministry then “arrested and summoned 98 affiliated operational agents,” the agency said on July 28.

The ministry provided no evidence to support its allegations and did not disclose the names, locations, or legal status of those detained or summoned.

The Islamic Republic has previously arrested Iranians working with international media on vague charges, such as for “collaborating with hostile states” or “propaganda against the state.”

Iran’s reformist Ham Mihan newspaper reported that more than 100 journalists had been fired in the aftermath of the 12-day war, as authorities have cracked down on critical voices, with hundreds of arrests and several executions. 

CPJ emailed Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York for comment but received no response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The submission details a sharp decline in media freedom in Georgia since the last review in 2021, as well as an ongoing crackdown on journalists and their newsrooms that appears designed to muzzle independent reporting.

Georgia, previously regarded as a democratic forerunner in post-Soviet Eurasia, is taking an authoritarian turn under the ruling Georgian Dream party, with mass protests against the country’s suspension of its European Union (EU) accession talks.

CPJ identified the following key areas of concern:

• Jailing of journalists on politically motivated charges. This includes the unwarranted pre-trial detention and trial of media manager Mzia Amaglobeli, who faces up to seven years in prison on charges widely condemned as excessive and retaliatory. A verdict is expected on August 1.

• Numerous large-scale incidents of apparently organized violence against journalists, particularly by law enforcement officers. For example, on July 5, 2021, more than 50 journalists covering a LGBTQ+ pride event in the capital Tbilisi were attacked by anti-LGBTQ+ protesters.

Between November 28, 2024, and May 1, 2025, rights organizations documented 145 incidents of attacks and other violations against 193 journalists reporting on protests against the suspension of EU accession talks, mostly by police. No police officers have yet been held accountable.

• The enactment of a raft of repressive laws targeting independent media.

These include:

-A 2024 “foreign agent” law and even harsher 2025 Foreign Agents Registration Act, with penalties of up to five years in prison;

-Amendments to the broadcasting law expanding the parliament-appointed regulator’s power to fine broadcasters and suspend their licenses;Amendments to the law on grants, requiring foreign donors to obtain government permission for grants. This adversely impacts online news outlets in particular, given their heavy reliance on foreign funding to ensure editorial independence;A “family values” law banning broadcasters from reporting on LGBTQ+ issues;

-Amendments to free speech laws abolishing key protections and facilitating defamation suits against the press.

–At least 16 foreign journalists have been denied entry since 2022. These denials appear to be in retaliation for critical reporting or views that conflict with Georgian Dream priorities.

–A significant increase in defamation lawsuits brought by politically influential individuals against critical media and journalists, with more than 40 such cases since 2021. These lawsuits, often referred to as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), aim to silence journalists.

–A sharp deterioration in access to public information and institutions. For example, in 2023 new regulations restricted journalists’ rights to film and conduct interviews in Parliament and granted Parliament the power to suspend their accreditation for violations. Since then, at least 15 journalists have had their accreditation suspended, all from critical media outlets.

–A marked rise in disinformation and hate speech.

Read the full 18-page report here.

Please send press inquiries to press@cpj.org.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

A state of emergency that was due to expire Thursday after seven extensions was lifted, Zaw Min Tun, a government spokesman, told state media. The decree had given legislative, judicial, and executive powers to Min Aung Hlang as head of the ruling military council.

But state media reported late Thursday that martial law and a state of emergency would be imposed in more than 60 townships across nine regions and states due to the threat of violence and insurgency.

Despite the moves, the junta remains in power. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, leader of the February 2021 coup that toppled Myanmar’s democratically elected government helmed by Aung San Suu Kyi, holds the title of interim president in the new structure and retains his role of chief of the armed forces. He was also named the head of an 11-member commission in charge of elections.

Min Aung Hlaing said the election would take place in phases during December and January due to security concerns, state television reported Thursday.

(AP)

David Mathieson, an independent analyst, framed Thursday’s moves as a cosmetic change.

“They are just rearranging the same pieces and calling the regime a new name,” he told Reuters. “Nothing will change in the near term, but this is part of preparations for an election which we don’t know much about.”

Analysts say the planned election could also have little practical impact.

“It’s the same people still in charge of everything,” Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Agence France-Presse. “These guys are not planning to just hand over power back to the civilians.”

The 2021 coup touched off a brutal civil war that has raged across Myanmar. Established ethnic minority armies and new armed groups have mounted a persistent resistance and have gained control of significant territory.

Since the coup, the military has killed more than 6,000 people and arbitrarily detained more than 20,000, according to Amnesty International.

The war has been devastating for the military, too. As of earlier this year, the junta controlled less than half of the country. More than 24,000 junta troops have been killed and more than 12,000 wounded, according to an RFA analysis in February. Over the past year, the military has been conscripting men under age 35, sometimes snatching people off the street to fill the military’s depleted ranks.

Includes reporting from Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

Erin is the creator of Erin In The Morning, the go-to source for breaking news on LGBTQ+ rights, trans healthcare, and the rising tide of attacks on civil liberties across the country. Her reporting has exposed the truth behind anti-trans legislation, tracked authoritarian policies in real time, and armed millions with the facts they need to fight back. Her courage, clarity, and compassion make Erin one of the most vital voices in the resistance, and we’re honored to have her on the show.

Want to join the conversation? Come to the Gaslit Nation Salon, live every Monday at 4pm ET. It’s a community of listeners, activists, and fellow travelers where we unpack the headlines, share strategies, vent our frustrations, and build a living archive of this moment in history.

Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit. Annual memberships are discounted, and your support keeps our show alive. Thank you to everyone who helps make Gaslit Nation possible.

Looking for a summer read that pairs rage with laughter? Check out the Gaslit Nation graphic novel, Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think! Follow our delightfully shady narrator, Judge Lackey, as he stumbles through a step-by-step guide to seizing and holding power, dodging accountability, and panicking over activists and journalists. Grab it at your local library or at BookShop.org.

EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:

• NEW DATE! Thursday July 31 4pm ET – the Gaslit Nation Book Club discusses Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince written in the U.S. during America First. 

• Minnesota Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other, available on Patreon. 

• Vermont Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other, available on Patreon. 

• Arizona-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to connect, available on Patreon. 

• Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join, available on Patreon. 

• Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group, available on Patreon. 

• Have you taken Gaslit Nation’s HyperNormalization Survey Yet?

• Gaslit Nation Salons take place Mondays 4pm ET over Zoom and the first ~40 minutes are recorded and shared on Patreon.com/Gaslit for our community

Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of a particular group. When it is your country, your troops, your government and its officials committing genocide, many people will stubbornly refuse to acknowledge such a fact. Such is the propagandic effect of patriotism that it erodes critical thought processes and even causes people to overlook extreme evil.

On 28 July 2025, NPR wrote, “Two prominent Israeli rights groups on Monday said their country is committing genocide in Gaza, the first time that local Jewish-led organizations have made such accusations against Israel during nearly 22 months of war.”

The genocide is undeniable as Afkār noted, “Since October 7, 2023, Israeli cabinet ministers, political figures, military officers and media pundits have openly and endlessly incited for the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian inhabitants.”

Moreover, Israel is trying to spin this genocide as a necessary transfer of the Gazan population: “In recent months, Israel has shifted its messaging on Gaza, acknowledging that it has rendered the territory unlivable and is pushing for the removal of its surviving population. ”

What explains the thinking that leads to the carrying out of such a hideous crime?

Psychopathy is a personality disorder rooted in a lack of empathy and remorse, manipulation, and antisocial behavior. That clearly describes people committing genocide and people aiding and abetting genocide.

Thus, people perpetuating or enabling the commission of a genocide fit the definition of psychopaths.

It is undeniable that Israeli Jews are committing genocide in Palestine. Their prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is therefore a genocidaire and a psychopath, as well as the many supportive establishment types in Israel. (For more on this read Hamid Dabashi’s After Savagery) The genocide of Gazans has much support among Jewish Israelis. This begs the question of whether psychopathology is widespread among Israeli Jews?

And, when a state or agency knowingly aids and abets Israeli Jews in committing genocide against the Palestinians, then such complicit governments and responsible authorities ought also to be considered genocidaires and psychopaths. Legally, as well:

… one can be held liable for aiding and abetting genocide, even if one does not share the specific genocidal intent of the principal perpetrator.

The Rome Statute contains a provision about criminal responsibility that is not found in either of the U.N. ad hoc tribunal statutes or the Genocide Convention but which further illuminates the mens rea of genocide. Under Article 30 of the Rome Statute, “knowledge” and “intent” are the two components of mens rea. A person has “intent” when the person “means to engage in the conduct” and “means to cause that consequence or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.” (Grant Dawson and Rachel Boynton, “Reconciling Complicity in Genocide and Aiding and Abetting Genocide in the Jurisprudence of the United Nations Ad Hoc Tribunals,” Harvard Human Rights Journal, 21, 2008: 250.)

Consequently, Israel is not alone in executing its genocide of Palestinians. Countries are called upon to “Stop Arming Israel and Abetting Its Crimes.” Among those governments supplying armaments to Israel are the US and Europeans (“How top arms exporters have responded to the war in Gaza,” and that “European countries use 3rd-party countries to keep arming Israel: British journalist,” “Australia,” “Report suggests arms still flow from Canada to Israel despite denials,” “Infrastructure of genocide: the case confronting Dutch support for Israel’s war machine,” etc) giving political cover, the companies seeking profit from the genocide. Hence, their actions reveal them to be genocidaires.

Many of the common people in many of these countries are opposing the genocide-supporting stance of their governments; for example, Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, even in the US, and worldwide. The leaders are out of touch with masses of their citizens.

Therefore, Canada’s Mark Carney, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Keir Starmer, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, and others are joining avowed Zionists Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Are Netanyahu and Trump really the people other country’s “leaders” should follow in making common cause to wipe Palestinians off the map?

Why is this psychopathy exhibited as a common trait among many Western government heads?

Worse, it seems to point to there being something inherently malevolent in the so-called democratic systems of these countries, such that it promotes psychopaths into leadership positions.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Mao was speaking to an audience of Chinese industrialists and merchants at a time when the country was desperately poor, its resources stretched by decades of Japanese invasion, civil war with the nationalist Kuomintang, and ongoing US aggression in Korea, where China had intervened in support of the forces of national liberation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Tricontinental Asia.

The post The AI Nuclear War Dead Hand appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

This email I received in my gmail box. With the following typical letter to me, my email, but who knows if he sent it to the editor, I may already be banned by the editor, and I will never know because these fellows never answer direct emails back.

Here, from that person who shall be unnamed, telling me …

All you do is criticize this country and the president, as if you are a spoil sport, mad that your guy didn’t win. My advice is leave. Go to Cuba, go to your great communist country of your choice. You do nothing for our community writing these screeds from your high horse. Love it or leave it is something I think everytime I read your junk. I’m shocked that some local patriot hasn’t read-ended your shitty mini-van or taken a swing at your smug face. Leave, and DO let the door hit you on your fucking anti-AmMerican ass.

Oh, well, my feelings aren’t hurt, but again, I’ve said this time and time again: I get people texting me thanking for my radio shows and my op-eds, but they just will not go on public record, i.e., a letter to the editor in support or agreement with me and my short “screeds.”

Today, with my Meals on Wheels gig and with my volunteer work at the senior center here, amazing social workers and folks with federal grants for their AmeriCorps workers lamenting about the Trumpism in the Senior Center — old flagging people, again, eating taxpayer paid for Meals on Wheels, and a Senior Center not just funded by local taxes, and these  octogenarians no less, vaunting Trump, going on and on about, “well Obama and Clinton never served in the military either.”

That comment came after I had entertained them, made these people laugh, served them food and drinks and gave them to-go boxes, and then, well, someone mentioned cuts in the Meals on Wheels program here and nationwide, and then I stated that Trump is laughing at that, that he’s a mean gene, and wants my butt gone, and he’s especially laughing at “you older folk relying on Medicare and Meals on Wheels and who voted for him.”

I mentioned that Trump’s a felon and criminal and just a faker, among other things, and he is a wimp, who declared bone spurs as his out for military service. Yep, me, atheist and communist AND someone who spent time in the Army, man, sure, less than honorable discharge I got,  but still, that, and then working with homeless veterans and even teaching college courses for various military outfits in my part-time faculty gigs.

These old people couldn’t square all those corners to the guy (me) who had just done all this service to the community work FOR them.

The social workers are tired. They are tired of people. They have family, and one I talked with, she even has a father who supports Trump Hands Down, like the freaks that in do. And, alas, I asked — Why no estrangement from these toxic folk in your life? These people, your fucking father, want you fired, essentially, because your AmeriCorps folk are being sacked because the grants have ended, and you too will be on the chopping block.

The system is winning when social workers hate people — not all, but most people, she told me — and when teachers hate their kiddos and the parents. This is what the design is all about — losing confidence in EVERYTHING except the price of toilet paper bundles at Costco.

More than just the Reagan way of getting people to believe government is too big, too cumbersome and too much an impediment in the American Way of Free-for-All Markets.

Chip chip chip those rotten democrats and republicans have enforced for decades.

Schizophrenia here by the Pew Research group:

Americans remain deeply distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. Just 20% say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time – a sentiment that has changed very little since former President George W. Bush’s second term in office.

The public’s criticisms of the federal government are many and varied. Some are familiar: Just 6% say the phrase “careful with taxpayer money” describes the federal government extremely or very well; another 21% say this describes the government somewhat well. A comparably small share (only 8%) describes the government as being responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans.

The federal government gets mixed ratings for its handling of specific issues. Evaluations are highly positive in some respects, including for responding to natural disasters (70% say the government does a good job of this) and keeping the country safe from terrorism (68%). However, only about a quarter of Americans say the government has done a good job managing the immigration system and helping people get out of poverty (24% each). And the share giving the government a positive rating for strengthening the economy has declined 17 percentage points since 2020, from 54% to 37%.

Yet Americans’ unhappiness with government has long coexisted with their continued support for government having a substantial role in many realms. And when asked how much the federal government does to address the concerns of various groups in the United States, there is a widespread belief that it does too little on issues affecting many of the groups asked about, including middle-income people (69%), those with lower incomes (66%) and retired people (65%).

*****

When participatory democracy never flourished, and when mutual aid is gone, and when people are doggedly dog-eat-dog and “I’ve got mine, so good luck getting yours” is the prevailing attitude, we are a disconnected “nation.”

Will this resonate?

For a decade, scholars, pundits and other analysts have been searching deep in the American political experience to understand why democracy seems so stressed. Now a new UC Berkeley report based on extensive surveys finds that Americans are confused about the meaning of democracy and frustrated with the leaders and institutions responsible for guiding the country — but also open to hope for repair.

In an interview, lead author David C. Wilson detailed the findings of this plunge into our political psyche, surveying a tangle of concerning trends. Americans are struggling with epidemic mistrust, but they’re also eager for solutions. For democracy to flourish, the report finds, its people must be flourishing, too.

Wilson, a political psychologist, offered a potentially innovative course of therapy: Just as the nation has economic and health policy, local, state and federal leaders need a commitment to democracy policy to strengthen the system and nurture commitment to democratic values and practices.

Wilson is the dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley and a professor of public policy and political science. The report, “Delivering on the Promises of ‘We the People’,” is based on surveys of more than 2,400 Americans conducted before and after the November 2024 election.

The report was produced by the Goldman School’s Democracy Policy Lab.

*****

Snake Oil, PT Barnum and Postmortem for July 4

I remember telling my daughter, who never got to meet my old man, her grandfather, that I was diametrically opposed to his 32 years in the US military. I told her that I even ended up in Viet Nam two years before she was born to work with a science team from England.

I visited all parts of Viet Nam, after doing intensive biodiversity studies along the Laotian border.

She has some of my large prints of kiddos on motorcycles piled high with live chickens. She has a photo I took of a female Buddhist monk near where a more famous monk self-immolated in protest of the US and French-backed repressive South Vietnamese president.

That is Ho Chi Minh City, called Saigon back then.

It was just before 10 in the morning on June 11, 1963, when 300 monks and nuns marched down a busy Saigon street. This 73-year-old monk named Thich Quang Duc emerged from a car at this crowded intersection and sat down in the lotus position on a cushion. Two fellow monks poured gasoline from a five-gallon can. As the fuel was emptied over his head, Duc chanted, “Nam mo amita Buddha,” — “return to eternal Buddha.”

Sixty years later a similar event was repeated here in the USA, although in this intentionally amnesiac and superficial society, it seems like a distant memory. But my friend from Wisconsin talks of this hero much.

That distant memory occurred just over a year ago—February 25, 2024. Remember? Twenty-five-year-old Air Force serviceman Aaron Bushnell died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington in an act of protest against the Gaza genocide.

Less than two years ago, and I have students who are afraid of calling “it” a genocide. I have fellow faculty in many parts of the country who are not just chastised for supporting innocent Palestinians but are fired.

Is this newspaper going to get the “hammer” or “ax” for republishing Aaron’s words before he set himself on fire?

“I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force. And I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers—it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

The last words of his life were ‘Free Palestine.’

Recall my professional soldier — CW4 — father. He was a 19-year-old in the so-called Korean Conflict, wounded there. He was then made a chief warrant officer in the Army and took his family to Paris, France, and Hamburg as part of his work.

He was shot in the chest in a Huey helicopter in Viet Nam with his blackbox of codes handcuffed to his wrist. He was 36 years old, and he survived.

I went to Viet Nam at age 36, leaving my home of El Paso behind. I visited villages near where my old man’s team set up communication towers and signal corps facilities.

I was against that illegal war when I was still in junior high school.

My father was a smart guy with graduate degrees in history and education. He always wanted me to go to college, and he supported my journalism and science studies at the University of Arizona. He read my newspaper articles.

What he was for —  as a first-generation American whose father was a WWI pilot in the Kaiser’s Navy —  included expanded services for the poor, safety nets for the elderly, massive cheap public services to include health care for all, seven-day-a-week libraries, a post office that handled payroll and served as a credit union.

He wanted more state and national parks. He was a Republican, and I was a Ralph Nader independent who was deeply leftist. As left as the liberators of Viet Nam under Ho Chi Minh.

Oh, if CW4 Marvin Haeder was alive today, man oh man. He knew European history and the history of the world, so having this perfume salesperson as his commander in chief would have chaffed him. Bone spur deferment from military service, Donald professed?

PT Barnum may have said: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Trump is that purveyor and protector of rip-off artists.

My old man supported expanded prosecution of grifters ripping off old people in all industries and services. He was for expanded consumer rights and expanded rights to unionize.

These were his Republican values, with his two bronze stars, purple hearts and 32 years in combined AF and Army service.

He was once an airman too, as we lived on Terceira Island in the Azores outside 65th Air Base Wing at Lajes Field.

Now, POTUS is selling perfume.  Trump’s perfume is called “Victory 45-47” because “they’re all about Winning, Strength, Success.”

Everywhere in Lincoln County the silence —  as I stated in a previous Op-Ed —  is deafening. Active genocide of the Holocaust variety, and people just go on with their rah-rah Fourth of July lives. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. Amnesia? Dis-education? Worse?

I recommend David Swanson’s website where you can peruse collected sources on how much snake oil we’ve consumed. You won’t like this last paragraph on David’s website, so try studying it:

“Since World War II, during a supposed golden age of peace, the United States military has killed or helped kill some 20 million people, overthrown at least 36 governments, interfered in at least 86 foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30 countries. The United States is responsible for the deaths of 5 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and over 1 million just since 2003 in Iraq.”

***** The End *****

The U.S. government provides weapons, military training, and/or military funding to almost every dictatorship and oppressive government on earth. See my 2020 book 20 Dictators Currently Supported by the U.S.

U.S. weapons are used on both sides of many wars.

In an attempt to quantify U.S. warmaking, I’ve copied below lists from these sources:
David Vine: The United States of War
William Blum: America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy
Dr. Zoltan Grossman: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions
James Lucas: U.S. Has Killed More Than 20 Million People
William Appleman Williams: Empire As a Way of Life

I can link to some others first. Here is a PDF from 2022 from the U.S. Congressional Research Service admitting to hundreds of U.S. military interventions abroad between 1798 and 2022.

