In international law Palestinians, living under a brutal occupation, have a legal right to all forms of resistance – including that of armed struggle. It is argued that in designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation Britain’s actions are politically motivated and have rendered them complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas only operates within Israel and has never been a threat to Britain. Designating Hamas as a terrorist organisation within the U.K. will likely have come at the behest of Israel, US and Zionist organisations who openly support Israel’s racist, colonial settler aspirations to establish a Jewish State over all of historic Palestine and beyond.

During the free and fair elections in 2006, Palestinians, in both Gaza and the occupied territories of West Bank, overwhelmingly voted for Hamas as their government. While the Palestinian Authority has retained power in the West Bank, Hamas is the recognised government within Gaza and is responsible for all public services in Gaza, including schools, police and hospitals. As such, anyone working in the public sector is deemed by Israel to be ‘Hamas’ and is regarded by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force, as a legitimate military target. As the genocide of Palestinians has continued into its third calendar year, several Israeli officials have stated that all of the civilian population are legitimate military targets because of the wide support Hamas received from the people. This mass criminalisation of a civilian population, including its children and babies, is used by Israel to justify the slaughter that we are witnessing on a daily basis. The ethnic cleansing that began with the establishment of Israel in 1948, is in its final stages of clearing the land of its native Palestinian population.

The submission presented by the legal team makes reference to Nelson Mandela, who during his resistance of South Africa’s racist apartheid policies, was labelled as a terrorist by Margaret Thatcher’s British Government. The comparison is apt. These politically motivated labels serve to justify the criminal behaviour of oppressive brutal regimes. In South Africa the racism and labels led to the displacement of millions of blacks and the imprisonment and slaughter of those who stood up for freedom and dignity. Today Nelson Mandela is considered to be a hero and before his death, was welcomed into Britain as an honoured statesman. In the U.K. racism, discrimination and incitement to violence through ‘hate speech’ is now deemed to be a crime.

Zionism is Israel’s official racist policy. Palestinians are regarded as lesser beings, frequently subjected to military incursions, detention, murder and humiliating checks in the occupied territories of the West Bank. The refugees of 1948, who fled into Gaza, having had their land and homes stolen, are imprisoned in a small enclave without adequate support for life. For almost 20years there has been a growing crisis where potable water, food and medicine have become scarce commodities resulting in starvation and chronic disease amongst its most vulnerable – the old and the young. The people of Gaza have been subjected to ongoing displacement, bombing raids and military incursions, since 2006. This current Israeli crime of genocide – ‘Sending Gaza back to the stone age’, has left hundreds of thousands dead, families without shelter and is seen as Israel’s final extermination of an honourable people whose crime is to be the rightful ancestral inhabitants of the land.

After a case was brought by the Government of South Africa, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is guilty of plausible genocide. This means that governments and individuals are charged with a responsibility to do everything within their power to bring a halt to the genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for their participation in war crimes. Other non-governmental organisations have attempted to bring about further charges of complicity to war crimes and genocide, against several Western leaders.

People around the world have watched in horror as this holocaust is being played out in real time. This legal case is of immense importance in a first step toward putting things right. Britain has a special responsibility toward contributing to a just closure to this tragedy because of its historical role in the setting up of this hundred year plus, colonial settler project. Continuing to be subservient to Israel, US and Zionist power groups, the British Government is not acting in the interests of the British people. They are acting in the interests of a foreign state. By taking a leadership role in de-proscribing Hamas as a terrorist organisation, Britain would go some way toward public recognition of the historical harm Britain has done to the Palestinians.The Government’s continued support of Israel’s crimes by military assistance and cover by giving ‘legal legitimacy’ to an otherwise murderous enterprise, must end. It is a violation of human rights and a violation of sovereignty that brings shame down upon all of us.

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

According to several news reports, many of NOAA's websites will go offline beginning at midnight due to the cancelation of a cloud service contract. The main site, NOAA.gov, is expected to be unaffected. This is the latest purge of publicly accessible, lifesaving scientific information and cuts to research budgets across the federal government.

Below is a statement by Dr. Juan Declet-Barreto, senior social scientist for climate vulnerability in the Climate and Energy Program at UCS:

“If this disruptive and reckless move by the Trump administration goes forward, vital research information will disappear from public view, depriving the public and businesses of critical weather and climate information that helps guide services such as shipping and aviation. Far from providing cost savings, this is a broadside assault on taxpayer-funded investments in science and the infrastructure needed to support it.

“Together with continuing indiscriminate staff and budget cuts at NOAA and its National Weather Service, gutting technological resources needed for the agency to conduct and communicate its world-class scientific research will have devastating consequences. Losing public access to this vital information is an existential threat to the work of those who rely on it to help prepare and protect communities, critical infrastructure, and commerce.

“This research and information were paid for by taxpayers and belongs in the public domain. This threat is the newest chapter of the Trump administration’s unrelenting assault on scientific research, government services and public information that will have dangerous impacts across the nation and the world.

“We urge Commerce Secretary Lutnick to reverse this decision before it takes force, or he will bear responsibility for enabling this attack on NOAA. Congress too must raise the alarm and demand accountability on behalf of people across the country.”

Additional Resources:

• The blogpost “We Need a Strong and Independent NOAA to Protect Our Lives and Homes from Climate Change.”
• The blogpost "A Day Without NOAA, a Day Without the National Weather Service?"
• Open letter organized by UCS and signed by more than 2,500 scientific experts, which was sent to Congress and the Commerce Secretary urging protection of NOAA.

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

Image by Johannes Plenio.

One bright spot amidst all the terrible news last couple of months was the market’s reaction to DeepSeek, with BigTech firms like Nvidia and Microsoft and Google taking major hits in their capitalizations. Billionaires Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Oracle’s Larry Ellison—who had, just a few days back, been part of Donald Trump’s first news conference—lost a combined 48 billion dollars in paper money. As a good friend of mine, who shall go unnamed because of their use of an expletive, said “I hate all AI, but it’s hard to not feel joy that these asshats are losing a lot of money.”

Another set of companies lost large fractions of their stock valuations: U.S. power, utility and natural gas companies. Electric utilities like Constellation, Vistra and Talen had gained stock value on the basis of the argument that there would be a major increase in demand for energy due to data centers and AI, allowing them to invest in new power plants and expensive nuclear projects (such as small modular reactor), and profit from this process. [The other source of revenue, at least in the case of Constellation, was government largesse.] The much lower energy demand from DeepSeek, at least as reported, renders these plans questionable at best.

Remembering Past Ranfare

But we have been here before. Consider, for example, the arguments made for building the V. C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina. That project came out of the hype cycle during the first decade of this century, during one of the many so-called nuclear renaissances that have been regularly announced since the 1980s. [In 1985, for example, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Alvin Weinberg predicted such a renaissance and a second nuclear era—that is yet to materialize.] During the hype cycle in the first decade of this century, utility companies proposed constructing more than 30 reactors, of which only four proceeded to construction. Two of these reactors were in South Carolina.

As with most nuclear projects, public funding was critical. The funding came through the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the main legislative outcome from President George W. Bush’s push for nuclear power, which offered several incentives, including production tax credits that were valued at approximately $2.2 billion for V. C. Summer.

The justification offered by the CEO of the South Carolina Electric & Gas Company to the state’s Public Service Commission was the expectation that the company’s energy sales would increase by 22 percent between 2006 and 2016, and by nearly 30 percent by 2019. In fact, South Carolina Electric & Gas Company’s energy sales declined by 3 percent by the time 2016 rolled in. [Such mistakes are standard in the history of nuclear power. In the 1970s, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and utility companies were projecting that “about one thousand large nuclear power reactors” would be built “by the year 2000 and about two thousand, mostly breeder reactors, by 2010” on the basis of the grossly exaggerated estimates of how rapidly electricity production would grow during the same period. It turned out that “utilities were projecting four to nine times more electric power would be produced in the United States by nuclear power in 2000 than actually happened”.] In the case of South Carolina, the wrong projection about energy sales was the basis of the $9 billion plus spent on the abandoned V. C. Summer project.

The Racket Continues

With no sense of shame for that failure, one of the two companies involved in that fiasco recently expressed an interest in selling this project. On January 22, Santee Cooper’s President and CEO wrote, “We are seeing renewed interest in nuclear energy, fueled by advanced manufacturing investments, AI-driven data center demand, and the tech industry’s zero-carbon targets…Considering the long timelines required to bring new nuclear units online, Santee Cooper has a unique opportunity to explore options for Summer Units 2 and 3 and their related assets that could allow someone to generate reliable, carbon emissions-free electricity on a meaningfully shortened timeline”.

A couple of numbers to put those claims about timelines in perspective: the average nuclear reactor takes about 10 years to go from the beginning of construction—usually marked by when concrete is poured into the ground—to when it starts generating electricity. But one cannot go from deciding to build a reactor to pouring concrete in the ground overnight. It takes about five to ten years needed before the physical activities involved in building a reactor to obtain the environmental permits, and the safety evaluations, carry out public hearings (at least where they are held), and, most importantly, raise the tens of billions of dollars needed. Thus, even the “meaningfully shortened timeline” will mean upwards of a decade.

Going by the aftermath of the Deepseek, the AI and data center driven energy demand bubble seems to have crashed on a timeline far shorter than even that supposedly “meaningfully shortened timeline”. There is good reason to expect that this AI bubble wasn’t going to last, for there was no real business case to allow for the investment of billions. What DeepSeek did was to also show that the billions weren’t needed. As Emily Bender, a computer scientist who co-authored the famous paper about large language models that coined the term stochastic parrots, put it: “The emperor still has no clothes, but it’s very distressing to the emperor that their non-clothes can be made so much more cheaply.”

But utility companies are not giving up. At a recent meeting organized by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying organization for the nuclear industry, the Chief Financial Officer of Constellation Energy, the company owning the most nuclear reactors in the United States, admitted that the DeepSeek announcement “wasn’t a fun day” but maintained that it does not “change the demand outlook for power from the data economy. It’s going to come.” Likewise, during an “earnings call” earlier in February, Duke Energy President Harry Sideris maintained that data center hyperscalers are “full speed ahead”.

