A Dakar court judge charged Zik Fm editor-in-chief Simon Pierre Faye with spreading false news on April 14 and released him under judicial control. On the same day, the Dakar gendarmerie questioned for several hours online broadcaster Source A TV’s journalists Omar Ndiaye and Fatima Coulibaly, and freelance news commentator Abdou Nguer, over their comments on the death of a local official. Nguer’s lawyer told local media that the gendarmes detained the journalist on false news charges related to a TikTok post that does not belong to him. The post called for an autopsy of the official. Ndiaye and Coulibaly were released without charges.

“Senegalese authorities must drop all charges against journalist Simon Pierre Faye, release news commentator Abdou Nguer, and end their judicial harassment of journalists,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa Representative. “Authorities should instead focus their efforts on advancing promised reforms to decriminalize press offenses.”

Police arrested Faye on April 10 for a post on his outlet’s Facebook page, later deleted, republishing another article on the alleged distrust of President Faye’s leadership.

Responding to a parliamentarian’s question about Faye’s detention, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said that “penal policy will now be zero tolerance” for spreading “false news.”

CPJ has documented detentions of Senegalese journalists on false news charges, an offense punishable by one to three years in prison. In his campaign, President Faye promised to replace imprisonment for press offenses with fines. 

Separately, on April 13, police and gendarmes stopped and questioned Al Jazeera Qatar journalist Nicolas Haque and his camera operator, Magali Rochat, upon their arrival in the southern Ziguinchor city, where they sought to report on the return of people displaced by the region’s conflict. The journalists were sent back to Dakar the day after, Haque told CPJ.

CPJ’s email to the government’s information and communications office was not answered.

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

On Saturday the Council of Canadians Treasurer and board member sent his PeaceQuest list an error filled, anti-Palestinian, power-serving ‘questionnaire’. As Israel’s holocaust in Gaza enters its fourteenth month, Staples published “4 ways to ‘shake off’ antisemitism claims. Can the pro-Palestinian movement take advice from Taylor Swift?” At the top of his smear against those challenging Canada’s complicity in genocide Staples quotes anti-Palestinian bigot Jim Good. A few posts below the one quoted by Staples, Good wrote on Facebook: “Return the hostages. Surrender. Recognize Israel. The only peaceful way forward. Otherwise Israel will annex Gaza. No country wants Palestinians. Don’t let them in to Canada! Everywhere they go it’s death to this, death to that. Death, death, and more death. They are insane! Anyone supporting them is a willing dupe.”

In a post just below that one, Good notes, “Fuck off with your Intifada bullshit. Hamas are like ISIS. A warped, perverted death cult. Incapable of peace. … They’d love to start a civil war, here. They hate us. They want us to die.

Hamas want it to hurt. Their hatred is that strong. They are mad. Hamas hide behind their own children, intentionally draw fire, and escape into a tunnel, leaving the families to perish. They’re convinced if they die martyrs they’ll have a great afterlife. 18 virgins or something like that.”

Alongside quoting a not-so-subtle racist expressing hate towards those being ethnically cleansed, Staples cites police and politicians’ lies sullying activists. In his genocidal apologia, the self-proclaimed “respected figure in global peace advocacy” states that “cars [were] alit by demonstrators” at the main anti-NATO protest in Montreal last week. While the police initially blamed protesters for setting fires in two cars, TVA and the Montreal Gazette subsequently reported that they backtracked after evidence emerged that tear gas canisters fired by the police were likely responsible (the fact police sent anti-war protesters to hospital is also ignored by Staples). In making his case that “the pro-Palestinian movement … can’t seem to shake off the accusation that it harbours antisemitism, or is itself antisemitic”, Staples sloppily merges two different protests. He writes that “a woman in the Montreal march was recorded giving a Hitler salute” and saying, “the final solution is coming your way”. But that incident took place a day before the anti-NATO demonstration in reaction to a small group of genocide advocates counter-protesting a large anti-holocaust rally that was part of a student strike at Concordia University. The Sieg Hitler gesture transpired as maybe 200 marchers arrived from Dawson College to the Concordia rally. Older than the largely teenage college students and walking in an oddly aggressive manner, I took note of the woman before seeing subsequent media reports of her actions. In fact, I happened to film the woman’s Sieg Hitler gesture, which appears to be prompted by a pro-genocide protester yelling something. The first part of her odd outburst — suggesting pro genocide activists are Nazis — is a damaging tactic, but not morally objectionable from my standpoint. The final solution reference is odious.

Despite losing her Second Cup franchise at the Jewish General Hospital due to her actions, the incident remains somewhat suspect. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was a plant designed to discredit a historic student strike for Palestine, which saw more than 40 student association representing 85,000 students in Quebec vote to stop classes for two days to pressure their institutions to sever all ties with Israel. Her relatively inconsequential outburst garnered as much attention as the historic student strike (Staples, for his part, mentioned her but not the strike).

As for the Friday “Block NATO” protest that led to some smashed windows, the Montreal police explicitly rejected claims of antisemitism. They neither saw anything anti-Jewish nor received any complaint to that effect. But Staples echoed Poilievre and Trudeau. (Jagmeet Singh had the good sense to stay out of it.)

At best, Staples’ argument is that if anti-genocide forces just conceded more to the genocide lobby’s antisemitism panic the movement would be more palatable to the power structure. At worst, he’s expressing power-worshipping anti-Palestinian racism under the guise of opposing antisemitism.

As part of his strategy to ‘mainstream’ the movement, Staples believes anti-holocaust activists should devote more attention to the “terrible crimes committed by Hamas on October 7”. But he omits mention of the far greater violence and oppression inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza prior to October 7, not to mention the last fourteen months of hell.

As part of centering Israeli and Jewish Canadian sensitivities, Staples wants the movement to echo the genocidal state’s atrocity propaganda, decrying that some “justify the attacks (or deny the well-documented rapes) at worst.” I invite Staples to provide his audience with the name of an Israeli woman raped during what was organized as a quick strike bid to tear down the Gaza cage on October 7.

Staples make a bizarre, paternalistic, demand of Canadians opposing their country’s complicity in a holocaust. He writes, “the movement should be clear that it seeks a truly democratic and legitimate leadership based on the values of peace and justice, not rape and murder.” Is he suggesting Canadians should decide Palestinian leadership? And isn’t it Israel that has murdered (or jailed) virtually every Palestinian leader that didn’t submit to its colonial project?

While Staples frames his missive as “advice” to help “the movement”, it doesn’t seem like he’s actively participated in the popular uprising against Canada’s role in genocide. If Staples hasn’t marched in some of the hundreds of demonstrations against the genocide he should hang his head in shame.

This isn’t the first time Staples has echoed the genocidal mainstream narrative. He’s repeatedly two-sided the holocaust against the long-oppressed Palestinians, publishing “Might pro-violence chants undermine Gaza peace rallies?” and “Israel and Hamas leaders benefiting from Gaza war” (only one side has largely been killed).

Claiming to be an important player in “global peace advocacy”, Staples joined the establishment in criticizing a historic student strike for Palestine that broadened to challenge a belligerent militarist alliance meeting in Montreal. With ‘friends’ like Staples the anti-war, anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian movements don’t need enemies.

Any progressive donating to PeaceQuest should redirect their assistance to groups actually opposing Canada’s complicity in genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Yves Engler.

Nothing is more evident of this than his treatment of New Caledonia, a Pacific French territory annexed in 1853 and assuming the title of a non-self-governing territory in 1946.  Through its tense relationship with France and the French settlers, the island territory has been beset by periodic bursts of violence and indigenous indignation.  Pro-independence parties such as L’Union Calédonienne have seen their leaders assassinated over time – Pierre Declerq and Eloi Machoro, for instance, were considered sufficiently threatening to the French status quo and duly done away with.  Kanak pro-independence activists have been butchered in such confrontations as the Hienghène massacre in December 1984, where ten were killed by French loyalists of the Lapetite and Mitride families.

As for Macron, New Caledonia was always going to feature in efforts to assert French influence in the Indo-Pacific.  In 2018, he visited the territory promising that it would be a vital part of “a broader strategy” in the region, not least to keep pace with China.  Other traditional considerations also feature.  The island is the world’s fourth ranked producer of nickel, critical for electric vehicle batteries.

In July 2023, Macron declared on a visit to the territory that the process outlined in the Nouméa Accord of 1998 had reached its terminus.  The accords, designed as a way of reaching some common ground between indigenous Kanaks and the descendants of French settlers through rééquilibrage (rebalancing), yielded three referenda on the issue of independence, all coming down in favour of the status quo. In 2018, the independence movement received 43% of the vote.  In 2020, the number had rumbled to 47%.

The last of the three, the December 2021 referendum, was a contentious one, given its boycott by the Kanak people.  The situation was aided, in large part, by the effects of Covid-19 and its general incapacitation of Kanak voters.  Any mobilisation campaign was thwarted.  A magical majority for independence was thereby avoided.  The return of 97% in favour of continued French rule, despite clearly being a distortion, became the bullying premise for concluding matters.

The process emboldened the French president, effectively abandoning a consensus in French policy stretching back to the Matignon Accords of 1988.  With the independence movement seemingly put on ice, Macron could press home his advantage through political reforms that would, for instance, unfreeze electoral rolls for May 2024 elections at the provincial and congressional level.  Doing so would enable French nationals to vote in those elections, something they were barred from doing under the Nouméa Accord.  New Caledonian parliamentarians such as Nicolas Metzdorf heartily approve the measure.

On May 13 riots broke out, claiming up to seven lives.  It has the flavour of an insurrection, one unplanned and uncoordinated by the traditional pro-independence group.  Roadblocks have been erected by the Field Action Coordination Cell (CCAT).  It had been preceded by peaceful protests in response to the deliberations of the French National Assembly regarding a constitutional arrangement that would inflate the territory’s electoral register by roughly 24,500 voters.

Much of the violence, stimulated by pressing inequalities and propelled by more youthful protestors, have caught the political establishment flatfooted. Even Kanak pro-independence leaders have urged such protestors to resist resorting to violence in favour of political discussions.  The young, it would seem, are stealing the show.