And here is a PDF of a journal article about something called the Military Intervention Project, which can also be found here and here and here. The authors claim to have a list of 392 U.S. military interventions between 1776 and 2019, but do not seem to actually produce the list. There are, however, extensive descriptions of it at those links, including:

“The United States has carried out 34 percent of its 392 interventions against countries in Latin America and the Caribbean; 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific region; 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa; and just 13 percent in Europe and Central Asia, according to a newly refined version of the Military Intervention Project (MIP) dataset — a venture of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza, period.
— Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, March 20 2024

It was a cynical lie. Now we have the evidence.

A damning new report from the Arms Embargo Now coalition traces hundreds of shipments of Canadian-made weapons and military tech that continued to reach Israel during its ongoing genocidal assault on Gaza.

Bullets. Explosives. Aircraft parts. High‑end surveillance and targeting systems. All from here — from factories in Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, the GTA, Halifax — to the runways and ports in Israel that feed Israel’s war machine.

Most of us already understood this was happening. Individual contracts and bits of evidence kept slipping through the cracks. But every time they did, the government would play whack-a-mole. This report ends that game. We now have ironclad evidence that Canadian weapons never stopped flowing to Israel. It shows a sustained, ongoing pipeline that continues to this day. It also exposes how the government systematically deceived Canadians about arming Israel.

In the frantic first three months after October 7th, the Trudeau government quietly approved a record-breaking number of export permits to Israel. Then you — and tens of thousands of people like you across the country — roared in protest. The pressure worked. By March 2024, then Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced a “pause” on new permits. She publicly insisted that no more arms would reach Gaza.

However Joly’s “pause” froze only new licences, leaving every previous permit untouched. Ottawa tried to soothe the public, claiming the ongoing shipments were only for “non-lethal” or “defensive” goods (i.e. Iron Dome parts, bullet-proof vests). In reality, a steady stream of lethal cargo kept moving: bullets, explosives, aircraft and helicopter parts, F-35 targeting tech. All funnelled from 21 suppliers in seven Canadian cities to Israeli arms companies like Elbit Systems.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t some bureaucratic oversight. It is a calculated breach of the Export and Import Permits Act, the Arms Trade Treaty, and the ICJ’s warning not to aid genocide.

Ottawa’s claim that it was no longer arming Israel served as a diplomatic fig leaf: soothing words that hid uninterrupted weapons shipments. This report rips that fig leaf away. The government must now own its complicity and decide — end the exports, or stand exposed before the world.

This report also shows something else: the power of civil society. A small group of researchers — activists with day jobs, family responsibilities, and limited resources — spent hundreds of hours digging through tax records, shipping manifests, flight records, and obscure government PDFs. They followed the paper trail and uncovered the reality that our government was trying to hide.

In the UK, a similar report created a political scandal that is still reverberating. This Canadian report is arguably even more damning and the potential impact is enormous—if we seize this moment.

On Tuesday, CJPME, Independent Jewish Voices, World Beyond War, and the Palestinian Youth Movement held a press conference in Parliament to share the findings. You can watch the recording of the press conference here.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.

Protesters demonstrated outside several major US media outlets in Washington this week condemning their coverage of the genocide in Gaza, claiming they were to blame over misinformation and the worsening catastrophe.

Banging pots and pans to spotlight the starvation crisis, they accused the media of “complicity in genocide”.

Banners and placards proclaimed “Stop media complicity in genocide” and “US media manufactures consent for Israel’s crimes”, as the protesters demonstrated outside media offices that included NBC News and Fox News.

• READ MORE: With the UK and France moving toward recognising Palestine, will Australia now follow suit?
• ‘Battle for the truth’: Pro-Israel bias inside UK newsrooms revealed
• Israeli social media campaign denies there is starvation in Gaza as death toll mounts
• More Israeli war on Gaza reports

But the irony was that while the protests appeared to have been ignored or overlooked by national media in the US – and certainly in New Zealand, they were strongly reported by at least one global news agency, Turkey’s Anadolu Agensi.

The protests echoed a series of statements by various news media organisations, such as Agence France-Presse concerned about the safety of their journalists from both under fire and the risk of starvation, and media freedom advocacy groups.

The Doha-based global television news network Al Jazeera, that has been producing arguably the best and most honest news coverage of Gaza and the occupied West Bank – which earned it being banned last year by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority from reporting inside their territory — called for global action to protect Gaza’s journalists.

It said in a statement that Isael’s forced starvation of the besieged enclave that threatened Gaza’s entire population, including those “risking their lives to shed light on Israel’s atrocities”.

Death toll passes 60,000
On Tuesday this week, the world noted a grim milestone in Gaza, with the Health Ministry announcing that the death toll had surpassed 60,000 (this does not include the tens of thousands of people buried under the rubble and missing, presumed dead).

Put in perspective, that is one in every 36 people in Gaza killed, and more than 90 people on average slaughtered every day.

Also, 1157 people have been killed near the notorious Israel and US-backed Gaza “Humanitarian” Foundation food depots condemned as “death traps”, while 154 people have died from starvation, 89 of them children with the numbers rising.

Israel’s genocide – ‘Everyone in Gaza is starving’       Video: Al Jazeera

An episode of the weekly media watch programme, The Listening Post, took up the theme as well, criticising the failure of many high profile Western news services from adequately reporting the horror of Israel’s devastating and cruel policies.

“When trying to stave off starvation becomes part of the job. What it means to be a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. The stories they are determined to tell, the incredible risks they are prepared to take,” said host Richard Gizbert when introducing the programme. He wasted no time firing a few caustic shots.

“What is unfolding in Gaza now has the appearance of a final solution, orchestrated by Israel and the United States, Israel’s other ally: The transformation of parts of the Gaza strip into starvation and concentration camps, a place where famine has been turned into a weapon of war,” he said.

“Reporting on the reality of this genocide can amount to a death sentence. Palestinian journalists can easily identify with the suffering they are documenting since they too are going hungry.

“They have been targeted because for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu, like other genocidal leaders before him, starving a population is much easier to do when no one is watching.

Perpetrator ‘left out’
“Across Western mainstream media, news outlets have been unable to ignore this story of mass starvation in Gaza. But in report after report, they have made a habit of leaving out a key detail – naming the perpetrators of the famine, Israel.

“The missing actors, the sanitised language, the use of the passive grammatical voice, it is all part of the playbook for far too many international news outlets and that is exactly what the few Palestinian journalists still standing are out to tell the world.”

Gizbert explained that “journalists in Gaza already have the world’s toughest assignment”:
“Job one for almost 22 months now has been survival; job two, telling heartbreaking stories; documenting a genocide while under fire.”

Like, for example, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Anas al-Sharif who was reporting live from outside Al Shifa medical complex when a woman behind him collapsed at the hospital’s gate.

Al-Sharif, who had reported on the genocide of his own people for more than 650 days without rest or complaint, through Israeli occupation airstrikes, drone attacks, and countless “scenes resembling hell”, suddenly could not take it anymore.

He broke down: “People are falling to the ground from the severity of hunger,” al-Sharif said through his tears. “They need one sip of water. They need one loaf of bread.”

Al-Sharif has also been threatened by the Israeli military, accusing him of being a “Hamas militant”, an accusation strongly denied by Al Jazeera, denouncing what it called Tel Aviv’s “campaign of incitement” against its reporters in the Gaza Strip.

Discredited for bias
Many Western mainstream media – including BBC, CNN, Sky, ITN, and Australia’s public broadcaster ABC — have been repeatedly discredited for their “pro-Israel bias” by scores of journalists who have acted as whistleblowers about the actions of their own news organisations.

According to a Declassified UK report, for example, the journalists working for a range of outlets from across the political spectrum have “painted a consistent picture of the obstacles faced by reporters who want to humanise Palestinians or scrutinise Israeli government narratives”. The US media is also under attack and has been putting up a lame defence.

Last week, more than 100 aid groups warned of “mass starvation” throughout Gaza — predictably denied by Israeli government in the face of overwhelming evidence — with their staff severely impacted by shortages and serious implications for journalists already being threatened with targeting by the Israeli military.

Israel faces growing global pressure over the enclave’s dire humanitarian crisis, where more than two million people have endured 22 months of war. UN Security Council member France has led a group of countries announcing that they plan to recognise the Palestinian state at the UN in September, with United Kingdom, Canada, Malta and Finland among those following with the total number now almost 150 of the 193 UN member states.

A statement with 111 signatories, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam, warned that “our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away”. The groups called for an immediate negotiated ceasefire, the opening of all land crossings and the free flow of aid through UN-led mechanisms.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reported from Amman that the Israeli government had accused the UK of supporting the establishment of a “jihadi” state and of derailing efforts to reach a ceasefire.

“But really,” she said, “the Israeli media, for example, is describing this as a political tsunami, a realisation of how significant the tide is, and how improbable it is to turn it back to countries withholding recognition because Israel said it doesn’t want it.”

Calling for sanctions
She also noted how 31 high-profile Israelis, including the former speaker of the Knesset, a former attorney general, and several recipients of Israel’s highest cultural award, were calling on world governments to impose crippling sanctions on Israel to stop the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and their expulsion

“This was taboo just a few days ago and has never really been done before, certainly not at this level of prominence of the signatories,” Odeh added.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) added its voice to the appeal by aid agencies to call for an end to Israel’s starvation of journalists and other civilians in Gaza, backing the plea for states to “save lives before there are none left to save.”

In a statement on its website, the CPJ accused Israel of “starving journalists into silence”.

“Israel is starving Gazan journalists into silence. They are not just reporters, they are frontline witnesses, abandoned as international media were pulled out and denied entry,” said CPJ regional director Sara Qudah.

“The world must act now: protect them, feed them, and allow them to recover while other journalists step in to help report. Our response to their courageous 650 plus-days of war reporting cannot simply be to let them starve to death.”

‘Bearing witness’ videos
Also, last week the CPJ launched a “bearing witness” series of videos from Gaza giving voice to the challenges the journalists have been facing. In the first video, Moath al Kahlout described how his cousin had been shot dead while awaiting humanitarian aid.

As Israel partially eased its 11-week total blockade of Gaza that began in May, CPJ published the testimony of six journalists who described how “starvation, dizziness, brain fog, and sickness” had threatened their ability to report.

Among highlights cited by the CPJ:
• On June 20, Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif — the journalist cited earlier in this article — posted online: “I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion, and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment . . .  Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”
• Sally Thabet, correspondent for Al-Kofiya satellite channel, told CPJ that she fainted consciousness after doing a live broadcast on July 20 because she had not eaten all day. She regained consciousness in Al-Shifa hospital, where doctors gave her an intravenous drip for rehydration and nutrition. In an online video, she described how she and her three daughters were starving.
• Another Palestinian journalist, Shuruq As’ad said Thabet had been the third journalist to collapse on air from starvation that week, and posted a photograph of Thabet with the drip in her hand.
• During a live broadcast on July 20, Al-Araby TV correspondent Saleh Al-Natour said: “We have no choice but to write and speak; otherwise, we will all die.”

Little of this horrendous state of affairs has made it onto the pages of newspapers, websites of the television screens in the New Zealand mainstream media which seems to have a pro-Israel slant and rarely interviews Palestinian journalists or analysts for balance.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Tornado

It is set in Scotland in the 1790s and follows the travails of a young Japanese woman called Tornado who is on the run from a local violent gang led by Sugarman. The story is told in a series of set pieces played out in a remote country setting as the gang pursues Tornado for two bags of gold which she had obtained from a young boy who in turn had taken from the gang members while they were busy watching a puppet show put on by Tornado and her father, Fujin.

The narrative begins with Tornado running into a decaying, dilapidated mansion and hiding while the gang threatens the family. While searching throughout the house one member of the gang falls from the floor above onto an old grand piano.

A flashback shows Tornado working with Fujin, a former samurai swordsman, who has trained Tornado in the skills of martial arts and puppetry. However, Tornado is bored of both and is looking for excitement and a change in lifestyle. The gold provides the possibility of a new life which prompts Tornado to ask her father about doing something else with their lives [“Don’t you ever wish our lives were different?”]. The gang eventually catches up with their wagon but Tornado runs into the woods and hides the gold. However, all ends in disaster as Fujin is shot by the gang’s archer, but with all the speed of a former samurai, he manages to cut Sugarman across the stomach as he falls, injuring him fatally.

Back in the present Tornado has joined up with a circus troupe who she knows well. Once again the gang catches up and then goes on a killing and burning spree. Tornado flees again and finds the gold which she brings to a local lake. Taking a small rowing boat she goes out  to the middle and drops the two bags into the water, keeping a small amount of the gold for herself.

At this point Tornado’s samurai skills kick in and she exacts revenge on the gang, unable to contain her grief and anger over the deaths of her father and her friends in the circus.

Minimalism

The style of the film music, editing, and dialogue, is minimalist. The action scenes are interspersed with quiet, empty countryside scenes, like moving from one mini play to the next, each mini play containing its own symbolism.

For example, Sugarman believes in honour among thieves [“Alright, get this to the safe spot, and equal share as always.”] A democratic bent which none of the gang members seem to share, as they are depicted as conniving to get all of the gold to themselves [“the work wasn’t equal, so why should this split be?”].

The mansion symbolises the declining aristocracy and the growing strength of a robber class – they had robbed the gold from the church which in turn had ‘robbed’ it from the peasantry. The piano is a symbol of former cultural glory destroyed by contemporary ignorance and criminality.

The confrontation between Sugarman and Fujin represents the conflict between the raw violence of the gang and the controlled, learned, violence of the samurai warrior. Twice Fujin states he has no wish for violence [“I do not want to hurt anyone.” “I do not want to fight you.”]

The gang attacks the circus, a symbolic confrontation between one group of people that uses violence to extort, and another group that uses their skills and knowledge to earn their living.

Tornado slowly realises that the gold has caused her and her friends nothing but destruction and death and so she reverts back to her survival skills and decides to dump most of the gold into the lake, thereafter attacking and killing the gang members one by one.

Tornado is a pared down, sparse film that operates not only as a revenge movie but also as an eighteenth century morality play, a genre of medieval drama:

Morality plays typically contain a protagonist who represents humanity as a whole, or an average layperson, or a human faculty; supporting characters are personifications of abstract concepts, each aligned with either good or evil, virtue or vice. The clashes between the supporting characters often catalyze a process of experiential learning for the protagonist, and, as a result, provide audience members and/or readers with moral guidance, reminding them to meditate and think upon their relationship to God, as well as their social and/or religious community.

Tornado’s ‘experiential learning’ teaches her that money may be the root of all evil but running away from oppressors merely emboldens them. By standing up to the gang and ultimately joining up with the circus she finds solace in solidarity with her social community. Her father’s comment during the puppet show that “They always cheer when evil is winning”, to which Tornado replies, “Because good is boring” is turned on its head as Tornado realises that the world of evil is irrational and unpredictable as those nearest and dearest to her fall prey to its  destructive forces. This new opposing view falls in line with Simone Weil’s comment that: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” (Simone Weil Gravity and Grace)

In the end, the multicultural aspect of the circus community symbolises the positive aspects of external, international influences on the home community / local people as a force for good to which Tornado aligns herself with.

Tornado (2025) is John Maclean’s second feature film after Slow West (2015). Slow West has a similar structure depicting a young Scotsman’s search for “his lost love in the American West, accompanied by a bounty hunter played by Michael Fassbender.” As the pair head West through forests and plains, a similar style of theatrical set pieces tell many different aspects of the story with a comparable respect for and understanding of ordinary people in conflict with murderous gangs. Similarly peace only comes after a major confrontation with the main gang (of cowboys) who are usually portrayed as heroes in the cowboy genre.

John Maclean’s films are measured, intelligent and beautifully filmed works of art with a human face that eschew the ‘might is right’ ideologies of much contemporary cinema.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Caoimhghin O Croidheain.

Several users on social media have claimed that he is a Muslim person who was on a flight to Glasgow. Some users have alleged that he is a Pakistani.

X user Tommy Robinson (@TRobinsonNewEra) shared the video with these claims. At the time of this article being written, the post has garnered more than 10 lakh views. (Archive)

Video footage of the Muslim on a flight to Glasgow screaming “allahu akbar”, threatening to bomb the plane and ranting about Trump.

He was arrested upon arrival.

No mention from the legacy media what he was doing. https://t.co/RL0xJJCfRc pic.twitter.com/3msqIXkT3A

— Tommy Robinson (@TRobinsonNewEra) July 27, 2025

X user Megh Updates also posted the video with the same claim — that the man i a Muslim. The post had around 43,000 views at the time of this article being written. Readers should note that this user frequently shares misinformation and communal propaganda on X. (Archive) 

Video footage of the Muslim on a flight to Glasgow screaming “allahu akbar”, threatening to bomb the plane and ranting about Trump.

He was arrested upon arrival. A Pakistani ? pic.twitter.com/deGaMYKAgt

— Megh Updates (@MeghUpdates) July 27, 2025

Other X users, like (@ocjain4), (@Basil_TGMD) and (@Incognito_qfs) also amplified the viral claims. (Archives: 1, 2, 3)

Screenshots below:

Fact Check

To verify the authenticity of the viral claims, we ran a relevant keyword search on Google to find out more about the incident. A BBC report identified the person shouting the slogans in a Luton to Glasgow flight on July 27 as 41-year-old Abhay Nayak, a resident of Luton.

We found several other reports in the incident in prominent media outlets, including The Times of India, The Telegraph, Deccan Herald, and Sky News. In every report, the individual was identified as Abhay Devdas Nayak, a man of Indian origin. He has not been charged with terrorism, but has been remanded in custody, and is due in court next week, according to the reports.

Some witnesses said Nayak had claimed he wanted to “send a message” to Trump he latter was visiting Scotland. the US President was on a trip to Scotland from July 27 to 29.

In conclusion, the video has been amplified with the suggestion that a Muslim man was threatening to bomb a plane, while shouting ‘Allah Hu Akbar’. On investigating, Alt News found that the man was a Hindu resident of Luton, named Abhay Nayak.

The post Man who shouted ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ & ‘Death to Trump’ on UK flight is a Hindu appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.

Amaglobeli, founder and director of award-winning independent news outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti, has been unjustly detained since January on the charge of attacking a police officer, for which she faces up to seven years in jail. The charge has been widely condemned as disproportionate and politically motivated.

The organizations condemned the smear campaigns against and degrading treatment of Amaglobeli, who has become a symbol of the resilience of Georgian independent media.

Read the full statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

President Donald Trump is standing by his August 1 deadline for other countries to reach new trade agreements with the United States or face steep new tariffs on their exports. The administration has announced a slew of deals, including with the U.K., Japan and the European Union, even as Trump has issued new tariff threats against India, Brazil and others.

“You’ve got total, random chaos,” says policy expert Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project and host of the podcast Rethinking Trade with Lori Wallach. “What the Trump administration is doing, basically, is an abuse of the tariff tool … to threaten countries based on foreign policy whims.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Canada became the latest Western country this week to announce it will recognize the state of Palestine, joining the United Kingdom and France, as well as over 147 other countries that already recognize Palestinian statehood. Palestinian writer and analyst Muhammad Shehada says that while the recent moves are “largely symbolic” and filled with caveats and loopholes, it shows that global opinion is rapidly shifting. He says that despite Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation over its starvation of Gaza, the only thing that will stop the genocide is if the United States uses its leverage.

