[A] lot of people across the global majority are asking the extremely serious question: why the BRICS, and especially why Russia and China, are not doing more than what they’re doing on behalf of Palestine and to defend Palestine. This is an extremely serious question and it’s not being addressed by Russia and China. We have to be straightforward about that, right? The only ones who are actually doing something, once again, are the Houthis in Yemen. Heroes of the whole planet.

— Journalist and geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar in a Youtube interview with Danny Haiphong, streamed live on 17 July 2024 (approximately 18:16 to 18:54)

The sentiments expressed by Escobar were expressed to me at an earlier date by author Randy Shields:

… if all Russia and China are going to do is talk they could start talking about a one state solution. They could put some urgency into the situation. They could let Abbas and the Gulf family dictatorships know that the status quo is unacceptable. They could start telling the truth to the world that the “two state solution” is impossible and was only ever a delaying tactic by Israel. They could even announce that Palestine is under consideration for BRICS membership…. They could cut off whatever trade they have and cut off diplomatic relations with Israel, recall ambassadors, etc…

Godfree Roberts, author of Why China Leads the World gave his take on China and Palestine in his 1 May 2025, “Xi the Merciful?: The fate of China’s worst enemy lies in Xi Jinping’s hands”:

Beijing is hunting much bigger game than tariffs: the liberation of Palestine. China, Palestine’s oldest and most loyal friend, has endured America’s genocidal mania for generations and now has the tools to end their shared misery….

This year, we will witness the most momentous events since WWII. Global leadership will return to Asia, America will enters [sic] its post-imperial twilight, and Palestine will become free and independent, and the Zionists return to Ukraine whence they came.

Shields is skeptical:

There’s no evidence to back up what [Roberts] says. Russia and China continue to maintain trade and diplomatic ties with a genocidal apartheid state committing 24/7 live-streamed genocide.

China plays a long game. There is plenty of evidence of Chinese advancements in science, technology, supply chains, manufacturing, arts, etc. The question is whether China (and Russia) will come through with morally based support befitting a leading world economy?

The Communist Party of China (CPC) has made great strides for its people, having achieved a xiaokang (moderately prosperous) society in 2021. Moving forward, China aims for gongtong fuyu (common prosperity) — a society based on social equality and economic equity.

On the road to gongtong fuyu, the CPC’s next five-year plan targets “the goal of basically realizing socialist modernization, with a view to building a great country and advancing national rejuvenation” in the period 2026 to 2030. China’s rise is also meant to benefit the world as it seeks peaceful win-win relationships. Chairman Xi Jinping said, “Long ago China made a solemn declaration to the world that it is committed to pursuing peaceful development.”¹

This commitment to pursuing peaceful development has recently been thrown into question by China’s business arrangements connected to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which can hardly be construed as peaceful development from the Palestinian side (or any morally based side).

China’s Support for Palestine

China’s support for the human and territorial rights of Palestinians dates back to the time of chairman Mao Zedong. Mao’s China supported anti-imperialist and national liberation movements worldwide; this included support for the Palestinian cause. In May 1965, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was ensconced in a Beijing office and accorded diplomatic privileges and immunity. During a meeting with a visiting PLO delegation in 1965, Mao said: “Imperialism is afraid of China and of the Arabs. Israel and Formosa are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the front gate of the great continent, and we are the rear.”²

Post-Mao, on 20 November 1988, China officially recognized the State of Palestine and established official diplomatic relations between the two countries. On 31 December of the same year, the PLO’s office in Beijing was upgraded to the Embassy of the State of Palestine in China, and its head was appointed as the ambassador of the State of Palestine to China.

However, China has a uneven history of supporting the Palestinian cause and opposing Zionism.³

More recently, at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 22 February 2024, Ma Xinmin, director-general of the Department of Treaty and Law of the Chinese Foreign Ministry “unequivocally stated”:

“The Palestinian-Israeli conflict stems from Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory and Israel’s longstanding oppression of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people fight against Israeli oppression and their struggle for completing the establishment of an independent state on the occupied territory are essentially just actions for restoring their legitimate rights.”⁴

Moreover,

Citing numerous articles of international laws, Ma claims that “the struggle waged by peoples for their liberation, right to self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression, domination against foreign forces should not be considered terror acts” and that “armed struggle in this context is distinguished from acts of terrorism. It is grounded in international law. This distinction is acknowledged by several international conventions.” He further declares, “in pursuit of the right to self-determination, Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right, well-founded in international law.”⁵

Regarding the deliberations by the ICJ on the charge of genocide being carried out by the state of Israel, China supports the ICJ’s role in upholding justice and international law, and calls for an immediate ceasefire in Palestine, humanitarian assistance, and a two-state solution to achieve lasting peace in the region.

On 14 April 2025, Times of India reported that Russia and China criticized Israel for turning humanitarian assistance to Gaza into “a tool of war.” Russia’s UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya alleged that Israel was attempting to make the UN an accomplice to its warring in Gaza. This sentiment was echoed by China’s envoy Fu Cong.

As Shields, and many others, would point out this is just more words.

What is China doing in Israeli Occupied Palestine?

But the situation vis-à-vis Palestine appears decidedly more sinister.

Razan Shawamreh is a Palestinian researcher interested in Chinese foreign policy in the Middle East. She has thrown a wrench into Chinese good intentions supporting Palestinian resistance and self-determination in its territories. Shawamreh wrote an article, “How China is quietly aiding Israel’s settlement enterprise,” for the Middle East Eye in which she charges, “Away from Beijing’s lofty rhetoric about defending Palestinians, Chinese firms are helping to sustain illegal settlements.” Despite China having supported the UN General Assembly resolution 3379 that defined Zionism as a “form of racism and racial discrimination” in 1975, Shawamreh provides numerous examples of Chinese support for Zionism.

• Adama Agricultural Solutions, a former Israeli company now fully owned by the Chinese state-run firm China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) is directly “linked to the militarised destruction of Palestinian livelihoods.”
• This is not an exception. Shawamreh writes, “In recent years, several state-owned Chinese companies, along with other private Chinese firms, have invested directly or indirectly in Israeli settlements or companies operating within them. Take the case of Tnuva, a major Israeli food producer that operates in illegal settlements. Despite international calls to boycott the company, China’s state-owned conglomerate Bright Food acquired a 56 percent stake in Tnuva in 2014. In 2021, Tnuva won a tender to operate 22 public transportation lines that serve 16 settlements in Mateh Yehuda – all built on occupied land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. These aren’t just buses; they’re infrastructure supporting colonial entrenchment, making settler life easier and more permanent.”

An earlier article by Shawamreh concluded, “China’s alleged impartiality serves to undermine Palestinian rights.”⁶

I have seen no official Chinese response to the reports of abetting the Israeli Jews’ dispossession of Palestinians. What did appear on 17 May 2025 was a Youtube video by global impulse, titled “The SHOCKING Truth Behind China’s Gaza Aid | 60,000 Families Saved,” which claimed, “But one thing is clear, China is no longer content to be a passive observer in Middle Eastern Affairs.” Two months earlier, The Indian Express showed a video that China had sent its first batch of 60,000 packages of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza via Jordan.

Can the guilt of colluding in the genocide and dispossession of indigenous Palestinians bring comfort to the Chinese soul through providing aid parcels?

Xi Jinping on Israel and Palestine

In a speech on 5 June 2014 chairman Xi Jinping spoke of “hundreds of years [of] peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning, and mutual benefit” between the Chinese and Arab peoples. “We will not forget the promise to support the cause of the Palestinian people that China made to the Arab states … at the Bandung Conference 60 years ago.”⁷ [Emphasis added]

Mao laid the foundation for the PRC in dealing with Palestinians. As part of a symposium to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Mao’s birth, Xi channelled Mao in a speech titled “Carry on the Enduring Spirit of Mao Zedong Thought”:

We stand for peaceful resolutions to international disputes, oppose all forms of hegemony and power politics, and never seek hegemonism nor engage in expansion.⁸

The Conscience of China

China is important. Its dedication to peaceful development and diplomacy is laudatory and in stark contrast to the bombastic hectoring and warring of the US-NATO block. China cares for the well-being of all its citizens; it seeks win-win relationships with other countries — not the win-lose entanglements of the capitalist West. As such China gives substance and believability to reifying that elusive, illusory, transient, teasing, wishful abstraction called hope — hope that all too often leads to bitter disappointment.

I have been disappointed before upon hearing of Chinese involvement in an unsavoury circumstance. A few years back, I came across an article that was scathing of a big Chinese tuna-fishing company, Dalian Ocean Fishing, for alleged maltreatment of foreign workers, workers who fell sick, died, suffered abuses, substandard food, excessive working hours, and withholding of pay.

I inquired about the situation and discovered it was a rogue private company that was selling its catch to a Japanese company, Mitsubishi. Nonetheless, that does not let China off the hook. Perfection is not expected, but how Chinese-licensed private companies do business at home and abroad does reflect back on the home country.

While beyond the scope of the present article, deeper consideration of the role of the Chinese State vs. Private Capital in China’s external relationships demands elucidation. What exactly does win-win mean?
While state-owned firms are clearly extensions of Chinese policy, how China manages — or fails to manage — the conduct of private or semi-state firms abroad, especially in contested or ethically sensitive zones speaks to the conscience of a nation.

Especially concerning, is the case of Chinese state-owned companies doing business for an occupier in occupied territory. This is morally magnified when the occupier, Israel, is under scrutiny by the World Court for committing genocide. Genocide is an act that morally upstanding countries will emphatically denounce as reprehensible; in addition, morally upstanding countries will take measures to publicly distance their state from such an evil-doer until such time as it sincerely atones for its crime against humanity. Highly moral countries — for example, Yemen — will make sacrifices to bring an end to such horrific crimes.

Professor and author T.P. Wilkinson, a keen China observer, remarked, “Non-interference is China’s top principle — business comes first. If there is any morality it only applies in China.”

China does not interfere in the culture and politics of other nations. That is understood. Nonetheless, morally centered people do not wish to see their country or any other country engage in violence against other nations in the world. And morally centered people do not wish to see their country abetting violence, not borne of self-defense, by another country. For allying with unrepentant rogue actors such as the United States and Israel, vassal states in Canada, Oceania, and Europe deserve to be regarded scornfully.

As an emerging superpower, China has increasingly garnered respect for pledging and delivering peaceful, win-win relations with other countries. That needs to be across the board. China is now faced with serious allegations, and it needs to come clean on what its companies are doing in occupied Palestine. One cannot expect that a country’s political leader is up-to-date and aware of all the ongoing functions of a country, domestically and externally, especially in a rapidly rising colossus of 1.4 billion people. However, when sordid facts come to the fore, a leader must lead. It is morally incumbent that chairman Xi deal forthrightly and promptly with any Chinese involvement in ignoble business affairs or crimes against humanity.

What Would Meaningful Action Look Like?

If Chinese firms are confirmed to be operating illegally in the occupied territories of Palestine, then I submit that an official Chinese public apology is demanded, also an immediate cessation of Chinese operations in what was once known as Mandate Palestine, and a turning over of Chinese assets in Mandate Palestine to Palestinian authorities. But it is for the Palestinians to determine what would be the proper rectification by China.

Why, one may ask, is such atonement not demanded of Canadians, American, and European interests in Mandate Palestine? It is and should be, but western governments have been unabashed in supporting colonialism, imperialism, and racism abroad. This speaks to the nature and conscience of Western governments that were so quick to fallaciously accuse China of genocide in Xinjiang, and yet they are loathe to acknowledge the factually undeniable genocide in Palestine. China, on the other hand, is viewed by much of the world’s people as a cut above the western governments.

Geopolitical Realism vs. Moral Idealism

While the present article acknowledges the current realpolitik constraints that China faces in balancing ties with Israel, the US, Arab countries, and the rest of the world, it posits the primacy of moral responsibility. Morality is what separates capitalism’s dog-eat-dog law-of-the-jungle from socialism, and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is what is practiced by China.

As such an unflinching moral audit of China’s actions in occupied Palestine is called for. Therefore, to maintain its high regard, China must earn and hold onto the people’s trust through morally centered economic activities at home and abroad, as is implied by win-win relationships. In a truly multipolar world not only must power be redistributed more equitably but shared moral standards must also be elevated.

It is decidedly not a win-win relationship when Palestinians are subjected to starvation, humiliation, murder, bombardment, theft of territory, and the indignity of the World Court taking what must seem like an eternity to put a halt to a crime that demands immediate action: genocide. That China companies would profit from a genocide would cast a pall over China that would be hard to shake.

If China aspires to genuine global leadership, then it must lead not just in development and diplomacy — but in conscience.

ENDNOTES:

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

The vessel was flying the flag of the Pacific Island of Palau; however, prior to the drone hit, Palau withdrew the registration, leaving the crew vulnerable to accusations of being without official papers. Israel had also made accusations of terrorism, claiming that the crew of activists were Hamas militants. There is no basis to the claim that the peaceful activists have any military connections or intentions. The crew are internationals of conscience, who had gathered together from various countries in an attempt to break the blockade of Gaza, carry essential supplies, and draw attention to the desperate plight of people in Gaza.

A nearby Maltese tug boat was the first to arrive at the boat’s aid, having been alerted by the authorities to the SOS distress call. The tug boat was equipped with a fire hose and managed to extinguish the fire totally. However, with holes in the boat from the drone attack and extensive damage to the generator, the boat has been slowly taking on water. When the authorities arrived shortly after, the captain of the ‘Conscience’ informed them that the crew would not abandon their vessel or let any of the authorities board it.

The fears of the crew of sabotage from an unknown person or persons boarding their boat are not unrealistic. Besides incidents of sabotage, activists from the earlier Freedom Flotilla Coalitions, in attempting to break the siege of Gaza, have experienced deaths, arrests, theft, and the destruction of vessels. In 2008 the ‘Dignity’, was rammed – with clear lethal intent by the Israeli military. The damage was so extensive that the boat took on water, leaving it unseaworthy. Although the authorities in Israel and Egypt ignored the call for help, the Lebanese responded and rescued the sixteen international activists on board. In 2010, ten activists were murdered by the Israeli military. In 2018, Dr. Swee Ang, a passenger on the ‘Al Awda’ freedom boat, describes how prior to reaching the Gaza coastline, they were boarded by the Israeli military, arrested, humiliated, and stripped naked. Their boat was confiscated.

The young, well-known environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, is already in Malta and, along with other internationals, hopes to join the ‘Conscience’ as early as possible. However, being well-known is no guarantee of survival or success, as orthopaedic surgeon David Halpin can testify from his experience on the ‘Dignity’. The Israelis have a documented history of committing crimes against anyone – Palestinian or international, if they are perceived to challenge their Zionist aspirations to turn all of Palestine and beyond, into a Jewish State.

The Maltese authorities agreed to allow the boat to come into Malta and to assist with repairs. However, they insisted that the boat go through the normal customs procedures of inspection. With concerns for Malta’s security and a responsibility for the security of those on the boat from further attack, the Maltese Navy blocked all vessels from approaching the ‘Conscience’. Included in those blocked, from the area around the boat, were activists connected with the freedom flotilla. This led to a standoff between the two groups as each tried to express their security concerns while also addressing the vessel’s evident need for assistance.

All eyes turned away from Israel’s war crime and toward Malta. Sandwiched between Zionist political pressure from Israel on one side and pressure from international humanitarian groups on the other side, the Maltese authorities were thrown into the spotlight as the potential villains. The Maltese people and the internationals were ready to protest in the capital city of Valletta in support of the humanitarian venture. However, the protest was called off after it appeared that the crew and supporters of the ‘Conscience’ were in genuine negotiations with the Maltese Government.

This is a narrative that is still unfolding. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations between the activists and the Maltese Government, we must remind ourselves that the real villain here is not Malta, but Israel. If justice is ever to be achieved, the Israeli Government must be held accountable for its ongoing theft and coveting of Palestinian land. Only then will Palestinians be free of this hundred-year-plus catastrophe that has led to displacement, occupation, and genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Heather Stroud.

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

In the early hours of May 2, the quiet of night was shattered aboard the Conscience, a civilian vessel anchored in international waters, 17 kilometers off the coast of Malta. Aboard were 18 crew members and passengers, jolted from sleep by the sound of two explosions. Flames and smoke filled the air. The ship had just been struck—by what the crew members say were drone attacks.

The very day of the attack, more passengers from 21 countries were waiting in Malta to be ferried out to join the Conscience. Among those slated to join the ship were world-renowned environmentalist Greta Thunberg, retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, and longtime CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry.

The Conscience is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, a network of international activists that has been challenging Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza since 2008.

The group alleges that the attack came from Israel—an allegation bolstered by a CNN investigation. According to CNN, flight-tracking data from ADS-B Exchange showed that an Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft departed from Israel early Thursday afternoon and flew at low altitude over eastern Malta for an extended period. While the Hercules did not land, its path brought it in proximity to the area where the Conscience was later attacked. The plane returned to Israel approximately seven hours later. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the flight data.

The ship suffered significant damage, but fortunately, no one was hurt. That was not the case when the Freedom Flotilla was attacked in 2010. This May 2 attack comes just weeks before the 15th anniversary of the infamous raid on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship that led a previous flotilla to Gaza in 2010. On May 31 of that year, Israeli naval commandos stormed the ship in international waters, killing ten people and injuring dozens. The Mavi Marmara had been carrying over 500 activists and humanitarian supplies. That attack drew condemnation from around the world and calls for an international investigation—calls that Israel dismissed.

One of this year’s flotilla organizers, Ismail Behesti, is the son of a man killed in the 2010 raid. In videos circulating after the recent strike, Behesti is seen walking through the damaged interior of the Conscience, his voice resolute as he condemns what he believes was another Israeli act of aggression against civilians on a humanitarian mission.

“People are asking how Israel can get away with attacking a civilian ship in international waters,” said Tighe Barry, speaking from the port in Malta. “But since October 8, 2024, Israel has shown complete disregard for international law—from bombing civilian neighborhoods to using starvation as a weapon by blocking food from entering Gaza. This is just one more example of its impunity.”

“Where is the outrage?” Barry continued. “The U.S. condemns the Houthis for stopping ships carrying weapons to Israel—and bombs Yemen mercilessly for it. But will they condemn Israel for attacking a peaceful ship on a humanitarian mission to Gaza?”

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition and activist groups such as CODEPINK are calling on governments and international bodies to speak out and take action.

The Conscience was carrying no weapons. It posed no threat. Its only crime was daring to challenge a brutal siege and slaughter that the UN itself has condemned as illegal and inhumane. That’s the real threat Israel fears—not the ship itself, but the global solidarity it represents.

So, will the world speak up about Israel’s latest outrage? Or will this, too, be quietly buried beneath the waves?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin.

A human rights agency has called for an investigation into the drone attacks on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla aid ship Conscience with Israel suspected of being responsible.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in a statement that the deliberate targeting of a civilian aid ship in international waters was a “flagrant violation” of the United Nations Charter, the Law of the Sea, and the Rome Statute, which prohibits the targeting of humanitarian objects.

It added: “This attack falls within a recurring and documented pattern of force being used to prevent ships from reaching the Gaza Strip, even before they approach its shores.”

• READ MORE: Freedom Flotilla attacked in an apparent Israeli drone attack in international waters
• Kia Ora Gaza page on the Freedom Flotilla

The monitor is calling for an “independent and transparent investigation under Maltese jurisdiction, with the participation of the United Nations”.

It is also demanding “guarantees for safe sea passage for humanitarian aid bound for Gaza”.

“Any failure to act today will only encourage further attacks on humanitarian missions and deepen the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza,” said the monitor.

A spokesperson for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla said the group blamed Israel or one of its allies for the attack, adding it currently did not have proof of this claim.

Israeli TV confirms attack
However, Israel’s channel 12 television reported that Israeli forces were responsible for the attack.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) is a grassroots people-to-people solidarity movement composed of campaigns and initiatives from different parts of the world, working together to end the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza.

The organisation said its goals included:

• breaking Israel’s more than 17-year illegal and inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip;
• educating people around the world about the blockade of Gaza;
• condemning and publicising the complicity of other governments and global actors in enabling the blockade; and
• responding to the cry from Palestinians and Palestinian organisations in Gaza for solidarity to break the blockade.

The MV Conscience — with about 30 human rights and aid activists on board — came under direct attack in international waters off the coast of Malta at 00:23 local time.

The Maltese government said everyone on the ship was safe following the attack. Although several New Zealanders have been on board past flotilla ships, none were on board this time.

In May 2010, Israeli security forces attacked six vessels in a Freedom Flotilla mission carrying aid aid bound for Gaza.

Nine of the flotilla passengers were killed during the raid, with 30 wounded — one of whom later died of his wounds.

