BEARING WITNESS: By Cole Martin

As a Kiwi journalist living in the occupied West Bank, I can list endless reasons why there is no peace in the “Holy Land”.

I live in a refugee camp, alongside families who were expelled from their homes by Israel’s violent establishment in 1948 — never allowed to return and repeatedly targeted by Israeli military incursions.

Daily I witness suffocating checkpoints, settler attacks against rural towns, arbitrary imprisonment with no charge or trial, a crippled economy, expansion of illegal settlements, demolition of entire communities, genocidal rhetoric, and continued expulsion.

• READ MORE:  Israel bombs Gaza, Syria as alarm grows over rise in starving children
• Other West Bank reports

No form of peace can exist within an active system of domination. To talk about peace without liberation and dignity is to suggest submission to a system of displacement, imprisonment, violence and erasure.

I often find myself alongside a variety of peacemakers, putting themselves on the line to end these horrific systems — let me outline the key groups:

Palestinian civil society and individuals have spent decades committed to creative non-violence in the face of these atrocities — from court battles to academia, education, art, co-ordinating demonstrations, general strikes, hīkoi (marches), sit-ins, civil disobedience. Google “Iqrit village”, “The Great March of Return”, “Tent of Nations farm”. These are the overlooked stories that don’t make catchy headlines.

Protective Presence activists are a mix of about 150 Israeli and international civilians who volunteer their days and nights physically accompanying Palestinian communities. They aim to prevent Israeli settler violence, state-sanctioned home demolitions, and military/police incursions. They document the injustice and often face violence and arrest themselves. Foreigners face deportation and blacklisting — as a journalist I was arrested and barred from the West Bank short-term and my passport was withheld for more than a month.

Reconciliation organisations have been working for decades to bridge the disconnect between political narratives and human realities. The effective groups don’t seek “co-existence” but “co-resistance” because they recognise there can be no peace within an active system of apartheid. They reiterate that dialogue alone achieves nothing while the Israeli regime continues to murder, displace and steal. Yes there are “opposing narratives”, but they do not have equal legitimacy when tested against the reality on the ground.

Journalists continue to document and report key developments, chilling statistics and the human cost. They ensure people are seen. Over 200 journalists have been killed in Gaza. High-profile Palestinian Christian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh was killed by Israeli forces in 2022. They continue reporting despite the risk, and without their courage world leaders wouldn’t know which undeniable facts to brazenly ignore.

Humanitarians serve and protect the most vulnerable, treating and rescuing people selflessly. More than 400 aid workers and 1000 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza. All 38 hospitals have been destroyed or damaged, with just a small number left partially functioning. NGOs have been crippled by USAID cuts and targeted Israeli policies, marked by a mass exodus of expats who have spent years committed to this region — severing a critical lifeline for Palestinian communities.

All these groups emphasise change will not come from within. Protective Presence barely stems the flow.

Reconciliation means nothing while the system continues to displace, imprison and slaughter Palestinians en masse. Journalism, non-violence and humanitarian efforts are only as effective as the willingness of states to uphold international law.

Those on the frontlines of peacebuilding express the urgent need for global accountability across all sectors; economic, cultural and political sanctions. Systems of apartheid do not stem from corrupt leadership or several extremists, but from widespread attitudes of supremacy and nationalism across civil society.

Boycotts increase the economic cost of maintaining such systems. Divestment sends a strong financial message that business as usual is unacceptable.

Many other groups across the world are picketing weapons manufacturers, writing to elected leaders, educating friends and family, challenging harmful narratives, fundraising aid to keep people alive.

Where are the peacemakers? They’re out on the streets. They’re people just like you and me.

Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the occupied West Bank and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with permission.

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

VIETNAM? “We fought them there so that we didn’t have to fight them on Wiltshire Boulevard!”

CAMBODIA: “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Saigon!”

LAOS? “So we that we didn’t have to fight them in Danang!”

GRANADA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Saint Thomas!”

NICARAGUA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in El Paso!”

EL SALVADOR? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Nogales!”

GAUTEMALA? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Yuma!”

HONDURAS? “So that St. Louis wouldn’t be ranked as the Murder Capital of North America!”

All of CENTRAL AMERICA? “So that the indigenes are kept in peonage – providing law-abiding, tax-paying, God-fearing Americans with an abundance of nutritious bananas at a price they can afford!”

COLOMBIA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Peru or Ecuador!”

LEBANON? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Dearborn!”

IRAQ in 1990? “So that we wouldn’t have to walk to work or to school!”

KOSOVO? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Albania!”

AFGHANISTAN? “So that we didn’t have to fight them in Washington, New York or MacLean!”

WHY for 20 YEARS? “So that our generals could fight for honors over in Bagram rather than in the Pentagon!”

IRAQ – the second time? “So that George W. Bush would stop fighting with his father!”

LIBYA? “So that Barack Obama wouldn’t have to fight with Hillary!”

SYRIA? “So that Barack Obama wouldn’t have to fight with Bibi Netanyahu!”

SOMALIA? “So that we didn’t risk running out of places to train our soldiers and hone their counter-insurgency techniques in order to protect us from them!”

YEMEN? “So that Crown Prince Mohammed bin-SALMAN would remain our loyal partner and keep inviting our Presidents to bashes in Riyadh with those terrific sword dances!”

CONGO? “Because Barack Obama was enthralled by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness!”

MALI? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight then in Niger!”

NIGER? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Chad!”

CHAD? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight then again in Burkina-Faso!”

BURKINO-FASO? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them again back in MALI!”

TUNISIA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Algeria!”

PANAMA? “So that we wouldn’t have to collar Noriega in South Beach!”

CUBA: “AULD LANG SYNE!”

VENEZUELA? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in CITGO gas stations!”

IRAN: “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in Tel Aviv!”

RUSSIA – in Ukraine? “So that we wouldn’t have to fight them in the Fulda Gap!”

NORDSTROM II PIPELINE?: “So that we wouldn’t be haunted by nightmares of Vladimir Putin and Olaf Schulz having a friendly plaudern in Deutsch in Kaliningrad over a beer at the Kropotkin on Teatralnaya!”

CHINA? “So that we could twirl our index finger in the air shouting – USA! USA!!”

Dad/Mom: Who is ‘THEM’? “I see that the pumpkin pie is ready. Let’s talk some more after dessert!”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Michael Brenner.

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The post Appeals court hears Trump vs Newsom challenge to National Guard in LA; CA lawmakers consider bill banning toxic chemicals in firefighters’ equipment – June 17, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

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

Pacific advocacy movements and civil society organisations have challenged French credentials in hosting a global ocean conference, saying that unless France is accountable for its actions in the Pacific, it is merely “rebranding”.

The call for accountability marked the French-sponsored UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice this week, during which President Emmanuel Macron will be hosting a France-Pacific Summit.

French officials have described the UNOC event as a coming together “in the true spirit of Talanoa” and one that would be inconceivable without the Pacific.

• READ MORE: Former Congress staffer allowed to return to Kanaky New Caledonia
• Other France in the Pacific reports

While acknowledging the importance of leveraging global partnerships for urgent climate action and ocean protection through the UNOC process, Pacific civil society groups have issued a joint statement saying that their political leaders must hold France accountable for its past actions and not allow it to “launder its dirty linen in ‘Blue Pacific’ and ‘critical transition’ narratives”.

‘Responsible steward’ image undermined
France’s claims of being a “responsible steward” of the ocean were undermined by its historical actions in the Pacific, said the statement. This included:

● A brutal colonial legacy dating back to the mid-1800s, with the annexation of island nations now known as Kanaky-New Caledonia and Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia;

● A refusal to complete the decolonisation process, and in fact the perpetuation of the colonial condition, particularly for the those “territories” on the UN decolonisation list. In Kanaky-New Caledonia, for instance, France and its agents continue to renege on longstanding decolonisation commitments, while weaponising democratic ideals and processes such as “universal” voting rights to deny the fundamental rights of the indigenous population to self-determination;

● 30 years of nuclear violence in Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia with 193 test detonations — 46 in the atmosphere and close to 150 under the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, irradiating both land and sea, and people. Approximately 90 percent of the local population was exposed to radioactive fallout, resulting in long-term health impacts, including elevated rates of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses;

● Active efforts to obscure the true extent of its nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui-French Polynesia, diverting resources to discredit independent research and obstructing transparency around health and environmental impacts. These actions reveal a persistent pattern of denial and narrative control that continues to undermine compensation efforts and delay justice for victims and communities;

● French claims to approximately one-third of the Pacific’s combined EEZ, and to being the world’s second largest ocean state, accruing largely from its so-called Pacific dependencies; and

● The supply of French military equipment, and the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior by French secret service agents — a state-sponsored terrorist attack with the 40th anniversary this year.

Seeking diplomatic support
“Since the late 1980s, France has worked to build on diplomatic, development and defence fronts to garner support from Pacific governments.

This includes development assistance through the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), Asian Development Fund, language and cultural exchanges, scientific collaboration and humanitarian assistance.

A strong diplomatic presence in Pacific capitals as well as a full schedule of high-level exchanges, including a triennial France-Oceania leaders’ Summit commencing in 2003, together function to enhance proximity with and inclination towards Paris sentiments and priorities.

The Pacific civil society statement said that French leadership at this UNOC process was once again central to its ongoing efforts to rebrand itself as a global leader on climate action, a champion of ocean protection, and a promoter of sovereignty.

“Nothing can be further from the truth,” the groups said.

“The reality is that France is rather more interested in strengthening its position as a middle power in an Indo-Pacific rather than a Pacific framework, and as a balancing power within the context of big-power rivalry between the US and China, all of which undermines rather than enhances Pacific sovereignty.”

New global image
The statement said that leaders must not allow France to build this new global image on the “foundations of its atrocities against Pacific peoples” and the ocean continent.

Pacific civil society called on France:

● For immediate and irreversible commitments and practical steps to bring its colonial presence in the Pacific to an end before the conclusion, in 2030, of the 4th International Decade on the Eradication of Colonialism; and

● To acknowledge and take responsibility for the oceanic and human harms caused by 30 years of nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui–French Polynesia, and to commit to full and just reparations, including support for affected communities, environmental remediation of test sites, and full public disclosure of all health and contamination data.

The statement also called on Pacific leaders to:

● Keep France accountable for its multiple and longstanding debt to Pacific people; and

● Ensure that Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia and Kanaky-New Caledonia remain on the UN list of non-self-governing territories to be decolonised (UN decolonisation list).

“Pacific leaders must ensure that France does not succeed in laundering its soiled linen — soiled by the blood of thousands of Pacific Islanders who resisted colonial occupation and/or who were used as test subjects for its industrial-military machinery — in the UNOC process,” said the statement.

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

Pacific advocacy movements and civil society organisations have challenged French credentials in hosting a global ocean conference, saying that unless France is accountable for its actions in the Pacific, it is merely “rebranding”.

The call for accountability marked the French-sponsored UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice this week, during which President Emmanuel Macron will be hosting a France-Pacific Summit.

French officials have described the UNOC event as a coming together “in the true spirit of Talanoa” and one that would be inconceivable without the Pacific.

• READ MORE: Former Congress staffer allowed to return to Kanaky New Caledonia
• Other France in the Pacific reports

While acknowledging the importance of leveraging global partnerships for urgent climate action and ocean protection through the UNOC process, Pacific civil society groups have issued a joint statement saying that their political leaders must hold France accountable for its past actions and not allow it to “launder its dirty linen in ‘Blue Pacific’ and ‘critical transition’ narratives”.

‘Responsible steward’ image undermined
France’s claims of being a “responsible steward” of the ocean were undermined by its historical actions in the Pacific, said the statement. This included:

● A brutal colonial legacy dating back to the mid-1800s, with the annexation of island nations now known as Kanaky-New Caledonia and Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia;

● A refusal to complete the decolonisation process, and in fact the perpetuation of the colonial condition, particularly for the those “territories” on the UN decolonisation list. In Kanaky-New Caledonia, for instance, France and its agents continue to renege on longstanding decolonisation commitments, while weaponising democratic ideals and processes such as “universal” voting rights to deny the fundamental rights of the indigenous population to self-determination;

● 30 years of nuclear violence in Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia with 193 test detonations — 46 in the atmosphere and close to 150 under the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, irradiating both land and sea, and people. Approximately 90 percent of the local population was exposed to radioactive fallout, resulting in long-term health impacts, including elevated rates of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses;

● Active efforts to obscure the true extent of its nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui-French Polynesia, diverting resources to discredit independent research and obstructing transparency around health and environmental impacts. These actions reveal a persistent pattern of denial and narrative control that continues to undermine compensation efforts and delay justice for victims and communities;

● French claims to approximately one-third of the Pacific’s combined EEZ, and to being the world’s second largest ocean state, accruing largely from its so-called Pacific dependencies; and

● The supply of French military equipment, and the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior by French secret service agents — a state-sponsored terrorist attack with the 40th anniversary this year.

Seeking diplomatic support
“Since the late 1980s, France has worked to build on diplomatic, development and defence fronts to garner support from Pacific governments.

This includes development assistance through the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), Asian Development Fund, language and cultural exchanges, scientific collaboration and humanitarian assistance.

A strong diplomatic presence in Pacific capitals as well as a full schedule of high-level exchanges, including a triennial France-Oceania leaders’ Summit commencing in 2003, together function to enhance proximity with and inclination towards Paris sentiments and priorities.

The Pacific civil society statement said that French leadership at this UNOC process was once again central to its ongoing efforts to rebrand itself as a global leader on climate action, a champion of ocean protection, and a promoter of sovereignty.

“Nothing can be further from the truth,” the groups said.

“The reality is that France is rather more interested in strengthening its position as a middle power in an Indo-Pacific rather than a Pacific framework, and as a balancing power within the context of big-power rivalry between the US and China, all of which undermines rather than enhances Pacific sovereignty.”

New global image
The statement said that leaders must not allow France to build this new global image on the “foundations of its atrocities against Pacific peoples” and the ocean continent.

Pacific civil society called on France:

● For immediate and irreversible commitments and practical steps to bring its colonial presence in the Pacific to an end before the conclusion, in 2030, of the 4th International Decade on the Eradication of Colonialism; and

● To acknowledge and take responsibility for the oceanic and human harms caused by 30 years of nuclear violence in Maʻohi Nui–French Polynesia, and to commit to full and just reparations, including support for affected communities, environmental remediation of test sites, and full public disclosure of all health and contamination data.

The statement also called on Pacific leaders to:

● Keep France accountable for its multiple and longstanding debt to Pacific people; and

● Ensure that Ma’ohi Nui-French Polynesia and Kanaky-New Caledonia remain on the UN list of non-self-governing territories to be decolonised (UN decolonisation list).

“Pacific leaders must ensure that France does not succeed in laundering its soiled linen — soiled by the blood of thousands of Pacific Islanders who resisted colonial occupation and/or who were used as test subjects for its industrial-military machinery — in the UNOC process,” said the statement.

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

Samoa’s Parliament has been formally dissolved, and an early election is set to take place within three months.

After months of political instability and two motions of no confidence, Prime Minister Fiāme Naomi Mata’afa said she would call for the dissolution of Parliament if cabinet did not support her government’s budget.

MPs from both the opposition Human Rights Protection Party and Fiāme’s former FAST party joined forces to defeat the budget with the final vote coming in 34 against, 16 in support and 2 abstentions.

• READ MORE: Samoa parliament to be dissolved in June, election date to come
• Other Samoa reports

Fiāme went to the Head of State and advised him to dissolve Parliament, and her advice was accepted.

This all came from a period of political turmoil that kicked off shortly after New Year.

A split in the FAST Party in January saw Fiāme remove FAST Party chairman La’auli Leuatea Schmidt and several FAST ministers from her cabinet.

In turn, he ejected her from FAST, leaving her leading a minority government.

Minority government defeated
Earlier this year, over a two-week period, Fiāme and her minority government defeated two back-to-back leadership challenges.

On February 25, with La’auli’s help, she defeated a no-confidence vote moved by Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, 34 votes to 15.

Then on March 6, this time with Tuilaepa’s help, she defeated a challenge mounted by La’auli, 32 votes to 19.

Parliament now enters caretaker mode, until the election and the formation of a new government.

Samoa’s Electoral Commissioner said his office has filed an affidavit to the Supreme Court, seeking legal direction and extra time to complete the electoral roll ahead of an early election.

A hearing on this is set to be held on Wednesday.

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

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

Thousands of senior hospital doctors and specialists walked off the job today for an unprecedented 24-hour strike in protest over stalled contract negotiations and thousands of other health workers protested across Aotearoa New Zealand against the coalition government’s cutbacks to the public health service Te Whatu Ora.

In spite of the disruptive bad weather across the country, protesters were out in force expressing their concerns over a national health service in crisis.

Among speakers criticising the government’s management of public health at a rally at the entrance to The Domain, near Auckland Hospital, many warned that the cutbacks were a prelude to “creeping privatisation”.

• READ MORE: Wellington doctors defend nationwide strike action over recruitment

“Health cuts hurt services, the patients who rely on them, and the workers who deliver them,” said health worker Jason Brooke.

“Under this coalition government we’ve seen departments restructured, roles disestablished, change proposals enacted, and hiring freezes implemented.

“Make no mistake. This is austerity. This is managed decline.

“The coalition can talk all they like about spending more on healthcare, the reality for ‘those-of-us-on-the-ground’ is that we know that money is not being spent where it’s needed.”

Placards said “Fight back together for the workers”, “Proud to be union”, “We’re fighting back for workers rights”, and one poster declared: “Don’t bite the hand that wipes your bum — safe staffing now”.

Palestine supporters also carried a May Day message of solidarity from Palestinian Confederation of Trade Unions.

• Photographs: David Robie/Asia Pacific Report    Other photos, videos here
  

Fighting back for NZ's public health system

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

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In the spring of 2019, as a new Mexican government shut down most of its cooperation with the United States in the fight against drug trafficking, a small group of American drug agents decided to confront the problem in a different way.

Sifting through databases and court files, they compiled dossiers on Mexican officials suspected of colluding with the mafias. Months later, federal prosecutors used the evidence to indict a former security minister, Genaro García Luna, the most important Mexican figure ever convicted on U.S. drug corruption charges.

The senior agent who led the team, Terrance C. Cole, was not rewarded for his efforts. He sought a promotion to run the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Mexico City office but was passed over. Frustrated with the agency’s direction and his own career trajectory, he retired in 2020 to take a job with a software company before becoming Virginia’s secretary of public safety in 2023.

Five years later, Cole is returning to run the DEA, having emerged as President Donald Trump’s unexpected choice for the position.

Unlike other former agents who have led the DEA, Cole never rose to its top ranks or even ran one of its 23 domestic field divisions. His most significant leadership experience has been overseeing police, prisons and emergency response agencies under Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Trump ally who championed Cole for the DEA post.

But with the White House promising an all-out fight against the traffickers who have flooded U.S. markets with fentanyl and other illegal drugs, Cole would bring an unusual background to the job. That includes some searing experiences with the corruption that sustains the drug trade, and a conviction that the United States cannot successfully fight the traffickers without also taking on the officials who abet their operations.

“The Mexican drug cartels work hand-in-hand with corrupt Mexican government officials at high levels,” Cole said in an interview with the far-right news site Breitbart shortly after his retirement. “If the average taxpayer had a basic understanding of how these two groups work together still — to this minute — they would be sickened.”

The Trump administration has warned that it is prepared to take unilateral actions against drug mafias in Mexico if the government there does not greatly escalate its own efforts. But current and former officials said White House discussions have been more focused on the tactics it could use against the traffickers — from drone strikes to cyber operations — than on any longer-term strategy to weaken them.

The administration may also have set in motion a new era of interagency competition on the issue, with the CIA and the Defense Department presenting proposals to expand U.S. intelligence collection on traffickers in Mexico and try to disrupt their operations in ways that may or may not complement the efforts of the DEA and other law enforcement agencies.

How U.S. officials might confront Mexico’s endemic corruption remains an open question. But after decades in which the problem has been mostly subordinated to other U.S. interests, it is likely to command a higher priority in American policy — and to unsettle the U.S. relationship with Mexico.

In its first announcement of punitive tariffs on Mexico, the White House cited “an intolerable alliance” between the government and the drug trade. “This alliance endangers the national security of the United States, and we must eradicate the influence of these dangerous cartels,” it said.

Hoping to avoid an economic calamity, Mexico has conspicuously intensified its own drug enforcement efforts since then. But when asked about Cole’s nomination, President Claudia Sheinbaum warned that she would uphold the sharp restrictions on DEA activities in Mexico imposed by her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“We will never permit interventionism or violations of our sovereignty,” Sheinbaum said. “It will not be like before President López Obrador, no.”

Privately, some DEA veterans have lobbied against Cole. Those former officials, most of them associated with the agency’s Special Operations Division, have questioned Cole’s qualifications for the job in discussions with Senate staff aides, but they have been unwilling to air their criticism publicly.

A former college lacrosse player, Cole was described by colleagues as a driven, competitive and sometimes abrasive agent and supervisor. As a rookie agent in McAlester, Oklahoma, Cole made enough of an impression to be sent in 2002 to Bogotá, Colombia, in the early years of the billion-dollar U.S. aid program known as Plan Colombia.

The ambitious U.S. effort sought to help Colombia transform its criminal justice system, root out corruption, and combat the interwoven threats of drug gangs, leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups. At the center of the plan was the creation of elite police teams, vetted and trained by the DEA, that operated alongside U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

The team that worked with Cole and several other agents was among Colombia’s most effective, former DEA officials said. In Bogotá, it made a series of arrests and drug seizures that struck at the Norte del Valle Cartel and its leader, Diego Montoya. It also uncovered evidence that the cartel had co-opted high-level officials in both the police and military, they said.

“We were doing amazing things,” Cole recalled last year on a podcast with Republican former U.S. Rep. Mary Bono. “Working some of the biggest corruption cases, against some of the highest-level Colombian government officials. But on May 22, 2006, that’s when it all came crashing down for me.”

That day, an informant walked into the Colombian team’s offices in Cali offering a tip that Montoya’s men had stashed some cocaine in the nearby town of Jamundí. After seeking approval from senior police officials but not the DEA, agency officials said, the team leader gathered nine of his agents and drove off with the informant to investigate.

As they pulled up to the isolated location, the police came under a barrage of gunfire. The shooting continued for 20 minutes until all 10 agents and their informant were dead. When Cole arrived at the scene that night with the Colombian attorney general and the head of the national police, they found the agents’ bodies on the ground; the Colombian army soldiers who attacked them were still on the hillside above them.

Cole was devastated.

“Those guys worked very closely with him,” his supervisor, Matthew Donahue, said. “We depended on them, and they depended on us. It was like having your partner killed.”

Although the army claimed that the shootings were a tragic accident, the attorney general found that the informant had been planted by the traffickers and that the lieutenant colonel who led the troops had organized the ambush. In 2008, he and 14 soldiers were convicted of aggravated homicide.

A few months after the killings, Cole went ahead with a planned tour of duty in Afghanistan. There, he found again that U.S. allies in the war were sometimes as involved in the drug trade as the Taliban insurgents they fought.

In 2008, Cole moved to Dallas, where he earned a reputation as a sharp-elbowed group supervisor who pushed his agents to get their photographs on the office wall by making the biggest cases and seizing the biggest loads. He was regarded highly by his superiors, several former colleagues said, but less popular with some of his peers.

By 2010, Cole’s squad was focused on the Texas distribution network of the Zetas, then widely seen as the most violent of Mexico’s drug mafias, and one of its leaders, Miguel Treviño Morales.

By leveraging the cooperation of traffickers facing prosecution, one of Cole’s agents obtained a list of cellphone numbers being used by Treviño; his brother, Omar; and their lieutenants. It was a coup — a way to perhaps intercept the Zeta leaders’ calls and encrypted text messages or even track their movements in real time.

On March 9, 2011, government records show, Cole entered the eight numbers and a PIN code for one of the phones into a secure agency database. He then forwarded them to the DEA’s Special Operations Division, which could sometimes intercept or geolocate cellphones overseas with the help of U.S. intelligence agencies.

Cole also sent the numbers to the DEA offices in Mexico City and Nuevo Laredo, where other agents were investigating the Zetas, officials said. Ten days later, gunmen led by the Treviño brothers roared into the Mexican border town of Allende, where the DEA’s informants had been operating. The traffickers began torturing and murdering anyone who they suspected might be connected to the men they thought had betrayed them, killing as many as 200 men, women and children.

In a 2017 article, ProPublica reported that Cole’s forwarding of the numbers to U.S. agents in Mexico — who then shared them with a DEA-trained Mexican police unit that warned the Zetas — led to the Treviños’ rampage. Only years later did the DEA, prodded by Congress, even review its files on the case; it never investigated its possible role in the massacre.

Cole declined to be interviewed for ProPublica’s article, and a White House spokesperson said he could not comment on the case now because the Treviño brothers, who were handed over to the United States by Mexico on Feb. 27, are facing prosecution for trafficking, murder and other crimes. They pleaded not guilty last month in a Washington, D.C., federal court.

The White House spokesperson said “of course” Cole and other DEA officials considered the sensitivity of sending the Zetas’ phone information to Mexico but followed standard protocols in doing so. A former deputy head of the DEA office in Dallas, Daniel Salter, said he and the special agent in charge there made that decision, not Cole.

At least three senior Mexican police officials who might have had access to the phone numbers shared by the DEA have since been charged in the United States with colluding with the traffickers. But officials said that subsequent DEA reporting also pointed to another reason why the Treviños might have turned on the informant who was their primary target in Allende: He owed them some $30 million and was blamed for some earlier U.S. seizures of drugs and cash.

After Dallas, Cole spent four years at the agency’s Washington-area headquarters, watching as U.S. law-enforcement agencies struggled with the Mexicans to hunt down well-protected drug bosses, like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, without making any substantial impact on the flow of drugs.

But even that halting cooperation came to an end as Mexico’s new president, López Obrador, took office promising to fight the drug trade with “hugs, not bullets.” He sidelined police teams trained by the DEA, shut down a Mexican marine commando unit that had been the country’s most effective weapon against the traffickers and even refused to grant visas to DEA agents assigned to Mexico.

Former officials said Cole, who arrived in Mexico City in late 2018 as a deputy director of the DEA’s regional office, soon proposed a radical solution: If the agents couldn’t get Mexican officials to work with them to pursue the traffickers, what about going after the corrupt officials who were protecting the traffickers’ operations?

For decades, U.S. investigators had generally avoided such targets, lest they be seen as interfering in internal Mexican politics. But the extradition of high-level Mexican traffickers over the previous decade had created a pool of criminals eager to reduce their sentences by helping U.S. prosecutors, and many were willing to testify about the officials they had bribed.

A team of DEA agents pulled together files on some 35 possible targets, ranging from police and military commanders to Mexican cabinet officials. One target that stood out was García Luna, the once-powerful security minister who had worked closely with U.S. officials.

While the Biden administration hailed García Luna’s prosecution in 2023 as proof of its mettle in pursuing corruption, it also worked assiduously to avoid drug enforcement actions that might antagonize López Obrador and jeopardize his help in controlling illegal migration.

Cole was by then gone from the DEA, having left Mexico City after just a year. He had once hoped to succeed Donahue there but was not seriously considered for the post. He retired from the agency after 22 years.

As Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security, Cole focused on trying to limit fentanyl trafficking, an effort that drew the attention of Trump supporters. While he kept a fairly low public profile, Cole’s tough rhetoric on Mexico was also very much in line with Trump’s.

“Mexico has been a failing state for years,” he told Bono. Referring to the reported recruitment of foreign mercenaries by the drug gangs, he added, “Now we’re seeing Mexico turn into a terror training camp similar to what we saw in the Middle East years ago.”

Although the Trump administration’s attention to the drug issue has raised the DEA’s profile, Cole will, if confirmed as the administrator, likely have to fight for its place in a growing bureaucratic scrum.

Already, officials said, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations have been pushing to lead the Trump administration’s campaign against trafficking groups that it has designated as terrorist organizations. The CIA and the Defense Department have also expanded their efforts to collect intelligence on the traffickers and put forward options for more aggressive actions to strike at their operations.

With Sheinbaum still attacking the DEA as a symbol of American interventionism, all four of those competing agencies may have an easier time rebuilding trust with the Mexican government. But while Mexican leaders insist they will act on hard evidence of corruption in their ranks, many U.S. officials remain skeptical that they will be able to make a serious push for such action without upending the two countries’ relationship.

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

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

For decades, Congress has appropriated money for grants to support workers’ rights programs around the world through the Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). These longstanding, bipartisan programs are the backbone of U.S. efforts to uphold labor standards in global trade, combat child and forced labor, and protect American and global workers and businesses from unfair competition.

The Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based nonprofit labor organization, had support for all 11 of its ILAB-funded projects terminated – totaling nearly $80 million. These programs, implemented in more than 15 countries, have supported workers organizing for better wages, enforcing safety standards and holding trade partners accountable under agreements like the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA).

The termination of Global March Against Child Labour’s single largest grant will impact around 40,000-50,000 children in Uganda, Peru, and Nepal as its implementing partners’ program developing child labor free municipalities cooperating with national governments has halted. The result will be tens of thousands of children out of school and a stoppage of preventive community work within supply chains like coffee production — even though these supply chains are crucial for US companies’ imports.

“Programs like those run by our clients, which promote stronger labor standards and better working conditions worldwide, are both critical from a human rights standpoint and necessary to ensure that American companies and workers aren’t undercut in the global marketplace,” said Stephanie Garlock, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel in this case. “Congress required the Department of Labor to fund these crucial programs. The Secretary of Labor has no authority to refuse to do so.”

“This case is about more than funding – it’s about protecting workers and enforcing the law. For over 25 years, the Solidarity Center has partnered with local unions to defend labor standards and fight exploitation that drives down wages and working conditions everywhere — including in the U.S. These programs are essential to fair trade and to ensuring workers have a voice on the job, from Honduras to Ohio,” said Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director of the Solidarity Center.

More information on the lawsuit is available on our website. The complaint can be found in full here.

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

The big one is the length of our friendship, professional relationship, and my relationship with where he is. He lives in Goodlettsville [Tennessee]. We tracked in Nashville and mixed in Goodlettsville, at his place. My relationship to place is very important when it comes to life and work. Beginning with the blatantly titled, I Made a Place, I’ve felt it’s a good idea to make records in Louisville, Kentucky and with people who are in Louisville, for many reasons. In terms of continuity, in terms of moving forward and looking back, and in terms of recognizing and respecting the relationships that exist with audience members, the relationships that could potentially exist.

Ferg is an extension of the place that I understand Nashville to be because of the kinds of friends that I have or have had there, some of whom have moved away, some of whom have died. It’s still mythologically a really important musical city and Ferg’s professional life has been spent there. When it comes to music, he’s a man of high standards, a human being of high standards. He has nurtured a community over the years of musicians and writers that he finds to be supernaturally talented as well as a joy to be around, at least for a few hours a day every once in a while.

It was an unspeakable honor that he instigated each step of The Purple Bird, beginning with collaborative writing sessions. Ferg’s access to musical wealth is immense, and I’m always overjoyed with whatever he shares. He shares generously but sparingly, if that’s not too much of a contradiction. If he sends me a text with a song he thinks I would like—which happens about once every three years—it’s a little gift from heaven because it’s packed with all kinds of information. Why did he share this with me? What did he like about it? His desire to get into collaborative situations with me was breathtaking.

Did you have to establish that trust and friendship with the other players? Or was it already there because Ferg was at the helm?

I was aware that a challenge was being thrown down. I didn’t know how I would respond to that challenge. At the same time, at every step I felt that I was up to the challenge, and Ferg probably wouldn’t have thrown down the challenges if he didn’t think that I was up to them. This wasn’t about, “Don’t feel bad about yourself, Will. You can do this.” It wasn’t that at all. It was that we’d spent enough time together that he thought, “This guy Will, he’s ready to play.” And he put me on the team.

As a teacher, there’s a delicate balance of setting high standards for students, but also meeting them where they’re at.

I know I’ve made the mistake of thinking someone was ready to do work that they weren’t ready for, and vice versa. It’s about recognizing that you don’t want to be the agent of a situation in which you or anybody else feels shame, frustration, or failure because you weren’t paying enough attention or were being overly optimistic. What age do you work with?

High school.

You’re creating their roadmap for understanding all existence. You don’t want to be the person of authority and experience who puts somebody in a position to fail. It’s not worth it unless you are willing to somehow make up for it, and you may not have time to make up for it… I’ve been in situations where I am, for whatever reason, experientially, creatively, or even actually incapable of fulfilling what’s been asked of me. Those are very confusing, potentially painful, and destructive situations.

Ferg doesn’t want to be involved with negativity if he can help it. He’s smart and wise enough to get involved with situations that aren’t going to spew out a lot of negativity. I knew that going in. I do get tired of talking about this, but the beginning of our relationship was a similar situation: the Johnny Cash recording session where Ferg was the engineer. It was an unspoken question, but the big question on the table in that room that day was, “Are you capable of just working with this artist Johnny Cash? Are you capable of just working with him?” Not bullshitting and throwing a lot of self doubt in there, not fucking up, but just being present. Do you have the answers that will be asked? Do you have the musical abilities to get through this small but significant task of getting through this song? This is sort of an extension of that, 20 some years later, where Ferg puts me in the room with Pat McLaughlin right away and thinks it will work. We come out with a song, “Boise, Idaho,” that we’re all kind of elated by.

What did these songwriting sessions look and feel like?

[Playing a show,] when you go to sound check, everybody sets up, and you’re waiting for the front-of-house person to say, “Okay, could I get your stage-right vocal please?” That’s when you know things have begun. Until then, you can be tuning, running a song, talking to your family on the phone. Anything. In these songwriting sessions, there is nobody. It’s this “hand of god” kind of thing that was magnificent to witness. You realize as a self-employed, creative kind of person that there isn’t anybody, almost any time, who is guiding me in what I’m supposed to do. If I had a manager, maybe. If I worked with a major label, perhaps. Or if I had what passes for a producer in most recording situations, again, maybe.

In this instance, I have to understand how to make a record. I have to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Here we are in these writing sessions with no mommy or daddy saying, “Do this.” [Instead it’s like,] “Okay, you’ve all been doing this for decades now, so just do it.” [The other musicians] had been in this situation many times before. I hadn’t been in that situation before. It was always at least two people with the experience and one person without the experience: me.

The way that Ferg makes records makes absolute sense to me and to everybody involved: the songwriters and all the session players, and Sean Sullivan, who was the chief engineer. We are privileged to get in the room with other people who want to use their minds to create a song and recording. People who want to use their skills and their experience to make something that is… I want to use words like “natural,” although it’s not fair to people for whom maybe a digital workspace is a natural extension of their creative life. It isn’t for me, and it isn’t for any of these people. What they like to do is be in the room with people, feel the energy, exchange ideas, exchange the energy—and that’s what they call making music. That’s what I call making music. I don’t connect with tuned and edited music. It just doesn’t work for me.

Working with an entire team of musicians who all cut their teeth in a pre-digital landscape must have made a big impact.

I’m convinced the record is imbued with this elevated spirit of hope and joy because of the hope and joy inherent in the experience of making the record itself. That comes from these musicians figuring out incredible ways of bringing a song to life that can be then shared with an audience. Progress and technological development gets in the way of that and subverts or contradicts what they know in terms of determining a good way to do something. What’s happened in music—as well as virtually every other field of human endeavor—is that people see the end result and don’t even think about reverse engineering it. They think, “How can I get something that sounds like that?” And then they go for it, not realizing that the sound is the end of complex processes.

To pick just an obvious one: Auto-Tune. All due respect to Auto-Tune; Auto-Tune can be great. I’m not trying to diss Auto-Tune or people who use Auto-Tune. But the main reason Auto-Tune is around is so that people don’t have to do the work to sing in tune. So people will seem like they’re better singers than they are. Ultimately that means we end up getting potentially weaker songs, weaker recordings, weaker music, because we’re not listening to things that people struggled to make. That’s the sustenance that we get from our music. Just like how the sustenance we get from our food is not because it resembles food, it’s because it is food. I think we are experiencing that culturally as well… There are long-term effects of people consuming things that are not what they resemble.

Tell me about your relationship to your singing voice and how it’s changed over time.

I won’t go so far as to be ashamed and embarrassed when I listen to recordings of my voice from 30 years ago. At the same time, I am often completely shocked at what I hear. I have a lot of mixed feelings about whatever the human entity known as Bob Dylan is. As a kid, I was taught, or you always read, “Oh, he’s a terrible singer.” I found myself constantly and consistently moved by many of his on-record vocal performances. I’m thinking, “I don’t understand. What do they mean he’s a terrible singer? Or that Leonard Cohen is a terrible singer? Or Daniel Johnston?” He maybe didn’t have the technical voice where people would say he’s a great singer, but he was very, very powerful. You knew what he was going for; it resonated with you as a listener.

I always had good intentions with my singing, and I always knew what I wanted to sing. I could to use my voice to its maximum potential. That means after years and years and years that I have, I think, greater ability to communicate and express than I did in my twenties. The desire was there and I would record songs and perform them. There are some people who develop or evolve or “progress” into a technical capacity that might not end up serving the music, or at least the relationship between the audience and the music. I appreciate hearing the complexities of the artists whose work I take in. The complexities include periodic failures, experimentation, and good-hearted attempts at doing something.

The record is one of the most joyful, hopeful pieces of music I’ve heard in a long time. What else is bringing you hope?

We do have this six-year-old who brings us a lot of hope and joy every day. She is remarkable. And this is my spot where I sit and work on songs. Outside of the window at this time of year, I can see two red-tailed hawks’ nests. In a month or two, I will see the hatchlings start to learn to fly. That makes me very happy seeing these hawks, and the barred owl has just moved back into the neighborhood for the year. They’ll be making all sorts of obscene noises for the next seven or eight months. These are great things.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jeffrey Silverstein.

What pays the bills these days?

Riya Mahesh: Actually, nothing really pays the bills right now because I’m still in school. I’m in my third year of med school. Which is awesome, but also…It’s almost over at this point, so I’ll be getting a job as a resident doctor, which is just a crazy life. That’s where I’m at. It sounds crazier than it actually is. I feel like my life is actually super normal.

That sounds tricky to juggle?

RM: Yeah, I feel like a lot of [being a musician] these days, too, is choosing your own adventure. I think I could be touring more if I had a job that allowed me to move around a lot more.

But I do think that it is really special to have multiple things in life that you care a lot about, because music is great and I love it so much, but there are periods time where I feel like it’s not really giving me what I need and it’s making me sad or it’s causing me economic stress. So having something else lets me keep music as a sacred thing. It also makes me feel like I’m part of a community because I feel like sometimes when you’re a musician, especially a solo musician, it’s really easy to feel like it’s you against the world.

Emma Gerson: Wow. You’re giving Hannah Montana, rockstar at night, school by day. So last year, I was working a job in the music industry trying to learn as much about the business as I could. I was in an assistant position, which was like a 70-hour week and it really did not give me time to launch a music career, but I was still finding the time somewhere in there to make my EP. Same kind of thing where it’s like the time you’re spending making music is when you have a separate job, especially a job that’s very, very demanding, it makes the time where you’re spending making music more valuable.

Totally.

EG: Because I went from being in school and having all the time in the world to write and think or whatever, to then being like, “Okay, I have 10 minutes where I don’t feel completely depleted and exhausted. Maybe I should try to write a line or something.” But then I left that job because I realized that I really wanted more space in my life to really pursue music as a career because ultimately that was my dream, and I felt like now is the time.

RM: Yeah, I’ll have time in the morning to think about music and I’ll listen to mixes in the morning. I’m usually up obscenely early anyways because my schedule has shifted to where I start the day early and then end early. My music brain will turn on the second that I leave the hospital and I put my headphones back on. I think that that sort of life of being like, “Okay, I have these hours where I’m not thinking about music at all. My music brain is off and I’m thinking about something else very intensely.” And then once that’s over, my brain is just so much more free to come up with musical ideas.

EG: When I was working as an assistant, I didn’t have the space to do it [writing music] during the day, and all the music stuff I was doing was in a separate world. I think because of that, I came to value being able to do the music so much more. I think I wasn’t as lucky as Riya to actually genuinely really enjoy my job and feel passionate about it. I didn’t necessarily have that experience. I was dying to get away from my desk so that I could make my art. It was hard because I am such a productivity-oriented person where I was like, “I just quit my job and I’m not doing anything. What’s wrong with me?” But now I’m trying to embrace this time.

How do you guys feel about the current way of putting out music and this idea of “momentum?”

