Narciso Barranco, an undocumented father of three Marines, has lived and worked in the US for over 30 years. On June 21, Barranco was doing landscaping work at an IHOP in Santa Ana, CA, when he was suddenly swarmed by a group of armed, masked, unidentified Customs and Border Patrol agents who chased him down, brutally beat him in the middle of a busy intersection, and kidnapped him in broad daylight. “I believe he was racially profiled,” Alejandro Barranco, one of Narciso Barranco’s sons, tells TRNN. “My dad has never done anything wrong. They had no warrant for him.” In this on-the-ground report, TRNN editor-in-chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Alejandro Barranco at the IHOP where his father was abducted about the cruel, terrifying reality of the Trump administration’s immigration raids.

Speakers:

• Alejandro Barranco is the eldest son of Narciso Barranco. He served in the Marines from 2019 to 2023
• Jose Francisco Negrete is a resident of Anaheim, CA, a rank-and-file Teamster, and a member of Labor for Palestine and Teamsters Mobilize
• We spoke with a number of undocumented day laborers near the site where Narciso Barranco was abudcted, including one eyewitness to Barranco’s abduction. To ensure their safety, we have kept their identities anonymous. 

Additional resources:

• Mona Darwish, Orange County Register, “‘I feel betrayed,’ US Marine says of seeing his father punched by federal immigration agent”
• Mona Darwish, Orange County Register, “OC father of 3 US Marines released from immigration detention center after multiple days of delay”
• Vera Institute of Justice, “Profile of immigrants in Santa Ana, California”
• NBC-LA, “Watch: Undocumented father of 3 US Marines speaks out”

Credits:

• Pre-Production: Maximillian Alvarez
• Studio Production / Post Production: Cameron Granadino

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Once again, US media is helping take pressure off of the White House by parroting US officials and pro-Israel talking heads insisting that the president is more or less helpless to stop anything Israel is doing in the Middle East, up to and including their ongoing mass starvation campaign and genocide in Gaza. 

“‘He’s a madman’: Trump’s team frets about Netanyahu after Syria strikes,” Axios’s Barak Ravid breathlessly reported on July 20. “Trump was agitated all around…in a call with Bibi,” alleged Sohrab Ahmari, citing “sources in and near the administration.” 

“Trump’s frustration with the devastation in Gaza is real,” Semafor insists. “After angry call from Trump, PM says Israel deeply regrets mistaken shelling of Gaza church,” The Times of Israel claimed on July 18. “Washington Struggles to Rein In an Emboldened Israel: Trump administration has expressed frustration with Israeli actions in recent days,” The Wall Street Journal reported on July 26. 

If this particular genre of reportage looks familiar it’s because it’s a pared-down version of a PR campaign pushed out by former President Biden, his aides, and pro-Israel media allies. I wrote about the trope—Fuming/Helpless Biden—in both TRNN, and, in greater detail, for the Nation the following year. Now that it’s spanned party and administration we can simply call it Fuming/Helpless President. Put simply: it’s any report, analysis, or opinion that describes the president as unable to do anything to stop Israel from committing war crimes or end the genocide overall or, relatedly, any reporting that gives readers the impression that not only is the president helpless, but is very upset/angry/sad at not being able to change Israel’s behavior. It’s an essential media convention because it allows the president to continue all material support to Israel—the endless flow of bombs, military and intelligence support, vetoes at the United Nations—while distancing themselves from the deep unpopularity of Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate bombing and mass starvation. 

The primary conduit for Fuming/Helpless President nonstories is Axios’s Ravid, who, as I noted in the Nation last year, had written 25 different examples of this genre up to that point for then-President Biden, quoting either US officials directly or a string of anonymous “US officials”—often as alleged scoops—claiming that Biden and White House officials were some variation of “breaking with Netanyahu,” “increasingly frustrated,” “running out of patience,” or “deeply concerned” about civilian casualties. Ravid, a former member of Unit 8200, Israel’s “secretive cyber warfare unit,” was awarded for his endless Fuming/Deeply Concerned reports with the White House Correspondents’ Association’s award for journalistic excellence in April 2024. 

Ravid has emerged again as the most aggressive practitioner of the Fuming/Helpless President routine for the new Trump administration. In just the last two weeks, he has published:

• Israel bombs Syrian capital despite U.S. pressure to “stand down” July 16 2025
• “He’s a madman”: Trump’s team frets about Netanyahu after Syria strikes July 20 2025
• White House confirms Trump objected to Israeli strikes in Syria July 21 2025
• Trump team rethinks Gaza strategy after six months of failure July 26 2025
• Trump says kids in Gaza are starving in break with Netanyahu July 29 2025

What Ravid did for Biden he is now doing for Trump, permitting the White House to distance itself from the more extreme and unpopular of Israel’s policies while maintaining the status quo of unfettered material support. Obviously, demand for this genre of low-effort propaganda is far less than it was under Biden, especially when 71 percent of Republicans continue to support Israel’s genocide. But there is a nontrivial faction of MAGA media world—from Tucker Carlson to Theo Von to Dave Smith—that have pushed back on the president’s lockstep support. They have done so for many reasons—principled libertarianism, humanitarian instincts, or, in Tucker’s case, genuine white nationalism—but there’s a modest revolt in the ranks nonetheless, and one that increasingly needs to be damped down by the Trump-aligned Right. 

No doubt feeling the heat from this contingent, and recognizing that being associated with countless images of emaciated and maimed children is not good for the brand in general, the White House and zionist groups in their orbit have dusted off the Biden-era playbook of Helpless/Frustrated President and seek to use it to distance Trump from the horrors emanating from Gaza just as the Biden White House did with great success. It’s easy, low effort, panders to antisemitic tropes of our otherwise benevolent leaders being manipulated by a foreign other, and provides what any head of a criminal enterprise seeks: plausible deniability. 

Trump’s passing acknowledgement Monday that there’s mass starvation in Gaza was widely reported as a “break from Netanyahu” despite it being pure rhetoric. “What reporting in Gaza shows amid Trump’s break from Netanyahu on starvation,” NPR tells its listeners. “Trump, breaking with Netanyahu, acknowledges ‘real starvation’ in Gaza,” Politico insists. “Trump raises pressure on Netanyahu, Israel,” the Hill reports. 

This narrative, born entirely from off-the-cuff comments by Trump, was quickly rejected by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee who, it’s worth noting, is playing to a different audience. Huckabee went on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday, and when asked about the supposed “break” with Netanyahu said, “Let me assure you that there is no break between the prime minister of Israel and the president. Their relationship I think to be stronger than it’s ever been. And I think the relationship between the US and Israel is as strong as it has ever been.”

So why did so many mainstream outlets rush to distance Trump from the horrific images of starving children coming out of Gaza of starving children? Because preservation of American Innocence is an ideological force greater than common sense and “mounting tensions” between US Presidents and Netanyahu is a genre of reportage requiring little evidence and even less effort. 

Another recent masterclass in Fuming/Helpless President stenography is a front page story in the Wall Street Journal, “Washington Struggles to Rein In an Emboldened Israel: Trump administration has expressed frustration with Israeli actions in recent days,” by Shayndi Raice and Alexander Ward. The article is littered with every cliche of the genre: Fuming Behind Closed Doors (“The Trump administration in recent days has expressed frustration with Israeli actions in Syria and Gaza”), Trump Forced to Do Israel’s Bidding Against His Will (“So far, they see Netanyahu leading Trump to act against his instincts”), and Out of the Loop (“The White House said this past week that Trump was “caught off guard” by the bombing in Syria and the strike that hit the Catholic church.”)

The piece even doubles as a means for ex-Biden officials Amos Hochstein and Phil Gordon to wash their hands of Gaza and insist they, too, were powerless, helping Trump officials and allies paint a picture of a White House getting run over by an increasingly powerful and willful ally. Kamala Harris foreign policy adviser Phil Gordon, who, on the eve of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, explicitly promised to never condition aid to Israel, wants WSJ readers to know that Trump is unable to do anything to “rein in” Israel for the same reason Biden was:  

Others say the reality of the relationship is far more complex. While the U.S. sells Israel advanced weapons and actively defends it against attacks, no American president would fully cut off the support to send Israel a message. Netanyahu knows this and operates knowing he can’t really lose U.S. backing for whatever it does. “Every president thinks they have some ability to constrain him and shape him, and they do,” said Philip Gordon, who in the previous administration was national-security adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris. “But in the end, Netanyahu is an experienced, wily actor, and knows he can get away with a lot.”…

But this, of course, is simply argument by tautology: “No American president would fully cut off the support to send Israel a message” is a moral choice Biden and Trump decided to make, not a law of nature. It’s not imposed upon them by any outside force. They are not “forced” to back Israel anymore than any war criminal is forced to carry out any war crime in the history of war crimes. They support Israel because, despite some bickering around the margins over tactics and PR, they agree with and support what Israel is doing. This basic fact is simply hand-waved away, lampshaded with a throwaway line by friendly reporters about how the US cannot ever possibly condition aid to Israel without any explanation, treated as an unquestioned axiom. 

But it’s not. Both Trump and Biden are and were more than capable of “reining in” Israel. They can do so by conditioning military support or cutting it off altogether. But clearly laying out how those conditions would work is awkward and associates the US government, and leadership in both parties, with the 21st century’s most horrific and well documented genocide. A much easier approach, consistent with the increasingly popular Politics of Feigned Helplessness, is to manage perception and use court reporters to wash one’s hands of the consequences of their policies and actions. Actually cutting off Israel is difficult and would require a president who opposes what they’re doing. It’s far easier to paint the most powerful empire in the history of the world as bumbling, out of the loop, getting “played” by a country the size of New Jersey, and ultimately frame the US as a spectator that funds and arms countless war crimes but, somehow, is not responsible for any of them.  

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Adam Johnson.

Janine Jackson interviewed the Hartmann Report‘s Thom Hartmann about Jeffrey Epstein and the MAGA movement for the July 25, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Hartmann Report (7/24/25)

Janine Jackson: There’s no need to choose: We can and must address the grievousness of the operation Jeffrey Epstein ran, how it was abetted by the banks that process the checks, and the lawyers dismissing the women who were brave enough to come forward, against literally the most powerful people in the country. And at the same time, we can marvel that this is what it takes to get a measurable subset of the MAGA cult to say, “Wait a minute, the guy who said, ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ is a creep?”

The Trump base’s relationship to reality is obscure to many people who are wondering; Why this? Why now? As much as we might want to look away, those questions have repercussions for all of us.

Here to help us with understanding the place of the Epstein story in various narratives, including that of corporate news media, is Thom Hartmann. He is a political analyst, radio host, author of the daily newsletter the Hartmann Report, along with many books, including The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party and a World on the Brink, which is forthcoming from Penguin Random House. He joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Thom Hartmann.

Thom Hartmann: Hey, thanks, Janine. Thanks for inviting me.

JJ: The MAGA/QAnon relationship to pedophilia is a psychosocial, historical phenomenon that will be studied for decades, I’m sure. We’re interested, today, in the political repercussions, wherein Trump, who could not be more obviously part of the Epstein crime factory, is throwing it all at the wall to hold on to a crowd who live and breathe conspiracy around precisely these things.

ABC (7/31/25)

So when you’re trying to break it down for people who have avoided this storyline, for various reasons, and are now just trying to get caught up, you need to explain a little history, right? Where do you start, if you want to orient someone to why the Jeffrey Epstein story would be the fissure in the MAGA crowd?

TH: To start with, everything makes sense if you get it that most of the followers of Donald Trump and the MAGA base are actually members of a cult. What differentiates people who live in a cult versus people who are just in normal society is that people who live in a cult live in a constructed reality that does not comport with actual reality. In other words, they are being lied to at a bunch of different levels, and they live in this unreal world. And, typically, it’s an unreal world that’s filled with panics, particularly moral panics.

So if you think back to the Reagan administration, the McMartin preschool, where for a year or so, everybody was convinced that the people were doing Satanic rituals with children and killing rabbits and stuff. And it turned out it was all imagination. But the whole nation was seized with this moral panic. This Pizzagate thing, you know, the Democrats are drinking the blood of children to get their adrenochrome and all this, is another moral panic.

And moral panics lend themselves to conspiracy theories. The McMartin preschool spun off 1,000 conspiracy theories.

Thom Hartmann: “You’ve got people who have been conditioned to live in a world of conspiracy theories.”

So you’ve got people who have been conditioned to live in a world of conspiracy theories. “The election in 2020 was actually stolen from Donald Trump.” “The fluoride in the water is a Communist conspiracy to destroy America.” On and on and on, right? And Jeffrey Epstein is one of the powerful people who control the world, and he’s part of this pedo ring, you know, this international pedo ring, and that probably has a lot of Jews associated with it, because usually these right-wing conspiracy theories are antisemitic, as well as everything else. “The Jews will not replace us,” the “Great Replacement Theory,” is another one. You know, the moral panic/conspiracy theory that Jewish people, wealthy Jews, are paying for Black and brown people to replace white people in their jobs and in education in America.

So what has happened is that Trump, during his campaign in 2016 and again in 2020, used Epstein as basically a foil, saying, “Yeah, you know Epstein? You know he had Bill Clinton on his plane, and he had Bill Gates on his plane, and it’s a bunch of him and a bunch of Democrats.”

And it’s a real testimonial to the power of Fox News to exclude data from the news that they’re sharing with their viewers, that these people never realized that Trump was Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend for a decade, and he’s all over the Epstein files, and any investigation of Epstein has Trump all over it.

And they just didn’t know this. And they were convinced that, when the truth comes out, Bill Clinton is going to get crucified here. And it’s starting to dawn on them that Trump maybe wasn’t the most honest with them, which may hopefully cause them to wonder about what are the other things that he lied to us about? Because there’s certainly a long list.

JJ: But is it really the case? I mean, they seem so separated from reality. And it, to me, it seems like if Trump said, “No, don’t look behind the curtain, actually,” well, as he’s said, “Those files are fake. These files are partial, anybody who says I’m involved….” I’m not sure why they wouldn’t fall for that too.

TH: Because they’ve been sold the counterstory. They’ve already bought the frame. The framework is that there’s this international network of pedophiles, and Epstein, of course, is Jewish. That helps as well. So you’ve got this frame that draws on racism, it draws on antisemitism, it draws on classical moral panic, and they have come to believe it, and it’s been reinforced over and over and over again for well over a decade. And it was conflated in their minds with the whole Pizzagate, Hillary Clinton, pedophile ring stuff.

Guardian (7/14/25)

And so, undoing that, you’d have to go back and say, “You know, what you’ve really believed for the last decade, that Donald Trump has been telling you, and Republicans have been telling you, and all these right-wing talkshow hosts and Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, and they’ve all been telling you this, but you know, it was all wrong. It didn’t exist.” That’s just not going to fly. This is too well-established, too solidly established in their brains, for them to simply deny it or walk away from it, or look away from it, even.

JJ: Given that, I wonder what you make about so-called “mainstream media’s” response to this. Because this is obviously a kind of, like I say, sociological thing that’s happening that we can look at, the sort of petri dish of what happened with QAnon and the MAGA cult and their relationship to reality.

But we look to mainstream news media to see that as an event, and to incorporate that into the reality for, if I may say, the rest of us, you know? So I’m mad at news media for the implication that they can flip on and off the switch of outrage. You know, it was also mainstream news media who were like, “The Epstein files are very important. Well, no, they’re not so important. We’re not going to talk about them. Now they’re important again.”

TH: Going after Barack Obama, our first Black president, and calling him “Hussein” and all this other kind of stuff, you know, it’s just classic Trump racism, and that does play well with his base, because I think the one major common denominator that runs through his base is white supremacy, particularly male white supremacy, Christian male white supremacy.

But the mainstream media has acknowledged that Trump is in the Epstein files for years. It comes and goes as a media fad, but they’ve acknowledged it.

It’s just that the people who are the MAGA base, that 20% of the Republican Party, that maybe 7% or 8% of the American population, they’ve never experienced that, because they don’t read or listen to or watch the mainstream media. They live in this isolated bubble of Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and Breitbart on the internet.

And social media, of course, has really closed the door even tighter for them, by running algorithms that are designed to keep you in your bubble. Both Facebook and Twitter do that aggressively to make more money for their owners, of course. These people are just befuddled, baffled. And I think that’s something that we really should be taking notice of, how poorly informed the Republican base is.

New York Times (7/22/25)

JJ: I understand where right-wing media might be, but so-called “mainstream,” elite, corporate media, New York Times, Washington Post, they have a job to do, too, which is to locate this disinformation in a reality frame. And I guess I’m not seeing that. I guess my problem is I see things like “Trump Is Easing His Base’s Fury,” and that just seems like not telling us what we need to get from a free press, in terms of this nightmare, frankly, that we’re living through.

TH: I agree with you on that. I mean, the New York Times has been sanewashing Trump for years; this is what they do. Things that Trump has done and said recently, that had Joe Biden done them, would have been a full week’s news cycle, just largely get ignored. Just blatant lies, manufacturing stories, like the story about his uncle and the Unabomber. He literally just made it up out of thin air, and it was impossible. And yet the media did not harp on that. If Joe Biden had done that, if he had just made up a story out of nothing, they’d be calling for his impeachment or his resignation.

Trump has always had a special relationship with the media. Partly they’re afraid of him, partly they depend on him. He generates eyeballs and clicks and likes and views, and that makes them money.

JJ: You noted recently that the kind of “what aboutism” just isn’t landing this time, in terms of the Epstein story. When folks are saying, “Well, Clinton did it too,” people are like, “Well, yeah, OK, if Clinton did it too, he should also go to jail.” You can’t pluck the same thought-ending strings anymore, particularly with young people. And I see hope there.

CNBC (7/22/25)

TH: Yeah, I do too, and I think it certainly is the moment that some people, the hold of the cult on them has been weakened. You’ve got a dozen members, Republicans in the House of Representatives, who are willing to vote against Trump and demand the release of the Epstein files. This is why Mike Johnson just cut and ran, you know why he shut down for the end of this month, all of next month, and into the first week of September, is because he’s afraid of this topic coming up.

I think it’s going to backfire on him. I think it’s going to be just as hot in September. I think everybody’s going to kind of take a month off, and then just come back with some ferocity. But I could be wrong. It may be that Trump will actually succeed.

My big fear is that Trump will do what dictators are famous for doing when their approval ratings are in the tank. What Putin did, for example, with Ukraine, and what George W. Bush did with Iraq and Afghanistan, is he’ll declare a war someplace, as a way of distracting us. And that could be, particularly if he decides to go to war with China and Russia, that could be civilization-altering. I believe that Donald Trump will do anything to protect himself, and that’s the danger.

JJ: And I’ll just add, finally, that the way a lot of people will understand that danger will have to do with media. That will be the way that people understand what’s happening, and what it means for them. And news media are not neutral town criers, not to put too fine a point on it, but they are not simply telling us what’s happening; they’re also telling us how to feel about it, and I think, if we want to have a positive vision of what could come after, I just wonder, in terms of media, where do you think that conversation could happen?

FAIR.org (3/6/96)

TH: In my opinion, the big problem with media goes back to the Telecommunications Act of ‘96, and Reagan’s doing away of the Fairness Doctrine in ‘87, or in ‘86, I guess it was. Because we used to regulate how many radio stations an individual billionaire or a corporation could own, and not just radio stations–radio, television and newspapers.

And that all got blown up in ‘96, when Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act. Within a year, Clear Channel had gone from being a little regional cluster of stations in the Southeast to having over 1,000 stations, and Sinclair Broadcasting now runs kind of a semi-monopoly.

And this CBS merger is another example of just insane monopolistic behavior that’s not good for America. It’s not good for business, it’s not good for the media, and it’s definitely not good for our democracy.

So that’s where my biggest concern lies right now, that and Brendan Carr being the head of the FCC, when he’s just an open Trump toady and will do whatever Donald Trump tells him to do, including investigating the big three networks, and all this other stuff that he’s doing right now.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Thom Hartmann. You can get started on his varied work online at HartmannReport.com, and the new book is The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party and a World on the Brink. That’s forthcoming from Penguin Random House. Thom Hartmann, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

TH: Thank you, Janine.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

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.

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.

As part of the 21-member international collective aboard the aid ship Handala, a flotilla that was headed to Gaza to protest and break the blockade on the Palestinian people collectively being starved to death, Smalls was the only member of the group beaten and choked by IDF agents. He was also the only Black person aboard the ship. While the IDF stopped, boarded, and abducted all the activists on board, they did not use the same level of force against the other passengers or crew that they brutally applied against Smalls.

The special brutality meted out to Smalls is another example of the racist, white supremacy at the core of Israeli settler colonialism and explains both their genocide against Palestinians and the relative silence and support for it by the West. This racist violence reflects the reality of how African Jews from various countries are viewed and treated in Israel. Even as we have seen African Jews in the IDF carrying out unconscionable violence upon Palestinians, they are subjected to the forms of racist hatred that the same IDF meted out to Smalls, and worse. The lack of response from the U.S. government regarding the treatment of Smalls also reflects the way this state views Black/ African residents in the country, and highlights the continuity of white supremacist settler colonialism across both of these violent and genocidal nations.

For some time now, Small’s example has highlighted a vital understanding that the liberation of any domestic working class is inextricably linked to the defeat of U.S.-led Western imperialist domination. This attack on a working-class, anti-imperialist leader further highlights the connection between domestic oppression and Western imperialism, where the U.S. and its allies— including Israel— act with impunity.

This lack of meaningful action against the zionist occupation and genocidal acceleration of the state of Israel, as well as the U.S.’s consistent support and own human rights violations, motivates BAP’s call to ban the United States and Israel from hosting or participating in international sporting events. While this is but one strategy, what is clear is that more efforts toward anti-imperialist multilateralism are needed, represented through movement efforts like the Friends of The Hague Group (FOTHG), state-based support by The Hague Group, and consistent solidarity with the Axis of Resistance. It is this impunity that has allowed this genocide in Gaza to continue unabated for almost two years, that has contributed to the deepening siege and theft of the West Bank, and that has permitted the brutalization of Chris Smalls to occur with little uproar from so-called progressives and liberal elites.

The capture, brutalization, and imprisonment of Smalls by the fascist and racist IDF underscores the urgent need for solidarity between African/Black and Palestinian struggles. The lack of consequences for Israel reflects not only the hypocrisy of so-called democratic nations but also the complicity of the U.S.’s own Black Misleadership Class, which too often aligns with sustaining pan-European, capitalist, patriarchal interests.

Justice for Chris Smalls!

Smash Zionism!

End the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

This story contains videos and descriptions of violent arrests.

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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.” 

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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.

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.

“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.

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.

Alexis Krauss: Well, she was a mysterious creature. But based on the love that she showed us, especially on tour and all of her many zoomies on the tour bus, I’m going to say she was a pretty big fan.

Derek Miller: We also hear her on the first track on Bitter Rivals. She’s the dog at the beginning, so she’s technically a performing, contributing member of Sleigh Bells.

Alexis: Exactly. She could ask for royalties. “Bunky Pop” was Derek’s effort to make a track that embodied her and her spirit, and I think he really succeeded in that. That song really does make me think of her in so many ways.

Derek: We turned the idea of Riz as a human being into half of the record. The other half would be Roxette, who represents Alexis. I’m definitely a little more Bunky Becky, a little more Riz—like a dog who playfully wanders into a room and starts knocking stuff over. They mean well, they’re just loud. Riz had a seizure in 2022. She was unconscious for two or three minutes, and Alexis called me crying. A week later, I got the idea to try to write an anthem for her. I tried to make a track that felt like her sprinting through a field, basically. Even though it is specific to a dog, it works in a less specific context as well. It’s really just about two friends. Even though there is autobiography in there, it’s really about any friendship that lasts. There’s going to be lots of ups and downs and you see each other through all of it.

You’ve worked together for almost two decades. What keeps your collaboration generative and invigorating?

Alexis: If it felt tired and stale, or if there was animosity that had built up, I don’t think we’d be doing it. Not that we wouldn’t care enough to try and fix things, but at this point, our relationship is so solid and the creative relationship is really pretty fluid. It’s something we both look forward to.

Derek: This is advice that I’ve given to younger artists who have asked me about the creative process: try to make music that you are, at least temporarily, madly in love with. Maybe it’s just a riff, maybe it’s a verse in a chorus, maybe it’s a complete arrangement. I want to get to a place where I record a new idea and I get in bed at night and I listen to it 19 times in a row staring at the ceiling, and on the 20th time I’m like, “This is madness. Go to bed.” So I put my phone down, I turn the lights out, and five minutes later I put my earbuds back in, turn the light on and listen to it three more times.

I feel like I’ve been in that zone since I was a teenager. Since I was 16, I’ve had at least one piece of music that I am absolutely dying for people to hear. Doesn’t mean it’s any good. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s trash. You never know. But if you’re in that space where you’re madly in love with what you’re working on while you’re working on it, it’s very, very easy to move forward. And that’s the space that we’ve been in really since the beginning.

The first thing we recorded together was Infinity Guitars… We recorded the first rough vocals for Infinity Guitars [for a few hours] before we heard a knock on our door; it was these two kids that lived down the hall. I started to apologize, but they said, “It’s cool, what is that?” And I remember looking at you, Alexis, and looking at them and being like, “I guess that’s our new band.”

The riff on “Wanna Start a Band?” was something you’ve been working on since 2014. When do you know when it’s the right time to revisit old work?

Derek: Anyone who makes records, especially if you’ve been doing it for a while, has a mental Rolodex of existing sessions with moments that are really great. You don’t know what the texture or the tempo or the key should be, but you know that there’s something there. All I had for “Wanna Start a Band?” was the ascending part of the riff. That’s all it was. It was this little pleasurable thorn in my brain that just sits there until I solve it. It took a long time to find the verses and the rest of the riff. It turns out it took almost a decade.

I think I’ll probably make records for the rest of my life. I don’t know who will listen or if they’ll be any good. I don’t mind if I have to wait years. I think it’s just about having patience. Right now I have 30 or 40 sessions, and each of them has something really special, even if it’s just a bar. I don’t mean to make it sound momentous, by the way. There’s just a couple of ideas, but in my life, it’s momentous.

Alexis: Derek is really discriminating about the best ideas. There’s been multiple times where we’ve recorded something and I’ve gotten really excited, and then I’ve gotten almost pissed at him because he starts to doubt it. Then there’s the process of mourning the shape that it had taken. There’s a song that I fucking loved that didn’t make this album. But there’s been very few times, if any, where that patience hasn’t paid off in terms of creating a song that I think was better than what we had initially. I think that patience has really benefited the band.

Do you ever try to purposely disconnect from the creative process?

Alexis: Derek, one thing I’ve noticed is that when you’re in that more contemplative state of brainstorming or developing a direction for one of the new records, you’ll often do this thing where you’ll say, “I’m making tracks for [another] artist. This isn’t Sleigh Bell’s music.” I love that idea. I love the idea of Derek producing for other people. But in the back of my mind, I always know he’s going to switch soon and send me a song that we can work on. I think that’s a way that you maybe step into a more exploratory mindset.

Derek: I love when that switch happens. That happened recently with something I shared three weeks ago. We don’t have any vocals written yet, but in my mind it was for somebody else. It’s just a fun game to play, to trick yourself. Every time I do it, I’m convinced: “This time, it’s not going to be for Sleigh Bells. I’m going to keep it out of that lane. I’m going to keep crash cymbals and cymbal chokes and high-game guitars out of the mix. Blah, blah, blah.” But it usually tends to come back around, if I love it enough.

Something I love about Sleigh Bells is how consistent the vision is. How much is that natural, and how much is it through an intentional shaping of the record?

Derek: I feel like it happens naturally. We’ve gone pretty far outside of what we would consider to be the Sleigh Bell sound. I always use a track from 2017 called “And Saints” as an example. For that song, I literally made a list of everything recognizable as Sleigh Bells and was unable to do any of those things, any of my usual tricks. So we ended up with a really simple Arp synth, some lush pads, Alexis’s vocal, and that’s it.

Alexis: I think one of the reasons why that melody took the shape the way it did is because it came out in one longer melodic take, which doesn’t always happen. A lot of our stuff will go part by part, or verse by verse, and then we’ll work on the bridge. That one all came together at once; I think it was because the track had space for that.

Derek: I have to resist my natural impulse to impact the speaker really intensely. I like cyan; I like things that are bright and shiny and aggressive, but in a pleasurable way. I want it to be joyful and euphoric. Most music that’s sonically aggressive has a very dark, heavy aesthetic. Lyrically, it’s very dark. The artwork is very dark, the merch is very dark—and I love that. That’s great. I just feel like there’s so much more to be explored with music that is sonically intense and aggressive but is more playful. 100 gecs is a great example of that. I was so excited the first time I heard 100 gecs. Bits of Poppy’s record I Disagree as well, are really fun and playful. Just so it’s crystal clear, I’m not shading metal or hardcore. I come from that. I love those records, but there’s really a lot of room to mess around. It’s a big sandbox with not a lot of people in it.

I think it’s fair to argue that many artists who often get classified as hyperpop, like 100 gecs and Poppy, were heavily inspired by Sleigh Bells. How did you feel when you encountered this newer crop of artists who share elements of your sound?

Derek: It was so exciting to hear the next wave of artists who are exciting and inspired and connecting. It’s truly an honor. At first, it can make you feel old, even if you’re in your 30s. And a little scared, which is natural. I’ve exchanged really, really lovely messages with Dylan Brady from gecs. It was great to hear directly from them that they were influenced by us. In turn, they have influenced us: I borrowed from gecs on Texis and a little bit of this record. It’s like the circle’s complete.

It’s not even borrowing a specific thing… It’s just the feeling. There’s just a life and a spark and a spirit and a playfulness that I feel like, at our best, we have. And when you hear it in another artist, it just makes you want to step up and be great as well. Not in a competitive way. I feel like we’re only ever in competition with ourselves.

Alexis: Personally, I’ve never felt particularly compelled to identify with a specific genre, but I do agree that listening to Poppy’s album or listening to 100 gecs, there is that feeling of just wanting to lose your shit. There’s this completely un-self-conscious, rowdy intensity—but then also this saccharine sweetness and playful giddiness. The marriage of these components is so compelling. As Derek’s said, it’s a feeling. It’s a spark. To be considered amongst bands who are really doing that well, it’s a huge privilege and a huge honor.

Derek: We should mention Charli [XCX] as well, who finally reached the masses with that sound. Right after True Romance came out, Charli opened our UK Reign of Terror shows, and within three minutes of the first set, I was like, “Enjoy this moment because she will never be opening for us again.” Even then, as a little kid, she was great. To watch her do her thing has been really incredible and inspiring, especially with Brat.

Why do you feel like that intense, over-the-top sound is speaking so much to this current moment?

Alexis: I spend a lot of time with young people and teenagers. I think young people have access to so much music and so many different ideas and styles. You seldom hear about a young person talk about a guilty pleasure. Kids are so much more exploratory and open to so many different genres. When I was growing up, marrying pop and hardcore wasn’t groundbreaking, necessarily. Bands have been doing it for a long time in different ways. But there was always this feeling, at least for me, that there was almost something shameful about pop, or that hardcore was more authentic. Young people have a disregard for that, and it’s created so much more space for young women and femme people to go to, say, a Turnstile show. That band is so exciting. You look at their fan base, and those shows never would’ve looked like that 20 years ago.

How did the lyrics for the new record come about?

Derek: A lot of times the instrumental will inform the lyric, or I’ll have something kicking around. I’ll send an instrumental and then a lyric file to Alexis and say, “Go nuts. Do whatever you want, move things around, change it.” Once she gets her hands on it, she definitely colors it in the best way.

Alexis: I think of melody first. When I’m listening to a track, I’ll usually just start with some mumbles or syllables. Once I have a melody that I think is worthy, I’ll try and add the lyric into that… A lot of times it’s a piecemeal assembly. But there have been multiple times where Derek is like, “No, this is really what I think should be said here.” I love that this record has a narrative it’s telling. You’re going through a relationship with the characters, a storyline, especially with regards to Riz. It’s almost like a word scramble: How do I put this together in a way with a melody that’s going to do the track justice?

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Arielle Gordon.

The obliteration of the clean vehicle standards is part of Trump’s frontal attack on the U.S. government’s ability to act on climate—the administration is also attempting to eliminate the 2009 “endangerment finding,” (EF) a bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane endanger human lives. See the Sierra Club’s statement on the EF here.

The endangerment finding requires the federal government to regulate climate pollution under the Clean Air Act. Eliminating it would gut key tools Congress gave EPA to address the immense harm wrought by the climate crisis and would undo regulations of industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions like vehicles or power plants.

The transportation sector accounts for 28 percent of greenhouse gas emissions—more than any other sector in the US. The clean vehicle standards continue EPA’s decades-long effort under the Clean Air Act to set standards that successfully reduce vehicle pollution, improve public health and prevent the worst of the climate crisis. For this latest round of final standards, the EPA engaged in a years-long, multi-stakeholder, comprehensive rulemaking process that engaged industry and civil society alike and would collectively avoid over 8 billion tons of carbon emissions.

In response to the announcement, Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All Director Katherine García released the following statement:

“Vehicle pollution kills, and Donald Trump’s catastrophic rollback of the vehicle standards will eviscerate one of our most effective tools to tackle the nation’s top polluting industry. Trump’s short-sighted, anti-regulatory agenda will deny Americans the option to choose cleaner vehicles over inefficient gas guzzlers. In one fell swoop just months into office, Trump’s pro-polluter administration is trying to destroy the United States’s ability to fight climate change and protect our health and well-being while making us less globally competitive.

