We speak with two brothers who are fighting Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over its massive data center in Memphis, Tennessee, used to run its chatbot Grok. The facility is next to historically Black neighborhoods and is powered by 35 pollution-spewing methane gas turbines the company is using without legal permits. Musk says he wants to continue expanding the project.

“What’s happening in Memphis is a human rights violation,” says KeShaun Pearson, executive director of the environmental justice organization Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Elon Musk and xAI are violating our human right to clean air and a clean, healthy environment.” His brother Justin J. Pearson, a Tennessee state representative for Memphis, says Musk is “perpetuating environmental racism” by ignoring the wishes of local residents: “They are abusing our community, and they’re exploiting us.”

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

Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

We know that Donald Trump is not fit to be sitting in the White House.  He is a dangerously disordered president, and we have observed enough aberrant behavior to fill a psychiatric text book.  We know from his exchanges with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that he has been quick to brandish his “bigger (nuclear) button” that has the unilateral power to kill us all.  And now we know that he is surrounded by a national security team whose members are totally unfit to serve and are willing to lie to an American public and an American Congress that has yet to come to grips with the normalization of Trump’s “no rules” presidency.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already lied to the press about the nature of the group chat involving war plans, and on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA director John Ratcliffe couldn’t recall any discussions of weaponry or targets, not even generic targets, in their testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee.  So don’t expect any accountability as the president and his national security team do their best to vilify an excellent journalist invited to the chat.

We can be thankful that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic and an outstanding journalist for decades, responded to a call on the messaging app Signal that involved every member of Trump’s national security team, including the vice-president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and leading intelligence and military officials.  We are fortunate that Goldberg, sitting in his car on a Safeway parking lot, took a call that he initially believed to be bogus or simply part of a disinformation campaign.

Goldberg was invited by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who may have intended to invite U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer (JG), who had no more need to be in such a group chat than did the Atlantic’s JG.  Typically, the trade representative would never be part of the Principal’s Committee.  Conversely, Goldberg probably has a better idea of overall U.S. national security than Greer, who is obsessed with tougher export controls and sanctions against China, and little else.

Every government official with a high-level security clearance is inundated with warnings against using personal cell phones in discussing government matters.    Nevertheless, one of the participants in the chat, special envoy Steve Witkoff, was on the call on his cell phone while in Moscow.  Russian intelligence has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, and Witkoff’s outrageous use of his personal cell phone for any discussion, let alone a discussion of precise military information dealing with the use of force.  The make-up of this particular group suggests that some or all of these members have been using Signal regularly for sensitive discussions.  It is particularly odd that not one individual questioned the presence of a journalist on the chat!

There is no national security information more sensitive that the discussion of war plans, which requires the highest level of operations security.  These discussions must be held in a sensitive and security facility that can be found at the National Security Council, the Pentagon, or throughout the intelligence community.  If an individual cannot be present at such a facility, at the very least he or she must be in a SCIF (a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) to prevent unauthorized physical or electronic access.  The high-level members even travel with their own classified communication systems.

Electronic surveillance and penetration has a long history.  When I was the intelligence advisor to the U.S. delegation at the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1971-1972, all professional matters were discussed in a SCIF that was flown to Vienna, Austria.  When I was stationed at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1976, I had to keep my office shutters closed because the KGB was targeting embassy windows to gather the signals emanating from the IBM Selectric typewriters that were used in the day.  In my 25 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, I was not permitted to bring a cell phone into the building because of the ease of foreign electronic penetration.

The group of misfits who occupy the highest national security positions that exist in Washington were simply too unwilling on a Saturday morning to travel to a SCIF.  It is highly likely that these Signal chats have been a regular feature of this particular team for the past two months.  We know that Donald Trump has no understanding or appreciation for intelligence security because of the case of the United States of America v. Donald Trump that filed 40 criminal counts related to his removal of sensitive classified materials from the White House to various insecure locations at Mar-A-Lago, including a bathroom, a ballroom, and a utility closet.

In the first months of his first term, Trump revealed a highly sensitive document—obtained from Israeli intelligence—to the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador.  Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State, and led Mossad—Israel’s CIA—to withhold the sharing of sensitive information for a period of time.  A U.S. official stated that Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”  It must be added that some of our best intelligence on foreign terrorism comes from foreign liaison sources, including intelligence sources that can be found in adversarial countries.

Finally, it must be noted that the participating members of the group chat, with the exception of Goldberg, were members of the Principals Committee of the National Security Council, which is the senior interagency forum for consideration and decision making of the most sensitive national security issues.  The NSC was created by President Harry S. Truman in 1947 to advise and assist the president on national security and foreign policy.  The intelligence services in Moscow and Beijing probably cannot believe their new form of access to such decision making.  Unfortunately, nothing will stop Trump from concentrating on his revenge tour and his campaign against the rule of law, not even the mishandling of Washington’s most sensitive intelligence information.

The post Trump’s Lying Band of Brothers appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

Around midnight on March 18, about two dozen individuals, identifying themselves as police, forcibly entered and searched Noorani’s family home in Islamabad. They assaulted the journalist’s two brothers, Mohammad Saif ur Rehman Haider and Mohammad Ali, dragged them into vehicles, and took them to an undisclosed location, according to Noorani, his mother, and a copy of a petition about the abductions  filed by the family’s lawyers with the Islamabad High Court, which CPJ reviewed. Noorani and the petition identify the abductors as agents of Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence.

Khehtran disappeared on March 13 from his home district of Barkhan in Balochistan province, and there has been no information about his whereabouts, according to independent news outlet ANI news and human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari, who is following the case and spoke to CPJ.

“It is deeply concerning that journalist Asif Karim Khehtran, as well as Mohammad Saif ur Rehman Haider and Mohammad Ali, brothers of journalist Ahmed Noorani, have been forcibly disappeared. This is indicative of a severe media crackdown in Pakistan,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Authorities must ensure their safety, immediately release them, and respect the rule of law.”

On March 17, Noorani published an investigative report detailing the alleged control that Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, has consolidated since assuming the country’s top military position in 2022. Both Noorani and the petition filed on behalf of his family in the Islamabad High Court claim that this report led to the enforced disappearance of his brothers.

In 2024, Khehtran had faced persistent threats from military authorities, who pressured him to halt his reporting on human rights issues in Balochistan. His family members had previously been forcibly disappeared, as well, according to Mazari.

Noorani is a journalist with the investigative news website FactFocus, which extensively publishes on Pakistan, and Khehtran has worked with Daily Awami and Quetta Voice.

Abductions and forced disappearances of journalists in Pakistan have been widely documented, including the high-profile cases of Imran Riaz Khan and Sami Ibrahim, who were abducted in May 2023 and later released.

CPJ’s messages for comment to Information Minister Attaullah Tarar have received no response.

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

In view of the Israeli Prime Minister, amid his own corruption trial, the truth about the Israeli-occupied territories seems to be equivalent to treason. Hence, his determination to destroy B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

The effort to decimate the last defenders of human rights in Israel cries for effective external intervention.

Why are Netanyahu’s autocrats after B’Tselem?

B’Tselem evolved in early 1989, when it was established by a group of Israeli lawyers, academics and doctors with the support of 10 members of Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The name comes from Genesis 1:27, which deems that all mankind was created “b’tselem elohim” (in the image of God); in line with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As Jewish far-right extremism was spreading in Israel, B’Tselem reflected an effort to replace nascent Jewish supremacism doctrines with the original, universalistic spirit of social justice that had marked Judaism for centuries.

It was founded after two years of the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories and in Israel. After two decades of futile struggle for decolonization and increasing Israeli repression, Palestinians resorted to protests, then civil disobedience and eventually violence.

Instead of taking a hard look at the causes of the uprising, the hard-right Likud government – led by Yitzhak Shamir, Netanyahu’s one-time mentor and ex-leader of the violent pre-state Stern group – deployed 80,000 soldiers in response, which started with live rounds against peaceful demonstrators.

The brutal repression resulted in over 330 Palestinian deaths (and 12 Israelis killed) in just the first 13 months. The objective of the newly-established B’Tselem became to document human rights violations in both Gaza and the West Bank. Amid a vicious cycle of violence, it sought to serve as the nation’s voice of conscience.

Today, it is led by human rights activist Yuli Novak who had to leave Israel in 2022 due to mounting death threats, and chaired by Orly Noy, left-wing Mizrahi activist and editor of +972 magazine. Despite mounting threats from the government, the Messianic far-right and the settler extremists, B’Tselem has insistently recorded human rights violations in the occupied territories earning the regard of rights organizations and awards worldwide.

In early 2021, the NGO released a report describing Israel as an “apartheid” regime, which the Netanyahu cabinets have fervently rejected. Yet, the NGO simply codified, with abundant evidence, Israel’s apartheid rule that had worsened over time. Several Israeli military, intelligence and political leaders had used the same characterization since the 2000s.

B’Tselem warned that Israeli governance was no longer about democracy plus occupation. It had morphed into “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” – that is, apartheid. And the kind of military excess that led to the genocidal atrocities in Gaza.

How is the Netanyahu cabinet undermining B’Tselem?   

Recently, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of two bills. They are an integral part of a broader shift from democracy to autocracy. The ultimate objective is to eliminate human rights (and other rights) groups from Israel, including B’Tselem, and to marginalize the autocratic harsh-right’s critics.

In its efforts, the Netanyahu cabinet is relying on two proposed laws involving NGO taxation and the ICC. In the former case, the proposal slaps an 80% tax on donations from foreign countries, the UN and many international foundations supporting human rights. This will effectively cut off the NGOs’ funding. The proposal was approved in a preliminary reading.

The second bill, which has now also passed a preliminary reading, seeks to criminalize any cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC). It could be seen as the Israeli version of the US Trump administration’s sanctions to undermine the ICC, its activities and members.

With its diffuse language, the Israeli ICC bill can be exploited to criminalize not only active assistance to the court but the release of any information indicating the government or senior Israeli officials are committing war crimes or crimes against humanity. According to Israeli scholars of international law, “the definitions in this dangerous bill are so broad that even someone sharing on social media a photo or video of a soldier documenting themselves committing what appears to be a war crime could face imprisonment.” More precisely, half a decade in jail.

If the “ICC law” criminalizes the work of B’Tselem and other human rights NGOs by making human rights defense a punishable offense, the “NGO taxation law” is intended to drain the meager financial resources of these NGOs.

Whose “foreign subversion”?            

B’Tselem is an independent, non-partisan organization. It is funded by donations: grants from European and North American foundations that support human rights activity worldwide, and contributions by private individuals in Israel and abroad. These donors do not represent the kind of “subversion” that the Likud governments attribute to human rights NGOs. Nor do they possess major financial resources. Even right-wing NGO critics estimate B’Tselem’s annual funding at most about $3 million per year.

Things are very different behind the donors of the Kohelet Policy Forum, led by neoconservatives with US-Israeli dual citizenship, and its many spinoffs. These have served as the Netanyahu cabinets’ thinktanks and authored many of their policies, including the “judicial reforms.” Totaling several million dollars, Kohelet in particular benefited from multi-million-dollar donations made anonymously and sent through the U.S. nonprofit, American Friends of Kohelet Policy Forum (AF-KPF).