Looking Deeper

Such repetition, even in the face of profound questions about whether such a growth will occur is to be expected, for it is key to the stock price evaluations and market capitalizations of these companies. The constant reiteration of the need for more and more electricity and other resources also adopts other narrative devices shown to be effective in a wide variety of settings, for example, pointing to the possibility that China would take the lead in some technological field or the other, and explicitly or implicitly arguing how utterly unacceptable that state of affairs would be. Never asking whether it even matters who wins this race for AI. These tropes and assertions about running out of power contribute to creating the economic equivalent of what Stuart Hall termed “moral panic”, thus allowing possible opposition to be overruled.

One effect of this slew of propaganda has been the near silence on the question of whether such growth of data centers or AI is desirable, even though there is ample evidence of the enormous environmental impacts of developing AI and building hyperscale data centers. Or for that matter the desirability of nuclear power.

As Lewis Mumford once despaired: “our technocrats are so committed to the worship of the sacred cow of technology that they say in effect: Let the machine prevail, though the earth be poisoned, the air be polluted, the food and water be contaminated, and mankind itself be condemned to a dreary and useless life, on a planet no more fit to support life than the sterile surface of the moon”.

But, of course, we live in a time of monsters. At a time when the levers of power are wielded by a megalomaniac who would like to colonize Mars, and despoil its already sterile environment.

The post Continued Propaganda About AI and Nuclear Power appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by M.V. Ramana.

The letter noted that the National Security Service (NSS) intelligence agency has been responsible for attacks on human rights defenders and journalists, including editor Emmanuel Monychol Akop, who has been in NSS custody since November 2024. South Sudanese authorities have failed to fully implement a 2018 peace agreement, signed following years of civil war, and postponed general elections, the first since South Sudan’s 2011 independence. 

During its upcoming February 24- April 4 session, the UNHRC should adopt a strong resolution addressing human rights in South Sudan and UN’s Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan’s mandate, the letter urges. The Commission’s mandate, tasked to “collect and preserve evidence of, and clarify responsibility for alleged gross violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes,” in South Sudan, expires in April.

Read the full letter in English and French. 

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

Bekirov, who is an ethnic Crimean Tatar from Ukraine’s Russian-occupied region of Crimea, was a correspondent for independent Russian news website Grani and reported on Russian authorities’ raids and trials of Crimean Tatars for Crimean Solidarity’s YouTube channel before he was sentenced to 19 years in prison in March 2022.

“The harsh treatment of Remzi Bekirov in prison is indicative of the plight of jailed Crimean Tatar journalists whom Russian authorities punish with lengthy prison terms on fabricated terrorism charges in retaliation for their reporting on human rights abuses in the occupied Crimea,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Russian authorities must immediately release Remzi Bekirov and all other jailed Ukrainian journalists and ensure their safe return to their homeland.”

Bekirov is imprisoned at a penal colony in Russia’s southern Siberia region of Khakassia on charges of organizing the activities of a terrorist organization and “preparing for a violent seizure of power,” according to his lawyer, Emil Kurbedinov, who spoke to CPJ, and Crimean Solidarity, a human rights organization that reports on politically motivated cases. The IK-33 colony is located in the region’s capital, Abakan, more than 4,000 km from his home in Ukraine’s Crimea.

Bekirov “receives heightened scrutiny,” including strict monitoring of his correspondence, regular cell searches, and being placed in solitary confinement five times since his transfer to IK-33 in August 2024, Kurbedinov told CPJ, adding that Bekirov was in solitary as of September 13.

CPJ’s email to the press office of Russia’s Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments requesting verification and details about Bekirov’s treatment did not receive a response. CPJ’s call to the Crimean branch of the Russian Ministry of Interior did not go through.

Kurbedinov said Bekirov appeared particularly frightened during their recent meeting, which a prison administrator monitored. Kurbedinov said Bekirov’s detention far from Crimea is harmful and “intentional,” making visits from family and attorneys difficult.

Since Russian authorities cracked down on independent media in Crimea after annexing the peninsula in 2014, many have engaged in “citizen journalism,” particularly focused on human rights issues affecting Crimean Tatars.

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

With Ukraine looking desperately bloodied at the hands of their Russian counterparts, the horizon of the conflict had seemingly shrunk of late.  Fatigue and desperation had set in.  Washington seemed more interested in sending such musically illiterate types as the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kyiv for moral cuddling rather than suitably murderous military hardware.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, mindful of the losses inflicted on his own side in the conflict, thought it opportune to spring the question of peace talks.  On June 14, while speaking with members of the Russian Foreign Ministry, he floated the idea that Russia would cease combat operations “immediately” if Ukraine abandoned any aspirations of joining NATO and withdrew its troops from the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Rather than refrigerate the conflict into its previous frozen phase, Putin went further.  It would end provided that Kyiv accepted Moscow’s sovereign control over the four regions as “new territorial realities”.  Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine would also be afforded protections; sanctions imposed by Western states would be lifted.  “Today,” he stated, “we have put forward another concrete, genuine peace proposal.  If Kyiv and Western capitals reject it as they have in the past, they will bear political and moral responsibility of the ‘continuation of the bloodshed.’”

He further added that, as soon as Ukraine began withdrawing its military personnel from Donbas and Novorossiya, with an undertaking not to join NATO, “the Russian Federation will cease fire and be ready for negotiations.  I don’t think it will take long.”

Length and duration, however, remain the signal attributes of this murderous gambit.  Ukraine’s defeat and humbling is unacceptable for the armchair strategists in the US imperium, along with their various satellites.  NATO’s obsessive expansion cannot be thwarted, nor can the projection of Washington’s influence eastwards from Europe.  And as for the defence contractors and companies keen to make a killing on the killings, they must also be considered.

This was unpardonable for the interests of the Biden administration.  The Washington War Gaming Set must continue.  Empires need their fill, their sullied pound of flesh.  Preponderance of power comes in various forms: direct assault against adversaries (potentially unpopular for the voters), proxy enlistment, or the one degree removed sponsorship of a national state or entity as a convenient hitman.  Ukraine, in this sense, has become the latter, a repurposed, tragic henchman for US interests, shedding blood in patriotic gore.

In keeping with that gore, US President Joe Biden, in announcing a funding package for Ukraine from the G7 group, promised that “democracies can deliver”.  The amount on the ledger: $US50 billion.  “We are putting our money to work for Ukraine, and giving another reminder to Putin that we are not backing down.”  That particular amount is derived from frozen Russian assets outside Russian territory, most of it from the Russian Central Bank amounting to US$280 billion.  The circumstances of such freezing will, in future, be the subject of numerous dissertations and legal challenges, but that very fact suggests that Ukraine’s allies are tiring from drawing from their own budgets.  We support you, but we also hate to see the money of our taxpayers continually splurged on the enterprise.

Biden’s remarks from the Hotel Masseria San Domenico in Fasano have a haunting quality of repetition when it comes to US support for doomed causes and misguided goals.  The fig leaf, when offered, can be withdrawn at any given movement: South Vietnam, doomed to conquest at the hands of North Vietnam; Afghanistan, almost inevitably destined to be recaptured by the Taliban; Kurds the Marsh Arabs, pet projects for US strategists encouraged to revolt only to be slaughtered in betrayal.

Thus goes Biden: “A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now and to deter future aggression anytime […] in the future,” Biden explains, drawing from the echo of Vietnamisation and any such exultation of an indigenous cause against a wicked enemy.   The idea here: strengthen Ukrainian defence and deterrence while not sending US troops.  In other words, we pay you to die.

The NATO disease, poxy and draining, rears its head.  Weapons and ammunition are to be provided to Ukraine along with the expansion of “intelligence-sharing” and training while “enhancing interoperability between our militaries in line with NATO standards”.  Money is to be put into Ukraine’s own defence industry so that they can duly “supply their own weapons and munitions”.  In the floral bouquet, a cautionary note is appended.  “In terms of longer range of weapons into the interior of Russia we are not changing our positions.”  Killing is always a matter of quantum, and calculation.  The note for Kyiv is clear: use the weapons but do so carefully.

As for the logistics of finance, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan is already voicing concerns about the complexity of the funding venture.  “The simple proposition is we got to put these assets to work.  The complex proposition is how you do that specifically.”

While Putin has turned his nose up at the UN Charter in its solemn affirmation of the sovereignty of states, Washington has taken its own wrecking ball to the text.  It has meddled, fiddled and tampered with the internal affairs of states while accusing Russia of the very same thing.  Spiteful of history and its bitter lessons, it has employed such saboteurs as former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to undertake such tasks, poking the Russian Bear while courting and seducing the Ukrainian establishment.  The horror is evident for all to see, and unlikely to halt.

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

WATCH THE PRESS CONFERENCE

Since the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, right-wing politicians have continued their assault on our democracy by introducing voter suppression bills in Congress and state legislatures across the country, spreading false election conspiracy theories, harassing and threatening election workers, and attempting to overturn election results they disagree with.

Today’s speakers called for accountability, defending the rule of law, and the urgent need for federal democracy reform to protect Americans’ freedom to vote. Here’s what they had to say ahead of the third anniversary of the failed coup:

“The vast majority of the American people believe in democratic institutions and believe in free and fair elections. It is only authoritarian parties which take the position that they can't lose an election,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD). “The struggle that began on January 6 in this building continues to this day.”

“January 6 was a wake up call—we've got to get back on track with respect to making sure that the big lie that's been told over and over again by Donald Trump and many of his members of the Republican Party—the public needs to hear the truth about that,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD). “The people who broke into [the U.S. Capitol ]that day and caused damage, disrupted the democratic process and tried to actually overthrow the democracy that day—they all have to be held accountable.”

“On January 6, three years ago tomorrow, the U.S. Capitol was attacked by individuals seeking to overturn democratic form of government while President Trump refused to send in the DC National Guard to the Capitol. The Metropolitan Police Department voluntarily responded protecting the Capitol, Congress, and democracy itself,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC).