“Our federal clean vehicle standards protect American families by cutting down on toxic air pollutants and climate-disrupting emissions. Strong standards also protect our wallets by ensuring manufacturers produce cleaner, more fuel efficient cars that are cheaper to fuel and own long-term.

"These standards are the product of years of public engagement, in which a broad coalition—including thousands of Sierra Club members and supporters—advocated for the strongest possible protections. Time and time again, Trump has proposed irrational policies that fundamentally hurt Americans and the planet. And, once again, the Sierra Club will fight this senseless attack tooth and nail.”

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

As the Trump administration ramps up its violent immigration raids around the country, increasingly targeting immigrants with no criminal record, and racially profiling Latinos to meet arrest quotas, immigrant communities in Baltimore and beyond are living in terror. In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with two immigrant justice organizers in Baltimore—whose identities are being protected to ensure their safety—about the horrifying reality that immigrant families, particularly Latino families, are experiencing right now. “If you don’t look Latino, do you tell your child to carry around their passport or their birth certificate?… US citizens are being detained only because they look Latino, because they are Latino.”

Additional resources:

• Maanvi Singh, Will Craft, & Andrew Witherspoon, The Guardian, “How Trump has supercharged the immigration crackdown – in data”
• Jaisal Noor, Baltimore Beat, “Baltimore residents are mobilizing to protect their immigrant neighbors from ICE”
• Tara Lynch, CBS Baltimore, “Community demands release of Maryland pastor who was arrested by ICE”

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: David Hebden
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

This story originally appeared in Truthout on July 28, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Palestinian activist who helped film the No Other Land documentary highlighting Israel’s violent occupation of the West Bank, Awdah Hathaleen, was shot and killed by an Israeli settler on Monday, according to one of the film’s directors.

Israeli co-filmmaker Yuval Abraham posted about Hadalin’s death on social media on Monday. “An Israeli settler just shot [Hathaleen] in the lungs, a remarkable activist who helped us film No Other Land in Masafer Yatta,” Abraham wrote. About an hour later, Abraham wrote that Hathaleen had succumbed to the shooting. “[Awdah] just died. Murdered,” said Abraham.

“I can hardly believe it. My dear friend Awdah was slaughtered this evening. He was standing in front of the community center in his village when a settler fired a bullet that pierced his chest and took his life. This is how Israel erases us — one life at a time,” said Basel Adra, activist and Palestinian co-director of No Other Land.

Accompanying Abraham’s post was a video of the settler angrily facing a group, wielding a handgun. He waves the gun around, firing it, and keeping his hand on the trigger as he paces and angrily pushes those trying to confront him.

Hathaleen was previously targeted by the U.S. government. Last month, he flew to the U.S. to do a speaking tour with his cousin, Eid Hathaleen, to speak in synagogues and churches. However, U.S. authorities detained and deported them upon arrival at the San Francisco airport.

He had previously reported about Israeli settler violence, and was a leader in his community advocating against Israel’s occupation of his village, Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta.

Wafa reported that two Palestinians had been injured in Umm al-Khair by Israeli settlers, who invaded the village with a bulldozer in an attack on Monday evening.

Palestinian activist Issa Amro, from Hebron, mourned the loss of Hathaleen.

“Israeli settlers have murdered our beloved hero, Awdah Hathaleen, from the Um Al-Khair community in Masafer Yatta,” Amro wrote on social media. “Awdah stood with dignity and courage against oppression. His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice. May he rest in peace. We will never forget him.”

Abraham said that local residents identified Hathaleen’s killer as Yinon Levi, who lives in an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. Levi was sanctioned by the Treasury Department under the Biden administration in April 2024, with officials saying that he “regularly led groups of violent extremists” in assaults on Palestinian and Bedouin communities in the West Bank. He was also sanctioned by the European Union around the same time.

President Donald Trump lifted the U.S. sanction on Levi and other Israeli settlers and settler groups on his first day in office this January. Even before that, however, the Biden administration’s and other international authorities’ sanctions on Israeli settlers were criticized as weak and ineffective, with Israeli leaders who are backing and often funding settler groups going unpunished.

In fact, Levi told The Associated Press last June that he only felt the financial impact of sanctions for a few weeks after banks froze his accounts. His community raised thousands of dollars for him, and Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a key architect of Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank, pledged to intervene to personally help take care of sanctioned settlers. The bank, which was supposed to freeze his assets, slowly lifted restrictions until he was able to access his money for whatever he wanted again.

“America thought it would weaken us, and in the end, they made us stronger,” Levi said at the time. Indeed, The Associated Press reported that local rights groups and settlers said that the sanctions only emboldened them.

This is just the latest settler attack on someone involved in making No Other Land. In March, just weeks after the documentary won an Oscar, an Israeli settler mob attacked and beat Palestinian filmmaker and activist Hamdan Ballal, in his home village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta. While he was in an ambulance to be treated for his injuries, Israeli soldiers invaded the vehicle and took him into custody. He emerged, bloody and bruised, saying that he has faced increased violence from settlers due to his role in making the film.

Israeli settlers and soldiers have intensified their violence in Masafer Yatta since the film won an Oscar, and Israeli authorities have now ordered a large swath of the region to be turned into a live-fire zone — effectively ordering the forcible transfer of over 1,200 Palestinians living in the region. Palestinians in the region report that Israel’s demolition of their homes is being fast-tracked by authorities.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Sharon Zhang.

The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji has sharply criticised the Fiji government’s stance over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, saying it “starkly contrasts” with the United Nations and international community’s condemnation as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace.

In a statement today, the NGO Coalition said that the way the government was responding to the genocide and war crimes in Gaza would set a precedent for how it would deal with crises and conflict in future.

It would be a marker for human rights responses both at home and the rest of the world.

• READ MORE: Macron says France will recognise Palestinian state in September
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“We are now seeing whether our country will be a force that works to uphold human rights and international law, or one that tramples on them whenever convenient,” the statement said.

“Fiji’s position on the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestinians starkly contrasts with the values of justice, freedom, and international law that the Fijian people hold dear.

“The genocide and colonial occupation have been widely recognised by the international community, including the United Nations, as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace and the self-determination of the Palestinian people.”

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would formally recognise the state of Palestine — the first of G7 countries to do so — at the UN general Assembly in September.

142 countries recognise Palestine
At least 142 countries out of the 193 members of the UN currently recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state, including European Union members Norway, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia.

However, several powerful Western countries have refused to do so, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

At the UN this week, Saudi Arabia and France opened a three-day conference with the goal of recognising Palestinian statehood as part of a peaceful settlement to end the war in Gaza.

Last year, Fiji’s coalition government submitted a written statement in support of the Israeli genocidal occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, noted the NGO coalition.

Last month, Fiji’s coalition government again voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that demanded an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Also recently, the Fiji government approved the allocation of $1.12 million to establish an embassy “in the genocidal terror state of Israel as Fijians grapple with urgent issues, including poverty, violence against women and girls, deteriorating water and health infrastructure, drug use, high rates of HIV, poor educational outcomes, climate change, and unfair wages for workers”.

Met with ‘indifference’
The NGO coalition said that it had made repeated requests to the Fiji government to “do the bare minimum and enforce the basic tenets of international law on Israel”.

“We have been calling upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes,” the statement said.

“We campaigned, we lobbied, we engaged, and we explained. We showed the evidence, pointed to the law, and asked our leaders to do the right thing.

“We’ve been met with nothing but indifference.”

Instead, said the NGO statement, Fiji leaders had met with Israeli government representatives and declared support for a country “committing the most heinous crimes” recognised in international law.

“Fijian leaders and the Fiji government should not be supporting Israel or setting up an embassy in Israel while Israel continues to bomb refugee tents, kill journalists and medics, and block the delivery of humanitarian aid to a population under relentless siege.

“No politician in Fiji can claim ignorance of what is happening.”

62,000 Palestinians killed
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war on Gaza, most of them women and children.

“Many more have been maimed, traumatised, and displaced. Starvation is being used by Israel as weapon to kill babies and children.

“Hospitals, churches, mosques,, refugee camps, schools, universities, residential neighbourhoods, water and food facilities have been destroyed.

“History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment.

“Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of always standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.”

Members of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights are Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Programme, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji.

Also, Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.

The NGO coalition said it stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

“Silence is not an option,” it added.

Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network said it supported this NGO coalition statement.

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

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story was originally published in our Dispatches newsletter; sign up to receive notes from our journalists.

In the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term, I spent a few weeks observing Chicago’s immigration court to get a sense of how things were changing. One afternoon in March, the case of a 27-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker caught my attention.

Albert Jesús Rodríguez Parra stared into the camera at his virtual bond hearing. He wore the orange shirt given to inmates at a jail in Laredo, Texas, and headphones to listen to the proceedings through an interpreter.

More than a year earlier, Rodríguez had been convicted of shoplifting in the Chicago suburbs. But since then he had seemed to get his life on track. He found a job at Wrigley Field, sent money home to his mom in Venezuela and went to the gym and church with his girlfriend. Then, in November, federal authorities detained him at his apartment on Chicago’s South Side and accused him of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

“Are any of your tattoos gang related?” his attorney asked at the hearing, going through the evidence laid out against him in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report. “No,” said Rodríguez, whose tattoos include an angel holding a gun, a wolf and a rose. At one point, he lifted his shirt to show his parents’ names inked across his chest.

He was asked about a TikTok video that shows him dancing to an audio clip of someone shouting, “Te va agarrar el Tren de Aragua,” which means, “The Tren de Aragua is going to get you,” followed by a dance beat. That audio clip has been shared some 60,000 times on TikTok — it’s popular among Venezuelans ridiculing the stereotype that everyone from their country is a gangster. Rodríguez looked incredulous at the thought that this was the evidence against him.

That day, the judge didn’t address the gang allegations. But she denied Rodríguez bond, citing the misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. She reminded him that his final hearing was on March 20, just 10 days away. If she granted him asylum, he’d be a free man and could continue his life in the U.S.

I told my editors and colleagues about what I’d heard and made plans to attend the next hearing. I saw the potential for the kind of complicated narrative story that I like: Here was a young immigrant who, yes, had come into the country illegally, but he had turned himself in to border authorities to seek asylum. Yes, he had a criminal record, but it was for a nonviolent offense. And, yes, he had tattoos, but so do the nice, white American moms in my book club. I was certain there are members of Tren de Aragua in the U.S., but if this was the kind of evidence the government had, I found it hard to believe it was an “invasion” as Trump claimed. I asked Rodríguez’s attorney for an interview and began requesting police and court records.

Five days later, on March 15, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, a country many of them had never even set foot in. Trump called them all terrorists and gang members. It would be a few days before the men’s names would be made public. Perhaps naively, it didn’t occur to me that Rodríguez might be in that group. Then I logged into his final hearing and heard his attorney say he didn’t know where the government had taken him. The lawyer sounded tired and defeated. Later, he would tell me he had barely slept, afraid that Rodríguez might turn up dead. At the hearing, he begged a government lawyer for information: “For his family’s sake, would you happen to know what country he was sent to?” She told him she didn’t know, either.

I was astonished. I am familiar with the history of authoritarian leaders disappearing people they don’t like in Latin America, the part of the world that my family comes from. I wanted to think that doesn’t happen in this country. But what I had just witnessed felt uncomfortably similar.

As soon as the hearing ended, I got on a call with my colleagues Mica Rosenberg and Perla Trevizo, both of whom cover immigration and had recently written about how the U.S. government had sent other Venezuelan men to Guantanamo. We talked about what we should do with what I’d just heard. Mica contacted a source in the federal government who confirmed, almost immediately, that Rodríguez was among the men that our country had sent to El Salvador.

The news suddenly felt more real and intimate to me. One of the men sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador now had a name and a face and a story that I had heard from his own mouth. I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

As a news organization, we decided to put significant resources into investigating who these men really are and what happened to them, bringing in many talented ProPublica journalists to help pull records, sift through social media accounts, analyze court data and find the men’s families. We teamed up with a group of Venezuelan journalists from the outlets Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News who were also starting to track down information about the men.

We spoke to the relatives and attorneys of more than 100 of the men and obtained internal government records that undercut the Trump administration’s claims that all the men are “monsters,” “sick criminals” and the “worst of the worst.” We also published a story about how, by and large, the men were not hiding from federal immigration authorities. They were in the system; many had open asylum cases like Rodríguez and were waiting for their day in court before they were taken away and imprisoned in Central America.

On July 18 — after I’d written the first draft of this note to you — we began to hear some chatter about a potential prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Venezuela. Later that same day, the men had been released. We’d been in the middle of working on a case-by-case accounting of the Venezuelan men who’d been held in El Salvador. Though they’d been released, documenting who they are and how they got caught up in this dragnet was still important, essential even, as was the impact of their incarceration.

The result is a database we published last week including profiles of 238 of the men Trump deported to a Salvadoran prison.

From the moment I heard about the men’s return to Venezuela, I thought about Rodríguez. He’d been on my mind since embarking on this project. I messaged with his mother for days as we waited for the men to be processed by the government of Nicolás Maduro and released to their families.

Finally, one morning last week, he went home. We spoke later that afternoon. He said he was relieved to be home with his family but felt traumatized. He told me he wants the world to know what happened to him in the Salvadoran prison — daily beatings, humiliation, psychological abuse. “There is no reason for what I went through,” he said. “I didn’t deserve that.”

The Salvadoran government has denied mistreating the Venezuelan prisoners.

We asked the Trump administration about its evidence against Rodríguez. This is the entirety of its statement: “Albert Jesús Rodriguez Parra is an illegal alien from Venezuela and Tren de Aragua gang member. He illegally crossed the border on April 22, 2023, under the Biden Administration.”

While Rodríguez was incarcerated in El Salvador and no one knew what would happen to him, the court kept delaying hearings for his asylum case. But after months of continuances, on Monday, Rodríguez logged into a virtual hearing from Venezuela. “Oh my gosh, I am so happy to see that,” said Judge Samia Naseem, clearly remembering what had happened in his case.

Rodríguez’s attorney said that his client had been tortured and abused in El Salvador. “I can’t even describe to this court what he went through,” he said. “He’s getting psychological help, and that's my priority.”

It was a brief hearing, perhaps five minutes. Rodríguez’s lawyer mentioned his involvement in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. The government lawyer said little, except to question whether Rodríguez was even allowed to appear virtually due to “security issues” in Venezuela.

Finally, the judge said she would administratively close the case while the litigation plays out. “If he should hopefully be able to come back to the U.S., we’ll calendar the case,” she said.

Naseem turned to Rodríguez, who was muted and looked serious. “You don’t have to worry about reappearing until this gets sorted out,” she told him. He nodded and soon logged off.

We plan to keep reporting on what happened and have another story coming soon about Rodríguez and the other men’s experiences inside the prison. Please reach out if you have information to share.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Melissa Sanchez.

Vietnam, the world’s second-largest exporter of coffee, is known for growing robusta beans. Earthier and more bitter than the arabica beans grown in Brazil, Colombia, and other coffee-growing regions near the Equator, robusta beans are often thought of as producing lower-quality coffee. 

In an effort to rebrand robusta, Mullin signed deals with coffee farming cooperatives in Vietnam and created smooth blends. Over the years, she helped a cohort of farmers convert their operations to organic. “We put in huge investments and were certified as the first organic specialty-grade coffee farms ever in Vietnam,” said the CEO and founder. In a few weeks, Copper Cow is planning to launch its first line of organic coffee at Whole Foods and Target.

But the second Trump administration has changed the calculus of her business. Mullin said she “was bullish” about her company’s prospects when President Donald Trump first took office, believing that Vietnam would likely be exempt from exorbitant tariffs since the president has many supporters in the coastal Southeast Asian country. Then, in April of this year, the White House announced a 46 percent tariff on goods from Vietnam. 

The shock left Mullin rethinking the very thesis she had set out to prove. “A big part of our mission is about how robusta beans, when treated better, can provide this really great cup of coffee at a lower price,” she said. “Once you put a 46 percent tariff on there, does this business model work anymore?”

Trump soon paused his country-specific tariffs for a few months, replacing them with a near-universal 10 percent tax. This month, Trump announced on social media that he would lower Vietnam’s eventual tariff from 46 to 20 percent — a sharp price hike that still worries Mullin. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to impose an astounding 50 percent tariff on goods from Brazil, the nation’s largest importer of coffee, starting August 1. 

“I joke with my partner that I feel like I’m in a macroeconomics class,” said Mullin. In lieu of raising its prices, Copper Cow, which sells directly to consumers as well as to retailers, has scrambled to cut costs by reconsidering its quarterly team get-togethers and slowing down its timeline for helping more farmers go organic. The price of coffee hit an all-time high earlier this year, a dramatic rise due in part to ongoing climate-fueled droughts in the global coffee belt. As the U.S. considers fueling a trade war with coffee-producing countries, “it just feels like such an insult to an injury,” said Mullin. “It’s like, let’s have an earthquake hit a place that is in the middle of a hurricane.”

Economists like to say that demand for coffee is relatively inelastic — drinkers are so attached to their daily caffeine fix that they keep buying it even when prices increase. As the Trump administration mounts its retaliatory trade agenda, that theory will be put to the test. Coffee growers, as well as the roasters and sellers that purchase them in the U.S., are now facing unforeseen geopolitical and economic challenges. “We have not seen tariffs of this magnitude before,” said David Ortega, a professor of food and economics policy at Michigan State University. “There’s no playbook for this.” 

Should Trump’s threatened tariffs go into effect next month, it will likely hurt consumers, as many businesses will pass on the costs by raising prices. But it could also have ripple effects on coffee farms, as companies may cut costs by pulling back on investments in environmentally-conscientious practices like organic or regenerative agriculture. “Our goal was always to slowly convert the rest of our products to certified organic,” said Mullin. “And we feel like that is not an option anymore because of the tariffs.”

Even if the tariffs do not go into effect in August, the ongoing economic uncertainty will likely impact coffee growers in Brazil, which provided 35 percent of America’s unroasted coffee supply as of 2023. As U.S. coffee companies navigate the Trump administration’s evolving trade policies, they are likely to seek out new, cheaper markets for coffee beans. “Suddenly, they become less attached to where they source their coffee from,” said João Brites, director of growth and innovation at HowGood, a data platform that helps food companies measure and reduce carbon emissions along their supply chain. 

The problem with that, according to Ortega, is that other countries in the coffee belt, such as Colombia, do not have the production capacity to match Brazil’s and meet U.S. demand for coffee. If the threat of punitive tariffs on Brazil kickstarts an increase in demand for coffee from other countries, that will likely raise prices. For coffee drinkers, “there are very few substitutes,” said Ortega.

These pressures on coffee farmers and buyers are coming after a period of worsening climate impacts. A majority of coffee grown in Brazil — about 60 percent — comes from smallholder farms, grown on about 25 or fewer acres of land. “The current reality they’re operating in is that they’re already very stretched,” particularly because of weather disruptions, said Brites. Coffee grows best in tropical climates, but in recent years unprecedented droughts in Brazil have stunted growers’ yields, forcing exporters to dip into and almost deplete their coffee reserves. Vietnam has been rocked by drought and heat waves — and though robusta beans need less water to grow than arabica beans, making them a relatively climate-resilient crop, growers have also seen their yields decline. (Mullin said she is seeing early signs of harvests rebounding this year.)

Brites speculated that U.S. companies buying from smallholder farms in Brazil may be able to pressure growers into selling their beans at lower prices, adding to the economic precarity that these growers face. “For a lot of these coffee growers, the U.S. is such a big market,” he said, adding that it would take time for them to find new buyers in other markets.

Growers themselves are worried. Mariana Veloso, a Brazilian coffee producer and exporter, said producers are facing logistical challenges — and anticipating more. “If we want to ship a coffee in the next month, we will probably not be able to,” said Veloso, remarking that sometimes cargo ships holding coffee sit at Brazilian ports for weeks before setting out. Shipping companies seem to be delaying shipments from Brazil, said Veloso, perhaps in anticipation of the looming tariffs.

In the U.S., not every coffee company sources from Brazil or Vietnam. But the Trump administration’s existing 10 percent across-the-board tariffs are still rattling the coffee business. “We source coffees from all around the world. So we’re not immune to anything,” said Kevin Hartley, founder and CEO of Cambio Roasters, an aluminum K-cup coffee brand. He added, “You know, 10 percent here and 30 percent there, that’s not trivial.”

Hartley added that one of the impacts of droughts on coffee growers is that younger farmers worried about the future are considering leaving the business. “In coffee farming families around the world, it’s a tough life and the current generation is showing reticence to take off where their parents began,” he said. 

Regardless of whether the U.S. imposes prohibitive tariffs on individual coffee-growing countries, climate change is already taking a toll on this workforce. “Everyone’s looking for a solution for this,” said Mullin, who believes robusta beans can offer a drought-resistant alternative to the ever-popular arabica beans. 

Copper Cow has even started experimenting with a lesser-known varietal of coffee beans called liberica, which requires even less water to grow than robusta beans. “And it’s delicious,” Mullin said. It’s an extremely labor-intensive crop because the coffee plant grows so tall, but one of the farmer cooperatives she works with is starting to plant them now, thinking the investment will be worth it as temperatures keep rising. 

This new era of environmental, economic, and geopolitical challenges has shaken coffee brands. “Everybody’s wondering, in 50 years, will there be much coffee anymore? People are trying to be really realistic about what that world is going to look like,” said Mullin. In the midst of that broader uncertainty, the impact of Trump’s tariffs is another question only time can answer.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change has sent coffee prices soaring. Trump’s tariffs will send them higher. on Jul 29, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

Mahi G’s song “Heatwave,” which was produced in collaboration with Greenpeace India, dropped in June, just as the country was reeling under soaring temperatures. Last year, more than 100 people died across India because of an extreme heatwave during the summer. Prolonged heat exposure can lead to heat strokes, a risk disproportionately borne by outdoor workers. 

In India, those workers typically occupy the lowest rungs of the social hierarchy. The country’s caste system divides people into four main groups based on birth. Those who are placed outside the system — referred to as Dalits — are often relegated to the most hazardous jobs. Members of tribes or indigenous communities — referred to as Adivasis — also fall outside this structure and face systemic discrimination. Successive governments in India have evicted Adivasis from their ancestral lands to clear the way for exploiting mineral resources.

Mahi G’s music primarily speaks to the experiences of Dalits and Adivasis. She belongs to the Mahadev Koli tribe, a community found in the western state of Maharashtra, and lives in Mumbai. She has released 12 songs so far since she first began rapping in 2019.  Nearly half of them are about climate justice.

Growing up, the 28-year-old rapper witnessed her community struggle to access clean drinking water. “It always made me sad to see women walk long distances to fetch water,” she said. As an Adivasi woman, her drive to research and write about the environment comes from a deep, personal space, she said, and she chose to rap about sociopolitical issues because “you can talk about a big issue in a short, powerful, and aggressive way.”

India’s mainstream hip-hop scene has been mostly dominated by upper-caste male artists, primarily from Maharashtra and Punjab, a northwestern state. But in recent years, a handful of Dalit and Adivasi rappers have broken into the mainstream, using their music to challenge caste hierarchies, critique government policies, and spotlight social injustices.

Among them is Arivu, who shot to fame with his track “Anti-national,” a bold critique of the Indian government led by Narendra Modi, a right-wing Hindu nationalist, whose party and supporters routinely label dissenting voices as anti-national. In another song, Arivu lays bare feudalism and its contemporary manifestations while paying homage to his grandmother, a landless labourer in a tea plantation. The video has garnered more than half a billion views on YouTube.

Mahi G’s videos haven’t had that level of reach, but she draws support from activists and nongovernmental groups working on environmental and social justice causes. Her videos typically garner tens of thousands of views, and one song about Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a social reformer and architect of the Indian constitution, has more than 300,000 views. But the music hasn’t made much money so far. She hasn’t monetized her YouTube channel and is instead funding her music through her salary as an engineer at a private company. 

“Heatwave” is not the first time Mahi G has used her music to talk about climate justice. In her first rap song, “Jungle Cha Raja” — King of the Jungle — Mahi G explored the relationship between tribal communities and the natural environment, highlighting how they have long worked to protect it. In another song, “Vikasacha Khul,” she raps about the cost of development — how the building of roads, skyscrapers, and shopping malls has come at the expense of forests, lakes, and clean air.

Rappers like Mahi G and Arivu are often making music that challenges the political establishment at great risk to themselves. In 2023, Umesh Khade and Raj Mungase, two rappers from Maharashtra, were jailed after the right-wing political party ruling the state alleged they had made defamatory statements about their politicians. Despite these concerns and looming threats, Mahi G said the response to her songs keeps her going. Her music has compelled people to think about the environment and has helped them realize that they don’t want industrialization that destroys forests, she said. Even though her community members, who are often new to rap, do not understand her music, she said they have appreciated her work to spotlight climate change, which has directly affected their lives. Shifting rainfall patterns and depleting water resources have taken a toll on the Mahadev Koli tribe’s ability to sustain themselves.

Asim Siddiqui, who teaches at Azim Premji University in southern India’s Bengaluru city and works on the educational and cultural politics of youth, said that rappers from lower-caste and indigenous communities who have been historically marginalised grow up in contexts where they are intimately connected to their social and natural environment. Ecological destruction or social injustice has a personal impact on their emotions and identity. “It becomes obvious for them to bring out these themes in their musical expression,” he said.

Siddiqui said that singing was historically stigmatised in India as a degrading occupation and, therefore, confined to lower-caste communities. But once India gained independence from British rule and embarked on its nation-building project, “some of the music traditions got classicized and later commodified, which excluded singers and performers from Dalit and Adivasi communities,” Siddiqui said. Hip-hop provided access to marginalised communities across the world, he added,  as it enabled young rappers like Mahi G to tell their stories through music.

For Mahi G, music is a platform for activism. “My rap focuses on protecting natural resources,” she said. “If you can’t plant a tree, at least don’t cut one down.” These basic principles form the core of her message.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This Indian rapper is spitting bars about climate justice, caste, and Indigenous rights on Jul 29, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Haziq Qadri.

Last week, the UN’s highest court issued a stinging ruling that countries have a legal obligation to limit climate change and provide restitution for harm caused, giving legal force to an idea that was hatched in a classroom in Port Vila. This is how a group of young students from Vanuatu changed the face of international law.

SPECIAL REPORT: By Jamie Tahana for RNZ Pacific

Vishal Prasad admitted to being nervous as he stood outside the imposing palace in the Hague, with its towering brick facade, marble interiors and crystal chandeliers.

It had taken more than six years of work to get here, where he was about to hear a decision he said could throw a “lifeline” to his home islands.

The Peace Palace, the home of the International Court of Justice, could not feel further from the Pacific.

• READ MORE: Other climate justice reports

Yet it was here in this Dutch city that Prasad and a small group of Pacific islanders in their bright shirts and shell necklaces last week gathered before the UN’s top court to witness an opinion they had dreamt up when they were at university in 2019 and managed to convince the world’s governments to pursue.

“We’re here to be heard,” said Siosiua Veikune, who was one of those students, as he waited on the grass verge outside the court’s gates. “Everyone has been waiting for this moment, it’s been six years of campaigning.”

What they wanted to hear was that more than a moral obligation, addressing climate change was also a legal one. That countries could be held responsible for their greenhouse gas emissions — both contemporary and historic — and that they could be penalised for their failure to act.

“For me personally, [I want] clarity on the rights of future generations,” Veikune said. “What rights are owed to future generations? Frontline communities have demanded justice again and again, and this is another step towards that justice.”

And they won.

The court’s president, Judge Yuji Iwasawa, took more than two hours to deliver an unusually stinging advisory opinion from the normally restrained court, going through the minutiae of legal arguments before delivering a unanimous ruling which largely fell on the side of Pacific states.

“The protection of the environment is a precondition for the enjoyment of human rights,” he said, adding that sea-level rise, desertification, drought and natural disasters “may significantly impair certain human rights, including the right to life”.

After the opinion, the victorious students and lawyers spilled out of the palace alongside Vanuatu’s Climate Minister, Ralph Regenvanu. Their faces were beaming, if not a little shellshocked.

“The world’s smallest countries have made history,” Prasad told the world’s media from the palace’s front steps. “The ICJ’s decision brings us closer to a world where governments can no longer turn a blind eye to their legal responsibilities”.

“Young people around the world stepped up, not only as witnesses to injustice, but as architects of change”.

A classroom exercise
It was 2019 when a group of law students at the University of the South Pacific’s campus in Port Vila, the harbourside capital of Vanuatu, were set a challenge in their tutorial. They had been learning about international law and, in groups, were tasked with finding ways it could address climate change.

It was a particularly acute question in Vanuatu, one of the countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis. Many of the students’ teenage years had been defined by Cyclone Pam, the category five storm that ripped through much of the country in 2015 with winds in excess of 250km/h.

It destroyed entire villages, wiped out swathes of infrastructure and crippled the country’s crops and water supplies. The storm was so significant that thousands of kilometres away, in Tuvalu, the waves it whipped up displaced 45 percent of the country’s population and washed away an entire islet.

Cyclone Pam was meant to be a once-in-a-generation storm, but Vanuatu has been struck by five more category five cyclones since then.

Among many of the students, there was a frustration that no one beyond their borders seemed to care particularly much, recalled Belyndar Rikimani, a student from Solomon Islands who was at USP in 2019. She saw it as obscene that the communities with the smallest carbon footprint were paying the steepest price for a crisis they had almost no hand in creating.

Each year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was releasing a new avalanche of data that painted an increasingly grim prognosis for the Pacific. But, Rikimani said, the people didn’t need reams of paper to tell them that, for they were already acutely aware.

On her home island of Malaita, coastal villages were being inundated with every storm, the schools of fish on which they relied were migrating further away, and crops were increasingly failing.

“We would go by the sea shore and see people’s graves had been taken out,” Rikimani recalled. “The ground they use to garden their food in, it is no longer as fertile as it has once been because of the changes in weather.”

The mechanism used by the world to address climate change is largely based around a UN framework of voluntary agreements and summits — known as COP — where countries thrash out goals they often fail to meet. But it was seen as impotent by small island states in the Pacific and the Caribbean, who accused the system of being hijacked by vested interests set on hindering any drastic cuts to emissions.

So, the students argued, what if there was a way to push back? To add some teeth to the international process and move the climate discussion beyond agreements and adaptation to those of equity and justice? To give small countries a means to nudge those seen to be dragging their heels.

“From the beginning we were aware of the failure of the climate system or climate regime and how it works,” Prasad, who in 2019 was studying at the USP campus in Fiji’s capital, Suva, told me.

“This was known to us. Obviously there needs to be something else. Why should the law be silent on this?”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the main court for international law. It adjudicates disputes between nations and issues advisory opinions on big cross-border legal issues. So, the students wondered, could an advisory opinion help? What did international law have to say about climate change?

Unlike most students, who would leave such discussions in the classroom, they decided to find out. But the ICJ does not hear cases from groups or individuals; they would have to convince a government to pursue the challenge.

Together, they wrote to various Pacific governments hoping to discuss the idea. It was ambitious, they conceded, but in one of the regions most threatened by rising seas and intensifying storms, they hoped there would at least be some interest.

But rallying enough students to join their cause was the first hurdle.

“There was a lot of doubts from the beginning,” Rikimani said. “We were trying to get the students who could, you know, be a part of the movement. And it was hard, it was too big, too grand.”

In the end, 27 people gathered to form the genesis of a new organisation: Pacific Island Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC).

A couple of weeks went by before a response popped up in their inboxes. The government of Vanuatu was intrigued. Ralph Regenvanu, who was at that time the foreign minister, asked the students if they would like to swing by for a meeting.

“I still remember when [the] group came into my office to discuss this. And I felt solidarity with them,” Regenvanu recalled last week.

“I could empathise with where they were, what they were doing, what they were feeling. So it was almost like the time had come to actually, okay, let’s do something about it.”

The students — “dressed to the nines,” as Regenvanu recalled — gave a presentation on what they hoped to achieve. Regenvanu was convinced. Not long after the wider Vanuatu government was, too. Now it was time for them to convince other countries.

“It was just a matter of the huge diplomatic effort that needed to be done,” Regenvanu said. “We had Odi Tevi, our ambassador in New York, who did a remarkable job with his team. And the strategy we employed to get a core group of countries from all over the world to be with us.

“It’s interesting that, you know, some of the most important achievements of the international community originated in the Pacific,” Regenvanu said, citing efforts in the 20th century to ban nuclear testing, or support decolonisation.

“We have this unique geographic and historic position that makes us able to, as small states, have a voice that’s much louder, I think. And you saw that again in this case, that it’s the Pacific once again taking the lead to do something that is of benefit to the whole world.”

What Vanuatu needed to take the case to the ICJ was to garner a majority of the UN General Assembly — that is, a majority of every country in the world — to vote to ask the court to answer a question.

To rally support, they decided to start close to home.

Hope and disappointment
The students set their sights on the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s pre-eminent political group, which that year was holding its annual leaders’ summit in Tuvalu. A smattering of atolls along the equator which, in recent years, has become a reluctant poster child for the perils of climate change.