Macron, for his part, promptly dispatched over 3,000 security officers and made a rushed visit lasting a mere 18 hours, insisting that, “The return of republican order is the priority.”  Various Kanak protestors were far from impressed.  Spokesperson for the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), Jimmy Naouna, made the sensible point that, “You can’t just keep sending in troops just to quell the protests, because that is just going to lead to more protests.”  To salve the wounds, the president promised to lift the state of emergency imposed on the island to encourage dialogue between the fractious parties.

Western press outlets have often preferred to ignore the minutiae about the latest revolt, focusing instead on the fate of foreign nationals besieged by the antics of desperate savages.  Some old themes never dissipate.  “We are sheltered in place because it’s largely too dangerous to leave,” Australian Maxwell Winchester told CNN.  “We’ve had barricades, riots … shops looted, burnt to the ground.  Our suburb near us basically has nothing left.”

Winchester describes a scene of desperation, with evacuations of foreign nationals stalling because of Macron’s arrival for talks.  Food is in short supply, as are medicines.  “Other Australians stranded have had to scrounge coconuts to eat.”

René Dosière, an important figure behind the Nouméa Accord, defined the position taken by Macron with tart accuracy.  Nostalgia, in some ways even more tenacious and clinging than that of Britain, remains.  The French president had little interest in the territory beyond its standing as “a former colony”.  His was a “desire to have a territory that allows you to say, ‘The sun never sets on the French empire’.”

For the indigenous Kanak population, the matter of New Caledonia’s fate will have less to do with coconut scrounging and the sun of a stuttering empire than electoral reforms that risk extinguishing the voices of independence.

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

CPJ has learned that at least five reporters have fled their homes in Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour Feuilles neighborhood in a wave of escalating violence as gangs clashed with police to gain control over the area.

“We are watching with grave concern as the situation in Haiti reaches new levels of bloodshed,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator, in São Paulo. “We stand in solidarity with journalists working in Haiti who are covering this horrific crescendo of violence.”

CPJ has confirmed that the violence forced the following journalists to flee their homes in recent weeks and is investigating reports that at least nine other journalists fled the Carrefour Feuilles neighborhood over the weekend.

• Arnold Junior Pierre, a reporter with the local independent broadcaster Radio Télé Galaxie, told CPJ he was forced to flee with 15 relatives on August 23 after gang members invaded his neighborhood of Savane Pistache and set fire to their home.
• Jacques Desrosiers, secretary general of the Association of Haitian Journalists, told CPJ he was forced to abandon his home on August 31 after gangs entered his neighborhood.
• Judex Vélima, camera operator for the local independent broadcaster Radio Télé Espace, told CPJ he also escaped with relatives after their home was burned on August 30.
• Kenny Raynald Petitfrere, president of the Haitian Online Media Association (CMEL), fled his home after receiving death threats, the association told CPJ.
• Celou Flécher, editor-in-chief of the independent news website Le Facteur, told CPJ he was forced to evacuate his family from their home in Carrefour Feuilles on September 1.  “People are leaving with whatever belongings they can carry and their personal documents,” he told CPJ. While his house had not been burned, “most of the houses are empty. Everyone is living in terror. No one knows when the gangs will appear,” he said.

The Carrefour Feuilles district is located in the heart of the capital and is home to many journalists. Since late July, thousands of residents have fled the area after it came under assault from the powerful Grand Ravine gang led by Renel Destina, known as “Ti Lapli.”  Police are reported to have virtually abandoned the neighborhood after they also came under attack and a police substation was burned down in Savane Pistache.

“We have lived through many dangerous moments in Haiti but nothing ever like this,” CMEL general coordinator, Dieudonné Dantor St Cyr, told CPJ on Monday. “We are exposed to violence and insecurity like the rest of the population. We live among them. We are all at the mercy of the bandits,” he added.

Since Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, the country has become one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists. CPJ has documented the killings of nine journalists since 2021, with six confirmed to have been killed in connection with their work. At least six other journalists and media workers have been kidnapped this year amid an unprecedented surge in gang violence, according to CPJ research.

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

CPJ has learned that at least five reporters have fled their homes in Port-au-Prince’s Carrefour Feuilles neighborhood in a wave of escalating violence as gangs clashed with police to gain control over the area.

“We are watching with grave concern as the situation in Haiti reaches new levels of bloodshed,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator, in São Paulo. “We stand in solidarity with journalists working in Haiti who are covering this horrific crescendo of violence.”

CPJ has confirmed that the violence forced the following journalists to flee their homes in recent weeks and is investigating reports that at least nine other journalists fled the Carrefour Feuilles neighborhood over the weekend.

• Arnold Junior Pierre, a reporter with the local independent broadcaster Radio Télé Galaxie, told CPJ he was forced to flee with 15 relatives on August 23 after gang members invaded his neighborhood of Savane Pistache and set fire to their home.
• Jacques Desrosiers, secretary general of the Association of Haitian Journalists, told CPJ he was forced to abandon his home on August 31 after gangs entered his neighborhood.
• Judex Vélima, camera operator for the local independent broadcaster Radio Télé Espace, told CPJ he also escaped with relatives after their home was burned on August 30.
• Kenny Raynald Petitfrere, president of the Haitian Online Media Association (CMEL), fled his home after receiving death threats, the association told CPJ.
• Celou Flécher, editor-in-chief of the independent news website Le Facteur, told CPJ he was forced to evacuate his family from their home in Carrefour Feuilles on September 1.  “People are leaving with whatever belongings they can carry and their personal documents,” he told CPJ. While his house had not been burned, “most of the houses are empty. Everyone is living in terror. No one knows when the gangs will appear,” he said.

The Carrefour Feuilles district is located in the heart of the capital and is home to many journalists. Since late July, thousands of residents have fled the area after it came under assault from the powerful Grand Ravine gang led by Renel Destina, known as “Ti Lapli.”  Police are reported to have virtually abandoned the neighborhood after they also came under attack and a police substation was burned down in Savane Pistache.

“We have lived through many dangerous moments in Haiti but nothing ever like this,” CMEL general coordinator, Dieudonné Dantor St Cyr, told CPJ on Monday. “We are exposed to violence and insecurity like the rest of the population. We live among them. We are all at the mercy of the bandits,” he added.

Since Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021, the country has become one of the world’s most dangerous places for journalists. CPJ has documented the killings of nine journalists since 2021, with six confirmed to have been killed in connection with their work. At least six other journalists and media workers have been kidnapped this year amid an unprecedented surge in gang violence, according to CPJ research.

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

On August 23, unidentified armed individuals set fire to Pierre’s home and several other houses in the Carrefour-Feuilles neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ, and his employer, the local independent broadcaster Radio Télé Galaxie.

The journalist and his family were able to escape the home unharmed.

For the past month, thousands have fled the neighborhood amid violence by members of the Grand Ravine gang, who have injured and killed citizens, and burned and looted their homes.

“The arson attack on Haitian reporter Arnold Junior Pierre’s home illustrates the deteriorating security situation in the country, which has made it nearly impossible for journalists to work safely,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator, in São Paulo. “We are deeply concerned by the unstable conditions in Haiti and urge authorities to take control of the situation and help journalists do their work.”

Renan Hédouville, head of Haiti’s Office of the Protector of Citizens, an independent state entity, said in a statement that the situation in Pierre’s neighborhood, Carrefour Feuilles, was a “real nightmare.” He also invited police leadership “to adopt without delay, concrete measures, in order to provide immediate and proportional responses to this situation” in Carrefour Feuilles.

On Tuesday, August 29, the police substation in Savane Pistache, the area where Pierre’s family lived, was burned down. CPJ contacted national police spokesperson Gary Desrosiers via messaging app but did not receive a reply.

“I’m afraid for my life. Looking at the situation, I don’t have complete confidence in the [police],” Pierre told CPJ. He said he believed he was targeted for his work but did not know what specific coverage may have prompted the attack.

On July 31, an unknown number of hooded men beat Pierre as he covered a demonstration in the southwestern part of Port-au-Prince, the journalist told CPJ, adding that a police officer later threatened him after he took a picture, saying he would have killed the journalist if they were not from the same neighborhood. Pierre said he received medical treatment for a cut to the back of his head following the encounter but still experiences eye and head pain.

CPJ has documented an uptick in the number of journalists who have been attacked or abducted in Haiti amid the political chaos and violence following the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

 In July 2023, an arson attack destroyed the independent local station Radio Antarctique in one of the largest assaults on a town by gang members.

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

Image from Ferrovial press release, “Baylor College of Medicine Receives $162,000 Donation from Ferrovial and Webber Amid COVID-19 Crisis”

This article was written by a physician who writes using the pseudonym “A Midwestern Doctor”. Both Dr. Pierre Kory and I are fans of this work and insights, I subscribe to his substack, and you may also wish to consider subscribing to his substack (“The Forgotten Side of Medicine”), which can be found here. He requested it be published in this substack (“Who is Robert Malone”) because the general topic is aligned with prior essays which we have published regarding cyberstalking, disruptors, chaos agents, fifth generation warfare, and propaganda.

When I was in High School, I heard a quote that really stuck with me:

“Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about themselves, and small people talk about others” — John C. Maxwell.

As I went on through life, I noticed that all of my happy and successful friends freely admitted when they made mistakes and rarely disparaged others. On the other hand, my friends whose lives were perpetually a mess, tended to do the opposite and in some cases, I had dear friends who made these mistakes for decades. Yet, regardless of how bad things went for them or how close we were, rarely would they be open to receiving feedback that required them to take ownership of their situation instead of blaming others for their bad luck.

Since I often observed this phenomenon inside and outside my circle of friends, I frequently asked myself what drove people to do this. Eventually, I concluded that much of it results from a classic way humans cope with pain.

A central dogma within Chinese Medicine is that there will be pain wherever something cannot flow in a human being (e.g., a fluid or their conception of the human biological energy known as “Qi”). The phrase classically used to convey this is “Tong Ze Bu Tong. Tong Ze Bu Tong” which translates to “when open, there is no pain. When there is pain, it is not open.”