• More information about the Freedom Flotilla at Kia Ora Gaza.

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

President Biden has spared the lives of 37 of 40 federal death row prisoners by commuting their sentences to life in prison. This comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House with a promise to restart and expand federal executions. “Death is in no way decreasing violence or is in no way giving anybody closure,” says Herman Lindsey, who spent three years on death row before being exonerated in 2009 and condemns politicians like Trump who use executions as a “political tool.” “Most politicians use that to put the fear into people and use it as a voting tool.” President Biden’s action comes after years of advocacy by civil rights and Catholic groups. Last week, he had a phone call with Pope Francis, who reportedly called for the sentences of death row prisoners to be commuted. “He shares that faith and put it into action in a pretty courageous way, to speak out about the needs of healing the criminal justice system, that too often is wrong,” says Sister Simone Campbell, the former executive director of the Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.

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

In 2021, Chief Dsta’hyl, a Wet’suwet’en hereditary chief, and a group of land and water protectors commandeered a battery from a excavator owned by a Coastal Gaslink contractor, then a week later blocked two roadways used by construction crews. In the aftermath, he was arrested for breaking a court order, known as an injunction, that barred the group from disrupting the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline. In early July of 2024, he was sentenced to 60 days of house arrest.

Hereditary chiefs, like Dsta’hyl, are tasked with preserving their tribe’s culture, land, and people, and represent a different, older legal order than the band council system — elected officials of the tribe’s six bands recognized by the Canadian government. While Coastal Gaslink consulted and received approval from the Wet’suwet’en band councils, the company did not get permission from the hereditary chiefs. 

Chief Dsta’hyl’s nonviolent approach to resisting the pipeline caught the attention of Amnesty International, who named him Canada’s first prisoner of conscience, a distinction given to people who are incarcerated for their politics, religion, or ethnicity, as well as other personal and protected statuses. Amnesty International said that there are potentially thousands of prisoners of conscience across the world, and called for Chief Dsta’hyl’s immediate release. 

Grist spoke with Chief Dsta’hyl at his home in Wet’suwet’en territory about his resistance to the Coastal GasLink pipeline, and his recognition as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

My English name is Adam Ganon, but my respected chief name is Dsta’hyl, which in our language means, “in the wake of a whale.” I’ve been one of the hereditary chiefs in the Sun House for well over 40 years now. I was in my mid 20s when I got the name. I have a lot of responsibility to the Sun House and our clan. Once you start doing work for your nation, you keep doing it, right from the time you take the name till you translate out of this world. 

Q. You were arrested three years ago outside of your camp on Wet’suwet’en territory. Can you tell me how that went and where it happened? 

A. It was cold and wet when they arrested me. I was not near the camp we had. I was just going for a drive and I was just doing a reconnaissance drive to check out what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were doing. Two Coastal GasLink trucks were following me, which I didn’t mind. But I guess they were on the same channel as the RCMP. So, once they knew that I was leaving the camp, they radioed ahead and when I got onto a bridge, the RCMP lights came on and they blocked me. That’s where they did the arrest.

Q. From what I understand, Coastal GasLink didn’t consult with the hereditary chiefs, they went to the band councils, which only have jurisdiction on reserve. But hereditary chiefs were found to have authority over traditional lands in 1997 by the Canadian supreme court. Can you tell me more about that?

A. In no way shape or form did Coastal GasLink ever communicate with their hereditary chiefs to get permission. What the provincial government did was encourage them to deal with the band councils and not to deal with the land owners, the actual hereditary chiefs, because band councils are just puppet governments for the federal government, and they only have jurisdiction on reserve and that’s only 2 square miles. 

What we decided to do is move under Wet’suwet’en law, because the government wasn’t looking after us. The courts weren’t looking after us. Nobody was looking after our land. So, the hereditary chiefs decided that we were going to use our old trespass laws, that have been around for thousands of years, to basically deal with the trespassers on our territory. 

Q. Can you explain what a hereditary chief is?

A. Hereditary chiefs come from different groups. In the Wet’suwet’en, we have 13 house groups. And in those 13 house groups, we have five clans. We have the Gilseyhu, which is the Big Frog clan. The Laksilyu is the Small Frog. Then we have the Gitdumden, which is the bear and wolf clan. Then we have the Tsayu, the Beaver clan, and the Laksamshu, which is the fireweed clan, which is us. 

So, the hereditary chiefs, they get their name bestowed upon them. They go through the feasts there before they’re fully recognized by the rest of the hereditary chiefs. 

When I got my name, one of the things I was groomed to know was the moment you accept that name you are no longer your own person. From that moment on you will only act in the best interest of your people. I have full responsibility, right to the day I die, to protect what we have.

One of the things that the matriarchs always said, back in the ’70s, I used to hear them say, “You know that you can sell your land and the money will be spent in a few years, and then you will have nothing?” So, what they said is, “We don’t sell our land because the land is just who we are.” If you don’t have your land, what are your children going to have, and what are their children going to have? It goes on generationally. 

Q. The Canadian government recognizes the authority of the hereditary chiefs, so if they claim to recognize your authority, how can this pipeline have been built?

A. It’s a smoke screen. They’re trying to appease the nation and appease the other First Nations by making these claims. But the willingness to follow through is not entirely there. What they are doing is using it as a means to try and negotiate and chisel us out of more and more land. One of the the things that they are trying to do is deal only with the band councils for all the different land claims, which undermines all of the chiefs. 

Q. I saw a video of you helping serve an eviction notice to the construction crew. I’d be scared. What were you feeling when you were doing that?

A. When you’re doing right, you’re not scared. When you’re doing something here that is real, there is no fear involved. Nothing brings fear to me, I’ve been like that my whole life. When I see injustice I have to work towards that, mitigating problems that we are facing. Come up with a solution. As a chief, our job is to mitigate all the situations, not to dwell on them and complain about them, but meet them head-on and meet them honestly. 

Q. In 2020, a year after the pipeline’s construction, the Wet’suwet’en sued the Canadian government for its lack of movement on climate change. Can you talk about how climate change affects your work, and the land you’re on?

A. One of the things we are faced with is we have over 80 percent of our territories logged, which means it’s now just a moonscape. When spring comes, there’s no canopy to allow for the snow to melt slowly. We end up with drought because in the past, snow would be there for half the summer, so you wouldn’t get the really fast runoff that we have today.

My dad was in the logging industry his whole life and when I was young, one of the things that I observed is that they used fairly responsible forestry, because everything was selectively logged. And then all of a sudden in the late ’60s, the industry started pushing for clear-cut logging with these big multinational companies. They try to destroy what little we have. 

It disrupts the wildlife, all of the larger mammals that we live on. All the moose, elk, and deer are being displaced. We’ve been displaced. Bears have been displaced. Everything has been displaced.

The province wanted to cull moose, and we already have a shortage of moose in our territories, and they just wanted to cull more to starve us out. It’s like the same thing with bison on the prairies, they killed all the buffalo to try and starve all the First Nations People out. Just dastardly tactics there to try and eliminate First Nations people. 

Climate change is very serious here. Because you look at what oil and gas has done. They call it natural gas, too, and it’s pretty much all hydraulically fracked gas, which disrupts all of the water tables and aquifers. It destroys water. 

Q. While being trained as a hereditary chief, did your dad talk about being a part of the logging industry, and how the industry was turning more extractive?

A. My dad never ever talked about anything like that. My mom was more concerned. She was the one that started to groom me as a hereditary chief at 13. She made me think about it and told me, “The moment you take that name, you will no longer be your own person. From this day on you are going to belong to your people, and you will act in the best interest for your people from that day onward.” It’s a big responsibility that was bestowed upon not just myself, but upon any chief. 

Q. In your spirit, how are you feeling about this fight right now as you are under house arrest?

A. It’s bringing me strength to what I’m going through right now. It just makes me stronger. Wet’suwet’en laws have to be recognized across the country, and I’ll keep up the fight.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Canada’s first ‘prisoner of conscience’ is an Indigenous land defender on Aug 16, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Taylar Dawn Stagner.

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

From his locked room, Chester Burnett could hear the trains rattling up the tracks, one every half hour. They reminded him of home, back on Dockery Plantation, when he played on the porches of old shacks with Charley Patton, blowing his harmonica to the rhythm of those big wheels rolling along the rails. Those northbound trains were the sound of freedom then.

Now he was in the madhouse, where grown men, their minds broken by the carnage of war, wailed and screamed all night long. Most of them were white. Some were strapped to their beds. Others ambled with vacant eyes, lost in the big room. Chester just stood in the corner and watched. He didn’t say much. He didn’t know what to say. Sometimes he looked out the barred window across the misty fields toward the river and the big mountains far beyond, white pyramids rising above the green forests.

The doctors came every day, men in white jackets with clipboards. They showed him drawings. They asked about his family and his dreams. They asked if he’d ever killed anyone—he had but he didn’t want to talk about that. They asked him to read a big block of words to them. But Chester couldn’t read. He’d never been allowed to go to school.

The doctors asked all the white men the same questions. Poked and prodded them the same way. Let them sleep and eat together. Left them to comfort each other in the long nights in the Oregon fog.

Chester would play checkers with the orderlies and sing blues songs, keeping the beat by slapping his huge feet on the cold and gleaming white floor. Men would gather around him, even the boys who seemed really far gone would calm down for a few minutes, listening to the Wolf growl out “How Long, How Long Blues” or “High Water Everywhere.” It was odd, but here in the madhouse Chester felt like an equal for the first time.

The mental hospital at Camp Adair was located just off of the Pacific Highway on a small rise above the Willamette River in western Oregon, only a few miles south of the infamous Oregon State Hospital, whose brutal methods of mental therapy were exposed by Ken Kesey in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Camp Adair had been built in 1942 as a training ground for the US Infantry and as a base for the 9th Signal Corps. The big hospital was built in 1943. Its rooms were soon overflowing with wounded soldiers from the Pacific theater.

Chester Burnett, by then known throughout the Mississippi Delta as Howlin’ Wolf, had been inducted into the Army in April 1941. Wolf didn’t go willingly. He was tracked down by the agents of the Army and forced into service. Years later, Wolf said that the plantation owners in the Delta had turned him in to the military authorities because he refused to work in the fields. Wolf was sent to Pine Bluff, Arkansas for training. He was thirty years old and the transition to the intensely regulated life of the army was jarring.

Soon Wolf was transferred to Camp Blanding in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was assigned to the kitchen patrol. He spent the day peeling potatoes, and slopping food onto plates as the enlisted men walked down the lunch line. At night, Wolf would play the blues in the assembly room as the men waited for mail call. Later Wolf was sent to Fort Gordon, a sprawling military base in Georgia named after a Confederate general. Wolf would play his guitar on the steps of the mess hall, where the young James Brown, who came to the Fort nearly every day to earn money shining shoes and performing buck dances for the troops, first heard Wolf play.  Still, it was a boring and tedious existence.

For some reason, the Army detailed the illiterate Howlin’ Wolf to the Signal Corps, responsible for sending and decoding combat communications. When his superiors discovered that Wolf couldn’t read he was sent for tutoring at a facility in Camp Murray near Tacoma, Washington. It was Wolf’s first experience inside a school and it proved a brutal one. A vicious drill instructor would beat Wolf with a riding crop when he misread or misspelled a word. The humiliating experience was repeated each day, week after week. The harsher the officer treated Wolf, the more stubborn Wolf became. Finally, the stress became too much for the great man and he collapsed one day on base before heading to class. Wolf suffered episodes of uncontrollable shaking. He was frequently dizzy and disoriented. He fainted several times while on duty, once while walking down the hallway.

Barracks at Camp Adair, 1942. Photo: Ben Maxwell (Salem Public Library).

“The Army is hell!” Wolf said in an interview in the 1970s. “I stayed in the Army for three years. I done all my training, you know? I liked the Army all right, but they put so much on a man, you know what I mean? My nerves couldn’t take it, you know? They drilled me so hard it just naturally give me a nervous breakdown.”

Finally, in August 1943, Howlin’ Wolf was transferred to Camp Adair and committed to the Army mental hospital for evaluation. The first notes the shrink scribbled in Wolf’s file expressed awe at the size-16 feet. The other assessments were less impressive, revealing the rank racism that pervaded both the US Army and the psychiatric profession in the 1940s. One doctor speculated that Wolf suffered from schizophrenia induced by syphilis, even though there was no evidence Wolf had ever contracted a venereal disease. Another notation suggested that Wolf was a “hysteric,” a nebulous Freudian term that was usually reserved for women. The diagnosis was commonly applied to blacks by military doctors who viewed them as mentally incapable of handling the regimens of Army life. Another doctor simply wrote Wolf down with casual cruelty as a “mental defective.”

None of the shrinks seemed to take the slightest interest in Chester Burnett’s life, the incredible journey that had taken him from living beneath a rickety house in the Mississippi Delta to the wild juke joints of West Memphis and an Army base in the Pacific Northwest. None of them seemed to be aware that by 1943, Howlin’ Wolf had already proved himself to be one of the authentic geniuses of American music, a gifted and sensitive songwriter and a performer of unparalleled power, who was the propulsive force behind the creation of the electric blues.

Howlin’ Wolf was locked up for two months in the Army psych ward. He was lashed to his bed, his body parts examined and measured: his head, his hands, his feet, his teeth, his penis. The shrinks wanted to know if he liked to have sex with men, if he tortured animals, and if he hated his father. He was beaten, shocked and drugged when he resisted the barbarous treatment by the military doctors. Finally, he was cut loose from the Army, and discharged as being unfit for duty. He was probably lucky he wasn’t lobotomized or sterilized, as was the cruel fate of so many other encounters with the dehumanizing machinations of governmental psychiatry.

“The Army ain’t no place for a black man,” Wolf recalled years later. “Jus’ couldn’t take all that bossin’ around, I guess. The Wolf’s his own boss.”

Sources.

Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman

It Came From Memphis by Robert Gordon

Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940–1965 by Morris J. MacGregor

Camp Adair: The Story of a World War II Cantonment: Oregon’s Largest Ghost Town by John H. Baker.

This is excerpted from Sound Grammar: Blues and the Radical Truth (forthcoming from Sitting Sun Press).

The post Conscience of the Blues: How Howlin’ Wolf Got Caged in Oregon appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

Former Green MP Keith Locke, a passionate activist and anti-war critic once described as “conscience of the year”, has died in hospital, aged 80.

Locke was in Parliament from 1999 to 2011, and was known as a human rights and nuclear-free advocate.

His family said he had died peacefully in the early hours this morning after a long illness.

• READ MORE: Keith Locke, former Green MP, dies: Party pays tribute to leading figure in New Zealand activism
• Other Keith Locke reports

“He will be greatly missed by his partner Michele, his family, friends and colleagues. He kept up his interest and support for the causes he was passionate about to the last.

“He was a man of integrity, courage and kindness who lived his values in every part of his life. He touched many lives in the course of his work in politics and activism.”

The son of activists Elsie and Jack Locke of Christchurch, Keith was politically aware from an early age, and was involved in the first anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid marches of the 1960s.

After a Masters degree at the University of Alberta in Canada, he returned to New Zealand and left academia to edit a fortnightly newspaper for the Socialist Action League, a union he had joined as a meatworker then railway workshop employee.

He joined NewLabour in 1989, which later became part of the Alliance party, and split off into the Greens when they broke apart from the Alliance in 1997, entering Parliament as their foreign affairs spokesperson in the subsequent election two years later.

Notable critic of NZ in Afghanistan
While in Parliament, he was a notable critic of New Zealand’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan and the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002, and advocated for refugee rights including in the case of Ahmed Zaoui.

He also long advocated for New Zealand to become a republic, putting forward a member’s bill which would have led to a referendum on the matter.

Commentators dubbed him variously the ‘Backbencher of the Year’ in 2002 — an award he reprised from a different outlet in 2010 — as well as the ‘Politician of the Year’ in 2003, and ‘Conscience of the Year’ in 2004.

He was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to human rights advocacy in 2021, received NZ Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender award in 2012, and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand’s Harmony Award in 2013.

In a statement today, Green Party co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick said Locke was a dear friend and leading figure in the party’s history, who never wavered in holding government and those in positions of authority to account.

“As a colleague and friend, Keith will be keenly missed by the Greens. He has been a shining light for the rights of people and planet. Keith Locke leaves a legacy that his family and all who knew him can be proud of. Moe mai ra e te rangatira,” they said.

“From 1999 to 2011, he served our party with distinction and worked extremely hard to advance causes central to our kaupapa,” they said.

Highlighting ‘human rights crises’
“Not only did Keith work to defend civil liberties at home, but he was vigilant in highlighting human rights crises in other countries, including the Philippines, East Timor, West Papua and in Latin America.

“We particularly acknowledge his strong and clear opposition to the Iraq War, and his commitment to an independent and principled foreign policy for Aotearoa.”

They said his mahi as a fearless defender of civil liberties was exemplified in his efforts to challenge government overreach into citizens’ privacy.

“Keith worked very hard to introduce reforms of our country’s security intelligence services. While there is much more to be done, the improvements in transparency that have occurred over the past two decades are in large part due to his advocacy and work. We will honour him by ensuring we carry on such work.”

Former minister Peter Dunne said on social media he was “very saddened” to learn of Locke’s death.

“Although we were on different ideological planets, we always got on and worked well together on a number of issues. Keith had my enduring respect for his integrity and honesty. Rest in peace, friend.”

‘Profoundly saddened’
Auckland councillor Christine Fletcher said she was also sad to hear of the death of her “Mt Eden neighbour”.

“We worked together on several political campaigns in the 1990s. Keith was a thoughtful, sincere and truly decent person. My condolences to Keith’s partner Michele, sister Maire Leadbeater and partner Graeme East.”

Peace Action Wellington said Locke was a tireless activist for peace and justice — and the organisation was “profoundly saddened” by his death.

“His voice and presence will be missed,” the organisation wrote on social media.

“He was fearless. He spoke with the passion of someone who knows all too well the vast and dangerous reach of the state into people’s lives as someone who was under state surveillance from the time he was a child.

“We acknowledge Keith’s amazing whānau who have a long whakapapa of peace and justice activism. He was a good soul who will be missed.”

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

Vale #KeithLocke, tireless and fearless campaigner for peace, justice and a sustainable future for a green planet … I’ll also remember him for friendship and commitment to independent truth publishing and OneWorld progressive bookshop. – @DavidRobie, editor, #AsiaPacificReport pic.twitter.com/SC0obJzfOA

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 21, 2024

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

Barry Castleman is a chemical engineer, environmentalist and researcher specializing in health issues. He is the author of Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects and has worked with public interest groups around the world over the past 50 years on the control of asbestos and chemical hazards. Mr. Castleman has been involved in rule-making on asbestos by numerous federal agencies as a consultant to the agencies and to environmental groups. He has testified as an expert witness in civil litigation in the US on the history of asbestos as a public health problem, and the reasons for failure to properly control asbestos hazards.

I remember speaking to students at Johns Hopkins about 30 years ago about careers in international public health, and talking to them about how they should try and listen into themselves and think about what it is they'd really like to do, what they're really interested in, and try to follow that. Rather than following the money or auctioning themselves off to the highest bidder when they graduate from Hopkins.

Barry Castleman

You lose your innocence reading these corporate documents. They're unbelievable in terms of showing that all of these decisions about health and safety and environment are business decisions to the people who make them. And the wanton, reckless, willful disregard of public health is clear. So making these documents publicly available is an extraordinary public service.

Barry Castleman

Ken Bossong is the Executive Director of the Sun Day Campaign, a non-profit research and educational organization he founded in 1992 to aggressively promote sustainable energy technologies as cost-effective alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuels. Mr. Bossong has advocated for solar energy and other renewable energy for more than 50 years, and he previously served as Director of the Critical Mass Energy Project at Public Citizen. 

Nearly 100% of all the new generating capacity in the United States in the month of March—which is the most recent month for which there are statistics—came from solar alone. There was none from coal. There was only one megawatt from natural gas. There was, I think, three megawatts from oil. And there was zero from nuclear. So the only resource that's growing and scaling up rapidly is solar. Coming in second place is wind. The fossil fuel technologies and nuclear power combined are producing very little.

Ken Bossong

What keeps me going? Basically the bad guys. I am always ginned up by the challenge of confronting people who are doing things which I consider to be socially, environmentally irresponsible. And as you pointed out with the example of the oil companies, there's never been a shortage of people who are trying to do things that I think are damaging. 

Ken Bossong

Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law.  Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.

Although it doesn’t really change a whole lot on the legal chessboard, the more countries that recognize a Palestinian statehood, the more pressure there will be on the United States to do something that acknowledges their right…The one other element that comes into play, however, is that there are various tribunals, jurisdictions that can be employed only by a state... So the more that we have international recognition of a Palestinian state, it then would have standing instead of South Africa to go to the International Court of Justice and say—we want a declaration that genocide is being committed against us by Israel. So there are small ways in which I think the greater the recognition, the greater the legal standing Palestine has as in at least some international body.