“We're here to commemorate something that was not okay… something that went beyond disruptive, something that was lethally dangerous not just to the brave officers who fought to protect the heart of our Capitol—but to every American who's striving to build a life of purpose and satisfaction,” said Svante Myrick, President, People For the American Way. “If we fight through this year, in 2024, we can keep safe everything we hold dear—because our democracy is not an abstract fact—our democracy is the key to keeping us all safe.”

“The [January 6] insurrection disrupted the peaceful transition of presidential power for the first time in our nation's history. The gravity of this situation cannot be overstated,” said Donald Sherman, Executive Vice President & Chief Counsel, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “We hope that our leaders across the street and across the nation are listening and will vindicate the Constitution and reaffirm that no one is above the law.”

“We need to continue to hold accountable the perpetrators of the Big Lie and, of course, we must eventually pass legislation in the form of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” said Lisa Gilbert, Executive Vice President at Public Citizen. “Together, we can all make sure that we don't repeat these mistakes, that we have a robust democracy that is backed up by the confidence of the American people that can hold criminal actors accountable, and one where our elections are safe.”

“The Big Lie continues to this day. It's resulted in voter suppression laws across the country. It resulted in decreased resources for Boards of Elections to do their job,” said Dustin Czarny, Elections Commissioner of the Onondaga County Board of Elections and Democratic Caucus Chair of the New York State Elections Commissioner Association. “I'm hopeful that we could see legislation in this next year in the States and in the federal government and resources directed, so that those boards of elections can do their job in a safe and accurate manner and deliver the voice of the American people to the ballot box and give them their choice in this election.”

“On January 6 2021, insurrectionists were incited by MAGA extremism to attack the U.S. Capitol—the standing symbol for democracy in this country—and the events on that day were horrific, a traumatic event for all of us,” said José Morales Jr., a spokesperson for Courage for America. “We cannot allow false narratives, misinformation, and extremism win. We have to tell the truth.”

“[January 6] wasn't just an attack on a building—it was an attack on every vote cast, every voice, every principle that America was built upon,” said Naveed Shah, a veteran and Political Director of Common Defense. “Those who incited, aided, and abetted the insurrection must face the full consequences of their actions.”

“January 6 was not a protest. January 6 was an insurrection. It was a violent attack on our democracy that silenced the will of the voters and the American people. We can't let January 6 happen again. Our democracy can't stand it, and our environment can’t afford it,” said Justin Kwasa, Democracy Program Director for the League of Conservation Voters. “We're asking Congress, we're asking the courts, [and] we're asking the administration to do everything in their power in order to ensure that the horrors of 2021 aren't repeated again.”

“Tomorrow marks three years since the attack on the very Capitol building that stands behind us. Not only was it an attack on the building, but in a larger sense, it was also an attack on our democracy. It was an attack on the very concept that free people can elect their own leaders in pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness and know that the peaceful transfer of power will occur when the time comes,” said Tishan Weerasooriya, Senior Associate, Policy & Political Affairs, Stand Up America.

“Tomorrow is going to be a solemn day, not only for myself, but for many of my colleagues who almost three years ago defended the Capitol against the mob. I did what I did, and my colleagues did what they did—not because we were seeking accolades, awards, or a medal, but because it was our duty and our job to defend this country,” said Aquilino Gonell, former U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant.

To speak with a Not Above the Law coalition member, please email Ryan Thomas at ryan@zpstrategies.com.

The Not Above the Law coalition is made up of more than 150 organizations—ranging from legal, national security, netroots, and more—committed to protecting our democracy and fighting for the rule of law.

The Declaration for American Democracy is a coalition of over 250+ organizations from the labor, racial justice, voting rights, faith, environmental, women’s rights, good government, and many other important communities, representing tens of millions of Americans.

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

The post #22 – Public Health Threatened by Beef Suppliers’ Continued Use of “Critically Important” Antibiotics appeared first on Project Censored.

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

What happened is, the prosecutor visited my blog and read a column I published in July, The Criminalization of Dissent (Revisited), which included screenshots of the alleged “hate-crime” Tweets that the original criminal investigation is based on, and that resulted in the Order of Punishment that the Berlin District Court handed down two weeks ago. So, the prosecutor opened a new criminal investigation and sent my attorney an official notice explaining the gravity of the additional charges.

The charges are of the utmost gravity. I am officially accused of “relativizing” or “minimizing” the crimes of the Nazis … by republishing the two Tweets that I originally tweeted.

Here, once again, are the Tweets …

Yes, that’s right, I just published them again. I am going to explain why I published them again.

I’m not going to explain the Tweets again. I have explained them in several previous columns. I have explained them to Matt Taibbi of Racket News, Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone, James Freeman, Patrick Henningsen, Elena Louisa Lange, Dirk Pohlmann, and Christine Black at Brownstone Institute (forgive me if I’m forgetting anyone). I explained them to Stefan Millius of Weltwoche, and to another journalist at a big Swiss newspaper. My attorney has explained them, in German, to the prosecutor, and to German audiences on Kontrafunk. RT published a piece explaining them. I believe they have been exhaustively explained.

Not that they ever really needed explanation. You would have to be a certified moron to believe they “minimized,” or “relativized,” or in any way made light of the crimes of the Nazis. You and I are not certified morons. Neither is the Berlin State Prosecutor. Neither is the District Court of Berlin. Not to put too fine a point on it, the charges are horseshit, and everyone involved knows it. They are a blatant pretext to crackdown on dissent.

OK, now let me explain why I just published the Tweets again, knowing full well that the Berlin State Prosecutor is probably going to read this column, become extremely agitated, and charge me with additional “hate crimes.”

No, I am not a glutton for punishment. I’m not at all enjoying my introduction to the so-called “German legal system.” It is taking up my time. It is making me angry. It is upsetting my wife, which I do not appreciate. It is costing me a lot of money. It has forced me to ask other people for money, which is something I do not like to do. It’s screwing with my sleep. It is distracting me from my work. And so on. Which is exactly the point.

The goal of horseshit prosecutions like mine (and those of many other dissidents currently) is (a) to punish us for speaking out against “New Normal” totalitarianism by making our lives as miserable as possible, (b) to make examples of us to discourage others from speaking out, and (c) to intimidate us into shutting the fuck up.

Totalitarians, fascists, and other power freaks are essentially just glorified schoolyard bullies. They may cloak themselves in the mantle of the law, but their modus operandi is brute force. Beneath all the bullshit, their message is simple: “either do what we say, or we will hurt you.”

OK, prepare yourself, because I’m going to give you some advice. I do not generally like to do that, but, in this case, I’m going to make an exception.

Never, ever, give in to a bully. The second you do, that bully owns you. What the bully wants, more than whatever he is demanding, more than anything else in the world, is your fear. The bully interprets your fear as respect, because the bully doesn’t understand respect. The bully craves your fear, and your obedience, because they reify the bully’s “authority.” They enable the bully to feel powerful and important. The bully needs to feel “powerful” and “important” because the bully feels weak and unimportant, and afraid. All fascists are essentially cowards. They are cowards, and nihilists, who hate themselves, and fear themselves, and hate and fear life, which is why they are so obsessed with controlling everything.

The point is, never give in to a bully. Never reify a bully’s “authority.” If you do, you will find yourself sucked into the bully’s sadistic, nihilistic “reality.” You will be playing by the bully’s rules. And that is all “reality” actually is, a set of rules we agree to play by, or, in this case, do not agree to play by.

So, getting back to my criminal case, and the Berlin State Prosecutor’s latest attempt to bully me into shutting up and demonstrating my “respect” for the “authority” and “power” of the Berlin State Prosecutor, fuck that. I do not respond well to threats. I do not take orders from totalitarians and fascists, or any other type of authoritarians or bullies. So that is why I have republished those Tweets, and why I will continue to republish those Tweets every time the German authorities threaten me with additional criminal charges for refusing to obey their “authority.”

Again, I am under no illusions. I expect the prosecutor to file new charges and issue further threats, which I will defy, which will lead to additional charges, and so on. I am not looking forward to that, but I don’t have any other choice, not if I want to be able to respect myself.

If you have any doubts about whether that will happen (i.e., an endless cycle of new bullshit criminal charges stemming from my repeated refusal to respond to the German authorities’ bullying), well, let me tell you about another dissident the German authorities are currently persecuting. I’ll do it quickly, and then I’ll let you go.

As many of my readers are aware, I am presently holed up in an undisclosed location in the Italian countryside. Michael Ballweg, the founder and lead organizer of the “Querdenken” movement, was also here for a while. Michael, who is an excellent cook, whipped up some delicious “extremist” dinners, after which we all sat around “denying Covid,” “conspiracy theorizing,” brainwashing each other with “Russian propaganda,” and “delegitimizing the state,” and so on. Late at night, when the other “extremists” were sleeping, Michael and I discussed our criminal cases.

Michael’s case is a bit more serious than mine. Michael just spent nine months in jail. The German authorities have seized his assets, and frozen all his funds, so he is homeless, and bankrupt, and they are prosecuting him for attempted fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, or, in other words, for launching a protest movement. If you’re not familiar with Michael and Querdenken, you can read the official propaganda disseminated by the usual “mainstream” media or the Intelligence officers who edit Wikipedia, or … here’s a Spiked article to start you off. Then, go ahead, do your own research.

The most absurd aspect of Michael’s case is the German authorities’ “theory of his crimes.” According to this theory, Michael’s devious scheme was to commit serious fraud by … well, basically, launching a nationwide protest movement that was certain to get a ton of media attention and incur the wrath of the German authorities. As any criminal mastermind will confirm, the best way to commit major fraud is to absolutely infuriate the government by organizing a series of massive protests, and generate tons of media attention, because you definitely want as much publicity as possible while you are defrauding your unsuspecting supporters of their voluntary donations to your cause.

Seriously, this is their “theory of the crime,” which would make Michael Ballweg the most idiotic and incompetent fraudster in the history of fraud.

I could go on about his case, and mine, or those of the numerous other dissidents that are currently being made examples of, and about the broader GloboCap crackdown on dissent, which is happening, not just in New Normal Germany, but all throughout the New Normal Reich, but I need to end here and go water some plants. I am serving as “caretaker” of this thoughtcriminal sanctuary, and I take my responsibilities seriously.