For years, these money flows originated mainly from two Jewish-American private equity billionaires and philanthropists, Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founders of Susquehanna International Group (The Fall of Israel, Chapter 6).

With a net worth of $7.5 billion, Dantchik is an active supporter of neoconservative Israeli causes. And so is Yass, with net worth estimated at $29 billion. Between 2010 and 2020, his Claws Foundation gave more than $25 million to the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute, the Kohelet and other right-wing causes. As the publicity-shy Dantchik and Yass began to suffer from Kohelet’s negative PR, they took distance, while other money flows offset the difference.

By 2021, more than 90% of Kohelet’s $7.2 million income came from the Central Fund of Israel, a family-run nonprofit that gave $55 million to more than 500 Israel-related causes. It was run by Marcus Brothers Textiles on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, which sponsors highly controversial settlement projects in the West Bank, while supporting the far-right activists’ ImTirtzu and Honenu, which is notorious for defending Jewish far-right extremists charged with violence against and killings of Palestinians.

Toward a unitary, autocratic Jewish state     

Given the present course, the ultimate demise of human rights in Israel is now a matter of time. The Netanyahu cabinet will decide when to bring the legislative proposals to hearings in the relevant parliamentary committees, to prepare them for final approval.

There is no doubt about the final objective: the creation of a state “from the river to the water,” but not the two-state model enacted almost eight decades ago. Nor the secular-democratic Jewish state with a vibrant Arab minority. The goal is a Jewish unitary state in which both the rule of law and democracy will be under erosion.

B’Tselem is the harsh-right’s scapegoat for its own international isolation, but only the first one. There is more to come. Under the watch of and military aid and financing by the Biden and Trump administrations, the protection of human rights in occupied territories will soon be treated as a punishable crime, while the economic resources of the remaining human rights defenders will be decimated.

In Gaza, the international community failed to halt the genocidal atrocities. If it fails to protect the last defenders of human rights in Israel, it is likely to become complicit in new atrocities in the West Bank.

• Originally published by Informed Comment.

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

Chinese authorities are holding Gao Zhen, one of the Gao Brothers artistic duo, on suspicion of 'insulting revolutionary heroes and martyrs,' after seizing satirical artworks depicting Chairman Mao from his home studio, Radio Free Asia has learned.

Gao Zhen, 68, who with his brother Gao Qiang has a global reputation for works of political satire, was detained by police in Sanhe city in the northern province of Hebei on Aug. 26, according to a detention notice sent to his family the following day, Gao's lawyer and friends told RFA Mandarin.

The Gao Brothers’ dissident artwork has been shown at many venues overseas, but not publicly displayed in China since they signed an open letter from dissident physicist Fang Lizhi to then supreme leader Deng Xiaoping during the pro-democracy movement of 1989.

Police detained Gao Zhen at around 9.00 a.m. on Aug. 26, rushing into his apartment and taking him away in handcuffs, while searching his studio and questioning his wife for several hours, according to an Aug. 31 post on the Gao Brothers' Facebook page.

State security police confiscated books, computer hard drives, and sculptures and artwork relating to late supreme leader Mao Zedong, the post said.

All of the works taken by police were created more than a decade ago, before laws on protecting the reputation of "revolutionary heroes and martyrs" took effect, it said.

China passed a law criminalizing "insults" to the ruling Communist Party's canon of revolutionary heroes and martyrs in 2018.

Gao is currently being held in the Sanhe Detention Center on suspicion of "infringing the reputation of revolutionary heroes and martyrs," the Facebook post said.

His lawyer Qu Zhenhong confirmed Gao's detention to RFA Mandarin on Sunday, but declined to give further details.

"His family has received a notice [of detention], but it's inconvenient for me to say anything more because the case is still under investigation," Qu said.

‘Miss Mao’

U.K.-based writer Ma Jian said he had heard of Gao's detention in a text message from his brother Gao Qiang, who lives in New York.

"According to the detention notice, he has been detained for crimes against the reputation of heroes and martyrs," Ma said in an open letter about Gao's detention, a copy of which was shared with RFA Mandarin.

The letter cited several sculptures from several years back including the "Miss Mao" series, depicting the late chairman with breasts, and "Mao Kneels in Repentance," which are believed to have sparked the charges.

Signed by Ma and several other creative artists, the letter called on the Chinese government to release Gao and to repeal the legislation banning "insults" to revolutionary heroes, because it infringes on the freedom of speech guaranteed -- on paper, at least -- in China's constitution.

It likened Gao's detention to the political witch-hunts of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, in which the Gao brothers lost their father.

"Today, the Sanhe police department seems to see Gao Zhen's artistic works as evidence of crime, repeating the persecution of the Cultural Revolution," the letter said, saying that controls on Chinese artists continue to tighten under Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. 

About to depart for New York

Thailand-based fellow artist Du Yinghong said Gao's detention came as he and his family prepared to board a flight to New York, where his son was due to start school.

"We've booked a flight to Tokyo, and then back to New York, because our son is about to start school," Gao says in an Aug. 26 voice note to Du, a recording of which was shared with RFA Mandarin. "I hope I'll get a chance to organize a trip [to visit you] next year, when we can discuss art-related matters."

Repeated calls to the Sanhe Detention Center rang unanswered on Sunday.

The other Gao Brother -- Gao Qiang -- responded to written questions from RFA only with the message: "Thank you for your attention."

A person close to the case told RFA Mandarin that the detention notice included the phrase "infringing the reputation of heroes and martyrs.” It is likely that the charge relates to sculptures of late supreme leader Mao Zedong, including one of Mao "kneeling and repenting," they said.

If the authorities can't make that stick retroactively, they may seek evidence to support other charges typically used to target critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, including "subversion" and "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," the person said.

Raid on warehouse

Gao Zhen's detention came alongside a police raid on his warehouse, apartment and studio in Sanhe's Best Jingu Industrial Park, according to Ma Jian. Previous attempts by police to enter the premises in 2023 were unsuccessful as Gao Zhen was in New York for the whole of last year.

In 2011, as the authorities released artist and social critic Ai Weiwei from 80 days' detention over alleged tax evasion, officials raided the 798 Art Village in Beijing in reaction to a satirical sculpture the brothers made of Mao as a woman.

The polished stainless steel sculpture titled "Miss Mao trying to poise herself at the top of Lenin's head," portrays the aging leader with signature receding hairline and facial mole, sporting a large pair of naked breasts. The Miss Mao element sits atop a large and grotesque head of Lenin, balancing with a tightrope walking pole.

A super-sized version of the sculpture was shown at the Vancouver Biennale festival in 2010, and was widely seen as a dissident work, satirizing orthodox communism and the official Chinese view of history.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kitty Wang for RFA Mandarin.

The 720-member European legislature has largely been the handmaiden for the technocrats in Brussels, who craft the economic and social direction of the European Union. Since its inception, the EU has presented a stable, reliable face of capitalist rule organized around market fundamentalism, minimizing market intervention, and slowing, even reversing, the growth of the public sector. The broad right-center and left-center — traditional pro-business, liberal, and social democratic parties — have united in ensuring that agenda.

With the demoralization or decline of the anti-capitalist left, there has been little resistance mounted to the forward march of the EU program.

Into the breach left by a marginal or now timid anti-capitalist left, stepped a new wave of right-wing populists preparing to exploit the growing mass dissatisfaction with twenty-first-century capitalism and its political custodians. The economic setbacks, stagnant or declining standards of living, inadequate social and employment security, inequality, social strife, and displacement incurred by European workers cried out for political expression. Right opportunists gladly answered these calls with hollow nationalism, ill-aimed blaming and shaming, and cultural anti-elitism.

Throughout Europe, new and refashioned parties like Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, Hungary’s Fidesz Party, Italy’s Lega and Brothers for Italy, Netherland’s Party for Freedom, Spain’s Vox, and many others, vie to fill the radical oppositional space evacuated or neglected by the anti-capitalist left.

Where the European Communist Parties could always count on a far more robust protest vote beyond their core membership, the protest vote now goes to the populist right by default.

To stem the right-populist tide, various strategists devised new alliances, power-sharing agreements, even technocratic governments. New “left” populist parties — Syriza, PODEMOS, France Insoumise — sprung up to draw support from the same mass anger and frustration exploited by the populist right.

But none of these supposed answers to right-wing populism have succeeded in containing or reversing its advance. The mid-June European parliamentary elections have, in many ways, marked a new high water for right-populism. In both France and Germany — the two anchors for the Eurozone project — the right has made spectacular gains.

Most dramatically, the French National Rally (RN) — the historic party of the Le Pen family — won more than double the vote (31+%) of Macron’s ruling party. In an act of frustration and, perhaps, desperation, Macron called for early national elections at the end of June. He, no doubt, expects to cry for a “united front” against the threat of right-wing governance, as he has successfully done in the past. He assumes that his party and RN will win in the first round and the left will have no choice but to support him in the second-round run-off.

Meanwhile, Macron’s approval rate in France has reached an all-time low of 5.5%. And he has begun his campaign by attacking both the left and right (“the fever of extremes”) — hardly a formula for drawing the left in a presumed second round of voting.

But the soft leftist parties– France Insoumise, the Communist Party, the Socialist, and the Greens– have cobbled together their own shaky “united front” to make an impact in the first round. The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois “solidarity” only goes so far.

In Germany, the hard right, semi-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the second largest party behind the Christian Democrats, garnering more votes than any of the individual parties in the governing coalition. The war-crazed Green Party took an especially hard hit in this election, losing nine seats.

While AfD has done less than RN to attempt to clean its ownership of fascistic detritus, it nonetheless draws a great deal of support from working-class protest voters. Germany’s ARD polling found that “a full 44% voted for the AfD out of disappointment at other parties.”

And that is how much of the electoral support for the populist right should be understood. The traditional right has long drawn its support from the bourgeoisie, small businesses, the professional strata: those protecting their status in a capitalist society. The populist right, taking that approach a step further — through nostalgia, misplaced blame, false anti-elitism, and the bogus promise of life-altering change — appeals to the masses: those alienated from a capitalist society. Unless one wants to cynically dismiss the people for their bad choices or pompously scold them for their bad judgment, you must conclude that the existing left parties have failed the masses, lost their credibility, and surrendered leadership on the popular issues, allowing right-populism to fill the breach.

Can one imagine Le Pen or even Macron winning the votes of France’s workers from the post-war Communist Party of Thorez, Duclos, and Rochet, the party esteemed for its role against fascism, and the party promising socialism?

Can one imagine Berlusconi, Lega, the Five Star Movement, Brothers of Italy drawing the Italian working class away from the Communist Party of Togliatti, the party that led the anti-fascist struggle, the party that offered Italian workers a dignified struggle against capital?

Can one imagine the AfD flourishing in the GDR, that part of Germany that today supplies the greatest number of votes to the AfD?

They do so today because the French Communist Party has abandoned its historic role as the champion of the working class and neither listens to workers nor puts their interests at the top of its agenda.

The Italian party dissolved itself thirty-five years ago and paved the way for decades of political farce and faux populism in Italian politics.