“Netanyahu and the Israeli government are terrified of Trump. They don’t want to anger him,” says Shehada. “The only thing it would take is Trump making a phone call to Netanyahu and saying, 'End this now.'”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip continue to kill and injure hundreds of Palestinians each day, including many people seeking aid amid deepening starvation across the territory. Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that there is “no starvation” in Gaza, a U.S. doctor who just returned from Gaza says the reality is undeniable. “It was evident to me, in my firsthand experience, that what I was seeing was malnourishment in my patients,” says Dr. Ambereen Sleemi, a urogynecologist and the executive director of the International Medical Response Foundation based in New York. “We also saw it in our hospital staff. … Everybody would sit and talk about how hungry they were.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We speak with Juliette Touma, director of communications at UNRWA, about deepening starvation in Gaza. Israel has accused the United Nations agency of failing to distribute aid in Gaza, but Touma says Israel continues to block most supplies from entering the territory. Touma notes that there are 6,000 trucks filled with food, medical supplies and other necessities ready to enter Gaza. “We’ve been waiting for a green light to start the wheels of those trucks for nearly five months now,” she says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

• Headlines for July 31, 2025
• UNRWA Rep Slams "Disaster" of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Says Aid Must Flow Without Restrictions
• NY Doctor Just Back from Gaza: Starvation Is Widespread & Undeniable, Despite Israeli PM Claims
• As Canada, U.K. & France Move to Recognize Palestine, Two-State Solution Remains Taboo Inside Israel
• "Total, Random Chaos" of Trump Tariffs Are Not Rebalancing U.S. Trade: Lori Wallach, Rethink Trade

Download this show

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This story contains videos and descriptions of violent arrests.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A month into the new Trump administration, on the predawn streets of suburban Maryland, a high-ranking ICE official stood alongside a Mazda sedan that his officers had just stopped.

The official told a local TV reporter at the scene what was about to happen. “He can either give us a license,” he said, “or we’ll smash the fucking window out and drag him out.” Then, as the driver refused to exit the car, officers broke the glass.

It was one of nearly 50 documented instances of immigration agents breaking vehicle windows that ProPublica has identified from social media, local news accounts, lawsuits and interviews since President Donald Trump took office six months ago. Using the same methods, we found just eight in the previous decade. Neither number is comprehensive. The government releases no relevant statistics.

Use-of-force experts and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement insiders say the tactic was rarely used during previous administrations. They say there is no known policy change greenlighting agents’ smashing of windows. Rather, it’s a part of a broader shattering of norms.

There are arrest quotas, and they are increasingly aggressive. “There’s been an emphasis placed on speed and numbers that did not exist before,” says Deborah Fleischaker, who served as ICE chief of staff under President Joe Biden.

Officers who break glass aren’t being disciplined — they’re being promoted. The official from Maryland, Matthew Elliston, now occupies a senior position at headquarters and oversees field operations on the East Coast. On the other side of the country, a Border Patrol chief who also embraced the tactic, Gregory Bovino, was put in charge of sweeps in Los Angeles. (Neither answered ProPublica’s questions.)

ICE says its officers use a “minimum amount of force” when making arrests. You can judge for yourself.

Watch video ➜

“She is pregnant!” a man yelled as his wife, a U.S. citizen, filmed from inside their Chevy. “Is pregnant! Is pregnant!”

Officers smashed through three windows to arrest Jeison Ruiz Rodriguez and his younger brother César in early March. The video was not the first under Trump — at least nine broken-windows arrests preceded it this year, some documented by Facebook posts or local reporters or Spanish-language TV.

Watch video ➜

On Mother’s Day in the Boston suburbs, ICE and FBI officers stopped a family on their way to church, threatening Daniel Flores-Martinez with what the family and a bystander believe was a gun. His three children and U.S. citizen wife sobbed in the car. Agents broke the window, forced Martinez to his knees, then slammed him roughly to the ground.

One of the children is a toddler. Another is a 12-year old with severe disabilities.

The incident was captured by then-high school student Kenneth Santizo, who was nearby waiting for his bus. “All I could hear was kids crying,” Santizo said.

Watch video ➜

Last month, a bystander filmed several masked agents using a baton to break a rear window of a white pickup truck, taking the driver to the ground and pressing his head forcefully into the asphalt. The man, last seen in the video bleeding from the head, has not been identified.

Watch video ➜

On a residential street in May, agents smashed through two windows of a Ford Focus to arrest the two men inside. A neighbor filmed from inside their home as one man, later identified by WBUR as Guatemalan immigrant Kiender Lopez-Lopez, struggled with masked agents. (He had previously been charged with domestic violence but was not convicted.) Several of them tackled him on the sidewalk while he screamed for help. The government released no information about the arrest, despite repeated requests from WBUR and ProPublica.

At least 10 people have said they were injured this year during broken-windows arrests. César Ruiz Rodriguez had an open wound at the back of his head when he arrived at detention from Spokane, Washington, his lawyer said, and X-rays showed glass in the knees of his brother Jeison. ICE claimed that the Nicaraguan-born brothers were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Both men have denied any gang affiliation. We found that the brothers had been accused of threatening a family member, but prosecutors dropped the charges.

In Kentucky, agents stopped Martin Rivera and his girlfriend, Jennifer Gribben, a U.S. citizen, while the agents searched for a fugitive. “You said you’re looking for Garcia,” Rivera said in a scene the couple broadcast on Facebook Live and have since deleted. One of the agents replied, “And I found you instead.”

Then they smashed through the car’s window. Gribben later wrote on Facebook that she was beaten “brutally in my head” and that officers broke Rivera’s arm. She pleaded not guilty to charges of resisting arrest and third-degree assault stemming from the incident.

Near Detroit, masked ICE officers dragged 49-year-old Veronica Ramirez Verduzco, an aide at an assisted-living center, out of her car through a window they broke. Ramirez Verduzco still had bloody, jagged scratches up and down her forearms five days later, her lawyer said.

ICE told ProPublica that agents are allowed to use force when civilians don’t follow their commands. But Ramirez Verduzco and others said they were given little time to respond before officers broke their windows.

“They didn’t give me a chance to understand what was going on,” she said in an interview shortly before she was ordered deported to Mexico.

Watch video ➜

This spring, ICE arrested Elsy Noemi Berrios after breaking her car window, scattering glass over her patterned dress. Her teenage daughter screamed and cried as she filmed with her cellphone. An officer helped Berrios shake off the glass and step out of the car. “Gracias,” she said. Then he put her in handcuffs.

After the video went viral and outrage spread, the agency put out a statement asserting that Berrios, a Salvadoran national, was a “known affiliate of the violent transnational street gang, MS-13.” Our review of judicial records — both federal and local — found no criminal history for Berrios and no other evidence to support this claim.

This July, in another widely circulated case, officers stopped an Iranian chiropractor and green-card applicant near Portland, Oregon. He was on his way to his toddler’s preschool. “There is a baby in the car,” the man said. They allowed him to continue to the school, then broke a window once the toddler was out. We found no criminal history for him.

Your car is a constitutional gray zone. It doesn’t have the same Fourth Amendment protections as homes. You can refuse to open the door of your home if officers don’t have a judicial warrant; you can’t refuse to step out of your car.

The Constitution still limits when officers can use force and how much they can use. But there are no firm rules. Should they shatter windows just minutes or seconds after making a vehicle stop? Should they drag someone through broken glass when they could wait to make the arrest another day?

“Use of force has to be objectively reasonable,” says Bruce-Alan Barnard, a retired Fourth Amendment instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, where ICE officers train. The problem with “objectively reasonable,” Barnard says, is that “it’s an oxymoron. What’s reasonable to you might not be reasonable to me.”

Immigration officers are given little guidance on whether or how they should breach car windows, former federal law enforcement officials told ProPublica. The tactic was never prohibited. It was just rare.

It isn’t mentioned in the government’s use-of-force guidelines for immigration agents. And past instructors and students at the Georgia training center say it was never part of the curriculum.

Watch video ➜

In Massachusetts this spring, a tall ICE officer in a trucker’s cap swung a sledgehammer to arrest Juan Francisco Méndez, the Guatemalan asylum-seeker inside. Officers had stopped the car looking for an “Antonio,” his wife told the New Bedford Light. Méndez has no known criminal record.

He and his wife told officers they were waiting to exit the car until their lawyer could arrive. Before the sledgehammer swung, one of the officers threatened them in broken Spanish: “We can do it two ways. Hard or easy?”

An ICE spokesperson told ProPublica that the agency “concurs with the actions deemed appropriate by the officers on the scene.”

Watch video ➜

In June, a 15-year-old girl and her mother watched as ICE agents stopped a work truck and roughly arrested several men.

“For the last time, are you opening this, or no?” an officer warned before he broke the glass. “I’m fucking blasting it right now.”

While the teenager yelled and asked the officers if they had a warrant, the driver turned toward her camera and said he was a U.S. citizen.

Early this year, border czar Tom Homan made one of his now-familiar threats to a sanctuary jurisdiction, promising to bring “hell” to the Boston area. To do that, his immigration officers needed help.

An ICE press release soon touted its collaboration with a half-dozen other federal agencies, including the Coast Guard and State Department, on a monthlong crackdown in the region, dubbed Operation Patriot. (The Coast Guard confirmed that it helped transport people arrested on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The State Department also confirmed its role. Neither commented further.)

In May, bystanders filmed in nearby Waltham, Massachusetts, as masked agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations, along with agents from unidentified agencies, questioned two men parked in a work van. “Show me you’re here legally and I’ll leave you alone,” said one officer, identified on his vest only as “federal agent.”

In the months since, federal officers from other agencies have continued to participate in immigration operations around the country.

What happens if officers cross the line? Usually very little.

Paths to suing federal officers are even more limited than for police officers, making it particularly hard for immigrants to hold officers accountable for any misconduct.

“The deck is stacked against them,” says Fleischaker, the former top ICE official.

Even if a judge decides to award damages, that usually won’t change what happens — or already happened — in the separate system of immigration court. Evidence of a violent arrest rarely stops a deportation, and if people have already been deported, it won’t bring them back.

In the instance of the family detained on Mother’s Day, they filed a complaint over “unlawful and excessive” actions — but the father has already been deported to Mexico. (The government has not responded to the complaint or to ProPublica’s questions about it.) A precursor to a full civil lawsuit, the complaint says their 3-year-old now tells people, “Police broke the window and threw daddy on the floor.”

Settlements in similar cases have been small. A California woman detained by Border Patrol in 2016 after agents broke her car window while her children screamed settled two years later for $25,000.

When we asked the White House detailed questions about the tactic and specific incidents, it stood by officers’ conduct. “ProPublica is a left-wing rag that is shamelessly doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens,” deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “ICE Officers are heroically getting these violent illegal aliens off of American streets with the utmost professionalism.”

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin also defended the tactic in response to questions about Border Patrol. Officers “may break vehicle windows” if occupants don’t follow their commands, she said. In June, an ICE spokesperson told ProPublica, “Our officers follow their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve situations in a manner that ensures the success of the operation and prioritizes safety.”

Other agencies whose officers were involved in incidents we documented — FBI; DEA; and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — did not respond or declined to comment on specific cases.

Watch video ➜

Bystanders who film these videos do so at no small risk to themselves.

Job Garcia, a 37-year-old Ph.D. student and U.S. citizen, was filming an immigration raid in June near a Home Depot in Los Angeles when Border Patrol agents broke the window of a truck to detain the man inside. Then, agents turned on Garcia.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a complaint against the federal government on Garcia’s behalf in July, alleging agents detained him in retaliation for recording and because he was Latino.

In response to our questions, DHS’ McLaughlin claimed Garcia “assaulted and verbally harassed” Border Patrol. (No assault is shown in the video.) McLaughlin added, “He was subdued and arrested for assault on a federal agent.”

Kayden Goode, the 15-year-old girl who filmed the arrest of the U.S. citizen in Rochester, New York, said she felt compelled to record despite the risk.

"I don’t think it was right,” Goode said. “Just because something is legal doesn’t mean that it’s right.”

Sometimes just the threat of window smashing is enough. One Afghan asylum-seeker who stepped out of a car after ICE threatened his window said in an affidavit, “It reminded me of the Taliban.”

But this all may be only the beginning. Shortly before Trump’s flagship domestic policy bill passed in early July, border czar Tom Homan told a conservative Christian conference that immigration agencies were just getting started. The law will triple the size of ICE and add thousands more immigration agents.

“You think we’re arresting people now?” Homan said. “You wait.”

Earlier this year, reporter Nicole Foy heard about Border Patrol officers near Bakersfield, California, smashing a car window. Reporter McKenzie Funk also noticed immigration agents using the tactic in Washington state. The federal government does not publicly track how often agents break car windows, nor did government officials agree to requests to speak about it.

In the months that followed, Foy and Funk documented dozens of cases by searching social media, local news and legal filings. They spoke to current and former law enforcement officials, experts in constitutional law and advocates across the country and contacted the agencies of officers involved in the incidents.

Along with research reporter Mariam Elba, they also looked into the backgrounds of the identified individuals whose immigration arrests are shown in this story. They searched for records in the criminal courts of the counties in which the arrest took place, as well as in the counties public records show the person previously lived in. We found one criminal conviction among those people: Veronica Ramirez Verduzco was convicted of reentering the country illegally.

The findings on criminal records are not comprehensive because there is no universal database of charges or convictions, and there was not enough identifying information for some people. When the government made claims about an individual, Foy and Funk asked them for supporting evidence. They did not provide any.

Do you have information or videos to share about the administration’s immigration crackdown? Contact Nicole Foy via email at nicole.foy@propublica.org or on Signal at nicolefoy.27 and McKenzie Funk via email at mckenzie.funk@propublica.org or on Signal at 212-379-5757.

Design and development by Anna Donlan, visual editing by Shoshana Gordon, research by Mariam Elba and reporting by Rob Davis. Additional production by Lucas Waldron.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

If you have information about cases or investigations paused or dropped by either the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission, contact Corey G. Johnson at corey.johnson@propublica.org or 917-512-0287.

The Trump administration has halted litigation aimed at stopping civil rights abuses of prisoners in Louisiana and mentally ill people living in South Carolina group homes.

The Biden administration filed lawsuits against the two states in December after Department of Justice investigations concluded that they had failed to fix violations despite years of warnings.

Louisiana’s prison system has kept thousands of incarcerated people behind bars for weeks, months or sometimes more than a year after they were supposed to be released, records show. And the DOJ accused South Carolina of institutionalizing thousands of people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses — sometimes for decades — rather than provide services that would allow them to live in less restricted settings, as is their right under federal law.

Federal judges temporarily suspended the lawsuits in February at the request of the states and with the support of the DOJ.

Civil rights lawyers who have monitored the cases said the move is another sign of the Trump administration’s retreat from the department’s mission of protecting the rights of vulnerable groups. Since January, President Donald Trump’s DOJ has dropped racial discrimination lawsuits, abandoned investigations of police misconduct and canceled oversight of troubled law enforcement agencies.

“This administration has been very aggressive in rolling back any kind of civil rights reforms or advancements,” said Anya Bidwell, senior attorney at the public-interest law firm Institute for Justice. “It’s unquestionably disappointing.”

The cases against Louisiana and South Carolina were brought by a unit of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division tasked with enforcing laws that guarantee religious freedom, access to reproductive health services, constitutional policing, and the rights of people in state and local institutions, including jails, prisons and health care facilities for people with disabilities.

The unit, the Special Litigation Section, has seen a dramatic reduction in lawyers since Trump took office in January. Court records show at least seven attorneys working on the lawsuits against Louisiana and South Carolina are no longer with the DOJ.

The section had more than 90 employees at the start of the year, including about 60 front-line attorneys. By June, it had about 25, including around 15 front-line lawyers, according to a source familiar with its operation. Sources said some were reassigned to other areas of the department while others quit in protest against the direction of the office under Trump, found new jobs or took early retirement.

Similar departures have been seen throughout the DOJ.

The exodus will hamper its ability to carry out essential functions, such as battling sexual harassment in housing, discrimination against disabled people, and the improper use of restraints and seclusions against students in schools, said Omar Noureldin, a former senior attorney in the Civil Rights Division and President Joe Biden appointee who left in January.

“Regardless of your political leanings, I think most people would agree these are the kind of bad situations that should be addressed by the nation’s top civil rights enforcer,” Noureldin said.

A department spokesperson declined to comment in response to questions from ProPublica about the Louisiana and South Carolina cases. Sources familiar with the lawsuits said Trump appointees have told DOJ lawyers handling the cases that they want to resolve matters out of court.

The federal government has used settlement talks in the past to hammer out consent decrees, agreements that set a list of requirements to fix civil rights violations and are overseen by an outside monitor and federal judge to ensure compliance. But Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, Trump’s appointee to run the DOJ’s civil rights division, has made no secret of her distaste for such measures.

In May, Dhillon announced she was moving to dismiss efforts to impose consent decrees on the Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis police departments. She complained that consent decrees turn local control of policing over to “unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.”

A DOJ investigation in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer accused the department of excessive force, unjustified shootings, and discrimination against Black and Native American people. The agency issued similar findings against the Louisville Metro Police Department after the high-profile killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot in 2020 when officers forced their way into her home to execute a search warrant.

Noureldin, now a senior vice president at the government watchdog group Common Cause, said consent decrees provide an important level of oversight by an independent judge. By contrast, out-of-court settlements can be subject to the political whims of a new administration, which can decide to drop a case or end an agreement despite evidence of continuing constitutional violations.

“When you have a consent decree or a court-enforced settlement, the Justice Department can’t unilaterally just withdraw from the agreement,” Noureldin said. “A federal judge would have to agree that the public interest is served by terminating that settlement.”

In the case of Louisiana, the Justice Department issued a scathing report in January 2023 about the state confining prisoners beyond their sentences. The problems dated back more than a decade and remained widespread, the report said. Between January and April 2022 alone, more than a quarter of everyone released from prison custody was held past their release dates. Of those, 24% spent an additional 90 days or more behind bars, the DOJ found.

Among those held longer than they should have been was Robert Parker, a disc jockey known as “DJ Rob” in New Orleans, where he played R&B and hip-hop music at weddings and private parties. Parker, 55, was arrested in late 2016 after violating a restraining order brought by a former girlfriend.

He was supposed to be released in October 2017, but a prison staffer mistakenly classified him as a sex offender. That meant he was required to provide prison authorities with two addresses where he could stay that complied with sex offender registry rules.

Prison documents show Parker repeatedly told authorities that he wasn’t a sex offender and pleaded to speak to the warden to clear up the mistake. But nobody acted until a deputy public defender contacted state officials months later to complain. By the time he walked out, Parker had spent 337 extra days behind bars. During that period, he said, his car was repossessed, his mother died and his reputation was ruined.

“I lost everything,” he told ProPublica in an interview from a nursing home, where he was recovering from a stroke. “I’m ready to get away from Louisiana.”

Louisiana’s detention system is complex. Unlike other jurisdictions, where the convicted are housed in state facilities, inmates in Louisiana can be held in local jails overseen by sheriffs. A major contributor to the so-called over-detentions was poor communication among Louisiana’s court clerks, sheriff’s offices and the state department of corrections, according to interviews with attorneys, depositions of state officials, and reports from state and federal reviews of the prison system.

Until recently, the agencies shared prisoner sentencing information by shuttling stacks of paperwork by van or truck from the court to the sheriff’s office for the parish holding the prisoner, then to corrections officials. The document transfers, which often crisscrossed the state, typically happened only once a week. When the records finally arrived, it could take staff a month or longer to enter the data into computers, creating more delays. In addition, staff made data errors when calculating release dates.

Two years ago, The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Parker could pursue a lawsuit against the former head of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, James LeBlanc. That lawsuit is ongoing, said Parker’s attorney, Jonathan Rhodes. LeBlanc, who resigned last year, could not be reached for comment, and his attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill acknowledged that the state’s process to determine release dates was unreliable but said the issue had been overblown by the Justice Department’s investigation, which she called “factually incorrect.”

“There were simply parts of it that are outside state control, such as clerks & courts,” Murrill stated.

Murrill said correction officials have been working with local officials to ensure prisoner releases are computed in a “timely and correct fashion.” Louisiana officials point to a new website that allows electronic sharing of information among the various agencies.

“The system has been overhauled. That has dramatically diminished, if not completely eliminated this problem,” Murrill stated. She did not address questions from ProPublica asking if prisoners were being held longer than their release dates this year.

Local attorneys who are handling lawsuits against the state expressed skepticism about Murrill’s claims.