Bruce Fein

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 5/22/24

1.  On May 20th, the International Criminal Court announced it would seek arrest warrants related to the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Bucking pressure from western governments, the ICC will pursue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges including “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare…[and] Extermination…as a crime against humanity.” The Court also announced it would seek arrest warrants for Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for their alleged international offenses. The ICC’s decision was met with indignation by Israel and its western allies, including President Joe Biden, who said “What’s happening is not genocide,” per the Guardian. Mousa Abu Marzouk – the first chief of Hamas’ politburo, and the head of Hamas' international relations – writes in Media Review Network “Hamas stands ready to appear before the ICC with witnesses and live testimony and bear the burden of any judicial finding against it or its members after a full and fair trial with rules of evidence; with examination and cross examination into [what] we have done or not over the many years of our leadership as a national liberation movement. Is Israel?”

2. On May 19th, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed when his helicopter was forced to make a “hard landing” near the Iranian/Azerbaijan border. Many suspect Israeli involvement in this crash, largely due to Israel’s history of assassinating Iranian officials. Israel however denies any involvement. The Middle East Monitor, relaying what Israeli officials told Channel 13, reports “The message Israel is sending to the countries of the world is that Tel Aviv has nothing to do with the incident.”

3. Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog has sent a letter to dozens of congressional Democrats “accus[ing] lawmakers of aiding…Hamas…misrepresenting Israeli policy and…inappropriately trying to influence President…Biden,” per the Huffington Post. This letter – a response to moderate Democrats Jason Crow and Chris Deluzio’s May 3rd letter alleging that Israel is breaking U.S. law – has rankled Democrats in Congress. One staffer told the Huffington Post that multiple parts of the letter “verg[ed] on offensive,” and another said “the tone of this letter is not reflective of the fact that the U.S. is the primary guarantor of Israel’s security. An unaware reader would assume that Israel is the superpower in this relationship and the U.S. the recipient of aid.” Yet another aid put it this way, “Never before have we received such a harsh letter from the Israeli government. But then again, never before have we been so critical of their actions.”

4. Independent investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reports “The National Counterterrorism Center, created in the wake of 9/11 to combat al Qaeda, is now working overtime to find evidence of foreign funding of pro-Palestinian student protesters.” Klippenstein continues “The effort follows repeated calls by Congress for the federal government to investigate university protesters’ purported links to Hamas, and coincides with a push by the FBI and homeland security bureaucracies to link the campus demonstrations to foreign actors. Tempting as it might be to laugh off the specter of foreign powers directing undergraduate protesters, evidence of this would provide the legal basis for the intelligence community to spy on Americans. Absent a foreign connection, the protests are constitutionally-protected speech.” Civil liberties advocates have long warned of the American anti-terrorism apparatus being weaponized against internal dissent. During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, the Trump administration infamously worked feverishly to cook up some connection between foreign governments and supposed domestic “antifa” leaders. The fact that the Biden administration is seeking to do the same speaks to just how enticing it is for the federal government to use trumped up terrorism accusations to silence legitimate protests.

5. In a chilling new installment of the campus crackdown on pro-Palestine activity, POLITICO reports the California State University system has “placed Sonoma State campus President Mike Lee on leave… after he agreed to protesters’ demands to involve them in university decision-making and pursue divestment from Israel.” In a statement, CSU Chancellor Mildred García derided president Lee for his “insubordination and the consequences it has brought upon the system.” The message is clear: any degree of violence in confronting the student protesters is acceptable, engaging with their demands is not.

6. In more higher education news, the Harvard Graduate Student’s Union – organized under the UAW – has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the university over their response to campus pro-Palestine protests, per Bloomberg labor reporter Josh Eidelson. “[The union is] claiming the school's retaliation violated students' right as employees to protest over workplace issues.” This charge will test the limits of workplace speech protections and we will be watching closely to see where the board lands.

7. Last week, workers at two Alabama Mercedes-Benz plants voted against joining the United Autoworkers by a margin if 2,045 to 2,642, per 1819 News. UAW President Shawn Fain blamed the loss on union busting by the corporation, stating “Mercedes engaged in egregious illegal behavior. The federal government as well as the German government are currently investigating Mercedes for the intimidation and harassment they inflicted on their own workers. We intend to follow that process through…This is a David and Goliath fight. Sometimes Goliath wins a battle. But David wins the war.” Fain went on to say “Justice isn’t about one vote or one campaign. It’s about getting a voice, getting your fair share. And let’s be clear: workers won serious gains in this campaign. They raised their wages, with the 'UAW bump.' They killed wage tiers. They got rid of a CEO who had no interest in improving conditions in the workplace. Mercedes is a better place to work thanks to this campaign, and thanks to these courageous workers.” Finally, Fain noted the similarities between this campaign and the previous attempts to unionize Volkswagen plants, stating “[Mercedes] told the workers to give the new CEO a chance. That’s exactly what Volkswagen told its workers in 2019. And in 2024, Volkswagen workers realized it’s not about a CEO. It’s about a voice on the job, it’s about getting our lives back, and getting our time back. The only path to do that is through a union contract.”

8. CNN reports that on Tuesday May 14th, the Justice Department  “notified Boeing that it [had] breached [the] terms of its 2021 [deferred prosecution] agreement in which the company avoided criminal charges for two fatal 737 Max crashes.” This report goes on to say “Families of victims and lawyers representing them met with the Justice Department late last month to persuade the Biden administration to end the agreement in light of multiple safety lapses at Boeing this year and in past years after the 2021 agreement was reached.”  Following this meeting, attorney Paul Cassell said the deferred prosecution agreement was “rigged” and “pledged to hold Boeing accountable for its ‘fraud and misconduct.’” 

9. On Monday May 20th, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange won the right to appeal his extradition to the United States. Per Democracy Now! “Assange’s lawyers argued before the British High Court that the U.S. government provided ‘blatantly inadequate’ assurances that Assange would have the same free speech protections as an American citizen if extradited from Britain. Assange…faces up to 175 years in prison for publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.” This is a major victory for Assange. Yet, as Chip Gibbons, policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent puts it “[Assange is] not out of Belmarsh [Prison] yet…This could still end in him being sent to the U.S. And the person who can stop this is Joe Biden.”

10. Finally, according to Washington Post labor reporter Lauren Kaori Gurley, “[Over 400] physicians have filed to unionize with SEIU, in what they say would be the first doctor's union in Delaware and the Mid-Atlantic.” These physicians – employed by ChristianaCare, Delaware's largest private employer – have laid out a list of grievances they hope to address by organizing, including “patient safety concerns due to understaffing and inadequate resources…the erosion of the physician-led model of care...[and] the moral injury caused by the pressure to prioritize...profit over patient needs.” Gurley further highlighted that a key priority of this doctor’s union is “combating excessive corporatization,” in healthcare.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard. 

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

On the first day of the 2024 Legislative Sessions, more than 500 Californian Jews alongside a diverse coalition of Californians shut down the California State Assembly session and the California State Capitol Rotunda to demand an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza. In response, the State Assembly canceled the session for the day. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network along with other Jews and concerned Californians gathered in protest, song, and prayer to demand that California legislators stand for justice and call a lasting ceasefire now. The coalition of protestors included rabbis, children of holocaust survivors, Israelis-Americans, teachers and healthcare workers and many more community members united in their call for American politicians to stop funding genocide.

“We represent thousands of Jewish people from over California who oppose the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign that has murdered over 22,000 including thousands of children and displaced the people of Gaza from their homes,” said Lisa Rofel, a board member of Jewish Voice for Peace and San Francisco resident.

Protesters gathered in both the State Assembly session and in the Capitol rotunda singing Jewish songs and prayers and calling for a ceasefire. They dropped banners from the balcony of the State Assembly room that said “Jews Say No US Funding for Israel’s Genocide of Palestinians.” Protestors laid red tissue-paper poppies on the center of the rotunda to mourn the lives of each Palestinian who has been murdered in Israel’s genocidal campaign. Protesters came together in grief and anger to protest and pray as a community while disrupting business as usual in resistance to the Israeli military’s genocidal campaign against Palestine, which is backed by the US government via significant financial aid as well as the sale of bombs and weapons. After the sit-in, the vast coalition joined a local rally in the Capitol's rose garden led by Palestinian organizers in Sacramento.

Since October 7th, the US government has sent millions of dollars in military aid and weapons to Israel, with the Biden administration twice bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale. The US government provides $3.8 billion in military aid to the Israeli government annually. Each year Californian’s federal tax dollars amount to more than $609 million in military aid to Israel. The Jewish-led protesters are resolute in their belief that the US government must stop funding genocide and instead invest in local communities including expansions for healthcare, affordable housing, climate resiliency, education, and affordable childcare.

“I am the grandchild of holocaust survivors and I know that part of the great tragedy of the Holocaust was that the world stood by and let it happen. I will not be a bystander as the Israeli military wages a genocide in Gaza that is fully funded by my own government. I owe it to my family to speak out. I am here to say never again for anyone,” said Margo Goldstein, a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist organization.

“We as California’s taxpayers contribute hundreds of millions in military aid to Israel each year, while people in our own communities struggle without access to food, homes, and healthcare. We are Jewish Americans committed to the safety and dignity of all people and call on our leaders to stop funding genocide and instead invest in our local communities,” saidDavid Jones Krause, a member of If Not Now, and labor activist based in Oakland.

For the past three months, Jewish Americans have protested at the United States Capitol, in train stations, congressional offices, and iconic landmarks across the nation calling for a permanent ceasefire now. On November 13th, over 700+ California Jews and allies occupied the Oakland Federal Building calling for a ceasefire. Jewish organizers will persist in disrupting business as usual as long as the Israeli government continues its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

Since October 7th, the Israeli military has slaughtered over 22,000 Palestinians including more than 8,000 children in Gaza. According to December’s polling by Data for Progress, American voters overwhelmingly support a ceasefire: 61% of likely voters and 80% of democrats. In spite of this, Representative Barbara Lee is the only California legislator who has signed onto Res. 786, which calls for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid into Gaza. Californian Jews in alliance with Californians of many faiths and backgrounds are calling upon California Legislators to do their job and represent their constituencies. Now we find out: will they listen?

“We as Jews demand an immediate lasting ceasefire and end to aid for Israel’s genocidal campaign,” Tina Szpicek, a Berkeley resident, lawyer, and grandchild of a Holocaust survivor. “Our tradition calls upon us to stand in solidarity with Palestinians, to disrupt business as usual, and to say unequivocally never again for anyone.”

Audio/visuals attached include: Photos of hundreds of Jewish residents of Northern California in shirts that say "Ceasefire Now" singing and praying. Photos available here. Additional videos and interviews available upon request.

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

Photograph Source: Wafa (Q2915969) in contract with a local company (APAimages) – CC BY-SA 3.0

The massacre of innocent people is a serious matter. It is not a thing to be easily forgotten. It is our duty to cherish their memory.

– Mahatma Gandhi

Introduction: Morality Divorced Politics

War breeds depravity and vague appeals to morality give way to a politics soaked in blood and destruction.[1] Too often it is the most innocent who pay the price. The most recent and tragic example is the death and violence that has been waged on the children of Israel and Gaza. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, when violence first erupted on October 7th with Hamas’s brutal and heinous attack on Israeli soldiers and civilians, 29 Israeli children were killed.[2] The killing of innocent children continued in shockingly accelerated numbers with Israel’s policy of collective punishment. By November 26^th, a staggering 5500 Palestinian children had been killed in Gaza, an additional 1800 are missing, and nine thousand were injured.[3]  About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are children.

For the children killed in both Israel and Gaza, history did not begin on October 7^th. History makes clear that the creation of graveyards for children has a long legacy and is deeply rooted in the language of war, militarism, forced detentions, occupation, blockades, and violence.[4] It is a language that pushes aside the rhetoric and value of human dignity, social responsibility, compassion for the other, and democracy itself. The killing of children in war is overlooked when human dignity succumbs to nationalistic passions and militarized machineries of violence.

Amid the current Israel-Hamas war, images of children covered in blood, limbs missing, bodies robbed of life are forgotten amidst the calls for security and revenge “created and maintained by planes and weapons of war.”[5] This is especially true for the children of Gaza. Under such circumstances, memory fails, and history no longer serves as a warning and moral witness to the depravity of sacrificing children to the cruelty of prioritizing war over peace. When history, ethics, and respect for human dignity disappear in the framing of violence, especially with regard to the killing of children, silence becomes both a form of betrayal and an accessory to ignorance and violence.[6] Whether by Hamas or Israel,  And the killing and wounding of children will continue, and must be condemned.

As Martin Luther King Jr. stated in his famous 1967 Riverside Church speech condemning the Vietnam War, times of violence and war make it even more necessary to raise the question regarding who is going to speak for the children.[7]King’s moving words are as relevant today in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war as they were in 1967. For King, the burden of conscience, justice, and compassion demands a notion of social responsibility that enables one “to speak for the weak, the voiceless [and the] suffering and helpless outcast children.”[8]

Children are innocent. They do not create the conditions for war; nor do they wage war on others. The deaths of all children in this conflict are tragic and as Judith Butler has argued “There can be no inequality here.”[9] How might we understand the Israel-Hamas war at a time in history when massive machineries of death not only engage in the slaughter of children, but as David Theo Goldberg has argued, such actions are “predicated on accepting that there is some self-defending legitimacy to killing almost at random women, children and men” in order to provide security through bombs, tanks, planes, and indiscriminate killing of civilians.[10] Of course, inflated emphases on security and fear are not the only major legitimating arguments for war but are connected to Rebecca Gordon’s observation that “War may not be healthy for children and other living things, but it’s great for the arms industry.”[11]

How might history, morality and politics be theorized to provide a language for opposing the actions of the leadership of both Hamas and right-wing Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu. This is an especially crucial issue, especially regarding Netanyahu whose war policies get relentlessly legitimated in the ethically eviscerated vocabulary of authoritarian double-speak of “collateral damage,” “military necessity,” “self-defense,” “human shields,” and “forces of barbarism.” As Jason Stanely observes, the killing of civilians cannot be vindicated in the name of self-protection by either side in this war. What must be acknowledged is that Israel’s desire for revenge, coupled with its overwhelming powerful military advantage over Hamas, makes it unacceptable to justify the fact that it is engaging in the [disproportionate] mass killing of innocent civilians, largely children.”[12]

 In these violent though greatly asymmetrical war machines waged by Hamas and the Israeli state, “justice equals injustice” and for children who are caught in this overwhelming assault by the Israeli Defense Forces, there is no world of play, justice, or joy. Instead, they live in a world in which there is only the intolerable reality of bloodletting, the destruction of hospitals and housing, and no life beyond militarized policies of revenge.[13] How else to explain two young children, one 15-year-old and another 8-year-old, being killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank? It gets worse.

Surely, given that over 15,000 civilians are dead, many of them women and children, as a result of Netanyahu’s war of reprisal, it is reasonable to break the silence and ask whether the staggering amount of destruction and death in Gaza “add up to a reasonable response to the nightmare of Hamas’s October 7^th attack.”[14]  Judith Butler goes further and argues that targeting civilians, but especially children, amounts to what she calls a “genocidal set of policies.”[15] In making this claim, she defends the right to criticize the Israeli state by claiming it is “not antisemitic to criticize the state of Israel if the state of Israel is a settler colonial state that’s doing violence of an extraordinary kind. One objects to injustice. Indeed, as a Jew, you’re obligated to object to injustice. You would not be a good Jew if you were not objecting to injustice. To be in solidarity with Palestine is not necessarily to agree with all the military actions of Hamas, but it is to stand with the people who are being targeted in a genocidal manner.”[16]

The death-dealing zones of tranquilization both haunt and shape the mainstream media and other educational institutions regarding their coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. Militarism merged with power produces a suppression of history, dissent, and civic courage. Truth is sacrificed to propaganda and the workings of a massive disimagination machine that has no memory, ethics, sense of justice, or future. The reach of violence and death in Israel by Hamas is shocking in its depravity and has been well publicized in the mainstream media and in other cultural apparatuses. The same publicity is not afforded to  the suffering experienced by the children and civilians in Gaza inflicted by the Israeli state, which gets too little coverage as the media reinforces a massive degree of historical and social amnesia.

Morality and politics appear to have negligible effects from those calling for peace on both sides of the conflict. Moreover, the fixation on morality with regard to the atrocities suffered by the Israeli civilians has a depoliticizing effect because it obscures “the massive power imbalance, which shapes the current crisis.”[17] The unacknowledged asymmetry of power, violence, and repression in the dominant media works to shut down a fruitful and truthful dialogue among Israelis and Palestinians regarding the history,  roots, and evolving context of the war and a recognition of the long-standing suffering of the Palestinian people.  Moreover, the often-one-sided emphasis on Israeli victims and hostages runs the risk of offering what Noura Erakat terms an “unquestioned support for Israeli militarism” and in doing so subordinates any talk of a possible political solution to a moral problem.[18]

Netanyahu’s eliminationist language is echoed in his claim that  “I will never allow a Palestinian state….We will ensure Gaza never poses a threat again.” [19] This extremist rhetoric provides a glimpse into the far-political calculus driving the massive bombing of Gaza and the staggering levels of suffering it has caused.  The Jewish historian, Seth Anziska notes in an essay in The New York Review of Books that there is more at work here than the sickening and visceral devastation caused by Israel’s military overreach. He writes:

The scholar Raz Segal has called the wrath currently being unleashed in Gaza a ‘textbook case of genocide, while the historian Omer Bartov has warned that ‘the danger of genocide is right there’—shocking turns of phrase for all of us who made sense of that term through the experience of European Jewry in the twentieth century. But Palestinian and Arab writers have long warned against the current attempt to eviscerate the Palestinian people, as have prophetic critics within the Jewish tradition and dissenting voices inside Israel itself. By disavowing the moral consequences of state power and sovereignty, Israel’s leaders and many within Israeli society—as well as staunch supporters abroad—refuse to admit that they can be both victims and perpetrators.[20]

The long-standing grip of colonial rule on the part of Israel points to the need to get beyond morality to examine and resist the politics, power relations, and conditions that led to the current conflict. In this case, there is a need to get beyond the language of moral condemnation, which overrides what it might mean to both provide security for Israelis and liberation and freedom for Palestinians.[21] James Baldwin insightfully stated that political freedom in the end is more about power than morality; it is about power in the service of collective resistance. Following Frederick Douglass’ admonition that “power concedes nothing without a demand,” he argued that “For power truly to feel itself menaced, it must somehow sense itself in the presence of another power — or, more accurately, an energy — which it has not known how to define and therefore does not really know how to control.” [22] This is the power of critical thought, provocation, and resistance.

History and Context

The Israel-Hamas war has seen the weaponization of education as part of a massive tool of propaganda and erasure. Any call for analyzing both the history and evolving context of Israeli-Palestinian relations is largely dismissed by many Western states, right-wing politicians, contemporary media, social media, and educational institutions as either a form of antisemitism or an apology for Hamas’s atrocious acts of violence. Even more egregious is the claim that Hamas and the Palestinian people are synonymous. In this instance, Israel uses Hamas’s terrorist crimes to punish all Palestinians. As Fintan O’Toole argues in the New York Review of Books:

This long-established logic continues to play out in Israel now. Those who commit terrorist crimes are identified (as they wish to be) with the people they claim to represent. That people is then reduced to the atrocities committed in its name and must pay the price for these outrages. It is a logic that simultaneously inflates the standing of the terrorists and shrinks almost to invisibility the individuality of the civilians who belong to the criminalized group. It is a logic that has been used, time and again throughout history.[23]

Central to the claim that Hamas’s actions offer the only narrative for understanding the Israel-Hamas war is a one-sided condemnation that “requires a refusal to understand…and undermine[s] [the] capacity to judge.”[24] As Nicholas J. Davies observes, “Missing from this view has been a recognition of any of the history that led to it.”[25] This reductionist narrative too easily provides a wholesale justification for Israeli violence against children, women, and civilians. It is crucial for any analysis of the current Israel-Hamas conflict to be situated and addressed through the history and root causes that have shaped it; otherwise, the search for peace is annihilated in the militarized calls for war. For example, Tal Schneider reported in the Times of Israel that any condemnation of Hamas would be incomplete without engaging the history of how Netanyahu “took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and West Bank—Bringing Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.”[26] In other words, Netanyahu played a decisive role in bringing Hamas to power and making sure that they remained in control of Gaza.