In a recent article, I put forward the thesis that the secret to emotional health is to allow your emotions to be open and able to flow (and eventually exit you) rather than being contracted and suppressed (so they remain as a pathologic force within you indefinitely). Unfortunately, this is rarely practiced as our culture actively encourages us to do the opposite because it is much easier to endlessly sell unneeded products to emotionally unhealthy people.

Note: contractions can be acute or chronic. For example, clenching your fist creates an acute contraction, while people often have muscles in their body that have chronically remained tight for such a long time that they’ve become numb. Likewise, contractions also exist in the mind and spirit (e.g., consider how often people close their minds to things that don’t sit well with them). Initially, this concept seems abstract, but once you spot it a few times, it becomes very apparent how frequently habitual contractions crop up.

Whenever a problematic contraction (e.g., a painful one) is present in the body, mind, or spirit, to resolve it, the contraction needs to open up so it can disperse. However, the innate reflex instead is typically to contract into the contraction (e.g., the classic example is someone biting down on a stick right before a painful procedure), which provides a brief alleviation of the pain before it inevitably returns.

The (unhealthy) approaches people typically use to address physical and emotional pain thus somehow contract them into their pain or disconnect them from it. Unfortunately, the greater the pain or trauma someone carries, the harder it is for the individual to not contract into their pain (which is quite tragic as it perpetually prevents them from utilizing an approach that opens their system and can resolve the underlying trauma residing within them).

Generally speaking, I find that the more one can keep their body, mind, and spirit open rather than closing it down (especially under challenging circumstances), the more successful one will be in life. Unfortunately, this becomes increasingly difficult to do as individuals carries more and more trauma or enter more and more stressful circumstances.
Note: This resistance to contraction was a common factor amongst the doctors who did the right thing throughout the pandemic and resisted following the overpowering COVID-19 narrative.

So, while they are quite challenging to deal with, I often have a great deal of compassion for individuals who continually lash out at others if I can tell they hold significant pain somewhere in their body, mind, or spirit. In turn, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen someone demonize someone else (without a good reason for doing so) as a way of contracting into their pain. I’ve even had a few cases where the individual directly admitted they were doing it to alleviate their pain temporarily and that they greatly feared a time would come when it was longer possible for them to continue lashing out at a relative who allowed them to.

In personal relationships, the best rule I’ve found to navigate this dynamic came from the book How to Be An Adult, which advised having both “Unconditional Love” and “Conditional Involvement” (meaning you can love the individual but separate yourself from them if they insist on making the relationship unhealthy). In the professional sphere, it gets a bit more challenging and complex (since you often have to be involved with those individuals), so I hesitate to try to soundbite a specific strategy.

However, I must note that in addition to alternative activist movements being comprised of the 5-10% of the population that see things for what they are (and thus dissent from the prevailing narrative), they also tend to attract individuals with habitual emotional contractions. I believe those individuals are drawn in because their self-sabotaging behaviors prevent them from succeeding within the conventional sphere resulting in the alternatives spheres being the only ones still available to them.

Thus, many within this movement have shared the observation that there are quite a few individuals within our movement who continually attack or demonize other people who I know are sincerely trying to do a good job. In almost all cases, just like my friends from childhood, I have found these people are unwilling to listen to feedback suggesting they behave differently, even when it could allow them to be much more successful in their endeavors.

Each time I go through this dynamic with someone (e.g., authors I knew from early on here) I am continually reminded of two song lyrics. One of them is from Taylor Swift:

And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off

The other is from an obscure German song about how we are continually lied to and given a false conception of reality by the ruling class:

You let it go
As if you know you are alone.

You always underrate the ability
To change the state
Of mind

And what you’ll find
Is hate so blind
It destroys every way out of here.

Note: the song is a bit weird and jarring, but it holds a special place in my heart because of how accurately it describes how we have been trained to close our hearts and minds to what is directly in front of us.

Attacking Public Figures

Because of my views on emotional contractions, I hesitate to publicly attack anyone I harbor negative feelings towards. Beyond not wanting to set a bad example, there are two specific reasons I do not do this:

•The first is that it is challenging to know with certainty what someone’s motivations are and if they are guilty of what they are accused of. I feel very strongly about upholding the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty,” Thus, I will not make an accusation unless I am relatively sure of it.

To use a contemporary example, many friends and readers have shared concerns about Dr. Malone, and I’ve looked into quite a few of them. At this point, I’ve lost count of how many were either (often nonsensical) misinterpretations of existing information or assumptions from afar about his personality that are entirely at odds with who I have found Malone to be when speaking to him directly. In many of those instances, I can see why their thought processes and emotionally biased filters of reality led them to those negative conclusions. Simultaneously, I believe those misinterpretations could have been prevented had they prioritized being “beyond a reasonable doubt” before making their accusations.

•The second is that it is seldom productive to respond to an emotional contraction with an emotional contraction (the only time this can work is when one has the strength to overpower someone else, and irrespective of what people believe, it is very rare they actually do). There are two specific reasons why doing so is counterproductive:

•If you engage an emotional contraction while contracting inside yourself, all that does is cause the other person to contract more (this is somewhat analogous to saying something which makes the other person become defensive which grinds the discussion to a halt); you can only overcome a contraction by remaining open.

•Humans (and some animals) have an animalistic instinct to interpret someone contracting (e.g., reacting to taunt) as a sign of weakness, which causes them not to take the contracting individual seriously and often to be drawn to attack them (predators instinctually seek out the weakest prey).

All of this thus begs the question—when should you denounce public figures? My view is that some, and ideally all, of the following requirements first need to be met:

•The individual is directly responsible for something that has caused significant harm.

•The individual consciously chose to make the events happen and willfully ignored warnings not to engage in their conduct.

•The individual in the present moment continues to perpetuate the harmful events.

To illustrate these points, there are many public figures I fully admit I dislike (e.g., the militant doctors who have spent years going after anyone who questions an existing narrative). However, unless these people directly challenge something I put forward, I don’t confront them—and when that happens, I try to present their argument in the best possible light before debating it rather than doing the opposite and misportraying it (which is what ideologically driven individuals typically do).

Because of this, there are a relatively small number of people I directly criticize. For example, Anthony Fauci has met the above criteria, and as I discussed in a recent article, Robert Califf, the current head of the FDA, has as well.

Peter Hotez

Peter Hotez has spent his career as one of the vaccine establishment’s leading cheerleaders, and I believe he was one of the individuals most directly responsible for the deadly censorship we saw throughout COVID-19. This is because right before COVID-19, he paved the way for it by going on a media tour to make people aware of the extreme dangers of the anti-vaccine movement and the critical need to censor them on each platform.

Note: I have long suspected (but cannot prove) his actions were part of a public relations campaign because many other things also happened at that time, Hotez used the same phrases in each media appearance (suggesting a PR company made them), and he consistently is invited to speak by major networks despite not being photogenic (the guy is a mess).

After Hotez got the mass censorship he clamored for, he then pivoted to aggressively defending the current narrative on television, frequently asserting statements with absolute certainty that were later definitively proven to be false. Following this, he then pivoted to gradually denouncing with increasing fervor anyone who questioned the narrative (i.e., Hotez’s lies), which gradually escalated to him calling for any criticism of Anthony Fauci to become a federal hate crime and for governments around the world to mobilize against anyone who did not support COVID-19 vaccines because vaccine skeptics were killing people.

Since Hotez was a clown, most of us just ignored him. However, last December, this was posted by the WHO, and we decided Hotez’s actions had reached the point we needed to do something.

“Anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally."
– @PeterHotez, Professor and Dean @BCM_TropMed, on the devastating impact of #misinformation and disinformation. pic.twitter.com/ZluiMGJ2gX

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) December 14, 2022

Note: many of Hotez’s statements in the WHO’s video were disingenuous or outright false (which in turn casts the WHO in a very bad light). Additionally, there is no way Hotez could have made this video himself, once again suggesting that this was part of a broader PR campaign.

After I saw Hotez’s call for political crackdowns, I remembered that during his 2019 media tour, Hotez had given an interview on Joe Rogan, which ended up being comical since Hotez was a mess, and unlike the rest of the media, Rogan gave Hotez a few tough questions. I felt simply letting Hotez show exactly who he was constituted the best response to his calls for political crackdowns, so I clipped their exchange and sent it to Pierre Kory. Many others felt the same way, and it immediately went viral (presently, it has 3.5 million views).

Note: in this clip and within the full interview, Hotez makes false statements, some of which his past statement demonstrated he knew were lies.

This might be my all time favorite Joe Rogan moment.

In just a few minutes, Peter Hotez inadvertently shows the world exactly what has gone wrong with our medical system and why his endless push for more vaccines will never create health. pic.twitter.com/Zye715BL0y

— Pierre Kory, MD MPA (@PierreKory) December 25, 2022

Later that day, once the clip had gone viral on Twitter, Hotez decided he needed to issue one of the few “apologies” of his career:

I then dug into Hotez’s background and learned a few noteworthy things about him:

•Because he ardently promotes vaccines and has an autistic daughter, anyone suggesting vaccines cause autism provokes profound mental and emotional contractions within him. He thus wrote a book to prove “Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism” and regularly cites it as proof vaccines don’t cause autism. I read the book and discovered not only did Hotez fail to provide any proof vaccines don’t cause autism, but he also provided a chronology of events and symptoms in his daughter identical to what many parents with autistic children have observed immediately following vaccination. That’s pretty sad but emblematic of how people like Hotez think.

•The most unbelievable passage I found in Peter Hotez’s book says a great deal about he sees himself and the world:

•Not surprisingly, I discovered that Peter Hotez has deep financial entanglements with the Gates Foundation and has received numerous large grants for vaccine development.