I’ll keep you (and the Berlin State Prosecutor) posted on my further “hate crimes.” In the meantime, best wishes from somewhere in Italy!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by C.J. Hopkins.

This past weekend saw not only ongoing rescue operations in the country's flood-ravaged northern region, but also the central and southwestern regions battling persistent rainfall. These have resulted in tens of thousands of people being displaced. 

A mudslide on the fringes of Xi'an, a central Chinese city, claimed at least two lives on Friday. In addition, state media confirmed the evacuation of 81,000 people from high-risk areas in Sichuan Province.

The absence of Xi during these difficult times, fueled online discontent. Xi was last seen in public on July 31, just three days after Typhoon Doksuri struck China, when he appeared on television in Beijing for a military promotion event. Chinese netizens were already riled in the first week of August when the Communist Party boss of Hebei Province called on the people of the province to stand firm as a “good moat” of protection for Beijing.

Radio Free Asia's Mandarin Service highlighted netizens sharing visuals of former Chinese leaders, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Notably, footage captured Hu assisting soldiers and Premier Li Keqiang through the flooded fields of Chongqing.

Lin Shengliang, a Chinese dissident in the Netherlands, told RFA Mandarin that the absence of top leaders on-site during disasters reflects arrogance of power.

“It proves that he [Xi Jinping] is firmly in control, a manifestation of arrogant power. He's not even willing to stage-manage [relief and rescue efforts].”

According to Lin, Xi’s absence could have a detrimental impact on subsequent rescue and post-disaster reconstruction efforts.

“If the highest national leader doesn’t go to the scene or doesn't attach importance to the matter, how can those below take it seriously?” asked Lin. “Even if they do take it seriously, it’s just putting on a show for the higher-ups.”

Mixed messages

Unlike reporting in the West on extreme weather – most recently, apocalyptic fires in Hawaii in which close to 100 perished, a number that is expected to grow – “climate change” is apparently a taboo subject for Chinese state media.

As The Economist recently noted that Chinese reporting on natural disasters tends to dwell “on heroics by soldiers, officials and rescue teams,” while Chinese social media users mutter on the sidelines about official incompetence.

Meanwhile, state media commentary on the official response to the latest disasters has been confusing even for those well-versed in the People’s Daily – a state media source of news and commentary that is seen as an opaque window into the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party. 

An RFA Mandarin commentary referenced the People’s Daily: “If one cannot lead by example and take the initiative, how can others truly be convinced and willing to follow?” It asked, “Who is the article referring to?”

The People’s Daily on Aug. 10 featured, “Without leadership, there is no compliance; without leading by example, there is no trust – general secretary’s wisdom in quotations.” Another article read, “At critical moments, leading from the front line... in flood control and disaster relief.” With Xi Jinping as the CCP's general secretary, social media debates emerged, questioning if these were “high-level criticism.”

RFA Mandarin pointed out that leaders like Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao consoled the public during disasters. However, since Xi's leadership, he hasn’t visited affected areas.

“Isn't this exactly what the article means by 'If one cannot lead by example and take the initiative, how can others truly be convinced and willing to follow?’” the commentary said. 

New York City University professor of political science, Xia Ming, told RFA Mandarin that, regardless of how recent pronouncements in the People’s Daily are read, Xi Jinping is confronting a leadership crisis, with his tight grip on the inner government indicating concerns for his safety.

“The grievances of the Chinese people are significant right now. If he were to confront the people face to face at present, the cost of maintaining stability would be high” he said. “They would certainly need to arrange actors from the masses, and that would backfire rather than achieve the desired effect.”

‘Government deceit’

Former Tiananmen student leader-turned-China politics watcher Wang Dan wrote for RFA last week that flooded cities in Hebei Province were classic examples of “man-made catastrophes” that cast a bad light on the current state of China.

After floodwaters were deliberately released to lift flooding pressure on Beijing and other CCP key areas, the CCP authorities “resorted to their usual strategy of lies, blaming the heavy rainfall,” leading to clashes with the populace in the city of Baoding, wrote Wang, describing the situation as an impasse.

“It's evident that the general public is aware of the government’s deceit, and the government is equally aware of the public’s awareness … Apart from instances of collective protests, the Beijing Red Cross Society’s call for donations to aid disaster relief was met with overwhelming negative response and mockery online, another way the public's dissatisfaction was expressed.”

Online discussions of calls for public donations for relief and rescue operations have been ridiculed due to a lack of any visible government response.

If nothing else, wrote Wang Dan, the latest natural disasters churning the lives of ordinary Chinese in Xi’s absence are a blow to his popularity and to the credibility of the party structure he has built around himself.

“While we cannot predict to what extent the public resentment caused by natural disasters will impact the stability of the regime, the fact that such resentment is accumulating in China is undeniable,” he said. 

Edited by Taejun Kang and Joshua Lipes.

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

“Please, Your Excellency, be assured that the new government’s policy toward China based on [our] mutual traditional friendship, trust and win-win cooperation will not be changed,” the prime minister wrote in a letter dated Wednesday.

Hun Sen announced his resignation after close to 40 years in power, saying at a news conference on Wednesday that a new Hun Manet-led government would be formed on Aug. 22, after the National Election Committee officially reports the results from last Sunday’s election. 

Preliminary results show Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party winning 120 of 125 seats in the National Assembly. The election included the 45-year-old Hun Manet as a first-time candidate for parliament from Phnom Penh.

The tightly controlled vote was condemned by the United States, France, Australia and others as neither free nor fair because of the exclusion of the main opposition Candlelight Party, as well as for efforts to neutralize the political opposition through threats, arrests and other means. 

For China, close ties with Cambodia ensure that Beijing has a supporter in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Time and again, Cambodia has undermined ASEAN unity on the disputed South China Sea over which Beijing has made sweeping claims of sovereignty, angering competing claimants.

Power projection

China and Cambodia began developing the Ream Naval Base, in Sihanoukville province on the Gulf of Thailand, with Beijing’s funding in June 2021. Cambodian officials said this week that renovation work has almost been completed, according to Voice of America.

The base would help Beijing boost its power projection in Southeast Asia and the Taiwan Strait. It would be China’s first naval staging facility in the region and the second in the world after a base in Djibouti.

Phnom Penh has repeatedly denied that China is being given exclusive military access to the base, saying that would contradict Cambodia’s constitution. 

Hun Manet’s government will need Chinese support to maintain power, while Vietnam may be reluctant to have close relations, even with its historical ties to the CPP, for fear of indirect economic sanctions from the United States, Finland-based political analyst Kim Sok told Radio Free Asia.

“China needs the Hun family government to achieve its long-term interests – the completion of the Chinese-related Ream Naval Base,” he said. 

In February, Hun Sen flew to Beijing for an official visit with Hun Manet and another son, 40-year-old lawmaker Hun Many.

The prime minister met with President Xi Jinping and then-Premier Li Keqiang and signed 12 agreements with the Chinese government, including the building of schools in Kratie province, a US$44 million grant for the removal of unexploded ordnance and the construction of a reservoir in Kampong Thom province.

A report by the Ministry of Economy showed that China held more than US$4 billion of Cambodia’s nearly US$10 billion in foreign debt at the end of 2022’s second quarter.

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

Since July 2013, 3,127 people making the naval journey to Australia to seek sanctuary found themselves in carceral facilities in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, told that they would never resettle on the Australian mainland.  Such persons were duly euphemised as “transitory persons” to be hurried on to third country destinations, if not returned to their country of origin, a form of vacant reasoning typical of a callous bureaucracy.

The wisdom here was that other countries would not only be more suitable for such persons, but keener candidates to pull their weight in terms of processing and accepting refugees.  For the Australian Commonwealth, outsourcing responsibilities from protecting citizens to shielding vulnerable arrivals from harm, has become a matter of dark habit.

Many of those remaining refugees held on the Australian mainland are the subjects of acute care, and all await transfer to third countries such as Canada under its private sponsorship program, the United States, New Zealand or other destinations.

In the meantime, 80 remain in PNG.  The situation there is marred by a fundamental legal peculiarity.  In October 2017, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea found the Manus Island Centre to be both illegal and unconstitutional.  (PNG, unlike Australia, has a constitution prohibiting violations of personal liberty, even for non-PNG nationals.)  Its closure led to the removal of the detainees to various transition centres devoid of basic amenities, including water, electricity and medical support.

Both PNG and Australia proceeded to squabble over responsibility, despite the obvious fact that the latter exercises effective control over the facilities and those being held in them.  Emilie McDonnell of Human Rights Watch deems it indisputable “that Australia bears primary responsibility for those in offshore detention under its policies and has an ongoing legal duty to find a durable solution.”

The offshore concentration camp system established and prosecuted by respective federal governments has become the envy for autocrats, populists and reactionaries the world over.  Fact-finding missions have been made by European Union member states.  The model is mesmerising officials in the UK.  Its credentials of cruelty and suffering are beyond doubt: 14 deaths since 2012, marked by gross medical neglect, suicide and murder by overly enthusiastic guards.  Spokesperson for the Refugee Action Collective, Ian Rintoul, suggested that the legacy on Nauru “will forever stain the record of both sides of Australian politics”.

The absence of any refugee inmates in Nauru’s detention facility does not herald its closure.  Far from it: the Albanese government has, according to Federal Budget figures, promised to spend A$486 million this year on the facility.

The Department of Home Affairs continues to tersely state that the position of the government “on maritime smuggling and irregular maritime ventures has not changed.  Any person entering Australia by boat without a valid visa will be returned or taken to a regional processing country for protection claims assessment.  Unauthorised maritime arrivals will not settle in Australia.”

For anyone concerned about the welfare of such persons held in captivity, the department makes a feeble assurance: “All transitory persons in Nauru reside in community accommodation and have access to health and welfare services.  Transitory persons have work rights and can operate businesses.”  These people have evidently not been to the prison idyll they so praise.  But not to worry, a wounded conscience could also be put to rest by the fact that there were “currently no minors under regional processing arrangements” on the island.