Tuvalu had hoped world leaders on Funafuti would see a coastline being eaten by the ocean, evidence of where the sea washes across the entire island at king tide, or saltwater bubbles up into gardens to kill crops, and that it would convince the world that time was running out.

But the 2019 Forum was a disaster. Pacific countries had pushed for a strong commitment from the region’s leaders at their retreat, but it nearly broke down when Australia’s government refused to budge on certain red lines. The then-prime minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, accused Australia and New Zealand of neo-colonialism, questioning their very role in the Forum.

“That was disappointing,” Prasad said. “The first push was, okay, let’s put it at the forum and ask leaders to endorse this idea and then they take it forward. It was put on the agenda but the leaders did not endorse it; they ‘noted’ it. The language is ‘noted’, so it didn’t go ahead.”

Another disappointment came a few months later, when Rikimani and another of the students, Solomon Yeo, travelled to Spain for the annual COP meeting, the UN process where the world’s countries agree their next targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

But small island countries left angry after a small bloc derailed any progress, despite massive protests.

That was an eye-opening two weeks in Madrid for Rikimani, whose initial scepticism of the system had been validated.

“It was disappointing when there’s nothing that’s been done. There is very little outcome that actually, you know, safeguards the future of the Pacific,” she said.

“But for us, it was the COP where there was interest being showed by various young leaders from around the world, seeing that this campaign could actually bring light to these climate negotiations.”

By now, Regenvanu said, that frustration was boiling over and more countries were siding with their campaign. By the end of 2019, that included some major countries from Europe and Asia, which brought financial and diplomatic heft. Other small-island countries from Africa and the Caribbean had also joined.

“Many of the Pacific states had never appeared before the ICJ before. So [we were] doing write shops with legal teams from different countries,” he said.

“We did write shops in Latin America, in the Caribbean, in the Pacific, in Africa, getting people just to be there at the court to present their stories, and then of course trying to coordinate.”

Meanwhile, Prasad was trying to spread word elsewhere. The hardest part, he said, was making it relevant to the people.

International law, The Hague, the Paris Agreement and other bureaucratic frameworks were nebulous and tedious. How could this possibly help the fisherman on Banaba struggling to haul in a catch?

They spent time travelling to villages and islands, sipping kava shells and sharing meals, weaving a testimony of Indigenous stories and knowledge.

In Fiji, he said, the word for land is vanua, which is also the word for life.

“It’s the source of your identity, the source of your culture. It’s this connection that the land provides the connection with the past, with the ancestors, and with a way of life and a way of doing things.”

He travelled to the village of Vunidologa where, in 2014, its people faced the rupture of having to leave their ancestral lands, as the sea had marched in too far. In the months leading up to the relocation, they held prayer circles and fasted. When the day came, the elders wailed as they made an about two kilometre move inland.

“That’s the element of injustice there. It touches on this whole idea of self-determination that was argued very strongly at the ICJ, that people’s right to self-determination is completely taken away from them because of climate change,” Prasad said.

“Some have even called it a new face of colonialism. And that’s not fair and that cannot stand in 2025.”

Preparing the case
If 2019 was the year of building momentum, then a significant hurdle came in 2020, when the coronavirus shuttered much of the world. COP summits were delayed and the Pacific Islands Forum postponed. The borders of the Pacific were sealed for as long as two years.

But the students kept finding ways to gather their body of evidence.

“Everything went online, we gathered young people who would be able to take this idea forward in their own countries,” Prasad said.

On the diplomatic front, Vanuatu kept plugging away to rally countries so that by the time the Forum leaders met again — in 2022 — they were ready to ask for support again.

“It was in Fiji and we were so worried about the Australia and New Zealand presence at the Forum because we wanted an endorsement so that it would send a signal to all the other countries: ‘the Pacific’s on board, let’s get the others’,” Prasad recalled.

“We were very worried about Australia, but it was more like if Australia declines to support then the whole process falls, and we thought New Zealand might also follow.”

They didn’t. In an about-turn, Australia was now fully behind the campaign for an advisory opinion, and the New Zealand government was by now helping out too. By the end of 2022, several European powers were also involved.

Attention now turned to developing what question they wanted to actually ask the international court. And how would they write it in such a way that the majority of the world’s governments would back it.

“That was the process where it was make and break really to get the best outcome we could,” said Regenvanu.

“In the end we got a question that was like 90 percent as good as we wanted and that was very important to get that and that was a very difficult process.”

By December 2022, Vanuatu announced that it would ask the UN General Assembly to ask the International Court of Justice to weigh what, exactly, international law requires states to do about climate change, and what the consequences should be for states that harm the climate through actions or omissions.

More lobbying followed and then, in March 2023, it came to a vote and the result was unanimous. The UN assembly in New York erupted in cheers at a rare sign of consensus.

“All countries were on board,” said Regenvanu. “Even those countries that opposed it [we] were able to talk to them so they didn’t oppose it publicly.”

They were off to The Hague.

A tense wait
Late last year, the court held two weeks of hearings in which countries put forth their arguments. Julian Aguon, a Chamorro lawyer from Guam who was one of the lead counsel, told the court that “these testimonies unequivocally demonstrate that climate change has already caused grievous violations of the right to self-determination of peoples across the subregion.”

Over its deliberations, the court heard from more than 100 countries and international organisations hoping to influence its opinion, the highest level of participation in the court’s history. That included the governments of low-lying islands and atolls, which were hoping the court would provide a yardstick by which to measure other countries’ actions.

They argued that climate change threatened fundamental human rights — such as life, liberty, health, and a clean environment — as well as other international laws like those of the sea, and those of self-determination.

In their testimonies, high-emitting Western countries, including Australia, the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia maintained that the current system was enough.

It’s been a tense and nervous wait for the court’s answer, but they finally got it last Wednesday.

“We were pleasantly surprised by the strength of the decision,” Regenvanu said. “The fact that it was unanimous, we weren’t expecting that.”

The court said states had clear obligations under international law, and that countries — and, by extension, individuals and companies within those countries — were required to curb emissions. It also said the environment and human rights obligations set out in international law did indeed apply to climate change, and that countries had a right to pursue restitution for loss and damage.

The opinion is legally non-binding. But even so, it carries legal and political weight.

Individuals and groups could bring lawsuits against their own countries for failing to comply with the court’s opinion, and states could also return to the ICJ to hold each other to account, something Regenvanu said Vanuatu wasn’t ruling out. But, ultimately, he hoped it wouldn’t reach that point, and the advisory opinion would be seen as a wake-up call.

“We can call upon this advisory opinion in all our negotiations, particularly when countries say they can only do so much,” Regenvanu said. “They have said very clearly [that] all states have an obligation to do everything within their means according to the best available science.

“It’s really up to all countries of the world — in good faith — to take this on, realise that these are the legal obligations under custom law. That’s very clear. There’s no denying that anymore.

“And then discharge your legal obligations. If you are in breach, fix the breach, acknowledge that you have caused harm. Help to set it right. And also don’t do it again.”

Vishal Prasad still hadn’t quite processed the whole thing by the time we met again the next morning. In shorts, t-shirt, and jandals, he cut a much more relaxed figure as he reclined on a couch sipping a mug of coffee. His phone had been buzzing non-stop with messages from around the world.

“Oh, it definitely does not feel real. I don’t think it’s settled in,” he said. “I got, like, a flood of messages, well wishes. People say, ‘you guys have changed the world’. I think it’s gonna take a while.”

He was under no illusions that there was a long road ahead. The court’s advisory came at a time when international law and multilateralism was under particular strain.

When the urgency of the climate debate from a few years ago appears to have given way to a new enthusiasm for fossil fuel in some countries. He had no doubt the Pacific would continue to lead those battles.

“People have been messaging me that across the group chats they’re in, there’s this renewed sense of courage, strength and determination to do something because of what the ICJ has said,” he said.

“I’ve just been responding to messages and just saying thanks to people and just talking to them and I think it’s amazing to see that it’s been able to cause such a shift in the climate movement.”

Watching the advisory opinion being read out at 3am in Honiara was Belyndar Rikimani, hunched over a live stream in the dead of the night.

“What’s very special about this campaign is that it didn’t start with government experts, climate experts or policy experts. It started with students.

“And these law students are not from Harvard or Cambridge or all those big universities, but they are students from the Pacific that have seen the first-hand effects of climate change. It started with students who have the heart to see change for our islands and for our people.”

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.

By Dionisia Tabureguci in Suva

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

Laurie van der Burg, Oil Change International Global Public Finance Manager, said:

“The EU has just fallen into another dangerous fossil fuel dependency trap. Spending $250 billion a year on U.S. energy purchases, mostly oil and gas, is not just a bad deal for energy security, affordability, the climate and communities, it is also completely unnecessary. Even as it moves away from Russian LNG, the EU’s current gas supply contracts are sufficient to meet declining demand under the EU’s own Fitfor55 climate policies package.

“Increasing Europe’s imports of U.S. LNG is a disaster for our climate. Our recent analysis of five planned U.S. LNG projects finds that every one would worsen the climate crisis, and that further investment in U.S. LNG is incompatible with a liveable climate.

“Over 70,000 people signed a petition asking the EU to not just end reliance on Russian gas, but also break free from U.S. gas and double down on a fair and green future instead. Instead of pouring billions into an untrustworthy regime and investing in energy products that poison communities’ air and water and risks the habitability of our climate, the EU should use that money on renewables, energy efficiency programs, and paying the climate finance it owes to the Global South.”

Enrico Donda, Campaigner at Food and Water Action Europe, said:

"As part of yesterday’s EU-U.S. trade deal, the EU has pledged $750 billion, over three years, to, among other things, increase energy imports—even though gas demand is actually falling across Europe and this move contradicts its own climate commitments under the Paris Agreement.

“While the deal is presented as a way to enhance energy security and reduce reliance on Russian fossil fuels, it effectively locks Europe into decades of continued gas dependency. At a time when we should be ramping up renewables, improving energy efficiency, and cutting gas use, the EU is instead pouring billions into fossil fuel infrastructure that risks becoming stranded assets. This feels like a concession to fossil fuel interests and short-term politics. What we truly need is to phase out fossil gas now.”

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

While previous efforts to finalize a global treaty on plastic pollution have stalled, a majority of ambitious countries continue to push for progress, with only a small minority hindering momentum. As a result, the question of whether a strong and effective treaty can be achieved through formal consensus alone is up for debate, and it is expected that alternative pathways to deliver a meaningful outcome will be part of the upcoming negotiations.

“The speed at which the treaty went from conception to near completion is exactly what the planet needed, but it was never going to be without challenges,” said Erin Simon, Vice President and Head of Plastic Waste & Business, World Wildlife Fund. “As we approach the final stretch, negotiators must remember why we’re here. Our planet is overwhelmed by plastic waste, and it’s impacting everyone and everything that calls this planet home. At the start of these negotiations, the global community collectively agreed enough was enough, now is the moment to come together to deliver a path forward.”

At this point, the negotiations are well into overtime and every day that goes by, another 30,000 tonnes of plastic pours into our oceans. Failure to conclude a strong treaty at INC- 5.2 will only make the job of addressing this crisis more difficult, costly and dangerous for people all around the world. While the cost of not acting is grave, the potential benefits of meaningful action are plentiful. In the US and around the world a strong global plastic treaty could help create jobs, boost economic competitiveness, lower taxpayer costs, curb pollution and improve human and environmental health outcomes.

The global community must leave Geneva with a treaty built on specific binding rules supported by the majority of countries to be able to effectively tackle global plastic pollution. This means a treaty which includes global bans on the most harmful plastic products and chemicals; global product design requirements to enable a non-toxic circular economy; financial and technical support for developing countries to ensure effective implementation and mechanisms to strengthen and adapt the treaty over time.

“The path forward won’t be easy but it’s time to prioritize the key points where we can align globally and deliver a treaty that will protect the health of people and our planet well into the future,” added Simon.

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

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Last week, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the murder and kidnapping of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old New York boy who disappeared in 1979 in one of the most famous missing child cases in U.S. history.

The three-judge panel ruled that a trial court judge had given jurors “manifestly inaccurate” guidance regarding a confession Hernandez made before he had been advised of his Miranda rights. Jurors asked whether, if they decided the first confession was involuntary, that meant they should disregard two videotaped confessions that came afterward.

The trial judge said “the answer is no” and offered no further explanation.

The appellate judges, in their opinion, said that by doing so, “the state trial court contradicted clearly established federal law.” They threw out Hernandez’s conviction and ordered that he be released or retried. He is now 64 years old and has served 13 years of a 25-years-to-life sentence in a case that has haunted New York City for decades.

The body of the 51-page decision echoed stories published by ProPublica starting in 2013, before Hernandez was convicted, that raised questions about the veracity and legality of his confessions.

We reported that Hernandez met many of the criteria of a person prone to making false confessions, a growing phenomenon and leading cause of wrongful conviction. We also discovered that Hernandez’s statements to law enforcement and others over the years were inconsistent and did not match the known facts of the case.

On the morning of May 29, 1979, Patz was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop two blocks away and then vanished. His disappearance ignited national concern around missing children, as he became one of the first “milk carton kids” and his image was plastered across New York City.

A massive search ensued, and law enforcement spent thousands of hours looking for him: Divers plunged into the East River searching for his remains following a tip from a psychic. Leads were chased as far as Israel. But no arrests were made. No charges brought.

In 2012, New York police and the FBI suddenly and very visibly took action on another lead, digging up the basement of a workshop near the Patz family home used by a carpenter who knew Etan and was briefly considered a suspect.

Nothing came of the dig, but the surge of media attention prompted one of Hernandez’s relatives to call police with a tip about rumors that he had a role in the disappearance of Patz.

New York police officers arrived at Hernandez’s home in New Jersey on the morning of May 23, 2012, and brought him to a local prosecutor’s office to question him. In the ensuing hours, Hernandez asked several times to go home, said the officers were trying to trick him, sobbed, clutched at his stomach, lay on the floor in a fetal position, had a fentanyl patch placed on his chest to treat his chronic pain, and mentioned his mental illness diagnoses. After more than six hours, he told officers that he “did it.”

He said he offered Patz a soda to lure him down into the basement of a bodega where he was working. He said he choked the boy, placed the body in a garbage bag, put the bag in a box and left it around the corner in broad daylight.

It wasn’t until after that confession that the officers read Hernandez his rights. They then had him repeat his statement in two video-recorded interviews over the next 24 hours. The stories he told contained several inconsistencies.

The federal court found that the trial court judge’s instruction to the jury about the confessions was “manifestly inaccurate,” that the jury should have been given more thorough instructions and that it could in fact disregard the recorded confessions.

The jury, which had asked about the un-Mirandized confession on the second of nine days of deliberations, was “clearly grappling with what weight, if any, to give to the confessions,” the appeals court wrote.

ProPublica covered the early phases of the case against Hernandez extensively, interviewing the people to whom he supposedly confessed over the years and speaking with a variety of legal and psychological experts about how police tactics can induce false confessions.

We found early on that Hernandez’s previous claims of having harmed a child not only conflicted with each other but bore little resemblance to the details of his confession to police. Once, for example, he said that he had killed a Black child. Patz was white.

We also learned that the bodega Hernandez was working out of had become a kind of police hub for the officers searching for Patz. Hernandez said in one of his confessions that he tossed the boy’s book bag behind a refrigerator there. It was never found.

Experts told us that a handful of factors are often at play in producing false confessions and that Hernandez’s situation contained many of them: He had low IQ, had a history of mental illness, and confessed to a high-profile crime where many of the details were widely known over the course of an intense, long interrogation.

The judges, in their decision, took note of many of these same characteristics, which, in their view, made it all the more important for the jury to have proper instructions to evaluate the confessions.

ProPublica also highlighted how the trial judge, Maxwell Wiley, held a hearing early in the proceedings to determine for himself whether Hernandez was properly informed of his rights and if he had the capacity to meaningfully waive them. He decided that the confession could be used. Later, Wiley, a former Manhattan prosecutor, limited the questions that could be asked about it and kept some subsequent hearings on the matter secret, drawing fire from several news organizations. Wiley, who is now retired, did not respond to calls for comment.

In an email, Cyrus Vance Jr., who handled the case against Hernandez as Manhattan district attorney, said it was “exceptionally challenging given the passage of time but also very strong.”

He said the recent decision came as a surprise, as other appellate courts had reviewed and sustained the confession and verdict.

“Clearly, the jury heard substantial expert testimony from both the prosecution and the defense, and considered both and the legal instructions by the court during deliberations and before the verdict,” he said, adding that he continues to believe Hernandez is guilty and that his “thoughts are with the Patz family and with Etan.”

Now Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg, will have to decide whether to retry Hernandez for the third time. The first of his two trials ended in a hung jury.

In a statement from Bragg’s office, a spokesperson said only: “We are reviewing the decision.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Joaquin Sapien.

Support for Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians has become a critical political dividing line, not just in the United States, but in countries around the globe. At a recent pro-Donald Trump rally in São Paulo, Brazil, for instance, a protester waving an Israeli flag fought with a man in a Palestinian shirt. In this on-the-ground report, Brazil-based journalist Michael Fox shows how Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is playing out in South America’s largest country.

Additional resources:

• Michael Fox, Brazil on Fire podcast

Filming / Post-Production: Michael Fox

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Incarcerated people in the US are routinely forced to work for low pay or no pay, while state governments are saving billions of dollars—and private corporations are making billions of dollars—exploiting the slave labor of prisoners. And yet, incarcerated workers have been largely excluded from the ranks of workers the public in general, and organized labor specifically, cares about. What will it take for unions and union members to embrace incarcerated workers as part of the labor movement? In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa explores the history of labor exploitation and labor organizing in America’s prison system.

Guests:

• Katherine Passley is Co-Executive Director of Beyond the Bars, a worker center in South Florida building the social and economic power of workers with criminal records and their families. Passley was named the 2025 Labor Organizer of the Year by In These Times magazine.
• JoeBill Muñoz is an independent Mexican-American documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, video editor, and journalist. Muñoz is the director and producer of The Strike (Hot Docs 2024).
• Bobby Dellelo spent 40 years of his life in prison.  While in prison he earned a BA in sociology, founded the AIDS Education Program, ran the library, and was the president of the National Prisoners Rights Association, the subject of a recently released book, When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story In the Movement for Prison Abolition.
• Kim Kelly is a freelance journalist and author based in Philadelphia, PA. She is a labor writer for In These Times, a labor columnist at Teen Vogue and Fast Company, and regularly contributes to many other publications. Her first book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, is now available from One Signal/​Simon & Schuster.

Producer / Videographer / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Mansa Musa.

Tribes can issue emergency declarations requests to open up help from regional and federal partners, typically 24 hours after the event. When help is authorized to arrive, emergency management systems tend to move slowly and may be staffed with volunteers juggling multiple roles in a new command to get aid directly to people. To help you prepare and stay safe, Grist has put together a toolkit to outline what Native people and their tribal governments should do to receive aid when natural disasters hit.

Jump to:

↓ How to find accurate information
↓ Preparing for a disaster
↓ How disaster response works for tribes
↓ Finding shelter and staying safe

How to find accurate information

Many people find out about disasters in their area via social media. But it’s important to make sure the information you’re receiving is correct. Below is a list of reliable sources to check for emergency alerts, updates, and more.

Your local emergency manager: This year, New Mexico and Arizona joined three other states (California, Colorado, and Washington) to create laws that establish “Feather Alerts” — public safety operations that many consider Native versions of AMBER alerts. This requires multiple jurisdictions to work together with preparedness in mind for when large-scale emergencies need to alert every cell phone in a region. Call a local nonemergency line and ask if your tribe has an emergency management department that operates police, fire, or hospital services. A simple call or visit to any tribal administration office can also help confirm if this is the case. Many tribal nations apply for federal or state grants in collaboration with other local governments.

From there, ask if you can sign up for any text alerts, emails, or an automated phone call service. For example, Navajo Nation has a text service: Text “NavajoNation” to 888-777. (These alerts can also be useful to learn about road closures, ceremonial events, and weather outside of a disaster.) 

Some alerts go to specific ZIP codes, or to people who receive tribal benefits like housing or senior services. Schools opt-in parents for campus alerts at both tribally run schools and campuses run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (which can be another resource to get alerts).  Emergency managers are responsible for communicating with the public about disasters, managing rescue and response efforts, and coordinating among different agencies. They usually have an SMS-based emergency alert system, so sign up for those texts now. Many emergency management agencies are active on Facebook, so check there for updates, like livestreamed press conferences that give operational status updates and share resources for shelter and other aid.

If you’re having trouble finding your local department, you can search for your state or territory. We also suggest typing your city or county name followed by “emergency management” into Google. In larger cities, it’s often a separate agency; in smaller communities, fire chiefs or sheriff’s offices may manage emergency response and alerts.

National Weather Service: This agency, also called NWS, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and offers information and updates on everything from wildfires to hurricanes to air quality. You can enter your ZIP code on weather.gov and customize your homepage to get the most updated weather information and receive alerts for a variety of weather conditions. The NWS also has regional and local branches where you can sign up for SMS alerts. Local alerts in multiple languages are available in some areas.

If you’re in a rural area or somewhere that isn’t highlighted on the agency’s maps, keep an eye out for local alerts and evacuation orders. NWS may not have as much information ahead of time in these areas because there often aren’t as many weather-monitoring stations.

Read more: How to get reliable information before and during a disaster

Local news: The local television news and social media accounts from verified news sources will have live updates during and after a disaster. Meteorologists on your local news station use NWS weather data. Follow your local newspaper and television station on Facebook or other social media, or check their websites regularly. If you don’t have cable, these stations often livestream online for free during severe weather. 

Weather stations and apps: The Weather Channel, Accuweather, Apple Weather, and Google, which all rely on NWS weather data, will have information on major storms and other extreme weather events. That may not be the case for smaller-scale weather events, and you shouldn’t rely on these apps to tell you if you need to evacuate or move to higher ground. Instead, check your local news broadcast on television or radio.

Read more: What disasters are and how they’re officially declared

Tribes with police or fire agencies must have emergency management plans in place and are another resource for information on a tribe’s response plan. Disasters often bring first responders from elsewhere; checking in with the ones who serve the community are going to be the most useful on-the-ground resource for families with limited access to transportation or technology like the internet or cell phones.

Preparing for a disaster

As you prepare for a disaster, it’s important to have an emergency kit ready in case you lose power or need to leave your home. These can often be expensive to create, so contact your local disaster aid organizations, houses of worship, tribal leaders, or charities to see if there are free or affordable kits available — or buy one or two items every time you’re at the grocery store. 

Here are some of the most important things to have in your kit. You can read more details about how to prepare safely here. 

• Water (1 gallon per person per day for several days)
• Food (at least a several-day supply of nonperishable food) and a can opener
• Medicines and documentation of your medical needs
• Identification and proof of residency documents (see a more detailed list here)
• A flashlight 
• A battery-powered or hand-crank radio
• Backup batteries
• Blanket and sleeping bag
• Change of clothes and closed-toed shoes
• First-aid kit (the Red Cross has a list of what to include)
• N95 masks, hand sanitizer, and trash bags 
• If you have babies or children: diapers, wipes, and food or formula
• If you have pets: food, collar, leash, and any medicines needed

Read more: How to stay safe if you’re feeling exhausted or ill

How disaster response works for tribes

When a major disaster hits, your tribal government will communicate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to apply for immediate aid as well as support for services that seek to mitigate future disasters. Here’s how that works:

There is a specific process cities, states, and tribal governments must navigate in order for residents to receive FEMA aid. FEMA has 10 regions that support tribes during disaster response. If your tribal nation’s lands cross multiple FEMA regions, identify which FEMA region the headquarters is located to determine whom to contact. Here is a map with a list of contacts.

FEMA updated its tribal policy in 2020, with the following guidance for its employees and contractors: Maintain tribal government relationships, consider unique community circumstances, and build tribal capacity through educational and technical assistance programs. It was updated again in December 2024 after FEMA held nine listening and consultation sessions with 118 tribal nations in all 10 regions the agency oversees. 

In 2025, FEMA changed that policy to empower “tribal nations’ sovereignty and access to federal assistance, thereby enhancing their response and recovery efforts and improving community and tribal community members’ outcomes.”

Here are other recent changes to the FEMA Tribal Policy:

• The policy gives power to tribes to define “tribal community member” when offering individual assistance to ensure “their full community is served.” This could reduce barriers for help to people not enrolled in the tribe to receive federal emergency funds for food, shelter, and reimbursements.
• Rebuilding tribal homes after a disaster also changed: When public assistance is approved, the federal government will automatically recommend that it takes on 98 percent of the cost when the total reaches $200,000. This means tribes could pay less for approved recovery and, as FEMA summarized from its tribal listening sessions, “provide more certainty for non-federal cost shares to tribal nations.”

Read more: How to navigate the FEMA aid process

State-recognized tribes

Tribes that are not federally recognized may encounter more red tape when trying to access government aid because they don’t have a direct relationship with FEMA. For example, the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw struggled to get aid after Hurricane Ida in 2021.

According to a June 2020 FEMA policy, state-recognized tribes should be treated as local governments, rather than tribal governments with a nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government. This way, they can access both individual assistance if there is a major disaster declaration in their state, as well as public assistance for infrastructure repair.

Tribal and state collaboration

Partnerships between local tribes and states or cities they border are essential for how Native nations and people move disaster aid and recovery. For example, a deadly Oklahoma wildfire in March gave some insight into how FEMA’s local partnerships work in a state with prominent tribal jurisdictional maps and people who live both in and outside the communities.

Last year, Oklahoma created rules for its State Assistance Dedicated for Disaster-Impacted Local Economies Revolving Fund, which takes federal disaster money, approves requests for aid, and pays Oklahomans directly with loans for long-term recovery projects.

There is a growing number of coalitions focused on relationships among tribes to promote a more collaborative approach. For example, Oklahoma has had the Inter-Tribal Emergency Management Coalition since 2004 and meets regularly to discuss emergency preparedness.

Read more: How to find housing and rebuild your home after a disaster

Finding shelter and staying safe

Emergency shelters can be set up in established tribal spaces, like school gymnasiums, powwow grounds, and hospitals. Tribal senior services and schools have the most up-to-date records of people and organizations in the community and are tapped by emergency management teams for welfare checks and transportation needs. Hospital services can also be key to prescriptions and other medical needs.

In the same way that cousins and relatives are expected to offer a home to rest, tribal citizens now have the expectation for their tribal government to give full immediate aid and help in recovery.

FEMA recovery centers

FEMA disaster recovery centers provide information about the agency’s programs as well as other state and local resources, and are opened in impacted areas in the days and weeks following a federally declared disaster. FEMA representatives can help navigate the aid application process or direct you to nonprofits, shelters, or state and local resources. Go to this website to locate one in your area, or text DRC and a ZIP code to 43362.

Community organizations and nonprofits

Here are some organizations focused on emergency management for Indigenous communities:

• Partnership with Native Americans has a disaster relief service and fund that helps displaced people, sets up supplies for shelters, and more. They coordinate with local groups as well as the Red Cross. 
• Northern Plains Reservation Aid, Southwest Reservation Aid, Native American Aid, Navajo Relief Fund, Sioux Nation Relief Fund, and Southwest Indian Relief Council are groups that offer direct aid to the regions they can serve. They can also be a direct resource for state-recognized tribes.

Read more: How to access food before, during, and after a disaster

More resources

Here are a few organizations that have newsletters, workshops, and other resources for tribal communities across the country.

• The Tribal Emergency Management Association, or iTEMA, is a “national association created for Indian Country, by Indian Country” that promotes a collaborative approach to disasters that impact tribal communities. They offer workshops and resources for tribal leaders, emergency managers, and other interested people. 
• Hazard Mitigation Planning through FEMA is essential. How to keep up with federal grant deadlines and policy directives can be navigated by the Pacific Northwest Tribal Climate Change Project: The online resource hosted by the University of Oregon is an example of tribal regional planning, with foundational support from the Nespelem Tribe in northern Washington. 
• The Regional Tribal Emergency Management Summit in May brought direct sources to South Dakota on what to expect in the next year. Access to presentations, other resources, and a list of other events is available on their site.
• The Red Guide to Recovery is another example of tribes networking with outside community groups in California. The National Tribal Emergency Management Council is listed as a partner.

Download a PDF of this article | Return to Disaster 101

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How tribes navigate emergency response aid to citizens and what you can do to prepare on Jul 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Shaun Griswold.

The report is based on a fact-finding mission carried out between October 2024 and January 2025, with investigators interviewing dozens of community journalists, indigenous radio station workers, and civil society representatives across nine departments in Guatemala.

The mission identified a pattern of serious and persistent threats, including legal harassment; violence; intimidation; gender-based attacks; structural racism, particularly against indigenous women journalists; and surveillance by both local authorities and private actors, among other threats.

Among its key recommendations, the report urges authorities to implement the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling on indigenous community radio, develop tailored protection mechanisms for community journalists, and formally recognize the legitimacy of community media outlets.

Read an executive summary of the report in English and Español.

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

— James Baldwin, “Open Letter to the Born Again” (September 29, 1979). Quoted in Hamid Dabashi, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarket Books, 2025): 159.

Baldwin’s assessment is shared by many others, such as Noam Chomsky, who discussed in his book (The Fateful Triangle, 1999 edition) Israel’s role as a “strategic asset.” (p. 69, 70, 103, 137) However, others, such as Jean Bricmont and Diana Johnstone countered that assessment in a 2024 article, “The Myth of Israel as ‘US Aircraft Carrier’ in Middle East.” They write:

But the crucial evidence, totally missing from their analysis, is the slightest example of Israel actually serving American interests in the region.

If no examples are given, it’s simply because there are none. Israel has never fired a shot on behalf of the United States or brought a drop of oil under U.S. control.

We can start with a common sense argument: If the U.S. is interested in Middle East oil, why would it support a country that is hated (for whatever reasons) by all the populations of the oil producing countries?

Bricmont and Johnstone attribute the unstinting US support of Israel as being influenced by money injected into the US political arena by the Jewish lobby, in particular AIPAC.

The question of which side leads in determining US support for Israel is debatable. What is indisputable is that the US and Israel are in lockstep despite all the violations of international law by Israel (US is a serial violator of international law, as well), despite several massacres carried out by Israel, and despite the mightily ramped up genocide being perpetrated by Israeli Jews against Palestinians currently.

Genocide and the understanding of what unleashes the bloodshirtiest of human actions is the subject of Hamid Dabashi’s After Savagery, scheduled for release by Haymarket Books on 30 September — while the savagery is ongoing. The urgency for a worldwide response calls for informing those unaware or those insouciant to the Jewish Israeli genocide that is being perpetrated on Palestine (It is not just a genocide in Gaza, as a 1 July 2025 Al Jazeera headline makes clear: “Israel has killed 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.”). After Savagery, however, is not just about the genocide in Gaza, it is about why some humans commit genocide. So After Savagery is also about “before savagery.” What are the conditions that lead to savagery today. And most importantly, how genocide can be prevented from happening.

Dabashi quotes many sources to attest to the genocide that is happening now in Palestine.

“What we are seeing in Gaza is a repeat of Auschwitz,” says the Burmese genocide expert and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Maung Zarni. “This is a collective white imperialist man’s genocide,” he further explains. (154-155)

Asked to describe what he witnessed in Gaza, Dr. Perlmutter replied, “All of the disasters I’ve seen, combined—forty mission trips, thirty years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined—doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.” And the civilian casualties, he said, are almost exclusively children. “I’ve never seen that before,” he said. “I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week … missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of eight-year-olds. And then there’s sniper bullets. I have children that were shot twice.” (103-104)

“Yes, it is genocide,” has affirmed Amos Goldberg, a professor of Holocaust history at the department of Jewish history and contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: “It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion.” (142)

Dabashi traces the roots of Zionism to a longstanding settler-European colonialism. And the author lays bare the insidiousness of Zionism and how this racism impacted Palestinians:

Today, the birth of Palestine as a “question” rather than a nation-state marks precisely the birth of Palestine as a constellation of refugee camps. The land was stolen from Palestinians, the state stealing the land was a European settler colony garrison state that rules over Palestinians with cruelty, the rules for the inscription of life were dictated to Palestinians in draconian terms, and the camps as the fourth inseparable element are precisely where generations of Palestinians are born and raised, before being killed by the Israeli military. (127-128)

Part of this racism towards Muslims, of which the majority of Palestinians are, is the use of term “Muselmann.” Writes Dabashi, “This is perhaps a mini encyclopedia of European ignorance, Islamophobia and antisemitism all wrapped up in an attempt to unpack the word ‘Muselmann,’ but in fact loading it with more racist dimensions.” (120) And the new Muselmann, is the Palestinian, “the Untestifiable, the human animal, as Israeli warlords have said.” (xxvi)

Zionist Israel and its racism and discrimination is compellingly described. My colleague B.J. Sabri and I needed no convincing of Israeli racism.¹

And this racism, not exclusive to Israeli Jews, points to “what ultimately matters for the world at large is the categorical inability to fathom a Palestinian as a human being.” (96) Thus, “Witnessing this savagery in Gaza, we can clearly link the Jewish Holocaust to the Palestinian genocide, and see genocidal Zionism  as the logical colonial extension of European fascism.” (xv)

Before Savagery

Many personages appear in After Savagery, such as, to name a few, Sven Lindqvist, Frantz Fanon, Joseph Conrad, and James Baldwin who opposed racism; Edward Said, Giorgio Agamben, Ghassan Kanafani and his Danish wife Anni Kanafani (née Høver), Mario Rizzi, Mahmoud Darwish who spoke to the beauty of Orientalism and Arab culture; others such as Ilan Pappe and UN special rappateur Francesca Albanese who denounce unflinchingly the depredations of Israeli Jews against Palestinians. Dabashi delves deeply into the Eurocentric perspective on colonialism, borne of Western philosophy and figures like Immanuel Kant, Hegel Heidegger, and others who thinking was impoverished by being shackled by their own racism.