William Most, an attorney who filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of incarcerated people who had been detained past their release dates, noted that as late as May 2024, 141 people who were released that month had been kept longer than they should have been, 120 of them for more than 30 days.

“I have seen no evidence suggesting the problem in Louisiana is fixed,” Most said. “And it seems unwise to dismiss any cases while that’s the situation.”

South Carolina’s mentally ill population is grappling with similar challenges.

After years of lawsuits and complaints, a DOJ investigation determined that officials illegally denied community-based services — required by the Americans with Disabilities Act and a 1999 Supreme Court decision — to over 1,000 people diagnosed as seriously mentally ill. Instead, the state placed them in group homes that failed to provide adequate care and were overly restrictive, the department alleged.

The DOJ report didn’t address why the state relied so heavily on group homes. It noted that South Carolina’s own goals and plans called for increasing community-based services to help more people live independently. But the investigation concluded that the availability of community-based services varied widely across the state, leaving people in some areas with no access. And the DOJ said the state’s rules for deciding when someone could leave were too stringent.

South Carolina funds and oversees more than 400 facilities that serve people with serious mental illness, according to a state affidavit.

Kimberly Tissot, president of the disability rights group Able South Carolina, said it was common for disabled adults who were living successfully on their own to be involuntarily committed to an adult group home simply because they visited a hospital to pick up medicine.

Tissot, who has inspected hundreds of the adult facilities, said they often are roach-infested, soaked in urine, lacking in adequate medicine and staffed by untrained employees. Her description mirrors the findings of several state and independent investigations. In some group homes, patients weren’t allowed to leave or freely move around. Subsequently, their mental health would deteriorate, Tissot said.

“We have had people die in these facilities because of the conditions,” said Tissot, who worked closely with the DOJ investigators. Scores of sexual abuse incidents, assaults and deaths in such group homes have been reported to the state, according to a 2022 federal report that faulted South Carolina’s oversight.

South Carolina has been on notice about the difficulties since 2016 but didn’t make sufficient progress, the DOJ alleged in its lawsuit filed in December.

After two years of failed attempts, state lawmakers passed a law in April that consolidated services for disabled people into a new agency responsible for expanding access to home and community-based treatments and for ensuring compliance with federal laws.

South Carolina’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, has argued in the DOJ’s lawsuit that the state has been providing necessary services and has not been violating people’s constitutional rights. In January, his office asked the court for a delay in the case to give the Trump administration enough time to determine how to proceed.

His office and a spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities declined to comment, citing the ongoing DOJ lawsuit.

Tissot credits the federal attention with creating a sense of urgency among state lawmakers to make improvements. While she said she is pleased with the latest progress, she warned that if the DOJ dropped the case, it would undermine the enforcement of disabled people’s civil rights and allow state abuses to continue.

“It would signal that systemic discrimination will go unchecked and embolden institutional providers to resist change,” Tissot said. “Most importantly, it abandons the people directly impacted.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Corey G. Johnson.

In the end, did the bank compensate any of the money my friend had lost? None, zero, zilch, nothing, not even a penny.

“You feel so left out, as if my family and friends and the rest of the world had all abandoned me. The first couple of weeks, I would wake up and find myself crying. I had lost a good chunk of my savings, and there was NOBODY that I could turn to.”

“I started looking for an attorney to help me recover, at least part of the money from the bank, but even if I found one, what were our chances of beating the full team of lawyers working for the bank?”

One attorney said his office would not accept cases dealing with dollar amounts less than $100,000.

To further mislead and disappoint the victim, the hackers had even set up internet links to fake lawyers’ offices in Canada and Mexico.

SO WHAT CAN BE DONE? I should say here that the following statements do not apply to all financial institutions. Some have already implemented features, such as those recommended by experts (in diverse ways), but a large number worry more about their transaction volume and the bottom line. In addition, the bank’s attitude towards client losses, and its responsibility towards the customer is, pretty much the same everywhere, and it derives from the banks’ attitude profits before people.

If you are willing to go back to the days of “manual banking”, the solution is very simple. Just call up the bank and disable or remove online banking, but you will have to visit the bank for the smallest of things.

Here is one interim solution before a definitive one is worked on.

A large percent of thefts are done through online banking. The money is lost when an online transfer (wire transfer, of some sort, Zelle, etc.) is initiated. The function is triggered when a request is received to do transfer online. This service should fail at this point if the destination of the transfer is a financial institution outside the bank’s network and the request is through online banking. The bank should then ask the client to visit a branch and show ID.

Nice and simple as it is, many banks refuse to implement this additional feature because it eats into their profits, as transaction volume is slowed and reduced, but the heck with the customer who might lose her/his life’s savings. After all, even though the banks are too big to fail, bank customers are not.

Business as usual in a neo-liberal world: profits before people when it should be people before profits.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Andres Kargar.

So, on June 17, when the USDA announced the end of $148.6 million in funding awarded by prior administrations to projects geared toward DEI, the move appeared in lockstep with the president’s priorities. The notice itself, for example, was titled “Secretary Rollins Takes Bold Action to Put American Farmers First, Cuts Millions in Woke DEI Funding.” 

The press release said that “more than 145” awards would be cancelled, and it gave three anonymized examples of such projects. There was a $575,251 project “educating and engaging socially disadvantaged farmers on conservation practices”; a $192,246 project for “creating a new model for urban forestry to lead to environmental justice through more equitably distributed green spaces”; and a $2.5 million award for a project “expanding equitable access to land, capital, and market opportunities for underserved producers in the Bay Area.” 

It all seemed like standard fare under the new administration — except that the USDA neither specified what awards it was scrubbing, nor did it follow the news with direct notifications to those affected. 

More than a month later, no one yet seems to know whether, or to what extent, the $148 million in grants has actually been cancelled. The scraps of information provided in the release have since been mined many times over by everyone from grantees to lawmakers. This fiscal year, the USDA had a total budget of $493.9 billion, of which $144.4 billion funded award obligations. That means the $148 million represents roughly 0.001 percent of what the agency planned to spend on awards. And yet, experts say, the missing money mystery indicates a new chapter in the USDA’s playbook — and it’s harming farmers and ranchers, and those that support them, across the country. 

“I just continue to think that they are motivated by the politics of saying that they cancelled a DEI-related program, and they’re not motivated by conducting thoughtful policy changes or updates, and they don’t seem to really be concerned about who’s on the other end of that policy change, and what the impact would be,” said Michael Amato, who was the USDA Communications Director during the Biden administration.

For those organizations that suspect their projects could be on the chopping block, the move is perplexing. When the team at the California-based organization Agroecology Commons saw the USDA press release, they presumed that the $2.5 million grant had to be theirs. Roughly two years beforehand, they had been awarded that very same amount through the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program to identify, purchase, and help develop land for up to ten “BIPOC, LGBTQIA, and landless farmers” in the Bay Area. 

The nonprofit had already come to feel targeted under the new administration. They had confronted the elimination of another USDA award back in March. In June, less than two weeks before the $148 million cancellation news was shared, the organization joined two other plaintiffs in filing a lawsuit against the USDA for what they believe were unlawful grant terminations. And, according to director of partnerships Leah Atwood, they were “put on blast on the Secretary of Ag’s Instagram,” when Brooke Rollins announced the end of the group’s Community Food Projects grant in a social media video.

“All signs pointed to ‘that’s gonna be us,’” said Atwood. The revelation was nonetheless “a big blow” to her team. In response to the USDA’s announcement, they started to halt the work they were doing that was supported by the federal funds, in case they wouldn’t be able to invoice for reimbursements later. As the days and weeks passed, the team got more and more bewildered when no official termination notice hit their inbox. 

Until last Tuesday, when a cancellation notice finally dropped — just not the one that they were expecting. 

On July 22, more than a month following the agency’s initial termination announcement, the team finally received an email from the USDA, shared with Grist, which informed them of the end of their Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grant, or BFRDP, amounting to nearly $600,000 that they were awarded back in 2021. First authorized by the farm bill more than two decades ago, the program provides grants to organizations in support of education, mentoring, and technical assistance for new agricultural producers. The letter stated that “the Secretary of Agriculture has determined, per the Department’s obligations to the Constitution and laws of the United States, that priority includes ensuring that the Department’s awards do not support programs that promote or take part in diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) initiatives, or any other initiatives that discriminate on the basis of immutable characteristics.” 

Though she isn’t sure, Atwood believes that Agroecology Commons’ BFRDP grant cancellation must be one of the 145 or so that the USDA says it has identified for elimination. She also believes that the notice for the bigger grant is still on the horizon, and has expressed concern over two other USDA grants of theirs that have an explicit DEI-focus. As of the time of this article’s publication, the Agroecology Commons team still has not received an official cancellation notice for the $2.5 million from the federal agency. 

“We’ve been in this constant state of evaluation and reevaluation and downsizing and streamlining and consolidating, and it’s impossible to do that in a clear, straightforward way when we don’t know what’s happening,” she said. “It’s just a juggling act of, like, plugging leaks and dodging waves.” 

Read Next

Seaweed brought fishers, farmers, and scientists together. Trump tore them apart.

Ayurella Horn-Muller

The USDA has not responded to multiple inquiries from Grist sent over the last month requesting clarity on the full list of awards included in last month’s press release, why those affected had not been issued official notices, and the criteria being used in these funding eliminations. What’s more, it isn’t clear whether the recent rescission of BFRDP grants account for any part of the $148 million, or belong to an entirely new crop of cancellations. 

Grist reporting has revealed that at least three other recipients of BFRDP grants were also issued official USDA termination notices in the last week. They are the only series of DEI-adjacent grants from the USDA that have been confirmed as cancelled since the agency’s June announcement. Like Atwood, those other grantees believe the dissolution of their federal support falls within the 145 or so awards that the USDA declared. One such group is the Rhode Island Food Policy Council.

The end of the BFRDP grant didn’t come as much of a surprise to its executive director Nessa Richman. In fact, when she saw the USDA’s announcement about the $148 million funding pot, Richman had a “sinking feeling” that her group’s grant was over. Right before the USDA made the announcement, Richman noticed that their BFRDP money was suddenly unfrozen — an experience that the Food Policy Council went through when the Trump administration pulled another of their grants — before it was terminated.

When it finally arrived, the USDA’s letter singled out the Food Policy Council’s focus on DEI as the rationale for the cancellation. “Specifically, the project is targeted at beginning farmers and ranchers from Rhode Island communities defined by their immutable characteristics,” the letter said. “The award is therefore inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” 

But what surprised Richman was the way the USDA presented the news. “Normally, in a USDA announcement like that, when it’s about grant awards, in the past there’s been a link to a list of all of the grantees,” said Richman. “And it was confusing that there wasn’t one.” So she called around to see if anyone in her network had been able to find a list buried on a federal website somewhere. No one had. No one knew what programs were on that list of “more than 145.”

“My guess was that the work had been done internally at USDA to identify the grants, because it was a very specific number, but that they hadn’t done the administrative work to move forward and send out notices of termination,” said Richman. “At this point, it probably took them longer than they thought to get all of the administrative pieces in place. Why else would it take them longer?” 

A Grist analysis of a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture reporting portal shows that since 2009, roughly 13 percent of all BFRDP awards have been DEI-related, and just 21 are active projects. If the USDA terminates all of the BFRDP awards with equity-associated keywords, that leaves at least 124 other grants facing potentially imminent elimination following the agency’s effort to cut “Woke DEI Funding.” 

Vanessa García Polanco, government relations director at National Young Farmers Coalition, is worried about the future of the other equity-related awards. “So how are they picking and choosing these grants? Is it just the ones that have equity in the title? Do they have some equity outcomes? Or is it just literally strategic? Is there an equation, an algorithm behind it? We really don’t know,” said García Polanco. “Everything feels extremely haphazard and inconsistent.”  

The federal agency’s silence has prompted urgent calls for transparency from some members of Congress. Last Tuesday, on the same day that BFRDP letters began landing in inboxes, a cohort of nine Democratic senators sent an official congressional oversight letter to Rollins, urging her to provide the missing information, including “a complete list of awards that USDA intends to terminate, including information about awardees, programs, funding amounts, and locations.” The letter also asked for further details “on why these awards intend to be cancelled, as well as the legal basis for cancelling the awards, and if the funds are being repurposed, for what they will be repurposed.” 

“It’s created more uncertainty, in a sea of uncertainty,” said Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “I don’t know how it wouldn’t have a chilling effect.” 

According to a former senior USDA official, who spoke to Grist on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the precedents of how the agency chooses to operate — and communicate — are changing so quickly and radically that it’s creating an environment of fear for the nation’s farmers and ranchers who could rely on federal government funds before Trump took office.

“People are just scared right now because they keep hearing the threat of these things, and they haven’t been notified. So ‘Do I continue to do work? Do I not continue to do work?’ The uncertainty is what’s getting people right now,” the official said. “You hear that from these grantees, as well as [USDA] employees, it’s hard to get people to talk about it, because they don’t know, from day to day, whether they’re going to be targeted. 

If they say anything, I think most folks are going on record anonymously because they’re in fear, because you really don’t know what’s next. And if you get out there on a limb, it might get sawed off behind you.”

Clayton Aldern contributed data reporting.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The USDA announced the cancellation of $148 million in ‘woke’ grants. Then it went dark. on Jul 31, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

Set in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, “Eddington,” directed by Ari Aster, blends elements of horror, Westerns, and satire that explore how we process such an earth-shattering event half a decade later. But its subplot about the development of a massive data center nearby explores just how this volatile landscape became profitable for tech corporations, while engaging with contemporary vignettes of Native life where Indigenous communities exist along the border, haunting the town’s history and politics.

In the film, the mayor of the town of Eddington, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), plays high-powered politics to the best of his ability in a small town, including cozying up to the shadowy tech company SolidGoldMagiKarp. The company has proposed a “Hyperscale Data Center Development” and Mayor Garcia touts the idea as a boon to the local economy, creating jobs. Sheriff Cross, however, sees it differently. To him, the world and its mask mandates have infringed on his town and life. As a result, he decides to run against Garcia for Mayor. 

From here, the action is set in motion. Defying masking orders is used for social media points, while young, mostly white activists, engage in online activism by invoking the Navajo Long Walk and calling out stolen land–talking points that operate more as currency than a genuine desire to engage with their Pueblo neighbors. Eddington, at its heart, is a Western. Like other Westerns, it evokes a moment of discovery and unleashes it on the viewing public. John Ford Westerns locate the founding mythologies of what animates American identity among red buttes and stagecoaches. Even in Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s revelatory vision of the first atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexico desert offers a view of evil’s origins. In “Eddington,” alienation drives the narrative, framed through social media, Zoom meetings, and the tech infrastructure pushing the community apart in every way possible.

That infrastructure, of course, exists off screen and in our lives. Earlier this month in southern Arizona, nearly 1,000 people in Tucson turned out to a city council meeting after local reporters revealed that officials had secretly planned an Amazon Web Services facility in their community. At a public meeting, angry residents cited that the city’s pattern of droughts would not meet the data center’s surging water needs. In Tennessee, residents in a South Memphis neighborhood have reported breathing problems due to nitrogen oxide emissions from burning fossil fuels used to power Elon Musk’s xAI’s servers, to run Grok, X’s resident chatbot.

Because of the speed of AI data center development, tribes have only begun to grapple with this trend and threats to water, land, and energy capacity. The Tonawanda Seneca Nation filed a lawsuit against the construction of a data center in upstate New York earlier this month, arguing the site would impede treaty rights, including hunting and gathering. Last year, the Arizona Corporation Commission, a utility regulator, approved an 8% rate hike to meet the energy demands brought on by the state’s rising number of data centers. In a separate measure, the Commission rejected a package to expand electricity to residents on the Navajo Nation, where nearly 13,000 households lack access.    

“As these data centers are moving into their communities, people are starting to realize that there are huge physical manifestations to all of this artificial intelligence and all of this computing that we’ve come to just kind of accept in our daily lives,” said Deborah Kapiloff, a policy advisor at the Western Resource Advocates. “There is going to start being a lot more pushback from communities as they understand what this means for them in terms of changes to their communities and these data centers siting there.” 

At the end of the film, there’s an opening ceremony of the center. In the corner, next to Phoenix’s character who is now physically incapacitated, is also a Santa Lupe Pueblo leader, symbolically incapacitated. It’s revealed that the state has invested millions of dollars into clean energy projects on their land and are praised for their partnership and participation with the data center. It’s unclear if the endeavors were driven by the Pueblo, or what kind of say the nation had in the deal. As the credits roll, the center glows against the dusky blue land, almost breathing.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Data centers, drought, and dispossession: The real nightmares in Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’ on Jul 31, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Miacel Spotted Elk.

You could say, I’m a child of family separation, I’m a child of war. I left my core family at the age of 13 and came here at 14. And what I didn’t know was how growing up in instability and conflict made me uniquely positioned to be in that kind of environment, because I understood what it meant to be a kid in that kind of environment. We always talk about how many people have died. And for me, that was an oversimplified and unsophisticated way of looking at the cost of conflict. I always felt like the true cost of conflict was in how many people lived through the conflict, those people who lost family members, kids, parents, uncles. Whose communities and homes and lives were impacted. That’s the true cost of conflict. And I always felt like if you measure conflict through that lens, the cost of war and the cost of conflict would no longer be justifiable. I think one of the biggest sorts of mistakes is looking at the cost of conflict through the number of people who die, because it underplays the cost.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I was like,”I want to tell stories, and I want to do this kind of work.” So 9/11 coincided with me being focused on my career as an artist, allowing myself even the possibility of thinking, “Can I be an artist?” When you’re a kid, surviving and trying to swim, you don’t think, “Oh, let me just go into the arts.” I’d never had that privilege. So it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I was like, “You know what? That’s what I always wanted to be as a kid. I’m going to give it a go.” I started working in installation work and video art in 2008. While I was at the same time trying to make rights and sell Hollywood projects and TV shows. And that’s sort of how it all happened. It was very organic. It was still all driven by two things. One, the need to survive as an artist, but also it needed to be broadly creative, and not limited. And here I am, still doing it.

Your feature directorial debut, Remote, premiered at the New York Film Festival. How did that experience impact your work moving forward?

I’ve been making stuff in one capacity or another for years. And I had directed shorts, documentaries, etc, but I’ve never taken the time to say, “Okay, let’s do my piece.” Then COVID happened, and everything shut down. And in that period in 2020, while we were waiting to see if the studios would open up, Mika Rottenberg, the co-director, and I started talking about something that we’d wanted to do since the first day we met, which was to make a film together.

At least for me, I never thought, “Oh, we’re going to do this thing, and it’s going to be at the New York Film Festival, and it’s going to premiere at the Tate Modern, and you name it.” We just wanted to have an outlet to do art. And 2020 was a bad year for many reasons. We had COVID, everything that was happening with George Floyd, and what was happening on the streets. There was an election that was coming up, which seemed quite consequential at the time. And this conversation that led to Remote was very much the way we were coping with that year.

Of course, it was wonderful to be at the New York Film Festival; it was a dream come true, as a New Yorker. It’s the festival that I always loved, it was where I would go every year to watch the latest Almodovar film. And that was my thing, you know, was, “Okay, what’s he got? It’s going to be at the New York Film Festival. I can’t wait to go see it.” And so that was beautiful. It was a very beautiful, meaningful experience.

You are working now on your project CURA, and one thing that struck me from this project is that it doesn’t rely on a specific narrative format for documentaries, like voice-over, verité, and archival. What is your intention in what you want to communicate with this project? Is there a specific point of view that you want to show, or is it more open to interpretation?

I think it was not an easy choice to make this film. I had to really find both the approach, but also answer the question of why, and why me? Or why us? And that came out of many conversations with the indigenous healers and tribal elders across Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, over the first seven months that we were really thinking about doing this. One of the things I learned is that, for many of the Indigenous people I spoke with, words were a problem. Words were a mechanism of lies, of deception. And some things cannot be expressed through words. So the challenge became, “All right, how do you tell a non-verbal story? How do you tell a story that doesn’t rely on words?” So that’s the initial impetus. And then, from my own experience of being there, I realized that so much of the relationship between these indigenous communities, these guardian communities, and the forest was not expressed through words, or not understood through words. It was very much about frequency and vibration, and this non-verbal relationship that they had with the spirits. And this thing, where they truly believe is a living entity. They believe the forest is alive, the rivers are alive, that the trees are alive, they believe that they are a sentient being and they’re in communication with, and they have a relationship too.