It is not enough to exclusively condemn Hamas’s atrocious violence as a violation of human rights. Turning a critical eye on the violence waged by Israel on Gaza is crucial, especially at a time when such violence may be in violation of international law, especially since October 7. For example, Israel’s bombing operations in Gaza included air strikes against the Jabalia refugee camp, which the U.K.-based watchdog Airwars claimed resulted “in the death of multiple family members, three of which reportedly involved entire families being wiped out. The estimated civilian death toll [of] 126-136, include[d] 69 children.”[27] In addition, and as Brett Wilkins reports  “as many as 1.7 million people—or about 70% of Gaza’s population—have been forcibly displaced in a war that numerous experts have called “genocidal.”[28]

Equating all Palestinians with Hamas is a formula for the globalization of Islamophobia and hate. At the same time, a similar reductionism works for equating Netanyahu’s brutalizing domestic and foreign policies with all Jews collectively. The latter notion of collective blame feeds antisemitism. What is missing in both accounts are the complex ways in which the horrors of war are embraced by a variety of right-wing states, groups and individuals and what they share in their support of Netanyahu’s policy of collective punishment. Put simply, all Jews cannot be held responsible for Netanyahu’s destruction of Gaza and Palestinians cannot be “held collectively and individually responsible for the actions of Hamas.”[29]

Refusing to hold all sides in this war to the standards of international law is a violation of human dignity, justice, and democratic principles. As theorists such as Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn, Amia Srinivasan, and Nancy Fraser have argued, there is little discussion of violations of international law in the current discourse. Atrocities against civilians and children on both sides must be condemned under the principles of international law. When they are not, the killing of children no longer becomes unthinkable, it becomes an atrocity that remains unaccountable. Tooze Mony, Fraser, et. al. are worth quoting. They write:

We are concerned that there is no mention of upholding international law, which also prohibits war crimes and crimes against humanity such as collective punishment, persecution, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure including schools, hospitals and places of worship. Being guided by principles of international legal standards, solidarity and human dignity compels us to hold all participants in the conflict to this higher standard. We cannot allow the atrocities to force us to abandon these principles.

Israel has engaged in the saturated bombing of one of the most densely populated areas on the earth; it has bombed hospitals, killed journalists, cut off water, electricity and food crucial to the survival of 2.3 million Palestinians, reproducing what many international agencies and commentators have referred to as an “open grave.” [30]  In the midst of the present assault by the Israeli military, “the Secretary-General of the U.N., António Guterres, emphasized that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children.”[31] The violence that is being waged against Gaza has a long history and apprehending that history is crucial to any viable understanding of the moral use of power and its relationship to the principles of justice and freedom. Unlimited destruction, suffering and murderous rage are at the roots of the Israel-Hamas war and are rooted in a history that must be addressed if the question of peace and freedom are to replace the death-dealing practices of war. Judith Butler is right in arguing that one’s moral position on the war should not be threatened by learning about history. She writes:

It need not threaten our moral positions to take some time to learn about the history of colonial violence and to examine the language, narratives and frameworks now operating to report and explain – and interpret in advance – what is happening in this region. That kind of knowledge is critical, but not for the purposes of rationalising existing violence or authorising further violence. Its aim is to furnish a truer understanding of the situation than an uncontested framing of the present alone can provide.[32]

Demonizing Language and the Suppression of Dissent

Any talk about peace between Jews and Palestinians and what it means to prevent the tragic killing of children and civilians has to address how language has been used in this conflict to utterly demonize Palestinians and those Jewish groups and individuals who speak out for ending the war and for Palestinian freedom. Much of the contemporary media has either reported or given airtime to a language of dehumanization, which feeds the far-right’s pathological hunger for revenge, war, and violence. For instance, in response to the horrifying attack by Hamas on October 7, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant stated that “‘we are fighting against human animals and we will act accordingly’.”[33] The Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin called for a Dresden on Gaza, referring to the World War II firebombing of the German city of Dresden, killing some 25,000 people. When asked about the killing of Palestinian civilians, “the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said to a reporter on Sky News. ‘What is wrong with you? We’re fighting Nazis.’”[34]Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly uses the language of demonization, evident in his claim that “Hamas are the new Nazis” and that the war against them represented “a battle of civilization against barbarism.”[35]  These comments are not simply moral and intellectual failings on the part of political leaders, they use this absolutist language to portray anyone who criticizes the Israeli state as hardened anti-Semites, if not terrorist collaborators.

Since the attack by Hamas, the language of extermination and disposability has reached a fever pitch. In Israel, much of it is aired by hardline, right-wing extremists in Netanyahu’s circle of support. Ishaan Tharoor, a writer for The Washington Post, provides a startling example of this discourse of dehumanization, violence, and ethnic cleansing. He writes:

Consider the remarks of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who, while inciting new rounds of violence in the West Bank, also suggested anyone who sympathizes with Hamas should be “eliminated.” Or those of Amihai Eliyahu, a far-right coalition partner of Netanyahu and Israel’s heritage minister, who said dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza could be an option. Or the call from Galit Distel Atbaryan, recently (but no longer) Israel’s information minister, to erase “all of Gaza from the face of the earth” and drive its Palestinians into exile in Egypt.[36]

The language of dehumanization whether it comes from Israelis or Hamas is profoundly disturbing. Hamas followers calling all Israeli’s neo-Nazis shred human dignity and politics in the discourse of unbounded hate. What is crucial to address is that power in this conflict is on the side of the right-wing Israeli state whose propaganda machine and discourse of dehumanization dominates global politics in the United States and many of the Western nations. As a number of Holocaust scholars noted in The New York Review of Books, such rhetoric promotes “racist narratives about Palestinians…separate[s] this current crisis from the context out of which it has arisen [and erases] seventy-five years of displacement, fifty-six years of occupation, and sixteen years of the Gaza blockade.”[37] In the end, the language of demonization and absolutes, further generates “an ever-deteriorating spiral of violence [and a] narrative in which an “evil” must be vanquished by force will only perpetuate an oppressive state of affairs that has already lasted far too long.”[38] Not only does such language, no matter the source, make violence the organizing principle of communication, but also elevates war as the only solution to the 70-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

 For instance, the high degree of pro-Israeli propaganda and disinformation is a powerful force in portraying Palestinians as less than human, unworthy of human dignity, and subject to a racist framing that recapitulates a colonial logic. Evidence abounds at how this discourse exists in Israel at the highest levels of power. For instance, an Israeli government minister, Bezalel Smotrich (who calls himself a proud homophobe) referred to Palestinians as mosquitoes, amplifying his derogatory remark with the comment “That is the problem with mosquitoes. If you swat mosquitoes and hit maybe 99, it will be the 100th one, which you didn’t swat, which will kill you. The genuine solution is to dry out the swamp.”[39] Victor Grossman points out that “When asked if that could mean eradicating whole families with women and children,  Smotrich replied: ‘War is war.’”[40]

The language of dehumanization becomes both a cover for the brutal treatment of Palestinians while offering an easy escape from the task of learning from history, providing a comprehensive context for understanding the conditions that led to the war, and courageously engaging the struggle for peace. Moreover, such a language is not limited to right-wing extremists, it also has the power to shape popular culture, engulfing the minds of a generation of young people with hateful racist stereotypes. In this instance, popular culture further normalizes the policy of collective punishment and collective rage for which there are no limits, regardless of the suffering inflicted. How else to explain, as the war was unfolding, an incident in which a video appeared on Israeli state TV channel Kan News in which children sang: “Within a year we will eliminate everyone…. In another year there will be nothing there. And we will safely return to our homes…The IDF crosses the border to eliminate the bearers of the swastika…We’ll wipe them all out…We’ll show the world how we destroy our enemies.”[41] Indoctrination fueled by the rhetoric of dehumanization produces a politics of disposability in which, in this case, Palestinian lives are viewed as worthless, excess, and worthy of destruction. It also reinforces and accelerates the suppression of critics calling, in the face of Israel’s staggering onslaught against Gaza, for either peace or a cease-fire.[42]

Militarized McCarthyism

Speaking for the suffering, oppressed, helpless, and innocent children who are under attack and brutally killed in this war has become increasingly dangerous. Individuals and groups both in Israel and abroad who either oppose Netanyahu’s policies of Palestinian dispossession, and brutal ground and air assaults, or who call for a cease-fire, are subject to a widespread campaign of harassment, censorship, and arrests. Marsha Gessen writing in The New Yorker states that people are being arrested in Israel on charges of inciting terrorism for posts calling for a cease fire. She claims that opposition to the war is met with a “crackdown on speech, which involves arrests, police interrogations, and so-called warning talks conducted by the Shabak, the security services.”[43] Israel has passed repressive legislation that enables and legitimates expansive use of surveillance, censorship, and arrests of opposition voices, especially Palestinian Jerusalemites, though capable of being used against all dissenters in Israel. Writing in +972 Magazine, Sophia Goodfriend reveals the draconian nature of the law. She writes:

 On Nov. 8, the Knesset passed an amendment to the Counterterrorism Law, introducing a new criminal offense — “consumption of terrorist materials” — that carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison. Its proponents promise that the measure will combat “brainwashing that may produce a desire or motive to commit terror,” but human rights advocates and legal experts are describing it as a bid to “penalize thoughts and feelings” and one of the most intrusive and draconian measures ever passed by the Israeli parliament. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) warned that the legislation has no precedent in any democracy elsewhere in the world.[44]

In the United States, attempts to suppress opposition and criticism of the war have been fast and furious.[45] Under the inflated and indiscriminate charge of a hardened antisemitism, there has been a widespread campaign among universities, workplaces, and in social media to silence dissenters who call for a cease-fire or defend Palestinians’ rights.[46] Some universities, including Brandeis and Columbia, have taken steps to suppress protests against Israel, and have abolished student organizations such as –Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. Ron DeSantis, the right-wing extremist governor of Florida “directed schools to disband campus chapters of a pro-Palestinian student group he alleges are aligned in support of terrorists.”[47]   In other cases of outright repression, academics have been fired or face punitive measures for protesting for Palestinian freedom. In addition, journalists and academics alike have argued that the reach of the Israeli lobby and public relations institutions is so powerful that it has been instrumental in getting major conferences canceled, publications and media interviews pulled, [and that] support for Palestine has invited a distributed, stochastic reprisal, severe to the point that it can, without exaggeration, be compared to a ‘McCarthyite backlash’.”[48] Doxing, censorship, intimidation, and the criminalizing of dissent have gained enormous power in drowning out the call for justice and Palestinian freedom.

This intense wave of repression is also driven by the influence of powerful right-wing billionaires who head prestigious law firms, rescinding job offers to law students who signed petitions advocating for Palestinian rights. One case that attained national attention focused on Ryna Workman a student at NYU who lost her job offer at a prestigious law form because of her opposition to the war.[49] The rich and powerful have also used their control over media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram, and X to censor pro-Palestinian narratives. They have also threatened to rescind their donations to universities that have allowed dissent to the war to take place on their campuses. The billionaire class supporting Netanyahu’s militarism has also fired writers and editors who opposed Israel’s assault on Gaza. This also includes David Velasco, the editor-in-chief of Artforum, who was fired by Jay Penske, the CEO of Penske Media Corporation, for printing a letter in which he opposed Israel’s scorched earth war policy.[50]

Netanyahu’s war culture thrives in the U.S. and among many Western nations in repressing dissent. Central to a militarized culture is the squashing of oppositional voices in order to produce a carefully managed ignorance. Under such circumstances, wars waged in the name of security, revenge, and hatred take on the overtones of a religious crusade. Culture industries, educational institutions and other cultural apparatuses such as mainstream social media are politically driven by their billionaire owners and patrons to create the political, educational, and cultural foundations for not only suppressing dissent but undermining the fundamental rights crucial to any viable democracy.

Conclusion

Children have become both the pawns and innocent victims in the Israel-Hamas war and symbols of needless suffering, death, and collapse of ethics when war and its machineries of violence dominate politics. Hamas killed twenty-nine children on October 7, 2023. As a result of Israeli airstrikes and bombing raids more than 5500 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of the war. According to the United Nations, 1.7 million of the 2.3 million residents in Gaza have been displaced, many of them children.[51] As the Holocaust historian Omer Bartov notes, both “sides in this war have focused on the deaths and kidnapping of children sharing images and videos of the children as a testament to the other side’s cruelty.”[52] However, it must be noted that the Israeli state has killed a much larger number of children than Hamas.

What connects both Hamas and Israel is that the violence done against children is used simply as a prop to legitimate and continue the war and the ongoing death and suffering of children, women, and civilians. Children have become not only victims in this war, but they have also been weaponized to fuel calls for revenge, retribution, and violence, on both sides of the conflict.

Surely the role of universities should be subversive in a world plagued by the growing tyranny of authoritarianism. What should be the role of academics, intellectuals, artists, educators, and other progressives in a time of war fed by rampant Islamophobia, antisemitism, and mass violence? The Israel-Hamas war is rooted in a history of colonialism, racist stereotypes, and a culture of fear, and is situated in a larger embrace of the madness of militarism. The language, politics and toxic racism that informs this war must be revealed through its history, and the efforts on the part of authoritarian governments such as the Israeli state to shut down the power of critical analysis in pursuit of social justice must be resisted.

Institutions that shut down the protective spaces where dialogue, debate, and informed exchange can take place, for instance, among Jews and Muslims must be challenged. Ethics must be put back into politics in order to recognize and condemn the killing and maiming of innocent children and civilians. Policies that deprive people of their land, sanction discourses of extermination, legislate the language of collective guilt, and demonize an entire people must be opposed in all public and educational spaces in which the values of free speech and democracy can flourish as well as through the growth of grassroots movements calling for peace, equality and freedom.

Academics and others must raise the question with their students and the larger public of what peace, true equality and freedom would look like in the region. Judith Butler provides an important insight in addressing these questions. She is worth quoting at length:

 I deplore the violence unequivocally at the same time as I, like so many others, want to be part of imagining and struggling for true equality and justice in the region, the kind that would compel groups like Hamas to disappear, the occupation to end, and new forms of political freedom and justice to flourish. Without equality and justice, without an end to the state violence conducted by a state, Israel, that was itself founded in violence, no future can be imagined, no future of true peace – not, that is, ‘peace’ as a euphemism for normalization, which means keeping structures of inequality, rightlessness and racism in place. But such a future cannot come about without remaining free to name, describe and oppose all the violence, including Israeli state violence in all its forms, and to do so without fear of censorship, criminalisation, or of being maliciously accused of antisemitism…. For this, we need our poets and our dreamers, the untamed fools, the kind who know how to organize.[53]

The erasure of history, the ongoing repression of dissent, the collapse of morality, and the embrace of war and militarism as the governing principles of state politics have removed the Palestinian people from the discourse of solidarity and human dignity. Under such circumstances, the long-term suffering of the Palestinian people is erased, demeaned, or misrepresented. With the omission of key historical contexts, the Israel-Hamas war gets presented through vast propaganda apparatuses that call for revenge, collective punishment, militarism, and war. The repression of dissent regarding Palestinian freedom is not innocent; it maligns human dignity, weakens the demands of conscience, and strips democracy of any value. It also works to prevent uncomfortable questions about the role of the Israeli state, settler violence, and the killing of children. Adam Shatz raises one of the more discerning questions regarding the contradiction that undermines Israel’s claim to democracy. He writes, “In the words of Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist who spent many years reporting from Gaza, ‘Gaza embodies the central contradiction of the state of Israel – democracy for some, dispossession for others; it is our exposed nerve. Israelis don’t say ‘go to hell,’ they say, ‘go to Gaza.’”[54]

The Israel-Hamas war is a dreadful example of a militarized colonial past resurrecting itself in the language of violence and expulsion and threatens humanity with the prospect of perpetual war, one that has the potential to spread like wildfire across the Middle East. What this past suggests is that as welcome as a cease-fire is, it is not enough. Israel cannot wipe out Palestinian resistance and their call to freedom; nor can Palestinians eliminate the state of Israel. Adam Shatz is correct in arguing that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are stuck with each other, and that the only political solution is one “that recognizes both as equal citizens, and allows them to live in peace and freedom, whether in a single democratic state, two states, or a federation. So long as this solution is avoided, a continuing degradation, and an even greater catastrophe, are all but guaranteed.”

We live in a time to echo the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. when “silence is betrayal.”   Against such silence, he argued that there is a need for a revolution of values, a rejection of the interlocking forces of “racism, extreme materialism and militarism.”[55] King was clear that there is no democracy without genuinely opposing critical power. Speaking out in a time of tyranny is the foundation for challenging the underlying forces that give momentum, life, and breath to killing machines and the states that embrace them. We have no other choice but to raise consciousness in order to act against tyranny in the name of social responsibility, human dignity, and justice. Michelle Alexander is right in stating that we must speak out in the name of the oppressed. She writes:

We must speak. When the oppressed, the poor, the weak are under attack, when their homes are stolen or demolished, when they are forced to migrate and to live in unspeakable conditions, in open-air prisons, and concentration camps, perpetually as refugees under occupation, we must speak. We must speak when Jewish children are brutally killed in the name of liberation, when antisemitism and Islamophobia slip in through the back door of supposedly progressive spaces. When Palestinian children in refugee camps are bombed and killed, when schools and hospitals and entire neighborhoods are laid waste, we must speak. When international law is treated like a naive suggestion, we must speak. Yes, it may be difficult. Yes, we will make mistakes. We are human. And yes, we may be afraid. But we must speak. Countless lives and the liberation of all of us depend on us breaking our silences.[56]

Higher education may be one of the few sites left where important issues can be analyzed, engaged, and subject to the rigors of history, a comprehensive analysis, and relevant evidence. It should be a place where students are given the knowledge to make informed judgments, deal with unsettling knowledge, and engage in pedagogical practices in which the search for truth is matched by a sense of ethical and social responsibility. Put simply, it should be a place where the habits of citizenship and critical agency should be allowed to bloom.  As pointed out in a letter signed by 150 University of California professors, education in a time of crisis should reject attempts at censorship and refuse to run away from topics that are controversial, especially in a moment of crisis, war, and mass suffering. Instead of refusing to address such topics in the classroom, they called upon educators to be engaged intellectuals who provide the best elements of critical pedagogy. They write:

As historians, we maintain that among our contributions to a democratic society and a more peaceful world is to teach students the skills to evaluate different points of view based on evidence, rigorous inquiry, best pedagogical practices, and peer-reviewed scholarship free from external interference and political pressure. Indeed, this is the very foundation of our collective craft and a core principle of academic freedom.[57]

If we remain silent in the face of this war and refuse to act individually and collectively to bring it to an end, more children will die, and the bombs and violence that define the politics of right-wing racists, antisemites, and Islamophobes will prevail. Before long, the scourge and darkness of authoritarian politics will drown out whatever hope lies in the promise of a strong democracy and the calls for peace. The morally reprehensible killing of children in Israel and Gaza is part of a larger problem that haunts the modern period:  the merging of colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. Regardless of the diverse forms it takes in various parts of the world, it is a dehumanizing politics of greed, disposability, and extermination. Its allegiance is not to human dignity but to the rewards of militarism, war, state violence, dispossession, and the repression of dissent and broader struggles for economic and social justice. Pressing the claims for such forms justice is no longer simply a political objective; it is a necessity at a time in which democracy across the globe is struggling to survive.

Notes.

[1] Chris Hedges, The Greatest Evil is War (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2022).

[2] Saranac Hale Spencer, “Dozens of Children Died in Hamas’ Oct. 7 Attack on Israel, Contrary to Online Claim,” Factcheck.org (November 16, 2023). Online: https://www.factcheck.org/2023/11/dozens-of-children-died-in-hamas-oct-7-attack-on-israel-contrary-to-online-claim/

[3] Mohammed Haddad, “World Children’s Day tragedy: Gaza 5,500 lives lost to Israel’s attacks,” Aljazeera(November 20, 2023). Online:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/20/world-childrens-day-tragedy-gazas-5500-lives-lost-to-israels-attacks

[4] On the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what has been done to Gaza, see Chris Hedges, “‘No Sanctuary’: Israel’s Long War on Gaza  Scheer Post,” (October 21, 2023). Online: https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/21/the-chris-hedges-report-no-sanctuary-israels-long-war-on-gaza/; see also, Norman G. Finkelstein, Gaza: An Inquest Into It’s Martyrdom (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018).