And the capitalist pillage of the former socialist German Democratic Republic planted the seeds of despair that grew into the AfD.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The untold story of the European parliamentary election reveals a world of possibility.

Purposely overlooked by the media were the impressive left gains in Greece and Germany. In both cases, working-class partisanship, principled socialism, and militant anti-imperialism and the promise of peace attracted voters. Where the weak-tea, decaffeinated left campaigned on fear of the right and defense of the European Union’s foreign policy, the Greek Communist Party and a new, radical German party surprised observers with significant gains.

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) nearly doubled its percentage of the vote over the previous European parliamentary election held in 2019. The results substantially exceeded last year’s parliamentary percentages as well. Its strength was shown especially in Attika and urban and working-class areas. These gains were made because of the principled stance of KKE and in spite of swimming against the EU tide of capitalism and war shared by all the other parties. KKE shows that defeating right-wing populism is possible by giving real, bold, and radical answers to the despair of working people.

In Germany, the left wing of the Die Linke Party — the working class-oriented, anti-imperialist wing — finally broke away and established a new party openly opposed to the European Union agenda, its institutionalized capitalism, and its war policies. Led by the independent-minded Sara Wagenknecht, the new party was quickly organized five months ago, yet drew 6.2% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections. The persistently compromising, centrist-orienting Die Linke was trounced, reduced to 2.7% of the vote. ARD polls show that the new party drew 400,000 votes from Die Linke, 500,000 votes from the Social Democrats, and 140,000 votes from the AfD. In some parts of Eastern Germany, the new party — yet to create a sustainable name — drew as much as 15% of the vote.

Perhaps better than any result, the new party delivered a shocking blow to the idea that one must stop the populist right by rallying to the center in defense of a moribund capitalism. As Lenin reminds us: “Two questions now take precedence over all other political questions — the question of bread and the question of peace.” Wagenknecht’s new party gave the questions precedence, attacking Germany’s economic malaise and inflation, as well as the deadly war in Ukraine. We should follow the development of the new party closely.

By attending to working-class interests, the Austrian Communist Party and the Workers’ Party of Belgium also made gains against the right-populist wave.

It should be clear that the hollow tactic of opposing right-populism by circling the wagons around mainstream centrist parties is proving to be bankrupt. The notion that voters can be shepherded away from populist poseurs with a “united front against the bad guys” approach has failed to win people from a desperate need for bread and peace.

These examples show a principled, proven approach to the problem of the populist-right, an approach that neither resorts to a retreat to the center or a bogus, unsustainable, ineffective “united front.” The thirst for change is there.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Godels.

The 720-member European legislature has largely been the handmaiden for the technocrats in Brussels, who craft the economic and social direction of the European Union. Since its inception, the EU has presented a stable, reliable face of capitalist rule organized around market fundamentalism, minimizing market intervention, and slowing, even reversing, the growth of the public sector. The broad right-center and left-center — traditional pro-business, liberal, and social democratic parties — have united in ensuring that agenda.

With the demoralization or decline of the anti-capitalist left, there has been little resistance mounted to the forward march of the EU program.

Into the breach left by a marginal or now timid anti-capitalist left, stepped a new wave of right-wing populists preparing to exploit the growing mass dissatisfaction with twenty-first-century capitalism and its political custodians. The economic setbacks, stagnant or declining standards of living, inadequate social and employment security, inequality, social strife, and displacement incurred by European workers cried out for political expression. Right opportunists gladly answered these calls with hollow nationalism, ill-aimed blaming and shaming, and cultural anti-elitism.

Throughout Europe, new and refashioned parties like Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally, Alternative for Germany, Hungary’s Fidesz Party, Italy’s Lega and Brothers for Italy, Netherland’s Party for Freedom, Spain’s Vox, and many others, vie to fill the radical oppositional space evacuated or neglected by the anti-capitalist left.

Where the European Communist Parties could always count on a far more robust protest vote beyond their core membership, the protest vote now goes to the populist right by default.

To stem the right-populist tide, various strategists devised new alliances, power-sharing agreements, even technocratic governments. New “left” populist parties — Syriza, PODEMOS, France Insoumise — sprung up to draw support from the same mass anger and frustration exploited by the populist right.

But none of these supposed answers to right-wing populism have succeeded in containing or reversing its advance. The mid-June European parliamentary elections have, in many ways, marked a new high water for right-populism. In both France and Germany — the two anchors for the Eurozone project — the right has made spectacular gains.

Most dramatically, the French National Rally (RN) — the historic party of the Le Pen family — won more than double the vote (31+%) of Macron’s ruling party. In an act of frustration and, perhaps, desperation, Macron called for early national elections at the end of June. He, no doubt, expects to cry for a “united front” against the threat of right-wing governance, as he has successfully done in the past. He assumes that his party and RN will win in the first round and the left will have no choice but to support him in the second-round run-off.

Meanwhile, Macron’s approval rate in France has reached an all-time low of 5.5%. And he has begun his campaign by attacking both the left and right (“the fever of extremes”) — hardly a formula for drawing the left in a presumed second round of voting.

But the soft leftist parties– France Insoumise, the Communist Party, the Socialist, and the Greens– have cobbled together their own shaky “united front” to make an impact in the first round. The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois “solidarity” only goes so far.

In Germany, the hard right, semi-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party became the second largest party behind the Christian Democrats, garnering more votes than any of the individual parties in the governing coalition. The war-crazed Green Party took an especially hard hit in this election, losing nine seats.

While AfD has done less than RN to attempt to clean its ownership of fascistic detritus, it nonetheless draws a great deal of support from working-class protest voters. Germany’s ARD polling found that “a full 44% voted for the AfD out of disappointment at other parties.”

And that is how much of the electoral support for the populist right should be understood. The traditional right has long drawn its support from the bourgeoisie, small businesses, the professional strata: those protecting their status in a capitalist society. The populist right, taking that approach a step further — through nostalgia, misplaced blame, false anti-elitism, and the bogus promise of life-altering change — appeals to the masses: those alienated from a capitalist society. Unless one wants to cynically dismiss the people for their bad choices or pompously scold them for their bad judgment, you must conclude that the existing left parties have failed the masses, lost their credibility, and surrendered leadership on the popular issues, allowing right-populism to fill the breach.

Can one imagine Le Pen or even Macron winning the votes of France’s workers from the post-war Communist Party of Thorez, Duclos, and Rochet, the party esteemed for its role against fascism, and the party promising socialism?

Can one imagine Berlusconi, Lega, the Five Star Movement, Brothers of Italy drawing the Italian working class away from the Communist Party of Togliatti, the party that led the anti-fascist struggle, the party that offered Italian workers a dignified struggle against capital?

Can one imagine the AfD flourishing in the GDR, that part of Germany that today supplies the greatest number of votes to the AfD?

They do so today because the French Communist Party has abandoned its historic role as the champion of the working class and neither listens to workers nor puts their interests at the top of its agenda.

The Italian party dissolved itself thirty-five years ago and paved the way for decades of political farce and faux populism in Italian politics.

And the capitalist pillage of the former socialist German Democratic Republic planted the seeds of despair that grew into the AfD.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. The untold story of the European parliamentary election reveals a world of possibility.

Purposely overlooked by the media were the impressive left gains in Greece and Germany. In both cases, working-class partisanship, principled socialism, and militant anti-imperialism and the promise of peace attracted voters. Where the weak-tea, decaffeinated left campaigned on fear of the right and defense of the European Union’s foreign policy, the Greek Communist Party and a new, radical German party surprised observers with significant gains.

The Greek Communist Party (KKE) nearly doubled its percentage of the vote over the previous European parliamentary election held in 2019. The results substantially exceeded last year’s parliamentary percentages as well. Its strength was shown especially in Attika and urban and working-class areas. These gains were made because of the principled stance of KKE and in spite of swimming against the EU tide of capitalism and war shared by all the other parties. KKE shows that defeating right-wing populism is possible by giving real, bold, and radical answers to the despair of working people.

In Germany, the left wing of the Die Linke Party — the working class-oriented, anti-imperialist wing — finally broke away and established a new party openly opposed to the European Union agenda, its institutionalized capitalism, and its war policies. Led by the independent-minded Sara Wagenknecht, the new party was quickly organized five months ago, yet drew 6.2% of the vote in the European parliamentary elections. The persistently compromising, centrist-orienting Die Linke was trounced, reduced to 2.7% of the vote. ARD polls show that the new party drew 400,000 votes from Die Linke, 500,000 votes from the Social Democrats, and 140,000 votes from the AfD. In some parts of Eastern Germany, the new party — yet to create a sustainable name — drew as much as 15% of the vote.

Perhaps better than any result, the new party delivered a shocking blow to the idea that one must stop the populist right by rallying to the center in defense of a moribund capitalism. As Lenin reminds us: “Two questions now take precedence over all other political questions — the question of bread and the question of peace.” Wagenknecht’s new party gave the questions precedence, attacking Germany’s economic malaise and inflation, as well as the deadly war in Ukraine. We should follow the development of the new party closely.

By attending to working-class interests, the Austrian Communist Party and the Workers’ Party of Belgium also made gains against the right-populist wave.

It should be clear that the hollow tactic of opposing right-populism by circling the wagons around mainstream centrist parties is proving to be bankrupt. The notion that voters can be shepherded away from populist poseurs with a “united front against the bad guys” approach has failed to win people from a desperate need for bread and peace.

These examples show a principled, proven approach to the problem of the populist-right, an approach that neither resorts to a retreat to the center or a bogus, unsustainable, ineffective “united front.” The thirst for change is there.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Godels.

All of Newshub operations — part of New Zealand’s second largest television news network channel Three — are to be shut down and 250 people will lose their jobs. The shutdown includes the company’s website, Warner Bros Discovery announced today.

The last 6pm news bulletin will air on July 5.

Warner Bros Discovery said talks were ongoing with third parties to provide a pared-back news service — such as a 6pm bulletin for the Three channel. However, no deals have been reached yet.

• READ MORE: TVNZ to cut Fair Go, midday and late night news bulletins
• TVNZ job cuts: Public asked to join ‘save our stories’ protest campaign
• RNZ News live blog on the cutbacks
• Other NZ news cutbacks reports

Head of networks Glen Kyne said Warner Bros Discovery had been clear it would listen to all feedback both internal and external over the five-week consultation period.

“Our door has been open and some conversations have taken place. They’re continuing to take place in confidence but there is no deal,” he said.

He promised to let staff know immediately if any new deals could be finalised.

He thanked staff for their feedback.

Definite shutdown
The announcement of the definite shutdown came at an all-staff meeting at a hall close to Newshub’s office in Auckland’s Eden Terrace this morning.

Newshub staff were told by Warner Bros Discovery managers in February it planned to axe the entire news operation.

The newsroom was losing too much money, staff were told.

Here is all the full information – devastated for my pals, colleagues and everyone who gives 110% there, NZ is a worse off place today with this news. https://t.co/q8HurxwV5g

— Darren Bevan (@geekboy73) April 9, 2024

Since then, it is understood there have been talks between Warner Bros Discovery and a number of media firms, including Stuff, about ways that part of the business could be preserved. It has been suggested that could include the production of a “slimmed-down” news bulletin by a third party.