•Hotez is very thin-skinned. Anytime he is criticized, he frequently blames it on “antisemitism” or “anti-scientism,” he continually complains on Twitter about all the harassment he receives (which I feel is minimal relative to the inflammatory rhetoric he puts out) and he immediately blocks anyone who uses data to debunk one of his lies on Twitter.
Note: This personal weakness is something I associate with someone who follows a path they are internally conflicted with, which leads to a wide variety of contractions in the body, mind, and spirit, thereby preventing one from having the openness that could provide the internal strength to persist in the face of obstacles.

•Hotez worked very hard to brand himself as a scientific celebrity (to the point he even wrote a paper about how he’d done it) so he could be an ambassador of science. One of the most noteworthy things about the publication was Hotez emphasizing the importance of self-awareness with how you presented yourself in the public sphere—which again illustrates how distorted his view of the world is as how he presents himself publicly is often abysmal.

•In 2019, Hotez stated that the anti-vaccine lobby owns the internet and that the brave defenders of science need someone to protect the anti-vaxxer’s onslaught (see the clip for yourself).

The story of Peter Hotez is covered in more detail here:

The Forgotten Side of Medicine
Why Does Peter Hotez Think We Are Mass Murderers?

One of the most common tactics the medical industry uses to defend against the scrutiny of bad medical practices is to accuse those who question those practices (and thus make the public reluctant to receive them) of “killing their patients!” (under the logic that the treatment is so safe and effective that causing the public to avoid it equates to murd…
Read more

6 months ago · 966 likes · 1,114 comments · A Midwestern Doctor

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When I looked at Hotez’s whole life story, I genuinely felt bad for the guy and could only imagine what his childhood was like. Beyond being a mess, he struck me as someone who continually got scammed by life and might just be being controlled by his unresolved internal distress to the point he could genuinely buy into the narrative that there was an evil cabal of anti-vaccine advocates who were terrorizing Hotez and his colleagues with impunity.

However, after I posted the article, an MD (who had been in Hotez and Fauci’s world and then left it to become a whistleblower) reached out and shared that she had directly worked with Hotez and deemed him to be a sociopath.

Anti-Science Violence

Recently Tucker Carlson aired the second episode of his widely viewed show on Twitter. A key point he made was how problematic nebulously defined crimes are as they undermine the fundamental rule of law our society depends upon (where you know what is illegal and what crime you are being charged with) and thereby leave everyone in a perpetual state of terror because they might accidentally break that unwritten rule.

These “crimes” are commonly created by the media relentlessly promoting an emotional charge to a word. Eventually, through doing this, anything associated with the word becomes “bad” solely based on the alleged association, which, in turn, becomes the means through which political opponents can be targeted as needed. This becomes particularly problematic because once that emotional gestalt is associated with the trigger word, the public’s filters become primed to associate everything with the evils of that trigger word (regardless of if it is or is not related) and then zealously move to enforce its de-facto law upon the entire population.

Peter Hotez’s key talking point has been to link everything he disagrees with (e.g., anything that questioned the scientifically flawed pandemic narrative) to being “anti-science” and to link “anti-science” to every other bad thing in the world (e.g., the far right). For the last few months, his focus has been promoting his upcoming book The Deadly Rise of Anti-science: A Scientist’s Warning, which in its brief Amazon description, concisely portrays Hotez’s distorted view of reality:

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one renowned scientist, in his famous bowtie, appeared daily on major news networks such as MSNBC, NPR, the BBC, and others. Dr. Peter J. Hotez often went without sleep, working around the clock to develop a nonprofit COVID-19 vaccine and to keep the public informed. During that time, he was one of the most trusted voices on the pandemic and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his selfless work. He also became one of the main targets of anti-science rhetoric that gained traction through conservative news media.

In this eyewitness story of how the anti-vaccine movement grew into a dangerous and prominent anti-science element in American politics, Hotez describes the devastating impacts it has had on Americans’ health and lives. As a scientist who has endured antagonism from anti-vaxxers and been at the forefront of both essential scientific discovery and advocacy, Hotez is uniquely qualified to tell this story. By weaving his personal experiences together with information on how the anti-vaccine movement became a tool of far-right political figures around the world, Hotez opens readers’ eyes to the dangers of anti-science. He explains how anti-science became a major societal and lethal force: in the first years of the pandemic, more than 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly died despite the widespread availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Even as he paints a picture of the world under a shadow of aggressive ignorance, Hotez demonstrates his innate optimism, offering solutions for how to combat science denial and save lives in the process.

All of this thus raises a simple question. What exactly is “anti-science?”

I’ve spent a while looking for an answer to this, and as best as I can tell (I admit I have not read all of his papers or seen all his interviews), Hotez never defines it. Rather, as is seen in many other PR campaign who just repeats the word in a charged manner over and over with as many negative associations as possible to demonize anyone who disagrees with him. So, if anyone can cite an example of Hotez defining exactly what anti-science is, I would greatly appreciate seeing it.

At this point, the only definition I’ve found of anti-science comes from Wikipedia. It essentially says that individuals who are skeptical either of mainstream scientific positions or the scientific method being the objective arbiter of truth are “anti-science,” as are those who believe in concepts (e.g., alternative medicine) not supported by mainstream scientific consensus.

Unlike Hotez’s hysterical portrayal of “anti-science” extremists, the existing definition is fairly tame as it’s essentially just a philosophical disagreement and applies to almost every revolutionary scientist throughout history. In turn, I would argue the Wikipedia definition of “anti-science” refers to opposing the political institution of science rather than science itself (which to some extent is acknowledged within Wikepedia’s article). This essentially means anyone who rallies against “anti-science” (to protect the prevailing institutions of science) is attacking science itself, and that is exactly what we saw throughout COVID-19 as every piece of scientific evidence which could have prevented the catastrophe we witnessed was systematically attacked and censored.

Regardless of which interpretation you choose from the Wikipedia article, one thing is clear. The accepted definitions are a far cry from Hotez’s portrayal and likely why he refuses to define anti-science. After all if it was, it could no longer be weaponized against those dissenting from the current narrative:

It is my sincere hope that this article will inspire Hotez to define exactly what anti-science violence is or where it has occurred. I would also like to know exactly where this anti-science violence is occurring because presently, while acts of violence were committed throughout COVID-19, I only know of them being committed against those who did not support “the science.”

Conclusion

Many spiritual traditions heavily emphasize compassion because they believe it is the one emotion that can antidote all of the contractions inside you and those within the world around you. However, there is also much more to compassion than the colloquial understanding that it is equivalent to empathy.

For example, compassion requires you not only to bear witness to someone’s conduct while having a deep understanding of where it originated from but also to be able to do that without having any contractions within your heart. This is quite difficult to do, and I frequently see individuals claiming to be compassionate towards someone while simultaneously having all manner of negative emotions arise within them during their moments of compassion.

Likewise, genuine compassion also requires the wisdom to know what is right and the strength to do it. In my own life, I’ve had so many times where I did what I believed was in someone’s best interest that later ended up backfiring and doing the opposite of what I intended (e.g., I sought to “help” them, but all I accomplished was enabling a bad habit on their part which was eventually catastrophic for them).

In a recent post, Robert Malone also provided an important example of why compassion requires strength—as stated above, bad actors will often filter into activist groups and then, once established in the group, fracture it apart. These individuals are usually relatively easy to spot, but despite that, the group’s leadership often takes a passive role and allows the bad actors to entangle themselves within the group.

Malone argued that this arises from personal weakness in the leadership:

Protest movement leaders, eager to grow their organization and activities, are prone to say “Yes” to any and all volunteers. And very reluctant to prune out the bad wood, to get rid of the bad apples before they contaminate the entire barrel. And so they postpone, rationalize, provide soft reprimands. “C’mon kids, cut it out, just play nice with each other”.

And therein lies the trap. The nice-guy trap. The “I just want to be liked, can’t we all get along” trap.

Having seen the same, I agree but would go further and state that weakness arises from the emotions and minds of the leaders being closed down. Conversely, when open, and those individuals live in accordance with their values, they are filled with a strength that does not permit this cowardice and allows them to persist through the most challenging of obstacles—something many have observed throughout history (e.g., for those who stand against a malignant mass formation) and which I repeatedly saw in the 5-10% of my profession who resisted the COVID-19 narrative. Much of this is encapsulated by the iconic quote:

      “If you don’t stand for something, you fall for anything.”

Like many of you, since I was a child, I always wanted to be a “good” person, but as life moved forward, more and more, I learned that this was easier said than done. Many of the ideas here likely come across as quite abstract, and I thank you for considering them. It is my sincere hope they provided insights on how each of us can be better prepared to stand against the wave of technocratic tyranny sweeping the world and provided more of a context for the abhorrent actions of those of like Peter Hotez.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Robert Malone.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/06/26/peter-hotezs-war-against-science/feed/ 0 407072 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/afp-journalist-arman-soldin-killed-while-covering-war-in-ukraine/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/afp-journalist-arman-soldin-killed-while-covering-war-in-ukraine/#respond Tue, 09 May 2023 20:57:47 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=286046 Paris, May 9, 2023—In response to multiple news reports that journalist Arman Soldin was killed on Tuesday, May 9, near the Ukrainian city of Chasiv Yar, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement:

“The Committee to Protect Journalists is profoundly saddened by the death of journalist Arman Soldin while covering the war in Ukraine. We extend our deep condolences to his friends and family,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Journalists are civilians whose reporting from war zones is essential. We call on Russian and Ukrainian authorities to thoroughly investigate the circumstances of Soldin’s death.”

Soldin, a Bosnian-French video journalist with the French news agency Agence France-Presse, was killed in a rocket attack while working with four AFP journalists in the company of the Ukrainian military, according to those reports and Twitter posts by AFP. The four other journalists were uninjured. 

CPJ was not able to immediately confirm the source of the fire. Chasiv Yar is located near the frontline city of Bakhmut and is regularly shelled by Russian forces, according to media reports.