[5] Fintan O’Toole, “No Endgame in Gaza.” The New York Review [October 31, 2023]. Online: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/10/31/no-endgame-in-gaza

[6] Linda Dayan and Maya Lecker, “How Haaretz Is Counting Israel’s Dead From the October 7 Hamas Attack,” Haaretz (November 23, 2023). Online: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-23/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-haaretz-is-counting-israels-dead-from-the-october-7-hamas-attack/0000018b-d42c-d423-affb-f7afe1a70000?lts=1701031597083

[7] Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam: A time to Break Silence,” American Rhetoric (Delivered April 4, 1967). Online: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[8] Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam: A time to Break Silence,” American Rhetoric (Delivered April 4, 1967). Online: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[9] Judith Butler, The Radical Equality of Lives,” Boston Review (January 2020). https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/brandon-m-terry-butler-int/

[10] David Theo Goldberg, “In our collective name,” Truthout (July 15,2014). Online: https://truthout.org/articles/in-our-collective-name/

[11] Rebecca Gordon, “Is it Time (Once Again) for Nonviolent Rebellion? On ending dreams of revenge in Israel, Palestine, and elsewhere,” TomDispatch (November 28, 2023). Online: https://mailchi.mp/tomdispatch/tomgram-rebecca-gordon-the-hamster-wheel-of-war?e=5101a5c41c

[12] Jason Stanley, “My life has been defined by genocide of Jewish people. I look on Gaza with concern.” The Guardian [November 11, 2023]. Online: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/11/my-life-has-been-defined-by-genocide-of-jewish-people-i-look-on-gaza-with-concern

[13] Fintan O’Toole, “No Endgame in Gaza.” The New York Review [October 31, 2023]. Online: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/10/31/no-endgame-in-gaza

[14] Thom Hartmann, “Rebecca Gordon, the Hamster Wheel of War,” TomDispatch (November 28, 2023). Online: https://mailchi.mp/tomdispatch/tomgram-rebecca-gordon-the-hamster-wheel-of-war?e=5101a5c41c

[15] Amy Goodman, “Palestinian Lives Matter Too: Jewish Scholar Judith Butler Condemns Israel’s “Genocide” in Gaza.”  Democracy Now [October 26, 2023]. Online: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/26/judith_butler_ceasefire_gaza_israel

[16] Amy Goodman “Judith Butler on Hamas, Israel’s Collective Punishment of Gaza & Why Biden Must Push for Ceasefire.” Democracy Now [October 26, 2023]. Online: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/26/judith_butler_on_hamas_israels_collective

[17] Deborah Chasman and Noura Erakat, “The Crimes Are Plenty” Boston Review [October 13, 2023]. Online: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-crimes-are-plenty/.

[18]   Deborah Chasman and Noura Erakat, “The Crimes Are Plenty” Boston Review [October 13, 2023]. Online: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-crimes-are-plenty/

[19] Cited in Alon Pinkas, “Israel-Gaza War Enters a New Phase: Saving Private Netanyahu,” Haaretz (November 23, 2023). Online: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-11-30/ty-article/.premium/how-do-you-gaslight-an-entire-nation-ask-netanyahu/0000018c-1f93-db78-adcc-bfffdcbf0000

[20] Seth Anziska, “Let Us Not Hurry to Our Doom,” The New York Review of Books, (November 9, 2023). Online: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/11/09/let-us-not-hurry-to-our-doom-israel-gaza/

[21] Ibid. Deborah Chasman and Noura Erakat.

[22] Cited in Blair McClendon, “To James Baldwin, the Struggle for Black Liberation Was a Struggle for Democracy,” Jacobin, [06.19.2021]

Online: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/06/james-baldwin-civil-rights-struggle-democracy

[23] Fintan O’Toole, “The Many and the Few.” The New York Review [October 21, 2023]. Online: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/10/21/the-many-and-the-few-israel-gaza/

[24] Judith Butler, “The Compass of Mourning.” London Review of Books [October 19, 2023]. Online:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/judith-butler/the-compass-of-mourning

[25] Nicolas J.S. Davies, “Israeli War Crimes and Propaganda Follow US Blueprint.” Counter Punch [November 16, 2023]. Online: https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/11/16/israeli-war-crimes-and-propaganda-follow-us-blueprint/

[26] Tal Schneider, “For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces,” Times of Israel(October 8, 2023). Online: https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/; Adam Raz, “A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance,” Haaretz (October 20, 2023). Online: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/a-brief-history-of-the-netanyahu-hamas-alliance/0000018b-47d9-d242-abef-57ff1be90000

[27] Jessica Corbett, “Probe Shows 126+ Civilians Killed by Israeli Airstrike Targeting ‘Just One Guy’.” Common Dreams [November 16, 2023]. Online: https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-bomb-refugee-camp-

[28] Brett Wikins, “Intensified Israeli Airstrikes Push Gaza Death Toll Over 13,000,” CommonDreams (November 19, 2023). Online: https://www.commondreams.org/news/jabalia-

[29] Rowan Wolf, Editor’s Note,” Uncommon Thought (November 28, 2023). Online: https://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/archives/2023/11/28/authoritarianism-anti-jewish-racism-and-the-israel-hamas-war-an-open-letter-to-the-left.php

[30] Adam Shatz, “Vengeful Pathologies.” London Review of Books [October 19, 2023]. Online: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies

[31] Steve Coll, “Hostage-Taking and the Use of Children and the Vulnerable in War.” The New Yorker [November 15, 2023]. Online: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hostage-taking-and-the-use-of-children-and-the-vulnerable-in-war

[32] Ibid. Judith Butler, “The Compass of Mourning.”

[33] Cited in Fintan O’Toole, “Eyeless in Gaza.” The New York Review [October 10, 2023]. Online: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/10/10/eyeless-in-gaza/

[34] Adam Shatz, “Vengeful Pathologies.” London Review of Books [October 19, 2023]. Online: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies

[35] Lazar Berman, Netanyahu to Dutch leader: This war is civilization vs. barbarism,” The Times of Israel (October 23, 2023). Online: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-to-dutch-leader-this-war-is-civilization-vs-barbarism/

[36] Ishaan Tharoor, “The Israeli right hopes not just for victory in Gaza, but also conquest.” The Washington Post[November 17, 2023]. Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/17/israel-government-right-gaza-endgame-conquest/

[37] Omer Bartov, Christopher R. Browning, Jane Caplan, Deborah Dwork, Michael Rothberg, et al., “An Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory,” The New York Review of Books (November 20, 2023). Online: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/11/20/an-open-letter-on-the-misuse-of-holocaust-memory/

[38] Ibid.

[39] Victor Grossman’ “Gaza and the World,” Berlin Bulletin  No 216 (November 3, 2023). Online: https://victorgrossmansberlinbulletin.wordpress.com/2023/11/01/gaza-and-the-world/

[40] Ibid. Grossman.

[41] See Sophia Khatsenkova, “Fact-check: Did Israeli children really sing about ‘annihilating everyone in Gaza’?” Euronews (November 27, 2023). Online: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/11/27/fact-check-did-israeli-children-really-sing-about-annihilating-everyone-in-gaza

[42] See, for instance, Radhika Sainath, “The Free Speech Exception.” Boston Review [October 30, 2023]. Online: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-free-speech-exception/;Tyler Walicek, “Advocacy for Palestinians Has Been Outright Criminalized, Warns Academic.” Truthout [November 2, 2023]. Online: https://truthout.org/articles/advocacy-for-palestinians-has-been-outright-criminalized-warns-academic.

[43] Masha Gessen, “Inside the Israeli Crackdown on Speech.” The New Yorker [November 8, 2023]. Online:https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-human-rights/inside-the-israeli-crackdown-on-speech

[44] Sophia Goodfriend, “Israel’s ‘thought police’ law ramps up dangers for Palestinian social media users,” +972 Magazine (November 24, 2023). Online: https://www.972mag.com/israel-thought-police-surveillance-palestinians/

[45] See, for instance, Chris Hedges, “The dirty tactics of Zionist censorship against pro-Palestine voices,” The Real News Network (November 27, 2023). Online: https://therealnews.com/the-dirty-tactics-of-zionist-censorship-against-pro-palestine-voices

[46] Tyler Walicek, “Advocacy for Palestinians Has Been Outright Criminalized, Warns Academic.” Truthout [November 2, 2023]. Online: https://truthout.org/articles/advocacy-for-palestinians-has-been-outright-criminalized-warns-academic/

[47] Divya Kumar, Ian Hodgson, “Florida orders pro-Palestinian student group off its university campuses.” Tampa Bay Times [October 26, 2023]. Online: https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/10/25/florida-orders-pro-palestinian-student-group-off-its-university-campuses/

[48] Ibid. Tyler Walicek.

[49] Amy Goodman, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: Censorship, Harassment Intensifies on Campus Amid Gaza War.” Democracy Now [October 27, 2023]. Online: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/27/palestine_legal_campus_censorship_ryna_workman

[50] Alex N. Press, “Artforum’s Editor Just Got Axed After Printing a Letter Opposing Israel’s Assault on Gaza.” Jacobin [October 27, 2023]. Online: https://jacobin.com/2023/10/artforum-editor-david-velasco-jay-penske-media-israel-assault-gaza-letter

[51] Yara Bayoumy, Samar Abu Elouf and Iyad Abuheweila, “Fearful, Humiliated and Desperate: Gazans Heading South Face Horrors,” New York Times (November 28, 2023). Online: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/28/world/middleeast/gaza-evacuation-israel.html

[52] Omer Bartov, “In the Israel-Hamas war, children are the ultimate pawns – and ultimate victims,” The Conversation(November 28, 2023). Online: https://theconversation.com/in-the-israel-hamas-war-children-are-the-ultimate-pawns-and-ultimate-victims-216411

[53] Judith Butler, “The Compass of Mourning.” London Review of Books [October 19, 2023]. Online:https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/judith-butler/the-compass-of-mourning

[54] Adam Shatz, “Vengeful Pathologies.” London Review of Books [October 19, 2023]. Online: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n21/adam-shatz/vengeful-pathologies

[55] Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam: A time to Break Silence,” American Rhetoric (Delivered April 4, 1967). Online: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[56] Michelle Alexander, “‘The Mandates of Conscience’: on Israel, Gaza, MLK & Speaking Out in a Time of War,” Democracy Now (November 24, 2023). Online: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/24/the_mandates_of_conscience_michelle_alexander

[57] Eric Levenson, “University of California professors push back on UC president’s call for ‘viewpoint-neutral’ history of Middle East,” CNN.Com (November 30, 2023). Online: https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/us/university-california-israel-gaza/index.html

The post Killing Children, the Burdens of Conscience, and the Israel-Hamas War appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Henry Giroux.

“They said the third verdict is waiting for me, and it would not be as light as the one I received six years ago, and it could be rather long,” Dung told RFA Vietnamese, referring to a Nov. 3 meeting he had with police over his post-prison social media activity. He has been in prison twice, including a one-year stint that started in 2015. 

“At that moment, I thought they were not kidding,” he said of his decision to flee.

Nguyen Viet Dung, was most recently arrested Sept. 27, 2017, on “anti-State propaganda” charges. He had posted seven articles on his personal Facebook page that were found to be “distorting the policies and guidelines of the Party and State, distorting history, and smearing leaders in order to oppose the Vietnamese state.”

Additionally he made four flags of the Republic of Vietnam, the government of South Vietnam before it lost the Vietnam War to the communist North in 1975, which he flew at his home in Yen Thanh district, Nghe An province, and several public places.

On April 12, 2018, Dung was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years probation. His appellate trial on Aug. 15, 2018, reduced the sentence to six years of imprisonment but upheld the probation time.

Dung had already served a year in prison on charges of disrupting public order for his involvement in a 2015 tree protection campaign in Hanoi.

Third case developing

On Sept. 27, Dung, 38, completed his sentence and returned to his home, where he was supposed to spend the next five years on probation.

Since then he was active on Facebook, and his posts attracted the attention of police, who called him in to verify that he had made the posts on Nov. 3.

The Facebook posts discussed three major stories:  A post about the deteriorating health of prisoner of conscience Vu Quang Thuan, who was one of Dung’s fellow inmates while he was in prison; a poll about lingerie model Ngoc Trinh, known popularly as the “Underwear Queen,” who was arrested for “disrupting public order” after she posted photos on social media of herself riding a motorcycle unsafely; and an interview with RFA on him being abducted and tortured by Nghe An Police and Ho Chi Minh City Police before his arrest in 2017 as well as him being in solitary confinement and maltreated in prison.

Dung said that after the meeting, he realized that his freedom of thought would not be guaranteed if he continued to stay in Vietnam, even though this freedom is enshrined in the current Vietnamese Constitution and recognized by international conventions, that Vietnam has signed.

“With those pressures, I realized that if I continued to stay in Vietnam, I would not have freedom of thought,” said Dung. “I would not be able to speak what I think and express my ideas in a peaceful way.”

Medical needs

Dung affirmed that he was totally healthy before he went to prison for six years, but now he has medical problems and he was not able to receive proper treatment while incarcerated. 

He said that during the time he was a prisoner, he received many beatings by the police and spent two years in solitary confinement, resulting in him having bone and digestive problems.

Since his release from prison, he has not been allowed to go to larger cities like Hanoi or even to smaller ones like Vinh City in Nghe An province for proper medical treatment.

“They said that on the one hand, I wanted to go to a [proper] hospital to get medical treatment, stabilize my life, and find a job, but on the other kept putting up such posts on my Facebook account. How come they can let me go?” said Dung.

RFA contacted the district and provincial police agencies to verify the information provided by Dung, but the officers who answered the phone said they could not provide a response unless a reporter came to their offices in person with a letter of introduction from RFA.

“If I stayed in Vietnam, I would have faced a lot of difficulties, and could be rearrested at any time. Therefore, I decided to leave Vietnam as soon as possible,” Dung said. “I have left Vietnam and am currently living outside the territory of Vietnam.”

According to Dung, representatives from the local authorities have come to his home many times to summon him since his departure, saying that if he refuses to show, a warrant for his arrest could be issued.

He said that his immediate goal in Thailand was to get medical treatment and improve his health. Next, he plans to continue to fight for inmates rights and democracy in Vietnam by establishing a political organization which he will call the Republican Party.

“I hope one day, the Vietnamese people will wake up to the truth,” he said. “Activists cannot take action alone, and freedom cannot come to Vietnam without the joint efforts of its people.”

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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

“But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience.” That was the name of a recent event organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature here in New York, where leading writers and academics came together to speak out against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Speakers included Yasmin El-Rifae of PalFest and the civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

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

The Israeli government has declared a genocidal war on the people of Gaza. As an organization that works for a future where Palestinians and Israelis and all people live in equality and freedom, we call on all people of conscience to stop imminent genocide of Palestinians.

Jewish Voice for Peace mourns deeply for the over 1200 Israelis killed, the families destroyed, including many of our own, and fears for the lives of Israelis taken hostage. Many are still counting the dead, looking for missing loved ones, devastated by the losses.

We wholeheartedly agree with leading Palestinian rights groups: the massacres committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians are horrific war crimes. There is no justification in international law for the indiscriminate killing of civilians or the holding of civilian hostages.

And now, horrifyingly, the Israeli and American governments are weaponizing these deaths to fuel a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, pledging to “open the gates of hell.” This war is a continuation of the Nakba, when in 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing violence sought refuge in Gaza. It’s a continuation of 75 years of Israeli occupation and apartheid.

Already this week, over 1000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed. The Israeli government has wrought complete and total devastation on Palestinians across Gaza, attacking hospitals, schools, mosques, marketplaces, and apartment buildings.
As we write, the Israeli government has shut off all electricity to Gaza. Hospitals cannot save lives, the internet will collapse, people will have no phones to communicate with the outside world, and drinking water for two million people will run out. Gaza will be plunged into darkness as Israel turns its neighborhoods to rubble. Still worse, Israel has openly stated an intention to commit mass atrocities and even genocide, with Prime Minister Netanyahu saying the Israeli response will “reverberate for generations.”

And right now, the U.S. government is enabling the Israeli government’s atrocities, sending weapons, moving U.S. warships into proximity and sending U.S.-made munitions, and pledging blanket support and international cover for any actions taken by the Israeli government. Furthermore, the U.S. government officials are spreading racist, hateful, and incendiary rhetoric that will fuel mass atrocities and genocide.

The loss of Israeli lives is being used by our government to justify the rush to genocide, to provide moral cover for the immoral push for more weapons and more death. Palestinians are being dehumanized by our own government, by the media, by far too many U.S. Jewish institutions. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is “fighting human animals” and should “act accordingly,” As Jews, we know what happens when people are called animals.

We can and we must stop this. Never again means never again — for anyone.

We call on all people of conscience to stop the imminent genocide of Palestinians. We demand our government work towards de-escalation, that it immediately stop sending weapons to the Israeli military. A future of peace and safety for all, grounded in justice, freedom and equality for all, is still the only option.

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

They only found out that he was being held for additional questioning when they visited him in a detention center last month, they said.

The, 60, was released from prison in July 2020 after serving a two-year term for “abusing democratic freedoms” under the controversial Article 331 of Vietnam’s criminal code.

On Feb. 22 this year, he was arrested again on the same charge.

According to Vietnam’s criminal procedure code the investigations can last up to three months and can be extended twice, the first for as long as three months and the second not exceeding two months.

The’s daughter Le Thi Nghia Tinh, told RFA she and her mother met him at Long Tuyen temporary detention center on Aug. 1. 

“My father did not confess so the police could not finish the investigation and were forced to extend it,” she said. 

“However, my family was not informed about the extension of the investigation.

“My father also said that his trial could be in … December this year.”

The maximum sentence under Clause 2 of Article 3 is seven years but The told his family he does not want them to hire a lawyer.

RFA called Binh Thuy District Police, but the person on the phone asked the reporter to go to the agency's headquarters to get information.

When The was arrested for the second time, state media quoted information from local police saying that The regularly posted and shared articles and images with illegal content on his personal Facebook page. However, the newspapers did not name any specific articles.

In The’s 2019 trial he was accused of using Facebook to broadcast live propaganda defaming the Communist Party of Vietnam and the state.

He was accused of destroying national unity, causing division between the people and the party and state; causing harm to national political order and threatening security and social safety.

The indictment also accused The of colluding with domestic and foreign “reactionary subjects” to exchange information, call for protests, demand regime replacement and a multi-party system.

Rights groups have said that Article 331 is used by the government  to silence dissenting voices and repress the people. 

Vietnam has arrested at least 18 people and convicted nine for violating Article 331 since January this year, according to RFA statistics.

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

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

Amidst our enduring and revivified racism - today's GOP: "A white nationalist (is) an American" - we celebrate the birthday of anti-lynching agitator, muckraking journalist, fierce suffragist and orator Ida B. Wells, who for decades used the media to fight against lynching, "that last relic of barbarism and slavery," as "color-line murder" based on "the old threadbare lie that Negro men assault white women." "Only under the Stars and Stripes," she charged, "is this human holocaust possible."

Born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862, Wells was not yet three when the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished. The oldest of eight children, she was 16 when her parents and baby brother died of yellow fever, and she suddenly found herself the head of a family of six remaining children. She became a schoolteacher in Memphis during Reconstruction, but at age 24 was fired after criticizing conditions in the schools. Turning to journalism, she became the co-owner and editor of two papers, Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, the country's first woman and black person to do so. She quickly became a prominent activist for civil rights, women's suffrage and the end of lynching - a cause, she later noted, "which the Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destruction of my paper." After an angry mob trashed her printing press, she kept at it, arguing, "The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press." Later in life, she became editor of the Chicago Conservator, married Chicago attorney Ferdinand Barrett - she insisted on keeping her maiden name - and in 1909 helped found the NAACP.

Above all, over 40 years she became the country's most powerful voice in the battle against "our country's national crime," the "mob murder by color" that was lynching. Her goal: "To arouse the conscience of America" and "demand that justice be done though the heavens fall." En route she also sought to expose the lie that "Negroes are lynched to protect womanhood" - a base excuse, she long charged, "to wreak vengeance and cover crime." "It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob," she said in a 1900 speech of "the awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week." "It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent (sic) people who openly avow there is an 'unwritten law' that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense." Citing a decades-long "spirit of mob procedure" in "a vindictive, unchangeable South," she claimed as her own thankless task helping end "the inhuman butchery." "Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning," she said, "and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so."

Added to the horror of summary executions of innocent black people was the grim spectacle made of them. "Not only are two hundred men and women put to death annually in this country by mobs, but these lives are taken with the greatest publicity," she told the 1909 National Negro Conference. She described the ensuing atrocities: Victims often burned and dismembered, their ears, fingers, private parts sold as souvenirs to picnicking crowds, or photos of the corpses turned into postcards for the luckless unable to attend the festivities. Ever the journalist, accompanying the savagery were always the facts to "give the world a true, unvarnished account." Her booklet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases documented 728 lynching cases between 1884 and 1892; her study, "The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States,” documented 959 lynchings from 1899 to 1908. She also listed the "causes" for death by hanging: unknown, 92; race prejudice, 49; miscegenation, 7; informing, 12; making threats, 11; keeping saloon, 3; political causes, 5; protecting a Negro, 1; writing letter to white woman, 1; self-defense, 6; jilting girl, 1; insulting language to woman, 5; quarreling with white man, 2...