In Senate estimates, it was also revealed that the government would continue forking out A$350 million annually to maintain the Nauru facility as a “contingency” for any future arrivals.  According to a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs, the processing centre was “ready to receive and process any new unauthorised maritime arrivals, future-proofing Australia’s response to maritime people-smuggling”.  And so, old canards are recycled in their staleness and counterfeit quality.

Another unsavoury aspect to this needless cost to the Australian budget is the recipient of such taxpayer largesse.  The Albanese government has an ongoing contract with the US prison company, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), which is responsible for running the facilities till September 2025 at the cost of A$422 million.

MTC has a spotty resume, though it trumpets its record as a “leader in social impact”.  Impact is certainly not an issue, if maladministration, wrongful death, poor medical care and a failing performance in rehabilitation count in the equation.  In 2015, then Arizona governor Dough Ducey cancelled MTC’s contract after a withering state department of corrections report into a riot at Kingman prison identifying “a culture of disorganisation, disengagement and disregard for state policies”.  As a 2021 lawsuit filed in the District Court of the Southern District of California pungently alleged, MTC “is a private corporation that traffics in human captivity for profit.”

The very fact that MTC Australia advertises itself as a provider of “evidence-based rehabilitation programs and other services to approximately 1,000 male inmates in Australia” begs that old question as to why they need to oversee refugees and asylum seekers in the first place.  But the answer is glaringly evident: anyone daring to make the perilous journey across the seas to the world’s largest island continent are seen as presumptively criminal, trafficked by actual criminals.  Such a sickness of attitude and policy continues to keep the Australian political imagination captive and defiant before law and decency.

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

Since July 2013, 3,127 people making the naval journey to Australia to seek sanctuary found themselves in carceral facilities in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, told that they would never resettle on the Australian mainland.  Such persons were duly euphemised as “transitory persons” to be hurried on to third country destinations, if not returned to their country of origin, a form of vacant reasoning typical of a callous bureaucracy.

The wisdom here was that other countries would not only be more suitable for such persons, but keener candidates to pull their weight in terms of processing and accepting refugees.  For the Australian Commonwealth, outsourcing responsibilities from protecting citizens to shielding vulnerable arrivals from harm, has become a matter of dark habit.

Many of those remaining refugees held on the Australian mainland are the subjects of acute care, and all await transfer to third countries such as Canada under its private sponsorship program, the United States, New Zealand or other destinations.

In the meantime, 80 remain in PNG.  The situation there is marred by a fundamental legal peculiarity.  In October 2017, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea found the Manus Island Centre to be both illegal and unconstitutional.  (PNG, unlike Australia, has a constitution prohibiting violations of personal liberty, even for non-PNG nationals.)  Its closure led to the removal of the detainees to various transition centres devoid of basic amenities, including water, electricity and medical support.

Both PNG and Australia proceeded to squabble over responsibility, despite the obvious fact that the latter exercises effective control over the facilities and those being held in them.  Emilie McDonnell of Human Rights Watch deems it indisputable “that Australia bears primary responsibility for those in offshore detention under its policies and has an ongoing legal duty to find a durable solution.”

The offshore concentration camp system established and prosecuted by respective federal governments has become the envy for autocrats, populists and reactionaries the world over.  Fact-finding missions have been made by European Union member states.  The model is mesmerising officials in the UK.  Its credentials of cruelty and suffering are beyond doubt: 14 deaths since 2012, marked by gross medical neglect, suicide and murder by overly enthusiastic guards.  Spokesperson for the Refugee Action Collective, Ian Rintoul, suggested that the legacy on Nauru “will forever stain the record of both sides of Australian politics”.

The absence of any refugee inmates in Nauru’s detention facility does not herald its closure.  Far from it: the Albanese government has, according to Federal Budget figures, promised to spend A$486 million this year on the facility.

The Department of Home Affairs continues to tersely state that the position of the government “on maritime smuggling and irregular maritime ventures has not changed.  Any person entering Australia by boat without a valid visa will be returned or taken to a regional processing country for protection claims assessment.  Unauthorised maritime arrivals will not settle in Australia.”

For anyone concerned about the welfare of such persons held in captivity, the department makes a feeble assurance: “All transitory persons in Nauru reside in community accommodation and have access to health and welfare services.  Transitory persons have work rights and can operate businesses.”  These people have evidently not been to the prison idyll they so praise.  But not to worry, a wounded conscience could also be put to rest by the fact that there were “currently no minors under regional processing arrangements” on the island.

In Senate estimates, it was also revealed that the government would continue forking out A$350 million annually to maintain the Nauru facility as a “contingency” for any future arrivals.  According to a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs, the processing centre was “ready to receive and process any new unauthorised maritime arrivals, future-proofing Australia’s response to maritime people-smuggling”.  And so, old canards are recycled in their staleness and counterfeit quality.

Another unsavoury aspect to this needless cost to the Australian budget is the recipient of such taxpayer largesse.  The Albanese government has an ongoing contract with the US prison company, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), which is responsible for running the facilities till September 2025 at the cost of A$422 million.

MTC has a spotty resume, though it trumpets its record as a “leader in social impact”.  Impact is certainly not an issue, if maladministration, wrongful death, poor medical care and a failing performance in rehabilitation count in the equation.  In 2015, then Arizona governor Dough Ducey cancelled MTC’s contract after a withering state department of corrections report into a riot at Kingman prison identifying “a culture of disorganisation, disengagement and disregard for state policies”.  As a 2021 lawsuit filed in the District Court of the Southern District of California pungently alleged, MTC “is a private corporation that traffics in human captivity for profit.”

The very fact that MTC Australia advertises itself as a provider of “evidence-based rehabilitation programs and other services to approximately 1,000 male inmates in Australia” begs that old question as to why they need to oversee refugees and asylum seekers in the first place.  But the answer is glaringly evident: anyone daring to make the perilous journey across the seas to the world’s largest island continent are seen as presumptively criminal, trafficked by actual criminals.  Such a sickness of attitude and policy continues to keep the Australian political imagination captive and defiant before law and decency.

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

"El Niño triggers far-reaching changes in weather that result in devastating floods, crop-killing droughts, plummeting fish populations, and an uptick in tropical diseases," explained a Dartmouth statement about the study, published Thursday in the journal Science.

Doctoral candidate Christopher Callahan and Justin Mankin, an assistant professor of geography at the college, examined economic conditions for several years after the 1982-83 and 1997-98 El Niño events. They connected those two warm phases to $4.1 trillion and $5.7 trillion in global income losses, respectively—far higher than previous estimates.

"El Niño amplifies the wider inequities in climate change, disproportionately impacting the least resilient and prepared among us."

"We can say with certainty that societies and economies absolutely do not just take a hit and recover," said Callahan, the study's lead author, noting that their data suggest an El Niño-related downturn could last up to 14 years or longer.

"In the tropics and places that experience the effects of El Niño, you get a persistent signature during which growth is delayed for at least five years," he continued. "The aggregate price tag on these events has not ever been fully quantified—you have to add up all the depressed growth moving forward, not just when the event is happening."

The pair found that the gross domestic product of the United States was roughly 3% lower in 1988 and 2003 than it would have been without the preceding El Niño events—and, for the latter phase, GDPs in coastal tropical countries were more than 10% lower.

"The global pattern of El Niño's effect on the climate and on the prosperity of different countries reflects the unequal distribution of wealth and climate risk—not to mention the responsibility for climate change—worldwide," said Mankin. "El Niño amplifies the wider inequities in climate change, disproportionately impacting the least resilient and prepared among us."

"The duration and magnitude of the financial repercussions we uncovered suggests to me that we are maladapted to the climate we have," he added. "Our accounting dramatically raises the cost estimate of doing nothing. We need to both mitigate climate change and invest more in El Niño prediction and adaptation because these events will only amplify the future costs of global warming."

Models for the latter research showed that sea surface temperature extremes were about 10% more intense for the six decades after 1960, compared with the previous 60 years. Co-author Mike McPhaden, a senior research scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said that "the big events pack the most punch, so even though 10% doesn't sound like much, it juices up the strongest and most societally relevant year-to-year climate fluctuation on the planet."

"In practical terms, this translates into more extreme and frequent droughts, floods, heatwaves, wildfires, and severe storms, just like we observed during the recent triple dip La Niña that ended in March," McPhaden toldThe Guardian.

Given that observed trend and expectations it will continue, the Dartmouth researchers project that even if countries pursue their pledges to cut planet-heating emissions, global economic losses related to El Niño could reach $84 trillion for the 21st century.

"If you're estimating the costs of global warming without considering El Niño," Mankin warned, "then you are dramatically underestimating the costs of global warming."

"Our welfare is affected by our global economy, and our global economy is tied to the climate," he said. "When you ask how costly climate change is, you can start by asking how costly climate variation is. We're showing here that such variation, as embodied in El Niño, is incredibly costly and stagnates growth for years, which led us to cost estimates that are orders of magnitudes larger than previous ones."

The Associated Pressreported Thursday that "some—but not all—outside economists have issues with the new research out of Dartmouth College, saying its damage estimates are too big."

However, McPhaden welcomed the findings, telling the AP that he has long believed previous estimates were far too low and the "big loser during El Niño is the Global South."

While the Dartmouth projections suggest 2023's looming warm phase could cost trillions of dollars, the NOAA scientist stressed that "the economic impacts of the El Niño that is predicted for later this year will depend on how strong it is."

"Monster El Niños" like the 1997-98 event "can be hugely damaging with lingering effects that carry over into following years," he said. "On the other hand, if it turns out to be a garden variety El Niño, the consequences may be more muted and the recovery time shortened."

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

Guterres said food, fuel and fertiliser prices were skyrocketing with supply chains being disrupted and added this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.

According to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, there is currently sufficient food and no risk of global food supply shortages.

We see an abundance of food but skyrocketing prices. The issue is not food shortage but speculation on food commodities and the manipulation of an inherently flawed global food system that serves the interests of corporate agribusiness traders and suppliers of inputs at the expense of people’s needs and genuine food security.

The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical trade and energy conflict. It is largely about the US engaging in a proxy war against Russia and Europe by attempting to separate Europe from Russia and imposing sanctions on Russia to harm Europe and make it further dependent on the US.