Dabashi writes:

“According to Hegel, Africans, or any other people, can only become civilized to the degree and so far as they abandoned their own cultures and convert to Christianity, founding a state according to Christian principles.” (91)

How are “we” to escape the indoctrination of feted philosophers and the inculcation of Western thought? How do “we” humanize Palestinians? The mere fact that the humanity of Palestinians requires affirmation for so many people points to the pervasiveness of racist Eurocentric narratives.

After the unbridled savagery in Gaza, it is not only European philosophy that reaches its ignoble ends. We need equally to think of the modes of knowledge production about Gaza itself, about Palestine, as the simulacrum of the world outside the purview of the discredited Eurocentric imagination. We no longer need to worry about the critique of Orientalism. We need to think of how to produce knowledge about Gaza and Palestine and the rest of the world. We need to reverse the anthropological gaze, to produce an anthropology of Zionism and Western Philosophy. (105)

The book covers a lot of ground. It delves deeply into ontology, epistemology, semantics, literature, art, filmmaking, poetry, politics, religion, exilism, and — especially — philosophy. After Savagery is not focused solely on the here and now of what is transpiring in historical Palestine. The book goes into the history, background, and philosophy that enables genocide. The book is scholarly and is well footnoted. If that is what the reader is looking for, then Hamid Dabashi’s After Savagery is well worth the read.

NOTE:

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

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The continents are rapidly drying out and the earth’s vast freshwater resources are under threat, according to a recently released study based on more than 20 years of NASA satellite data. Here are the report’s key findings and what they portend for humankind:

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, examined changes to Earth’s total supply of fresh water and found that nearly 6 billion people live in the 101 countries facing a net decline in water supply, posing a “critical, emerging threat to humanity.”

According to the study, the uninhibited pumping of groundwater by farmers, cities and corporations around the world now accounts for 68% of the total loss of fresh water at the latitudes where most people live.

Mined groundwater rarely seeps back into the aquifers from which it was pumped. Rather, a large portion runs off into streams, then rivers and ultimately the oceans. According to the researchers, moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the ice sheets of either Antarctica or Greenland as the largest contributor of water to the oceans.

Most of the water lost from drying regions is from groundwater pumping, which ultimately shifts fresh water from aquifers into the oceans.

Worldwide, 70% of fresh water is used for growing crops, with more of it coming from groundwater as droughts grow more extreme. Only a small amount of that water seeps back into aquifers. Research has long established that people take more water from underground when climate-driven heat and drought are at their worst.

The parts of the world drying most acutely are becoming interconnected, forming what the study’s authors describe as “mega” regions. One such region covers almost the whole of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia.

The study examines 22 years of observational data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, satellites, which measure changes in the mass of the earth and have been applied to estimate its water content. Since 2002, the sensors have detected a rapid shift in water loss across the planet. Around 2014, the study found the pace of drying appears to have accelerated. It is now growing by an area twice the size of California each year.

The dramatic depletion of groundwater and surface water plus the melting of glaciers between 2014-24 has connected once-separate arid places, forming “mega-drying” regions that stretch across whole continents.

Watch video ➜

Major groundwater basins underlie roughly one-third of the planet, including about half of Africa, Europe and South America. Many of those aquifers took millions of years to form and might take thousands of years to refill. The researchers warn that it is now nearly impossible to reverse the loss of water “on human timescales.”

The accelerated drying, combined with the flooding of coastal cities and food-producing lowlands, heralds “potentially staggering” and cascading risks for global order, the researchers warn. Their findings all point to the likelihood of widespread famine, the migration of large numbers of people seeking a more stable environment and the carry-on impact of geopolitical disorder.

Data Source: Hrishikesh. A. Chandanpurkar, James S. Famiglietti, Kaushik Gopalan, David N. Wiese, Yoshihide Wada, Kaoru Kakinuma, John T. Reager, Fan Zhang (2025). Unprecedented Continental Drying, Shrinking Freshwater Availability, and Increasing Land Contributions to Sea Level Rise. Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298

Graphics by Lucas Waldron

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by ProPublica.

Before the Biden administration could finalize the rule, Donald Trump was re-elected president, ushering in another era of deregulation. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced plans to revise or repeal 63 workplace regulations that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said “stifle growth and limit opportunity.” 

OSHA’s heat stress rule wasn’t among them. And though the new administration has the power to withdraw the draft regulation, it hasn’t. Instead, OSHA has continued to move it forward: The agency is currently in the middle of soliciting input from the general public about the proposed policy. Some labor experts say this process, typically bureaucratic and onerous even in the absence of political interference, is moving along faster than expected — perhaps a sign that civil servants at OSHA feel a true sense of urgency to protect vulnerable workers from heat stress as yearly temperatures set record after record. 

But labor advocacy groups focused on workers along the food supply chain — many of whom work outside, like farmworkers, or in poorly ventilated spaces, like warehouse and meat processing facilities — say workers have waited too long for basic live-saving protections. Earlier this month, Senator Alex Padilla and Congresswoman Judy Chu, both from California, re-introduced a bill to Congress that, if passed, would direct OSHA to enact a federal heat standard for workers swiftly.

It’s a largely symbolic move, as the rule-making process is already underway, and the legislation is unlikely to advance in a Republican-controlled Congress. But the bill signals Democratic lawmakers are watching closely and urgently expect a final rule four years after OSHA first began drafting its proposed rule. The message is clear: However fast OSHA is moving, it hasn’t been enough to protect workers from the worst impacts of climate change. 

“Since OSHA started its heat-stress rulemaking in 2021, over 144 lives have been lost to heat-related hazards,” said Padilla in a statement emailed to Grist. “We know how to prevent heat-related illnesses to ensure that these family members are able to come home at the end of their shift.” 

The lawmaker added that the issue is “a matter of life or death.” 

Heat is the deadliest form of extreme weather, according to the World Health Organization. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 986 workers died from heat exposure on the job from 1992 to 2022, or about 34 per year. 

This is very likely an undercount. Prolonged heat exposure can exacerbate underlying health problems like cardiovascular issues, making it difficult for medical professionals to discern when illness and death is attributable to extreme heat. As heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions continue to push global temperatures higher, experts expect heat-related illnesses and deaths to follow.

The life-threatening impacts of exposure to extreme heat in the workplace have been on the federal government’s radar for more than 50 years. Labor unions and farmworkers have long pushed for federal and local heat standards. In 2006, California became the first state to enact its own heat protections for outdoor workers, after an investigation by the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health found 46 cases of heat-related illnesses the year prior. Legislative efforts to protect workers or nudge OSHA along often follow or name farmworkers who died from heat stress. Padilla and Chu’s bill from this year is named after Asunción Valdivia, a 53-year-old who died in California in 2004 after picking grapes for 10 hours straight in 105 degree Fahrenheit heat. 

OSHA’s proposed heat standard would require employers to establish plans to avoid and monitor for signs of heat illness and to help new hires acclimate to working in high heat. “That should be implemented yesterday,” said Nichelle Harriott, policy director of HEAL Food Alliance, a national coalition of food and farmworkers. “There really is no cause for this to be taking as long as it has.”

In late June and early July, OSHA held virtual hearings in which it heard testimony from people both for and against a federal heat standard. According to Anastasia Christman, a senior policy analyst from the National Employment Law Project who attended the hearings, employees from the agency seemed engaged and asked substantive questions. “It was very informative,” she said. OSHA didn’t respond to Grist’s request for comment.

As written, OSHA’s proposed heat rule would apply to about 36 million workers in the U.S. Christman noted that sedentary workers — those who sit for most of the work day — are currently excluded from the federal standard. Ironically, at one point during the agency’s hearings, participants had to take an unscheduled break after the air conditioning stopped working in the Department of Labor building where OSHA staff were sitting. “They had to be evacuated because it was too hot to sit there and be on a Zoom call,” said Christman. She estimated that if sedentary workers were non-exempt, the number of U.S. workers covered by the rule would nearly double to 66 million.

From her point of view, OSHA is moving “very fast on this — for OSHA.” But Christman acknowledged that, even in a best-case scenario, regulations would not be on the books for another 12 to 14 months. At that point, OSHA would publish guidance for employers on how to comply with the regulation, as well as respond to any legal challenges to the final rule. That process, “in an optimistic world,” she said, could take between two and four years. 

For many farmworkers, as well as other workers along the food supply chain, that’s too long to wait. 

“For decades, millions of workers have been waiting for federal heat standards that never came,” said Oscar Londoño, co-executive director of WeCount, a member-led immigrant rights organization based in South Florida. 

The group has spearheaded multiple campaigns to draw public attention to how sweltering temperatures impact outdoor workers in the region, including plant nursery workers. Londoño said some agricultural workers have told WeCount it already feels like the hottest summer of their lifetime.

In response to the news of Padilla and Chu’s bill, Londoño said, “We appreciate any step by a lawmaker trying to protect workers, especially as we’re seeing, once again, a record-breaking summer.” But he cast doubt on OSHA’s ability to enforce regulations around heat stress, particularly in the agricultural sector.

“We know that there are employers across the country who are routinely violating the laws that already exist,” said Londoño. “And so adding on new laws and regulations that we do need doesn’t automatically mean that workers will be protected.”

WeCount’s organizing is hampered by Florida’s Republican governor and state legislature, which passed a law last year prohibiting local governments from enacting their own heat standards. In the absence of politicians who will stand for workers, WeCount members are trying to publicize the risks that agricultural workers take on. Their latest campaign, Planting Justice, centers on local plant nursery workers, who grow indoor houseplants. 

The goal is to try and educate consumers about the labor that goes into providing their monsteras, pothos, snake plants, and other indoor houseplants. “If you buy indoor houseplants, it’s very possible that that plant came from workers in Florida,” said Londoño, “workers who are being denied water, shade, and rest breaks by working in record-breaking heat, including 90- or 100-degree heat temperatures.”

Down the line, the nursery workers hope to solidify a set of demands and bring those concerns to companies like Home Depot and Lowes that sit at the top of the indoor plant supply chain. Similar tactics have worked for agricultural workers in other sectors; the Fair Food Program, first established by tomato pickers in 2011 in Florida, has won stringent heat protections for farmworkers in part by building strong support for laborers’ demands among consumers.

“Right now we are looking at every possible solution or strategy that can help workers reach these protections,” said Londoño. “What workers actually need is a guarantee that every single day they’ll be able to go to work and return home alive.” This kind of worker-led organizing will continue, he said, whether or not OSHA delivers its own heat standard.

“Right now we are looking at every possible solution or strategy that can help workers reach these protections,” said Londoño. “What workers actually need is a guarantee that every single day they’ll be able to go to work and return home alive.” This kind of worker-led organizing will continue, he said, whether or not OSHA delivers its own heat standard.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A long-awaited rule to protect workers from heat stress moves forward, even under Trump on Jul 28, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.

The statement as run by Doctors Without Borders on July 23 is stark: “As the Israel government’s siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families. With supplies now totally depleted, humanitarian organisations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste before their eyes.” Two months after the implementation of the controlled aid scheme by Israel, utilising the grotesquely named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, over 100 organisations were “sounding the alarm and urging governments to act: open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, UN-led mechanism; end the siege; and agree to a ceasefire now.”

Outside Gaza, and even within the Strip, abundant supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items and fuel sat untouched. Humanitarian organisations had been prevented from accessing them. “The Government of Israel’s restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death.” A paltry figure of 28 trucks a day were being allowed into the Strip.

The relevant gore is recounted: massacres at food sites in the Gaza Strip are impossible to ignore; the figures from the UN suggest that 875 Palestinians had been slaughtered while seeking sustenance as of July 13. The frequency of these “flour massacres” is also receiving comment from those in the employ of the operation being run by GHF, policed by private contractors and the IDF. Retired US special forces officer Anthony Aguilar, who resigned from working with the GHF, told the BBC that he had “witnessed the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at crowds of Palestinians.” During his entire career, he had never seen such “brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”

The NGO statement goes on to note the rise of cases of acute malnutrition, most prevalent among children and the elderly. (The World Food Programme has warned that one in three Gazans do not eat for days at a time, with 90,000 women and children requiring treatment.) “Illnesses like acute watery diarrhea are spreading, markets are empty, waste is piling up, and adults are collapsing on the streets from hunger and dehydration.”

In the face of this, international law’s decrees appear like the neglected statues of a distant land. The three sets of Provisional Measures Orders from the International Court of Justice, handed down since 2024, have warned Israel to observe its obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and address the humanitarian crisis in the Strip. In its modifying order of provisional measures handed down on March 28, 2024, the ICJ instructed Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address famine and starvation and the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza”. These include the provision of “food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care” and “increasing the capacity of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary”.

The latest concession from Israel to deal with this engineered humanitarian catastrophe is a promise to open humanitarian corridors to permit UN convoys into the Strip. In addition to that, COGAT, the Israeli military agency overseeing humanitarian affairs in Gaza, has announced that Jordan and the United Arab Emirates will be permitted to parachute humanitarian aid to those in Gaza. UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has made a small team of British military planners and logisticians available to assist Jordan in this endeavour. On July 27, the IDF also released a statement claiming it had made the first airdrop including “seven packages of aid containing flour, sugar, and canned food”. These efforts, in their practical futility, are a reiteration of the humanitarian airdrops conducted by the US military and Jordan’s air force in March last year.

These drops will do little to alter the cruel, strangulating model of aid delivery in place, emboldening the fittest recipients capable of outpacing their adversaries. Those recipients will also be fortunate not to be injured or killed by the dropped packages, instances of which were recorded in March last year. “Why use airdrops,” asks Juliette Touma, chief spokeswoman for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, “when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders?” Using trucks was “much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper.” Precisely why using them is so unappealing to the IDF.

Instead of focusing on isolating Israel, its allies prefer piecemeal approaches that prolong the suffering of the Palestinians. Measures such as those announced by Starmer to “evacuate children from Gaza who need medical assistance, bringing them to the UK for specialist and medical treatment” only serve to encourage the Israeli war machine. The aid drops serve to do much the same. The objective is one of inflicting a sufficient degree of harm that will encourage the eventual depopulation of the enclave. Israel’s allies, with intentional or unintentional complicity, will clean up.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In a yoga training I just did, they asked that exact question. I feel like in the space of teaching [yoga], it’s literally to give people the mental space from their everyday lives. To give them a container to be in—to reflect, sit, be quiet, separate from the outside world, and see what comes up. With tattooing, I feel like it’s about making people feel more beautiful. Every time I get a tattoo, I feel like I look more like myself—it’s about making people look more like how they feel on the inside. Also giving people a space to lay, be quiet, listen to music, and not engage in anything other than the act of receiving.

How do you see the relationship between teaching yoga and tattooing?

I love teaching because it’s much less of a high stakes environment. A one-on-one interaction is so different from leading a collective. I love the balance of both because they feel equally life-giving, exciting, and embodying. For me, yoga is very internal—moving, burning, cleansing—while tattooing is very external. Tattooing feels like, “This is who I am externally.” Yoga feels like, “This is who I’m trying to be inwardly.” I think they complement each other extremely well. I also tattoo a lot of young people, and I teach a lot of older people. There’s been this funny crossover where I’ve had tattoo clients start to take my yoga classes because they vibe with me, and then I’ve had older people want to get tattoos because they feel safe, and trust my energy or my intention. It’s been cool to mix those communities and introduce them to each other. I like as much diversity in age as I can be around—both sides can teach you a lot about life.

Why do you get tattoos?

I think it’s genuinely so beautiful to be able to decorate yourself—with clothing, color, the way we can do our hair. Something about being able to adorn and decorate skin feels so cool and freeing.

I’m curious how giving and receiving tattoos has informed your perception of permanence, and the passage of time?

When I receive tattoos, the feeling of permanence is so comforting—to think that I’ll be 87 years old, hopefully, with everything I have on my body. Then I get to look back at things I got—I have a tattoo I got in India 5 to 8 years ago—and remember that I’m still that person. I’m still in that body. You know when you see a picture of yourself at five years old and you’re like, “Whoah, I’m still that person”? That’s how it feels. Whether I got it at a good or bad time, there’s something really grounding and comforting about knowing that person is within me. It makes you reflect on everything you’ve been through. For me, tattoos are a timestamp.

For other people, I feel like I watch them really practice surrender. They give up control to the artist to a certain extent. Obviously, they choose the placement and confirm they want the design, but then there’s a level of letting go. You’re fully giving me your body, and you’re trusting me while you lay there and hope that it turns out how you wanted. I’ve had a lot of past clients tell me they feel like they can take on way more risk and trust other people, all from the act of getting tattooed. I think the permanence of it all loosens people up, and makes them practice surrender. It makes them take their bodies less seriously. We’re so body centered and body focused. It reminds people that this is just a vessel to decorate.

Outside of all external definitions, how would you define artwork?

For me, it’s simply the inner world made visual. Someone trying to represent what’s happening inside of them. There’s so many mediums that are possible through that, which is where artwork is interesting to me.

Have you always felt drawn to bodywork?

I feel like massage came up first and foremost when I was a kid. I used to massage people’s feet under the table at Thanksgiving. I also loved giving face massages.

How did tattooing come into your life?

I think when I started practicing [tattooing], I recognized a similar feeling that I would get when I would teach [yoga]. There is an overlapping sense of embodiment—a coming into yourself more than you did before you arrived. Teaching came first, and then tattooing started a year or two after I did my [yoga teacher] training. Tattooing is way more personal. You’re working with one-on-one relationships rather than teaching a group of 20 or 30, but you’re still making people feel embodied and relaxed, creating that container for reflection. Tattooing is also more physical because people are leaving with something very permanent, which is scary.

How did you find the confidence to tattoo for the first time?

I practiced on myself for a while… But there was no confidence. It kind of just happened. I had a few moments of messing up at the very beginning, where it would hit me like a wall—the idea that you’re doing something extremely permanent—and I had to be checked a few times to realize it really was high stakes. I think the ignorant optimism you have as a young person, to just kind of do something and not really care about the outcome, actually served me pretty well in terms of getting into it, and doing it consistently without fear.

Why did you choose hand poke tattooing as your medium?

I started that way because it felt more accessible and less scary. Machines were really expensive, and I didn’t know much about them. Then I fell in love with the process of it, the quiet of it. I love slow art. I love things that take a long time. In an increasingly fast-paced, fast fashion kind of world, it’s so much harder to find things made slowly, and to find people who want things made slowly. To slow down in general is just more of a commodity. The slowness is what tethers me to it. Also, knowing that it’s pre-electricity. It’s funny that it’s coming back into trend. Hand poke is the original form of tattooing; it’s how people did it for thousands of years. Connecting with the original form of the practice is really cool to me.

How would you describe your style?

The technical tattoo term would be micro realism: small things that have a realistic quality to them. I wouldn’t say I do a lot of abstract work. I do a lot of realistic and natural forms through dot work, through pointillism—plants, animals, and shells. I would say my style is soft, and compliments the body well. It’s usually specific to what people find sacred, which happens to be natural life forms that you find outside.

Do you have a favorite piece you’ve ever done?

Yeah. In January I gave this girl a really big bird on her back that went from shoulder to shoulder. It took two days. I had never done a tattoo that took multiple days before. That was really awesome—not to rush and just be with one person for two days. The bird is a native Hawaiian bird and the client is from the island, so it meant a lot to her to wear that animal on her back. It was such a crazy honor to be the person to give it to her. Since then, I want to take on bigger pieces.

How has social media influenced your professional growth while being based in Hawaii?

I really like living rurally because a lot of the work I do comes through word-of-mouth. Everyone is talking and showing each other their tattoos. I would much rather work in that way, through organic ways of sharing and spreading my art. But social media is awesome. I’m able to reach people in cities and then I can afford to go to those cities and bring my art to other places. Before I moved [to Kauai], a few tattoo artists told me I had to be in New York or LA if I wanted to make it. I didn’t really want to do that, or believe that it was true. Social media has allowed me to be where I want to be and still reach people in more urban environments.

What are the challenges that come with owning your own shop?

Self-management, in general. There’s not a lot of challenges with owning and managing the specific space because I feel like I know how to do it really well. I know what I need. It’s literally just me. I don’t have any employees or people to oversee. I would say the challenges are the logistics of starting it alone and doing everything alone—business stuff, financial stuff, tax stuff. But I’m still in my first six years of tattooing… So I think time will help.

What do you gain from guest spotting at other shops and being around other creatives?

It’s so nice to just ask questions. To figure out what materials people are using, techniques, what kind of printers or online platforms people use to enhance their work… It’s really nice to be around other people who’ve also made this their career. It can be so up and down. Sometimes you make a lot of money, sometimes you make no money. It’s dependent upon the economy—how much disposable income people have. It’s just so nice to be around people that are down for that challenge, even though it can be really hard to have such an unpredictable and taxing job, physically and mentally. It’s such a cool community to be in.

Do you remember the best piece of advice another tattooer has given you?

Don’t rush. Oh, and quality over quantity. Yes, you can make more money by taking four or five appointments in a day, but the quality of your work is going to go down. It’s obviously nice to make more money, especially as a freelance artist, but what we’re making is forever. Prioritize the quality of the work over the money that could be made by rushing.

How do you ground and care for yourself after the intense physical and energetic exchange of tattooing? Do you turn to yoga or any other self-soothing practices?

I love that people feel so extremely comfortable with me, and speak to me about really personal things going on in their lives. I know a lot of tattooers who have their headphones on while doing their job, and their client is on their phone or listening to music. Personally, that’s not the kind of tattooer I want to be. To be able to hold as much space as I do, I think I need to take less people, eventually. I’m holding too much space for too many people right now.

The practice that keeps me from carrying too much—which I’m still trying to practice—is to visualize a barrier around myself while I’m tattooing, like a thin film of light protecting me, so I don’t take it home as much. Burning something after really helps. Right now, it feels important for me to allow people to let their minds run and say whatever they’re feeling. I don’t want to stop people from doing that, but I don’t think I’ve quite mastered how to not let it overwhelm me. The answer is not to close myself off. I think I am still seeking those tools. But I’m also going to be doing this my whole life, so I have a lot of time to figure it out.

Do you have advice for a freelance creative starting out?

Make art for yourself, not for the audience. When you authentically make what you think is cool, and what you find incredible, you’ll attract people that want to support you. If you’re trying to make art for an audience, you’re not going to build a sustainable audience that will follow your journey. Instead of catering to what people already want, show them something they didn’t even know they wanted by making it for yourself first.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sammy Steiner.

As of Saturday, Thailand said seven soldiers and 13 civilians had been killed in the clashes, while in Cambodia five soldiers and eight civilians had been killed, said Defense Ministry spokesperson Maly Socheata.

(Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

During an emergency meeting on Friday, members of the U.N. Security Council called for de-escalation and urged ASEAN to mediate a peaceful solution.

Cambodia’s Information Minister Neth Pheaktra said Saturday the clashes had forced 10,865 Cambodian families, or 37,635 people, in three border provinces to evacuate to safe locations, while Thai officials said more than 131,000 people had fled their border villages.

Reporting by The Associated Press and Reuters

(Heng Sinith/AP)

(Lillan Suwanrumpha/AFP)

(Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP)

(Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

(Anton L. Delgado/AP)

(Sakchai Lalit/AP)

(AFP)

(Sakchai Lalit/AP)

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

“Skydance and Paramount’s self-censorship and pay-off of the Trump Administration, in pursuit of government approval of an unwise merger, is worthy of condemnation. But it’s important to view Paramount’s action within two broader contexts.

First, it marks but the latest in a long series of attacks by this administration on free speech and the free press in America, including unprecedented attacks on universities, newspapers, and even the oligarchs who control America’s communications platforms. The purpose of antimonopoly regulation is to establish a rule of law to protect individual liberty and the distributions of power on which democracy depends, not extort favors from desperate corporations.

Second, it’s important to remember how CBS and so many other news and entertainment companies came to this point. Today’s assaults on free speech and the free press are the direct result of the fantastically naïve pro-monopoly policies put in place under presidents Reagan and Clinton. It was Google and Facebook, after all, that for 15 years starved American newspapers and broadcasters of the ad dollars on which they always depended, and directly suppressed the ability of readers and viewers to connect with the reporters and publishers of their choice.

CBS and Paramount have been in deep trouble for years now. Many leading liberals helped create that crisis.

One immediate lesson stands out. Democracies around the world must beware. As the Trump administration tries to use tariffs and trade policy to loosen regulation of tech monopolists, theoretically in the name of free speech, remember always that their goal is the exact opposite.”

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

On the Northeastern Brazilian coast, in the region of Alcântara, Maranhão, there are dozens of traditional villages of Black communities. Their families have lived here for generations — farming and fishing. They are known as quilombos. These villages were founded by their ancestors, who were either freed or who escaped enslavement on the plantations of Brazil.

There are thousands of quilombos across Brazil. But only a small number have the titles to their lands. And many are under threat from development projects, resource extraction, Big Ag, and real estate. This was the story in Alcântara, where these communities have faced removal and threats from Brazil’s Alcântara Space Center. 

But they have fought back.

This is episode 59 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.

Sign up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

On Sunday, July 20, 2025, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez delivered the keynote speech at the national convention of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (NOLSW), UAW Local 2320. “I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything,” Alvarez told the crowd of union members. “And so I am here not to extol the virtues of your union or the value of unions in general, but to ask you bluntly: What good is a union in Hell? How much can an organization of the dawned do in a future no one wants to live in? What good does a collective bargaining agreement serve when the world as we know it is dying?”

Additional links/info: 

• NOLSW-UAW Local 2320 website, X page, Facebook page, and Instagram

Featured Music: 

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits: 

• Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor 

Below is the transcript of the speech Alvarez delivered at the 2025 NOLSW-UAW convention in Baltimore, Maryland. The text has been lightly edited for length. 

Over the years—on my podcast Working People, on The Real News Network, in my book The Work of Living, on channels like Breaking Points—I’ve interviewed workers from all walks of life, from industries across the economy, from just about every union you can imagine. Railroad engineers and conductors with SMART-TD and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. VA nurses with National Nurses United. Young baristas with Starbucks Workers United. Strippers in Hollywood who unionized with Actor’s Equity. Longshore workers with the ILWU. Public school teachers with the Chicago Teachers Union. UMWA coal miners and UPS Teamsters. Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh workers at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette who have been on strike for over two years. UNITE HERE hotel and hospitality workers from the Las Vegas strip to colonial Williamsburg. Legal aid advocates and attorneys with UAW Local 2325, UAW graduate student workers, UAW autoworkers at the Big Three automakers. And so many more. 

I’ll be honest, when I started doing this work, I didn’t really know shit about unions. I did not grow up in a union family. And the dominant consensus in the Southern California I knew in the ‘90s and early aughts was that unions, at best, had served important functions in the past but were unnecessary today; at worst, they were corrupt, self-serving, bloated bureaucratic institutions that hurt businesses and held individual workers back from advancing in their jobs. By the time I started my podcast in 2018, a lot of those anti-union sentiments I absorbed as a kid had melted away, and I myself was part of a union for the first time—shout out to the Graduate Employees Organization, AFT Local 3550 at the University of Michigan. 

Still, I knew way less about unions and the labor movement then than I do now. And while I have since become a staunch advocate for both and become known as a fierce, unapologetic advocate for workers’ rights, that is not what I set out to be—and Working People was never intended to be a show about unions. As the title makes clear, it was and is a show about people; it was and is a “podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today.” I did not start the show because I hoped to one day be speaking in rooms like this to union members like you. I started the show because I did not want my father, Jesus Alvarez, to live the rest of his life and to go to his grave feeling like a failure. Pops was the first working person I interviewed for the podcast, and I often joke that I basically started the show as a ruse to get my dad to talk about the trauma he and our family had experienced, because I could see the shame and hurt eating him alive, destroying his sense of self, destroying my parents’ marriage, destroying our family.  

What I saw happening to my own father was what I had seen happen to so many of my coworkers at the restaurants, retail stores, and warehouses I worked at; what I myself had felt as a low-wage worker in America. He had become convinced that his life was as small and worthless as this rigged system trains us to believe by beating and cheating and wearing us down until, eventually, we stop dreaming of a better life, we stop believing we deserve better, and we accept “getting by” as good enough. From that first interview with my dad to every interview I’ve done and every report I’ve published since, my primary goal has been to honor the humanity of working people, to remind us that we do deserve better, that our lives are beautiful and every life is precious, that our stories are worth sharing, worth listening to, worth remembering, worth celebrating, and that we cannot and must not keep internalizing as personal failures the indignities and injustices of economic and political systems designed to fail us. 

It was in that context that I came to learn much more about unions, the history of organized labor, and the existentially vital role unions play in our individual and collective struggles to believe we are worth more—to not only dream of but demand better workplaces, better lives, and a better world, and to fight to get them together. I have also learned about and railed against the many real problems unions have, from the local to the international level, the unfathomably restrictive and boss-friendly nature of US labor law, and the failures of organized labor to live up to its promise to union members and to the working class writ large as the ruling class takes back all that our ancestors fought for and won. But I have never wavered in my understanding that we will not get to the world we deserve without unions, or in my belief that unions CAN live up to their promise when they are more democratic, more accountable to the rank and file, more militant, and when they understand and take seriously the responsibility unions have not just to their members, but to the entire working class. Unions are one of the only institutional forces we have for working-class people to independently organize themselves and fight for our needs as workers, as a class. 

That is what I want to talk to you about with the time I have left. When I was initially invited to speak at this convention, I researched the proud and incredible history of the National Organization of Legal Services Workers—you guys have a hell of a history. I planned to talk to you about the importance of your roles as justice workers in our unjust society, the specific issues you could lead the way on in your contract bargaining and workplace organizing, the specific challenges you all are facing now under the current administration and the specific opportunities you have to empower the powerless, the poor, and the exploited, as you have done for so many decades. And I cannot overstate how vital the work you all do in your day-to-day work and in your union is. It’s so, so important. But a lot has changed in our world these past few months. 

As a reporter myself and as editor in chief and co-executive director of The Real News Network, I have seen these monstrous changes up close. Again, I’m not just a labor reporter, and I don’t just report on unions. You could say that I and everyone at The Real News are class-war correspondents, reporting from the front lines of the ruling class assault on working people’s lives, our health, our communities, our freedom, our democracy, our planet, and on life itself. I don’t need to tell you that we are losing this war, but I need you to understand all that we are losing with it. I am here to report back to you from the front lines of struggle, without hesitation or hyperbole, that we are at risk of losing everything. And so I am here not to extol the virtues of your union or the value of unions in general, but to ask you bluntly: What good is a union in Hell? How much can an organization of the dawned do in a future no one wants to live in? What good does a collective bargaining agreement serve when the world as we know it is dying?

My brothers, sisters, siblings, we stand here now, on July 20, 2025, on the precipice of oblivion. We are cooking our planet at a blinding pace and life is dying off en masse all around us, war and genocide and imperialist plunder are ripping our world and our people apart, the maga-rich are speedrunning our society to collapse and pillaging everything they can like Earth is having a going-out-of-business sale, placating us with lies and AI-generated fake realities so we keep rejecting the monstrous truth in front of us and keep fighting each other as we lower ourselves into the mass grave of human civilization. We have descended quickly into what sisters Astra Taylor and Noami Klein rightly call “end-times fascism.” The levers of power are controlled by a ghoulish death cult of billionaire oligarchs, war hawks, bigoted misanthropes, and religious fanatics who have given up on this world and the very notion that we can have a society that works for everyone. 

“Not so long ago,” Taylor and Klein write, 

It was primarily religious fundamentalists who greeted signs of apocalypse with gleeful excitement about the long-awaited Rapture. Trump has handed critical posts to people who subscribe to that fiery orthodoxy, including several Christian Zionists who see Israel’s use of annihilatory violence [against Palestinians] to expand its territorial footprint not as illegal atrocities but as felicitous evidence that the Holy Land is getting closer to the conditions under which the Messiah will return, and the faithful will get their celestial kingdom… But you don’t need to be a biblical literalist, or even religious, to be an end times fascist. Today, plenty of powerful secular people have embraced a vision of the future that follows a nearly identical script, one in which the world as we know it collapses under its weight and a chosen few survive and thrive in various kinds of arks, bunkers and gated “freedom cities”… Today’s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them.

I see the inhumane results of this dismal, anti-human, anti-life politics everywhere. I see it in the dozens and dozens of documentary reports we have published over the last two years from the Occupied West Bank and from what remains on the blistered earth that was Gaza. I hear it in the stories of working-class people, union and non-union, who are living in sacrifice zones that are multiplying in every state, from East Palestine, Ohio, to here in South Baltimore, from Honolulu to rural Texas. People whose communities have been made unlivable by corporate and government pollution, people whose lives are sacrificed at the altars of greed and deregulation, people whose communities have been abandoned and are being obliterated by the predictable and unpredictable consequences of man-made climate change. 