In an internal communication and an AFP draft statement reviewed by CPJ, AFP CEO Fabrice Fries said Soldin’s death was “a terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists every day covering the conflict in Ukraine.” According to those sources, Soldin, 32, was one of the first AFP correspondents to enter Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

Soldin had worked with AFP since 2015 and became the agency’s Ukraine video coordinator in September 2022. He has been living in Ukraine since then, “leading the team’s coverage and traveling regularly to the front lines in the east and south,” the statement said. In Ukraine, Soldin worked exclusively with AFP as a staff journalist, an AFP representative told CPJ via email.

“Arman’s brilliant work encapsulated everything that has made us so proud of AFP’s journalism in Ukraine,” AFP Global News Director Phil Chetwynd said in the internal communication. “He was courageous, creative, and tenacious. He was, above all, an excellent journalist who was totally committed to the story.”

A representative with French broadcaster Canal +, who declined to give their name, told CPJ via messaging app that Soldin has been working as a freelance journalist for the outlet’s sports department since 2019. His last report was from April 15.

“He went back to Ukraine right after, and was supposed to come back on May 26,” the representative said. “The football editorial team is in shock.”

Soldin is at least the 15th journalist to be killed while reporting on the war since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

On April 26, 2023, Ukrainian producer Bohdan Bitik was killed while reporting on the war. At least two other French journalists, Pierre Zakrzewski and Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, have been killed covering the conflict.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/05/09/afp-journalist-arman-soldin-killed-while-covering-war-in-ukraine/feed/ 0 393581 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/20/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/20/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison-2/#respond Fri, 20 Jan 2023 14:20:38 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=254607 Nairobi, January 20, 2023 – Burundian authorities must not contest the appeal of journalist Floriane Irangabiye and ensure that members of the press are not imprisoned for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

On January 2, the Mukaza High Court in Bujumbura, the capital, convicted Irangabiye of undermining the integrity of the national territory, according to news reports, tweets by Burundi’s Ministry of Justice, and the judgment, which was made public on January 3 and which CPJ reviewed. The charge stemmed from her work as a commentator and host on Radio Igicaniro, a diaspora-based online outlet that airs critical commentary and debate on Burundian politics and culture.

The court sentenced Irangabiye to 10 years imprisonment and fined her 1 million Burundian francs (US$482), according to those sources. Her defense lawyers say she plans to appeal the conviction, according to news reports. 

Irangabiye has been in custody since her arrest on August 30, 2022, and is being held at Muyinga Prison in the northern province of Muyinga.

“After months of arbitrary detention, Burundian journalist Floriane Irangabiye’s sentencing to a decade behind bars demonstrates the state’s capacity for cruelty and its deep intolerance for politically critical commentators,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “Prosecutors should not object to the appeal by Irangabiye’s defense team, and Burundi should amend its laws to address vague provisions that can be used to target critical journalists.”

During the trial, prosecutors cited an August 2022 Radio Igicaniro program in which Irangabiye and guests criticized Burundi’s government and accused its leaders of being thieves and trampling on citizens’ rights, according to court documents reviewed by CPJ.

Prosecutors, who said that an audio recording of the program was found on Irangabiye’s phone after her arrest, accused the journalist of calling for public rebellion and the overthrow of the government, according to those documents.

As part of their evidence, prosecutors cited Irangabiye’s frequent travel between Rwanda, where she lives, and Burundi, where she was born and her family lives, as well as photos in which the journalist appeared with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and former Burundian President Pierre Buyoya, according to those sources. In 2020, Buyoya, was convicted in absentia of the murder of another Burundian president.

Prosecutors also accused Irangabiye of participating in meetings organized by civil society groups to empower young men in exile to overthrow the Burundian government.

Irangabiye and her defense team asserted that she had the freedom to express herself as a journalist, denied that she had participated in any of those meetings, and asked the court to disregard the information gained from interrogations carried out by intelligence officials as Irangabiye was without legal counsel, according to the court documents, which said the court dismissed that request.

Sylvestre Nyandwi, Burundi’s prosecutor general, sent CPJ a statement via messaging app saying that Irangabiye’s case complied with Burundian procedures and laws and that the conviction was not politically motivated.

CPJ emailed the Ministry of Justice and sent requests for comment via messaging app to Justice Minister Domine Banyankimbona but did not immediately receive any replies. 

[Editors’ Note: This alert was updated to fix a typo in the last paragraph.]

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/20/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison-2/feed/ 0 365907 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/20/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/20/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison/#respond Fri, 20 Jan 2023 14:20:38 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=254607 Nairobi, January 20, 2023 – Burundian authorities must not contest the appeal of journalist Floriane Irangabiye and ensure that members of the press are not imprisoned for their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

On January 2, the Mukaza High Court in Bujumbura, the capital, convicted Irangabiye of undermining the integrity of the national territory, according to news reports, tweets by Burundi’s Ministry of Justice, and the judgment, which was made public on January 3 and which CPJ reviewed. The charge stemmed from her work as a commentator and host on Radio Igicaniro, a diaspora-based online outlet that airs critical commentary and debate on Burundian politics and culture.

The court sentenced Irangabiye to 10 years imprisonment and fined her 1 million Burundian francs (US$482), according to those sources. Her defense lawyers say she plans to appeal the conviction, according to news reports. 

Irangabiye has been in custody since her arrest on August 30, 2022, and is being held at Muyinga Prison in the northern province of Muyinga.

“After months of arbitrary detention, Burundian journalist Floriane Irangabiye’s sentencing to a decade behind bars demonstrates the state’s capacity for cruelty and its deep intolerance for politically critical commentators,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “Prosecutors should not object to the appeal by Irangabiye’s defense team, and Burundi should amend its laws to address vague provisions that can be used to target critical journalists.”

During the trial, prosecutors cited an August 2022 Radio Igicaniro program in which Irangabiye and guests criticized Burundi’s government and accused its leaders of being thieves and trampling on citizens’ rights, according to court documents reviewed by CPJ.

Prosecutors, who said that an audio recording of the program was found on Irangabiye’s phone after her arrest, accused the journalist of calling for public rebellion and the overthrow of the government, according to those documents.

As part of their evidence, prosecutors cited Irangabiye’s frequent travel between Rwanda, where she lives, and Burundi, where she was born and her family lives, as well as photos in which the journalist appeared with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and former Burundian President Pierre Buyoya, according to those sources. In 2020, Buyoya, was convicted in absentia of the murder of another Burundian president.

Prosecutors also accused Irangabiye of participating in meetings organized by civil society groups to empower young men in exile to overthrow the Burundian government.

Irangabiye and her defense team asserted that she had the freedom to express herself as a journalist, denied that she had participated in any of those meetings, and asked the court to disregard the information gained from interrogations carried out by intelligence officials as Irangabiye was without legal counsel, according to the court documents, which said the court dismissed that request.

Sylvestre Nyandwi, Burundi’s prosecutor general, sent CPJ a statement via messaging app saying that Irangabiye’s case complied with Burundian procedures and laws and that the conviction was not politically motivated.

CPJ emailed the Ministry of Justice and sent requests for comment via messaging app to Justice Minister Domine Banyankimbona but did not immediately receive any replies. 

[Editors’ Note: This alert was updated to fix a typo in the last paragraph.]

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/20/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-sentenced-to-10-years-in-prison/feed/ 0 365906 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/19/when-the-people-have-nothing-more-to-eat-they-will-eat-the-rich/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/19/when-the-people-have-nothing-more-to-eat-they-will-eat-the-rich/#respond Thu, 19 Jan 2023 16:36:56 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=137065 Maruja Mallo (Spain), La Verbena (‘The Fair’), 1927. On 8 January, large crowds of people dressed in colours of the Brazilian flag descended on the country’s capital, Brasília. They invaded federal buildings, including the Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, and vandalised public property. The attack, carried out by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, came as no […]

The post When the People Have Nothing More to Eat, They Will Eat the Rich first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

Maruja Mallo (Spain), La Verbena (‘The Fair’), 1927.

On 8 January, large crowds of people dressed in colours of the Brazilian flag descended on the country’s capital, Brasília. They invaded federal buildings, including the Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace, and vandalised public property. The attack, carried out by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, came as no surprise, since the rioters had been planning ‘weekend demonstrations’ on social media for days. When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) was formally sworn in as Brazil’s new president one week prior, on 1 January, there was no such melee; it appears that the vandals were waiting until the city was quiet and Lula was out of town. For all its bluster, the attack was an act of extreme cowardice.

Meanwhile, the defeated Bolsonaro was nowhere near Brasília. He fled Brazil prior to the inauguration – presumably to escape prosecution – and sought haven in Orlando, Florida (in the United States). Even though Bolsonaro was not in Brasília, the Bolsonaristas, as his supporters are known, left their mark throughout the city. Even before Bolsonaro lost the election to Lula this past October, Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil suggested that Brazil was going to experience ‘Bolsonarism without Bolsonaro’. This prediction is supported by the fact that the far-right Liberal Party, which served as Bolsonaro’s political vehicle during his presidency, holds the largest bloc in the country’s Chamber of Deputies and Senate, while the toxic influence of the right wing persists both in Brazil’s elected bodies and political climate, especially on social media.

Mayo (Egypt), Un soir à Cannes (‘An Evening in Cannes’), 1948.

The two men responsible for public safety in Brasília – Anderson Torres (the secretary of public security of the Federal District) and Ibaneis Rocha (the governor of the Federal District) – are close to Bolsonaro. Torres served as the minister of justice and public security in Bolsonaro’s government, while Rocha formally supported Bolsonaro during the election. As the Bolsonaristas prepared their assault on the capital, both men appeared to have abdicated their responsibilities: Torres was on holiday in Orlando, while Rocha took the afternoon off on the last working day before the coup attempt. For this complicity in the violence, Torres has been dismissed from his post and faces charges, and Rocha has been suspended. The federal government has taken charge of security and arrested over a thousand of these ‘fanatic Nazis’, as Lula called them. There is a good case to be made that these ‘fanatic Nazis’ do not deserve amnesty.