EG: I’ve watched this interview with Fiona Apple once I think, where she said, “You have an antenna up. And the antennas up, the antennas up, and then all of a sudden it goes… And it’s all the way full, and then you have to explode.” I genuinely feel like when I’m writing a song, it’s like the expression of everything that I’ve experienced up to that point.

I think there’s a difference between making art as a product and making art as an expression. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be the same thing, I think that they can be, in a lot of instances. As an independent artist in the TikTok era, it’s very much this individualist thing where it’s like…It’s the same bootstraps mentality of “If you want to make it, then you just have to make a thousand videos and you have to be blah-blah. You have to be as productive as possible.” And maybe some of that is true because it is a gamble, and the more things you put out there, maybe the likelihood increases or something like that.

But that’s not really what the purpose of art is, to elevate your own standing or voice or maybe your status. It’s not really supposed to be something that makes you famous, it’s supposed to be something that connects people. It’s obviously very complicated and nuanced, but I think if you’re an artist who wants to make a career out of your art, then it’s this very delicate balance that you’re always trying to walk of staying true to what your art is and staying connected to why you make art in the first place.

RM: What Emma said resonated with me. When you asked that question, Maryam, the first thing that came to mind for me, too, was a Fiona Apple quote, but a different one. She’s on some late night talk show—I don’t remember who the talk show host was, but they’re like, “Oh, what happened to you? Six years went by and you didn’t put out any music. What were you doing?” And she was like, “I was literally not doing anything.” She was like, “I was maybe watching some TV, but nothing more than that.” And she’s just saying it in the most nonchalant tone because that’s normal. It’s normal to take a break from creating.

It also makes me think of this Sade quote where she said, “Oh, I feel like it’s really important if people want me to make the music that I make, that I step away from the limelight and actually live my life so I have something to write about.” And I think that those two concepts have really stuck with me. And I also think a lot about these artists that I admire, like Fiona Apple, Sade, Björk, you name it. Would they have thrived in today’s music landscape? Would they have been able to keep up with the TikTok outpouring or constantly promote themselves on social media? And maybe, maybe they would be able to…

But I think that the music industry thinks that there’s a one-size-fits all model for musicians. And I think that they especially think that that’s true for solo female acts. They’re obsessed with this idea of, “Oh, you can have this amazingly well-crafted image, and we will sell all these visuals of you and people can have access to your pictures on their phone and these…” It’s all about the visuals and the aesthetic or whatever. I feel like you can’t just… You can aestheticize it to some extent, but to some extent it’s someone’s life. It can’t really be an aesthetic.

So yeah. That’s why I cut myself some slack when my music is not that successful because I’m just like, “I’m sure some of my heroes would be really unsuccessful right now.” It’s brutal. It’s a brutal environment. But that’s not to say that I don’t think there’s amazing music that’s being made right now. It used to be that you had to sell your soul to get some recording executive to sign you on, and you had to record in this big fancy studio. But now if you have a MacBook, you can be a recording artist. So there’s some amazing music out there. I think that music is amazing. I just feel like the music industry needs to figure out how they’re going to adapt to the current circumstances because they literally think it’s a one-size-fits-all model.

EG: Yeah, it’s tough because I think post-COVID, a lot of venues really got hit hard. And I think it depends on where you are. I definitely feel in the Bay Area that there’s an amazing music scene here that’s blooming and growing before my eyes. It’s cool to see. It’s so funny because sometimes as an independent artist, there is this chicken or egg thing where you need to play to get exposure, but venues are hurting so bad in so many ways that when you go to play sometimes you’re literally having to bring all of your friends just to break even.

First of all, there’s pay-to-play places which prey on artists. Never do that. And then there’s places where you go there, you play, you don’t make any money because it’s essentially the same thing as a pay-to-play thing where they’re like, “We’ll give you 50% after we hit 200 bucks or whatever.” And it’s like you bring all your friends there and who has that many friends, really? You’re not even exposing yourself to anybody new because you worked so hard to get all your friends there so that you might even make it over the cap.

That is the part where social media I think can be really helpful. An artist that I saw… Not to be #hopecore. I know it sucks to be an independent artist right now, but—

I love that. #hopecore is incredible.

EG: Not to be #hopecore, because I agree with Riya in every sense of it is desolate, especially as a young female solo act. It’s hard out here. But I got to open in the Bay Area for Shauna Dean Cokeland.

RM: Oh my god, I love Shauna Dean Cokeland.

Who is that?

EG: She’s a folk punk artist. She’s great. So in 2021, or whatever, something weird happened. I don’t know how this happened, but it was one of those magic golden nugget moments where someone who’s actually an authentic artist cut through the algorithm and was constantly on my “for you page,” or whatever, and she got a ton of followers which was really cool and amazing. All on her own.

I opened for her in the Bay Area, and she was going on a tour. I think it was her first headlining tour, and she had never played in the Bay before. She’s from the East Coast. It was at this co-op called The New Farm. It was so funny. There was a hardcore band practicing in a silo across from the stage, and you could hear as she’s playing a solo acoustic fucking set.

The crowd there was good. It was like 30 to 50 people who were not from her town. They’re not her friends. They were there to see her, and they’re all these 13 to 15-year-old girls there to see her. She was talking about US imperialism and all this stuff to this crowd of teenage girls who had found her on TikTok. So I do think that if you are an artist and you have something to say, your people will find you. They have to be given the opportunity to find you.

RM: I do feel like I’m glad that we got all #hopecore for a second there because I do feel like… And also, I was definitely getting all boomer about TikTok.

EG: No, you’re right though.

RM: It’s really just because I don’t know how to use it and I don’t like it. And every industry person I’ve ever met has been like, “You need to get on TikTok.” And I’m like, “I don’t know how to use this app.”

But I do feel like I would be very ignorant if I didn’t acknowledge the fact that for me, too, I feel like a lot of my fan base…I grew up in Texas and now live on the East Coast, and my fans are everywhere. Right now I’m in Boston, but I play a lot of shows in New York, and so a lot of people in New York can keep track of what I’m doing based off of my Instagram. That is really helpful because also it’s like…I don’t know how it would be if I had to put flyers everywhere.

Also, with the whole aesthetic thing too, I do actually really enjoy different aesthetics and I like being able to brand the album. I just feel like it’s tough when people expect you to live that way. There’s a big disconnect for me between the way that the albums are [and my real life]. My albums are really concept albums, but then my real life is different from the albums. The songs are based on my life, but the visual world is different from my real life. And I think that’s where I’ve really struggled with the whole branding thing because I’m in the hospital from, what, like 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM almost every day. So I’m just like, “Oh, that’s my life.” And everybody just expects you to have this really well-thought-out vision for what you are aesthetically. And I still just, every year I’m changing so much that I just don’t know what I am or want.

EG: Yeah, I think it’s so interesting because I think there are different kinds of artists that you see where there’s artists who are performance artists as much as they are musicians, and then there’s people who are just musicians. One of my favorite musicians of all time is Elliot Smith. Elliot Smith was just Elliot Smith and he was cool because he was himself. And obviously it’s different because he’s a man, but I think if you can find… And it’s so surprising to me, Riya, because I feel like Quiet Light, the visuals are just so perfect. They’re wonderful. Don’t change.

RM: That’s so nice.

EG: Yeah. But I think it needs to stay fun. The way that I feel about lucky break is I just want to make stuff that my 13-year-old self would think is cool, and I just want to enjoy it, enjoy the process. I think I really was really worried because originally I was putting music out under my own name and I was very perfectionistic about it. I didn’t put anything out because I didn’t feel like I liked any of it. And then something magical happened where when I took my name out of it, I was like, “Oh, this is a character. I can just do whatever I want.” I recently was like, “I can’t stand TikTok. I don’t know what to do.” So my friend Elliot was like, “Why don’t you just start blogging your life or whatever?” I have this shitty camera that I got for my 11th birthday and I’ve started taking it everywhere with me and just literally recording my life. Then I put it in iMovie and it takes me… It’s a little bit of a commitment. It takes me a couple hours, edit it, and upload it to YouTube. And I’ve only been doing that for four weeks now, and I’m like, “Wait, I want to make YouTube, maybe, my main thing,” because I actually really enjoy this, and it’s cool to get to see, I don’t know, my life in retrospect. It’s really weird. I’ve always been a journal-er, so it felt pretty natural to go into archiving my life through just the camera.

And I also feel, Riya, like what you’re saying about TikTok, even though I think there’s this thing in the music industry where everyone’s like, “Go to TikTok, go to TikTok, go to TikTok.” It’s like, I really think you just have to exist a little bit on TikTok. I do think the cream rises to the top. I think if you’re a good artist, you’re committed to what you do, you have your thing that you are and you believe in, people are going to gravitate towards it regardless if you’re on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. Because I think TikTok and Instagram now are more reactive.

RM: I feel like on that point of discovery not really happening on TikTok and on Instagram brings me some hope that it’s returning back to just discovering things like IRL. I feel like the kids, people that are 15 and 16 right now, probably get so much more of a thrill of going to the show and listening to the opening act and hearing something new that they didn’t find on their phones because that’s how we used to find new artists that we liked and stuff. You’d just go to a show and you’d go to see the main act, then you would enjoy the openers, then you’d become a fan. But I think that that art has been lost during COVID when people really weren’t playing shows and now it’s coming back.

I think that people are getting really into going to shows and partying and DJing. I think that’s amazing because everything is cyclical, and it’s like the over-saturation of the internet has led people to think that, “Oh, maybe there are cooler things if I log off.” And I still think Instagram’s so fun, the internet is so fun, but there’s nothing that’s better than going to a show and being so mesmerized by the artist and being in a room full of people who you don’t know, but you’re also connected by the music. It’s a really almost religious experience.

Right now , there’s been talks about unionizing the music industry and artists unionizing. I wonder what that would look like in the future?

RM: Yeah. I’m all about unions. I think UMAW is doing some really great stuff with unionizing artists. I do think that there does need to be reform in terms of the way that the economic aspects of music happen, just because so many people are just uploading their music online and not seeing any returns from it essentially. But I have hope that that’s going to change and get better. I feel like it’s unfortunate that’s the way that it is right now, but it’s affecting so many people that I find it hard to believe that it’ll just continue to be like this, but maybe it will.

I do think that, yeah, it’s a balancing act between trying to live your life and also trying to make money, which is what I feel being an adult is…I’m learning. But I feel like every year I learn a little bit more about how to be responsible, but also let loose a little bit. I don’t know what to say about the music industry as a whole because I don’t really work in it, but I hope that they’re trying to make some changes and trying to make it more equitable for musicians. But until then, if you make music and you believe in your art and it’s fun, there’s no reason to not keep doing it and to do whatever you can to be involved in music.

EG: Yeah. I think making a living as a musician is certainly doable. You just have to be playing fucking constantly. And that’s something that takes years to build up. If that’s genuinely what you want to do and you dedicate yourself to making a living gigging, then you can do it. It’s just like there’s going to be sacrifices involved. As for unions, I’m always pro-union. I think that artists, if you’re choosing art as your career, it’s essential that you have a network of people. You have an abundance of resources in your network. You have to have other artists around you, you have to have people around you who are supporting you. As simple as it is getting people to shows, that’s your network is getting people to come into your show. Making a living as an artist is this act of how many people can I put around me.

Yeah. Connecting different people around the world.

EG: It’s a choice. If you decide, “I’m going to make a living as a musician,” you’re going to find a way to do it. It’s not going to be easy. Obviously you need to have some sort of safety net underneath you. Don’t take risks that aren’t calculated. You have your day job, you have whatever it is… A lot of things have to fall into alignment, and it’s different for every single person. Like Riya said, it’s “choose your own adventure.”

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Maryam Said.

Like a relentless ocean, wave after wave of pro-Palestinian pro-human rights protesters disrupted New Zealand deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters’ state of the nation speech at the Christchurch Town Hall yesterday.

A clarion call to Trumpism and Australia’s One Nation Party, the speech was accompanied by the background music of about 250 protesters outside the Town Hall, chanting: “Complicity in genocide is a crime.”

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) co-chair John Minto described Peters’ attitude to Palestinians as “sickening”.

• READ MORE: Israel kills at least 51 in Gaza today as it prepares to send more troops
• No love lost as Winston Peters and Chris Hipkins trade barbs
• Green Party’s Swarbrick calls for urgent NZ action over Israel’s ‘crazy’ Gaza slaughter
• Other Gaza genocide reports

Inside the James Hay Theatre, protester after protester stood and spoke loudly and clearly against the deputy Prime Minister’s failure to support those still dying in Gaza, and his failure to denounce the ongoing genocide.

Ben Vorderegger was the first of nine protesters who appealed on behalf of people who have lost their voices in the dust of blood and bones, bombs and sniper guns.

Before he and others were hauled out, they spoke for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza — women, men, doctors, aid workers, journalists, and children.

Gazan health authorities have reported that the official death toll is now more than 50,000 — but that is the confirmed deaths with thousands more buried under the rubble.

Real death toll
The real death toll from the genocide in Gaza has been estimated by a reputed medical journal, The Lancet, at more than 63,000. A third of those are children. Each day more children are killed.

One by one the protesters who challenged Peters were manhandled by security guards to a frenzied crowd screaming “out, out”.

The deputy Prime Minister’s response was to deride and mock the conscientious objectors. He did not stop there. He lambasted the media.

At this point, several members of his audience turned on me as a journalist and demanded my removal.

This means that not only is the right to free speech at stake, the right or freedom to report is also being eroded. (I was later trespassed by security guards and police from the Town Hall although no reason was supplied for the ban).

Inside the Christchurch Town Hall the call by Peters, who is also Foreign Minister, to “Make New Zealand Great Again” continued in the vein of a speech written by a MAGA leader.

He whitewashed human rights, failed to address climate change, and demonstrated loathing for a media that has rarely challenged him.

Condemned movement
Slamming the PSNA as “Marxist fascists” for calling out genocide, he condemned the movement for failing to talk with those who have a record of kowtowing to violent colonisation.

This tactic is Colonial Invasion 101. It sees the invader rewarding and only dealing with those who sell out. This strategy demands that the colonised people should bow to the oppressor — an oppressor who threatens them with losing everything if they do not accept the scraps.

Peters showed no support for the Treaty of Waitangi but rather, endorsed the government’s challenge to the founding document of the nation – Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In his dismissal of the founding and legally binding partnership, he repeated the “One Nation” catch-cry. Ad nauseum.

Besides slamming Palestinians, the Scots (he managed to squeeze in a racist joke against Scottish people), and the woke, Peters’ speech promoted continued mining, showing some amnesia over the Pike River disaster. He did not reference the environment or climate change.

After the speech, outside the Town Hall police donned black gloves — a sign they were prepared to use pepper-spray.

PSNA co-chair John Minto described Peters’ failure to stand against the ongoing genocide of Palestinians as “bloody disgraceful”.

The police arrested one protester, claiming he put his hand on a car transporting NZ First officials. A witness said this was not the case.

Protester released
The protester was later released without any charges being laid.

A defiant New Zealand First MP Shane Jones marched out of the Town Hall after the event. He raised his arms defensively at protesters crying, “what if it was your grandchildren being slaughtered?”

I was trespassed from the Christchurch Town Hall for re-entering the Town Hall for Winston Peters’ media conference. No reason was supplied by police or the Town Hall security personnel for that trespass order..

It is well known that Peters loathes the media — he said so enough times during his state of the nation speech.

He referenced former US President Bill Clinton during his speech, an interesting reference given that Clinton did not receive the protection from the media that Peters has received.

From the over zealous security personnel who manhandled and dragged out hecklers, to the banning of a journalist, to the arrest of someone for “touching a car” when witnesses report otherwise, the state of the nation speech held some uncomfortable echoes — the actions of a fascist dictatorship.

Populist threats
The atmosphere was reminiscent of a Jorg Haider press conference I attended many years ago in Vienna. That “rechtspopulist” Austrian politician had threatened journalists with defamation suits if they called him out on his support for Nazis.

Yet he was on record for doing so.

I was reminded of this yesterday when the audience called ‘out out’ at hecklers, and demanded the removal of this journalist. These New Zealand First supporters demand adoration for their leader or a media black-out.

Perhaps they cannot be blamed given that the state of the nation speech could well have been written by US President Donald Trump or one of his minions.

The protesters were courageous and conscientious in contrast to Peters, said PSNA’s John Minto.

He likened Peters to Neville Chamberlain — Britain’s Prime Minister from 1937 to 1940. His name is synonymous with the policy of “appeasement” because he conceded territorial concessions to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, fruitlessly hoping to avoid war.

“He has refused to condemn any of Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians, including the total humanitarian aid blockade of Gaza.”

Refusal ‘unprecedented’
“It’s unprecedented in New Zealand history that a government would refuse to condemn Israel breaking its ceasefire agreement and resuming industrial-scale slaughter of civilians,” Minto said.

“That is what Israel is doing today in Gaza, with full backing from the White House.

“Chamberlain went to meet Hitler in Munich in 1938 to whitewash Nazi Germany’s takeovers of its neighbours’ lands.

“Peters has been in Washington to agree to US approval of the occupation of southern Syria, more attacks on Lebanon, resumption of the land grab genocide in Gaza and get a heads-up on US plans to ‘give’ the Occupied West Bank to Israel later this year.

“If Peters disagrees with any of this, he’s had plenty of chances to say so.

“New Zealanders are calling for sanctions on Israel but Mr Peters and the National-led government are looking the other way.”

Only staged questions
The conscientious objectors who rise against the oppression of human rights are people Winston Peters regards as his enemies. He will only answer questions in a press conference staged for him.

He warms to journalists who warm to him.

The state of the nation speech in the Town Hall was familiar.

Seeking to erase conscientiousness will not make New Zealand great, it will render this country very small, almost miniscule, like the people who are being destroyed for daring to demand their right to their own land.

Saige England is a journalist and author, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

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

”Television was a Baby Crawling Towards That Deathchamber. (“It is here, the long Awaited bleap-blast light that Speaks one red tongue like Politician.”)

–Allen Ginsberg, quoted in A Brief Guide to Trump & the Spectacle, by TJ Clark in London Review of Books Vol 47/No. 1

Trump speaks in the name of science but…he does so…to insist that God decreed the immutable character of the two sexes, and that he, Trump, is decreeing it once more..

–Judith Butler, This Is Wrong: On Executive Order 14168, London Review of Books, Vol. 47, No. 6

…any alternatives to authoritarianism must address [the fears being exploited by Trump and his people] with a compelling vision in which there would be security for all those who now fear their own vanishing and the vanishing of their communities...This imagined world…would… refuse all forms of violence in affirming the equality, value and interdependency of all living beings.

–Ibid.

“We have unquestionably a great cloud-bank of ancestral blindness weighing down upon us, only transiently riven here and there by fitful revelations of the truth. “

The post Who Will Challenge Rule By Spectacle? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kim C. Domenico.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed the challenge on February 19 in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals under the Clean Air Act. The advocacy group says the federal agency has prohibited the use of phosphogypsum, a radioactive, carcinogenic, and toxic waste generated by the fertilizer industry, in road construction since 1992, citing an “unacceptable level of risk to public health.”

The legal challenge is centered on a road project proposed at the New Wales facility of Mosaic Fertilizer, a subsidiary of The Mosaic Company, some 40 miles east of Tampa. The EPA approved the project in December 2024, noting the authorization applied only to the single project and included conditions meant to ensure the project would remain within the scope of the application. But Ragan Whitlock, Florida staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, feared the project could lead to more roadways built with the toxic waste.

“Part of what makes this process so alarming, it’s not just a one-off science experiment,” he said. “It’s being billed as the intermediate step between laboratory testing and full-scale implementation of the idea. So our concern is that whatever methodology is used for this project will be used for national approval down the road.”

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Phosphogypsum contains radium, which as it decays forms radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer. Normally, phosphogypsum is disposed of in engineered piles called stacks to limit public exposure to emissions of radon. The stacks can be expanded as they reach capacity or closed, which involves draining and capping. More than 1 billion tons of the waste is stored in stacks in Florida, with the fertilizer industry adding some 40 million tons every year, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

Mosaic aims to construct a test road near its Florida stack with four sections, each made with varying mixtures of phosphogypsum. The waste would be used in the road base, which would be paved over with asphalt. University of Florida researchers would be involved in the study.

Most of the comments the EPA received in response to the proposal opposed the use of phosphogypsum in road construction in general and criticized the current methods for managing the waste, but the federal agency said these comments were outside the scope of its review. The agency declined to comment on pending litigation.

“The review found that Mosaic’s risk assessment is technically acceptable, and that the potential radiological risks from the proposed project meet the regulatory requirements,” the EPA stated in the Federal Register dated December 23, 2024. “The project is at least as protective of public health as maintaining the phosphogypsum in a stack.”

Mosaic has faced scrutiny in the past after a pond at its Piney Point site leaked and threatened to collapse in 2021, forcing the release of 215 million gallons of contaminated water into Tampa Bay. Mosaic did not respond to a request for comment on the new litigation.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Plan to build a road with radioactive waste in Florida prompts legal challenge against the EPA on Mar 1, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Amy Green, Inside Climate News.

Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa has survived a vote of no confidence after weeks of political turmoil.

In a vote today, she defeated the motion by 34 votes in favour and 15 against.

The motion was prompted by a split in the ruling FAST Party, which saw Fiame leading a minority government.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan crisis reports

But in a shock move today, FAST members voted alongside Fiame’s faction to register a resounding defeat against Opposition Leader Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi’s motion.

The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Papalii Lio Masipua, had granted the opposition’s formal request for a vote of no confidence against Fiame on Friday.

Tuilaepa, who is also the head of the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), confirmed that the Speaker approved the motion in writing and allowed five members from the opposition bench to speak on it.

According to Samoa’s constitutional requirements, the MP who commands the majority of MPs should be elected as Prime Minister or continue as Prime Minister.

‘Another desperate attempt’
However, the Samoan government stated Tuilaepa’s move was “another desperate attempt to stir political drama” ahead of the no-confidence vote.

Political upheaval hit Samoa just three days into 2025 when the chair of the ruling FAST party and Samoa’s Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries La’auli Leuatea Schmidt confirmed he was facing criminal charges.

On January 10, Mata’afa removed La’auli’s ministerial portfolio and subsequently removed three of her Cabinet ministers.

But La’auli remained chair of the FAST Party, and went on to announce the removal of the prime minister and five Cabinet ministers from the ruling party.

This decision was reportedly challenged by the removed members.

Fiame then removed 13 of her associate ministers.

Laauli acknowledged the challenge of holding a vote of no confidence, but refrained from disclosing the party’s position, stating they would wait until Tuesday.

First female prime minister
Fiame is Samoa’s first female prime minister. She had heritage — her father, Fiame Mata’afa Faumuina Mulinu’u, was the country’s first prime minister.

She took office following the April 2021 election, but that devolved into political crisis.

The caretaker HRPP government locked the doors to Parliament in an attempt to stop the then prime minister-elect from being sworn into office following her FAST Party’s one-seat election win.

Two governments claimed a mandate to rule, and the United Nations urged the party leaders to find a solution through discussion.

The Court of Appeal ruled that the country had a new government after it judged the impromptu swearing-in by the newcomer FAST party on May 24 was legitimate under the doctrine of necessity.

It took until July for the incumbent, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, to concede.

Fiame went to school and university in Wellington, New Zealand, but her studies were interrupted in 1977 when she returned to Samoa to help with court cases around the succession of her father’s titles following his death in 1975.

In 1985, she was elected as MP for Lotofaga, the same seat held by her father and then her mother after his death.

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

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

Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa has survived a vote of no confidence after weeks of political turmoil.

In a vote today, she defeated the motion by 34 votes in favour and 15 against.

The motion was prompted by a split in the ruling FAST Party, which saw Fiame leading a minority government.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan crisis reports

But in a shock move today, FAST members voted alongside Fiame’s faction to register a resounding defeat against Opposition Leader Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi’s motion.

The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Papalii Lio Masipua, had granted the opposition’s formal request for a vote of no confidence against Fiame on Friday.

Tuilaepa, who is also the head of the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), confirmed that the Speaker approved the motion in writing and allowed five members from the opposition bench to speak on it.

According to Samoa’s constitutional requirements, the MP who commands the majority of MPs should be elected as Prime Minister or continue as Prime Minister.

‘Another desperate attempt’
However, the Samoan government stated Tuilaepa’s move was “another desperate attempt to stir political drama” ahead of the no-confidence vote.

Political upheaval hit Samoa just three days into 2025 when the chair of the ruling FAST party and Samoa’s Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries La’auli Leuatea Schmidt confirmed he was facing criminal charges.

On January 10, Mata’afa removed La’auli’s ministerial portfolio and subsequently removed three of her Cabinet ministers.

But La’auli remained chair of the FAST Party, and went on to announce the removal of the prime minister and five Cabinet ministers from the ruling party.

This decision was reportedly challenged by the removed members.

Fiame then removed 13 of her associate ministers.

Laauli acknowledged the challenge of holding a vote of no confidence, but refrained from disclosing the party’s position, stating they would wait until Tuesday.

First female prime minister
Fiame is Samoa’s first female prime minister. She had heritage — her father, Fiame Mata’afa Faumuina Mulinu’u, was the country’s first prime minister.

She took office following the April 2021 election, but that devolved into political crisis.

The caretaker HRPP government locked the doors to Parliament in an attempt to stop the then prime minister-elect from being sworn into office following her FAST Party’s one-seat election win.

Two governments claimed a mandate to rule, and the United Nations urged the party leaders to find a solution through discussion.

The Court of Appeal ruled that the country had a new government after it judged the impromptu swearing-in by the newcomer FAST party on May 24 was legitimate under the doctrine of necessity.

It took until July for the incumbent, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, to concede.

Fiame went to school and university in Wellington, New Zealand, but her studies were interrupted in 1977 when she returned to Samoa to help with court cases around the succession of her father’s titles following his death in 1975.

In 1985, she was elected as MP for Lotofaga, the same seat held by her father and then her mother after his death.

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

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

The plaintiffs in this case consist of the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO; AFGE Local 1216; and United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, AFSCME, AFL-CIO. They are represented by State Democracy Defenders Fund (SDDF) and the law firm Altshuler Berzon LLP.

The complaint says that OPM’s egregious firings were made on false pretenses and violate federal law, including the Administrative Procedure Act and other statutes defining federal employment and OPM's role. These firings were executed across federal agencies, based on directives from OPM. OPM, the complaint asserts, acted unlawfully by directing federal agencies to use a standardized termination notice falsely claiming performance issues. Congress, not OPM, controls and authorizes federal employment and related spending by the federal administrative agencies, and Congress has determined that each agency is responsible for managing its own employees.

“This administration has abused the probationary period to conduct a chaotic, ill-informed, and politically-driven firing spree. The result has been the indiscriminate firing of thousands of patriotic public servants across the country who help veterans in crisis, ensure the safety of our nuclear weapons, keep power flowing to American homes, combat the bird flu, and provide other essential services,” said AFGE National President Everett Kelley. “These actions aren’t just illegal. They are hurting everyday Americans and making us all less safe. It’s a stark reminder of the price we all pay when you stack the government with political loyalists instead of professionals.”

“Overnight, tens of thousands of federal employees received the same termination letter citing ‘performance issues’ without any explanation or reasoning,” said AFSCME President Lee Saunders. “These mass firings are yet another unlawful attempt by this billionaire-run administration to gut public services without regard for the health and safety of our communities. Federal workers are qualified professionals who make our nation stronger – supporting our schools, parks, hospitals and vital infrastructure. We will keep fighting these attacks on their freedoms that threaten everything from food safety to national security to health care.”

“New hires are crucial as our country continues to face nurse staffing challenges. Indiscriminately firing these nurses, who are essential to the care their units provide, could truly cost lives,” said Charmaine S. Morales, RN and UNAC/UHCP President.

Norm Eisen, representing the plaintiffs and executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund, said, “SDDF is proud to stand with leading public service unions in this critical fight to protect their members, who dedicate their lives to serving our nation. The mass firings ordered by OPM are illegal and betray the trust of countless federal employees. We are committed to restoring justice for these workers.”

The complaint is available here.

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

The Speaker of the House, Papali’i Li’o Taeu Masipau, decisively addressed a letter from FAST, which informed him of the removal of Fiame along with Deputy Prime Minister Tuala Tevaga Ponifasio, Leatinu’u Wayne Fong, Olo Fiti Vaai, Faualo Harry Schuster, and Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster from the party.

The letter also referenced a lack of confidence in Fiame’s leadership and alleged discussions between the Government and the opposition. Papali’i rejected all claims, emphasising that decisions about parliamentary seats must align with the Constitution.

• READ MORE: Samoa’s political future hangs in balance with Fiame leadership challenge
• Other Samoan politics reports

“I have received a letter from the FAST Party concerning the removal of some of their members from the party. The letter raised questions about their parliamentary seats. Let it be clear: neither the Speaker of the House nor Parliament can, at this stage, make a decision that would result in the vacating of these seats in Parliament. The process must align with the rule of law,” the Speaker stated.

The Electoral Act 2019 of Samoa outlines provisions regarding changing party allegiance by Members of Parliament (MPs). These rules are designed to maintain political stability and ensure that MPs adhere to the party alignment under which they were elected.

Fiame and the affected MPs have not declared their exit from FAST or joined another party, ensuring their seats remain legally secure, as affirmed by the Speaker.

In response to FAST attempts to remove her, Fiame dismissed 13 Associate Ministers. They had aligned themselves with La’auli Leuatea Polataivao Fosi Schmidt, the FAST Party chairman and former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, in an attempt to oust her from the party.

Three ministers removed
Fiame had earlier removed three Cabinet Ministers — Mulipola Anarosa Ale-Molio’o (Women, Community, and Social Development), Toelupe Poumulinuku Onesemo (Communication and Information Technology), and Leota Laki Sio (Commerce, Industry, and Labour).

The Speaker also dismissed references in the FAST letter to alleged discussions between the government and the opposition, citing a lack of verification.

“Legal avenues outside Parliament are available for these matters to be pursued,” he added.

Opposition leader Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, Fiame’s predecessor, confirmed in Parliament that he had met with Fiame but clarified that the discussions focused solely on parliamentary matters and the smooth operation of the government.

In her Parliamentary address, Fiame acknowledged the challenges within the FAST Party. “As Prime Minister, I must acknowledge that the primary cause of this issue stems from the charges against La’auli, the former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries,” she said.

Fiame removed La’auli from his Cabinet role after he refused to step down following charges filed by the Samoa Police Service. The resulting fallout led to internal dissent within FAST, tit-for-tat removals of Ministers and Associate Ministers, and attempts to oust Fiame from the party and her role as Prime Minister.

Emphasising the importance of adhering to constitutional principles and due process, Fiame further stated in her Parliamentary address, “These challenges are not unprecedented. In 1982, similar divisions within the HRPP led to multiple changes in leadership before the government stabilised.”

‘Rift in alignment of canoes’
Regarding divisions in the FAST party, she said in Samoan: “Ua va le fogava’a.” Translated: there is a rift in the alignment of the canoes.

Despite this she reaffirmed her commitment to her role: “My Cabinet and I remain committed to fulfilling our duties as outlined in the law.”

She apologised to the nation for the disruptions caused by the unrest and called for mutual respect and adherence to the rule of law.

“My leadership defers to the rule of law to conduct my work. The rule of law is the umbrella that protects all Samoans under equal treatment under the law,” Fiame added.

In an unexpected move, opposition leader Tuilaepa expressed full support for Fiame’s leadership.

“Myself and our party — the only thing that we will do is to follow what I have said in the past on 26th July in 2021. I said: ‘Fiame, here is our government, lead the country. We put faith in you and 500 percent support.’”

Tuilaepa’s endorsement, along with the Speaker’s firm stance on upholding the rule of law, has been widely viewed as a stabilising factor during a turbulent time for Samoa’s government.

Filllng the gaps
To fill the gaps left by the dismissed Ministers, four new Cabinet members were sworn in earlier in the week. They are: Faleomavaega Titimaea Tafua (Commerce, Industry, and Labour), Laga’aia Ti’aitu’au Tufuga (Women, Community, and Social Development), Mau’u Siaosi Pu’epu’emai (Communications and Information Technology), and Niu’ava Eti Malolo (Agriculture and Fisheries).

The session marked the conclusion of a 20-day period of political unrest, social media harassment, attacks on press freedom and significant cabinet restructuring. With less than a year remaining in her term, Fiame faces the dual challenge of managing internal divisions within FAST while steering the government toward stability.

The Speaker’s decisive handling of the FAST letter, combined with the opposition leader’s support, has reaffirmed the rule of law as the cornerstone of Samoa’s democracy. While challenges remain, the Government now has a clearer path to focus on its legislative agenda and governance responsibilities.

Samoa faces high stakes, with more twists, turns, and potential crises likely to unfold in the months leading up to the elections. The political landscape remains fragile, and the nation’s stability hangs in the balance.

A steadfast commitment to the rule of law will be crucial as the country navigates this turbulent period.

Adding to the tension is the role of the Samoan diaspora, who amplified the political divide from abroad, fueling the ongoing discord. As the election approaches, only time will reveal how these dynamics will shape Samoa’s political future.

Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson is a Samoan journalist with over 20 years of experience reporting on the Pacific Islands. She is founding editor-in-chief of The New Atoll, a digital commentary magazine focusing on Pacific island geopolitics. Lilomaiava Maina Vai is the local host of Radio Samoa and editor of Nofoilo Samoa. Republished from the Devpolicy Blog with permission.

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

Samoa’s prime minister and the five other ousted members of the ruling FAST Party are reportedly challenging their removal.

FAST chair La’auli Leuatea Schmidt on Wednesday announced the removal of the prime minister and five Cabinet ministers from the ruling party.

Twenty party members signed for the removal of Fiame Naomi Mata’afa and five others, including Deputy Prime Minister Tuala Iosefo Ponifasio and two original members.

• READ MORE: Explainer: Power struggle: where to from here?
• Samoa Observer: For the people or for themselves? — Editorial
• Samoa’s political future hangs in balance with Fiame leadership challenge
• Let law take its course: PM Fiame on Laauli’s charges
• Other Samoan politics reports

Samoa media outlets have been reporting that in a letter dated January 17, one of the removed members, Faualo Harry Schuster, wrote: “We all reject the letter of termination as relayed as unlawful and unconstitutional.”

In the letter, which is circulating on social media, he claimed they were still members of the FAST party.

Local media reports had suggested members of the FAST party had called for Fiame’s removal as prime minister.

Meanwhile, the government’s Savali newspaper has confirmed the removal of 13 associate ministers of Fiame’s Cabinet.

“The termination of their appointments stem from the issue of confidence in the Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa to continue work with the associate ministers, as well as the associate ministers’ expression of no confidence in her leadership,” it said.

“The official statement emphasises that the functions and responsibilities of the Executive Arm of Government continues under the leadership of the Prime Minister — Fiame Naomi Mata’afa and Cabinet.”

Fiame had last week removed three members of her Cabinet, after she also stood down La’auli, who is facing criminal charges.

Parliament is scheduled to reconvene on Tuesday, January 21.

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

There should be only one reason why people enter politics. It is for the good of the nation and the people who voted them in. It is to be their voice at the national level where the country’s future is decided.

The recent developments within the Samoan government are a stark reminder that people have chosen politics for reasons other than that. We are at a point where people are guessing what is next.

Will the faction backing Laauli Leuatea Schmidt continue on their path to remove Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa or will they bite the bullet and work together for the better of the nation?

• READ MORE: Samoa’s political future hangs in balance with Fiame leadership challenge
• Let law take its course: PM Fiame on Laauli’s charges
• Other Samoan politics reports

The removal of the prime minister and the nation heading to snap elections has far-ranging implications. While the politicians plot and play a game of chess with the nation and its people, at the end of the day it will be people who will feel the adverse effects.

After the 2021 Constitutional Crisis and then the economic downturn from the effects of the measles lockdown and the covid-19 pandemic, the nation had just started recovering. A snap election would impact this recovery and the opportunity cost would be far greater than people have thought.

According to political scientist Dr Christina La’ala’i Tauasa, should the ruling party proceed with a vote of no confidence against the PM. In terms of party unity, a no-confidence vote could deepen internal divisions within the FAST party, potentially leading to a leadership crisis and a weakened government.

“Overall, there is Samoa’s political stability to carefully take into consideration as a successful vote of no confidence will no doubt destabilise the country’s political landscape, prompting more questions about the state of the party’s cohesion, particularly their ability and capacity to effectively govern and lead Samoa given their first term in government. The country and the FAST party cannot afford to go into a snap election, it would be a loss for all except the Opposition party,” she said.

The nation needs leadership that will drive economic growth, the development of infrastructure and basic services.

There is a hospital that is slowly falling apart, there are not enough doctors and nurses, teachers are needed in hundreds, people are unable to send children to school because of high education costs and the disabled population does not have access to equal opportunities in education and employment, better roads are needed, towns are getting flooded whenever it rains, there is a meth scourge which indicates the need for better control at the border, agriculture and fisheries are in dire need of fuel injection, many families are living in poverty, there is a need for an overhaul of the electricity infrastructure and not every household in the country can access clean water.

The list goes on. This should be the focus of the government and if the government is split then this cannot take place. It seems like there is a race to grab power at the expense of the people.

If politicians are concerned about the good of the nation and its people, all efforts should be made to have a government in place that would focus on these issues.

The days leading up to the first parliamentary session and thereafter will bring to light the true colours of the people we have elected. There will be two kinds, one who chose the path to genuinely help improve the lives of the people and prosper the nation and the second who only wants to prosper their needs.

Time will tell.

This Samoa Observer editorial was first published on 16 January 2025. Republished with permission.

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

With just over a year left in her tenure as Prime Minister of Samoa, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa faces a political upheaval threatening a peaceful end to her term.

Ironically, the rule of law — the very principle that elevated her to power — has now become the source of significant challenges within her party.

Fiame left the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) in 2020, opposing constitutional amendments she believed undermined judicial independence. Her decision reflected a commitment to democratic principles and a rejection of increasing authoritarianism within the HRPP.

• READ MORE: Other Samoan politics reports

She joined the newly formed Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party, created by former HRPP members seeking an alternative to decades of one-party dominance.

As FAST’s leader, Fiame led the party to a historic victory in the 2021 election, becoming Samoa’s first female Prime Minister and ending the HRPP’s nearly 40-year rule.

Her leadership is now under threat from within her own party.

FAST Founder, chairman and former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries La’auli Leuatea Polataivao Schmidt, faces criminal charges, including conspiracy and harassment. These developments have escalated into calls for Fiame’s removal from her party.

Deputy charged with offences
On 3 January 2025, La’auli publicly revealed he had been charged with offences including conspiracy to obstruct justice, fabricating evidence, and harassment. These charges prompted widespread speculation, fueled by misinformation spread primarily via Facebook, that the charges were related to allegations of his involvement in an ongoing investigation into the death of a 19-year-old victim of a hit-and-run.

Following La’auli’s refusal to resign from his role as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Fiame removed his portfolio on January 10, citing the need to uphold the integrity of her Cabinet.

“As Prime Minister, I had hoped that the former minister would choose to resign. This is a common stance often considered by esteemed public office custodians if allegations or charges are laid against them,” she explained.

In response to his dismissal, La’auli stated publicly: “I accept the decision with a humble heart.” He maintained his innocence, saying, “I am clean from all of this,” and expressed confidence that the truth will prevail.

La’auli urged his supporters to remain calm and emphasised his commitment to clearing his name while continuing to serve as a Member of Parliament for Gagaifomauga 3.

Following his removal, the Samoan media reported that members of the FAST party wrote a letter to Fiame requesting her removal as Prime Minister.

Three ministers dismissed
In response, Fiame dismissed three Cabinet Ministers, Mulipola Anarosa Ale-Molio’o (Women, Community, and Social Development), Toelupe Poumulinuku Onesemo (Communication and Information Technology), and Leota Laki Sio (Commerce, Industry, and Labor) — allegedly involved in the effort to unseat her.

Fiame emphasised the need for a cohesive and trustworthy Cabinet, stating the importance of maintaining confidence in her leadership.

Amid rumors of calls for her removal within the FAST party, Fiame acknowledged the party’s authority to replace her as its leader but clarified that only Parliament could determine her status as Prime Minister.

She expressed her determination to fulfill her duties despite internal challenges, though she did not specify the level of support she retains within the party.

Samoa’s Parliament is set to convene next Tuesday, where these tensions may reach a critical point. La’auli, facing multiple criminal charges, remains a focal point of the ongoing political turmoil.

A day after the announcement, on January 15, four new Ministers were sworn into office by Head of State Tuimaleali’ifano Va’aleto’a Sualauvi II at a ceremony attended by family, friends, and some FAST members.

