UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, addressing the UN Conference on The Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, said it was “660 days since the Israeli hostages were first cruelly taken by Hamas terrorists. There is no possible justification for this suffering.” Lammy had spent most of that time deliberately misinterpreting the Genocide Convention and insisting that no genocide was being committed.

“Our support for Israel, its right to exist and the security of its people is steadfast,” he said. Considering Israel’s massacres and other crimes against humanity since the first day of its statehood in 1948 this frequently repeated statement has never convinced anyone.

“However, the Balfour declaration came with the solemn promise ‘that nothing shall be done, nothing which may prejudice the civil and religious rights’ of the Palestinian people’…. This has not been upheld and it is a historical injustice which continues to unfold.” True, but he misquotes Balfour even here. That part of the declaration actually reads: “… it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine….”

The Balfour declaration also came with dire warnings. Lord Edwin Montagu, the only Jew in the Cabinet at the time, called Zionism “a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom”. Lord Sydenham remarked: “What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.”

Well, we know now. And it will stain Britain’s reputation forever.

Lammy continued: “Hamas must never be rewarded for its monstrous attack on October 7.” Of course, he said nothing about Israel having been continuously rewarded for its monstrous attacks on Palestinians over the last 77 years and will likely be rewarded again for its genocide.

“It [Hamas] must immediately release the hostages, agree to an immediate ceasefire, accept it will have no role in governing Gaza and commit to disarmament.” Coincidentally Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also called on Hamas to disband. Along with a number of other countries they’ve just signed a statement saying, “Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.” Quite how this squares with international law isn’t clear, and no-one explains. It is for the Palestinian people to decide who governs their sovereign state.

Lammy: “His Majesty’s Government therefore intends to recognise the State of Palestine when the UN General Assembly gathers in September…. unless the Israeli government acts to end the appalling situation in Gaza, ends its military campaign and commits to a long-term sustainable peace based on a two-state solution. Our demands on Hamas also remain absolute and unwavering.” So what happens if Israel actually complies, or appears to comply? Does HMG then see no reason to recognise statehood? That would suit Israel very well. Note that there’s no requirement in all this for Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, which is central to the whole problem. So the Starmer-Lammy proposal purposely misses the point.

Lammy maintains “there is no better vision for the future of the region than two states. Israelis living within secure borders, recognised and at peace with their neighbours, free from the threat of terrorism. And Palestinians living in their own state, in dignity and security, free of occupation.” Just a minute: how about Palestinians, whose land this is, “living within secure borders, free from the threat of Israeli terrorism and occupation”, the terrorists being (as if he didn’t know) the Israelis and their backers the US? Furthermore, UK leaders have banged the drum about a two-state solution for decades without ever describing what it would look like – especially now that Israel has been allowed to establish irreversible ‘facts on the ground’ that make a proper, workable Palestinian state almost impossible.

“The decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians cannot be managed or contained,” he says. True, and that’s been obvious for decades.

“It must now be resolved.” True, and that too has been obvious for decades.

That same day, 29 July, Prime Minister Starmer was delivering “words on Gaza” from Downing Street.

“On the 7th of October 2023 Hamas perpetrated the worst massacre in Israel’s history. Every day since then, the horror has continued.” He makes it sound like the 660 days of horror have been Hamas’s doing.

“Ceasefire must be sustainable and it must lead to a wider peace plan, which we are developing with our international partners. This plan will deliver security and proper governance in Gaza and pave the way for negotiations on a Two State Solution”. Yes, but under international law Palestinians should not have to ‘negotiate’ their freedom and independence, it’s theirs by right regardless of what other nations think or say.

“Our goal remains a safe and secure Israel, alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.” Oh dear, the same old lopsided spiel. Parity isn’t on the West’s agenda.

“Now, in Gaza because of a catastrophic failure of aid, we see starving babies, children too weak to stand: Images that will stay with us for a lifetime.” The horror is not due to “a catastrophic failure of aid” but failure over the years to end Israel’s illegal occupation and, in particular, its cruel 18-year siege and blockade of Gaza and the sickening practice of ‘mowing the grass’. The UK especially has been complicit in enabling Israel to maintain its stranglehold.

Starmer: “I’ve always said we will recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to a proper peace process, at the moment of maximum impact for the Two State Solution.” UK governments have been saying that for years. Britain was supposed to grant Palestinians provisional statehood under its Mandate responsibilities back in 1923 and failed to do so. We’ve been ducking the issue ever since while eagerly recognising Israeli statehood with their terrorist militia and Ben-Gurion’s plan to take over the entire Holy Land by force.

“This is the moment to act,” Starmer continued. “So today – as part of this process towards peace I can confirm the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two State Solution. And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid, and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank.” This is unbelievable vague and gives Israel endless wriggle-room. Much of the West Bank, of course, is already annexed. To give peace any kind of chance conditions must include Israel withdrawing its squatters, quitting all annexed lands and ending its illegal military occupation forthwith.

Starmer ends with the familiar mantra: “Our message to the terrorists of Hamas is unchanged and unequivocal. They must immediately release all the hostages, sign up to a ceasefire, disarm and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza.” No mention of the Israeli terrorists disarming and no ban on Likud (Netanyahu’s demented party) from any future government of Israel.

Starmer and Lammy never use the terms ‘international law’ or ‘justice’. Don’t they understand that there can be no peace without justice? Perhaps they do but won’t admit it because their friends and allies Israel and the US, for selfish strategic reasons, don’t want peace and never have.

Starmer and Lammy compromised and untrustworthy

Starmer told The Times of Israel, “I support Zionism without qualification”. Lammy has made similar declarations. The Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life state very clearly (seer ‘Integrity’): “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.” How do they get away with it?

So it’s hardly surprising that Lammy and Starmer show no concern for the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, held in Israeli jails on 7 October under appalling conditions. Over 1,200 were under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’. Or the fact that in the 23 years up to October 7 Israel had been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women. Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem). Were they and their friends in Israel expecting Palestinians to take all that lying down?

Our dynamic duo were not so appalled by the sight of “starving babies and children too weak to stand” that they provided protection for the British-flagged aid vessel Madleen and the Handala bringing much-needed supplies to Gaza. They allowed these vessels to be hijacked in international waters, their cargo stolen and crews abducted by Israel’s thugs, just as the Mavi Marmara, the Al-Awda and other mercy ships had been similarly assaulted. Israeli piracy is the new normal in the eastern Mediterranean and Western nations don’t give a damn. The British government are more than happy, though, to instruct the RAF to fly surveillance missions over Gaza in support of Israel’s genocide programme and to continue sharing intelligence with the apartheid regime.

And if their concerns about the suffering and devastation were ever genuine, why didn’t they proposed forming a UN multi-nation intervention force to take over the Gaza crossings to ensure aid gets through as it should? They have now been shamed and their ‘no genocide’ stance utterly discredited by two of Israel’s own human rights organisations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – who declare that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza and its Western allies have a legal and moral duty to put a stop to it. B’Tselem’s summing-up of the situation is worth sharing:

Since October 2023, Israel has shifted its policy toward the Palestinians. Its military onslaught on Gaza, underway for more than 21 months, has included mass killing, both directly and through creating unlivable conditions, serious bodily or mental harm to an entire population, decimation of basic infrastructure throughout the Strip, and forcible displacement on a huge scale, with ethnic cleansing added to the list of official war objectives.

This is compounded by mass arrests and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, which have effectively become torture camps, and tearing apart the social fabric of Gaza, including the destruction of Palestinian educational and cultural institutions. The campaign is also an assault on Palestinian identity itself, through the deliberate destruction of refugee camps and attempts to undermine the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The term genocide refers to a socio-historical and political phenomenon involving acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Both morally and legally, genocide cannot be justified under any circumstance, including as an act of self-defense.

Genocide always occurs within a context: there are conditions that enable it, triggering events, and a guiding ideology. The current onslaught on the Palestinian people, including in the Gaza Strip, must be understood in the context of more than seventy years in which Israel has imposed a violent and discriminatory regime on the Palestinians, taking its most extreme form against those living in the Gaza Strip. Since the State of Israel was established, the apartheid and occupation regime has institutionalized and systematically employed mechanisms of violent control, demographic engineering, discrimination, and fragmentation of the Palestinian collective. These foundations laid by the regime are what made it possible to launch a genocidal attack on the Palestinians immediately after the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.

The assault on Palestinians in Gaza cannot be separated from the escalating violence being inflicted, at varying levels and in different forms, on Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the West Bank and within Israel. The violence and destruction in these areas is intensifying over time, with no effective domestic or international mechanism acting to halt them. We warn of the clear and present danger that the genocide will not remain confined to the Gaza Strip, and that the actions and underlying mindset driving it may be extended to other areas as well.

The recognition that the Israeli regime is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the deep concern that it may expand to other areas where Palestinians live under Israeli rule, demand urgent and unequivocal action from both Israeli society and the international community, and use of every means available under international law to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Stuart Littlewood.

The BBC, Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse have all called on Israel to allow journalists in and out of Gaza as starvation there becomes imminent. In a statement, the news outlets said, “We are desperately concerned for our journalists in Gaza, who are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families.” We speak with Afeef Nessouli, a journalist who just returned from Gaza, where he volunteered as an aid worker. “It has been an incredibly awful experience to see people sort of become sicker and sicker from hunger,” says Nessouli, who describes visiting community kitchens in Gaza that have run out of food. “Many of us would just have one meal a day,” he says of his seven weeks in Gaza. Now his colleagues who remain in Gaza “are having one meal every three days.”

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

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

Louisiana passed a new police accountability law following allegations of civil rights violations against a sheriff’s deputy caught on video dragging a Black woman by her hair and slamming her head into the ground.

The woman, Shantel Arnold, sued the deputy and the sheriff, accusing the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office of conspiring to cover up the 2021 assault. The Sheriff’s Office agreed in March to pay Arnold $300,000 after three days of trial but before jury deliberations began, Arnold’s attorney said.

After the incident, ProPublica, in partnership with WRKF, WWNO and The Times-Picayune, published an investigation detailing the long history of excessive-force complaints against Jefferson Parish sheriff’s Deputy Julio Alvarado. Alvarado, a 20-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, was employed by the department as of March.

Arnold’s attorney, state Sen. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans, said he introduced the legislation after it emerged that Alvarado had failed to write a report about his encounter with Arnold despite his department’s policy that officers document each time they use force. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said during his testimony in the March trial over Arnold’s lawsuit that Alvarado’s commanders instructed him against writing such a report after video of his actions spread across social media.

Arnold’s run-in with Alvarado, which was captured in a 14-second video, left the woman with bruises and scratches across her body, a busted lip and recurring headaches, according to her subsequent account to police investigators.

“Had it not been for a bystander capturing how this officer beat up Shantel Arnold, there would be no report, there would be no evidence of it, there would be no indication that it ever happened,” Carter said in a recent interview.

The new law, passed unanimously by state legislators and signed by Gov. Jeff Landry in June, will require all law enforcement agencies to report every time an officer’s use of force results in serious injury. It directs the Council on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which certifies police officers, to adopt a policy on mandatory use-of-force reporting by Jan. 1. Details of how the process will work have not been spelled out, nor has the penalty for failing to comply.

The bill was introduced as “Shantel Arnold’s Law,” but Carter said that name was removed because “Sheriff Lopinto got very upset about that, and that almost killed the bill.”

Neither the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office nor Alvarado’s attorney responded to requests for comment or an interview.

Alvarado came across Arnold in September 2021, when the officer responded to a 911 call about a fight among 25 people in Jefferson Parish. When the deputy pulled up in his patrol car, Alvarado saw Arnold, covered in dirt, walking down the street. Arnold told the deputy she was attacked by a group of boys who frequently bullied her. When Alvarado ordered her to stop, Arnold said she just wanted to go home and kept walking. That’s when the deputy jumped out of his vehicle, grabbed Arnold and slammed her into the sidewalk, according to several witnesses.

In a video taken by a bystander, Alvarado drags Arnold along the pavement, holds her by her braids and slams her repeatedly onto the pavement. Arnold was not charged with a crime and was later taken to a hospital. The Sheriff’s Office did not use body cameras at the time but has since begun using them.

The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office denied wrongdoing. A 2022 internal investigation by the Sheriff’s Office determined Alvarado’s actions against Arnold were “both reasonable and acceptable.” Alvarado received an “approximately” 40-hour suspension for failing to file a written report, Lopinto said in his March testimony.

Arnold alleged in her 2022 lawsuit that the Sheriff’s Office knew Alvarado had a propensity for violence against Black people and other minority groups yet continued to have him patrol such communities, putting the public in danger.

Lopinto attributed Alvarado’s history of complaints to his working a high-crime beat, according to a 2022 Times-Picayune interview. “It’s not like he’s getting a complaint every month,” Lopinto said. During that same interview, Lopinto dismissed Arnold’s account and accused her of “looking for a paycheck.”

Alvarado’s alleged misdeeds fit a broader pattern in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, as the yearlong investigation into the Sheriff’s Office by ProPublica, WRKF and WWNO found. Between 2013 and 2021, deputies disproportionately discharged guns against Black people. Of the 40 people shot at by Jefferson Parish deputies during that time, 73% were Black, more than double their share of the population. Twelve of the 16 people who died after being shot or restrained by deputies during that time were Black.

Alvarado has been named in at least 10 federal civil rights lawsuits since 2007, all involving the use of excessive force; eight of the plaintiffs were members of minority groups.

The Sheriff’s Office settled three of those lawsuits. Arnold’s $300,000 payout is the third — and largest — settlement involving Alvarado. Five other lawsuits were closed in favor of the Sheriff’s Office, one was dismissed on a legal technicality and one was indefinitely delayed.

The Sheriff’s Office said in filings responding to the eight lawsuits that were not dismissed or delayed that officers’ actions were “reasonable under the circumstances” and characterized the claims as “frivolous.”

Prior to the 2021 incident involving Arnold, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office had settled a 2016 lawsuit accusing Alvarado of grabbing a 14-year-old Hispanic boy by the neck and slamming his head against the concrete as the child screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?” A woman had called the police complaining that the boy and a friend were wrestling in a parking lot. Alvarado then threatened to have the boy and his family deported, according to the suit. The Sheriff’s Office, which paid the boy’s family $15,000, said in court filings that Alvarado’s actions were “reasonable under the circumstances.”

In 2018, another lawsuit claimed Alvarado and three deputies beat Atdner Casco, a Honduran native, and stole more than $2,000 from him during a traffic stop the year before, then conspired to have him deported. Casco claimed Alvarado beat and choked him until he agreed to keep silent about being robbed. The Sheriff’s Office denied wrongdoing but settled that case in 2020 for $50,000.

Both incidents were cited in Arnold’s lawsuit as evidence that Alvarado has exhibited a pattern of behavior throughout his career that made him unfit for duty. Carter, Arnold’s attorney, raised yet another incident during the March trial in which sheriff detectives in December 2019 witnessed Alvarado patronizing a massage parlor that was being investigated for suspected prostitution. Alvarado denied he went there to “have a sexual act performed on him.” He was demoted from sergeant to deputy for “bringing the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in disrepute” and for patronizing an “illegitimate business while on duty and neglecting your responsibilities to detectives under your command,” Carter said during the trial, citing an internal police report.

Carter said in an interview that Lopinto’s continued defense and employment of Alvarado represented a permissive attitude toward questionable behavior.

“He stood by” Alvarado, who “shows no contrition, no remorse,” Carter said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Richard A. Webster, Verite News.

Freelance journalist Sean Beckner-Carmitchel was knocked to the ground by police and then struck in the back with a baton in Whittier, California, while documenting immigration protests on June 11, 2025.

The protests began June 6 in response to federal raids in and around LA of workplaces and areas where immigrant day laborers gathered, amid the Trump administration’s larger immigration crackdown. After demonstrators clashed with local law enforcement officers and federal agents, President Donald Trump called in the California National Guard and then the U.S. Marines over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.

Beckner-Carmitchel told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he was freelancing for the Los Angeles Public Press, reporting on demonstrations at the DoubleTree Hotel in Whittier, where protesters believed federal immigration officials were staying as they carried out raids throughout Los Angeles County.

In a post on the social platform Bluesky, Beckner-Carmitchel wrote that Whittier Police Department officers arrived after a window was broken. In photos and footage he posted, the officers appear to be positioned to prevent protesters from entering the hotel.

He told the Tracker that officers then came rushing out of the hotel to push back the crowd.

“When Whittier PD surged out of the hotel, an officer pushed me with his baton and I lost my balance and fell,” Beckner-Carmitchel said. “While I was on the ground, I also had an officer put his hand on me. I don’t necessarily want to call it a punch, but there was force.”

In footage he posted to Bluesky, officers can be seen charging forward, pushing the crowd with their batons and shouting “Back! Get the fuck back!” It appears that two officers pushed Beckner-Carmitchel, knocking him to the ground. As he begins to get up, another officer seems to rush toward him, striking and pushing the journalist back down despite him shouting, “Press! Press! Press!”

Beckner-Carmitchel told the Tracker he was able to get up once the officers had moved past him, but he was left with bruises on his left arm and hip.

In a statement posted on Instagram, the city of Whittier and the Whittier Police Department said that the claims that federal agents were staying at the hotel were incorrect.

“In response to an urgent plea from hotel management, a regional law enforcement response, led by the Whittier Police Department, was activated to help restore safety,” the statement said. “The crowd was safely dispersed around 2:00 a.m., with no injuries reported and no arrests made.”

Whittier police did not respond to a request for further comment.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Several users shared visuals of a blood-filled road and remarked sarcastically, “This isn’t Bangladesh or Pakistan…” Some stated that parts of Kolkata resembled “scenes from Bangladesh”. The posts also claimed that the visuals were from Ward 44 in Kolkata. (Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4)

BJP leader Sajal Ghosh who represents Ward No. 50 in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), also shared the video on Facebook and claimed that it was from the Bhawani Dutta Lane and Neel Madhab Sen Lane areas of Bowbazar. In the post, He also urged ‘urban, smart, ultramodern seculars’ to wake up unless they wanted the same picture to emerge from their localities within four-five years.

On the same day, the X handle of the West Bengal Police Cyber Crime Wing shared a related fact check. It picked up a Facebook post from a user named Nepal Saha, which contained six photos of purported Eid celebrations in Kolkata, and labelled them as fake. One of these photos is a screenshot from the viral video. The fact check claimed that the photos originated in Bangladesh, with a 2016 post from Dhaka cited as the source. However, the viral video screengrab is not part of the 2016 post, and only two of the five others flagged as fake can actually be traced back to it. (Archive)

A disturbing image falsely linked to Kolkata post-Eid is actually from Dhaka, 2016, after Eid-ul-Adha and heavy rain. It has no connection to West Bengal.#factcheckthetruth#factcheck#Bangladesh#WestBengal pic.twitter.com/SVSPwxr748

— Fact Check : The Truth (@t20274) June 8, 2025

Taking a cue from Sajal Ghosh’s Facebook post, Alt News was able to precisely identify the spot featured in the viral clip. Bhawani Dutta Lane and Neel Madhab Sen Lane are two narrow streets near the College Street — Mahatma Gandhi Road crossing, stones throw from the Presidency University. We visited the site and shot a video that shows the same area that is seen in the  viral clip. 

The business establishments visible toward the end of the footage all carry Kolkata addresses. (Outlined in red in the screengrabs below)

Key landmarks visible in the viral video — including a distinct red-coloured house, a grey coloured building with light blue stripes, and a black car — can be seen in the Alt News video as well. The grey building houses the historical and current sections of the West Bengal state archives and bears the address: 6, Bhawani Dutta Lane.  

These elements have also been highlighted below:

Have Never Seen Streets Turn Red Like this Before: Locals

To understand what transpired, we spoke to several locals. They recounted that on the intervening night of June 6 and June 7, the area experienced heavy rainfall resulting in severe waterlogging. On Saturday, June 7, morning, the ritual of qurbani (animal sacrifice) was carried out in keeping with religious tradition, local residents observed.

With the lanes being already waterlogged from the overnight rain, blood from the animal sacrifices mixed with the stagnant rainwater. Locals themselves came forward to manually clear the drains before the intervention of the civic body.

Alt News spoke to a local shop owner, Rajesh, who said he had lived and worked in the neighbourhood for over four decades. He told us that he had never witnessed anything like this before. 

“I’ve been living and working in this neighbourhood for over 40 years, and I’ve never witnessed anything like this. The area indeed gets waterlogged whenever it rains, and the ritual of qurbani is performed here every year. But this is the first time I’ve seen such a scene — it was truly unprecedented.” Rajesh also confirmed that the video shows his locality and is from last Saturday.

The same information was corroborated by another shop owner from the area who told  us that he had been in business there for around five to seven years and “had never seen anything like it.” “The water was red and there was a pungent smell”, he told us.

To further corroborate the events, we spoke to another family that had been residing there for over 60 years. They told us that in all their time living there, they had never witnessed such a disturbing sight. According to them, waterlogging is a recurring issue whenever it rains — and Friday was no exception. That evening, the area experienced heavy rainfall, which led to water accumulation due to clogged drains. “I was born and brought up here. In my lifetime, this was the first time I had witnessed something like this. Yes, the streets get waterlogged after a heavy shower. And on Friday, we experienced a heavy rainfall, which led to the accumulation of water.”

“Even at around 7 am, the water was clear, and likely after an hour, it turned red. Yes, it was accompanied by foul odour,” members of the household told Alt News. they did not want to be named. The time of the water turning red was corroborated by two other witnesses. 

When asked whether the ritual of qurbani is practised every year on Eid al-adah, the family said, “Yes, but it has never affected the neighbours in any manner.” They also observed that a few local residents took the initiative to clear the clogged drains using sticks in an attempt to improve the situation. Shortly after these efforts, municipal workers arrived, cleaned the affected area, and restored normalcy. “We saw a few locals trying to unclog the drains with sticks. And later the municipality intervened and cleared it up.”

Kamal Pandit, a priest at a nearby temple, repeated the same point — that this was unprecedented. “I have been working here for the past six years. In this span, I have never seen a filthy sight like this. Whenever it rains, the area gets waterlogged, but I have never seen it turn red. It was cleared up in the afternoon.”

To sum up, Alt News’ on-ground investigation confirmed that the viral video was indeed authentic and were filmed in Kolkata. On the night of June 6 (Friday), the city witnessed heavy rain in certain areas, including Bhawani Dutta Lane in central Kolkata. As a result, following the Qurbani (sacrificial) ritual on Bakri Eid the next day, the already waterlogged lanes turned red, possibly due to contamination with animal blood. However, the X handle of Bengal police’s cyber crime wing issued an inaccurate fact-check of a Facebook post carrying a screenshot from the same video, incorrectly claiming that it was from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2016.

This story will be updated if we receive a response from the cyber cell of police.

The post Waterlogged Kolkata street did turn red after Eid qurbani: Alt News ground report rebuts police cyber cell’s denial appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Ankita Mahalanobish.

“National media showed what they had to. Our endeavour is to give you our version of the truth, as those who suffered and survived. Even if 5% of the ground reality reaches the people with every small, local news outlet’s report, eventually, when these narratives add up, at least some truth will trickle down to the people of this country who live in faraway cities and clamour for war.” These were Jamrodh Singh’s words to Alt News days after his uncle, Amrik Singh (54), was killed in Pakistani shelling in Kashmir’s Poonch.

Over a month has passed since India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire (May 10), but civilians residing near border areas are still grappling with the magnitude of their losses. Amrik Singh was among the 21 Indian civilians killed in the conflict between India and Pakistan that went on for four days. On the intervening night of May 6 and 7, shortly after India launched a military strike targeting terror bases in Pakistan, the neighbouring country retaliated with cross-border firing, hitting many civilian areas. The Indian strikes, labelled Operation Sindoor, followed the April 22 Pahalgam massacre in which 26 civilians were shot dead by terrorists with alleged links to Pakistan.

Caught unaware when the strikes happened, families of those who lost their loved ones recount how blindsided and helpless they felt. Their stories were not covered by several mainstream television channels in India that were too busy celebrating the operation’s success as a befitting revenge for Pahalgam. Even in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation after the conflict, there was no mention of the civilian casualties, which included five children.

Alt News spoke to five bereaved families who debunked some of the falsehoods spread by media outlets and shed light on the on-ground realities of such operations, forcing us to look beyond headlines that only celebrate the military wins in the conflict.

Deaths Marred by Misinformation

On May 9, while the conflict was at its peak, a family living in Khai Pheme Ki village in Punjab’s Ferozpur had no idea their lives were about to change forever. A drone fired by the Pakistan army hit a car stationed in their garage at around 8:40 pm. Within minutes, the whole house, about 10 kilometres away from the International Border, was engulfed in flames. Sukhwinder Kaur, a woman in her late forties, who was in the kitchen at the time this happened, suffered third-degree burns. Three days later, on May 12, she succumbed to her injuries. Kaur’s husband and son, who were also present inside the house when the drone fell, also suffered serious injuries and are still recovering.

But adding to the pain of her grieving family were misreports around her death that seemed to blame the family for what happened.

“Shells were being fired, and media claimed that they were sitting with their lights on; that’s why it [the drone] hit their home. Isn’t that stupid? They are sitting elsewhere.. How do they know whether or not their lights were on at the time?” Kaur’s relative Ramandeep Singh told Alt News, the rage in his voice palpable.

“Some reported their home lights were on, some said their car lights were on [after the blackout was announced], some locals even spread the word that they were making spurious liquor, and the drone struck that cylinder, and that is how their house caught fire. They are an Amartayi parivaar [a colloquial expression to describe a family of Amritdhari Sikhs—those committed to the Khalsa code of conduct which prohibits consumption of tobacco, alcohol, or meat]. These are rumours,” he said. “Ask those who have suffered the loss, you’ll get goosebumps,” Singh added.

In fact, relatives of the family even clarified to some media outlets that the lights of their home were not on and that the drone hit the house in spite of that. Even then, the channels that broadcast this have not corrected their reports.

Kaur was among the first civilian casualties in the conflict outside of Jammu and Kashmir after Pakistan retaliated against Operation Sindoor.

Two days before Kaur’s home was struck by mortar shells, a family in Kashmir’s Poonch was similarly seething in anger.

Mohammed Iqbal was among those killed in retaliatory shelling by Pakistan in the early hours of May 7. However, the 47-year-old Qari, an honorific title given to those who specialise in recitation of Quranic verses, was labelled a terrorist by many news outlets.

“My uncle, Qari Mohammed Iqbal, was martyred in shelling by Pakistan, and news channels ran bulletins that India killed a Lashkar terrorist, the Pulwama mastermind, who was hiding in Kotli. He was a well-respected teacher and religious figure in our community. They showed an image of him in his last moments, bleeding… celebrating it as a triumph. Media is supposed be the fourth pillar of democracy, and they ran such horrific fake news regarding a martyr who is a well-respected man and a kattar Hindustani (a staunch Indian). We were already heartbroken, what they were broadcasting was like rubbing salt in our wounds,” Tariq Manzoor told Alt News from Poonch. “We really hope those channels pay the price for the hurt they have caused us. I hope these channels are shut down, actually…”

Read: His name was Qari Mohammad Iqbal. He was not a terrorist.

Manzoor also told us that Mohammed Iqbal, who taught at the local school, Zia-Ul-Uloom, for over 20 years, was trying to shift the children who showed up in school to a safer spot on a lower floor when a splinter pierced through the classroom wall and hit him. He added that it was unfortunate that a man who died doing something noble was plastered across channels as a ‘most-wanted terrorist’.

Close to where Qari Mohammed Iqbal breathed his last was a Gurudwara. When the conflict escalated, media outlets ran suggestive shows that Pakistan was targeting Sikhs’ place of worship in Poonch.

On May 7, at least two segments by the news channel Republic claimed that Pakistan killed three innocent civilians by striking the Gurudwara in Poonch. “Cowardly Pakistan is now targeting civilians and Gurudwaras… India is in complete solidarity with the families of the Gur-Sikhs and the Ragis who lost their lives… Pakistan will have to be punished,” said the show’s host.

On May 8, senior journalist and Aaj Tak’s managing editor, Anjana Om Kashyap’s segment “Halla Bol” also reiterated the same. Note that in her programmes between May 7 and May 10, Kashyap did not pose any questions to the administration regarding evacuation efforts and whether civilians could have been saved by timely intervention. Also, it’s worth noting that during the Pahalgam massacre, Kashyap dubbed the incident “Kashmir Files Part 2”.

“Look, Pakistan is exposing itself. If it attacks Amritsar, if it attacks a Gurudwara in Poonch and three people are killed, then we can understand their intentions and where they are headed,” she remarked in her show on May 8.

But these assertions stand on shaky ground. Two local journalists Alt News spoke to dismissed claims that these attacks ‘targeted’ a Gurudwara. Late Amrik Singh’s nephew, Jamrodh Singh, also countered the claim shared by news outlets. Jamrodh Singh told us that his uncle worked closely with the Gurudwara and recited verses from the holy text there.

“Yes, a shell did fall on the Gurudwara, but a shell also fell on a mosque. It hit so many homes. It’s wrong to say that communities were targeted. How is it possible? They can’t fire shells based on which community they want to target… Sardars died, Muslims died, Hindus died, children died, people everywhere died,” he said. Explaining that he comes from an army background, Jamrodh Singh said that artillery guns narrow down on the location and target, wherever the firing is coming from. This time, India likely used some advanced weaponry that was similar to a moving gun; this made it hard for Pakistan to determine the exact location, and so they fired mercilessly and hit whatever they could, he added.

Recounting his uncle’s last moments, he said that Amrik Singh went to the Gurudwara early on the morning of May 7, where he made an announcement, asking everyone to stay indoors because he had an inkling that the situation could worsen. Amrik Singh then tried to move his own family to safety in a bunker on the ground floor of his house. The street-facing side of the ground floor had a shop front. The bunker doubled up as storage.

“He must have come to the shop to get a broom when a shell perforated through the shuttered shop and hit him,” he said, adding, “Can you imagine? The shutters were made of strong metal, it pierced through that… it was hard to believe… my uncle’s body just lay there, slumped on a chair.” Amrik Singh passed away around 7:30 am on May 7.

Jamrodh Singh shared with us more visuals that display the extent of the damage caused to the shop/bunker due to shelling by Pakistan.

Amrik Singh’s elder brother, Harjeet Singh, was also seriously injured in the shelling on May 7. His shop too suffered sizeable damage due to the strikes.

Jamrodh Singh and the rest of Amrik Singh’s family, like the other victims’ kin Alt News spoke with, are deeply upset with the administration. They all told Alt News that had they received some notice regarding what was about to unfold, perhaps some lives could have been saved.

But these questions were seldom raised by TV journalists of mainstream media channels. Worse, they blatantly misreported on the ground situation. On May 7, for instance, when Pakistan was retaliating with broad-range attacks, ABP’s Chitra Tripathi hosted a segment in which other anchors and the channel’s correspondents joined in to offer updates. At the 1:57-minute mark of the segment, Tripathi says that schools were closed in Poonch and Jammu because of Pakistan’s continued provocation. “We must ensure the safety of our citizens and children,” she said.

However, each of the four families from Poonch we spoke to, separately told Alt News that until the morning of May 7, schools had issued no notice of closure. Manzoor said that people in Poonch had no clue that India was going to strike and there would be retaliatory fire, so children came to the school where his uncle taught as usual that morning. Jamrodh Singh also said that many children were on their way to school early in the morning when firing intensified.

Families of three children who were killed in shelling told Alt News that the schools were preparing for a mock drill on May 7.

Among the children who breathed their last that day were 12-year-old twins Zain and Urwa. Their aunt, Maria Khan, told us that the family was planning to visit the kids’ maternal grandparents on May 6, but chose to stay in Poonch because of the mock drills that were supposed to be held in school and by the military in their area. Zain and Urwa’s parents, originally residents of Chandak, had moved to Poonch just two months ago to be closer to the school both children attended.

“They [Zain and Urwa’s parents] thought the kids would learn what to do in such situations in school, and they would also know how to approach such a scenario. If not for the drill, they would have left the previous day for their maternal grandparents’ home,” she told Alt News, her voice choking. “They had said it [the drill] would take place on May 7… If instead of saying a mock drill would happen, they had said that a war-like situation might take place, then may be our family wouldn’t be in this state. May be the kids would still be with us, and none of this would have happened.”

A video report by Mojo Story on the twins’ death claimed that they had “stepped out for school but never returned”. However, Maria told us that the twins died while trying to evacuate from their homes on the morning of May 7.

Shelling started around 1:30-2 am at night and seemed to intensify, which is when the twins’ mother reached out to her family, and they decided that the twins’ maternal uncle would come pick them up after 5:30 am. “The street on which they lived is congested, so he [the maternal uncle] could not get the car in. They just stepped out of the home to walk towards the car when a shell fell behind them and exploded. The splinters of the shell hit them from the back… Zoya (Urwa’s nickname), who was holding her mother’s hand, bled out and died on the spot. Zain also died right there; he had a cut the size of a palm, his intestines had fallen out of his body,” she said, adding that the father, who was also severely injured, did not know about the kids’ deaths for days.

Alt News also reached out to the family of 14-year-old Vihaan Bhargav, who attended the same school as Zain and Urwa. Vihaan was killed on May 7 at around 11:30 am after splinters from a shell fired by Pakistan struck him in the head. His father, Sanjeev Kumar, a government employee in the education department, confirmed that on May 6, authorities had announced there would be a mock drill the following day; however, he said, they launched Operation Sindoor. “It’s a fact that no mock drill was conducted. Maybe these lives could have been saved if a mock drill had happened”.

Recounting what happened the day Vihaan’s life was tragically cut short, Kumar told us, “There was heavy shelling throughout the night, and nearly 70–80% of the population had started relocating to safe zones. We also decided to leave for safer areas such as Rajouri and Jammu. We were travelling in our private car and had covered three to four kilometres when a shell fell near us, causing a huge explosion. Our car was moving at a speed of 60–70 kilometres per hour when the splinters from the shell hit Vihaan on the head, and he died on the spot”. Apart from Vihaan and his parents, Sanjeev Kumar’s sister and her family were also in the car. “My brother-in-law is admitted to a hospital in Amritsar, his condition is also quite critical”, he added.

In our analysis of over eight major news channels across English and Hindi, we found that between May 7 and 10, most aired visuals of drones, shells, and artillery. But there was little or no emphasis on what happens when these shells hit the ground and damage homes, shattering the lives of those who did not see it coming. NDTV was an exception and Shiv Aroor’s ground reports from civilian areas across sectors in Kashmir and Punjab were among the few that went beyond defence gains.

Besides the misinformation clarified by the families above, news channels also went all out, launching fictional strikes on the Karachi port and Islamabad and sharing unrelated visuals from Gaza and even from video games as footage from the conflict.

READ: The fictional strikes on the Karachi port and what it says about Indian media

We also wrote about how the government’s own fact-checking unit, PIB, refrained from calling out the falsehoods spread by news channels.

READ: Op Sindoor: As Indian media made false, outrageous claims, PIB looked the other way

Misplaced Focus

Much of the coverage on the ground situation remained focused on the operation and India’s defence wins, conveniently downplaying the human cost.

For instance, ABP News’ broadcast from May 7 has anchor Megha Prasad claiming, “… Pakistan had to respond in some way. Chitra, you must understand, on our side of the border, there are many homes where people were advised to evacuate. But some families chose to stay, perhaps due to personal reasons. So when there is shelling on the border, these kinds of tragedies and casualties do happen [sic].”

Prasad’s comment here is not just inconsiderate but a blatant misrepresentation of what happened. Two journalists from Kashmir and families of five victims explicitly told Alt News that many of the casualties happened in towns with high civilian populations and that it appeared as though the government or the administration was unprepared for the scale of attacks by Pakistan.

“We did not expect shelling to take place in the town, neither were we alerted that something like this could happen….We have not seen shelling of this scale… drones reached all the way to Jammu city, imagine if you witnessed drones and shelling in Delhi-NCR, that will be unexpected, right? That’s how it was for us… This was not meant to be a war; it was an operation…” said Jamrodh Singh. “Nobody from the administration arrived to help us. There were no evacuation orders, no sirens, no warnings.”

“I am 45, in my whole life here [in Jammu and Kashmir], we have not witnessed civilians being attacked. Both sides would attack military posts, and that was it, for the first time we saw war so closely. They [Pakistan] fired without any hesitation. So much of the Poonch town has been damaged, it’s never happened before,” Tariq Manzoor explained. He added that even if the administration had announced that morning or in the middle of the night and asked people to take shelter, many could have been saved.

Vihaan’s father Sanjeev Kumar, a resident of Poonch for decades now, also reiterated that he had never seen anything of this scale before. “Before this, whenever such a [conflict or war-like] situation happened, the exchange of fire was only between the [defence] forces on both sides. I am almost 46 years old and I have never seen anything like this. In 1992 [referring to the Siachen conflict], when I was younger, I remember about three or four shells fell near our area, but nothing of this scale”.

Like the families of Zain, Urwa and Vihaan, others too tried to leave town on their own. Jamrodh Singh said that when the rest of his family tried to reach Poonch after his uncle’s passing, they saw most people desperately trying to leave. “So many were labourers who did not have their vehicles, they were willing to pay anything to just save their lives.”

An India Today report from Poonch by Kamaljit Sandhu corroborates this. One family told her that they sold their motorcycle for Rs 3,500 and cut down on food expenses to afford evacuation, yet it wasn’t enough for all members to secure a spot on the bus. They ended up stranded on the roadside, helpless. The channel also reported on a similar situation in Punjab’s Ferozepur, where people residing in the Kaluwala village were shoring up their means to find a way out.

However, apart from this, much of India Today’s coverage remained focused on India’s military capabilities. Even when civilian deaths were reported, which, anyway, received very little screentime, the conversation remained centred on Pakistan instead of urging accountability on why Indian authorities did not make rescue efforts when the situation worsened, and whether these losses could have been prevented.

The families we mentioned above all told Alt News that coverage by mainstream media outlets, often selective, seemed to disregard their grief, painting an altogether different picture of the ground reality.

“Even the A of administration was nowhere to be seen. Nobody was guiding anyone to safety. Each was left to their own.” He later told Alt News that officials from the administration only arrived after the ceasefire. “Nobody came when the shelling was happening to help us out. Why they were not there, we don’t know. We heard about the plane crash in Ahmedabad. You must have seen that immediately after the crash, emergency responders reached the location. However, that was not the case for people in Poonch when shelling took place.”

But the focus of news channels remained elsewhere.

Take the programme aired by Times Now Navbharat on May 7, where anchor Sushant Sinha and former army personnel Gaurav Arya were discussing Operation Sindoor and Pakistan’s next steps. During the episode, Arya said he prays that Pakistan attacks India so the country can give a befitting response. “Meri prarthana hai ki ek baar Munir [Pakistan’s army chief] attack kar de, bas mazza aa jayega”. Once they [Pakistan] attack something strategic, India will have a reason, a justification to hit back or “thoko”. While Arya’s statement was in poor taste, the channel egged him on. At one point in the show, the two even lauded India’s deception tactics. Instead of actually sounding the siren for war, they straight up did the job, Sinha said with pride. “Siren nahi baja, band baja. Bajna kahiin aur tha, baj kahiin aur gaya,” he said with a grin.

Not only are such comments on national television in poor taste, but they also show just how divorced the media is from reality. For families that lost their loved ones that morning in Poonch, any siren sounded by the government could have been a lifeline.

“There was no indication from the administration’s end that would help us understand the extent of the situation. No sirens, no security officials, no local police. Nobody alerted us or told us to stay indoors while shelling was happening or that we would be moved to safe zones. What happened due to this is that people started to evacuate since 3 am,” Vihaan’s father told Alt News.

“They told us it would be a mock drill and then declared war. Common people were under the impression that there would be a drill, and for no fault of theirs, innocent children died,” said Maria Khan, the aunt of the twins who passed away. “It’s easy to sit in other states and wish for a war, come to the border areas, stay here and see for yourself what war is like in reality.”

Families of Qari Mohammed Iqbal and Amrik Singh also blamed the administration.

“I understand the limitations that sensitive operations pose. Some things cannot be said out loud, some information cannot be divulged to all, but since there was going to be a drill, you could have called it a mock drill and gotten people to move out… Why would you let your own people die?” said an anguished Jamrodh Singh.

“If they told the public even an hour or two ahead that save yourself, find shelter, find your safe points to hide, because we are going to strike and they may hit back, the damage could have been limited. The children and older men who died could have been saved… People lay waiting for the mock drill and overnight everything changed, we were suddenly in a war zone,” Tariq Manzoor said.

Jamrodh Singh also blamed the media for the excessive but misplaced coverage on the mock drill in some parts. “In Bihar, they called photographers to shoot how they made children do the mock drills. [On news] they showed children being evacuated, sirens were played, they all hid in bunkers, they publicised this, they showed it on TV. But on the ground, in the area where this was absolutely crucial, none of this was done and nobody is questioning it,” said Jamrodh Singh.