And I think that inherently is this sense of connection that they have to the natural world is what I realized was something that, as a cost of modernity or living in modernity, we have lost. And we get glimpses of it when we go hang out in the wilderness, we’re like, “Oh, my god. I feel so much at peace, and this is so good.” And we return and we forget again. And the reason we feel at home in the wilderness, in nature, it’s because that is who we are, that’s where we come from. Despite where we have arrived and how far we’ve come, we are inherently, as a being, creatures of the forest, creatures of the mountains, of this earth.

One of the things that came out of this process was recognizing that so much about conventional filmmaking made me go away from documentaries specifically, from conflict zones, and from this obsession with data and facts, and information. But we have an eco-anxiety pandemic. People are suffering from deep anxiety around the climate, and rightly so. And I think in part, you can say that this barrage of information and data, and doom and gloom, is what a byproduct of that was, is this eco-anxiety, which is now a big problem. And when you looked at these tribes and the way they existed, even though their conditions are extremely hard, they are still living in joy and hope. And I knew I couldn’t make conventional work. It had to find its own language. That it had to really rely on the modality that I was in the forest itself. And I knew that ultimately the character that had to emerge from this work had to be the forest itself. And I knew I couldn’t do that through conventional narrative means. And that’s why we took a non-verbal approach. And that’s sort of how I ended up where I am.

Since this project is so different from what you have done in the past, what are your hopes when it goes out into the world?

I think we’re living in a period of time where traditional institutions and legacy companies are no longer viable routes. Yes, it’s art, but it’s art that’s created within an economic framework, right? The reason these conventions are built has a lot to do with the economics of storytelling and media and film, and documentary. And they have nothing to do with actual artistic creativity.

And I felt, especially with this work, that I was going to go back to a documentary form that I didn’t want to rely on those things. So I had to take a very entrepreneurial approach to the work. And so that’s the approach that we’re taking. CURA is being made within what I find very valuable in the art world, which is these editions; you’re creating a work of art. There’s a certificate of authenticity; you’re selling additions to collectors and commissioners, etc., in advance. At the time, we’ve sold a couple of those already, and hopefully we’ll sell the rest of them, so that we can keep filming and do all that work.

I think partially what’s exciting about our Kickstarter campaign that we’re doing is that it incorporates some of these ideas. But one of the things that I did that I think is quite novel is that I said, “Okay, normally you have additions of the work. I’m going to take one of these additions and break it into digital editions.” So, several digital additions that I can sell directly to collectors. Now, those collectors are oftentimes inaccessible to so many people. But what if those additions were $500 or $1,000? Then suddenly people can collect a work of art that they own, that it’s always with them, like buying a vinyl, that you can play for your friends and family members, and your community. And your work, and you’re supporting a work, but you’re also getting something that you own in return.

I think this is about being aware of the moment we are in, and saying, “You know what? I can’t rely on these traditional institutions. If they want to come to me, great. But I can’t sit there and wait for gatekeepers to say, ‘Yes, no. It makes sense.’” If artists don’t find their own path to their audiences, then we’re facing what is a cultural extinction of sorts.

I want this to be a work of public art, so hopefully we can be available as installations in various places. In museums and art festivals as well. It’s something that we can take on the road and bring to people who don’t necessarily have access to the work. But also be able to digitally distribute in this way, around ownership and sovereignty, artists’ sovereignty, and impact. That’s going to be quite meaningful. And so we have our own life cycle in that way. And then if the conventional space, if the traditional institutions want to also play along, then we can find within this model a way to interact and also work with that space. But this allows us to maintain ownership and control, as opposed to giving everything away.

Following up on what you mentioned about how traditional institutions and legacy companies might not be the best path for artists, what role do audiences play in the equation?

Right now, artists often assume their audience is a buyer, a commissioner, or an executive, and that’s a problem. Making a film that must pass through conventional channels means assuming the audience lacks a deep or immersive understanding of the story, the issues at hand, or the artistic context, let alone the people behind the work. That assumption leads to self-censorship and manipulation. Even those of us who say, “You say what you need to say to sell it, and then you make what you really want,” eventually realize: if you’ve been through this process, as I have, that’s not how it works in reality.

Once you enter into that mindset of, “I’ll do the song and dance just to get the project commissioned,” you’ve already started down a path that alters the core of the original idea. Now, I’m not saying that this process is always negative, there are great executives out there who truly know how to support and shape an idea. But the reality of the marketplace is harsh: artists are often underpaid, overworked, and desperate. This is not a level playing field. It’s not a space where most artists hold real power. A few might, but most don’t.

Even the best advice comes at a price. Sometimes the baby goes out with the bathwater. Sure, it’s necessary to drain the bathwater, that’s part of the creative process. You shape, chisel, revise. Friction is necessary. We want friction; the best work often comes out of it. But the problem is, that friction has become distorted. Even well-meaning executives are worried about keeping their jobs. Data has become supreme, it’s driving all the decisions. Do you think documentary executives really believe everything should be true crime, cults, controversy, or celebrity-driven stories? No. They’re being told that’s what works, and they’re just collecting their paycheck while prescribing that reality to others.

That’s why, for me, choosing to say, “My audience is my audience,” and proving the value of a project by engaging that audience early on, that’s a form of liberation. I prefer that space of autonomy, of artistic sovereignty. It allows me to be true. I can sleep at night knowing that the conversations I’ve had—even the ones across the metaphorical forest, have been delivered honestly. I might not always arrive at the final destination, but what I make will reflect what was truly said and intended. And I believe that if you stick to that path, you have a real shot, a far greater one than in the system we’re currently trapped in.

What is one piece of advice that you received that helped you in your career?

Having no other choice. If you’re an artist, it’s just because that’s what you have to do, right? And turning that into a creative source as opposed to a source of desperation was the best advice. You don’t have a choice, and the people in this economy, which is called the arts, are well aware of your lack of choice. But if you liberate yourself from that lack of choice and make it a creative force, as opposed to a desperate need to just get forward, then you’re much more likely to actually get to where you wanted to go. So that was great advice. And the best advice I can give artists like myself, who don’t come from a conventional privileged background, whose stories that they care about or grew up around, isn’t what is dominant… It’s don’t shy away from your otherness. Your otherness is your superpower. Embrace it.

I truly believe that artists will survive, not based on this abstract idea of a global audience, but through small communities and small audiences, and local community power, that you build from the ground up. And that’s where artists always belong, and that is sort of the field, the farm that we have to cultivate, to be able to grow our work. And in that environment, your otherness is what helps you grow, not this sort of trying to fit a mold of mainstream conventions.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Miriam Garcia.

Each book is its own journey, but it’s been an exercise in time and patience. I got the deal in late 2022, and by January 1st, 2023, I had to sit down, roll up my sleeves, and start writing. A year and a half later, I had the full first draft.

I had started thinking about this project ten years ago when I published an initial feature on the Wall of Sound while on staff at Motherboard, Vice’s science and tech vertical. I had spent a year working on it, and it clocked in at around 9,000 words. By sheer coincidence, it ran during a series of shows celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary that generated additional attention. I remember thinking I’d gone so deep, “surely this will be the definitive take.” I quickly realized I had barely scratched the surface. I filed the idea away, but couldn’t stop thinking about it. I kept gathering bits here and there, reading everything I could, staying obsessed. I couldn’t shake it. I was so captivated.

Why do you think?

If you don’t know, the Wall of Sound was a groundbreaking technology consisting of hundreds of speakers, dozens of amplifiers, custom staging, and scaffolding, and stood over three stories tall. It was between 70 and a hundred feet wide and 40 feet deep. It was a custom sound reinforcement system–like a public address or PA system–that The Dead and their circle of roadies, audio engineers, sound consultants, and technicians built over several years, beginning in the mid-sixties through 1974. It revolutionized sound reinforcement. To this day, if you see live music, from a stadium to a small punk club, you’ll see some principles first forged through the Wall of Sound. If you talk to anyone in the sound world–a sound technician, a recording engineer–they will know about the Wall of Sound.

I see why it was so inspiring.

From that first feature in Motherboard to the book’s publication, it’s been almost 10 years to the month. One thing I learned is that a project is going to take the time that it needs. There was a point in 2018, early 2019, when I started putting together an initial proposal. But the agent I was working with saw the book as something different, so nothing came of it, which I learned is a rite of passage.

Can you explain?

The first time you shop around a book proposal, you might not get any bites, and that can sting and be demoralizing. But if you feel strongly, you just have to keep going.

After that initial round of rejections, the final proposal took shape. The real lesson was that you’ll probably get rejected, and that’s just part of it the first time around. But you have to keep going. And if you get a great agent, which I am so grateful for, good things can happen.

That’s a great point.

I feel like I’ve been working on this book my whole life. Being raised by two Deadheads, this music was always in the background. But the TLDR is that it will take years from idea to proposal to landing the book deal and then actually writing it. It’s an ultra marathon, not a sprint. If you’re going to get impatient at all, this might not be the thing for you. But if you’re committed to the vision and in for the long haul, you can totally do it.

You have very specific insight into the Dead through your parents. Was it more complicated that this topic was such a part of your personal narrative?

A funny part of my book journey has been what I call being “an insider-outsider.” I’m not a Dead Instagram hype beast. I’m not even a music journalist, per se. I’ve been an editor for various science, tech, and health verticals at major publications. But at the same time, I’ve listened to this band my entire life and absorbed so much knowledge. I also just appreciate a good yarn, and I always knew this story was entertaining.

I’m not a Grateful Dead fan, but still found myself invested.

It’s a psychedelic romp and ultimately a story about obsession. This group had to put aside any interpersonal drama or tensions in the name of driving toward this greater collective good. But having something of a personal stake helped because I could thread the needle.

There have been dozens of books written about The Dead. It’s this massive cultural institution. For so many on the outside, it can be overwhelming. Many don’t even bother trying to find a way to enter this world and see what it’s about.

Right.

Having that personal angle helped tell a story in a way that folks who might think they have no interest will be able to understand and keep turning the page. St. Martin’s is a big five publisher for a general audience, so I had to keep that in mind. Having absorbed so much information throughout my life crystallized what aspects of Dead history and lore I had to mention and what I could dispense with.

You actually bought a piece of the Wall of Sound.

Yes! I came to own a part of it through a Sotheby’s auction in 2021. Sotheby’s had partnered with the Grateful Dead Organization to auction decommissioned items from the Grateful Dead Warehouse in Northern California. There were around 150 lots, and I didn’t bother looking through until there were 24 hours left until bidding closed. The night before, I started scrolling through, wondering which item had the lowest starting bid. That was this object. Having a piece of the Wall fall into my life got me reconnected with old sources, people I’d first spoken to years ago, and reaching out to entirely new sources. One thing led to another.

Kismet!

To own a part of it, it’s special. Thinking of all of the places this artifact has been, all the miles it clocked–tens, even hundreds of thousands–and all the people who experienced The Grateful Dead partly through this thing that’s sitting in my office, my mind reels. It gave me a unique window into this gigantic story. There’s a part that just feels cosmic, or fate.

Truly.

Another lesson was that you can have something as iconic as The Grateful Dead, where so many books have been written and so much scholarship, but still find unique windows in. I can’t believe nobody has written this book yet, and I’m the one who did it. As a writer, there’s this feeling that nothing is new anymore. Everything has been covered. Everything’s been written about and explored to death. But it’s not true. You can still find fresh and interesting avenues into storytelling. You have to trust the process and know it might take time.

As a journalism professor, you must have students hoping to write books. What advice do you give them?

There is this idea that the book proposal-to-book-to-docuseries pipeline is a surefire thing, and it will happen quickly. But no, the first and foremost thing is that it will take time, and that’s something you’ll have to make peace with early on. In the formative stages of getting your idea together, putting the proposal together, and getting an agent, it might be something you’ll need to chip away at on nights and weekends. Even if it doesn’t feel like you’re getting as much done as you would hope to in the beginning or throughout any stage of the process, it will add up if you keep chipping away. At a certain point, you will look back and think, “holy shit, I’ve come this far.”

One thing I did learn is that working on a book can completely consume you. You get sucked in, so you have to ride that fine line between being totally committed and being totally uncommitted. If you don’t watch out, it will take you. With all of the work that goes into this process, maybe you have the time and the resources to work on it solely, but I know I couldn’t. I had to work on editing while the proposal was coming together.

But a book deal with an advance can free you up to put your head down for that first full draft and focus entirely on that, if you want to. I’m not pretending to know everyone’s exact situation, but in my case, I did a lot of chipping away early on it, got an advance, and the pressure was off a bit.

Just giving you the time and space and the encouragement too.

It felt very validating when I got the book deal. When you’re putting a proposal together that, in your heart of hearts, you know is a good idea and are fully committed, even if it gets rejected. I always knew this was a good idea, but the time it takes to make these sorts of things happen, you go through stretches where it feels like it’s you against the world. It can feel isolating. But if you stick to it, it can happen.

There are various milestones along the way that feel validating. Much of it is just you out on the trail, and then every once in a while, you come to an intersection, and there’s someone holding up a sign that says “keep running” or “good job.” You see people hold up signs during marathons–that’s what it feels like because so much of the work is just getting up every day and chipping away.

In the book, I loved the character of Bear, the band’s original soundman and key architect of what would later become the Wall of Sound. I kept imagining his dogged perfectionism was a stand in for the entire creative process.

He was a polymath. He could drive the others in this scene crazy, but he was the original force behind the Wall of Sound. He also needed others to help actualize those ideas — sound engineers, technicians, and classically trained audiophiles. He was brilliant and largely self-taught, and the Wall of Sound couldn’t have existed without him.

It took the crew ten years to realize the Wall of Sound. There were fits and starts and trial and error. Many take credit for the Wall of Sound, and while it was a group creative effort, Bear was highly influential. He was sensitive to “unclean signals” in tech, which fed into his idea of a sound system without distortion. Basically, each player had their own PA. There was no “intermodulation distortion”–the technical term. No two sounds were running through the same speaker. So if you listen to the Wall of Sound recordings, the clarity is unmatched.

Some of the early shows would be delayed by up to five hours because he would freak out over a single amplifier. He claimed to be able to communicate with inanimate objects, such as sound system gear in this case. People would happen upon him hugging a speaker and crying and talking to it, trying to coax signals out of it. He was way out there but also a very brilliant creative person without whom none of this could probably have happened.

What an interesting man.

He was obsessed with audio, but also a ballet dancer. He produced millions of hits of LSD and basically turned on that entire generation. So much of the acid flowing through the Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love, and then throughout the rest of the country, was manufactured by Bear and his assistants. He also got obsessed with metallurgy. He would go in deep and bring in everyone.

There’s a great quote from the late Steve Silverman, a New York Times bestselling science writer and an OG Wired writer who wrote the book that changed the conversation around autism and the spectrum, called Neuro Tribes. He noted, “I spent some time with Bear at a Grateful Dead studies conference back in the day, and came away convinced that he was on the spectrum in the best possible way.” Silverman said that the Wall of Sound is, he would consider, the most outstanding achievement of the neurodivergent community. That neurodivergent folks and neurotypicals came together and forged this groundbreaking piece of technology.

It’s interesting how much emotion this system of inanimate objects contained, and how much work went into building it. Obviously there’s a great metaphor in there for completing a book.

Talking about the process and the journey, putting this thing together in terms of the sheer timeline and the community–it takes everyone from your editor to your agents, friends, and acquaintances who often would listen to me, being a little harebrained, working through it. It takes all those people to realize something like this. I didn’t always think this would be something that would happen one day, but like everything else, it’s just a progression and then one day you realize “oh shit.” If you are committed and put in the time, patience, and work, you really can make these things happen.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Laura Feinstein.

Pacific countries have emerged relatively unscathed from a restless night punctuated by tsunami warning sirens.

The tsunami waves, caused by a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Russia, have now rolled on southeastward toward South America.

According to the US Geological Survey, there have been around 80 aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher around the area, and there is a 59 percent chance of a magnitude 7 or higher shock within the next week.

• READ MORE: Tsunami alerts lifted in several nations after waves hit Russia, US, Japan

“It is most likely that 0 to 5 of these will occur,” it stated.

The Guardian reported that a 6.4-magnitude quake struck around 320 km southwest of the epicenter yesterday about 11am local time (ET).

As such, while there are no longer any formal warnings or advisory notices in the Pacific, the threat of tsunami waves remains.

Metservice said that waves as high as 3 metres were still possible along some coasts of the northwestern Hawai’ian islands.

Waves between 1 and 3 metres tall were possible along the rest of Hawai’i, as well as as French Polynesia, Kiribati, Samoa and the Solomon Islands.

Assessing the damage
In Fiji, an advisory was put in place until 10:15pm local time, though the National Disaster Risk Management Office (NDMO) reminded citizens to remain alert and continue to follow official updates.

The office said people should take this as an opportunity to update their family emergency plans and evacuation routes.

The NDMO also called on citizens to refrain from spreading false or unverified information in the wake of the cancellation.

Advisory notices were cancelled in the early hours of the morning across Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, French Polynesia and the American Territories. Samoa was the last to rescind theirs, at around 4am local time.

No damage or major incidents have been reported.

In the Cook Islands, the Meteorological Service warned residents to anchor their boats and tie down their washing lines.

“A big boss high-pressure system chilling way down southwest is flexing hard — sending savage southerly swells and grumpy southeast winds across the group like it owns the reef,” it said.

“A sassy low-pressure trough is making a dramatic entrance tomorrow, rolling in with clouds, showers, and random thunderclaps like it’s auditioning for a Cook Islands soap opera.”

Evacuation order
In Hawai’i, an evacuation was ordered after 12pm local time along the coast of Oahu, including in parts of Honolulu, before waves began to arrive after 7pm.

As local media reported, intense traffic jams formed across Oahu as authorities evacuated people in coastal communities, and a sense of panic stirred.

Lauren Vinnel, an emergency management specialist at Massey University, told RNZ Pacific that the ideal scenario would have been for people to leave on foot.

“We know that this is where public education and practising tsunami evacuation is really important,” she said.

“We know that if people have identified their evacuation route and have practised it, it’s much easier for them to calmly and safely evacuate when a real event does occur.”

The advisory notice was lifted across Hawai’i at 8:58am local time.

Tonga’s tsunami trauma
Meanwhile, tsunami sirens sounded on and off overnight in Tonga until authorities cancelled the warning for the kingdom at around midnight local time.

Siaosi Sovaleni, Prime Minister of Tonga, during the 2022 volcano eruption and subsequent tsunami, said he was pleased the country’s emergency alert systems were working.

“The population is better informed this time around than the last time. I think it was much more scary [in 2022] . . . nobody knew what’s happening. The communication was down.”

‘We have to be prepared’
Vinnel said that she was satisfied overall with how Aotearoa responded.

“Obviously, it’s not ideal that initially we didn’t think there was a tsunami threat based on the initial assessment of the magnitude of the earthquake. But these things do happen. I’m not sure that there was anything that could have been done differently.”

John Townend, a geophysics professor at Victoria University of Wellington, told RNZ Pacific that these happen frequently around the world,”but one of this size doesn’t really happen more often than about once every decade.”

The last time an earthquake surpassed the magnitude 8 level was the 2011 Tōhoku disaster in Japan, which clocked out at 9.1.

But Townend said that the characteristics of the “subduction zone earthquake,” were largely in line with expectations for it’s kind, a “subduction zone earthquake”.

“They have happened repeatedly in the past along this portion of the Kamchatka Peninsula . . .  these things happen in this part of the world.