Meanwhile, TVNZ staff will today hear the fate of its Sunday current affairs show, after the company confirmed on Tuesday it was axing the on-air version of Fair Go, and the Midday and Tonight news programmes.

Independent Spinoff founder Duncan Greive said the changes would be irreversible, and a “tragic” outcome for those affected.

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

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

The future of Aotearoa New Zealand television news and current affairs is in the balance at the two biggest TV broadcasters — both desperate to cut costs as their revenue falls.

The government says it is now preparing policy to modernise the media, but they do not want to talk about what that might be — or when it might happen.

On Monday, TVNZ’s 1News was reporting — again — on the crisis of cuts to news and current affairs in its own newsroom.

• READ MORE: Other TVNZ and Newshub reports

The extent of discontent about the proposed cuts had been made clear to chief executive Jodi O’Donnell at an all-staff meeting that day.

The news of cuts rocked the state-owned broadcaster when they were announced four days earlier.

In fact, it rocked the entire media industry because only one week earlier the US-based owners of Newshub had announced a plan to close that completely by mid year.

No-one was completely shocked by either development given the financial strife the local industry is known to be in.

But it seems no-one had foreseen that within weeks only Television New Zealand and Whakaata Māori would be offering national news to hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who still tune in at 6pm or later on demand.

Likewise the prospect of no TV current affairs shows (save for those on Whakaata Māori) and no consumer affairs watchdog programme Fair Go, three years shy of a half century as one of NZ most popular local TV shows of all time.

Yvonne Tahana’s report for 1News on Monday pointed out Fair Go staff were actually working on the next episode when that staff meeting was held on Monday.

All this raised the question — what is a “fair go” according to the government, given TVNZ is state-owned?

Media-shy media minister?
After the shock announcements last week and the week before, Minister of Media and Communications Melissa Lee seemed not keen to talk to the media about it.

The minister did give some brief comments to political reporters confronting her in the corridors in Parliament after the Newshub news broke. But a week went by before she spoke to RNZ’s Checkpoint about it — and revealed that in spite of a 24-hour heads-up from Newhub’s offshore owner — Warner Bros Discovery — Lee did not know they were planning to shut the whole thing.

By the time the media minister was on NewstalkZB’s Drive show just one hour later that same day, the news was out that TVNZ news staff had been told to “watch their inboxes” the next morning.

In spite of the ‘no surprises’ convention, the minister said she was out of the loop on that too.

After that, it was TV and radio silence again from the minister in the days that followed.

“National didn’t have a broadcasting policy. We’re still not sure what they’re looking at. She needs to basically scrub up on what she’s going to be saying on any given day and get her head around her own portfolio, because at the moment she’s not looking that great,” The New Zealand Herald’s political editor Claire Trevett told RNZ’s Morning Report at the end of the week.

By then the minister’s office had told Mediawatch she would speak with us on Thursday. Good news — at the time.

Lee has long been the National Party’s spokesperson on media and broadcasting and Mediawatch has been asking for a chat since last December.

Last Sunday, TVNZ’s Q+A show told viewers Lee had declined to be interviewed for three weeks running.

Frustration on social media
At Newshub — where staff have the threat of closure hanging over them — The AM Show host Lloyd Burr took to social media with his frustration.

“There’s a broadcasting industry crisis and the broadcasting minister is MIA. We’ve tried for 10 days to get her on the show to talk about the state of it, and she’s either refused or not responded. She doesn’t even have a press secretary. What a shambles . . . ”

A switch of acting press secretaries mid-crisis did seem to be a part of the problem.

But one was in place by last Monday, who got in touch in the morning to arrange Mediawatch’s interview later in the week.

But by 6pm that day, they had changed their minds, because “the minister will soon be taking a paper to cabinet on her plan for the media portfolio”.

“We feel it would better serve your listeners if the minister came on at a time when she could discuss in depth about the details of her plan for the future of media, as opposed to the limited information she will be able to provide this Thursday,” the statement said.

“When the cabinet process has been completed, the minister is able to say more. That time is not now.”

The minister’s office also pointed out Lee had done TV and broadcast interviews over the past week in which she had “essentially traversed as much ground as possible right now”.

What clues can we glean from those?

Hints of policy plans
Even though this government is breaking records for changes made under urgency, it seems nothing will happen in a hurry for the media.

“I have been working with my officials to understand and bring the concerns from the sector forward, to have a discussion with my officials to work with me to understand what the levers are that the government can pull to help the sector,” Lee told TVNZ Breakfast last Monday.

A slump in commercial revenue is a big part of broadcasters’ problems. TVNZ’s Anna Burns Francis asked the minister if the government might make TVNZ — or some of its channels — commercial-free.

“I think we are working through many options as to what could potentially help the sector rather than specifically TVNZ,” Lee replied.

One detail Lee did reveal was that the Broadcasting Act 1989 was in play — something the previous government also said was on its to do list but did not get around to between 2017 and 2023.

It is a pretty broad piece of legislation which sets out the broadcasting standards regime and complaints processes, electoral broadcasting and the remit of the government broadcasting funding agency NZ On Air.

But it is not obvious what reform of that Act could really do for news media sustainability.

Longstanding prohibitions
The minister also referred to longstanding prohibitions on TV advertising on Sunday mornings and two public holidays. Commercial broadcasters have long called for these to be dumped.

But a few more slots for whiteware and road safety ads is not going to save news and current affairs, especially in this economy.

That issue also came up in a 22-minute-long chat with The Platform, which the minister did have time for on Wednesday.

In it, host Sean Plunket urged the minister not to do much to ease the financial pain of the mainstream media, which he said were acting out of self-interest.

He was alarmed when Lee told him the playing field needed to be leveled by extending regulation applied to TV and radio to online streamers as well — possibly through Labour’s Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.

“Are you seriously considering the government imposing tax on certain large companies and paying that money directly to your chosen media companies that are asking for it?” Plunket asked.

“I have actually said that I oppose the bill but what you have to do as the minister is listen to the sector. They might have some good ideas.”

When Plunket suggested Lee should let the market forces play out, Lee said that was not desirable.

Some of The Platform’s listeners were not keen on that, getting in touch to say they feared Lee would bail the media out because she had “gone woke”.

That made the minister laugh out loud.

“I’m so far from woke,” she assured Sean Plunket.

A free-to-air and free-to-all future?
At the moment, TVNZ is obliged to provide easily accessible services for free to New Zealanders.

TVNZ’s Breakfast show asked if that could change to allow TVNZ to charge for its most popular or premium stuff?

The response was confusing:

“Well ready accessibility would actually mean that it is free, right? Or it could be behind a paywall — but it could still be available because they have connectivity,” Lee replied.

“A paywall would imply that you have to pay for it — so that wouldn’t be accessible to all New Zealanders, would it?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked.

“For a majority, yes — but free to air is something I support.”

When Lee fronted up on The AM Show for 10 minutes she said she was unaware they had been chasing a chat with her for 10 days.

Host Melissa Chan-Green bridled when the minister referred to the long-term decline of linear real time TV broadcast as a reason for the cuts now being proposed.

“To think that Newshub is a linear TV business is to misunderstand what Newshub is, because we have a website, we have an app, we have streaming services, we’ve done radio, we’ve done podcasts — so how much more multimedia do you think businesses need to be to survive?

“I’m not just talking about that but there are elements of the Broadcasting Act which are not a fair playing field for everyone. For example, there are advertising restrictions on broadcasters where there are none on streamers,” she said.

Where will the public’s money go?
On both Breakfast and The AM Show, Lee repeated the point that the effectiveness of hundreds of millions of dollars of public money for broadcasting is at stake — and at risk if the broadcasters that carry the content are cut back to just a commercial core.

“The government actually puts in close to I think $300 million a year,” Lee said.

“Should that funding be extended to include the client of current affairs programs are getting cut?” TVNZ’s Anna Burns-Francis asked her.

“I have my own views as to what could be done but even NZ on Air operates at arm’s length from me as Minister of Media and Communications,” she replied.

It is only in recent years that NZ On Air has been in the business of allocating public money to news and journalism on a contestable basis.

When the system was set up in 35 years ago that was out of bounds for the organisation, because broadcasters becoming dependent on the public purse was thought to be something to avoid — because of the potential for political interference through either editorial meddling or turning off the tap.

That began to break down when TV broadcasters stopped funding programs about politics which did not pull a commercial crowd — and NZ started picking up the tab from a fund for so-called special interest shows which would not be made or screened in a wholly-commercial environment.

Online projects with a public interest purpose have also been funded by in recent years in addition to programmes for established broadcasters — as NZ on Air declared itself “platform agnostic”.

Public Interest Journalism Fund
In 2020, NZ on Air was given the job of handing out $55 million over three years right across the media from the Public Interest Journalism Fund.

That was done at arm’s length from government, but in opposition National aggressively opposed the fund set up by the previous Labour government.

Senior MPs — including Lee — claimed the money might make the media compliant — and even silent — on anything that might make the then-Labour government look bad.

It would be a big surprise if Lee’s policy plan for cabinet includes direct funding for the news and current affairs programmes which could vanish from our TV screens and on-demand apps within weeks.

This week, NZ on Air chief executive Cameron Harland responded to the crisis with a statement.

“We are in active discussions with the broadcasters and the wider sector to understand what the implications of their cost cutting might be.

“This is a complex and developing situation and whilst we acknowledge the uncertainty, we will be doing what we can to ensure our funding is utilised in the best possible ways to serve local audiences.“

They too are in a holding pattern waiting for the government to reveal its plans.

But as the minister herself said this week, the annual public funding for media was substantial — and getting bigger all the time as the revenues of commercial media companies shrivelled.

And whatever levers the minister and her officials are thinking of pulling, they need to do decisively — and soon.

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

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

Television New Zealand’s chief executive has been challenged by the public broadcaster’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver at a fiery staff meeting over job cuts and axing of high profile programmes, reports The New Zealand Herald.

Writing in his Media Insider column today, editor-at-large Shayne Currie reported that Dreaver, one of TVNZ’s most respected and senior journalists, had made the challenge over the planned layoffs and axing of shows such as the current affairs Sunday and consumer affairs Fair Go.

Dreaver reportedly asked chief executive Jodi O’Donnell if she would apologise to staff — “apparently for referring to her watch during an earlier staff meeting on Friday”.

• READ MORE: Mediawatch: Apocalypse now for NZ news – take 2?
• TVNZ plans to axe Fair Go, Sunday, midday and night news in restructure
• NZ media people react with ‘shock’ over plan to close Newshub in June

“TVNZ would not confirm specific details last night, but it is understood O’Donnell pushed back during yesterday’s meeting, along the lines that perhaps she might also be owed an apology,” wrote Currie, a former Herald managing editor.

“One source said she talked at one stage about the response she had been receiving.”

Media Insider quoted a TVNZ spokeswoman as saying: “We expect sessions like this to be robust, but to give all TVNZers the opportunity to be free and frank in their participation, we don’t comment on the details of these internal meetings to the media.”

Dreaver told 1News last night: “We need really strong leadership and we expect to get it. And I’m quite happy to call out and challenge it [and] my own bosses when we don’t get that, just as I would a politician or any other person who deserves it.”