The slogans and signs that pervaded Brasília on 8 January were less about Bolsonaro and more about the rioters’ hatred for Lula and the potential of his pro-people government. This sentiment is shared by big business sectors – mainly agribusiness – which are furious about the reforms proposed by Lula. The attack was partly the result of the built-up frustration felt by people who have been led, by intentional misinformation campaigns and the use of the judicial system to unseat the Lula’s party, the Workers’ Party (PT), through ‘lawfare’, to believe that Lula is a criminal – even though the courts have ruled this to be false. It was also a warning from Brazil’s elites. The unruly nature of the attack on Brasília resembles the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of former US President Donald Trump. In both cases, far-right illusions, whether about the dangers of the ‘socialism’ of US President Joe Biden or the ‘communism’ of Lula, symbolise the hostile opposition of the elites to even the mildest rollback of neoliberal austerity.

Kartick Chandra Pyne (India), Workers, 1965.

The attacks on government offices in the United States (2021) and Brazil (2023), as well as the recent coup in Peru (2022), are not random events; beneath them is a pattern that requires examination. At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we have been engaged in this study since our founding five years ago. In our first publication, In the Ruins of the Present (March 2018), we offered a preliminary analysis of this pattern, which I will develop further below.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Third World Project withered as a result of the debt crisis, the US-driven agenda of neoliberal globalisation prevailed. This programme was characterised by the state’s withdrawal from the regulation of capital and by the erosion of social welfare policies. The neoliberal framework had two major consequences: first, a rapid increase in social inequality, with the growth of billionaires at one pole and the growth of poverty at the other, along with an exacerbation of inequality along North-South lines; and second, the consolidation of a ‘centrist’ political force that pretended that history, and therefore politics, had ended, leaving only administration (which in Brazil is well-named as centrão, or the ‘centre’) remaining. Most countries around the world fell victim to both the neoliberal austerity agenda and this ‘end of politics’ ideology, which became increasingly anti-democratic, making the case for technocrats to be in charge. However, these austerity policies, cutting close to the bone of humanity, created their own new politics on the streets, a trend that was foreshadowed by the IMF riots and bread riots of the 1980s and later coalesced into the ‘anti-globalisation’ protests. The US-driven globalisation agenda produced new contradictions that belied the argument that politics had ended.

Leonora Carrington (Mexico), Figuras fantásticas a caballo (‘Fantastical Figures on Horseback’), 2011.

The Great Recession that set in with the global financial crisis of 2007–08 increasingly invalidated the political credentials of the ‘centrists’ who had managed the austerity regime. The World Inequality Report 2022 is an indictment of neoliberalism’s legacy. Today, wealth inequality is as bad as it was in the early years of the twentieth century: on average, the poorest half of the world’s population owns just $4,100 per adult (in purchasing power parity), while the richest 10 percent owns $771,300 – roughly 190 times as much wealth. Income inequality is equally harsh, with the richest 10 percent absorbing 52 percent of world income, leaving the poorest 50 percent with merely 8.5 percent of world income. It gets worse if you look at the ultra-rich. Between 1995 and 2021, the wealth of the top one percent grew astronomically, capturing 38 percent of global wealth while the bottom 50 percent only ‘captured a frightening two percent’, the authors of the report write. During the same period, the share of global wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent rose from 7 percent to 11 percent. This obscene wealth – largely untaxed – provides this tiny fraction of the world’s population with a disproportionate amount of power over political life and information and increasingly squeezes the ability of the poor to survive.

The World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report (January 2023) forecasts that, at the end of 2024, gross domestic product (GDP) in 92 of the world’s poorer countries will be 6 percent below the level expected on the eve of the pandemic. Between 2020 and 2024, these countries are projected to suffer a cumulative loss in GDP equal to roughly 30 percent of their 2019 GDP. As central banks in the richest countries tighten their monetary policies, capital for investment in the poorer nations is drying up and the cost of debts already held has increased. Total debt in these poorer countries, the World Bank notes, ‘is at a 50-year high’. Roughly one in five of these countries are ‘effectively locked out of global debt markets’, up from one in fifteen in 2019. All of these countries – excluding China – ‘suffered an especially sharp investment contraction of more than 8 percent’ during the pandemic, ‘a deeper decline than in 2009’, in the throes of the Great Recession. The report estimates that aggregate investment in these countries will be 8 percent lower in 2024 than had been expected in 2020. Faced with this reality, the World Bank offers the following prognosis: ‘Sluggish investment weakens the rate of growth of potential output, reducing the capacity of economies to increase median incomes, promote shared prosperity, and repay debts’. In other words, the poorer nations will slide deeper into a debt crisis and into a permanent condition of social distress.

Roberto Matta (Chile), Invasion of the Night, 1942.

The World Bank has sounded the alarm, but the forces of ‘centrism’ – beholden to the billionaire class and the politics of austerity – simply refuse to pivot away from the neoliberal catastrophe. If a leader of the centre-left or left tries to wrench their country out of persistent social inequality and polarised wealth distribution, they face the wrath of not merely the ‘centrists’, but the wealthy bondholders in the North, the International Monetary Fund, and the Western states. When Pedro Castillo won the presidency in Peru in July 2021, he was not permitted to pursue even a Scandinavian form of social democracy; the coup machinations against him began before he was inaugurated. The civilised politics that would end hunger and illiteracy are simply not permitted by the billionaire class, who spend vast amounts of money on think tanks and media to undermine any project of decency and fund the dangerous forces of the far right, who shift the blame for social chaos away from the tax-free ultra-rich and the capitalist system and onto the poor and marginalised.

The hallucinatory insurrection in Brasília emerged from the same dynamic that produced the coup in Peru: a process in which ‘centrist’ political forces are funded and brought to power in the Global South to ensure that their own citizens remain at the rear of the queue, while the wealthy tax-free bondholders of the Global North remain at the front.

Ivan Sagita (Indonesia), A Dish for Life, 2014.

On the barricades of Paris on 14 October 1793, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, the president of the Paris Commune who himself fell to the guillotine to which he sent many others, quoted these fine words from Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ‘When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich’.

The post When the People Have Nothing More to Eat, They Will Eat the Rich first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/19/when-the-people-have-nothing-more-to-eat-they-will-eat-the-rich/feed/ 0 365641 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/14/like-trump-and-bolsonaro-canadas-pierre-poilievre-offers-anger-but-no-solutions/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/14/like-trump-and-bolsonaro-canadas-pierre-poilievre-offers-anger-but-no-solutions/#respond Sat, 14 Jan 2023 19:19:57 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/like-trump-and-bolsonaro-canada-s-pierre-poilievre-offers-anger-but-no-solutions

Populist leaders who inspire their angry followers to storm the national capitol seem to be in vogue these days.

But if Canada is in search of such a strongman, it’s not clear that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre — or PP (as he’s affectionately called) — really fits the bill, as some are now suggesting.

Donald Trump earned his strongman stripes building a crooked real estate empire in rough-and-tumble New York City, while Jair Bolsonaro developed his tough-guy habits as a captain in the Brazilian military (where he learned to express his manhood by declaring he’d rather find his son dead than dating someone with a mustache).

PP, on the other hand, acquired his street-fighting ways in the dark and savage jungle known as … Canada’s Parliament.

But while Poilievre’s handlers may be trying to fine-tune his bio to increase his street cred, it might not matter to those angry men who are, after all, not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Indeed, perhaps the one thing that could be said about them is that they are, well, confused.

An insightful article in The Walrus, co-written by prominent pollster Frank Graves, describes how Poilievre is making gains among disaffected Canadian men — particularly young men — who “complain they have not seen the kind of progress their parents and grandparents did. Pensions and secure retirement are a mirage.”

These men are correct, and their anger at being left behind as the world economy zooms ahead is understandable, even poignant.

Where they get off course and start lapsing into loopy thinking is in their inability to grasp who’s to blame for their predicament. And this is where a populist strongman can make hay. A strongman purports to be on their side, grasping their grievances and feeling their pain.

Typically, the strongman urges them to vent their rage by storming the seat of government or, in the Canadian version supported by Poilievre, parking in front of Parliament and clogging the surrounding streets with enormous trucks, hot tubs and bouncy castles. Strongmen offer up a clear villain: government, or in Poilievre’s words “this big beast called government.” Government’s evil is apparently perpetrated by all those who exercise its authority, notably public health officials trying to curb a pandemic.

Blaming government is a clever bait-and-switch, since the root grievance of the angry men is their economic insecurity.

And it wasn’t government officials (or pointy-headed public health authorities) who made them economically insecure. The corporate world did that!

If pensions and secure retirement are a mirage today (which they are), it’s because the cutthroat corporate world of recent decades stopped providing pensions to its employees.

The corporate world also pushed governments to adopt a whole range of pro-business policies that destroyed the earlier economic order based on the New Deal, under which economic rewards were distributed much more equitably.

Indeed, that New Deal order had treated the economic security of workers as vital — the very glue that made democracy work; if working people could achieve economic gains and financial security, they would value highly the democracy that delivered all that.

This has been stripped away over the past four decades as the corporate elite has managed to impose the new pro-business order, redirecting income and wealth to the top, slashing social supports and undermining the ability of the common people to achieve economic gains through unionizing.

This leaves today’s uneducated workers with little hope of retiring comfortably or buying a house, as their uneducated parents and grandparents did.

No longer tethered to a democratic system that doesn’t deliver as it used to, they become a volatile, malleable mass, susceptible to the snake oil of a wily strongman.

Poilievre is hoping working people won’t notice that he’s not, in fact, offering them a return to economic security.

But, what the hell, he’s just as angry as they are! And he’s delighted to champion them as they lash out at public health officials, blast the horns of their oversized trucks and frolic in steamy hot tubs in the public square.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Linda McQuaig.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/14/like-trump-and-bolsonaro-canadas-pierre-poilievre-offers-anger-but-no-solutions/feed/ 0 364577 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/05/having-the-systems-all-locked-up-monopolies/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/05/having-the-systems-all-locked-up-monopolies/#respond Thu, 05 Jan 2023 01:42:27 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=136678 Delusional thinking. Trapped inside a world of knee jerking. Multi-Generational Trauma on steroids. Fear thy self and thy enemy, so self-loathing in a bipolar self-aggrandizing flipping. Yo-yo thinking. If you attempt to get a bead on the “situation,” you know, THE Situation, it is almost impossible to be and to live and to survive in […]

The post Having the System(s) All Locked Up — Monopolies! first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> Delusional thinking. Trapped inside a world of knee jerking. Multi-Generational Trauma on steroids. Fear thy self and thy enemy, so self-loathing in a bipolar self-aggrandizing flipping. Yo-yo thinking.