“In a New Zealand context, this earthquake was about one magnitude unit bigger than the Kaikoura earthquake and it released about 30 times more energy.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

This recent trend is most conspicuous in an ongoing regulatory war being waged against the Internet and the corporate citizens that inhabit it. Terrified that Australia’s tender children will suffer ruination at the hands of online platforms, the entire population of the country will be subjected to age verification checks. Preparations are already underway in the country to impose a social media ban for users under the age of 16, ostensibly to protect the mental health and wellbeing of children. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 was passed in November last year to amend the Online Safety Act 2021, requiring “age-restricted social media platforms” to observe a “minimum age obligation” to prevent Australians under the age of 16 from having accounts. It also vests that ghastly office of the eSafety Commissioner and the Information Commissioner with powers to seek information regarding relevant compliance by the platforms, along with the power to issue and publish notices of non-compliance.

While the press were falling over to note the significance of such changes, little debate has accompanied the last month’s registration of a new industry code by the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. In fact, Inman Grant is proving most busy, having already registered three such codes, with a further six to be registered by the end of this year. All serve to target the behaviour of internet service companies in Australia. Not all have been subject to parliamentary debate, let alone broader public consultation.

Inman Grant has been less than forthcoming about the implications of these codes, most notably on the issue of mandatory age-assurance limits. That said, some crumbs have been left for those paying attention to her innate obsession with hiving off the Internet from Australian users. In her address to the National Press Club in Canberra on June 24, she did give some clue about where the country is heading: “Today, I am […] announcing that through the Online Safety Act’s codes and standards framework, we will be moving to register three industry-prepared codes designed to limit children’s access to high impact, harmful material like pornography, violent content, themes of suicide, self-harm and disordered eating.”  (Is there no limit to this commissar’s fears?) Under such codes, companies would “agree to apply safety measures up and down the technology stack – including age assurance protections.”

With messianic fervour, Inman Grant explained that the codes would “serve as a bulwark and operate in concern with the new social media age limits, distributing more responsibility and accountability across eight sectors of the tech industry.” These would also not be limited in scope, applicable to enterprise hosting services, internet carriage services, and various “access providers and search engines. I have concluded that each of these codes provides appropriate community safeguards.”

From December 27, such technology giants as Google and Microsoft will have to use age-assurance technology for account holders when they sign in and “apply tools and/or settings, like ‘safe search’ functionality, at the highest safety setting by default for an account holders its age verification systems indicate is likely to be an Australian child, designed to protect and prevent Australian children from accessing or being exposed to online pornography and high impact violence material in search results.” This is pursuant to Schedule 3 – Internet Search Engine Services Online Safety Code (Class 1C and Class 2 Material).

How this will be undertaken has not, as yet, been clarified by Google or Microsoft. The companies have, however, been in the business of trialling a number of technologies. These include Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) cryptography, which permits people to prove that an aspect of themselves is true without surrendering any other data; using large language models (LLMs) to discern an account holder’s age based on browsing history; or the use of selfie verification and government ID tools.

Specialists in the field of information technology have been left baffled and worried. “I have not seen anything like this anywhere else in the world,” remarks IT researcher Lisa Given. This had “kind of popped out, seemingly out of the blue.” Digital Rights Watch chair, Lizzie O’Shea, is of the view that “the public deserves more of a say in how to balance these important human rights issues” while Justin Warren, founder of the tech analysis company PivotNine, sees it as “a massive overreaction after years of police inaction to curtail the power of a handful of large foreign technology companies.”

Then comes the issue of efficacy. Using the safety of children as a reason for censoring content and restricting technology is a government favourite. Whether the regulations actually protect children is quite another matter. John Pane, chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), was less than impressed by the results from a recent age-assurance technology trial conducted to examine the effect of the teen social media ban. And all of this cannot ignore the innovative guile of young users, ever ready to circumvent any imposed restrictions.

Inman Grant, in her attempts to limit the use of the Internet and infantilise the population, sees these age-restricting measures as “building a culture of online safety, using multiple interventions – just as we have done so successfully on our beaches.” This nonsensical analogy excludes the central theme of her policies, common to all censors in history: The people are not to be trusted, and paternalistic governors and regulators know better.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

New York State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani handily won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June, despite corporate media’s best attempts to discredit and suppress his campaign. But his opponents are not giving up, and Mamdani faces three noteworthy challengers in the general election.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s humiliating defeat, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams’ overwhelming unpopularity and Republican Curtis Sliwa’s eccentricities have not stopped the Wall Street Journal from trying to discourage New Yorkers from voting for Mamdani in the general election. Once primary results became official on July 1, the Journal published ten op-eds in a single week (7/1–7/25) that cast Mamdani in a negative light.

Red scare

Mary Anastasia O’Grady (Wall Street Journal, 7/6/25) denounced Zohran Mamdani’s “plan to turn New York into an Orwellian ‘Animal Farm’ of equality.”

Mamdani is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which to the Wall Street Journal is equivalent to Stalinism. There are currently six mayors in America who are DSA members, and none of them have implemented purges or rounded up billionaires into gulags. That does not stop the Journal’s opinion writers from fearmongering about a dystopian future under Mamdani.

Under the headline “The Lure of Comrade Mamdani,” former Merrill Lynch strategist and current Heritage Foundation affiliate Mary Anastasia O’Grady (7/6/25) asked, “Have you made something of yourself? If so, [Mamdani is] coming for you.” O’Grady attacked Mamdani’s progressive platform through references to Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela, blaming their economic struggles on socialist leaders. She made no mention, of course, of the US interventionist policies—including not just coups and coup attempts, but also strangling economic blockades and punishments—that were key drivers of those struggles.

Columnist Jason L. Riley (7/1/25) offered readers a “Blueprint for Defeating Zohran Mamdani”: the 2021 Buffalo mayoral election. His op-ed gleefully recounted that when Black democratic socialist India Walton won the Democratic primary there, business elites collaborated with Republicans and establishment Democrats to flood the general election with money and crush her campaign in favor of “corrupt, incompetent” (Jacobin, 11/3/21) incumbent Byron Brown.

Sadanand Dhume (Wall Street Journal, 7/2/25) accused Mamdani of importing “Third World” ideas like rent control (which New York City has had since 1943). 

Sadanand Dhume (7/2/25) of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute contributed the outrageously headlined op-ed, “Mamdani Brings Third World Prejudices to New York.” “Why would someone who emigrated to the US from a poor country champion ideas that keep poor countries poor?” he asked.

More than one writer compared Mamdani to Trump in terms of their extremism. In his piece, Gerard Baker (7/7/25) lambasted the “siren song of socialism,” suggesting that Mamdani and Trump similarly adhere to a “reality-challenging radicalism.” Mamdani shows that Democrats “refuse to reconcile with the new order,” and would rather “take their chances on the easy appeal of radical ideas.”

Meanwhile, Long Island Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi (7/2/25) repeatedly drew parallels between Mamdani and Trump, and argued that New York would be destroyed by Mamdani’s “lofty, utopian promises: free public transit, free college tuition, more public housing, sweeping debt cancellation and massive overhauls of systems”—because they will be paid for by modestly increasing taxes on corporations and people making millions. Allysia Finley (7/6/25) took issue with Mamdani’s proposed tax increases for the wealthy, irrespective of the social benefits that money could provide.

Former hedge fund manager Jay Newman (7/7/25) published a satirical op-ed titled “Some Modest Proposals for Mamdani,” modeled on Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” While Swift’s essay was meant to bring attention to the plight of the Irish poor and the callousness of the English response, Newman used the format to mock Mamdani for wanting to respond to the homeless crisis. Newman suggested that Mamdani might convert the Metropolitan Museum of Art into public housing—ignoring the city’s tens of thousands of empty apartment units.

Israel: NYC’s sixth borough?

If polling is to be believed, the Jewish way is more to vote for Mamdani’s New York (Wall Street Journal, 7/3/25).

Much has been written about the Islamophobia and baseless accusations of antisemitism the Zionist establishment has hurled against Mamdani. The Wall Street Journal is a key player in that narrative. Five of the ten anti-Mamdani op-eds (7/2/25,  7/3/25, 7/3/25, 7/7/25, 7/7/25) included reference to Mamdani’s anti-Israel stance (or that of his supporters) as a means to paint him as unfit for office; all of these mentioned “Hamas,” “globalize the intifada” or both.

Dhume (7/2/25), who dedicated three entire paragraphs to Mamdani’s position on Israel, expressed outrage over Mamdani’s compliance with international law. He wrote that Mamdani “accuses the Jewish state of ‘genocide’ in Gaza. If elected, he said he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli prime minister visits New York City.” This is presented as if Mamdani himself is making these accusations, rather than echoing the conclusions of several human rights organizations, and joining various world leaders in complying with the ICC’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu. (A Data for Progress poll—7/11-17/25—found that 78% of Democratic primary voters believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people, and 63% think that New York’s mayor should enforce the warrant against Netanyahu.)

Multiple writers warned of a mass exodus of Jews from New York in the face of a Mamdani mayoralty. In an opinion interview with political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, Tunku Varadarajan (7/3/25) wrote that Sheinkopf

expects Jews will start to leave New York in substantial numbers. “Never mind the general election. Jews will think, ‘If Mamdani’s got this far, who knows what’s next?’ ” There are now three-quarters of a million Muslims in New York—nearly 9% of the population. Mr. Mamdani campaigned extensively in their neighborhoods.

It’s an Islamophobic version of the Great Replacement Theory, using a dubious outlier number for the Muslim population, which most sources report to be around 3% of the city’s population (compared to a Jewish population of 7%).

Sheinkopf also suggested that Mamdani’s New York would be “the capital of class war and hatred and antisemitism, where it’s OK for a mayor to say the intifada’s just fine.”

Meanwhile, Dovid Margolin (7/3/25) wrote that Jews in New York “are nervous” because they “know what it means to have to flee. They know what it looks like in America, too, when their homes are no longer safe and there is no one to call for help.”  He painted such a dire depiction of the predicament of Jews under a Mamdani administration that he felt he had to quote Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, “One must stand firm and not run away.”

Despite the Journal’s allegations that Jewish New Yorkers are terrified of a Mamdani victory, his opponent Cuomo believes that “50% of the Jewish people voted for Mamdani” (Forward, 7/20/25). A recent poll by Zenith and Public Progress (7/16–24/25) found Mamdani getting a 43% plurality of the Jewish vote in a five-way race—vs. 26% for Cuomo. Mamdani was the choice of an overwhelming 67% of Jews between 18–44, with Cuomo having only 7% support from this group.

‘Useful idiot generation’

Mark Penn and Andrew Stein (Wall Street Journal, 7/7/25): “Call [Gen X] the Useful Idiot generation, mouthing slogans and causes they don’t understand and from which they would recoil if they did.”

Sheinkopf (7/3/25), for instance, argued that, because of their politics, “the kids are going to be the death of New York.” He called Gen Z “the most pampered generation in the history of the world…. I’m sorry they can’t buy an apartment. But they can buy a $9 latte, and a $100 dinner.”

Given that the average price of a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan is $1.5 million, young people would have to forgo their imaginary daily latte and dinner for almost eight years before they could afford a down payment.

Varadarajan also criticized Mamdani for his privileged upbringing, contrasting it with Sheinkopf’s “hardscrabble background” in which he “‘cut corned beef at the Carnegie Deli’ as he put himself through college.” Neither Sheinkopf nor Varadarajan noted that around the time that Sheinkopf was attending college, the average yearly tuition for a US public college was $394. After adjusting for inflation, that’s a quarter of the cost in the 2020s.

The crown jewel of this argument, though, was an op-ed headlined “Gen Z: the Useful Idiot Generation” (7/7/25) by Democratic strategist/corporate lobbyist Mark Penn and disgraced former New York City politician Andrew Stein. They fret about the generation’s “radicalism,” which they argue stems from being “indoctrinated” at college (where, among other things, they supposedly “learn that socialism means free stuff”), delaying marriage and turning away from religion, all of which leaves them “unmoored.” They warned:

Socialism and antisemitism will continue to fester and grow if we don’t stand up and reform our universities, reinforce our basic values and balance our social media.

Though the primary results are finalized, the Wall Street Journal has joined with others in New York’s corporate media in trying to ensure that Mamdani’s success, and his supporters’ enthusiasm, ends there.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Emma Llano.

Thai government and police officials have both issued public statements condemning the attacks on Cambodian migrant workers.

RFA Khmer service’s Poly Sam speaks with Bangkok-based rights and labor activist Phil Robertson of Asia Human Rights Labour Advocates (AHRLA) about what’s being done.

Below is a transcript of the interview for RFA Perspectives:

(Citizen video)

RFA:

Quite a few Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand have been discriminated against since the war broke out on July 24th. A Cambodian NGO that works in Thailand documented around 16 cases that Thai youth gangs have been beating up Cambodian migrant workers.

And I’m wondering, in your opinion, why would a country like Thailand allow this kind of violence to happen to migrant workers?

Phil Robertson:

Well, I will say a couple of things on this. First, the Thai government and the Thai police have actually issued statements saying that this should not happen. So we had the police on Friday, saying very clearly, no attacks should happen against migrant workers and that anybody who did this would face the full force of law.

We also saw the deputy government spokesperson make a similar statement, again, saying that the police were going to patrol and trying to protect migrants in areas where there are a significant number of Cambodian migrants. But the big problem in Thailand is that there is a yawning gap between what officials say and what the law says and what actually happens on the ground.

(RFA)

And as you said, there were these youth attacks. I’ve seen some of the videos that were quite horrific, with gangs of Thai youths attacking Cambodian migrant workers who had nothing to do with what is going on between the two countries. I mean, those migrant workers are simply here trying to make a living, and send money back to their families.

And those attacks have caused a great deal of fear in the Cambodian migrant community. There are a number of people who have voluntarily left, who have headed to the border, to try to return because they were so afraid. And that’s really unfortunate because Thailand needs migrant workers. They need these workers working agricultural construction, particularly, you know, here in Bangkok, much of the construction is being done by Cambodian workers.

So, I’ve seen a couple different worksites, including one that I was, nearby at a restaurant just the other day and I was talking to the waiters and saying what’s happening with the worksite over there? And they said, oh well, it was all Cambodian construction workers and they all ran away.

(Citizen video)

So quite clearly, the fear is very significant. And, I don’t see that anybody has been prosecuted yet, for these attacks. And what that shows again, is that the Thai police are a bit of a paper tiger here and there remains a degree of impunity to abuse migrant workers. And this has been an ongoing problem in Thailand for many years.

This is a bigger problem of which this latest incident is just part, which is that migrant workers really are treated very poorly in Thailand that they don’t get their rights under law. And I’m not just talking about Cambodians — I’m talking about Burmese. I’m talking about Lao, I’m talking about Vietnamese. I’m talking about all sorts of different people, from different countries in the region who come to Thailand.

They expect that they’re going to be treated accordance with law. They’re going to get the minimum wage.They’re going to get the the basic rights and benefits under the labor law in Thailand. And it simply doesn’t happen. They’re not being considered as equal to Thais, even though the law says they must be.

RFA:

Except the fact that’s in — I think most Cambodians are being at the brunt of the injustice that’s what’s going on in Thailand right now, because the two countries are practically at war at this time. And just like you said up to now there is no arrest of the perpetrator. And some of them, we can see their faces.

I think if Thai authorities have the intention to arrest those people, I think they probably could easily do it. But like you said they are paper tigers at this point in time. Do you know why that is? Since this will portray a very negative image for the Thai government and Thais as a country?

Phil Robertson:

I’m assuming that the orders that were given to crack down on anybody who attacks migrants simply doesn’t filter down to the lower levels of the police force and the local officials.

You know that there’s not enough power and determination behind the order to make it stick. And unfortunately, the migrant workers may not know where to go for help. And really, what they need to do is they need to be contacting groups, NGOs and others, many of those who are, in a coalition called the Migration Working Group. That group is one which has NGOs that do advocacy and take up cases and try to pressure the Thai government to do the right thing and what we find is whenever migrants actually achieve some degree of justice in Thailand, invariably there’s an NGO or a Thai labor union that is helping them.

(Andre Malerba/Reuters)

On their own, the migrant workers don’t have enough power or knowledge on how to work the Thai system and to actually achieve some degree of recognition for their rights. And so, this is a big problem.

As I said, there’s a big gap between what the law and policy says and what the actual implementation is on the ground. And I’m assuming that these police either don’t want to take on the Thai youth because they’re worried that they might get in trouble.

Someone would single them out as going after youth who were expressing what some in the right wing and the conservative elements of Thai society would see as justified attacks and that they would worry that they would have issues and problems and they assume that these attacks would soon be forgotten.

And things will go back to the way they were before. So this is, really an unsatisfactory and unacceptable situation that once again whenever something goes wrong between Thailand and Cambodia, invariably it is the Cambodian workers in Thailand that face the brunt of the abuse by unthinking Thai nationalists who don’t recognize that these migrant workers are ordinary people just trying to make a living.

RFA:

You just answered my question, actually, in addition to what you say is that the Cambodian migrant workers simply are really fearful of their safety at this point in time.

And many of them went into hiding meaning that they’re not leaving their apartment, their home or the place that they’re staying. So, some of them actually say that they’re really, really afraid to go out to buy food or necessities.

I’m just wondering, since you are based in Thailand and you understand Thai culture and stuff like that, it’s there any possibility that average Thai citizens can help alleviate the pain and suffering of these people?

(Chor Sokunthea/AFP)

Phil Robertson:

Well, I think many — Look, I mean, I think that there are many Thai citizens who would look at this situation and say, yeah, there’s no reason to attack these migrant workers. These migrant workers are just ordinary people and I think that most Thai people, most Thai citizens are pretty considerate and pretty humanitarian in their outlook.

I’ve had many cases of migrant workers where somebody faced a difficult time and there was a good Samaritan there was someone from the Thai community who was prepared to help. But what we have is also some of these ultranationalist, right wing youth or gangs, who think it’s easy and fun to go out and attack a migrant worker.

And they need to be brought to book. They need to be held accountable under the law. And frankly, the Thai police are just not doing their job.That’s the fundamental problem. Again, it comes to the Thai police, their failures, to effectively protect people in Thailand, whether they be Thai or other nationalities.

RFA:

So, who is to blame in this situation? You said the Thai police are not doing their job. Should the international community or the Cambodians blame the Thai police?

Phil Robertson:

I think the Thai police are at the core of the problem. It’s their failures to implement the law. As I said, there was a very clear statement on Friday, by senior Thai police officials saying attacks against migrants would not be tolerated. And the deputy government spokesperson said the same thing.

RFA:

Do you think they really mean that?

Phil Robertson:

Absolutely. The policy makers are saying the right thing. They’re saying, “We don’t want to attack civilians. We don’t see attacking civilians who have nothing to do with this as a way forward. And this discredits Thailand,” as you’ve mentioned. It makes Thailand look bad.

So I think people recognize that what has happened, these attacks are damaging to Thai credibility. And it’s damaging to the Thai image. But the problem is that the recognition, the policy recognition and the announcements simply don’t make it down to the level where the police enforce the law.

(Chor Sokunthea/AFP)

And so, we don’t have police investigating. We don’t have police necessarily looking at CCTV to figure out through facial recognition who these people were who are the attackers?

As you said, there are a number of cases where the faces of the attackers are very clear. These people could be identified and they haven’t been, and that’s a problem. That’s a failure of local police to carry out orders that have been issued from above.

RFA:

Since the Thai authorities specifically, Thai police cannot fulfill their role and responsibility to protect migrant workers from Cambodia, what do you think the Cambodian government should do to help their own people?

Phil Robertson:

Well, I’m not sure the Cambodian government can do anything to help their own people. I mean, the problem is that the Cambodian government’s migration management processes are corrupt.They are failing.

They provide no protection to Cambodian migrant workers. Even when it was open and operating, the Cambodian embassy in Thailand was worthless when it came to protecting Cambodian workers.

So, for the Cambodian government, the claim that now they’re sort of very concerned about the status and the health of migrant workers in Cambodia when they’ve done so little to help Cambodian migrant workers who’ve come here previously. I think it’s, you know, it’s a bit ridiculous.