The new Ministers are Faleomavaega Titimaea Tafua (Commerce, Industry, and Labour), Laga’aia Ti’aitu’au Tufuga (Women, Community, and Social Development), Mau’u Siaosi Pu’epu’emai (Communications and Information Technology), and Niu’ava Eti Malolo (Agriculture and Fisheries).

FAST caucus voted against Fiame
Later that evening, FAST chairman La’auli announced that 20 members of the FAST caucus had decided to remove Fiame from the leadership of FAST and expel her from the party along with five other Cabinet Ministers — Tuala Tevaga Ponifasio (Deputy Prime Minister), Leatinuu Wayne Fong, Olo Fiti Vaai, Faualo Harry Schuster, and Toesulusulu Cedric Schuster.

In Samoa, if an MP ceases to maintain affiliation with the political party under which they were elected — whether through resignation or expulsion, their seat is declared vacant if they choose to move to another party or form a new party.

These provisions aim to preserve political stability, prevent party-hopping, and maintain the integrity of parliamentary representation, with byelections held as needed to fill vacancies.

Under Section 142 of Samoa’s Electoral Act 2019, if the Speaker believes an MP’s seat has become vacant as per Section 141, they are required to formally charge the MP with that vacation.

If the Legislative Assembly is in session, this charge must be made orally during the Assembly. Fiame and the four FAST members can choose to maintain their seats in Parliament as Independents.

Former Prime Minister and now opposition leader Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi remarked that what should have been internal FAST issues had spilled into the public sphere.

“We have been watching and we continue to watch what they do and how they deal with their problems,” he stated.

Freedom of expression
When asked whether he would consider a coalition or support one side of FAST, Tuilaepa declined to reveal the opposition’s strategy, citing potential reactions from the other side. He emphasised the importance of adhering to democratic processes and protecting constitutional rights, including freedom of expression.

As Parliament prepares to reconvene on January 21, Facebook has become a battlefield for misinformation and defamatory discourse, particularly among FAST supporters in diaspora communities in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

Divisions have emerged between supporters of Fiame and La’auli, leading to vitriol directed at politicians and journalists covering the crisis. La’auli, leveraging his social media following, has conducted Facebook Live sessions to assert his innocence and rally support.

Currently, FAST holds 35 seats in Parliament, while the opposition HRPP controls 18. If the removal of five MPs is factored in, FAST would retain 30 MPs, though La’auli claims that 20 members support Fiame’s removal. This leaves 10 MPs who may either support Fiame or remain neutral.

If FAST fails to expel Fiame, La’auli’s faction may push for a motion of no confidence against her.

Such a motion requires 27 votes to pass, potentially making the opposition pivotal in determining the outcome. This could lead to either Fiame’s removal or the dissolution of Parliament for a snap election.

As Samoa faces this political crisis, its democratic institutions undergo a significant test.

Fiame remains committed to the rule of law, while La’auli advocates for her removal.

Reflecting on the stakes, Fiame warned: “Disregarding the rule of law will undoubtedly have far-reaching negative impacts, including undermining our judiciary system and the abilities of our law enforcement agencies to fulfill their duties.”

For now, Samoa watches and waits as its political future hangs in the balance.

Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson is a Samoan journalist with over 20 years of experience reporting on the Pacific Islands. She is founding editor-in-chief of The New Atoll, a digital commentary magazine focusing on Pacific island geopolitics. Junior S. Ami is a photojournalist based in Samoa. He has covered national events for the Samoa Observer newspaper and runs a private photography business. Republished from the Devpolicy Blog with permission.

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

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The post SCOTUS weighs challenge to Tennessee’s ban on transgender health care for minors; California AG vows to protect immigrants against Trump’s pledge for ‘mass deportations’ – December 4, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

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

This article was produced by The Maine Monitor, which was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2022-23. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In the first major update to assisted living and residential care regulations in more than 15 years, the Maine Department of Health and Human Services has proposed significantly increasing staffing requirements, among other changes.

The proposed updates follow an investigation by The Maine Monitor and ProPublica into the state’s largest residential care facilities. It found dozens of violations of resident rights, including incidents of abuse and neglect, as well as more than 100 cases in which residents wandered away from their facilities and hundreds of medication and treatment violations.

As part of the news organizations’ investigation, one facility owner called the current staffing requirement “scary,” “unsafe” and “completely inadequate.” Experts, advocates and providers said requiring higher staffing levels, better training and more nursing care would help address these problems.

During a public hearing this month, the department proposed doubling the number of direct care workers at residential care facilities overnight and setting stricter rules in memory care units that go beyond the state and federal staffing requirements at nursing homes. DHHS must present its proposed regulations to lawmakers by Jan. 10 in order for them to be considered in the upcoming legislative session.

Assisted living programs serve older Mainers, adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and people with mental illness. These facilities offer less medical care than nursing homes, but they have expanded in recent years after the state capped the number of nursing home beds in the 1990s. In the last decade, at least 26 nursing homes have closed in Maine.

That shift has meant that the needs of residents in these facilities have “increased significantly,” said Brenda Gallant, Maine’s long-term care ombudsman, the state’s advocate for residents and their families. “Current regulations for assisted housing have not kept pace with the increasing needs of residents,” Gallant said, citing assessments from the state in recent years that as many as one-third of residents in these facilities could qualify for nursing home care.

Currently, residential care facilities with more than 10 beds require one direct care worker for 12 residents during the day, one for 18 residents during the evening, and one for 30 overnight. Under the proposed regulations, these ratios would be increased to one direct care worker for eight residents during the day and evening shifts and one for 15 residents overnight.

Currently, facilities with 10 or fewer beds must at all times have at least one responsible adult present. That would be increased to two on duty at all times.

For memory care units, the proposed staffing requirements are even stricter — and higher than those currently required in nursing homes: one direct care worker for five residents during the day and evening, and one worker for 10 residents on overnight shifts.

Experts and advocates have told The Monitor that residents with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are among the most vulnerable because they have a tendency to wander. The proposed regulations also require assessing residents for risk of elopement, defined as “leaving a secure facility without authorization or supervision.” The Monitor and ProPublica found that there were at least 115 reported elopements at Maine residential care facilities from 2020 to 2022, according to state inspection records and a database of incidents reported to the health department.

The proposed changes came as “quite a shock,” said Angela Cole Westhoff, president and CEO of the Maine Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes and assisted living facilities across the state.

Westhoff and facility administrators repeatedly asked the state during this month’s hearing to pause the process in order to get more industry input. A DHHS spokesperson did not respond to questions about what would happen if it missed the Jan. 10 deadline for submitting proposals to the Legislature in favor of more discussion.

The staffing requirements will mean adding about 2,000 more direct care workers, according to estimates from MHCA.

“This industry is not financially positioned to incur significant new costs without a corresponding increase in MaineCare spending and private pay pricing,” Westhoff said, referring to Maine’s version of Medicaid. Providers strongly disputed DHHS’ assertion that the rule was expected to have “minimal fiscal impact on licensed providers.”

DLTC Healthcare & Bella Point, a company that owns and operates 17 residential care facilities, estimated the change would cost an additional $108,000 annually for each 30-bed facility.

The director of finance and human resources for Schooner Estates, Schooner Memory Care and Fallbrook Woods estimated the three facilities would need to add 68 full-time-equivalent employees, totaling $4.5 million a year.

Woodlands Senior Living, which operates 16 facilities in Maine, said it would need to hire more than 300 staff members across its facilities, totaling nearly $13 million a year.

Many providers said they would likely have to pass these costs on to residents unless the regulations came with an increase in MaineCare reimbursement from the state.

Facility owners and administrators also warned that increased staffing requirements would be difficult to meet due to workforce shortages. During the hearing, one resident services director in Saco said they have been trying to hire a nurse for more than two years. Another administrator said her facility’s last opening took two months to fill, and when they finally hired, the candidate had “no qualifications” and required months of training.

DHHS spokesperson Lindsay Hammes said the department could not comment about the proposals during the rulemaking process and noted that the proposals could change based on public comments, which were accepted until Nov. 25.

While facility representatives offered vocal opposition at the recent hearing, others testified in support.

Citing a recent survey of direct care workers, Nicole Marchesi, who works in the ombudsman’s office, said increasing staff ratios could help prevent burnout and turnover.

“Staff continue to express the frustration around caring for residents who are nursing home level of care in assisted living,” Marchesi said. “When staffing is insufficient, resident safety is jeopardized.”

Gallant, the long-term care ombudsman, and Legal Services for Maine Elders also recommended having license renewal and survey inspections completed annually, rather than every two years, and creating a standard practice to follow up on plans of correction when facilities are cited for deficiencies. In their investigation into elopements, The Monitor and ProPublica found that in the vast majority of cases, DHHS never inspects facilities and rarely imposes sanctions.

“The stakes here are high,” wrote John Brautigam on behalf of Legal Services for Maine Elders. “These rules have the potential to prevent neglect, improve health outcomes, and foster environments where residents feel valued and safe. We owe it to them to ensure these protections are as strong as possible.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by Rose Lundy, The Maine Monitor.

As voters across the United States head to the polls, we speak with New York Times writer Jim Rutenberg about how Donald Trump may try to preemptively declare victory and challenge election results. The former president has ramped up claims Democrats are “a bunch of cheats” and preemptively cast doubt on a win by Vice President Kamala Harris, following a similar playbook as 2020 when he baselessly claimed the election was stolen. Rutenberg spoke to pro-Trump election officials in battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania who say they are ready to refuse to certify local election results as part of a wide-ranging effort to throw the system into disarray. Rutenberg says after the failed insurrection of January 6, 2021, many in Trump’s orbit had a clear goal for 2024: “We have to go local.” He also discusses the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 that makes it harder to stop the final certification of results.

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

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In an ornate room in Georgia’s Capitol, Julie Adams — a member both of the election board serving the state’s most populous county and of a right-wing organization sowing skepticism about American elections — got the news she was waiting for. And she couldn’t wait to share it.

With pink manicured nails that matched her trim pink blazer, she tapped out a message on her phone to a top election lawyer for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. “Got it passed,” she wrote to Gineen Bresso, photographs reviewed by ProPublica show.

What had passed that September afternoon in Atlanta was a state rule, championed by Adams, that would allow poll watchers like those she’d trained to gain greater access to sensitive areas in counting centers where votes were being tallied. The rule was a priority for supporters of former President Donald Trump who are looking to pave the way to challenge election results if their candidate loses this week’s vote.

The win was one in a string of them for Adams, who quickly ascended from a little-known, financially troubled conservative activist to a surprise appointee to the Fulton County board of elections. Her note to Bresso signaled not just this particular victory but the extent to which the 61-year-old has used her new perch to carry out the efforts of national players seeking to tilt the election in Trump’s favor.

Fulton itself is significant in state and national politics for a host of reasons: its sheer concentration of Democratic voters (380,000 in 2020, more than any other Georgia county), the scrutiny it received from national election skeptics after Trump lost the state by fewer than 12,000 votes — and, now, its newest election board member’s outsize role in trying to influence Georgia’s election processes.

Her actions in her nine months on the Fulton County board have been prodigious. She secretly helped push another, arguably higher-stakes rule through the state election board that vastly expanded the authority of county board members to refuse to certify votes they deem suspicious. She herself refused to certify the results of the presidential primary in March (though the board’s Democratic majority overruled her), and then she sued her board and election director, asserting local officials should be allowed to refuse to certify vote totals if there are discrepancies, which experts say are almost always innocuous. Some of her lawyers in that case work for the America First Policy Institute, an advocacy group staffed with former Trump officials.

So far, Adams’ efforts have mostly failed. Two judges have invalidated rules that Adams backed, with one calling them “illegal, unconstitutional and void.” But other efforts are still underway. The month after joining the Fulton County election board, Adams became regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network, the group founded by lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who joined Trump on a call when he asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to overturn the 2020 election results there.

In that role, Adams runs weekly calls for Republican activists who have described Georgia’s voting as rigged, and she has pulled conservative members of local election boards into a loose coalition, many of whom have challenged results in their counties, too. And prominent conservative election lawyers, writers and national groups have used Adams’ push against certification in Georgia as the basis for a national argument.

Adams did not respond to numerous requests for comment or a detailed list of questions. Nor did representatives for the Election Integrity Network.

The Georgia-based group that hired Adams in 2022, Tea Party Patriots Action, has received millions of dollars from organizations closely tied to conservative legal activist and fundraiser Leonard Leo and billionaire Richard Uihlein, tax records show. Uihlein-backed groups launched unsubstantiated attacks on the legitimacy of voter rolls in at least a dozen states after the 2020 election.

A representative for Uihlein did not respond to questions. A representative for Leo would not elaborate on his contributions to organizations that supported Tea Party Patriots.

The true test of Adams’ effectiveness will come on Election Day — and, if the results in Georgia are anywhere near as close and consequential as they were in 2020, in the days and weeks beyond.

“She’s trying to help Trump win or trying to create chaos in the administration of the election in order to cast aspersions on it if he doesn’t win,” said Patrise Perkins-Hooker, who served as chair of the county election board when Adams joined. Perkins-Hooker described Adams’ work as centered on carrying out the agenda of right-wing activists and not making “the elections run smoothly or transparently.”

In response to ProPublica’s questions, the Republican National Committee provided a statement that said: “The Georgia state election board passed commonsense safeguards to secure Georgia's elections. The Trump-Vance Campaign and RNC supported these rules to bring transparency and accountability to the election process.” It also said, “The RNC defended these rules in court against attacks from Kamala and the DNC and will continue to fight against Democrat election interference.”

Back in 2020, Mitchell and others challenging the results across the country had to rely on disorganized groups of Trump supporters who came together at the last minute and were mostly unfamiliar with election systems. Experts now warn about the more pronounced impact that election deniers like Adams will have, given that they have come to occupy positions of power in local election administration. As Trump said at an October rally in North Carolina: “The vote counter is far more important than the candidate.”

“It was universal support for Julie,” said Earl Ferguson, a vice chair of the Fulton County Republicans, who has also filed challenges to voters’ eligibility and repeated debunked conspiracy theories about the reliability of voting machines at election board meetings. (Ferguson does not agree that the points he made about the machines were not valid.) “She is honest and very capable, and very pleasant.”

After Trump lost the 2020 election, Adams and a small group of conservative activists became regular attendees at election board meetings. On a few occasions, she addressed the board during the public comment period, questioning the integrity of the county’s elections and its certification process. But she was much less outspoken than other activists in the group.

“When Adams was appointed, little was known about her connections to election deniers to justify opposition,” said Max Flugrath, spokesperson for Fair Fight, the Georgia-based voting advocacy organization. “Voting rights groups instead focused on opposing candidates with documented anti-voter records.”

Adams had worked in human resources and executive recruiting. Records show she also had experienced major financial setbacks. She’d filed for bankruptcy in 2005, and her mortgage company had auctioned her Cobb County home on the courthouse steps in 2010. A landlord later sued her, and she agreed to pay more than $13,000 in back rent, according to a 2021 consent agreement.

That same year, she trained 32 poll watchers to monitor the 2021 municipal elections. And she told county commissioners that she believed some tally sheets from an audit of the 2020 election had been “falsified.”

In 2022, Tea Party Patriots Action, the politically active arm of one of the largest national Tea Party groups, hired Adams as a field director, paying her about $124,000 a year according to tax filings.

Her hire came at a time when the group was pulling in cash and intensifying its focus on election issues. Groups funded by Leo, who is seen as the architect behind the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, provided the Tea Party group and a related foundation at least $1.1 million between 2020 and 2022, records show, including a 2021 grant related to election integrity. The group also hired Leo’s firm as consultants.

In 2022, Tea Party Patriots Action more than doubled its annual revenue, thanks in part to a $2.5 million grant from Restoration of America — which is backed by Uihlein, the billionaire owner of the packing supplies company Uline. That year, former Trump campaign official Gina Swoboda was a Restoration for America executive director. Restoration has spent the years since Trump lost in 2020 pushing the unfounded idea that discrepancies in voter roll data between the number of votes and the number of ballots cast are evidence of fraud, despite insistence by elected officials from both parties that the claims are baseless.

That year, the Tea Party group added a program to bring in poll watchers and workers in Georgia, records show. And it had Adams in place.

Representatives for the Tea Party group and Restoration of America did not respond to requests for comment. Swoboda did not respond to questions.

Adams has run scores of poll watcher and worker online trainings, with some drawing dozens of people, records reviewed by ProPublica show. In a May training, Adams listed over 10 things that she wants trainees to report, from the serial numbers on voting machines to the names of poll managers. “There’s no such thing as too much documentation,” she said in a recording of a May training. “If something doesn’t feel right to you, you need to write it out.”

At an October training, she told the roughly three dozen attendees, including those joining from out of state, to first report discrepancies to their state GOP and RNC hotlines and then to VoterGA, an organization whose leader has cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election. The Republican Party and right-wing organizations plan to use the poll watchers’ reports in post-election litigation, ProPublica has reported.

“VoterGA has an 18-year proven track record of nonpartisan activity,” said co-founder Garland Favorito. “Republicans and Democrats are told to call their own party hotlines for election issues. We have no plans or resources to file any type of speculative litigation in any matter.”

While working for the Tea Party, Adams also led weekly meetings frequented by prominent state activists, RNC officials, GOP county heads, conservative election board members and voter registration challengers, according to records including emails obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and shared with ProPublica.

Agendas included subjects such as “Voter Integrity concerns for 2024 Elections” and warnings like “New York Times Reporter traveling to several counties in Georgia.”

In 2022, Adams had appeared at the Election Integrity Network’s Georgia chapter launch and was described the following year as its state liaison in social media posts by other activists.

But much of her work was done behind the scenes. So when the county GOP nominated her to join the election board in the heavily Democratic Fulton County, commissioners approved the choice 6-0.

After Adams joined the board in February, it did not take long for fellow members to begin worrying about her intentions. The board is made up of four political appointees, two by each party, led by a chair chosen by the Democratic-majority county commission. Traditionally, the board’s primary goal has been to make Fulton elections run smoothly, past and present board members said.

However, Perkins-Hooker, the chair when Adams joined, said that during meetings, she could see Adams receiving text messages from a Republican activist “telling her what to say, and what to do.” After Perkins-Hooker stepped down in April, the new chair banned board members from using phones during meetings.

“She came with a mission to try and paint our elections as being fraught with fraud and incompetency,” said Perkins-Hooker, an opinion echoed by other board members.

Adams had been on the board for just a few weeks when, in March, she was elevated to regional coordinator for the Election Integrity Network, the organization that Mitchell, Trump’s lawyer, had launched. The new position put her near the top of the leadership’s organizational chart.

Adams quickly began pushing conservative priorities at election board meetings. She wanted poll watchers to have more access to vote tallies from election machines. And she was very concerned about the mechanics of certifying elections. Though a century of case law says that certification is a mandatory duty for officials like her — whom experts compare to scorekeepers, not referees — Adams began questioning if she had to do it. She demanded reams of information she said that she needed to be certain of the results before certifying.

At Adams’ third meeting, in March, she and the other Republican board member shocked Democratic board members by voting against the certification of the presidential primary election — though the Democratic majority overruled them.

Adams’ push to have power over certification of election results couldn’t succeed under the state’s current rules, so she set out to change them.

To do so, she lobbied to remake the body that determined them, the State Election Board, which at the time was composed of two moderate Republican members, two MAGA-aligned members and a Democrat. She activated the coalition she had been building with the support of national Republicans, inviting them to a March meeting where the goal was to ensure that the moderate Republican on the State Election Board was replaced. “The Georgia House of Representatives needs to take action immediately!!!!” the meeting invitation read, providing the phone number of the speaker of the house.

Not long afterward, the speaker replaced that board member with a conservative media personality whom Trump would soon praise by name at a rally.

The new Trump-backed majority quickly began passing rules that the prior board had criticized as illegal, including one, originally pushed by Adams, expanding the power of county board members to refuse to certify votes they found suspicious. It was passed by the new board along with another rule potentially allowing county board members to delay certification.

A national outcry ensued, with The New York Times calling it “The Republican Plan to Challenge a Harris Victory.”

Three of the nation’s leading conservative election lawyers backed the new rules. A conservative group ran ads targeting swing state election officials that echoed the lawyers’ arguments. And the certification rule Adams pushed became a talking point for conservative media outlets. One article in The Federalist argued that it “could stop leftists from bullying election officials into certifying results without completing their duties.” Lawyers for the Republican National Committee and a Trump-aligned conservative think tank also defended the certification rules in Georgia superior court, testing arguments that certifying election results was optional.

Adams’ arguments that certification is not mandatory inspired David Hancock, a GOP member of Gwinnett County’s election board, to vote against certifying the same presidential primary as Adams. (He described several minor inconsistencies as sufficient reason for him not to certify.) “It was, like, a big deal,” Hancock said of Adams’ decision to vote against certifying.

Because two judges in October invalidated the new rules passed by the State Election Board, the mechanics of the election this week will be the same as before Adams’ pushes to empower poll watchers and county election board members.

But at a combative Fulton County board meeting the week before the election, Adams made clear that she wasn’t going to let the judge’s rulings stop her from continuing her campaign. Despite the county’s lawyer telling her that the certification rule she had pushed had been stayed, she argued that it had actually not been, citing her lawyers. “I’ve learned how the system works — or at least how it was supposed to work,” Adams said. “I’ve learned how sometimes it doesn’t work as the law requires, right here in Fulton County.”

Mollie Simon contributed research and Andy Kroll contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Doug Bock Clark and Heather Vogell.

Will the BRICS economic and political alliance change the world’s U.S.-centered balance of power? As the annual BRICS summit wraps up in Russia, we host a debate between American economist Richard Wolff and South African sociologist Patrick Bond over the significance of the conference. This year, the nine BRICS countries invited 13 new “partner states” into their alliance, which Wolff calls “historic” and “a serious economic competitor to the United States and its role in the world.” Bond, on the other hand, argues that BRICS should be considered a “subimperial” formation, which expands and legitimates the existing world economic system rather than truly disrupting it.

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

The majority of Cubans support Castro…every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba…to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.

— Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, 1960

Despite draconian coercive measures by the US – overwhelmingly condemned every year by the UN General Assembly, with the next vote slated for October 29-30 – the Cuban Revolution has had extraordinary successes. This small, impoverished, formerly colonized island nation has achieved levels of education, medical services, and performance in many other fields, including sports, that rival the first world, through the application of socialist principles.

Cuba has rightly become a model of internationalism and an exemplar of socialism. As a consequence, every US administration for over six decades has targeted this “threat of a good example.” Back in its early days, the Cuban Revolution was bolstered by socialist solidarity, particularly from the Soviet Union.

The contemporary geopolitical situation is very different. Most notably the socialist bloc is defunct. Meanwhile, Cuba continues to be confronted by a still hegemonic US. In turn, the Yankee empire is now challenged by the hope of an emergent multipolar order. Cuba has expressed interest in joining the BRICS trade alliance of emerging economies and will attend their meeting in Russia, October 22-24.

Successes turned into liabilities

Today, Cuba is confronting perhaps its greatest challenge. The ever intensified US blockade is designed to perversely turn the successes of the revolution into liabilities.

For example, the revolution achieved one hundred percent literacy, created farming collectives and cooperatives, and mechanized cultivation, thus freeing the campesinos from the drudgery of peasant subsistence agriculture.

But now, most tractors are idle, in need of scarce fuel and embargoed spare parts. Agricultural production has subsequently contracted. In May, I was on a bus that traveled the length of the island. Mile upon mile of once productive agricultural fields lay fallow.

Historical yields of key crops are down nearly 40% due to lack of fertilizers and pesticides, according to a Cuban government statement. The daily bread ration has been slashed, Reuters reports.

In order to feed the nation, the state has had to use precious hard currency to import food; currency which otherwise could be used to repair a crumbling infrastructure. Broken pipes have caused widespread shortages of drinking water.

Under siege, some 10% percent of the population, over a million Cubans, have left between 2022 and 2023. This has, in turn, led to a drain of skilled labor and a decrease in productivity, contributing to a vicious cycle driving out-migration.

Le Monde diplomatique cautions: “Cuba is facing a moment that is extraordinarily precarious. While numerous factors have led to this…US sanctions have, at every juncture, triggered or worsened every aspect of the current crisis.”

The Obama engagement

 Of the some 40 sovereign states sanctioned and slated for regime-change by Washington, Cuba is somewhat unique. Until recently, the island did not have the domestic social classes from which a counter-revolutionary base could be recruited.

In Cuba, most bourgeoisie under the Batista dictatorship left the country shortly after the revolution. The large US corporations that they had operated were expropriated. Similarly, when the government nationalized many small businesses in the 1960s, others fled to US shores.

By 2014, then-US President Obama lamented that Washington’s Cuba policy had “failed to advance our interests.” Obama’s new strategy was to engage Cuba in the hope of fostering a counter-revolutionary class opposition.

Obama reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba after a hiatus dating to 1961. Travel and some trade restrictions were lifted. And more remittances from relatives living in the US could be sent to Cuba.

In his famous March 2016 speech in Havana, Obama proclaimed to rousing applause: “I’ve called on our Congress to lift the embargo.” This was an outright lie. The US president had only remarked that the so-called embargo (really a blockade, because the US enforces it on third countries) was “outdated.”

Obama lauded the cuentapropistas, small entrepreneurs in Cuba, and pledged to help promote that stratum. He promised a new US policy focus of encouraging small businesses in Cuba. “There’s no limitation from the United States on the ability of Cuba to take these steps” to create what in effect would be a potentially counter-revolutionary class, Obama promised.

Obama warned the Cubans, “over time, the youth will lose hope” if prosperity were not achieved by creating a new small business class.

While normalizing relations with Cuba, Obama took a more adversarial stance toward Venezuela. He declared the oil-rich South American nation an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and imposed “targeted sanctions” on March 2015. The successes of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution in promoting regional integration were challenging US influence in Latin America, prompting Washington to adopt a “dual-track diplomacy” of engagement with Cuba and containment with Venezuela.

Obama spoke of the “failed” US policy on Cuba, which had not achieved “its intended goals.” Often left unsaid was that the “goal” has been to reverse the Cuban revolution. Obama’s intent was not to terminate the US regime-change policy, but to achieve it more effectively.

His engagement tactic should not be confused for accord. Obama still championed the three belligerent core elements of the US policy: a punishing blockade, occupation of the port of Guantanamo, and covert actions to undermine and destabilize Cuba.

Trump undoes and outdoes Obama

 Donald Trump assumed office at a time when the leftist Pink Tide was ebbing. Taking advantage of the changed geopolitical context, the new president intensified Obama’s offensive against Cuba’s closest regional supporter Venezuela, while reversing his predecessor’s engagement with Havana. His “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela devastated their oil sector, thereby reducing Cuba’s petroleum subsidies from its ally.

Trump enacted 243 coercive measures against Cuba. He ended individual “people-to-people” educational travel, banned US business with military-linked Cuban entities, and imposed caps on remittances. In the closing days of his administration, he relisted Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, which further cut the island off from international finance.

Biden continues and extends Trump’s policies

 Joe Biden, while campaigning for the presidency, played to liberal sentiment with vague inferences that he would restore a policy of engagement and undo Trump’s sanctions on Cuba.

By the time Biden assumed the US presidency, Cuba had been heavily impacted by the Covid pandemic. Temporary lockdowns reduced domestic productivity. Travel restrictions dried up tourist dollars, a major source of foreign currency.

Once in office and Cuba ever more vulnerable, Biden continued and extended Trump’s policies, including retaining it on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

At the height of the Covid pandemic, Belly of the Beast reported how scarcities in Cuba fueled anti-government demonstrations on July 11, 2021. Eleven days later, Biden imposed yet more sanctions to further exacerbate the scarcities.

As an article in the LA Progressive explained, “Cuba’s humanitarian crisis – fueled by the sanctions maintained by Biden – seems to have only encouraged his administration to keep tightening the screws,” concluding “his policy remains largely indistinguishable from that of Trump.”

Biden, however, continued the Obama policy of empowering the Cuban private sector. He allowed more remittances, disproportionately benefiting Cubans with relatives in the US (who tend to be better off financially). He also facilitated international fund transfers involving private Cuban businesses. Amendments to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations enhanced internet access to encourage development of private telecommunications infrastructures for “independent entrepreneurs.”

 What about Democratic Party presidential hopeful Kamala Harris?

“When evaluating the impact of a possible Kamala Harris electoral victory on the United States’ Cuba policy,” On Cuba News admits, “the first thing that should be recognized is the lack of evidence or antecedents to form a well-founded forecast.” Likewise, the Miami Herald finds Harris’s current Latin American policies a mystery with “few clues and a lot of uncertainty.”

Going back to when she was on the vice-presidential campaign trail in 2020, Harris commented about the possibility of easing the blockade on what she called the “dictatorship.” She said that won’t happen anytime soon and would have to be predicated on a new Washington-approved government in Cuba.

Alternative for Cuba

If Cubans want to see what an alternative future might be like under Yankee beneficence, they need only look 48 miles to the east at the deliberately made to fail state of Haiti.

In the US, the National Network on Cuba, ACERE, and Pastors for Peace are among the organizations working to end the blockade and get Cuba off the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.

As the US Peace Council admonished: “No matter how heroic a people may be, socialism must provide for their material needs. The US blockade of Cuba is designed precisely to thwart that and to discredit socialism in Cuba and anywhere else where oppressed people try to better their lot…The intensified US interference in Cuba is a wakeup call for greater efforts at solidarity.”

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

“Anything that’s lithium-ion and exposed to salt water can have an issue,” said Bill Morelli, the fire chief in Seminole, Florida, and the bigger the battery, the greater the threat. That’s what makes EVs especially hazardous. “[The problem] has expanded as they continue to be more and more popular.”

It is not yet clear how many vehicles might have caught fire in the wake of Hurricane Milton, which slammed into Tampa Bay on Wednesday, leaving at least 13 people dead and some 80,000 in shelters. But there have been 48 confirmed battery fires related to storm surge from Hurricane Helene, 11 of them associated with EVs.

Morelli’s crews fought three of them. St. Petersburg Fire Rescue reported at least two, one from an electric bike and another from a Mercedes-Benz EQB300 that led to what a fire department representative called “major damage to the home.” CNN and other outlets reported on a fire in Sarasota sparked by a Tesla Model X. 

Overall, such fires are far from common. Idaho National Laboratory found that of the 3,000 to 5,000 electric vehicles damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022, about three dozen caught fire. Public awareness of the risk has mounted since then, with officials up to and including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urging residents to move their EVs to higher ground ahead of storms. But the chemistry and construction of lithium-ion batteries make them especially prone to fires that are difficult for first responders to combat.

“They burn hot, they burn fast, and they’re hard to extinguish,” Morelli said.

The battery in an EV is comprised of thousands of cells stacked and packed into a sealed enclosure. If salt water, which is particularly conductive, reaches the interior of a battery, it can cause a short circuit, which can generate excessive heat that jumps from cell to cell. “That’s called ‘thermal runaway,’” said Andrew Klock, senior manager of education and development at the National Fire Protection Association. 

As a battery heats up, it releases flammable gases that can ignite. Once the car starts burning, methods of putting out traditional vehicle fires — such as foam or thermal blankets to smother the flames — aren’t as effective. “Lithium-ion batteries generate their own oxygen and heat when they are on fire,” Klock said. “You can’t starve the fire.“

Instead, first responders must direct high volumes of water at the battery pack as directly as possible in order to reduce the heat. The International Association of Fire Chiefs recommends having 3,000 to 8,000 gallons on hand — which can be difficult during a disaster, when hydrants may not be working properly and trucks have a limited supply aboard. 

“They take tons and tons and tons and tons of water to extinguish,” said Morelli, who is working with other departments to acquire more thermal blankets. A ready supply of them could allow firefighters to smother the flames enough to move the car away from structures so it can burn itself out safely. 

Klock said “training is paramount” to effectively fighting these fires. But of the roughly 1.2 million firefighters in the country, only 350,000 or so have completed the association’s training, he said. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

The danger doesn’t end when a storm passes, either. According to the Department of Transportation, “the time frame in which a damaged battery can ignite varies, from days to weeks,” which is one reason Tesla urges owners not to operate their vehicle until a dealer inspects it. 

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents 44 automakers and suppliers, declined to comment but cited a letter it sent to Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida on the issue in 2022. It notes that “safety is a top priority for our members, which is why they have been engaged in long-standing efforts to address fire risks for both conventionally fueled vehicles and EVs.”  

In the meantime, a range of efforts are underway to try to prevent these fires from occurring. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has funded research into emerging hazards of at-home battery storage systems. Other researchers are looking at how to make batteries safer, including Yang Yang, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Central Florida. His team developed a battery that, instead of fighting salt water, utilizes it as the main electrolyte. 

“It can be soaked in the salty water and still works well,” said Yang, who started working on the project after living in Houston and Florida and seeing firsthand the problem floods present. While he said car companies have yet to contact him about his research, he’s optimistic that safer batteries could be on the market within the next few years. 

Until then, storms like Helene and Milton may be among the biggest drivers of public attention to both the problem and prevention methods. Yang, for one, finds that possibility bittersweet at best: “I don’t want people to have any issues with their electric vehicles.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Helene and Milton reveal an emerging challenge for first responders: EV batteries catching fire on Oct 11, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.

It came through thinking about how I wanted to grow and mature as a painter and what kind of painter I really wanted to be. I saw my figurative work as a really good start, but I wanted to be a painter where there’s a bit more ambiguity and mystery and refinement within each piece. And the way I tried to solve that problem was through abstraction and formal experimentation in the studio.

I had this big painting in my studio, and I was taking a detail photo of that. And when I saw the detail, I thought that this, in itself, should be a painting. And when I made that painting, I loved it. Then I refined that painting, and from there I made it bigger, I used more colors, different colors. I started going formally, and I liked what I saw.

I think this body of work is really expansive. It can go in so many directions. What could I do if there’s more shapes on the next one? What could I do if there’s more texture? If there’s an area of way more detail in one section and huge swaths of one color in another, how would that change what people infer from the work?

Is this excitement—about all the different directions this kind of painting can go in—something you felt with prior bodies of work?

This feels more me. It feels like no one else could do this. This is my idea as an artist. And this looks like my work. I like it when people make associations with me and other artists, but no one’s ever made a painting that is exactly like mine. My newest painting is a step towards me.

Elana Bowsher, Green Landscape, 2024, oil on linen, 60 x 70 inches (152.4 x 177.8 cm)

It’s so hard to have the confidence to make a shift like that in your practice. Was it hard to explain to other people when you shifted your practice in this new direction? Did you face any pushback?

Yes, I did. But not with Hannah [Hoffman] and Adrianna [Cole]. They got it right away. But, yeah, there were previous people who I’ve worked with who were like, “Stick to the pelvic bones.”

I think the job of an artist is to just try and keep pushing yourself, and I don’t understand when people don’t do that. It’s like, it’s your job. You want to get better at your job and keep growing.

Definitely.

I always look at my paintings with a very critical eye. I’m sure most artists do. And I think, how do I get better, and how do I become more me as an artist? And because I had the support I care about, I thought, well, I don’t care what other people think. You’ve got to be a little rebellious as an artist, even if it’s quiet rebellion.

How do you balance that career aspect of artmaking with art as a creative pursuit?

I’m very interested in the business side of this world. I like thinking about that part. And I will say, with my show at Hannah Hoffman, I went all in on the creative part.

Elana Bowsher, Pelvis, 2024, oil on linen, 60 x 70 inches (152.4 x 177.8 cm)

I started working on it in February. I made a list of goals of what I wanted, which some of them were just that I wanted the show to have a certain mood. I wanted it to be very sensual and a bit moody. I didn’t know exactly what kind of mood, but I wanted it to feel mature and bodily, and I wanted to be brave. And so, with that set of instructions to myself, I just went all in.

I decided that I would ignore the people, or the part of me that said, “Just do the same work.” And I thought it was actually a prudent business decision, also. For my first actual solo show in LA, to make a big leap, because that shows myself and the viewers that I am growing… So, I thought it was a business and an artistic move. At this point, I’m not far enough in my career to be stuck with one thing. I want to set myself up to have a very free and expansive new body work.

You said that you like thinking about the business side. What do you mean by that?

Right now, it’s an interesting time. I think, to be honest, a lot of artists and gallerists started upping their pricing in a really significant way that wasn’t equating to the amount of shows they had had. So we were just careful with pricing. I think it’s important to not rush that side of things.

Obviously, it’s very scary to have this as your job. You feel like you need to take every opportunity, but actually it’s a good business decision to say no to things. I’ve learned that the hard way. I’ve made decisions based off stress, off monetary stress and thinking other opportunities wouldn’t come. But I think all you can do is learn from that.

And then it’s also so important to find the right fit business-wise. With this show and working with Hannah, it was the exact right fit for both of us. Because she saw the work and responded to it. She watched this body of work grow, especially over the past year, until she offered me a show. There was no forcing a square peg in a round hole or whatever. And that’s lucky.

I’m curious to hear about how this work connects to LA, where you and I both live. I feel like I see so much art that’s more vocal about the fact that it’s by an LA painter. But this feels very otherworldly. The pinks I recognize a bit from LA.

That’s a really good question. It’s funny, because a collector came into my studio, and was like, “That’s so funny that you’re from San Francisco, because these look like Bay Area colors.”

Elana Bowsher, Untitled, 2024, oil on linen, 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25.4 cm)

I really didn’t know what they meant. But then I was thinking about Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. And my painting does have that! The dirty, muddy stuff. Which probably comes from the weather there.

I think what I get from LA is more practical. The cost of living here, while exorbitant, is not as exorbitant as New York. Or the Bay. I think that LA gave me the freedom to have changed bodies of work and explore. We have that freedom a little bit more here.

The color palette, I think it just… I didn’t want 10 different color palettes in this show. Most of the underpainting is brown, and so, even though there’s cooler and warmer paintings, it is all united by this muddy, earthier tone. I think I could probably answer your question better after I get back from New York in the fall, to see if my palette changes.

Elana Bowsher, Dive, 2024, oil on linen, 60 x 96 inches (152.4 x 243.8 cm)

I feel like there is something kind of Alice Waters about your painting.

Yeah. Love her.

What are you going to do in New York?

I am taking over a friend’s studio. I’m going to paint. I’m going to make works on paper. I’m going to experiment with new materials. I’m just going to try and grow and challenge myself. Obviously, I’ve gone to New York a lot, and I always go and see shows there, but even just being there and going to see the type of work that’s there, I hope it will push me further.

You have an interesting narrative with painting, where the artwork is a challenge, a battleground. Can you trace the roots of that back in your life?

I was a very serious ballerina. That’s a very challenging art. You’re never good enough. And I went to very rigorous high school, too.

I think I definitely approach painting as problem-solving. That probably comes from how I grew up. In San Francisco, in the community I was raised in, it was so much about being better, getting better. So I push myself, not even in a stressful way. But there’s always problems that come up in a painting or making a work of art, and so, I think, well, how do you solve those problems? And that’s not a negative thing. I take it as motivation.

I don’t know why you would be an artist if you aren’t willing to face a challenge. It’s already so difficult, so why would I do it if it was not exciting, if it didn’t move me forward as a human? If I didn’t want a challenge, I would choose something else.

Elana Bowsher, Abstract Plume VI, 2024, oil on linen, 50 x 40 inches (127 x 101.6 cm)

If you are so conscious of being critical of your work, is it hard to know when to end?

That’s something I talk with my therapist about a lot. Like you have to have a critical eye as a writer, as a painter, whatever. But hopefully, when you’re working you can let that subside a little bit.

Like being in the painting is one way to emerge on the other side of your self-criticism.

That is actually why I listen to podcasts when I paint. It’s a little bit distracting in a really good way, so it takes away my anxiety, my fully critical brain. It’s a little bit distracting in a really beautiful way. If I am listening to music, it has to be really lyric-heavy music. If it’s too moody or there’s no lyrics, I get too in my head.

What kind of podcasts?

Murder podcasts.

You’re not the first painter that I’ve talked to that listens to true crime while they paint. Actually, have you considered working in any other mediums?

Yeah. I went to UCLA mostly for ceramics and sculpture. I would definitely like to bring that part of my practice back in, to meld it with this new body of work in some way. And ceramics is so much a part of LA and San Francisco art history, so it would really make sense for me. I just have to figure out how to enter that, where it makes sense in conversation with painting.

Did you go to an MFA program?

No.

What was it like trying to be an artist when you were right out of undergrad?

I worked for a couple artists. I worked for Shio Kusaka for about eight months. I feel like all artists should do that, and most artists do, but that was good training. At least, to see how she ran her day. It’s not so much about the technical stuff, but, yeah, speaking of the business stuff—Shio and Jonas [Wood] are so clued into how to be good businesspeople. And then I worked for Liz Glynn, who’s a sculptor, and I did the ceramic part of her projects. And those were really good learning experiences.