If you attempt to get a bead on the “situation,” you know, THE Situation, it is almost impossible to be and to live and to survive in this society without many forms of media and collective consciousness pollution from flooding even a 9 to 5 and 8 to midnight, M-Sunday worker, busting his butt with two jobs.

The air is a miasma that is impossible to shelter from, and the spirits are wandering hoping for some form of sanity in the living. No matter how you open up your phone —  and it is always on, no, 24/7 — or how you navigate your working life, the dirty deeds of the marketers and madmen and the propagandists and behavioral mad scientists and political pirates come through. You can not shelter yourself completely, or even partly with any significant buttressing against the poison of our times.

No man or woman is an island, no matter how hard some of my email friends think they are that Island in the Slipstream having checked out of the good old USA or Canada. Living in Baja, setting up a simple palm frond hut and simple low water and low yield garden, sure, it is an Island Unto Itself. But, in Baja, in Mexico, with so many injustices around and near and possibly just down the road? How does one buffer one’s totality from all of that?

There is a certain instantaneous insanity that captures the world, even the ones in Nomad-Landia or Off-the Grid-Landia, because to be of this world, is to be of this world. Same old passport, USA, no matter where one might find his or her island of peace. More power to them. But the DNA is pretty much a determinant.

Yet, some of us are navigating other rough seas, and sure, what a deal, getting out of Dodge City to end up in some red-tiled roof town in the grape vineyard hills of Portugal, with full WiFi, a heck of a Saturday market, and stroller dancers on Wednesdays and free museum entry on Mondays. The Church bells, the uniformed school children kicking footballs and drinking lemonade.

Right! Ready, Set, Go:

It’s that easy, no? Good health, at least a cool $500,000 in some investment portfolio, and, hmm, minimum, what $4,000 a month, not counting many “incidentals”?

Okay back to earth and gravity. I was looking into school bus driving since Joe Biden’s and FDR’s Social Security is an utter joke. Actually, just van driving was the ad I answered, as in special needs. Oh, that old time monopoly religion, and that old time making money off of the taxpayer, and that old time transnational fun. I was skirted into getting a commercial driver’s license, because the school district is hurting for bus drivers. I wonder why.

With more than a century of experience in providing safe and reliable transportation to students across the U.S. and Canada, we at First Student understand the priorities of today’s K-12 community. We can help you build a transportation solution tailored to your community’s needs.

Think Brussels, as this company’s headquarters is ensconced well in one of those lovely expensive buildings:

EQT Infrastructure completes acquisition of First Student and First Transit, the market leading providers of essential North American transportation services.

Oh, so, who is selling the taxpayer down the proverbial river without a paddle? And, these companies, like First Student, has 55,000 mostly part-time drivers and others, and that is just one aspect of our so-called public schools selling the public down the private sewer hole. That’s right, the janitorial services and food services, run by another privatizing baron, Sodexo:

Founded in Marseille, France, in 1966 by Pierre Bellon, Sodexo is the global leader in services that improve Quality of Life, an essential factor in individual and organizational performance. Operating in 56 countries, Sodexo serves 100 million consumers each day through its unique combination of On-site Food and Facilities Management Services, Benefits & Rewards Services and Personal and Home Services.

Yikes, they used to be a big private prison builder:

Sodexo does not contract with any prison entities, detention centers, or correctional facilities, public or private, in the United States. Sodexo does not operate any prisons or detention centers in any of the countries with the largest number of prisons. We provide food for staff and prisoners, maintenance and, in some cases, prisoner skills training, education and programs in 84 prisons in mainland Europe and Chile. Sodexo also fully manages five prisons – all in the United Kingdom.

Ahh, the Old SodexoMarriot scam: Sodexho Marriott and the For-Profit Prison Industry

An article in The Independent reported that inmate Natasha Chin was found unresponsive in her cell in 2016 at the Sodexo-operated prison HMP Bronzefield; her death was attributed to “medical neglect” on the coroner’s report.

In 2021, at HMP Peterborough, female prisoners reported having inadequate access to menstrual care products and other sanitary items. In 2017, four HMP Peterborough inmates were unlawfully strip-searched.

Companies, such as Marriott International, and private individuals’ lawsuits against Sodexo allege discriminatory lawsuits and mistreatment of employees. Since 2000, Good Jobs First, a subsidy and work violation tracker, reported over $103 million has been paid in penalties by Sodexo. (source)

Oh, I had talks with food services and the administrations in two colleges, asking why local amazing caterers in Spokane could not get on our community college campuses with the cafeteria contract. I talked with local caterers who certainly could’ve fulfilled a healthy and creative food and beverage contract with the schools. And still following a local farmer-production ethos.

However, it’s all about economies of scale, underselling, and giving away (sic) funds at the end of the year for student and faculty groups. Legal (sic) bribery.

Staffing K12, and colleges, well, done by outsourced staffing and professional head hunter outfits. Money money money in every aspect of the taxpayer base.

Back to the First Student. I had to get fingerprinted, and then I took the commercial learner permit test, at $60 with Oregon DMV (I took two of the four tests over). Then, well, I was supposed to get some medical check. In the end, the $13.50 an hour for the training period that will eventually get to $19.00 an hour to have all those K12 students on the bus, pick up and drop off, that’s it for this multi-billion dollar monopoly. Tons of on-line junk, and again, more middle application services running part of the show.

Note: The local Air B & B is paying $21 an hour for that service. Sure, you have a time limit, and, sure, you have to photo each room, and upload to prove to the Vacasa outfit the job was done, and to shunt any complaints from the next renter who might lie about garbage still in the pails or sheets in the washer.

In the end, everything about capitalism, whether it is transnational, monopoly, casino, parasitic, what have you, is absolutely against the worker, counter any collective bargaining, without regard to health and safety, anti-getting ahead for the lower economic class, and antithetical to a great work environment, etc. We have no single payer affordable health care-dental care-mental health care. We have outrageous de-regulated air travel. We have no train travel of note. We have not local public busses or micro-vans running 24/7. And, mom and pops can’t deliver kids to and from school because of the super high insurance rates, the litigation threats and expensive fuel costs. Again, the money is made by having money, by deploying economies of scale, through sophisticated thuggery with their lobbies and lobbyists, by stashing politicians in their pockets, by going IPO with publicly traded status, and through the endless graft and grifting galore.

We have turned our own citizens against our own public services — bridges, roads, biologists, justice departments, criminal investigators, FCC, SEC, you name it, we have become a nation that hates anything that might be government regulation and citizen oversight, in favor of this childish attitude: “the companies and corporations, they want to do good, because they have kids and families too, so why would they pollute them or endanger them . . . so let the corporations run America?” This mentality gets some of us to the point where a few vaunted ones and some middle class ones just want to get hell out of the USA because of these top reasons: broaden your horizons; moving abroad is a wonderful challenge; cheaper than you’d expect; new kinds of food; better education prospects; the main reason that people move abroad is employment; learn a new tongue;  let go of the stress and let your new environs take over; build your confidence; lose your attachment to things.

This is the rationale for the new expats who want a fully WiFi, Zoom ready community up in the hills with the sheep, yodelers and fresh cheese.

Where are Americans emigrating to and why?

• 40% opt for the Western hemisphere — Canada, Central and South America.
• 26% move to Europe.
• 14% head to East Asia and the Pacific — think Australia and New Zealand as well as China and Japan.
• 14% head to the Middle East.
• 3% travel to Central or South Asia.
• 3% choose Africa.

In 2015, the most popular countries for expats of all nations to move to are:

1. Ecuador
2. Mexico
3. Malta
4. Singapore
5. Luxembourg
6. New Zealand
7. Thailand
8. Panama
9. Canada
10. Australia

I’ll take Andre Vltchek’s DV piece, Stop Millions Of Western Immigrants!

Tens of millions of European and North American immigrants, legal and illegal, have been flooding both the cities and countryside in Asia, Latin America, and even Africa.

Western migrantsare charging like bulls and the ground is shaking under their feet; they are fleeing Europe and North America in hordes. Deep down they cannot stand their own lifestyle, their own societies, but you would hardly hear them pronounce it. They are too proud and too arrogant! But, after recognizing innumerable areas of the world as suitable for their personal needs – as safe, attractive and cheap – they simply pack and go!

We are told that some few hundred thousand African and Asian exiles are now causing a great “refugee crises” all over Europe! Governments and media are spreading panic, borders are being re-erected and armed forces are interrupting the free movement of people. But the number of foreigners illegally entering Europe is incomparably smaller than the number of Western migrants that are inundating, often illegally, virtually all corners of the world.

No “secret paradise” can be hidden any longer and no country can maintain its reasonable price structure. Potential European,North American and Australian immigrants are determined to enrich themselves by any means, at the expense of local populations.They are constantly searching for bargains: monitoring prices everywhere, ready to move at the spur of the moment, as long as the place offers some great bargains, has lax immigration laws, and a weak legal framework.

Everything pure and untapped gets corrupted. With lightning speed, Western immigrantsare snatching reasonably priced real estate and land. Then, they impose their lifestyle on all those “newly conquered territories”. As a result, entire cultures are collapsing or changing beyond recognition.

So, here we are, the transnational, economies of scale, end of mom and pop shops, with a big fish eats little fish mentality as oppressive as anything the Amazon Publishing, Starbucks Coffee, Well Fargo Banking can deliver us. Pick an industry or service industry, and you can see what monopoly looks like and how each year the shifting baseline moves closer and closer to us being those useless eaters and workers and breathers. Until, taking care of precious children, youth, before and after school, on slippery and icy roads, we get paid as bus drivers less than, well (not to knock people who clean for a living), but toilet and laundry cleaners.