Majority of Times Now Navbharat’s segments around that time used similar language and remained focused on damage India caused Pakistan. Likewise, throughout their panels and debates on Operation Sindoor, Republic called politicians, defence experts and former military personnel who all lauded the military win, using hypermasculine language. A lot of screen time was used to shame Pakistan with a passing mention of civilian casualties in bulletins.

Overall, it would be fair to say that several news channels owned by legacy media houses skipped questions on accountability by the Indian side. However, as we said before, NDTV was among the select few who raised these issues in their shows. It’s a different matter that these reports were often eclipsed by discussions on India’s defence moves. Reportage by the channel’s Hindi counterpart, however, was very different with tickers bordering on jingoism.

Rhetoric of Revenge

In its segments, Republic also kept reiterating how Operation Sindoor was “revenge” for Pahalgam. Even before the Indian strikes, the channel had begun using the hashtag revenge is coming. But such coverage overshadows the resentment of survivors who felt their losses were dubbed as collateral damage.

But Republic alone cannot be blamed for setting such a narrative when the Prime Minister’s 22-minute address to the nation also skimmed over the casualties from Operation Sindoor.

“The terrorists wiped off the sindoor of our sisters, that is why India wiped off the headquarters of terror…” Modi said in his address on May 13. While he did say Pakistan attacked civilian homes, there was no mention of how many lives were lost in the border areas of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.

“We are deeply sorry about the innocent lives lost in Pahalgam. This is why they launched Operation Sindoor, right? If this operation was to avenge them, what about the Indians who died in Pakistani shelling? What operation will be launched for the innocent children who died?” quipped Maria Khan, her voice breaking. She added that in her interviews with news channels, she clearly asked these questions, but her bytes were edited and conveniently not aired.

“People from Kashmir, Poonch, and almost everyone are highlighting that the PM did not even mention the area, district or even J&K in his speech, think about how we felt, our kids died. Three innocent kids died, and there was no mention of that,” she continued.

“We already lost 26 lives, and in order to avenge that, we suffered more losses. It could have been avoided,” said Manzoor.

On X, too, there has been anger about the disregard for the lives of those living near the borders. On May 13, Nasir Khuehami (@NasirKhuehami), national convenor of the J&K students association, wrote on the social media platform: “It is deeply disheartening that in the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s 22-minute address, there was not a single word about the innocent lives lost in Poonch, Rajouri, and Uri… Over 15 coffins were lowered into the ground, including that of a 12-year-old child, yet there was no word of condolence, no acknowledgement, no empathy. Are the lives on the border invisible? Do the cries from Poonch, Rajouri, and Uri not reach the corridors of power?”

With grief welling in their hearts, the victims’ families are trying to live on.

“My appeal to the government is that they create a war memorial in Poonch for those who died due to this conflict, and they should be declared as martyrs,” said Sanjeev Kumar, who is still trying to come to terms with his son’s demise. “Family members who have lost a loved one have received appointment letters [for a government job], and a relief amount has also been announced. I still haven’t had the mental bandwidth to check these things; my only child is gone,” said the grieving father.

“A few minutes before he died, my uncle recited a Punjabi line from our holy book, Guru Granth Sahib, telling my aunt that when death comes to find you, it will. That’s what happened,” Jamrodh Singh said, adding they wished it didn’t have to be this way.

The bereaved families said they have been offered financial compensation and jobs but also that official visits followed much after the incident.

Punjab victim Sukhwinder Kaur’s relative, Ramandeep Singh, told us that the family was given Rs 15 lakh as compensation, adding that several politicians paid them a visit. “The main thing is, when the blast happened at their house, nobody came. When they were being rushed to the hospital, even then, no one came. The military force visited the home only to pick up the drone debris that had fallen on their house”.

“The administration is now offering us Rs 30 lakh and a fourth-class [government] job, but can a kid’s death be compensated with money? When we were trying to arrange an ambulance and an oxygen cylinder to move Zain and Urwa’s father from Poonch to a different location, we couldn’t get hold of anything. This incident happened at 6:30 am, and we could get an ambulance only by 4:30 pm,” said Maria Khan.

“The governor announced a compensation of Rs 15 lakh and a job for those who lost their family in the conflict. This money has reached those affected. But those whose houses were majorly damaged were offered a sum of Rs 1.3 lakh; those with partially damaged homes were offered just Rs 4,000. Reconstructing some of these houses will cost several times more. In one of the houses, just fixing the damage alone will cost Rs 30 lakh; where will they get this money from? What is Rs 1.3 lakh or Rs 4,000 in comparison? Even insurance companies are washing their hands off the damage to cars because of shelling,” said Tariq Manzoor.

“Our local media [in J&K] and small news outlets have really been our strength; many came despite the circumstances and did really good coverage of what happened. This was a major miss by big TV channels… they were on a different tangent,” he added.

Editor’s Note: Images of victims, including minors, were provided by their families, who have given Alt News exclusive permission to use them for this story. 

The post Operation Sindoor: Grief on the ground, glory on TV screens appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

As the genocide in Gaza enters its 15th month, we look at From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza by Palestinian filmmakers surviving Israel’s bombings and brutal blockade. The film has been shortlisted for this year’s Academy Awards in the category for best international feature. “In spite of all what happened, we were trying to search for hope,” says filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, director of From Ground Zero, now playing in U.S. theaters. Masharawi was born in Gaza and has lost many relatives during the war. He says the film is an opportunity to focus on “the normal stories” of survival and perseverance, calling it “cinema for humanity.”

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

This is from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in Dhaka.

The national flag of India was placed at the BUET campus gate in such a way that people could walk on it and disrespect it. pic.twitter.com/WyURrMeDWM

— Anshul Saxena (@AskAnshul) November 27, 2024

The image has been widely shared amid concerns that it is a major snub to a symbol of national pride for Indians.

Alt News has received numerous requests on its WhatsApp helpline number (7600011160) to authenticate the image. 

True or hoax? 

To verify the image, we ran a keyword search (in Bengali) that led us to a news report by Dhakatimes24 from November 29 titled “Kolkata doctor stopped seeing Bangladeshi patients for insult to the Indian flag”. The report led us to a post by a Kolkata doctor named Indranil Saha on Facebook where he avows that he will stop seeing patients from Bangladesh owing to the treatment meted out to the flag. “Aage desh, pore rojgaar” (Country comes first, not income), Saha wrote. The post has received a lot of attention and over 4,000 comments.

The Dhakatimes24 report, however, did not get into who placed the flag and why, but did say that similar cases of the Indian flag being placed on the ground were reported from other universities as well. This includes the cafeteria at Rajshahi Science and Technology University, Noakhali Science and Technology University and Dhaka University.

Alt News reached out to a few students from BUET, who confirmed that the incident took place on November 27 (a day before the Kolkata doctor’s Facebook post). They identified the image as authentic and from their university and mentioned that the banner with the Indian flag design was removed from the university entrance within 24 hours. A student from nearby Dhaka University also corroborated the information. All the students spoke to Alt News on condition of anonymity.

We were also able to procure additional images of BUET’s entrance gate from a different point of view to cross-check the claims. The images are added below:

Alt News also reached out to a fact-checking journalist from Bangladesh, who confirmed the authenticity of the incident, the viral photo and the claims. This person preferred to remain anonymous.

On investigating, we also found BUET held such demonstrations (by placing country flags on the floor) in previous instances as well. In October, something similar happened with flags of Israel and the USA.

Note that the Flag Code of India, 2002 and the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 clearly mention that if anyone “burns, mutilates, defaces, defiles, disfigures, destroys, tramples upon or *otherwise shows disrespect to or brings into contempt (whether by words, either spoken or written, or by acts) the Indian National Flag or the Constitution of India or any part thereof” at a public place anywhere within public view, they can be imprisoned for up to 3 years, fined or both. Interestingly though, this only applies to such instances within the country.

To sum up, the claim that the Indian national flag was placed on the floor at the entrance of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology is true. The image viral in this connection is not edited or doctored. 

The post Viral image of Indian flag placed on the ground at Bangladesh tech varsity gate is genuine appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Ankita Mahalanobish.

The Irrawaddy online news outlet reported that the junta formed a 13-member working committee on October 22 to prepare the groundwork to establish a “joint security company” with China.

According to the report, the committee, chaired by Major-General Toe Yi, the junta’s deputy home affairs minister, is currently tasked with “scrutinizing the importing and regulating of weapons and special equipment” until Beijing signs a drafted MOU on forming a “security company.”

After that, according to the narrative from Beijing and Naypyidaw, Chinese personnel would join a “company” — more like a militia — alongside junta troops, which would be tasked with defending Chinese strategic and economic interests in the country.

I’m told that China will send troops from the military and police in a “private” capacity, giving the fiction of detachment.

Yet this would not be a joint venture in anything but name.

Does one seriously think that Chinese troops or police are going to listen to the Myanmar generals who have lost battle after battle to ethnic armies and ill-trained civilian militias over the past four years?

Moreover, there is no reason to think that the China-junta “militia” will stick to merely protecting Chinese nationals and Chinese-owned businesses in Myanmar.

Chinese projects delayed

It is true that Chinese assets have come under increased levels of attack from anti-junta forces in recent months.

There is some logic, if you’re sitting in Beijing and Naypyidaw, in wanting to allow Chinese forces to help command most of northern Myanmar, giving junta forces a better chance of mopping up rebel forces elsewhere.

The civil war has delayed key Chinese projects in the country, such as the long-planned China-Myanmar Economic Corridor between China’s Yunnan province and Myanmar’s Indian Ocean coast.

Strategically key for Beijing is a port it wants to build in Rakhine state, allowing China to import oil and gas from the Middle East without ships needing to pass through the Malacca Strait, a potential chokepoint.

This would be essential in the event of a conflict in the South China Sea, during which the Philippines or Taiwan could try to blockade Chinese trade, including oil and gas imports on which China’s economy depends.

My sources say that the majority of the PLA contingent will be deployed to Rakhine state.

According to statements released by Beijing, almost certainly intended to construct a peace narrative ahead of the deployment, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told junta leader Min Aung Hlaing in August that he hoped “Myanmar will earnestly safeguard the safety of Chinese personnel and projects.”

When Min Aung Hlaing visited China earlier this month, his first visit since the coup, Chinese Premier Li Qiang instructed him to “take effective measures to ensure the safety of Chinese nationals, institutions, and projects in the country.”

The reality, as Beijing knows well, is that the junta cannot ensure these things.

That’s the entire reason why the “security companies” are deemed necessary by the Chinese government.

Offensive operations

Once Chinese security personnel are on the ground in Myanmar, the fiction that they’re just standing guard outside a few industrial compounds or pipelines will become difficult to maintain.

Indeed, they’re likely to have no choice but to mount offensive operations.

The most obvious reason to expect this is that many Chinese-run enterprises are in territory currently controlled by resistance groups that will presumably need to be taken by Chinese forces.

If not, why would Beijing make a u-turn on its existing policy, which had been to cajole and pay the ethnic militias to leave Chinese entities out of their fight with the junta?

Secondly, after years of dallying, Beijing now clearly thinks that it cannot trust the anti-junta National Unity Government (NUG), presumably because it’s too pro-Western, nor most of the anti-junta ethnic militias – even those who have taken money from Beijing.

Chinese authorities reportedly detained Peng Daxun, the leader of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), a militia that has inflicted heavy casualties on the junta, after he was summoned to Yunnan for a parlay last month.

This may be a temporary detention pour encourager les autres, or it may be Beijing trying to dismantle disloyal militias more permanently.

Yet, in essence, Beijing has now thrown its weight behind the junta because it presumably believes China’s interests would be best served by an outright junta victory.

So if Beijing thinks the ultimate way of protecting Chinese business interests in Myanmar, for now and in the long term, is for the civil war to be ended and for junta forces to win the conflict decisively, the difference between Chinese security personnel conducting defensive and offensive operations is paper thin.

Why wouldn’t Beijing use its troops to bring about its overarching goal? Why would Beijing overlook the opportunity to end a civil war that it wants over?

Anti-China sentiment

Why would Beijing merely send personnel to defend Chinese factories and pipelines for a few months or years if it thinks there is the possibility that forces hostile to Chinese interests could eventually take power nationally?

Under these circumstances, Chinese personnel would think it justified, under the narrative of “safeguarding the safety of Chinese nationals, institutions and projects in the country,” to wage offensive assaults against anti-junta forces across Myanmar.

Granted, the junta is touchy about being seen as a lackey of Beijing — or about Myanmar becoming a protectorate of China.

That is why Beijing has offered platitudes of a joint “security company,” a fiction to get around Myanmar’s constitution that forbids the deployment of foreign troops.

But what position will the junta be in to dictate what Chinese personnel can do or where they can go once they are in Myanmar?

Lastly, does one imagine that anti-junta forces won’t retaliate against Chinese intervention, especially when that intervention is so clearly on behalf of the regime?

Anti-China sentiment is running high in Myanmar and will boil over once Chinese troops and police step foot in the country.

One can very easily imagine an escalating campaign of attacks by anti-junta forces on Chinese interests – increasing the incentives for Chinese security personnel to launch offensive operations.

Once Chinese boots are on the ground in Myanmar, this means direct intervention by China – not merely an economic peacekeeping effort by joint “security companies.”

And Chinese personnel will have to conduct offensive operations – not just stand guard at Chinese-run factories and pipelines.

David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes the Watching Europe In Southeast Asia newsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.

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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by David Hutt.

Freelance photojournalist Susan Stava was shoved to the ground by police while reporting outside a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 20, 2024.

Stava told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker she went to cover the town hall event at the Lancaster County Convention Center but stayed outside to conduct interviews as part of an ongoing project about women who support the former president.

“I went to leave and I saw a bunch of demonstrators outside in Lancaster Square, and it was basically a Harris group, and what struck me was it was pretty peaceful and the Harris-Walz group was just mingling with the Trump supporters,” she said. “It got a little crazy around the center, where there were a bunch of kids that were sort of antagonizing the Harris supporters.”

Then a woman Stava had been speaking with noticed that her friend was under arrest following an altercation.

“We all were going around to see where they were taking her, and it was sort of on the street and I was going to actually run to the other corner of the street when I could, to get a front shot of her coming toward me,” she said. “And I never got there.”

Stava said an officer suddenly broadsided her, shoving her to the ground.

“I landed on my back, and I really didn’t know what hit me,” she told the Tracker. “He didn’t even bother to see if I was OK. He just backed up, standing there. Another cop came over and hoisted me up very quickly without assuring that I wasn’t injured.”

She said she was examined by emergency responders at the scene and they transported her to a hospital to ensure that she didn’t have any internal bleeding. Stava said she suffered from whiplash and has a “huge lump” on her head, a large bruise on her arm and jaw pain. One of her camera lenses was also damaged during the incident.

“I’ve been in this business for 30-35 years: I’ve never had that happen,” Stava said. “I’ve been to January 6, I’ve been to all kinds of places and I’m pretty careful. I’m very savvy about what’s around me.”

Stava told the Tracker that after she was released from the hospital she went straight to the Lancaster City Bureau of Police to file a complaint about the incident.

Women Press Freedom condemned the “violent actions” taken by the police officer, stating that it was “a clear violation of press freedom and the rights of journalists to report safely and without interference.”

“This incident not only highlights the concerning aggression faced by journalists in the field but also raises serious questions about the training and conduct of law enforcement officers,” the advocacy organization wrote in its statement. “We call for a thorough investigation into this incident, and we urge the Lancaster City Police to take immediate action to address the serious issues raised by Stava’s experience.”

When reached by email, the police directed the Tracker to its statement issued on Oct. 23, announcing that it had completed its investigation and concluded that the officer had not engaged in any misconduct.

“A scene like this can escalate quickly and officers may not always be able to immediately identify an individual’s intent when the group is rapidly moving toward a restricted area,” the statement said. “It’s important for everyone, including media personnel, to remain aware of their surroundings during dynamic situations where safety conditions can change rapidly.”

Stava told the Tracker that she has been in contact with the National Press Photographers Association and is considering next steps.

“I’m worried about the fascist directions the cops and the police department are going into. I don’t know if journalists are being singled out, I don’t know what’s happening for sure, but that’s my sense. So, big concern,” Stava said.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

North Korean farm managers who are not carefully harvesting their potato crops – leaving some behind – are getting in trouble with authorities, residents with links to the agricultural sector told Radio Free Asia.

Inspectors recently swooped down on several collective farms in the northern potato-growing region of Ryanggang province to check the fields. “The inspectors drove around in cars and dug up every nook and cranny of the potato fields on the farm,” a resident who works in agriculture said on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“If the inspectors conclude that the fall harvest was not done properly, the farms must redo it until they pass the inspection,” another provincial resident said.

The reason behind the checks appears to be that farmers are spending more time tending their personal fields than the collective farm’s lots, the sources said.

In North Korea’s collective farming system, farmers are paid the standard government salary to work the land, and then all crops are collected by the state and distributed to the people. But since the collapse of the country’s economy in the 1990s, that salary is nowhere near enough to live on. 

So the farmers, like everyone else, must support themselves by other means – and are planting their own personal potato patches–usually on land surrounding their homes. The potatoes grown there are either eaten or sold for extra income.

When harvest time comes around, citizens are mobilized to provide free labor to the farm managers, who order them to quickly dig up the collective farms just to make quota by the Sept. 30 deadline.

The farm managers have a tendency to not to watch the collective farms too, and they acknowledge that they are mostly going through the motions, the first resident said. “They are working so irresponsibly to the point that they joke that the mobilized workers are ‘digging for potatoes with their eyes closed,’” he said.

Farmers beware

But the government wants them to be more thorough, so it is sending inspection teams to check.

“The Cabinet Agricultural Commission dispatched a 20-member harvest inspection team in Hyesan City on Sept. 26,” the second Ryanggang resident said, referring to a city in the province.

Punishments for farm officials who fail inspections can be harsh, he said.

Last year, many farm officials in the province were expelled from the Workers’ Party, and they lost all the housing and employment privileges that go with membership, and some were even sent to prison because they were sloppy in their management of the harvest.

“Farm officials can’t sleep at night because they think something like that could happen to them right now,” the first resident said.

At a farm in the city of Hyesan, the harvest was completed on Sept. 27, but then the workers were remobilized, that is, called to provide unpaid labor once again, when they heard that the inspection team had arrived.

“They even mobilized middle and high school students to complete the harvest again,” he said. “The farm officials would rather miss the deadline than fail the inspection.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Moon Sung Hui for RFA Korean.

Lebanese Prime Minsiter Najib Mikati says Lebanon is now facing “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” as the Israeli military claims to have begun launching “limited and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon. However, Hezbollah has denied that Israeli soldiers have actually entered Lebanon. The possible Israeli ground operation comes after two weeks of Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have killed over 1,000 people and forced over a million Lebanese to evacuate. While Biden called for a ceasefire, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday and affirmed U.S. support for Israeli actions along Lebanon’s border. “Israel is ultimately undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East,” says Beirut-based political and security analyst Ali Rizk. “Benjamin Netanyahu … wants to go down in history as the person who was able to successfully defeat the major enemy of Israel.”

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

• The Israeli army chief says the military is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon.
• As fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, Palestinians in Gaza fear their plight is being overlooked by the international community.
• In a blow to the oil and gas industry, California Governor Gavin Newsom signs 3 bills in Los Angeles holding oil drillers accountable for pollution and giving more power to local governments to limit drilling.
• The San Francisco Board of Supervisors introduced a resolution this week urging the city attorney’s office to drop a controversial lawsuit going before the Supreme Court next month, which some fear could weaken the Environmental Protection Agency.

The post The Israeli army chief says the military is preparing for a possible ground operation in Lebanon – September 25, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

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

​​Israel attacked more than 300 sites in Lebanon Monday, killing at least 182 people and injuring more than 700 others as fears grow of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli military also ordered residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near any site used by the militant group. “At the heart of this is an attempt to manufacture consent and try to portray most southern Lebanese as Hezbolloh operatives,” says Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at the Beirut-based media organization The Public Source. We also speak with Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon volunteering at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where he has been treating victims of last week’s device explosions that injured thousands of people. He describes the disfiguring injuries from Israel’s booby-trapping of pagers and walkie-talkies, calling it “an act of mass mutilation.”

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

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

That is a rough picture of what Ecuador’s Indigenous Waorani people have been living with since the 1970s, when U.S. oil company Texaco arrived and joined a campaign of American missionaries to force contact on families and remove them to evangelical encampments. 

As oil operations expanded, so too did the nation’s gross domestic product. Crude has powered the economy ever since. Resistance to the industry’s growth was long seen as an impediment to national progress.

But one year ago, Ecuadorians did something extraordinary. In a nationwide referendum, nearly 59 percent of voters chose to leave billions of dollars worth of heavy crude oil in the ground. 

The ballot measure asked voters whether they wanted to stop operations in three oil fields located inside Yasuni National Park, a part of the Amazon rainforest so biodiverse that there are more species of trees located in one square mile of it than in all of North America. The Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini (ITT) fields also encompass the territories of uncontacted and recently contacted Waorani families.

Referendums, a form of direct democracy, have long been used in Ecuador. Most have been top-down, called by politicians seeking legitimacy for proposed policies. 

The Yasuni ITT vote was a rare instance of citizens forcing the government’s hand through grassroots organizing and signature gathering. To some, that makes the ITT referendum all the more legitimate and why many perceive compliance with the vote as a high-stakes moment for Ecuadorian democracy. 

This month, the government will pass a deadline, imposed by the nation’s top court, to end oil operations in the ITT fields and remediate the area as the referendum requires. 

While Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa appears to have halted planned drilling expansions there, it’s not clear that the government will fully obey the Constitutional Court’s ruling. 

Noboa pledged to do so during his presidential campaign last year. But in a January television interview, Noboa suggested that the government may delay phasing out operations in the ITT fields to finance its fight against growing drug-related violence. 

Today, the state oil company Petroecuador continues to extract and pipe about 55,000 barrels of oil per day from that area.

Ecuadorian embassies in New York City and Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment or emailed questions about whether the government was taking steps to comply with the referendum.

The situation has created tensions both within and outside Ecuador.

On the ground in Yasuni, where the oil industry has historically trampled on Indigenous peoples’ rights, individual communities and organizations are planning to challenge the government through new court actions and other forms of resistance and protest. 

Outside of Ecuador, the outcome will shed light on whether direct democracy is a viable tool to stop extractive projects with outsized harmful impacts. Communities affected by fossil fuel, mining, and agriculture projects in developing countries have long struggled to defend their land rights and the right to a healthy environment. Ecuador’s ITT referendum offered them a beacon of hope as other governments roll out new plans for fossil fuel extraction and mining projects linked to renewable energy technologies. 

Noncompliance or excessive delay with the ITT referendum results could chill enthusiasm for similar direct democracy initiatives in the future, according to David Altman, a political scientist at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile. 

“If the government keeps extracting oil from Yasuni, the next time someone comes up with a nice idea for a popular initiative, some people will say, ‘What’s the point?’” Altman said. “This frustration could become a frustration toward democracy itself, and that is extremely dangerous.”

Ecuador’s president: ‘We are at war‘

Behind Noboa’s apparent pivot away from his campaign promise to end ITT production is an explosion of crime in the once-tranquil nation.

Until a few years ago Ecuador was, unlike its neighbors Peru and Colombia, largely free from drug-related violence. But from 2022 to 2023, Ecuador’s murder rate soared, making it one of South America’s most violent countries. The escalating brutality reared its head during last year’s snap presidential and congressional elections. At an October campaign event in Quito, gunmen assassinated Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a former journalist who had spoken out about corruption. And earlier this year, violence in the nation of 18 million people again made headlines when masked gunmen took a journalist hostage on live television. 

“We are at war,” Noboa said in an interview after the hostage taking. 

In April, the president called his own referendum, this time focused on security measures like allowing the military to work with police and increasing some prison sentences. Voters approved the proposals by wide margins. 

Funding those and other police activities, Noboa has argued, will require a bump in income and closing the ITT fields would move the national balance sheet in the wrong direction. Ending production in the three fields would cost the country just under $14 billion over the next two decades, according to Petroecuador. 

Without that income to fight gangs, Noboa said, Ecuador would “lose the country.” 

‘Yes to life‘

But a broad coalition of Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, and activists are challenging the government’s narrative that fighting crime necessitates continued oil extraction in the ITT fields. 

They say Noboa’s business-friendly administration is using the drug war as an excuse to delay the phaseout of a declining industry. The nation’s oil production has slumped from its 2014 peak of 557,000 barrels per day to 475,000 in 2023. The ITT fields comprise about 12 percent of that total. Advocates also argue the government has other ways to fund Noboa’s priorities, such as through progressive taxation, combating illicit financial flows and budget cuts. 

More broadly, those favoring an end to oil production cast the fight over the ITT fields as a battle for the soul of the country and its future.  

Esperanza Martinez, a co-founder of the nonprofit Acción Ecológica, said the outcome of the ITT referendum was in large part due to Ecuadorians’ weariness with persistent corruption in the country’s oil industry. Also playing a part was a decentralized advocacy campaign and an increasingly powerful and well-organized Indigenous movement. Advocates promoted the ITT vote as a way of recognizing that environmental stewardship is a cornerstone of Ecuadorian nationality.

Straddling the equator and encompassing the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, the snow-capped Andes and the Amazon rainforest, Ecuador is one of the most biologically diverse places in the world. It is home to countless endangered and rare animals, like the spectacled bear and the giant otter, and some species found nowhere else on Earth, like the marine iguana. In 2008, voters moved to codify the highest form of legal protection for nature when they enacted a new Constitution packed with environmental rights, including a provision recognizing that nature itself has a right to exist. 

The ITT referendum, Martinez said, reflects that heritage and “was about saying yes to life, yes to Yasuni, and yes to care of nature.”

Demands for legal guarantees

The process of forced contact and land theft thrust upon Waorani families over the past several decades has not ended. 

They have continued to lose territory to expanding oil operations and associated logging, colonization and some environmental protection efforts. In 1979, Yasuni National Park was imposed on top of Waorani peoples’ territories without consultation or consent. The government subsequently greenlit oil operations throughout the park, which is a United Nations-designated biosphere reserve. 

Until recently, the government appeared to be pushing ahead with plans to expand operations in the ITT fields by adding eight new platforms, for a total of about 280 new wells, according to Petroecuador’s environmental impact statements. 

“The plans for expansion are huge,” said Judith Kimerling, an American lawyer who reviewed the environmental impact statement. 

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Kimerling works with a Waorani community known as the Baihuaeri of Bameno. Their territory overlaps with the Ishpingo field, the most southern of the ITT trio. The new platforms Petroecuador had planned to install run right to the border of the “Intangible Zone,” a Delaware-sized patch of rainforest off limits to all extractive activity because of the presence of uncontacted Waorani families, known formally as “peoples living in voluntary isolation.” 

Several recently contacted Waorani families, including the Baihuaeri, also live inside the Intangible Zone or have territories that intersect with it. 

It’s unclear why the government has halted its Ishpingo expansion plans, but Kimerling suggested it could be because of a pending court case. 

Penti Baihua, a traditional leader of the Baihuaeri of Bameno, said he’s concerned that the government will renew operations in the planned Ishpingo expansion. 

“I want a legal document that guarantees they won’t come back,” he said. 

Baihua is also worried about what academics call the balloon effect: When operations are banned in one area, they are moved elsewhere. He said the three uncontacted Waorani groups are known to inhabit or travel through multiple oil blocks where operations are ongoing or could expand — Oil Block 43, which houses the ITT fields, as well as several blocks beyond that area.

In the fall of 2022, Baihua testified before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights about these concerns. The case, the Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous Peoples v. Ecuador, has put a spotlight on Ecuador’s history of prioritizing the growth of its oil industry over the rights of Indigenous peoples. 

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A ruling in that case is expected to come down before the end of the year, when the term of some judges ends. If the judges decide that Ecuador has violated the rights of uncontacted Waorani people and families, they could order Ecuador to take measures to repair those harms and prevent new ones, such as by halting oil production. 

Other unfolding legal and political actions will have a bearing on the future of the Yasuni region. 

The Baihuaeri have been organizing communities living in and around the Intangible Zone to agree on ways to stop oil expansion.  

Separately, NAWE, a Waorani organization, is hosting a summit in Puyo, Ecuador, from August 28 to 30 aimed at producing a strategy to push the Ecuadorian government toward dismantling ITT operations. 

Juan Bay, the president of NAWE, said the organization expects to host 300 people from across South America. His organization plans to file a complaint with the Constitutional Court in the coming weeks to force compliance with the referendum and to ask that NAWE be given a seat on the governmental committee tasked with overseeing compliance with the ITT referendum. That committee, established in May, is composed of governmental officials, including the head of Petroecuador, without Indigenous representation. It’s unclear what steps the committee has taken since its formation. 

“We should be on the front lines of making decisions about our territories and what happens in our homes,” Bay said.

On Tuesday, a group of U.N. human rights experts released a statement calling on the Ecuadorian government to implement the ITT referendum. 

“Any delay or deviation from the popular consultation’s mandate risks undermining environmental protection and climate action efforts, the integrity of Ecuador’s democratic processes, and threatening human rights,” the statement said.

Previously, human rights experts have called on the international community to provide Ecuador with debt relief and access to concessional financing.

Indigenous peoples living in Ecuador’s oil-producing regions have some of the highest poverty rates in the country and lack access to basic services like electricity, education, and running water, according to the U.N. 

The United States has historically been, and currently is, the biggest purchaser of Ecuadorian crude oil. 

Update: After this article was published, the Ecuadorian government announced plans to cap and close 246 oil wells in the Ishpingo, Tambococha, and Tiputini (ITT) fields beginning on August 30, 2024. That phase-out process will last until December 31, 2029. The government expects that removing other infrastructure, such as well pads, and remediating environmental damage will last through August 31, 2032.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Ecuador voted to keep oil in the ground. Will it happen? on Aug 24, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Surma, Inside Climate News.

Hernán González, a producer for the South American broadcaster Torneos, was forced to the ground and handcuffed by multiple law enforcement officers at a stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, while reporting live before a soccer match on July 14, 2024.

The New York Times reported that mayhem broke out at the Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia, when throngs of unticketed fans attempted to enter Hard Rock Stadium in the Miami suburb, delaying kickoff for more than an hour.

In footage captured by Mail Sport reporter Jake Fenner, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies can be seen grabbing a man who appears to be holding press credentials and who entered through the media entrance, according to Fenner.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker was able to confirm the man was González, who is the content and production director for Torneos, which produced and was a host broadcaster of the event.

In the video, González is quickly surrounded by at least six officers, who lift him sideways and place him prone on the ground, with an officer appearing to hold his head against the pavement while others place him in handcuffs. Both of the journalist’s shoes came off and his shirt ripped open in the course of the detention.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew, which submerged the town under more than 10 feet of water eight years ago, Princeville’s residents debated three distinct options: staying put on the town’s historic land, taking government buyouts to relocate individual families elsewhere, or moving the town itself to higher ground. But internal disagreements and a lack of funding made it difficult for the town to move forward with any of those choices in a comprehensive way. As a result, the damaged town hollowed out as residents and businesses left one by one, becoming yet another example of how slow and painful disaster recovery can be for rural and low-income communities.

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Now, almost a decade after Hurricane Matthew’s devastation, Princeville’s fate is becoming clear — for better and for worse. The town has just received millions of dollars in new funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to build a new site on higher ground, offering hope for a large-scale relocation. At the same time, a long-awaited levee project that promised to protect the town’s historic footprint has stalled out, making relocation harder to avoid as another climate-fueled hurricane season begins.

The idea to relocate the town first emerged after Hurricane Matthew, when the state of North Carolina helped Princeville buy 53 acres of nearby vacant land. The state also kicked in money to help town leaders plan a mixed-use neighborhood with new apartments and businesses, and it later bought another larger parcel adjacent to the 53-acre tract. Earlier this month, FEMA officials announced that they will send almost $11 million to Princeville to build out the stormwater infrastructure for the new town. Construction could begin before the end of the year.

When the development is done, it will contain the seeds of a new town center for Princeville. There will be a fire station and a town government building, as well as 50 new subsidized apartments to replace a public housing complex that was destroyed during Hurricane Matthew. Town officials are hoping that private developers will build dozens of single-family homes and businesses on the tract. This would make the 53-acre development almost as large and well-appointed as the old Princeville, with as many stores and almost as many homes.

When he announced the new funding, FEMA administrator Robert Samaan praised “Princeville’s commitment to build outside of the floodplain and protect their community,” saying the decision to move to higher ground “is a testament to their resilience.” But this was somewhat misleading: Many residents and town leaders, including the mayor, have sought for years to stay put on the town’s original flood-prone site. In 2016, Jones even tried to turn down a federal program to buy out flooded homeowners in the old town. 

“We’re open to expansion, but we are not going to leave,” said the town’s mayor, Bobbie Jones, in an interview with Grist. 

But that option looks less viable than ever. Those who wanted to protect historic Princeville have long held out hope that the federal Army Corps of Engineers would repair and expand the old levee that defends the town from the caprices of the Tar River, whose overflowing banks have long been responsible for Princeville’s woes. The Corps’s original levee contained critical flaws that caused it to fail during floods in 1999 and again in 2016, but it took the agency until 2020 to secure funding from Congress to build a new and larger levee.

Jones touted this new levee project as proof that historic Princeville could survive, but earlier this year the Corps told residents that it was going back to the drawing board to review the project. The agency had discovered that building the planned levee would inadvertently cause flooding in the larger nearby town of Tarboro, on the other side of the Tar River. Officials said they couldn’t reduce flood risk in one place only to increase it in another. This is a cruel historical irony: The founders of Princeville only got access to the low-lying land in the 19th century because the white residents of Tarboro deemed it too flood-prone to use.

“Here we are in the midst of hurricane season again, and we’re just praying,” said Jones. 

In response to questions from Grist, a spokesperson for the Corps said the agency is committed to flood protection in Princeville and is seeking funds that would allow it to commission a report looking at other options beyond the levee.

The setbacks on the levee project, combined with the sudden burst of progress on the new 53-acre development, seems to provide a bittersweet answer to the murky question of how Princeville will adapt to climate change. When it is complete, the new development will give Princeville a path toward long-term resilience, one that doesn’t require keeping most residents on land that’s destined to flood. But even this progress has come at great cost: Almost eight years after Matthew, many displaced residents have moved on for good, and even the promise of a new Princeville on higher ground may not be enough to draw them back.

“I understand the government moves slow,” said Calvin Adkins, a former resident of Princeville who took a government buyout and now lives across the river in Tarboro. “But when you’re talking about such a historic town, I just — in my heart of hearts, I was hoping that these things could have been done earlier.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Climate change has forced America’s oldest Black town to higher ground on Jul 10, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

Labour’s landslide victory in Thursday’s U.K. election gives the party a “wide but thin” mandate, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik, who says the new government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has to work hard to solidify its gains “if it’s not going to be a temporary win.” She also discusses her new piece, “Pro-Palestine votes aren’t 'sectarian'. Dismissing them would be a dangerous mistake for Labour.”

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

Image by Planet Volumes.

On June 30, South Africa’s leader Cyril Ramaphosa announced his new Government of National Unity (GNU), including 31 ministers in his Cabinet. In the national and provincial elections that had taken place a month earlier, Ramaphosa’s African National Congress won 40% of the vote and the white-led Democratic Alliance won 22%, following which a variety of horse-trading scenarios were then tested. The two largest parties’ centre-right forces, respectively holding 20 and 6 ministries, managed to consolidate across racial lines in spite of their very different traditions of liberalism: ANC democratic-enlightenment (in common with most anti-colonial liberation movements) and DA corporate neo-liberalism. (The other five ministerial positions were spread out between parties ranging from the leftwing PanAfricanist Congress to the Freedom Front Plus of hard-core right-wingers.)

The two core parties’ elites converge on an economic policy characterized by steady privatisation and outsourcing, budget cuts, extremely high interest rates and deregulatory finance, which have held sway in most periods since the society’s 1994 escape from apartheid. (And since Ramaphosa came to power in 2018, add attacks on labor rights.) The GNU deal’s 60% ‘sufficient consensus’ minimum allows DA leaders John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille to enjoy what is an effective veto on state policies decided in the Cabinet, thus probably derailing the two main progressive (albeit hollow, unfunded) promises Ramaphosa had made in May to opportunistically catch votes: a National Health Insurance programme and a Basic Income Grant.

But all of this has played out in a manner that ultimately jettisoned the third and fourth parties: former president Jacob Zuma’s MK Party (15%) and Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF, 10%). Both had wanted Ramaphosa to resign and insisted that any GNU exclude the DA as their two negotiating conditions. This left a strong residue of grievance and indeed a sense of the ANC anti-apartheid tradition’s betrayal.

That tradition is indeed formidable, for two of the parties that the EFF had attracted into a so-called Progressive Caucus – later joined by MK – were ANC spinoffs: the PanAfricanist Congress (which split from the ANC in 1959) and United Democratic Movement (1997), which bolted into the GNU as plum positions were dangled by Ramaphosa, as had the Inkatha Freedom Party (whose founder – dating to 1975 – also left the ANC). The EFF had split from the ANC in 2013 and MK leadership left in 2023.

Against a potential unification of African nationalists, the DA leadership and negotiating team apparently had several objectives:

* to swing state policy in an even more neoliberal, Western-gazing and low-intensity-democracy direction;

* to gain sufficient national ministries so as to impose such policies on line departments, and likewise take provincial ministry slots (in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal – which hold 44% of the country’s residents) and also demand restructured metropolitan and municipal coalitions that include local leadership and allow a slightly different version of crony patronage to begin;

* to position DA cadres for more effective attacks on ANC elites (e.g. through resumption of parliamentary investigations into various scandals), in preparation for major 2026 municipal and 2029 national electoral gains; and

* to help the ANC’s centrist and openly neo-liberal factions to push the EFF and MK back into parliamentary irrelevance, and to suppress civil society resistance.

The DA can therefore be expected to emphasize its version of a so-called “Basic Minimum Programme” by highlighting select parts of the GNU deal: “Rapid, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, the promotion of fixed capital investment and industrialization… infrastructure development, structural reforms and transformational change, fiscal sustainability, and … Macro-economic management must support national development goals in a sustainable manner… Building state capacity and creating a professional, merit-based, corruption-free and developmental public service. Restructuring and improving state-owned entities to meet national development goals… Strengthening law enforcement agencies to address crime, corruption and gender-based violence, as well as strengthening national security capabilities… Foreign policy based on human rights, constitutionalism, the national interest, solidarity, peaceful resolution of conflicts, to achieve the African Agenda 2063, South-South, North-South and African cooperation, multilateralism and a just, peaceful and equitable world.”

These words will provide DA entry points in attempts to attract more multinational corporate investors, in part through lower taxes (e.g. the Special Economic Zone level of 15%) and more parastatal privatisation and commercialisation, price hikes on crucial services (electricity and water/sanitation), and intensified austerity (except when it comes to already-generous corporate subsidies such as the ones long enjoyed by Mercedes before this month it fires ¼ of its workforce). And the DA will stress Law & Order, and a stronger sub-imperial military capability.

However, given the declining standard of living, an elite transition of this sort won’t stick nearly as well as Nelson Mandela’s 1994-99 reign. It may be a matter of just months before the centre can no longer hold, due to a wide variety of local and especially international divisions that could shatter the core ANC-DA deal.

Five international wedge issues

Although early rumours (from News24) suggested that pro-Palestine foreign minister Naledi Pandor would be reappointed as foreign minister, instead that position went to Ronald Lamola, who has been minister of justice and who gave voluble support to South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court since January. For Palestine solidarity, this is extremely good news, because most alternative candidates do not have such a firm commitment to the ANC’s long-standing alliance with Palestinian Authority elites.

Of interest, though, are how the new government addresses four main sites of armed conflict and the BRICS+ scene, which itself suffers worsening internecine military friction: on the Sino-Indian border, and between Iran and traditional U.S. West Asian allies. And there are also profound intra-BRICS+ ideological, economic and practical contradictions that the DA will exploit. These five hotspots are:

1) Gaza: against DA objections, Pandor valiantly led the “genocide!” charge, resulting in both the empowerment of Palestine solidarity across the world, but also in Tel Aviv’s “Hague Schmague“ reply and heightened bombings, plus threats from U.S. Congressional imperialists to end South Africa’s membership in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (with its slight trade preferences). But with the limitations of international court action now evident, heightened Boycott Divestment Sanctions activism and Pretoria’s state commitment are vital, especially following the recent commitments to cut trade by governments in Ankara and Bogota. However, one very serious contradiction in South Africa is the ongoing export of thermal coal from mines an hour’s drive east of Johanneburg to the Richards Bay harbour and onwards around West Africa and Gibraltar to Israel. Already in the first half of 2024, SA was the third largest supplier behind Colombia and Russia, ahead of China. But Colombia is apparently no longer exporting as of June 22, so that may mean traditional South African coal exporters like Glencore and Thungela (formerly AngloCoal) will help fill the gap, as an Israeli official told Ynet in early June.