After that I decided to immerse myself in the LA art community. I had a full-time job, and I was doing my art in the afternoons and evenings. I felt like I was pushing myself enough that I didn’t want to interrupt that flow and go do an MFA program. I felt like I was meeting enough people and looking at enough work that I was feeding myself.

Where do you see your work going within painting?

I think experimenting with more texture, more depth—those are two things I really want to push for the next paintings. I really liked working at a larger scale. Eight feet long by five feet. Working at that scale feels very exciting.

After I take a good break, I feel very excited about all the areas I could move towards. I’m really excited to incorporate drawing into the new works. I would love to do a works on paper show or a works on cardboard show. How would that work? How would that mess things up in a good way?

Elana Bowsher, Hannah Hoffman, June 29 - August 10, 2024, install view

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Claudia Ross.

The special rapporteurs wrote to the government on June 14, and released the letter after a customary 60 days.

They said there were indications the Jan. 20 trial in Dak Lak did not meet fair trial standards under international human rights law.

They addressed allegations of illegal arrest and detention in connection with the case, torture and ill-treatment of Montagnard suspects, unexplained deaths in custody, allegations of terrorism, restrictions on freedom of expression and media participation, discrimination against indigenous peoples and repression of Montagnards’ religion and beliefs.

Montagnard is a term coined by French colonialists to describe a grouping of about 30 ethnic minorities in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Since 1975, after the Vietnam War, the government has implemented a migration policy, bringing more than three million people to the region. 

According to government statistics in 2019, indigenous Montagnards accounted for 39% of Dak Lak province’s total population of 5.8 million.

The January trial followed attacks on June 11, 2023 when dozens of Montagnards, divided into two groups, attacked the headquarters of the People’s Committee and the police of Ea Tieu and Ea Ktur communes in Dak Lak province. Four police officers, two commune officials, and three civilians died in the attacks.

The trial was attended by 94 defendants with19 lawyers, while six defendants were tried in absentia. U.N. experts noted that the six had no legal representation in court.

At the end of the trial, 10 people were sentenced to life in prison on charges of terrorism against the government.

Forty-three people received prison sentences ranging from six to 20 years on terrorism charges. A further 45, including the six tried in absentia, received prison sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years on terrorism charges. Two others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from nine months to two years on charges of concealing criminals and helping others illegally enter and exit Vietnam.

The rapporteurs said most coverage by Vietnamese media relied on information provided by the Ministry of Public Security under the direction of the Central Propaganda Department, leading to censorship and self-censorship.

“Senior Vietnamese government officials made highly prejudicial pretrial public comments about the defendants’ perceived responsibility for terrorist crimes, and state-controlled media (including television) both reported on the defendants as ‘terrorists’ and published images of some of the recently captured defendants,” the experts said in their letter.

The rapporteurs also questioned the use of a “mobile court” for the Dak Lak trial.

“Vietnamese law has never sought to regulate the use of mobile court procedures, such that they lack an adequate legal basis and are necessarily arbitrary in operation,” they said, noting that the court didn’t follow procedures prescribed by international law, which requires similar cases to be treated the same way.

“An apparent purpose of ‘mobile trials’ is to ‘educate’ the public about the law,” the rapporteurs said. 

“However, we are concerned that the proceedings did not perform a legitimate educative function but resulted in publicly embarrassing, shaming, humiliating or degrading the defendants and their families before other members of their community.”

On Aug. 15, Vietnam’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. requested a two-month extension to respond to the questions in the letter. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not answer RFA’s calls seeking comment.

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‘Ethnic divisions’

The U.N. experts said they were also concerned the defendants didn’t have adequate access to lawyers during their long detention and when the trial took place, only 19 lawyers were assigned to 100 defendants who didn’t have the right to choose their own lawyers.

They also said there were indications that some arrests weren’t based on reasonable grounds backed with evidence. 

“We are concerned that the heavy security response after the 11 June 2023 attacks, including the state’s co-option of civilian vigilantes (of majority Kinh ethnicity), may have resulted in the arrest of innocent people,” they said. 

“These risks were accentuated by ethnic divisions, with Montagnards being publicly blamed by state officials and media, encouraging potential profiling and arrests on the basis of minority ethnic status. We note that arrests of detention on discriminatory grounds are arbitrary and unlawful.”

Vietnam accused all those involved of having links with U.S. and Thai-based Montagnard organizations who they say helped plan the 2023 attack..

On March 6, 2024, the Ministry of Public Security designated the group Montagnards Stand for Justice, or MSFJ, a terrorist organization. It was established in Thailand in 2019 with a representative in the U.S. 

Vietnamese authorities said the group operates by spreading propaganda to recruit members, providing training and funding attacks with the aim of establishing an autonomous state in the Central Highlands.

The government said MSFJ organized the 2023 attack with the aim of establishing Montagnard state.

MSFJ rejected the charges saying they are aimed at preventing the group from documenting rights abuses against Montagnards.

Founding member Y Quynh Bdap, who has been living in Thailand since 2018, is on remand in Bangkok, facing possible extradition at Vietnam’s request, to serve a 10-year sentence for “terrorism” in connection with the attack. Vietnam sent public security officers to attend his trial.

The rapporteurs said they were worried for the safety of Montagnards in Thailand given reports of illegal abductions by Vietnamese security agencies of activists such as blogger Truong Duy Nhat and freelance journalist Duong Van Thai.

They said international human rights law prohibits forcing people back to places when there are grounds for believing they would be at risk of “irreparable harm on account of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or other serious human rights violations.”

They concluded by noting signs of continued discrimination against Montagnards in the Central Highlands.

“The excessive response to the 11 June 2023 attack, the unfair mass trial of January 2024, the listing MSFJ as terrorist in March 2024, and the alleged intimidation of Vietnamese refugees in Thailand in March 2024 seem to be part of a larger and intensifying pattern of discriminatory and repressive surveillance, security controls, harassment and intimidation against the Montagnard indigenous minority peoples.”

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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

Now the rule is coming under fire from two directions. In early July, groups representing environmental advocates and the medical-supply industry both filed separate lawsuits against the EPA. 

Studies have connected ethylene oxide exposure to cancers of the stomach, breasts, and lungs, and have found that it can alter DNA, causing negative health effects in unborn children. The chemical has the unique ability to disinfect products without damaging their heat-sensitive components, making it an essential part of the medical device supply chain. The FDA estimates that about half of all medical devices manufactured in the U.S. pass through ethylene oxide sterilization facilities, making these plants hotspots of ethylene oxide exposure. (Globally, ethylene oxide is also used to sterilize food products, cosmetics, and textiles.) The EPA’s new rule targets these operations and requires them to install equipment that can capture and destroy more than 99 percent of their ethylene oxide emissions within the next two to three years. 

But environmental and community advocates, who’ve long pushed the agency to more carefully scrutinize the sterilization industry, don’t believe the rule goes far enough to protect residents and are trying to force tougher standards in court. They also contend that the compliance deadline is too far off. By giving companies up to three years to comply, the EPA is “illegally and arbitrarily prolonging [residents’] exposure to toxic emissions of ethylene oxide,” their initial court filings argued. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of members of the Sierra Club, California Communities Against Toxics, and the Union of Concerned Scientists as well as community groups in Lake County, Illinois; Laredo, Texas; and Salinas, Puerto Rico — all places where sterilizers release hundreds of pounds of ethylene oxide into the air each year.

The EPA’s rule does not require sterilization companies to monitor the air around their facilities for ethylene oxide — a requirement that could help residents gauge the effectiveness of the emission reduction equipment the EPA is mandating — and continues to consider sterilization facilities “minor” sources of toxic emissions despite their disparate impact on public health. The advocates argue that by refusing to require these added protections, the EPA is denying residents “access to pertinent information about the danger posed by the commercial sterilization facilities in their neighborhoods.” 

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Meanwhile, in its own legal filings, the Ethylene Oxide Sterilization Association, or EOSA, a trade group representing sterilizers and medical device manufacturers, contends that the EPA’s regulations use inappropriate cancer risk estimates for ethylene oxide, set an unrealistic compliance deadline, and do not adequately consider the cost of installing equipment to capture emissions.

For companies affected by the rule, a key point of contention stems from the EPA’s decision to conduct a second analysis of the cancer risk posed by ethylene oxide. The first standards for ethylene oxide sterilization were promulgated in 1994, and the EPA surveyed the health risk posed by the sector in 2006. According to the Clean Air Act, the EPA is supposed to review the standards for these facilities every eight years, but regulators failed to fulfill this obligation in 2014 and again in 2022, at which point environmental groups sued. The resulting court decision led the agency to include in its new rule a second review of the risk the facilities pose to communities using an updated toxicity value for ethylene oxide. Industry groups claim that the EPA does not have authority to conduct this second review.

The American Petroleum Institute has sought to intervene in both lawsuits, in part because it believes the second risk review — which the EPA rarely, if ever, conducts — sets a precedent that could apply to other petrochemical and industrial facilities. 

Both environmental groups and EOSA have filed motions to intervene in the other group’s lawsuit. The cases will be litigated in the D.C. Court of Appeals. Speaking on background, a source with knowledge of the case told Grist that it is in its “very, very early stages,” without a clear timeline for what comes next. What is clear is that the fight to regulate medical sterilization facilities — one the EPA was hoping to put to bed with its new rule — is far from over. 

The health of about 14 million people who reside within a 5-mile radius of these facilities may hang in the balance.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Two lawsuits challenge the EPA’s regulation of ethylene oxide on Aug 16, 2024.

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

Regional leaders will gather later this month in Tonga for the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Tonga and high on the agenda will be Japan’s dumping of
treated nuclear wastewater in the Pacific Ocean.

A week ago on the 6 August 2024, the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima in 1945 and the 39th anniversary of the Treaty of Rarotonga opening for signatures in 1985 were marked.

As the world and region remembered the horrors of nuclear weapons and stand in solidarity, there is still work to be done.

• READ MORE: Other nuclear wastewater in Pacific reports

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has stated that Japan’s discharge of treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean does not breach the Rarotonga Treaty which established a Nuclear-Free Zone in the South Pacific.

Civil society groups have been calling for Japan to stop the dumping in the Pacific Ocean, but Brown, who is also the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum and represents a country
associated by name with the Rarotonga Treaty, has backtracked on both the efforts of PIFS and his own previous calls against it.

Brown stated during the recent 10th Pacific Alliance Leaders Meeting (PALM10) meeting in
Tokyo that Pacific Island Leaders stressed the importance of transparency and scientific evidence to ensure that Japan’s actions did not harm the environment or public health.

But he also defended Japan, saying that the wastewater, treated using the Advanced Liquid
Processing System (ALPS) to remove most radioactive materials except tritium, met the
standard set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Harmful isotopes removed
“No, the water has been treated to remove harmful isotopes, so it’s well within the standard guidelines as outlined by the global authority on nuclear matters, the IAEA,” Brown said in an Islands Business article.

“Japan is complying with these guidelines in its discharge of wastewater into the ocean.”

The Cook Islands has consistently benefited from Japanese development grants. In 2021, Japan funded through the Asian Development Bank $2 million grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, financed by the Government of Japan.

Together with $500,000 of in-kind contribution from the government of the Cook Islands, the grant funded the Supporting Safe Recovery of Travel and Tourism Project.

Just this year Japan provided grants for the Puaikura Volunteer Fire Brigade Association totaling US$132,680 and a further US$53,925 for Aitutaki’s Vaitau School.

Long-term consequences
In 2023, Prime Minister Brown said it placed a special obligation on Pacific Island States because of ’the long-term consequences for Pacific peoples’ health, environment and human rights.

Pacific states, he said, had a legal obligation “to prevent the dumping of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter by anyone” and “to not . . .  assist or encourage the dumping by anyone of radioactive wastes and other radioactive matter at sea anywhere within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.

“Our people do not have anything to gain from Japan’s plan but have much at risk for
generations to come.”

The Pacific Islands Forum went on further to state then that the issue was an “issue of significant transboundary and intergenerational harm”.

The Rarotonga Treaty, a Cold War-era agreement, prohibits nuclear weapons testing and
deployment in the region, but it does not specifically address the discharge of the treated
nuclear wastewater.

Pacific civil society organisations continue to condemn Japan’s dumping of nuclear-treated
wastewater. Of its planned 1.3 million tonnes of nuclear-treated wastewater, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has conducted seven sets of dumping into the Pacific Ocean and was due to commence the eighth between August 7-25.

Regardless of the recommendations provided by the Pacific Island Forum’s special panel of
experts and civil society calls to stop Japan and for PIF Leaders to suspend Japan’s dialogue
partner status, the PIF Chair Mark Brown has ignored concerns by stating his support for
Japan’s nuclear wastewater dumping plans.

Contradiction of treaty
This decision is being viewed by the international community as a contradiction of the Treaty of Rarotonga that symbolises a genuine collaborative endeavour from the Pacific region, born out of 10 years of dedication from Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, the Cook Islands, and various other nations, all working together to establish a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific. Treaty Ratification

Bedi Racule, a nuclear justice advocate said the Treaty of Rarotonga preamble had one of the most powerful statements in any treaty ever. It is the member states’ promise for a nuclear free Pacific.

“The spirit of the Treaty is to protect the abundance and the beauty of the islands for future
generations,” Racule said.

She continued to state that it was vital to ensure that the technical aspects of the Treaty and the text from the preamble is visualised.

“We need to consistently look at this Treaty because of the ongoing nuclear threats that are
happening”.

Racule said the Treaty did not address the modern issues being faced like nuclear waste dumping, and stressed that there was a dire need to increase the solidarity and the
universalisation of the Treaty.

“There is quite a large portion of the Pacific that is not signed onto the Treaty. There’s still work within the Treaty that needs to be ratified.

“It’s almost like a check mark that’s there but it’s not being attended to.”

The Pacific islands Forum meets on August 26-30.

Brittany Nawaqatabu is assistant media and communications officer of the Suva-based Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG). 

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

The vision

“How can healing our relationship to the planet help us heal our relationships with ourselves?”

— Ki’Amber Thompson

The spotlight

The outdoors can be a healing place. Spending time in nature can inspire wonder, confer physical and mental health benefits, and deepen our understanding of the land and ecosystems around us — and our role in caring for them.

That’s part of the idea behind the Charles Roundtree Bloom Project, an outdoor program in San Antonio specifically for young people whose families have been impacted by incarceration. The organization offers activities like camping trips, surfing, and community gardening, also weaving in meditation, journaling, and other exercises intended to foster introspection and empowerment.

“We are not just an outdoor organization creating more access in the outdoors, or working on climate issues in a solely environmental way,” said Ki’Amber Thompson, the program’s founder. “We’re also doing deep healing work with the participants, and thinking about not only environmental but social sustainability, and how that connects.”

Creating safe and joyful experiences also means overcoming many barriers these kids face in enjoying the outdoors. Those include both historical exclusion from these spaces and a continued narrative that outdoor recreation is not for people of color. And, increasingly, these barriers are compounded by extreme weather that makes it ever-harder to ensure safety, let alone restoration, in the outdoors.

Thompson (who uses both they and she pronouns) started the Bloom Project to address a need they saw in their community. They had discovered a love for the outdoors while attending college in California, and wanted to make those same transformative experiences possible for young people in her hometown of San Antonio — specifically, those caught up in a system of over-policing, incarceration, and environmental injustice.

This work is personal for both Thompson and Gabriela Lopez, the organization’s co-director. Lopez’s father has been in prison for most of her life, she said, and as a kid she saw nature as a form of therapy that helped her cope. She was excited to join the Bloom Project after spending many years as a teacher, and seeing how the school system was not well equipped to address some of the mental health issues and traumas that young people were experiencing. “I feel like it’s promoting healing in a way that’s really accessible,” she said of the Bloom Project’s work, “but then also creating a generation of advocates, not only for their communities, but for nature and for the outdoors and for the land.”

Lopez (right) with two Bloom Project participants at a retreat in December of 2023. Courtesy of the Charles Roundtree Bloom Project

In creating those experiences, the Bloom Project’s directors know they are up against prevailing narratives that outdoor recreation is not for everyone. In Texas, around 95 percent of land is privately owned, Thompson said, making access to outdoor spaces challenging — but, they added, that’s only the beginning of the issue. Despite their best efforts to make outdoor excursions feel safe and inclusive, they have still on occasion been made to feel unwelcome, a microcosm of the issues people of color face in outdoor access across the country. “We’ve done camping trips in different state parks and at Big Bend National Park in Texas, and we’ve experienced policing on multiple occasions from white park users,” they said.

Many affinity organizations have emerged to create more visibility and safety in outdoor spaces for people of color, people with disabilities, queer people, and others — including Black Outside, the Texas-based organization that has housed the Bloom Project for the past five years. (Later this year, the program will be spinning off into its own nonprofit.)

At the Bloom Project, the aim is not only to increase outdoor access, but to use that access to help these kids actively oppose systems of oppression — something that, as children of incarcerated parents, they experience keenly. “Knowing the extent to which Black youth are policed in schools, parks, neighborhoods, and families, in the Bloom Project, we affirm our youth for who they are and all that they bring to our community,” Thompson said. In some ways, she said, the Bloom Project is an experiment in preconfiguring a better, more just world. Sessions include healing or talking circles for sharing and processing, in an environment intentionally free from policing. And another core part of the programming is education that tackles head-on the realities of the challenges that are showing up in young people’s lives — always in an age-appropriate way, Lopez said.

At a park day with a group of younger kids earlier this summer, she facilitated an experiment in which they tested how quickly ice cubes would melt on different surfaces — a fun way of learning about the urban heat island effect.

But the heat melting those ice cubes also represents another, ever more pressing challenge to creating safe and enjoyable outdoor experiences. More frequent and intense extreme weather events — like Hurricane Beryl, which narrowly missed San Antonio last month — and a new normal of hotter summers mean that the very tool the Bloom Project uses to facilitate healing and connection is getting harder to access.

“It’s so, so hot in San Antonio these summers,” Thompson said. Last year, the city sweltered through more than 70 days of triple-digit temperatures. Because of heat, the organization does not run camping trips locally in Texas in the summer months.

“It’s really hard because [summer] is a time where we could see our youth more, since they’re on a break from school,” Lopez said. But it isn’t always worth the risk, nor conducive to the overall mission. “We don’t want to bring people outside and have them feel miserable.”

Thompson said they’ve made adjustments like starting some activities earlier in the morning before it gets prohibitively hot outside and paying attention to basic protections like hats, sunscreen, and shade. The organization has also thought about emphasizing water-centric activities in the hot months, or even indoor sessions.

Bloom Project participants on a trip to White Sands National Park in April 2023. Courtesy of the Charles Roundtree Bloom Project

One new program the Bloom Project is piloting later this summer, in partnership with Latino Outdoors and the Casey Family Foundation, an organization aimed at improving the foster system, is a four-month special cohort dubbed the Wild Trail fellowship. That program will focus less on recreation and more on education and career pathways in different environmental and outdoor sectors. The first meeting will be in an REI store, Lopez said, where the high school-age participants will go on an indoor scavenger hunt, assemble first aid kits, and hopefully hear from a store manager.

Across the country, organizations that work on outdoor access, education, and recreation are grappling with the same conundrum. José González, founder of Latino Outdoors, noted that for the first time this year, the nationwide Latino Conservation Week will be shifted from late July to late September, due to concerns about the heat. And even if an event is not cancelled or postponed, extreme weather has increasingly become a part of planning. “Many people do not know how heat can affect them — how to spot heat stroke, for example — so it’s important to note it as part of risk management and the education for participants,” he said.

In May, the outdoor education organization Outward Bound coordinated three events in Vancouver, Halifax, and Toronto, bringing together more than 60 groups from across Canada to discuss how the outdoor sector can adapt to climate impacts, and also be a part of mitigation. One wilderness program manager noted that “climate change has irrevocably shifted the landscape of outdoor education.”

Although the realities of climate change are compounding the challenges faced in creating restorative and joyful experiences in the outdoors, they also make that work all the more pressing. The ultimate goal for the Bloom Project, Thompson said, is to imbue these young people with a sense of agency and radical imagination that will help them usher in a healthier, more just world.

“Sometimes with justice education, it’s really focused on all the problems,” Thompson said. “And that’s real, and it’s important to be educated on that.” But, they said, the key is striking the right balance, and creating the right container that can allow moments of heaviness alongside moments of reflection — and fun. “Joy is what sustains us,” they said, “and just being able to access that and tune into that is so key to have the capacity to [not only] want to be here in the first place, but to envision a better world.”

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: a personal essay describing the healing power that nature can have as a respite from systemic racism and injustice (Glamour)
• Read: about the importance of representation in the outdoors, and a push for a federal fund to make recreation more accessible (Grist)
• Read: some of the science behind how nature improves our health — and how much exposure we need to get those benefits (Yale Environment 360)
• Watch: an Instagram Live with Ki’Amber Thompson and Wawa Gatheru, discussing their paths into environmental justice and the importance of solidarity (or read some highlights from the conversation here)

A parting shot

If extreme heat makes it more challenging to find healing respite in the outdoors, it also amplifies risk for athletes pushing their bodies to the brink in outdoor environments — including many competing in the Paris Olympics this summer. While some countries made plans to protect their athletes by bringing portable air conditioners to Olympic Village (thwarting Paris officials’ plans to make the games more green), others, including the Olympics medical department, have suggested heat acclimatization training as a way to adapt. In this photo, spectators mill around tennis courts at Roland Garros stadium on July 31 — day five of the games, when temps in Paris reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Spotlight: Courtesy of the Charles Roundtree Bloom Project

Parting shot: Julian Finney / Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How outdoor programs are adapting to the challenge of extreme weather on Aug 7, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

Promises of “accountability and transparency” in deep-sea mining has seen a tsunami-size vote by nations on Friday for a Brazilian scientist to replace the incumbent British lawyer as head of an obscure UN organisation that regulates the world’s seabed.

Mounting international opposition to prospects of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) approving exploitation of the deep ocean’s vast mineral bounty by corporations before its environmental regulations were finalised fuelled the mood for change.

A rare vote by member nations saw Brazil’s candidate, former oceanographer Leticia Carvalho, defeat two-term head Michael Lodge, who has been criticised for being aligned to seabed mining companies.

• READ MORE: Other deep-sea mining reports

Lodge was not present when the result was announced.

“The winning margin reflects the appetite for change,” Carvalho told BenarNews. “I see that transparency and accountability, broader participation, more focus on additional science, bridging knowledge gaps are the priority areas.”

Lodge had support from only 34 nations compared with 79 for Carvahlo, who also campaigned on restoring neutrality to the secretary-general position. She is currently a senior official at the UN Environment Programme and a former oil industry regulator in Brazil.

The change of leadership at the Kingston-based ISA is a possible setback to efforts to quickly finalise regulations for seabed mining, which would pave the way for exploitation to begin in the areas under its jurisdiction.

Some countries, meanwhile, are exploring the possibility of nodule mining in their territorial waters, which are outside of ISA oversight.

Mining of the golf ball-sized metallic nodules that litter swathes of the sea bed is touted as a source of rare earths and minerals needed for green technologies, such as electric vehicles, as the world reduces reliance on fossil fuels.

Sceptics say such minerals are already abundant on land and warn that mining the sea bed could cause irreparable damage to an environment that is still poorly understood by science.

Lodge was nominated for a third term by Kiribati, which is one of three Pacific island nations working with Nasdaq-listed The Metals Company on plans to exploit seabed minerals. More than 30 nations were disqualified from voting in the secret ballot as their financial contributions to the ISA are in arrears.

The hundreds of delegates and other attendees at the ISA assembly lined up to hug Carvalho following her election, including Gerard Barron, chief executive of The Metals Company.

After the vote the company tweeted, “we appreciate her proactive engagement with us and share her belief that adopting regulations, not a moratorium, is the best way to fulfil the ISA’s mandate,” adding they still hope to become “the first commercial operator in this promising industry.”

Greenpeace International campaigner Louisa Casson said she hoped Carvalho would work with governments “to change the ISA’s course to serve the public interest, as it has been driven by the narrow corporate interests of the deep sea mining industry for far too long.”

This week’s annual assembly of the ISA also witnessed more nations joining a call for a moratorium on mining until there was greater scientific and environmental understanding of its likely consequences.

Tuvalu is one of the latest to join those calling for a moratorium, taking to 10 the members of the 18-nation Pacific Islands Forum, now opposed to any imminent start to deep-sea mining.

Nations such as Vanuatu and Chile also succeeded in forcing a general debate on establishing an environmental policy at the ISA.

Pelenatita Petelo Kara, a Tongan activist who campaigns against deep-sea mining, said she was hopeful new leadership would mean “more time for science to confirm new developments” such as alternative minerals for green technologies as well as a more thorough dialogue on the proposed mining rules.

Deep-sea mineral extraction has been particularly contentious in the Pacific, where some economically lagging island nations see it as a possible financial windfall, but many other island states are strongly opposed.

The island nation of Nauru in June 2021 notified the seabed authority of its intention to begin mining, which triggered the clock for the first time on a two-year period for the authority’s member nations to finalise regulations.

Its president David Adeang told the assembly earlier this week that its mining application currently being prepared in conjunction with The Metals Company would allow the ISA to make “an informed decision based on real scientific data and not emotion and conjecture.”

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Published with the permission of BenarNews.

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

By Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor, manager of RNZ Pacific

This King’s Birthday, the New Zealand Order of Merit recognises Professor David Robie’s 50 years of service to Pacific journalism.

He says he is astonished and quite delighted, and feels quite humbled by it all.

“However, I feel that it’s not just me, I owe an enormous amount to my wife, Del, who is a teacher and designer by profession, but she has given journalism and me enormous support over many years and kept me going through difficult times,” he said.

• READ MORE: A journey of faith, language and service: Presbyterian Minister receives ONZM
• Leitualaalemalietoa Lynn Lolokini Pavihi: champion of Vagahau Niue receives MNZM
• Sportspeople recognised in King’s Birthday Honours

“There’s a whole range of people who have contributed over the years so it’s sort of like a recognition of all of us. So, yes, it is a delight and I feel quite privileged,” he said.

Starting his career at The Dominion in 1965, Dr Robie has been “on the ground” at pivotal events in regional history, including the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 (he was on board the Greenpeace ship on the voyage to the Marshall Islands and wrote the book Eyes of Fire about it), the 1997 Sandline mercenary scandal in Papua New Guinea, and the George Speight coup in Fiji in 2000.

In both PNG and Fiji, Dr Robie and his journalism students covered unfolding events when their safety was far from assured.

As an educator, Dr Robie was head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) 1993-1997 and then at the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva from 1998 to 2002.

Started Pacific Media Centre
In 2007 he started the Pacific Media Centre, while working as professor of Pacific journalism and communications at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). He has organised scholarships for Pacific media students, including scholarships to China, Indonesia and the Philippines, with the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

Running education programmes for journalists was not always easy. While he had a solid programme to follow at UPNG, his start at USP was not as easy.

He described arriving at USP, opening the filing cabinet to discover “…there was nothing there.” It was a “baptism of fire” and he had to rebuild the programme, although he notes that currently UPNG is struggling whereas USP is “bounding ahead.”

He wrote about his experiences in the 2004 book Mekim Nius: South Pacific media, politics and education.

Dr Robie recalled the enthusiasm of his Pacific journalism students in the face of significant challenges. Pacific journalists are regularly confronted by threats and pressures from governments, which do not recognise the importance of a free media to a functioning democracy.

He stated that while resources were being employed to train quality regional journalists, it was really politicians who needed educating about the role of the media, particularly public broadcasters — not just to be a “parrot” for government policy.

Another challenge Robie noted was the attrition of quality journalists, who only stay in the mainstream media for a year or two before finding better-paying communication roles in NGOs.

Independence an issue
He said that while resourcing was an issue the other most significant challenge facing media outlets in the Pacific today was independence — freedom from the influence and control of the power players in the region.

While he mentioned China, he also suggested that the West also attempted to expand its own influence, and that Pacific media should be able set its own path.

“The other big challenge facing the Pacific is the climate crisis and consequently that’s the biggest issue for journalists in the region and they deal with this every day, unlike Australia and New Zealand,” he said.

Dr Robie stated his belief that it was love of the industry that had kept him and other journalists going, that being a journalist was an important role and a service to society, more than just a job.

He expressed deep gratitude for having been given the opportunity to serve the Pacific in this capacity for so long.

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

The King’s Birthday Honours list:

To be Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit:

• The Very Reverend Taimoanaifakaofo Kaio for services to the Pacific community
• Anapela Polataivao for services to Pacific performing arts

To be a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit:

• Bridget Kauraka for services to the Cook Islands community
• Frances Oakes for services to mental health and the Pacific community
• Leitualaalemalietoa Lynn Lolokini Pavihi for services to Pacific education
• Dr David Robie for services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education

The King’s Service Medal (KSM):

• Mailigi Hetutū for services to the Niuean community
• Tupuna Kaiaruna for services to the Cook Islands community and performing arts
• Maituteau Karora for services to the Cook Islands community

 

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

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Maine Monitor. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Late one morning in May 2021, a resident of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, spotted an “elderly, disoriented” man standing in a driveway, according to a police report. The resident called police and then followed the man on foot as he wandered to a nearby intersection.

When police officers arrived, the man had difficulty communicating with them. But he was clutching a toiletry case that contained a card for Cape Memory Care, the residential care facility where he lived. When the officers brought him back, the facility’s staff said they didn’t know that he had been missing. The officers reported the incident to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services for “inadequate care and supervision of a patient.”

The health department opened an investigation but only conducted a “desk review” — looking into the incident without visiting the facility. Three weeks later, it closed the case without citing Cape Memory Care for failing to prevent the man from wandering away.

The health department’s minimal response to the incident illustrates what happens when residents wander away from their residential care facilities in Maine: In the vast majority of cases, investigators never inspect the facilities, conducting only a desk review or no investigation at all, and rarely impose sanctions.

Maine is the oldest state in the country, where people aged 65 or older make up the highest share of the population. The Maine Monitor and ProPublica reported last year how residential care facilities in the state had been ill-prepared to handle the influx of older Mainers, many with significant medical needs, following the state’s decision in the mid-1990s to make it harder to qualify for nursing home placement.

The number of people in the state with dementia is projected to grow by 20% between 2020 and 2025. And for residents with dementia in residential care facilities, elopement — which the state defines as an incident in which a resident “unsafely wanders” out of a long-term care facility — is a real risk. From 2020 to 2022, new reporting shows, residents wandered away from Maine residential care facilities at least 115 times, according to state inspection records and a database of incidents reported to the health department.

The incidents took place at 48 residential care facilities classified as Level IV, which resemble what are known generally as assisted living facilities in other states. According to the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation’s online licensing portal, there are roughly 190 Level IV facilities in the state.

The Maine Monitor and ProPublica found that at least 30 of the elopements took place at Cape Memory Care and other facilities that house people with severe dementia — which are required to be locked or otherwise secured to prevent residents from wandering away.

In 98 of the elopements, investigators conducted only a desk review or no investigation at all. Health department spokesperson Lindsay Hammes said investigators decide not to take action for a variety of reasons, including because a facility has already moved to correct the underlying issue.

“The Department takes seriously and investigates instances of elopement. A desk review is one type of investigation,” Hammes said.

Woodlands Senior Living, which runs Cape Memory Care and 13 other Maine facilities, declined to comment on the May 2021 incident.

Eilon Caspi, a gerontologist and assistant research professor at the University of Connecticut’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention and Policy, said the health department should investigate every time a resident wanders away, even for a brief moment, and impose substantial fines in more serious cases.

The health department “should consider every situation where a resident leaves for a few — even for five seconds — as a serious incident,” Caspi said, “because if staff are not there, then the resident may continue out the door into the road or into a lake or snowbank. ... It only takes two minutes."

From 2020 to 2022, the health department imposed sanctions against only two residential care facilities for failing to prevent their residents from wandering away, state inspection records show. This contrasts sharply with how the federal government responds to elopements at nursing homes.

Even though the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates nursing homes, isn’t mandated to impose sanctions, the agency did so in response to at least 11 elopements in Maine that it investigated from February 2021 to February 2024. (CMS couldn’t provide the total number of elopements reported by Maine nursing homes.)

According to a CMS inspection database, the agency imposed a fine of more than $71,000 against one Maine nursing home and issued three additional “immediate jeopardy” citations, which can lead to the facility being prohibited from billing Medicare or Medicaid if deficiencies aren’t corrected. CMS determined that most of the other elopements resulted in “minimal harm,” but those comparatively minor incidents still led the agency to require the facilities to submit a plan of correction stating how they intended to address the deficiencies.

Under state regulations, the health department does have the power to impose a fine of up to $10,000 or issue a conditional license that bars residential care facilities from accepting new residents for up to 12 months. But even with the two serious cases that led to sanctions, including one where a resident died, it employed only the lowest level of intervention: requiring the facilities to submit a plan of correction.

In one of the two incidents, in December 2022, a resident at Woodlands Memory Care of Rockland in the state’s Midcoast region died after getting into a locked outdoor courtyard without anyone at the facility noticing for nearly two hours. The resident was one of the nearly 100 people around the country who have died since 2018 after they wandered away from their assisted living facilities, according to a December investigation by The Washington Post.

But the health department didn’t impose a fine or issue a conditional license after the courtyard incident. Woodlands of Rockland was only required to submit a plan of correction, in which the facility said it would “limit access to the exterior courtyard” with consideration of “weather conditions, time of day, and time of year.”

Woodlands Senior Living, which also runs Woodlands of Rockland, declined to comment further.

The only other sanction imposed in response to elopements was against another Midcoast residential care facility, Frankfort Assisted Living, where a resident was found by a neighbor standing in the middle of a busy road with her walker during a heat wave in August 2022.

Tara Lyford, who lives across the street from the facility, told the Monitor and ProPublica that the resident appeared confused and disoriented as cars zipped by going much faster than the road’s 45 mph speed limit. When Lyford approached, the resident told her that she was trying to hitchhike away from the facility.

According to Lyford, when she brought the woman back, an employee told her that no one had noticed that the woman was missing. The employee also told Lyford — and a state investigation later confirmed — that she was the only one on duty at the time, even though, under state regulations, the facility was supposed to be staffed by at least one more direct-care worker.

Lyford also learned that the facility didn’t have alarms on its doors; that precaution isn’t required by the state because it isn’t a memory care facility. But the whole situation worried her.

“How is that safe?” Lyford said she asked the employee. “I said, ‘You’re the only worker here. You don’t know who’s coming and who’s going. She’s in the road.’”

After investigating the incident, the health department issued a “statement of deficiencies” against the facility, saying it “caused the resident to be at risk for physical harm and injury when the resident wandered outdoors on the road alone, confused, and disoriented.”

The health department could have imposed a fine or issued a conditional license but it only required the facility to submit a plan of correction.

The facility’s parent company, Texas-based Magnolia Assisted Living, told the Monitor and ProPublica that the incident took place days after the company purchased the facility.

“There were significant issues at the time of acquisition and we immediately tried to address each of the issues,” Edward Sedacca, CEO and founder of Magnolia Assisted Living, said in an email. “All of the initial staff of the Frankfort property have been replaced as part of an overall effort to improve the property.”

In its plan of correction, the facility told the health department that it would train its employees on “observation of residents with potential elopement issues” and ensure “continuous observation of residents.”

Dr. Karen Saylor, a Falmouth, Maine-based geriatrician who works with residents at several Level IV facilities, said the incident was “alarming” and highlights the need for the state to make sure that people with dementia are promptly moved to nursing homes or memory care facilities when their conditions worsen.

“If you have somebody who is that confused that they’re standing in the middle of traffic, that’s a hard stop,” Saylor said. “They need to not be there. That is not the right place for them.”

But Sedacca said the shortage of beds funded by MaineCare, the state’s version of Medicaid, means that it can take months to move people with dementia to nursing homes or memory care facilities.

“Many Assisted Living properties cannot accommodate residents with dementia and cognitive disorders that are exit-seeking or elopement risks,” Sedacca said. Further complicating matters, he said, is that MaineCare’s rules don’t allow facilities to hold residents who aren’t in memory care against their will or to physically keep them from leaving.

Long-term care advocates say it’s ultimately the responsibility of each residential care facility to make sure that it has the capacity to meet the needs of all of its residents.

”If a care home is going to take care of people living with dementia, they have a moral, if not regulatory, obligation to know what they’re doing,” said Susan Wehry, who directs AgingME, a program at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, that trains health care workers, patients and their families to improve health outcomes for older adults.

Hammes, the health department spokesperson, said residential care facilities are expected to adjust how they care for residents who start showing the signs of dementia. Facilities could, for instance, put an ankle monitor on or closely monitor the habits of those who have a tendency to wander away.

Hammes added that residential care facilities must also ensure that they have sufficient staff to meet the needs of their residents.

But even some providers say the state isn’t doing enough to make sure that residential care facilities are living up to expectations. Nichole Lessard, the co-owner of Heron House, a Level IV facility north of Portland, said the state’s staffing requirement is particularly lacking, calling it “scary,” “unsafe” and “completely inadequate.”

Currently, residential care facilities with more than 10 beds are required to have one direct-care worker for every 12 residents during the day, one for every 18 residents in the evening and one for every 30 residents overnight.

Even though Heron House isn’t a memory care facility, Lessard said about 95% of its residents have memory issues, so she ensures that it has almost twice the required number of staff. She said that’s what it takes to keep residents from wandering away.

“If you’re going to take care of people with more memory care needs, then you’re going to need to be able to staff for those behaviors that come with it,” Lessard said.

Lessard added that the state’s dementia training requirement is also woefully inadequate. Currently, non-memory-care facilities aren’t required to provide any dementia training. Memory care facilities, meanwhile, are mandated to provide a one-time dementia training — but not ongoing training, which is required for nursing homes.

Pat Sprigg, who served as the CEO of a North Carolina retirement community called Carol Woods for 30 years, said it’s important for all long-term care facilities to make sure they have well-trained staff.

Sprigg, who is writing a book about how to care for people with dementia without restricting the freedom of their movement, said not educating staff about memory care means that “you’re going to have people walking out of your community all the time.”

During this year’s legislative session, state Rep. Margaret Craven, a Democrat who represents the city of Lewiston and serves on the health and human services committee, introduced a bill calling for the establishment of a dementia advisory council that would recommend a state plan to better meet the needs of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other memory issues.

Craven told the Monitor and ProPublica that she would support having higher staffing requirements and more dementia training as part of the state plan “because people, in my opinion, are not adequately taken care of.”

In May, the Legislature passed Craven’s proposal, but Gov. Janet Mills’ office said she isn’t signing that bill or 34 others based on a technicality: Lawmakers approved the measures on a day when they were supposed to only consider overriding vetoes.

Craven said she was disappointed but not giving up, even though she isn’t running for reelection and won’t return to the Legislature for the next session. “I’ll have someone refile the same bill next year,” she said.

To examine how often people wander away from Level IV residential care facilities in Maine, The Maine Monitor and ProPublica examined state inspection records and analyzed a database of incidents reported to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services from 2020 to 2022. The database included elopements reported to the health department by facilities themselves and additional incidents reported by others, such as law enforcement agencies.

In December, we looked up each of the 48 facilities where elopements took place using the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation’s online licensing portal to check whether they were licensed for memory care at the time of the incidents.

We found that at least 30 elopements took place at facilities licensed for memory care and 72 were at non-memory-care facilities. An additional 13 elopements took place at eight facilities that did not appear in the state licensing portal, so we could not determine if they were memory care facilities. The health department did confirm that all eight facilities are licensed to operate in Maine.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Rose Lundy, The Maine Monitor.

By Stephen Wright of BenarNews

The Papua New Guinea government’s push for news organisations to become its cheer-leading squad is under further scrutiny this week as Parliament hears testimony from journalists and top officials.

The effort to wield influence over the news, first announced last year as a “media development policy”, has been watered down in the face of strong opposition.

Despite the changes, the policy still contains avenues for politicians and officials to undermine the watchdog role of the Pacific island country’s media.

• READ MORE: Other PNG media freedom reports

“When we say media development we are saying media should be a tool for development because we are a developing nation,” said Steven Matainaho, Secretary of the Department of Information Communication Technology, which devised the media regulation plans.

“In a more advanced and mature economy it could be used as a Fourth Estate for balance and check, but in a developing economy every stakeholder should work together to develop the country — that includes the media,” he told the Committee on Communications’ hearing at Parliament House.

Papua New Guinea’s global ranking in the annual Reporters Without Borders press freedom index deteriorated to 91st place this year from 59th last year. In 2019 it was placed 38th out of the 180 nations assessed.

“We’re calling it the ‘media control policy’, not the ‘media development policy’,” Scott Waide, a senior Papua New Guinea journalist, told BenarNews.