Do your own research — check out the top mining companies, top offensive weapons companies, top lumber companies, top grocery chains, top insurance, top medical services, etc., etc. You end up with fewer choices, bigger barons.

And we aren’t just consumers and marks and interest rates and fines and penalties and fees and closing costs and overdrafts and tickets and maintenance fees and tolls and VATs to them. Each way, each step in this Western Culture, each transaction, each nanosecond that might give “them” a chance at marking us for rip-off, i.e. profits, we become useful idiots and useless everything else.

And we come down to this — public schools, taxpayers, footing the bill for major investment companies that rule the yellow bus mafia?. This is the way of Capitalism. You get $19 an hour driving a bus with school children, but $21 an hour cleaning up after a bunch of beer-drinking, dog-peeing, messy and dirty Air B & B customers.

The post Having the System(s) All Locked Up — Monopolies! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/01/05/having-the-systems-all-locked-up-monopolies/feed/ 0 362050 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/04/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-detained-for-over-two-months-without-formal-charge/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/04/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-detained-for-over-two-months-without-formal-charge/#respond Fri, 04 Nov 2022 19:11:26 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=242079 Nairobi, November 4, 2022—The Committee to Protect Journalists on Friday called for the immediate and unconditional release of Burundian journalist Floriane Irangabiye, who has been detained for over two months without being formally charged.

Irangabiye is a commentator and debate program host on Radio Igicaniro, a Rwanda-based outlet that publishes critical commentary and debate on Burundian politics and culture, according to Radio Igicaniro editor Arsène Bitabuzi, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, a report on Facebook by exiled Burundian station Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), and CPJ’s review of Radio Igicaniro’s content published on YouTube, SoundCloud, Facebook, and distributed via WhatsApp.

In mid-August, Irangabiye traveled from Rwanda, where she has lived since 2009, to visit family in Burundi, according to a person familiar with her case who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. On August 30, intelligence personnel in the capital Bujumbura stopped a vehicle in which Irangabiye was traveling and took her into custody, the person and Bitabuzi said. Irangabiye remains detained but has not been formally charged with any crime, the person, Bitabuzi, media reports, and Radio Igicaniro said.

“After two months, the authorities’ failure to credibly charge Floriane Irangabiye with any crime is evidence that this case is in retaliation for her commentary and critical opinions,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative. “Floriane Irangabiye should be released immediately and allowed to continue her life and work without further interference. Burundi’s government should also hold accountable officials responsible for her arbitrary detention and ill-treatment behind bars.”

Irangabiye was initially detained at the intelligence headquarters in Bujumbura, where she was denied access to family and legal counsel, and was interrogated about her work with Radio Igicaniro, which officers said supported opposition groups, the person familiar with her case said. Officials also accused Irangabiye of working with armed opposition groups and espionage, according to a VOA report and human rights organization ACAT-Burundi. The person familiar with her case said at least one intelligence officer sexually assaulted Irangabiye while she was detained at the intelligence headquarters, by groping her buttocks and breasts. 

In a statement sent via messaging app in response to CPJ’s questions about the sexual assault and whether the government would investigate, Burundi’s prosecutor general Sylvestre Nyandwi called the sexual abuse allegation “unfounded” and an “extension of (Irangabiye’s) harmful acts towards the State of Burundi to tarnish its image.”

On September 8, Irangabiye appeared in court in Bujumbura, where officials accused her of attacking the integrity of the state, but did not file formal charges, RPA and the person familiar with her case said. Irangabiye was then transferred to Mpimba prison in central Burundi. In late September, she was transferred to Muyinga prison in northern Burundi, where she is allowed family visitation, Radio Igicaniro and the person said.

During an October 28 court appearance in Muyinga, Irangabiye was again accused of anti-state crimes against Burundi but also was accused of operating without a journalist’s accreditation, according to the person familiar with her case and Radio Igicaniro. Prosecutors requested more time to gather evidence, and did not formally charge her, the person said.

Prosecutor general Nyandwi said that Irangabiye’s ongoing pre-trial detention was in accordance with Burundi’s criminal procedure code, had been sanctioned by a judge, and that authorities were waiting for a court to settle the matter following the pre-trial stage of the case.

Radio Igicaniro’s programming is stridently critical of Burundi’s government, according to CPJ’s review of its content. In some Radio Igicaniro programming that CPJ reviewed, Irangabiye participated as a debate moderator, host, or commentator, and criticized poor governance and human rights violations by Burundi’s government and called for reform in the country.

Pierre Nkurikiye, spokesperson of Burundi’s interior and public security ministry, did not answer calls from CPJ or queries sent via text message and messaging app.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/11/04/burundian-journalist-floriane-irangabiye-detained-for-over-two-months-without-formal-charge/feed/ 0 348096 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/05/congolese-authorities-order-lomela-city-radio-stations-off-the-air-over-security-concerns/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/05/congolese-authorities-order-lomela-city-radio-stations-off-the-air-over-security-concerns/#respond Wed, 05 Oct 2022 14:21:16 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=234526 Kinshasa, October 5, 2022—Authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Sankuru province should reverse their decision to shut down radio stations in Lomela city and ensure media there can work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.

On September 17, Jules Lodi Emongo, governor of Sankuru province, ordered privately owned radio stations based in the province’s Lomela city—Radio Ekitela, Radio Numbampela, and Radio Liberté Sankuru—to stop broadcasting until further notice, according to a press release from the Sankuru provincial government, a report by local press freedom organization L’Observatoire de la Liberté de la Presse en Afrique (OLPA), Radio Ekitela director Franck Danga, and Radio Numbampela reporter Philémon Lokongo.

The decision only affected Radio Ekitela and Radio Numbampela because Radio Liberté Sankuru had not broadcast for several years due to technical issues, according to Danga and Lokongo, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

Danga and Lokongo said their stations stopped broadcasting because they worried about repercussions for defying the order, which they heard about from the province’s state media.

“Congolese authorities should ensure that radio stations in Lomela, in Sankuru province, are permitted to work without fear of running afoul of government directives,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, from New York. “The vague reasoning offered by Sankuru provincial authorities for the blanket order for the stations to stop broadcasting smacks of sweeping censorship.”

In the September 20 press release, Sankuru government spokesman Pierre Shosola ordered that “all radio stations, without distinction, be prohibited, in a conservative manner, to broadcast throughout the territory of Lomela until further notice,” adding that “media (particularly the radio) in part of the province were accused of being at the root of the upsurgence of community and ethnic tensions. The latter stand out as real channels for transmitting violent messages with tribal connotations.”

Danga and Lokongo denied these allegations, saying separately that the government’s motivation was to silence the media in Lomela. “Our two radios did not broadcast any information or news inciting the population of Lomela to tribal hatred. Let the provincial governor tell us precisely that it is such (a) program that our two radios broadcast,” Danga told CPJ. “We agreed to close our radios so as not to have problems with the provincial governor although so far we have not received any written decision from his government,” Lokongo said. The political climate in the Sankuru province is tense.

Contacted by phone, Patrick Bekanga, the vice-governor of Sankuru, declined to comment, saying he was not in the province and the governor better understood the situation.

Lodi told CPJ by phone that he had ordered Lomela radio stations to stop broadcasting for security reasons. “It is a precautionary decision that we have taken and it will be lifted one day. We are not obligated to release provincial security records to the media. Many Lomela journalists are not trained, they do not respect the ethics of their profession, and many operate illegally—that is to say without any documents,” Lodi said.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/10/05/congolese-authorities-order-lomela-city-radio-stations-off-the-air-over-security-concerns/feed/ 0 338894 https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/15/attack-on-fox-news-team-in-ukraine-kills-journalists-pierre-zakrzewski-oleksandra-kuvshynova-correspondent-benjamin-hall-injured/ https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/15/attack-on-fox-news-team-in-ukraine-kills-journalists-pierre-zakrzewski-oleksandra-kuvshynova-correspondent-benjamin-hall-injured/#respond Tue, 15 Mar 2022 17:29:32 +0000 https://cpj.org/?p=176120 Paris, March 15, 2022 – Russian and Ukrainian forces must ensure that journalists can cover the ongoing war safely, and those responsible for journalists’ deaths must be held to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

On Monday, March 14, a vehicle carrying a news team with the U.S. broadcaster Fox News was attacked near the village of Horenka, outside of Kyiv, according to according to a statement by Fox News, media reports, and a Ukrainian army official who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Camera operator Pierre Zakrzewski and Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Kuvshynova died from injuries sustained during the attack, according to that statement and news reports. Correspondent Benjamin Hall was injured and remains hospitalized, those reports said.

Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs adviser Anton Gerashchenko posted on Telegram that the team was attacked by mortars fired by Russian forces. However, the news reports and the Fox News statement did not specify the suspected source of the attack.

“We are deeply saddened by the deaths of Pierre Zakrzewski and Oleksandra Kuvshynova in Ukraine while they were working with Fox News, and we are hoping that correspondent Benjamin Hall recovers from his injuries,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Reporting on this war is a vital public service, and it has already claimed the lives of at least two other journalists in just a few weeks. Ukrainian and Russian authorities must do their utmost to ensure safety of all journalists, and to thoroughly investigate attacks on the press.”

Svyatoslav Yurash, a former Fox News fixer who was familiar with the case, told CPJ in a phone interview that the team’s car was clearly labeled as “Press” at the time of the attack.

On March 7, the Associated Press reported that Russian shelling of Horenka had reduced one area of the town to “ashes and shards of glass.”

Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin wrote on Twitter that he was “disturbed and saddened” by the death of Zakrzewski, who was an Irish citizen.

CPJ emailed the Russian and Ukrainian Ministries of Defense for comment, but did not receive any replies.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2022/03/15/attack-on-fox-news-team-in-ukraine-kills-journalists-pierre-zakrzewski-oleksandra-kuvshynova-correspondent-benjamin-hall-injured/feed/ 0 282116