I saw it last week when I returned home to Southern California to report on the terror campaign and fascist occupation of the neighborhoods I grew up in by armed, masked, unidentified men kidnapping people who look like me and my family off the street, from their job sites and bus stops, from immigration courts, from their homes. No one I talked to even knows if these people are agents of the state, bounty hunters, or vigilante impersonators, but they’re being told to stand by and do nothing as they or their loved ones are kidnapped without warrants, disappeared, and possibly sent to blacksite prisons in countries they’ve never been to before without access to lawyers or contact with their families. 

Again I ask you, not in an accusatory or presumptuous way, but in desperation and hope that you will find a forceful answer: what good is your union, or any union, to them? 

That may seem like an unfair question to ask of any union, any local, but when history calls our number, fairly or unfairly, it is the duty of every person of conscience to answer the call. These are not normal times, and business as usual won’t cut it. For instance, I have seen firsthand the truth of labor’s claims that unions raise the floor for all workers, not just their members. But we cannot rely on such traditional axioms when the end-times fascists and oligarchs are attacking the very right of unions to exist while smashing holes in the floor and pushing more of us into the black abyss below. 

From the massive tax cuts to the catastrophic cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP, Republicans know that their policies today, like the policies Republicans have been pushing my whole life, will continue to supercharge inequality, will continue to enrich and empower the same oligarchic ruling class destroying our planet and our society, and will continue the 50-year trend of making life measurably harder for poor and working people. While they rob us and our economy in broad daylight, the insurance policy of Trump and the ruling class he represents is the hyper-expansion of an unaccountable police state to execute his mass deportations. You know what was also included in the “big, beautiful bill” Congress passed and Trump signed two weeks ago? $170 billion in new funds for border security and immigration enforcement that will make ICE the largest domestic police force in the US, bigger than most countries’ militaries, and the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the entire government. Trump’s implicit, and increasingly explicit, promise is that deporting or incarcerating immigrants, people who LOOK LIKE immigrants, citizens, dissidents, and an ever-expanding class of “undesirables” will eventually leave only a deserving few for whom the manufactured scarcity of capitalist class war will seem like abundance when there are fewer human beings left around to fight over the scraps. 

That is their dark vision. They are executing it now, as we speak, and the traditional checks and balances that have protected us in the past are being gleefully smashed in front of our eyes. I can’t tell you how all of this will end, because that depends on what we all do right now, but I can tell you where we’re going if we do nothing. And the more atomized, disunified, alone, and fearful we are, the easier it will be to break us, control us, disappear us, and deliver us to the dark dystopia on the horizon. 

Brothers and sisters, this is the defining moment of our lives and our generation, and what we do or don’t do now will define the course of our future or the lack thereof. Politicians aren’t coming to save us, corporations aren’t coming to save us, it is up to us, the workers of the world, the great laboring masses, to save ourselves. 

This isn’t just about fighting for better wages and working conditions. It was never just about that. But it sure as shit can’t be about just that now. This is about who is willing to fight for life itself, for liberty, and for the needs of all met so all can pursue their happiness… Who is willing to fight against the imposing forces of death, control, lies, greed, and destruction? 

I have met fighters from all corners of society. I met a group of them in Pasadena, California, last week. They call themselves Grupo Auto Defensa. They’re not part of an official organization, they have no backing from unions or nonprofits or local government; they’re just a group of neighbors from the hood, as they describe it, who saw the fascist terror spreading in their community and decided to band together to do something about it. From chasing ICE cars out of town with bullhorns to setting up security brigades so terrified residents can walk outside and go to the grocery store, from providing know your rights information to reclaiming public space, protecting each other, and rebelliously refusing to live in fear. 

These everyday heroes have shown extraordinary bravery by making the decision to get up, organize, and do something. Just like you all or your predecessors organized and did something at your job when they formed a union. And if we’re gonna survive this, if we’re gonna stop this, if we’re gonna keep hope alive that we can still have a future worth living in, we need working people everywhere coming together, forming unions in the most literal sense. You are in labor unions, you have a lot to teach people out there. And the labor movement has a lot to learn from people like Elizabeth Castillo, Jesus Simental, and their neighbors who all formed Grupo Auto Defensa. 

What transferable skills, structures, and strategies for bringing people together as a union of the willing can you bring from organized labor and help others harness and develop in their struggles? What support, material, legal, or otherwise, are you as unions willing to give to this fight? What coalitions can you help build to bring working people together in a united front that fights for light and life as such? How can we leverage the positions and different legal restrictions of labor unions, tenant unions, and grassroots unions of all kinds to creatively marshal working-class resistance, apply pressure, and build power on and off the shop floor? What rights and privileges as union workers are you willing to put on the line for those whose rights, from their reproductive rights to their very right to exist, are under attack? What will you do, as unions, to stand up for immigrants, queer and trans people, Palestinians obligated by weapons paid for by our tax dollars, students imprisoned for exercising their first amendment rights? How can we in the movement use our skills, our spaces, our connections, and our resources to physically bring disconnected people together in real spaces where they can know one another, like Grupo Auto Defensa is doing in Pasadena and like you are all doing right here? 

Resignation, despair, acceptance of our own powerlessness as a permanent, unfixable state—this is, simply and truly, unacceptable. We will not accept it. We cannot afford to be paralyzed by fear and defeatism; there is too much at stake—for us, for our children, our planet, and for our future. Now is the time for bravery, and history is calling upon all of us to be brave and to instill bravery in others. We must model bravery in our everyday lives by how we carry ourselves, by how we treat each other, and by standing firmly for what’s right, always, even if no one is watching. 

Your international union president, brother Shawn Fain, famously said “the working class is the arsenal of democracy and the workers are the liberators.” If that is true, brothers and sisters, then for ourselves, for each other, for our children, this is our time to prove it. 

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

The joint letter called for Israeli authorities to allow Gazan journalists and their families – many of whom, like the rest of the population, are starving and facing extraordinary challenges to their health and ability to report – to leave Gaza, and allow other journalists to enter Gaza to continue their work. Nearly two years into the war, no international journalists have independently been able to access Gaza.

“Protecting those who report from conflict is a duty shared by all,” the letter said. “Our local journalists have done their jobs with unimaginable resilience and bravery. Letting them leave Gaza if they wish to do so and allowing others in to offer respite and continue their work is a humanitarian obligation we cannot ignore.”

Read the full letter here.

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

Rocket attacks and shelling started near the Ta Muen Thom temple, which was also the flashpoint for the initial skirmish on Thursday.

Clashes were reported in 12 locations, up from six on Thursday, according to Thailand’s military. More than 130,000 people have been evacuated from Thailand’s border regions, said the country’s health ministry, which also reported 15 people killed in two days of skirmishes.

(Soveit Yarn/Reuters)

Leaders from both countries talked publicly about resolving the conflict.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet has backed a cease-fire proposal offered by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia, which chairs the ASEAN conference of nations that counts Cambodia and Thailand as members. The Cambodian leader posted on Facebook on Friday that Thailand had initially agreed to the deal, but later backed out.

After initially pushing for a bilateral agreement, Thailand’s foreign ministry said in a post on X that it will consider the Malaysian proposal, but that “appropriate on-the-ground conditions” must exist.

Earlier Friday, the acting prime minister of Thailand, Phumtham Vejjayachai, told reporters that the situation between the countries “had intensified and could escalate into a state of war.”

(Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Seamstress Pornpan Sooksai was among 600 people who took shelter at a gymnasium at a university in Surin, Thailand, about 80 kilometers from the border. She told the Associated Press that she had been doing laundry on Thursday when the shelling began.

“I just heard boom, boom, boom. We already prepared the cages, clothes, and everything, so we ran and carried our things to the car. I was frightened, scared,” she said.

In Cambodia, hundreds of residents near the border in Oddar Meanchey fled to a nearby Buddhist pagoda. Among them was 36-year-old Salou Chan, who lives about 20 kilometers from the disputed area.

“I fear for the safety of my children, they are still small,” he told Agence France-Presse. “I don’t know when I will be able to return home, but I want them to stop fighting soon. Nobody’s looking after my rice paddy and livestock.”

The two days of fighting follow many years of tension along the disputed border, and eight weeks of political jousting between Thai and Cambodian officials after a shooting incident on May 28 that killed a Cambodian soldier. On Wednesday, Thailand expelled Cambodia’s ambassador and recalled its own.

Includes reporting by RFA Khmer and Pimuk Rakkanam for RFA, as well as Agence France-Presse, The Associated Press, and Reuters.

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

The evidence discussed in the article points to a single Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) as the original organism from which all life existing on earth today is descended and the appearance of this ancestor roughly 4.2 billion years ago. That ancestor appears to have been what is called a “prokaryote-grade anaerobic acetogen,” in other words, a very simple single-celled organism, neither male nor female and not requiring oxygen to survive. It procreates simply by creating copies of itself. Such cells continue to exist today, and our bodies contain large numbers of them.

As astonishing and significant as this statement is, it is important to recognize what it does not say. First, it does not say that other life forms did not precede LUCA. In fact, these even more primitive life forms (or pre-life chemistry) are presumed to have existed and evolved into LUCA, but we have no traces of them.

Second, LUCA is not presumed to have been the only existing life form at the time, but rather the only one that survived and evolved into all earthly life forms that exist today. To put this into perspective, let’s remember that our entire pre-human population of 900,000 years ago fell to only 1280 individuals, and remained that size until 117,000 years later, before starting to increase again. Furthermore, the entire human race today can trace its ancestry to a single woman, who existed around 200,000 years ago. Every human being alive today shares her DNA.

Both of these examples illustrate the fact that not all of the branches of a family tree ultimately bear fruit, so that even if the family is large, many individual members will themselves have no descendants. The continuation of my line, for example, depends entirely upon my two grandsons, who may or may not have children. That’s not unusual. Every family can ultimately trace its line to a single ancestor. In the case of LUCA, therefore, the common ancestor of all life on Earth is simply the one that survived. Others surely existed, but left no offspring that exist today.

The evolution of LUCA and the laws of evolution

Obviously, LUCA did not remain unchanged. It evolved into many other species and forms of life, through the processes first described by Charles Darwin. In fact, as the Nature article sets forth, it evolved into all other forms of life living today on Earth. How did it do that? Simply by following the laws of evolution. These laws have been described by many naturalists and biologists. The most famous of these laws with respect to evolution, is the law of natural selection, first articulated by Charles Darwin in his book, The Origin of Species. With some editing on my part to allow for the more recent discovery of DNA and its role in what Darwin called heredity, it can be stated as follows:

Evolutionary Law #1: Natural selection is the process by which an individual member of a species passes along traits encoded in its DNA to its offspring. To the extent that these traits contribute to the survival of the offspring, they propagate themselves (and therefore the species).

Natural selection operates over generations to select for the traits that help a species to survive, and to select out the traits that do not. This is often called “survival of the fittest,” with “fittest” being a relative term, depending on changes in the environment in which the species lives. In some cases, the entire species dies out, which we call extinction, when, for example a change in habitat is too great or too abrupt for natural selection to save the species. Some examples of extinct species are the trilobite, the Irish elk, and the Hawaii Chaff Flower. In other cases, one species can evolve into more than one, when populations of a species are isolated from each other for a long time in habitats that alter them in different ways. A common example is the donkey or burro and the horse.

The factors at play in evolution and extinction are many. Some examples are:

• climate change
• cataclysmic events
• loss of habitat
• invasive competing species
• loss of food source
• physical isolation of a species, or a population with the species

By the same token, some of the traits by which species propagate themselves in order to adapt to these changes are:

• strength
• speed
• rapid maturation
• defensive mechanisms
• access to prey or nourishment
• aerial flight
• prolific distribution of seed or offspring
• ability to store nutrients
• access to sexual propagation
• ability to survive hardship and deprivation

All of these are fairly obvious, but it is their common thread that can be consequential in ways that are well-known but not yet fully explored. That common thread is competition. All organisms compete with each other – both within and between species – for resources and sustenance, including food, shelter, mates/procreation, protection, etc. This is true for fungi and single-celled organisms as much as for higher species. It is a well-known, universally accepted statement (or law, if you prefer). It permeates the behavior of all life forms, including (obviously) the human species. It can also be stated as a second Law of Evolution:

Evolutionary Law #2: All living things compete for their existence with all other living things.

The role of cooperation

But does natural selection operate by competition alone? What about cooperation, such as symbiosis and other mutually beneficial relationships between organisms of both the same and different species?

There’s no doubt that cooperation is a factor, but what is its role? We can begin this line of inquiry by examining what eventually happened with LUCA. For well over a billion years, LUCA and its descendants remained prokaryotes. Evolution was not static during this time, but it was exceedingly slow, and dependent to a vastly greater extent upon chance mutations and interactions other than mating, which did not yet exist.

Nevertheless, prokaryotes eventually graduated to eukaryotes – single cells with a nucleus housing the DNA – sometime between 2.7 and 1.8 billion years ago. This means that for a minimum of 1.5 billion years, LUCA did not to evolve beyond simple anaerobic single-celled organisms with no nucleus. This is not to say that prokaryotes did not evolve at all during that time, only that before the appearance of eukaryotes, the potential of natural selection was not apparent. This all changed with eukaryotes – a fundamentally new form of life, containing a nucleus housing the DNA.

Eukaryotes were capable of combining with each other to form offspring that were a combination of two parent cells, and not merely copies of a single parent. As a result, the offspring would have combinations of the DNA from the two parents, and thus be different from either of them. This drove faster evolution, and eventually developed into male and female types, as well as a categorical distinction between plants, animals and fungi, starting as early as 1.5 billion years ago, with plants consuming carbon dioxide and expelling oxygen, and animals and fungi consuming oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide. Even more significant, eukaryote cells began to cluster in ways where some could specialize in certain functions – such as digestion and protection – that served other members of the cluster, and vice versa. These colonies of cells with specialized functions exist today in organisms like the Portuguese man o’war, and bear some resemblance to colonies of insects like ants, termites or bees. In any case, these clusters of eukaryotes can be considered early examples of cooperation, and these first cooperative groups of eukaryotes eventually evolved into the first multi-celled organisms, both plants and animals.

Competition vs. cooperation

There is no question that both competition and cooperation are inherent in all life forms on Earth, and that the origin of cooperation may be said to begin with the transition from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, some 2 billion years ago. It is no wonder that they are both part of our DNA, so to speak.

But I would argue that competition is in fact the only driving force in evolution. Why? Let me begin with a reductionist argument. Let us suppose that an organism exists that does not compete for its existence against organisms that do compete? With no motivation to defend itself against other organisms, how fast would it simply cease to exist?

But if that is self-evident, how can cooperation exist at all? The answer is that cooperation confers an advantage to the organisms that engage in it. It was true for the early eukaryotes, and it is true for social alliances today, from wolf packs to human nations and bee hives.

But what is the nature of the advantage that cooperation confers upon the organisms that engage in it? The simple answer is that it enhances the ability to compete. In French they say, “l’union fait la force.” Unity makes strength. Strength for what purpose? To compete.

Ungulates form herds. Why? For protection. Nations form alliances for the same reasons. Criminals form gangs. Wolves form packs. Fish form schools. Bees form hives. Eukaryotes form colonies and eventually multi-celled organisms. But the purpose is always the same: to compete more effectively, to survive and to pass one’s genes to one’s offspring. Cooperation is a means of competition, not an alternative to it, as far as natural selection is concerned. Life does not compete in order to cooperate; it cooperates in order to compete. This may be stated as:

Evolutionary Law #3: All living things cooperate in varying degrees with each other for mutual advantage over other living things.

Obviously, none of this is directly relevant to questions of morality, ethics, justice or religion. Right and wrong, as well as good and bad, are questions which must be answered in a different type of discussion. The analysis that is presented here is devoted to what is or is not, with respect to evolution and where it is leading the human species, life on Earth, and potentially life throughout the universe. I am not addressing the question of what should or should not be. But it always helps to start with what we know, in order to look at the effects and consequences.

The emergence of technological species

We come now to the question of the human species and its evolution. We know that evolution has led life in many different directions during its long history on Earth. It began in the sea, migrated onto land, and eventually into the air, as well. It has developed life forms that generate poison and perfume, change color at will, grow horns, fangs and armor and many other means and strategies for defending themselves, gaining advantage over other organisms, and propagating themselves. Evolution can be a very powerful process.

We are, nevertheless, at a particularly momentous juncture in the history of evolution. I refer not so much to the development of the human species per se as to the development of technology in the hands of the human species. Humans are of course the primary and almost exclusive agent of technology on Earth, and they are exceptional in its natural history. We tend to think of intelligence as the primary reason for the ascendance of the human species. But we know that other species possess intelligence as well, including cetaceans, corvids, elephants and cephalopods. And we can’t be sure about the power of their intelligence, their linguistic abilities, and their abilities to function in organized groups. Their intelligence and communication skills, as well as their social organization and life cycles may be so different that it can be hard to gauge their capabilities.

But the octopus is the only other intelligent organism that possesses anything like our hands, and cephalopods are handicapped by a very short lifetime and a lack of social structure. Our ability to fashion, with our hands, new and artificial objects and machines and to harness energy, i.e. technology, is unique. We are clearly the first technological species on this planet. This is why I prefer to emphasize the contribution of technology, rather than brain development or intelligence per se toward the age in which we find ourselves. Let us remember that our brains are essentially the same as they were tens of thousands of years ago. The last major change was the development of human language, which required some rewiring of the brain, but not a lot, because it had already proceeded in that direction, as it has in other species. Current estimates are that the capacity for modern language in Homo sapiens evolved prior to 135,000 years ago, but actual modern language may not be much older than 100,000 years. On the other hand, tool making is millions of years old. Neither tool making nor intelligence nor language nor even hands are unique to the human species, but the convergence of them is. And clearly, these capabilities have fed off each other in a systematic way, even if none of them has resulted in major physical changes in our species.

Some of this can be inferred from the growth and spread of human population, especially during the last 60,000 years or so. Equally astonishing has been the parallel and roughly simultaneous development of agriculture, urban architecture, and written languages, even in the Americas, which could not have known what was happening on the other side of the world. The reasons for this are not likely to be organic changes, since we are essentially the same organism everywhere on Earth. The process and the convergence appear to be largely self-driving, once all the elements are in place, perhaps when human settlements reach a critical size that creates a level of interaction that is in some ways exponential. No other species achieved these breakthroughs.

The process has now brought about the Age of Technology, which is accelerating at breakneck speed, challenging our efforts to keep up with and adapt to it, and potentially relegating our participation to that of mere cogs in a system controlled by algorithms, technical managers and organizations like Cambridge Analytica, who discovered that humans could be controlled to a significant degree through their electronic devices. The onset of the age may have begun with the first stone tool kits of hominids, millions of years ago, but today it has progressed to where technology increasingly drives itself, with humans as the pollinators of developments such as AI, artificial life forms and exploration of both the farthest and innermost reaches of the universe. We are often unprepared for the consequences. Most of us try to keep up, but it requires increasing vigilance to stay ahead of the forces arrayed to manipulate us and turn us into mere fuel for the vast machinery that is technology today. Think about your interaction with your smartphone. Who is controlling whom?

Perhaps most of this is the inevitable result of the convergence of forces that formed our species and its societal dynamics. Nevertheless, it is in our interest to try to understand what is happening to our species and our planet – and beyond – to the best of our abilities. This is a unique time in the history of life on earth, and it is due to the evolution of our species and its capabilities. Intelligent species existed in the distant past, especially among dinosaurs, but while we have found their remains, we have never found any signs of civilizations or technologies produced by them. And we surely would have, if they existed. Apparently, the convergence of developments that resulted in a species capable of creating a technological society has never existed on Earth until now.

Similarly, we have no confirmed signs of technology from other worlds, either on our planet or on the others that we have investigated thus far. At most, we have speculation about unexplained phenomena that remain unexplained, which has been true since the beginning of time. But we have no objects on Earth that could not have been produced on Earth, whereas we have transported earth-made artifacts to several other bodies in our solar system, which could not have been produced on those bodies. Where is the space junk from extraterrestrial civilizations?

A similar question was famously asked by nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950 at a gathering of his fellow scientists. After some debate about life on other planets, they concluded that it must exist, because there is nothing particularly unique about Earth. Planets with life may be rare, but there are so many planets in the universe that ours cannot be the only one to produce life. Even one in a million allows for a vast number. Furthermore, even though it took Earth more than 4 billion years to create its first technological species capable of interplanetary – and potentially interstellar – travel, there is no reason to think that we are necessarily the first in the entire universe, much less the only one. In fact, the odds are hugely against this being the case. This is the point at which Fermi asked his famous question, known as the Fermi Paradox, “Then where are they?”

This is more than an idle question. It is a troubling mystery and refers to an uncomfortable fact that deserves an answer. Why is there no evidence of any contact with extraterrestrial civilizations? Why would such civilizations not have left their traces during the billions of years of our planet’s existence? If we can find one-celled organisms from the earliest times, how much easier is it to find alien space junk? Even if aliens found our planet not worth very much of their time, how much more interesting are the moon and Mars, where we left our space junk? It is simply inconceivable that Earth would not have been visited, nor that we are the very first technological species to exist in all the universe.

The answer to Fermi’s question may help give us an idea about where we are headed as a technological species, and I believe it is possible to at least partially provide such an answer using the facts and analysis already discussed thus far. I apologize in advance if the answer is not to your liking; it is not to mine, either.

The evolutionary ceiling

What worries me is that there may be a law of evolution that has the effect of blocking technological species from developing beyond a certain point – that a technological species hits a ceiling above which it cannot rise, and that this law is the same everywhere in the universe, because the laws of evolution operate the same throughout the universe, as do the laws of physics. If we could pass that point, we would make contact with other technological species from other planets. But the available evidence points to the conclusion that no species anywhere in the universe develops beyond that point. Why?

Does it have anything to do with competition being the prime mechanism behind natural selection and cooperation secondary? I don’t know, but the idea that human nature is fundamentally different from the nature of all other life seems flawed and unrealistic to me. We’re not that different. The laws of the universe are universal.

Hollywood is full of films, like Dr. Strangelove and Don’t Look Up, about apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic visions of the world. We all agree that they have a plausible basis, because we know the power of existing weaponry and the potential to use it, as well as the weakness of human will. Our species is entirely capable of wreaking terrible destruction on our planet, and destroying many of its species, including our own. In fact, a significant number of species already trace their extinction to human activity. Did technological species on other planets and star systems meet the same fate? Is there a law of nature and evolution that dictates that when a technological species reaches a certain point of development, it destroys itself or sets itself so far back in development that it requires a long, arduous crawl to recover, at which time it once again hits its evolutionary ceiling? Perhaps we should take Hollywood more seriously.

We certainly have the means to accomplish such an apocalyptic outcome: nuclear war, climate change, biological warfare (such as experimental disease strains), chemical warfare, even artificial intelligence. If extraterrestrial civilizations have the same experience, this would certainly explain the absence of contact from or with them. But is it a law of evolution?

I believe that a strong case can be made that it is, that it is built into the nature of life and the primary mechanism of natural selection, as a corollary to Evolutionary Law #2, that all living things compete for their existence with all other living things. I therefore propose Evolutionary Law #4 as follows:

Evolutionary Law #4: When a technological species achieves the capability of self-destruction, its primary competitive drive sooner or later causes the exercise of this capability.

Is an evolutionary ceiling hanging over our heads like a sword of Damocles? Do natural laws of evolution dictate that sooner or later we will bring catastrophe upon ourselves? If so, how close are we to that point? In the last 2 million years, have we ever invented a weapon that we have not used? The answer is no, we haven’t.

The spectacular and unprecedented changes through which we are now living appear to be accelerating geometrically and perhaps exponentially. Compared to the period of the existence of life on Earth, the Age of Technology is no more than a split second, but its acceleration seems without constraint. My analysis is a modest attempt to suggest that there may in fact be a limit – an unplanned direction in which we may be headed, and which may be directed by universal laws that we as yet understand poorly.

Let me ask six questions for which I do not have answers but which may illustrate the problem.

1. How likely is it that we will stop inventing new means of destroying ourselves, either in part or in whole, whether deliberately or not?
2. How likely is it that all the nations of the world will agree to destroy all technology that endangers our entire species?
3. How likely is it that we will live with the tools of our own destruction for the indefinite future without using them, either by accident or on purpose?
4. If we agree to measures that will make us safe, how long will all the nations of the world abide by them, with no “Samson option” that destroys everyone?
5. If we achieve the previous objectives, how likely is it that we will manage to keep the means of destruction out of the hands of actors that are not party to the agreements?
6. If we manage to adhere to all of these control measures for ten years, how much longer will we be able to do so? Another 10 years? Another 50 years? Another 100 years? Another 1000? 10,000? 100,000? Will we really keep all of these weapons under control indefinitely?

We have no previous experience with this point in our evolutionary history. Nothing to compare it to. If or when we hit the Evolutionary Ceiling, what will it look like? Will we destroy all life on Earth? Will we destroy all human life plus some other species? Will we destroy ourselves only to the point of leaving behind enough population remnants to rebuild slowly, in the absence of the technological tools to which we will have become accustomed? If we succeed in rebuilding, will we find ourselves hitting the same Evolutionary Ceiling as before? In that case, will the result be as bad or better or worse than the first time, or is it totally unpredictable?

As I said, we have nothing to guide us. For us this is the first time in our planet’s history (and possibly the last) to face this situation. We also have no guidance from the rest of our galaxy or universe, at least not yet.

I don’t know about you, but I would find it very comforting to receive visitors from other planets telling and showing us that there is another option and explanation for Fermi’s Paradox.

• Image credit: NASA.

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

It was an honor to have her on my show, which airs July 30, 6 pm PST at KYAQ.org. Finding Fringe. DV gets the show early! Listen here.

And, remember, Gaza now, but China in 2027, we will see blood. These fucking war lords and tech LGBTQ+ and straight/cis fucking devils want war with China.

TWENTY TWENTY SEVEN — the year of the GOAT: The US is conducting intensive military exercises around the Pacific on a scale, intensity and tempo, not seen since the Cold War. In the meantime, frontline US and NATO troops are actively deploying and rehearsing war. Some top-level US officials have calendared 2027 as the date for war to start. Is the die already cast for war with China?

Here, Abby Martin signed on to this petition, as I did, and this was 10 months (Jan 2023) before the most current Jewish State of Murdering Maiming Starving Polluting Poisoning Thieving Occupied Palestine GENOCIDE:

Open Letter to US Congressional Representatives marking our opposition to the US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) January 25, 2022

WASHINGTON, DC: The undersigned chapters and members of the Democratic Socialists of America and other allied organizations and individuals strongly condemn Congress’s use of industrial policy and other elements of the proposed US Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) to counter China as part of a new Cold War fueled by US imperialist interests, which further destabilizes geopolitical relations and jeopardizes efforts toward greater global cooperation on issues affecting everyone worldwide.

We call on members of Congress to oppose this aggressive escalation and push back on the narratives that have fueled rising anti-Chinese sentiment in the US, marked by increased anti-Asian racism and violence. We oppose the USICA and other legislation that calls for increased military budgets, further militarization of the Asia Pacific region, and fosters anti-Chinese propaganda efforts, all based on nothing more than perceived threats to US geopolitical interests. Elected members of the US Congress have the duty to prioritize the needs and concerns of their working-class constituents instead of those of arms manufacturers and defense contractors who have fueled decades of endless war at the expense of genuine global cooperation and common prosperity for working-class people everywhere.

We believe that US industrial policy should not be built upon imperialist ambitions that serve only to drag the world into a new Cold War. We believe that working people in the US and elsewhere deserve policies that invest in public works programs, climate resilience, infrastructure, healthcare, and more. The US Innovation and Competition Act is not created for those purposes; instead, it is overwhelmingly focused on preserving US global hegemony by fabricating narratives aimed at painting China as a threat and riling up global conflict in an effort to undermine an increasingly multipolar world. If enacted, the bill would ramp up interference in the sovereignty of nations throughout the world, establish an anti-Chinese federal bureaucracy, intensify the militarization of US global policies, and continue the legacy of US industrial policy being weaponized against socialist movements globally. This legislation will promote confrontation and conflict with China, escalate the potential for military conflict between nuclear powers, and hinder global cooperation needed to address critical issues like climate change.

For these reasons, we strongly condemn the USICA and urge members of Congress to oppose the bill and call for an end to US policies that threaten hundreds of millions of people in the Asia Pacific region and could spiral into worldwide conflict.

Abby Martin and I talked about the fact that this empire of chaos, terror, amnesia and in my words, empire of agnotology, is on crack and Ritalin. In a 24-hour news cycle, there are literally hundreds of stories on the WWW that would be of interest to journalists and educators like myself and hard-working media mavens like Abby.

[Fifty Fucking Years Ago, published.]

One My Lai Massacre (500 killed, dozens wounded, raped, maimed) every week in Gaza. Where is the outrage? Real time genocide, as they say, Cell Phone/Telegram/TikTok produced fucking genocide:

Stop calling this “Netanyahu’s war” when the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis support the genocide. This is a fully radicalized society—that’s why Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions are necessary. on X, Abby Martin

Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has been warning of this — and argues there is an obligation to act:

“We knew that Israel had intended to starve the Palestinians in Gaza since October 9, 2023 when Israel announced explicitly its plan to starve the Palestinians in Gaza. For 20 months, the governments of the world were on notice and had many opportunities to stop what’s happening. There are arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the war crime of starvation against Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Gallant. In fact, the International Court of Justice itself in January, recognized there is famine and starvation in Gaza. That creates a mandatory obligation. Countries MUST act to stop starvation. So it creates a legal obligation for every country in the world to step in and end this starvation and famine in Gaza today. So what must happen now? Governments can [should] act through the General Assembly because the United States keeps exercising its veto at the Security Council. When that happens, the General Assembly has the authority to call upon peacekeepers to accompany humanitarian convoys into Gaza to protect the convoys and bring aid.”

This below was Goddamn Five Months Ago:

Abby was just in Bogota, for that fiasco: The Hague Group. Listen to her go off on those countries that didn’t even sign on, that is, in the interview above.

She said that of all the folks she’s interviewed for her various platforms, but mostly Empire Files, the grassroots activists and organizers and on the ground folk she most closely aligns to. Or empathizes with, and/or valorizes with a small “v”. But Corbyn is her hero.

Bring in the fucking navies, man, all those logistics personnel to get the food, meds, doctors/nurses, clean water, psychologists, media, tents and prefab homes to these people NOW!

A CALL TO CONSCIENCE: AN APPEAL TO THE LEADERS OF THE WORLD

The tragedy unfolding in Gaza is a test of our shared humanity. Entire families are being murdered. Children — even babies — have been killed. Others are wasting away from hunger. This appalling disregard for human life and dignity must end, for it is a violation of the most basic moral code.

Malaysia calls on all world leaders to act with urgency. Every government that believes in international law, every nation that claims to value human life, must speak with one voice.

In this regard, I urge all those with influence over Israel to find the courage to act decisively. I especially appeal to US President Donald Trump to use that influence to press for an immediate end to the killing, stop the indiscriminate bombings, and ensure that humanitarian aid reaches those in need without obstruction.

This is the hour for moral leadership. This is the time to uphold the values we claim to defend.

Malaysia stands ready to work with all nations—North and South, East and West—to bring relief to Gaza, and to restore the basic principles of humanity. Let us not be remembered as those who stood by. Let us be guided by our conscience, to answer suffering with compassion, and to pursue peace for the sake of our humanity.

ANWAR IBRAHIM

I’ve followed Project Censored for a time, having my various college students tap into that, those 25 most under-reported and de-platformed or just not covered stories annual recognition (in the mainstream press, that is).

She appeared in this flick:

I gave her the honorific that she, like so many others, not only know what that leash is, but she and others just yank out the bloody peg holding truth back.

“The U.S. military is the largest institutional polluter in the world. There is no corporation or industry that compares to the damage and devastation done by the U.S. war machine,” Martin told Watchdog host Lowkey.

She’s got skin-kin-amigos-colleagues in the game — she did that documentary years ago, 2019. Gaza Fights For Freedom

Yes indeed, her work with Telesur is what got Empire Files up and running, and the sanctions against Venezuela, that forced EF to go to a subscription basis.

Abby Goes to Palestine

Sources and Links

Videos

• The Empire Files, run by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner
• The Empire Files on YouTube.
• Israelis Speak Candidly to Abby Martin About Palestinians

Podcasts

• Media Roots Radio, hosted by Abby Martin and Robbie Martin
• Abby Goes to Palestine
• “Great March of Return” Massacre, Killing Gaza: Interview w/ Max Blumenthal & Dan Cohen:

Support Abby’s Work

• Media Roots Patreon Page

We did not get into the new documentary on the military industrial complex under the umbrella of US’s Military:

She’s making the rounds now as the film is about to be final edited, cut, sound-enhanced and soon to be released:

There’s emphasis on the carbon and polluting and poisoning footprint of the military, for sure. I want to get into other issues tied to the +Military Legal Retail Energy Oil Chemical Mining Education Surveillance Prison Policing Finance Banking Real Estate Entertainment PR Congressional Transportation Ag Pharma Medical COMPLEX.

All the harms done not just through direct kinetic forces shooting and sniping, but the overall psychological harm, that collective consciousness of trauma, that epigenetic force of a military and the uniforms and badges and pips and medals and camo and flyovers and complete saturation of military mindset as well as the first hand, second hand and third hand damage wars do to entire generations and beyond.