The Cambodian government doesn’t have a real leg to stand on when it comes to talking about protecting migrant workers overseas, because they don’t. They simply fail. Whether it be in Thailand or Malaysia, Indonesia or the Middle East. The Cambodian migrant workers who are overseas are on their own.

RFA:

Well, the situation is a bit different. One is they’re neglecting the people. Another one is that people are facing severe discrimination and perhaps death. You know, if someone allowed this to happen.

Phil Robertson:

Unfortunately, what I would say about this is I would say that if the Cambodian government starts to come in and say that they are here to protect the Cambodian migrant workers, everybody would understand that that was a political ploy by the Cambodian government.

If the Cambodian government was serious about doing something, they would be working with U.N. agencies like the IOM, to provide effective protection and support for migrant workers living overseas, whether they be in Thailand or somewhere else.

But, sending migrants overseas is big money. The brokerage fees are a lot of money. And this has been taken over by Oknha and other corrupt people in Cambodia,who do deals with the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Labor looks the other way. So, Cambodia does not have a good record when it comes to protecting its migrant workers overseas.

Certainly, if it wants to speak up and say something about what has happened to the migrant workers in Thailand, I think that that would be helpful. But, it would also just, get more attention on the migrant workers as well. I mean, I think what we need to do is have a way of getting NGOs to pressure Thai police to do their job.

RFA:

Regarding the NGOs — your organization — is there any specific task or responsibility that you guys are doing to help migrant workers at this particular time?

Phil Robertson:

Well, we’re trying to coordinate responses amongst Thai NGOs to go out and investigate and look at these cases and try to figure out how we can get a more effective policing response to go after the people who were committing the crimes and try to find ways to help the migrant workers themselves.

We’re very small. So we work in coalition with other groups and that’s the best we can do, to be honest. But we need to speak out about these issues as well. Ultimately, it would be good to have more international media attention on what has happened to migrant workers from Cambodia in Thailand.

But I think it’s hard. It’s hard because everybody is focused on the big issues at the border and the cross-border shelling and what is happening in places like Minburi, or other parts of the Bangkok suburbs where these attacks have been taking place is sort of out of sight, out of mind for many of the international media.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Khmer.

At least eight gray whales have been killed by probable ship strikes in the Bay Area so far in 2025.

“It’s been a terrible year for whales off the West Coast, and we can’t afford to let federal officials waste any more time delaying action on ship strikes,” said David Derrick, a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “A decent plan for routing and slowing ships down is long overdue, and this federal foot-dragging has been deadly for whales. The law is clear that the agencies must go back to the drawing board and come back with something that will actually protect whales and sea turtles.”

Ship strikes are a leading cause of death for gray, blue, fin and humpback whales off California’s coast. Scientists also say the actual number of ship strikes could be 20 times higher than what’s observed, since most dead whales sink. One study estimated that about 80 whales are killed by ship strikes off the West Coast each year.

“This is not the first time we have gone toe-to-toe with the federal government for failing to assess the grave risks that shipping poses for marine life,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth. “Now, even with a federal court opinion on our side, agencies have not changed their tune. And neither have we: we will keep fighting inside and outside the courtroom to protect whales and sea turtles from the serious and fatal risks from ship strikes.”

In December 2022 a federal court ruled in favor of the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth in their lawsuit challenging the failure of the Fisheries Service and the Coast Guard. The suit asserted that the agencies did not protect endangered whales from being struck by ships using ports in the Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Francisco Bay regions.

The existing designated shipping lanes route shipping traffic through several “hot spots” where whales congregate, including the Santa Barbara Channel and the northern approach to the San Francisco Bay. But the Fisheries Service concluded in a 2017 biological opinion that the designations would cause no “take” of any whales or sea turtles. The 2022 court ruling rejected those conclusions, finding that its determination “defies logic,” and that it is “undisputed” that whales are struck and killed by ship strikes within the lanes.

The ruling invalidated the agencies’ consultation, called a biological opinion, which had evaluated the routes’ harm to protected species. Since that ruling, the agencies have not taken steps to complete a new biological opinion, nor have they considered measures proven to reduce ship strikes.

A dead juvenile blue whale washed ashore on a Point Reyes National Seashore beach after being struck by a ship in June 2018. (Photo: Sarah Codde/ NPS)

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“In a bold move that clearly must be unrelated to Donald Trump’s sprawling crypto grifting, the White House is releasing a report that celebrates what is widely understood as the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.

“Trump is well known for scrupulously honoring anti-discrimination laws, his contracts, his debts, his marriages, and the Constitution, so we can rest assured that his most lucrative source of income ever, namely crypto, had no influence whatsoever on this report.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

They will be joining Hibakusha – atomic bomb survivors – dignitaries, parliamentarians and international delegates from across the world, participating in anniversary ceremonies in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as part of a World Conference united in its call for an end to nuclear weapons.

In August 1945, the US dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Out of a population of 350,000, it’s estimated that total deaths in Hiroshima range from 100,000 to 180,000. Casualties from Nagasaki are thought to be between 50,000 and 100,000. By 1950, over 340,000 people had died. Generations to this day have been poisoned by radiation.

CND remembers all those who were killed and injured in these criminal bombings and we pay tribute to the survivors, Hibakusha, who continue to campaign for a world free from nuclear dangers by sharing their powerful testimonies with people around the world.

The commemoration comes amid growing global nuclear dangers and the continued expansion and modernisation by nuclear weapons states of their arsenals. The war in Ukraine continues amid threats of escalation. Nuclear-armed Israel's horrific genocide against the Palestinian people is intensifying admit threats of further military attacks on Iran. And tensions continue to grow in the Asia Pacific. This means the threat of nuclear use has never been higher.

In June, the British government announced that it will add an air-launched nuclear capability by buying 12 F-35A fighter jets. In July, US B61-12 nuclear bombs were deployed to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. These co-called “battlefield” nukes have a potential yield of up to 50 kilotons, more than three times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

CND is redoubling its efforts to ensure the human cost of nuclear war is never forgotten and that the call for 'No more Hiroshimas' is taken up across the country. CND groups will be marking the anniversaries with events taking place in towns and cities across the country.

CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said:

“CND would like to pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands who had their lives cruelly taken by the US atomic bombing – a most barbaric act. Now is the time to reflect on the human cost of nuclear war. People in Japan still live in pain and anguish because of this war crime committed 80 years ago.

We must expose the lie that nuclear weapons keep us safe. On the contrary, they are a daily threat to us all. And, because of nuclear expansion of nuclear states like our own reckless government, the threat of nuclear weapons being used in war again is growing. So, as we mark 80 years since these horrific crimes were committed, we must come together to challenge this terrifying war drive and end the nuclear threat.”

CND Vice-President Jeremy Corbyn MP said:

“As we reflect on 80 years since the criminal bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we must ask where is the leadership in pursuing the urgent need for nuclear disarmament? It certainly isn’t among the nuclear weapons states who are spending ever increasing sums to develop new ways to carry out mass killing.

We can take inspiration from countries across the global South, who are championing nuclear weapons-free zones and promoting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This offers the legal framework to ban these weapons and provide reparations for victims of nuclear weapons testing and use. Britain should rethink its disastrous nuclear expansion and start engaging with the TPNW immediately.”

CND Vice-President Caroline Lucas said:

“It’s a great honour to be representing CND in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on such an important anniversary. It could not be more urgent to support all those working for nuclear disarmament, and I pay tribute to the very last survivors who continue to use their voice to raise awareness about the dangers of nuclear weapons. The threat of nuclear war is growing, as the international disarmament frameworks come under increasing pressure.

Far from abiding by their legal duties to take steps to disarm under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, countries like the UK are moving in the opposite direction, increasing and modernising their arsenals. Yet at the same time, over 90 countries have signed the UN’s Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It’s vital that we use this anniversary to reshape the debate about real security. This means investing in a sustainable, green economy, and pursuing a foreign policy based on international law.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“’That Suffering Haunts Me Even Here’ - The Struggle for Human Rights of the Antandroy People Displaced by Climate Change from Southern Madagascar”, documents how Antandroy people have been forced to travel to other parts of the country in search of better conditions, with many internally displaced people (IDPs) making the arduous 1,500km journey to the northern Boeny region. The report exposes the government’s violation of their rights to freedom of movement and choice of residence within state borders, adequate housing, and an adequate standard of living.

“From insufficiently addressing the impacts of droughts in the south, to its lack of protection and support for internally displaced persons, the government has repeatedly failed the Antandroy,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa.

“To mitigate against these failures and their effects on IDPs, Madagascar must do more to improve its response to a changing climate by urgently adopting comprehensive national and local strategies to address drought-induced displacements, and by prioritizing the human rights needs of displaced Antandroy.”

Drought-induced displacements in southern Madagascar are deeply rooted in the French colonial era which introduced cochineal parasites to eradicate the opuntia monacantha, a drought-resilient cactus growing in the region. This policy contributed to the vulnerability of the Antandroy people to droughts, which the government of Madagascar and scientists have in recent years linked to global climate change.

More recently, the effects of climate change have made droughts more severe, leading to displacements towards the Boeny region in north Madagascar and other parts of the country.

“Madagascar’s contribution to global carbon emissions is negligible. Yet, the Antandroy people find themselves bearing the brunt of a crisis created, in part, by the actions of high-income historical emitting countries and French colonial rule. France must own up to its historical role in the ongoing crisis and provide reparatory justice for the colonial wrongs against the Antandroy,” said Tigere Chagutah. “High-income, historical emitting states must financially support Madagascar with grants and the transfer of environmentally sound technologies.”

To understand the plight of those displaced, Amnesty International visited six villages of Antandroy IDPs and the main arrival bus station. In total, Amnesty International interviewed 122 IDPs, and also consulted government officials, local and international organizations, academics, climate scientists, and analysed satellite imagery.

The government responded to Amnesty International, underscoring efforts to improve drought resilience in southern Madagascar. It also explained that plans for a local displacement management strategy had been delayed partly due to limited logistical and financial resources. The response, however, failed to address France’s responsibility dating back to the French colonial period, the 2021 forced evictions, or the inadequacy of the 2023 pilot resettlement site.

An arduous journey

Between 2018 and 2024, about 90,000 people from southern Madagascar, mostly the Antandroy, were forced to leave their ancestral lands due to drought-induced famines.

Those interviewed by Amnesty International described the journey from Androy to Boeny as long and difficult. In most cases, they travelled by bus, with two main routes connecting southern Androy to northwestern Boeny, which are about 1,500 km apart. Many could not afford the trip and had to borrow money, sell their belongings, take stops on the journey to do casual jobs, or call on family members to send them money. In some cases, families made stops along the way to work and feed themselves, sleeping in markets and forests before continuing their journey.

The journey put families at risk of exploitation. One woman, Lia, told Amnesty she was coerced into exchanging sex with bus drivers for a seat.

One man, Masoandro, 48, said: “I negotiated with the driver. To repay him, he employed my son as a herder for one year, and the debt to the driver amounted to 220,000 Malagasy Ariary (about US$50). My son did this because he had no choice, as the driver had threatened to imprison us if the debt was not repaid.”

Upon arrival

Once in Boeny, they received no support from the government, including access to productive land.

Boeny Governor Mokthar Andriatomanga told Amnesty International: “All available land has already been allocated to the local community.”

Rather than providing support or alternatives, from April to July 2021, the government forcibly evicted Antandroy people who had built homes or cultivated land within a designated reforestation area bordering the Ankarafantsika National Park, violating their right to adequate housing.

Betro, a 28-year-old woman, recalls how she was taken by surprise during an eviction in July 2021 as the gendarmes stormed a church where she was praying: “At that time, upon the shock of seeing them, I gave birth and then I fled [she was nine months pregnant]. The umbilical cord had not even been cut yet...The state did not do anything... They just arrested people.”

The authorities’ failure to address the Antandroy’s plight and its root causes, including historic neglect by central government, has resulted in families being separated, with no support from the government or aid organizations for reunification.

Reny, 46, said: “Those strong enough to work and earn money are the ones who leave [for Boeny]. Those with children, and those who are weak, stay behind.”

Amnesty International calls on the Madagascar government to ensure all evictions comply with international human rights law.

Placed in an open-air prison

A resettlement site constructed by the Boeny regional government lacks essential services. It consists of 33 tiny huts with leaky walls, which let in rain, wind, and sweltering heat. During the rainy season

the nearby Kamoro River swells dangerously, encircling the site with fast-flowing and crocodile-infested waters cutting access to essential services such as markets, chemists, hospitals and schools. In 2023, one man was killed by a crocodile and another drowned while trying to cross.

Mandry, a mother of eight, expressed her frustration: "What can we say? There’s not much we can do. If we fall ill, it’s death because we can’t cross this body of water – we don’t have money for a pirogue (small boat).”

In January 2025, a newborn, Anakaondry, died after her mother, weakened by hunger and thirst, could no longer breastfeed.

Despite these conditions, the regional government estimates that around 100 Antandroy IDPs enter the region each week.

“Responsibility for the support and protection of the Antandroy IDPs goes beyond Madagascar - regional and international partners including the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU), the United Nations, as well as humanitarian organizations, must mobilize resources to speed up adaptation efforts,” said Tigere Chagutah.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

“Six years ago, when we first called for an end to de minimis and insisted that no commercial trade should enter without inspection, tariffs, and taxes, the big online retailers and delivery corporations profiting from this dangerous loophole laughed at us and hired more lobbyists, so this is great—if overdue—news.

For the end of duty-free access to also translate into fewer unsafe and deadly imports and end the mass trade cheating hurting domestic producers that de minimis fueled, the administration must also strengthen customs enforcement by requiring more information about imports, boosting inspection, and raising penalties for violations.

If the courts invalidate the Executive Orders based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that implement this executive action to terminate de minimis, we urge the administration to use its ample authority under Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to issue a new Executive Order to effectuate the same global de minimis termination.”

Learn about the president’s authority to end de minimis by executive action here.

Learn more about Rethink Trade here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – July 30, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

In the land of the Condor, near the base of the tallest mountain in the Western hemisphere, an Incan community lived. The people hunted, along the sheer hillsides, they farmed, they collected water from the river gushing from snowmelt. They had children, built families, and passed on traditions to generations of descendants.

The land was cold, inhospitable, but their village grew and their community thrived at the far Southern reaches of the vast Incan empire, in present-day Argentina. Today, centuries have passed, the people are gone, but the stones and dirt that made their homes remain. The stories and language of their ancestors have been lost to time. But their spirits remain. And the ruins remember.

This is episode 60 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

A note from Stories of Resistance host Michael Fox: 

If you enjoy this podcast, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

You can check out pictures of these Incan ruins in Argentina’s Andes Mountains, on Michael’s Patreon account

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting at patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

“Sari Al-Shoufi risked his life to document critical events in a region of Syria that has recently plunged into renewed violence,” said Doja Daoud, CPJ’s Levant program coordinator. “His killing is a stark reminder of the grave dangers journalists face in conflict zones. Syrian journalists deserve safety and accountability from Syrian authorities.”

Rayan Marouf, editor-in-chief of the Druze-focused Suwayda 24 website, told CPJ that Al-Shoufi was last heard from in the early hours of July 14 while reporting from a checkpoint in his home village of Taara, near Sweida. “He told us around 1 a.m. that he was safe and staying with local armed residents,” Marouf said.

At approximately 6 a.m., Al-Shoufi began sending urgent messages. “He said the site was under heavy attack by drones and armored vehicles, and that everyone around him had been killed,” Marouf told CPJ. “He was wounded and trying to surrender, but no one was responding to his calls.”

Marouf said he spoke to Al-Shoufi by phone at around 6:20 a.m. and kept the line open. “I heard continuous gunfire, then the call abruptly ended,” he said.

CPJ has documented cases of journalists being wounded, targeted by gunfire, robbed, and obstructed from accessing areas during the ongoing sectarian violence between Syrian government and tribal forces against the Druze. Al-Shoufi’s killing was the first journalist death in 2025 that CPJ has documented in Syria.

CPJ reached out via messaging apps to Mohammad Al-Saleh, a spokesperson at the Syrian ministry of information, to request comment but received no response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

On June 28, 2025, Baroshky’s lawyer, Reving Yaseen, informed CPJ that the court had reactivated a previously suspended six-month sentence from December 2021, citing a violation of its conditions — Baroshky was convicted in January of defamation over a January 2024 Facebook post. Baroshky, who is the director of privately owned Rast Media, was originally set to be released on July 31, after serving a six-month sentence for that conviction.

“The use of overlapping defamation charges and suspended sentences to keep journalists behind bars has become a dangerous pattern for press freedom in Iraqi Kurdistan,” said Doja Daoud, CPJ’s Levant program coordinator. “Omed Baroshky has already faced retaliation for his reporting. We urge Iraqi Kurdish authorities to stop criminalizing the work of opposition journalists and ensure that they can operate without fear of reprisal.”

According to Yaseen, Baroshky was sentenced in 2021 under the Misuse of Communication Devices law, following a lawsuit filed by then-Kurdish lawmaker Mala Ihsan Rekani. The case stemmed from Baroshky’s reporting that Rekani had returned to the Kurdistan Region without undergoing the required COVID-19 quarantine procedures, “but the sentence was suspended on the condition that he not commit any offense for three years,” he said. “The court has now ruled that his 2025 defamation conviction breached that condition and ordered that he serve the full 2021 sentence in addition to the current term.” 

CPJ called Aram Atrushi, the director of Zirka prison, where Omed is detained, for comment, but did not receive a response.

Baroshky previously served 18 months in prison between 2020 and 2022 under the same law because of social media posts critical of Iraqi Kurdish authorities. After Rast Media was raided and forcibly shut down in April 2023, he shifted his reporting to Facebook, which became his primary platform for publishing.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The debate is over. The Israel apologists lost. And we are seeing this reflected in mainstream discourse.

Pop megastar Ariana Grande has started speaking out in support of Gaza, telling her social media followers that “starving people to death is a red line.” This is a new threshold. Opposing Israel’s genocide is now the most mainstream as it has ever been.

MSNBC just ran a piece explicitly titled “Israel is starving Gaza. And the U.S. is complicit.”, featuring a segment with the virulently pro-Israel Morning Joe slamming the mass atrocity. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, himself a former AIPAC employee, has done a 180 and is now raking Israel over the coals on the air for its deliberately engineered starvation campaign. The New York Times finally overcame its phobia of the g-word with an op-ed titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”

We’re now seeing notoriously Zionist swamp monsters in the Democratic Party like Barack Obama, Hakeem Jeffries, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar changing their tune and attacking Netanyahu and Trump for their joint genocide project in Gaza, with increasingly forceful pushback from some on the right like Marjorie Taylor Greene as well.

As western pundits, politicians, and celebrities suddenly pivot to denouncing Israel’s genocidal atrocities after two years of silence, it’s hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, we were being told that saying “death to the IDF” is a hate crime.

People who’ve been staring at this genocide from the beginning have been asking the entire time, what is it going to take? What will it take for our society to stop sleepwalking through inane trivialities and vapid distractions and start opposing the holocaust of our day?

Raining military explosives on a giant concentration camp packed full of children wasn’t enough.

Burning children alive wasn’t enough.

Systematically destroying Gaza’s entire healthcare infrastructure — up to and including entering hospitals they’ve attacked and destroying individual pieces of medical equipment one by one — wasn’t enough.

Killing more journalists than were killed in both World Wars, plus the US Civil War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Yugoslav Wars, the War in Afghanistan, and the ongoing war in Ukraine wasn’t enough.

The systemic rape and torture of prisoners wasn’t enough.

IDF soldiers routinely sharing photos and videos of themselves mockingly dressing in the clothes of dead and displaced Palestinian women and playing with the toys of dead and displaced Palestinian children wasn’t enough.

Israeli officials openly expressing genocidal intent for the people of Gaza wasn’t enough.

The US president and Israeli prime minister openly declaring their goal of the complete ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian territory wasn’t enough.

Field testing new weapons of war on Palestinians like they’re guinea pigs in a laboratory wasn’t enough.