2) Vast methane gas fields offshore northern Mozambique’s war-torn Cabo Delgado province: 1200 SA soldiers served unceremoniously, with occasional controversies, for three years as part of a regional team. They were deployed immediately after French President Emmanuel Macron visited Ramaphosa (and Paul Kagame in Kigali) in May 2021, so it is widely understood that the regional mission aimed to protect the $20 billion in existing and planned facilities built to process a huge gas field – by TotalOil, ExxonMobil (in a joint venture with China National Petroleum Corporation) and a few other oil firms – against attacks by a local Islamic insurgency that began in 2017. Hopes were even expressed to Parliament by Pandor in September 2020 that in return for military assistance, South Africa might gain access to more fossil fuels – notwithstanding the (unmentioned) climate catastrophe whose cyclones had laid waste to the area 18 months earlier (“Great opportunity also exists for SA to import natural gas from Mozambique, thus the security of Cabo Delgado is of great interest to SA…”).

3) The eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo: 3000 SA troops (which include many from Mozambique) are now replacing UN peacekeepers, to be based mainly in Goma in the vicinity of at least six million ‘resource curse’ civilian deaths since the late 1990s, and millions more refugees. We can blame the carnage partly on predatory corporations from the West and BRICS+ – especially China and South Africa – extracting enormous amounts of natural resources, more often than not entailing child labor (and to some extent favouring SA mining houses which operated there even during the worst warlordism and mass murder, e.g. AngloGold Ashanti when it was still SA-based during the early 2000s)

4) The Russian invasion of Ukraine: Moscow’s move is tacitly – sometimes openly – supported by Pretoria, along with many other nationalist and ‘left’ forces (e.g. in the MK Party, Economic Freedom Fighters, SA Communist Party, Congress of SA Trade Unions, and National Union of Metalworkers of SA), but which is opposed by the DA and SA’s weakened liberals, and for different reasons, by the anti-imperialist independent left (e.g. SAFTU, GIWUSA and other social critics, who also oppose NATO’s eastward creep).

5) Debilitating BRICS+ controversies: the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa bloc began its annual talk shops in 2007, and at the 2023 Johannesburg leadership summit, five new governments – Iran, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and likely Saudi Arabia – were invited to join. But contradictions scream out, with the most extreme example being the New Delhi, Cairo, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi capitalist class actively supporting Tel Aviv’s military. The former do so through Delhi-Tel Aviv geopolitical and trade alliances as well as via bulldozers and bombs that kill Gazans directly. In the wake of Yemen’s attacks on Red Sea shipping, the latter now reroute containers sent from Asia to Israel along their own highways. Alongside Jordan, on April 13 they also provided intelligence used by the U.S. and Israel (“with the support of Russia” according to Seymour Hersh) to defend an Israeli military base under attack by Iran (in the wake of Israel bombing that country’s Syrian embassy on April 1). And along with Egypt, military leaders from Saudi Arabia and the UAE also met generals from the U.S. Pentagon’s Centcom and the Israeli Defense Forces on June 11. As Haidar Eid wrote on June 28, “Neighbouring Arab regimes have done nothing more than issue timid statements of condemnation, while mediating between oppressor and oppressed. Indeed, Arab regimes have let Palestinians down since 1948, through a combination of cowardice and hypocrisy.”

Such BRICS+ hypocrisy is partly explained by the profits their companies are enjoying, e.g. India’s Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone and the Shanghai International Port Group which both facilitate lethal arms imports through (privatized) Haifa Port berths (although these now appear highly vulnerable to disruption by drone attacks). And Moscow, Pretoria and Beijing still (in 2024) allow coal shipments amounting to millions of tonnes. Brasilia hosts an Israeli Elbit arms company branch, albeit an activist-inspired pause was imposed on one recent deal. Even Ethiopia typically votes ‘abstain’ on UN resolutions condemning Israel.

Of the BRICS+ capitals, only Tehran consistently opposes the genocide. Will the DA’s look-West versus the ANC’s look-South perspectives come into increasing conflict, especially as Putin hosts the BRICS+ in October, or does the BRICS+ tilt towards Israel tell us that an overarching sub-imperial agenda is actually in play, so DA Zionists can relax?

However, it is also important to observe that new disincentives are rising thanks to Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. Russian coal was apparently unloaded from the MV Tutor ship in Israel’s south-Jordanian port neighbour of Aqaba on June 9, and three days later the bulk carrier was sunk in the Red Sea (en route to India), after being hit by a small Houthi fishing vessel remote controlled (carrying three mannequins to disguise its intent). And on June 22, the Transworld Navigator coal ship was attacked twice (having in 2022 traversed from a Russian coal export terminal to Israel). With the Houthis also claiming to have capacity to hit long-range shipping targets in the Mediterranean, and Hezbollah easily capable of firing on the Ashdod and Hadera terminals next to the Rutenberg and Orot Rabin coal-fired power stations, no shipments to Israel can now be considered safe. (One Russian load of iron and steel was reported to have been hit by Hezbollah while in the Haifa Port on June 12, but it turned out to have been an engine room fire caused by inadequate maintenance.)

These problems of mixed BRICS+ loyalties may be exacerbated by DA leader Steenhuisen’s Zionist posturing. Although now merely the new minister of agriculture, Steenhuisen had in March expressed open support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza, blurting, “One side’s genocide could be another side’s freedom fighting.” Typical of white South African liberals, he is against Russia’s role in Ukraine, and the DA also opposes troop deployment in the DRC. (This contrasts to the DA’s opportunistic support since 2021 for South African troops’ deployment in Mozambique, given the DA’s desired contracts not only for Blood Methane gas imports, but also for a resumption of TotalEnergies’ procurement deals there with white South African subcontractors.)

In other foreign policy hotspots in Africa, the Horn (especially Sudan and South Sudan) and West Africa are also roiled by conflict. But these are considered too far afield to entail a major commitment by Pretoria.

Hence in spite of Lamola’s ascent, vital struggles lie just ahead over SA’s schizophrenic anti-imperialism (i.e. against the U.S. and Israel in the Middle East and against NATO expansion), alongside Pretoria’s sustained (apartheid/post-apartheid) sub-imperial agenda favouring multinational extractive-industry corporates as well as most forms of Western-dominated multilateralism. For example, South African financial elites successfully led the campaign within BRICS against de-dedollarisation at the Johannesburg summit last August, in spite of some rhetoric to the contrary – and in spite of the world’s desperate need for an alternative to U.S. monetary and currency hegemony.

For Palestine activists, the most obvious site of tension is the ANC’s leadership’s long involvement in Glencore coal exports to Israel: Ramaphosa’s Shanduka Coal was until 2014 (when he became deputy president) Glencore’s main South African black-empowerment partner, and his brother-in-law Patrice Motsepe is the Swiss firm’s current lead partner, dating to profitable exports during the era of Xstrata (later swallowed by Glencore) when the firm bragged: “Outside of Europe, Israel was the largest purchaser of the South African operations’ coal production” of 20 megatons annually. Glencore senior board member Gill Marcus was formerly Nelson Mandela’s early -1990s spokesperson, but on May 24 at the firm’s annual general meeting in Switzerland she ignored a shareholder’s plea to stop fuelling Israeli genocide.

A vibrant review of some of these sites of struggle can be seen on the SABC Big Debate tv show last Thursday, regarding Pretoria’s inconsistent human-rights advocacy. Indeed the participants there generally agreed that civil society will have to work far harder to get genuinely consistent state support given the incoming Government of Neoliberal Unity’s propensity to serve big capital. On this front, like others, we can expect an Elite Transition 2.0 in which Lamola will help Pretoria with talking left, yet simultaneously the walking right will logically speed up, unless tripped up by international-solidarity activists.

After the GNU cracks

Those who are unhappy (mainly from the left but also the populist right) are apparently stymied and increasingly appear to fall into three fractions:

* the Progressive Caucus parties outside the GNU, led by Zuma’s MK and Malema’s EFF, initially had 28% of MPs (though that fell to 26% as several small ones were assimilated by Ramaphosa since mid-June), and their leaders will be grumbling in frustration at how little the period immediately ahead will serve their interests, and hence they will be permanently located outside this GNU, even if it means losing a share of municipal ruling coalitions in which they are junior members;

* the internal Tripartite Alliance of the ANC-SA Communist Party-Congress of SA Trade Unions forces are opposed to Ramaphosa’s DA deal-making but lack a way to let off steam aside from grudgingly quitting the Alliance (a highly unlikely scenario); and

* the independent left which will probably thrive in a milieu in which the Ramaphosa-Steenhuisen pairing fumbles in imposing austerity, service delivery cuts (e.g. Johannesburg’s current extreme morning-evening electricity load-reduction in black neighbourhoods) and more intense labor battles (in the tradition that life sometimes has to get worse, before anger rises and gains are won through struggles).

In sum, as ANC neoliberal-nationalism must give way to an uncomfortable black-white limping-zebra politics – even more neoliberal than at present, and likely a bit less ‘anti-imperialist’ on the foreign policy front – the ruling crew requires a renewed version of talk-left, walk-right. If this deal breaks, as can be reasonably expected, a more complicated version of Ramaphosa’s assimilation politics lies ahead, if the ANC ditches the DA and instead imposes neo-liberalism through the MK and EFF as his Plan B. But that prospect is on the distant horizon.

Agriculture: Minister: John Steenhuisen (DA); Deputy Minister: Rosemary Capa (ANC)

Basic Education: Minister: Siviwe Gwarube (DA); Deputy Minister: Reginah Mhaule (ANC)

Communications and Digital Technologies: Minister: Solly Malatsi (DA); Deputy Minister: Mondli Gungubele (ANC)

Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs: Minister: Velinkosi Hlabisa (IFP); Deputy Ministers: Dickson Masemola (ANC), Zolile Burns-Ncamashe (ANC)

Correctional Services: Minister: Pieter Groenewald (Freedom Front Plus); Deputy Minister: Lindiwe Ntshalintshali (ANC)

Defence and Military Veterans: Minister: Angie Motshekga (ANC); Deputy Ministers: Bantu Holomisa (UDM), Richard Mkhungo (ANC)

Electricity and Energy: Minister: Kgosientsho Ramokgopa (ANC); Deputy Minister: Samantha Graham (DA)

Employment and Labour: Minister: Nomakhosazana Meth (ANC); Deputy Ministers: Jomo Sibiya (ANC), Phumzile Mgcina (ANC)

Finance: Minister: Enoch Godongwana (ANC); Deputy Ministers: David Masondo (ANC), Ashor Sarupen (DA)

Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment: Minister: Dion George (DA); Deputy Ministers: Narend Singh (IFP), Bernice Swarts (ANC)

Health: Minister: Aaron Motsoaledi (ANC); Deputy Minister: Joe Phaahla (ANC)

Higher Education: Minister: Nobuhle Nkabane (ANC); Deputy Ministers: Buti Manamela (ANC), Mimmy Gondwe (DA)

Home Affairs: Minister: Leon Schreiber (DA); Deputy Minister: Njabulo Nzuza (ANC)

Human Settlements: Minister: Mmamoloko Kubayi (ANC); Deputy Minister: Tandi Mahambehlala (ANC)

International Relations and Cooperation: Minister: Ronald Lamola (ANC); Deputy Ministers: Alvin Botes (ANC), Tandi Moraka (ANC)

Justice and Constitutional Development: Minister: Thembi Nkadimeng (ANC); Deputy Minister: Andries Nel (ANC)

Land Reform and Rural Development: Minister: Mzwanele Nyhontso (PAC); Deputy Minister: Chupu Stanley Mathabatha (ANC)

Mineral and Petroleum Resources: Minister: Gwede Mantashe (ANC); Deputy Minister: Judith Nemadzinga-Tshabalala (ANC)

Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation: Minister: Maropene Ramokgopa (ANC); Deputy Minister: Seiso Mohai (ANC)

Police: Minister: Senzo Mchunu (ANC); Deputy Ministers: Polly Boshielo (ANC), Cassel Mathale (ANC)

Public Service and Administration: Minister: Mzamo Buthelezi (ANC); Deputy Minister: Pinky Kekana (ANC)

Public Works and Infrastructure: Minister: Dean Macpherson (DA); Deputy Minister: Sihle Zikalala (ANC)

Science, Technology and Innovation: Minister: Blade Nzimande (ANC); Deputy Minister: Nomalungelo Gina (ANC)

Small Business Development: Minister: Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams (ANC); Deputy Minister: Jane Sithole (ANC)

Social Development: Minister: Sisisi Tolashe (ANC); Deputy Minister: Ganief Hendricks (Al Jama-ah)

Sport, Arts and Culture: Minister: Gayton McKenzie (Patriotic Alliance); Deputy Minister: Peace Mabe (ANC)

Tourism: Minister: Patricia De Lille (Good); Deputy Minister: Maggie Sotyu (ANC)

Trade, Industry and Competition: Minister: Parks Tau (ANC); Deputy Ministers: Zuko Godlimpi (ANC), Andrew Whitfield (DA)

Transport: Minister: Barbara Creecy (ANC); Deputy Minister: Mkhuleko Hlengwa (IFP)

Water and Sanitation: Minister: Pemmy Majodina (ANC); Deputy Ministers: David Mahlobo (ANC), Isaac Seitlholo (ANC)

Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities: Minister: Sindisiwe Chikunga (ANC); Deputy Minister: Mmapaseka Steve Letsike (ANC)

The post South Africa’s ‘Government of Neoliberal Unity’ is Constructed on Shaky Ground appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Bond.

Sergio Olmos, an investigative reporter for the nonprofit news site CalMatters, reported that his phone was knocked to the ground and subsequently stolen while he was documenting clashes between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters in Los Angeles, California, on June 23, 2024. At least nine journalists were assaulted while covering the violence that day.

The conflict began after the Southern California chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement called for demonstrators to meet at noon outside the Adas Torah synagogue in the heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood in west LA to protest the alleged sale of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Multiple journalists told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that scuffles, brawls and exchanges of pepper spray broke out in the streets nearby between the protesters and counterprotesters.

Individuals from both sides — including a rabbi and security volunteers from the Jewish community — attempted to intervene and prevent the violence from escalating. CNN reported that Los Angeles Police Department officers established a perimeter around the synagogue.

Olmos wrote on the social media platform X that he was filming an attack on a pro-Palestinian protester when a man drove a truck toward the crowd, nearly ramming people. “At that moment a pro-israeli demonstrator knocked my phone out of my hands to stop me from filming it,” Olmos wrote.

Independent videographer Sean Beckner-Carmitchel told the Tracker that the phone was later returned. Olmos declined to comment further when reached by the Tracker.

In a second post, Olmos wrote that later that day a different demonstrator stole his phone and, when he held up his press credentials, the man told him, “You shouldn’t be there.” The robbery can be seen at 0:47 in footage captured by Beckner-Carmitchel. Of the phone, Olmos wrote: “its gone.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Fatih Aktaş, a photojournalist for the Turkish state-run outlet Anadolu Agency, was shoved to the ground by multiple New York City police officers while covering a pro-Palestinian protest in Brooklyn on May 31, 2024.

Protesters gathered outside Barclays Center arena at 3 p.m., NBC News reported, before walking the mile to the Brooklyn Museum, where they occupied the plaza and entered the building, hanging banners both inside and on the facade and calling for a cease-fire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Aktaş told Anadolu he was photographing the violent police response to the protests when he became a target of it. “While I was trying to capture the police intervention in the protests, a police officer strongly pushed me backward,” Aktaş said. “To avoid damaging my camera, I had to fall on my back, hitting my elbow hard on the ground.”

In footage of the incident, Aktaş appears to be standing and photographing police while demonstrators march in front of the museum. At least three officers can then be seen shoving Aktaş, with the photojournalist landing on the ground approximately 10 feet back from the officers. Moments later, another officer can be seen helping him to his feet as two supervisory officers walk past, with one of the higher-ranking officers then pushing him again and ordering him to back up.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Residents in all 27 countries of the European Union went to the polls this weekend to vote for the European Parliament, which resulted in a surge of support for far-right parties across much of the continent while many liberal and Green parties stumbled. Far-right parties did especially well in Italy, Germany and France, prompting French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the National Assembly and call snap elections. Lawmakers in the European Parliament can veto and shape laws, though they cannot introduce them. They also set the EU’s budget and approve the selection of the European Commission president — a powerful role currently held by Ursula von der Leyen of the center-right European People’s Party, which remains the strongest bloc. For more on European politics, we speak with Mehreen Khan, the economics editor at The Times of London and a former Brussels and EU correspondent for the Financial Times. Khan says that while some observers celebrated the relative strength of mainstream conservative parties, that is more a reflection of how successful racist, nationalist parties have been in reshaping the continent’s politics, particularly on immigration. “These formerly center-right parties are now definitely occupying territory that we used to call that of the far right,” she says.

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

Independent videographer Sam Seligson was arrested by New York City police officers while reporting on a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Brooklyn on May 18, 2024.

Brooklyn Paper reported that the rally marking Nakba Day — which commemorates the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 — has been held in the Bay Ridge neighborhood for years without incident.

Seligson told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker via direct message on social network X that he has reported on the rally for the past several years and that he was livestreaming the demonstration on the video platform Twitch, filming as police made arrests in several waves.

He wrote that as a new wave of arrests began at approximately 4 p.m., police arrested someone who was filming a commanding officer and then pushed away a group of women who were yelling at them about his detainment. As he filmed an officer tackling one of the women, another commanding officer in a white shirt grabbed Seligson and pulled him to the ground.

“I stand up and back away because I didn’t do anything besides filming,” Seligson wrote. “I was on the sidewalk at this point, still obeying the law. And then they continued to grab me. Told me to get down, which I did, can see me sit down in my live stream. Then they grab my hair and pull me into the street and try to flatten me for arrest.”

Seligson told the Tracker that the officers dragged him across the ground, and while one tried to pull his arm backward another officer was on his back pushing his face into the cement. In footage of his arrest, multiple voices can be heard identifying him as a member of the press while officers pin him down.

He said that he sustained no major injuries, but had a bump on his head, a scrape with bruising on his shin and some soreness.

Seligson said he identified himself as a journalist and that while he wasn’t wearing his city-issued press credential at the moment of his arrest, it was in his pocket. He added that, “They saw my press badge and said ‘Oh shit’ out loud and then tucked it in my backpack.”

After he was cuffed, Seligson said, he was transported alongside other arrestees to New York City Police Department headquarters at One Police Plaza and waited outside for around three hours before finally being processed and taken to a holding cell.

The videographer was released at around 1 a.m. the following day and ordered to appear for an initial hearing on June 7. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office confirmed when reached by phone that Seligson is charged with disorderly conduct, obstruction of government administration and resisting arrest.

The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

A little more than a century ago the village of Taholah was built where the ocean meets the Quinault River. Today when there’s too much rain, or a storm surge, water will rush past Quinault Street, down 2nd, 3rd all the way across town, filling yards and homes with salt water.

Ryan Hendricks points to the sea wall and remembers one such flood. “It’s almost like a geyser shooting through the rocks,” said Hendricks, a member of the Quinault Indian Nation’s Tribal Council. “The water was coming in from the river and just coming directly into the village. And then over here … the water wasn’t coming really over the wall. It was just coming through the rocks like a geyser. So it was just pushing almost with the speed of like a natural river current.”

The Quinault Nation faces dangerous long-term currents. Taholah is barely inches above the ocean and the sea level is rising. On top of that there are a growing number of storm surges, where flood waters are propelled by high winds.

What makes the Quinault story so powerful is that it’s a window into our future: It’s the idea that a changing climate will determine where and how we will live, what we will eat, and how much it’s going to cost.

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The Quinault Nation has been deliberate in its response, debating for the past couple of decades about how to protect its lands, its fish, people, and property. After many community meetings the conclusion was reached in a 2017 tribal master plan, a move to higher ground.

That plan included a new village, about a half-mile uphill, that will protect residents from storm surges or even a potential catastrophic tsunami. Relocation will “incorporate smart growth techniques including low-impact development and green infrastructure to better prepare the community for the future climate.”

The easy part of relocation is already done. The nation has constructed what’s needed for a new community. The streets are paved. The sewers are in. And only a couple of things are missing: houses and residents.

The new village “must be designed to be as resilient as possible,” the master plan said. “Even small events, such as windstorms, close roads and down power lines, isolating the village. Thus, planning for safe havens in case of disaster and alternative energy sources is a must when determining facility siting, sizing, orientation, and programming.”

In a reflection of Indigenous values, the first building opened by the nation was the Generations House, a 30,000-square-foot building serving elders, Head Start, day care, and adult education.

“This was our most modern effort to relocate our most vital citizens with all of our next generations,” Hendricks says. “This is a shared building with all of our most valuable resources, our children. And then, all of our most valuable information holders are our elders on the other side [of the building].”

The Generations House is also the gathering point should there be an emergency.

There are a lot of questions that still must be answered before any houses are built.

“We have penciled out what a house would cost. And right now we are sitting at somewhere between $350 and $400,000 per house,” Hendricks says. That is a number unaffordable for most tribal members.

And what about the people now living in Taholah who have paid off their mortgages — especially elders?

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“Why would they come up with a new mortgage? Well, they already have a house for themselves. And then there’s someone who said, ‘Well, we don’t have the means to pay for a new home. Is the tribe going to buy my home?’” asks Hendricks.

That means the nation still must work through these scenarios and come up with individual solutions.

And that starts with a community-based plan.

“I had the chance to visit Quinault a year ago, and they are doing just amazing work on climate relocation and climate resilience,” said Bryan Newland, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for Indian affairs. “It’s one of three communities that are going to serve as kind of pilot projects, if you will, on community driven relocation. And they’re just doing amazing work. I was really impressed by their foresight in their planning and how they are really thinking through a lot of issues that aren’t intuitive and working to address them. And so I’ve been really impressed. And, you know, we shouldn’t be surprised that when tribes have resources, they’re able to do very impressive things. And so I look forward to seeing where they’re going to take that.”

For now the bottom line is that the Quinault Nation is not sure where more than $450 million will come from to pay for this relocation.

But here’s the thing. The Quinault Nation is further along in this sort of planning than nearly every community on the planet. When we drove up the coast to get here, we passed through low-elevation towns and even cities that reflect the scale of the problem. And it’s clear that neither the region nor the country are penciling out what has to be done and what it will cost.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As sea levels rise, the Quinalt Nation moves to higher ground on May 12, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Mark Trahant.

Independent videographer Sean Beckner-Carmitchel was repeatedly harassed and his phone knocked to the ground while reporting on a pro-Israeli counterprotest to the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 29, 2024.

UCLA’s student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, reported that protesters had erected the encampment on campus April 25 to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and demand that the UC system divest from companies that invest in weapons manufacturers for the Israeli military.

A large, pro-Israeli counterprotest was organized next to the encampment, with barricades erected to separate the groups, Reuters reported. Beckner-Carmitchel told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he was headbutted and shoved by a man while reporting on the clash between the two groups on April 28.

Throughout his coverage the following evening, Beckner-Carmitchel said, multiple individuals targeted him for harassment and assault.

“At one point, one of the pro-Israel protesters stood in front of me and blared an air horn directly in my ear for like five minutes straight,” he said. “They also threw what I’m guessing was a wadded up sign at my head at one point.”

In footage Beckner-Carmitchel posted on Instagram, an air horn can be heard resounding as he filmed counterprotesters attempting to break into the encampment. He added that at various points individuals called him slurs, knocked the phone from his hands and came up from behind him and blew a whistle in his ear.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Independent photojournalist Josh Pacheco was pulled to the ground, punched, kicked and arrested by New York City police while documenting a pro-Palestinian protest on May 7, 2024.

Officers had moved in to dismantle a protest outside of Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology, the last campus encampment in the city, according to Gothamist. A separate group of protesters had marched from Union Square a mile to the campus in solidarity with the calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and divestment from Israeli companies.

Pacheco arrived at FIT just as police had erected barricades to bar access to the encampment, with hundreds of officers stationed on the street, they told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

“Things were relatively calm and consistent: student protesters rallying, chanting on the side. Very little confrontation except from counterprotesters that were walking by,” Pacheco said. They said that things began to escalate only after police began arresting students at the encampment and loading them into a correctional bus.

As some demonstrators attempted to prevent the prisoner transport vans from leaving with the detained students, Pacheco said they heard someone say, “Take it to the street,” and assumed the protesters were preparing to march.

“I made my way to where the protesters were and, within 30 seconds of walking toward the protesters, I was grabbed by a sergeant or a lieutenant,” Pacheco said.

Pacheco posted footage to Instagram in which an officer with a bullhorn can be heard saying, “Let’s start making arrests here, guys. They’re blocking traffic, that’s it.” Officers then advance on the protesters, pushing and throwing them to the ground, while other police direct everyone to get off the street or face arrest.

In footage from Status Coup photojournalist Jon Farina, an officer can be seen at 0:45 pushing Pacheco backward as police detain a protester, and the photojournalist continues recording from between two parked cars.

Seconds later, an officer wearing a white shirt — typically worn by higher-ranking officers — is then seen grabbing Pacheco by the arm and neck and pulling them into the street before forcing them onto the ground.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Freelance photojournalist Olga Fedorova was shoved to the ground and arrested by New York City police while documenting a pro-Palestinian protest on May 7, 2024.

Officers had moved in to dismantle a protest outside of Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology, the last campus encampment in the city, according to Gothamist. A separate group of protesters had marched from Union Square a mile to the campus in solidarity with the calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and divestment from Israeli companies.

Fedorova told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker she was on assignment for two news outlets — taking stills for the European Pressphoto Agency and video for FreedomNews.TV while covering the Union Square march and then the student rally to protect the encampment.

“There were reports that a police sweep of the encampment was imminent,” Fedorova said. “When there eventually was a sweep, I ran around to where the students who had been arrested would be loaded into buses and taken away. And, as has happened pretty frequently recently, people tried to block the buses from leaving and attempt to de-arrest the students.”

Police then moved in to arrest everyone in the street, Fedorova said, and she remained to document the violent detention of a woman, the photographer kneeling to capture an image of the woman’s face between the legs of the officers.

In footage from Status Coup photojournalist Jon Farina, officers can be seen arresting protesters and directing everyone to get off the street or face arrest. At 1:04 in the video, Fedorova can be seen beginning to kneel and raise her camera when an officer forcefully pushes her to the ground and shouts for her to go to the edge of the street.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

"Hong Kong is being rapidly deselected from the East-West trades by all major shipping lines," the Danish-based consultancy Sea-Intelligence said in an April 2 report citing recent data from shipping lines.

Total container volumes coming through Hong Kong fell to 14.3 million TEUs in 2023, the lowest volume since 1998.

While the decline was exacerbated by the closure of Hong Kong's borders during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, cutting off cross-border road links and prompting shipping lines to send containers straight to Shenzhen, political factors including the international reaction to the city's ongoing crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement also played a role, according to industry analysts.

"Hong Kong enjoyed a special relationship with the United States and other countries, because it was seen as semi-independent and autonomous, with little interference from mainland China in its day-to-day operations," Tom Derry, Chief Executive Officer at the Institute for Supply Management, told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview. "That's no longer seen as the case."

"Foreign nationals, both U.S. and from other countries, have been arrested under charges due to the new National Security Law," Derry said. "The rule of law in Hong Kong is seen as being a little more arbitrary today than it was in the past, because national security cases can only be heard by specially appointed justices in Hong Kong, not by the main judicial system." 

"So Hong Kong's ... special status as a preferred port has been eroded. It's to the detriment of Hong Kong and to the benefit of other mainland Chinese ports."

On Jan. 18 RFA Cantonese shot footage of the No. 9 Container Terminal at Kwai Ching, which was once stacked with containers several high, and which is now an empty expanse of concrete.

According to Derry, Hong Kong was hit by the loss in May 2020 of its separate trading status previously accorded by the U.S. government -- a move that was in direct response to the crackdown on the 2019 pro-democracy movement -- and by tariffs imposed on technology products amid a Sino-U.S. trade war begun under the Trump administration.

"Mainland China has 38% market share, the largest in the world, in those particular kinds of firms," Derry told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview. "Hong Kong enjoyed a large volume of integrated circuits that were moving to those [electronics] firms in mainland China and then moving from those mainland China firms back through Hong Kong and to their ultimate destinations around the world."

"That has been significantly impacted by the removal of preferential status, and by the later imposition of tariffs ... which has only made those conditions a little bit worse," he said.

Derry said Indonesia, Singapore and Manila will be significant beneficiaries of the shift away from Hong Kong, including Manila due to a significant semiconductor presence in the Philippines.

"Those will be the beneficiaries, and it will be Hong Kong's relative loss," he said.

Meanwhile, a recent network overview from the Gemini Cooperation shipping alliance of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, revealed no direct deep-sea calls in Hong Kong since the alliance pivoted to using Shanghai, Ningbo, Yantian, Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas as major hubs on regional container shipping routes, downgrading Hong Kong to the status of "feeder" port with cargo trucked or shipped to Yantian in the neighboring mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Hong Kong isn't the only port that will lose direct connectivity under the Gemini network: the northeastern Chinese port of Dalian, Taiwan's Kaohsiung and South Korea's Busan have also been downgraded.

Yet the damage to its status as an international container port will likely be extensive, with the city's port losing throughput traffic from Hapag-Lloyd of around 615,000 20-foot-equivalent units (TEU)  a quarter and around 261,000 TEUs a quarter from Maersk to Yantian, according to U.K. maritime consultancy MDS Transmodal.

Consolidating routes

The developments come as the Alliance, which groups South Korea's HMM, Japan's Ocean Network Express and Taiwan's Yang Ming shipping lines, is cutting the number of direct port calls it makes to Hong Kong from 11 to just 6, Sea-Intelligence reported.

Hong Kong will only be included on one of Yang Ming's 13 regional and trans-Pacific routes from 2025, according to a press release published to Yang Ming's website.

The consolidation of routes "does not bode well for the Port of Hong Kong," Sea-Intelligence commented in its report. "Analysis of network design and network efficiency will show that fewer, but larger, hubs are economically more efficient. Hong Kong appears to be the first major 'victim' of this."

Hong Kong's Transport and Logistics Bureau issued a statement in response to RFA Cantonese reporting on the issue on April 5, calling it "unreasonable."

"Radio Free Asia's unreasonable comments on the rapid deterioration in Hong Kong's status as an international shipping hub have no basis in fact and have been fabricated out of thin air," a spokesman for the bureau said in a statement.

"This is wanton criticism and attack ... and can never be accepted."

Declining numbers

It cited the Xinhua-Baltic International Shipping Centre Development Index Report（2023), a collaboration between China's state news agency Xinhua and the Baltic Exchange, which claimed that the city ranks fourth in the world as an international container port.

However, Lloyd's List ranked Hong Kong 10th in the world in terms of throughput last year, one place lower than in 2022.

Financial commentator Joseph Ngan, a former assistant controller at Hong Kong's i-CABLE News, wrote in a recent commentary for RFA Cantonese that Hong Kong has indeed "lost its role as an entrepôt port," citing figures that showed a 0.8% decline in the city's exports in the year to Feb. 29, 2024 and a 1.8% decline in imports, "far worse than market expectations."

Ngan cited data from the Hong Kong Maritime and Port Board, which shows that the throughput of Kwai Tsing Container Terminal, which accounts for 70% of Hong Kong's total cargo volume, fell for 25 consecutive months to the end of December 2023, the largest decline on record. 

Total throughput fell by nearly 14% for the whole of last year, Ngan wrote, citing a further double-digit decline in February following a brief spike ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday in January.

Hong Kong's biggest container terminal operator, CK Hutchison, saw a 9% decrease in its China-Hong Kong port revenue and a 18% fall in its gross earnings last year, Ngan wrote.

"We have seen that the ranking of container terminals has dropped from No. 1 in the world 20 years ago to the bottom of the top 10," Ngan wrote. "It is clear from the data that container throughput has plummeted."

He said Hong Kong officials were choosing to deny the problem in favor of issuing positive propaganda about the city's outlook instead.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

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

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

“Nothing has changed, and everything has changed.”  These are the words of Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American businessman and activist who spoke to our delegation.

Nothing has changed because the deadly oppression of the Palestinian people has been ongoing for 76 years. Everything has changed since October 7, the day Hamas fighters pierced the walls of the concentration camp called Gaza.  As followers of Jesus, we embrace non-violence and so grieve for all who have died, including the victims of the Hamas attack. Nevertheless, as our Palestinian friends reminded us, the violence did not begin on October 7; it must be understood in the broader context of at least 17 years of Israel’s inhuman strangulation of Gaza by land, air, and sea, 76 years of a continuing Nakba (since 1948), and over a century since the rise of Zionism.

In the past 150 days, Gaza has become a killing field.  Israel’s response against the Palestinian people is disproportionate by orders of magnitude.  The atrocities perpetrated by the IDF on Gaza by land, sea, and air are broadcast before our eyes, on our phones, in real-time.  We watch in horror. Entire families die in their beds under Israel’s bombs.  Apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, churches and mosques, markets are leveled. Relief and food convoys are denied entry at the Egypt border.

Mass starvation is rampant. On February 29, Gazans in the north rushed to grab bags of flour for rare relief. Israeli soldiers responded with a massacre of starving civilians seeking food; at least 100 died. Lethal infections and diarrhea, lack of clean water and medicines will kill thousands more in the coming weeks and months. The UN representatives on the ground, no strangers to tragedy, call this “the worst humanitarian crisis that they have ever seen.” We conclude it is nothing less than an attempt to wipe Palestinian history, tradition, and culture from human memory, the very definition of genocide.

We are a delegation of 23 American Christians, pastors and lay people, activists all, some who have been to Palestine and Israel often, a few who have lived and worked in the region, and a few who are visiting for the first time.  We have been urgently called by our Palestinian sisters and brothers to bear witness to this abomination and return to the US with their message. To put our visit into context, the “Flour Massacre,” as it is now called, was taking place in Gaza less than 50 miles from where we sat listening to Sam Bahour.

Let us be clear:  it is our faith, our shared faith, our shared humanity, that compelled us to be here, in the land where our faith was born.  But it is also as US citizens that we’ve come, knowing that US tax dollars, our tax dollars, are funding this crisis. Our government, the administration and Congress, bipartisan, supports these war crimes.

We met with Palestinian leaders – clergy, laypeople, civil rights lawyers, NGO leaders, and the director of UNRWA.  We asked each one to share what they would say to policymakers in Washington DC, to our churches, to our communities in the US.

• The Palestinians with whom we spoke ferventlybelieve in nonviolent resistance.  They say, “Hear our voices.”

• They feel abandoned, forsaken by the world, to face the genocide of their people alone. Our visit and solidarity comfort them and gives them the courage to carry on.

• The genocide in Gaza is now in its fifth month, and the world has done nothing to stop it. Palestiniansare incredulous.  There is palpable anger, righteous anger, even from clergy, from activists devoted to non-violence. They want no more high and mighty lectures from the West about values, democracy, equality, and human rights. The sheer tonnage of US hypocrisy is epic in its scale in the bombs paid for by the US that Israel drops on Gaza.

• We call for acease-fire now, including hostages held by Hamas and political prisoners held by Israel. No mincing words. No equivocation. NOW!

• We heard again and again that while our eyes are fixed on Gaza –and rightly so – there is a “slow massacre,” a “slow genocide” taking place in the West Bank. While there is genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing is exponentially increasing in the West Bank “under the radar.”

• End the occupation of Palestine by Israel. Stop illegal settlements. The West Bank is not Samaria and Judea.  It is Palestinian territory and Palestinians cannot continue to exist as stateless people without human rights.

• Children as young as 5 years old are arrested, abused, tortured, and held in prisons without trial for months or years. Night raids into Palestinian homes occur every night. They are tried in military, not civil, courts.  Confessions are extracted by torture.

• There are 700+checkpoints in the West Bank, an area roughly the size of Delaware, Joe Biden’s home state. Restricting freedom of movement is a tool of torment to make daily life unbearable for Palestinians. IDF teenagers with machine guns man these checkpoints and kill Palestinians with impunity.

• Home demolitions have increased. We visited a man whose home was demolished two weeks earlier. His crime: he was a spokesman for Palestinians in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. We sat under a tarp in his yard amidst the rubble.  Israel is ethnically cleansing, stealing, and Judaizing his neighborhood, Silwan, on the hills below the Old City of Jerusalem.  The large Silwan neighborhood has been zoned for demolition by the Israeli government to expand an archaeologicalsite and create a theme park.  The home demolitions would displace hundreds of people from their homes. Israel uses home demolitions as a potent weapon used for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.  We call for an end to Israel’s policy of demolition of Palestinian homes.

• The knee-jerk reaction by the Biden administration to cutoff funding for UNRWA (based on unfounded Israeli allegations against a few employees out of thousands) was unjustified.  We call for the full restoration – and increase – of UNRWA funding immediately.UNRWA is the only organization that can deliver mass human services to Gaza. The UNRWA West Bank Director told us the agency cannot continue unless donations are restored. To withhold food and relief from starving people is a war crime. It comes as no surprise that the accusations against UNWRA employees were levied just two days after the International Court of Justice announced its findings that Israel is credibly guilty of genocide, the crime of all crimes.

• This is a US war;the weapons are US-made. The money is US money. The shameful United Nations veto against a cease-fire is US policy. We say it again loudly and clearly: This is a US war!

• The US selectively applies international law.  Compare the US response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the US response to Israel’s open genocide in Gaza and its takeover and oppression in the West Bank.The world is watching. We continually heard the words applied to the United States – “hypocrisy,” “double standard.”

• The nations supporting a ceasefire, who continue their support of Palestine, the South Africa ICJ case –the Global South understands and is making their voices heard.  The people of the Global South see the hypocrisy.

• The West’s response is profoundlyracist. Again, compare the response to Ukraine, a predominantly white Christian country, to the response to Palestine, a predominantly Arab Muslim country. The world is watching. The people of the Global South see the injustice.

• They –and we – say to our churches: Both those who unconditionally support Israel as well as those who are silent, not wanting to offend, “You are complicit in Israel’s genocide of Gaza!” Following Jesus, listening to Jesus’ Gospel message, loving your neighbor, even your enemy – that is our call.  It is morally derelict that some Christians insist on undying loyalty to Israel. Scripture is not to be manipulated to crush one of God’s people for the gain of another. We heard from many about the scourge of Christian Zionism. It is equally sickening to be silent in the face of evil.

• Nonviolent resistancecan only succeed if people of good conscience take bold and decisive action in support of the cause. The Palestinian people cry out, “Hear our call. Take up our cross with us.”

How many Palestinians beyond the 30,000 must be murdered, plus 8,000 estimated dead under the rubble, for Israel to be satiated? For the US to decry the killings? For the world to intervene and say, “No”?

We say it again:  This is a US war.  We are party to genocide. We give Israel a free pass.  Israel continues to violate international law with impunity. The slaughter could not happen without the backing of the US government. Our tax dollars provide billions in aid to Israel, weapons, and full cover for Israel’s crimes. The fighter jets, bombs, tanks, chemical weapons are US-made.  The US vetoes UN cease-fire resolutions.

The US believes it is in its geopolitical interest to protect Israel, believing Israel is key to the strategic military, economic, and political interests of the US. On the contrary, as Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing inside Palestine continue, Israel and the US are less safe, they are pariahs on the world stage, with other countries looking to China and Russia for support.  The US is a shield and bank for Israel to commit war crimes. Our adversaries are watching and exploiting our moral failing to perpetuate their own.

We heard various political solutions offered, but all agree that Zionism –and support by the US government and Christian Zionists in the West – is the problem.  The racist, settler colonial project that is Zionism must be rejected out of hand, dismantled, and a system of government based on equity, human dignity, and full civil, political, and human rights created. Zionism makes Jews around the world less safe and contributes to antisemitism. If the US wants to be Israel’s friend, it must realize that this genocidal action fosters even more acts of antisemitism and disgust for the US.  It is in no one’s interest, no one’s.

We call on the United States to follow international law, including support for the recent ICJ ruling declaring a “plausible case” for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.  Palestinians no longer want to hear Western and US platitudes about democratic values and equal rights.  The words are a lie. The US needs to apply the values that it espouses equally – democracy, human rights, equality, and equity. Put up or shut up.

Each of the speakers with whom we met were activist leaders committed to non-violence. Each refuses to hate; they acknowledge that Palestinians over the years have compromised for peace.  The response has been more illegal settlements (major towns, illegal outposts with populations in the tens of thousands) in the West Bank, more checkpoints, more restrictions of movement, more killings, more children imprisoned.

No form of resistance is allowed, none.  Violent resistance leaves no one safe and leads to more violence.  Israel and US decry violence but at the same time actively suppress nonviolent resistance and muzzle nonviolent activists. One nonviolent speaker told us that he was arrested on October 7 and tortured.  When released, the IDF ordered him to leave his home for his own security. When he refused, the IDF forcibly removed him.  They wanted him to leave to steal his property for a military outpost.

The world condemns Hamas.  But years of non-violent resistance, including BDS, is – and has been – rejected out of hand. Hypocrisy.  Double standards. That same activist said, “Violence is condemned.  Non-violent resistance, BDS, and others are rejected.  This shows what they really want.  They want us gone.”