A ‘legend, icon, queen’
Media Insider reported that in a social media post today, Sunday journalist Kristin Hall had described Kiribati-born Dreaver as a “legend, icon, queen” for her Pacific reporting.

Legend, icon, queen

So proud to call @barbaradreaver a colleague https://t.co/FNksH6ih2f

— Kristin Hall (@kristinhallNZ) March 11, 2024

In November 2022, Dreaver was named Reporter of the Year at the New Zealand Television Awards and in 2019 she won two awards at the Voyager Media Awards for her coverage of the Samoa measles outbreak.

In this year’s New Year Honours, Dreaver was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities.

Yesterday’s TVNZ meeting came amid a strained relationship between the TVNZ newsroom and management over the way the company has handled the announcement of up to 68 job cuts, as least two-thirds of them journalists.

The shock news followed a week after the US-based Warner Bros Discovery announced that it would be closing its entire Newshub newsroom at the end of June.

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

After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

RNZ MEDIAWATCH: By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

In her report, political reporter Amelia Wade reminded viewers more than 30 years of TV news and current affairs — spanning the entire period of commercial TV here — could come to an end in June.

Before TV3 launched in 1989, state-owned TVNZ had been the only game in town.

But for most of its recent history, TV3’s parent company MediaWorks was owned by private equity funds and it was hamstrung with debts.

There were periodic financial emergencies too which seemed to signal the end.

In 2015, the boss Mark Weldon axed the current affairs shows Campbell Live and 3D and replaced them with ones that didn’t pull in more viewers or pull up many trees with their reporting.

“Reports of our death at 6pm have been greatly exaggerated”, host Hilary Barry responded to reports 3 News might be for the chop the following year.

But Weldon persuaded the owners to stump up a significant sum to launch Newshub instead.

When the huge global company Discovery bought MediaWorks loss-making TV channels in December 2020, many in the media were pleased a major media outfit was now in charge.

Using the Official Information Act, Newsroom later reported the Overseas Investment Office fast tracked Discovery’s application and sought no guarantees of a commitment to local news.

The 2021 mega-merger in the US that turned it into “Warner Bros Discovery” excited The Spinoff founder Duncan Grieve.

“Tova O’Brien breaking stories on CNN NZ at 6pm, before an evening of local reality TV souped up by global budgets and distribution — with major sports and drama rights for good measure,” was one scenario.

“It could also swing the other way, with the New Zealand linear asset seen as too small and obscure,” he warned.

After losses including a $35 million one last year, the owners now “propose” to slice out the entire on-screen and online news operation. New Zealand could lose more than 15 percent of its full-time journalists in one go.

Beginning of the end?

“Oh, the irony, right? When those so-called ‘vulture funds’ had it, the operation still continued, albeit always run on the smell of an oily rag. Then a big media organisation was the one which axed it,” long-serving TV3 current affairs journalist Eugene Bingham told Mediawatch.

“I’ve been around long enough to see death by a thousand cuts over the years. But this was a moment we’ll look back on as a watershed moment in democracy and journalism,” Bingham said.

Former MediaWorks executive Andrew Szusterman told RNZ’s Morning Report the next day this decision would also ripple out to local drama and entertainment.

“We’re going to start to see how this is going to impact the production sector. Irrevocably, possibly,” said Szusterman, now the chief executive at production company South Pacific Pictures.

Does Newshub’s demise also kill off Three?

There’s been no shortage of people this week pointing out the appetite for TV news — and linear TV in general — is not what it was. That’s the main reason for the ad revenue slump cited by WBD.

Some who do tune in to Three (and WBD’s other channels) for The Block, Married at First Sight and free movies may not miss the news shows from June 30. So maybe Three will be fine?

“The loss of the newsroom represents the loss of the ability to respond to any event in real time. That is the heart and soul of a traditional TV broadcaster,” Hal Crawford — chief news officer at MediaWorks (and effectively Newshub’s boss) until early 2020 — told Mediawatch.

“When the Queen dies you can send a team to London, you can have someone in the studio talking about it, you can interact in a way that makes people feel like it is alive and a real human entity.”

Channels without the live element news brings are effectively just “content databases”, Crawford told Mediawatch.

“News is the one programme that runs 365 days a year . . . which the schedule is going to rely on to lead into prime time. So the rest of your schedule is going to dwindle. Ratings are gonna fall off and everything is going to go to pieces.

“It really is going to dwindle as a cultural entity in New Zealand because you’re not going to be able to justify the funding from NZ on Air if you aren’t getting audiences. It’s hard for me to see a way out of Three basically going away as a cultural force in New Zealand.”

But TV-style news and current affairs is also now being done online.

After Eugene Bingham’s TV3 show 3D was axed in 2016, four members formed the Stuff Circuit investigative team. Its video documentary productions won awards until it was axed by Stuff late last year.

“Of course, there have been changes in viewing habits . . .  but there’s still a reason that the ‘1’ and the ‘3’ on remotes around the country are worn down. Hundreds of thousands of people at six o’clock flip the channel. Without a TV bulletin there, doesn’t (Three) just become like Bravo, where there’s just programmes running and you either switch on or you don’t?”

In the end, journalists have to confront the fact that not quite enough people these days care about what they do — including executives at media companies, politicians not inclined to intervene and members of the public.

Most New Zealanders are happy to use services like Netflix or Google search or Facebook that carry news and local content but contribute almost nothing to it.

“But I don’t think people quite understand the depth of the problem facing media and the implications. That certainly came through to me watching the broadcasting minister saying, well, people can still watch programmes like Sky for news,” Bingham said.

The National Party went into the last election without a media or broadcasting policy or any specific manifesto commitments.

What should/could the government do?

While Wednesday’s announcement shocked the 300-odd staff, the local chief executive Glen Kyne — close to tears on Newshub at 6 —  told Newshub’s Michael Morrah he had known about the possibility since January.

The government also got a heads-up earlier this week.

Media minister Melissa Lee told reporters WBD made no requests for help, prompting Glen Kyne to tell Newshub WBD did ask both the current and previous government for assistance, such as a reduction in the multi-million dollar fee paid to state-owned transmission company Kordia.

Lee later clarified her comment but was firm that the government had no role to play because this was a case of a private company taking action because “their business model actually wasn’t working.”

On Morning Report, Andrew Szusterman disagreed.

“Channels 7,9 and 10, SBS, ABC, and Fox in Australia all run news services. I don’t think their government would let the last commercial free-to-air news broadcaster just walk away. The fact the broadcasting minister hasn’t fronted . . .  it’s quite shameless,” he told RNZ’s Morning Report.

Stuff’s Tova O’Brien — who famously turned on her former employer MediaWorks on air in real time last year when it closed Today FM — called the minister’s response “cold and tone-deaf” and accused the government of a “glib shrug”.

That was partly because Lee’s first response to the Newshub announcement was to tell reporters: “There’s Sky as well, there’s a whole lot of other media about.”

Sky contracts Newshub to produce its 5.30pm free-to-air news bulletin — and Sky subscribers won’t find any locally-made news on Sky TV’s pay channels.

Lee should have known that. She was a programme-maker before she was an MP and was National’s spokesperson on broadcasting for years in opposition.

Lee declined all interview requests this week — including from Mediawatch — but did tell reporters at Parliament: “I wasn’t as articulate as I could have been. But I am taking this seriously.”

The PM told Stuff he is expecting an update at Cabinet on Monday. The media will be watching that space with pens and cameras poised.

There is legislation currently before a select committee which could compel the big online tech platforms to pay local producers of news for it.

In opposition, Lee opposed it and called it “literally a shakedown” in Parliament. (This weekend Facebook’s owner Meta announced it would not do any more deals with media under Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, prompting a likely confrontation with the government there.)

“The government’s position on this will obviously take into account these latest developments in terms of the wider media landscape. This government is committed to working with the sector on ways to ensure sector sustainability, while still preserving the independence of a fourth estate and avoiding market interference,” Lee said in Parliament on Thursday when questioned.

The government already heavily intervenes in the market by overseeing the state-owned broadcasters and agencies — including TVNZ — and putting over a quarter of a billion dollars every year onto broadcasting, programmes and other content.

The former government also put $80 million over two years into Māori media content, partly in the expectation there might also be a new public media entity to broadcast it.

In 2019, Hal Crawford — boss of Newshub at the time — declared the New Zealand news media is broken.

His chief executive also urged the government to intervene. AM show host Duncan Garner switched the studio lights off as an on-air stunt.

Crawford is now a digital media consultant based in his native Australia. The broadcasting funding agency in NZ On Air hired him in 2021 to review its own spending of public money on the media.

“It’s not a good idea for governments to knee jerk and sponsor particular commercial companies in some sort of bailout,” he said.

“To give money to the people who are in financially the worst position is the most ineffective and unfair use of public money that I can think of. If the market is telling you that something isn’t wanted and needed, you have to listen to that.

“But it doesn’t mean that you have to always listen to the market and do things that have never been done before.”

He cites the Public Interest Journalism Fund which put $55 million into new content and created new jobs for cash-strapped news media companies.

Crawford’s fact-finding report on the planned PIJF in 2021 records media managers feared cuts and possible closures to come.

“Many of our interviewees believed that if an organisation could show that cuts were imminent, they should be able to apply for funded roles under the PIJF. Many saw the dangers in this non-incremental funding, but argued for exceptions in extreme circumstances. Although these arguments are compelling, Funding could evaporate quickly trying to keep the newsrooms of big commercial companies afloat if this became the primary aim of the fund.”

“Around the world and in New Zealand, there’s ample evidence that public funding of journalism is becoming more essential. There has to be a way there, because what we’re seeing with the the planned closure of Newshub is the end result of the factors that we’ve known about for at least a decade,” Crawford told Mediawatch.

“Direct subsidy from the government to a commercial newsroom isn’t going to work. The government has to find a way to sensibly finance news and structure it so that it doesn’t become a political football.”

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

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

Newshub, one of the key media companies in Aotearoa New Zealand, is to close its newsroom on June 30, reports RNZ News.

Staff were told of the closure at an emergency meeting today.

Newshub is owned by US-based global entertainment giant Warner Bros Discovery which also owns Eden, Rush, HGTV and Bravo.

• READ MORE: Other Newshub reports

In 2020, it took over the New Zealand channel’s assets which had been then part of Mediaworks.

Staff were called to a meeting at Newshub at 11am, RNZ News reported on its live news feed.

They were told that the US conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery, owners of Newshub, was commencing consultation on a restructuring of its free-to-air business

This included the closure of all news operations by its Newshub operation

All local programming would be made only through local funding bodies and partners.

James Gibbons, president of Asia Pacific for Warner Bros Discovery, said it was a combination of negative events in NZ and around the world. The economic downturn had been severe and there was no long hope for a bounce back

Revenue has ‘disappeared quickly’
“Advertising revenue in New Zealand has disappeared far more quickly than our ability to manage this reduction, and to drive the business to profitability,” he said.

He said the restructuring would focus on it being a digital business

ThreeNow, its digital platform, would be the focus and could run local shows

All news production would stop on June 30.

The consultation process runs until mid-March. A final decision is expected early April.