Leaving countless civilians to slowly suffocate or die of dehydration, trapped under the rubble of bombed buildings, wasn’t enough.

Creating an AI system to ensure that suspected Hamas fighters are bombed when they’re at home with their children and naming it “Where’s Daddy?” wasn’t enough.

Using Palestinians as human shields wasn’t enough.

Burying injured civilians alive with bulldozers wasn’t enough.

The IDF admitting to running a popular Telegram channel called “72 Virgins,” which posted extremely gory and sadistic snuff films of people in Gaza being butchered by Israeli forces, wasn’t enough.

IDF snipers routinely shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip wasn’t enough.

The IDF flying drones, which play the sounds of crying babies at night in order to lure out hiding civilians to murder them, wasn’t enough.

IDF troops telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians seeking food from aid sites wasn’t enough.

Israeli snipers targeting different body parts of starving civilians on designated days — leg day, head day, genitals day, etc — wasn’t enough.

Far right Israeli citizens setting up blockades to stop aid trucks from entering Gaza while they enjoyed parties and barbecues at the blockade sites wasn’t enough.

Using lies and propaganda to dismantle the aid system for bringing essential food and life-supporting supplies into Gaza, to replace it with a US/Israeli op where aid seekers are massacred every single day, wasn’t enough.

Using siege warfare to starve Gaza for the previous 22 months deliberately wasn’t enough.

But now that starvation has hit a critical point and deaths from malnutrition are skyrocketing, now that images of dead skeletal children are filling our screens, now that the damage to organs and brains from starvation will be irreversible in many cases — now it’s enough.

That was the line, apparently. That’s what mainstream Western consciousness has decided is too much. Everything up until that line was fine, but now it’s not fine anymore.

And the killing is still going on. The sudden awakening of conscience hasn’t translated into any material actions or changes at all yet. If it had come in October or November 2023, like it should have, we might be seeing that opposition translate into actually saving Gaza by now, but the light has only just been switched on. It’s not even guaranteed that those who are speaking up will continue to do so.

I’m glad people are waking up to the cruel reality of this nightmare. I’m grateful to each and every influential voice who uses their platform to speak out, even at this late date. I truly am.

But I also think we need to take a very hard, very uncomfortable look at ourselves as a society right now. If all those monstrous abuses were tolerable for us over these last two years, there’s something deeply and profoundly sick about our civilization.

We are not living right. We are not thinking right. We are not feeling right. We are warped and twisted. The information we consume and the norms we’ve been conditioned to accept have corrupted our souls.

We have been made into something bad. Something ugly. Something shameful. Something we need to do everything in our power to change.

We need to rescue ourselves from what we have become. We need to transform, deeply and radically, into something that could never again allow something like this to occur.

The way things are clearly isn’t working. The mainstream worldview is clearly a lie. Everything we’ve been taught to believe about our society, our nation, our government, and our world was clearly false.

We need to fight our way through the cognitive dissonance of recognizing that our entire way of looking at things as a collective has failed, and we need to find a new way of being.

Otherwise, we’re going to keep being smashed in the face with increasingly horrifying reminders of what we have allowed ourselves to become.

The lessons will repeat until they are learned.

We had better start learning them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Caitlin Johnstone.

Family and friends are reeling after an Israeli settler shot and killed Palestinian activist Odeh Muhammad Hadalin, an athlete, teacher and father of three young children. Hadalin helped produce the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, which follows Palestinians in the occupied West Bank community of Masafer Yatta as they struggle to stay on their land amid violent attacks by Jewish settlers. Hadalin’s cousin Alaa calls him an exceptionally “humane” and “peaceful” person in an interview with +972 Magazine and Local Call reporter Oren Ziv, who joins us from Tel Aviv.

In January, the Trump administration lifted Biden-era sanctions on Hadalin’s alleged killer, Yinon Levi, who has been released on house arrest. Meanwhile, multiple members of Hadalin’s family are still imprisoned and awaiting hearings in Israel’s military court after they were arrested by Israeli soldiers following the shooting. Ziv describes how Israeli soldiers also conducted a raid on a mourning party days after Hadalin died of his injuries. “They forced us out. And even in the entrance to the village, they started to throw stun grenades,” Ziv says. “It’s important to say it’s not only an attack on the family, on his friends. It’s an attempt to prevent us, the journalists, [from] investigating the case.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In Gaza, “the situation is beyond atrocious.” Aid worker Arwa Damon, a former CNN journalist and the founder of INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza, describes the deadly lack of access to food, water and medicine in the besieged territory. The situation on the ground conflicts with the claims of Israeli officials, who are denying the existence of starvation conditions. “If anyone goes into Gaza, within 15 minutes, the vast majority of what Israel is claiming just unravels before your very eyes,” says Damon. She is currently helping to facilitate aid access from outside of Gaza, which she and many other humanitarian workers have been barred from accessing since February.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

People with disabilities are among those most heavily impacted by Trump’s cuts to Medicaid. “I know so many people like me, disabled adults living and thriving now, who were able to get to adulthood because Medicaid existed,” says Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. We feature additional testimonies from disabled members of the advocacy group Caring Across Generations, and speak to Town, who says she fears “so many kids [will] not get a chance to make it to adulthood,” while countless adults “will not be able to live into old age because of these cuts.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of Medicare and Medicaid — and nearly one month since President Trump’s federal budget slashed nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid to extend tax cuts for the rich. The cuts could lead to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths every year. “Medicaid has been a lifeline. And without it, people will die,” says Ai-jen Poo, co-founder of Caring Across Generations and the Domestic Workers Alliance, which helped organize a 60-hour vigil last week ahead of the anniversary as part of a broader campaign to fight back against Trump’s cuts. She highlights the role of immigrants, who make up a third of the caregiving sector, and says Trump’s crackdown on immigration hastens the dwindling of care available to the aging and elderly. “We should be adding a trillion dollars in investments in healthcare in this country and in caregiving services in this country,” says Poo. “We need to strengthen these systems and programs for the 22nd century, not gut them.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

• Headlines for July 30, 2025
• 60 Years After LBJ Signed Medicaid & Medicare, GOP Cuts Threaten Lifeline for Millions
• Disabled People "Will Die" as GOP Medicaid Cuts Go into Effect, Warns Disability Rights Leader
• "Beyond Atrocious": Arwa Damon on Desperation & Hunger in Gaza as Israel Continues Blocking Most Aid
• "The Most Peaceful Man": West Bank Mourns Odeh Hadalin, Palestinian Activist Killed by Israeli Settler

Download this show

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The University of the South Pacific (USP) is at the heart of a global legal victory with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivering a historic opinion last week affirming that states have binding legal obligations to protect the environment from human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

The case, hailed as a triumph for climate justice, was driven by a student-led movement that began within USP’s own regional classrooms.

In 2021, the government of Vanuatu took a bold step by announcing its intention to seek an advisory opinion from the ICJ on climate change. But what many may not have realised is that the inspiration behind this unprecedented move came from a group of determined young Pacific Islanders — students from USP who formed the Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC).

• READ MORE: How Pacific students took their climate fight to the world’s highest court. And won
• The Pacific Community (SPC) climate justice resource
• Climate Justice at the ICJ
• Other Pacific climate justice reports

According to the United Nations background information, these USP students led the charge, campaigning for years to bring the voices of vulnerable island nations to the highest court in the world.

Their call for accountability resonated across the globe, eventually leading to the adoption of a UN resolution in March 2023 that asked the ICJ two critical legal questions:

• What obligations do states have under international law to protect the environment?
• What are the legal consequences when they fail?

The result
A sweeping opinion from the ICJ affirming that climate change treaties place binding duties on countries to prevent environmental harm.

As the ICJ President, Judge Iwasawa Yuji, stated in the official delivery the court was: “Unanimously of the opinion that the climate change treaties set forth binding obligations for States parties to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of the environment from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.”

USP alumni lead the celebration
USP alumna Cynthia Houniuhi, president of the PISFCC, shared her pride in a statement to USP’s official news that this landmark opinion must guide not only courtrooms but also global climate negotiations and policy decisions and it’s a call to action.

“The law is on our side. I’m proud to be on the right side of history.”

Her words reflect the essence of USP’s regional identity, a university built not just to educate, but to empower Pacific Islanders to lead solutions to the region’s most pressing challenges.

Why is the ICJ’s climate ruling such a big deal?         Video: Almost

Students in action, backed by global leaders
UN Secretary-General Antόnio Guterres, in a video message released by the UN, gave credit where it was due.

“This is a victory for our planet, for climate change and for the power of young people to make a difference. Young Pacific Islanders initiated this call for humanity to the world, and the world must respond.”

Vishal Prasad, director of PISFCC, in a video reel of the SPC (Secretariat of the Pacific Community), also credited youth activism rooted in the Pacific education system as six years ago young people from the Pacific decided to take climate change to the highest court and today the ICJ has responded.

“The ICJ has made it clear, it cemented the consensus on the science of climate change and formed the heart of all the arguments that many Pacific Island States made.”

USP’s influence is evident in the regional unity that drove this case forward showing that youth educated in the Pacific are capable of reshaping global narratives.

A win for the Pacific
From coastal erosion and rising sea levels to the legacy of nuclear testing, the Pacific lives with the frontline effects of climate change daily.

Coral Pasisi, SPC Director of Climate Change & Sustainability, highlighted in a video message, the long-term importance of the ruling:

“Climate change is already impacting them (Pacific people) and every increment that happens is creating more and more harm, not just for the generations now but those into the future. I think this marks a real moment for our kids.”

Additionally, as Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change, noted to SPC, science was the cornerstone of the court’s reasoning.

“The opinion really used that science as the basis for its definitions of accountability, responsibility, and duty.”

Among the proud USP student voices is Siosiua Veikune, who told Tonga’s national broadcaster that this is not only a win for the students but for the Pacific islands also.

What now?
With 91 written statements and 97 countries participating in oral proceedings, this was the largest case ever seen by the ICJ and it all began with a movement sparked at USP.

Now, the challenge moves from the courtroom to the global stage and will see how nations implement this legal opinion.

Though advisory, the ICJ ruling carries immense moral and legal weight. It will likely shape global climate negotiations, strengthen lawsuits against polluting states, and empower developing nations especially vulnerable Pacific Islands to demand justice on the international stage.

For the students who dreamed it into motion, it’s only the beginning.

“Now, we have to make sure this ruling leads to real action — in parliaments, at climate summits, and in every space where our future is at stake,”  said Veikune.

Vahefonua Tupola is a second-year student journalist at University of the South Pacific’s Laucala Campus. Republshed from Wansolwara News, the USP student journalism newspaper and website in partnership with Asia Pacific Report.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Wansolwara.

Leer en español.

Now that he’s free, Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, a 31-year-old Venezuelan, wants the world to know that he was tortured over four months in a Salvadoran prison. He said guards stomped on his hands, poured filthy water into his ears and threatened to beat him if he didn’t kneel alongside other inmates and lick their backs.

Now that he’s free, Juan José Ramos Ramos, 39, insists he’s not who President Donald Trump says he is. He’s not a member of a gang or an international terrorist, just a man with tattoos whom immigration agents spotted riding in a car with a Venezuela sticker on the back.

Now that he’s free, Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla, 40, said he wondered every day of his time in prison whether he’d ever hold his mother in his arms again. He’s relieved to be back home in Venezuela but struggles to make sense of why he and the other men were put through that ordeal in the first place.

“We are a group of people who I consider had the bad luck of ending up on this black list,” he said.

These are the accounts being shared by some of the more than 230 Venezuelan men the Trump administration deported on March 15 to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as CECOT. Throughout the men’s incarceration, the administration used blanket statements and exaggerations that obscured the truth about who they are and why they were targeted. The president has both hailed the men’s removal as a signature achievement of his first 100 days in office and touted it as a demonstration of the lengths his administration was willing to go to carry out his mass deportation campaign. He assured the public that he was fulfilling his promise to rid the country of immigrants who’d committed violent crimes, and that the men sent to El Salvador were “monsters,” “savages” and “the worst of the worst.”

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans, and Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News.

Few cases have gotten as much attention as the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. They were deported against the instructions of a federal judge, frog-marched off American planes and forced to kneel before cameras and have their heads shaved. The administration rebuffed requests to confirm the men’s names or provide information about the allegations it had made against them. Meanwhile, the deportees were held without access to lawyers or the ability to speak to their families. Then, 12 days ago, they were returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap.

Now that they’re home, they’ve begun to talk. We interviewed nine men for this story. They are bewildered, frightened, angry. Some said their feelings about what happened were still so raw they had trouble finding words to describe them. All of the men said they were abused physically and mentally during their imprisonment. Their relatives say they, too, went through hell wondering whether their loved ones were alive or dead, or if they would ever see them again. All the men said they were relieved to be free, though some said their release was proof the U.S. had no reason to send them to prison to begin with.

Blanco, for example, has no criminal record in the U.S., according to the government’s own data. His only violation was having entered the country illegally. He’d come because he wasn’t earning enough to help his parents and support his seven children, ages 2 to 19, after his family’s wholesale dairy and deli supply business failed. He arrived in December 2023 and turned himself in to immigration authorities in Eagle Pass, Texas, to request asylum. Then he was released to continue his immigration process.

Afterward, Blanco moved to Dallas and found work delivering food. In February 2024, he accompanied his cousin to a routine appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. While he was there, he decided to notify the agency that he’d changed his address. On his way out of the building, an immigration agent stopped him and asked about his tattoos. He has several of them, including a blue rose, a father hugging his son behind railroad tracks and a clock showing the time his mother was born.

He said the tattoos signified his affection for his family, not evidence of affiliation with a gang. Records show the officials didn’t believe him and detained him. While in custody, a judge ordered his deportation. However, because Washington and Caracas don’t have diplomatic relations, the Venezuelan government was refusing to accept most deportees from the United States at the time. Immigration officials released Blanco back into the U.S. until they could send him home.

For the next seven months, Blanco continued on in Dallas and picked up additional work as a mechanic. Then, shortly after Trump was inaugurated, ICE officers asked Blanco to come in for another appointment and detained him. A month later, despite Venezuela agreeing to take back some deportees, Blanco was on one of three planes bound for El Salvador.

“From the moment I realized I was in El Salvador and that I would be detained, it was anguish,” he said. “I was shaken. It hit me hard. Hard, hard, hard.”

To deport the Venezuelans, Trump invoked an obscure law from the 1700s known as the Alien Enemies Act. He declared that the men were all part of a Venezuelan prison gang called Tren de Aragua that was invading the United States. Within days, CBS News published a list of the men’s names, and there were anecdotal reports indicating that not all of the deportees were hardened criminals, much less “savages.” By early April, several news organizations had reported that the majority of the men did not appear to have criminal records.

Administration officials dismissed the reports, saying that many of the deportees were known human rights abusers, gang members and criminals outside of the U.S. The fact they hadn’t committed crimes in the United States, they said, didn’t mean they weren’t a threat to public safety.

To examine those claims, ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of Venezuelan journalists from Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates) and Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) launched an exhaustive investigation of the backgrounds of the 238 men on the list of detainees first published by CBS. Last week, we published a first-of-its-kind database that highlights our findings, including the fact the Trump administration knew at least 197 of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S. Nearly half the men had open immigration cases when they were deported, and at least 166 have tattoos, which experts have told us are not an indicator of gang membership.

When asked for comment for this story, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, called ProPublica a “liberal rag hellbent on defending violent criminal illegal aliens who never belonged in the United States.” She added, “America is safer with them out of our country.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson echoed the White House’s claim. “Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend criminal illegal gang members,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims.”

The fact that border encounters have plummeted to record lows after reaching record highs during the Biden presidency suggests that the administration’s efforts are having the effect that Trump intended. After what happened to him, Colmenares said he didn’t think migrating to the U.S. was safe anymore.

He’d been a youth soccer coach in Venezuela before setting off for the U.S. He followed the rules and got an appointment to approach the U.S.-Mexico border last October, as had more than 50 of the men. At the appointment, Colmenares said an agent pulled him aside to take pictures of his many tattoos — then detained him. He never set foot in the U.S. as a free man.

“The country with the Statue of Liberty deprived us of our liberty without any kind of evidence,” he said in an interview two days after he was returned to his family. “Who is going to go to the border now, knowing that they will grab you and put you in a prison where they will kill you?”

The men we interviewed said the terror they felt in El Salvador began almost immediately upon arrival.

Salvadoran police boarded the planes and began forcing the shackled men off — shoving them, throwing them to the ground, hitting them with their batons. Five said they saw flight attendants crying at the sight.

“This will teach you not to enter our country illegally,” Colmenares said one ICE official told him in Spanish. He wanted to explain that wasn’t true in his case but could tell there was no point. He got off the plane and was loaded onto a bus to prison.

Once inside, guards stripped them down to white boxers and sandals. Those who tried to refuse to have their heads shaved were beaten. Blanco said he heard their screams and didn’t dare resist. Humiliated and enraged, he did as he was told: head down, body limp.

They were loaded up again on the buses and taken to another part of the compound. Blanco said the shackles were so tight that he couldn’t walk as fast as the guards wanted, so they beat him until he passed out and dragged him the rest of the way. Inside, they dropped him so hard that his head banged on the floor. As he opened his eyes and saw the guards, bright lights and polished concrete floor, he asked: “God, why am I here? Why?”

The men said beatings by the guards were random, severe and constant. Guards lashed out at them with their fists and batons. They kicked them while wearing heavy work boots and shot them at close range with rubber pellets. One man we spoke to said he suspects he will have a lasting injury from a hard kick to the groin.

Colmenares recalled seeing one man defecate all over himself after a particularly severe beating. Guards laughed at him and left him there for a day, saying that the Venezuelans weren’t “real men.”

Just as vicious, the men said, was the psychological abuse. They lost track of the days because they were never allowed outdoors. Blanco said that whenever he asked a guard for the time, they’d mock him: “Why do you want to know what time it is? Have somewhere to be? Is someone waiting for you?”

Over and over, the men said, the guards called them criminals and terrorists and sons of bitches who deserved to be locked up. They said the guards told them so often that they were nobodies and that no one, not even their families, cared about them that some started to believe it.

The men said they waged at least two dayslong hunger strikes, skipping the beans, rice and tortillas they were fed most days, to demand an end to the abuses and an explanation for why they were in prison. “They told us nothing about how the process was going, what was going to happen to us, when we were going to see a judge, when we were going to see an attorney,” Ramos said.

Several of those interviewed said suicide crossed their minds. Ramos said he thought: “I’d rather die or kill myself than to keep living through this experience. Being woken up every day at 4 a.m. to be insulted and beaten. For wanting to shower, for asking for something so basic. ... Hearing your brothers getting beaten, crying for help.”

Four talked about a man who started cutting himself and writing messages on the walls and sheets with his blood: “Stop hitting us.” “We are fathers.” “We are brothers.” “We are innocent people.”

Some of them became friends. They made playing cards out of juice boxes and soaked tortillas in water and shaped the cornmeal into dice. They talked about their families and wondered if anyone knew where they were. They prayed.

About three and a half months into their detention, the men said they noticed a change in the guards and in the conditions in the facility. They were beaten less frequently and less severely. They were given ibuprofen, antibiotics and toothbrushes. They were told to shave and shower. And a psychologist came in to evaluate them.

Then, sometime after midnight on July 18, guards began banging their batons on the bars of the men’s cells. “Everyone take a shower,” they yelled.

This time, when Blanco asked for the time, a guard gave it to him. It was 1:40 a.m.

Photographers and reporters were allowed into the facility. Blanco wondered whether he was about to be a part of a publicity stunt. He told himself he wouldn’t give them what they wanted. No smiles for the camera.

Then, a top Salvadoran official walked in. “You are leaving.”

In a brief phone interview, Félix Ulloa, El Salvador’s vice president, denied any mistreatment and pointed to videos of the men looking unscathed as they left the prison as proof they were in good shape. He declined to comment on what role, if any, the U.S. had played in what happened to the men while they were in El Salvador. However, according to court records, the Salvadoran government previously told the United Nations that while it was physically holding the men, they remained under U.S. jurisdiction.