Frederick Douglass offered heartfelt thanks. "You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity, and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves," he wrote. "Brave woman!" You have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half alive.... a scream of horror, shame and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read." Alas, he added, "It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven, yet we must still think, speak and work..." Mob lynchings did slowly decline after the 1930s. But the racism at their core has clearly lingered, and the noose has remained a potent, vicious symbol of vigilante vengeance, of "murder by community," of the perceived need to keep black people in fear and in their place - especially in a newly, boldly white-supremacist America where racist idiot and "Republi-Klan" Sen. Tommy Tuberville feels free to declaim of white nationalists, "I call them Americans" and - still - a 37-year-old Black man in New Rochelle, NY was shot and killed by police for eating a few grapes and a banana in a grocery store and leaving without paying for them, except with his life..

Nooses, meanwhile, keep cropping up - at schools, garages, construction sites, the Capitol on Jan 6. A black professor at Columbia found a noose hanging on her office door; a noose was found outside D.C.'s Museum of African-American History and Culture, on the UC Santa Cruz campus, at the site of the Obama Presidential Center, at a Maryland lynching memorial. When white teens in Louisiana hung nooses from a tree, the school superintendent dismissed it as a "prank"; when photos of six slain Black people were hung by nooses in a park, the Times wondered if it was racism or "just rope in the hands of fools." WTF, NYT. And last week, after a BLM mural was vandalized, a noose was hung in downtown Santa Cruz; a black woman posted an image of it, prompting a guy to go cut it down, but she remained shaken: "It represents, ‘We don’t want you here, we can kill you at any time.'..It’s threatening, (and) I shouldn’t feel threatened here." So Ida Wells' work goes on. In her honor, Daily Kos offered music. Nina Simone's Revolution:"The only way we can stand in fact/ Is when you get your foot off my back." Sweet Honey in the Rock channeled Ella Baker: "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." And Strange Fruit still haunts, as it should.

Billie Holiday: Strange Fruit (Live 1959)youtu.be

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

Nguyen Van Duc Do, 47, said he got sick after drinking water he purchased at the canteen at the Xuan Loc Z30A Prison, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Ho Chi Minh City, his younger brother, Nguyen Duc Hai, told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday. 

Do is serving the seventh year of his jail term for “carrying out activities to overthrow the government.” 

Do said he and his prison roommate, Vuong Thanh Thuan, recently bought 17 20-liter jugs of drinking water for drinking and cooking, and that he started having stomach aches and diarrhea while using the fourth jug. 

In Vietnamese prisons, inmates can buy water and ready-made foods, such as instant noodles, to cook for themselves.

“After leaving the water there for a few days, it smelled like pesticide,” Hai said. “When he drank the water again, he got an unbearable stomach flu and then diarrhea.”

Do suspected guards tried to poison him because he and his cellmate fell ill after using the water, while other inmates bought similar water jugs but did not have any problems, his brother said.

As a result, he now must buy more expensive bottled water to drink, though he will not be able to afford it for long, Hai said.

Do, a former member of the Coalition for National Self-Determination of the Vietnamese People and vice president of the Vietnam Labor Movement, asked a guard to let him see the prison warden to complain about the drinking water issue, but the prison guard did not respond to his request, his brother said.

The health and well-being of political prisoners has been a long-standing concern of human rights groups and inmates’ families whose relatives have become seriously ill or even died while in jail due to lack of safe food and water and access to outside medical care when needed. 

RFA could not reach officials at Xuan Loc Prison to verify the information.

A former political prisoner who was released from Xuan Loc Prison last year but wanted to remain anonymous for safety reasons, told RFA that the detention center provided inmates with water from drilled wells for drinking and washing.

Do was arrested in November 2016 along with four other members of the Coalition for National Self-Determination of the Vietnamese People. They all were charged with “carrying out activities to overthrow the government” and given sentences ranging from eight to 15 years imprisonment at a 2018 trial.

Do, who has constantly maintained his innocence, told his family that he refused a guard’s offer for a reduced sentence if he admitted guilt.

He has been held in solitary confinement at times without access to fresh air and exercise, causing his health to decline, and was threatened by guards with a dog when he banged on his cell door for help while experiencing chest pain and difficulty breathing, according to the 88 Project, a human rights group that advocates for persecuted Vietnamese political activists.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

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

"Every new investment in planet-heating fossil fuels is a death sentence for the vulnerable communities who are already facing devastating storms, floods, and rising seas," Singh said. "The rich, industrialized countries are also shirking their responsibilities to provide adequate finance to help poorer nations adapt to and recover from the losses and damages caused by climate disasters."

"Every new investment in planet-heating fossil fuels is a death sentence for the vulnerable communities who are already facing devastating storms, floods, and rising seas."

Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Asian Peoples' Movement on Debt and Development, declared that "instead of delivering on climate finance obligations and fulfilling last year's commitment to end public finance for fossil fuels by the end of 2022, this year's Japan-led G7 continues its shameful disregard for what people and planet urgently need—a rapid, equitable, and just transition directly to renewable energy systems."

Referencing the bolder goal of the 2015 Paris agreement, the communiqué states that "we underline our commitment, in the context of a global effort, to accelerate the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels so as to achieve net-zero in energy systems by 2050 at the latest in line with the trajectories required to limit global average temperatures to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, and call on others to join us in taking the same action."

However, noting the energy impacts of Russia's war on Ukraine, the statement adds that "investment in the gas sector can be appropriate to help address potential market shortfalls provoked by the crisis, subject to clearly defined national circumstances, and if implemented in a manner consistent with our climate objectives and without creating lock-in effects, for example by ensuring that projects are integrated into national strategies for the development of low-carbon and renewable hydrogen."

Oil Change International (OCI) earlier this month published a briefing about how major economies—particularly the G7 countries Japan, the United States, Italy, and Germany—have poured billions of dollars of public financing into new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal capacity over the past decade. That document followed the group's March report calling out multiple countries for breaking their promise to swiftly cut off public finance for international fossil fuel projects.

Pointing to the Group of Seven's related pledge from last year, OCI public finance campaign co-manager Laurie van der Burg said Thursday that a new International Energy Agency analysis "reinforces that for the G7 not to jeopardize the 1.5°C global warming limit, they must not backslide on this commitment by endorsing new gas investments."

"The science is crystal clear that leaving the door open to investments in new gas or LNG leaves the G7 off track for 1.5°C," van der Burg stressed Sunday. "In addition, the claim that last year's G7 commitment to end international fossil fuel finance has been met is an outright lie as evidenced by new investments in fossil fuel projects."

"G7 leaders must next month fully close the door to investments in new gas and LNG and instead maximize on their opportunity to shift billions in public money out of fossil fuels and into the clean energy solutions that can build a more energy secure, sustainable, and affordable future," she said. "The U.K., Canada, and France have shown this can be done, Japan, Germany, Italy, and the United States must urgently catch up."

Along with the gas language in the communiqué, "Japan won endorsements from fellow G7 countries for its own national strategy emphasizing so-called clean coal, hydrogen, and nuclear energy to help ensure its energy security," The Associated Pressreported, explaining that a timeline to phase out coal "is a long-standing sticking point" because the nation relies on it for nearly a third of its power generation.

"This G7 ministerial revealed Japan's failure of climate leadership at a global level," charged OCI Asia program manager Susanne Wong. "At a time when we rapidly need to phase out fossil fuels, this year's G7 host pushed for the expansion of gas and LNG and technologies that would prolong the use of coal. We need Japan to stop prioritizing corporate interests and derailing the transition to clean energy with its dirty energy strategy."

Friends of the Earth Japan campaigner Hiroki Osada similarly argued that the country "has become both a promise-breaker and Earth-destroyer at the same time by continuing to finance fossil fuel projects overseas."

"With no time to waste to address climate change, nothing can justify new investment in fossil fuels, and no exceptions can be allowed," Osada added. "Japan should immediately end international financial support to fossil fuels in line with its G7 commitment, and should also commit to a complete phase-out from coal by 2030."

"LNG is... a bridge that ends in a hotter, more dangerous world for all of us, especially the world's most vulnerable people and ecosystems."

While campaigners certainly took aim at Japan, they also criticized other nations represented at the meeting.

"The effects of Italy's nonexistent implementation of its stop funding fossils pledge are beginning to reverberate on the international scene, now also with the Japan-led G7 ministerial," said Simone Ogno of ReCommon Italy. "We urge that the other G7 members like France and the U.K. work to bring both governments back on track. This is especially important as Italy is scheduled to host the G7 next year."

Leading up to the meeting this weekend, climate campaigners told U.S. President Joe Biden that "the global LNG boom must be stopped in its tracks," warning of the impacts on frontline communities, and were outraged when his administration approved a liquefied natural gas project in Alaska, on the heels of greenlighting ConocoPhillips' Willow oil development in the state.

"LNG is not a bridge fuel to a clean energy future," Leah Qusba, executive director of Action for the Climate Emergency, wrote Friday for The Hill, highlighting the resulting methane emissions. "It's a bridge that ends in a hotter, more dangerous world for all of us, especially the world's most vulnerable people and ecosystems."

After the meeting, OCI United States program manager Collin Rees said that "despite G7 ministers' rhetorical games, new investments in gas and LNG cannot be 'consistent with our climate objectives.' This is a deadly lie inconsistent with science and justice."

"Joe Biden's team signing off on this language rings dangerously hollow just days after he approved a massive LNG project in Alaska that, if built, will devastate communities and the climate for decades," Rees continued. "Biden must stand up to Japan's dirty energy lobby at the G7 and stop doing the gas industry's bidding at home."

Biden's climate envoy, John Kerry, even acknowledged during a Sunday interview with the AP that the international community has made progress over the past few years, "but we're not doing everything we said we'd do."

"A lot of countries need to step up, including ours, to reduce emissions faster, deploy renewables faster, bring new technologies online faster, all of that has to happen," said Kerry, who attended the meeting in Japan.

"If we're going to be responsible, we have to turn around and figure out how we are going to more rapidly terminate the emissions," he added. "We have to cut the emissions that are warming the planet and heading us inexorably toward several tipping points beyond which there is no reverse."

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

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Suong, 55, told Radio Free Asia on Friday, that the harassment began after she attended the appeals trial of activists Nguyen Thai Hung and his spouse, Vu Thi Kim Hoang, at the People’s Court in the southern province of Dong Nai on March 29. Authorities asked her to leave the courtroom.

On Friday, Dinh Quan district police summoned her and warned her not to attend other trials. They also said policemen would check on her often. 

“Recently, the police have watched me very closely,” Suong told Radio Free Asia after she met with police. “They came to see me right after I returned home [from the trial]. They said I was not allowed to do this.” 

At the end of the meeting, a police officer told her: “I’ll visit you every couple of days.” 

Suong said she did not remember the officer’s name because he was not wearing a name badge. 

When RFA contacted Dinh Quan district police to verify the information, a staffer asked for the name of the officer for verification. 

Suong, who said her health has been deteriorating since her release, was convicted in May 2019 under Article 117 of Vietnam’s penal code. The article, which criminalizes “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items” against the state. Violators can be sentenced to from five to 20 years in prison.  

Suong was freed last Dec. 13 in poor health, 10 months before her jail term ended. 

Health issues while detained 

While in prison, Suong had several physical ailments, including liver and kidney swelling, elevated liver enzymes, a bacterial infection in her stomach and thyroid issues.   

The only treatment she received was the medicine that prison officials gave to all inmates to treat various diseases.  

“When I took them, my condition got worse,” Suong said. “I remember one time I could not speak because my body was swollen from top to toe, including my mouth and tongue.” 

Suong said she believes her health deteriorated because she had been subjected to forced labor at Dong Nai police’s B5 temporary detention facility where she was held during the investigation period, and later at An Phuoc Prison, where she was held after an appeals trial. She produced votive paper offerings without protective gear.  

Suong also said she had not been paid for her labor, though Vietnamese law stipulates that inmates should receive some compensation for labor they perform in jail.  

While she was at the temporary detention facility from October 2018 to early December 2019, Suong's family had to bribe staffers so they could get supplies to her, though she never received them after the payments were made, she said.  

When Suong had a medical check after she was released, her doctor said she was very weak and it would be difficult for her to improve her physical condition because she took too much pain reliever in previous years.  

RFA could not reach officials at Dong Nai police or An Phuoc Prison for comment. 

Arrested and charged in 2018 

Suong was arrested along with activist Vu Thi Dung in October 2018, and they were both brought to court in the same case for using different Facebook accounts to watch videos and read articles containing anti-state content. 

They both allegedly called for protests against draft laws on the creation of new special economic zones and cybersecurity, and were said to have incited locals people to take to the streets.  

The indictment also said that Dung had produced anti-state leaflets and asked Suong to distribute them at four different places in Dinh Quan town of Dong Nai province. 

Dung was sentenced to six years in prison and will complete her jail term this month.  

Suong received the Tran Van Ba Award for 2021-2022 along with four other Vietnamese activists — Nguyen Thuy Hanh, Huynh Thuc Vy, Vo An Don and Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh. 

Named for a Vietnamese dissident and freedom fighter executed in 1985 on charges of treason and intent to overthrow the government, the award is given annually to Vietnamese in Vietnam in recognition of their courageous action for freedom, democracy, justice and independence for their country.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

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

The two were convicted of violating Article 117 of the country’s penal code, which criminalizes “making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items” against the state. Violators can be sentenced to from five to 20 years in prison. 

Authorities on Tuesday freed Huynh Thi To Nga, 40, about 10 months earlier than scheduled. Police arrested the doctor in Ho Chi Minh City on Jan. 28, 2019, along with her older brother, Huynh Minh Tam, for their online activities.

In November of the same year, they were sentenced to five years and nine years in prison, respectively, for negative comments they posted on Facebook about Vietnam’s leaders, national sovereignty, corruption and economic mismanagement.   

Nga’s brother is still serving his sentence in Gia Trung Prison in Gia Lai Province. 

Authorities also freed Nguyen Van Cong Em, 52, about 11 months earlier than scheduled, on March 26. He was arrested on Feb. 28, 2019, for allegedly using Facebook to distort information about the U.S.-North Korea Summit, which took place in Hanoi that month.

Police accused him of using four Facebook accounts to post and share stories and livestream videos with content distorting the summit and calling for protests during the event. 

Both former prisoners of conscience declined to give interviews to Radio Free Asia following their release.

Former prisoner of conscience Le Thi Binh, who was held in the same jail – An Phuoc Prison in Binh Duong province – as Nga from December 2021 to December 2022, told Radio Free Asia that Nga “followed the prison’s rules and tried hard when performing labor to get penalty mitigation and return home early.”

Authorities also accused Nga of taking part in illegal demonstrations, writing and posting nearly 50 articles inciting people to take to the street to protest against the government, call for freedom and democracy, and oppose the Cybersecurity Law. 

The law, which came into force in 2019, in part restricts citizens’ use of the internet and requires companies like Google and Facebook to delete posts considered threatening to national security.

Vietnam responds to U.N.

In a related development, Vietnam’s permanent delegation to the United Nations in Geneva issued a response on March 24 to a November 2022 request by the Special Procedures Branch of the U.N. human rights agency concerning the arbitrary arrests of nine activists.

Authorities convicted them of propagating untruthful information and abusing the right to freedom of expression and democracy to distort and smear the government.

Hanoi said the arrests, detention and conviction of Nguyen Van Nghiem, Le Van Dung, Dinh Thi Thu Thuy, Do Nam Trung, Dinh Van Hai, Chung Hoang Chuong, Le Trong Hung, Le Chi ThanhTran Quoc Khanh, complied with Vietnamese law and Vietnam’s international human rights commitments.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said Thursday that the Vietnamese government was “completely two-faced by refusing to comply with its international obligations but then writing its response as if it is doing so.”

“Hanoi’s stance has been regularly repudiated by the Special Procedures of the U.N. Human Rights Council, yet the government shamelessly keeps making the same argument,” he said in an email to RFA. “Judging by Vietnam's rights abusing actions and total refusal to accept blame, much less change its practices, it's hard to see why Vietnam thinks it deserves to be on the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

In October 2022, Vietnam was elected to the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council, despite calls by human rights groups that the country should be excluded because of its dismal rights record. The Southeast Asian nation began its three-year term on Jan. 1, 2023.

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

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

More than 120 mostly English lawyers on Friday published a "declaration of conscience" pledging to withhold their services from "supporting new fossil fuel projects" and "action against climate protesters exercising their democratic right of peaceful protest."

The United Kingdom has in recent years faced protests from numerous climate groups, including those with more pronounced direct actions like Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, and Extinction Rebellion. As part of those protests, participants have filled the streets, blocked fossil fuel facilities, glued scientific papers and themselves to a government building, called out major law firms for "defending climate criminals," and even, controversially, tossed tomato soup on one of Vincent van Gogh's glass-protected paintings.

Released on the heels of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, the lawyers' statement notes the U.K. Parliament's 2019 climate emergency declaration, the International Energy Agency's warning against future oil and gas development, and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' proclamation that "investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness."

The attorneys' declaration also recognizes that the world is on track to breach the 2015 Paris climate agreement's 1.5°C goal and the "dire consequences" of doing so, pointing out that "in the U.K. alone, we are already seeing unprecedented heatwaves, wildfires, flooding, and coastal erosion. In other parts of the globe the effects are already far worse."

Along with vowing to restrict their services, the lawyers:

• Called upon the U.K. government and other attorneys to take action;
• Advocated for law and litigation reform related to mitigating and adapting to global warming;
• Expressed support for the democratic right to peaceful protest, which is under attack in the United Kingdom; and
• Committed to donating their time and money to climate causes.

The attorneys, collectively calling themselves Lawyers Are Responsible, are supported by the groups Good Law Project and Plan B.Earth—whose director, Tim Crosland, highlighted that "the U.N. has said we're on a 'highway to climate hell' and that to get off it, we need to stop new fossil fuel developments now. But behind every new oil and gas deal sits a lawyer getting rich."

"Meanwhile, it's the ordinary people of this country, taking a stand against this greed and destruction that the British legal system prosecutes and imprisons, jailing them just for talking about the climate crisis and fuel poverty," Crosland said. "The rule of law has been turned on its head. Lawyers are responsible. It's time to take a stand."

Taking a stand is not without risk. In the United Kingdom, generally, solicitors advise clients on specific issues and barristers argue in court—and the former are able to choose their cases and clients while the latter are subject to the "cab rank rule," obligating them to provide services as long as they are qualified, even if the case or client is objectionable.

As Lawyers Are Responsible's website details in response to some right-wing outrage over the declaration:

The classic example of the cab rank rule in action is of a criminal barrister who accepts a brief to represent a person accused of murder, against whom there is strong evidence of guilt. In that situation, there is no conflict between the cab rank rule and the interests of justice. The barrister is agreeing to perform his or her role within a system of justice that produces, on the whole, just outcomes. By representing the accused, the barrister is merely helping to ensure that there is a fair trial and is serving the greater good.

The signatories to the declaration are convinced that at the present time offering their services in support of new fossil fuel projects or action against peaceful climate protesters would not serve the greater good.

Good Law Project director and declaration signatory Jolyon Maugham wrote in a Friday opinion piece for The Guardian that "like Big Tobacco, the fossil fuel industry has known for decades what its activities mean. They mean the loss of human life and property, which the civil law should prevent but does not."

"The scientific evidence is that global heating, the natural and inevitable consequence of its actions, will cause the deaths of huge numbers of people. The criminal law should punish this but it does not," Maugham continued. "Nor does the law recognize a crime of ecocide to deter the destruction of the planet. The law works for the fossil fuel industry—but it does not work for us."

"Today's history books speak with horror about what the law of yesterday did, of how it permitted racism, rape, and murder," he added. "And tomorrow's history books will say the same about the law as it stands today, of how it enabled the destruction of our planet and the displacement of billions of people."

The Guardianreported that "18 barristers, including six king's counsel, have signed the declaration" and "will now self-refer to the Bar Standards Board." The newspaper noted that while barristers can face fines for rule-breaking, "the consequences can be more far-reaching for junior members of the profession, who can find themselves blocked from receiving the 'silk' awarded to king's counsel, or from promotion to the judiciary."

In a statement from Plan B, one junior lawyer who wished to remain anonymous said that "young lawyers are being placed in an impossible position. We're being told by our firms and regulators it's a professional obligation to act for fossil fuel projects, knowing that doing so will poison our own future and all of life on Earth."

"That's wrong on every level. It's indefensible," the lawyer added. "If the profession doesn't look out for my generation, how does it expect to survive?"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Radio Free Asia reported in October that Hyunh Thuc Vy had been beaten and choked by guards in Gia Trung Prison in Vietnam’s central highlands, according to family members. The family also said that the guards were doing nothing to protect her from attacks from other inmates at that time.