“Deeply shocked’
Interviewed on RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme, a former head of Newshub, Mark Jennings, said he was deeply shocked by the move.

Other media personalities also reacted with stunned disbelief. Rival TVNZ’s Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver said: “Thinking of my friends and colleagues from Newshub.

“So many super talented wonderful people. Its a terrible day for our industry that Newshub [will] close by June, we will be all the much poorer for it. Much aroha to you all.”

Newshub has broken some important Pacific stories over the years.

Jennings told RNZ a cut back and trimming of shows would have been expected — but not on this scale.

“I’m really deeply frankly shocked by it,” said Jennings, now co-founder and editor of Newsroom independent digital media group.

He said he expected all shows to go, including AM Show and investigative journalist Patrick Gower’s show.

Company ‘had no strategy’
“I think governments will be pretty upset and annoyed about this, to be honest.”

“Unless they have been kept in the loop because we’re going to see a major drop in diversity.

“Newshub’s newsroom has been, maybe not so much in recent times, but certainly in the past, a very strong and vibrant player in the market and very important one for this country and again as [RNZ Mediawatch presenter] Colin [Peacock] points out, who is going to keep TVNZ’s news honest now?

“I think this is a major blow to media diversity in this country.”

“First of all, Discovery and then Warner Bros Discovery, this has been an absolute shocker of entry to this market by them. They came in with what I could was . . . no, I couldn’t see a strategy in it and in the time they owned this company, there has been no strategy and that’s really disappointing.

“If this had gone to a better owner, they would have taken steps way sooner and maybe we wouldn’t be losing one of the country’s most valued news services.”

Loss of $100m over three years
Jennings said his understanding was the company had lost $100 million in the past three years, which was “really significant”.

“I wonder if it had been a New Zealand owner, whether the government might have taken a different view around this, but I guess because it’s owned by a huge American, multi-national conglomerate, they would’ve been reluctant to intervene in any way.”

He said Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee, a former journalist who ran the Asia Down Under programme for many years, faced serious questions now.

“It’ll be her first big test really, I guess, in that portfolio.”

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

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

Fueled by Hamas' atrocities and Israel's bloodlust, the collective punishment of 2.3 million Gazans for crimes committed by perhaps 20,000 terrorists constitutes a mere, brutal "intensification of what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for decades," writes Norman Solomon. Similarly, the embrace of the mantra this is "Israel's 9/11" exposes "willful blindness to history." "Wrapping itself in the shroud of victimhood," he notes, "the U.S. exploited the trauma and tragedy of those events as a license to kill vast numbers of people - nearly all of whom had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks - in the name of retaliation, righteousness (and) the 'war on terror,' a playbook (Netanyahu's) government is implementing with a vengeance." Shamefully echoing our own history, Israel's "willingness to treat human beings as suitable for extermination" in the name of self-defense is largely ignored by U.S. media: See the New York Times story, relegated to Page 9, about airstrikes flattening four mosques and killing worshipers - and presumably boys playing soccer outside - and razing a busy marketplace to rubble strewn with the bodies of entire families.

In the wake of the horrific violence, the Jewish left both here and in Israel is grappling with walking a near-untenably intricate line to honor both the living and the dead. In this country, Jewish Voice For Peace has called for "channeling our grief and rage into action" to stop genocide in Gaza, dismantle the systems of oppression and apartheid "that brought us to this moment," and build "a world beyond Zionism." On Wednesday, 500 protesters, including two dozen rabbis, were arrested in DC demanding lawmakers back a ceasefire in Gaza; earlier, over 5,000 also gathered in the name of "our shared humanity." In Israel, where many peace activists "dreaming of a different future" were among the dead and missing, Jews argued the roots of Hamas' assault lay in "failures of political vision." "We have been telling ourselves fairy tales," said the head of Breaking the Silence of the fiction they could be safe while "we are controlling millions of people by force...without rights." "I have no need of revenge," said the director of a human rights group who hid for hours in a safe room on her kibbutz. "Nothing will return those who are gone. All the military might on Earth will not provide security."

Despite his grief and sense of loss, Noy Katsman echoes her, rejecting the notion Israel's violence in Gaza comprises righteous vengeance for his brother Hayim. "They always tell us if we kill enough Palestinians, it’s going to be better for us,” Noy told CNN. "But of course it never brings peace - it just brings more terror, and more people killed like my brother." Hayim, 32, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, lived for a decade at Kibbutz Holit. Born in Israel to American parents, he earned a master’s degree in Israel and a PhD in International Studies at the University of Washington, where he wrote his thesis on Israel's religious right and lived part-time with his grandfather; one professor recalled "this wonderful human being (who) had no malice toward either side...toward anyone, really." A longtime peace activist and former IDF soldier who testified for Breaking the Silence, he was what his uncle called a modest, generous, respectful, intellectually honest "Renaissance man"; at the kibbutz, he was a mechanic, a gardener who often spent time with Palestinian farmers, a musician who played drums, and a DJ - with playlists in both Hebrew and Arabic.

Above all, Noy says his brother believed an endless cycle of violence was "not the way to bring peace." "I have no doubt that even in the face of the people who murdered him, he would still speak out against the killing of innocent people," Noy told hundreds of mourners at Hayim's funeral. "My call to my government: Stop killing people." It's not a message getting much air-time in Israel; since Hayim's death, Noy has given over 20 interviews, but has had no requests from Israeli media. Even during his eulogy, he heard murmurs of anger. Afterwards, though, Hayim's friends came up to thank him: "One told me, 'It's exactly what your brother would have wanted you to say.'" He's also found comfort in online responses to things he's posted. "I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am for what happened to your brother," wrote one Gazan, "and I want to thank you a lot for not wanting us dead like everyone else." Citing the history of her own Polish and German parents, his mother Hannah Wacholder Katsman said she found it "chilling" that her son "died hiding in a closet." Still, she said, she knew he "wouldn’t want this conflict to be used to kill innocent people."

The Mishnah, the first written collection of Jewish oral traditions, teaches that one who saves a single human life is akin to one who saves an entire world. Hayim Katsman, it turns out, saved three. When he heard Hamas forces storm the kibbutz, he went to hide in a safe room closet along with a neighbor, Avital Alajem. As Hamas entered the room and opened fire, Alajem says, Hayim shielded her with his body, taking all the bullets: "He was murdered. I was saved." Hamas opened the door, pulled her out, handed her another neighbor's two children, 4 months and 4 years old, and began marching them to the Gaza border. At some point amidst the chaos, her captors abandoned them; clutching both children, she managed to make her way back to the kibbutz. "Hayim in Hebrew means ‘life,'" Alajem said. "And he gave life to this planet. He saved me, and I was able to save two kids." Years before, Hayim had done fieldwork in Israel for his PhD research on religious nationalism; his dissertation was dedicated to, "All life forms that exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.” May their memories, all of them, be for a blessing.

Jewish peace activists arrested in D.C. protestPhoto by Jewish Voice For Peace

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

After 10 years of being detained in India and unsuccessfully seeking asylum there, they face the growing prospect of being deported to China, said their lawyer, Muhammed Shafi Lassu. 

“This (Indian) government feels threatened by China, which is why they are hesitant to release these individuals and grant them political asylum, which they are actively avoiding,” Lassu told Radio Free Asia in an interview last week. “In a way, they prefer to keep them detained.”

Since their arrest in 2013 in the northern India-administered region of Jammu & Kashmir, the brothers – Adil, Abduhaliq and Abdusalam Tursun – have been moved around to various detention centers in Kashmir. They are now being held in a prison in Jammu city, Lassu said.

Lassu said that if any country were to offer the three Tursun brothers political asylum, he would petition the Supreme Court of India to seek their release. 

In February, Canada offered to resettle 10,000 Uyghur refugees, giving them new hope.

To help people apply for asylum, a humanitarian group called the Canadian Uyghur Rights Advocate Project has set up an online application that Lassu said he plans to use on the brothers' behalf. 

Hopefully that will bring better results than his previous attempts to write the Canadian government to request asylum, which have not elicited any response, he said.

Lassu said he also wrote to several Arab countries on behalf of the brothers, but said officials there “showed no concern for the violation of human rights.” 

The United States and the United Nations have urged against the repatriation of Uyghur refugees to China, where there is a growing body of evidence documenting the detention of up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in “re-education” camps, torture, sexual abuse and forced labor. 

Crossing mountains

Facing persecution from the Chinese government in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the three Tursun brothers in 2013 – aged 16, 18 and 20 at the time – trekked through the rugged Karakoram Mountain Range and crossed into India in the Ladakh region of Kashmir. 

They were apprehended by the Indo-Tibetan Armed Police Force, a division of the local Indian Border Guard Forces, and detained for about two months.

The brothers admitted to crossing the border and were transferred to a police station in Leh in Jammu, Kashmir, Lassu said. In July 2014, they were charged with illegal entry and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

But Indian authorities later re-indicted the brothers under a special security law in Kashmir and have extended their detention every six months for the last 10 years, Lassu said. 

“This law is exceptionally stringent, allowing the government to detain individuals without trial,” he said.

The brothers have managed to maintain their religious worship and have learned Urdu, Hindi and English during their time in captivity, Lassu said.

“They pray five times a day in prison and read the Quran,” he said. “They fast during Ramadan. They have always maintained their religious dedication.” 

Risk of deportation

They are in danger of being sent back to China, according to Akash Hassan, an independent Kashmiri journalist who has written several articles about their case.

Hassan said the Indian government has instructed “relevant authorities to initiate the repatriation process. Therefore, there is a possibility that these individuals will be sent back to China at any moment.”

Lassu said he has also reached out to the UN refugee agency, or UNHCR, for help with the asylum request.

“They emphasized that if the government officially recognizes these individuals as refugees, the UNHCR will provide them with all kinds of support and assistance,” he told RFA.

But UNHCR doesn’t have those same requirements for other refugees in India, including Rohingya refugees who began fleeing Myanmar in 2012. 

RFA sent a list of questions to Rama Dwivedi of UNHCR’s office in India about the brothers’ case on June 13 but has not received a response.

Even if Lassu or another lawyer is able to bring the brothers’ case to the Supreme Court of India, it is very unlikely that the court will rule in their favor, said Hassan, the journalist.

Double standard?

India has a double standard when it comes to treatment of Uyghur and Tibetan refugees, he said.

“On one hand, India welcomes thousands of Tibetan refugees who have fled from the Chinese-controlled Tibet region, and a significant number of Tibetan refugees reside in India,” he said. 

“However, the treatment of Uyghurs differs. I believe this discriminatory and disparate treatment is associated with the Muslim identity of the Uyghurs,” he said. “It appears that India, under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, is increasingly embracing right-wing Hindu nationalism.”

The Indian government should cease returning Uyghur individuals to China and refrain from treating them as criminals, Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said to RFA in a June 13 interview.

Even though India hasn’t signed the U.N. Refugee Convention, it still has an obligation to abide by international law in cases concerning Uyghurs, she said.

Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jilil Kashgary for RFA Uyghur.