In conclusion:

Zionism is a force of destruction.  Vicious and hateful “settlers” do the dirty work for the state, with impunity and protection of the IDF, the police, and the courts. The settlers are armed with automatic weapons and present a bold menace in the streets.  Their assaults on Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank go unpunished.  We encountered a party of settlers, parading through the streets of Hebron while the IDF protected them, their machine guns cocked and pointed at us, a group of Americans as they hustled us out of the way.  Many of these violent, extremist, fascist settlers are now leaders in the Israeli cabinet.

Last week a US Air Force serviceman immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC.  His act of self-sacrifice reverberated across the globe.  Every day Palestinians mentioned him, they said they would remember him long after he had become just the answer to a trivia question in the West.

His name. Aaron Bushnell.  We conclude with his words:

 “Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid?  What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, You are doing it now.  Right now.

 “I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people are experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal. Free Palestine.”

And we, too, say “Free Palestine!”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Wendell Griffen.

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

The post Nowhere Left To Go In Gaza As Israel’s Ground Assault On Rafah Looms appeared first on Al-Shabaka.

This content originally appeared on Al-Shabaka and was authored by Tareq Baconi.

As Palestinian health officials say overnight Israeli strikes killed dozens in Rafah, where over 1 million Palestinians have sought refuge, we speak with a teacher trying to evacuate Rafah with her young children, who urges the U.S. government to stop the bloodshed. “My message to President Biden: We are innocent civilians, and we have no fault in what is happening,” says Duha Latif. “Our children deserve to live a normal life like the rest of the world’s children.” Latif is fundraising to gather the money she needs to enter Egypt. The latest Israeli bombardment was conducted as part of an operation to free two Israeli hostages and came amid warnings from U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders against Israel’s expected ground invasion of Rafah. Aid agencies fear the offensive would cause massive casualties.

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

A January U.S. Air Force personnel memo obtained by The Intercept describes military orders to be “on standby to forward deploy to support troops in the case of on ground US involvement in the Israel Hamas war.” According to a separate personnel document, the standby order related to personnel deployed last year to Iraq.

While the documents do not suggest that U.S. military ground involvement in the war is forthcoming, the January memo is the latest intimation of the Pentagon’s preparations to support Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack. Days after the attack, the U.S. military reportedly put 2,000 troops on prepare-to-deploy orders for potential support to Israel, though from neighboring countries — orders that were confirmed by a procurement document obtained by The Intercept.

The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment on the personnel memo about preparing for ground involvement, but in the past the White House has stressed that its support for Israel in the Gaza war would not include boots on the ground.

“There are no plans or intentions to put U.S. boots on the ground in combat in Israel,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on October 17. “But as we’ve also said, we have significant national security interests in the region.” 

Two days after Kirby’s remarks, the White House inadvertently shared a picture of President Joe Biden in Israel posing alongside members of the secretive U.S. special operations units, before quickly deleting it. In late October, the New York Times reported that American special operations personnel were in Israel to help with hostage rescue efforts.

U.S. Still in the Middle East

The documents obtained by The Intercept provide a stark reminder of the pervasive U.S. military presence in the Middle East, with personnel deployed to theaters where many Americans think the mission ended long ago — and how quickly those orders can be repurposed for new conflicts.

The records, for instance, involve personnel deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S. military’s name for the war against the Islamic State group. Though ISIS was driven from its last strongholds years ago, the war persists, providing a legal basis for continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and Syria.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” former President Donald Trump tweeted in December 2018. Shortly thereafter, Trump announced that U.S. troops in the country are “all coming back and they’re coming back now.” Trump would later announce that all U.S. troops in Iraq would be withdrawn as well.

Despite the announcements, U.S. forces remained in Syria as well as Iraq, where they are still present to this day. The deployments are “part of a comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS,” the White House informed Congress in December, “to limit the potential for resurgence of these groups and to mitigate threats to the United States homeland.”

A grim reminder of the longevity of the anti-ISIS deployment emerged Sunday, when three American soldiers were killed in a drone attack on a secret U.S. base in Jordan, near the border of Syria.

“These three fallen heroes were deployed to Jordan in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and the international coalition working to ensure the lasting defeat of ISIS,” Defense Department deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a press briefing on Monday. 

ISIS, however, did not launch the drone that killed the American soldiers. It was an alliance of Iraqi militias backed by Iran, according to the Pentagon.

The deaths represent the first U.S. troops killed since the October 7 Hamas attack. And they may not be the last, if the militia claiming responsibility for the attacks is to be believed. A senior official from an alliance of Iraqi militia groups claiming credit for the attack tied it to U.S. support for Israel in its Gaza war, as The Intercept previously reported.

“As we said before, if the U.S. keeps supporting Israel, there will [be] escalations,” the senior militia official said. “All U.S. interests in the region are legitimate targets, and we don’t care about U.S. threats to respond.”

With U.S. troops stationed all over the Middle East fighting wars long declared over, there are plenty of targets.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ken Klippenstein.

In a roundabout way, coal is solar-powered. Millions of years ago, swamp plants soaked up the sun’s energy, eating carbon dioxide in the process. They died, accumulated, and transformed over geologic time into energy-dense rock. This solar-powered fuel, of course, is far from renewable, unlike solar panels: Burning coal has returned that carbon to the atmosphere, driving rapid climate change.

But what if humans could reverse that process, creating their own version of coal from plant waste and burying it underground? That’s the idea behind a growing number of carbon projects: Using special heating chambers, engineers can transform agricultural and other waste biomass into solid, concentrated carbon. Like those ancient plants captured CO₂ and then turned into coal, this is carbon naturally sequestered from the atmosphere, then locked away for (ideally) thousands of years.

To be abundantly clear: Such “carbon removal” techniques are in no way a substitute for reducing emissions and keeping that extra carbon out of the atmosphere in the first place. But at the annual COP28 conference last month, carbon removal was a hotter topic than ever before. For years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has insisted that to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, we’re going to need carbon removal in one form or another, preferably a bunch of techniques working in concert.

If scaled up in the coming years, biomass carbon removal and storage could be one of those techniques. To start, you gather up waste biomass like corn stalks and cook it in a high-heat, low-oxygen environment in a special reactor, a process known as pyrolysis. It’s not burning the material with fire, per se, but blasting it with heat to remove the water content and turn it into concentrated carbon. (Note that this differs from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, in which you grow crops specifically to burn to produce electricity, capturing the emissions from the power plant.)

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“It’s basically like heating it in a pizza oven without oxygen,” says Andrew Jones, CEO and cofounder of Carba, which is using the process to bury carbon. “The optimal place is actually an abandoned coal mine, kind of putting it right back where it came from. We’re basically reverse coal mining.”

The challenge is that microbes love chewing on dead plant material, releasing carbon dioxide as a byproduct, as well methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas. This is an especially acute problem in the Arctic, where permafrost is thawing, releasing ancient plant material for microbes to eat. But it’s also a problem much closer to major human populations: Agricultural waste, landscaping waste from yards, the biomass you’d get from thinning forests (to lessen the amount of combustible material and reduce wildfire risk), such matter is often left to rot, burping up its carbon, or is burned, which releases both carbon and aerosols that are terrible for air quality and human health.

Because the reactor removes the carbohydrates that microbes love, creating charcoal, the carbon that goes into the ground doesn’t become food, so it persists. “If you’re just burying carbohydrates, you always have this risk that you don’t have it in the right conditions,” says Paul Dauenhauer, senior adviser and cofounder of Carba and a chemical engineer at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. “And so if 10, 20, or 30 percent of the material that you bury ends up degrading, that’s a loss of a lot of credibility.”

You don’t even need an abandoned coal mine to get rid of the processed biomass—Carba is burying it in landfills, too—so the technique could be used pretty much anywhere. “Every municipality has wastepaper waste, tree clippings, and grasses, all that kind of stuff,” says Dauenhauer. “But also, you can imagine packaging centers, where they have all the waste cardboard. That’s all carbohydrate and cellulose also.”

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When applied to agricultural fields, this sort of carbon is known as biochar, which also improves soils. Biochar can boost crop yields in some cases, says Sanjai Parikh, who created the Biochar Database, an open-access tool at UC Davis for those that make and use biochar. “It’s sequestering carbon still, even though it’s at the surface,” Parikh adds. “That biochar, some of it will degrade, but we’re talking stability of hundreds to thousands of years.”

The material also helps retain water in sandy soils, for instance, which tend to drain quickly otherwise. “Biochar is a highly, highly absorbent material,” says Wendy Lu Maxwell-Barton, executive director of the International Biochar Initiative. “This is why biochar is such an extraordinary soil amendment … it makes it more resilient to both drought conditions as well as flooding.”

Biochar is also quantifiable, Maxwell-Barton says: With a certain amount of biomass, you create a certain amount of carbon to store in soils or underground. Indeed, biochar accounts for 90 percent of the carbon removal market, in which companies pay to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

Alternatively, it’s harder to quantify exactly how much carbon you’re sequestering by restoring a complex forest ecosystem. Not that humans shouldn’t also protect these habitats—such “nature-based solutions” sequester carbon, bolster species, reduce flooding, and boost tourism industries. The unfortunate risk, though, is that a wildfire might destroy a protected forest, returning the carbon to the atmosphere. Burying carbon as charcoal theoretically protects it better in the long run.

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In addition to burying solid carbon or sprinkling it on fields, researchers are also turning waste biomass into liquid carbon—oil, essentially, that they pump back into the ground instead of pumping the fossil variety up. “What we do at the highest level is we make barbecue sauce—or liquid smoke for barbecue sauce—and then we inject it into old oil wells,” says Peter Reinhardt, CEO and cofounder of the carbon removal company Charm.

They also do this with pyrolysis, which spits out solid char for agriculture, but also liquid oil. That’s shipped to abandoned wells and pumped underground, where it solidifies. “There’s about 2 to 3 million abandoned, end-of-life oil and gas wells across the United States,” says Reinhardt. “It’s quite a problem, actually—a lot of them are methane emitters or improperly sealed, with fluid leaking up to the surface.” By pumping its biomass oil underground at these sites, Charm both sequesters carbon and seals up wells that have been leaking greenhouse gases.

Whatever the end product, biomass removal cleverly exploits nature’s own photosynthesis to sequester and then bury carbon. “The genius in this business model, in many ways, is letting nature do most of the work,” says climate economist Gernot Wagner of the Columbia Business School. “This is a natural process that’s been perfected over millions of years, so why not take advantage of it?”

In reality, though, things are more complicated, Wagner says. When fossil fuel companies remove coal or oil from the earth, they’re tapping into huge deposits that are relatively easy to exploit on the cheap, hence the prices of those fuels remain low. But there’s only so much biomass waste available above ground, and it’s distributed across the planet. (Though this is a potential strength of this kind of carbon removal, in that each municipality could process its own biomass waste for storage.) “The more demand there is for biochar, or for this kind of carbon removal technology, the more startups are out there clamoring for the same food waste, corn husk waste, and so on,” says Wagner. “Suddenly, the prices increase, rather than decrease.”

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The other potential issue, Wagner says, is the “moral hazard”: If humanity is able to delete carbon from the atmosphere, that’s less incentive to slash emissions. There’s still so much money to be made in fossil fuels, and indeed, oil companies like Occidental Petroleum are investing heavily in carbon removal technologies like direct air capture, in which machines scrub the air of CO₂. That way, they can keep on drilling. “There is always this moral hazard aspect,” says Wagner. “The big, big topic in the background behind any of these carbon removal conversations is: OK, well, we could—or should, frankly—be doing more to reduce emissions in the first place, as opposed to let’s suck it back out after the fact.”

Reinhardt, of Charm, says the carbon removal industry is catering to companies that are indeed reducing their emissions and are trying to do more. “If you look at who’s buying removals, it’s companies that are already doing a lot on the reduction side and are trying to zero-out the remainder,” says Reinhardt. “Every single startup in the carbon removal space is singing that same tune of: Have you done everything you can to reduce? OK, if you have, then great. Let’s talk about how we get you to net zero.”

In the end, the science is very clear that in addition to reducing emissions, humanity has to figure out how to pull more carbon out of the sky. It’s not just going to be about relying on forests to capture carbon, or on enhanced rock weathering that reacts with atmospheric CO₂, or on buried biomass, but ideally some combination of the best of the best techniques, both natural and technological. “We can have lots of different strategies, and they can be highly engineered, or they can be very simple,” says Parikh. “We just need to create all of these tools so that for each location and goal, we can use something to make a difference.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Why humans are putting ‘coal’ and ‘oil’ back in the ground on Jan 20, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon, WIRED.

We look at the reluctance in Congress to censure Israel despite growing grassroots pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza. “The narrative on both sides of the aisle is mostly about the right of Israel to defend itself,” says Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. “Congress has bought, completely, the framing which says that any Palestinian that dies in Gaza … that’s all on Hamas.” Friedman explains how the normalization of the racist Kahanist movement by Israel and the U.S. helped lead to today’s crisis, and lays out Israel’s approach to the ongoing hostage situation in Gaza.

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

• Israel steps up air and ground attacks in Gaza and cuts off the territory’s communications in advance of an expected ground assault.
• The UN General Assembly today approved a nonbinding resolution which calls for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza.
• Maine officials lift shelter-in-place order as search for mass shooting suspect continues.
• Donald Trump is set to testify Nov. 6 in civil fraud trial; Daughter Ivanka also will testify.
• The family members of six Palestinian-Americans trapped in Gaza put out a plea today, asking for the US government to help their loved ones out of the war zone.
• Residents of affordable housing communities in San Jose caravanned from the Bay Area to Orange County today, to protest rent increases in front of the house of the CEO of the company that owns the properties.

Smoke rises from explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)

The post Israel steps up air and ground attacks in Gaza and cuts off the territory’s communications in advance of an expected ground assault – Friday, October 27, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

• Humanitarian aid is beginning to trickle into Gaza, even as fighting continues, and the death toll rises. Some lawmakers are calling for a cease-fire, but the Biden administration says that would only give Hamas time to regroup and carry out more terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, some analysts say more attention should be paid to what comes after the fighting stops and what needs to be protected.
• Day 20 without a House Speaker, and Republicans are starting over; nine lower-level Republican lawmakers including Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota are now running, with none having a clear shot at the gavel.
• Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey pleaded not guilty today to new charges that he conspired to act as an illegal foreign agent on behalf of Egypt while serving as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
• President Joe Biden today announces the designation of 31 “technology hubs” across the country to develop new regions geared towards technological industries.
• Former President Donald Trump formally filed for the New Hampshire presidential primary today before speaking at a campaign rally in the town of Derry.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump signs papers as New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan watches, to be on the 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot at the New Hampshire Statehouse, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The post Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza as US advises delaying ground war to allow talks on captives; Hamas militants release two hostages they had been holding captive in the Gaza Strip as third small aid convoy from Egypt enters Gaza – Monday, October 23, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

• Humanitarian aid is beginning to trickle into Gaza, even as fighting continues, and the death toll rises. Some lawmakers are calling for a cease-fire, but the Biden administration says that would only give Hamas time to regroup and carry out more terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, some analysts say more attention should be paid to what comes after the fighting stops and what needs to be protected.
• Day 20 without a House Speaker, and Republicans are starting over; nine lower-level Republican lawmakers including Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota are now running, with none having a clear shot at the gavel.
• Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey pleaded not guilty today to new charges that he conspired to act as an illegal foreign agent on behalf of Egypt while serving as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
• President Joe Biden today announces the designation of 31 “technology hubs” across the country to develop new regions geared towards technological industries.
• Former President Donald Trump formally filed for the New Hampshire presidential primary today before speaking at a campaign rally in the town of Derry.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump signs papers as New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan watches, to be on the 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot at the New Hampshire Statehouse, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The post Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza as US advises delaying ground war to allow talks on captives; Hamas militants release two hostages they had been holding captive in the Gaza Strip as third small aid convoy from Egypt enters Gaza – Monday, October 23, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

• Humanitarian aid is beginning to trickle into Gaza, even as fighting continues, and the death toll rises. Some lawmakers are calling for a cease-fire, but the Biden administration says that would only give Hamas time to regroup and carry out more terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, some analysts say more attention should be paid to what comes after the fighting stops and what needs to be protected.
• Day 20 without a House Speaker, and Republicans are starting over; nine lower-level Republican lawmakers including Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota are now running, with none having a clear shot at the gavel.
• Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey pleaded not guilty today to new charges that he conspired to act as an illegal foreign agent on behalf of Egypt while serving as the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
• President Joe Biden today announces the designation of 31 “technology hubs” across the country to develop new regions geared towards technological industries.
• Former President Donald Trump formally filed for the New Hampshire presidential primary today before speaking at a campaign rally in the town of Derry.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump signs papers as New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan watches, to be on the 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot at the New Hampshire Statehouse, Monday, Oct. 23, 2023, in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The post Israel ramps up strikes on Gaza as US advises delaying ground war to allow talks on captives; Hamas militants release two hostages they had been holding captive in the Gaza Strip as third small aid convoy from Egypt enters Gaza – Monday, October 23, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

• The White House and congressional leaders are keeping up their campaign of support for Israel. The U.S. Secretary of State continued his trip to Israel and the region, as lawmakers work on an emergency military aid package. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden says terrorists need to be eliminated, but he says it would be a mistake for Israel to re-occupy the Gaza Strip in response to the Hamas attack.
• KPFA’s Rami Almeghari reports from Gaza.
• Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said today that it has started destroying surveillance cameras on several Israeli army posts along the border.
• FBI releases new crime report.
• California State Attorney General announces five-year court oversight plan for the Vallejo Police Department.
• Oakland celebrates the beginning of “Love Life Week.”

(Rockets are fired toward Israel from the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023 – AP Photo/Leo Correa)

The post President Joe Biden to visit Israel; Israel prepares ground offensive in Gaza; GOP Representative Jim Jordan closes in on House Speakership – Monday, October 16, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

From Tel Aviv, we hear from award-winning Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy, whose recent column for Haaretz is headlined “Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price.” Levy discusses the reaction within Israeli society toward Hamas’s unexpected attack and condemns the Netanyahu government for only mobilizing for further warfare rather than providing effective assistance to victims. “Nobody is leading Israel,” declares Levy, who also calls for Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza and accept that its campaign of eradicating Hamas is “impossible.” After decades of Palestinian subjugation under Israeli rule, “you can kill the current top people of Hamas, but you will not kill the ideology of Hamas,” says Levy.

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

In the ensuing interview Jim Heddle references a “nuclear revival,” a phenomenon which has also recently been occurring in different mediums. Christopher Nolan’s all-star epic Oppenheimer dramatizes the creation of the atomic bomb and the fallout from it. Steve James’ A Compassionate Spy chronicles espionage conducted by the Manhattan Project’s youngest physicist at Los Alamos. Oliver Stone’s documentary Nuclear Now argues in favor of nuclear energy as a supposed solution to the climate emergency. Janice Haaken’s new film Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance looks at the downside of this supposed nuclear energy revival. Irene Lusztig’s doc Richland, like Joshua Frank’s book Atomic Days, The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, both chronicle the U.S.’s largest plutonium production site, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.

More

The post Nuclear Power Plant is Ground Zero in SOS – THE SAN ONOFRE SYNDROME appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ed Rampell.

To combat this, Louisiana officials broke ground Thursday on an ambitious, $2.92 billion project to divert sediment from the Mississippi River into the basin, mimicking the natural processes of the river’s flow in an attempt to save the state’s disappearing coast. The initiative is the first step in Louisiana’s $50 billion Coastal Master Plan, funded in part by a lawsuit settlement from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Though many laud the project, some worry it will harm existing wildlife in the basin, while taking a very long time to do its work.

The main event for the mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project will be “punching a hole in the levee” that prevents the Mississippi River from regularly overflowing its banks and changing course, said Bren Haase, the chair of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. The project involves installing a complex gate structure through the Mississippi River’s levee, allowing some water to flow into a channel, which will then empty out over the basin and wash into the sea, carrying mud, silt, and clay with it to create new land. It’ll take five years to build. Over 50 years, the diversion project should add 21 square miles of land to the basin, according to Haase. 

Supporters note the project will help restore a degraded ecosystem to some of its former glory. “There are large areas of open water where the marsh has just eroded and sunk away,” said Natalie Snider, associate vice president for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Resilient Coasts and Watersheds program.

Read Next

‘There’s no alternative’: Louisiana’s ambitious plan to stay above water

Zoya Teirstein

Engineers factored sea-level rise projections of up to two and a half feet into the project’s design. But some scientists warn that sea-level rise is ultimately a wild card. There’s no knowing exactly how much, how or quickly, oceans will go up in the coming decades — and at some point, funding will likely run out for updates. For all the acres gained, they said, many will still be lost over time to the ravages of climate change. 

“It’s mitigation, not restoration,” said Rex Caffey, an associate professor of wetlands and coastal resources at Louisiana State University. “Slowing down the bleed.” 

The project has also been met with outcry from some of the people who make their living from the region’s fisheries. Louisiana has the most biorich fisheries  of any state, and some say the influx of freshwater from the project will decimate saltwater-loving stock in the basin, like oysters and shrimp.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Louisiana breaks ground on experimental project to rebuild lost wetlands on Aug 10, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

Asia Pacific Report:
Locations
Monday, July 17: Christchurch
Public meeting, 7pm
Knox Centre, Cnr Bealey Avenue & Victoria street, Christchurch (books available)
https://www.facebook.com/events/813719740268177/

Tuesday, July 18: Wellington
7pm
St Andrews on the Terrace, 30 The Terrace (Unity Books will have a rep there)
https://www.facebook.com/events/644521054258279/

Wednesday, July 19: Hawkes Bay
8pm
Greenmeadows Community Hall, 83 Tait Drive, Napier
https://www.facebook.com/events/6474977775923813/

Thursday, July 20: Auckland
Public Meeting, 7pm
The Fickling Centre, 546 Mt Albert Road (The Women’s Bookshop will be at the meeting to sell books)
https://www.facebook.com/events/285795137317711/

• Antony Loewenstein’s website

TRT World News interviews Antony Loewenstein on this week’s Israeli attack on Jenin refugee camp.

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

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

On a dead-end street in Cleveland’s Kinsman neighborhood, on 18 acres of land that previously served as an illegal dumping ground, an entire food ecosystem has emerged and thrived under the leadership of local residents.

Rid-All Green Partnership started with a single hoop house erected in February of 2011; now acres of farmland support a community kitchen and farmer’s market. All food waste is turned into compost, which supports the farm and is sold across Cleveland. A training program and paid apprenticeships bring community members in, while an aquaponics and hydroponics system generates local jobs. Specialized programs emerged to serve veterans and youth.

“We’ve created a circular economy,” says Keymah Durden, a Rid-All co-founder who grew up in the neighborhood. “Piece by piece, we’ve built this business with things that complement each other.”

Durden is one of three co-founders, all childhood friends who grew up on Cleveland’s east side. Rid-All’s name comes from late co-founder Damien Forshe’s company, Rid-All Exterminating Corporation, which he operated for 15 years before transitioning to agriculture. He was inspired by a research report written by co-founder Randy McShepard that advocated for building urban farms in vacant land following the 2009 foreclosure crisis. (Cleveland had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, with many of the vacated homes demolished.)

The trio secured 1.3 vacant acres in Kinsman, a neighborhood struggling with disinvestment and entrenched poverty. They prompted the county and others to clean the illegal dumping ground; more than 2,000 tires, burned out cars and abandoned refrigerators were removed. They participated in a five-month training program at the Milwaukee urban farm Growing Power and were inspired by two things: creating their own soil to replace the contaminated soil in their lot, and investing in fish farming, which could become an income generator to support a larger urban farm.

In addition to building a hoop house to begin growing plants and vegetables, they collected food waste from local businesses around Cleveland, creating compost for their farm and selling it. They built a self-sustaining hydroponics system to grow fish in tanks and vegetables on a connected top tier, with the fish waste fortifying the plants and the plants supporting clean water for the fish. In the first three years, they grew and sold 10,000 tilapia fish out of one greenhouse.

It was enough success to secure an investment to build a 7,200-square-foot urban fish farm, which now grows 70,000 tilapia that Rid-All sells to local restaurants. “These two critical pieces of our business — the fish farm and the compost — came from our early learnings and realizing there was a market for both,” explains McShepard.

As Rid-All grew, the nonprofit secured adjacent land. It is now an 18-acre campus with two greenhouses, six hoop houses, a commercial composting station, and a rain catchment pond. The nonprofit was also named the official tree nursery site of the Cleveland Tree Coalition and will be growing and selling at least 5,000 trees over the next few years as part of a larger effort to reforest the city.

“We’ve looked at ways to stay current and evolve over time,” says Marc White, a founding partner who serves as operations manager. “We didn’t want to be stuck just growing vegetables, we wanted to grow community.”

To that end, Rid-All introduced workshops, trainings and apprenticeship programs, including specific programming for youth and veterans. The farm now employs 18 people, many of whom are from the neighborhood, and offers summer employment for young people.

Its two latest developments cemented Rid-All’s circular economy model. In the summer of 2020, Rid-All began operating a farmer’s market in Maple Heights, a suburb bordering Cleveland that’s considered a food desert. This was Rid-All’s first opportunity to sell produce at scale. “Whatever we grow at the farm we can sell at the market and any produce that doesn’t sell we bring back and it becomes compost,” says McShepard. A chef sets up in the market once a month to share meals and recipes using the produce currently for sale.

In the spring of 2021, Rid-All opened a new building on its campus to serve as a community kitchen, market and restaurant facility. Similarly to the market, anything grown by Rid-All is cooked up and sold in the community kitchen, any food waste becomes compost. “This is a full, closed-loop ecosystem now,” McSheperd says.

Durden oversees the community kitchen. “The building is styled like a log cabin, which is such a unique feature to inner-core Cleveland, that it’s almost become a showpiece,” he says. On Tuesdays and Fridays they sell meals cooked by rotating guest chefs; Kinsman residents often eat alongside local government officials and professional athletes.

Rid-All hosts cooking and nutrition classes here and rents the space out for meetings and special events. They also plan to use the kitchen as an incubator for emerging food businesses and staging facility for food products that require processing and packaging.

Durden calls the farmer’s market and community kitchen “game changers” in that “everything we grow here at the farm, we can translate to our market and our kitchen.”

“This is a real Cleveland story,” he says. “It’s as local as it gets — three kids who grew up on the east side who now represent this good-faith and hopeful messaging around agriculture that shows what can be possible.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The former dumping ground that became a flourishing food ecosystem on Jun 17, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Nonko, Next City.

On May 28, 2023, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new Parliament building in Delhi, the protesting wrestlers, including Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, were about to hold a Mahila Maha Panchayat. As they tried to march towards the new Parliament building from their site of protest at Jantar Mantar, they were stopped by the police and detained at various police stations across Delhi.

An image, apparently of Sakshi Malik, clicked during the protest, showing her to be pinned to the ground with the boot of a police official on her face, is circulating on social media. The image was shared by AAP MLA from Sultanpur Mukesh Ahlawat, who compared India with the Taliban and questioned the state of affairs in the country. (Archive)

क्या ये देश के लिए महिला रेसलिंग में पहला ओलंपिक मेडल दिलाने वाली @SakshiMalik है?
अगर यह तस्वीर आज की है तो समझ नहीं आ रहा कि यह हिंदुस्तान है या तालिबान?
देश का जमींर जिंदा है या मर गया या फिर बिक गया??#WrestlerProtest pic.twitter.com/Nh7WRR5tq3

— MLA Mukesh Ahlawat (@mukeshahlawatap) May 28, 2023

Another verified user named Kirti Pathak AAP (@kirtispathak), who is described as the state vice-president of AAP in Rajasthan in her Twitter bio, shared the same image asking if it was of Sakshi Malik.

क्या ये देश के लिए महिला रेसलिंग में पहला ओलंपिक मेडल दिलाने वाली @SakshiMalik है?
अगर यह तस्वीर आज की है तो समझ नहीं आ रहा कि देश का जमींर जिंदा है या मर गया ??#WrestlerProtest pic.twitter.com/zcEbu8srZU

— Kirti Pathak AAP (@kirtispathak) May 29, 2023

Ziya Us Salam (@ziyaussalam), whose Twitter bio describes him as a ‘journalist-author’ shared the same image with the caption: “If this image of a woman wrestler who has won medals for India does not stir you, nothing will of this fascist regime.” He later deleted the tweet.

Fact Check

First, we noticed that wrestler Sakshi Malik was wearing a light blue t-shirt during the protest and the subsequent scuffle on May 28. This can be seen in a video that she posted on Twitter. (Archive)

We did a reverse image search of the viral image and found an article in The Asian Age dated January 30, 2021, where the same picture was used in a report on the farmers’ protest. The image is captioned ‘Police pin down a farmer, who allegedly attacked Police SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal, during clashes between people claiming to be local villagers and farmers at the Singhu border in New Delhi on Friday. (Photo: PTI)’.

A Newslaundry article dated January 29, 2021, too, used the same picture and identified the person seen in the image as a 22-year-old Ranjit Singh, farmer from Kajampur village of Nawanshahr district in Punjab.

A further keyword search led us to an article in The Times of India dated February 1, 2021, which also used the same photograph and wrote how Ranjit Singh was accused by the Delhi Police of attacking a station house officer (SHO) with his sword and injuring him. He was arrested by Delhi Police under various sections, including attempt to murder. According to his brother Jaspreet Singh, Ranjit had gone with members of Kirti Kisan Union to the Singhu border protest.

When we looked for further information, we found an IANS article published by News18 dated January 30, 2021, which contained a zoomed out photograph of the same moment. It was attributed to PTI. The image is captioned: “New Delhi: Police pin down a farmer, who allegedly attacked Police SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal, during clashes between people claiming to be local villagers and farmers at the Singhu Border in New Delhi, Friday, Jan. 29, 2021. (PTI Photo)”.

Times Now published an article on January 30, 2021, where we found the following photograph captioned ‘Singhu border violence | Photo Credit: ANI’ The article also said: “The man who attacked SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal has been identified as Ranjeet Singh, 22, a resident of Punjab’s Kazampur village.”

The Newslaundry report also explained the tussle between the protesting farmer Ranjit Singh and the police personnel. It stated: “All of this was shot on camera by journalists and bystanders. It is in one such video that Ranjit was present. Before he entered the frame, members of the mob could be seen pelting stones and shouting at farmers across the barricades. A policeman in riot gear walked among them but not really stopping them. At one point, one of them attempted to yank his lathi but he gently pulled it back. This individual then managed to yank another lathi from a farmer and started to aim it at a farmer across the barricade. It was at this point, Ranjit, with a sword tucked in his belt, emerged from the barricaded area. He did not attack or point his sword at anyone. He then walked back into the barricaded area. In response, Delhi police personnel pushed Ranjit and he responded by pushing them back. In a flash, multiple policemen started raining blows on him with lathis. Ranjit pulled out his sword and raised it but was overpowered by the police who pinned him down and beat him.”

We also came across an interview of Ranjit Singh taken by BBC News Punjabi published on March 18, 2021, after his release on March 17. This video contains footage from the incident. These can be seen at the 0:19-minute, 0:32-minute and 1:01-minute mark.

To sum up, we can conclude that the person pinned to the ground under a boot in the viral image is not Olympic medalist Sakshi Malik, but Ranjit Singh, a farmer from Punjab. The photo was shot by the PTI on January 29, 2021 near Singhu border.

Shreyatama Datta is an intern at Alt News.

The post Photo from 2021 farmers’ stir falsely viral as Sakshi Malik pinned to the ground appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shreyatama Datta.

On May 28, 2023, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the new Parliament building in Delhi, the protesting wrestlers, including Vinesh Phogat, Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, were about to hold a Mahila Maha Panchayat. As they tried to march towards the new Parliament building from their site of protest at Jantar Mantar, they were stopped by the police and detained at various police stations across Delhi.

An image, apparently of Sakshi Malik, clicked during the protest, showing her to be pinned to the ground with the boot of a police official on her face, is circulating on social media. The image was shared by AAP MLA from Sultanpur Mukesh Ahlawat, who compared India with the Taliban and questioned the state of affairs in the country. (Archive)

क्या ये देश के लिए महिला रेसलिंग में पहला ओलंपिक मेडल दिलाने वाली @SakshiMalik है?
अगर यह तस्वीर आज की है तो समझ नहीं आ रहा कि यह हिंदुस्तान है या तालिबान?
देश का जमींर जिंदा है या मर गया या फिर बिक गया??#WrestlerProtest pic.twitter.com/Nh7WRR5tq3

— MLA Mukesh Ahlawat (@mukeshahlawatap) May 28, 2023

Another verified user named Kirti Pathak AAP (@kirtispathak), who is described as the state vice-president of AAP in Rajasthan in her Twitter bio, shared the same image asking if it was of Sakshi Malik.

क्या ये देश के लिए महिला रेसलिंग में पहला ओलंपिक मेडल दिलाने वाली @SakshiMalik है?
अगर यह तस्वीर आज की है तो समझ नहीं आ रहा कि देश का जमींर जिंदा है या मर गया ??#WrestlerProtest pic.twitter.com/zcEbu8srZU

— Kirti Pathak AAP (@kirtispathak) May 29, 2023

Ziya Us Salam (@ziyaussalam), whose Twitter bio describes him as a ‘journalist-author’ shared the same image with the caption: “If this image of a woman wrestler who has won medals for India does not stir you, nothing will of this fascist regime.” He later deleted the tweet.

Fact Check

First, we noticed that wrestler Sakshi Malik was wearing a light blue t-shirt during the protest and the subsequent scuffle on May 28. This can be seen in a video that she posted on Twitter. (Archive)

We did a reverse image search of the viral image and found an article in The Asian Age dated January 30, 2021, where the same picture was used in a report on the farmers’ protest. The image is captioned ‘Police pin down a farmer, who allegedly attacked Police SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal, during clashes between people claiming to be local villagers and farmers at the Singhu border in New Delhi on Friday. (Photo: PTI)’.

A Newslaundry article dated January 29, 2021, too, used the same picture and identified the person seen in the image as a 22-year-old Ranjit Singh, farmer from Kajampur village of Nawanshahr district in Punjab.

A further keyword search led us to an article in The Times of India dated February 1, 2021, which also used the same photograph and wrote how Ranjit Singh was accused by the Delhi Police of attacking a station house officer (SHO) with his sword and injuring him. He was arrested by Delhi Police under various sections, including attempt to murder. According to his brother Jaspreet Singh, Ranjit had gone with members of Kirti Kisan Union to the Singhu border protest.

When we looked for further information, we found an IANS article published by News18 dated January 30, 2021, which contained a zoomed out photograph of the same moment. It was attributed to PTI. The image is captioned: “New Delhi: Police pin down a farmer, who allegedly attacked Police SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal, during clashes between people claiming to be local villagers and farmers at the Singhu Border in New Delhi, Friday, Jan. 29, 2021. (PTI Photo)”.

Times Now published an article on January 30, 2021, where we found the following photograph captioned ‘Singhu border violence | Photo Credit: ANI’ The article also said: “The man who attacked SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal has been identified as Ranjeet Singh, 22, a resident of Punjab’s Kazampur village.”

The Newslaundry report also explained the tussle between the protesting farmer Ranjit Singh and the police personnel. It stated: “All of this was shot on camera by journalists and bystanders. It is in one such video that Ranjit was present. Before he entered the frame, members of the mob could be seen pelting stones and shouting at farmers across the barricades. A policeman in riot gear walked among them but not really stopping them. At one point, one of them attempted to yank his lathi but he gently pulled it back. This individual then managed to yank another lathi from a farmer and started to aim it at a farmer across the barricade. It was at this point, Ranjit, with a sword tucked in his belt, emerged from the barricaded area. He did not attack or point his sword at anyone. He then walked back into the barricaded area. In response, Delhi police personnel pushed Ranjit and he responded by pushing them back. In a flash, multiple policemen started raining blows on him with lathis. Ranjit pulled out his sword and raised it but was overpowered by the police who pinned him down and beat him.”

We also came across an interview of Ranjit Singh taken by BBC News Punjabi published on March 18, 2021, after his release on March 17. This video contains footage from the incident. These can be seen at the 0:19-minute, 0:32-minute and 1:01-minute mark.

To sum up, we can conclude that the person pinned to the ground under a boot in the viral image is not Olympic medalist Sakshi Malik, but Ranjit Singh, a farmer from Punjab. The photo was shot by the PTI on January 29, 2021 near Singhu border.

Shreyatama Datta is an intern at Alt News.

The post Photo from 2021 farmers’ stir falsely viral as Sakshi Malik pinned to the ground appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shreyatama Datta.

RNZ Pacific

Papua New Guinea expects to see a steady increase in United States military presence following the signing of the US-PNG Defense Cooperation Agreement today.

But there is uncertainty over the future implications for the country and its people with the agreement giving the US access to strategic military and civilian locations within Papua New Guinea.

“You need not fear [it], this is not a new thing,” Prime Minister James Marape said.

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While the details of the agreement are yet to be made clear, there will be a steady increase in US military presence over the next decade — the biggest since World War II.

“How many soldiers we are looking at, how many contractors we are looking at, I do not have that scope today but there will certainly be an increased presence and a more direct presence of US in our country,” Marape said.

He has had other proposals from nations wanting an agreement of sorts but they were turned away because they stipulated PNG must not engage with other nations.

The Prime Minister said the agreement with Washington was the only proposed agreement which allowed PNG to engage with who they want.

PACIFIC Islands Forum Sectratery Henry Puna was welcomed with a Cook Island welcome song “Trete”sung by Vabukori singing group at Jackson’s International Airport. pic.twitter.com/dAfjUzQwMZ

— PostCourierlive (@postcourierlive) May 21, 2023

US soldiers, contractors
“Certainly, as we go forward over the next 15 years, we will see US soldiers in our country. We will see US contractors in our country,” Marape said.

Papua New Guinea is a strategic military location for western powers. In the north of the country, Lombrum in Manus Province, was once a combined US naval and airbase with more than 30,000 personnel.

Outside of political circles, various groups have come together to voice strong concerns about the agreement.

The president of the Catholic Professionals Society, Paul Harricknen, fears the agreement may be unconstitutional.

“America needs to understand that we are a constitutional democracy. If there is to be geopolitical rivalry, they cannot use PNG for their disagreements,” Harricknen said.

But Marape insists it is a constitutional agreement.

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

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

Stewart Rhodes, the infamous leader of the anti-government Oath Keeper militia, was standing on a street in Conroe, Texas, a city about 40 miles north of Houston. The sky was clear blue, but remnants of darker days were everywhere. Residents were shoveling up splintered lumber and debris. A boy holding a broom was halfheartedly scooping lawn scraps into a garbage bag a few feet away from where Rhodes was conducting an on-camera interview.

A Category 4 hurricane named Harvey had just dumped feet, not inches, of water on the state, sparking one of the most expensive disasters in United States history. The scale of the damage was so vast that the then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, put out a request for volunteers. “We need citizens to be involved,” he said on August 28, 2017, a few days after the storm struck Texas. The Oath Keepers answered the call. 

Rhodes was wearing an Oath Keepers cap and T-shirt. He was there with another Oath Keeper, the organization’s Southeast regional assistant coordinator, Alex Oakes. The men were interviewing Beau Sullivan, a Conroe local who had been organizing hurricane relief efforts after the storm. 

“Thank you, gentlemen, for coming out here,” Sullivan said, shaking Rhodes’ and Oakes’ hands. “You know, normally y’all gotta be a little more brass tacks, but y’all come out here with a message of love this time, and camaraderie, and I really appreciate that. That’s what’s needed now in this rebuilding effort.”

The exchange, captured on video and disseminated by the Oath Keepers on AltCensored, a right-wing alternative to YouTube, neatly distills why a group mainly preoccupied with uncovering made-up evidence of government tyranny might participate in hurricane relief efforts: It wins people over.

For nearly a decade, the Oath Keepers — which formed in 2009 in the wake of Barack Obama’s election to the presidency — have responded to disasters like hurricanes and floods by administering rescue operations, serving hot meals, and doing construction work. Disasters provide the Oath Keepers with opportunities to fundraise and gain the trust of people who might not otherwise be sympathetic to their anti-government cause. By arriving to crisis zones before federal agencies do, the Oath Keepers take advantage of bureaucratic weaknesses, holding a hand out to people in desperate circumstances.

This all serves to reinforce the militia members’ conviction that the government is fallible, negligent, and not to be trusted. And every time a new person sees the Oath Keepers as the helpers who respond when the government does not, it helps build the group’s fledgling brand.

The group has been in disarray since some of its leaders and most active members, including Rhodes, were arrested, tried, and convicted for their participation in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Facing public backlash and social media bans, the Oath Keepers have retreated from the public sphere. For a time, they took down their website and stopped gathering in public. But the retreat has been short-lived. “Militia groups are finding some footing again,” said Hampton Stall, a research specialist at Princeton University who runs a watchdog site called MilitiaWatch. “2023 will be the year they start to reactivate.”

“Our main issue is disaster preparedness,” he told Grist, an assertion local officials and others in Arizona have taken at face value. But that’s not the full story. The fringe group is trying to ride the coattails of disaster preparation and relief work into the mainstream, experts told Grist. Its success thus far hints at a frightening post-disaster outcome in a warming world: What happens if the government fails to show up and communities start to rely on the extremists next door?