In a Jan. 31 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, urged the administration to pressure Vietnam to release Vy, whom he described as an independent blogger who has written about human rights and socio-political issues in Vietnam since 2008.

“Vietnam’s politically motivated imprisonment and physical abuse of Ms. Huynh is an affront to freedom of expression and press freedom. She and the 20 other journalists imprisoned in Vietnam as of December 1, 2022, should be released immediately,” Connolly said in the letter.

On the same day, U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, also called for her release on Twitter.

“I urge the Vietnamese government to release Huynh Thuc Vy, a journalist and human rights activist. The Vietnamese government and prison guards must be held accountable for Vy’s treatment during her imprisonment,” Khanna said.

Khanna said his office would continue to monitor the situation.

Vy’s older brother, Huynh Trong Hieu, said that the two congressmen’s support for his sister was “great news that we have been looking forward to.”

“We have been expecting that under the diplomatic pressure created by the U.S., the Vietnamese government in general, and Gia Trung Prison, in particular, will let my sister be safe in prison and the prison’s maltreatment will be restricted,” Hieu said.

Khanna’s office has told the family that the congressman would press his colleagues to join in advocating for her release, Hieu said. Vy knows about the congressmen’s support and hoped it would help win her release, he said.

Over the past decade, several prisoners of conscience in Vietnam who lawmakers from the U.S. and other countries have advocated for were subsequently released. The list includes lawyer Nguyen Van Dai, a co-founder and chairman of the Brotherhood for Democracy, a group of formerly jailed dissidents that coordinate their activism online.

In an interview with RFA, Dai credited the advocacy of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith and former U.S. Rep. Alan Lowenthal for helping win his release. Dai, who currently lives in Germany, said that the lawmakers as well as political figures in Germany and other countries raised his case whenever they met with Vietnamese government’s officials.

“Thanks to the persistent advocacy of the U.S. and Germany’s lawmakers, I was released earlier than many others even though I was sentenced to 15 years in prison and five years on probation,” Dai said.

On Dec. 30, 2022, Khanna also called on the Vietnamese government to “immediately and unconditionally release” human rights activist Nguyen Thuy Hanh who was arrested in 2021 on the charge of “anti-State propaganda.” 

Hanh has been forced to receive treatment at a psychiatric hospital in the capital city of Hanoi over the past few months. Hanh’s husband, Huynh Ngoc Chenh, told RFA that although she was not treated badly and harshly in the hospital, she had not been released yet.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Jim Snyder. 

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

A recent talk with a friend gave me valuable insight into an important human phenomenon: how is a moral conscience created? A few years ago, I met Pierre, an abstract painter, and we developed a close friendship. As I learned about his complex upbringing, I wondered how he was able to overcome harrowing events in his life.

Pierre had been borne in a French containment camp (which in practice functioned as a prison,) where his parents were held after fleeing Spain’s civil war fought between 1936 and 1939 between Republicans and Nationalists. Both of them fought on the Republican side against the regime headed by general Francisco Franco. When the Republicans were defeated, to escape Franco’s reprisals, they crossed on foot the Pyrenees, a mountain range that separates the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of the continent. A strenuous trip under any circumstance, crossing the tallest mountain range in Europe was excruciating during the bitter winter cold.

From the time he was born Pierre was surrounded only by adults. He told me, “For a long time, I thought I was a midget, since I never saw another child.” When the Nazis invaded France, Pierre’s father was sent to a concentration camp and his mother went underground; Pierre was left in the care of strangers. Only later, when he was sent to an orphanage, he learned how to play with other children.

When the war ended, his mother chose to live in France but not for too long. Because his father never came back, his mother took care of him with the occasional help of paid caretakers. A couple of years later, his mother decided to come to the U.S., and they ended up in a rough Bronx neighborhood.

With French as his only language, the frail and shy Pierre was the target of bullying and threats from older children and had to be rescued by adult neighbors. Once he learned English, however, he was accepted by his peers. “These were not easy years for me,” he told me, a gross understatement considering he was left in the care of neighbors or family friends when his mother, who worked in the merchant marine, went out to sea.

Often short of money, he found a way to survive as a courier to drug dealers. “It scared the lights out of me, but it was an easy way to make some money for food and the frequent movies I attended, where I was transported to another world away from the strains and ugliness of everyday life. The American movies showed me a world totally different to the one I had known in France.”

Pierre was able to leave that line of work (“a cause of great anguish,” he confessed) learned a few trades, created a loving family, went to art school, and became an excellent abstract artist. “I played the cards that life gave me the best way I could,” he said.

During our frequent talks, I was curious to find out how he became the good citizen I know him to be, concerned about the fate of this country, and the world, always ready to help people in need. Simply put, how did he find his “moral compass”?

“When I was a child,” he told me, “I saw the American movies of the 50s, that portrayed an America that no longer exists, among them ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. More than any other, that movie had a transformative effect in my life. That’s how I learned about the evils of injustice, racism and prejudice and their negative effects on people’s lives, and on the lives of a nation. And because it showed the consequences of those feelings from the perspective of a child, the impression that movie had on me was even greater.”

“Mesmerized by the movie, at times I was ‘Jem,’ the child protagonist; more often, however, I was Atticus Finch, the lawyer who taught his children to be empathetic and just. ‘It is a sin,’ he told them, ‘to kill a mockingbird,’ referring to the fact that the birds are innocent and harmless.” “Since then, those values became part of my moral compass, and the sense of justice and my endeavor to contribute even in small measure to build a better world have never abandoned me.”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Cesar Chelala.

The post Creating a Moral Conscience appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Cesar Chelala.

Nguyen Nang Tinh was a music lecturer at a college in Nghe An province on Vietnam’s North Central Coast when he was arrested in May 2019. He is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after being convicted of “conducting anti-state propaganda.”

Viet Tan spokeswoman Dong Xuyen said Tinh beat many strong candidates in a vote by a council which included Canadian MP Judy Sgro and Asian Democratization Movement President Takayuki Kojima.

"Recognizing and upholding the efforts of peaceful, responsible citizens in contributing to promoting human rights and protecting national sovereignty [while they are] persecuted, smeared and abused by the state shows that their work is very meaningful and valuable for the life and development of the Vietnamese people and the country,” she told RFA.

“The award helps their families visit them in prison and represents a small share of their courage, affirmation, integrity and love of their nation."

Tinh’s wife Nguyen Thi Tinh told RFA her family were overjoyed by news of the award.

“This is a priceless gift for Nguyen Nang Tinh and our family. It is also a source of encouragement for the family as well as all those who have been, are, and will be fighting for democracy, human rights and justice in Vietnam,” she said.

Authorities in north-central Vietnam’s Nghe An province arrested Tinh, 46, in May 2019 for writing and sharing what authorities called anti-state posts and videos on his Facebook account for seven years.

The posts included protests against a law on Vietnam’s special economic zones that protestors feared would favor Chinese businesses over local enterprises, and demonstrations against a Taiwanese company that dumped toxic waste into the sea, causing an environmental disaster off Vietnam’s central coast in April 2016.

Tinh was also an active participant in civil rights organizations including the Life Defense Group and the Human Development Fund, speaking out in support of political prisoners.

He was charged under Article 117 of the 2015 Criminal Code for “making, storing, spreading information, materials, items for the purpose of opposing the State of Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

On Nov.15, 2019 Tinh was sentenced to 11 years in prison and the following year an appeals court upheld the lower court’s verdict. Tinh went on hunger strike for a month ahead of the appeal hearing, during which time his wife said he was not allowed to pray, read religious books, or meet with Catholic priests,

Tinh’s wife said that since being transferred to Prison Camp No. 5 in northern Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province in May 2020, her husband has not been allowed to leave the cell he shares with one other prisoner and is only able to speak with prison guards. She said in spite of this harsh treatment her husband continues to assert his innocence.

In Nov. 2021, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) issued a document saying Tinh's arrest and conviction were arbitrary and contravened international law, and called for his immediate release.

The Le Dinh Luong Human Rights Award was established by Viet Tan in 2018. It is named after a Vietnamese human rights and environmental campaigner who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Aug. 2018.

Viet Tan was labeled a terrorist group by Vietnam in Oct. 2016, but describes itself as “committed to peaceful, nonviolent struggle” to promote democracy the country. Vietnam’s state-controlled media has criticized its human rights award, describing it as a joke.

"Every year-end, the ‘democratic society' is bustling with 'human rights awards' and the so-called 'Le Dinh Luong Human Rights Award' initiated by Viet Tan is actually a ploy to polish Viet Tan's name and provoke opposition of democracy, distract public opinion and create an excuse to attack the government,” wrote author Anh Tu on the Binh Phuoc online news site on Nov. 17 this year.

Viet Tan spokeswoman Dong Xuyen said the Vietnamese government constantly uses state-media to support its actions.

"When making justifications, the Vietnamese government repeatedly underestimates the ability of the Vietnamese people to see the truth and their ability to observe and evaluate,” she said.

“They use the police apparatus and prisons to suppress the people's integrity, but they will never quench the kindness, love of reason, love of originality and intelligence, sensitivity and determination of the Vietnamese people for each other and their homeland."

This year’s Le Dinh Luong Award ceremony was held on Dec. 10 in Tokyo to mark International Human Rights Day and also the birthday of Le Dinh Luong, who is still serving his prison sentence at Ba Sao Prison camp in Ha Nam province.

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

The 2022 midterm election represents a unique and historic opportunity to protect our democracy and our right to equality before the law against an unrelenting offensive being waged by the reactionary right.

We must mobilize now and vote for democracy, equality before the law, and economic policies that support the vast majority of Americans—by voting for Democrats in the midterms.

In an unprecedented move, the Democratic Party has committed itself to altering the Senate filibuster to pass voting rights, protect democracy, and codify Roe v Wade—but to do so they must maintain a majority in the US House and gain two seats in the Senate for a majority of 52.

If the Republicans prevail, the opportunity to achieve these essential ends will be lost, possibly forever. For if the Democrats do not control Congress, there will be no checks on the Republicans who will use the next two years to implement laws in states across the country to pervert the electoral process to their advantage—with a goal of insuring continued Republican rule.

As I will argue below, we arrived at this place because of the tremendous degree of wealth inequality that has developed over the past four decades, which is not conducive to democracy but oligarchy—and our democracy is the best weapon we have to correct this egregious imbalance that is at the root of our seemingly interminable political crisis.

Therefore, we must mobilize now and vote for democracy, equality before the law, and economic policies that support the vast majority of Americans—by voting for Democrats in the midterms.

Simply put, there can be no false equivalences on these matters. Read the voting rights legislation that the Democratic Party is committed to passing: The John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the election-related components of the For the People Act.  All of it is straightforward common sense, designed to improve the operation of US elections, facilitating greater participation. None of it restricts voting or corrupts the process in a partisan manner.

Of course, these laws will achieve something else equally important. They will block the various ways that Republicans plan to pervert elections to their benefit—by purging voting rolls, by limiting access to voting, putting up barriers to registration, establishing arcane rules about how votes are processed, and even how elections are finalized—and this is to say nothing of widespread Republican support for Trump's Big Lie and the embrace of Authoritarian despots like Hungary's Victor Orban by Republican elites, including Tucker Carlson, arguably the most influential pundit in the country.

The difference between the two parties is night and day. Voting rights were one of the great achievements of the 1960s civil rights movement. However, the Right-wing Supreme Court turned its back on that historical accomplishment with its hideous 2013 Shelby County ruling.  The John Lewis Voting Rights Act re-establishes the central tenets of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Even if no other matter were on the ballot this year, surely this is enough cause for every person who wants to live in a just, democratic society to cast a ballot this fall.

Similarly, the Democrats commitment to codifying Roe v Wade and re-establishing, by an act of Congress, a woman's right to control her own body as the law of the land should itself be cause for every person who believes in equality to vote Democratic—let alone the fact that it will literally save the lives of countless women.

I'm a Gen Xer, raised in the wake of second-generation feminism and the Roe decision. I do not know a single person who does not, as a matter fact and nature, accept the full equality of women and the right of all people to control their own bodies. Yet today this is not the law of the land. Who can possibly accept this? What kind of moronic troglodyte thinks that the State should rule over women's bodies? And why would anyone not vote if they understood that their vote would reverse this tyranny?

C'mon people. Wake up! If you're reluctant to vote Democrat in your local congressional race because the nominee is not the progressive you supported in the primary, you must recognize that you are not voting for the candidate in this election you are voting for a woman's right to choose and the preservation of democracy. Plain and simple. Sitting out this election is a sin against all that progressives, and people of conscience, have fought for over the past century and a half.

In recent elections, the Democrats mobilized unprecedented millions of Americans through fear of Donald Trump—now, the message is positive: elect Democrats to Congress in 2022 and they will make history, passing laws that will secure our democracy and ensure equality.

As a Progressive Democrat, I know well the recent history of broken promises by establishment Democrats, so I've done my due diligence, reaching out to Senators and Senate candidates. I can report that other than Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, all 47 returning Democrats are committed to supporting a filibuster “carve out" to pass voting rights and codify Roe v Wade. Incoming Vermont Senator Peter Welch feels the same, as do the Democratic nominees for Senate in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida. We need two of those five candidates to win (though all five would be great), combined with holding onto the House majority, to secure the passage of these historic bills.

With two glorious acts of Congress we will have set back the 60-year reactionary counter-offensive against the Civil Rights Movement and the rights of women like never before! It will be a glorious day for everyone in America and around the world who believes in Democracy and equality; and who has watched in horror as anti-democratic forces have gained strength around the world over the past decade. “No Pasaran!" we will declare! This is, and will remain, a democratic society with equality for all under the law!

On top of that, and of almost equal importance, is the fact that when the Democrats use a filibuster carve-out to overturn the rulings of an activist, politicized Supreme Court, it sets a powerful precedent that the Congress will no longer take a back seat to the courts in determining the law of the land when the two are in conflict.  Indeed, the Constitution is clear about the primary role of Congress—and by extension the people who elected Congress—in establishing laws.  By overruling the Shelby and Dobbs rulings—and confirming the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Roe v Wade—Congress itself will be asserting the country's commitment to democracy over autocracy, as embodied by a Supreme Court captured by the reactionary right.

But have no illusions, this has to happen now, in this election, or the opportunity will likely be lost! The Senate map for the 2024 election cycle is daunting, with Democrats defending 23 seats and the Republicans only 10.  The prospect of Democratic gains in the Senate in 2024 are next to nil—and Democrats need to control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency to pass this historic legislation. Two years of inaction, let alone four, when the right-wing courts are rampant seems unfathomable.  So, no matter whether your local Democratic candidate is a progressive champion or a milquetoast moderate, there's only one way to vote in 2022 (unless you don't give a damn about democracy or equality).

The 2022 midterms are indeed a moment of truth—so, why is this not a landslide? On the one hand there's the age-old problem of a Democratic Party unable to channel urgency or passion (perhaps because the “moderate" wing of the Party has been more interested in being stewards of the status quo than champions of the people), but on the other there's the reality of a turbulent economy. On both fronts we need to emulate Bernie Sanders, who is barnstorming the country in the final two weeks like no other politician in the country.

On economics, I am not naïve. I understand the insidious, vertigo-inducing impact of inflation on poor, working, and middle-class households—and the tendency to blame the incumbent party for economic woes. However, much like with the crisis of democracy and equality, the Democrats should be able to rout the Republicans on this matter because, as Bernie always highlights, only the Democrats have popular, positive proposals.

There are three main categories to address concerning inflation: 1. How to provide relief for besieged Americans 2. How to combat the immediate causes of inflation and 3. How to address the long term causes. On all three fronts the Democrats can run circles around the GOP.

First, only the Democrats will push through popular relief measures like the reintroduction of a $600 childhood tax credit, which would seriously help working households suffering because of inflation (and, of course, reduce child poverty).

Second, the Republicans would never touch the equally-popular Democratic proposal for a windfall tax on corporations, whose excessive profits are a major contributor to current inflation.  Not only will this measure force businesses to lessen their gouging of consumers, but the money raised by the tax can be paid directly to poor, working and middle-class households.

Lastly, the Democrats should be crowing about how, unlike Trump, they have passed no fewer than three major pieces of legislation (the Infrastructure Act, the Chips act, and the Inflation Reduction Act) that are revamping US manufacturing—and thus address one of the main causes of the current inflation: the supply-chain breakdowns that have plagued America and the world since the onset on the pandemic. Democrats should be shouting from the rooftops that they are the Party, not the Republicans, who are already bringing back high-wage manufacturing jobs to the US and helping make America immune to the higher costs created by broken supply chains.

Combine these three points about inflation with the urgency of protecting our democracy and equal rights for all citizens and, even at this late hour, these midterms should be a landslide for the Democrats—but, in closing, I want to take it one step further.

As mentioned briefly above, I think the roots of the right-wing's current offensive against American democracy lie in the cavernous divide in wealth distribution that has grown over the past four decades.

The United States now stands apart from every other rich industrialized democracy in the world in the “Gini Coefficient"rankings, which measures a country's degree of wealth inequality.  In the latest ranking, the United States ranks as having the world's 46th worst level of wealth inequality.  The next worst of the prosperous democracies is Italy, conspicuously ranked at 92nd (giving the, perhaps-accurate, impression that the USA is twice as bad in this regard as any other comparable country).  Indeed, the non-USA rich democracies are clotted together among the better third of nations - from East Asia, Australia/NZ, Canada, and Western Europe.

You don't have to be a political scientist to get the message, per the crisis of American democracy. The USA is ranked alongside countries with either failed or fledgling democracies or that have no democratic tradition at all—clearly, democracy doesn't fit with countries with USA levels of wealth inequality.  The reason for this is equally obvious: when a few people own everything in a society, they don't want to bother with interference from the people.

As you can see, we have a problem on our hands.  Fortunately, the democratic tradition runs deep in American society—but it's up to us to save it, right now.

After all, even when it comes to redistributing wealth, it's hard to see how that can be achieved in the United States unless through democratic action (combined, no doubt, with the labor movement, which itself requires support through the democratic process).

Without our democracy, American society will truly be adrift. Now is the time to save it at all costs—and then let's set about using it right—getting money out of politics, supporting the labor movement, protecting the environment, taxing the wealthy, fully funding public education, establishing universal single payer health care, passing a $15 minimum wage, building a just society, fulfilling Dr. King's vision.

None of that is on the horizon, unless we short circuit the right-wing's assault on our democracy and our rights. That has to start now—with this election.

Vote and tell all of your family, friends, and co-workers to vote too.

Let's win this thing and get to work for the people and the planet!

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Alan Minsky.

The 2022 midterm election represents a unique and historic opportunity to protect our democracy and our right to equality before the law against an unrelenting offensive being waged by the reactionary right.

We must mobilize now and vote for democracy, equality before the law, and economic policies that support the vast majority of Americans—by voting for Democrats in the midterms.

In an unprecedented move, the Democratic Party has committed itself to altering the Senate filibuster to pass voting rights, protect democracy, and codify Roe v Wade—but to do so they must maintain a majority in the US House and gain two seats in the Senate for a majority of 52.

If the Republicans prevail, the opportunity to achieve these essential ends will be lost, possibly forever. For if the Democrats do not control Congress, there will be no checks on the Republicans who will use the next two years to implement laws in states across the country to pervert the electoral process to their advantage—with a goal of insuring continued Republican rule.

As I will argue below, we arrived at this place because of the tremendous degree of wealth inequality that has developed over the past four decades, which is not conducive to democracy but oligarchy—and our democracy is the best weapon we have to correct this egregious imbalance that is at the root of our seemingly interminable political crisis.

Therefore, we must mobilize now and vote for democracy, equality before the law, and economic policies that support the vast majority of Americans—by voting for Democrats in the midterms.

Simply put, there can be no false equivalences on these matters. Read the voting rights legislation that the Democratic Party is committed to passing: The John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the election-related components of the For the People Act.  All of it is straightforward common sense, designed to improve the operation of US elections, facilitating greater participation. None of it restricts voting or corrupts the process in a partisan manner.

Of course, these laws will achieve something else equally important. They will block the various ways that Republicans plan to pervert elections to their benefit—by purging voting rolls, by limiting access to voting, putting up barriers to registration, establishing arcane rules about how votes are processed, and even how elections are finalized—and this is to say nothing of widespread Republican support for Trump's Big Lie and the embrace of Authoritarian despots like Hungary's Victor Orban by Republican elites, including Tucker Carlson, arguably the most influential pundit in the country.