The searing images, by "the poster child for America's torture program," stun. "Like clockwork," Abu Zubaydah was ceaselessly beaten, rectal-fed, hung by the hands, slammed into walls, jammed into a "dog box" and waterboarded 83 times during grisly, post-9/11 sessions of Darth Cheney's ultimately senseless "enhanced interrogation techniques." In newly released drawings, Zubaydah documents his abuse during 21 years at Guantánamo. Still there, he's become "the forever prisoner" - not for what he did (he's never been charged) but for what was done to him.

Now 52, the Saudi-born Zubaydah moved to the West Bank in occupied Palestine as a teenager, and was captured in Pakistan by CIA, FBI, and Pakistani agents in 2002. Shot multiple times, he was successively renditioned to CIA "black sites" in Pakistan, Poland, Thailand, Afghanistan, Lithuania and Northern Africa before being sent to Guantánamo in September 2006. There, he was used as "a human guinea pig," the first victim of George Bush's "21st-century medieval torture program" against terror suspects. The US initially claimed he was a top al-Qaeda operative, but was later forced to concede he wasn't even a member of the group. "Everybody agrees, they tortured the wrong guy," says his lawyer. "They went ahead anyway so they could get permission to torture other people." After years of savagery, roughly 120 victims and at least 26 detainee deaths at the hands of torturers at Asadadad, Bagram, Gardez, Abu Ghraib, Basra, Mosul, Tikrit, Bucca, CIA officials admitted they'd gained no new intelligence from the carnage. Zubaydah and his painfully detailed, precisely damning drawings, says attorney Mark Denbeaux, "are the ultimate repudiation of the failure and abuses of torture."

They are also one of the few surviving records of a sordid chapter of history the CIA and FBI have long labored to keep hidden. Though the CIA made videotapes of Zubaydah's torture, they later destroyed them in violation of a court order; meanwhile, a 6,700-page report by a 2014 Senate intelligence committee remains secret. In the absence of any full accounting of a human rights disaster that violated both international laws and our government's own minimal guidelines, Zubaydah's drawings represent a singularly chilling look at this "long-festering...collective national wound." They saw new light this week when The Guardian published American Torturers: FBI and CIA Abuses at Dark Sites and Guantánamo, a report based on 40 sketches and Zubaydah's notes on them, compiled by Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall University, a UC San Francisco psychiatry professor, and Seton Hall law students. "Silence and darkness" have kept Zubaydah imprisoned, argues Denbeaux; if the report's release, coupled with a new UN avowal that Zubaydah's ongoing detention is a crime against humanity, then his "iconic self-portraits (of torture) will have done their job."

Many of the portraits of his degradation between 2002 and 2006 are so meticulously rendered that Zubaydah often blacked out the faces of his torturers to protect their identities, and presumably himself. He depicts grotesque violence, sexual and religious humiliation, psychological terror, all accompanied by plain-spoken descriptions. "This drawing shows threatening the detainee with rape," he writes of forced "rectal feedings" by guards wielding thick batons. They "drop the prisoner on the ground, and hold him in a way to sodomize him"; they use "dirty, sexual words," they "start the disgrace," they "use their hands or some sticks around the anus." He draws himself chained naked before a female interrogator: He is "sitting on the chair for weeks...Naked. Very hungry. Shivering from cold...He cannot cover his genitalia...They pour buckets of water over him." He describes prolonged use of multiple torture techniques he calls "the Vortex" of pain, stress, hunger and cold: Hitting with a stick in cold temperatures till the prisoner passes out, waking him up, starting on another method for an hour, pass out, wake up, more for the next hour, "until they finish all their methods."

There is no respite, no break. He is regularly "walled," thrown head-first against a concrete wall; beaten on his face and back; confined in a tiny "dog box" for days; shackled for weeks; deprived of sleep; exposed to constant light and noise; threatened with desecration of the Qur’an; hung by the hands; forced into stress positions; denied use of a toilet to wallow in his own shit and piss. He is waterboarded 83 times; variations include being confined in a coffin-size crate that inexorably fills with water as he tries to keep his nose above it, leaving him terrified of drowning long afterward. The guards open the locked door of his cell when they bring a power drill into the next cell "so I could hear the shouting, begging and crying in horror of the brother receiving the torture threat. Did they drill the brother's head? Did they drill his stomach or foot or rear end?...All these questions kept going through my mind for days until another day when they come back (with) the drill. The same sounds of horror come back...Is he the same brother? Didn't he die? Or is this another brother? Who is the second one? And who will be the third one? Will it be me?" It will not be us; it was just being done in our name. Don't look away.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

In the past couple of months, Americans have suffered disastrous consequences from deregulation initiated during the Trump administration: in transit, the East Palestine derailment threatening the lives and livelihoods of thousands; in banking, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that are still roiling financial markets.

The good news is that despite the overall deregulatory bent of the last administration, the Biden administration has been strengthening antitrust enforcement, plus there have been bipartisan efforts, led in the House by David Cicilline (D-RI) and Ken Buck (R-CO), to strengthen antitrust protections and curb the growing power of Big Tech.

Those bipartisan efforts were stymied thanks to intense lobbying from libertarian-leaning tech companies, think tanks, and advocates, with Big Money funding from the donor network of libertarian oil billionaire Charles Koch, whose influence over antitrust legislation goes back decades. As the new GOP-helmed Congress contemplates reforms, it’s already clear that party leaders like Jim Jordan (R-OH) and libertarian Thomas Massie (R-KY) — who are recipients of Koch cash themselves — are planning to do Big Tech’s bidding and delay or kill regulation and let the companies continue accumulating market power.

From privacy concerns around consumer data to predatory pricing locking out small businesses to the flood of disinformation on social media, Americans have become aware of how much market concentration the big four technology companies have achieved. Americans of all political parties agree that Big Tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google have too much power and need to be reined in. President Biden has made promoting competition and ending monopolies a cornerstone of his economic agenda, but he can only do so much facing Republican obstructionism in the House. While congressional action has stalled, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are working to fully enforce existing antitrust laws.

The tech companies, think tanks, advocates, and Koch network continue to fight these efforts. A far-right founder of the notoriously obstructionist House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan is now chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee which oversees antitrust policy. In January, he named Thomas Massie as chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, ignoring precedent and bypassing the more senior Ken Buck, whom many had presumed would lead it. Jordan’s move was not unexpected though, as he opposed Buck’s antitrust regulatory approach in favor of a more libertarian one.

Jim Jordan’s ties to the Koch brothers date back to at least 2008, when he became the first member of Congress to sign onto the No Climate Tax pledge, an initiative of the Koch advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. Koch Industries PAC has donated $60k to Jordan since 2011 – the maximum allowed for each of the last six elections – and he has been a featured speaker for at least one of the secretive Koch donor retreats.

Thomas Massie has been a recipient of Koch cash since he assumed office in 2012. Like Charles Koch, Massie earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and also like Koch, Massie is an avowed champion of deregulation, having sponsored bills to abolish both the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A recent, fawning profile by the New York Times claims that “Mr. Massie’s politics are very much at odds with the interests of the Republican Party’s traditional donor class and leadership” and notes his “resistance to the influence wielded by corporations and interest groups over our policymaking” – without noting the funding from Koch (a long-time member of the traditional GOP donor class) or the high scores Massie has received for his legislative votes from Americans for Prosperity.

While Charles Koch is most commonly known for his oil interests, he also has a large stake in Silicon Valley – his son Chase runs the venture capital arm, Koch Disruptive Technologies, launched in 2017, the same year his political groups began partnering with Big Tech on public policy fights in DC.

Though Massie is hailed as an anti-establishment contrarian by The New York Times author, his voting record advances the agenda of a libertarian oil and tech billionaire whose primary concerns are juicing corporate profits and deregulating industries his companies already dominate.

But it’s easy to see why Massie would want to cultivate an anti-establishment, anti-corporate image: it’s popular with the electorate. GOP voters overwhelmingly support antitrust regulation. In a 2022 poll, 73% of Republican voters said that Big Tech companies are not regulated enough, and 85% of them agree that Big Tech companies have become too powerful, are destroying competition, and are abusing consumers through monopoly behavior.

These popular antitrust policy ideas supported by Republican voters are met with lip service from Republican leaders. Look instead at their actions. Jim Jordan’s public rebuke of Ken Buck’s antitrust work in the last Congress, and naming instead Thomas Massie to lead antitrust policy negotiations, are clear signals that Jordan intends to stall congressional reforms in the tech industry as long as the Republicans hold their House majority.

When the next big disaster unfolds due to deregulation, don’t be fooled. Republicans are deflecting blame by attacking the Biden administration as insufficiently populist, but the seeds of the East Palestine train derailment and Silicon Valley Bank bailout were sown under the Trump deregulatory regime and more broadly by the anti-government ethos of the GOP and its Big Money donors.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Mike Lux.

A recent legal decision in a case involving Johnson & Johnson (J&J) may ultimately impact the massive profits Koch Industries and its Georgia-Pacific subsidiary have been raking in while sidestepping asbestos liability claims. At the end of January, a federal appeals court ruled that J&J could not shield itself from pending lawsuits arising from exposure to its now off-the-market baby powder by transferring them to a new subsidiary and then declaring that company bankrupt.

Koch Industries was the first conglomerate to use the bankruptcy maneuver—known as “the Texas two-step”—in 2017. It involves a “divisive merger,” allowed under Texas law, in which a company splits in two in order to transfer all of its liability claims to a subsidiary that then declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy while the parent company retains all corporate assets and profits.

In the J&J case, a three-judge federal appeals court panel in Philadelphia sided with the plaintiffs—cancer victims who argued that J&J had established a subsidiary called LTL Management with the specific intent of limiting liability payments that would be made due to the parent company’s harmful product. “The ruling means J&J will most likely need to defend itself against claims that tainted talc in its baby powder causes cancer,” according to Bloomberg Law.

A similar lawsuit has been pending in a North Carolina bankruptcy court due to Georgia-Pacific’s Texas two-step transfer of thousands of asbestos claims to its subsidiary, Bestwall, Inc., six years ago.

On Feb. 17, in the wake of the J&J decision, a Georgia-Pacific mesothelioma victim filed a motion with the North Carolina court to dismiss the company’s bankruptcy claim, noting that since Georgia-Pacific paid $2.5 billion in dividends to its parent company Koch Industries last year, the company is clearly not in financial distress. Even in bankruptcy, Bestwall itself has continued to generate more than $5 billion in profits for its parent companies, Georgia-Pacific and Koch Industries.

“The courts are going to look at the full circumstances” behind Georgia-Pacific’s move to shift its claims to a subsidiary and then declare that subsidiary bankrupt, explains John Seligman, a personal injury lawyer in Coral Gables, Florida who has dealt with defendant companies that threaten bankruptcy. “The courts will determine if this is an arms-length transaction, or [whether] the subsidiary [was] created just for the purpose of reducing the total liability.”

“Plaintiffs’ lawyers have called the two-step a fraud in court actions seeking dismissals or other remedies,” according to a 2022 Reuters investigation. “They argue the subsidiaries are essentially corporate shells, with no purpose beyond aiding their parent companies in abusing the bankruptcy system to escape accountability for wrongdoing.”