“We didn’t agree with it because it was trying to make the media an extension of the government public relations mechanism,” he said.

Amid the criticism, the parliamentary committee on Wednesday asked the Media Council of Papua New Guinea to amend its submission to include a proposal that it takes the leading role in drafting any media policy.

Marape threatened media
Prime Minister James Marape has threatened to hold journalists accountable for news reports he objected to and has frequently criticised coverage of his government’s failings and Papua New Guinea’s social problems.

The government has an at times tenuous hold over the country, which in the past few months has suffered economically ruinous riots in the capital, spasms of deadly tribal violence in the highlands and a succession of natural disasters.

The fifth and latest draft of the policy argues that a government framework is needed for the growth of a successful media industry, which currently suffers from low salaries, insufficient training, competition for readers with social media and, according to a government survey, a high level of public distrust.

The media policy is also needed to justify providing funds from the government budget to bolster journalism training at universities, according to Matainaho.

It envisages a National Media Commission that would report to Parliament and oversee the media industry, including accreditation of journalists and media organisations. A Government Media Advisory Committee would sit inside the commission.

A separate National Media Content Committee would “oversee national content” and a National Information Centre would “facilitate the dissemination of accurate government information” by overseeing a news website, newspaper and 24-hour news channel.

It also aims to make existing state-owned media a more effective conduit for government news.

Government role ‘too much’
Neville Choi, president of the Media Council of PNG representing the major mainstream broadcasters and publishers, said the plans still give far too much of a role to the government.

He said the council is concerned about the long-term risk to democracy and standards of governance if the state became the authority for accreditation of journalists, determining codes of practice, enforcing compliance with those codes and adjudicating complaints against media.

“One must consider how future actors might interpret or administer the policy with political intent,” he said in the council’s submission to the committee.

“The proposed model would allocate too much centralised power to government,” he said.

Waide said the main focus of a media development policy should be on training and providing adequate funding to university journalism programmes.

Media, he said, “is a tool for development in one respect, in that we need to promote as much as possible the values of Papua New Guinean society.

“But there has to be a healthy mix within the media ecosystem,” he said. “Where opinions are expressed, opinions are not suppressed and not everyone is for the government.”

Call to develop ‘pathways’
Although the policy mentions the importance of press freedom in a democracy and freedom of expression enshrined in the country’s constitution, other comments point to different priorities.

“It is necessary to review, update and upgrade how we do business in the media space in PNG. This must be with the mindset of harnessing and enhancing the way we handle media information and news for development,” Minister of Communications and Information Technology Timothy Masiu said in the document.

It is timely to develop “pathways” for developing the industry and “holding media in general responsible and accountable,” he said.

And according to Matainaho: “The constitution protects the rights of the citizens, we must not take that away from the citizens, but at the same time we need to find a balance where we still hold the media accountable.”

His department had studied Malaysia — which ranks lower than Papua New Guinea in the press freedom index and has draconian laws used to threaten journalists — when it was developing the media policy, Matainaho said.

Media’s rights under the constitution are not absolute rights, he said.

Harlyne Joku contributed to this report from Port Moresby. Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

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

Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side gate entrance for media workers for about an hour.

The protest climaxed a week of critical responses from commentators and critics of TVNZ’s Q&A senior reporter/presenter Jack Tame’s 45-minute interview with Israel ambassador Ran Yaakoby last Sunday which Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott described as “a platform for propaganda to excuse the genocide happening in Gaza over the last six months”.

• READ MORE: October 7: Forensic analysis shows Hamas abuses, many false Israeli claims
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Waving Palestine flags and placards declaring “Bias”, “silence is complicity — free Palestine,” and “Balanced journalism — my ass,” the protesters chanted “Jack Tame, you cannot hide – you’re complicit with genocide.”

Chalked on the pavement and on the walls were slogans such as “Jack ‘Shame’ helped kill MSM”, “TVNZ stop platforming genocide and Zionism”, “TVNZ genocide apologists” and “137 journalists killed” in reference to the mainly Palestinian journalists targeted by Israeli military forces.

Across the street, a wall slogan said: “TVNZ (Q&A) broadcast Israeli lies about Gaza”. Other slogans condemned the lack of Palestinian voices in TVNZ coverage – there are about 288 Palestinian people in New Zealand, according to the 2018 Census.

Ironically, TVNZ tonight screened a rare Palestinian story — a heart-rending report about the tragic death in Gaza of a baby girl, Sabreen Joudeh, “Patience” in Arabic, who had been saved from her dying mother’s womb after an Israeli air strike on their family home.

The TVNZ report interviewed the related Gouda family in Auckland hours before Abdallah Gouda, a doctor, flew out to Turkiye to join a humanitarian aid flotilla leaving for Gaza.

PSNA’s Neil Scott criticises TVNZ coverage of Gaza.   Video: Café Pacific

Criticism of ‘complicity’?
“Jack Tame, you’re a professional,” yelled PSNA secretary Scott through a loud hailer addressing TVNZ. “You know what would be set up, you have to know.

“But you allowed it to happen!”

“I don’t get you Jack, stupid or complicit? Complicit or stupid? One of the two.”

Critics are understood to be filing complaints about the alleged “one-sidedness” of the programme citing many specific criticisms.

“We’re here today because of Jack Tame’s Q&A report for TVNZ,” said Scott.

With the war having passed 200 days this week with more than 34,000 Palestinians having been killed — mostly children and women — and 392 bodies having been recovered from three separate mass graves discovered at two hospitals after they were destroyed by the Israeli military, some of his complaints were that presenter Tame:

• Interviewed Ambassador Yaakoby at the Israeli Embassy in Wellington instead of at a TVNZ studio with the New Zealand flag being showed alongside the Israeli flag. “Tying the two countries together – a professional would have had the New Zealand flag removed”;
• Did not provide context around the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel at the start of the interview – “more than 75 years of repression since 750,000 Palestinians were expelled as refugees from their homeland in the 1948 Nakba”;
• Asking a series of questions that the Israeli ambassador “avoided, changed, or outright lied” in his response;
• Did not follow up with the questions as needed; and
• Avoided the questions that “would have placed the issue of the Israeli attack on Gaza” in context.

Platform for propaganda
“Essentially, Tame gave Israel a platform for propaganda to excuse the genocide happening in Gaza over the last six months,” said Scott.

Among the contextual questions that Scott claimed Tame should have questioned Ambassador Yaakoby on were the envoy’s unchallenged claim that “1400 people had been butchered” by Hamas fighters.

In fact, the documented figure is 1139 — 695 civilians, including 36 children, and 373 security force members, according to a France 24 report citing official sources.

“The ambassador didn’t mention that more than 350 Israeli soldiers were among those killed — at their military posts,” Scott said.

“Many of the others were aged between 18 and 40 and in the military reserves.”

Also, no mention was made of the controversial Hannibal Directive which reportedly led to the Israeli military killing many of its own countrymen and women captives as the resistance fighters retreated back to Gaza.

The controversial Q&A interview with Israeli Ambassador Ran Yaakoby. Video: TVNZ

Among other responses to TVNZ’s Q&A this week, Palestine solidarity advocate and PSNA chair John Minto declared in an open letter to TVNZ published by The Daily Blog that the programme “breached all the standards of decent journalism. In other words it was offensive, discriminatory, inaccurate and grossly unfair.”

‘Unchallenged lies’
“It wasn’t journalism – it was 45-minutes of uninterrupted and unchallenged Israeli lies, misinformation and previously-debunked propaganda. It was outrageous. It was despicable,” Minto wrote.

“The country which for six months has conducted genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza was given free rein to pour streams of the most vile fabrications and misinformation against Palestinians directly into the homes of New Zealanders. And without a murmur of protest from Jack Tame.

“Even the most egregious lies such as the ‘beheaded babies’ myth were allowed to be broadcast without challenge despite this Israeli propaganda having been discredited months ago.

“The interview showed utter contempt for Palestine and Palestinians as well as New Zealanders who were assailed with this stream of racist deceits and falsehoods with Q&A as the conduit.”

Among a stream of social media comments, one person remarked “On John Tame’s YouTube channel it gained a lot of comments fairly quickly . . .

“These comments were encouraging as at least 95 percent were denouncing the interview . . . with a lot of them debunking the endless stream of blatant lies and atrocity propaganda that poured out of the Israeli ambassador’s mouth.

“Most of the posters were obviously from our country and it was a great example of how Israel’s actions have shattered its reputation with their propaganda fooling hardly anyone anymore.

“It’s a bit like a little child with chocolate all over their face denying they ate the chocolate . . . except in Israel’s case it’s civilian blood all over their face . . .

“Anyway, when I revisited the thread the comments had been purged and deleted.”

On the Q&A YouTube channel, @ZaraLomas commented: “The fact that Q&A are deleting critical comments speaks volumes about their integrity (or lack thereof), and their faith in this shocking piece of ‘journalism’.

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

Ten days ago, a man biking with his two kids saw Melanie Joly on Laurier Avenue in Montreal and asked the foreign minister to “lift the cap on the number of Palestinian refugees”. In response, Joly hit his phone and grabbed his jacket. Antoine (sole identification of the man) then told the minister to calm down and after she mentions the children with him says he’s trying to instill “good values” in them by opposing Israel’s killing. After the minister says she’s trying to have a relaxing walk Antoine says she doesn’t have that right while enabling a genocide in Gaza. Antoine then says it’s his job to harass her for promoting genocide.

Two weeks before the incident Joly made what she called a “solidarity” trip to a state the International Court of Justice found to plausibly committing genocide. In response to its mass killings in Gaza, Joly’s Global Affairs sped up the approval of weapons permits to Israel, okaying $28.5 million in arms in the two months after its onslaught on Gaza began.

A slew of commentators condemned Antoine, not Joly who may have assaulted him. They seem to believe Canada’s foreign minister can enable mass slaughter and not expect to be challenged about it. A number of the commentators demanded greater police protection for the minister even though an RCMP agent was with Joly. Radio Canada’s flagship weekly program Tout Le Monde en Parle (everyone is talking about it) played the video and had the minister on to discuss how difficult it’s been for her during the past six months.

According to the commentariat, people filming themselves challenging politicians on the street is a threat to democracy. Of course, this is an inversion of reality. While sometimes messy and unpleasant, common people questioning politicians and sharing it on social media subverts our society’s political passivity and the dominant media’s power to ‘manufacture consent’ for imperialism. Journalists with regular access to politicians rarely ask tough questions on international affairs, prioritizing ‘access’ over holding power accountable. Beyond their cozy relations with politicians, the commentariat don’t support this type of social media activism because it subverts the establishment media’s power. Over one million viewed Antoine’s interaction with Joly on my X account and hundreds of thousands more on others’ social media platforms.

Alongside media commentators, Liberal ministers came to Joly’s defence. Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge posted on X, “As MPs, we’re here to listen to the public. It’s part of our job. There are many ways to reach us, to express yourself. But no one deserves to be harassed, followed and filmed without their consent in their private life. My heart goes out to my colleague and friend, Melanie Joly.”

Leaving aside her “my heart goes out” hyperbole, St-Onge is a hypocrite. Three days later St-Onge and her staff cancelled a press conference, hid in a room for half an hour, called the police and ultimately fled out a backdoor to avoid a simple question about her government backing a holocaust in Gaza. When I arrived a few minutes late to a press conference with St-Onge a TVA cameraman was waiting in the room and the minister was touring a public housing project. The press people asked my name and then what I was planning to ask the minister about (which was the Heritage Minister’s silence on Israel destroying 40 UNESCO sites and killing 100 journalists in Gaza). Five minutes later they asked me to leave. I refused. Subsequently, they said the minister would not return to conclude the press conference so I found St-Onge. To avoid appearing on camera she hid inside an apartment for nearly half an hour while her attaché called the police and the manager of the facility to ask me to leave. As the police talked to me, the minister fled out a side door.

Hours after releasing a sanctimonious statement about the appropriate place to ask politicians questions, St-Onge went to embarrassing lengths to avoid taking my question at a press conference!

I already knew St-Onge’s ‘there’s a right time to communicate with politicians’ rhetoric was hogwash. A year ago I attended a press event with St-Onge and asked the then sports minister, who was pushing to bar Russian and Belarusian athletes from sports competitions, whether she felt the same way about US athletes after they invaded Iraq? She smirked and walked away.

As she left the room and waited for an elevator I asked the same question regarding Canadian athletes after the Canadian led bombing of Libya or Israeli athletes. Multiple millions viewed the clip on social media and the embarrassing encounter was picked up by a slew of major international media.

A bid to avoid a similar clip may explain why she went to such absurd lengths to elude my questioning her on camera (though after a run Media commentators and Liberal ministers are angry a father filmed himself challenging Canada’s foreign minister on the street for enabling genocide. The outrage exposes the media/political establishment’s anti-democratic ethos.

Ten days ago, a man biking with his two kids saw Melanie Joly on Laurier Avenue in Montreal and asked the foreign minister to “lift the cap on the number of Palestinian refugees”. In response, Joly hit his phone and grabbed his jacket. Antoine (sole identification of the man) then told the minister to calm down and after she mentions the children with him says he’s trying to instill “good values” in them by opposing Israel’s killing. After the minister says she’s trying to have a relaxing walk Antoine says she doesn’t have that right while enabling a genocide in Gaza. Antoine then says it’s his job to harass her for promoting genocide.

Two weeks before the incident Joly made what she called a “solidarity” trip to a state the International Court of Justice found to plausibly committing genocide. In response to its mass killings in Gaza, Joly’s Global Affairs sped up the approval of weapons permits to Israel, okaying $28.5 million in arms in the two months after its onslaught on Gaza began.

A slew of commentators condemned Antoine, not Joly who may have assaulted him. They seem to believe Canada’s foreign minister can enable mass slaughter and not expect to be challenged about it. A number of the commentators demanded greater police protection for the minister even though an RCMP agent was with Joly. Radio Canada’s flagship weekly program Tout Le Monde en Parle (everyone is talking about it) played the video and had the minister on to discuss how difficult it’s been for her during the past six months.

According to the commentariat, people filming themselves challenging politicians on the street is a threat to democracy. Of course, this is an inversion of reality. While sometimes messy and unpleasant, common people questioning politicians and sharing it on social media subverts our society’s political passivity and the dominant media’s power to ‘manufacture consent’ for imperialism. Journalists with regular access to politicians rarely ask tough questions on international affairs, prioritizing ‘access’ over holding power accountable. Beyond their cozy relations with politicians, the commentariat don’t support this type of social media activism because it subverts the establishment media’s power. Over one million viewed Antoine’s interaction with Joly on my X account and hundreds of thousands more on others’ social media platforms.

Alongside media commentators, Liberal ministers came to Joly’s defence. Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge posted on X, “As MPs, we’re here to listen to the public. It’s part of our job. There are many ways to reach us, to express yourself. But no one deserves to be harassed, followed and filmed without their consent in their private life. My heart goes out to my colleague and friend, Melanie Joly.”

Leaving aside her “my heart goes out” hyperbole, St-Onge is a hypocrite. Three days later St-Onge and her staff cancelled a press conference, hid in a room for half an hour, called the police and ultimately fled out a backdoor to avoid a simple question about her government backing a holocaust in Gaza. When I arrived a few minutes late to a press conference with St-Onge a TVA cameraman was waiting in the room and the minister was touring a public housing project. The press people asked my name and then what I was planning to ask the minister about (which was the Heritage Minister’s silence on Israel destroying 40 UNESCO sites and killing 100 journalists in Gaza). Five minutes later they asked me to leave. I refused. Subsequently, they said the minister would not return to conclude the press conference so I found St-Onge. To avoid appearing on camera she hid inside an apartment for nearly half an hour while her attaché called the police and the manager of the facility to ask me to leave. As the police talked to me, the minister fled out a side door.

Hours after releasing a sanctimonious statement about the appropriate place to ask politicians questions, St-Onge went to embarrassing lengths to avoid taking my question at a press conference!

I already knew St-Onge’s ‘there’s a right time to communicate with politicians’ rhetoric was hogwash. A year ago I attended a press event with St-Onge and asked the then sports minister, who was pushing to bar Russian and Belarusian athletes from sports competitions, whether she felt the same way about US athletes after they invaded Iraq? She smirked and walked away.

As she left the room and waited for an elevator I asked the same question regarding Canadian athletes after the Canadian led bombing of Libya or Israeli athletes. Multiple millions viewed the clip on social media and the embarrassing encounter was picked up by a slew of major international media.

A bid to avoid a similar Media commentators and Liberal ministers are angry a father filmed himself challenging Canada’s foreign minister on the street for enabling genocide. The outrage exposes the media/political establishment’s anti-democratic ethos.

Ten days ago, a man biking with his two kids saw Melanie Joly on Laurier Avenue in Montreal and asked the foreign minister to “lift the cap on the number of Palestinian refugees”. In response, Joly hit his phone and grabbed his jacket. Antoine (sole identification of the man) then told the minister to calm down and after she mentions the children with him says he’s trying to instill “good values” in them by opposing Israel’s killing. After the minister says she’s trying to have a relaxing walk Antoine says she doesn’t have that right while enabling a genocide in Gaza. Antoine then says it’s his job to harass her for promoting genocide.

Two weeks before the incident Joly made what she called a “solidarity” trip to a state the International Court of Justice found to plausibly committing genocide. In response to its mass killings in Gaza, Joly’s Global Affairs sped up the approval of weapons permits to Israel, okaying $28.5 million in arms in the two months after its onslaught on Gaza began.

A slew of commentators condemned Antoine, not Joly who may have assaulted him. They seem to believe Canada’s foreign minister can enable mass slaughter and not expect to be challenged about it. A number of the commentators demanded greater police protection for the minister even though an RCMP agent was with Joly. Radio Canada’s flagship weekly program Tout Le Monde en Parle (everyone is talking about it) played the video and had the minister on to discuss how difficult it’s been for her during the past six months.

According to the commentariat, people filming themselves challenging politicians on the street is a threat to democracy. Of course, this is an inversion of reality. While sometimes messy and unpleasant, common people questioning politicians and sharing it on social media subverts our society’s political passivity and the dominant media’s power to ‘manufacture consent’ for imperialism. Journalists with regular access to politicians rarely ask tough questions on international affairs, prioritizing ‘access’ over holding power accountable. Beyond their cozy relations with politicians, the commentariat don’t support this type of social media activism because it subverts the establishment media’s power. Over one million viewed Antoine’s interaction with Joly on my X account and hundreds of thousands more on others’ social media platforms.

Alongside media commentators, Liberal ministers came to Joly’s defence. Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge posted on X, “As MPs, we’re here to listen to the public. It’s part of our job. There are many ways to reach us, to express yourself. But no one deserves to be harassed, followed and filmed without their consent in their private life. My heart goes out to my colleague and friend, Melanie Joly.”

Leaving aside her “my heart goes out” hyperbole, St-Onge is a hypocrite. Three days later St-Onge and her staff cancelled a press conference, hid in a room for half an hour, called the police and ultimately fled out a backdoor to avoid a simple question about her government backing a holocaust in Gaza. When I arrived a few minutes late to a press conference with St-Onge a TVA cameraman was waiting in the room and the minister was touring a public housing project. The press people asked my name and then what I was planning to ask the minister about (which was the Heritage Minister’s silence on Israel destroying 40 UNESCO sites and killing 100 journalists in Gaza). Five minutes later they asked me to leave. I refused. Subsequently, they said the minister would not return to conclude the press conference so I found St-Onge. To avoid appearing on camera she hid inside an apartment for nearly half an hour while her attaché called the police and the manager of the facility to ask me to leave. As the police talked to me, the minister fled out a side door.

Hours after releasing a sanctimonious statement about the appropriate place to ask politicians questions, St-Onge went to embarrassing lengths to avoid taking my question at a press conference!

I already knew St-Onge’s ‘there’s a right time to communicate with politicians’ rhetoric was hogwash. A year ago I attended a press event with St-Onge and asked the then sports minister, who was pushing to bar Russian and Belarusian athletes from sports competitions, whether she felt the same way about US athletes after they invaded Iraq? She smirked and walked away.

As she left the room and waited for an elevator I asked the same question regarding Canadian athletes after the Canadian led bombing of Libya or Israeli athletes. Multiple millions viewed the clip on social media and the embarrassing encounter was picked up by a slew of major international media.

A bid to avoid a similar clip may explain why she went to such absurd lengths to elude my questioning her on camera (though after a run across a parking lot I opened the heritage minister’s door to question her before she drove off). Politicians controlling questions and scripting public events is a far bigger threat to democracy than common people rudely filming them on the street. So is a Montreal media sphere which devoted more attention to criticizing a father for challenging the foreign minister on the street then to 20 weeks in a row of mass marches in the city against Canada’s complicity in Israel’s genocide (from week 5 to 26 the media all but stopped covering the protests even though thousands came out each weekend).

Joly, St-Onge, Justin Trudeau and others should be questioned on video whenever possible. We need to give the decision-makers a bit of a headache and inspire like-minded individuals to act. With the dominant media largely refusing to cover critical perspectives on important international issues, we need to find other ways to put forward our message and push back against government policies.

Shame on all the commentators and politicians who denigrated a father for challenging Canada’s foreign affairs minister for promoting genocide. We need more people with Antoine’s convictions and a willingness to act.clip may explain why she went to such absurd lengths to elude my questioning her on camera (though after a run across a parking lot I opened the heritage minister’s door to question her before she drove off). Politicians controlling questions and scripting public events is a far bigger threat to democracy than common people rudely filming them on the street. So is a Montreal media sphere which devoted more attention to criticizing a father for challenging the foreign minister on the street then to 20 weeks in a row of mass marches in the city against Canada’s complicity in Israel’s genocide (from week 5 to 26 the media all but stopped covering the protests even though thousands came out each weekend).

Joly, St-Onge, Justin Trudeau and others should be questioned on video whenever possible. We need to give the decision-makers a bit of a headache and inspire like-minded individuals to act. With the dominant media largely refusing to cover critical perspectives on important international issues, we need to find other ways to put forward our message and push back against government policies.

Shame on all the commentators and politicians who denigrated a father for challenging Canada’s foreign affairs minister for promoting genocide. We need more people with Antoine’s convictions and a willingness to act.across a parking lot I opened the heritage minister’s door to question her before she drove off). Politicians controlling questions and scripting public events is a far bigger threat to democracy than common people rudely filming them on the street. So is a Montreal media sphere which devoted more attention to criticizing a father for challenging the foreign minister on the street then to 20 weeks in a row of mass marches in the city against Canada’s complicity in Israel’s genocide (from week 5 to 26 the media all but stopped covering the protests even though thousands came out each weekend).

Joly, St-Onge, Justin Trudeau and others should be questioned on video whenever possible. We need to give the decision-makers a bit of a headache and inspire like-minded individuals to act. With the dominant media largely refusing to cover critical perspectives on important international issues, we need to find other ways to put forward our message and push back against government policies.

Shame on all the commentators and politicians who denigrated a father for challenging Canada’s foreign affairs minister for promoting genocide. We need more people with Antoine’s convictions and a willingness to act.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

The post Wildfires in Chile Challenge Its Goal to be Carbon Neutral by 2050 appeared first on Project Censored.

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

The opposition group in Papua New Guinea’s Parliament staged a walkout yesterday after a fiery exchange, amid an ongoing political ruckus in the country.

The walkout happened after the Acting Speaker suspended standing orders and put forward a motion for a vote of confidence in Prime Minister James Marape.

The opposition, which is in the process of mounting a leadership challenge, objected and stormed out once it became clear that Acting Speaker Koni Iguan was going ahead with the vote.

• READ MORE: Other PNG politics reports

The vote of confidence in the Prime Minister was passed 84-0 while opposition MPs were not in the House.

RNZ Pacific PNG correspondent Scott Waide called the move “simple psychological powerplay” as it haD no bearing on the vote of no confidence lodged earlier this week by the opposition.

He said the vote of confidence caused confusion for some people watching yesterday’s Parliament livestream.

Iguan said the private business committee that was looking over the motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister had found one defect in the submission.

Iguan said the committee asked the opposition to correct one point.

He said they had since submitted “a new notice” for deliberation.

The Acting Speaker said the committee would consider the updated motion in its next meeting.

Later, the opposition returned to the chamber and debate continued on a bill proposing to amend the Constitution to declare Papua New Guinea a Christian country.

Christian state bill
A bill proposing to make Papua New Guinea a Christian state passed its first reading during the same session with an overwhelming majority voting in favour of the constitutional change.

This is just the first step in the process with a second vote expected to take place in around two months time and a third and final vote after that.

RNZ correspondent Waide said there had already been a fierce pushback.

“The Catholic Bishops Conference has come out saying that this . . . the proposed changes to the Constitution are a bad idea,” he said.

“And it’s not wise to proceed not wise for public money to proceed with changes to the Constitution because it could create problems that we can’t foresee at the moment.”

Waide said this did not have anything to do with the upcoming visit by the Pope, rather it was something Marape had been pushing for.

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

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

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Zelenskiy met with his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nauseda on January 10 to discuss military aid, training, and joint demining efforts during the previously unannounced trip, which will also take him to Estonia and Latvia.

“We have proven that Russia can be stopped, that deterrence is possible,” he said after talks with Nauseda on what is the Ukrainian leader's first foreign trip of 2024.

"Today, Gitanas Nauseda and I focused on frontline developments. Weapons, equipment, personnel training, and Lithuania's leadership in the demining coalition are all sources of strength for us," Zelenskiy later wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Lithuania has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since the start of Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion, which will reach the two-year mark in February.

Nauseda said EU and NATO member Lithuania will continue to provide military, political, and economic support to Ukraine, and pointed to the Baltic country's approval last month of a 200-million-euro ($219 million) long-term military aid package for Ukraine.

Russia's invasion has turned Ukraine into one of the most mined countries in the world, generating one of the largest demining challenges since the end of World War II.

"Lithuania is forming a demining coalition to mobilize military support for Ukraine as efficiently and quickly as possible," Nauseda said.

"The Western world must understand that this is not just the struggle of Ukraine, it is the struggle of the whole of Europe and the democratic world for peace and freedom," Nauseda said.

Ukraine has pleaded with its allies to keep supplying it with weapons amid signs of donor fatigue in some countries.

There is continued disagreement between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress on continuing military aid for Kyiv, while a 50-billion-euro ($55 billion) aid package from the European Union remains blocked due to a Hungarian veto.

But a NATO allies meeting in Brussels on January 10 made it clear that they will continue to provide Ukraine with major military, economic, and humanitarian aid. NATO allies have outlined plans to provide "billions of euros of further capabilities" in 2024 to Ukraine, the alliance said in a statement.

Zelensky warned during the news conference with Nauseda that delays in Western aid to Kyiv would only embolden Moscow.

"He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is not going to stop. He wants to occupy us completely," Zelenskiy said.

"And sometimes, the insecurity of partners regarding financial and military aid to Ukraine only increases Russia's courage and strength."

Since the start of the year, Ukraine has been subjected to several massive waves of Russian missile and drone strikes that have caused civilian deaths and material damage.

Zelenskiy said on January 10 that Ukraine badly needs advanced air defense systems.

"In recent days, Russia hit Ukraine with a total of 500 devices: we destroyed 70 percent of them," Zelenskiy said. "Air defense systems are the number one item that we lack."

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, an all-out air raid alert was declared on the morning of January 10, with authorities instructing citizens to take shelter due to an elevated danger of Russian missile strikes.

"Missile-strike danger throughout the territory of Ukraine! [Russian] MiG-31Ks taking off from Savasleika airfield [in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region].

Don't ignore the air raid alert!' the Ukrainian Air Force said in its warning message on Telegram.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Zelenskiy met with his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nauseda on January 10 to discuss military aid, training, and joint demining efforts during the previously unannounced trip, which will also take him to Estonia and Latvia.

“We have proven that Russia can be stopped, that deterrence is possible,” he said after talks with Nauseda on what is the Ukrainian leader's first foreign trip of 2024.

"Today, Gitanas Nauseda and I focused on frontline developments. Weapons, equipment, personnel training, and Lithuania's leadership in the demining coalition are all sources of strength for us," Zelenskiy later wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Lithuania has been a staunch ally of Ukraine since the start of Russia's unprovoked full-scale invasion, which will reach the two-year mark in February.

Nauseda said EU and NATO member Lithuania will continue to provide military, political, and economic support to Ukraine, and pointed to the Baltic country's approval last month of a 200-million-euro ($219 million) long-term military aid package for Ukraine.

Russia's invasion has turned Ukraine into one of the most mined countries in the world, generating one of the largest demining challenges since the end of World War II.

"Lithuania is forming a demining coalition to mobilize military support for Ukraine as efficiently and quickly as possible," Nauseda said.

"The Western world must understand that this is not just the struggle of Ukraine, it is the struggle of the whole of Europe and the democratic world for peace and freedom," Nauseda said.

Ukraine has pleaded with its allies to keep supplying it with weapons amid signs of donor fatigue in some countries.

There is continued disagreement between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress on continuing military aid for Kyiv, while a 50-billion-euro ($55 billion) aid package from the European Union remains blocked due to a Hungarian veto.

But a NATO allies meeting in Brussels on January 10 made it clear that they will continue to provide Ukraine with major military, economic, and humanitarian aid. NATO allies have outlined plans to provide "billions of euros of further capabilities" in 2024 to Ukraine, the alliance said in a statement.

Zelensky warned during the news conference with Nauseda that delays in Western aid to Kyiv would only embolden Moscow.

"He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) is not going to stop. He wants to occupy us completely," Zelenskiy said.

"And sometimes, the insecurity of partners regarding financial and military aid to Ukraine only increases Russia's courage and strength."

Since the start of the year, Ukraine has been subjected to several massive waves of Russian missile and drone strikes that have caused civilian deaths and material damage.

Zelenskiy said on January 10 that Ukraine badly needs advanced air defense systems.

"In recent days, Russia hit Ukraine with a total of 500 devices: we destroyed 70 percent of them," Zelenskiy said. "Air defense systems are the number one item that we lack."

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, an all-out air raid alert was declared on the morning of January 10, with authorities instructing citizens to take shelter due to an elevated danger of Russian missile strikes.

"Missile-strike danger throughout the territory of Ukraine! [Russian] MiG-31Ks taking off from Savasleika airfield [in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region].

Don't ignore the air raid alert!' the Ukrainian Air Force said in its warning message on Telegram.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Photograph Source: Fars Media Corporation – CC BY 4.0

1948 was a year of tragic irony.

That year saw the adoption of both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, together promising a world in which human rights would be protected by the rule of law. That same year, South Africa adopted apartheid and Israeli forces carried out the Nakba, the violent mass dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Both systems relied on western colonial support.

In short, the modern international human rights movement was born into a world of racialized colonial contradictions. Seventy-five years later, the world is watching in horror as Israel has continued the Nakba through its months-long, systematic ethnic purge of Gaza — again with the complicity of powerful western governments led by the United States.

The horrors of the original Nakba were met with decades of absolute impunity for Israel, feeding further violence. But this time, three decades since the overthrow of apartheid in South Africa, the post-apartheid “Rainbow Nation” is taking the lead in challenging Israel’s genocidal assault.

On December 29, South Africa became the first country to file an application to the UN’s high judicial arm, the International Court of Justice, instituting genocide proceedings against Israel for “acts threatened, adopted, condoned, taken, and being taken by the Government and military of the State of Israel against the Palestinian people.”

In wrenching and horrifying detail, South Africa’s 84-page document describes a litany of Israeli actions as “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.”

A Horrifying Civilian Toll in Gaza and the West Bank

2023 was the bloodiest year in the Palestinian territories since the destruction of historic Palestine and the founding of the state of Israel.

In the first half of the year, Israeli assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank had already reached a fever pitch, with successive waves of mass arrests, settler pogroms, and military attacks against Palestinian towns and refugee camps, including the ethnic cleansing of entire villages. At the same time, millions of civilians in Gaza were suffering unbearable hardship under a 17-year-long Israel-imposed siege.

On October 7, Gaza-based militants launched a devastating attack on Israeli military and civilian targets and seized more than 200 military personnel and civilian hostages. In an appalling act of mass collective punishment, Israel immediately cut off all food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity to the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza. Then it began a relentless campaign of annihilation through massive bombing and missile strikes followed by a ground-level invasion that brought shocking reports of massacres, extrajudicial executions, torture, beatings, and mass civilian detentions.

More than 22,000 civilians and counting have since been killed in Gaza, the overwhelming majority children and women — along with record numbers of journalists and more UN aid workers than in any other conflict situation. Thousands more are still trapped under the rubble, dead or dying from untreated injuries, and now more are dying from rampant diseases caused by Israel’s denial of clean water and medical care, even as the Israeli military assault continues. Eighty-five percent of all Gazans have been forced from their homes. And now Israeli-imposed starvation is taking hold.

The Legal Standard for Genocide

Genocide analysts and human rights lawyers, activists, specialists around the globe — no strangers to human cruelty — have been shocked by both the savagery of Israel’s acts and by the brazen public declarations of genocidal intent by Israeli leaders. Hundreds of these experts have sounded the genocide alarm in Gaza, noting the point-by-point alignment between Israel’s actions and its officials’ stated intent on the one hand, and the prohibitions enumerated in UN Genocide Convention on the other.

The South African application “unequivocally condemns all violations of international law by all parties, including the direct targeting of Israeli civilians and other nationals and hostage-taking by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.” But it reminds the Court: “No armed attack on a State’s territory, no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can, however, provide any possible justification for, or defense to, breaches of the [Genocide Convention] whether as a matter of law or morality.”

Unlike many aspects of international law, the definition of genocide is quite straightforward. To qualify as genocide or attempted genocide, two things are required. First, the specific intent of the perpetrator to destroy all or part of an identified national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. Second, commission of at least one of five specified acts designed to make that happen.

South Africa’s petition to the ICJ is filled with clear and horrifically compelling examples, identifying Israeli actions that match at least three of the five acts that constitute genocide when linked to specific intent. Those include killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group, and, perhaps most indicative of genocidal purpose, creating “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” As South Africa documents, Israel has shown the world, at levels unprecedented in the 21^st century, what those conditions look like.

For specific intent, South Africa points to dozens of statements made by Israeli leaders, including the President, Prime Minister, and other cabinet officials, and as well as Knesset members, military commanders, and more.

Accustomed to decades of U.S.-backed impunity, Israeli officials have been emboldened, describing openly their intent to carry out “another Nakba,” to wipe out all of Gaza, to deny any distinction between civilians and combatants, to raze Gaza to the ground, to reduce it to rubble, and to bury Palestinians alive, among many other similar statements.

Their deliberately dehumanizing language includes descriptions of Palestinians as animals, sub-human, Nazis, a cancer, insects, vermin — all language designed to justify wiping out all or part of the group. Prime Minister Netanyahu went so far as to invoke a Biblical verse on the Amalek, commanding that the “entire population be wiped out, that none be spared, men, women, children, suckling babies, and livestock.”

The U.S. May Also Be Complicit in Israel’s Genocide

The petition to the ICJ is sharply focused on Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention. It does not deal with the complicity of other governments, most significantly of course the role of the United States in funding, arming, and shielding Israel as it carries out its genocidal acts.

But the active role of the United States in the Israeli onslaught, while hardly surprising, has been especially shocking. As a State Party to the Genocide Convention, the U.S. is obliged to act to prevent or stop genocide. Instead, we have seen the United States not only failing in its obligations of prevention, but instead actively providing economic, military, intelligence, and diplomatic support to Israel while it is engaged in its mass atrocities in Gaza.

As such, this is not merely a case of U.S. inaction in the face of genocide (itself a breach of its legal obligations) but also a case of direct complicity — which is a distinct crime under the Genocide Convention. The Center for Constitutional Rights, on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations and individual Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, has filed a suit in U.S. federal court in California focused on U.S. complicity in Israel’s acts of genocide.

South Africa’s Genocide Complaint is a Rallying Cry for Civil Society

In a situation such as this, framed by shocking Western complicity on one side and a massive failure of international institutions fed by U.S. pressure on the other, South Africa’s initiative at the ICJ may hold significance beyond the Court’s ultimate decision.

This case comes in the context of the extraordinary mobilization of protests, petitions, sit-ins, occupations, civil disobedience, boycotts, and so much more by human rights defenders, Jewish activists, faith-based organizations, labor unions, and broad-based movements across the United States and around the world.

As such, this move puts South Africa, and potentially the ICJ itself, on the side of the global mobilization for a ceasefire, for human rights, and for accountability. One of the most important values of this ICJ petition may therefore be in its use as an instrument for escalating global civil society mobilizations demanding their governments abide by the obligations imposed on all parties to the Genocide Convention.

Predictably, Israel has already rejected the legitimacy of the case before the Court. Confident that the U.S. and its allies will not allow Israel to be held accountable, the Israeli government is defiantly continuing its bloody assault on Gaza (as well as the West Bank). If Israel and its Western collaborators are once again successful in blocking justice, the first victims will be the Palestinian people. Then the credibility of international law itself may be lost as collateral damage.

But South Africa’s ICJ action has opened a crack in a 75-year-old wall of impunity through which a light of hope has begun to shine. If global protests can seize the moment to turn that crack into a wider portal towards justice, we may just see the beginnings of real accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, and attention to the long-neglected root causes of violence: settler-colonialism, occupation, inequality, and apartheid.

The post A Crack in the 75-Year-Old Wall of Impunity: South Africa’s Court Challenge of Israeli Genocide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Craig Mokhiber – Phyllis Bennis.

We look at how Israel’s war on Gaza has inflamed tensions in the Middle East and threatens to pull other countries into the fighting, including the United States. The Pentagon says it has intercepted a number of drones and missiles launched by Yemen’s Houthi forces — known as Ansar Allah — in the Red Sea aimed at disrupting international shipping, with the group vowing to continue the attacks on ships in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The U.S. and Israel have also exchanged fire with groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, and violence continues to increase in the occupied West Bank. The growth of forces openly fighting against Israel and the U.S. is a major development in the Middle East that most Western commentators do not fully understand, says Rami Khouri, a veteran Palestinian American journalist and a senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. This “axis of resistance” is largely motivated by outrage over the treatment of Palestinians, he says. “The U.S. and Israel at some point need to acknowledge that the Palestinian people have rights that are equal to the Israeli people.”

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

“March-in can be, should be, a powerful tool to support fair pricing and access to publicly-funded medicines, as President Biden importantly suggests. Unfortunately the administration’s march-in policy is far more limited than the statute allows. It should be quickly revised to recommend use of march-in wherever publicly-funded medicines are unreasonably priced.

“We appreciate the White House spotlighting patent abuse and indicating that high prices can give cause for exercising march-in rights.

“But the framework proposed today is far too restrictive. It considers cases of ‘extreme, unjustified and exploitative’ pricing, presumably measured against the already-outrageous commonplace pharma price abuses of the day, under which Americans are routinely charged two to four times more for drugs than patients in other wealthy countries.

“Where most drug prices already are egregious and force rationing, few drugs will seem ‘extremely’ priced by comparison. Federal agencies have shown themselves reluctant to act against unreasonable prices, and this new proposal may give them permission to continue to do nothing.

“The examples the announcement offers evade the main and important use case: where drug corporations abuse their monopoly power to charge exorbitant prices, ignore the government contribution to R&D and charge Americans more than people in other countries. The final guidelines must be adjusted so they explicitly cover these scenarios and establish common-sense criteria for what constitutes an unreasonable price. Falling short risks doing nothing to lower the prices of taxpayer-funded medicines for patients, and instead perpetuating an unacceptable status quo. Americans have a right to expect not to be price gouged for medicines they paid for in the first place.”

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

Disgruntled staff at the University of South Pacific (USP) are demanding the USP Council make a decision on the relocation of the vice-chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, to Fiji from Samoa.

The demands from the USP staff coincide with the university’s two-day 96th council meeting at the Laucala campus’s Japan ICT Building earlier this week.

In an email that was sent to regional media last Friday, including the Samoa Observer, the staff said they were “up in arms” over the decision by the university’s pro-chancellor to block a submission from the staff to the agenda of the council’s meeting.

• READ MORE:  Ahluwalia reappointed as USP’s VC in spite of protests, strike threat
• USP strike on the cards after council blocks staff papers in pay row
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• USP staff unhappy with VC, but he thanks them for ‘engagement’
• USP saga and other reports

“The paper is in response to the decision of the May 2023 USP Council (C95) meeting where its attention was drawn to the many unresolved issues faced by the staff over the period 2021 to May 2023 and some earlier, despite meetings of the staff policy committee and SMT/union quarterly meetings which are chaired by VCP [vice-chancellor and president],” read the statement issued by the university staff.