Economist Professor Michael Hudson recently stated that ultimately the war is against Europe and Germany. The purpose of the sanctions is to prevent Europe and other allies from increasing their trade and investment with Russia and China.

Neoliberal policies since the 1980s have hollowed out the US economy. With its productive base severely weakened, the only way for the US to maintain hegemony is to undermine China and Russia and weaken Europe.

Hudson says that, beginning a year ago, Biden and the US neocons attempted to block Nord Stream 2 and all (energy) trade with Russia so that the US could monopolise it itself.

Despite the ‘green agenda’ currently being pushed, the US still relies on fossil fuel-based energy to project its power abroad. Even as Russia and China move away from the dollar, the control and pricing of oil and gas (and resulting debt) in dollars remains key to US attempts to retain hegemony.

The US knew beforehand how sanctions on Russia would play out. They would serve to divide the world into two blocks and fuel a new cold war with the US and Europe on one side with China and Russia being the two main countries on the other.

US policy makers knew Europe would be devastated by higher energy and food prices and food importing countries in the Global South would suffer due to rising costs.

It is not the first time the US has engineered a major crisis to maintain global hegemony and a spike in key commodity prices that effectively trap countries into dependency and debt.

In 2009, Andrew Gavin Marshall described how in 1973 – not long after coming off the gold standard – Henry Kissinger was integral to manipulating events in the Middle East (the Arab-Israeli war and the ‘energy crisis’). This served to continue global hegemony for the US, which had virtually bankrupted itself due to its war in Vietnam and had been threatened by the economic rise of Germany and Japan.

Kissinger helped secure huge OPEC oil price rises and thus sufficient profits for Anglo-American oil companies that had over-leveraged themselves in North Sea oil. He also cemented the petrodollar system with the Saudis and subsequently placed African nations, which had embarked on a path of (oil-based) industrialisation, on a treadmill of dependency and debt due to the spike in oil prices.

It is widely believed that the high-priced oil policy was aimed at hurting Europe, Japan and the developing world.

Today, the US is again waging a war on vast swathes of humanity, whose impoverishment is intended to ensure they remain dependent on the US and the financial institutions it uses to create dependency and indebtedness – the World Bank and IMF.

Hundreds of millions will experience (are experiencing) poverty and hunger due to US policy. These people (the ones that the US and Pfizer et al supposedly cared so much about and wanted to get a jab into each of their arms) are regarded with contempt and collateral damage in the great geopolitical game.

Contrary to what many believe, the US has not miscalculated the outcome of the sanctions placed on Russia. Michael Hudson notes energy prices are increasing, benefiting US oil companies and US balance of payments as an energy exporter. Moreover, by sanctioning Russia, the aim is to curtail Russian exports (of wheat and gas used for fertiliser production) and for agricultural commodity prices to therefore increase. This too will also benefit the US as an agricultural exporter.

This is how the US seeks to maintain dominance over other countries.

Current policies are designed to create a food and debt crisis for poorer nations especially. The US can use this debt crisis to force countries to continue privatising and selling off their public assets in order to service the debts to pay for the higher oil and food imports.

This imperialist strategy comes on the back of ‘COVID relief’ loans which have served a similar purpose. In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. The world’s poorest countries are due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports.

Oxfam and Development Finance International have also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next five years.

The closure of the world economy in March 2020 (‘lockdown’) served to trigger an unprecedented process of global indebtedness. Conditionalities mean national governments will have to capitulate to the demands of Western financial institutions. These debts are largely dollar-denominated, helping to strengthen the US dollar and US leverage over countries.

The US is creating a new world order and needs to ensure much of the Global South remains in its orbit of influence rather than ending up in the Russian and especially Chinese camp and its belt road initiative for economic prosperity.

Post-COVID, this is what the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and the engineered food and energy crisis are really about.

Back in 2014, Michael Hudson stated that the US has been able to dominate most of the Global South through agriculture and control of the food supply. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has transformed countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.

The oil sector and agribusiness have been joined at the hip as part of US geopolitical strategy.

The dominant notion of ‘food security’ promoted by global agribusiness players like Cargill, Archer Daniel Midland, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus and supported by the World Bank is based on the ability of people and nations to purchase food. It has nothing to do with self-sufficiency and everything to do with global markets and supply chains controlled by giant agribusiness players.

Along with oil, the control of global agriculture has been a linchpin of US geopolitical strategy for many decades. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests and poorer nations adopted agri-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development.

It entailed trapping nations into a globalised food system that relies on export commodity mono-cropping to earn foreign exchange linked to sovereign dollar-denominated debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives. What we have seen has been the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.

And what we have also seen is countries being placed on commodity crop production treadmills. The need for foreign currency (US dollars) to buy oil and food entrenches the need to increase cash crop production for exports.

The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) set out the trade regime necessary for this type of corporate dependency that masquerades as ‘global food security’.

This is explained in a July 2022 report by Navdanya International – Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design – which notes international trade laws and trade liberalisation has benefited large agribusiness and continue to piggyback off the implementation of the Green Revolution.

The report states that US lobby and trade negotiations were headed by former Cargill Investors Service CEO and Goldman Sachs executive – Dan Amstutz – who in 1988 was appointed chief negotiator for the Uruguay round of GATT by Ronald Reagan. This helped to enshrine the interests of US agribusiness into the new rules that would govern the global trade of commodities and subsequent waves of industrial agriculture expansion.

The AoA removed protection of farmers from global market prices and fluctuations. At the same time, exceptions were made for the US and the EU to continue subsidising their agriculture to the advantage of large agribusiness.

Navdanya notes:

With the removal of state tariff protections and subsidies, small farmers were left destitute. The result has been a disparity in what farmers earn for what they produce, versus what consumers pay, with farmers earning less and consumers paying more as agribusiness middlemen take the biggest cut.

‘Food security’ has led to the dismantling of food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency for the sake of global market integration and corporate power.

We need look no further than India to see this in action. The now repealed recent farm legislation in India was aimed at giving the country the ‘shock therapy’ of neoliberalism that other countries have experienced.

The ‘liberalising’ legislation was in part aimed at benefiting US agribusiness interests and trapping India into food insecurity by compelling the country to eradicate its food buffer stocks – so vital to the nation’s food security – and then bid for food on a volatile global market from agribusiness traders with its foreign reserves.

The Indian government was only prevented from following this route by the massive, year-long farmer protest that occurred.

The current crisis is also being fuelled by speculation. Navdanya cites an investigation by Lighthouse Reports and The Wire to show how speculation by investment firms, banks and hedge funds on agricultural commodities are profiting off rising food prices. Commodity future prices are no longer linked to actual supply and demand in the market but are based purely on speculation.

Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and investment funds like Black Rock and Vanguard continue to make huge financial killings, resulting in the price of bread almost doubling in some poorer countries.

The cynical ‘solution’ promoted by global agribusiness to the current food crisis is to urge farmers to produce more and seek better yields as if the crisis is that of underproduction. It means more chemical inputs, more genetic engineering techniques and suchlike, placing more farmers in debt and trapped in dependency.

It is the same old industry lie that the world will starve without its products and requires more of them. The reality is that the world is facing hunger and rising food prices because of the system big agribusiness has instituted.

And it is the same old story – pushing out new technologies in search of a problem and then using crises as justification for their rollout while ignoring the underlying reasons for such crises.

Navdanya sets out possible solutions to the current situation based on principles of agroecology, short supply lines, food sovereignty and economic democracy – policies that have been described at length in many articles and official reports over the years.

As for fighting back against the onslaught on ordinary people’s living standards, support is gathering among the labour movement in places like the UK. Rail union leader Mick Lynch is calling for a working class movement based on solidarity and class consciousness to fight back against a billionaire class that is acutely aware of its own class interests.

For too long, ‘class’ has been absent from mainstream political discourse. It is only through organised, united protest that ordinary people will have any chance of meaningful impact against the new world order of tyrannical authoritarianism and the devastating attacks on ordinary people’s rights, livelihoods and standards of living that we are witnessing.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

On May 13, two days after the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli Occupation Forces, as her loss still dominated international news cycles, thousands of Palestinian mourners gathered to pay tribute to the woman who had given them voice for so long. They came to lay her body to rest.

Twitter (5/13/22)

Immediately, as the funeral procession was just starting, images emerged of Israeli forces attacking the pallbearers as they attempted to carry her coffin across the courtyard from the French hospital in East Jerusalem. One of the first reports came from British-Egyptian correspondent Emir Nader with BBC News investigations, who posted footage and said on Twitter (5/13/22): “Horrible scenes as Israeli security forces beat the funeral procession for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the crowd momentarily lose control of her casket.”

Al Jazeera carried the funeral live on air, and the footage showing the attack was widely shared over social media. One Twitter user (5/13/22) described the video, referring to the IOF, or Israeli Occupation Force:

Everyone switch on to Al Jazeera right now. This is one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen. IOF is attacking mourners carrying Shireen’s body from the hospital right now. They’re using stun grenades and tear gas and charging at them with horses and batons.

The Intercept (5/13/22) noted the footage that unfolded on live television, stunned viewers and only “intensified the outrage over her death.” Video was quickly remixed and shared, and the article linked a 45-second video on Twitter (5/13/22) posted by Rushdi Abualouf, a Palestinian journalist working for the BBC. Described as “the closest video” of the attack, it mixed Arab instrumental music over a slowed version that show helmeted, uniformed riot police singling out pallbearers and smashing bare arms with batons as mourners struggled to keep the casket upright.

The language of obfuscation

Mirroring the euphemism-dominated coverage of Abu Akleh’s killing (FAIR.org, 5/20/22), many of the first corporate press reports employed language that mystified what was happening at the funeral.

MintPressNews editor Alan MacLeod recognized the language of obfuscation, posting a series of news headlines on Twitter (5/13/22) that transformed black-clad Israeli riot squads wantonly beating pallbearers into “clashes.” Referring to an article he wrote for FAIR (12/13/19), MacLeod (5/14/22) observed that the word “clash” is used by media “when they have to report on violence, but desperately want to obscure who the perpetrators are.”