The difference between the two parties is night and day. Voting rights were one of the great achievements of the 1960s civil rights movement. However, the Right-wing Supreme Court turned its back on that historical accomplishment with its hideous 2013 Shelby County ruling.  The John Lewis Voting Rights Act re-establishes the central tenets of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  Even if no other matter were on the ballot this year, surely this is enough cause for every person who wants to live in a just, democratic society to cast a ballot this fall.

Similarly, the Democrats commitment to codifying Roe v Wade and re-establishing, by an act of Congress, a woman's right to control her own body as the law of the land should itself be cause for every person who believes in equality to vote Democratic—let alone the fact that it will literally save the lives of countless women.

I'm a Gen Xer, raised in the wake of second-generation feminism and the Roe decision. I do not know a single person who does not, as a matter fact and nature, accept the full equality of women and the right of all people to control their own bodies. Yet today this is not the law of the land. Who can possibly accept this? What kind of moronic troglodyte thinks that the State should rule over women's bodies? And why would anyone not vote if they understood that their vote would reverse this tyranny?

C'mon people. Wake up! If you're reluctant to vote Democrat in your local congressional race because the nominee is not the progressive you supported in the primary, you must recognize that you are not voting for the candidate in this election you are voting for a woman's right to choose and the preservation of democracy. Plain and simple. Sitting out this election is a sin against all that progressives, and people of conscience, have fought for over the past century and a half.

In recent elections, the Democrats mobilized unprecedented millions of Americans through fear of Donald Trump—now, the message is positive: elect Democrats to Congress in 2022 and they will make history, passing laws that will secure our democracy and ensure equality.

As a Progressive Democrat, I know well the recent history of broken promises by establishment Democrats, so I've done my due diligence, reaching out to Senators and Senate candidates. I can report that other than Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, all 47 returning Democrats are committed to supporting a filibuster “carve out" to pass voting rights and codify Roe v Wade. Incoming Vermont Senator Peter Welch feels the same, as do the Democratic nominees for Senate in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Florida. We need two of those five candidates to win (though all five would be great), combined with holding onto the House majority, to secure the passage of these historic bills.

With two glorious acts of Congress we will have set back the 60-year reactionary counter-offensive against the Civil Rights Movement and the rights of women like never before! It will be a glorious day for everyone in America and around the world who believes in Democracy and equality; and who has watched in horror as anti-democratic forces have gained strength around the world over the past decade. “No Pasaran!" we will declare! This is, and will remain, a democratic society with equality for all under the law!

On top of that, and of almost equal importance, is the fact that when the Democrats use a filibuster carve-out to overturn the rulings of an activist, politicized Supreme Court, it sets a powerful precedent that the Congress will no longer take a back seat to the courts in determining the law of the land when the two are in conflict.  Indeed, the Constitution is clear about the primary role of Congress—and by extension the people who elected Congress—in establishing laws.  By overruling the Shelby and Dobbs rulings—and confirming the 1965 Voting Rights Act and Roe v Wade—Congress itself will be asserting the country's commitment to democracy over autocracy, as embodied by a Supreme Court captured by the reactionary right.

But have no illusions, this has to happen now, in this election, or the opportunity will likely be lost! The Senate map for the 2024 election cycle is daunting, with Democrats defending 23 seats and the Republicans only 10.  The prospect of Democratic gains in the Senate in 2024 are next to nil—and Democrats need to control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency to pass this historic legislation. Two years of inaction, let alone four, when the right-wing courts are rampant seems unfathomable.  So, no matter whether your local Democratic candidate is a progressive champion or a milquetoast moderate, there's only one way to vote in 2022 (unless you don't give a damn about democracy or equality).

The 2022 midterms are indeed a moment of truth—so, why is this not a landslide? On the one hand there's the age-old problem of a Democratic Party unable to channel urgency or passion (perhaps because the “moderate" wing of the Party has been more interested in being stewards of the status quo than champions of the people), but on the other there's the reality of a turbulent economy. On both fronts we need to emulate Bernie Sanders, who is barnstorming the country in the final two weeks like no other politician in the country.

On economics, I am not naïve. I understand the insidious, vertigo-inducing impact of inflation on poor, working, and middle-class households—and the tendency to blame the incumbent party for economic woes. However, much like with the crisis of democracy and equality, the Democrats should be able to rout the Republicans on this matter because, as Bernie always highlights, only the Democrats have popular, positive proposals.

There are three main categories to address concerning inflation: 1. How to provide relief for besieged Americans 2. How to combat the immediate causes of inflation and 3. How to address the long term causes. On all three fronts the Democrats can run circles around the GOP.

First, only the Democrats will push through popular relief measures like the reintroduction of a $600 childhood tax credit, which would seriously help working households suffering because of inflation (and, of course, reduce child poverty).

Second, the Republicans would never touch the equally-popular Democratic proposal for a windfall tax on corporations, whose excessive profits are a major contributor to current inflation.  Not only will this measure force businesses to lessen their gouging of consumers, but the money raised by the tax can be paid directly to poor, working and middle-class households.

Lastly, the Democrats should be crowing about how, unlike Trump, they have passed no fewer than three major pieces of legislation (the Infrastructure Act, the Chips act, and the Inflation Reduction Act) that are revamping US manufacturing—and thus address one of the main causes of the current inflation: the supply-chain breakdowns that have plagued America and the world since the onset on the pandemic. Democrats should be shouting from the rooftops that they are the Party, not the Republicans, who are already bringing back high-wage manufacturing jobs to the US and helping make America immune to the higher costs created by broken supply chains.

Combine these three points about inflation with the urgency of protecting our democracy and equal rights for all citizens and, even at this late hour, these midterms should be a landslide for the Democrats—but, in closing, I want to take it one step further.

As mentioned briefly above, I think the roots of the right-wing's current offensive against American democracy lie in the cavernous divide in wealth distribution that has grown over the past four decades.

The United States now stands apart from every other rich industrialized democracy in the world in the “Gini Coefficient"rankings, which measures a country's degree of wealth inequality.  In the latest ranking, the United States ranks as having the world's 46th worst level of wealth inequality.  The next worst of the prosperous democracies is Italy, conspicuously ranked at 92nd (giving the, perhaps-accurate, impression that the USA is twice as bad in this regard as any other comparable country).  Indeed, the non-USA rich democracies are clotted together among the better third of nations - from East Asia, Australia/NZ, Canada, and Western Europe.

You don't have to be a political scientist to get the message, per the crisis of American democracy. The USA is ranked alongside countries with either failed or fledgling democracies or that have no democratic tradition at all—clearly, democracy doesn't fit with countries with USA levels of wealth inequality.  The reason for this is equally obvious: when a few people own everything in a society, they don't want to bother with interference from the people.

As you can see, we have a problem on our hands.  Fortunately, the democratic tradition runs deep in American society—but it's up to us to save it, right now.

After all, even when it comes to redistributing wealth, it's hard to see how that can be achieved in the United States unless through democratic action (combined, no doubt, with the labor movement, which itself requires support through the democratic process).

Without our democracy, American society will truly be adrift. Now is the time to save it at all costs—and then let's set about using it right—getting money out of politics, supporting the labor movement, protecting the environment, taxing the wealthy, fully funding public education, establishing universal single payer health care, passing a $15 minimum wage, building a just society, fulfilling Dr. King's vision.

None of that is on the horizon, unless we short circuit the right-wing's assault on our democracy and our rights. That has to start now—with this election.

Vote and tell all of your family, friends, and co-workers to vote too.

Let's win this thing and get to work for the people and the planet!

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Alan Minsky.

On Oct. 15, his father Trinh Ba Khiem went to Prison Camp No. 6 to visit his son, but was refused.

"I just went there on October 15 to ask about Trinh Ba Tu's health, but a police officer who covered Trinh Ba Tu's area answered 'normal'," said Khiem who is a former prisoner of conscience.

Ten days ago, Khiem visited the prison again to see his son. Prison authorities refused the visit and wouldn’t let Khiem provide food for his son on the grounds that Tu was still being disciplined.

During a visit last month Tu told his father he had been beaten and left in solitary confinement for 10 days with his feet shackled.  An unnamed prison official said Tu was disciplined "for writing false accusations." The official then told Khiem he could see Tu once in September and not at all in October.

Khiem said the family was very worried about the health of their second son.

“On Sept. 20, Trinh Ba Tu said he had been on hunger strike for 14 days,” Khiem said.

“Since that day, I have not heard any news… and I do not know if he has stopped his hunger strike or not."

According to Article 43 of the 2019 Law on Execution of Criminal Judgments there are three forms of discipline for prisoners: reprimand, warning, and detention in a solitary cell for up to 10 days. During their time in solitary, prisoners are not allowed to see their relatives and may have their feet shackled.

Last month, shortly after returning from prison, Trinh Ba Khiem filed a petition with the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security to request an investigation into his son’s beating but has received no response.

RFA called the prison on Monday to verify Khiem’s claims, but no one answered the phone.

Trinh Ba Tu, 33, along with his mother Can Thi Theu and his brother Trinh Ba Phuong have been land rights activists for many years.

Theu and her two sons were arrested on June 24, 2020 on charges of "conducting propaganda against the state." Theu and Tu were sentenced to eight years in prison and eldest son Phuong was sentenced to ten years.

Prison No. 6 is located in an area of the Central region with the harshest climate. Many former prisoners have told RFA the warden and guards treat prisoners of conscience extremely harshly.

In 2019, former teacher Dao Quang Thuc died in Prison No. 6 while serving a 13-year sentence. In August this year, citizen journalist Do Cong Duong also died there. Both men were healthy before being transferred to the prison camp.

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

Most recently, Hanoi activist Nguyen Thi Tam was transferred to Gia Trung Prison camp in Gia Lai province, nearly 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) from her home. Another activist from Vietnam’s capital, Trinh Ba Phuong, was taken to An Diem Prison camp in the central province of Quang Nam, 800 kilometers (497 miles) away from his home on Sept. 21, one month after the Higher People’s Court in Hanoi rejected his appeal and upheld his 10-year prison sentence in an appeal hearing in mid-August.

Phuong’s wife Do Thi Thu and his father-in-law and sister-in-law left their hometown in Hoa Binh province on the evening of Sept. 25 and did not arrive at the prison until the next morning.

“It took us 29 hours to get to the prison and back. The cost per person was at least VND1 million (U.S.$ 44) for both ways,” she said.

Also arrested on charges of "conducting anti-state propaganda" under Article 117 of the Criminal Code for human rights activities and speaking out about a police raid in Dong Tam commune in early 2020, Thu's mother-in-law and brother-in-law, Can Thi Theu, and her son Trinh Ba Tu were both sentenced to eight years in prison.

Theu is currently serving her sentence at Prison camp No. 5 in Yen Dinh district, Thanh Hoa province while Tu is serving his at Prison camp No. 6 in Thanh Chuong district, Nghe An province, neither of which is convenient for prison visits.

Thu said to save costs her father-in-law, former prisoner of conscience Trinh Ba Khiem, rode a motorbike from their family farm in Hoa Binh to the two prisons. It took him more than two hours to reach Prison camp No. 5, and 8 hours to get to Prison camp No. 6.

According to human rights organizations, Vietnam is holding hundreds of prisoners of conscience, although Hanoi has always insisted that there are none in Vietnam, only people who break the law.

It has been a long-running practice to send the vast majority of prisoners of conscience to serve their sentences far from their families. Those with families in the North are transferred to prisons in the Central region or the South, while those in the South are sent to the Central region or the North.

Truong Minh Duc, Vice President of the Brotherhood for Democracy was sentenced to 12 years in prison for subversion in 2018 and is currently being held at Prison camp No. 6 in Nghe An.

His wife Nguyen Kim Thanh said that from Ho Chi Minh City to Nghe An, she spends more than VND5 million (U.S.$ 211) on plane tickets, bus tickets and motorbike taxis every time. On the Lunar New Year and other public holidays, the cost of traveling to the prison may rise to over VND7 million (U.S.$ 295).

Prison No. 6 has an extremely harsh climate which affects prisoners’ health Thanh said:

“When it is sunny, the weather is too harsh. He [her husband] has to wet towels and clothes to hang on the window and his neck to cool it down,”she said.

“It would be very cold in winter because the prison is in a mountainous area. As the prison cell is not small, the cell is very cold due to wind.”

Because of bad weather conditions, Duc has headaches and high blood pressure in the hot season and colds and allergies in the winter.

Nguyen Tuong Thuy, Vice Chairman of the Independent Journalists Association of Vietnam, is serving an 11-year prison sentence at An Phuoc Prison camp in the southern province of Binh Duong. He was arrested in May 2020 on charges of "conducting propaganda against the state" in the same case as President Pham Chi Dung and editor Le Huu Minh Tuan.

His wife Pham Thi Lan takes at least two nights and one day to get from Hanoi to the prison and back, and it costs at least VND4 million (U.S.$ 168) if she can buy a cheap round-trip flight ticket between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. If she can't buy cheap airline tickets and has to get them from Vietnam Airlines, the cost can be up to VND7-8 million (U.S.$295-337) for a visit.

An activist commented that the transfer of prisoners of conscience to prisons far from their families makes prisoners unaccustomed to living in new climatic conditions, which leads to them getting sick more often, especially as prison medical care is limited. Sending them away to prison also makes it difficult for their families to find the time and money to visit.

Not all prisoners of conscience are sent a long way from their family homes. Journalist Le Van Dung (Le Dung Vova) was transferred to Nam Ha Prison camp after losing his appeal against a five-year prison sentence. His wife Bui Thi Hue said it takes her four hours and about VND1 million  (U.S.$ 42)  for each visit.

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

In it, the wife of prisoner of conscience Nguyen Bac Truyen said she was banned from leaving the country by the Vietnamese government to prevent her speaking in the U.S. about her husband's situation and the issue of religious persecution in Vietnam.

Nguyen Bac Truyen was arrested in July 2017 under the charge of "subversion" and was sentenced to 11 years in prison during a trial in Hanoi in April 2018.

Phuong told RFA she has been banned from leaving the country since 2019.

“In 2019, I was invited to attend a conference by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, but when I arrived at Tan Son Nhat Airport, I was blocked from leaving the country,” she said. “They said the reason I was stopped was for security, social order and safety reasons.

“I lodged a complaint with the Ministry of Public Security and the Immigration Department, and they replied giving the same reason."

Phuong said she has been invited every year since 2019 to attend a conference on religious freedom, and, although every year she still submits a complaint to the Ministry of Public Security to ask to be allowed to leave the country, she is not allowed to leave Vietnam.

“In 2020, I was also invited,” she said. “I applied to the Vietnamese Government to ask if I was allowed to leave the country, and they answered with the same reason. In 2021, I also filed a petition to prepare to leave the country to attend the conference but the COVID-19 pandemic occurred.”

“This year, before this conference, I also submitted a petition to the Ministry of Public Security and the Immigration Department, but until today they have remained silent.”

Her husband Nguyen Bac Truyen is an independent Hoa Hao Buddhist and an active human rights activist. When he was arrested, many organizations believed the arrest to be politically motivated and a case of religious persecution.

The International Religious Freedom Summit is an annual event. This year's conference runs from Tuesday to Thursday. Part of the program will be devoted to victims of religious persecution around the world to publicize and discuss their cases.

When asked about her feelings when being prevented from attending an international conference to fight for her husband, Ms. Bui Thi Kim Phuong said:

"Of course, deep down I am very angry and frustrated but, since I live in this regime, if they block me and I still go it will be very difficult since I am still living in this country."

She added that she still planned to speak out strongly to denounce the government persecution faced by her family and her religion.

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

Threats, intimidation and misogyny have long been a reality for women in public life around the world, and the pandemic appears to have amplified this toxic reality.

Aotearoa New Zealand is led by one of the world’s best-known female prime ministers, Jacinda Ardern, and was the first country in the world to grant all women the right to vote.

Yet even here today, attempts to silence, diminish and demean the prime minister, female MPs and other prominent women have plumbed new depths, leading to calls for more robust policing of violent online and offline behaviour.

• READ MORE: There are differences between free speech, hate speech and academic freedom — and they matter
• Academic freedom can’t be separated from responsibility
• From ‘pretty communist’ to ‘Jabcinda’ – what’s behind the vitriol directed at Jacinda Ardern?

Unfortunately, the phenomenon extends well beyond elected representatives and public health professionals into most workplaces, including academia.

Women working in universities, including those in positions of academic leadership, are also routinely subjected to online vitriol intended to shut them down — and thus to prevent them exercising their academic freedom to probe, question and test orthodox ways of making sense of the world.

One of the commonest defences of abusive or threatening language (online or not) is an appeal to everyone’s right to free speech.

And this has echoes within universities, too, when academic freedom becomes a testing ground of what is acceptable and what isn’t.

A duty to call it out
The international evidence indicates that almost all of this behaviour comes from men, some of them colleagues or students of the women concerned.

The abuse comes in various forms (such as trolling and rape or death threats) and takes place in a variety of settings, including conferences. It is enabled by, among other things, the hierarchical nature of universities, in which power is stratified and unequally distributed, including on the basis of gender.

Threatened scholars warn that online harassment risks academic freedom. Rebekah Tromble and Patricia Rossini feared for their safety when the conservative online world turned against them last summerhttps://t.co/FZYo1e8Qzf pic.twitter.com/WLPGRRzIe0

— Times Higher Education (@timeshighered) February 15, 2019

As male academics we have an obligation not just to call out these sorts of behaviour but also to identify some of the corrosive consequences of the misogyny directed against women academics, wherever they may work.

We need to use our own academic freedom to assess what can happen to that of academic women when digital misogyny passes unchecked.

Whose freedom to speak?
Misogyny in university settings takes place in a particular context: universities have a statutory obligation to serve as producers and repositories of knowledge and expertise, and to act as society’s “conscience and critic”.

Academic freedom is what enables staff and students to carry out the work through which these obligations are met. This specific type of freedom is a means to various ends, including testing and contesting perceived truths, advancing the boundaries of knowledge and talking truth to power.

It is intended to serve the public good, and must be exercised in the context of the “highest ethical standards” and be open to public scrutiny.

A great deal has been written about threats to academic freedom: intrusive or risk averse university managers, the pressures to commercialise universities’ operations, and governments bent on surveilling and stifling internal dissent are the usual suspects.

But when women academics are subjected to online misogyny, which is a common response when they exercise academic freedom, we are talking about a different kind of threat.

Opinion: Misgendering students is not “academic freedom.” It’s an abuse of power. https://t.co/AatNwzrnB1

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 1, 2021

Betrayal of academic freedom
The misogynists seek to silence, shut down, diminish and demean; to ridicule on the basis of gender, and to deride scholarship that doesn’t align with their own preconceptions of gender and body type.

Their behaviour is neither casual nor accidental. As journalist Michelle Duff put it, it is intended to intimidate “as part of a concentrated effort to suppress women’s participation in public and political life”.

Its aim is to achieve the obverse of the purpose of academic freedom: to maintain an unequal status quo rather than change it.

It is to the credit of women academics that the misogynists frequently fail. But sometimes the hostility does have a chilling effect. For a woman to exercise her academic freedom when she is the target of online threats to rape or kill requires considerable bravery.

Women who continue to test perceived truths, advance the boundaries of knowledge and speak truth to power under such conditions are academic exemplars. They are contributing to the public good at considerable personal cost.

‘Whaddarya?’
The online misogyny directed at women academics is taking place in a broader context in which violent language targeting individuals and minority groups is becoming increasingly graphic, normalised and visible.

We do not believe the misogynistic “righteous outrage” directed at academic women is justified under the statutory underpinnings of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech — within or beyond a university — is not absolute, and to the extent that it is invoked to cloak violent rhetoric against women, existing constraints on that freedom (which are better thought of as protections for the targets of misogyny) need strengthening.

Men who engage in online misogyny almost always speak from an (unacknowledged) position of privilege. Moreover, by hiding their sense of entitlement behind core democratic notions, their self-indulgence does all of us a disfavour.

With academic freedom comes the moral responsibility to challenge misogyny and not stay silent. What so many women across New Zealand’s tertiary sector are subject to poses a challenge to men everywhere.

The kind of conduct our women colleagues are routinely subjected to is the sort of behaviour at the heart of Greg McGee’s seminal critique of masculinity and masculine insecurity in New Zealand, the play Foreskin’s Lament. In the final scene of the play, the main character stares out at the audience and asks: “Whaddarya, whaddarya, whaddarya?”

He might have been asking the question of every man, including those of us who work in universities.

Dr Richard Shaw is professor of politics, Massey University; Dr Andrew Dickson is senior lecturer, Massey University; Dr Bevan Erueti, senior lecturer — Health Promotion/Associate Dean — Māori, Massey University; Dr Glenn Banks is professor of geography and head of school, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University; Dr John O’Neill, head of the Institute of Education te Kura o Te Mātauranga, Massey University, and Dr Roger McEwan is senior lecturer, Massey University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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