Forget about just the toxins and the depleted uranium and land mines. It’s the terror of those drones, or the threat of war, or the respective countries in USA’s and 14 Eyes’ gun sights having to spend time and resources and valuable human lifetimes to fend off the enemy, or the threat of war, or coup or sanctions.

We need a Military Madness Offensive Weapons footprint calculator like we do for water (water footprint) or ecology (ecological footprint). Even those two standard bearers of sustainability education do not put in the PSYCHOLOGICAL and SOCIOLOGICAL harms done to places without water or those places with degraded and deadly water caused by industrial and post-industrial (data centers, AI, etc) for- profit endeavors.

Do this for each part and paint smear on a B-2 bomber. Life Cycle Analysis/ Assessment of a coffee maker? Or the coffee that gets put into that Kureig? Oh, that is a fun experiment — where the coffee is grown, how, by whom, in which system of exploitation, which systems, who owns the finca, who works the finca, which Western company owns the brand, and then where the coffee fruit goes, or gets dried and then roasted, and then the criss-cross of all this raw product throughout the global chain, and then, packaging, transporation, marketing, middle men, and alas, in that Trader Joe’s as Trader Joe’s brand organice (is that beyond organic, or shade tree or frair trade or co-op locally owned coffee?)

Check out this WordPress piece:

Life Cycle Assessment of Coffee Production Ben Salinas December 18, 2008

So, let’s do the same thing for just ONE US Mercenary product, hell, just a bloody set of boots, which ones, Timberline?

[Belleville Boot Company and Rocky Boots were recently selected to supply the U.S. Army with about 36,700 pairs of newly-designed Jungle Combat Boots.]

This system of destruction — the greatest polluter and enemy of the earth — relies on that complex +Military Legal Retail Energy Oil Chemical Mining Education Surveillance Prison Policing Finance Banking Real Estate Entertainment PR Congressional Transportation Ag Pharma Medical COMPLEX. And relies on the thousands of Boeing’s and GE’s and all the cool companies on planet earth who are hiring cool kiddos and youth and adults to do the bloody Faustian Bargain.

Hell, in fact, some of those major Defense/Offensive Industries have parent and partner companies, so, at GE, for example, you can work on sustainability:

About GE Vernova

GE Vernova Inc. (NYSE: GEV) is a purpose-built global energy company that includes Power, Wind, and Electrification segments and is supported by its accelerator businesses. Building on over 130 years of experience tackling the world’s challenges, GE Vernova is uniquely positioned to help lead the energy transition by continuing to electrify the world while simultaneously working to decarbonize it. GE Vernova helps customers power economies and deliver electricity that is vital to health, safety, security, and improved quality of life. GE Vernova is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., with approximately 75,000 employees across approximately 100 countries around the world. Supported by the Company’s purpose, The Energy to Change the World, GE Vernova technology helps deliver a more affordable, reliable, sustainable, and secure energy future.

So your brother is at the other division of GE:

(GE) has a history of involvement in the military and defense industry, including the production of weapons and military equipment. While GE Aerospace focuses on engines and related systems for aircraft, they also have a history of manufacturing weapons and weapon systems. GE produced the M134 Minigun and the GAU-8 Avenger cannon, among other systems. They also supplied components and systems for various military aircraft and naval platforms. GE has also been involved in the development of jet engines for military aircraft.

We all get folded into this evil machine, this war machine, at every level, even all those community colleges with drone programs! Here, from California, where Abby and her family reside:

City College of San Francisco (Link)
Diablo Valley College (Link)
Gavilan College (Link)
Los Medanos College (Link)
Mission College (Link)
Ohlone College (Link)
Santa Rosa Junior College (Link)
Skyline College (Link)
West Valley College (Link)

Mt. San Antonio College (Link)

Santa Ana College (Link)
Coastline College (Link)
Orange Coast College (Link)
Cypress College (Link)
Fullerton College (Link)

In Israel, ‘Death to Arabs’ chants are common—but ‘Death to leftists’ is also heard. To ultranationalists, leftists are AIDS and Arabs are the common cold. You have to purge those tying your hands before carrying out the final solution — Abby Martin on X

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

Excess seaweed is a seasonal nuisance along the bays and inlets that twine throughout Puget Sound. But the issue has magnified as excess nutrient runoff has fueled sprawling blooms. It has become a bona fide threat to the business of Washington shellfish farmers like Joth Davis.

In the past, Davis has attempted to harvest the seaweed by hand to reduce the surging number of macroalgae menacing his catch. Alas, there is the “age-old problem of scale,” he said. “It is difficult work, and time available during low tides to tackle the problem is limited, with everything else we need to accomplish when the tide is out.” 

A couple years before the team got to work last May, researchers at the University of Washington approached Davis to see if he’d be interested in partnering with them to develop a new supply chain. The plan was simple: Harvest the seaweed from Davis’s farm, give it to small and mid-sized crop farmers in the area as a soil-building replacement for chemical fertilizer, and along the way study the effects — reduced emissions from a shortened supply chain, steady yields from shellfish and terrestrial farms, changes in soil chemistry, and possibly a way to sequester the carbon stored in the seaweed itself. They were also aiming to investigate the impacts of seaweed removal on shellfish survival and growth. 

A Department of Agriculture program established by the Biden administration, and funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, offered exactly the federal support they needed to make the vision happen. In February of 2022, the USDA launched the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, or PCSC, which former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said at the time would “provide targeted funding to meet national and global demand and expand market opportunities for climate-smart commodities to increase the competitive advantage of American producers.”

Davis, who has a background in marine science, seized the chance. 

The aptly named “Blue Carbon, Green Fields,” project was selected by the USDA in 2023 to receive roughly $5 million of the climate-smart commodities money in a five-year agreement. In addition to Davis’s team at Baywater and the scientists from UW, the partnership consisted of researchers from Washington State University and Washington Sea Grant, conservationists from the nonprofit Puget Sound Restoration Fund, and the local farm incubator Viva Farms. In their first year in the field, the team harvested a little over 15,000 pounds of wet seaweed, which was stockpiled and distributed to four crop farms throughout the region. By laying the groundwork for the agricultural supply chain, the team was on track for the unthinkable — a quadruple win of sorts, where everyone involved benefitted, including the planet. 

Instead, not even halfway through a federal contract, their drying racks and other seaweed harvesting equipment are at risk of just gathering cobwebs on Davis’s farm; each unused tool a daily reminder of the progress they lost at the behest of President Donald Trump’s cultural politics. The supply chain, fragile in its novelty, is splintering apart.

Almost a year after the team began their field work harvesting seaweed in Puget Sound, the USDA announced that it would cancel the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative. In a press release issued on April 14, the agency called the $3.1 billion funding pot a “climate slush fund” and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins decried it as “largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers.” The USDA said that it axed the initiative due to the “sky-high administration fees which in many instances provided less than half of the federal funding directly to farmers.” 

Robert Bonnie, the former Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation at the USDA under the Biden administration, rejects this claim. He contends that the reason some projects reported higher administrative fees than others is because roughly half the awards were intended to boost markets for smaller projects. “You would expect those projects to have higher administrative costs because those farmers are harder to reach,” he argued. “Take the Iowa Soybean Association, or Archer Daniels Midland, where they’ve got established relationships with farmers, where they’ve got high demand amongst many of their farmers, you’re going to expect those projects to have lower administrative costs as a percentage because they’ve already got an extensive network. So we wanted to provide flexibility across projects to make sure that the door was open to everyone,” added Bonnie. 

In any case, USDA’s use of the term “cancel” was something of a misnomer. In the same announcement, the agency shared its plan to review existing projects under a new set of scoring criteria, to ensure that they align with the new administration’s priorities. The release noted that the program would be “reformed and overhauled” into a Trump-era effort to redistribute the pool of IRA money. So as the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program sunsetted, the Advancing Markets for Producers initiative was born. 

The Trump program’s criteria required grant awardees to ensure that a minimum of 65 percent of their funds go directly to farmers, that they enrolled at least one farmer in their program by December 31, 2024, and that they have made a payment to at least one farmer by that same date. According to a former senior USDA official, who spoke to Grist on the condition of anonymity, the USDA grouped the 135 PCSC grantees into three buckets: Fifteen projects were told they could keep going, as they met the new thresholds; five recipients were told they could continue on the condition that they modified their projects to meet the new priorities; and 115 were informed that their projects were terminated as they did not meet the new policy priorities and were invited to resubmit. A few weeks later, the official said that projects that initially received cancellation letters were told something different – that the termination would be rescinded and they could just modify their proposals to meet administration priorities.

The group behind Blue Carbon, Green Fields was among the 115. 

In the USDA’s official termination notice to the University of Washington, shared with Grist, the team was told that their project “failed to meet the first of three Farmer First policy priorities identified by USDA” — that at least 65 percent of the funds must go to producers. A second notice stated that because of that, “the award is inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.”

Sarah Collier, the UW assistant professor leading the initiative, remembers how the news of the termination hit her. When she got the letter, “everything had to come to a screeching halt.” She jumped into crisis-mode, notifying the 25 or so people working on the project, including students whom Collier said saw their “dissertation research derailed.” She then reached out to notify the farmers who had been receiving the seaweed fertilizer. The timing couldn’t have been worse: the team had just completed a round of farmer recruitment, and were in the middle of signing contracts with five more small and mid-sized farmers.  

“I have days where I am like, I can’t,” said Collier. “I can’t handle one more conversation where all I can say is, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do about this, because this isn’t the way that things are supposed to go. This isn’t the way that federal grants are supposed to work.’” 

In May, the USDA sent a letter to grantees who had received cancellation notices informing them of how to submit revised applications. According to the letter, which was also shared with Grist, grantees would need to arrange one-on-one meetings with Natural Resources Conservation Service representatives and submit a new budget narrative and statement of work incorporating Trump’s policy priorities. They had until June 20th. 

When they first learned that their funding had been culled, Collier’s UW team, as the main grantee, wasn’t sure they were going to resubmit — or whether they even could. At the time, nothing further had been disclosed about what it would entail, so Collier decided to wait to talk with the NRCS to find out more. After that meeting, they moved forward with resubmission, in a bid to salvage what funding they were able to. That required Collier to create “a very revised” narrative and restructure the budget, in addition to regular meetings with the NRCS. 

The former USDA official noted that specific details of the resubmission process have since largely been kept quiet, since the vast majority of former PCSC grantees are fearful of speaking out about their experiences in case of retaliation by the administration. The closed-door nature of it all, with a lack of clear communication from the Trump administration and changes in guidance leading up to the submission deadline, the official said, has sown confusion and distress among former grantees. 

Although no official verdict timeline has been communicated — Collier has heard everything from 60 days to sometime in September — she expects to be waiting on the final funding decision for at least two more months. Hannah Smith-Brubaker, executive director at the nonprofit Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, or Pasa, has been told something similar about her pending resubmission. Another PCSC grantee, Pasa also reapplied to the new USDA program after being informed they didn’t meet one of the Trump administration’s priorities. Doing so required a total revamp of what their old project had been structured to do. 

“In the end, we decided to completely rewrite our proposal rather than just alter our original proposal. We had already said goodbye to the old program and knew it wouldn’t be able to fit the new reality,” said Smith-Brubaker. She says she “lies awake at night” concerned over the outcome, including whether the USDA may choose to deny their resubmission because of Pasa’s involvement in a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year challenging the Trump administration’s funding freeze. 

“It’s hard to say right now which decisions and actions might unintentionally result in things going awry,” said Smith-Brubaker. “Even though we still feel it was not in farmer’s best interest to have this degree of disruption, and fear for what a new reality could mean where every change in administration could involve a complete dismantling of stability and promises, we are extremely grateful for the opportunity to still leverage these funds for what our farmers need most.”

In a series of separate recent actions, the USDA provided a peek into how leaders at the nation’s highest food and farming agency have taken strides to comply with the president’s executive orders targeting climate action, environmental justice, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In mid-June, the agency announced the termination of more than 145 awards totaling $148.6 million of “Woke DEI Funding.” Then, on July 10, the USDA posted a final rule in the Federal Register revoking a longstanding provision that ensured “disadvantaged” producers have equitable access to federal support, by allowing for carve-outs designed specifically for groups, such as Black and Indigenous farmers, that have historically faced discrimination. Shortly thereafter, the agency also revoked guidelines implemented during the Biden administration that mandated schools administering federal meal programs to ban discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. 

Some observers say that in the USDA’s rushed campaign to gut federal funding while erasing footprints of the Biden administration, the termination of the climate-smart project happened much too fast, and much too soon. For one, Bonnie, who helped design and implement the PCSC initiative, believes that the USDA’s invitation for grantees to resubmit their applications signals the administration’s initial lack of understanding about the bipartisan backlash to the decision. 

“The Trump administration was surprised at the amount of support for not only this program, but for climate-smart agriculture more broadly,” said Bonnie. Leadership at USDA were, he added, “under pressure to satisfy the far-right, to be anti-climate and anti-woke.”

“They try to paint with a broad brush about this being the Green New Deal,” Bonnie continued. “Most people that knew this program, knew that they were blowing smoke.” 

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While the Blue Carbon, Green Fields team is hopeful that, in time, an iteration of the project may continue, work on the ground has stalled. If they do receive a new round of funding from the USDA, Collier said, one change to their budget proposal will have considerable impacts on how the project will be carried out. To satisfy the requirements for resubmission, nearly two-thirds of the funds for the award will have to go directly to participating producers — rather than to the partners like the UW team, which is how it was originally structured.

“That does mean that, pending what we learn as we engage with USDA on this, that if we’re able to go forward, participants will have to seek out their own services to support the practices that they’re implementing, rather than having those services provided by the project partners, as part of the grant,” said Collier. “Instead, they will receive funds to seek out the services that they need, like technical assistance, or like harvesting and transporting seaweed.”

That modification, though seemingly minor, is rather significant, particularly for small farmers who already struggle with limited time and resources to allocate to anything beyond their day-to-day operations, some of whom say it presents an unjust burden. According to fellow PCSC grantee Smith-Brubaker, such a structural change will make things harder for them. “It’s really too bad to have to make it even more complicated for farmers to get the services they want and need,” she said.

Ellen Scheffer, who co-operates a 20-acre organic vegetable and grain farm in Fall City, Washington, is a small farmer involved with the Blue Carbon, Green Fields project. The funds “being yanked away” makes Scheffer “feel really defeated about the future.” A downside of USDA’s resubmission process, she noted, is that “any positive benefit that might help the future of our environment is going to have to be a side benefit, rather than the direct goal of the research. It feels very, very frustrating, especially as someone who is living every day trying to grow food in a way that is good for our planet.” 

Others, like project partner Viva Farms, the nonprofit farm incubator that connected producers in their network with the seaweed researchers, feels as if the group’s chapter together has already come to a close. “It did feel like the momentum was really a sheer drop-off,” said Viva Farms’ Elma Burnham. “We were about to prepare to onboard all sorts of new farms, to have seaweed drying here, to sort of get them more action of the program, instead of more of this, like, planning. And, yeah, it was challenging to see it sort of come to a halt,” she said. 

The likelihood of revival, according to Burnham, feels low. “Of course, we would love to see more organic, small-scale farmers pursue this research, we would love to see more innovation and collaboration happening in the Puget Sound region. But it feels over,” said Burnham. “This particular project feels over.” 

Davis, the shellfish grower, says he struggled to come to terms with the time and workload that would be demanded of him in the revised program — and what the restructuring of the proposal to align with the Trump administration’s policy priorities altogether represents. “I just thought it was kind of backwards, to be honest. It just didn’t seem like the right way to do it,” he said. For instance, directing most of the grant money to the farmers rather than project leads, he added, “didn’t make sense.”   

Instead, he’s going his own way. Davis has begun planning out an even shorter seaweed supply chain in tandem with his daughter Hannah and Emily Buckner, one of her colleagues at the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, just two of the six original partners. They’ve been busy identifying producers in the Chimacum Valley to collaborate with, all within a twenty mile radius of his farm. By narrowing the geographic range and foregoing much of the soil chemistry research, the scope of Davis’s new venture is limited compared to Blue Carbon, Green Fields, but, he said, “At the end of the day, I was, and I am, too invested in the parts that [the USDA] didn’t want.”

Still, not all the equipment that the USDA funds bought is laying idle around the farm, at risk of catching cobwebs: Davis is currently testing out a raft-based suction system to vacuum up the excess seaweed clustered around sensitive geoducks.

“We’ve got the equipment, and we’re going to harvest it and dry some and see where this can go,” he said. “We want to move forward with that, just to see if it works.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Seaweed brought fishers, farmers, and scientists together. Trump tore them apart. on Jul 25, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

As I wander through tents emblazoned with the logos of organizations like the Nature Conservancy and Generation180, volunteers explain how fans can reduce their carbon footprints and join the clean energy transition. The longest line emanates from Reverb’s flagship tent, where batches of limited-edition blue-and-yellow Nalgene bottles hang from tent poles like so many coconuts from a grove of palm trees. 

Fans acquire the bottles by making a $20 donation, which enters them into a raffle to win a guitar signed by Matthews; they can fill their bottles at a nearby filtered water station. It’s all part of “RockNRefill,” a partnership between Reverb, Nalgene, and the Nature Conservancy. The program has raised $5 million for climate and conservation nonprofits and eliminated an estimated 4 million single-use plastic bottles. 

“It’s cutting down on single-use plastics, so we hope everybody takes a bottle home or brings it back to another show,” says Dan Hutnik, Reverb’s onsite coordinator. “We’re trying to help save the planet — I like to say, one water bottle at a time.” (I bought one of the Nalgenes, but didn’t win a signed guitar.)

With this year’s summer touring season in full swing, the Dave Matthews Band’s efforts are just one example of the increased focus on sustainability in live music over the past several years. Decades after trailblazers like Bonnie Raitt began to prioritize climate, more and more artists are embracing sustainability and pushing for change — both inside and outside the industry — with the help of organizations like Reverb. 

Founded in 2004 by environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and her husband Adam Gardner, a guitarist and vocalist of the alt-rock group Guster, Reverb has become a leading force in greening live music. The nonprofit sends staffers like Hutnik out on the road with acts from Matthews to Billie Eilish, setting up eco-villages and organizing volunteers. Reverb staffers serve as the bands’ de facto sustainability coordinators, allowing initiatives like RockNRefill to be scaled up, rather than every artist having to build something similar from scratch.

Reverb also coordinates with concert promoters and venues, which have their own sustainability teams and programs. As part of the recent renovation of Jones Beach, for example, Live Nation added a sorting facility out back where employees handpick recyclables and compostables out of the garbage. The company’s Road To Zero campaign, a partnership with Matthews, diverted 90 percent of landfill-bound waste at the majority of the band’s shows last summer.

Live music has grown immensely since the pandemic — the top 100 tours grossed roughly $10 billion last year, nearly double what they reached in 2019. (For various reasons unrelated to climate, the 2025 number will likely be lower.) 

If abandoning climate projects is the new normal in our current political moment, the music business hasn’t gotten the memo. According to a recent Reverb study, 9 out of 10 concertgoers are concerned about climate change and are prepared to take action — and artists are ready to lead the way.

“As more and more artists are asking for the same things, it makes sense for these venues to make it a permanent change and not something where they just say, ‘OK, put away all the Styrofoam and all that crap, we’ll save it for the next band,’” said Gardner. “And that’s where the power really starts coming into play.”

Five days after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Coldplay played the biggest — and almost certainly the most overtly eco-friendly — stadium show of the 21st Century. A crowd of 111,000 streamed into Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India, to see the latest stop on the band’s Music of the Spheres Tour. Coldplay has grossed nearly $1.3 billion in the first three years of the tour, making it the second-most lucrative of all time behind Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. 

Coldplay has notched quite a few firsts on the climate front. After the group’s 2016-2017 tour, front man Chris Martin and his bandmates were so concerned about their carbon footprint that they took a break from the road until they could forge a more sustainable path. They eventually began planning the Music of the Spheres Tour with a pledge to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent compared to their last tour, and to hold themselves accountable with transparent reporting.

Coldplay committed to offsetting unavoidable emissions as responsibly as possible, drawing on the Oxford Principles for Net-Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting, a guide that aims to ensure the integrity of carbon credits. The group has also used a portion of its tour proceeds to support new green technologies and environmental causes. Above all, the band wanted to push the envelope industry-wide with a sustainability rider — a set of requests that artists make as a condition for performing — covering everything from venues’ power connections to free water for fans.

Concert promoters are accustomed to accommodating all manner of demands on big acts’ riders (ranging from peppermint soap to actual kittens) and have proven open to doing the same for climate initiatives.

“Any artist could add sustainability considerations to their rider and try to influence promoters and venues to do things in a lower-impact way,” said Luke Howell, the band’s head of sustainability. “While not all artists can change how a venue operates at the macro scale, they can all ask for no single-use plastics, more veggie options on menus, or make sure the kit they are using is efficient and specced correctly to minimize energy use. And they can all engage their fans.”

To that end, while operating at a scale that few other acts can approach, Coldplay has introduced a bevy of novel green touring concepts. The band partnered with BMW to develop the first mobile show battery, which can power 100 percent of a concert with renewable energy. These clean sources include solar panels that come along for the ride, as well as power-generating bicycles and kinetic floors that quite literally draw energy from dancing fans.

Coldplay, of course, isn’t the first group to care about its impact on the planet, or try to reduce it. Environmental activism in the modern pop music world dates back more than half a century to conservation-focused songs like Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology).” 

Similarly, early benefit concerts — many organized by late folk singer Tom Campbell — focused on causes like protecting forests in the Pacific Northwest. After Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne played one such show in Oregon, their crews needed a police escort out of town to stave off a convoy of chainsaw-wielding loggers.

As the science around global warming went mainstream at the turn of the millennium, artists turned their focus toward climate change. Raitt’s 2002 summer tour launched Green Highway, a traveling eco-village where fans could learn about environmental issues and check out the newest hybrid vehicles from Honda. She and her manager, Kathy Kane, convinced tour bus companies to let them power their vehicles with biodiesel, booking the tour well in advance so as to route buses efficiently instead of wasting fuel hopscotching the country. 

At every venue, Raitt’s rider called for replacing disposable silverware with real cutlery, and she began bringing her own water bottle refill stations to reduce backstage plastic use. If there wasn’t a proper recycling system on-site, the crew would bring paper scraps on the bus and dispose of them properly in the next town. And Raitt inspired a new generation of artists who were concerned about live music’s environmental footprint.

“All I had to do was look at the ground when the lights came up at the end of the show to see all the plastic,” said Guster’s Gardner. “I just didn’t feel good about it.”

His wife, Lauren Sullivan, was working for the Rainforest Action Network when a venue refused to let them set up a table at a Dave Matthews show. Apparently, the nonprofit had been rallying against old growth woodcutting practices of one of the venue’s major sponsors. When Matthews threatened to skip the gig, the venue relented. 

The episode inspired Sullivan to team up with her husband to channel the power of live music into climate action. Sullivan reached out to Raitt, who was on the Rainforest Action Network’s board, and learned that the touring gear from Green Highway was in storage. Raitt offered it up — and pledged to incubate Sullivan’s project via her own nonprofit, until Reverb was officially launched in 2004.

Sullivan and Gardner wanted their new nonprofit to be an organization that all acts could use to make their tours greener. In their vision, fans walking into any venue would be greeted by a Reverb volunteer wearing a band-branded T-shirt, ready to engage on environmental issues. Concertgoers would be incentivized to take action — like reducing their own carbon footprint or pushing elected officials to enact eco-friendly legislation — with chances to win goodies like ticket upgrades and signed instruments. 

On the artists’ side, Reverb helped institutionalize practices that not only reduced waste, but saved dollars — like replacing single-use batteries with rechargeable battery packs for performers’ in-ear monitors. Over time, due to artist demand, these rechargeable packs became the norm.

It turned out that, when big acts demanded a certain standard of sustainability, the live music industry was willing to make meaningful changes. Adam Met, from the alt-pop band AJR, remembers realizing this while planning a tour five years ago and asking venues to eliminate single-use plastics.

“Every place we went, the venue [employees] said, ‘Oh, like Jack Johnson,’” recalled Met, who now serves on Reverb’s advisory board. “That was the artist bringing the requests to the table, and an organization like Reverb.”

As the nonprofit grew, one challenge was broadening its reach beyond alt-rock, whose artists and audiences skew heavily white, male, and middle-aged. To that end, Reverb worked increasingly with emerging artists to help them weave sustainability into their touring process from day one.  

Perhaps the best example is Billie Eilish, who started teaming up with Reverb six years ago when she rose to stardom with her 2019 album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” On her 2022 Happier Than Ever Tour, Reverb helped her eliminate 117,000 single-use plastic bottles, save 8.8 million gallons of water, and push venues to offer plant-based meals — for the same prices as meat-based meals. She also introduced the pricier Changemaker Ticket, with proceeds supporting climate projects. Eilish even fueled her 2023 Lollapalooza set with solar-backed batteries.

Other young artists have also joined the movement. Last year, for the first time, solar panels fueled the batteries behind festivals in the world of country music (Tyler Childers’ Healing Appalachia) and hip-hop (Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw). And concert promoters continue to step up to meet artist and fan demand. In 2022, Live Nation invested in Turn Systems, purveyor of a leading reusable cup setup; earlier this month, AEG hosted its first solar-backed battery-powered festival.

“As touring infrastructure becomes normalized where we don’t have to go out of our way to bring along our reusables and compostables, it’s just part of what’s happening at those venues,” said Gardner. “If that becomes the new normal, then there’s massive savings there, both with carbon and with dollars.”

On a bright Monday morning, I was walking through Central Park with AJR’s Met — discussing the future of green touring — when, appropriately, we happened upon the seasonal amphitheater at Rumsey Playfield. Perched on a hill overlooking Bethesda Fountain, it has hosted acts ranging from Pitbull to the Barenaked Ladies. The venue is largely constructed with repurposed shipping containers.

“So the infrastructure itself is already reused, which is great,” said Met, who then wondered aloud how this sort of space could be used during the venue’s downtime — perhaps as a seasonal solar farm. “There are all of these different ways to think about how to use the venue itself as a producer for sustainability initiatives.”

For Met, though, what’s even more powerful is the collective ability of fans to mobilize around the causes championed by their favorite artists. That’s the focus of his new book, Amplify: How to Use the Power of Connectivity to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World. 

He believes that, with a little encouragement, audiences can be particularly potent around local causes. For example, during last summer’s AJR tour stop in Phoenix — where temperatures reached 109 degrees — thousands of fans signed petitions to FEMA asking the agency to designate extreme heat as a type of emergency, thereby unlocking additional funds for response. In Salt Lake City, concertgoers phone-banked around increasing the Great Salt Lake’s water levels because of the economic benefits it provides to seven different states; Met noted that each state later voted for progressive climate policies, even the ones that went for Trump.

This sort of activity might strike some as preachy, but it turns out most fans don’t mind. According to a survey of 350,000 concertgoers organized by Met’s nonprofit, Planet Reimagined, most fans encourage it. A full 70 percent of respondents said they had no problem with musicians publicly addressing climate change; 53 percent believed artists had an obligation to do so.

Perhaps the most important thing an artist can do on the climate front is spotlight the collective carbon footprint of concertgoers — a facet that has more to do with advocating for a greener society than a greener music industry. As part of its Music Decarbonization Project, Reverb recently released a concert travel study that found the average amount of CO2 emissions generated by the thousands of fans getting to a given show is 38 times larger than that of the typical act — including artist and crew travel, hotel stays, and gear transportation. 

That makes sense: 80 percent of fans at the average show arrive in a personal vehicle, usually gasoline-powered. Yet the study also found that fans are hungry for greener ways to attend concerts — 33 percent would prefer to use public transit, but only 9 percent say they can and do.

Rock stars can’t make cities build more subways. But they can work with municipalities to run more routes on show nights, and keep trains and buses open later than usual. They can also team up with businesses like Rally and Uber that can offer deals on group shuttles. That’s something Raitt and her peers never had back in the day.

“I mean, what were you going to do, send postcards to people in the ’90s: ‘Let’s meet up at 8 o’clock and catch a ride to the show?’” said Raitt’s manager, Kane. “The development of technology has been able to allow fans to connect into a community, and artists to connect to their fans, in more real time.”

Music — and the special energy and sense of community that forms around a concert — has a unique power, whether that’s starting fashion trends or catalyzing social change. It shouldn’t be a stretch for acts to inspire fans to choose more sustainable options, especially if artists and venues do the work to make those options more accessible. 

At its best, live music can be a launching pad for all sorts of climate-friendly ideas — from the plant-based concessions championed by Eilish to the kinetic dance floors pushed by Coldplay — making them not only available, but desirable to the broader public.

In the meantime, back at Jones Beach, as Dave Matthews winds down his set, thousands of cars sit in the parking lot beyond the grandstand, dimly illuminated by a strawberry moon rising over the ocean. While many fans will be leaving with new reusable water bottles, they’ll still have to burn dinosaur bones to get home. But the singer offers a message of hope.

“The world is a little bit crazy at the moment,” Matthews tells the crowd. “We should take care of each other a little bit more.”

One Nalgene at a time.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How musicians and concert venues are upping the tempo on climate action on Jul 25, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zack O’Malley Greenburg.

“We believe we’re going to get 90-plus percent of all future projects terminated,” U.S. Representative Chip Roy of Texas told Politico after the bill passed. “And we talked to lawyers in the administration.”

Last week, Trump’s Department of the Interior announced what appeared to be a fulfillment of the president’s promise to his party’s right wing. The department’s new guidelines for wind and solar developers now require all federal approvals for clean energy projects to undergo “elevated review” by Interior Secretary Doug Bergum, who was appointed by President Trump in January.

The new guidelines include a granular outline of steps that will now require personal approval from Bergum’s office, rather than being delegated to department bureaucrats as had previously been customary. Experts who spoke to Grist say that this could create an unmanageable slowdown for developers and allow the administration to quietly kill wind and solar projects on public land. Some are even worried that the effect of the updated regulations will spill over into private projects, which sometimes have to consult with the Interior Department when their work bleeds into federal lands or a habitat for endangered species.

Since only 4 percent of existing renewable energy projects are on public land, clean industry insiders who have interpreted the new policy narrowly are not yet panicking. But those with a broader interpretation of the text — or those who suspect that the administration will take a broad interpretation — wonder if the new rules will amount to a de facto gag order on the industry. For now, only time will tell just how many of their fears come to pass.  

Much of the memo’s power to wreak havoc for renewables depends on how strictly it’s enforced. The Interior Department maintains a website called Information for Planning and Consultation, or IPaC, which developers often use to plan large-scale projects. You type in the name of a locale, draw a border around the general area of your proposed project, and IPaC will tell you what kind of federal permitting you might need to move forward. (For example, it would flag if there are any protected wetlands or endangered species that would be affected by your development.) As of last week, the website now displays a pop-up warning users that “solar and wind projects are currently not eligible to utilize the Information for Planning and Consultation website.” This kind of opacity could make it especially hard for developers to plan for an endless bureaucratic battle with Interior. 

“It’s one thing to take away our [tax] credits, but it’s another to basically just put impediments so projects can’t get built,” a source who works for a renewables developer told E&E News. (He was granted anonymity due to his ongoing professional engagement with the federal government.) “The level of review here is so ridiculous.”

Others say that, while the outlook for wind and solar has become much dimmer, the new Interior rules aren’t necessarily a kill shot. “I was personally very worried when I saw it come out,” said Jason Kaminsky, CEO of kWh Analytics, a solar risk management firm. “But after doing more reading, it does seem like it affects, hopefully, a minority of assets.” 

An internal report from the investment bank and research firm Roth Capital Partners, which was obtained by Grist, estimated that only 5 percent of projects on private land — specifically, those that require an easement or need to cross public land to connect a transmission line to the main electrical grid — would be affected by the new regulations. 

“If [projects are on] a private piece of land, that’s a totally different story that would not be impacted by this,” said Doug Vine, director of energy analysis at the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “There’s plenty of projects that are going to go ahead.” 

Others warn that it will be hard to know anything for certain until the dust clears and the permitting process begins to play out. “Just how broad and wide-scoped the activities listed in the memo were, points towards an attempt to quash [private] projects, not just the ones on federal land,” said Dan O’Brien, a senior modeling analyst at the clean energy think tank Energy Innovations, noting that developers often end up consulting the Interior Department on issues like wildlife protection.

Regardless of the scope of the memo, any move with the potential to slow the deployment of renewables is almost certainly bad news for American energy, since most other sources of new electricity simply aren’t being built: 93 percent of new energy that came online in 2024 was renewable. But upon taking office, President Trump warned that the United States was reliant on a “precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply” and immediately set about revoking previously approved federal funding from green energy projects, trying to cancel offshore wind leases, and rescinding clean energy tax credits that had been expanded by his predecessor. How this will lead the nation toward the current administration’s promise of “energy dominance” is unclear. 

“You don’t have enough [electricity] supply to meet new demand,” said O’Brien. “Instead of new capacity coming online — cheap renewables — you have existing gas plants running longer, and so gas demand goes up and prices go up, both for power plants and for household consumers. … All signs point toward this being a bad, bad scenario.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Will new Interior Department rules shackle wind and solar? Insiders are divided. on Jul 25, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Rebecca Egan McCarthy.