Violence comes from nowhere, it simply erupts: CBS‘s headline (5/13/22) was, “Shireen Abu Akleh Funeral Sees Clashes Between Israeli Forces and Palestinian,” updated later that day to report that “Violence Erupts” at the funeral as Israeli forces “Confront” mourners. The Times of Israel (5/13/22) had “Violence Erupts as Journalist’s Casket Emerges From Jerusalem Hospital.” And the BBC (5/13/22) went with “Shireen Abu Akleh: Violence at Al Jazeera Reporter’s Funeral in Jerusalem.”

CBS News (5/13/22)

CBS‘s language prompted one Twitter user (5/13/22) to wonder about

the best term for lies by omission, untruths couched in deliberately obfuscating language. Perhaps “willfully misleading”? Denial of facts, even gaslighting, given the footage circulating of attacks on pallbearers….

An exception was a report from Jerusalem by Atika Shubert for CNN (5/13/22) headlined, “Video Shows Israeli Police Beating Mourners at Palestinian-American Journalist’s Funeral Procession.” It opened:

Israeli police used batons to beat mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh…. Tear gas was fired by Israeli forces and at least one flash bomb was used.

Mondoweiss (5/13/22) pointed out that the “White House says it ‘regrets the intrusion’ into Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral, but it doesn’t condemn Israeli police actions.”

Repression as retaliatory

Reporting went from bad to worse when the Israeli government issued an official statement claiming that police had to respond to Palestinian violence. Many Western news outlets repeated the claims.

Under an early BBC video (5/13/22), after “clashes broke out” and “violence erupted,” the text read, “Projectiles are seen flying towards the police, who also fired tear gas,” and then, “Israeli police said officers at the scene were pelted with stones and ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’”

Intercept (5/13/22)

In a later, longer version, the BBC text (5/13/22) opened with, “Police said they acted after being pelted with stones,” and repeated, “Police said officers ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’” The body of the text included on-the-ground reporting that accurately described what happened, only to be followed with more back-and-forth accusations.

The descriptive reporting on the funeral attack and Israeli brutality, followed with patched, confused “balance” between Palestinian and Israeli statements–contention often going back decades–began to characterize coverage. This style of journalism presents repression surrounded in a fog of inevitability, rendering even eyewitness accounts inexplicable, without context or solution.

As many reports repeated Israeli justifications for the attacks, presenting Israeli state repression as retaliatory, the Intercept (5/13/22) refuted the official Israeli version, showing how it fabricated Palestinian violence.

On Twitter (5/13/22), activist Rafael Shimunov explained how the Israeli police account used drone video to “prove” that two of the mourners had thrown rocks at police:

But a comparison of that video to ground-level news footage showed that the police video had been edited to remove the initial police charge and slowed down to make it seem as if a man who just waved his arms in frustration had thrown something at the officers.

Shimunov concluded that the mourner had no stone, his “action was putting his body between them and Shireen Abu Akleh’s casket.” He added: “To be clear, no stone justifies attacking mourners at a funeral of a journalist assassinated by your military.”

‘This isn’t a tussle’

All the media techniques come together on a CBS video posted on Twitter (5/13/22), with overlaid text saying police “clashed” with mourners, and that the “tussling” was so bad they almost dropped the coffin. “Projectiles could be seen flying through the air as Palestinians chanted anti-Israeli slogans,” the network declared.

The response on Twitter was outrage. One user (5/13/22) replied:

This isn’t a tussle or push back. This is an occupying force abusing its power. The sooner @CBSNews calls it how it is, the sooner we can pressure change. Do better.

Another “fixed” the headline, changing “clashes” to “attacking,” and switching Abu Akleh being “killed” to “assassinated.” Another Twitter used said, “These are violent occupiers (who killed journalists prior #ShireenAbuAkleh) invading a funeral… not a ‘tussle.'” Yet another asked:

Oh clashing was it? Clashing? Very interesting choice of words for being attacked by armored thugs during a peaceful memorial for a journalist those armored thugs also murdered.

Another tweeter was “imagining the headline ‘Ukrainians left dead in Bucha after clashes with Russian forces.’”

Posting an unedited video in response to CBS, a user asked: “Why was this clip cut?… to falsify the facts of course.”

Al Jazeera (5/12/22)

In fact, the actual footage was stunning for its clear view of one-sided violence—beginning unmistakably when helmeted Israeli forces stormed the crowd and began to beat pallbearers with batons. The pallbearers stumble and are sometimes ripped from their positions, but they never retaliate. One tries to shield his head with his arm. A man wearing jeans, tennis shoes and a sleeveless shirt kicks at the helmeted, uniformed police, trying to stop them from hitting the pallbearers. Those carrying the coffin do all they can to prevent it from falling, ignoring the blows.

Al Jazeera (5/12/22) interviewed Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, who said that Israel has a track record of creating ambiguity over social media as a strategy to “muddy the waters,” knowing that many press accounts will repeat their claims.

‘Incitement’ or expression?

Explaining the funeral attacks, the Intercept (5/13/22) reported, Israeli police “said they attacked the procession because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans.” 

NPR (5/13/22) also reported, “Police said the crowd at the hospital was chanting ‘nationalist incitement,’ ignored calls to stop and threw stones at police.” It added, citing police, that “the policemen were forced to act.” NPR went on to explain why police raided Shireen’s family home, saying they “went” there “the day she was killed and have shown up at other mourning events in the city to remove Palestinian flags.”

The CBS video (5/13/22) posted on Twitter overlaid with text also read, “Al Jazeera said Israel had warned her brother to limit the size of the funeral and told him no Palestinian flags should be displayed and no slogans chanted.” They followed with, “The network said he neglected to take that guidance given the outpouring of grief and anger over the reporter’s killing.”

Slate (5/22/21)

No comment is made about Israeli repression of Palestinian freedom of expression. “Neglected” and “guidance” are unlikely choices of words from Al Jazeera, given that the network published a scathing piece (5/12/22) slamming Western media coverage for obscuring and denying Israel’s murder of its journalist, calling it a “whitewash.” Al Jazeera has assigned a legal team to refer the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces to the International Criminal Court (Al Jazeera, 5/27/22).

Though CNN journalist Atika Shubert (5/13/22), reporting from the funeral, acknowledged Israeli attacks, she ended by saying that the family was “told not to display the Palestinian flag, that was a special request, but as you can imagine, it’s very difficult to control these crowds,” and the flags were flying. The “request” was a raid on Abu Akleh’s family home, where flags were forcibly removed. Restrictions on flying the Palestinian flag are normalized within these stories, not exposed as violations of human rights and freedom of expression.

When US media routinely repeat without comment Israeli “reasons” for “clamping down” on any display of support for Palestinian statehood, or that Palestinians were “chanting nationalistic slogans,” amounting to “incitement,” they condone the repression of Palestinian rights, which would cause other countries to be called dictatorships, or at least authoritarian regimes. Yet Israel is still listed as a democracy. As Nolan Higdon (5/28/22) pointed out, “You Can Kill and Censor Journalists or You Can have Democracy—You Can’t Have Both!” Such attitudes toward Israeli repression of Palestinian expression are a major contradiction by US media institutions, which themselves enjoy press freedoms and should be able to recognize when those freedoms are being violated.

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian American and Columbia University professor, told FAIR that US media are “terrified of being attacked if they don’t repeat the Israeli versions of events. They live in constant fear. This happens on the ground, and during editing.” These practices were confirmed in an article published in Slate (5/22/21) last year, when a journalist admitted having trouble “reporting the truth” from Gaza.

‘System of domination’

There are rules for occupying forces articulated by the International Committee of the Red Cross on Occupation and International Humanitarian Law (4/8/04); these prohibit the collective punishment of occupied peoples. Violent repression of nationalist slogans and the Palestinian flag violates the International Declaration of Human Rights, rights which are established for those living under occupation.

Twitter (5/13/22)

Writing for Common Dreams (5/23/22), the Institute for Policy Studies’ Phyllis Bennis and Princeton’s Richard Falk noted that Israeli forces “threw Palestinian flags to the ground and violently beat mourners—including the pallbearers.” They placed the attacks into a context of “the structural nature of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” citing an Amnesty International report on Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories characterizing it as a “Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.”

The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the supposedly defensive attacks on mourners are part of a “pattern of repression…far more pervasive,” and in fact codified in the country’s Law of 2018, which grants only Jewish citizens the right of self-determination. Along with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem, Bennis and Falk concluded that this “constitutes the crime of apartheid.”

This point was made visually online by Tony Karon (Twitter, 5/13/22) , a lead editorial writer at Al Jazeera, who set pictures of South African apartheid next to Israeli attacks on the funeral with the text:

African police in ‘87 attacking the coffin of Ashley Kriel to seize the ANC flag that draped it: Israeli police attacked the coffin of #ShireenAbuAkleh today, trying to seize Palestinian flags. Apartheid regimes waging war on their victims, even after death.

US responsibility 

For decades, the United States has unconditionally provided Israel with “political, diplomatic, economic and military support,” Bennis and Falk wrote. Military subsidies alone amount to about $3.8 billion every year, “most of it used to purchase US-made weapons systems, ammunition and more. This makes the US complicit in Israel’s criminal wrongdoing.”

With 20% of Israeli’s military budget supplied by the US, “the bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from US weapons manufacturers with our own money.” The use of US military aid for repression is a violation of US law:

CNN (5/26/22)

The Leahy Law’s restriction on military aid is unequivocal: “No assistance shall be furnished,” it says, “to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

To date, there have been six investigations into the killing of Abu Akleh, all that find conclusive evidence that the journalist was killed by Israeli Forces. “A reconstruction by the Associated Press lends support to assertions” from both the Palestinian Authority and Abu Akleh’s colleagues, the news service (5/24/22) reported, “that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.” CNN (5/26/22) explained, “There were no armed clashes in the vicinity,” and the text over a map reads, “Footage from the scene showed a direct line of sight towards the Israeli convoy.”

Demanding the fatal bullet

Much has been made of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, and the Israeli demands that it must be turned over to them (New York Times, 5/12/22). This offers a last talking point for Israeli’s claim that Palestinian fighters are responsible for shooting her.

Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22)

For example, when Reuters (5/26/22) reported on the investigations into her killing, it added Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s response on Twitter (5/26/22): “Any claim that the IDF intentionally harms journalists or uninvolved civilians is a blatant lie.” Reuters also included his demand that the Palestinian Authority hand over the bullet for ballistic tests to see if it matched an Israeli military gun.

Palestinian tests, noted by Reuters (5/27/22), have determined that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh “was a 5.56 mm round fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle, which is used by the Israeli military.” But Reuters followed that with the Defense minister’s claim that the “same 5.56 caliber can also be fired from M-16 rifles that are carried by many Palestinian militants,” adding: “Al-Khatib did not say how he was sure it had come from an Israeli rifle.”

As Khalidi pointed out, “Anything the Israelis say, even about an investigation, will be repeated, you will still get the Israeli version—that in the name of balance.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22) cited the numerous reports, including the findings of the Dutch-based Bellingcat Investigative Team, confirming Israeli culpability, and joined 33 other press freedom and human rights groups calling for an independent investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.

‘The world knows very little’

Yet on June 3, 2022, the New York Times’ editorial board wrote, “The world still knows very little about who is responsible for her death.” The wordy piece repeated every Israeli talking point, including the justification of the funeral attack, saying Israeli police “appeared to want to prevent” the funeral from becoming a “nationalist rally,” and said the officers had acted against a mob “in violation of a previously approved plan.” In other words, pallbearers and mourners were attacked for expressing political opinions and allowing Palestinian society to participate in the burial of Abu Akleh.

The Middle East Eye (6/8/22) reported that when Abby Martin, host of the Empire Files, confronted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, she asked why there has been “absolutely no repercussions” for Israel over Abu Akleh’s killing. Blinken responded that the facts had “not been established” in the killing of the veteran Al Jazeera journalist, yet no independent investigation has been started.

Twitter (6/7/22)

Washington Post reporters (6/12/22) reviewed the audio, video, social media and witness testimony of Abu Akleh’s killing, and confirmed that an Israeli soldier likely shot and killed her. Mondoweiss (6/12/22) reported the findings, expressing hope that the report would “add pressure on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to actually demand an independent investigation and accountability.”

Yet even though the Post’s editorial board (6/13/22) referred its its own reporter’s investigation as “impressive,” it still called on the Palestinian Authority to agree to a joint investigation with Israel, with US participation. In what amounts to an attempt to control the narrative about Abu Akleh’s killing, the Post editorial cited “emotional” reasons for refusing to back calls for an international investigation, saying, “We’re skeptical such an impartial inquiry is possible given the high emotions, and low trust, that permeate global discussion of the Middle East.”

On June 14, 2022, journalist Dalia Hatuqa, who covers Israeli/Palestinian affairs, told Slate’s Mary Harris (6/14/22) that Blinken had promised Shireen’s famliy that there would be a full investigation, then she continued: “But honestly, nothing’s happened. It’s been a month. It’s not that hard: There’s footage, eyewitnesses, all kinds of stuff. This isn’t a mystery.”

The post In the Wake of Abu Akleh’s Murder, Media Continued to Obscure Israeli Violence  appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Robin Andersen.

President Joe Biden was rebuked Saturday for doubling down on his opposition to expanding the U.S. Supreme Court even after its deeply unpopular right-wing majority spent the past week ending the constitutional right to abortion care, weakening gun restrictions, undermining the separation of church and state, and eroding hard-won civil rights, with more attacks on equality and federal regulatory power expected.

"Any Democrat not calling for the expansion of the Supreme Court is now in favor of the end of abortion rights and the coming attacks on same-sex marriage, contraception, and every other right we have."

"That is something that the president does not agree with," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters when asked about the possibility of court expansion. "That is not something that he wants to do."

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan called the president's lack of urgency "ridiculous," "infuriating," and "inexplicable."

"What does Biden 'agree' with doing?" Hasan asked on social media. "What does the leader of this country want to do to stop the increasingly fascistic assault on our democratic institutions and basic rights?"

Hasan and other outraged commentators were responding to a viral tweet suggesting that Biden is opposed not only to court expansion but also to filibuster reform.

While ABC News confirmed that Biden doesn't support expanding the high court, CNN reporter Mike Valerio deleted his tweet because, as journalist Judd Legum explained, it misrepresented Jean-Pierre's comments about the president's position on the filibuster. Although Biden has typically defended the Senate's 60-vote threshold for advancing most legislation, he has called for carve-outs on voting rights. He may or may not do the same for reproductive freedom, but Jean-Pierre dodged the question.

"I don't care what President Biden thinks about the filibuster," said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). "He is no longer in Congress."

"This is the messaging and the actual facts," Lieu continued. "If we elect two more Democratic U.S. Senators and Democrats hold the House, we can pass the bill that codifies Roe v. Wade into law."

The House passed the Women's Health Protection Act last year, but it has stalled in the Senate because right-wing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) have repeatedly refused to back abolishing or suspending the filibuster, thus giving the GOP minority veto power over most legislation.

While Lieu argued that the Senate Democratic Caucus needs just two more members to be able to repeal the filibuster and codify Roe, others made the case that Biden and other party leaders need to do much more, including expanding the Supreme Court, to prevent the Republican Party from continuing to impose a reactionary agenda opposed by the vast majority of Americans.

"Any Democrat not calling for the expansion of the Supreme Court," journalist Jordan Zakarian said Friday on social media, "is now in favor of the end of abortion rights and the coming attacks on same-sex marriage, contraception, and every other right we have."

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), as well as Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are among the lawmakers who have demanded court expansion since Roe was overturned.

Last April, Biden appointed a 36-member bipartisan commission to study potential reforms to the Supreme Court—including the addition of more seats, the establishment of term limits, and the creation of a code of ethics for justices.

Although the panel found "considerable" support for 18-year term limits for justices, proposals to increase the size of the court were met with "profound disagreement."

"As we watch this court majority go berserk for its right-wing overlords," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) tweeted Saturday, "is there any regret that the anodyne, feckless Supreme Court commission missed all the major issues: no transparency, no ethics code, dark money appointments, secret gifts, hypocrisy, capture, corruption?"

"More and more people are understanding what I've been saying is going on," he added, pointing to recent reporting by The Lever. "The court got captured by special interests using gobs of dark money."

In a Sunday appearance on ABC's "This Week," Warren told host Martha Raddatz that the high court has "burned whatever legitimacy they still may have."

"They just took the last of it and set a torch to it with the Roe v. Wade opinion," she said. "I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court."

Soon after Biden created his Supreme Court commission, congressional Democrats—led by Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), and Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) in the House and Markey in the Senate—introduced legislation that would expand the number of seats on the high court from nine to 13.

While its passage is unlikely barring the election of more progressive lawmakers in the upcoming midterms, there is no shortage of ideas for immediate steps the Biden administration could take to protect abortion access in post-Roe America.

In a letter sent to the White House on Saturday, 33 Senate Democrats told Biden that "now is the time for bold action to protect the right to an abortion."

"You have the power to fight back and lead a national response to this devastating decision," the letter states, "so we call on you to take every step available to your administration, across federal agencies, to help women access abortions and other reproductive health care, and to protect those who will face the harshest burdens from this devastating and extreme decision."

Biden has instructed the Justice Department to ensure that pregnant people can travel to states where abortion remains legal, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed to crack down on states that attempt to ban federally approved abortion pills.

But there is much more that can be done, progressives say. As of Sunday, more than 14,200 people have signed Ocasio-Cortez's petition urging Biden to open abortion clinics on federal lands, especially in states where access to care has already been eliminated or severely reduced.

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

Calls are growing for President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, the 77-year-old imprisoned Native American activist who has spent 46 years behind bars for a crime he says he did not commit. Amnesty International considers Peltier a political prisoner, and numerous legal observers say his 1977 conviction for alleged involvement in killing two FBI agents in a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation was riddled with irregularities and prosecutorial misconduct. “At this point, there’s no reason other than vindictive revenge for him to be in prison,” says writer and activist Nick Estes, co-founder of the Indigenous resistance group The Red Nation. “He survived COVID, he’s in poor health, and the man deserves to be with his people,” says Estes, who calls for a full congressional investigation into the deaths of Indigenous activists on Pine Ridge Reservation, where the shootout that led to Peltier’s arrest occurred.

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

Months after the head of U.S. Africa Command announced that funding for Cameroon’s armed forces would be slashed due to human rights concerns, the Pentagon continued employing members of an elite Cameroonian military unit long known for committing atrocities — including extrajudicial killings — as proxies through a classified Special Operations counterterrorism program, The Intercept has learned.

Until late 2019, members of the unit — known as the Rapid Intervention Battalion or by its French acronym BIR — conducted the missions against groups U.S. officials designated as VEOs, or violent extremist organizations, to “degrade” their ability to “conduct terrorist acts against U.S. interests,” according to a formerly secret Pentagon document obtained through a public records request. At least some of the operations were “planned and coordinated … with input from U.S. counterparts,” the memorandum notes.

Those operations occurred under a program intended to carry out counterterrorism missions with minimum deployment of U.S. personnel. 127e programs are named after the budgetary authority that allows U.S. Special Operations forces including Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and Marine Raiders to use foreign military units as proxies. They differ from other forms of assistance, training, or equipping of foreign forces because they allow the U.S. to employ foreign troops to do its own bidding — often in countries where the U.S. is not officially at war and the American public does not know the military is operating. In some cases, U.S. troops even engage in combat.

A heavily redacted Pentagon document reveals details about the U.S. partnership with a unit of the Cameroonian military known as the Rapid Intervention Battalion, or by its French acronym BIR.

Image: Obtained by The Intercept

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

Related

▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​▄​

Cameroonian soldiers from the Rapid Intervention Brigade, or the BIR, tell a young boy to stay back while on patrol in Kerawa, Cameroon, on March 16, 2016.

Photo: Joe Penney/Reuters

A U.S. Marine assesses members of the Cameroonian rapid response brigade during a training exercise in Douala, Cameroon, on March 22, 2017.

Photo: U.S. Navy

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Nick Turse.