The first phase of an Oath Keepers remobilization is taking place in Chino Valley, Arizona. A man named Jim Arroyo, the former state vice president for the Arizona Oath Keepers chapter — the group’s largest state contingent to date — is on a mission to rebrand his chapter as a disaster assistance organization. His group, which he has registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is called the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, named after the county it’s based in. Arroyo is fond of calling the outfit, known as YCPT, a “nonviolent, apolitical, nonpartisan” organization.

Rhodes founded the Oath Keepers on the premise that a violent clash between American citizens and the United States government wasn’t just possible, it was inevitable. Rhodes subscribes to the far-fetched notion that the government is conspiring to strip its citizens of their rights and force them to participate in a “new world order” defined by a “tyrannical, globalist, and socialist one-world government.” Fear of government tyranny isn’t a new concept; it’s one of the tenets upon which this nation was founded. 

Anti-government militias are a key part of the so-called patriot movement, a loose coalition of nationalistic and often violent far-right groups. The Oath Keepers recruit current and former members of the military, first responders, and law enforcement. Like other sects of the patriot movement, the Oath Keepers are overwhelmingly white, but otherwise they look and act differently than many of their allies. 

“They live much more on the side of the spectrum that wants mainstream political legitimacy,” Sam Jackson, a University of Albany professor and the author of Oath Keepers: Patriotism and the Edge of Violence in a Right-Wing Antigovernment Group, told Grist. “One of the ways that Oath Keepers has done this is by trying to portray itself as a civic organization.” 

In 2013, Rhodes launched a program aimed at preparing communities for a natural disaster, a civil war, or anything in between. He originally said the program — a national network of community groups akin to neighborhood watches — was intended to create “civilization preparedness teams.” He soon gave them a far more innocuous-sounding new name: “community preparedness teams,” or CPTs. CPTs provide volunteers with medical, disaster, and fire safety training. As the Oath Keepers grew, changed, and increasingly made themselves known in the public sphere, the CPT program remained a relative constant — something “the group seems to view as core to its identity,” Jackson wrote in his book. 

The CPTs kept their eye on events with potential for conflict with government agencies. In 2014, they responded to Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s call to arms, after he refused to pay federal land management agencies millions of dollars in required fees to graze his herd of cattle on public land. They defended a gold mine from the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon in 2015. They were present that same year in Ferguson, Missouri, providing security, according to the group, for business owners during widespread protests on the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager who was killed by police in 2014. And they provided relief in Conroe after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in 2017.

That year saw the dawn of a new era for FEMA. Harvey and two other hurricanes called Irma and Maria made landfall on U.S. soil in the same 30-day period, claiming thousands of lives, causing widespread destruction, and generating hundreds of billions of dollars in cumulative costs. The back-to-back disasters made it exceedingly clear that the federal government is unprepared for the consequences of climate change — more intense hurricanes, heavier floods, rising sea levels. 

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Despite years of abnormal weather events that have laid its shortcomings bare, FEMA still doesn’t have the personnel or the budget it needs to ready Americans for disasters or respond adequately when multiple disasters strike at the same time. Experts say that federal lawmakers, who decide how much funding FEMA gets every year, lack the foresight required to actually prepare for climate change. Instead, disaster management centers around response, which means FEMA is constantly playing a game of catch-up. 

The agency’s shortcomings leave gaps for militias to step in. Teams of Oath Keepers moved into Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico in the wake of the 2017 trio of hurricanes. They showed up again in Florida in 2018 after Hurricane Michael struck the state. Leaked Oath Keeper chats, shared with Grist by the nonprofit watchdog group Distributed Denial of Secrets, show that members of the group put out a call for volunteers following a damaging outbreak of tornadoes in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Tennessee in the spring of 2021.

It’s not just the Oath Keepers. Armed vigilantes reportedly set up roadblocks and interrogated people fleeing wildfires in Oregon in 2020; a different militia tried to recruit people affected by the Oak Fire in central California last summer. “Disaster relief in this country is pretty broken because of the way it often takes months to get federal funding activated,” Stall said. “There’s a long time during which groups can often get active.”

And FEMA’s large-scale efforts to help communities in the aftermath of disasters inadvertently provide these groups with fodder for their conspiracy theories. When a hurricane hits, FEMA goes to work building out a massive network of field camps, relief stations, and other physical infrastructure that makes the work of disaster aid possible. Where the unindoctrinated might see logistics at work, the far right sees a sinister plot unfolding. 

“There’s a long-standing conspiracy theory among the far right that everything that FEMA does is dual use,” Jackson said. “It has this surface-level purpose of responding to emergencies and disasters and all that kind of stuff. But also it’s building up the infrastructure so that one day when martial law is declared, there are these huge detention camps and there are deployed resources to be used by troops who are enforcing martial law.”

Many Oath Keepers subscribe to that belief, but they’re not vocal about it. Publicly, Jackson said, they portray themselves as supplementing FEMA’s efforts and even working in tandem with the agency. It’s part and parcel of the group’s founding ethos — understand the system, work within the system, and be prepared to defeat the system when the time comes.

If there’s one thing Jim Arroyo, leader of the Yavapai County Preparedness Team, understands, it’s how the system works. The 62-year-old gunsmith trained as an army ranger in the early 1980s, regularly volunteers with the Chino Valley Police Department, and assists his county’s local emergency management program, in addition to serving as the Arizona chapter vice president for the Oath Keepers for several years starting in 2014. Arroyo insists that neither his organization nor the Oath Keepers qualify as militias, and he vehemently rejects accusations that the Oath Keepers are in any way anti-government.

“That’s completely stupid,” he told Grist. “We are the government.”

Grist reached Arroyo on his landline in mid-March. He answered questions with occasional coaching from his wife Janet, who helps him run YCPT. In 2022, as the groups that stormed the U.S. Capitol confronted mounting legal and social repercussions, Arroyo officially broke ties with Oath Keepers national. He says his chapter is no longer in contact with the larger organization or Stewart Rhodes. But he still puts up the Oath Keeper flag at meetings and sports branded Oath Keeper gear.

“We still believe in the mission of the Oath Keepers,” Arroyo said, though he admitted that his efforts to partner with local governments outside of Arizona since the Capitol insurrection have been difficult due to his association with the organization. For the time being, he’s focused on building YCPT into a national network. “At this stage of the game, our mission is to train individuals,” he said. He declined to say what he aims to do with the group in the future, but the YCPT website claims the group has outposts in 14 U.S. states and three countries — Canada, Panama, and the U.K. 

Arroyo offers YCPT attendees training in person and via Zoom twice a month. He lectures in front of a large banner that lists some of the threats the group says it’s focused on mitigating: fires, floods, food shortages, and economic collapse, to name a few. Many of the trainings focus on skills that come in handy during natural disasters — like contacting people by radio in the event that internet and cellular networks break down, or administering CPR and other emergency medical procedures. Topics have also included how to prepare for electrical outages, plant a garden, and keep warm in freezing conditions. 

But the group isn’t just preparing for hurricanes and floods; it’s getting ready for war. In fact, that’s the bulk of the “preparedness” work it’s doing. Though the YCPT website makes it seem like the organization is primarily focused on teaching participants basic survival skills, recordings of the group’s monthly general meetings make it clear that YCPT’s agenda goes far beyond those mainstream offerings. At every meeting, Arroyo invites a guest to give a lecture or offers one himself, an Oath Keeper cap perched on his graying head and a handgun holstered to his hip. 

At one recent meeting, a self-described information warfare officer and retired Army lieutenant colonel named Steven Murray preached a potent cocktail of misinformation. “Trans, gay, transhumanist agendas” were infiltrating the public sphere. China had undermined every office in Arizona’s government, and the sovereignty of Yavapai County had been “transferred” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will ultimately “usurp the constitution.” FEMA had built a “containment” camp in Arizona, he said. “That should bother everybody in this room.” Each point Murray made was aimed at inspiring action. “Our job now is to resist,” he said, “to outthink, outsmart, and out-act our enemy.” 

The next guest, the head of YCPT’s security team, taught attendees how to build their own tripwires, decoys, and booby traps. One mechanism, a tripwire that makes a loud noise to scare off intruders, requires a shotgun blank, he said. “It doesn’t have to be a blank,” a member of the crowd shouted. 

Arroyo later warned the group about the legal consequences of putting a live cartridge in a trip alarm. But he closed out the meeting with a warning about the “police state,” which he said controls elements within federal, state, and local law enforcement as well as the media, corporations, and the court system. Those entities, he claimed, are preparing to attack. “I’m getting prepared for the inevitable,” Arroyo said. “We’re already engaged in the preliminaries before we get ready to go full kinetic.”

Arroyo told Grist that YCPT’s goal isn’t to teach people how to participate in a civil war. “Face it,” Arroyo said, “the vast majority of our people here are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. We are not teaching them to fight in a war. We’re teaching them how to survive it.” 

YCPT has the idea “that there will be some eventual moment when they are going to need particular skills,” said Rachel Goldwasser, a research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center who studies the Oath Keepers and has kept track of YCPT meetings. “There’s going to come a day when the government is going to go, essentially, full tyrant.” According to Arroyo, that day isn’t too far off. 

YCPT’s political arm, a group called the Lions of Liberty, staked out ballot dropboxes in Arizona last November as early voters submitted their ballots. Arroyo told Grist that he organized the surveillance effort in Yavapai County, and said “there is overlap” between the groups. “People who are Oath Keepers or people who come to the YCPT trainings and meetings also attend the Lions of Liberty meetings.” The unauthorized surveillance came to a halt after roughly a week when the League of Women Voters of Arizona sued the Lions of Liberty for violating the Voting Rights Act.

Arroyo told Grist that he believes that the world’s economic systems are on the verge of collapse, that unnamed attackers might disable U.S. power grids with an electromagnetic pulse, that the U.S. has already entered a civil war, and that the globe is in the first phase of a third world war. Unlike his guest speaker, Arroyo says he doesn’t believe that FEMA is currently planning to imprison Americans in its camps, though he told Grist he does think FEMA could overstep its authority at some point down the line.

“Governments all the time can do crazy things,” he said.

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While Arroyo’s views may seem far out to the average American, it’s obvious there’s an audience for them in Arizona and beyond. Arroyo said that between 100 and 150 people regularly show up to his gatherings. Goldwasser and other experts who track these meetings confirmed they’re well attended. Republican candidates running for seats in Arizona’s House of Representatives, Senate, attorney general’s office, and Department of Education have spoken at YCPT meetings. In 2022, Eli Crane, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, spoke at a meeting. He subsequently ousted the Democratic incumbent in the midterm elections. An Arizona state representative, Quang Nguyen, has been a guest speaker at least three times. Mitch Padilla, candidate for local justice of the peace, spoke at a YCPT meeting before winning his 2022 race. Multiple current and prospective county sheriffs have given speeches. 

For attendees, the risks are minimal. Though YCPT meetings are fueled by conspiracy theories, the organization has a harmless name and isn’t bogged down by the controversy surrounding the national Oath Keepers organization. That may allow the group to expand its reach in coming years.

“There is a gap now and a vacuum where Oath Keepers was,” said Goldwasser, who thinks Arroyo will hoover up Oath Keepers who have been standing idly by as the national organization’s leadership has splintered apart. 

Disasters are already chaotic. Adding in teams of armed volunteers, jacked up on conspiracy theories about the government, civil unrest, and global war, adds an unpredictable dimension to already complicated and flawed state and federal relief efforts. “The vast majority of Oath Keeper beliefs and activities are still embodied in YCPT,” Goldwasser said. “Even if Arroyo doesn’t agree with an all-out coup attempt, the things he might agree to that are dangerous, that are intimidating, that are potentially in conflict with the government, those still exist.” 

Some well-established relief groups, like the Red Cross, might link up with the Yavapai County Preparedness Team without realizing it’s a spinoff of the Oath Keepers, Goldwasser said. 

And then, of course, there’s the matter of who, exactly, these groups are targeting for disaster assistance.

It’s hard to say how these older, majority white veterans and other volunteers currently think about the communities they aim to provide disaster assistance to, but in the past, Jackson said, Oath Keeper relief missions have focused on helping predominantly white communities. “They’re focusing on the suburbs, and they’re seeing the inner city as a source of problems and threats that need to be patrolled rather than people that need help.” FEMA has faced persistent criticism for shortchanging minorities and low-income Americans in its relief efforts. If the Oath Keepers bring racist bias to their disaster recovery work, it could make disasters even more dangerous for communities of color.

Arroyo disputes the idea that his group discriminates. “We’ve got transgenders in our organization, we’ve got members of the LGBTQ community, we’ve had Democrats come in and participate in our training,” Arroyo said. “The narrative that the Oath Keepers are white nationalist, white supremacist, that’s a false statement.”

As the planet warms, more calamities will strike the U.S. and, if the recent past is any indication, create new opportunities for militias and other extremist groups to mobilize and recruit. But researchers have been examining productive counter-extremist messaging methods for decades now, and experts told Grist they see a few interventions that could limit militias’ power during natural disasters. 

Brian Hughes, co-founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, said his group has had success using credible messengers — a trusted community group, a loved one, or an authority figure — to teach potential recruitment targets to avoid being manipulated by extremists. Those targets are people who are disillusioned with the “system” or simply have too much time on their hands. “We try to reach people as early in the radicalization process as possible and ideally even before it begins,” he said.

Hughes has had success experimenting with a technique called “pre-bunking,” a mix of media literacy and counter-propaganda education. The method teaches people how to recognize extremist recruitment tactics and reject them on sight. “You can say something like, ‘If somebody is telling you a story that sounds like they’re saying you need to stockpile guns because society is going to collapse, there’s a good chance this person is representing an extremist group or an extremist point of view,’” Hughes said. His lab’s research has shown that people who have been pre-bunked are less likely to find extremist messaging credible and are more likely to develop their own counterarguments against it.

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States can also play a firmer role in curtailing extremist activity. Many states have laws on the books that prohibit private militias from operating, but most state attorneys general don’t enforce them. In fact, some states are trending in the opposite direction. Idaho lawmakers recently passed a law that repeals legislation prohibiting militias and paramilitary activity. 

“The states seem reticent” to enforce anti-militia laws, “and some states don’t even know that they can utilize this,” Goldwasser said. “But it’s something that is absolutely necessary moving forward.” 

Stall is particularly heartened by organizations that enlist retired law enforcement and veterans — the same groups targeted by the Oath Keepers — to do relief work while ditching the heavy dose of extremist ideology. Team Rubicon, a humanitarian organization headquartered in California, recruits veterans, first responders, and other volunteers to help communities prepare for and recover from disasters. The group has built out a network of 150,000 volunteers, half of whom are veterans, and conducted some 1,500 missions in its 13 years of operation. Art delaCruz, Team Rubicon’s CEO and a veteran himself, told Grist that the organization’s work in disaster zones helps make the transition from soldier to civilian easier for its volunteers. 

“I like to say that military veterans and people who have retired out of law enforcement or fire departments, whatever it might be, you have muscles that you’ve built up over the years and you love to use them,” delaCruz said. “The ability to use those muscles in a manner that’s meaningful is really, really powerful.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Boots on the Ground on May 17, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Zoya Teirstein.

The company broke ground on a $375 million lithium refining plant in Corpus Christi, Texas, this week, which CEO Elon Musk said will process enough lithium for 1 million vehicles annually. 

“We thought it was important to address … a fundamental choke point in the advancement of electric vehicles, [which] is the availability of battery-grade lithium,” Musk said at the groundbreaking ceremony on Monday. 

The Biden administration is working to help fast track the transition to electric vehicles, or EVs, but a domestic supply chain for lithium and other crucial battery materials — from mining to refining to recycling — is almost nonexistent in the U.S. The country is responsible for just 1 percent of global lithium refining; China, meanwhile, processes more than half the world’s lithium.

“EV technology is really all lithium-dependent right now and probably for quite a while going forward,” said Melissa Barbanell, director of U.S.-International Engagement at the World Resources Institute and an expert on the clean energy economy. “So if we are reliant on other countries for that lithium then there is a possibility we will not be able to meet our goals.”  

Over the last year, the Biden administration has directed billions of dollars to automakers, materials processors, and start up companies to help address this gap in domestic battery manufacturing. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law last August, also adjusted the Clean Vehicle Tax Credit so that eligible vehicles must meet certain battery sourcing requirements, with materials largely coming from the U.S. or free-trade-agreement partners. 

Tesla processing its own lithium will help ensure the company’s vehicles qualify for those credits and will protect it from supply chain fluctuations and geopolitical disruptions. While it is the only U.S. automaker with a plan to refine its own lithium so far, General Motors announced in January that it would invest $650 million in the Thacker Pass lithium mining project in Nevada. 

Tesla claims its refining process is more environmentally friendly and will consume 20 percent less energy than conventional methods. It will also produce less-toxic byproducts that could be repurposed in construction materials, the company said. “We end up as a net environmentally very neutral site,” said Turner Caldwell, senior manager of battery minerals and metals at Tesla. The company estimates construction on the Texas plant will conclude in 2025.

Even with less impactful processing methods, sourcing lithium and the other critical minerals essential to the green transition remains controversial. Multinational lithium mining companies, including some of Tesla’s suppliers, have been accused of causing environmental and social harm, such as impacting water supplies, and desecrating Indigenous land. While Tesla has early agreements in place with companies that will mine lithium in North America, there is currently only one operating lithium mine in the United States. 

Expansion of lithium mining has met opposition in parts of the United States, such as North Carolina. Instead, mining critics argue, the green transition should focus less on electrifying passenger vehicles and more on improving public transit and micro mobility options. But Barnabell said the advantages to mining domestically go beyond supply chain reliability. Avoiding shipping lithium ore thousands of miles around the world would reduce its carbon footprint, and the U.S. could potentially employ more environmental and social oversight than operations in other countries. “When it’s being done in the U.S., we know the laws that are applied,” she said. “A lot is developing in terms of how we track if it’s being done right.” 

In addition to shoring up the supply of new minerals for EV batteries, the Biden administration has made large investments in making the domestic battery supply chain circular: The Department of Energy recently granted a conditional loan of $2 billion to a Nevada EV battery recycler. 

Caldwell said that while the Texas facility’s lithium will originally come from hardrock mines, the process is designed to be “feed flexible,” meaning it could in the future refine lithium from recycled sources, such as manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Tesla breaks ground on lithium refinery in Texas — a first for a US automaker on May 11, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Gabriela Aoun Angueira.

Numerous shootings of people who have mistakenly approached the wrong property have raised alarm among gun control advocates, as the United States faces what one columnist called the effects of a "national experiment in freely giving deadly weapons to anyone who wants one."

Wednesday morning brought the latest news of a young person who was shot after making a common mistake, as a man in the Austin, Texas area was arrested for opening fire on a group of teenage girls after they mistook his vehicle for their own in an H-E-B supermarket parking lot.

Payton Washington, 18, was shot twice and is in critical condition at a nearly intensive care unit, while Heather Roth was grazed by a bullet and was treated at the scene. Roth told reporters that the girls approached the car of the suspect, Pedro Tello Rodriguez, and opened the door before realizing it wasn't theirs.

Rodriguez got out of the car and began shooting at Washington and Roth as well as two other high school students they were with. The girls were members of a cheerleading team with Woodlands Elite Generals and were preparing for the World Championships in Orlando this weekend.

"We are becoming a heavily armed nation, so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations."

The shooting took place days after 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was fatally shot in Hebron, New York, after mistakenly driving up the wrong driveway with a group of friends while looking for a friend's house. A 65-year-old man named Kevin Monahan has been charged with second-degree murder.

The group had already realized their mistake and turned around when Gillis was shot on Saturday night.

"There were no words exchanged," Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey J. Murphy told reporters. "They were turning around, leaving... there certainly was no threat."

As Common Dreamsreported Monday, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot in the head and arm as he stood on the front porch of a home in Kansas City, Missouri where he believed his younger brothers were. He had mistakenly arrived at the wrong address and the homeowner, Andrew Lester, shot Yarl without "any words" being exchanged, according to prosecutors. Yarl had surgery to remove the bullets and was able to walk out of the hospital on Sunday and is expected to make a full recovery.

Prosecutors say "there was a racial component to the case" involving Yarl, who is Black.

Both Missouri and Texas have so-called "stand your ground" laws which permit people to use deadly force without retreating first if they believe they're being threatened with a crime, including robbery or burglary. Stand your ground laws apply "anyplace where a person has a legal right to be, not just at home," according to The New York Times.

About 30 states have stand your ground laws, and the majority have been enacted in the last 25 years—with Republican lawmakers enabling citizens to use deadly force to protect themselves from criminals even as crime rates significantly declined over the last three decades.

"This is literally the exact path everyone had predicted for years that the Republican obsession with looser gun laws and 'stand your ground' would lead," said podcast host and writer Fred Wellman. "We said it would get innocents killed. They don't care. That's the price we pay for their fear, racism, and guns."

Ari Freilich, state policy director for the gun control advocacy group Giffords Law Center, told The Guardian Wednesday that none of the suspects in the three cases should be permitted to invoke stand your ground laws in their defense.

"There's no state in the country where the existing laws are such that you can lawfully shoot someone for ringing the doorbell at the wrong house," said Freilich, adding that the cases "fit the pattern we've seen over and over again of racist fear intersecting with really widespread unvetted firearm access, combining in our country to make gun violence the leading cause of death by far for young Black men."

While New York does not have a stand your ground law, gun control advocates this week said the same worldview that has driven states to adopt such statutes, and led the U.S. population to amass about 120 privately owned guns for every 100 Americans, was also likely in play when Monahan allegedly shot Gillis.

"This week, this country is convulsed by a series of horrific shootings where mistakes and minor slights are being met by gunfire," said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on the Senate floor on Wednesday. "We are becoming a heavily armed nation, so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations."

Times columnist Jamelle Bouie said the shootings demonstrate the consequences of the $28 billion gun industry's relentless selling of "the fantasy of blowing away anyone who intrudes on your property."

"Wrong-house shootings are a bleak reminder how many of our fellow Americans are armed and waiting for an opportunity to kill," said writer and historian Peter Manseau. "Expect more in the future: It's what happens when people have been sold weapons as 'home defense' for decades; they are desperate to get what they paid for."

"What 'home defense' has done is put Chekhov's gun in millions of American homes," he added. "Sooner or later, many will go off. And when they do, for the most part they will not be used for actual protection. They'll shoot innocent strangers, or family members, or the gun owners themselves."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Gun control advocates were among the progressives calling for criminal charges on Sunday for a Kansas City, Missouri resident who allegedly shot a Black teenager last week when the 16-year-old mistakenly knocked on his door.

Ralph Yarl reportedly meant to pick up his two younger brothers at a home on 115th Terrace in Kansas City on Thursday evening, but accidentally went to a house on 115th Street and rang the doorbell.

A suspect who has not been identified allegedly opened the door and shot Yarl once in the head and then in the arm after he had fallen to the ground.

Attorneys for Yarl's family say the shooter was a white male.

Yarl was able to run to three different neighbors' houses before finally reaching someone to ask for help, and has been hospitalized with a "life-threatening injury," according to The Guardian.

Protests broke out in the city over the weekend after the suspect was released, under Missouri law, from a "24-hour hold" and allowed to walk free without being charged.

Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves has said the police department is currently compiling evidence and needs a victim's statement in order to press charges, but attorneys for Yarl's family have joined local community members and gun control advocates in demanding a prompt investigation and charges for the suspect.

"There can be no excuse for the release of this armed and dangerous suspect after admitting to shooting an unarmed, non-threatening, and defenseless teenager that rang his doorbell," said civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who has been retained by Yarl's family.

The Kansas City Defender, a local news outlet, reported that community members assembled in front of the house where Yarl was shot on Sunday, holding a protest that "was absolutely unprecedented in this area of Kansas City."

Shannon Watts, founder of the national gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said volunteers with her organization joined the protest, where supporters called on prosecutors to charge the suspect with a hate crime.

Graves said in a statement that police are investigating whether the suspect may be protected legally by Missouri's "stand your ground" law, which permits residents to use deadly force if they believe they are at risk of a crime including a robbery, burglary, or murder. A defendant in a stand your ground case only needs to convince a jury that they believed their safety was at risk before they shot someone, not that they were actually in danger.

Missouri also has a law called the "castle doctrine," which allows a person to use deadly force to protect their home from an intrusion.

Benjamin Crump, another civil rights attorney who is representing Yarl's family, told the Kansas City Star that prosecutors should charge the man regardless of Missouri's pro-gun laws.

"You can't just shoot people without having justification when somebody comes knocking on your door and knocking on your door is not justification," Crump said. "This guy should be charged."

As Common Dreamsreported last year, a study by public health researchers found that stand your ground laws that went into into effect between 2000 and 2016 were linked to an "abrupt and sustained" 11% spike in gun deaths.

Missouri saw one of the most dramatic increases in gun deaths over those years, with a 31% rise.

Civil rights advocate Bernice King noted that justice is "a continuum" and won't be secured in Yarl's case just through criminal charges for the suspect.

Justice, she said, "means the man who did this should be charged AND we need to work for the legislative and heart change to prevent these tragedies."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

At 11.15 pm on the first day, Bengal BJP president Sukanta Mazumdar tweeted two videos, in one of which one can see fire engulfing something in the distance and smoke billowing out. A woman can be heard saying, “Chachaji mandir me aag laga di, jaldi upar aao,” (Uncle, they have set fire to the temple, rush upstairs) while others look at the fire from a rooftop. One of them is video-calling someone and showing him the fire. The caption of the video, written in Bengali, can be roughly translated as “You must be ready for the kicks if you are milking a cow.” (Archive)

যে গরু দুধে দেয় তার লাথি খেতে হয়। pic.twitter.com/J8ALRpkb8S

— Dr. Sukanta Majumdar (@DrSukantaBJP) March 30, 2023

The caption apparently refers to words spoken by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee at a press conference on May 25, 2019, while she was talking about attending an Iftar and responding to allegations of ‘minority-appeasement politics’.

The video posted by Majumdar soon went viral. When this article is written, it has been retweeted close to 1,200 times and viewed almost 2 lakh times.

A verified user called Gopal Goswami (@gopalgiri_uk) tweeted the same video and wrote, “See the condition of Bengal! Jihadists set a temple on fire on Ramnavami and Nero didi is singing bhajans of Rahul.” (Archive)

He later deleted the tweet. By then, it was retweeted over 2,300 times and viewed 40,000 times.

Twitter user Mr. Sinha (@MrSinha_), a Right Wing influencer who frequently puts out misinformation, quote-tweeted Sukanta Majumdar’s tweet and wrote, “So the news about the Hindu temple being set on fire in WB was true..” (Archive)

His quote-tweet was retweeted over 3,700 times.

Several other BJP-linked handles tweeted the same claim. Among them were Bhavin Shah, Karthik Rao Pantham and Neetu Garg.

Fact Check

Alt News looked at several mainstream media reports on the violence of March 30 and found no mention of a temple being set on fire. In order to verify the claim made in the video, we visited the violence-hit area. We located the exact spot with help from journalists who had covered the developments.

Shibpur, a bustling riverside town at a stone’s throw from the state secretariat, Nabanna, is primarily known for one of India’s oldest engineering colleges and a botanical garden set up in 1787. As we reached the spot of the March 30 violence, about 100 meters from the Shibpur police station on the Grand Trunk Road, we showed the video to the locals, who eventually directed us to a Shiv temple in front of the Shibpur Shree AC Market.

We met the priest, Sudama Pandit from Bhadrak in Odisha, and showed him the video tweeted by Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar. He identified the place as the lane behind the temple. Looking at the video, he said the flames seen in the video had engulfed plastic crates, baskets and roadside waste right in front of the temple.

We asked if there was any damage to the temple. “Yes, some stones and bricks came flying and did some damage on the second day,” he said, pointing at a crack on the tiles on the temple’s outer wall.

“Stone-pelting happened on the second day (April 1). On the Ram Navami day, there was none. I locked myself inside the temple and was peeping out from an opening in the door. Things were set on fire right in front of the temple, here and there. Things like baskets, crates, papers and plastic lying scattered.”

“There was no damage to the temple from the fire. The fire did not touch the temple. I was inside all the while,” he asserted.

He invited us inside the temple. We went in and found everything in tact.

“My father used to the priest here. I have been a priest here for the last 40 years. We live in perfect harmony with our Muslim brothers. I haven’t seen anything like that ever before,” Pandit told us.

To be certain, we asked him again if the the claim that the temple was set on fire was false, and showed him the video one more time.

“Yes, this video is taken from some building in the lane behind my temple. The temple was not set on fire. You can see for yourself,” he shot back.

The readers can hear a part of the conversation here:

Where was the Video Shot from?

In order to ascertain that we were indeed looking at the same temple as seen in the video, we entered the lane trying to find the spot from where it was shot. We tried to match the locale with the frame in the video on our mobile screen. The video was shot from high up, either an open balcony or a rooftop.

About 30 meters into the dingy lane, we noticed a freshly plastered building without a coat of paint as the one visible in the video in front of the girl with the phone. The next building was five-storeyed, so, the video could have been shot from there.

We entered the building next to the freshly plastered one and rushed upstairs. The rooftop had bamboo poles supporting a recently built floor further above. From the edge of the roof over the lane, we could have the same view as in the viral video.

What we saw in front matched the video frame to frame. We were standing at the same spot from where the video tweeted by the Bengal BJP chief was shot. Readers can see the comparison below:

We could see the top of the temple at the point where the lane met the main road. It was in tact. See the video below:

We also noticed something that corroborated the claim that articles from the vending carts were set on fire. All the fruit vendors — and there were many of them as this was the time of Ramzan — had got new bamboo-made baskets (called ‘jhuri’ in Bengali) when we visited the spot on April 3. “When the Ram Navami procession came, most of us had gone for Namaz. They threw down our baskets and plastic crates on the road and set them on fire. So, we got new ones. You can see everyone has brand-new baskets,” said Saheb Alam, a local fruit-juice seller, even as an elderly woman selling bananas pointed at the new ‘jhuri’ she had got.

Howrah SP Traveen Tripathi rubbished the claim that a temple was set on fire. “No such incident has happened. We will take action against the persons who are trying to spread any such rumour. They will be dealt strictly as per law,” he told Alt News.

Who Set Things on Fire?

When Alt News asked the priest, Sudama Pandit, who had set the articles on fire in front of the temple, he said, “The men who came with the rally did it. I saw it from the temple.”

We accessed several videos of the day from a local activist. One of them, 51-second long, shows the fire in front of the temple. The man shooting the video first focuses on a crowd of people, many of them wearing saffron and carrying saffron flags, and exhorts them to break something (“Tod, saale tod,” he says). Then he runs towards the fire right next to the temple shouting Jai Shri Ram. Once he is close to the fire, he urges others to burn things (“Jalaa, jalaa,” he says). One can see men wearing saffron and carrying saffron flags setting bamboo baskets, plastic crates and even a trolley van on fire in front of the temple. The signboard of the Shibpur Shree AC Market in the background (visible clearly at  the 0.37-minute mark) and the temple next to it confirm that it is the same spot. Others can also be heard shouting slogans of Jai Shri Ram. A man can be seen dancing with a sword in his hand at the 0.42-minute mark.

We have circled the temple in the video for the ease of viewers.

Another video was tweeted by journalist Tamal Saha which showed plastic crates being thrown into a fire at the same spot. Men wearing saffron are standing around it. The temple and the market building can be seen in the background, corroborating what was said by the priest. In the caption he affirms that no temple was burnt.

Fact: No temple was burnt in Howrah. One viral video shows someone from balcony while filming presumed the temple was being burnt seeing black smoke billowing from the main road. That black smoke was due to burning of these plastic fruit carts that belonged to poor vendors. pic.twitter.com/mJq5cGUCKA

— Tamal Saha (@Tamal0401) April 2, 2023

Replying to our query on who was behind setting things on fire on the road, SP Tripathi told us, “The CID is investigating the matter.”

To sum up, our on-ground investigation from the spot of the Ram Navami violence at Shibpur, Howrah, made it amply clear that no fire caused any damage to the temple seen in the viral video. The video was shared on social media suggesting that a temple had been set on fire by Muslims on the day of Ram Navami, without any verification. Our conversation with locals on the spot and videos shot by activists on the ground suggest that various articles were set on fire near the temple by those who came with the rally and/or people carrying saffron flags.

It was a text-book example of a fake narrative being created on the basis of a misleading video. A look at the comments and quote-tweets on BJP state chief Sukanta Majumdar’s tweet shows how it provoked his followers. Enraged by the ‘news’ of a temple being set afire, people wrote things like, “This is the beginning of riots. I can’t see any provocation.”, “Jihadis are poisonous for the society”, “Rabid DOGS. Bloody animals in the guise of Humans. A blot on civilized society.”, “That’s why nrc is needed in India..” etc, while venting their anger at Muslims.

The post Alt News ground report: ‘Temple in Shibpur burnt by Muslims’ claim false appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Indradeep Bhattacharyya.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott drew widespread condemnation from legal experts after he said Saturday that he is "working as swiftly" as the law allows to pardon a man who was convicted the previous day of murdering a racial justice protester in 2020.

Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, was convicted by an Austin jury on Friday of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, an armed Air Force veteran participating in a Black Lives Matter protest in the Texas capital following George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police.

After tweeting that he "might have to kill a few people on my way to work" as an Uber driver, Perry accelerated his car into a crowd of racial justice protesters in downtown Austin on July 25, 2020. As Foster approached Perry's vehicle carrying—but not aiming—an AK-47 rifle in accordance with Texas law, Perry opened his window and shot Foster four times in the chest and abdomen with his .357 Magnum pistol. When asked by police if Foster had pointed his rifle at him, Perry admitted that he did not, but said that "I didn't want to give him a chance to aim at me."

After an eight-day trial and 17 hours of deliberation, the Austin jury rejected Perry's claim of self-defense. However, Abbott tweeted that "Texas has one of the strongest 'stand your ground' laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney," a reference to Travis County District Attorney José Garza, a Democrat.

"Unlike the president or some other states, the Texas Constitution limits the governor's pardon authority to only act on a recommendation by the Board of Pardons and Paroles," Abbott wrote. "Texas law does allow the governor to request the Board of Pardons and Paroles to determine if a person should be granted a pardon. I have made that request and instructed the Board to expedite its review."

"I look forward to approving the board's pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk," he added.

Rick Cofer, a partner at the Austin law firm of Cofer & Connelly, noted that "Garrett Foster was killed protesting the killing of George Floyd," and that "in 2022, the Texas Board of Pardons unanimously recommended that Floyd be pardoned for a drug charge, in which a crooked cop planted drugs."

"Facing pressure, Abbott got the board to yank the recommendation," Cofer added. "Now the man who killed Garrett Foster, while Foster protested George Floyd's murder, will be pardoned. George Floyd's pardon is still stuck with the Board of Pardons. If a fiction author wrote this, no one would believe it."

David Wahlberg, a former Travis County criminal court judge, said he has never heard of a case in which a governor sought to pardon a convicted felon before their verdict was appealed.

"I think it's outrageously presumptuous for someone to make a judgment about the verdict of 12 unanimous jurors without actually hearing the evidence in person," Wahlberg told the Austin American-Statesman.

Wendy Davis, an attorney and former Texas state lawmaker and Fort Worth city councilmember, called Abbott's move "nothing more than a craven political maneuver."

"Our democracy is imperiled when any branch of government moves to usurp another," Davis argued on Twitter. "And it's happening all over this country on a regular basis."

Abbott's announcement came less than 24 hours after Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson sharply criticized the governor on his show, claiming that "there is no right of self-defense in Texas."

The governor also faced pressure from right-wing figures including Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of murder and other charges after he shot dead two racial justice protesters and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.

Abbott has also threatened to "exonerate" 19 Austin police officers indicted for attacking and injuring Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, asserting that "those officers should be praised for their efforts, not prosecuted."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Members of Congress have begun drafting the 2023 "Farm Bill," and they’ll be wrangling over it through most of the year. This legislation, passed into law anew every fifth year or so since the 1930s, has had far-reaching influence on food and farming in the United States. Each version of the bill is given its own name; the previous one, for example, was called the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. Given the nature of the early debate over this bill-in-the-making, it might end up deserving to be called the Food and Climate Bill of 2023.

Over the next two years, any legislation explicitly aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions will be dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. By default, the Farm Bill may now be the playing field for the only climate game in town, according to Washington-watchers such as Peter Lehner, who represents the group Earthjustice. He told Politico last month, “The farm bill is probably going to be the piece of legislation in the next two years with the biggest impact on the climate and the environment.”

Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act beefed up several of the Farm Bill’s climate-related conservation programs to the tune of an additional $20 billion. And the Washington Post has reported that a task force of more than 80 “climate-conscious House Democrats” is working to further extend the bill’s green impact, with additional protection for existing forests; planting of new stands of trees; conservation of soil, water, and biodiversity; and research on protecting crops against climatic disasters, including drought.

Meanwhile, March 6–8, a coalition of 20 sustainable ag and farmworker groups under the banner Farmers for Climate Action held a “Rally for Resilience” in D.C. Their message: “The next Farm Bill needs to explicitly empower farmers to address climate change, by providing resources, assistance, and incentives that will allow them to lead the way in implementing proven climate solutions.”

Climate politics get dirtier

Because there are farmers and ag-related industries in every state, whether red, blue, or purple, Farm Bills routinely pass with broad bipartisan support. It’s typical, therefore, for Congress members representing rural red states to make common cause with those who represent populous blue states with big ag economies, such as California, Illinois, and Michigan. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly “food stamps”) and the Women’s, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program also are parts of the Farm Bill, further extending its political base of support.

Controversy arises nonetheless, most often in debates over the bill’s conservation provisions. Agribusiness, for example, often sees protection of soil, air, water, and biodiversity in rural areas as detracting from or interfering with the Farm Bill’s focus on boosting production of the major commodity crops and keeping food prices low. And now that climate action is increasingly finding a home in the conservation section, pushback from the right has increased.

The chair of the House Agriculture Committee, G. T. Thompson (R-PA) has vowed to minimize climate policy in this year’s Farm Bill, while cutting other conservation programs in favor of traditional industry-friendly spending. According toEENews, “Some Republicans are eyeing the farm bill as a chance to redirect climate money to other agriculture programs, such as crop subsidies, while other conservative lawmakers want across-the-board spending cuts.” The hardliners may even try to rescind the $20 billion for climate mitigation that the Inflation Reduction Act has directed toward the Farm Bill.

Climate denial is alive and well in Congress. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), who now chairs the conservation subcommittee of the ag committee, told Politico, somewhat fuzzily, that “CO2 is not responsible. Especially American-produced CO2, I mean we’re a tiny part of the whole thing.” Rep. John Boozman (R-AR) is trying to divert attention to just about any remotely ag-related issue that doesn’t involve climate protection. Pointing his colleagues toward a couple of favorite targets of right-wing hostility, he has called for investigations into the purchase of U.S. farmland by Chinese interests and for cuts in SNAP benefits to low-income families. Meanwhile, five House members led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL) got even meaner, with a letter to President Biden urging him to “enact work requirements” for SNAP recipients.

Feed people, not steers and SUVs

Farm Bill debates are often complex, technical, and littered with clumsy acronyms, commodity-market arcana, and bureaucratic jargon. Only the nerdiest Congress-watchers have the attention span and patience to go deep enough into the weeds (literally, in some parts of the bill) to understand what it’s all about. Even in Congress, only a minority of members and staff have solid familiarity with the issues. This year, nearly half the members of the House of Representatives have almost zero Farm Bill experience, as they were not in office during the last debate, five years ago. But with climate at the center of this year’s debate, members on both sides of the aisle, whether well-schooled in ag issues or not, are now wading into the fray.

Most of the policies that are needed to flip U.S. agriculture’s climate impact from deleterious to beneficial are good and necessary in their own right. Even if there were no climate emergency, the nation should be adopting agricultural policies that, along with cutting emissions, can improve soil health; prevent erosion and water pollution; curb the ongoing wipeout of biodiversity; and prevent agriculture from further disrupting the global nitrogen and phosphorous cycles.

The first step would be to stop doing things that not only generate greenhouse-gas emissions but also wreak ecological havoc of other sorts. If you don’t mind taking just a few steps into those weeds with me for a moment, I’d like to cite scientists at the University of Georgia and the University of New Mexico who have argued convincingly for deep cuts in the production of fuel ethanol and meat—especially grain-fed beef—actions that, they show, could achieve the greatest reductions of fossil energy use (and therefore of greenhouse gas emissions) in agriculture. The quantity of energy contained in the fossil fuels used to produce feed grains for cattle exceeds by an order of magnitude the amount of energy contained in the beef that’s produced by those cattle and sold. And the production and delivery of fuel ethanol, from the cornfield to the gas pump, requires as much or more energy (mostly from fossil fuels) as the ethanol will supply to a vehicle’s engine.

Beef and ethanol also have a broad range of other disastrous environmental impacts.