The announcement followed a high-level visit to Beijing by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa, who met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior officials on Thursday. As the United States steps back from international climate diplomacy, the EU–China statement signals a clear intent to reinforce global ambition and multilateral cooperation.

Notably, the statement comes just one day after the International Court of Justice handed down a landmark ruling reinforcing states’ legal obligations to protect people from the impacts of climate change.

Key elements of the EU-China joint statement include:

• The EU and China call for “policy continuity and stability” among major economies and a clear “step up” in efforts to address climate change, signaling the need for more ambitious 2035 NDCs. Both parties confirm their intent to submit updated 2035 NDCs (national climate plans) before COP30, covering all sectors and greenhouse gases, aligned with the 1.5°C goal.
• Reaffirming the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement as the cornerstone of international climate cooperation.
• Emphasizing that climate collaboration holds “great and special significance” for upholding multilateralism and global climate governance.
• Noting a “solid foundation and broad space” for deepening green cooperation, even amid rising trade tensions. The EU and China commit to enhanced bilateral cooperation in areas such as the energy transition and green economy.

Andreas Sieber, Associate Director of Policy and Campaigns at 350.org says:

"This joint statement offers a timely stabilizing signal in an increasingly fragmented geopolitical landscape and the United States’ withdrawal from climate diplomacy. While this statement reflects a welcome willingness for cooperation, real and ambitious action must follow. Current ambition remains far too low. With COP30 fast approaching, the EU and China must go beyond committing to update their climate targets. Drawing the line for global heating at 1.5°C will require urgent, credible action, not just diplomatic symbolism."

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

Over the past six months, JVP has repeatedly warned that the Trump administration is manufacturing false charges of antisemitism as a cynical ploy to fundamentally reshape higher education and, through it, American society. The Trump regime, which platforms white supremacists and neo-Nazi sympathizers, does not truly care for Jewish safety. Columbia’s agreement confirms our worst fears. The deal mandates measures to silence research, teaching and criticism of the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and system of apartheid. In addition, it includes broad limitations on the right to protest, reduces protections for trans students, places severe restrictions on international students and their rights, and establishes an effective ban on any considerations of diversity in hiring, promotions or admissions.

This is the latest in a series of recent moves by Columbia University that flagrantly — and falsely — invoke Jewish safety in an effort to appease authoritarian forces, including: the mass suspension of student protesters, the adoption of the discredited IHRA definition of antisemitism, draconian antidemocratic reforms to its disciplinary procedures, attacks on shared governance, new ideological tests for academic departments, silence in the face of ICE kidnapping one of its students, and shuttering its campus to the public. We refuse to allow Jewish identities and histories to be used as fuel for such heinous attacks on our fundamental rights.

These policies do nothing to advance Jewish safety. To the contrary, as the vast majority of Jews recognize, they endanger our community by making us the face of a broad right-wing attack on higher education, movements for social justice, and communities of color. This is especially the case on college campuses, where a great and growing number of young Jews, called by the social justice traditions of our faith, are mobilizing in an effort to end our universities and our government’s support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Jewish Voice for Peace urges other colleges and universities not to follow Columbia University’s dangerous example and to instead recommit themselves to academic inquiry free of outside political interference and to the pursuit of a more just and equal world. As the Trump administration pursues an authoritarian project at home and finances an ongoing genocide in Gaza, it is incumbent upon universities to recognize and respond to this historical moment with concrete actions.

Anonymous undergraduate Columbia University student, JVP-Columbia member:

“It is frankly terrifying to see how easily and shamelessly Columbia has thrown its international students, its students of color and its transgender students under the bus. The implementation of these fascist policies is not capitulation — it is exactly what Columbia has wanted to do all along. Even with all the dangers this agreement poses to us, we know that it pales in comparison to the suffering the Israeli government is inflicting upon Gaza. Columbia is trying to stop us from speaking out against forced starvation, but we know nothing is more important than fighting for the people of Palestine, and we will not be silenced when Gaza needs us to speak up.”

Joseph Howley, Associate Professor of Classics, Columbia University, JVP Academic Council:

“In a crisis of authoritarian attacks on democracy, universities have one job: standing up to tyrants. Columbia not only neglected that basic duty to the rest of society, but also sold out its own proud heritage of protest and social justice by making a deal that leaves every student, staff and faculty member studying and teaching under the threat that Trump will be back to shake us down again if someone with the right connections doesn’t like what gets said on campus or in a classroom. At a moment when Israel’s policies have hundreds of thousands of Gazans on the brink of starvation, the White House and Columbia’s Board are more focused on ending DEI and making it illegal to criticize the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

Jonah Rubin, Sr. Manager of Campus Organizing, Jewish Voice for Peace:

“Columbia has betrayed its core mission and set a dangerous precedent for the entire higher education sector. The once-great university is quickly transforming itself into an appendage of the MAGA movement, agreeing to anti-Palestinian, xenophobic, transphobic, racist, pro-genocide ideology. History will not forget their role in facilitating the rise of authoritarianism at home and genocide in Gaza.”

JVP staff, members and students are available to speak with media

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

“The authorities of the Republic of the Congo must urgently investigate the threats against journalist Rosie Pioth and ensure she can continue her work without the looming possibility of being killed,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa regional director, from New York. “Many journalists working in the Republic of the Congo self-censor out of fear of reprisal, and the possibility that these threats will go without adequate response may only entrench those fears.”

Pioth, correspondent for the French government-owned outlet France 24 and director of the news site Fact Checking Congo, published an article on July 17, the anniversary of the bombing, which detailed how, after 43 years, victims’ families continue to demand justice and compensation.

Pioth emphasized how the story of the bombing had been “erased” with “No monuments. No textbooks. No national day. No public mention of this tragedy.” At the end of the report, she also announced intentions to publish further investigations on the bombing, which killed nine, and its aftermath.

The day after the article was published, unidentified individuals called and messaged death threats to Pioth, urging her to stop reporting about the bombing, according to Pioth and CPJ’s review of the messages. Pioth said her husband also received threatening messages directed at her.

“[A]re you the one encouraging your wife towards media provocations? You have 72 hours to decide to stop your publications. I am watching all your movements, and the unpredictable is not far away, dear infiltrator,” read one of the messages sent to her husband.

Pioth told CPJ that she went into hiding after the threats and intended to file a complaint with the prosecutor’s office in Brazzaville. The local professional association Journalism and Ethics Congo (JEC) also called for her protection.

CPJ’s calls and questions sent via messaging app to a Republic of the Congo government spokesperson and Minister of Communication and Media Thierry Moungalla did not receive a reply.

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

This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on July 24, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Israel is accelerating its efforts to cement its permanent control over the West Bank through a number of sweeping legal and institutional changes, according to a new report from Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

The 87-page report, Legal Structures of Distinction, Separation, and Territorial Domination, describes the ways in which the Netanyahu government is rapidly building on a long-standing legal matrix that further threatens Palestinians’ right to self-determination. 

“These developments are not something new to us,” Dr. Suhad Bishara, Legal Director of Adalah and lead author of the report, told Mondoweiss. “All eyes are on Gaza, justifiably so,” she said. “However… it is important to highlight the intensity of the structural changes that have taken place since the current government took over in December 2022.”

“What is happening in the West Bank is dangerously fast-forwarding annexation policies in a blatant violation of international law,” Bishara said. “Israel is intensifying measures to change the status of the West Bank, the status of many Palestinians living in Area C who are subject to intensified displacement induced by settler violence and Israeli policies.” She said, “This is in addition to settler expansion and further restrictions on Palestinian development in the area.”

Thoroughly researched and footnoted, the report documents how the current extremist government has built on what Adalah describes as “foundational mechanisms through which Israel has entrenched a land regime that facilitates territorial domination and racial segregation.” 

Area C comprises over 60 percent of the West Bank, and is under full Israeli military control. 

Here are the mechanisms of territorial domination Adalah examines in these areas.

Civilian governance for Israeli settlers; military rule over Palestinians

Beginning in the late 1970s, Israel abandoned its security-based justifications for approving settlements and adopted a policy based on civil, not military grounds. The report describes how, soon after, the Civil Administration — the Israeli body governing the West Bank — was established to formalize the division between military and civilian affairs.

As a result, “Israel has steadily transferred governance over Israeli settlers in the West Bank from military to civilian control, entrenching permanent territorial dominance and greatly expanding the settlement enterprise,” according to the report.

Most recently, structural reforms — such as the appointment of Bezalel Smotrich to serve as both Finance Minister and a Minister in the Defense Ministry — have resulted in increasing legal authority for the pro-settler civil servants working with Smotrich in the West Bank. These reforms have cemented the two distinct legal structures that govern life in Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements: the former, in which the military rules, and the latter, administered according to Israeli law. 

1. Administration by local authorities

Adalah’s report dives into the weeds as it describes one of the more concerning mechanisms that reveals Israel’s intent to annex the whole of the West Bank. Having transitioned the settlements from military administration to civilian rule — and having handed over significant legal and administrative decision-making to pro-settler civil servants — Israel can argue that the settlements operate now under Israeli sovereignty. But applying Israeli law in occupied territory, Adalah maintains, is a violation of international human rights law and constitutes “a measure of de facto annexation.” 

2. Financial incentives for settlements 

Readers of the report won’t be surprised to learn that, as Adalah writes, “Israeli settlements receive extensive financial benefits through direct government subsidies, preferential policies, and financial incentives… [covering] multiple sectors, including land allocation, housing, infrastructure, and agriculture.” 

Still, it is remarkable—as documented in the Adalah report—how in contravention of international law, Israel continues each year to pour billions of shekels into the development of settlements in the West Bank. Readers of the report will learn of “the legal mechanisms behind these incentives and how Israeli law facilitates their distribution.” 

3. Declaring State land 

According to Adalah, Israel’s designation of State Land in the West Bank is “the primary legal mechanism through which Israeli authorities have taken possession of Palestinian land since the late 1970s.” Those already familiar with Israel’s use of this means of de facto annexation will be surprised by the extraordinary amount of Palestinian land so designated. The report includes information obtained by Peace Now through a Freedom of Information Act request that shows a shocking fact: in under a one-year period, Israel has designated more Palestinian land as State Land than it had in an 18-year period.

From 1998 to 2016, just over 21,000 dunams were declared as State Land. But in just over nine months (from the end of February 2024 through early December 2024), over 24,200 dunams were declared as State Land. This acceleration is historically unprecedented.

The planning system in Area C

Adalah includes an entire section on the legal and structural framework in place in Area C to further expand Israel’s settlement project, fulfilling one of the Netanyahu government’s guiding principles shared the day before his swearing-in as Prime Minister in December 2022: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” promising to expand settlements throughout “Judea and Samaria,” the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank. 

Paralleling the judgments of the ICJ, UN experts, and international, Palestinian, and Israeli human rights groups, the report ends by listing the five international crimes that Adalah finds Israel guilt of: violations of International Humanitarian Law; the deepening of the illegal mechanism of de facto annexation; the denial of Palestinian people’s right to self-determination; the deepening of the apartheid system in the occupied Palestinian territory; and the commission of war crimes and crimes of aggression on the part of Israel.

The most recent newsletter from Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO, describes Israel’s expanding control over illegally annexed East Jerusalem. Asked to comment, Tess Miller, Public Outreach staff at Ir Amim (“City of Nations” or “City of Peoples” in Hebrew) told Mondoweiss that “the mechanisms of displacement that we monitor and advocate against within Jerusalem are not separate from the mechanisms seen today in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“What we are witnessing,” Miller said, “time after time, place after place, is violent control granted to those willing to advance the state’s agenda of expanding Jewish presence and diminishing Palestinian presence.” Ir Amim’s newsletter documents home demolitions, evictions, and starkly discriminatory housing and land confiscation policies.

“Together,” Miller said, “they all contribute to the accelerating erasure of the Palestinian people from their own cities, neighborhoods, and lands — enabled by the complicity of an increasingly radicalized Israeli public and the international community’s persistent refusal to take meaningful action.”

According to Adalah’s Dr. Bishara, it is hoped that the Adalah report, read by advocates for Palestinian rights, stakeholders, and states alike, “will generate international pressure against these long-term changes in the West Bank that violate international law and threaten the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Jeff Wright.

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 24, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

A Trump administration appointee has been going hard after demonstrators in Los Angeles who in recent weeks have been protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations—but it seems like he’s having a hard time getting grand juries to go along.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Bill Essayli, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, recently became “irate” and could be heard “screaming” at prosecutors in the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles when a grand jury declined to indict an anti-ICE protester who had been targeted for potential felony charges.

And according to the LA Times’ reporting, this failure to secure an indictment against demonstrators was far from a one-off.

“Although his office filed felony cases against at least 38 people for alleged misconduct that either took place during last month’s protests or near the sites of immigration raids, many have been dismissed or reduced to misdemeanor charges,” the paper writes. “In total, he has secured only seven indictments, which usually need to be obtained no later than 21 days after the filing of a criminal complaint. Three other cases have been resolved via plea deal.”

It is incredibly rare for prosecutors to fail to secure indictments from grand juries, which only require a determination that there is “probable cause” to believe a suspect committed a crime and which do not hear arguments from opposing counsels during proceedings.

Meghan Blanco, a former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney representing one of the anti-ICE protesters currently facing charges, told the LA Times that there’s a simple reason that grand juries aren’t pulling the trigger on indictments: Namely, prosecutors’ cases are full of holes.

In one case, Blanco said she obtained video evidence that directly contradicted a sworn statement from a Border Patrol officer who alleged that her client had obstructed efforts to chase down a suspect who assaulted him. When she presented this video at her client’s first court hearing, charges against him were promptly dropped.

“The agent lied and said he was in hot pursuit of a person who punched him,” Blanco explained. “The entirety of the affidavit is false.”

One anonymous prosecutor who spoke with the LA Times similarly said that ICE agents have been losing credibility when their actions and statements are put under a legal microscope.

“There are a lot of hotheaded [Customs and Border Protection] officers who are kind of arresting first and asking questions later,” they said. “We’re finding there’s not probable cause to support it.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, was floored by the failures to secure indictments against the anti-ICE demonstrators.

“Incredible,” he wrote on social media website X. “Federal prosecutors are seeing many cases of people accused of assaulting Border Patrol agents being turned down by grand juries! Los Angeles federal prosecutors are privately saying it’s because CBP agents are just ‘arresting first and asking questions later.'”

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) similarly bashed prosecutors for using easily discredited statements from ICE officers to secure indictments.

“I’m a former prosecutor and can confirm that any prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich,” he wrote. “Except the top prosecutor in L.A. Why? Because this article points out ICE AGENTS ARE MAKING SHIT UP. You want your agents respected? Tell them to stop lying.”

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Brad Reed.

The post ECONOMIC TERROR AND THE TURBOCHUGGF*CK IN TEXAS appeared first on Project Censored.

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

President Donald Trump has explicitly targeted climate- and justice-related programs and funding, but the resulting cuts have gone deep into services communities rely on to survive, like food aid in rural areas or improvements to failing wastewater infrastructure. Farmers have lost grants and support that help keep them going through increasingly volatile weather. Even your favorite YouTube creators may be affected.

We asked those who have lost their federal jobs or funding to tell us about what’s being lost: What was their work providing to communities, and what happens now?

Their stories, reflecting just a small sample of the many people who’ve been affected, illuminate  how deep these cuts go, not only into programs explicitly working to reduce emissions, but also into those keeping us safe, healthy, fed, and informed.

Have you been impacted, or know someone who has? We want to hear about it. Message us on Signal at 206-876-3147 or share your story using this form. (Learn more about how to reach us and how we will use your information.)

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline They lost their jobs and funding under Trump. What did communities lose? on Jul 24, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Grist staff.

Julia Cumming: I think it’s a very complex thing. I think we reached an impasse. It’s like, you’re trying to get the car started, you have the key in there, you’re trying to get all the sparks going. We just couldn’t light them up in a way that felt authentic to any of us. It wasn’t this huge, huge blowout, thank god. I think it also spoke to how much we cared about the music and the process—that we couldn’t force something that wasn’t happening in that way. Once we realized we couldn’t force it, we just had to stop.

You never know where you are in the story. I say that to myself and I say that to my friends a lot. That was a moment where we were feeling very afraid about our creative collaboration. We didn’t know where it was going. Now, we’re a few days from this record being out, and I’m reading people say how the songs made them feel. Seeing everything that we were able to accomplish when we did come together, with that serendipity, I’m just grateful for all the different parts of the experience.

Because art adjacent stuff is fun, a lot of people think that the process of making the art should also be fun. Sometimes it’s really exciting and cool and sometimes it is fun. [But low points] just mean that I now have a way different perspective. I have more insight on how those lower and more challenging moments can actually mean really great things for the work eventually.

I know this is probably a bit of a sensitive topic. Julia, one of the songs you wrote on the new record is about being sexually abused. First off, I’m really sorry that happened to you. It’s very intense to make art about something like that. What made you realize you were ready to write about that experience?

Julia: Well, first of all, I want to thank you for your question because some people have brought this up to me in interviews in very crass and random ways.

I’m sure.

Which has been really surprising, actually. When that happens, I’m just like, “Fuck this, I’m not going to talk about it.” Context-wise, I didn’t expect that song to be a single. That was kind of chosen as a team. I thought that it was going to be a really powerful touchpoint on the record. I think the way that it musically came out helped tie in our other singles, and helped tie in the sound of the record. That was one of the reasons that it happened. I even talked to the label and I said, “Should we even put out a single that is dealing with something like this?” I have to thank Lucky Number for saying, “I think it’s good that this is a song that is actually saying something. It has a reason to exist.”

It was a song that I had worked on with Olive [Faber, the band’s drummer] a couple of years prior to making the record. I had gone to the studio one day with her and I had been playing with it for a while… I never expected to do anything with it. That’s the cool thing about having an ongoing creative process. Sometimes you have these feelings and they arrive in song form and then you make them, and sometimes there’s nowhere for them to go. That’s okay because you got to do it.

When we were putting this record together, we had started to get the idea of what we wanted it to sound like. We were looking at this kind of really naturalistic sound. I started looking for songs that had that quality. Along with this, these religious phrases kept coming up for us. I remembered that song and I remembered that line: “I just thought I was a kid who said the Lord’s Prayer every night when I went to bed with my parents.” There was something so funny to me about it, about turning it on its head, especially when you’re thinking about religion and how much violence gets used in the name of religion.

What I really like about that song is how direct the lyrics are. They’re very… I wouldn’t say juvenile, but you can kind of see them on paper, you know what I mean? You can just look at them and see exactly what they are. It’s not trying to weave any other kind of story for you. There are a lot of songs that are trying to be like, “Oh, I went through this and this is my fight song.” They’re really triumphant. I thought that it would be more interesting to do a song that was about not being triumphant. I thought that, hopefully, it would resonate with a lot of people. This is not a unique experience. Unfortunately it’s a very, very common experience.

When I thought about if I had something to say in that area, I thought it would be more interesting to create a song that allowed people to be angry and allowed people to be spiteful. Saying, “You don’t have to fix that spite. You don’t have to forgive everyone. You don’t have to appease everyone. You don’t have to pretend that everything is better every moment of your life.” Sometimes you can just say, “Wow, that was fucked, and I’m kind of fucked up about it, and maybe that’s just how it is for now. I’m just going to let that be.”

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. My next question is for you, Nick. You’ve talked about learning that you don’t need to suffer to make art. What was your journey to realizing that?

Nick Kivlen: Honestly, it was probably from being really depressed, and not being able to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing, what I’m trying to say—or romanticizing it. I’m always one foot in the door of falling into the trope of putting a special, otherworldly meaning onto artists that suffer. I just read this book that Julia had at her house about Nick Drake and his last album, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m getting sucked in again to this old trope of the tortured artist.” I don’t want to say it’s true, but you think that someone who has gone through that kind of thing somehow has this wisdom or special otherworldly ability now.

It’s not usually true that when you’re in that space, you’re creative or healthy or thriving in any sort of way… There’s nothing romantic about feeling terrible about the way you are with people that are really close to you. I also was thinking about the song [“There’s A Part I Can’t Get Back”] in terms of faith, because I’ve always been jealous of people who say they feel the love of god or the love of Jesus, because I’ve never been able to feel that myself. I don’t know what they’re talking about when they say that they have that feeling. I’d rather live my life with that feeling of love and faith, but it’s not something I’ve been able to find yet.

What is something that scares both of you about making art? How do you deal with that fear?

Nick: I would say nothing scares me about making art because making music—and creating in general—is my favorite thing to do. It’s the time in my life when I’m away from everything that causes me anxiety. It’s like playing in a world of make believe. I am never, ever, ever guided by any sort of fear when I’m making stuff.

Julia: I don’t know if it is fearful, but for me it involves having a conversation with my subconscious and working continuously on strengthening my relationship with my subconscious. Sometimes your subconscious is a very ugly and scary partner to have in this journey. It is not ruled by logic. It’s just totally ruled by something else. You can’t control what’s going to happen when you’re interacting with it… I think the further I go on my life path and this journey, the more I can look at it like a partner and less like an animal I’m trying to catch.

What excites you about being an artist?

Nick: So much.

Julia: Besides making something where you really know that you’ve grown, like being able to pull off that chorus you really want, the best part for me is seeing the threads of how the work permeates in the world. When you get to meet kids who say that your band made them want to start a band, or when people say, “Your song was my wedding song.” I think the world is a lot more non-physical than we give it credit for, especially working in a medium that is completely abstract. It’s sound. You buy stuff sometimes to make it physical, but it’s literally, like, a bird song in the wind. It’s something that is hard to pin down. But to get to experience it having real world effects on other people, it starts to look like the roots of a tree. It starts to make you feel really connected to everything. I think that is one of my favorite parts.

Nick: I think that sums it up pretty well, honestly. That’s such a good answer.

What do you think are the biggest challenges for you as artists right now? And how are you overcoming those challenges?

Nick: The most difficult thing for me creatively is the limitations of my recording setup, I would say. The main way that I found to work around it is focusing on lyrics and melody, and focusing on chord structure and emotion, and less on production.

Julia: I think I would say finding a balance. I’ve always kind of struggled with that: balancing the attention that I love to give to creativity and my career, and then how that balances into making sure that I have enough time for family. There’s so much that we’re so reliant for, on our community of friends, family, and creatives that we collaborate with. Sometimes I feel really guilty that I don’t have enough to give back to them. That can be tough. I think especially as you get older, there’s just more pressure in every direction—the people that need you and that you need.

The way that I deal with it now is that I’ve sort of stopped operating with this idea that my life needs to look any certain way. I’m allowing it to unfold [in a way] where I can be the most useful at whatever time. I’m not trying to uphold anything because I think I should. I’m just trying to show up where I can… I’ve let go of trying to do something because I thought that was the thing I was supposed to be doing, and that’s made it easier for me to actually show up for the people that I need to.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sarah John.

Yet recent research from Food & Water Watch details the immense and potentially catastrophic impact on water and energy resources an unfettered AI industry could have on communities across the country – especially those in the West that are already suffering through a decade or more of extreme drought. Energy demand from AI servers and data centers in the U.S. is expected to increase up to threefold between 2023 and 2028. Among the report’s findings, by 2028 AI in the United States could consume:

• 720 billion gallons of water annually just to cool AI servers — equal to more than 1 million Olympic-size swimming pools, or enough water to meet the indoor needs of 18.5 million American households.
• 300 terawatt-hours (TWh) of energy annually — enough electricity to power over 28 million American households.

Meanwhile:

• As of 2024, ChatGPT used over half a million kilowatts of electricity each day, equivalent to the daily power use of 180,000 U.S. households.
• One Meta-owned data center consumes as much power as 7 million laptops running for eight hours each day.
• In Santa Clara Ca., 50 data centers account for 60 percent of the city’s electricity use, while receiving discounted rates on electricity compared to residential rates.

In response, Food & Water Watch’s managing director of policy and litigation, Mitch Jones, made the following statement:

“At its core, President Trump’s AI agenda is nothing more than a thinly-veiled invitation for the fossil fuel and corporate water industries to ramp up their exploitation of our environment and natural resources – all at the expense of everyday people. In communities across the country we are already seeing precious water and energy supplies being diverted to massive data centers, while homes and small businesses are paying ballooning costs for their regular utility needs.

“The expanding data center industry is being leveraged as an excuse to prolong the life of filthy, climate-killing fossil fuel power and dangerous nuclear plants, and even build new ones.

“America’s technological advancements must not come at the expense of everyday families’ water, energy and economic security – plain and simple.”

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

More than a hundred aid organizations warned Wednesday that “mass starvation” is spreading in Gaza, as Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians reaches an unspeakable turning point. As the crisis of humanity deepens, another Gaza Freedom Flotilla has set sail in the hopes of breaking Israel’s blockade and bringing life-saving supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip. Calling from the Handala ship while en route to Gaza, American labor organizer Chris Smalls, co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union, speaks with TRNN editor-in-chief Maximillian Alvarez about the threats and sabotage attempts the Freedom Flotilla has already faced on its journey—and why that won’t deter the crew from their humanitarian mission.

Additional resources:

• Chris Smalls X account and Instagram
• Gaza Freedom Flotilla linktree 
• Ann Wright, Common Dreams, “Despite 2 sabotage attempts, the Gaza Flotilla Ship Handala sails onward”
• Marium Ali, Al Jazeera, “Freedom Flotillas: A history of attempts to break Israel’s siege of Gaza”

Credits:

• Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
• Post-Production: David Hebden

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

“With only rare exceptions,” Norman Solomon writes, “US news media and members of Congress continue to dodge the reality of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, normalizing atrocities on a mass scale.” How did we end up in this Orwellian situation, where the reality of genocide is so thoroughly denied by pundits and politicians even as that genocide is unfolding in front of our eyes? How do we combat this level of inhumane violence and propaganda? Solomon, co-founder of Roots Action, joins The Marc Steiner Show for an urgent discussion about Israel’s manufactured genocide of Palestinians and how the media manufactures consent to, at best, hide and, at worst, justify Israel’s heinous actions.

Guests:

• Norman Solomon is the cofounder of RootsAction.org, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, and the author of numerous books, including War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death and War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of the Military Machine.

Additional resources:

• Norman Solomon, Common Dreams, “In too much of the US, Israel’s Gaza genocide has been made invisible”
• Norman Solomon, Common Dreams, “Who’s afraid of Zohran Mamdani? Billionaires”
• Norman Solomon, Common Dreams, “Bombing Iran Is part of the USA’s repetition compulsion for war, war, war”

Credits:

• Producer: Rosette Sewali
• Studio Production: David Hebden
• Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 22, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

In what has been described as a “barrage of attacks on workers,” the U.S. Department of Labor under President Donald Trump is planning to overhaul dozens of rules that protect workers from exploitation and wage theft.

The administration announced this month that it planned to change over 60 regulations it deems “unecessary” burdens to businesses and economic growth.

According to an analysis released Tuesday by labor policy experts at the Century Foundation—senior fellows Julie Su and Rachel West and director of economy and jobs Andrew Stettner—most of the changes “reverse critical standards that ensure workers get a just day’s pay and come home healthy and safe.”

In one of the most sweeping changes, the department plans to reverse a 2013 rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to home healthcare workers.

These workers, who care for elderly and other medically frail individuals, already make less than $17 an hour on average.

Stettner told Common Dreams that the changes will “suppress wages” and allow agencies to “put the screws on workers to work 50- or 60-hour weeks.”

The Trump administration is also rolling back a Biden-era rule that banned bosses from paying subminimum wages to disabled employees.

This discriminatory practice has been on the wane due to state-level bans in 15 states. But in the absence of a federal ban, nearly 40,000 employees—most of whom have intellectual disabilities—still received less than the federal minimum wage as of 2024.

The Century Foundation report says that by ending the rule, the Trump administration would be once again “relegating workers with disabilities to jobs that pay as little as pennies per hour.”

The department is also taking a hatchet to workers’ rights and safety. Another major change it proposed would do away with protections for seasonal migrant farmworkers under the H-2A visa program who raise complaints about wage and hour violations.

It was commonplace for farm owners to take advantage of these seasonal employees, whose legal status was tied to their work, and who therefore risked deportation if they lost their jobs.

Cases of exploitation, however, declined to an all-time low after the Biden administration introduced the rule, which banned employers from firing, disciplining, or otherwise retaliating against workers who attempted to participate in collective bargaining.

“These reforms protected the rights of farmworkers in the H-2A program to speak out individually and collectively against mistreatment and prevented employers from arbitrarily firing them from their jobs,” the report says.

The department also proposed weakening the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) general duty clause, which allows businesses to be punished for putting their employees in dangerous situations. The proposed change would exempt many jobs that are deemed “inherently risky” from protection.

The administration described it as a way to prevent OSHA from cracking down on workplace injuries among athletes and stuntmen.

However, Stettner suggested that the broad language could allow the administration to go much further in defining what is considered “inherently risky.” The report notes that the administration is “crowdsourcing” suggestions from employers about what other occupations to exempt.

“The employer community, they’re jumping onto this,” Stettner said. “They’re telling their members to write in to the Department of Labor about other inherently dangerous occupations they should except from the general duty clause.”

The authors pointed out that the administration has previously rolled back restrictions meant to protect workers from heat-related stress on the job, which results in more than 600 deaths and over 25,000 injuries each year.

As the administration pushes to expand coal mining, it is also weakening protections for the miners themselves. After laying off most of the employees at OSHA’s research arm—which monitors cases of black lung disease—earlier this year, it is now weakening safety requirements to prevent roof falls, mine explosions, and exposure to toxic silica.

“The DOL’s role should be to protect the most vulnerable workers: farmworkers, people with disabilities, people that have suffered discrimination,” Stettner said. “They’re showing their true colors as an anti-worker administration.”

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Stephen Prager.

I would say crafting, radical imagination (as usual), and self-sustainability—making sure people are well within and sustaining themselves, which is different from the past.

What initially drew you to crafting?

I was entering my late 20s, single, and I was like, “You know what? I got to shake some stuff up.” So, I took a painting class and a ceramics class. It was just so nice to play. I was also experiencing writer’s block at the time—thinking about my second book. I wrote multiple proposals and they kept getting rejected. I really felt like I needed to just get creative to find myself. It made me feel like I was healing in a lot of ways. I feel like I was able to get through certain problems because I had this creative outlet—that’s been something I’ve wanted to share.

What is your go-to material language right now?

I like doing things with plants—a lot of floral dyeing and learning how to treat clothing so it receives plant color better. I’m also experimenting with learning how to make plant-based milks and things like that. Ceramics have also been so lovely.

What is the value add for you, personally, when it comes to crafting in community?

I want more friends. I have so many amazing, incredible friends that also have platforms, and I think it’s just connecting me to random people. I’m an introverted person but there’s a need that I have to get grounded, get back down to earth, and talk to people about their interests. It’s bringing me a lot of joy—getting grassroots. I feel really lucky that when I was building my platform, I got to just say whatever I wanted and people would listen. I’m like, “Why are you listening to me? I’m 25.” Now that I am older, I want to listen and learn from other people.

What have you learned about people from hosting events?

There’s such a need for third spaces. There was a wave in 2020, when I was really platformed on Instagram, where people were just wanting to be educated about everything from anti-racism to environmental justice. There was so much happening online because of the pandemic. I’ve realized from the craft club that so many people would like to do activities or mindfulness exercises… not only that, but do it with other people. There’s a need to be in community. It also just showed me that there are so many amazing crafters out there. Every event I go to, I basically meet the instructor of the next crafting club that I host. It’s introducing me to the topic of skill sharing, and how that’s really important for building resilient communities that aren’t reliant on huge corporations. It’s teaching me a lot about the importance of third spaces, the importance of learning how to skillshare, and learning these skills in community.

What is making craft club gatherings meaningful or transformative?

A lot of the work that I do is activism-adjacent at times—sustainability is either overtly or not so overtly infused into it. A lot of spaces that are about social good, understandably, can also be incredibly intense. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching Black feminist scholars and learning about radical activism in the ’60s and ’70s. There was always some sort of complimentary offering to the radical work. I want to show people that you can be interested in sustainability, or even activism, but you can also connect in those spaces over things that contribute to the wellbeing of the community. I’m learning that these kinds of complimentary third spaces are needed to support the work that people are doing to try to make a better world. Teaching people that self-care is not just bubble baths—I mean, it can be, but it can also be the radical act of being in community. I feel like a lot of movement spaces are starting to mirror capitalism by overworking people, bombarding them with information, and basically making them feel like they’re a cog in the machine—the very thing they’re trying to resist. That doesn’t feel right. We don’t also want to burn people out through activism. I’m trying to have something that actually resists capitalism, and those systems that say that we can’t rest, by showing people the importance of resting and being creative with one another.

You’re holding the intimacy of crafting alongside the scale of larger environmental issues. I’m curious how your crafting practice informs the way you think about waste and material?

I just did a workshop where people were making fruit syrups and learning how easy it can actually be. All the fruit was essentially farmer’s market waste from this really cool group called Anomaly Coffee Lab—they’re a waste reductive coffee, food, and cocktail lab. It’s cool to be able to work with people like them. It’s been a really nice way to reconnect with sustainability and infuse it into the programming without it being overt. I don’t necessarily market the craft club as an environmental club, but then people are making necklaces with beads made out of recycled glass found on the beach, and they’re learning those lessons in another way—how to repurpose things.

Do you consider crafting a form of activism?

Yes. Craftivism is the new wave. I’m going to make a video about it. I also want to help contextualize why I’m crafting for people who might be confused.