“University management only found it necessary to respond to issues when the Association of USP Staff (AUSPS) filed a log of claims in October 2023. The VCP then appointed the chief operating officer and the executive director people and workforce strategy to engage with the union.”

According to the USP staff, two meetings were held to respond to the decision of the May Council for the university management and the unions to work together to address the issues and to report and update the November (C96) council.

A paper was then submitted for the November 2023 council agenda containing updates on resolved and unresolved issues in response to the council’s decision and new issues that have come to light since C95.

Paper ‘cannot be tabled’
However, the staff said that on November 20 the secretary to the council informed the council staff representative that the pro-chancellor and chair of the council had directed him to inform her that after reviewing the paper, “it cannot be tabled at the 96th council meeting” because “the issues raised therein are not for council to deliberate on”.

They added that the pro-chancellor had directed that these be worked on with the USP management!

“She failed to acknowledge that the paper contained responses to May council decision and that there are issues such as the salary adjustment that the management has refused to discuss or negotiate on.

“PC [pro-chancellor] then proceeded to state that the council does not deal with matters of salary adjustment. Precedent has been set where the council has approved salary adjustments.”

Fiji’s national broadcaster FBC on Tuesday reported that the president of AUSPS, Elizabeth Read Fong, had questioned why Professor Ahluwalia continued to live in Samoa despite the Fiji government lifting the ban that the former Fijian government had placed on him.

Fong reportedly said that the logical choice would be for the university’s vice-chancellor and president to return to his office at the main headquarters of the USP in Laucala Bay, Suva, and appealed to the Samoa government to facilitate the release of the vice-chancellor.

She said the regional university continued to spend a lot on Professor Ahluwalia’s travel and accommodation expenses every time he travelled to Suva from Samoa.

The Samoa Observer has contacted the USP vice-chancellor for comment on the concerns that the USP staff members have raised.

Many USP staff dressed in black protested for two days over their grievances with the vice-chancellor.

Alexander Rheeney is editor of the Samoa Observer. Republished with permission.

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

One of President Joe Biden’s very first executive orders in January 2021 directed agencies to recalculate the social cost of carbon — currently placed at $51 a ton while the government finalizes its revised estimate. In the meantime, Republican state attorneys general have been flinging lawsuits at the administration in an attempt to block its ability to use the metric in evaluating regulations.

But their plans were thwarted by Tuesday’s order from the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Without any explanation, the justices declined to hear Missouri v. Biden, a case in which 12 states alleged that Biden’s executive order violated the constitutional separation of powers. A federal appeals court ruled last year that the states suing over the use of the estimate didn’t have legal standing because they couldn’t show they’d been harmed by the way agencies had applied the metric.

It’s the second time the Supreme Court has declined to take up a challenge to the social cost of carbon. Last year, the justices blocked a similar request led by Louisiana.

The social cost of carbon is likely to have cascading effects on agriculture, power plants, oil and gas leases, and more. That’s because federal agencies have to weigh the costs and benefits of any regulation they adopt. If the government accounts for the true costs of emitting greenhouse gases — lost lives, dying crops, homes swallowed by rising seas — then decisions that result in more carbon emissions start to look a lot more expensive, while those that reduce emissions look like a smart deal.

The Obama administration, the first to require agencies to use this metric in assessing rules, placed the social cost of carbon at $43 a ton — a move that helped justify things like stronger emissions standards for vehicles. The Trump administration calculated the number differently and, in typical fashion, slashed the number down to a couple bucks per ton. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed $190 a ton, nearly four times higher than the estimate the Biden administration currently uses. (The EPA’s number is in line with estimates from independent experts.)

Because the social cost of carbon is so influential in developing climate policy, some Republicans consider it a paragon of the “radical climate agenda.” In response to the Supreme Court’s rejection of Missouri’s challenge, Andrew Bailey, the state’s attorney general, vowed to “continue to combat government overreach at every turn.” 

Analysts say the fight isn’t over yet. In a note to clients, the research firm ClearView Energy Partners said the ruling doesn’t preclude states — or anyone else — from suing over specific agency actions and rules that rely on the social cost of carbon, E&E News reported.

In recent months, the White House announced that it was considering applying the social cost of carbon more broadly across agencies, in everything from annual budgets and permitting decisions to fines for violating environmental regulations. It represents a sea change in how the government approaches climate policy: For decades, policies to reduce emissions had been cast as an economic burden, a narrative propelled by oil industry-backed studies that made legislation look prohibitively expensive. Now, the frame has switched: Carbon emissions are viewed as the economic harm, and climate policy is the balm.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Supreme Court rejected a Republican challenge to Biden’s climate math on Oct 11, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

Enacted in the wake of the Civil War, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies from public office any individual who has taken an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution but then engages in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or gives aid or comfort to its enemies. No prior criminal conviction is required. Trump’s involvement in the violent attack on Congress to prevent the certification of election results, which resulted in the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history, disqualifies him from holding any future public office. State election officials do not need permission from Congress to enforce the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause, just as they do not need congressional approval to enforce the U.S. Constitution in general.

“Donald Trump violated his oath of office and incited a violent insurrection that attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatened the assassination of the Vice President and congressional leaders, and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history,” said Ron Fein, Legal Director at Free Speech For People. “Our predecessors understood that oath-breaking insurrectionists will do it again, and worse, if allowed back into power, so they enacted the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause to protect the republic from people like Trump. Trump is legally barred from the ballot and election officials must follow this constitutional mandate.”

“The United States Constitution makes Donald Trump ineligible to run for or serve in any public office in the country, let alone President,” said Mark Brewer. “All Michigan voters, including the plaintiffs, have a well-established right to have only eligible candidates on the ballot. Since Secretary of State Benson has announced that Trump will be on the primary ballot unless a court orders otherwise, we are seeking a court order preventing Trump from being on the ballot.”

The lawsuit details the multiple actions taken by Trump to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, starting with widespread claims of election fraud and repeatedly urging former Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electoral certification of the results before and during the January 6th attack. It also describes the ways in which Trump incited his supporters, many of whom were armed, and whom he knew to be armed, to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” When Trump was prevented from engaging in the Capitol attack himself, he stationed himself in the White House dining room and refused to call off his supporters for more than three hours as they violently attacked members of the Capitol Police and forced members of Congress into hiding while invading the building. Congress, over a dozen federal judges, Trump’s own Department of Justice, and his personal defense lawyer have all characterized the attack as an insurrection. And judges hearing January 6-related cases have repeatedly assigned responsibility for that insurrection to Trump.

On September 12, 2023, Free Speech For People filed, on behalf of voters in Minnesota, a similar legal challenge to Trump’s eligibility to appear on that state’s ballot. Oral argument before the Minnesota Supreme Court in that case is scheduled for November 2, 2023.

Free Speech For People filed similar challenges in 2022 against Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and former North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn for their role in the January 6th insurrection. Although those challenges did not result in disqualification (Cawthorn’s because he lost his primary while the challenge was pending; Greene’s because the judge found insufficient factual evidence that she, personally, had engaged in the insurrection), they set important legal precedent that lays the groundwork for this challenge, including: that states have legal authority to adjudicate Section 3 challenges; that state processes for adjudicating Section 3 challenges do not violate a candidate’s constitutional rights; that no prior criminal conviction is required under Section 3 challenge; that words (including “marching orders or instructions to capture a particular objective, or to disrupt or obstruct a particular government proceeding”) can constitute engaging in insurrection; and that an 1872 congressional amnesty for ex-Confederates does not apply to January 6.

On September 6, 2022, Judge Francis J. Matthew of New Mexico’s First District permanently enjoined Otero County Commissioner and “Cowboys for Trump” founder Couy Griffin from holding office under the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause.

Free Speech For People, a national nonpartisan legal advocacy group, has spearheaded the nationwide effort to “hold insurrectionists accountable for their role in the violent assault on American democracy” that took place on January 6th, 2021. Along with the Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, the group launched TrumpIsDisqualified.org, a campaign calling on Secretaries of State and top election officials across the country to follow the mandate of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment and permanently bar Donald Trump–and all other elected officials who participated in the January 6th insurrection–from any future ballot.

Read the full complaint here.

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

We must question everything: Pt 1 (Where to begin)

Humans have lived, in organic communities, with relative ease in well provisioned ecosystems for hundreds of thousands years; our species developed a variety of technologies from projectile devices that extended the reach of the arm by many meters; we captured fire discovering its many uses, many uses completely new to the universe. Since those times we have made millions of ‘new things’ from shovels to computers to space ships.

Now, our vast numbers and myriad inventions have organized into social and economic dependencies utterly disconnected from essential ecological dependencies, dependencies that have long informed all of many many trillions of living things over billions of years. This is simply the recognition of what are the most explosive changes in the nearly 4 billion year history of life on this planet; these recent changes have reshaped the planet’s surface physically, chemically and energetically more quickly and with greater magnitude than any previous biophysical events. Unremitting regular environmental violence has come with our huge human populations and the biophysically influencing pollutants and activities that have characterized the last 10,000 years of human history.

Each year’s production of new humans begins life with the technologies and behaviors of their time as the base experience of what is real. This sets the changes created by our species into a dangerous competition with the biophysical designs of planetary stability, and suggests the need to question everything that we have done.

We need to understand that our species has reached a point, in our numbers and in our powers over material and energy, that our actions compete in major ways with earth’s productive and buffering systems; we have been changing biological systems in major, unsustainable, ways for millenia, but have been able to move on from the damages done to new regions with adequate soil, materials, biodiversity and living space: that period of options is long over.

We need to use our best epistemologies, scientific and philosophical understandings, to try to understand how we have come to this place in our history; and we need to be ready to be surprised by the answers. 

We must question everything: Pt2 (If everyone made their mark, there would be no place left to write.)

For millions of years the biological world organized the behaviors and communities of ours and related species. Today, we organize and make judgments not from any ecological informing source, but by what has been accomplished within the designs of social valuing: a community or social system adapts a hierarchy of performable actions for which a variety of practical and social rewards are attained. A most underlying principle of social life in all human societies is to find ways of being valued, to accomplish something, either within the overarching social hierarchies or within the hierarchies of some part of society. It is my argument that this, almost completely unquestioned, social motive has been and remains the most destructive biologically created force in the evolutionary history of life on this planet.

I realize that such a statement is far outside of the central principles of my society, that it is represented by only a very tiny subset of values and ideas, and that such a statement is easily rejected out of hand. But, it should be obvious that the many billions of small and large acts of accomplishment, largely disconnected from ecological realities, result in vast and rapid changes to our world, almost completely without design or reason.

Yet, we, each of us, are moved to ‘make our mark’, to achieve in ways that distinguish us and, in the process, to add, incrementally, to the impact of the human species on total earth biophysical systems. The human animal has been doing this for all of its time as the dominant species, but for more than 99% of the nearly 3 million or so years that our genus has been tooling up its dominance, the communities and social organizations of the various species were embedded in the feedback systems of their local ecosystems, populations were small and impact was part of evolutionary adaptive processes. And note: there has never been before a single dominant species in the whole 4 billion history of life on the earth!

Today, our present species has rejected both recognizing and responding to ecological feedback information in favor of social and economic feedback; this is the ‘overcoming and defeating the forces of nature’ of which we are so proud. And today, we exist in many orders of magnitude greater numbers than any land animal of our physical size in the history of the earth; each using, on average, many times more resources per individual animal, while returning very little useful to the environment and much that is damaging; this is unlike every other species in the history of life.

The social motive structure of accomplishment is such a deep and ubiquitous expectation in all human societies, that it is almost impossible to imagine organizing human actions in any other way: Humans imagine and invent at a rate and in volumes vastly greater than evolutionary processes of environmental fitness; ours is an entirely new way of selecting, storing, manipulating and implementing information. What I am suggesting is that this ‘new way’ has reached its limit in its present form. The changes we have wrought confront destructively both environmental and social Reality. This is not, by any means, a new observation; what is a bit new is that the social motive of accomplishment is seen as the foundation of our dilemmas; our most revered and cherished motive is the most dangerous and destructive.

Further, the ‘social accomplishment’ of doing as little as possible for one’s self by one’s own direct action is a deeply distorting influence that has increasingly dominated human societies since institutional agriculture became the primary source of human nutrition. It means that wealth must be accumulated as a sort of violence to force others to do the ‘onerous’ and devalued things that ‘must be done’. Rethinking and remaking this institutional structure and expectation of human society, fundamental to all political forms presently on the planet, will require uncharacteristic understanding, selflessness and cooperation…to the point that there is considerable despair that it can be done.

But, accomplishment as human motive will not be removed; social hierarchy with its defining activities will not be removed. The human activities of imagination and invention will not be removed. BUT, changes within these givens must be imagined and must be implemented. ‘Accomplishments’ and social valuing can be measured against projections of long-term destructiveness to social and environmental systems. Material and energy use limits can become society-wide expectations…along with a shifting from personal material accumulation to various forms of personal non-material attainments.

These things are possible! Humans have the capacity to imagine, invent and implement imaginative thought. Up to this point these powers, while supplying us with literally incredible material accomplishments, have brought us to the brink of environmental and social catastrophe; still these capacities do have the potential to recognize the realities of the moment, can give credence to informed knowledge sources and imagine-invent-implement designs that reorder human habits and expectations. Individual humans and groups of humans have been making decisions that benefit community for as long as the species has existed; in fact, the valuing of the community over individual attainments or privilege has been fundamental to human survival, and can become so again.

A few millions of people are in the process of understanding these things and some of them are acting on them. While no viable solution to the present dilemmas may be forthcoming, we are the only animal that can even make the effort.

We must question everything: Pt 3 (Humans as Ecological Organisms)

All organisms in the history of life on the earth are, and have been, organized in such a way that physical form, physiology and behaviors of each species integrate these same qualities of every other organism in their space, and with the physical qualities of the total environment, creating the earth’s ecosystems. And in ecosystems, for every taking from the biophysical space there is some complimentary compensation made in return to make for a near net-zero input-output balance (while ecologists recognize that there can be wide deviations from input-output balance, over time such deviations follow homeostatic principles).

All forms of life on the earth, other than our species, have formed and existed within the designs of these fundamental principles; most, with every immediate exchange of energy and material; and the more complex, with delays of exchange limited to their lifetimes; only our species has, as a consequence of our specialized adaptations, put off the fundamental taking/compensation design for extended generations. It is increasingly clear that putting off the consequences of not compensating for our taking has reached the point of disrupting the services that the environment provides to living things.

In order to properly address how we might re-engage the fundamental designs of the biophysical space, and appreciate the absolutely essential need to do so, we must understand how it is that we came to violate that design as has no other organism in the history of life on earth.

Here is a ‘thumbnail’ sketch: Humans evolved adaptations for taking from the environment with greater and greater ease…as giraffes have adaptations for eating from the tops of trees… and, as we were ‘successful’ at easy taking, the natural forms of compensation attached to the taking fell away. There was, sometimes, recognition of our role in creating damage by our actions, without clarity, and humans made ‘sacrifices’ as a form of compensation, but these were sacrifices of things that humans valued, not actually ecologically balancing compensations.

As humans created new ways of taking from the environment using their expanded capacities of communication, finer and finer levels of detail allowed for individual experience to be shared with family group/community: learning became a group process rather than individual. As the communication of detail developed, the level of the recognition, selection and storage of environmental detail increased; and a new capacity developed increasing the rate of change: the comparison of observed details as speculative elements to be mixed and matched beyond the direct and immediate experience of them…imagination. Since the reader is a human and deeply possessed of this capacity, it is the water in which we all swim, it is easy to miss the incredible powers and changes to the earth’s ecology both implied and actualized.

With this new and powerful capacity to take from the environment, humans competed directly with nature rather than living within nature’s designs. There was no intention or agency in the competition; it arises from the different ways information is selected, stored and implemented and the many forms of previously ‘non-existent’ information that could be accessed. It is this competition that is the foundation of our present dilemmas and deepest deviations from the biophysical and social Realities to which every living thing must, and in our case eventually, answer.

There are three primary elements to our human situation: 1) our biological-physical designs and limitations including emotional, motivational, cognitive behaviors, 2) our human tool kit, which our imagination has actualized, a tool kit that has grown from a few sticks and stones to giant earthmovers, computers, space shuttles and atomic weapons… 3) our consciousness-cognitive capacities for social and economic adaptations to the huge increases of our numbers, our organizations and our relationship with the fundamental necessities of the living state.

The essence of what is needed to readapt and normalize toward an ecological existence becomes clearer from this formulation. The first, our native nature, isn’t optional, even though we have long treated it as optional. The second, our tool kit, is optional which, in the inverse of the first, we have treated as necessity. The third, our unique adaptability, makes clear that we must act with clearer appreciation of our nature and with selective control of technologies. Then it would be possible for our capacities of imagination to be devoted, in reality, to present dilemmas: we can’t act in biophysical reality when we don’t know who we are, what we want or need and when our only solutions are to make more poorly considered technical changes.

But, this is not to say that these are new understandings or that worthy efforts at explicating them haven’t been made; both understanding and explication have a long, long history: as humans began moving out of the neolithic, what was being lost as we moved away from ecological closeness was apparent to many humans and they wrote it down as some of the first uses of written language as seen in some early cuneiform religious texts. Early ‘civilized’ religions addressed these concerns, many times with common themes of restraint.

As each generation succeeded the previous, new life experience, by tiny increments, included more technology and less ecology. Concern for nature became more and more quaint, so that today it is possible to live almost completely within a human designed and created space with all needs and experiences filtered through human and technical actions. We can believe that the whole earth, even the universe, is here for human use. We can assume infinite economic growth without question; we can be told that the earth’s resources and environmental services are being used beyond capacity without any recognition of its meaning. The Reality-organizing property of ecosystems has been lost and not replaced with any comparable or efficacious informing source.

We are, therefore, the first pure contradiction in the earth’s, and possibly the universe’s, history: a biologically evolved creature with a biological adaptation that exceeds the parameters of biological systems and can be, and has proven to be, in direct competition with the fundamental principles upon which life is organized in the biophysical space. 

We must question everything: Pt 4 (Issues and solutions)

A seemingly obvious direct and simple mitigating response would be to intentionally design more activities around environmental experiences, especially, though not only, for children. But while a useful and relatively easy start, it is not nearly enough; such experiences tend to be perfunctory at best. We cannot narrowly train or argue our way to changes in our most fundamental habits: as Upton Sinclair succinctly put it a hundred years ago, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” I would add that it is difficult to get a person to understand something when they have no life experience relating them to the understanding: Dare I say that we will not save what we do not love; and we cannot love that which isn’t brought close in our experience.

One thing that is needed is for every actual human hand to be laid to, at least, some of the tasks required for meeting one’s most primary needs in the immediate ecosystem: it is absolutely not enough, actually destructive, to make “workplace jobs”, and fungible currencies, the only way to get water, food, shelter, safety, companionship, etc. So, there is the dilemma: the necessary solution is for a majority of humanity to very quickly change behavior, to act in ways for which they have no foundational experience; in fact, to act in ways directly opposed to much of their life expectations and experience.

While this statement of what might be the only solution that can minimize conflicts over dwindling earth resources, it is not as completely hopeless as it sounds at first, though admittedly dangerously so. In the approximately 300,000 year history of our species and nearly 3 million year history of our genus, only the last several hundred years have “stolen” from the ‘human hand’ its utility to inform the mind of biophysical supremacy; people have long directly supplied many of their own needs and made objects of use directly from ecosystem sources: the fundamental relationships with environment were natural and unavoidable in our development as genus and species and in the greatest part of our time on the earth.

The most fundamental impediments to redeveloping ecologically sustaining ways of life for humanity seem to be:

• Non-adaptive, environmentally destructive, expectations for how life should be lived.
• Belief systems that do not comport with biophysical reality.
• Economic systems that are functionally Ponzi schemes requiring ever increasing population, material production and consumption, exacerbated by these schemes’ unquestioned acceptance.
• Present social and economic ‘communities’ fail in significant ways to meet human needs resulting in a variety of distortions to what I call specieshood (essentially, human nature). The human animal evolved within and to the emotional, motivational and intellectual structure of natural organic communities.

This last bullet point needs deeper consideration and is vital to any truly possible solutions. What we call communities today are not communities at all when compared to natural organic communities. Original human communities were (are) formed by the full variety of all those born into them, and were (are) benefited by having all the inborn and acquired characteristics among their many different individuals. The community was the entity that organized its actions in the environment, supported by the many talents, capacities and behavioral variety of its people. All the learning and experience of its individuals was shared, spread and accentuated by community; the community acted as a coherent unit for its own maintenance, enhancement and survival within the fullness of the living world.

In the broadest strokes, community solidarity needs to be valued over the economic designs of advantage. This is difficult since, when the original organic community’s “gravitational” designs of love, respect and mutual obligation weaken, individual advantage takes their place and becomes a new ‘gravitational force of life’, organizing the social order into individual centers of power and influence. But, this is also a place that people can begin, begin to begin again, renewing 300,000 years of habit, a habit seemingly still weakly ‘remembered’ in an almost universal nagging suspicion that ‘something isn’t right’.

We know how and can create community-like organizations around specific issues, the people who organize community action can be the guides, but ultimately we need diverse communities organized around, not one issue, but rather around the survival of community; the survival of the nurturing community must be, must become again, the fundamental goal and obligation of life, and can become the essential organizing principle for humans readapting as part of the world’s ecosystems. And then, communities of communities where people are respectful beyond their own close associations, not by any demand, but because they have lived the same experiences.

Adapting such designs to the many varied ways that people live would be a considerable challenge, though it seems that increasing numbers are ready for changes that they don’t yet understand, but know need to come. Social, economic and technological innovation need to be evaluated by communities, for benefits or dis-benefits to the community and not only for advantages conferred on a few; the actual meaning of this would be especially hard to make part of social expectation: using less, valuing nonmaterial accomplishments, rejecting technologies and products that weaken community solidarity. Only the integrated experience of people organized in mutual caring and respect could do it.

If none of this sounds new, that is obviously because it isn’t. Humans have tried similar efforts many times. It will remain “too hard to do” until it becomes an option for a significant number of people either through education or necessity.

We must question everything: Pt 5 (Special Case of  Environmental Activism) 

Only the environmental movement is naturally equipped to take on these challenges. But, because of a natural dependency on the methods of community organizing for its support base, it is easy for energy generated by focused actions, some of which could go to addressing global issues, to slip away. Leadership must consistently make clear to those working with them, and to the media that covers actions, that the focused activities are a singular part of a much larger movement with global concerns directly related to the action being taken; creating a public and media habit of seeing local action as part of a global effort is vital.

The plutocracy is benefited when each individual environmental action can be framed as isolated, weak and trivial. When environmental activism is focused primarily on immediate concerns and not expressly relating local activism to resolute globalist conceptions of purpose, then the ‘dark side’ forces of environmentally destructive plutocratic interests will control events that overwhelm with thousands of individual destructive actions that spread thin the capacities of activists to respond. Social movements can keep attention on issues and make marginal, though locally important, changes, but ultimately the asymmetry of power to influence events is overwhelmingly on the side of the plutocracy.

The whole variety of social, economic and political activist movements need to append environmental issues to their other more focused concerns: because: 1) Environmental issues almost always underlie the issues that they are working on. 2) A broader support system can be formed as the many different activist organizations adopt some common language and bridging interests. And 3) combining the power of many organizations can create the force and energy needed by the environmental movement, on the one hand, and can leverage that energy back to the focused projects of the various groups, on the other. An inhabitable world is the first necessary condition for everything else!

But, the environmental movement, and activists movements generally, have no inherent, naturally motivated powerbase; the base must be created.  While the general population has a natural interest in their own well-being, what is to constitute that well-being isn’t at all clear to most people; much of the activist agenda has been framed by plutocratic propaganda as dangerous to jobs, lifestyles, personal safety and beliefs. Activist movements need the strength of centralized organization to challenge that narrative; we cannot wait for environmental failures to convince people of the dangers that we all face.  There just isn’t a sufficient powerbase for either the magnitude or the urgency of the changes needed to be made. The public is too fragmented and misinformed; governments have become, especially on these issues, deeply compromised by wealth-power.

With The People and government compromised, a cold-eyed, critical analysis leaves the uncomfortable conclusion that only a coalition of activist movements and great wealth remain with a chance of organizing “humanitarian” solutions to coming environmental and social crises. Activists have the knowledge and activist base. Great wealth has impunity level power-control over the widest array of human activities. Of course, the activist community must make every effort to inform the public and to influence governance, but with the clear understanding that these efforts, while necessary and power creating, are insufficient on their own.

We are watching, in our own and international politics, authoritarianism, opportunism and demagoguery taking political power as human actions are disconnected from the real environmental dangers facing us. Such self-serving governance only increases the stresses on economic, social and environmental systems; assuming that we survive these command-control totalitarian responses to our present confusions, what comes next will be determinative.

It must be taken as reality that the plutocracy has so fortified the ‘power of wealth’ that there is no effective challenge possible. The only option being talked about – when options are talked about at all – is taxation; however, the fundamental design of the tax code puts the writing of taxing legislation largely in the  control of the rich. What we have seen up to now is great wealth organizing to maintain the industrial-level domination of environmental and social concerns.  With only regard for short-term gains, these powerful economic interests create a plethora of seemingly incomprehensible humanitarian and ecological disasters.

But it seems almost inevitable that some wiser elements of the plutocracy will realize (are even at this moment realizing – even green-washing is a beginning: here, here) that only by engaging with the relevant activist movements can the more devastating consequences of social and environmental collapses can be minimized; it must be increasingly realized that there would be no protection for anyone in an uninhabitable world.  Great wealth has hands on the real levers of power and activist movements have essential knowledge and a dedicated workforce.

As uncomfortable as it may be, the power of great wealth in the present world is ubiquitous and overwhelming. If that power stands in the way of ecological stability, it will not happen (except as an extinction event). If elements of wealth-power can have sufficient overall influence, in combination with academic and activist powers, the need for humanitarian solutions (in the Panglossian sense!) could, at least, be possible.  Given the time frame of environmental degradation, every other potential action appears to lead either to violent revolutions from which there can be no recovery or resource wars from which there can be no recovery.

The environmental movement  is uniquely positioned to respond to and guide such coalition efforts (there are a number of international organizations well positioned for such an effort, e.g.: WWF, IPCC, IUNC).  While it is completely unclear how a coalition of a cabal of plutocrats and the most farsighted environmentalists could directly address the three great challenges: destructive wealth inequity, dismal worldwide state of social justice and the destruction of the environment, the power/control of great wealth and the knowledge/social base of the environmental movement could potentially be organized on an international scale with sufficient real power/control over government and business interests that the most essential changes in human impact on the environment would be made possible. If this sounds both unlikely and very dangerous for a beneficent future, it would be both! There would be many ways that those kinds of forces for change could go very wrong; but reflect, there would be no greater danger than the consequences of going on as we are.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by James Keye.

The effects of the 15-week ban have been devastating for Floridians. Since the ban went into effect over a year ago, many people seeking abortions have been forced to travel long distances out of state to access care. Others have been forced to carry pregnancies against their will, subjecting them to the life-altering — and sometimes life-threatening — consequences of pregnancy.

Under the law’s limited exceptions, even patients in dire circumstances have been unable to get the care they need. In one circumstance, a woman whose water broke at 18 weeks of pregnancy nearly died of sepsis after being forced to wait for lifesaving care. While she knew that her child would not survive and that continuing the pregnancy put her life at risk, she was sent to wait at home until her condition was so dangerous that a doctor could induce labor without violating the state’s law. In another situation, a 14-year-old survivor of rape was unable to have an abortion and forced to continue her pregnancy because Florida’s 15-week ban — compounding the traumatic experience the minor had to suffer in addition to sexual assault and an unwanted pregnancy.

Abortion providers, advocates, and attorneys will hold a virtual press conference today at 12:30 p.m. ET to answer questions shortly after oral argument. To RSVP to the virtual press conference, please fill out this form.

Below are statements from plaintiffs and litigators:

Whitney White, staff attorney, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project:

“The devastating 15-week ban has been in effect for more than a year, in defiance of four decades of well-established protections under the Florida Constitution. Not satisfied with that, the state has now asked the court to wipe out any constitutional protection for Floridians’ ability to have an abortion at all, clearing the way for Florida to enforce Gov. DeSantis’ ban on abortion at six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many people don’t even know they are pregnant. The Florida Supreme Court should respect the rule of law and protect the right of people to make personal medical decisions during pregnancy for themselves.”

Stephanie Fraim, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida:

“Across the state, Floridians are outraged that the government continues to interfere in their personal medical decisions. The people’s voice needs to be part of this. Today, we brought that voice to the Florida Supreme Court. The people of Florida have said over and over that their right to control their own bodies and make their own health care decisions should remain a protected right in the Florida constitution. Moreover, the Florida Supreme Court must respect the decades of precedent that make this law clearly unconstitutional. Floridians understand that this ban is a gross overreach into their lives, and they will not stand for it. We will continue to fight for our reproductive rights through all possible avenues.”

Alexandra Mandado, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida:

“Every day that Florida’s abortion ban is in effect is another day that people’s lives are at risk. A decision upholding the abortion ban would be unconscionable, continuing to deny people control over their own bodies and futures. We already know that this ban has endangered Floridians and their families. Upholding it would only worsen our state’s health. When abortion is banned, health care providers cannot act in their patients’ best interest, and they cannot train the next generation of needed medical professionals to do so, either. The Florida Supreme Court must act in the interest of all Floridians and strike down this ban.”

Kelly Flynn, president and CEO, A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville:

“Florida prides itself on individual freedom without government interference and abortion bans directly contradict who we are. This 15-week abortion ban undermines the care we provide to patients who come to our clinic, often under complex and difficult circumstances. Many patients in Florida aren’t able to receive an abortion by fifteen weeks, let alone six weeks, due to financial obstacles, logistical hurdles, and navigating overlapping policies designed to make it harder to provide and access care. A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville has served as a crucial access point for abortion care in Florida and the South, and we remain committed to providing abortion care to Floridians and attaining abortion justice for all.”

Caroline Sacerdote, staff attorney, U.S. litigation, the Center for Reproductive Rights:

“Florida’s 15-week abortion ban is endangering the health, safety, and dignity of Floridians. This ban blatantly violates the Florida Constitution and forces patients to travel hundreds, and even thousands, of miles to access abortion care—if they are able—or to forgo critical health care altogether. People in the Sunshine State deserve timely, compassionate, and affordable abortion care. The Florida Supreme Court should block this ban, putting a stop to the extraordinary hardships this ban continues to inflict on pregnant people every day.”

April Otterberg, partner, Jenner & Block:

“HB5 unconstitutionally limits access to abortion services, a fundamental right that has long been protected by the Florida Constitution. We hope the Florida Supreme Court will enforce the state constitution and overturn this law.”

Hélène Barthelemy, staff attorney, ACLU of Florida:

“Let’s be clear: Floridians overwhelmingly support legal and safe abortion care. Floridians want the freedom to make their own private healthcare decisions without the government interfering in their personal lives. The court’s decision could harm even more people and prevent Floridians from deciding whether, if, when, how to continue their pregnancy before most even know they’re pregnant. We urge the Florida Supreme Court to act in accordance with the will of the people, protect their freedom to medical care, and block this unconstitutional ban.

Despite overwhelming opposition to banning abortion among Florida voters and health care professionals, Gov. DeSantis signed the 15-week ban into law in spring of last year. This year, Gov. DeSantis signed a six-week ban that will go into effect unless the court blocks the 15-week ban.

Two-thirds of Floridians support the right to abortion, and voters have consistently cast their ballots to ensure that the state Constitution provides independent protection for the right to abortion. In 1980, Florida voters amended the state Constitution to provide broad protections for individual privacy rights — including abortion. And in 2012, voters overwhelmingly rejected Amendment 6, which would have taken those abortion protections away.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Florida, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the law firm Jenner & Block filed the case — Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, et al. v. State of Florida, et al. — on behalf of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida; Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida; Gainesville Woman Care; Indian Rocks Woman’s Center; St. Petersburg Woman’s Health Center; Tampa Woman’s Health Center; A Woman’s Choice of Jacksonville; and an individual physician plaintiff.

An overview of the case and the complaint can be found here.

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

The leaders of five Melanesian nations have agreed to write to French President Emmanuel Macron “expressing their strong opposition” to the results of the third New Caledonia referendum.

In December 2021, more than 96 percent of people voted against full sovereignty, but the pro-independence movement FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) has refused to recognise the result because of a boycott by the Kanak population over the impact of the covid pandemic on the referendum campaign.

Since then, the FLNKS has been seeking international support for its view that the referendum result was not a legitimate outcome.

• READ MORE:  Sad Regenvanu condemns MSG for ‘failing’ people of West Papua
• Wenda welcomes MSG call for UN visit and fights on for full membership
• OPM accuses Melanesian group of taking Jakarta’s ‘blood money’ at expense of West Papuan justice
• Wenda calls on MSG for urgent action to back pledge over human rights
• MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
• MSG leaders defer Papua membership decision to Pacific Islands Forum
• Flashback: Fiji, PNG lead betrayal, but still West Papuans triumph (in 2015)
• Other MSG reports

The Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders — Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the FLNKS — met in Port Vila last week for the 22nd edition of the Leader’s Summit, where they said “the MSG does not recognise the results of the third referendum on the basis of the PIF’s Observer Report”.

FLNKS spokesperson Victor Tutugoro told RNZ Pacific the pro-independence group had continued to protest against the outcome of the December 2021 referendum.

“We contest the referendum because it was held during the circumstances that was not healthy for us. For example, we went through covid, we lost many members of our families [because of the pandemic],” Tutugoro said.

“We will continue to protest at the ICJ (International Court of Justice) level and at the national level. We expect the MSG to help us fight to get the United Nations to debate the cause of the Kanaks.”

The leaders have agreed that “New Caledonia’s inclusion on the UN List of decolonisation territories is protected and maintained”.

The MSG leaders have also directed the UN permanent representative to “examine and provide advice” so they can seek an opinion from the ICJ “on the results of the third referendum conducted in December 2021”.

They have also requested that the UN provide a report on the “credibility of the election process, and mandated the MSG UN permanent representatives, working with the MSG Secretariat and the FLNKS, “to pursue options on the legality of the 3rd referendum”.

Support for West Papua
New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS movement also said it would continue to back the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) to become a full member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

Tutugoro told the 22nd MSG Leader’s Summit in Port Vila that FLNKS had always supported West Papua’s move to join the MSG family.

He said by becoming a full member of the sub-regional group, FLNKS was able to benefit from international support to counterbalance the weight of France in its struggle for self-determination.

He said the FLNKS hoped the ULMWP would have the same opportunity and in time it could be included on the UN’s list of non-self-governing territories.

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

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

The leaders of five Melanesian nations have agreed to write to French President Emmanuel Macron “expressing their strong opposition” to the results of the third New Caledonia referendum.

In December 2021, more than 96 percent of people voted against full sovereignty, but the pro-independence movement FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) has refused to recognise the result because of a boycott by the Kanak population over the impact of the covid pandemic on the referendum campaign.

Since then, the FLNKS has been seeking international support for its view that the referendum result was not a legitimate outcome.

• READ MORE:  Sad Regenvanu condemns MSG for ‘failing’ people of West Papua
• Wenda welcomes MSG call for UN visit and fights on for full membership
• OPM accuses Melanesian group of taking Jakarta’s ‘blood money’ at expense of West Papuan justice
• Wenda calls on MSG for urgent action to back pledge over human rights
• MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
• MSG leaders defer Papua membership decision to Pacific Islands Forum
• Flashback: Fiji, PNG lead betrayal, but still West Papuans triumph (in 2015)
• Other MSG reports

The Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders — Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and the FLNKS — met in Port Vila last week for the 22nd edition of the Leader’s Summit, where they said “the MSG does not recognise the results of the third referendum on the basis of the PIF’s Observer Report”.

FLNKS spokesperson Victor Tutugoro told RNZ Pacific the pro-independence group had continued to protest against the outcome of the December 2021 referendum.

“We contest the referendum because it was held during the circumstances that was not healthy for us. For example, we went through covid, we lost many members of our families [because of the pandemic],” Tutugoro said.

“We will continue to protest at the ICJ (International Court of Justice) level and at the national level. We expect the MSG to help us fight to get the United Nations to debate the cause of the Kanaks.”

The leaders have agreed that “New Caledonia’s inclusion on the UN List of decolonisation territories is protected and maintained”.

The MSG leaders have also directed the UN permanent representative to “examine and provide advice” so they can seek an opinion from the ICJ “on the results of the third referendum conducted in December 2021”.

They have also requested that the UN provide a report on the “credibility of the election process, and mandated the MSG UN permanent representatives, working with the MSG Secretariat and the FLNKS, “to pursue options on the legality of the 3rd referendum”.

Support for West Papua
New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS movement also said it would continue to back the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) to become a full member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

Tutugoro told the 22nd MSG Leader’s Summit in Port Vila that FLNKS had always supported West Papua’s move to join the MSG family.

He said by becoming a full member of the sub-regional group, FLNKS was able to benefit from international support to counterbalance the weight of France in its struggle for self-determination.

He said the FLNKS hoped the ULMWP would have the same opportunity and in time it could be included on the UN’s list of non-self-governing territories.

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

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

The post Alliance Wins Court Challenge Against Widespread Illegal Motorized Use on National Forests appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mike Garrity.

One issue of particular concern is the use of what are officially known as lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), which can select and engage targets with force, without human involvement - raising a raft of security, ethical and legal concerns.

What are countries doing to regulate LAWS? And how can international law and the UN respond to this challenge?

To explore these and other questions, the Group of Governmental Experts on LAWS began meeting at the UN in 2017, as Mélanie Régimbal, Chief of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva, explains to UN News’s Nancy Sarkis.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Nancy Sarkis.

The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to hear a challenge to a court-ordered prohibition on offshore fracking in federal waters off the California coast.

Today’s decision leaves in place last year’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the federal government violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act and Coastal Zone Management Act when it allowed fracking and acidizing extraction practices at all offshore oil and gas wells in leased federal waters in the Pacific Ocean.

“California’s amazing coast and vulnerable marine life deserve this victory, which will protect the ecosystem from the many dangers of offshore fracking,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The fracking ban will help prevent more toxic chemicals from poisoning fish, sea otters and other marine life. But our ocean won’t be truly protected until offshore drilling stops once and for all. We hope this is the beginning of the end of drilling off California’s coast.”

Environmental Defense Center initially filed a lawsuit in 2014 to stop fracking and acidizing in the region after discovering, through a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, that more than 50 permits had been issued by the federal government without any public or environmental review.

“The Supreme Court was right to reject the oil industry’s latest attempt to allow fracking and acidizing in our waters with zero meaningful environmental review,” said Maggie Hall, senior attorney at EDC. “The Santa Barbara Channel is one of the most ecologically rich and important regions in the world. As the climate crisis escalates, ending these destructive extraction practices is a matter of survival — not just for the whales, otters and other animals in the Channel, but for all life on earth.”

The appeals court decision also forbids the Interior Department from issuing fracking permits until it completes an Endangered Species Act consultation and an Environmental Impact Statement that analyzes “the environmental impacts of extensive offshore fracking” and “fully and fairly evaluate[s] all reasonable alternatives.”

The ruling was the result of three separate lawsuits filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and Wishtoyo Foundation, Environmental Defense Center and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, and the State of California. The lawsuits challenged the federal government’s approval and inadequate environmental review of offshore fracking in the Pacific Ocean.

“Protecting the health of the ocean is essential to conserving the ecosystem upon which Chumash people have thrived for more than 10,000 years,” said Mati Waiya, executive director of the Wishtoyo Foundation, a native-led nonprofit dedicated to the protection of Chumash lifeways and the environment. “We celebrate the appellate court’s decision, which by upholding environmental laws, honors the rights of our people and protects our precious, coastal resources.”

The American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil and DCOR, LLC, which intervened as defendants in the case, asked the Supreme Court to review the 9th Circuit’s decision. The Department of Justice, representing the federal defendant agencies, opposed the petition for review.

"Today’s decision affirms the importance of assessing the impacts of offshore fracking on California’s marine wildlife, fisheries, and coastal communities,” said Ted Morton, executive director of Santa Barbara Channelkeeper. “With ever-mounting threats to ocean ecosystems from climate change, it is essential that federal agencies adequately evaluate the risks of oil and gas development on marine resources."

At least 10 chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including marine mammals and fish, Center scientists have found. The California Council on Science and Technology has identified some common fracking chemicals to be among the most toxic in the world to marine animals.

The 9th Circuit’s decision notes that Interior “disregarded necessary caution” when greenlighting fracking practices with unknown consequences.