Therefore, the most effective action Congress could take is to stop using the Farm Bill’s conservation funds to support these and other ecologically harmful, climate-busting agricultural practices. For example, the 2018 Farm Bill supported one such practice: confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), such as cattle feedlots and factory farms for swine and poultry. These super-polluting facilities have deeply negative impacts on both local environments and the global climate. The 2023 bill should end all support for CAFOs. And rather than pursue the expansion of ethanol production, as the Department of Agriculture is requesting, Congress should flush ethanol completely out of ag policy.

We can’t get there with annual crops

Agriculture generates only 11 percent of total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, so reducing emissions from the farm sector, important as it is, can go only so far toward driving total U.S. emissions toward zero quickly and steeply. However, unlike other sectors of the economy, farming also has the potential to help mitigate climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through nature’s preferred method of carbon sequestration: photosynthesis.

To use U.S. farmlands and forests as reservoirs for atmospheric carbon would help to reverse a massive loss of soil carbon that began long before the age of mechanized agriculture. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, native grasslands and forestlands across North America were plowed up to make way for corn, wheat, cotton, and other annual crops—replacing vast, biodiverse, perennial ecosystems with plantings of annual monocultures. Extensive root systems, alive year-round, were killed off across hundreds of millions of acres, to be replaced by the sparser, ephemeral root systems of crops that had to be resown with every growing season. For much of the year, there were now only spindly seedling roots or no living roots at all to support the soil ecosystems that had thrived before the arrival of the plow. Consequently, over subsequent decades, countless tons of carbon that had been captured by plants over millions of years went back up into the atmosphere.

Accumulating enough carbon in the soil to mitigate climate change effectively will require switching from annual to perennial crops across most of U.S. farm country, to get soils even part way back to their robust state. Fortunately, the necessity for perennial agriculture is being expressed more widely in this year’s Farm Bill discussion than in previous years, with both the scientific community and grassroots climate and sustainable-agriculture groups calling for more perennial farming systems.

For example, a coalition called Farm Bill Law Enterprise, “a national partnership of law school programs working toward a farm bill that reflects the long-term needs of our society,” is arguing that perennial agriculture must be one of the highest priorities in the 2023 bill. In its report, titled simply, “Climate and Conservation,” the group pushes for perennial forage crops; interplanting of tree crops with annual crops; “forest farming and multi-story cropping”; perennial fruits and vegetables; and perennial cereals, grain legumes, and oilseeds. The group goes on to urge more funding for research and development of perennial agriculture in the U.S. Department of Agriculture itself, especially on grain crops, and for “research on the economic and social conditions critical to development of perennial agriculture systems and markets.”

Needed: A fifty-year Farm Bill

Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture by ditching products such as fuel ethanol and grain-fed beef would mesh nicely with the use of perennial crops to capture more atmospheric carbon and store more of it in living roots deep in the soil. If U.S. farmers were to stop producing the bazillions of bushels of corn and soybeans that go into feeding cattle and biofuel plants, tens of millions of acres would be newly available for growing perennial range, hay, and pasture crops. From those, more modest quantities of grass-fed beef and dairy products could be produced. And each year, more and more of the lands liberated from annual feed grains could be sown to perennial food-grain crops.

Wes Jackson and Fred Kirschenmann envisioned this sort of grand transition in their proposal for a “Fifty-Year Farm Bill” in 2009. But at the time, the breeding of perennial food-grain crops (which would be necessary to achieve that last step in the transition) was just getting started. That process is now well underway.

Over the past two decades, efforts to domesticate and breed perennial grain-producing crops have progressed from their beginnings at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas (where I work), to be taken up by research networks worldwide. These networks now include more than 50 researchers across North America and five other continents, and solid results are emerging. Development of perennial wheat is accelerating. A perennial cousin of wheat known as Kernza® is under pilot production in the U.S. Plains, the upper Midwest, and Europe. Highly productive perennial rice varieties are being grown on tens of thousands of acres in China and on a smaller scale in East Africa as well. Breeding and ecological work are continuing, with perennial food legumes and perennial grain sorghum under development, in addition to the wheat and rice.

* * *

The need to start a precipitous phase-out of oil, gas, and coal is more acute than ever, but federal legislation will remain out of reach as long as there’s a climate-hostile House majority. So, as the struggle against fossil fuels carries on in our states and communities, the quest for serious action in Washington on climate and ecological renewal will focus largely on the national push for a radically new kind of Farm Bill.

It is essential both to purge fossil fuels and to perennialize agriculture. No two policies are more crucial to preventing ecological meltdown.

The original version of this article was published by City Lights Books as part of their ‘In Real Time’ series and appears at Common Dreams with permission.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Stan Cox.

The post Climate Policy’s on Shaky Ground in the Farm Bill appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Stan Cox.

The Nebraska state Senate's 90-day legislative session reached its halfway point on Wednesday, but not a single bill has been passed yet thanks to a filibuster that was begun three weeks ago by state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh in a bid to stop Republicans from "legislating hate" against transgender children across the state.

Cavanaugh (D-6) was horrified to see an anti-transgender rights bill advance to the Senate floor in late February and was determined to keep it from passing into law, as at least nine other anti-LGBTQ+ bills have in state legislatures so far this year.

The so-called Let Them Grow Act (Legislative Bill 574) would bar transgender and nonbinary people under the age of 19 from obtaining gender-affirming healthcare.

Republicans hold 32 seats in the state Senate compared to Democrats' 17, but it takes 33 votes to overcome a filibuster.

"The children of Nebraska deserve to have somebody stand up and fight for them."

So Cavanaugh has spent every day in session since the bill arrived on the Senate floor introducing dozens of amendments to other pieces of legislation, slowing the Senate's business to a crawl and taking up every hour of debate time permitted by the chamber's rules—at times speaking at length about unrelated topics including her favorite foods and movies.

"If this Legislature collectively decides that legislating hate against children is our priority, then I am going to make it painful, painful for everyone, because if you want to inflict pain upon our children, I am going to inflict pain upon this body," Cavanaugh told her colleagues during one debate session. "I have nothing, nothing but time, and I am going to use all of it."

"I will burn the session to the ground over this bill," she added.

The Let Them Grow Act, like a number of the approximately 150 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced in other states so far this year, would prohibit gender-affirming surgical procedures, hormone therapy, and puberty blockers for minors.

Gender-affirming care for minors is supported by the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, with the latter organization noting in a 2018 policy statement that many transgender youths experience fear of discrimination by providers and "lack of continuity with providers" as a result of limited access to gender-affirming care.

A study by the University of Washington found that youths who received gender-affirming care were 73% less likely to experience suicidality and 60% likely to suffer from depression than those who did not obtain care.

Cavanaugh also told the Associated Press Wednesday that 58% of transgender and nonbinary youths in her state seriously considered suicide in 2020, according to a 2021 survey by the Trevor Project, and more than 1 in 5 said they had attempted suicide.

"The children of Nebraska deserve to have somebody stand up and fight for them," Cavanaugh told the AP.

Speaking to "The New Yorker Radio Hour" last week, the senator said some of her Republican colleagues have privately told her they are frustrated with their own party's agenda as GOP leaders including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump wage attacks on transgender children.

"What has been expressed to me is a frustration over discussing policies like this instead of discussing policies that most of them ran to be here discussing. This is what a culture war looks like apparently," said Cavanaugh. "What I'm asking of them is to rise up and say that, if this really isn't who they are, rise up and say that and stop having private conversations with me telling me how much you don't like the bill, how much you don't want to be focusing on this issue, and rise up and say something about it. I'm challenging them."

LGBTQ+ advocacy group OutNebraska told the AP that Cavanaugh has embarked on a "heroic effort."

"It is extremely meaningful when an ally does more than pay lip service to allyship," said executive director Abbi Swatsworth. "She really is leading this charge."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

The project in North Kalimantan province, estimated to cost U.S.$2.6 billion and have a capacity of 925 megawatts, is being built by PT Kayan Hydropower Nusantara, a joint venture between Indonesia’s PT Kayan Patria Pratama (KPP) Group and Sarawak Energy Berhad, a Malaysian firm.

“I am very, very, very happy today because the construction of the Mentarang Induk Hydropower Plant has begun,” Jokowi said at the groundbreaking ceremony, according to a statement released by his office.

“And what makes me even happier is that this is being done by a consortium of Indonesia and Malaysia, showing that we as fellow Malays can truly work together well.”

Elsewhere in the Indonesian section of Borneo, construction is already underway on the Kayan River for a separate 9,000 MW hydroelectric plant, a joint venture between PT Kayan Hydro Energy, a local affiliate of the Power Construction Corp. of China, and Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation. That $17.8 billion hydropower project began in 2019 and consists of the construction of five dams.

Together, the two power plants will provide electricity to what Jokowi called the world’s largest industrial zone, the Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia (KIPI) in Bulungan regency. Construction on the park began in December 2021 and is expected to take five to 10 years to complete.

The $132 billion estate is being built with investments from China and the United Arab Emirates.

When finished the 30,000-hectare (116-square-mile) industrial zone in North Kalimantan will be about as big as Malta. The project is being touted as a future manufacturing hub for solar panels, batteries for electric cars, industrial silicon, and other products. Jokowi has said the project would enable Indonesia’s economy to “leapfrog” onto the global stage.

On Tuesday, Jokowi toured the sprawling industrial park, on the first day of his working visit to North Kalimantan. He expressed confidence that it would produce green products that could compete globally and boost Indonesia’s economic growth.

“With competitive advantages like this, green energy and green products, the Kalimantan Industrial Park Indonesia will become a major contributor to Indonesia’s future,” he said.

“The future of Indonesia is here. If this is done properly, everyone will come here, every industry that is related to green products will come to this area.”

The president said he would closely monitor the progress of the park’s development and ensure that it meets its deadlines.

“From what I see on the ground and after asking around, there seem to be no problems,” Jokowi said. 

Environmentalists have expressed concerns that the power plants will threaten Borneo’s pristine forests and ecosystem. The Kayan River runs through the northern part of Kalimantan, the name for the Indonesian region of Borneo, where vast swaths of forest have been cleared for logging, mining, and the cultivation of palm oil.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest and most populous country, is the world’s eighth most polluting one with 2% of global greenhouse-gas emissions to its name, according to the World Resources Institute.

China is funding projects in Indonesia as part of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative,  a worldwide infrastructure-building program. These include the $6 billion Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail project, which is expected to be completed by July this year.

President camps out

Jokowi’s visit to Borneo was his second to the region in recent days. 

Last week in East Kalimantan province, Jokowi spent a night in a cabin in an area where Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara, is to be built.

“Tonight, the First Lady and I are staying at the location that will become the seat of government in the Nusantara capital city,” Jokowi tweeted last Thursday, posting a photo of himself sitting in front of a semi-permanent house.

Last year, the president and his wife Iriana camped in the same location.

In August 2019, Jokowi announced that the country would move the capital from crowded and partially sinking Jakarta, on Java Island, to East Kalimantan, a densely forested and thinly populated province in Borneo.

The government has struggled to attract investment for its construction since Japanese tech conglomerate Softbank last year withdrew its plans to invest.

In December, Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia said Softbank withdrew because the Indonesian government deemed that its proposal was unfair.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Dandy Koswaraputra for BenarNews.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Robert Muggah, Mac Margolis.

Thousands of people demonstrated in a pouring rain on Saturday protesting the clearance and demolition of a village in western Germany that is due to make way for the expansion of the coal mine Garzweiler.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg joined the demonstrators as they protested the clearance of Luetzerath, walking through the nearby village of Keyenberg. Protesters chanted “Every village stays” and “You are not alone.”

Activists from climate action groups including Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion and Last Generation came from across the country to join the protest.

\u201cThe carbon needs to stay in the ground. #GretaThunberg in #Luetzerath #LuetziBleibt #LuetzerathUnraeumbar #AlleDoerferBleiben #LuetziLebt\u201d

— Guenther Schneider (@Guenther Schneider) 1673708029

Thunberg criticized Germany’s Green Party on Saturday for supporting the demolition of the village of Lützerath

German outlet dpa reported:

Making deals with fossil fuel corporations such as energy giant RWE – which has bought the site of Lützerath for mining – “show where their priorities are”, Thunberg said of the Greens, who form part of Germany’s coalition government, in an interview with dpa.

Leading Green politicians such as Economy Minister Robert Habeck have defended the demolition of Lützerath, arguing that the coal below is needed to maintain energy security in the current crisis.

“The coal that is in the ground here will not lower prices immediately. Anyone who thinks like that is simply out of touch with reality,” Thunberg said.

The Greens are also in power in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, where the village of Lützerath has become the latest flashpoint for activists opposed to the government’s continued use of coal.

During a visit to Lützerath Friday afternoon, 20-year-old Thunberg said it was "horrible to see what's happening here."

"We expect to show what people power looks like, what democracy looks like. When governments and corporations are acting like this, destroying the environment, putting countless people at risk, the people step up," she said.

The climate activist also referred to "outrageous ... police violence" occurring at the site.

Thunberg held up a sign that read, "Keep it in the ground."

Sara Ayech, Global Campaign Lead for Climate at Greenpeace International said Saturday: “We’re in 2023, in the middle of a climate crisis, and while destroying a village to expand one of the biggest carbon bombs in Europe should be considered criminal, it is still legal. Fossil fuel companies’ influence is so powerful that the ones considered criminals now are the ones fighting for climate justice. It is time to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.”

Environmentalists say bulldozing the village to expand the Garzweiler mine would result in huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

The local and national governments, both of which include the Green party, made a deal with fossil fuel giant RWE last year allowing it to destroy the village in return for a promise to end coal use by 2030, rather than 2038.

\u201c35,000 people show solidarity with the activists in #Luetzerath \ud83d\udc9a\n\nThey demand that fossil fuel companies stop their climate killing activities \ud83c\udf0e\ud83d\udd25\u201d

— Greenpeace e.V. (@Greenpeace e.V.) 1673705823

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

The UK's plan to deport migrants to Rwanda is lawful, the High Court ruled on Monday.

The policy, which involves Britain forcibly sending tens of thousands of migrants to Rwanda in an alleged effort to tackle the record number of refugees and asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats, has been mired by controversy.

Many asylum seekers have had a lack of access to legal representation and advice and no access to translated documents from the Home Office.

"People who have suffered the horrors of war, torture, and human rights abuses should not be faced with the immense trauma of deportation to a future where we cannot guarantee their safety. We believe that sending refugees to Rwanda will breach our country's obligations under International Treaties and we continue to believe this policy is unlawful," Care4Calais said after the court ruling.

The ruling came as a relief for newly appointed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who has made a high-stakes political promise to tackle the 'migration problem' in Britain.

However, the plan has attracted criticism from opposition parties and human rights organizations in the UK, as well as across the international community, including the UN. "UNHCR remains firmly opposed to arrangements that seek to transfer refugees and asylum seekers to third countries in the absence of sufficient safeguards and standards. Such arrangements simply shift asylum responsibilities, evade international obligations, and are contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention," the UNHCR's Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Gillian Triggs, announced back in April.

A report published by Medical Justice condemns the UK government's deportation plan, claiming that Rwanda deportees include victims of torture and human trafficking. It adds that many asylum seekers have had a lack of access to legal representation and advice and no access to translated documents from the Home Office relating to their imminent removal and deportation to Rwanda.

For many, the deal represents a crisis of responsibility, rather than a "migration crisis". It ignores the UK's international commitments and sets a dangerous precedent for other countries looking to leverage migration for political ends. Denmark is one of the countries considering a similar deal with Rwanda.

However, for the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, the deal adds unnecessary pressure on the small African state. "Rwanda is a small country. We are also not economically a rich country, like the UK. So we still have many economic challenges, issues of water, distribution, scarcity, issues with electricity, and issues of gas. So we are not anywhere [near] ready to receive people coming from the UK," Frank Habineza, a politician from the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, told MEMO.

In spite of the court's green-lighting of the plan, there is currently no airline willing to carry asylum seekers to Rwanda, with the last company pulling out following pressure from activists. Having already spent £120 million on the deportation scheme, the coming year will see the British government wrangle new ways to make the plan – and its effort to reduce migrant numbers – a success. With only two years before the next general election, a lot is at stake. So far, in spite of the risk of being deported, more asylum seekers have crossed the Channel to the UK in 2022 than in previous years, this has brought into question the effectiveness of the plan and whether or not the "unlawful" policy can really get off the ground.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Sanja Skov Vedel.

The post Congressional Amendment Opens Floodgates for War Profiteers and a Major Ground War on Russia appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Medea Benjamin - Nicolas J. S. Davies.

If the powerful leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senators Jack Reed (D) and Jim Inhofe (R), have their way, Congress will soon invoke wartime emergency powers to build up even greater stockpiles of Pentagon weapons. The amendment is supposedly designed to facilitate replenishing the weapons the United States has sent to Ukraine, but a look at the wish list contemplated in this amendment reveals a different story.

Reed and Inhofe’s idea is to tuck their wartime amendment into the FY2023 National Defense Appropriation Act (NDAA) that will be passed during the lameduck session before the end of the year. The amendment sailed through the Armed Services Committee in mid-October and, if it becomes law, the Department of Defense will be allowed to lock in multi-year contracts and award non-competitive contracts to arms manufacturers for Ukraine-related weapons.

If the Reed/Inhofe amendment is really aimed at replenishing the Pentagon’s supplies, then why do the quantities in its wish list vastly surpass those sent to Ukraine?

Let’s do the comparison:

–           The current star of U.S. military aid to Ukraine is Lockheed Martin’s HIMARS rocket system, the same weapon U.S. Marines used to help reduce much of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, to rubble in 2017. The U.S. has only sent 38 HIMARS systems to Ukraine, but Senators Reed and Inhofe plan to “reorder” 700 of them, with 100,000 rockets, which could cost up to $4 billion.

–           Another artillery weapon provided to Ukraine is the M777 155 mm howitzer. To “replace” the 142 M777s sent to Ukraine, the senators plan to order 1,000 of them, at an estimated cost of  $3.7 billion, from BAE Systems.

–           HIMARS launchers can also fire Lockheed Martin’s long-range (up to 190 miles) MGM-140 ATACMS missiles, which the U.S. has not sent to Ukraine. In fact the U.S. has only ever fired 560 of them, mostly at Iraq in 2003. The even longer-range “Precision Strike Missile,” formerly prohibited under the INF Treaty renounced by Trump, will start replacing the ATACMS in 2023, yet the Reed-Inhofe Amendment would buy 6,000 ATACMS, 10 times more than the U.S. has ever used, at an estimated cost of $600 million.

–           Reed and Inhofe plan to buy 20,000 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from Raytheon. But Congress already spent $340 million for 2,800 Stingers to replace the 1,400 sent to Ukraine. Reed and Inhofe’s amendment will “re-replenish” the Pentagon’s stocks 14 times over, which could cost $2.4 billion.

–           The United States has supplied Ukraine with only two Harpoon anti-ship missile systems – already a provocative escalation – but the amendment includes 1,000 Boeing Harpoon missiles (at about $1.4 billion) and 800 newer Kongsberg Naval Strike Missiles (about $1.8 billion), the Pentagon’s replacement for the Harpoon.

–             The Patriot air defense system is another weapon the U.S. has not sent to Ukraine, because each system can cost a billion dollars and the basic training course for technicians to maintain and repair it takes more than a year to complete. And yet the Inhofe-Reed wish list includes 10,000 Patriot missiles, plus launchers, which could add up to $30 billion.

ATACMS, Harpoons and Stingers are all weapons the Pentagon was already phasing out, so why spend billions of dollars to buy thousands of them now? What is this really all about? Is this amendment a particularly egregious example of war profiteering by the military-industrial-Congressional complex? Or is the United States really preparing to fight a major ground war against Russia?

Our best judgment is that both are true.

Looking at the weapons list, military analyst and retired Marine Colonel Mark Cancian noted: “This isn’t replacing what we’ve given [Ukraine].  It’s building stockpiles for a major ground war [with Russia] in the future. This is not the list you would use for China. For China we’d have a very different list.”

President Biden says he will not send U.S. troops to fight Russia because that would be World War III. But the longer the war goes on and the more it escalates, the more it becomes clear that U.S. forces are directly involved in many aspects of the war: helping to plan Ukrainian operations; providing satellite-based intelligence; waging cyber warfare; and operating covertly inside Ukraine as special operations forces and CIA paramilitaries. Now Russia has accused British special operations forces of direct roles in a maritime drone attack on Sevastopol and the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

As U.S. involvement in the war has escalated despite Biden’s broken promises, the Pentagon must have drawn up contingency plans for a full-scale war between the United States and Russia. If those plans are ever executed, and if they do not immediately trigger a world-ending nuclear war, they will require vast quantities of specific weapons, and that is the purpose of the Reed-Inhofe stockpiles.

At the same time, the amendment seems to respond to complaints by the weapons manufacturers that the Pentagon was “moving too slowly” in spending the vast sums appropriated for Ukraine. While over $20 billion has been allocated for weapons, contracts to actually buy weapons for Ukraine and replace the ones sent there so far totaled only $2.7 billion by early November.

So the expected arms sales bonanza had not yet materialized, and the weapons makers were getting impatient. With the rest of the world increasingly calling for diplomatic negotiations, if Congress didn’t get moving, the war might be over before the arms makers’ much-anticipated jackpot ever arrived.

Mark Cancian explained to DefenseNews, “We’ve been hearing from industry, when we talk to them about this issue, that they want to see a demand signal.”

When the Reed-Inhofe Amendment sailed through committee in mid-October, it was clearly the “demand signal” the merchants of death were looking for. The stock prices of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics took off like anti-aircraft missiles, exploding to all-time highs by the end of the month.

Julia Gledhill, an analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, decried the wartime emergency provisions in the amendment, saying it “further deteriorates already weak guardrails in place to prevent corporate price gouging of the military.”

Opening the doors to multi-year, non-competitive, multi-billion dollar military contracts shows how the American people are trapped in a vicious spiral of war and military spending. Each new war becomes a pretext for further increases in military spending, much of it unrelated to the current war that provides cover for the increase. Military budget analyst Carl Conetta demonstrated (see Executive Summary) in 2010, after years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, that “those operations account(ed) for only 52% of the surge” in U.S. military spending during that period.

Andrew Lautz of the National Taxpayers’ Union now calculates that the base Pentagon budget will exceed $1 trillion per year by 2027, five years earlier than projected by the Congressional Budget Office. But if we factor in at least $230 billion per year in military-related costs in the budgets of other departments, like Energy (for nuclear weapons), Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Justice (FBI cybersecurity), and State, national insecurity spending has already hit the trillion dollar per year mark, gobbling up two-thirds of annual discretionary spending.

America’s exorbitant investment in each new generation of weapons makes it nearly impossible for politicians of either party to recognize, let alone admit to the public, that American weapons and wars have been the cause of many of the world’s problems, not the solution, and that they cannot solve the latest foreign policy crisis either.

Senators Reed and Inhofe will defend their amendment as a prudent step to deter and prepare for a Russian escalation of the war, but the spiral of escalation we are locked into is not one-sided. It is the result of escalatory actions by both sides, and the huge arms build-up authorized by this amendment is a dangerously provocative escalation by the U.S. side that will increase the danger of the World War that President Biden has promised to avoid.

After the catastrophic wars and ballooning U.S. military budgets of the past 25 years, we should be wise by now to the escalatory nature of the vicious spiral in which we are caught. And after flirting with Armageddon for 45 years in the last Cold War, we should also be wise to the existential danger of engaging in this kind of brinkmanship with nuclear-armed Russia. So, if we are wise, we will oppose the Reed/Inhofe Amendment.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies.

Chaïbia Talal (Morocco), Mon Village, Chtouka, 1990.

On 17 October, the head of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), US Marine Corps General Michael Langley visited Morocco. Langley met with senior Moroccan military leaders, including Inspector General of the Moroccan Armed Forces Belkhir El Farouk. Since 2004, AFRICOM has held its ‘largest and premier annual exercise’, African Lion, partly on Moroccan soil. This past June, ten countries participated in the African Lion 2022, with observers from Israel (for the first time) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Salah Elmur (Sudan), The Green Room, 2019.

Langley’s visit is part of a broader US push onto the African continent, which we documented in our dossier no. 42 (July 2021), Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity, a joint publication with The Socialist Movement of Ghana’s Research Group. In that text, we wrote that the two important principles of Pan-Africanism are political unity and territorial sovereignty and argued that ‘[t]he enduring presence of foreign military bases not only symbolises the lack of unity and sovereignty; it also equally enforces the fragmentation and subordination of the continent’s peoples and governments’. In August, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield travelled to Ghana, Uganda, and Cape Verde. ‘We’re not asking Africans to make any choices between the United States and Russia’, she said ahead of her visit, but, she added, ‘for me, that choice would be simple’. That choice is nonetheless being impelled by the US Congress as it deliberates the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, a bill that would sanction African states if they do business with Russia (and could possibly extend to China in the future).

To understand this unfolding situation, our friends at No Cold War have prepared their briefing no. 5, NATO Claims Africa as Its ‘Southern Neighbourhood’, which looks at how NATO has begun to develop a proprietary view of Africa and how the US government considers Africa to be a frontline in its Global Monroe Doctrine. That briefing can be read in full below and downloaded here:

In August 2022, the United States published a new foreign policy strategy aimed at Africa. The 17-page document featured 10 mentions of China and Russia combined, including a pledge to ‘counter harmful activities by the [People’s Republic of China], Russia, and other foreign actors’ on the continent, but did not once mention the term ‘sovereignty’. Although US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that Washington ‘will not dictate Africa’s choices’, African governments have reported facing ‘patronising bullying’ from NATO member states to take their side in the war in Ukraine. As global tensions rise, the US and its allies have signalled that they view the continent as a battleground to wage their New Cold War against China and Russia.

Richard Mudariki (Zimbabwe), The Passover, 2011.

A New Monroe Doctrine?

At its annual summit in June, NATO named Africa along with the Middle East ‘NATO’s southern neighbourhood’. On top of this, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ominously referred to ‘Russia and China’s increasing influence in our southern neighbourhood’ as a ‘challenge’. The following month, the outgoing commander of AFRICOM, General Stephen J Townsend, referred to Africa as ‘NATO’s southern flank’. These comments are disturbingly reminiscent of the neocolonial attitude espoused by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, in which the US claimed Latin America as its ‘backyard’.

This paternalistic view of Africa appears to be widely held in Washington. In April, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Countering Malign Russian Influence Activities in Africa Act by a vote of 415-9. The bill, which aims to punish African governments for not aligning with US foreign policy on Russia, has been widely condemned across the continent for disrespecting the sovereignty of African nations, with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor calling it ‘absolutely disgraceful’.

The efforts by the US and Western countries to draw Africa into their geopolitical conflicts raise serious concerns: namely, will the US and NATO weaponise their vast military presence on the continent to achieve their aims?

Amani Bodo (DRC), Masque à gaz (‘Gas Mask’), 2020.

AFRICOM: Protecting US and NATO’s Hegemony

In 2007, the United States established its Africa Command (AFRICOM) ‘in response to our expanding partnerships and interests in Africa’. In just 15 years, AFRICOM has established at least 29 military bases on the continent as part of an extensive network which includes more than 60 outposts and access points in at least 34 countries – over 60 percent of the nations on the continent.

Despite Washington’s rhetoric of promoting democracy and human rights in Africa, in reality, AFRICOM aims to secure US hegemony over the continent. AFRICOM’s stated objectives include ‘protecting US interests’ and ‘maintaining superiority over competitors’ in Africa. In fact, the creation of AFRICOM was motivated by the concerns of ‘those alarmed by China’s expanding presence and influence in the region’.

From the outset, NATO was involved in the endeavour, with the original proposal put forward by then Supreme Allied Commander of NATO James L Jones, Jr. On an annual basis, AFRICOM conducts training exercises focused on enhancing the ‘interoperability’ between African militaries and ‘US and NATO special operations forces’.

The destructive nature of the US and NATO’s military presence in Africa was exemplified in 2011 when – ignoring the African Union’s opposition – the US and NATO launched their catastrophic military intervention in Libya to remove the government of Muammar Gaddafi. This regime change war destroyed the country, which had previously scored the highest among African nations on the UN Human Development Index. Over a decade later, the principal achievements of the intervention in Libya have been the return of slave markets to the country, the entry of thousands of foreign fighters, and unending violence.

In the future, will the US and NATO invoke the ‘malign influence’ of China and Russia as a justification for military interventions and regime change in Africa?

Zemba Luzamba (DRC), Parlementaires debout (‘Parliamentarians Standing’), 2019.

Africa Rejects a New Cold War

At this year’s UN General Assembly, the African Union firmly rejected the coercive efforts of the US and Western countries to use the continent as a pawn in their geopolitical agenda. ‘Africa has suffered enough of the burden of history’, stated Chairman of the African Union and President of Senegal Macky Sall; ‘it does not want to be the breeding ground of a new Cold War, but rather a pole of stability and opportunity open to all its partners, on a mutually beneficial basis’. Indeed, the drive for war offers nothing to the peoples of Africa in their pursuit of peace, climate change adaptation, and development.

“Europe is a garden. The rest of the world is a jungle. And the jungle could invade the garden.”

“Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us.”

– Shocking comments from EU foreign policy head @JosepBorrellF pic.twitter.com/eFbbb9LxGl

— No Cold War (@NoColdWar) October 15, 2022

At the inauguration of the European Diplomatic Academy on 13 October, the European Union’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said, ‘Europe is a garden… The rest of the world… is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden’. As if the metaphor were not clear enough, he added, ‘Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us’. Borrell’s racist comments were pilloried on social media and eviscerated in the European Parliament by Marc Botenga of the Belgian Workers’ Party, and a petition by the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25) calling for Borrell’s resignation has received over 10,000 signatures. Borrell’s lack of historical knowledge is significant: it is Europe and North America that continue to invade the African continent, and it is those military and economic invasions that cause African people migrate. As President Sall said, Africa does not want to be a ‘breeding ground of a new Cold War’, but a sovereign place of dignity.

The post Africa Does Not Want to Be a Breeding Ground for the New Cold War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/05/africa-does-not-want-to-be-a-breeding-ground-for-the-new-cold-war/feed/ 0 348261 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/28/on-the-ground-in-donbass-under-ukrainian-fire/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/28/on-the-ground-in-donbass-under-ukrainian-fire/#respond Fri, 28 Oct 2022 23:29:02 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=e729113f5e9f3a9596e63f5b28317dd0
This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/28/on-the-ground-in-donbass-under-ukrainian-fire/feed/ 0 346258 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/airpower-10282022131143.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/airpower-10282022131143.html#respond Fri, 28 Oct 2022 19:12:00 +0000 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/airpower-10282022131143.html The bombing of a concert in Kachin state last weekend that killed more than 60 people showed the brutal advantage the Myanmar military retains in its struggling campaign for control of the country: its air power.

Junta forces have faced a number of setbacks since ousting the democratically elected government in a coup 20 months ago. Between 12,000 and 15,000 of its soldiers may have been killed, according to a Stimson Center report. Thousands of troops are believed to have defected. The country’s economy is in shambles, pushing poverty rates to a 10-year high. 

But the military’s superior arsenal, which includes heavy artillery in addition to its jets and attack helicopters, has made up for missteps on the ground and make it tough for rebel forces, including People’s Defense Force militias aligned with the shadow National Unity Government and anti-junta ethnic armies, to mount significant offensives of their own.

“The junta is reliant on its airpower and its artillery to offset the limitations of its infantry forces, and it relies on bombardments and airstrikes to drive the PDFs and the EAO forces away from its main bases and cities,” says Lucas Myers, who has written about the conflict as program coordinator for the Wilson Center’s Asia Program in Washington. 

Rebel forces are “struggling to be able to take ground when faced with artillery and airpower,” he added. “That's their main limitation on the battlefield.”

Kachin strike

The Oct. 23 strike in Kachin state in Myanmar’s far north killed at least 66 attendees of the concert to celebrate the anniversary of the Kachin Independence Organization, according to a KIO statement. The group is the political wing of one of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic insurgencies, which has been fighting for greater autonomy for the region for decades. 

Most of the dead were KIO officers, but 17 civilians were also killed, according to the group, which said the death toll could rise. At least 61 people were initially wounded in the attack, which the State Administration Council (SAC), as the junta calls itself, said came in retaliation for Kachin fighters and PDF militias attacking military forces in the area. A few of the wounded later died as residents said roadblocks set up by military forces hampered aid efforts.

Analysts said the strike is part of the military’s ruthless counterinsurgency strategy, which has seen it target civilian supporters of anti-junta forces through a scorched earth campaign. More than 36,000 homes have been burned down, at least 1 million people have been displaced, and more than 2,000 civilians killed. 

But airstrikes like the one in Kachin haven’t overpowered the junta’s many enemies, and in some cases seem to have spurred on resistance, leaving an uncertain balance of power between an expanding, though fractionalized, opposition and a more heavily armed military.  

Myanmar’s air arsenal

Myanmar’s air force has more than 100 combat-capable aircraft and is looking to acquire more, according to Akhil Kadidal, an analyst at Janes, a defense intelligence firm based in the United Kingdom.

Its fleet includes Mi-35 gunships, attack helicopters built by Russia that can ferry troops in and out of combat, and small jets like Russian Yak-130s and Chinese-made K-8s and Nanchang A-5Cs. The strike in Kachin state reportedly was carried out by Yak-130s, which are typically used as training aircraft. About 70% of its air arsenal are planes, according to Kadidal.

Myanmar received two, more capable Sukhoi SU-30SM fighters from Russia earlier this year, with another four still to be delivered. The junta reported that the leader of the SAC, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, visited the Irkustsk Aviation plant in Russia last month, itself an indication of the value the junta places in its air power. 

In Myanmar’s past conflicts, the military has hedged its use of air power against rebel groups, which have historically been arrayed in border regions, Kadidal said. Bombardments risk sparking a mass exodus into neighboring countries – Thailand, China, Bangladesh and India -- or striking civilians in those countries. 

Pressure from all sides

But the SAC now relies on its air power as it fights on several fronts at once. It has battled Rakhine, Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karenni and Karen ethnic forces and dozens of pro-democracy militias recruited from Myanmar’s ethnic Burman majority. Previously safe supply routes in the country’s interior are now routinely attacked. 

Airpower allows the regime to exert its offensive power over long distances, Kadidal said. Military pilots flew 13 air combat operations in October, Kadidal said.

“The result has been the aerial bombardment of locations not under the control of the regime's ground forces,” he said.

Zachary Abuza, a U.S. National War College professor who specializes in Southeast Asian politics and security issues, said during an online presentation on Myanmar presented by the Stimson Center think tank, that National Unity Government and affiliated ethnic groups control about 50% of the country.

The SAC’s main air advantage comes from its attack helicopters, which can fire its weapons at close range and transport troops in and out of fights, Abuza said.

While the Oct. 23 attack in Kachin state is thought to have resulted in the single-most casualties from an air attack since the coup, helicopters have been the source of numerous atrocities in the conflict.

Attack helicopters were part of a Sept. 16 strike on a village school in Sagaing that killed at least seven students between 7 and 16 years of age. “Two helicopters hovered above and attacked us from both sides. For an hour, there was nothing we could do,” one parent who witnessed the attack told RFA Burmese, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

A January attack in Gahe village in Sagaing's Indaw township killed 5, including four siblings, the youngest of whom was 5 years old, RFA Burmese reported.  

The following month a helicopter fired on a graduation ceremony for PDF recruits in Myinmu township’s Pa Dat Taing village. Terrified residents who scattered during the strike discovered 11 charred bodies upon their return. 

Calls for help

In February, a report from the U.N. special rapporteur on Myanmar accused the military of “bombing villages indiscriminately” and called for an arms embargo against the regime. It noted the delivery of Russian-made unmanned aerial vehicles and Chinese-made K-8 attack aircraft and transport planes that were delivered to the junta after the coup. According to the U.N., more than 40 member states, mostly Western nations, currently have arms embargoes against Myanmar.

The SAC’s air advantage has also led to calls for international assistance, through surface-to-air missiles -- known as “manpads,” for man-portable, air defense systems -- and a no-fly zone akin to NATO operations in the Balkans in the early 1990s.

But analysts say there is little appetite for either denying Myanmar’s military access to the air or arming rebels on the ground. A no-fly zone would require support from regional countries, all of which have hedged their bets in the conflict. 

Myers of the Wilson Center said that China, which has been a junta ally, would likely object to any arming of rebel forces by Western countries.

That leaves attacking air forces when they are stationary.

“The best way for an insurgent group to take out air assets is on the ground,” Abuza said at a Stimson Center event.

The NUG has been “doxing” military pilots -- publishing their addresses – as part of an assassination campaign. Abuza said the house of a pilot was recently bombed. Rebel forces also need to attack junta supply routes, he said. The jet fuel the aircraft needs is transported over land on trucks, not via pipelines.

A diminished capability?

The strength of Myanmar’s air force may also diminish on its own, Abuza told RFA in a separate interview. Russia’s ability to provide spare parts for its helicopters, which break down frequently, are likely to be hard to come by, given the sanctions against it and its own equipment needs for the campaign in Ukraine.

Kadidal at Janes said the Myanmar military is “likely” to have acquired Kamov Ka-29 Helix utility-attack helicopters. The junta hasn’t officially announced a purchase, but a Ka-29 was photographed on Oct. 19 participating in combat operations in the Yinmarbin township in the Sagaing, he said.

Despite being outgunned, rebel groups remain optimistic about their chances, in part because they’ve noticed signs the SAC’s advantage in weapons may be dissipating, according to Michael Martin, an expert on Myanmar who for many years reported on the country for the Congressional Research Service in Washington. He met opposition fighters from several combatant groups on a trip this month to India and Thailand.

Soldiers from the Karen National Liberation Army in eastern Myanmar, the nation’s longest-running insurgency, are increasingly finding 500-pound bombs that haven’t exploded on impact.

“They’re duds,” said Martin, who is now an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “And when examined, they find that they are using a cheaper and less effective fuse.”

Other fighters told him junta jets sometimes just fly overhead without dropping any munitions, which they take as a possible sign of supply issues, he said.

Even so, he said, they hope for better tools to strike back at the military’s air advantage.

“Each group fighting in each theater certainly would like to have better equipment, better weaponry -- and particularly if they could deal with the aircraft that the SAC is sending out, they think victory is feasible in a not-too-distant future.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jim Snyder for RFA.

]]> https://www.rfa.org/english/news/myanmar/airpower-10282022131143.html/feed/ 0 346284 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/26/not-an-air-war-a-ground-war-dems-should-direct-election-funds-to-organizing-if-black-votes-matter/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/26/not-an-air-war-a-ground-war-dems-should-direct-election-funds-to-organizing-if-black-votes-matter/#respond Wed, 26 Oct 2022 14:08:29 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=726978ea661ce05e98dbec9e148f53d2
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/26/not-an-air-war-a-ground-war-dems-should-direct-election-funds-to-organizing-if-black-votes-matter/feed/ 0 345097 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/26/not-an-air-war-a-ground-war-dems-should-redirect-election-funds-to-organizing-if-black-votes-matter/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/26/not-an-air-war-a-ground-war-dems-should-redirect-election-funds-to-organizing-if-black-votes-matter/#respond Wed, 26 Oct 2022 12:44:34 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=0b1a95400c0e881072706bcf02a4fd53

As Republican-led states clamp down on voting rights, we look at how Black voters are helping to organize unprecedented voter turnout ahead of midterms. “We are literally fighting for democracy,” says LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, who says organizing voters is “the winning strategy” despite the resolve of the “consulting class” to invest campaign funds primarily in TV ads.Georgia’s special election Senate races in early 2021 were “not a fluke, “says Brown. “We need to recognize that it is going to be community-led efforts, grassroots democracy groups that are literally our best defense on the frontlines from protecting us against facism.” This comes as President Biden announces he has authorized the transfer of $10 million from the Democratic National Committee to House and Senate Democratic campaign committees.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/26/not-an-air-war-a-ground-war-dems-should-redirect-election-funds-to-organizing-if-black-votes-matter/feed/ 0 345095 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/14/photographer-shoved-to-ground-by-nfl-player-after-game-in-kc/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/14/photographer-shoved-to-ground-by-nfl-player-after-game-in-kc/#respond Fri, 14 Oct 2022 14:04:01 +0000 https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/photographer-shoved-to-ground-by-nfl-player-after-game-in-kc/

Photographer Park Zebley was shoved to the ground by Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams after a Monday Night Football game in Kansas City, Missouri, on Oct. 10, 2022.

In footage published by SportsCenter and shared widely, Adams can be seen pushing Zebley with two hands following a 30-29 Raiders loss.

Davante Adams was visibly upset after the Raiders’ loss to the Chiefs. pic.twitter.com/XW2fmx6adJ

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 11, 2022

When reached by email, Zebley declined to comment and referred the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker to his attorney, Dan Curry. Curry said Zebley is a college student who had just started working for a local production company that provides content to ESPN. He did not identify the name of the production company.

In a written statement, Curry said it was the photographer’s first day on the job and he had been given the task of carrying equipment for a camera operator.