Mounting Costs of Mounting Claims

When Koch Industries bought Georgia-Pacific in 2005, the company already faced almost $1 billion in liability claims arising from a hazardous product it hadn’t manufactured in three decades.

The claims—more than 64,000 of them by 2017—are from individuals who developed mesothelioma, an aggressive type of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos in the plaster, joint compound, and other products Georgia-Pacific manufactured for years—until the 1970s. Even though the dangers of asbestos had been known for well over a century, the industry initially worked very hard to hide all evidence of harm to those exposed to it. And given the long latency period, with symptoms generally not surfacing until 10–50 years after exposure, the claims didn’t start mounting until the early 2000s.

Now, roughly 3,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with mesothelioma every year, and two-thirds of them die within 6–12 months. Victims include public servants, veterans, firefighters, and teachers who were exposed to asbestos in public schools.

As the claims began to mount, Georgia-Pacific paid selected scientists $6 million to conduct studies to disprove that asbestos causes mesothelioma. According to the Center for Public Integrity, it was a flawed attempt to “rewrite history,” as Linda Reinstein, co-founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, put it. “Georgia-Pacific funded junk science in an attempt to contest the known facts about asbestos and negate its culpability in this manmade disaster.”

Despite the attempt to use these suspect studies in defending itself against litigation, by 2017 Georgia-Pacific was paying approximately $160 million a year in asbestos-related settlements and legal fees. So it did the Texas two-step, creating Bestwall as a subsidiary that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy less than 100 days later. Once a company with outstanding claims goes into bankruptcy, it sets up a trust fund to cover existing claims but is then protected from new lawsuits once it emerges from bankruptcy.

Misuse of Bankruptcy Protections

In the J&J ruling, the appeals court judges point out that the purpose of bankruptcy protections is to assist a “putative debtor in financial distress.” Since LTL clearly isn’t hurting financially, they opted to “dismiss its petition (for bankruptcy).”

Although the decision is not binding in the Georgia-Pacific case, the message—that bankruptcy was never meant as a panacea for profitable companies to shirk liability claims—may influence the judges overseeing the Bestwall bankruptcy. As a private company, Koch Industries does not reveal its profits, but its 2022 revenue was $125 billion.

“The Texas two-step mires victims in protracted proceedings, robbing them of precious time,” noted Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) during a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing last year. “Asbestos victims can die of mesothelioma and other types of cancers before their claims are heard. That is a blot on our legal system.”

Koch continues to challenge asbestos claims in other ways. Koch Industries is a major funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and serves on the corporate pay-to-play group’s private enterprise advisory council. One of ALEC’s model bills, the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act, forces victims to take legal action against bankrupt companies that produced asbestos decades ago as opposed to companies still in business.

For those with serious claims, the problem is that many companies involved in making asbestos or asbestos-related products have sought bankruptcy protection and are now in trusts. These trusts are more difficult to sue, their assets are harder to determine, and, as Whitehouse points out, the victims often die before their cases are heard. The bill also limits the amount of time victims have to file a case after diagnosis, even though it takes more time to prepare a suit against a bankrupt company.

In 2018, Missouri state representative and ALEC member Bruce DeGroot (R) introduced the model asbestos bill in the Missouri House, where it passed on a party-line vote but was then not taken up by the Senate. A similar bill was introduced in Nebraska’s single-chamber legislature in January of this year.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Don Wiener.

Minnesota on Thursday scored a significant procedural win in a lawsuit seeking to hold Big Oil accountable for lying to consumers about the dangers of burning fossil fuels and thus worsening the deadly climate crisis.

In a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with a lower court that the state's climate fraud lawsuit against the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, and Koch Industries can proceed in state court, where it was filed.

"This ruling is a major victory for Minnesota's efforts to hold oil giants accountable for their climate lies, and a major defeat for fossil fuel companies' attempt to escape justice," Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement.

"Big Oil companies have fought relentlessly to avoid facing the evidence of their climate fraud in state court, but once again judges have unanimously rejected their arguments," said Wiles. "After years of Big Oil's delay tactics, it's time for the people of Minnesota to have their day in court."

Fossil fuel corporations have known for decades that burning coal, oil, and gas generates planet-heating pollution that damages the environment and public health. But to prolong extraction and maximize profits, the industry launched a disinformation campaign to downplay the life-threatening consequences of fossil fuel combustion.

"Big Oil companies have fought relentlessly to avoid facing the evidence of their climate fraud in state court, but once again judges have unanimously rejected their arguments."

Dozens of state and local governments have filed lawsuits arguing that Big Oil's longstanding effort to sow doubt about the reality of anthropogenic climate change—and to minimize the fossil fuel industry's leading role in causing it—has delayed decarbonization of the economy, resulting in widespread harm.

Since 2017, the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and the District of Columbia, along with 35 municipalities in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Washington, and Puerto Rico, have sued fossil fuel giants in an attempt to hold them financially liable for misleading the public about the destructive effects of greenhouse gas emissions from their products.

"Minnesota is not the first state or local government to file this type of climate change litigation," the Eighth Circuit declared Thursday. "Nor is this the first time" that fossil fuel producers have sought to shift jurisdiction over such suits from state courts to federal court, where they believe they will be more likely to avoid punishment.

"But our sister circuits rejected them in each case," the federal appeals court continued. "Today, we join them."

According to the Center for Climate Integrity, "Six federal appeals courts and 13 federal district courts have now unanimously ruled against the fossil fuel industry's arguments to avoid climate accountability trials in state courts."

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice moved for the first time to support communities suing Big Oil by urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject Exxon and Suncor Energy's request to review lower court rulings allowing a lawsuit from three Colorado communities to go forward in state court.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

In my very young days, I lived in a fourth-floor apartment in a five-story, pre-war, walk-up building. On the second floor, you’d find an older Italian couple: Mr. and Mrs. Larucci. (I say “older” because that’s how they appeared to me at the time. I’m probably older now than they were then.)

Anyway, the two Laruccis were the first cat people I had ever encountered. They religiously fed the local strays — rain or shine, in sickness and in health — in an alcove behind the building. Their diligence, effectiveness, and focus clearly inspired my mother and sister to become cat ladies/animal lovers for life. To a slightly lesser degree, both me and my Dad were influenced by witnessing all this animal-based altruism.

It was while dwelling in that building that I first showed signs of Early Onset Activist Syndrome. To follow are but two of many symptoms.

Even as a very young child, I understood:

1. The war in Vietnam was becoming increasingly unpopular

2. Being on TV is a really big deal to most people

So, it was while hanging out on the stoop with my grade school friends — not far from the 59th Street Bridge, connecting Queens to the east side of Manhattan — that I hatched a cynical scheme to allegedly capitalize on the above two facts.

About six of us staged our very own anti-war protest amidst the high volume of motor vehicles streaming down Crescent Street on their way to the city (Queens may be one of New York’s five boroughs but for us, only Manhattan is and will ever be “the city”).

Mimicking the images we saw nightly on our black-and-white TV sets, we made rudimentary signs and posters. One of my fellow subversives wasn’t a regular on the block. He was a little older than me, perhaps a classmate of my big sister. I can’t remember his full name but I do recall that his last name was Castro and that he later became notorious for ending up in the hospital after attempting to ride a motorized mini-bike down a flight of concrete steps.

By the time I was in my teens, I heard a rumor that Castro had died during the commission of a crime. Considering how many of my childhood friends ended up in jail or dying young, this was a rumor to be taken at face value.

Anyway, I can still see Castro’s chastened expression when I scolded him for a misspelling on his sign: “SPOT THE WAR!” it read. I insisted that he correct it.

With or without proofreading, we enthusiastically held up our protest posters to passing cars and trucks and yelled “stop the war” until our pre-pubescent voices grew hoarse. “Someone will call the news,” I promised, “and we’ll all be on TV tonight.”

Our children’s crusade lasted maybe 20 minutes. When it neither ended the war nor landed us on TV, we got bored. One by one, we heard our mothers’ voices calling us to dinner from different windows of the tenement buildings looming above us. Hunger trumped revolution, and the experiment was over. I don’t believe any of us ever mentioned it again.

Today, that same anti-war demo or rally or protest or march or whatever would’ve had its own social media event page. It would’ve been live-streamed. And it would’ve been deemed a “success” if it garnered even just one of us a kick-ass Facebook profile pic for which we could use the caption: #warrior.

Speaking of “anti-war,” a few years after I organized that futile demonstration, I first saw Duck Soup on TV. Instantly, I was hooked on the Marx Brothers… but I had a problem. You see, this was long before YouTube and free streaming services. It was also before VHS players and video stores.

To see more of the Marx Brothers, I had to hope that one of the local NYC channels (5, 9, 11) would randomly show one of their 13 films (12 actually, because Animal Crackers was in the midst of a legal battle at that time).

After catching a couple more of the Marxster’s movies, I grew tired of waiting for the rest so I hatched a plan. With help from my Mom, I found the names and addresses of the directors of programming of the local channels (easier said than done in the pre-Google days of yore).

I hand-wrote three passionate petitions — requesting/demanding more Marx Brothers movies be shown on their stations — and brought the documents to my Catholic grammar school.

I was popular enough and cool enough to convince, cajole, or coerce all my classmates to sign. Feeling mighty proud of myself, I mailed off all three petitions and sat back to wait for a steady supply of Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Groucho.

The weeks and months passed with a) no change in local programming and b) no reply from any of the stations. All the necessary lessons about “activism” were right there in front of me, but I wasn’t yet ready to learn. Not even close.

Nope, that part would only happen after decades had passed, and — through personal experience — I could finally recognize activism for what it is. And what it could potentially be.

This brings me back to Mr. and Mrs. Larucci. While I was trying to “spot” the war and spread “Marxism” on TV, my cat-loving neighbors just kept feeding and caring for the local strays. Regardless of weather or personal issues, they fulfilled their chosen mission.

Cat ladies get results.

A cat lady understands urgency when she encounters it. She also accepts her limitations and works around them. From there, she basically behaves like a triage nurse. As a result, she gets results. Day after day, felines within her reach are fed and have safe havens in which to hide. If they fall ill or are injured, they will be promptly cared for with dignity.

When others in the general area see a hungry, sick, injured, or threatened cat, they know who to contact: the local cat lady. No delusions of grandeur about shifting global conditions or ‘changing the conversation.’ No social media fame. Just results.

Finally, lessons learned.

So, to all the #woke activists still out there virtue signaling their way onto my news feed, I have this message from a song by Groucho:

“I don’t know what you have to say. 

It makes no difference anyway. 

Whatever it is, I’m against it!”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

We speak with filmmaker Shaunak Sen about his Oscar-nominated documentary, “All That Breathes,” which follows two self-taught brothers who rescue black kite birds suffering from air pollution in New Delhi. The brothers, Nadeem and Saud, have saved about 25,000 black kites from the dirty air in India’s capital over the last 15 years. “When you live in the city of Delhi, you’re almost always preoccupied with the air,” says Sen, who explains why he centered the film on the brothers and purposely stayed away from obvious environmental and political messages. “The idea is to open the conversation and not close it,” he says. “All That Breathes” became the only film ever to win the best documentary prize at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals last year.

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Olya Romashova.