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

The post The Mainstream Media’s Unwillingness to Challenge U.S. Militarization appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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

The trafficking of people and illicit goods, especially synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, from the Golden Triangle, an area which includes Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, has enriched criminal networks and flooded the region and beyond with addictive narcotics.

UNODC has brought governments together to collaborate through border liaison officers who share information about trafficking. Daniel Dickinson spoke to UNODC’s Chief of Border Management, Alan Cole on a trip to the Golden Triangle and began by asking him about the role of these officers.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Daniel Dickinson.

The trafficking of people and illicit goods, especially synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, from the Golden Triangle, an area which includes Thailand, Myanmar and Laos, has enriched criminal networks and flooded the region and beyond with addictive narcotics.

UNODC has brought governments together to collaborate through border liaison officers who share information about trafficking. Daniel Dickinson spoke to UNODC’s Chief of Border Management, Alan Cole on a trip to the Golden Triangle and began by asking him about the role of these officers.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Daniel Dickinson.

The post Socialists’ Antiauthoritarian Challenge appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Seth Adler.

Turkey’s closely watched presidential election is headed to a May 28 runoff, as both incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his main rival fell short of the 50% needed to win outright in Sunday’s vote. Erdoğan is facing his toughest challenge since coming to power 20 years ago, as opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu leads a broad coalition in a bid to unseat him amid criticism for his administration’s economic policies, weakening Turkey’s democracy and poor response to the deadly February earthquakes. Kılıçdaroğlu has vowed closer ties with NATO and the EU and to reinforce democratic institutions. We get an update from Istanbul with Turkish historian Kaya Genç, who says Erdoğan’s political survival was a “stunning comeback” that contradicted polls predicting a comfortable first-round victory for Kılıçdaroğlu. “This was a total shock for the Turkish establishment,” he says.

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

In what sustainable agriculture, public health, and animal rights champions celebrated as a major victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a California law prohibiting the in-state sale of pork, eggs, and veal derived from creatures "confined in a cruel manner."

The law, known as Proposition 12, was challenged by the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation. The organizations claimed that "because of California's huge market share... pork producers elsewhere would be required to abide by" its rules, and they argued unsuccessfully that this would violate the U.S. Constitution's "restraints on the authority of states to regulate industry beyond their borders," The Washington Post reported.

Writing the majority opinion for the 5-4 decision in National Pork Producers v. Ross, Justice Neil Gorsuch rejected what he described as the plaintiffs' request for the court to "fashion two new and more aggressive constitutional restrictions on the ability of states to regulate goods sold within their borders."

"While the Constitution addresses many weighty issues, the type of pork chops California merchants may sell is not on that list," Gorsuch wrote on behalf of himself and Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett.

"A major victory for animal welfare and a more regenerative, healthful, and humane future of our food."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson "would have kept the case involving California's humane pork production laws alive but sent it back to a lower court for more work," the Post noted.

Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen called the ruling "a rightful victory for sustainable, humane farming against giant corporations that prioritize cost-cutting and profit margins over the environment, food safety, and animal welfare."

"It is also a critical victory for the rights of states that seek to do better on those issues than some of their neighbors, or the country at large," she added.

George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety, which filed a brief in support of California last year, also welcomed Thursday's decision as "a major victory for animal welfare and a more regenerative, healthful, and humane future of our food."

"The Supreme Court rejected industrial agriculture's far-reaching efforts to curtail states' rights to enact laws governing farming to prevent animal cruelty and to protect the public health. Instead, the court properly recognized the value and benefits of such laws," said Kimbrell. "Intensive confinement of pigs poses profound danger to food safety and the public health such as foodborne illness and disease and pathogen transmission, and important laws like Prop 12 mitigate those risks."

As the advocacy group Animal Outlook explained in a statement:

Proposition 12 sets minimum space requirements for egg-laying hens, mother pigs, and baby cows raised for veal in California, such that these animals cannot be confined in the industry-standard cages, which are barely bigger than their bodies. Prop 12 also requires that any eggs, pork, or veal sold in the state comply with these space requirements, regardless of where those products were produced.

After Prop 12 was approved by nearly two-thirds of California voters in 2018, the meat industry proceeded to challenge the law in four separate lawsuits.

"Every court to consider each of the cases, at both the trial and appellate level, has ruled against the industry," Animal Outlook pointed out. "Today's Supreme Court ruling is the industry's latest in that string of losses."

"No matter how cruel or painful a practice is, the animal agriculture industry has fought against laws to prohibit it—in this case, all the way to the Supreme Court," said Cheryl Leahy, the group's executive director. "When a powerful industry will stop at nothing to make complicity in cruelty mandatory, it's a clear sign that the cruelty is part and parcel of that industry, and the only way to refuse to be a part of it is to not eat animals altogether."

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

As we have noted before, a systemic feature of state-corporate media is propaganda by omission. Missing out salient facts, informed commentary and context about the machinations of government and big business means that the public is less able to:

1. Understand the world around us;
2. Challenge state-corporate power; and
3. Bring about the fundamental changes in society that have never been more necessary.

Current examples are legion, as we will see in the selection that follows.

1. Journalists Pushing For Less Transparency

Last week, 21-year-old US airman Jack Texeira was arrested following, as BBC News put it: ‘[a] leak of highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war and other national security issues.’

Former UK diplomat Craig Murray pointed to a disturbing aspect of the case, namely, that Texeira was:

‘tracked down by UK secret service front Bellingcat in conjunction with the New York Times and in parallel with the Washington Post, not to help him escape or help him publish or tell people his motives, but to help the state arrest him.’

Bellingcat has been examined by, among others, Kit Klarenberg of the Grayzone who reported that the supposedly ‘independent, open-source investigations’ website has ‘accepted enormous sums from Western intelligence contractors’.

As for the New York Times and Washington Post, US journalist Glenn Greenwald noted:

‘It is indescribably shocking and sickening that the nation’s two largest media outlets were the ones who did the FBI’s work and hunted for the leaker and outed him.’

Almost as bad, he said, was that rather than press the government during a Pentagon press conference about the content of the leaked documents, journalists actually pushed for greater clampdowns on security leaks.

Murray added:

‘I am not at all surprised by Bellingcat, which is plainly a spook organisation. I hope this enables more people to see through them. But the behaviour of the New York Times and Washington Post is truly shocking. They now see their mission as to serve the security state, not public knowledge.’

He also observed that, over the past week or so, ‘nothing has been published [from the leaked material] that does not serve US propaganda narratives.’

Very little, if anything, has been reliably presented about Texeira’s motives in releasing these state documents. Murray warned readers to be sceptical of attempts to portray him as simply a ‘rampant Trump supporter’ or ‘inadequate jock’ trying ‘to boast to fellow gaming nerds.’

Murray concluded:

‘We should remain suspicious of attempts to characterise him: I am acutely aware of media portrayals of Julian Assange which are entirely untrue.’

2.  Cancelling Julian Assange

April 11 marked four years since Julian Assange, co-founder of WikiLeaks, was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and imprisoned in the high security Belmarsh prison. He and his lawyers have been fighting the prolonged threat of extradition to the US, where he would likely spend the rest of his life in a ‘Supermax’ prison. His ‘crime’ has been to expose the nefarious activities, including serious war crimes, of the US and its allies.

As Alex Nunns, author and former speechwriter for Jeremy Corbyn, noted:

‘Probably the world’s most significant and famous journalist has been in prison for four years today for his work – not in Egypt or China or Russia, but in Britain, a country that lectures others on free speech. His imprisonment is entirely political. He should be free.’

Media Lens has documented the grotesque smears and mischaracterisations of Assange over many years, not least by the Guardian, as well as the dearth of coverage of his plight and what that means for real journalism, freedom of speech and democracy.

In a piece for international media organisation Peoples Dispatch, political writer Amish R M summarised key facts that state-corporate media have buried about Assange. These include:

• The CIA plan to kidnap and assassinate Assange in London.
• The US prosecution is based on fabricated testimony from a repeat offender, currently serving a prison sentence for sexual abuse crimes in Iceland, and described as a ‘sociopath’ by court-ordered psychologists.
• The US spied on Assange while he was in the Ecuadorian embassy.

Earlier this month, Reporters Without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire and Director of Operations Rebecca Vincent were barred access to visit Assange in Belmarsh prison, despite receiving confirmation that a visit would be permitted.

In a sane world, with responsible national media outlets, the above facts would be headline news. Both BBC and ITV News at Ten would devote significant coverage to Assange’s plight and there would be extensive follow-up reporting and commentary on the parlous consequences for journalism and society. Instead, there is virtual silence.

But there is space to document the plight of Russian journalists who contradict the Kremlin’s narratives. What about journalists in this country who might try to contradict the narratives of the White House and Downing Street? Have they, in fact, already been ‘purged’ from so-called ‘mainstream’ media outlets: the word used by John Pilger to describe his treatment by the Guardian? Where is the outrage about the dumping of dissenting voices in the ‘free’ western media?

BBC News would rather direct attention to: ‘The talk-show hosts telling Russians what to believe.’ Of course, you would never see a major feature by the famously ‘impartial’ BBC News on: ‘The talk-show hosts telling Britons what to believe’ on the war in Ukraine, or anything else for that matter.

Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone describes Assange as ‘the greatest journalist of all time’. She wrote recently:

‘Assange began his journalism career by revolutionizing source protection for the digital age, then proceeded to break some of the biggest stories of the century. There’s no one who can hold a candle to him, living or dead.

‘And now he’s in a maximum security prison, solely and exclusively because he was better at doing the best kind of journalism than anyone else in the world. That is the kind of civilization you live in. The kind that imprisons the best journalist of all time for doing journalism.’

3.  Nord Stream: ‘It May Be In No One’s Interest To Reveal More’

We have previously written about the blanket of silence over attempts to get to the truth of the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines that supplied Russian gas to Germany. US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report pointing to the US as the most likely perpetrator of this terrorist act have been blanked, or summarily dismissed, by state-corporate media.

Following Seymour’s report, US officials released an assessment based on ‘new intelligence’, faithfully relayed by the media, that a ‘pro-Ukrainian group’ carried out the pipeline attack. Der Spiegel then carried a news report, echoed in coverage around the world, claiming that divers used a German chartered yacht to sabotage the pipelines. There was a modicum of scepticism; journalists are not totally inept or subservient to state narratives.

But media coverage still steered clear of examining the most likely explanation of US involvement; not least given that President Joe Biden had boasted in February 2022 that the US would ‘bring an end to it [Nord Stream]’ if Russia invaded Ukraine. As Reuters reported:

‘”If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the … border of Ukraine again, then there will be … no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it,’ Biden said. Asked how, given the project is in German control, Biden said: “I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”’

Glenn Greenwald observed recently:

‘The NYT — after feeding the public several bullshit versions about who blew up Nord Stream (an environmentally devastating act of industrial terrorism) — now announces: “it may be in no one’s interest to reveal more.”

‘Maybe there’s a clue in the article’s last 2 paragraphs?’

Here are those last two paragraphs in question:

‘And naming a Western nation or operatives could trigger deep mistrust when the West is struggling to maintain a united front [over the war in Ukraine].

‘“Is there any interest from the authorities to come out and say who did this? There are strategic reasons for not revealing who did it,” said Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, a Danish naval commander and military expert at the University of Copenhagen. “As long as they don’t come out with anything substantial, then we are left in the dark on all this — as it should be.”’

The NYT even emphasised the point in its tweet highlighting their article:

‘Intelligence leaks surrounding who blew up most of the Russian-backed Nord Stream pipelines last September have provided more questions than answers. It may be in no one’s interest to reveal more.’

So, if you still harbour the illusion that ‘mainstream’ journalism can be relied upon to report the truth to the public, rather than covering it up, you may have to reconsider what even the ‘best’ news media, including the NYT, the BBC and the Guardian, do routinely.

4. Propaganda Operations That Remain Hidden

One of the central tenets of western political ideology is that ‘we’ have free access to information, and that only ‘the other side’ does propaganda, a dirty word that we are not supposed to discuss; except, when it does get mentioned in polite company, it is termed ‘counter-disinformation’. In other words, it is information that is intended to ‘counter’ the ‘misleading’ narratives spun by ‘official enemies’.

Last month, the UK government announced ‘emergency funding’ of £4.1 million ‘to fight Russian disinformation’. The press release stated that this large sum would help the BBC World Service continue to bring:

‘independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state.’

Of course, we are expected to swallow the myth that we in the West already enjoy ‘independent, impartial and accurate news’ from the BBC.

But, as John McEvoy and Mark Curtis of the Declassified UK website recently highlighted:

‘Britain’s media routinely takes information from private groups countering Russian and other disinformation without saying these organisations are funded by the UK government and directed by people linked to the UK or US foreign policy establishment.’

The same authors reported earlier this month that the UK Foreign Office has given over £25 million since January 2018 to organisations targeting ‘disinformation’. Four of these organisations are directed by former members of the British and US foreign policy establishment and are focused overwhelmingly on ‘official enemies’.

McEvoy and Curtis observed:

‘These organisations tend to focus on Russian war crimes and information operations, particularly in Ukraine, while failing to conduct comparable investigations into Britain, the US or NATO.

‘Much of these groups’ research is thus unidirectional, presenting malign information operations as the sole domain of enemies identified by the UK government. The impact is likely to be one-sided information entering the public news arena.’

Indeed, unsuspecting members of the public will have no idea that analysis from supposedly ‘independent’ experts commenting on the war in Ukraine often comes from Foreign Office-funded organisations.

In particular, Declassified UK noted of two such organisations:

• 25 Guardian and Observer articles referenced the Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab, none of which mention its funding by the UK and US governments.
• The Centre for Information Resilience were referenced 29 times in the UK media, with only one article mentioning its UK government funding.

Also buried by state-corporate media is the extent and nature of the UK’s global militarism since 1945. Curtis reported earlier this year that:

‘Britain has deployed its armed forces for combat over 80 times in 47 countries since the end of the Second World War, in episodes ranging from brutal colonial wars and covert operations to efforts to prop up favoured governments or to deter civil unrest.’

Faithful consumers of British media over this period, right up to the present day, are meant to believe that successive UK governments have been acting out of benign intent in such foreign ‘interventions’. To unearth the reality requires digging deeper and further than the tightly-restricted domain overseen by state-corporate media.

Concluding Remarks

The above sections are but a taste of the systematic blanking, sidelining and even smearing of those who present facts and perspectives that challenge state-corporate policies and pronouncements. In an era of volatile international tensions, threat of nuclear conflict, class warfare against the majority of the population, inhumanity towards refugees, and the overarching spectre of the climate crisis, the propaganda system needs to be exposed and replaced by genuine public-interest media.

Do you think electing establishment stooge Sir Keir Starmer is a solution to any of this? Or do you see that his promotion by establishment media, not least the Guardian, is how the establishment seeks to perpetuate its own interests?

Alex Nunns, mentioned earlier, recently noted that when Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader it ‘gave the Labour right the fright of their lives’. Nunns explained:

‘Suddenly the right saw the left as an existential threat. Whatever electoral benefits there were to having the left in the tent were outweighed by the risk of the Labour right permanently losing the party they saw as their property.’

Starmer and his supporters in the party are determined to ensure that the prospects of a left-wing Labour leadership are permanently crushed. Banning Corbyn from standing for Labour in the next General Election is:

‘about sending a message, first to the left, and second to the establishment, that they have nothing to fear from a tamed Labour Party. They want to prove that the insurgent, radical leftism that Corbyn represented will never be repeated.’

In this very real sense, the current Labour Party is part of the established interests that are determined to suppress grassroots opposition to endless war, class exploitation and the steps required to avert the worst of the onrushing climate catastrophe.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Media Lens.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Intercepted.

The post Mass French Strikes and Mobilizations Challenge Macron’s Pension Reform appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeff Mackler.

The Biden administration opened its second Summit for Democracy this week with a panel featuring India's Narendra Modi and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu. As the leaders of their countries, both have pursued similar forms of exclusionary nationalism.

Indeed, both Modi and Netanyahu were—as they spoke—facing political crises at home in response to their attempts to permanently sideline democratic opposition.

This was a seemingly discordant note with which to begin a democracy conference. Even so, it is very much in keeping with what the Biden administration means when it says that the United States is fighting a global battle for democracy against autocracy. Understanding the counterintuitive meaning of Biden's slogan is important both to see why this framing is so powerful among American leaders and why it is so dangerous to the health of global democracy.

The administration's interpretation is best captured in its 2022 National Security Strategy:

The most pressing strategic challenge facing our vision [of a free, open, prosperous, and secure world] is from powers that layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy. It is their behavior that poses a challenge to international peace and stability—especially waging or preparing for wars of aggression, actively undermining the democratic political processes of other countries, leveraging technology and supply chains for coercion and repression, and exporting an illiberal model of international order. Many non-democracies join the world's democracies in forswearing these behaviors. Unfortunately, Russia and the People's Republic of China (PRC) do not.

The salient division in the world, then, is not between democracies and autocracies but between countries that support the existing international order and the two autocracies—China and Russia—that are seeking to reshape it in illiberal ways.

But this raises some awkward questions:

One: Which side are autocratic U.S. allies on if, like Saudi Arabia and UAE, they wage wars of aggression, undermine the democratic political processes of other countries, and use technology for repression?

Two: Which side are democratic countries on if they support China's efforts to reshape the international order? This is quite common, because many of the things that China does to "tilt the global playing field to its benefit" are things that poor countries—democratic or not—must do if they are to achieve economic development.

Three: Which side is the U.S. on? Because the U.S. violates the rules-based order and engages in coercion on a regular basis. Leaving aside a long list of examples under earlier presidents and looking only at the Biden administration, the U.S. is currently incapacitating the world trade dispute resolution system; supporting Russia's argument that it can exempt itself from any economic agreement (in this case, throttling Ukraine's trade) merely by invoking national security; building a comprehensive blockade on Chinese businesses' access to certain advanced technologies; seeking to destroy China's most successful private multinational company, Huawei; and maintaining an extraterritorial sanctions regime that has done terrible damage to Iran's economy.

The United States welcomes as client states outright autocracies like Saudi Arabia or Egypt and deteriorating democracies like India, Israel, and Italy in order to turn back the huge threat that administration officials think a powerful China poses to the principle of democracy itself.

So the particular list of allegations against Russia and China, which does not apply equally to both countries, also fails to clearly distinguish the "democracy" team from the "autocracy" team. But the Biden administration has a deeper rationale in mind. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, "China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it." Ultimately the United States welcomes as client states outright autocracies like Saudi Arabia or Egypt and deteriorating democracies like India, Israel, and Italy in order to turn back the huge threat that administration officials think a powerful China poses to the principle of democracy itself.

What is the nature of that threat? Often the administration accuses China of exporting its authoritarian model in the form of surveillance technology—technology that companies in the U.S. and allied states also sell. Or they highlight China's campaign to change "democratic norms" at the United Nations. For example, China has sought to elevate collective rights, such as the right to economic development, to the same level as individual rights.

Members of the Biden administration have argued that such a goal would dilute individual rights and empower autocratic states to speak in the name of their people. This perspective, however, is not shared by the overwhelming majority of democratic developing countries. They stand on this issue and many others alongside their authoritarian counterparts, against the opposition of the rich democratic countries. In U.S. political culture, the interests of wealthy countries are often represented as the interests of democratic countries.

Beijing also rejects the "universal values" that the U.S. champions and seeks respect for "the diversity of civilizations," including those that do not recognize liberal democratic rights and freedoms. The Biden administration has a point here—China does seek to overturn the rhetorical dominance that liberal values have enjoyed in recent decades—but the presence of numerous autocrats and aspiring autocrats in U.S.-led coalitions is eloquent proof that liberal rhetoric does little to restrain authoritarians.

Finally, Biden has made the point that if Chinese authoritarianism is stable and prosperous while U.S. democracy is dysfunctional and stagnant, democracy will lose its appeal around the world. But it is hard to find examples of this happening in practice. China's recent history of Party-state rule sets it apart from most other countries, making it unpersuasive as a model. And third countries are perfectly capable of valuing partnership with China without losing faith in democracy. In a 2022 survey of African leaders, China was preferred over the United States (46% to 9%) as a partner on infrastructure development; yet the U.S. was chosen over China (32% to 1%) when it comes to cooperation around governance and the rule of law.

The idea that a popularity contest between two powerful countries is what determines the choice of political regime in other countries is, in any case, both implausible and insulting.

Why, then, is the idea that China poses a potentially existential threat to democracy so widespread in Washington? Because over the last two decades, the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism ("free markets and free individuals")—which underwrote the narrow concept of democracy that drove the Third Wave of democratization and supplied the intellectual foundations for the U.S. political elite in recent decades—has disintegrated at home and abroad.

This ideology's loss of legitimacy is a global phenomenon, but in Washington it was experienced as the outcome of a series of increasingly disastrous setbacks for U.S. economic and military aspirations, starting with the dotcom crash and 9/11, ramifying through the failures of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, the Iraq War, and the Doha Round of WTO negotiations, and culminating in the 2008 global financial crisis and the Great Recession.

The sense of crisis only grew over the following decade as previously marginalized political currents represented by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders suddenly posed a serious challenge to the political status quo in the United States.

For mainstream American political leaders, the three essential parts of the post-Cold War global system—U.S. military hegemony, free market globalization, and a specifically neoliberal vision of democracy and human rights—were inseparably interwoven

For mainstream American political leaders, the three essential parts of the post-Cold War global system—U.S. military hegemony, free market globalization, and a specifically neoliberal vision of democracy and human rights—were inseparably interwoven. Now referred to in Washington as the "rules-based international order," a challenge to any part of the package is considered an attack on the whole, and American leaders are particularly sensitive to such challenges given the fragility of the whole system.

Today's China, though a product of that very system, was also the most prominent country to reject liberal democracy and U.S. hegemony. And in the years since 2008, it has been a step or two ahead of other countries—in some ways constructive and in some horrifying—as every country moves beyond the system. So even though China has been little involved in the specific U.S. failures of the last two decades, it nonetheless stands in as a symbol of all the setbacks that U.S. power and ideology have faced.

Though China's success within the "rules-based international order" has given it a major stake in sustaining and shoring up significant parts of the system, that success has also made China far more powerful than more antagonistic countries like Russia or North Korea. Because Washington sees China as both hostile and powerful, the image of a menacing China offers a shared focus for U.S. leaders that could overcome the debilitating partisan divisions afflicting the country's governance—a point that Biden has made manytimes.

So it's true that the Biden administration does not see the world as divided between democracies and autocracies. But it does see the world as divided between democracy in the abstract—understood to be the same as U.S. military and economic power and the alliances supporting it—and autocracy in the abstract, represented by the only peer competitor facing the United States, China.

This emerging consensus in Washington is driven by insecurity and defensiveness rather than a serious analysis of the real forces endangering democracy around the world. As such, U.S. leaders have neglected the single most important question: is international conflict and geopolitical bloc formation likely to nourish democracy—or will it strengthen in every country the most threatening authoritarian political currents, namely militarism, nationalism, and nativism?

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Werner.

Two days after President Joe Biden's administration rejected a petition asking federal regulators to use their authority to lower the astronomical price of a lifesaving prostate cancer drug developed entirely with public funds, petitioners on Thursday filed an administrative appeal.

At issue is enzalutamide, a drug the Japanese pharmaceutical giant Astellas and its U.S. counterpart Pfizer sell under the brand name Xtandi. Although Xtandi owes its existence to U.S. taxpayers, who bankrolled 100% of its development, an annual supply of the drug costs $189,900 in the United States—three to six times more than its list price in other wealthy nations.

In late 2021, prostate cancer patients Robert Sachs, Clare Love, and Eric Sawyer petitioned the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to exercise its "march-in rights" against Xtandi. Under the Bayh-Dole Act, the federal government can reclaim and redistribute patents for inventions created with public funding—enabling generic competitors to produce cheaper versions—when "action is necessary to alleviate health or safety needs" or when an invention's benefits are not being made "available to the public on reasonable terms."

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra referred the petition to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose acting Director Lawrence Tabak argued in a Tuesday letter that "Xtandi is widely available to the public on the market," citing Astellas' estimate that "more than 200,000 patients were treated with Xtandi from 2012 to 2021."

Even with insurance, co-pays for Xtandi are sky-high. Medicare recipients, for example, are expected to pay roughly $10,000 per year for the medicine. Especially for the millions of uninsured and underinsured people in the U.S., Xtandi remains completely out of reach.

Tabak's letter went on to say that Xtandi's "practical application is evidenced by the 'manufacture, practice, and operation' of the invention and the invention's 'availability to and use by the public….'" As Knowledge Ecology International executive director James Love lamented, the NIH completely elided any mention of "reasonable terms," editing out that key phrase from Bayh-Dole.

In their appeal, the petitioners wrote: "The petition focused on a single issue: the reasonableness of charging U.S. cancer patients three to six times more than residents of other high-income countries for the drug Xtandi."

"There is no dispute about the following facts," the appeal continues. "Xtandi was invented on grants from the U.S. Army and the NIH at UCLA, a public university. The patents were licensed eventually to Astellas, a Japanese drug company, with a partnership share now held by Pfizer, following its 2016 $14 billion acquisition of Medivation, UCLA's original licensee, that occurred just after the NIH rejected an earlier march-in request on Xtandi. The prices in the United States have consistently been far higher than the prices in other high-income countries."

Prior to the 2021 petition, Clare Love and prostate cancer patient David Reed filed a petition, later joined by Sachs, with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) after the Senate Armed Services Committee instructed the Pentagon to initiate march-in proceedings when the price of a drug created with a DOD grant exceeds the median price in seven large high-income nations. The Pentagon, however, has yet to acknowledge or act on the petition submitted to it in February 2019.

"If you consider both of these requests together, a petition to exercise the government's march-in or other rights in the Xtandi patents has been pending before the federal government for more than four years," Thursday's appeal states. "The HHS petition was filed 16 months ago."

It continues:

The petitions were filed with the DOD and HHS instead of the NIH because the NIH has repeatedly demonstrated its unwillingness to even acknowledge that the Bayh-Dole Act includes an obligation to make products invented with federal funds 'available to the public on reasonable terms.' This is demonstrated by a track record of dismissing multiple requests to use the government's Bayh-Dole safeguard to address pricing abuses and access restrictions, including those concerning the federal government's march-in rights under 35 USC § 203, and the federal government's global royalty-free license, under 35 USC § 202(c)(4). There are also extensive email records between Mark Rohrbaugh, currently NIH special adviser for technology transfer who is a long-time agency official, and lobbyists for drug companies and university rights holders, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, which not only express opposition to any safeguards regarding unreasonable pricing but organize public relations efforts against using a march-in request to address the pricing of products.

"HHS chose to assign to the NIH the evaluation of our petition regarding Xtandi," says the appeal. "We request HHS to consider this appeal directly, and not assign NIH to review its own decision. The latter would be tantamount to no review at all."

Since Bayh-Dole was enacted in 1980, "march-in rights have never been used... and NIH has repeatedly rejected the idea that affordability is a reasonable term," The American Prospectreported Wednesday. With Xtandi, "advocates thought they found the perfect test case for a new administration that paid lip service to lowering prescription drug costs."

As The Levernoted on Wednesday, the NIH's decision this week was consistent with Biden's track record:

Biden was vice president when the Obama administration rejected congressional Democrats' demand that the government use the same power to lower the skyrocketing prices of medicine in America.

As a senator in 2000, Biden was one of just eight Democrats who helped pharmaceutical lobbyists kill a measure spearheaded by Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that would have reinstated the Reagan-era requirement that drug companies sell medicines developed with public money at a reasonable price.

That requirement was repealed by the Clinton administration in 1995, following pressure by drugmakers.

But Becerra's acquiescence to Big Pharma was more surprising. Prior to joining the Biden administration, the HHS secretary had expressed support for wielding the executive branch's authority to rein in soaring drug prices.

As the attorney general of California in the summer of 2020, "Becerra demanded the Trump administration use existing law to lower the price of medicines that were originally developed at taxpayer expense," The Lever reported. "As a member of Congress in 2016, Becerra signed on to a letter to the Obama Department of Health and Human Services calling on officials to broadly use 'march-in rights' to lower the cost of prescription drugs—including 'specialty drugs, like those to treat cancer, which are frequently developed with taxpayer funds.'"

Despite pressure from numerous members of Congress and medicine affordability advocacy groups, the NIH declared Tuesday that it "does not believe that use of the march-in authority would be an effective means of lowering the price of the drug."

Instead, the agency vowed to "pursue a whole-of-government approach informed by public input to ensure the use of march-in authority is consistent with the policy and objective of the Bayh-Dole Act," a move that progressive advocates denounced as a "pathetic" attempt to deflect criticism of its failure to use or threaten to use its legal power.

“This is a drug that was invented with taxpayer dollars by scientists at UCLA and can be purchased in Canada for one-fifth the U.S. price," Sanders said Tuesday. "The Japanese drugmaker Astellas, which made $1 billion in profits in 2021, has raised the price of this drug by more than 75%."

"How many prostate cancer patients will die because they cannot afford this unacceptable price?" asked Sanders, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

During a Wednesday hearing, Sanders made the case for changing "the current culture of greed into a culture which understands that science and medical breakthroughs should work for ordinary people, and not just enrich large corporations and CEOs."

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

Powell "has a dual mandate," said Warren. "Yes, he is responsible for dealing with inflation, but he is also responsible for employment. And what Chair Powell is trying to do, and he has said fairly explicitly, is that they are trying to, in effect, slow down the economy so that, this is by the Fed's own estimate, two million people will lose their jobs. And I believe that is not what the chair of the Federal Reserve should be doing."

Since the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupted international supply chains—rendered fragile by decades of neoliberal globalization—powerful corporations in highly consolidated industries have taken advantage of these and other crises such as the bird flu outbreak to justify profit-boosting price hikes that far outpace the increased costs of doing business.

"Raising interest rates doesn't do anything to solve" a cost-of-living crisis driven primarily by "price gouging, supply chain kinks, [and] the war in Ukraine," Warren said Sunday. "All it does is put millions of people out of work."

"Jay Powell... has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy, one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both."

Powell, an ex-investment banker, was first appointed by then-President Donald Trump in 2018 and reappointed by Biden in 2021. Warren noted that she opposed Powell's nomination in both cases "because of his views on regulation and what he was already doing to weaken regulation."

"But I think he's failing in both jobs, both as the oversight and manager of these big banks, which is his job, and also what he's doing with inflation," said Warren.

Asked by Todd if Biden should fire Powell, Warren said: "My views on Jay Powell are well-known at this point. He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy, one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both."

"Would you advise President Biden to replace him?" Todd inquired.

"I don't think he should be Chairman of the Federal Reserve," the Massachusetts Democrat responded. "I have said it as publicly as I know how to say it. I've said it to everyone."

Meanwhile, in a Saturday letter, Warren asked Richard Delmar, Tyler Smith, and Mark Bialek—respectively the deputy inspector general of the Treasury Department, acting inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and inspector general of the Fed's board of governors—to "immediately open a thorough, independent investigation of the causes of the bank management and regulatory and supervisory problems that resulted in this month's failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank (Signature) and deliver preliminary results within 30 days."

Until the Treasury Department, the Fed, and the FDIC "intervened to guarantee billions of dollars of deposits," the second- and third-biggest bank failures in U.S. history "threatened economic contagion and severe damage to the banking and financial systems," Warren noted. "The bank's executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures."

"But this mismanagement was allowed to occur because of a series of failures by lawmakers and regulators," Warren continued.

In 2018, several Democrats joined Republicans in approving Sen. Mike Crapo's (R-Idaho) Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which weakened the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Crapo's deregulatory measure, signed into law by Trump, loosened federal oversight of banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets—a category that includes SVB and Signature.

"As officials sought to develop a plan responding to SVB's failure, Chair Powell muzzled regulators from any public mention of the regulatory failures that occurred under his watch."

Moreover, the Fed under Powell's leadership "initiated key regulatory rollbacks," Warren wrote Saturday, echoing criticisms that she and financial industry watchdogs voiced earlier in the week. "And the banks' supervisors—particularly the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw SVB—missed or ignored key signals about their impending failure."

It is "critical that your investigation be completely independent and free of influence from the bank executives or regulators that were responsible for action that led to these bank failures," Warren stressed. "I am particularly concerned that you avoid any interference from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who bears direct responsibility for—and has a long record of failure involving—regulatory and supervisory matters involving these two banks."

"I have already asked Chair Powell to recuse himself from the Fed's internal investigation of this matter, but he has not yet responded to this request," wrote Warren. The progressive lawmaker said "this silence is troubling" in light of recent reporting that "as officials sought to develop a plan responding to SVB's failure, Chair Powell muzzled regulators from any public mention of the regulatory failures that occurred under his watch."

"Bank regulators and Congress must move quickly to close the gaps that allowed these bank failures to happen, and your investigation will provide us important insight as we take steps to do so," added Warren, who has introduced legislation to repeal a vital provision of the Trump-era bank deregulation law enacted five years ago with bipartisan support.

In appearances on three Sunday morning talk shows, Warren doubled down on her demands for an independent investigation into recent bank failures, stronger financial regulations, and punishing those responsible.

After lawmakers from both parties helped Trump fulfill his campaign promise to weaken federal oversight of the banking system, Powell "took a flamethrower to the regulations, saying, 'I'm doing this because Congress let me do it,'" Warren toldABC's "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. "And what happened was exactly what we should have predicted, and that is the banks, these big, multi-billion-dollar banks, loaded up on risk; they boosted their short-term profits; they gave themselves huge bonuses and big salaries; and they exploded their banks."

"When you explode a bank, you ought to be banned from banking forever."

"When you explode a bank, you ought to be banned from banking forever," said Warren, who acknowledged that criminal charges could be coming. "The Department of Justice has opened an investigation. I think that's appropriate for them to do. We'll see where the facts take them. But we've got to take a close look at this."

Not only did former SVB chief executive officer Greg Becker, who lobbied aggressively for the 2018 bank deregulation law, sell millions of dollars of shares as recently as late last month, but until federal regulators took control of the failed bank on March 10, he was on the board of directors at the San Francisco Fed—the institution responsible for overseeing SVB.

On Saturday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced that he plans to introduce legislation "to end this conflict of interest by banning big bank CEOs from serving on Fed boards."

"We've got to say overall that we can't keep repeating this approach of weakening the regulation over the banks, then stepping in when these giant banks get into trouble," Warren said Sunday, arguing for stronger federal oversight to prevent the need for bailouts.

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

New Zealand’s Green Party has told other parties to come to the table with faster, bolder climate action if they want their support at the election later this year.

The Greens gathered in Auckland for the party’s “State of the Planet” speech.

Co-leader James Shaw — who is also the Climate Change Minister outside cabinet — said the 2023 election would be a climate election.

• READ MORE: Other NZ climate reports

“I am proud of what we have achieved with the governments we have been given. I am proud that over the last five years we have taken more action on climate change than the past 30 years of governments combined,” he said.

“But it’s not enough. I do not want another generation to have to bear the burden of slow progress.”

The speech came at the end of a week which started with the government dumping or deferring a number of emissions reduction-focused policies, including the clean car upgrade scheme and the container return scheme.

While Prime Minister Chris Hipkins gave the Greens a heads up, he did not consult with them, breaching the co-operation agreement. Te Pāti Māori also called for Shaw to stand down over the policy purge.

Cutting climate pollution
Shaw said the Greens would set out a plan to cut climate pollution over the next few months, and are planning to get Green ministers into cabinet.

“To any political party that wants the Green Party’s support to form a government after the election, let us put it as simply as we can: The Green Party will not accept anything less than the strongest possible climate action.

“The stakes are too high, the consequences of failure too great.”

Co-leader Marama Davidson said many people were struggling to put food on the table and pay the bills.

“We can address climate change and inequality at the same time.”

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

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

In a move decried by one critic as a "significant loss for the First Amendment," the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a challenge to an Arkansas law requiring companies doing business with the state to sign a pledge vowing not to boycott Israel.

The justices will not hear an appeal to a June 2022 decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals involving Act 710 of 2017, an Arkansas law imposing a 20% penalty on state contractors with contracts over $1,000 if they refuse an oath not to support the nonviolent international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli crimes in Palestine including occupation, settler colonization, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.

The ACLU petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, Arkansas Times LP v. Mark Waldrip, on behalf of Arkansas Times editor Alan Leveritt, who was informed by officials at the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College that the weekly alternative paper would have to sign the anti-BDS pledge if it wanted to keep its advertising contract with the state school. The publication does not boycott Israel, but refused to sign the oath.

"If states can suppress boycotts of Israel, then they can suppress boycotts of the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood."

In 2021, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court ruled that "supporting or promoting boycotts of Israel is constitutionally protected," however the court later reversed the ruling in a decision written by Judge Jonathan Kobes, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who the American Bar Association deemed "not qualified" to serve.

While pro-Israel groups and individuals hailed the high court's punt as a major blow to BDS, journalism, free speech, and Palestine advocates decried the move.

"We are obviously disappointed at the news today from the U.S. Supreme Court. Permitting state governments to withhold state contracts from citizens who voice opinions contrary to those held by a majority of their state legislators is abhorrent and a violation of the Bill of Rights," wrote Leveritt.

"In our case the Arkansas state Legislature required our magazine to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel if we wanted to receive state advertising," the editor continued. "We refused. We are not boycotting Israel but neither do we sign political pledges in return for advertising. Especially state advertising."

"Thanks to support from our readers, we will not be signing any pledges dictated by our Legislature," Leveritt added. "The Supreme Court can ignore our First Amendment rights but we will continue to vigorously exercise them."

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib(D-Mich.)—the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress—called the high court's decision not to hear the case a "travesty."

The Freedom of the Press Foundation tweeted that "SCOTUS should've stood up for the First Amendment. Instead, it let a ruling stand permitting the government to withhold ads from newspapers that won't pledge to not boycott Israel. Government should not financially pressure the press (or anyone) to echo its views."

Some critics warned that allowing anti-BDS laws to stand—effectively upholding them—will adversely affect Americans' right to voice dissent on a wide range of issues.

"From the Boston Tea Party to the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the boycott of apartheid South Africa, Americans have proudly exercised that right to make their voices heard," Brian Hauss—the senior staff attorney at the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project—said in a statement.

"But if states can suppress boycotts of Israel, then they can suppress boycotts of the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood," he added. "While we are disappointed with the result in this case, the ACLU will continue to defend the right to boycott in courts and legislatures throughout the country."

Leveritt toldThe Guardian that "this is simply a template. It doesn't stop here. We now have in the Arkansas Legislature bills introduced to deny state contracts to financial and banking institutions that have [environmental, social, and corporate governance] policies that prohibit them from investing in fossil fuels or firearms companies."

"In other states, they've introduced laws to deny state contracts to any company that subsidizes their employees' transportation costs if they go out of state for an abortion," he added. "So this is just going to be used time after time after time, eventually, the Supreme Court is going to have to deal with it, or else it's going to be open season on the First Amendment."

While federal courts in Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, and Texas have ruled that laws banning or penalizing boycotts of Israel are unconstitutional under the First Amendment, each of those states subsequently amended their respective legislation to apply only to larger contractors and exclude individuals.

According to a database compiled by Lara Friedman at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, at least 34 U.S. states have passed laws targeting boycotts of Israel or its illegal Jewish-only settler colonies in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Julie Bacha, director of the documentary film Boycott—which highlights efforts to fight anti-BDS laws including in Arkansas—toldMondoweiss that "it is unfortunate that the Supreme Court opted to stay on the sidelines for now, but let's be very clear—the fight to protect the right to boycott is far from over."

"The last—and only—time the Supreme Court reviewed the right to boycott in 1982, it ruled unanimously that the First Amendment protects the right of Americans to engage in boycotts to affect social and political change," she added. "Americans across the country will continue to exercise that right, and take their states to court when that right is violated."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Privacy advocates on Tuesday blasted the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear the Wikimedia Foundation's case against a federal program for spying on Americans' online communications with people abroad.

The nonprofit foundation, which operates Wikipedia, took aim at the National Security Agency (NSA) program "Upstream" that—under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—searches emails, internet messages, and other web communications leaving and entering the United States.

"In the course of this surveillance, both U.S. residents and individuals located outside the U.S. are impacted," the foundation explained in a statement. "The NSA copies and combs through vast amounts of internet traffic, including private data showing what millions of people around the world are browsing online, from communications with friends and family to reading and editing knowledge on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects."

"This government surveillance has had a measurable chilling effect on Wikipedia users, with research documenting a drop in traffic to Wikipedia articles on sensitive topics, following public revelations about the NSA's mass surveillance in 2013," the group added.

Last August, Wikimedia—represented by the ACLU, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and the law firm Cooley LLP—petitioned the high court to take up the case after a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit dismissed it based on the "state secrets privilege."