After arranging transportation to the hospital, Zebley filed a police report with the Kansas City Police Department. In an emailed statement to the Tracker, a KCPD spokesperson said Zebley’s injuries were thought to be non-life threatening and the incident is being investigated.

Zebley’s attorney confirmed that the photographer suffered a headache, whiplash and was still recovering from a concussion.

After the incident, Adams apologized for his behavior, saying he was frustrated by the loss and was surprised when Zebley “jumped” in front of him, ESPN reported.

Adams was charged with misdemeanor assault on Oct. 12. According to Missouri statutes, he faces up to six months of jail time or a fine of up to $1,000. The citation, also shared with the Tracker by KCPD, identifies him as Ryan Zebley. His attorney said Park is his name.

The Raiders receiver is also facing possible suspension from the NFL, according to ESPN. He is scheduled to appear in Kansas City Municipal Court on Nov. 10.

“What happened was egregiously unsportsmanlike and an act of violence that should not be excused by the NFL,” Zebley said in a statement provided by his attorney.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/14/photographer-shoved-to-ground-by-nfl-player-after-game-in-kc/feed/ 0 341997 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/12/losing-ground-cortez-masto-defeat-in-nevada-could-cost-democrats-senate-majority/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/12/losing-ground-cortez-masto-defeat-in-nevada-could-cost-democrats-senate-majority/#respond Wed, 12 Oct 2022 19:22:49 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/node/340321

With less than a month before the midterm elections, recent polling and reporting have heightened fears about the GOP seizing control of the evenly split U.S. Senate—and particularly, whether Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada can hold on to her seat.

Cortez Masto's is one of few key Senate races—along with those in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—that election watchers largely consider a toss-up. In Nevada, the first-term incumbent senator faces Republican Adam Laxalt, who succeeded her as state attorney general.

Some polls have suggested that Laxalt could be Republicans' "golden ticket" to reclaim the Senate, showing him with slim leads over the chamber's "most vulnerable" Democrat. While the results of a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll out Wednesday showed Cortez Masto with a 46%-44% lead, that's within the margin of error for the survey, which was conducted last week.

"Both candidates have solidified support within their parties," noted USA TODAY's reporting on the survey. "Cortez Masto is backed by 89% of Democrats, Laxalt by 87% of Republicans. Independents favor Laxalt by 40%-36%. The two sides are matched in intensity; 46% of the backers of each say they are 'extremely' motivated to vote."

The new poll results also highlighted key priorities for Nevada voters:

Concern about inflation and the economy dominates in Nevada, the top issue for 43% of likely voters. Almost half of those surveyed, 46%, say their standard of living is worse now than it was two years ago. Only 16% say it's better.

By 46%-39%, Nevadans say the state is on the wrong track, not heading in the right direction.

One in four cite abortion as the top issue. Asked how much impact abortion views would have on their choice of a candidate in November, using a scale of one to ten, 40% of those surveyed chose 10—the most powerful possible impact.

The U.S. Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to abortion in June with its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling gave pro-choice Democrats a motivating issue to run on, but Cortez Masto's race may also be revealing the potential pitfalls of focusing too singularly on the issue.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who serves as outreach lead for the chamber's Democrats and won Nevada in the party's 2020 presidential primary—wrote Monday that "I am alarmed to hear the advice that many Democratic candidates are getting from establishment consultants and directors of well-funded super PACs that the closing argument of Democrats should focus only on abortion."

"I disagree," Sanders explained in his Guardian opinion piece. "In my view, while the abortion issue must remain on the front burner, it would be political malpractice for Democrats to ignore the state of the economy and allow Republican lies and distortions to go unanswered."

The Associated Press reported Monday that Democrats predicted abortion would be the "saving grace" for Cortez Masto, "but inside Nevada's crowded union halls, across its sun-scorched desert towns, and on the buzzing Las Vegas strip, there are signs that outrage over the Supreme Court's decision to dismantle abortion rights may not be enough to overcome intensifying economic concerns."

While Laxalt in June celebrated the reversal of Roe v. Wade as a "historic victory," the Republican has since highlighted that in a 1990 referendum, voters "determined that Nevada is and will remain a pro-choice state," allowing abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The New York Times on Saturday pointed to Laxalt as an example of the kind of GOP candidate who has "sought a delicate two-step on abortion, catering to a base demanding its prohibition and to the political center, which is largely supportive of Roe."

As the newspaper detailed:

Laxalt… is broadcasting television ads proclaiming that no matter what happens in Washington, abortion will remain legal in Nevada, attempting to pivot voter attention back to crime and the economy.

"Over the last two years, Democrat politicians have done incredible damage to America," one ad intones. "But one thing hasn't changed: abortion in Nevada. Why do Democrats like Catherine Cortez Masto only talk about something that hasn't changed? Because they can't defend everything that has."

The AP's Monday report noted that "in an interview, Cortez Masto sidestepped questions about her fragile political standing. She acknowledged 'there's more work to be done' on the economy in a working-class state in which gasoline remains over $5.40 per gallon, the unemployment rate is higher than the national average, and spending at casinos has not kept pace with inflation."

"I know our families, the issues that are important to them are the kitchen-table issues," she said, citing the Democrats' recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. "But I also know, talking with our families, the repeal of Roe v. Wade is having an impact… We're a pro-choice state, proudly. That's why so many are outraged by the repeal."

Cortez Masto also took aim at her GOP opponent for openly backing former President Donald Trump's claim that Democrats stole the 2020 election, saying that he "was the face of the Big Lie" in the state and "in my view, he stands with the insurrectionists and not the people of Nevada."

Laxalt is a favorite of both Trump—who campaigned for him in Nevada last weekend—and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), making him "a perfect fusion for a GOP that needs both Trump's base and McConnell's ability to marshal millions to effectively compete," Ross Barkan wrote Tuesday for Intelligencer.

Barkan pointed out that ushering in a GOP Senate majority that thwarts President Joe Biden's legislative goals is not the only potential consequence of a loss by Cortez Masto—a "protégé of the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid," who oversaw a "highly effective apparatus that forged coalitions between progressive groups and organized labor while homing in on voter registration, consistently turning out the new Democrats that joined the rolls."

According to Barkan, "Her defeat may also say something disconcerting about the health of the Democratic coalition itself: If an increasingly diverse and working-class state slips away from them, what hope is there?"

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

Along an open stretch of tundra far above the Arctic Circle, a gas flare burns bright against the early morning sky. The oil production facility, about eight miles north of the Alaska Native Village of Nuiqsut, sits like a ship on the horizon. Known as CD1, it is ground zero for ConocoPhillips’ Alpine Field, a sprawling network of gravel roads, pipelines, and well pads that covers about 165 acres of land. The CD1 pad houses hundreds of employees and has its own airstrip to receive direct flights from Anchorage. ConocoPhillips refers to it as “our town.” 

On March 4, the fossil fuel company reported an uncontrolled gas leak at the facility. According to ConocoPhillips’ own analysis, an estimated 7.2 million cubic feet of natural gas was released into the atmosphere during the first five days of the leak, equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of over 3,000 cars. Residents in Nuiqsut complained of headaches and nausea. ConocoPhillips brought in industry specialists from Texas with experience fighting oil well fires in Iraq and Kuwait. Then, around noon on March 7, the company decided to evacuate 300 employees from the pad out of “an abundance of caution.” It would take nearly a month before the leak was fully plugged.  

Nuiqsut’s mayor, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, had been getting little sleep during those first few weeks and was anxious about the village’s air quality — an ongoing concern for residents of Nuiqsut, which is surrounded by oil and gas development. ConocoPhillips had reached out to the community to provide updates, but information was hard to come by, in part because it took several weeks for the company to fully understand what had happened.

More than a week passed before the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the state agency that regulates drilling on both state and federal land, had someone on the ground at CD1. The state’s spill response division, known as the Prevention, Preparedness, and Response program, or PPR, was frustrated with ConocoPhillips’ response, according to dozens of emails obtained by Grist and Type Investigations.

“I’m having difficulty getting the information PPR needs regarding the situation at CD 1,” the northern region manager wrote in an email to ConocoPhillips nearly a week into the event. 

While some questions remain unanswered more than six months later, it’s clear now that the gas leak at Alpine illuminated the ways that climate change is amplifying the risks associated with oil and gas drilling in the Arctic — and even creating new ones. Permafrost thaw, which is accelerated by drilling and new construction, played an important role in the leak: In its incident report submitted to the state, ConocoPhillips explained that the heat generated by the injection of drilling fluids deep underground had thawed the permafrost layer — ground that had been frozen for thousands of years — to a depth of about 1,000 feet, which ultimately allowed the gas to reach the surface.

But the problem didn’t end there. This same thawing process had affected some of the neighboring wells — there are about 50 wells on the CD1 pad, each about 10 feet apart — forming what Steve Lewis, a retired petroleum engineer who worked in the region for 20 years, described as a “gas highway,” creating multiple pathways for the gas to migrate. In its report, ConocoPhillips called this phenomenon a “thaw bulb.”

A similar phenomenon is being replicated across Alaska’s North Slope region at a time when the Arctic is warming two to four times faster than the rest of the planet. According to an analysis by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, more than half of the near-surface permafrost on the North Slope could disappear by 2100 if emissions aren’t curbed. Soil temperatures at Prudhoe Bay, which is about 60 miles east of Nuiqsut, have already warmed by about 6 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1970s. 

Permafrost thaw can cause the ground to buckle and in some cases collapse. Roads, pipelines, and well pads could all potentially be compromised and even in some cases rendered unusable, according to Vladimir Romanovsky, a permafrost expert and emeritus professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Portions of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the 800-mile conduit that runs from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, have already been damaged due to thawing permafrost.

According to interviews with former petroleum engineers and geologists who have worked on the North Slope, state and federal oversight of oil and gas drilling has not kept pace with the changes wrought by a warming climate. The Alpine leak exposed deep flaws in ConocoPhillips’ understanding of the region’s geology, but regulators at the Department of the Interior and the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, or AOGCC, continue to rely largely on the company’s assurances and proprietary data as it embarks on major new development projects.

Despite the risks, Alaska’s political leaders remain determined to expand oil and gas development on the North Slope, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In Alaska, the fossil fuel industry is deeply intertwined with the state officials who regulate it: Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy’s former chief of staff, Ben Stevens, is now vice president of external affairs at ConocoPhillips Alaska. Dunleavy also appointed Jeremy Price, another top aide and a former lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, to head the AOGCC, which is overseeing the investigation into the Alpine leak and has not yet released its findings. (Price stepped down in late September to work for an oil refinery out of state.)  

The company’s own preliminary analysis revealed several missteps that led to the leak. “ConocoPhillips screwed up in a number of different ways,” said Mark Myers, a retired petroleum geologist who served as director of Alaska’s Division of Oil and Gas from 2001 to 2005.

In a written statement, an AOGCC spokesperson said that the agency is aware of problems created by thawing permafrost and has addressed the issue in the past by modifying its drilling requirements. “AOGCC has some of the strongest regulations in the country in terms of drilling and well construction,” the spokesperson wrote. The commission would not comment on whether it plans to make additional changes because of the Alpine leak but said it “continuously evaluates the adequacy of our regulations.”

The Department of the Interior says it has collected permafrost temperature data from unplugged legacy wells on the North Slope for more than 20 years, in partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey, and continues to monitor the changes closely. “Preliminary data supports temperatures warming at approximately 0.1°C/year,” the department said in a written statement, “though additional data is needed to better characterize the changes spatially.” 

But long-held assumptions about oil and gas drilling on the North Slope may no longer apply. Scientists and engineers who spoke to Grist and Type Investigations were far less certain about the future of development in an area experiencing such rapid warming. 

“The assumed structural integrity of the permafrost is basic to the design of both surface facilities and well construction,” Lewis said. “If that premise is questionable, the entire design philosophy of North Slope development becomes suspect.”

As ConocoPhillips struggled to control the leak during those first few days in March, Nuiqsut residents were worried that a single spark could lead to a far more dangerous situation. If just one well had caught fire, according to Lewis, it could have led to a series of explosions. Terza Hopson, a young mother who is expecting a second child in October, drove her family and their two dogs and cat to Anchorage, more than 800 miles away.

Hopson said that she grew alarmed when she heard of ConocoPhillips’ decision to evacuate its own employees, as well as rumors that the company was bringing in buses to prepare for a larger emergency. At least 20 other families left the village during that first week, according to Ahtuangaruak.

“We were scared,” Hopson told me. “My concern was my unborn child. I wasn’t going to try to endanger my child.” 

Nevertheless, oil and gas development continues nearby. As Mayor Ahtuangaruak focused on keeping her town safe during the leak, she was also preparing for the next big battle on the North Slope. ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, one of the largest proposed onshore oil and gas developments in the United States, lies about 30 miles west of Alpine in the government-managed National Petroleum Reserve. The Department of the Interior approved the project during the final months of the Trump administration. In August of last year, however, a federal judge ruled that the legally required environmental analysis did not sufficiently address the project’s anticipated greenhouse gas emissions, among other flaws, and ordered the department to redo portions of its environmental impact statement.

If the Willow project is approved, it would allow for more than 250 wells, dozens of new gravel roads, and up to two airstrips. The project would produce an estimated 284 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over its 30-year lifetime, according to the most recent environmental impact statement. The Center for American Progress, a Democrat-aligned think tank, has described the project as a “carbon disaster.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has supported Willow since the president took office, even though it threatens to derail the White House’s climate goals by locking in decades of fossil fuel drilling. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has squeezed global energy supplies, has only strengthened calls to boost oil and gas production on the North Slope. In early July, the Interior Department released a new draft of the environmental analysis providing a wider range of possible development scenarios, including one that would reduce the project’s overall footprint.

The department has sent mixed signals in its rollout of the document. It originally posted an obsolete version, which included language suggesting that the agency was legally obligated to greenlight the project. This draft was later removed and replaced with one that did not indicate a preferred development scenario. The department also initially promised Nuiqsut a longer comment period, but it later reversed course without explanation and ultimately gave the public just 45 days, the minimum required by law. A final decision is expected later this year.

This has all served to heighten tensions in Nuiqsut, where Willow has been a source of controversy for several years. In 2019, tribal leadership passed resolutions opposing the project and urging federal and state agencies to undertake baseline environmental studies before approving any new development.

“The Tribal Council of the Native Village of Nuiqsut objects to the continued practice of approving oil and gas exploration and development activities in a piecemeal fashion and without [a] thorough understanding of how these activities are affecting our lands, waters, and air,” the council wrote.

Snow covers houses in the village of Nuiqsuit. Nathaniel Wilder

Children play near the Nuiqsuit community center, left. Photographs of elders hang in the community hall in Nuiqsut, right. Nathaniel Wilder

That same year, the village filed its first-ever lawsuit challenging the Interior Department’s approval of ConocoPhillips’ winter exploration work. A court ultimately decided in the company’s favor, but it marked a turning point in relations between Nuiqsut and the fossil fuel industry on the North Slope. Ahtuangaruak, a former physician’s assistant and public health aid, was elected mayor in November 2021, and she attributes her victory in part to growing opposition to new oil and gas development. 

Nearly 100 percent of Nuiqsut households depend on subsistence hunting and fishing, which has already been affected by decades of industrial development. According to the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the Interior Department, oil and gas activity has made it more difficult for residents to access traditional use areas. Willow’s footprint would overlap with some of the most important hunting and fishing grounds in the region. Under ConocoPhillips’ preferred development scenario, there would be an estimated 3.2 million vehicle trips over the lifetime of the project, many of them in areas currently used by subsistence hunters.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen once they get that project going,” said Gordon Brown, a member of the village corporation’s subsistence oversight panel. “Are we going to lose our caribou, or are we not? That’s the big thing.”

Some of the development, including gravel roads and pipelines, would be built within a special conservation area around Teshekpuk Lake, the largest body of water on the North Slope and critical calving grounds for the Teshekpuk caribou herd. And, just as it did with Alpine, ConocoPhillips has plans to expand its development further west, designs it refers to as “greater Willow 1 and 2.”

Ultimately, the final decision on Willow will be made not in Nuiqsut but well over 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C. In April, Interior Department Secretary Deb Haaland traveled to Alaska, fulfilling a promise she’d made to Alaska’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, during her confirmation hearings. Her trip included a stop in Utqiagvik, the North Slope borough seat, where she sat down with local leadership and representatives from Native corporations, including Kuukpik and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, according to a Department of the Interior employee who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the event. Kuukpik and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation have voiced their support for the Willow project.

Haaland’s trip came just two months after Russia invaded Ukraine and threw the world into an energy crisis. A few days before she arrived, Senator Sullivan and North Slope Borough Mayor Harry Brower published an op-ed urging the secretary to quickly complete the Willow environmental impact statement and invoke emergency measures to expand oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve.

“Roughly the size of Indiana, the [National Petroleum Reserve] was set aside in 1923 specifically for oil production in case of emergencies,” they wrote. “We believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the disruption this is causing energy markets, and the astronomical prices Americans are paying at the pump, all constitute an emergency.”

The new draft environmental impact statement published in July includes a brief, two-paragraph discussion of the events at Alpine and notes that the same shallow layer of sandstone, known as the Halo formation, that was the source of the leak is also present at Willow. But key questions related to the leak remain unanswered, scientists say, raising concerns about the potential for similar accidents if Willow moves forward.

In particular, experts who spoke to Grist and Type Investigations say they were surprised that ConocoPhillips, despite decades of drilling in the Arctic, was unable to detect the presence of significant amounts of natural gas in the area where the leak occurred. The company, which has since conducted new three-dimensional seismic surveys of the area, has not explained the anomaly.

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In a written statement, Dennis Nuss, a ConocoPhillips spokesperson, said the company took federal guidelines and environmental concerns into account when designing the Willow project. “Arctic engineering principles are present throughout Willow’s design, and they include practices that are widely used and designed to promote safe, environmentally sound operations,” Nuss said.

Meanwhile, the draft environmental impact statement for Willow has only a few pages devoted to permafrost thaw, an issue that will continue to complicate drilling on the North Slope. The Interior Department said it would not comment on any questions related to the Alpine leak, which occurred on state land, including whether it has had access to the new seismic data. 

According to ConocoPhillips, human error was the immediate cause of the leak: Pressure limits exceeded during a routine drilling operation damaged a portion of the well known as the casing shoe about a half-mile underground, creating the initial pathway for gas to escape. Poor cement bonding, which adds another layer of protection between the casing and the surrounding rock, also compromised the integrity of the well. Between March 1 and March 3, before the leak was reported, warning signs were also missed or left unaddressed, ConocoPhillips has acknowledged.

In an April letter to the Department of the Interior, a coalition of environmental groups urged the agency to undertake a more rigorous analysis of potential impacts from gas leaks, blowouts, oil spills, and other accidents. “The leak demonstrates that ConocoPhillips cannot guarantee the safe operation of oil development projects in the region,” they wrote.

In a written statement, ConocoPhillips defended its safety record on the North Slope and said that the permitting process and design principles used at Willow account for the future effects of a rapidly warming climate. 

“ConocoPhillips recognizes that it is a privilege to operate on the North Slope and in Alaska, and we have done so safely and responsibly for more than 50 years,” Nuss said. “When planning and permitting projects like Willow, the company works with regulatory agencies, local communities, and other stakeholders to assess and mitigate community concerns and potential impacts related to air emissions, subsistence activities, surface disturbance, water use, wildlife, and people.”

The company also said the Willow project would come with significant benefits for the public — and that there is no reason to further delay construction. Depending on when the Interior Department issues its final decision, ConocoPhillips says it could break ground on the project as soon as this winter.

Just over a week after the court ruling vacating the Willow environmental impact statement in August 2021, ConocoPhillips sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska office describing the flaws in the document as “discrete and fixable” and asking to work with the agency to “expeditiously move the permitting process forward.” That’s exactly what they did. According to public records obtained by Grist and Type Investigations through a Freedom of Information Act request, ConocoPhillips and the bureau had their first meeting a few days later. 

“It shows the depth of influence ConocoPhillips has no matter which party is in office,” said Bridget Psarianos, a former Interior Department employee who now works as a staff attorney at Trustees for Alaska, an environmental organization representing groups who have filed suit against the department over the Willow project.

The draft environmental statement also reveals how the Interior Department and other regulatory agencies depend on assurances from the oil and gas industry that may not always turn out to be reliable, especially in a rapidly warming environment. The statement echoes some of the same assumptions that led to the leak at ConocoPhillips’ Alpine site. According to the incident report, ConocoPhillips’ decision to forgo the use of cement casing around the portion of the well where the leak occurred was based on the assumption that there was little to no gas present in the 3,000-to-4,000-foot deep formation. (In ConocoPhillips’ words, it was not considered a “significant hydrocarbon zone.”) This turned out to be wrong. But Lewis, the former petroleum engineer, said that Interior appears to have reached a similar conclusion for Willow, where the same geological formation is found, without providing much evidence to support it.

In a written statement, the Interior Department said it made its determination after reviewing seismic studies and proprietary data from wells drilled in the project area, which cannot be released to the public. 

Lewis said that the paragraphs in the draft environmental impact statement devoted to the leak rely almost entirely on information provided by ConocoPhillips and “read like industry-supplied text.” (The Interior Department declined to comment on Lewis’ assertion.) Because the geological formation in the Willow project occurs at a shallower depth than it does at Alpine, the Interior Department says planned wells would be fully cemented, providing additional protection in the event of an accident. “This would further reduce the already very low risk of a shallow-gas leak,” the environmental impact statement reads.     

But Mark Myers, the retired petroleum geologist and former director of the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, said that the agency needs to do more to ensure that leaks like the one at Alpine don’t happen again. Myers argued that the agency should incorporate whatever ConocoPhillips has learned about the underlying geology through newly conducted seismic surveys at Alpine into its planning for the Willow project. In addition, he said there should be a more robust permafrost monitoring program at the Willow site in order to evaluate changes and possibly modify standards for pad construction.  

The Department of the Interior said that the current design of the Willow project “accounts for the expected conditions” over the project’s anticipated 30-year lifespan.

Meanwhile, ConocoPhillips continues to expand its footprint in and around Nuiqsut. In May, the company announced that it had successfully tested a new Alpine rig dubbed “The Beast” capable of drilling up to 7.5 miles in any direction. It’s often noted that Nuiqsut is encircled by oil and gas development. That circle is growing closer. 

Late one evening in May, Ahtuangaruak drove me out along the road that runs south of the village. The sun was still bright, and snow geese angled overhead. We passed a lake that provides Nuiqsut’s drinking water and eventually came to a bluff overlooking the Colville River, not far from where the original inhabitants of the village had settled in the early 1970s.

Ahtuangaruak pointed out seismic tracks on the surface of the river, still covered in snow, running in a grid-like pattern toward the village. Kuukpik, Nuiqsut’s village corporation, had recently completed new seismic surveys covering 59 square miles of land as part of another project, known as Narwhal, including areas in and around the village. These surveys will be used to provide the location and estimates of oil and gas reserves in the area.

“We fought it,” said Ahtuangaruak. “They did it anyway.” 

Looking out at a landscape that had undergone profound changes in the last 40 years, Ahtuangaruak explained that Nuiqsut is an Iñupiat word meaning “beautiful place on the horizon.” She still believes that to be true, but doesn’t know how much more development the village can endure. Part of the area surveyed this winter and spring includes leases directly underneath the village that have already been sold. The buyer? ConocoPhillips.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Unstable Ground on Oct 3, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Adam Federman.

For both Pro-Life groups, the moment of conception is definitive. For the Pro-Choice voices, the moment of conception is an underlying issue, but not a definitive one.

The religious Pro-Life affiliation is primarily Christian and addresses procreation through two essential concerns: God’s proclaimed will or directive for humankind, and the perceived moment of ensoulment (when a spiritual soul unites with a biological body). Currently, ensoulment and conception are accepted as simultaneous (or possibly simultaneous) events that conjointly create a human being. After conception, purposeful obstruction of embryonic or fetal development is thus deemed to be generally immoral and likely murderous.

Secular Pro-Life evades conjecture of ensoulment, but stands on the premise that human life is unlocked at conception. The resulting zygote is immediately declared a human being and is therefore instantly endowed with all human-based rights and considerations.

The secular Pro-Choice argument contends that conception initiates the process of becoming a human, but does not herald the event as being intrinsically definitive. Conception is viewed as merely the first biological step in the developmental process of becoming a human being. As there is no sudden and unequivocal moment of recognition in that process, it is deemed permissible to intercede in embryonic and fetal development before human being status is arguably conferred.

Religiously based Pro-Choice is primarily Judaic and like its faith-based Pro-Life counterpart, addresses procreation through the proclaimed will of God and the perceived moment of ensoulment, but differs with Christian understanding on both counts. God is understood to hold fetal development as secondary to the health of the woman carrying it, and ensoulment is firmly believed to occur at the end of pregnancy rather than at the beginning.

The religious Pro-Life and the religious Pro-Choice camps advocate from a position of certainty, as does the secular Pro-Life camp. Both religious camps lay claim to the certainty of God’s will, while secular Pro-Life lays claim to the certainty of human declaration (it is because I say it is). It’s only the secular Pro-Choice camp that admits to uncertainty.

The Christian Pro-Life camp is certain that ensoulment happens (or potentially happens) at conception, so the moment of conception must be accepted as the recognizable moment in which a human being is formed. The secular Pro-Life camp is certain that the moment of conception immediately creates a human being that will pass through developmental stages on the way to being born. The Judaic Pro-Choice camp is certain that a fetus becomes a human being upon leaving the womb. Secular Pro-Choice is admittedly uncertain in conferring status: a human being is considered not present at the moment of conception, but is present at the moment of birth. Somewhere in between, in the developmental process, an ambiguous threshold is passed, and human life becomes recognized as a human being.

The Comfort of Knowing

There’s comfort and confidence to be had when advocating from a position of certainty, but is it really justified? Where does it come from; upon what is it based?

The certainty of Christian-based Pro-Life advocacy comes as an adjunct to the belief of knowing and expressing God’s will. Certitude of God’s will might be acquired in several ways: receiving a direct communication from God, faith in another (living or dead) who claims a direct communication from God, faith that an accepted sacred text (i.e. Bible) accurately reflects the will of God, or faith in one’s own or another’s ability to interpret or project God’s will in the absence of a clear directive. Christian Pro-Life advocacy relies primarily upon the conjecture of God’s will through Biblical interpretation, and/or the recognition of God’s will through some who are deemed worthy of declaring it. It hasn’t been a constant; procreation conjecture and declarations of God’s intent have changed profoundly through the years. Presumably, God’s will has not changed, but those declaring it certainly have.

Abortion and contraception are not explicitly mentioned in Biblical text, nor is the moment of ensoulment precisely addressed. Because the Bible does not provide clear articulation with regards to abortion or contraception, inference is drawn upon to determine the will of God. Likewise, as it is not explicitly pinpointed in sacred text, human speculation rather than a pronouncement from God is used to ascribe the moment of ensoulment.  It’s particularly noteworthy that while the Christian and Judaic faithful share much in recognition of sacred text (the Old Testament), they differ in its interpretation. If pious and learned theologians can view the same text and draw different procreation conclusions, it should be clear that the given source of God’s word is either not clear, or is purposely misconstrued by some who are supposedly pious.

The Judaic procreation stance has been the more consistent. Citing Exodus 21: 22-23, ensoulment has long been deemed to occur at birth, along with full recognition of a human being. Fetal development issues then have been considered secondary to the health of the woman carrying it. It’s the Christian stance, particularly with the recognized moment of ensoulment that has been wildly inconsistent.

It’s not exactly clear when Christian thought on the moment of ensoulment began to diverge from the Judaic stance, but the influence of early Greek philosophy is clear. Even before the birth of Christ, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Hippocrates, and probably others had opined on the existence of a human soul. Aristotle postulated that ensoulment occurred in the womb and somehow calculated that it happened about 40 days after conception for males, and 90 days after for females. Aristotle’s questionable timetable took hold among Christian theologians and was still maintained centuries later by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Accordingly, while abortive procedures were considered sinful, they weren’t thought to be murderous until the human soul (and thus a human being) was present.

Shifting Sands

For more than 15 centuries, Christian (Catholic) thought held to the Aristotle/Aquinas schedule of ensoulment. It changed briefly in 1588 when Pope Sixtus V declared that all abortions were murderous. But just three years later, Pope Gregory XIV reversed the decision, reinstating the position that abortion was homicidal only if it took place after ensoulment. He also declared that ensoulment occurred at “quickening” (first perception of fetal movement), about 166 days after conception. His declaration held for the next 278 years before being overturned by Pope Pius IX in 1869. Pope Pius IX declared all acts of abortion to be excommunicable, not because ensoulment clearly happened at the moment of conception, but rather that conception conferred the potential for ensoulment, and therefore the potential must be protected from the first moment of conception.

“Potential” appears to be the current Catholic fallback with regards to ensoulment. Ensoulment certainly takes place in the womb, but the precise moment of ensoulment need not be pinpointed. Biblical and/or scientific evidence provides no confirmation for that moment, nor is any required. Rather, it’s only the potential that now needs to be recognized. The potential to become a fully developed human being begins at the moment of conception, and with it, at that same moment, the potential to receive a human soul. Therefore, from the moment of conception, an embryo must be protected as if it were a human being, regardless of the immediate presence of a soul.

It’s a subtle, but profound change of stance. For centuries, Christian doctrine held that it was ensoulment, recognized as occurring long after conception that created a human being. It was considered a forgivable sin, but not murderous, to abort before ensoulment. The 1869 decree of Pope Pius IX drastically changed that position. By declaring that ensoulment might happen at conception, it suddenly became both sinful and murderous to willfully abort at any time in a pregnancy. His pronouncement had ramifications beyond stark abortive considerations. As became evident years later, it would also require pharmaceutical advances in contraceptive means to be seen as abortive and judged accordingly: the use of pharmaceutical contraceptives would be deemed sinful and murderous.

Nothing Biblically had changed; it was the same as it ever was. The 1869 declaration by Pope Pius IX could have been a simple admission that the precise moment of ensoulment was scripturally indeterminate had he left it at that, but he didn’t. In decreeing that ensoulment might actually occur at the moment of conception, he inserted his personal opinion to contravene the small bit of guidance that the Bible did provide. While it never indicates the precise moment that ensoulment takes place, a verse of the Bible does indicate a moment when it clearly hasn’t taken place:

If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, as according the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.  And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life. (Exodus 21: 22-23)

The verse clearly shows that a woman’s life is considered more significant than that of an unborn fetus, revealing that the fetus has not yet been ensouled to attain full status as a human being. So why, after two thousand years of Christian acceptance that it occurs after conception, did Pope Pius IX disregard Biblical text to assert that ensoulment might actually happen at conception? The long answer would require an investigational study, the short answer is that “why” doesn’t really matter. What matters is the recognition that he was opining on (rather than pointing to) Biblical text. In effect, the Pope was manipulating Church doctrine by supplanting what was considered to be God’s word with his own personal opinion.

It’s not like he was the first (or the last) to do so. It’s long been Christian tradition for its hierarchy to expand on (or beyond) Biblical vagueness to reach surety of position (Papal Infallibility, Papal Primacy, Natural Law). Thomas Aquinas confidently pushed Aristotle’s weird ensoulment timetable (40 days for males, 90 days for females) into Catholic doctrine that was accepted for centuries. The Church was equally confident (for 3 years) when Pope Sixtus V pulled the timing back to conception, and then became even more confident (for 278 years) when Pope Gregory XIV pushed the moment of ensoulment back out to 166 days. Perhaps sensing that confidence in Papal authority might waver if it kept declaring new ensoulment timetables, Pope Pius IX adroitly declared that its timing need not be pinpointed at all. He proclaimed that it wasn’t the precise moment of ensoulment that need be recognized, but rather the potential for that moment. Pope Pius IX confidently declared that the potential for ensoulment occurred precisely at the moment of conception. Maybe it didn’t actually happen at that moment, but it absolutely could! Artfully, without truly declaring a newly recognized moment of ensoulment, Pope Pius IX tied it to the moment of conception. With complete confidence, the Church would henceforth recognize the need to see conception and the moment of ensoulment as simultaneous events, even if they weren’t … or put another way, the Church would now recognize that a human being is created at conception, even if it isn’t.

More Certainty, Less God

It may have sounded innocuous, to seemingly address Biblical ambiguity with the word “potential,” as if in acceptance of that ambiguity. But it wasn’t innocuous, and it wasn’t in acceptance. Declaring that ensoulment might potentially occur at conception was a direct refutation of the guidance provided by Exodus 21: 22-23. Arousing hardly a ripple of institutional opposition (or even recognition), Pope Pius IX had subtly pushed aside the accepted word of God and replaced it with his own. Since 1869, the Church has used his declaration rather than Biblical guidance for its near total prohibitive stance on contraception and abortive measures.

It wasn’t just the Catholic Church that would take liberties with espousing God’s will. Much of the Protestant/Evangelical world would eventually follow Vatican precedent to establish its own brand of certainty. In the 1980’s blossoming of network Evangelicalism, Jerry Falwell redirected early Evangelical ambivalence and began espousing that “The Bible clearly states that life begins at conception.” He cited Luke 1:39-44 and Psalm 139: 13-16. Does an actual reading of the King James Bible provide the clarity that Falwell implies? Not really; in the cited text there is mention of human life in the womb, but there is no mention as to when life in the womb should be first recognized as a human being. Likewise, there’s absolutely no mention of conception or the moment of ensoulment. Like Pope Pius IX, Falwell was supplanting the vagueness of God’s word with the clarity of his own opinion and presenting it as the will of God.

It’s a big deal, or at least it should be. When a pope or priest replaces the given ambiguity of God’s word with the certitude of personal opinion, something quite significant takes place: a new god is created. Pope Pius IX desired a god that clearly tied ensoulment to conception, so he used his papal authority to recognize one. Jerry Falwell wanted a god who articulated the simultaneity of conception and ensoulment, so he used his Evangelical prominence to declare one. Both were making new gods in their own image and presenting them as the known God of their sacred book. Believers believed accordingly and now worship a distorted god that provides dynamic procreative clarity: recognition that a human being is formed (or potentially formed) at the moment of conception, and that abortion and contraceptive measures are thus sinful and likely murderous.

So, if one accepts the proclamations of Jerry Falwell and Pope Pius IX, one can be certain that God explicitly forbids contraception and abortion. Therein lays the surety of Christian-based Pro-Life advocacy: the supposition that one is upholding the will of God. It doesn’t really matter that it was derived from clerical fabrication — to a true believer, it’s still the will of God.

Like its Christian counterpart, secular Pro-Life also enjoys certainty, but without recourse to the supposed will of God or the concept of ensoulment. It simply asserts that a human being is created at the moment of conception. Its immediate personhood is deemed obvious and entitled to the full recognition and protection afforded all human beings. The surety of secular Pro-Life advocacy lies in the absolute acceptance of that assertion — it’s an asserted opinion, but one accepted as fact.

The Virtue of Not Knowing

Facing the certainty held by Pro-Life advocacy, it would seem that the secular Pro-Choice voice is doubly disadvantaged. It makes no claim to the will of God in its stance and offers no precise moment of certainty as to when fetal life becomes recognized as a human being. What it does have though, is acceptance — a virtuous acceptance of apparent ambiguity. What exactly is a human being? When does the growing amalgam of human cells become a human being? Where is the transitional Rubicon that will surely be crossed? Pro-Choice feigns no precise answer, but does acknowledges the existence of that crossing. On one side are biological human cells; on the other side is a human being. Like the minority of Christians who do recognize the ambiguity of Biblical procreation guidance, Pro-Choice adherents recognize the ambiguity of fetal development. A human egg cell at the moment of conception is not seen as a human being, but nine months later a human being presents itself. Somewhere in that interlude, the Rubicon is crossed; a single cell has multiplied and grown to irrefutably become a human being.

So, where is that crossing? Any answer to that question evades universal acceptance. To extremists, the only acceptable answers are at conception or at birth. For others, it’s somewhere in between, but the whereabouts is equivocal and evades consensus — there’s no scientifically held precise moment of recognition to be had, and there’s no clear scriptural guidance to ascertain that moment. The grey area of “crossing” then is based on conjecture — admitted conjecture derived without pretense to either scientific or spiritual exactitude. It’s an ambiguity that Pro-Choice accepts as a given reality, an ambiguity that needs to be admitted when making moralistic procreation decisions.

It may seem disadvantageous to hold onto the ambiguous position that Pro-Choice accepts. Christian clerics certainly saw it that way when they replaced Biblical vagary with opinionated clarity. There’s visible irony in that artifice: The secular Pro-Choice camp now finds itself more closely aligned with the given (but vague) Biblical word of God, than does the Christian Pro-Life camp that has adopted the certainty of clerical opinion. Whatever its positional disadvantage, Pro-Choice acknowledges the nebulous nature of human development — that grey transitional area of crossing, where living human cells become irrefutably recognized as a living human being. The Pro-Choice challenge is to conservatively recognize the proximity of that crossing in making moralistic decisions that respect a woman’s right to choose and a human’s right to live.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vern Loomis.

Linda Worsley had been trying to get back to her hometown of Princeville, North Carolina, for almost six years. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew overwhelmed the banks of the Tar River and submerged the town under more than 10 feet of water, destroying Worsley’s house and nearly 500 others. Worsley fled with her family, but she returned without one: Her mother, father, and husband all passed away before they could move back. Many of her closest friends had also died or moved elsewhere during her period of exile.

Worsley and I sat on the porch of her parents’ house, less than half a mile from the banks of the Tar River, one hot afternoon in early June. I noticed the sounds of North Carolina’s swampy coastal plain region: huge wasps buzzing around us (Worsley doesn’t mind them), twittering birds darting around the porch, and a short freight train chugging past us, carrying scrap metal. Worsley, 72, mostly notices what’s gone silent. When she sits on the porch, the absence of passing cars and neighbors’ voices reminds her of how much she has lost; when she leaves the house and drives through the streets of Princeville, the rows of abandoned houses remind her of how much the small town of 2,000 has changed.

“The caring is gone,” Worsley said. “In a way I’m glad to be back here, and in a way I’m not.”

The flood caused by Hurricane Matthew was at least the 10th major flood in Princeville’s 150-year history, and the second in as many decades. It devastated the town, displacing hundreds of people and wiping away entire blocks. Since then, longtime residents like Worsley have been struggling to return and rebuild, waiting on the aid money the federal government is supposed to provide in the aftermath of natural disasters. Meanwhile, the houses they left behind have begun to rot and sag, their white slats turning fuzzy and green with mold.

The cost of repairing their damaged houses made it impossible for many of Worsley’s neighbors to return until they received federal aid, but thanks to the government’s convoluted bureaucracy, much of that money is still in limbo. Some people sold their destroyed properties for pennies on the dollar. Many just walked away, renting in nearby cities like Tarboro, Rocky Mount, and Pinetops. The storm had exiled them from the town where their families had lived since the aftermath of the Civil War, when a group of emancipated Black people founded the town on abandoned land.

“It’s God’s will, it’s not my will, and we just have to accept that,” Worsley said. “I have been gone from here up until last Monday. No way I could have foreseen that I’ll be gone that long.”

While she waited for federal officials to process her aid application in the years after Hurricane Matthew, Worsley spent tens of thousands of dollars renting a series of apartments in and around Tarboro. This spring, five years after her application was submitted, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, agreed to buy her a new manufactured home and set it up on her family property. When I visited the Worsley family’s three-acre plot in June, the home hadn’t yet arrived. Instead, a storage unit containing all of Worsley’s belongings sat next to a clearing in the yard, full of knickknacks and family heirlooms. Worsley didn’t know when she’d unpack.

Linda Worsley stands on the porch of her parents’ home in Princeville, North Carolina. Grist / Gabrielle Joseph

Linda Worsley looks through photos of her family members in Princeville, North Carolina. Grist / Gabrielle Joseph

Dozens of other places around the country have suffered the same fate as Princeville, their communities emptied out and scattered by natural disasters fueled by climate change. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, which monitors involuntary movements around the world, more than 200 flood events have displaced half a million Americans since 2008. In the aftermath of these disasters, residents in ruined towns and neighborhoods have confronted an agonizing choice: return to the place they know, or move somewhere safer?

In Princeville, what’s at stake is not just one town’s survival but a unique window into American history: Princeville is the oldest community in the United States chartered by Black people. In an effort to safeguard this history, several arms of the state and federal government have promised to invest millions of dollars to protect the town, which is still more than 90 percent Black, from floods. The wide variety of strategies deployed offer a preview of the ways the government plans on helping communities adapt to climate-fueled disasters in the future. The Army Corps of Engineers has promised to build a levee that would protect against floods brought on by storms like Hurricane Matthew, while FEMA has offered to buy out flood-prone homes and relocate residents. The state government has launched a third campaign to build a new version of Princeville on higher ground. 