I love that term—you also coined the term intersectional environmentalism. What does intersectionality look like to you in everyday life?

It really does flow throughout the way that I interact with people—understanding that you really never know what someone’s going through or what their family life is like. Intersectionality, or intersectional thinking, just encourages me to tap into empathy a little bit more and understand that even with all of these differences, we are so alike in a lot of ways. I just know that multiple truths can exist at once. I think I know that because of intersectionality—because people’s identities are incredibly complex and layered, and to lean into empathy, not generalizations.

What was it like to write your first book proposal for The Intersectional Environmentalist, and has your crafting practice helped shape or influence your creative voice for your second proposal?

I feel like I didn’t realize that crafting was actually this meditative practice that was helping me feel a lot more confident in myself—especially hand building with ceramics. It’s just you, your hands, clay, and water making whatever you want to make. You can’t be a perfectionist. It’s teaching me about letting go of perfection, and then also getting something beautiful. I love my hand-built pieces even more because they’re all uniquely different. I just love that it’s like infusing bits and pieces of my personality into the work. I think that flows into how I’m approaching my second book proposal.

My first book was an intro to environmental justice, and only the introduction was written in first person. The rest of it is primarily data, and it’s used mostly in a classroom setting. With this book, I’m like, “No, I actually want to write in first person, infuse my personal story, and have more conversation.” My crafting practice has informed my writing a bit by teaching me to take up space—and then also teaching me to be okay with introducing myself into the work that I’m doing. For the last couple of years, I felt like the work I was doing was to represent a movement—to represent the environmental justice movement, and help people really understand the connections between social issues and environmentalism. Things are unfortunately ricocheting and changing right now. It got me thinking, “What do I want to do?” I want to introduce people to me, Leah—not just as an intersectional environmentalist, but as a person who’s doing all these other things and activism is just part of my interests—which I feel incredibly privileged to do. That’s a cool question because it made me realize how those two things did go together and inform my writing.

Can you share any themes you’re exploring in your second book?

It’s all about why we refer to the Earth as Mother Earth. I also love sci-fi, fantasy, and folklore, so the book is going to have a lot of that in it. I’m really leaning into ecofeminism lately, and how the treatment of women and the planet go hand in hand. I’m excited to just explore what an ecofeminist manifesto could look like. I’m going to be interviewing so many incredible researchers, musicians, and random people.

Are there any authors inspiring you right now?

Amanda Montell is one of my favorite writers. She wrote the book Cultish, The Magical Age of Overthinking, and she also has a podcast called Sounds Like A Cult. She’s a linguist, and is just one of the funniest people. I’m learning a lot from her writing—how she infuses her personality, and also includes pop culture references, which I find really inspiring.

Has anything surprised you about being a published author since The Intersectional Environmentalist came out?

It’s been out for a while, but I think it’s the fact that people are still reading it. I think something that surprised me is that I don’t resonate with the book anymore. Even the other day I was like, “What was I talking about?” I wonder if musicians ever feel that way… because, wow, I really had a lot to say. There’s a cognitive dissonance, or a separation, between the work and where I am as a person. That surprised me the most. I’m also still shocked that the book is being used in classrooms. That feels really good.

Cognitive dissonance is very real—especially when something becomes public. It can take on a life of its own and still be attached to you, even if you’ve grown beyond it. Social media can magnify that too. How have you been interacting with social media lately? Has your relationship with it shifted over the past five years, especially since becoming platformed in 2020?

I’m starting to showcase more bits and pieces of myself. I think when I started Intersectional Environmentalist, I really wanted that to be an educational platform, and then my personal platform could be a blog where I post whatever I want. I’ve started to embrace that more recently by sharing crafts. I realize that I am going to build a new audience of people and there are going to be some people who are like, “No, we want you to educate us on every possible system we need to dismantle.” I just don’t have it in me. I’ve had to really use Instagram like Pinterest in some ways. I’m still always going to share certain thoughts about social justice because that’s a part of who I am, but I think I’ve developed a healthier relationship with it. I don’t think I would be able to sustain myself if my presence on social media was educating people solely about all of the trauma that’s happening to the planet and people right now—it’s heartbreaking—and people are already being bombarded with that information.

I’m trying to experiment with how I can be a positive light in the midst of all of this chaos—not in a way that’s toxically positive. There are people online that think you don’t care if you’re not sharing this, or doing this. I want to show people that you can care, and because you care, you can give that care out to other people by posting things that hopefully make people feel a little tiny moment of joy, or feel held and connected.

How do you balance protecting your creative voice while navigating the demands for output on social media?

I started posting on TikTok more because you don’t have to be as serious—I just have hot takes and no makeup on. I’m still talking about the same things, but it just feels like there’s a little less pressure. I’m going to develop a Substack, which feels really fun. I’m also just grappling with the fact that social media is also my job to a certain extent. My dream is to be a professor, but right now some of my income is tied to my social media. I wouldn’t feel genuine if I didn’t admit that part of the reason I’m sharing is because I need to support myself as an artist. If I can post about craft club, and there’s a brand that wants to sponsor craft club, then there’s more crafts for the people. That feels like a worthy way to use my platform and redistribute money. In some ways, I do feel like I am playing the game when it comes to social media.

What do you wish your younger self knew?

I feel like I took a lot of things really personally when I was younger—I wanted everybody to like me. Then I just realized that with some people, it’s really not about you. Just show up the best that you can because social media is not the end all, be all. It’s crazy how this journey has taken me back to getting offline. You can still use it as a job, but it’s more important to touch grass, be in community with real people, and grassroots organizations. Some people are just meanies—let them be mean and move on.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sammy Steiner.

A longtime Bougainville politician, Joe Lera, wants to see widespread changes in the way the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) is run.

The Papua New Guinea region, which is seeking independence from Port Moresby, is holding elections in the first week of September.

Seven candidates are running for president, including Lera.

• READ MORE: Other Bougainville independence reports

He held the regional seat in the PNG national Parliament for 10 years before resigning to contest the presidency in the 2020 election.

This time around, Lera is campaigning on what he sees as faults in the approach of the Ishmael Toroama administration and told RNZ Pacific he is offering a different tack.

JOE LERA: This time, people have seen that the current government is the most corrupt. They have addressed only one side of independence, which is the political side, the other two sides, They have not done it very well.

DON WISEMAN: What do we mean by that? We can’t bandy around words like corruption. What do you mean by corruption?

JL: What they have done is huge. They are putting public funds into personal members’ accounts, like the constituency grant – 360,000 kina a year.

DW: As someone who has operated in the national parliament, you know that that is done there as well. So it’s not corrupt necessarily, is it?

JL:Well, when they go into their personal account, they use it for their own family goods, and that development, it should be development funds. The people are not seeing the tangible outcomes in the number two side, which is the development side.

All the roads are bad. The hospitals are now running out of drugs. Doctors are checking the patients, sending them to pharmaceutical shops to buy the medicine, because the hospitals have run out.

DW: These are problems that are affecting the entire country, aren’t they, and there’s a shortage of money. So how would you solve it? What would you do differently?

JL: We will try to make big changes in addressing sustainable development, in agriculture, fishing, forestry, so we can create jobs for the small people.

Instead of talking about big, billion dollar mining projects, which will take a long time, we should start with what we already have, and develop and create opportunities for the people to be engaged in nation building through sustainable development first, then we progress into the higher billion dollar projects.

Now we are going talking about mining when the people don’t have opportunity and they are getting poorer and poorer. That’s one area, the other area, to create change we will try to fix the government structure, from ABG to community governments to village assemblies, down to the chiefs.

At the moment, the policies they have have fragmented the conduit of getting the services from the top government down to to the village people.

DW: In the past, you’ve spoken out against the push for independence, suggesting I think, that Bougainville is not ready yet, and it should take its time. Where do you stand at the moment on the independence question?

JL: The independence question? We are all for it. I’m not against it, but I’m against the process. How they are going about it. I think the answer has been already given in the Bougainville Peace Agreement, which is a joint creation between the PNG and ABG government, and the process is very clear.

Now, what the current government is doing is they are going outside of the Peace Agreement, and they are trying to shortcut based on the [referendum] result.

But the Peace Agreement doe not say independence will be given to us based on the result. What it says is, after we know the result, the two governments must continue to dialogue, consult each other and find ways of how to improve the economy, the law and order issues, the development issues.

When we fix those, the nation building pillars, we can then apply for the ratification to take place.

DW: So you’re talking about something that would be quite a way further down the line than what this current government is talking about?

JL: The issue is timing. They are putting deadlines themselves, and they are trying to push the PNG government to swallow it. The PNG government is a sovereign nation already.

We should respect and honestly, in a family room situation, negotiate, talk with them, as the Peace Agreement says, and reach understanding on the timing and other related issues, but not to even take a confrontational approach, which is what they are doing now, but take a family room approach, where we sit and negotiate in the spirit of the Peace Agreement.

This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Don Wiseman is a senior journalist with RNZ Pacific. 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 story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on July 22, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

For 100 days, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank town of Idna have been surviving without running water. The town of some 40,000 inhabitants has been relying on rain reservoirs and water tanks sold by vendors. The town’s water crisis was provoked by the April decision of Israeli national water company Mekorot to reduce the daily provision of water to the Hebron governorate of the southern West Bank. The water supply shrank from 32,000 cubic meters to 26,000, which included completely shutting down Mekorot’s water line for Idna.

This water crisis isn’t new, and it isn’t limited to Idna. Every summer, multiple parts of the West Bank experience prolonged water cuts that can extend for up to a month, mainly due to the lack of water supply by Mekorot, which controls most of the water resources in Palestine.

In Idna, residents met in the municipality hall on Monday to discuss the crisis. The mayor of the town shared the Israeli company’s argument for cutting off their water: that some residents were “illegally stealing water.”

“The mayor said that it is not the municipality’s responsibility to look for those who steal water, but to provide water to residents, which is being made impossible,” Rami Nofal, a local journalist and resident of Idna, told Mondoweiss. “Every summer, we go through water cuts, and the argument that some individuals steal water from the main line is not an excuse to leave 40,000 people without water for three months,” he said. 

The mayor went on to assure the crowd that the Palestinian Authority is trying to fix the crisis with Mekorot, but no news of a solution was forthcoming. “In Idna, like in the rest of the West Bank, we receive water on specific days of the week, and my neighborhood’s turn was in April, just a few days before the complete cut was scheduled,” Nofal went on. “I bought a water tank of 13 cubic meters for 180 shekels, and this is the water that my family and I are saving to survive on.”

Tanks of this sort dot the roofs of all buildings in the West Bank, as water shortages are chronic. “We have to watch for every instance of water consumption,” Nofal explained. “Every time my children open the faucet, I tell them to close it back as soon as they can. We economize while washing and even when flushing the toilet.”

How the water system works on the West Bank

Mekorot was established in the 1930s under the British Mandate. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the company was given the exclusive right to explore and exploit water in the country. After 1967, that included the lands of the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel occupied. Mekorot expanded its operations and was assigned to build the national carrier, a line of water pipes that transports water from the northern part of the country, around the West Bank through Israel’s 1948 proper, to the southern dry areas of the Naqab desert. A large part of this water used to feed the Jordan river before the construction of the carrier in the 1960s.

Ihab Sweiti, of the Palestinian water authority, told Mondoweiss that “natural water sources in Palestine are mostly underground, and they classify into four natural reservoirs; the eastern and western acquifers on both sides of the central hill country, the Jordan Valley Basin, and the coastal acquifer, which is the main water source for Israel and the Gaza Strip. The eastern and Jordan Valley reservoirs are mainly in the West Bank, and the western reservoir extends into Israel, too.”

“Since the occupation of 1967, Mekorot dug more wells in the West Bank, ending up controlling about 25 wells, which it uses to provide water to Israeli settlements and to sell water to many Palestinian municipalities, like Idna,” Sweiti continued.

“When the Mekorot company informed us that they were cutting the water supply from the west Hebron area, including Idna, they said that the reason was that there were too many illegal extensions made by Palestinians along the water line.” 

Sweiti says that the Israeli company claims the stealing of water for the towns and villages in the area reduced the water share for the Israeli settlements. Sweiti admits that Palestinians make irregular extensions along Mekorot’s line, but the data belies the claim that the share of Israeli settlements has been reduced. 

According to the Palestinian Hydrology Group, Palestinians consume an average of 70 liters of water per person per day, while Israelis consume 300. For Israeli settlers in the West Bank, however, the average rises to 800 liters per person a day.

According to the World Health Organization, the healthy average for daily water consumption is 100 to 120 liters per individual per day, which is far above the Palestinian average consumption rate and much further below the daily average consumption of Israeli settlers. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics figures from March 2023, the individual water share of Israeli settlers in the West Bank compared to that of Palestinians is seven to one.

Under international law, both Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Israel’s exploitation of the West Bank’s water are illegal. The 4th Geneva Convention, which regulates cases of occupation, explicitly prohibits both the transfer of the citizens of the occupying power to the occupied territory and the exploitation of natural resources of the occupied territory unless it is to the benefit of the occupied population.

When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 between the PLO and Israel, water rights were classified as part of the strategic “final status” negotiations phase, along with Palestinian refugees, borders, the status of Jerusalem, and Israeli settlements. The final status negotiations were supposed to conclude in Camp David in the year 2000, but the accords collapsed. Since then, the administration of water distribution continues to take place according to the Oslo Accords’ provisional mechanism: vastly unequal distribution, and total Israeli control.

This mechanism is based on the formation of a joint committee in which Israeli and Palestinian water authorities regularly review and update the number of wells that Palestinians are allowed to dig or exploit and the quantity of water they can extract and distribute based on population growth.

This regular meeting of the joint committee is supposed to take place every few years. According to Ihab Sweiti, the last meeting happened in 2023, before the war on Gaza started. “We, the Palestinian Water Authority, had several new wells  on the agenda that we wanted to get Israeli approval to dig and operate, and there were two other wells that had already received Israeli approval, including in the west of Hebron.” 

Only technical discussions were left, Sweiti says, but the war on Gaza paralyzed everything. “It is all still pending.”

‘People will literally go thirsty’

In Idna, even the irregular extraction of water by Palestinians was cut short by the Israeli army. “On Sunday, occupation forces raided the area outside Idna where the water line passes, dug the ground, and destroyed all the irregular extensions made by some Palestinians,” Rami Nofal noted. “ As a result, now even water tanks are no longer available. If this continues, in two weeks the crisis will get out of control.” 

“People in Idna will literally go thirsty,” Nofal stressed.

Sweiti maintains that irregular extensions to the main line are a problem for Palestinians, not just Israeli settlements. “The water extracted, which is not accounted for, is eventually deducted from Palestinians’ share,” Sweiti says. “But the area where the line passes is located in Area C, where Israel doesn’t allow the Palestinian Authority to have any presence.” 

This means that the Palestinian Authority has no powers to impose order or maintain water infrastructure for Palestinian communities, Sweiti explains. 

“Cutting water off from an entire area or city is not a solution,” he says. “The solution is to allow us Palestinians to run our own water supply and have our own water sources.” 

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Qassam Muaddi.

This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 22, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Republicans on the House Rules Committee have ground business in the chamber to a halt to avoid having to vote on Democratic amendments calling for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

For weeks now, Republicans in Congress, facing pressure from the White House, have dodged efforts to force the release of the files, which may implicate U.S. President Donald Trump in crimes committed by the convicted sex criminal.

According to Axios, the House had been scheduled to vote on GOP legislation involving immigration and environmental legislation this week. But in order for these votes to reach the floor, they’d first need to pass through the Speaker-controlled Rules Committee, which has also been presented with multiple Epstein amendments.

Republicans on House Rules “don’t want to vote no because they’re then accused of helping hide the truth about Epstein,” Punchbowl News reported Tuesday morning. So instead, they’ve chosen to simply stop work for the week to avoid having to vote at all.

This has essentially ground all business in the House to a halt, potentially until after Congress gets back from its August recess.

On Monday, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), told Politico reporter Mia Camille, “We’re done in [the] Rules Committee until September.”

“The Rules Committee decides what gets voted on in the House. It’s where Republicans have already voted six times against forcing the release of the Epstein files,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.). “They’d rather shut down Congress than vote to release the files. What are they hiding?”

The Epstein cloud has only grown thicker over the White House over the past week after The Wall Street Journal reported that in 2003, Trump gave Epstein a salacious letter for his 50th birthday containing talk of a “secret” between the two men and a drawing of a nude woman. Trump has sued The Journal, calling the letter “a fake thing.”

The New York Times later reported that a decade earlier, Trump hosted a party full of young women where Epstein was the only other guest.

Amid the drip of scandal, the White House has remained dismissive of calls, including from the president’s own supporters, for the Department of Justice to release all its files related to Epstein.

Not long ago, officials in his administration made promises to release the files themselves, assuring damning revelations. But now, Trump describes the files as a “hoax” by the “radical left.” Of the Trump-faithful who have called for their release, he said, “I don’t want their support anymore!”

Late last week, Trump called for the DOJ to release grand jury transcripts pertaining to the investigation. But many other critical pieces of information, including ones that could implicate the president, would remain hidden.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has closely coordinated the House GOP’s response to the Epstein fiasco with the White House, saying repeatedly that there is “no daylight” between his position and that of the administration.

Johnson last week introduced a non-binding resolution to provide the public with “certain” Epstein-related documents, but it had no legal weight, allowing the White House to have total control over the information they disclosed. But even that resolution, Johnson said, would not be brought forth for a vote until after the August recess.

This has provoked the ire of a fellow Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who—along with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (Calif.)—drafted a discharge petition last week in an attempt to force a vote on the Epstein files onto the House floor.

“I think this is the referendum on [Johnson’s] leadership,” Massie said. “Who’s he gonna pick? Is he going to stand with the pedophiles and underage sex traffickers? Or is he gonna pick the American people and justice for the victims?”

Last week, a CNN/SSRS poll found that just 3% of Americans were satisfied with the amount of information the government had released about the Epstein files, while more than half said they were dissatisfied.

“This is the ultimate decision the speaker needs to make. And it’s irrespective of what the president wants,” Massie said.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Stephen Prager.

In a related development, senior journalist Ajit Anjum released a video report from a block office in the Phulwari assembly constituency of Patna, showing a BLO engaged in an SIR work. In his report, Anjum alleged that BLOs were forging signatures on voter forms.

Subsequently, the Patna district administration ‘fact-checked’ Anjum’s claims, calling them misleading and baseless. The Election Commission also shared this fact-check on X.

Claim I by Patna District Administration

In a press note, the Patna district administration stated that it had taken cognisance of the matter flagged by Anjum, and the district election officer-cum-district magistrate, Patna, had constituted a district-level investigation committee under the chairmanship of the deputy development commissioner, Patna. During the investigation, it was discovered that all the BLOs present in the video had been preparing a list of deceased/shifted voters of the respective assembly constituency. In addition, the press note claimed that the investigation confirmed that the enumeration form of deceased/shifteds voters was being verified by the BLO by writing ‘Death’ or ‘Shifted’ along with putting his signature.

The district administration also shared two such documents in which the signature of BLO Rani Kumari with the words ‘Death’ and ‘Shifted’ can be seen on the back of the voter enumeration form.

What We Found

Upon taking a closer look at the video uploaded by journalist Ajit Anjum on his YouTube channel, we observed that the BLO was not signing as herself. In fact, the male BLO was signing in the name of Shanti Devi. Furthermore, the female BLO was signing in the name of Chandra Prakash Sah. Therefore, the claim of the Patna administration that the BLO was verifying the enumeration form of dead/shifted voters by writing ‘Death’ or ‘Shifted’ and signing the forms seems to be misleading.

Claim II

After the first claim was proven wrong, the Patna district administration issued a new statement. In this response, they cited the death certificate of the deceased Chandra Prakash Sah and stated that it had also verified the information about the voter named Shanti Devi being deceased. It claimed that the BLO had verified that both of these individuals were dead by writing ‘Death’ on their forms and putting their names (the deceased person’s) in the signature column.

What We Found

It is worth noting that in the first document issued, the Patna district administration showed that in the deceased/shifted voters’ enumeration form, the BLO’s signature was below the ‘Death’ or ‘Shifted’ remark. However, in the second statement issued by the district administration, it was claimed that the BLO verified that both the individuals in question were deceased by marking ‘Death’ and writing the deceased person’s name (read signature) in place of the voter’s signature. Two different formats for filling the enumeration forms of deceased voters in the same block seems suspicious and creates confusion. The two different statements by the administration seem to be hastily prepared, and are contradictory.

Along with this glaring discrepancy in the two statements, the other question that this response by Patna district administration raises is whether there is any legally accepted procedure where the signature of a deceased individual can be replaced by someone else writing the deceased person’s name in the signature box. In addition, it raises the question of whether a deceased person can even have a signature. Indian law considers the use of a signature of another individual in place of the concerned person in a document as forgery and treats it as a crime.

Claim III

In both its first and subsequent press notes, the Patna district administration claimed that all the BLOs seen in journalist Ajit Anjum’s video were preparing the list of deceased/shifted voters of their respective polling stations.

The Patna district administration also released a video of a female BLO speaking on the matter. In the footage, she can be heard saying that she was making a list of dead/shifted voters from the block.

What We Found

Another name appears in journalist Ajit Anjum’s video, that of Sanjay Kumar, son of Ramayan Yadav. It is seen in the video that Sanjay Kumar’s signature was being done on his form by the female BLO.

Alt News verified Sanjay Yadav’s details on the Election Commission website and found his name in the voter roll released by the body.

(For privacy reasons, we have redacted the address details of Sanjay Kumar and his father.)

Apart from this, journalist Meera Rajput from a YouTube channel named National Pillar and journalist Jyotish Chauhan from a YouTube channel named NUBT NEWS reached the scene and reported that Sanjay Kumar was, in fact, not deceased. They also shared a picture of Kumar and his father Ramayan Yadav with us.

Journalist Meera Rajput, who reached the scene to conduct a ground report, also shared with us the voter ID and Aadhaar cards of Sanjay Kumar and his father Ramayan Yadav. Kumar’s photo on his voter ID card and his EPIC number match the one seen in Ajit Anjum’s video. In addition to this, Alt News also independently verified that Sanjay Kumar is a resident of the same place, and has not shifted somewhere else.

To sum up, the claim made by the Patna district administration in its press note and alleged investigation stating all the BLOs present in journalist Ajit Anjum’s video were preparing the list of dead/shifted voters of their respective polling booths and adding their own signatures does not seem to be completely factual. This is because neither is Sanjay Kumar dead, nor has he shifted, whereas in the video it can be seen that BLO is signing Sanjay Kumar’s enumeration form on his behalf.

Change in Status of Sanjay Kumar’s Enumeration Form

On the night of July 18, Anjum posted some pictures raising questions on the Patna district administration. These pictures included the enumeration form of a voter named Sanjay Kumar on the BLO’s table and a screenshot of the status of his form, which showed that it had been submitted.

मेरी रिपोर्ट का खंडन करने वाले पटना DM के दावे की हकीकत जानिए.
DM के हिसाब से मेरे वीडियो में दिख रही BLO डेड वोटर की लिस्ट बना रही हैं . अब उसी वीडियो के शुरुआती हिस्से से कुछ स्क्रीन शॉट दे रहा हूं. संजय कुमार नाम से महिला BLO दस्तखत कर रही हैं . बगल में वोटर लिस्ट है .संजय… https://t.co/uDHV49c4lc pic.twitter.com/RbguJxiJ2h

— Ajit Anjum (@ajitanjum) July 18, 2025

Alt News checked the status of Sanjay Kumar’s enumeration form through EPIC on July 18 itself. The result was as follows, “Your enumeration form has been submitted. Your name will appear in the draft electoral list to be published on 01.08.2025. If you have not yet submitted your document, please contact your BLO.”

When we checked the status of Sanjay Kumar’s enumeration form again through the same EPIC number before publishing this report, we noticed the status has now changed. The result shows, “Please contact your BLO”. This also confirms that after Kumar’s case was pointed out on social media, the district administration changed the status of the enumeration form of the said voter. The difference in the status of Sanjay Kumar’s enumeration form before and after can be seen in the graphic given below.

The post ECI and Patna admin’s rebuttal of Ajit Anjum’s SIR ‘exposé’ has several loopholes appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

That the United States of America is controlled by a criminally perverse, two party ruling class should be obvious to any reasonable (not rational, for the above-named people are very rational) person not living in what Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existential writer, called bad faith (mauvaise foi).

Bad faith is based on Sartre’s premise that people are radically free despite social and biological constraints; in each person’s consciousness they sense this but choose to play games, to perform for themselves and others, and to act as if they have no choices when they do. They deny their freedom. This is not lying but a form of self-deception since one cannot lie to oneself for “the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know in my capacity as a deceiver the truth which is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived,” writes Sartre. This should be so obvious but it escapes most people who imbibe psychobabble.

Lying is different since it involves other people. “The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding,” added Sartre. This cynical consciousness that knows the truth but denies it to others is a perfect description of  politicians, propagandists, intelligence services, and their media mouthpieces. They know they are lying and are proud of it, but of course they will never admit it. Regular people also lie regularly but with not the same tremendous social consequences.

People often say that certain people really believes their own lies, that they are deluded, but this is impossible.

I begin with this brief excursion into philosophy (and psychology) because I recently read a fine journalist, Patrick Lawrence, in an otherwise excellent article – “Trump, Bibi, and Ayn Rand’s ghost” – write the following about war criminals Trump and Netanyahu’s recent dinner meeting in which  Netanyahu shows Trump a letter he wrote nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, that Medea Benjamin of Code Pink rightly called “surreal:

We must reason through the matter such that we are able to recognize that these two appalling men were serious in their self-congratulation. The idea of themselves they presented before the media cameras is to them genuine: They sincerely understand themselves in this way—virtuous, courageous, standing heroically alone, bearing the world’s banner forward. (my emphasis)

Of what are such people made? This is our question. Attempting our answer leads us beyond politics and policy and into the spheres of psychology and pathology. I have long contended that any true understanding of global affairs cannot leave out consideration of the mental and emotional makeup of those who, for better or worse, are in positions of leadership. The Israeli PM, a case in point, exhibits clear symptoms of clinical psychosis if by this we mean a frayed relationship with reality.

Now Patrick Lawrence most forcefully and eloquently often condemns Trump and Netanyahu and their ilk as the genocidal war criminals that they are. Because I admire his work so much, I hesitate to pick up on his point about their sincerity, but I think it is essential to do so because of its wider implications.

Sartre claimed “sincerity,” purportedly the anti-thesis of self-deception, takes one deeper into self-deception. It goes to Patrick’s  question of what are such people made, of what are we all made; it goes behind psychology to its philosophical presuppositions and beyond the issue of pathology to a theological analysis of evil. While Lawrence’s analysis is focused not on these matters but on Ayn Rand’s influence on Trump, Netanyahu, and the wider individualistic culture – an astute analysis – it respectfully needs an a priori corrective.

I maintain that not for a second do Trump and Netanyahu believe they are genuine or virtuous or believe their own lies. They are the perfect examples of hypocrites, as in the word’s etymological sense of stage actor; pretender, dissembler, from the Greek hypokritēs. To repeat: it is impossible to believe one’s own lies since one knows they are not the truth one withholds.

Since it is obvious from their own words and actions and can be followed in real time video by any concerned person that they enthusiastically support the genocide of the Palestinians without an iota of compunction, can we say they are mentally ill?  I think not. That would suggest that if in some alternative universe they were tried for their crimes and convicted, they should be sent to a mental institution, not a prison, because they are sick. They are far beyond sick and are the current examples of their nations’ predecessors’ support for massive war crimes for a very long time. Both the U.S.A. and Zionist Israel were founded on similar claims of being  God-ordained countries that hid the satanic violence they used against native peoples and anyone who dared to suggest God was not on their sides.

Are they, as Lawrence says of Netanyahu, out of touch with reality? I think not. In any case, whose reality? Those in power, with the corporate mass media and tech companies as accomplices, create their own reality, as in the famous quote attributed to a George W. Bush aid by Ron Suskind: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” This is even truer today with the use of artificial Intelligence. Their reality is not yours, mine, or Patrick Lawrence’s. Their facts are not ours. In any case, to suggest Netanyahu is out of touch with “reality” would suggest mental illness, not evil intent. Sartre would say that to do so is to excuse him, which is clearly not Patrick’s intention. The result, however, of saying that Netanyahu and Trump sincerely think of themselves as genuine does exactly that.

One can, of course, reject Sartre’s philosophical premise about freedom, bad faith, and lying in favor of psychological and biological explanations. This is the modern approach, which is commonplace. It assumes much. It needs to be understood within the historical context of the decline of religion and the rise of science, modernism, and post-modernism. It is not scientific, however, but pseudo-scientific, and delusional on its own claims to being scientific. I maintain that it fails to comprehend the nature of evil.

But like Sartre and Dostoevsky, I too believe we are fundamentally free. Which is not to say we are not confronted with biological and social limitations on that freedom. We are. But fundamentally we have free will.

In the ancient tragedy Oedipus Rex, known in its Greek original as Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus commits two heinous acts: he kills his father and marries his mother. He commits crimes against society and sins against the gods. But he does so unknowingly, unconsciously, as the play makes clear. Throughout the Western world in morality and law it has become accepted, as Aristotle argues in his Ethics, that consciousness and will are necessary for acts to be ethically bad or good.

If Netanyahu, Trump, and their ilk (to be clear, by ilk I mean Biden and former U.S. presidents and Israeli prime ministers before Netanyahu) are not conscious but believe they are being virtuous by mass murdering Palestinians and so many others, then they, like Oedipus, deserve sympathy. For they know not what they do. But they clearly know, so they deserve no sympathy. They deserve condemnation.

What could possess them, and all the other political leaders, to commit mass murder over and over again while reveling in their “accomplishments,” and to speak casually about using nuclear weapons? For that is what they do. I should emphasize that I am not referring to individuals who commit murder and other horrible crimes but to political leaders backed by millions of supporters. Institutional leaders who quite rationally sit in offices discussing the best methods for slaughtering millions.

Why do they act this way? Why did Hitler? Harry Truman with Hiroshima and Nagasaki? George W. Bush with Iraq? You know all the names, or should. They are legion, as are the statistics. The demonic nature of U.S. history from the start is there for all to contemplate, as the late theologian David Ray Griffin has documented in a number of books. No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves. It is demonic, as is the history of Zionism in Palestine.

So we are left with the question that has engaged people for millennia: What is the nature of evil? The demonic? While not here entering into a long analysis of this question, I will cast my vote with those, such as Soren Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Herman Melville, et al., who have claimed it goes much deeper than psychological sickness to a spiritual level and that the Enlightenment’s error was that it lacked a devil.

Satan is hard character to fathom, but when he is strutting his stuff, the consequences of his evil are blatantly real in the actions of those who have sold their souls for his favors.

In Melville’s Moby Dick the possessed Ahab says to Starbuck and to us:

Ahab is forever Ahab, man. This whole act is immutably decreed. ‘T’was rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates’ lieutenant, I act under orders.

The same clarity of mind and will can be said of Trump, Netanyahu, and their ilk. They know from whence their orders come; they echo Ahab’s words that “from hell’s heart” and “for hate’s sake” they will kill the innocent and exult in the slaughter.

God and Satan battle on.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

As Congress approved some $45 billion to expand ICE’s immigration detention capacity, including the jailing of families and children, we look at the case of one family. In May, plainclothes ICE agents detained a 6-year-old boy from Honduras who has acute lymphoblastic leukemia, along with his 9-year old sister and their mother, as they left their immigration court hearing in Los Angeles. In detention, the boy missed a key doctor’s appointment, and the family said his sister cried every night. As pressure grew over their conditions, the family was released on July 2. “The little boy doesn’t want to leave his home. He’s terrified. He sobs, cries and screams when his mother takes him out of the house,” says attorney Elora Mukherjee, who represents the boy and his family and is director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. She says the young children are traumatized after their month in ICE detention.

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

X handle Voice of Hindus (@Warlock_Shubh) posted the picture on July 20, 2025, slamming Devgn for talking to “terrorist Shahid Afridi”. (Archive)

You can’t trust on any Bollywood celebrities, Now Ajay Devgan is talking with Pakistani terrorist Shahid Afridi.

Any words for these celebrities! pic.twitter.com/QACPFZ6t7g

— Voice of Hindus (@Warlock_Shubh) July 20, 2025

The post has garnered over 2 Lakh views.

Another verified user, Roshan Rai, shared the same set of photos, and wondered why ‘sanghis’ were silent on “IT Cell Fav Ajay Devgan enjoying” with Afridi.

Devesh Pandey (@iamdevvoffical), who claims to be a journalist, shared the images on X and called for boycotting Devgn’s new movie. 

Several other X-users have made similar claims while sharing the images. A few of them can be seen in the gallery below. Many of them are verified users. 

Fact Check

A simple keyword search on X led us to several posts from July 2024. 

X handle Saif Ali Moon, for example, uploaded one of the now-viral images on July 6, 2024 and used #WCL2024 in the caption. 

ajay devgn is meeting shahid khan afridi in Birmingham England before the start of play between pak vs ind #WCL2024 #WCL #PakistanCricket #PakvsInd #PAKCvsINDC #INDCvsPAKC pic.twitter.com/mazJoSJGVC

— SAIF ALI MOON (@cric_info_saif) July 6, 2024