"The Supreme Court's refusal to grant our petition strikes a blow against an individual's right to privacy and freedom of expression—two cornerstones of our society and the building blocks of Wikipedia," said Wikimedia legal director James Buatti. "We will continue to champion everyone's right to free knowledge, and urge Congress to take on the issue of mass surveillance as it evaluates whether to reauthorize Section 702 later this year."

As Common Dreamsreported earlier this month, in a separate case, the ACLU sued the NSA along with the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence for failing to respond to public records requests for information about Section 702, which will expire if it is not reauthorized.

"Before Congress votes on reauthorizing this law, Americans should know how the government wants to use these sweeping spying powers," Patrick Toomey, deputy project director for the ACLU's National Security Project, said at the time.

Responding to the development in the Wikimedia case on Tuesday, Toomey declared that "the Supreme Court let secrecy prevail today, at immense cost to Americans' privacy."

"We depend on the courts to hold the government to account, especially when it wields powerful new technologies to peer into our lives like never before. But the Supreme Court has again allowed the executive branch to hide abuses behind unjustifiable claims of secrecy," he continued. "It is now up to Congress to insist on landmark reforms that will safeguard Americans in the face of the NSA's mass spying programs."

In a series of tweets about the case, the ACLU asserted that "we all deserve to use the internet without fear of being monitored by the government" and by declining to hear the case, "the court has slammed shut one of the only doors left to hold the NSA accountable for surveillance abuses revealed in 2013" by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

That thread concluded with a call for Congress to kill Section 702—which Snowden himself echoed on the platform:

Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, joined them in urging action from U.S. lawmakers.

"This decision is a blow to the rule of law," Abdo said of the high court. "The government has now succeeded in insulating from public judicial review one of the most sweeping surveillance programs ever enacted. If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia's challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans' privacy by reining in the NSA's mass surveillance of the internet."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

As The Associated Pressreported Monday: "The Palestinian-backed draft resolution was the subject of frantic talks by senior Biden administration officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Palestinian, Israeli, and United Arab Emirates leaders. Those discussions culminated in a deal Sunday to forego it in favor of a weaker presidential statement that is not legally binding, according to multiple diplomats familiar with the situation."

The watered-down statement says, "The Security Council reiterates that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines."

"The Security Council expresses deep concern and dismay with Israel's announcement on February 12," the statement continues, referring to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration's decision to retroactively authorize nine illegal settlements built without government approval in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem—and its plans to erect even more.

According to AP:

The presidential statement does not condemn Israeli settlement activity or demand a halt. It does condemn "all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terrorism."

On settlements, the Security Council statement also "strongly opposes all unilateral measures that impede peace including... Israeli construction and expansion of settlements, confiscation of Palestinians' land, and the 'legalization' of settlement outposts, demolition of Palestinians' homes, and displacement of Palestinian civilians."

In contrast to the agreed-upon presidential statement, the tabled draft resolution "would have demanded Israel 'immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,'" Reutersreported.

To be adopted, Security Council resolutions must receive nine votes in favor and no vetoes from the body's five permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States. The council's last resolution condemning Israel's illegal settlements was passed in December 2016 when U.S. President Barack Obama's administration abstained from the vote.

U.S. President Joe Biden's ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told the Security Council on Monday that Washington is opposed to Israel's move to retroactively "legalize" nine settler colonies—considered illegal not only under international law but also under Israeli law—and its plans to construct 10,000 new housing units on land stolen from Palestinians.

"These unilateral measures exacerbate tensions," said Thomas-Greenfield. "They harm trust between the parties. They undermine the prospects for a negotiated two-state solution. The United States does not support these actions full stop."

The ambassador described the presidential statement as "real diplomacy at work," arguing that it shows "how seriously this council takes these threats to peace."

"Council members should at a minimum adopt a resolution that clearly condemns as illegal all Israeli settlements on Occupied Palestinian Territory and demands they be dismantled."

While an infuriated Netanyahu asserted that "the declaration didn't need to be said and the United States didn't need to join it"—an opinion shared by right-wing U.S. lawmakers including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour welcomed the move.

"We are very happy that there was a very strong united message from the Security Council against the illegal, unilateral measure" announced by Israel on February 12, Mansour told reporters.

"I think the fact that we reached a unanimous agreement on a presidential statement is a very important step in the right direction," he said.

"All the ingredients are there for us to reach a point of no return," Mansour had told the council earlier. "Every action we take now matters. Every word we utter matters. Every decision we delay matters."

Louis Charbonneau of Human Rights Watch, however, was less complimentary.

"While it's helpful to have the U.N. Security Council criticize Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinians, today's statement, diluted under pressure from the U.S. and Israel, is a far cry from the full-throated condemnation the grave situation deserves," he wrote on Twitter.

"Council members," he added, "should at a minimum adopt a resolution that clearly condemns as illegal all Israeli settlements on Occupied Palestinian Territory and demands they be dismantled."

AP reported that the U.S.—the only Security Council member opposed to the stronger resolution—didn't want to use its veto because it "would have angered Palestinian supporters at a time when the U.S. and its Western allies are trying to gain international support against Russia for its war with Ukraine."

"To avoid a vote on the draft resolution," the outlet reported, citing multiple diplomats, "the U.S. managed to convince both Israel and the Palestinians to agree in principle to a six-month freeze in any unilateral action they might take."

According to AP:

On the Israeli side, that would mean a commitment to not expanding settlements until at least August, according to the diplomats. On Monday, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not greenlight any new wildcat settlements in the West Bank beyond nine outposts that it approved retroactively earlier this month.

On the Palestinian side, the diplomats said it would mean a commitment until August not to pursue action against Israel at the U.N. and other international bodies such as the World Court, the International Criminal Court, and the U.N. Human Rights Council. But Mansour said the U.N. General Assembly's request to the U.N.'s highest judicial body, the International Court of Justice also known as the World Court, for an advisory opinion on the legality of Israeli politcies in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is going ahead.

Roughly 700,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements that have been built in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel violently seized those Palestinian territories, along with Gaza, in 1967.

International law prohibits occupying forces from transferring their civilian population into occupied territories, prompting a top U.N.-appointed expert to characterize Israeli settlements as a "war crime."

More than 50 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied territories since Netanyahu returned to power at the end of last year.

Israel, the recipient of $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid each year, has been denounced as an apartheid state by multiple human rights groups.

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

The post Biden Wielding DNC to Guard Against Progressive Challenge appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

As I’ve ventured in life, I have had an initiative to really value the quality of the people that I spend my time working with, working for, hanging out with. And that’s been a guide for me. As an artist, I think you need to create what it is that you want to do. Even as a film composer or a TV composer, you need to write music all the time—whether you’re employed or not—and write the music that you want to relate to, at least at that point in your life, instead of just waiting to get tapped to do a gig and be some kind of jack of all trades.

Once I did Dawn of the Dead and The Devil’s Rejects pretty close to one another, I got into doing a lot of dark ambient noise scores. But I also really love writing orchestral music and melodic music. You can get in this current of doing something other than exactly what you want to do sometimes, but that’s why I do a lot of different things.

Say, for instance, that I was looking to satisfy all of my creativity through film scoring. It would be entirely unfair to any of the projects because that’s just not possible for me. I love to play music with other musicians; I love to play guitar. I love to perform. All that stuff is a different dimension of what I do, and it’s entirely up to me to work that stuff out so I don’t bring in the overt desire or angst of not doing that into my film projects.

How did you find your footing when you first started composing scores for film and TV?

It took me a while to really join my natural style and talent with the music I was creating for movies. In my opinion, I did not do a very good job on those early movies. I mean, I did my work and took that very seriously, but stylistically, I just didn’t understand that I have a certain skill set that I’ve really developed throughout my life up to a certain point.

Honestly, I probably should have just done more guitar-oriented scores the first few times out. It probably would’ve been better quality music. But nonetheless, I really did enjoy that experience of developing myself and finding a whole new world to focus my energy and my thought and the talent I had cultivated to that point in my life.

I interviewed Danny Elfman for TCI as well, and his background is similar to yours in that he went from playing in bands to scoring films. He told me that when he started composing for movies, he received massive resistance from other composers who didn’t want to see someone from a rock band in their world. Did you experience anything like that?

I think there has always been resistance to anybody new with a voice. Danny Elfman, I’ve met him only once. He was super cool and great—and thankfully very complimentary of some of my work. But before I even understood what the hell was going on with the film business, I was just doing these little movies out of my apartment studio with different players. I was working with one very high-ranking musician in the business who was kind of throwing shade on Danny Elfman. He said, “The guy doesn’t even know how to read music.” I just looked at him and said, “Well, then he’s a genius.” And that didn’t occur to him until then.

Now, I know Danny Elfman has definitely educated himself. He’s extremely well versed and he knows exactly what he’s doing. But he was clearly intelligent enough and wise enough to find a way to do this relying on his natural strengths. I haven’t read a ton about him, but I’m guessing that he sang a lot of his parts and figured out how to transcribe that or translate that to the orchestra and all of the necessary instrumentation to create the score. To me, that’s genius, that’s brilliant.

We can all go to school and study the works of John Williams and others who are amazing, but we’re really looking backward when we do that. When a person’s looking forward, they’re just taking on challenges, trying to figure out how to achieve something that they’ve never done before.

And mind you, when Danny Elfman got into the business—same with me—there wasn’t YouTube. There wasn’t any information that was easily accessible. Who was teaching film composition? How many composers that actually had a viable career were teaching the craft? I have a tremendous amount of respect for all educators, but I’m just saying that this business is so challenging that you realize, over time, music is just a component of what the job is and what the career is.

What do you mean by that?

You have to be extremely tough mentally. You have to be very nonjudgmental of people. You need to set your emotions aside a lot of the time and just orient yourself to understand the people around you. When you’re working with a director, you don’t judge them. You understand what their storytelling is about. And the cool thing that has happened for me is because I began in bands and writing music for my bands and booking the gigs and promoting it all, I was always very, very focused and driven in that way. And then, as I got into films, at some point that took hold.

The other thing is, projects always overlap because the schedules never remain as ironclad as you might imagine they would be when they hire you. There’s always something that pushes the schedule and that’s why composers sometimes need some help. They thought they were going to do one movie, but if you’re having success, everything’s kind of slid on top of another and you’re on three or four projects before you know it.

You’ve collaborated with many rock-based musicians—Chelsea Wolfe and Jerry Cantrell come to mind. What do you like about that process?

For me, it’s always about understanding the person I’m with. When we judge other people, we’re really using ourselves as the basis of comparison and we’re all weird and fucked up anyway, so I really don’t do that. But what this whole practice has helped me do is to more articulately express what a director is trying to accomplish through the musical dimension of storytelling and film and television.

Same thing with records. It’s really about me understanding what these artists need, what they need to get out, and how they like to work. You can shout into the wall all day long about how this person’s process is not efficient or professional or appropriate. That’s not going to necessarily change much. You really have to just understand what’s going on and find a way to tee people up to be the most creative—and potently creative—as possible.

What I’m saying is that the cross-pollination of things in my life now has become really vibrant and really interesting because I’ve been open-minded and still very driven and focused. So now, as a middle-aged dude, I’m writing songs with all different artists now, producing records, producing songs. Touring with my friends like Jerry Cantrell, who is a very close friend of mine, and literally close because he lives across the street. We have so much fun playing together. That’s just an absolutely awesome experience to have in life that I just wouldn’t have had if I was only focused on one thing.

Clearly, being open-minded has served you well.

I haven’t fallen into doing a ton of franchises. I’ve worked with several directors on at least four or five movies, which is really great, but I think I’ve done about 100 movies or something by now. But I am grateful that I’ve managed to keep my mind open about people. It goes back to: What do I want my life to be? Because when you’re young, you’re thinking—in an egotistical way, whether you’re cognizant of that or not—of what you’re going to do and be known for and all that. And I think that because I really placed an emphasis on the people that I wish to have in my life—the type of people—I’ve been working more and more toward what I want my life experience to be.

Because all this stuff doesn’t even matter, anyway. Once we’re dead, we’re dead. Really, the idea of legacy is when you’re living. And I very much cherish my relationships, personal and professional. And there’s a certain experience I have, say, working with Jerry Cantrell, that there’s just no other person, no other medium that I could have that type of experience with. And that factors into me understanding my own life more. To me, that’s what’s important. I could give a shit about awards. I really have never cared one bit.

Judging by the sheer amount of films you’ve done in the last 10 to 15 years, you seem to work constantly. How do you deal with burnout?

Dude…oh my God. It’s a real battle. But I temper it by my involvement in so many different things. Touring gives me a different type of energy than scoring a movie, so I feel recharged. But by the beginning of 2020, I was burnt. Thankfully I was able to do this before COVID really became a thing, but I went to Costa Rica and spent the first month of the year there. And then obviously things got pretty crazy once I got back to L.A.

I also try to save my emotional energy for when it really counts. It’s like if you react to everything that’s happening around you… first off, you may miss the point. You may not hear or understand the necessary information that’s required to succeed at your task—TV show, video game, movie, marriage—whatever it is. So it’s really, really important not to be overtly reactionary. We’re all human, so we have our days.

When you start to practice that, you’re not necessarily trading blows with everything that happens to you in your life. Because if you’re reacting to all the things that piss you off or scare you or upset you in any way, you’re going to be exhausted. I mean, that’s just like a constant fistfight in your mind and in your body. Because every time we process these reactionary thoughts, we have a physical reaction as well—and that can make you sick.

I’ve seen it happen to composers. I mean, this is a seriously stressful career. Any of us who are able to pay the bills doing it are certainly grateful for the opportunity, but it’s extremely stressful. You’re always feeling like your head is on the guillotine. So that’s another thing. As you grow into your career and into your life, you have to have the presence of mind to know what environment you’re in because you develop PTSD from doing this. And that’s for real. So, as burnt out as you might get, there’s also the concern you’ll never get hired again. Every time we’re done with a job, it’s like, “Will I ever get another gig?” We all have that fear to some degree. You get used to a certain velocity that you’re kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

So, it’s a matter of trying to find a middle ground. And I find that because I do keep myself very busy, I try to temper my emotional responses to what’s going on around me so that I can really just process what’s happening. It does help me preserve my energy and my soul a little bit.

I feel like I’m still learning how to do that. Every once in a while I catch myself reacting to something in a way that’s not helpful.

Oh, totally. We never master it, you know what I mean? It’s just having the presence of mind to know that. For instance, if you’re working with a very dysfunctional director or a director who’s really emotional or…I’ve worked with some abusive directors. I have to be very much aware that that’s their energy, that’s their issue.

There’s no reason to ever talk to somebody in a way that’s disrespectful, even if you are upset with them or you’re frustrated with them. I still work on this all the time, but it’s definitely a meditation that I have running through my mind. I already know when I’m in a situation that’s volatile, and it’s very exhausting. So I need to be very, very sure that I don’t react to it and do something that would be detrimental to the project and to myself.

We just have to really think about what we want, where do we want to be, what do we want the result of this action or this conversation or this day to be? Another thing for people at the beginning of their career is, when you get out of bed everyday, take just a second and consider the intent of your day. Instead of, “Oh my god, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that, I’ve got to do this.”

You just need to take a minute and think of the intent of your day. What are you setting out to accomplish? What are your priorities for the day? And this isn’t just about work because your work will go to shit if you don’t take care of your personal life, too. And if you’ve spoken to many film composers, you’ve spoken to many divorced film composers. Because managing your time and the stress is very, very difficult.

We just have to really be cognizant of this. And I’m still learning. When I was 30, I didn’t know shit, and I missed a lot of family outings because my time management or my efficiency wasn’t as good. I wasn’t working as intelligently.

How do you deal with writer’s block?

It’s lame to say, “Well, there’s this book,” but I would only mention this book—The War of Art by Steven Pressfield—because it is a super-easy, fast read. And it really is written for artists and entrepreneurs. One of the concepts that he lays out is, it’s a matter of us not brushing over the things that are important or giving ourselves excuses to not do the work that we don’t want to do.

So, say you have writer’s block. It’s not going to help you really to sit in front of the TV. It might help you to go for a run or something like that, so you can just loosen up your mind. But really, you need to sit down and write. You may create total horseshit for two or three hours, but at some point you’re going to have a breakthrough. You’re probably creatively productive for what—five, six hours a day? And then the rest of your time is really cultivating whatever that creative idea is.

So, if you are persistent enough to have a breakthrough, you can work with that. Even if it’s the end of the day and you’re like, “Okay, I’m physically and mentally at the point of diminishing returns. I’m going to leave this for tomorrow.” You now have that seed or that spark that can help take you to a fresh place. Also, if you play an instrument, learn a song that is of a style that you wouldn’t normally play. Listen to stuff that you haven’t heard before. And I’m talking about people who are creative, who are looking to open themselves up.

I think we just need to consider what our diet is. If you do this all the time, every day, you have the muscle as a creative person to create. You just have to be willing to challenge yourself and not write backwards. Like saying, “Well, this worked,” or, “They liked this.” You’re going to fail when you do that. You have to continue to invent.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by J. Bennett.

The post Progressive Democrats Welcome a Primary Challenge to Biden appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Marcy Winograd.

Dhaka wants good relations with both Beijing and Washington but striking a balance between the two superpowers is a challenge, Bangladesh’s foreign minister said Tuesday after meeting new Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. 

China’s top diplomat was making a stopover at Dhaka’s international airport as he headed to Africa for his first official trip in his new position. His brief visit took place amid tensions between Washington and Beijing – rival powers competing for influence in Asia.

When asked about Bangladesh foreign policy in such a situation, Foreign Minister A. K. Abdul Momen said the country’s position had not changed.

“They might have their own issues. That is their headache, not ours,” Momen said, referring to China and the United States. 

“Bangladesh wants to maintain good relations with both of them. That is a challenging thing,” Momen said.

Bilateral tensions have arisen lately between Washington and Dhaka after the U.S. sanctioned an elite Bangladeshi security unit over human rights concerns. Sino-Bangladeshi tensions have also surfaced.

“We believe in the one-China principle. We maintain a balanced foreign policy. This is our principle. We will extend our support [to China] from time to time.”

The Chinese minister did not talk to the media but the Chinese embassy in Dhaka posted a statement on its website.

“The two sides spoke highly of the friendship between China and Bangladesh, and agreed to strengthen exchanges in the new year and jointly work for new progress in bilateral relations,” the statement said.  

Qin, 56, who most recently served as Beijing’s ambassador to Washington, replaced Wang Yi, who had been China’s top diplomat for a decade.

Qin’s airport layover in Bangladesh came as the U.S. National Security Council’s Senior Director for South Asia, Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, visited the country. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu is also scheduled to visit Bangladesh on Jan. 14.

China and the U.S. are vying for influence in the small non-aligned South Asian nation, which is bordered by the Bay of Bengal to its south. 

Bangladesh is, in fact, caught in the middle of a geopolitical battle between the two superpowers for supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region, analysts say. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladesh was one of the targets of the superpowers’ vaccine diplomacy for this reason.

Being sought after, though, can be a “challenge,” as Momen put it, because Bangladesh needs both China and the U.S. for its economic development and has to balance its relationships with them. As it is, Dhaka walks a tightrope between New Delhi and Beijing, which are staunch foes.

The U.S. is a key recipient of Bangladesh’s exports, and the South Asian nation is looking to China to ramp up its infrastructure under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Since December 2021, Dhaka’s relationship with Washington has been fraught after the U.S. declared sanctions on Bangladesh’s elite security force, the Rapid Action Battalion, over alleged human rights violations such as enforced disappearances.

Tensions spilled over into 2022 and this year.

On Monday, Bangladesh’s Momen archly commented that his country did not need lessons on democracy from other nations, after the U.S. called on Dhaka to ensure that upcoming elections be free, fair and transparent.

“This country was born to establish democracy, human rights and justice. We fought for human rights. Every citizen has these ideals in their veins,” Momen said when asked about recent related comments from the U.S. State Department spokesman.

“We don’t need to be advised by others. Let them look in the mirror,” he added.

On Tuesday, Momen was asked if U.S. Rear Adm. Laubacher had discussed Bangladesh’s upcoming general election, but he didn’t give a direct answer. He merely said that the last national polls were free and fair.

“It will be unfortunate if any violence occurs during the elections and it cannot be stopped by outside suggestions. We have to do it,” he said.

Dhaka has seen tensions with Beijing as well.

In May 2021, China’s then-envoy to Bangladesh said that the relationship between the two countries could be “substantially damaged” if the South Asian country joined any initiative launched by the Washington-led Quad alliance.

The Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue on the Indo-Pacific region, comprises the United States, Japan, Australia and India.

Bangladesh hit back saying it was a sovereign state and would make its own decisions about the nation’s foreign policy. At the time, Momen called the Chinese envoy’s comments “aggressive.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Ahammad Foyez.

The post The Price of Betraying Palestine: Moroccans Challenge Normalization with Israel  appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

Years ago, a close Moroccan friend told me that the ‘first time’ he was arrested was during a solidarity protest for Palestine in Rabat which took place many years ago.

The reference to the ‘first time’ indicated that he was arrested again, though mostly for other political activities, suggesting that Palestine, in many ways, has become a local struggle for many Moroccans.

Whenever Moroccans protest for Palestine, they would do so in large numbers, sometimes in their millions. Such solidarity has historically served as the foundation of regional and global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Though ordinary Arabs have always considered Palestine a core struggle, the relationship between North Africans and Palestine is, in many ways, unique and rooted.

Despite a strong push for normalization between Arab countries and Israel, countries like Algeria and Tunisia made it clear that no diplomatic ties between their respective capitals and Israel would be declared anytime soon.

Credit for this goes mostly to the Algerian and Tunisian peoples who have made their rejection of Israeli racism, and support for Palestinian freedom akin to local or national struggles. Palestinian flags have always accompanied flags of these countries during any large gathering, be it a political protest or a sports event.

Morocco is no exception. Solidarity with Palestine in this country goes back generations, and hundreds of activists have paid a price for confronting their government on its failure to stand up to Israel or to challenge Washington for its support for Tel Aviv.

The normalization agreement between Rabat and Tel Aviv in 2020 was falsely assumed to be an end to popular solidarity with Palestine. In fact, such acts of normalization, rightly considered a betrayal by Palestinians, were also meant to be the final delinking of Palestine from its Arab and regional environs.

However, this was not the case. Normalization with Apartheid Israel is still strongly rejected by the vast majority of Arabs, as opinion polls indicate. Moreover, the pouring of love for Palestine during the Qatar World Cup demonstrated, beyond doubt, that Israel cannot possibly be accepted by Arabs while still an occupying power and a racist apartheid regime.

The little political gains achieved by the Moroccan government in exchange for sacrificing the rights of Palestinians shall prove irrelevant in coming years. In fact, signs of this are already on display.

The Moroccan government, led by the Development and Justice Party of Saadeddine Othmani, which had taken part in the normalization efforts, was rejected en masse in the September 2021 elections. Only nine months earlier, Othmani was signing the “Joint Declaration” with Israel’s National Security Advisor, Meir Ben-Shabbat.

The US recognition of Rabat’s claim over Western Sahara as the political barter between Rabat and Washington, which led to the normalization with Tel Aviv, shall eventually prove meaningless.

The US and Western superiority is increasingly being challenged throughout the African continent, especially in West and Central African regions. Powerful new players, like Russia and China, are gaining geopolitical ground, in some regions entirely replacing the West’s dominance. Thus, the US support for any country’s territorial ambitions is no longer a guarantor of political gains, especially as the African geopolitical spaces have become greatly contested.

When Morocco normalized with Israel, many Moroccans were taken by surprise. The assumption was that Morocco, like other Arab nations, was too consumed by their own problems to notice their government’s foreign policy shifts, whether regarding Palestine or anywhere else.

Whether that was the case or not, it matters little now. On the second anniversary of the “Joint Declaration” agreement, tens of thousands of Moroccans demonstrated against normalization in 30 different cities, including Rabat, Agadir, Tangier and Meknes. The protests were mobilized by the Moroccan Front for Supporting Palestine and Against Normalization.

The Front is reportedly a network that includes ‘over a dozen political and human rights organizations,’ the New Arabreported. Their chants included: “The people want to bring down normalization”, a slogan that is reminiscent of the pan-Arab popular slogan of a decade ago, ‘The people want to change the regime’. The latter resonated throughout many Arab capitals during the years of political upheaval in 2011 and upward.

This popular movement and its chants indicate that Palestine remains a local and national struggle in Morocco, as well as other Arab countries.

But why Morocco, and why now?

The popular association of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags throughout the World Cup had an invigorating effect on the collective psyche of Moroccans, who were empowered by their national team’s impressive showing against legendary teams such as Belgium, Spain and Portugal. It was a matter of time before this confidence translated to actual solidarity on the streets of Rabat and other major Moroccan cities.

The fact that Moroccans are mobilizing in large numbers against their country’s normalization with Israel only two years after the agreement is a sign of things to come.

2022 was a particularly bloody year in Palestine, according to UN Mideast Envoy, Tor Wennesland, who said that it was “on course to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since … 2005.”

Moroccans, like other Arab nations, are following the news with alarm, especially following the swearing-in of Israel’s new extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right fascist ilk — the likes of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.

These two individuals’ constant targeting of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in particular, has a great emotional impact on Moroccans, especially since Morocco serves as the Chair of the Al-Quds Committee of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which is tasked with the protection of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israel wants to normalize with the Arabs and tap into their massive markets and economic largesse without having, in return, to relinquish its military Occupation or grant Palestinians basic freedoms. Politically engaged Arab masses understand this well, and are growingly mobilizing against their governments’ betrayal of Palestine.

The self-serving and limited gains of normalization are likely to turn into a political liability in coming years. It is time for Morocco and others to reconsider their ties with Israel, as they risk political isolation and social instability, a far greater price to pay than the empty promises of Washington and Tel Aviv.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

Beijing has already given a pre-emptive response, with a foreign ministry spokesman accusing Tokyo of “ignoring facts” and “hyping up the China threat.” 

In the previous security strategy formulated in 2013, Japan described China’s "external stance and military activities" as an "issue of concern.” The change of language has been criticized in Chinese state media as “aggressive” and “provocative.”   

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner, Komeito, reached an agreement earlier this week on the draft revisions of three security documents – the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Force Preparedness Plan.

The changes also include details of Japan’s plan for a major upgrade of its defense capabilities in what many see as the country’s largest military buildup since World War II.

The new strategy speaks about existing geopolitical tensions and hotspots including the war in Ukraine, potential risks of conflict over Taiwan, the situation on the Korean Peninsula and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

It calls for boosting Japan’s “counter-strike capabilities,” a remarkable shift away from the pacifist doctrine that has been at the core of Japan’s international policies for 70 years.

What’s in the name?

The LDP, in its recommendations in April, called for a tougher approach to China’s increased assertiveness documented by frequent incursions into the waters near the Senkaku Islands, controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing, which calls them Diaoyu.

Japan is also supportive of the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific Strategy in which U.S. policy makers pointed out that China’s “coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific.”

The ruling coalition however stopped short of using the word “threat” when describing China in the National Security Strategy and instead designating it a “strategic challenge.”

“Japan has no choice but to live next to China,” said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Tokyo’s  International Christian University.

“As a consequence, it purposely never proactively uses language that can provoke China,” he said, adding that “this does not mean that Japan thinks China is not a big problem but there is no need to move away from ambiguity when the U.S. does it for them.”

Meanwhile, some other analysts see the move as a “very important development” in Japan’s dealing with China.

Rena Sasaki, an East Asian security analyst based in Washington D.C., told RFA that in her opinion, “describing China as a ‘strategic challenge’ in the new National Security Strategy is a break with the usual accommodating attitude toward China for economic gains.”

China is Japan’s largest trading partner, and the 2013 National Security Strategy, while expressing concerns about China's military activities, stated that China and Japan would "work to build and strengthen mutually reciprocal strategic relations and work to strengthen it" in all areas.

“This reflected the Abe administration's strategy toward China at the time, and was an expression of its policy of showing a certain degree of accommodation with China for its economic interests while building a gradual encirclement of China,” said Sasaki.

Military buildup

There have been efforts to smooth differences and prevent further deterioration of the bilateral relations which have been strained in recent years.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in three years on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bangkok in November.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi plans to travel to Beijing later this month to meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

The two countries also plan to start a defense hotline in the spring to minimize risks of incidents at sea and in the air.

Tokyo nevertheless is set to increase its military spending with a focus on countermeasures. Kishida has already announced plans to increase the defense budget by about 60% to ¥43 trillion (U.S.$315 billion) over the next five years.

China has increased its defense budget by 130% in the last decade and it is now five times larger than Japan’s, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). In 2021 alone, Beijing spent an estimated U.S.$293 billion on the People’s Liberation Army.

Japan's new defense strategy argues that relying on the current defense system is not enough and the country would need to acquire more “counter strike” capabilities, especially long-range land and sea-launched missiles.

Other areas of priority development are the coast guard and cybersecurity.

The Japanese government however states that the buildup is “exclusively defensive” and that the ban on nuclear arms remains firmly in place.

With the new strategy though, “Japan-China relations will continue to be awkward at best,” according to Tokyo-based Stephen Nagy.

“Tokyo will continue to build stability throughout the region to be resilient against Chinese assertive behavior,” the analyst said.

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

Beijing has already given a pre-emptive response, with a foreign ministry spokesman accusing Tokyo of “ignoring facts” and “hyping up the China threat.” 

In the previous security strategy formulated in 2013, Japan described China’s "external stance and military activities" as an "issue of concern.” The change of language has been criticized in Chinese state media as “aggressive” and “provocative.”   

Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner, Komeito, reached an agreement earlier this week on the draft revisions of three security documents – the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy and the Defense Force Preparedness Plan.

The changes also include details of Japan’s plan for a major upgrade of its defense capabilities in what many see as the country’s largest military buildup since World War II.

The new strategy speaks about existing geopolitical tensions and hotspots including the war in Ukraine, potential risks of conflict over Taiwan, the situation on the Korean Peninsula and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

It calls for boosting Japan’s “counter-strike capabilities,” a remarkable shift away from the pacifist doctrine that has been at the core of Japan’s international policies for 70 years.

What’s in the name?

The LDP, in its recommendations in April, called for a tougher approach to China’s increased assertiveness documented by frequent incursions into the waters near the Senkaku Islands, controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing, which calls them Diaoyu.

Japan is also supportive of the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific Strategy in which U.S. policy makers pointed out that China’s “coercion and aggression spans the globe, but it is most acute in the Indo-Pacific.”

The ruling coalition however stopped short of using the word “threat” when describing China in the National Security Strategy and instead designating it a “strategic challenge.”

“Japan has no choice but to live next to China,” said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor at the Department of Politics and International Studies at Tokyo’s  International Christian University.

“As a consequence, it purposely never proactively uses language that can provoke China,” he said, adding that “this does not mean that Japan thinks China is not a big problem but there is no need to move away from ambiguity when the U.S. does it for them.”

Meanwhile, some other analysts see the move as a “very important development” in Japan’s dealing with China.

Rena Sasaki, an East Asian security analyst based in Washington D.C., told RFA that in her opinion, “describing China as a ‘strategic challenge’ in the new National Security Strategy is a break with the usual accommodating attitude toward China for economic gains.”

China is Japan’s largest trading partner, and the 2013 National Security Strategy, while expressing concerns about China's military activities, stated that China and Japan would "work to build and strengthen mutually reciprocal strategic relations and work to strengthen it" in all areas.

“This reflected the Abe administration's strategy toward China at the time, and was an expression of its policy of showing a certain degree of accommodation with China for its economic interests while building a gradual encirclement of China,” said Sasaki.

Military buildup

There have been efforts to smooth differences and prevent further deterioration of the bilateral relations which have been strained in recent years.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for the first time in three years on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bangkok in November.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi plans to travel to Beijing later this month to meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

The two countries also plan to start a defense hotline in the spring to minimize risks of incidents at sea and in the air.

Tokyo nevertheless is set to increase its military spending with a focus on countermeasures. Kishida has already announced plans to increase the defense budget by about 60% to ¥43 trillion (U.S.$315 billion) over the next five years.

China has increased its defense budget by 130% in the last decade and it is now five times larger than Japan’s, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). In 2021 alone, Beijing spent an estimated U.S.$293 billion on the People’s Liberation Army.

Japan's new defense strategy argues that relying on the current defense system is not enough and the country would need to acquire more “counter strike” capabilities, especially long-range land and sea-launched missiles.

Other areas of priority development are the coast guard and cybersecurity.

The Japanese government however states that the buildup is “exclusively defensive” and that the ban on nuclear arms remains firmly in place.

With the new strategy though, “Japan-China relations will continue to be awkward at best,” according to Tokyo-based Stephen Nagy.

“Tokyo will continue to build stability throughout the region to be resilient against Chinese assertive behavior,” the analyst said.

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

The post Biden Wants to Prevent a Strong Primary Challenge. He Shouldn’t Get Away With It. appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

Of the traditional US holidays, Thanksgiving was by far my favorite. I can do without the excessive commercialization of Xmas with its cheesy music that broadcasts for weeks on end. Cancel the forced festiveness of New Years and the sloppy drunks it generates; ditto for the militarism of July 4^th.  So, what’s not good about coming together with friends and family and sharing a home cooked feast?

I don’t want to ruin the party, but before you carve up the turkey, read the opening essay in Glen Ford’s The Black Agenda. His critique of the holiday is that the mythology surrounding Thanksgiving serves as a justification for our nation’s founding genocide of its native peoples and a validation of white supremacy.

“The Thanksgiving story,” Ford explains, “is an absolution of the Pilgrims, whose brutal quest for absolute power in the New World is made to seem both religiously motivated and eminently human.” According to the mythos, the Pilgrims are depicted as victims of harsh weather and naïveté rather than the Christian fascists that they were.

Glen Ford and the making of a black-oriented journalism

The Black Agenda book was published posthumously after Ford died on July 28, 2021, at age 71. The New York Times described Ford as a “constant scourge of the liberal establishment.”

African American theologian Cornell West elaborated: “Glen Ford was the most brilliant, courageous, and consistent writer and journalist in the black radical and independent tradition of his generation.”

A “red diaper baby,” Ford’s career traced back to reading the news live on the radio at the age of eleven. His surname was shortened from Rutherford to Ford at the insistence of the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown when Ford took a job as a reporter at his radio station in 1970. Later, Ford created the Black World Report, a nationally syndicated weekly news magazine on radio.

Ford went on to television, print, and online media. He reported for the Communist Party USA’s national newspaper and collaborated with the Black Panther Party in Jersey City. In 1977, he launched, produced, and hosted the first nationally syndicated black news interview program on commercial television called America’s Black Forum.

After the Black Commentator, which he co-founded in 2002, Ford founded the website Black Agenda Report in 2006 with current editor Margaret Kimberly and the late Bruce Dixon. The book, The Black Agenda, is a collection of Ford’s essays, published by OR Books, which describes itself as “the go-to source for titles that challenge the status quo.”

In a talk at the People’s Forum in 2019, Ford explained the role of a left, black-oriented journalism and its relationship to the mass movement: “Although political journals can’t jump start political movements on their own, they can tie the residue of previous mass movements like our own of the ‘60s and ‘70s together with people who never experienced a mass movement.”

Engaged journalists like Ford, according to Margaret Kimberly in the forward to the book, “speak for the marginalized, who can’t speak for themselves, and they expose the privileged.”

Black misleadership class

Glen Ford was one of the foremost critics of “black faces in high places,” who sell out the interests of their constituents for petty fame and privileges. These are the folks who have “historically been far more ashamed over mass black incarceration than outraged.” A case in point is US Senator Corey Booker, whose career has been dogged by Ford from Booker’s first run for mayor of Newark, NJ. Ford called such individuals “the black misleadership class.”

Ford does not pull any punches in his criticism. He described the time of the Obama presidency as the “lonely days.” When much of liberal America were all gaga about a black man in a white house, Ford was a courageous voice asking us to look beyond skin color to politics. Given the current cheerlessness of the national mood after the Trump and now the Biden presidencies, it is hard to envision a period when excessive hope was a problem. Ford, however, was the anecdote to the hope-maniacs back in those heady days after Mr. Obama moved into the White House.

Essays in the book include “First black presidency has driven many African Americans insane” and “To hell with Obama and his Van Joneses.”  In “Why Barack Obama is the more effective evil,” Ford explains that Obama “has been more effective in evil-doing than Bush in terms of protecting the citadels of corporate power and advancing the imperial agenda. He has put both Wall Street and US imperial power on new and more aggressive tracks – just as he hired himself out to do.”

“The bulk of black voters,” Ford lamented, “have aligned themselves with the right wing of the Democratic Party,” which he accuses of being the “road to black ruin.” Moreover, “both major US parties are plagues on humanity.”

In a what would have been an apt description of the recent 2022 US midterm elections, Ford commented: “Election seasons are reality-creation festivals, during which the two corporate parties pretend to put forward different visions of the national and global destiny. When, in fact, they answer to the same master and must pursue the same general strategy.”

Ukraine War

Although it did not get into the book, Ford wrote a prescient article on Ukraine in 2014, after the US-engineered coup there. His perceptive essay on the geopolitics of the Ukraine War was titled “US prepares to gas Russia into submission.”

Ford exposed the core imperial issues animating the conflict: US energy interests and economic power. He wrote: “Washington’s strategy is to permanently ratchet up tensions to ‘new cold war’ levels to justify sanctions against Russian energy exports while exploiting America’s own natural gas ‘surplus’ as an enhanced weapon of global hegemony.”

Ford foresaw the imposition of a proxy war in Ukraine, designed to sever Europe from the Russian supply of cheap natural gas in favor of a more costly US product from across the Atlantic. But even Ford did not anticipate the ever more aggressive nature of US imperialism, which some analysts believe literally blew up the main gas lines from Russia to western Europe.

The US intent in provoking this “new cold war,” Ford explained, is “to crush, or at least seriously disrupt, Russia.” Over eight years later, US Secretary of “Defense” Lloyd Austin said “we want to see Russia weakened.”

Anticipating the movement for multilateralism and international independence from Washington, Ford described an emerging geopolitical dynamic with “an assertive Russia, increasingly coordinated with China.”

The current US-dominated world order is predicated on military super spending and economic and financial control. In the same article, Ford predicted that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) bloc “is the most likely venue for hatching alternatives to dollar hegemony.” Fast forward to 2022 and Lula da Silva is on the campaign trail in his ultimately successful bid to become the next president of Brazil and proposes the SUR, a new Latin American currency to end US dollar dependency.

May Glen Ford rest in power

“Glen Ford is irreplaceable,” his fellow journalist and comrade Margaret Kimberly eulogized in the book’s forward, “not just because his writing was so sharp and so clear, but also because his politics were so clearly of the left…He was a Marxist, and he brought that ideology to all that he did.”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Harris.

The post Our Challenge is the Future, Not the Past appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by George Ochenski.

In the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional right to abortion and made abortion rights the purview of state government, 13 states have banned the procedure altogether, most with very limited exceptions. In Pennsylvania, the Republican-controlled legislature has been preparing to enact an abortion ban for years. Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has promised to veto such a ban as long as he remains in office. 

But Wolf’s second term is drawing to a close, and the availability of safe, legal abortion in Pennsylvania is essentially dependent on which candidate succeeds him: sitting state Attorney General Josh Shapiro or ultra-conservative Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano. Shapiro has promised to protect access to abortion, whereas Mastriano intends to severely restrict it. If Mastriano prevails and Republicans retain their majorities in the state House and Senate, Pennsylvanians’ right to terminate pregnancies would likely come to an end. 

In southwestern Pennsylvania, this battle for reproductive rights takes place against a disturbing backdrop. Over the past 15 years, shale gas development has proliferated across the region, with thousands of unconventional wells — also known as fracked wells — drilled since 2007. And due to widespread fracking being a relatively new practice and the oil and gas industry’s efforts to conceal and downplay the toxicity of chemicals used in it, Pennsylvanians are just beginning to understand the potential health impacts of living, becoming pregnant, and raising a family in the second-highest natural gas-producing state in the nation. For these Pennsylvanians, a ban on abortion would just be one more way in which their health has been wrested out of their control.

“I feel like if you’re going to say, ‘life is so precious,’ and then take away the rights of women, I think you should think about what’s happening around the people that are trying to have children,” says Gillian Graber, a mother in Westmoreland County and executive director of the fracking awareness organization Protect Penn-Trafford.

Graber and her family participated in a landmark investigation conducted by Environmental Health News in 2019 that found high levels of chemicals used in the fracking process in the bodies of people living near well pads. “We’re going to have several generations of people that may see really dramatic consequences to something that they had no part in planning, no part in allowing, no say in whether it happened in their community.”