But even as the government moves to protect Princeville, the hundreds of people who have already died or moved away have left holes in the town’s social fabric. Princeville is caught between rebuilding and retreating, unable to bring all its residents back but also unable to convince them all to move somewhere safer and more stable. The town’s decline is a testament to just how much history is at risk in an era of accelerating climate change, as well as an object lesson in the contradictions of climate adaptation. Disasters like those brought by Hurricane Matthew don’t lead to complete rebuilds or complete retreats. Instead they condemn towns like Princeville to a kind of indefinite limbo, trapping them between the future and the past.

In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, millions of formerly enslaved Americans found themselves in a world that was profoundly changed. The Union’s 1865 victory and the passage of the Constitution’s 13th Amendment had brought an end to chattel slavery and thrown the South’s plantation economy into turmoil. But as efforts to redistribute Southern land to Black Americans soon stalled out, most stayed within a few miles of the estates where they had once been in bondage.

In the heart of North Carolina’s plantation country, a group of these freedmen congregated on the banks of the sluggish Tar River after the war, forming a settlement across the river from the town of Tarboro. At first the freedmen had no legal right to the Edgecombe County tract they were living on, but the land was too flood-prone to support cotton, so the white planters who owned it eventually sold it off to them at cut-rate prices. By 1880, the settlement boasted around 400 residents, many of whom worked as day laborers, laundresses, or in other occupations that kept them “only a step away from slavery,” in the words of North Carolina State University historian Joe Mobley. But there were also blacksmiths, farmers, teachers, and two local leaders who were among the state’s earliest Black legislators.

It was around that time that residents began campaigning to incorporate an independent town named after one of its founders, a carpenter named Turner Prince. When the state legislature formally recognized Princeville in 1885, it became the first municipality in the postbellum United States to be chartered by formerly enslaved people.

From the beginning, Princeville’s fortunes were intertwined with the caprices of the Tar River, which flooded the town every few years. Floodwaters would seep through pipes, contaminating drinking water, and the puddles that accreted by the banks of the river attracted hordes of mosquitoes. When the Tar crested its banks, residents would watch their homes and stores wash away. Not even those that were built on stilts were safe. A local legend holds that during the great flood of 1919, a less-than-honorable mayor was seen fleeing downriver on a rowboat, clutching a chest full of money purloined from the town treasury.

In 1958, 75 years after its founding, Princeville was still vulnerable to every flood event. After the town was submerged for the eighth time in its short history that year, local leaders began a concerted and ultimately successful campaign to lobby the federal Army Corps of Engineers to build a levee along the Tar River.

When the Corps completed the levee in 1967, it was as though the town had been reborn. The levee, a grassy rampart that stretched three miles along the river bank, rose a steep 37 feet at the water’s edge and sloped gently back down toward the town settlement. It was almost unthinkable that the water would ever rise high enough to flow over the rampart. An entire generation of residents grew up without fear of flooding, and dozens of businesses sprung up, many of them owned by locals. There were convenience stores, mills, a blacksmith, an auto shop, and a psychic by the name of Madam Rose. 

“We were a very small town, but it was quite serene,” recalled Delores Porter, who grew up just off Main Street, near the spot where Princeville was founded. “We didn’t have to worry about being worried. We could keep our doors unlocked at all times, and we just had fun, and you knew everybody. I always say that we were poor, but we didn’t know we were poor.”

The peace was not to last. Princeville’s decades-long reprieve from flooding came to an abrupt end in September 1999, when Hurricane Floyd made landfall in North Carolina as a Category 3 storm. Though the levee was built to withstand even strong hurricanes like Floyd, the timing could not have been worse. Ten days earlier, the smaller Hurricane Dennis had passed over North Carolina not once but twice, soaking the ground and raising the water level in rivers and lakes. The rainfall from Floyd swelled the Tar River to almost 42 feet above its normal flow, high enough to overtop the levee.

The residents of Princeville rushed to fortify the Army Corps levee with makeshift stacks of sandbags, to no avail: The floodwaters soon spilled over and inundated the town, pooling in the low-lying basin of land. When the flood reached its peak, only the treetops were visible above the water, along with a few church steeples. The water knocked down rows of brick houses along Main Street, destabilized the Reconstruction-era town hall, and squished dozens of mobile homes like soda cans. (Madame Rose’s house also flooded, casting doubt on her psychic powers.)

Within days, the town’s plight attracted national attention. Emergency response teams from the county, state, and federal government arrived, along with then-Congresswoman Eva Clayton, then-Governor Jim Hunt, and civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. ​​Prince and Queen Latifah sent donations. Even President Bill Clinton turned up in town, later signing an executive order to assist Princeville’s recovery.

Before the recovery could start, though, Princeville had to make a choice. FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers had approached the town’s mayor, Delia Perkins, with two contradictory offers. The Corps offered to fortify its levee, raising the height of its walls and fixing flaws in the old structure, such as a divot by the railroad tracks where water could rush through. At the same time, FEMA offered to buy out a large share of the homes in Princeville, giving residents the resources to move somewhere safer while simultaneously depopulating the town. Perkins and her colleagues on the town board could accept one offer or the other, but not both.

This was thanks to a Reagan-era regulation that required federal agencies like the Corps to conduct cost-benefit analysis for every project, forcing officials to prove that the financial upside of a project outweighed what it would cost. If FEMA bought out the town’s residents, there would be so few houses left that the Corps would not be able to justify building a levee. The federal government could only give so much money to an impoverished town like Princeville, where the median household income today is still around $33,000, less than half the national figure. 

The four-member town board soon deadlocked on which offer to take, with two members arguing that residents deserved the chance to move somewhere safer and the other two arguing that it was wrong to give up on Princeville’s legacy. Mayor Perkins held the tie-breaking vote, and she had been opposed to buyouts from the beginning. Princeville would stay put.

“I did not think the buyout was a good idea,” Perkins told me. “Participating in the buyout would mean leaving all our history behind.”

So the displaced residents of Princeville moved back, reassured by the Army Corps’ promise to repair the levee. FEMA distributed aid and helped rebuild homes, but it didn’t buy anyone out. Some of those who were more concerned about flooding shuffled away from the historic center to the outskirts of town, where the housing stock was newer and less vulnerable, while others erected new brick houses and trailer homes on land that had just flooded. Slowly, life trickled back into Princeville. Some of the businesses that shuttered after the storm never reopened, but almost everyone returned. Most people weren’t concerned about the next flood: Experts had said that Hurricane Floyd was a hundred-year storm, the kind that hits just once a century, and the Army Corps had vowed to start work on the new levee within a few years.

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Neither of those assumptions turned out to be true. As the years passed, the Corps made little progress on the levee project, and its communications to Princeville’s leaders became less frequent. Princeville went through several mayors and city managers over the same period, and some of the new leaders neglected to pursue the levee repairs. The result was that it took more than a decade for the Corps to identify a few viable options for repairing the levee, and even longer to actually begin conducting engineering studies for the structure. (In response to questions from Grist, a spokesperson for the Army Corps of Engineers attributed the delays to the difficulty of designing a project that met federal cost-benefit regulations.)

In the spring of 2016, more than 15 years after Hurricane Floyd, the Army Corps of Engineers returned to Princeville to present residents with its final levee study. The results were alarming: Not only was the previous levee weaker than the Corps had thought, but it also contained numerous structural defects that would render Princeville vulnerable even to smaller storms than Floyd. The town needed a brand-new levee. Without it, the report said, “each occurrence of flooding would bring another round of suffering and hardship to the community.” 

That prophecy would be fulfilled far sooner than anyone thought.

Six months later, Linda Worsley was at home cooking a pot of pig’s feet. Hurricane Matthew had just passed over North Carolina, but it hadn’t caused any significant damage to Princeville, so Worsley was resting easy. Shortly after nightfall, though, she got a phone call from her mother, who sounded frantic. She told Worsley that the Tar River was going to crest its banks and breach the town levee again, just like it had during Hurricane Floyd 17 years earlier. Worsley looked outside. Sure enough, there was already water rising through a ditch in her yard. She showed her husband, who said it wasn’t worth worrying about: Floyd had been a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Worsley was still scarred from her experience escaping Princeville during the last flood and wasn’t going to take any chances. She left the house and drove across the river to Tarboro, where she booked a room at the Quality Inn just to be safe. Her husband stayed at home to finish cooking, and by the next morning the floodwaters had reached the Worsleys’ doorstep, making it impossible for him to drive out. He climbed up to the roof of the house and hollered until some neighbors who ran an auto body shop approached the area in a cherry-picker truck and scooped him off the roof.

To many people in Princeville, it seemed like history was repeating itself. Meteorologists had called Hurricane Floyd a “100-year storm,” which made it sound like it would only happen once in a lifetime, but in fact the term only meant that the storm had about a 1 percent chance of happening each year. Matthew was another 100-year storm in less than 20 years. This time, instead of overtopping the levee, the floodwaters rushed in through a gap where the railroad tracks went through, sweeping away Worsley’s home and dozens of others. The houses that remained were so sodden and moldy they could barely stand up. In the weeks that followed, the town’s residents scattered in all directions, renting rooms in Tarboro or taking up residence in trailer parks around the county. Some moved in with relatives farther away in larger cities like Fayetteville and Raleigh.

“The first time, I could not believe it. It was like something out of a movie,” Worsley said of living through Hurricanes Floyd and Matthew. “The second time I said, ‘Well, what will be will be.’” People in Princeville had told themselves that another storm like Floyd was impossible, but in fact such monster hurricanes are becoming more common in an era of accelerating climate change. As the ocean warms, it provides more fuel for tropical cyclones as they barrel toward the mainland United States, helping storms like Matthew gather strength faster and maintain that strength longer after they make landfall. Warmer air can also retain more moisture, which makes rainstorms even wetter. Princeville had always struggled against the river, but these two climatic shifts had helped to make devastating floods much more likely.

After Matthew, Princeville’s people were again presented with a choice to stay put or leave, this time with the knowledge that storms like Floyd could come more than once in a lifetime. The Army Corps had just completed its plan for a new levee to protect Princeville from more rounds of suffering, and the only remaining barrier to building it was securing funding from Congress. No one knew how long that would take. At the same time, FEMA was offering millions of dollars in recovery money, and representatives from the federal and state governments were urging the town’s leaders to consider buyouts.

Bobbie Jones had been elected mayor two years before Matthew hit. A schoolteacher who had been born in Princeville but spent most of his adulthood elsewhere, Jones moved back after Floyd to help revitalize the town. He opposed buyouts, and in his early conversations with FEMA officials he insisted that his friends and neighbors wouldn’t take them. They would take money to rebuild destroyed homes, or to elevate homes off the ground, but not to leave.

“I’m totally anti-buyout because of the significance of the town of Princeville,” Jones told me, ”and because we’re already operating on a small budget of less than a million dollars. Every time you take away a home and you can’t replace it with a home, that tax base decreases.”

After Hurricane Matthew struck in 2016, though, the board overruled Jones, voting to allow residents to decide for themselves whether they’d take a buyout. The experience of a second flood had shown the board members that the risks facing Princeville were far greater than they had thought. They felt an obligation to let people leave if they wanted to. A few months later, the state government pitched the town on a second buyout program that would target a specific area around Princeville’s historic main center, the area that faced the greatest danger from floods. Most residents felt the same way as Jones and wanted to return to their homes if possible, but a few dozen residents enrolled in the state or FEMA buyouts. It seemed like Princeville’s social ties were finally starting to fray.

At the same time, the state government approached Princeville about yet another adaptation project, one that would allow the town to move to higher ground in a more concentrated way. The state would purchase a 53-acre tract of vacant land near housing on the outskirts of town. Essential town services like the fire station would be relocated to the new tract, and the state would also help build a few new affordable housing units. The idea was to relocate Princeville entirely out of harm’s way, but Jones managed to negotiate something different: The state would help build the new subdivision for Princeville, but the town’s longtime residents would all stay put, and the town hall would be rebuilt on the original historic land as well. A few years later, the state bought another 88-acre tract and sketched out a mixed-use housing development for that land, and Princeville received another million dollars from FEMA to help build it. Despite Jones’s insistence that Princeville is not moving, FEMA’s grant paperwork refers to the project as a “relocation.”

“The vision we have is for visitors to come in to see the historical area, but also be able to spend dollars and cents in the new commercial area,” Jones told me. “We just don’t want to recover. We want to flourish.”

Each one of these adaptation actions made sense on its own, but the big picture revealed contradictions. FEMA had doled out grant money to rebuild homes, but it was also funding buyouts to help people leave. The state of North Carolina was doing the same thing, even as money from another federal grant program was paying to help the town move to higher ground. Then, in 2020 Congress gave money to the Army Corps to build a new levee and protect the town’s core, even though other government agencies were working to depopulate that area. The federal officials who funded these various projects were all trying to respond to Princeville’s needs, but different residents had different visions for the future — some wanted to stay, some wanted to leave, some wanted to shift to higher ground, and still others were just trying to make ends meet. 

The federal and state governments had the money and the will to save Princeville, but no one agreed on how to save it. Did saving the town mean fortifying the land that Turner Prince and his fellow freedmen had settled, or did it mean giving vulnerable residents a chance to move somewhere else? And who got to decide which path the town took?

“After Floyd, it was seen much more as ‘one or the other’ between the [levee] and the buyouts, but the situation is a little bit more complicated this time around,” said Amanda Martin, the chief resilience officer in the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, who has led the state’s recovery efforts in Princeville. According to Martin, the fragmented nature of the disaster recovery system has made it impossible to coordinate a unified response to Hurricane Matthew — even now, six years after the fact. The result is that Princeville has become the rope in a game of tug-of-war, with federal and state agencies pulling the town in different directions.

“These decisions are being made by so many different people, with so many different funding sources,” Martin said. ”We don’t have the tools or the framework to make them as interdependent kinds of decisions. No one’s able to make a decision that’s informed by anything other than what they have right in front of them.”

By the time the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Matthew comes around next month, Linda Worsley will be living in her own home in Princeville again, having finally reached the end of her road to recovery. Her new manufactured home sits nine feet off the ground on wooden pilings, a few feet higher than the floodwaters from Floyd and Matthew.

Princeville itself still has a long way to go. As another hurricane season reaches its peak, the town is more vulnerable than ever. The Army Corps of Engineers still has not begun construction on the new levee. Corps officials discovered last year that their proposed design would push water toward Tarboro in the event of a major flood. The agency went back to the drawing board and expects to present Princeville officials with a new plan next month.

The Corps declined to provide Grist with an updated timeline for the levee’s completion but noted that, “due to a variety of factors like inflation and cost,” it is “unlikely” that the money appropriated by Congress would be sufficient to finish the project. “If there was a simple solution to this problem, it would have been identified by now,” said a Corps spokesperson. “We understand the frustrations.”

In June, as I drove through the streets of the town’s historic center, I found myself surrounded by an eerie silence. There were four or five houses on each block, but only one or two of them showed signs of life. The others had facades stained green with mold, or gaping holes where their doors should have been. Some homes looked like they were in good condition until I got up to the doorstep and saw sagging columns on the porch or shattered glass in the windows. On other blocks, the lots were vacant and overgrown, untouched since Hurricane Floyd more than 20 years earlier. 

A sign at the entrance to Princeville’s town hall features a picture of Jones, who was reelected mayor earlier this year, along with a caption that reads, “I could never be completely satisfied until all our citizens are back home.” The residents who own empty homes and abandoned lots, meanwhile, are still out there; indeed, many of them live just a few miles away, but the myriad delays in the recovery process have made it impossible for them to return. FEMA’s grant money first has to be disbursed to state governments, which then have to work out recovery plans with county governments, which then have to take applications from residents, which then have to go back up the paper chain so FEMA can approve them. The result is that many Princeville residents, both those who wanted to rebuild and those who wanted to take buyouts, are still waiting for their money to arrive.

Delores Porter is one such resident in exile. She spent most of her life living right off Main Street in Princeville, and she rebuilt within a year after Hurricane Floyd. But since Matthew hit, Porter has been living across the river in Tarboro, working at a Christian printing shop and driving over to check on her old property whenever she can. Porter applied for recovery funding from FEMA to rebuild her home in 2016. Because her house was in a flood zone, she could not rebuild it as it had been. Like Worsley, she would have to elevate it many feet in the air — a tough decision, given that her husband uses a wheelchair. Almost six years have passed since she first applied, but she still hasn’t received any money from FEMA. She isn’t sure she ever will and has all but given up on trying to pursue her application.

“Why should I rush to get something done and rebuild, and then there’s a flood and I lose everything?” she said. “I’m holding out as long as I can, and my land is still my land, and maybe one day I’ll make it back.” Porter is happy that Worsley returned to Princeville after so many years, but she doesn’t know if she’ll be joining her friend any time soon.

Joann Bellamy moved further away to Fayetteville, where her son lives. She applied for a buyout from a state program after Matthew, only to be told that her flooded home wasn’t in the subsection of town the state had identified for buyouts. She’s still hoping to secure one from FEMA, but she isn’t optimistic.

“They are not doing enough for the people, rebuilding folks’ houses and helping them out,” Bellamy said. “I signed up for the buyout, we did all the paperwork, they kept telling us we needed this, and we needed that, and we couldn’t get no help — we were in the flood zone, but we weren’t in the district.”

In response to questions from Grist, a FEMA spokesperson said that the agency has received around a hundred applications for buyouts and home elevations in Princeville since Hurricane Matthew. Eight buyouts have been completed, plus Worsley’s elevation. The rest of the repair projects are still pending.

Stories like Porter’s and Bellamy’s paint a grim picture of Princeville’s future, at least in its historic center. Some, like Bellamy, will continue to move away out of frustration with the bureaucratic delays. The most dedicated — and the luckiest — may follow in Worsley’s footsteps and return to their original homes or build new houses that are elevated off the ground. But in the absence of a new levee, the returning residents will be just as vulnerable as they were before Matthew.

To the extent that Princeville has a future, that future may be in the new elevated acreage that the federal and state governments are working to develop. In one sense, the history of the town has already seen a slow migration away from the Tar River, with new development shifting back from the levee and toward the high ground that Princeville is now building on. Worsley and Mayor Jones see this shift as a means to an end, a way of generating tax revenue to protect the old Princeville, but in another generation this new Princeville might be all that remains.

Not everyone sees this as a bad thing. The day after I visited Worsley, I took a drive around town with Calvin Adkins, a lifelong Princeville resident. Adkins has served in what seems like every aspect of local civic life: He’s been a newspaper reporter, a town clerk, a liaison for FEMA’s recovery efforts, and several other things besides. As we circled around the historic center of town, he seemed to remember who lived on every lot, whether occupied or vacant, recalling a childhood memory from just about every intersection.

Adkins grew up in the historic center of Princeville, but he moved to one of the newer subdivisions on the outskirts after Hurricane Floyd. Even there, he said, he saw some flooding during Hurricane Matthew. The flooding led him to conclude that nowhere in Princeville was safe, which is why he’s trying to get FEMA to offer him a buyout on his new house. He wants to move somewhere else in the county, leaving his hometown behind. 

“I don’t want to go through another flood. The anticipation of knowing or not knowing if it’s going to flood, it’s devastating” Adkins said. “That doesn’t take away from my love for Princeville. I love Princeville, but I gotta love me better.”

Adkins isn’t holding out hope that the long-promised levee can save Princeville. He understands why people like Worsley and Jones want to stay, but he doesn’t think it’ll ever be safe. The past might have limited Princeville’s founders to dangerous, low-lying land that white planters did not want, but, as Adkins sees it, the future is on higher ground.

“What do you think Turner Prince would do?” he asked. “Do you think Turner Prince would allow his people to stay in a flooded area, given the chance to move? My answer would be no. He’d say, ‘As sacred as those grounds are, we can’t stay here.’”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Higher Ground on Sep 20, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Paul Rogers.

The upcoming feature-length movie, On Sacred Ground, opts for none of these. Rather, it follows the story of a (white) journalist and a (white) oil company executive who “find themselves on opposite sides of the fight” during the construction of the contentious pipeline. As for the Indigenous activists who led the actual protest effort on the North Dakota reservation, their narratives are shunted to the background in order to allow the main characters to plumb the depths of white guilt. 

On Sacred Ground is hardly the first film to focus on Standing Rock. There have been some documentaries on the protests: Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, co-directed by Myron Dewey, for example. The 2017 Vice television series, Rise, included two full-length episodes, Sacred Water and Red Power, End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock. There was also Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story. But to date, there have been surprisingly few “major” works on the subject, and arguably little self-reflection as a nation. This, despite an ever-growing chorus of voices demanding clean water, Indigenous stewardship of natural resources, and climate action — all central themes of the climate crisis, magnified through the actions of Indigenous people at Standing Rock.

On Sacred Ground touches on these ideas, but because the story is told from the white perspective, the needs of white characters and narratives inevitably supersede those of Indigenous stakeholders. How does one even begin to understand the lessons of NODAPL in a film set during the 2016 protests when the main protagonists are white people? Given the explosion of Indigenous-made television and film production occurring at multiple levels of the entertainment industry, On Sacred Ground decision’s to stick with a colonial-first gaze is, at best, puzzling, and, at worst, insulting.  One must ask why filmmakers did not read the room.

The set-up is this: Daniel, is a burnt-out journalist dealing with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experience as a reporter covering the war in Iraq. He sleepwalks through his days in Lancaster, Ohio, struggling to fit in with those around him. Played lethargically by William Mapother, Daniel is distant, and inattentive to his wife, Julie, who is expecting a baby. He drives a beat-up Ford and lives in a modest house (because he’s a journalist, it’s safe to say he’s not drowning in riches). 

Then comes a phone call from a fancy editor in Houston, played by Frances Fisher. She tells him she spotted his talent based on his previous work and wants to assign him to a story on the Standing Rock for the (fictional) Houston Daily. In reality, Fisher has scouted and recruited Daniel based on his low credit score (438), the knowledge that his last car was repossessed, and the fact that he is a Republican. The paper has oil and gas funding and a deep research budget, and Fisher figures that she can pressure Daniel to write an oil-friendly piece on the anti-pipeline protests. 

Thankful for the employment, Daniel throws himself into his new assignment at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He’s doing it for the money, to be sure, but it’s clear he’s also seeking some sort of clarity in his life – what exactly that might be, he doesn’t appear to know. 

Once at Standing Rock, the plot gets pretty predictable. Daniel meets a sleazy intermediary tasked with guiding him to write that big, oil-friendly story. Somehow, Mariel Hemingway gets mixed into the narrative as a frontline activist, as does Irene Bedard, who plays a matriarchal-type activist named Mary Singing Crow. Daniel gets a crash course on how to act at the makeshift camp and becomes gradually aware of the significance of the story he’s writing and the nuance it demands. Needless to say, the story he discovers is not as oil-friendly as his employer’s funders would have him believe.

Films like On Sacred Ground mean well, and they’ve meant well for a while. I’m reminded of the well-intentioned 2017 film Neither Wolf Nor Dog, where the white protagonist spends the entire run time grimacing after learning the “real” story of how America has treated Indigenous people — a revelation that, when presented to Indigenous viewers or individuals with even a modicum of education, elicits a reaction of “duh?” Here, William Mapother’s Daniel does much of the same, standing in for white America, carrying a look of confusion and pain throughout nearly the entirety of the movie. 

Characters like Daniel are designed as stand-ins for WHITE GUILT. Ostensibly, they shoulder some of the heavy weight of America’s historic and ongoing human rights abuses and responsibility for the crushing climate crisis, but that form of atonement leaves little space for nuance when the narrative favors didacticism over true representation. Many viewers may be on board with the idea that the United States has an unhealthy love for oil, but do we need another film about how white people feel guilty about it — especially one set at one of the most important Indigenous events in recent history, at a place where the images of resistance are still seared into our collective memory? Can a film about Standing Rock without Indigenous people at the forefront succeed on any level? And perhaps most importantly, can white people make films like this and not make it about themselves? Of course not. 

While co-writers and directors Joshua and Rebecca Harrel Tickell have crafted a story about the price we pay for oil, it unfortunately relies on tired tropes of white guilt and white redemption, retreading that old story we’ve seen so many times before where a white guy is thrown into an “exotic” situation and with the help of ancient Indigenous teachings, goes “off the reservation,” has an epiphany, and finds his truth. In fact, at one point of the film, Frances Fisher’s character actually yells to David Arquette’s Elliot: “He’s gone off the reservation!” The line was so predictable, I was able to say it at the same time she did even on first viewing. I may or may not have howled in amusement. 

In the end, the film leans back on the historical record: The Indian activists get arrested, their teepees are burned down, and a lone tear falls down an Indian’s face as they watch the destruction happen. Daniel, meanwhile, watches sadly on his laptop from the comfort of his own home, thus ending his journey. It feels condescending to see the Indians fight valiantly and get punished for it while Daniel gets to go back to his family, file a story about it, and cash a check.

I know I’d rather see other takes on the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the things that occurred there: the love, the loss, the challenges, the inspiration. But I want to see Indigenous people, the ones who took the journey there, tell these stories. I personally know plenty of people who went to Standing Rock in the fight for clean water. And unlike Daniel, once I close my laptop, I know they still exist. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In ‘On Sacred Ground,’ the sound of white guilt drowns out the drama of Standing Rock on Aug 25, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jason Asenap.

The upcoming feature-length movie, On Sacred Ground, opts for none of these. Rather, it follows the story of a (white) journalist and a (white) oil company executive who “find themselves on opposite sides of the fight” during the construction of the contentious pipeline. As for the Indigenous activists who led the actual protest effort on the North Dakota reservation, their narratives are shunted to the background in order to allow the main characters to plumb the depths of white guilt. 

On Sacred Ground is hardly the first film to focus on Standing Rock. There have been some documentaries on the protests: Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, co-directed by Myron Dewey, for example. The 2017 Vice television series, Rise, included two full-length episodes, Sacred Water and Red Power, End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock. There was also Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story. But to date, there have been surprisingly few “major” works on the subject, and arguably little self-reflection as a nation. This, despite an ever-growing chorus of voices demanding clean water, Indigenous stewardship of natural resources, and climate action — all central themes of the climate crisis, magnified through the actions of Indigenous people at Standing Rock.

On Sacred Ground touches on these ideas, but because the story is told from the white perspective, the needs of white characters and narratives inevitably supersede those of Indigenous stakeholders. How does one even begin to understand the lessons of NODAPL in a film set during the 2016 protests when the main protagonists are white people? Given the explosion of Indigenous-made television and film production occurring at multiple levels of the entertainment industry, On Sacred Ground decision’s to stick with a colonial-first gaze is, at best, puzzling, and, at worst, insulting.  One must ask why filmmakers did not read the room.

The set-up is this: Daniel, is a burnt-out journalist dealing with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experience as a reporter covering the war in Iraq. He sleepwalks through his days in Lancaster, Ohio, struggling to fit in with those around him. Played lethargically by William Mapother, Daniel is distant, and inattentive to his wife, Julie, who is expecting a baby. He drives a beat-up Ford and lives in a modest house (because he’s a journalist, it’s safe to say he’s not drowning in riches). 

Then comes a phone call from a fancy editor in Houston, played by Frances Fisher. She tells him she spotted his talent based on his previous work and wants to assign him to a story on the Standing Rock for the (fictional) Houston Daily. In reality, Fisher has scouted and recruited Daniel based on his low credit score (438), the knowledge that his last car was repossessed, and the fact that he is a Republican. The paper has oil and gas funding and a deep research budget, and Fisher figures that she can pressure Daniel to write an oil-friendly piece on the anti-pipeline protests. 

Thankful for the employment, Daniel throws himself into his new assignment at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He’s doing it for the money, to be sure, but it’s clear he’s also seeking some sort of clarity in his life – what exactly that might be, he doesn’t appear to know. 

Once at Standing Rock, the plot gets pretty predictable. Daniel meets a sleazy intermediary tasked with guiding him to write that big, oil-friendly story. Somehow, Mariel Hemingway gets mixed into the narrative as a frontline activist, as does Irene Bedard, who plays a matriarchal-type activist named Mary Singing Crow. Daniel gets a crash course on how to act at the makeshift camp and becomes gradually aware of the significance of the story he’s writing and the nuance it demands. Needless to say, the story he discovers is not as oil-friendly as his employer’s funders would have him believe.

Films like On Sacred Ground mean well, and they’ve meant well for a while. I’m reminded of the well-intentioned 2017 film Neither Wolf Nor Dog, where the white protagonist spends the entire run time grimacing after learning the “real” story of how America has treated Indigenous people — a revelation that, when presented to Indigenous viewers or individuals with even a modicum of education, elicits a reaction of “duh?” Here, William Mapother’s Daniel does much of the same, standing in for white America, carrying a look of confusion and pain throughout nearly the entirety of the movie. 

Characters like Daniel are designed as stand-ins for WHITE GUILT. Ostensibly, they shoulder some of the heavy weight of America’s historic and ongoing human rights abuses and responsibility for the crushing climate crisis, but that form of atonement leaves little space for nuance when the narrative favors didacticism over true representation. Many viewers may be on board with the idea that the United States has an unhealthy love for oil, but do we need another film about how white people feel guilty about it — especially one set at one of the most important Indigenous events in recent history, at a place where the images of resistance are still seared into our collective memory? Can a film about Standing Rock without Indigenous people at the forefront succeed on any level? And perhaps most importantly, can white people make films like this and not make it about themselves? Of course not. 

While co-writers and directors Joshua and Rebecca Harrel Tickell have crafted a story about the price we pay for oil, it unfortunately relies on tired tropes of white guilt and white redemption, retreading that old story we’ve seen so many times before where a white guy is thrown into an “exotic” situation and with the help of ancient Indigenous teachings, goes “off the reservation,” has an epiphany, and finds his truth. In fact, at one point of the film, Frances Fisher’s character actually yells to David Arquette’s Elliot: “He’s gone off the reservation!” The line was so predictable, I was able to say it at the same time she did even on first viewing. I may or may not have howled in amusement. 

In the end, the film leans back on the historical record: The Indian activists get arrested, their teepees are burned down, and a lone tear falls down an Indian’s face as they watch the destruction happen. Daniel, meanwhile, watches sadly on his laptop from the comfort of his own home, thus ending his journey. It feels condescending to see the Indians fight valiantly and get punished for it while Daniel gets to go back to his family, file a story about it, and cash a check.

I know I’d rather see other takes on the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the things that occurred there: the love, the loss, the challenges, the inspiration. But I want to see Indigenous people, the ones who took the journey there, tell these stories. I personally know plenty of people who went to Standing Rock in the fight for clean water. And unlike Daniel, once I close my laptop, I know they still exist. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In ‘On Sacred Ground,’ the sound of white guilt drowns out the drama of Standing Rock on Aug 25, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jason Asenap.

The upcoming feature-length movie, On Sacred Ground, opts for none of these. Rather, it follows the story of a (white) journalist and a (white) oil company executive who “find themselves on opposite sides of the fight” during the construction of the contentious pipeline. As for the Indigenous activists who led the actual protest effort on the North Dakota reservation, their narratives are shunted to the background in order to allow the main characters to plumb the depths of white guilt. 

On Sacred Ground is hardly the first film to focus on Standing Rock. There have been some documentaries on the protests: Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, co-directed by Myron Dewey, for example. The 2017 Vice television series, Rise, included two full-length episodes, Sacred Water and Red Power, End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock. There was also Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story. But to date, there have been surprisingly few “major” works on the subject, and arguably little self-reflection as a nation. This, despite an ever-growing chorus of voices demanding clean water, Indigenous stewardship of natural resources, and climate action — all central themes of the climate crisis, magnified through the actions of Indigenous people at Standing Rock.

On Sacred Ground touches on these ideas, but because the story is told from the white perspective, the needs of white characters and narratives inevitably supersede those of Indigenous stakeholders. How does one even begin to understand the lessons of NODAPL in a film set during the 2016 protests when the main protagonists are white people? Given the explosion of Indigenous-made television and film production occurring at multiple levels of the entertainment industry, On Sacred Ground decision’s to stick with a colonial-first gaze is, at best, puzzling, and, at worst, insulting.  One must ask why filmmakers did not read the room.

The set-up is this: Daniel, is a burnt-out journalist dealing with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experience as a reporter covering the war in Iraq. He sleepwalks through his days in Lancaster, Ohio, struggling to fit in with those around him. Played lethargically by William Mapother, Daniel is distant, and inattentive to his wife, Julie, who is expecting a baby. He drives a beat-up Ford and lives in a modest house (because he’s a journalist, it’s safe to say he’s not drowning in riches). 

Then comes a phone call from a fancy editor in Houston, played by Frances Fisher. She tells him she spotted his talent based on his previous work and wants to assign him to a story on the Standing Rock for the (fictional) Houston Daily. In reality, Fisher has scouted and recruited Daniel based on his low credit score (438), the knowledge that his last car was repossessed, and the fact that he is a Republican. The paper has oil and gas funding and a deep research budget, and Fisher figures that she can pressure Daniel to write an oil-friendly piece on the anti-pipeline protests. 

Thankful for the employment, Daniel throws himself into his new assignment at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He’s doing it for the money, to be sure, but it’s clear he’s also seeking some sort of clarity in his life – what exactly that might be, he doesn’t appear to know. 

Once at Standing Rock, the plot gets pretty predictable. Daniel meets a sleazy intermediary tasked with guiding him to write that big, oil-friendly story. Somehow, Mariel Hemingway gets mixed into the narrative as a frontline activist, as does Irene Bedard, who plays a matriarchal-type activist named Mary Singing Crow. Daniel gets a crash course on how to act at the makeshift camp and becomes gradually aware of the significance of the story he’s writing and the nuance it demands. Needless to say, the story he discovers is not as oil-friendly as his employer’s funders would have him believe.

Films like On Sacred Ground mean well, and they’ve meant well for a while. I’m reminded of the well-intentioned 2017 film Neither Wolf Nor Dog, where the white protagonist spends the entire run time grimacing after learning the “real” story of how America has treated Indigenous people — a revelation that, when presented to Indigenous viewers or individuals with even a modicum of education, elicits a reaction of “duh?” Here, William Mapother’s Daniel does much of the same, standing in for white America, carrying a look of confusion and pain throughout nearly the entirety of the movie. 

Characters like Daniel are designed as stand-ins for WHITE GUILT. Ostensibly, they shoulder some of the heavy weight of America’s historic and ongoing human rights abuses and responsibility for the crushing climate crisis, but that form of atonement leaves little space for nuance when the narrative favors didacticism over true representation. Many viewers may be on board with the idea that the United States has an unhealthy love for oil, but do we need another film about how white people feel guilty about it — especially one set at one of the most important Indigenous events in recent history, at a place where the images of resistance are still seared into our collective memory? Can a film about Standing Rock without Indigenous people at the forefront succeed on any level? And perhaps most importantly, can white people make films like this and not make it about themselves? Of course not. 

While co-writers and directors Joshua and Rebecca Harrel Tickell have crafted a story about the price we pay for oil, it unfortunately relies on tired tropes of white guilt and white redemption, retreading that old story we’ve seen so many times before where a white guy is thrown into an “exotic” situation and with the help of ancient Indigenous teachings, goes “off the reservation,” has an epiphany, and finds his truth. In fact, at one point of the film, Frances Fisher’s character actually yells to David Arquette’s Elliot: “He’s gone off the reservation!” The line was so predictable, I was able to say it at the same time she did even on first viewing. I may or may not have howled in amusement. 

In the end, the film leans back on the historical record: The Indian activists get arrested, their teepees are burned down, and a lone tear falls down an Indian’s face as they watch the destruction happen. Daniel, meanwhile, watches sadly on his laptop from the comfort of his own home, thus ending his journey. It feels condescending to see the Indians fight valiantly and get punished for it while Daniel gets to go back to his family, file a story about it, and cash a check.

I know I’d rather see other takes on the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the things that occurred there: the love, the loss, the challenges, the inspiration. But I want to see Indigenous people, the ones who took the journey there, tell these stories. I personally know plenty of people who went to Standing Rock in the fight for clean water. And unlike Daniel, once I close my laptop, I know they still exist. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In ‘On Sacred Ground,’ the sound of white guilt drowns out the drama of Standing Rock on Aug 25, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jason Asenap.

The Meteorology and Hydrology Department of the Lao Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment predicts even more rain is in store for the region as a tropical depression is expected to cover northern Laos from Aug. 19-28.

The dams that released water are the four Nam Ou dams in Phongsaly Province and Luang Prabang Province; the Xayaburi Dam, on the Mekong mainstream in Xayaburi Province; two Nam Khan dams in Luang Prabang Province; and two Nam Lik dams in Vientiane Province.

Residents told RFA’s Lao Service that their homes, places of work and farms are now flooded. Many said they had to escape to higher ground.

“Our farm was on low ground, and our floating restaurant on the Khan River is damaged,” a resident of Samakhixay, Xeing Ngeun district, Luang Prabang province, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons, told RFA Friday.

“We’re now trying to save our livestock by moving them to higher ground. We hope that the Nam Khan dams are able to control the water soon. We don’t worry much about water from the rain, but we do worry a lot about the dams because we’re afraid they could break,” said the source.

Laos has aggressively built dozens of dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries in its controversial economic strategy to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia” by selling the generated electricity to neighboring countries. 

But villagers living near the dams say the projects have upended their lives. Many residents have had to move, often facing protracted disputes over compensation and being relocated to less fertile lands, while those left behind sometimes have to scramble for higher ground if the dams release water without prior notice. 

The Xayaburi dam’s release resulted in rising waters inundating corn fields, a resident of Pak Hung Village in the city of Xayaburi, Xayaburi province, told RFA.

“The corn fields of at least 20 families in this village near the Mekong River are under water. The current of the Mekong River is very strong,” the source said.

A resident of Feuang district, Vientiane province, told RFA on Friday that the two Nam Lik dams had begun releasing more water the day before.

“The Lik River has gone up about 50 centimeters [about 20 inches]. Up to now, our floating raft guesthouses have not been affected yet,” the Feuang district resident said.

Because the Mekong has many tributaries, a dam that releases water in one spot may force others downstream to do the same, as was the case with the Xayaburi Dam, according to an official of the  Agriculture and Forestry Department of Xayaburi Province.

“We’re monitoring the water level of the Mekong River below the Xayaburi Dam. The Nam Ou dams are still releasing water; that’s why the Xayaburi Dam must also be releasing more water too,” the official said.

Multiple sources told RFA that authorities issued safety warnings prohibiting floating guesthouses from receiving tourists, in some cases saying that the water level could increase as much as four meters. Others were concerned that the flooding could sweep away fishing boats and flood roads, isolating residents in the process. Many locals said they were packing their valuables before heading to higher ground. 

“The Ministry of Energy and Mines, the authorities of Feuang district and of our village should make sure that the warning reaches all the residents because this time of the year is the rice planting season, and many villagers stay at their farms for several months to plant rice,” a resident of Hat Don Kang Yai Village in Feuang district said.

“The authorities should also give notice several days in advance, so that the business owners have enough time to prepare,” the source said.

Official response

Government officials told RFA it is standard practice for the dams to release water in heavy rains, and that dam operators warn the authorities in advance.

“The Xayaburi Power Company wrote to us on Saturday that our department should inform all districts below the Xayaburi Dam,” an official of the Energy and Mines Department of Xayaburi province told RFA. 

“A day later, our department informed the Xayaburi Municipality, Pak Lay district and Kenthao districts and their residents to pack their valuable belongings. Based on the report from the dam, the Xayaburi Dam is releasing more water because the Nam Ou dams in Luang Prabang province and Phongsaly province are releasing more water,” he said.

“We’re gathering information about the impact and the damage caused by the flood and water discharges,” an official of the Ministry of Energy and Mines told RFA. “The water is coming from all directions, from Luang Prabang province and other northern provinces.”

Xayaburi province issued a warning on August 13 to all provincial districts about releases from the Xayaburi and Nam Ou dams.

Similar warnings were issued by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which on Tuesday warned that the Nam Lik 1 and 2 dams would release water on Thursday. The operators of the Nam Khan 2 and 3 dams warned on Tuesday that those dams would also release water on Thursday.

 Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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

Papua New Guinea’s longest serving politician and oldest member of Parliament is already getting things moving in his province a week after being sworn-in.

New Ireland Governor Sir Julius Chan, 82, is not wasting his renewed five-year mandate and has given instructions for road projects to start.

His 56-year career — including two terms as Prime Minister– spans a crucial period of the country’s history, particularly its coming of age from an Australian colony to a leading democratic nation in the South Pacific.

• READ MORE: The memoirs of Sir Julius Chan
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According to Sir Julius’ media team, work has commenced on the West Coast highway in New Ireland and aims to make it better than the East Coast highway.

In a statement, he said: “The highway must be equal if not better than the East Coast Highway. If it is not then we are wasting our time and we would not have left a mark on this place.

“You may be the last but you will be the best.”

Works Manager Solomon Pela said the West Coast would be getting K5 million (NZ$2.3 million) worth of road works done and it would be funded by the New Ireland government.

“The new highway will empower you economically, socially and dramatically change your living standards for the better.”

On top of this Sir Julius also met with Chinese Ambassador Zeng Fanhua last Thursday with discussions covering the two countries’ historical relationship, the Taiwan crisis and general development opportunities.

Thierry Lepani is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

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

The post What Happened in Kansas: Common Sense, Common Ground appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kathleen Wallace.