“Media freedom is often a casualty of war, and Israel’s recent war with Iran is no exception. We have seen Israeli authorities use security fears to increase censorship, while extremist right-wing politicians have demonized the media, legitimizing attacks on journalists,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Despite hopes that we will see a ceasefire in Gaza this week, Israel’s government appears relentless in its determination to silence those who report critically on its military actions.”

After Haaretz newspaper published an interview with Israeli soldiers who said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed Gazans waiting for food aid, a mayor in southern Israel threatened to shut shops selling the popular liberal paper. This follows the government’s decision last year to stop advertising with Haaretz, accusing it of “incitement.”

Authorities are also pushing ahead with a bill to dismantle the public broadcaster, Kan, and shutter its news division, the country’s third-largest news channel. Meanwhile, government support has seen the right-wing Channel 14 grow in popularity.

The hostile climate fueled by Israel’s right-wing government has emboldened settler violence against journalists. On July 5, two Deutsche Welle (DW) reporters wearing press vests were attacked by Israeli settlers in Sinjil, West Bank — an incident condemned by Germany’s ambassador and the German Journalists’ Association, which called it “unacceptable that radical settlers are hunting down media professionals with impunity.” Reporters from AFP, The New York Times, and The Washington Post were also present. Palestinian journalists had to flee.

“War is a dangerous time for civil rights – rights that Netanyahu’s government is actively undermining as it moves toward dismantling democracy,” Haaretz Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn told CPJ.

‘Broadcasts that serve the enemy’

During the Israel-Iran war of June 13 to 24, anti-press government actions included:

• A June 18 military order requiring army approval before broadcasting the aftermath of Iranian attacks on Israeli military sites. Haaretz reported that this order was illegal as it was not made public in the official government gazette or authorized by a parliamentary committee.

• On June 19, security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on Israelis who see people watching “Al Jazeera broadcasts or reporters” to report their sightings to authorities. Israel shut down the Qatari-based outlet in May 2024, and six of its journalists have been killed while reporting on Israel’s war in Gaza. Many Arabs in Israel still watch Al Jazeera broadcasts, and former Israeli officials have appeared on the network since the shutdown. 

“These are broadcasts that serve the enemy,” Ben-Gvir said. 

• On June 20, Ben-Gvir and communications minister Shlomo Karhi issued a directive that broadcasting from impact sites without written permission would be a criminal offense.

When Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara demanded that the ministers explain the legal basis for their announcement, the ministers said she was “trying to thwart” their efforts to ensure that foreign media “don’t help the enemy target us.”

• On June 23, Haaretz reported that the police’s legal adviser issued an order giving officers sweeping powers to censor journalists reporting from the impact sites.

“This directive, which primarily targets foreign media and joins a wave of police and ministerial efforts to obstruct news coverage, is unlawful and infringes on basic rights,” Tal Hassin, an attorney with Israel’s biggest human rights group, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), told CPJ.

ACRI petitioned the Attorney General, arguing that the police adviser did not have the legal authority to issue such an order. It has not received a response.

Journalists censored, detained, and abused

CPJ subsequently documented at least four incidents involving journalists who were abused and blocked from reporting.

• On June 20, police stopped a live broadcast from Tel Aviv by Turkish state-owned broadcaster TRT’s correspondent Mücahit Aydemir, although he told the officers he had the required permits, including authorization from the military censor. For several days afterwards, Aydemir received “unsettling phone calls” from unknown Hebrew-speakers, he told CPJ.

• On June 21, privately owned Channel 13’s journalist Ali Mughrabi and a camera operator, who declined to be named, citing fear of reprisals, were expelled from a drone crash site in Beit She’an, northern Israel, despite showing their press accreditation. During a live broadcast, Deputy Mayor Oshrat Barel questioned their credentials, shoved the cameraperson, and ordered them to leave. She later apologized.

“What we’re experiencing isn’t just about the media — it’s about citizenship,” Mughrab, an Israeli citizen of Palestinian origin, told CPJ.

• On June 22, a civilian police volunteer squad, led by far-right activist and rapper Yoav Eliasi, known as “The Shadow,” detained three Jerusalem-based, Arab Israeli journalists and one international journalist, after separating them from their non-Arab colleagues outside a building in Tel Aviv that had been damaged by an Iranian strike.

Mustafa Kharouf and Amir Abed Rabbo from the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency, Ahmad Gharabli, with Agence France-Presse news agency, and another journalist who declined to be named, citing fear of reprisal, were held for three hours.  

Kharouf told CPJ, the unit asked them who was “Israeli” and allowed the non-Arab journalists to leave. 

“One officer accused us of working for Al Jazeera, even though we showed official press credentials,” said Kharouf.

“When I showed my ID, they told me I wasn’t allowed to film because I’m not Israeli – even though they treat us like Israelis when it comes to taxes,” Gharabli told CPJ.

Armed volunteer squads have rapidly grown from four before the October 2023 Hamas attack to around 900 new units, an expansion that “had negative effects on Arab-Jewish relations,” Dr. Ark Rudnitzky of Tel Aviv University told CPJ in an email. Squad members “tend to suspect an Arab solely because they are Arab,” he said.

“It was clear they targeted the journalists because they were Arab,” said Israeli journalist and witness Oren Ziv, who wrote about the incident.

The Central District Police told CPJ via email that the journalists were “evacuated from the building for security reasons related to their safety and were directed to alternative reporting locations.”

• On June 24,  Channel 13 correspondent Paz Robinson and a camera operator who declined to be named were reporting on a missile strike in southern Israel’s Be’er Sheva when a woman shouted that he was a “Nazi” and “Al Jazeera” and blocked him from filming, screaming, “You came to celebrate over dead bodies.”

“After I saw the woman wasn’t backing down, I decided to leave. I’m not here to fight with my own people. I’m not a politician. I came to cover events,” Robinson told CPJ.

Earlier in the war with Iran, CPJ documented eight incidents in which 14 journalists faced harassment, obstruction, equipment confiscation, incitement, or forced removal by the police.

The Israel Police Spokesperson’s Unit told CPJ via email that police “made significant efforts to facilitate safe, meaningful access for journalists” during the war with Iran.  “While isolated misunderstandings may occur…case was addressed promptly and professionally.”

CPJ’s emails to the Attorney General, Israel Defense Forces’ North America Media Desk, Ben-Gvir, and Shlomo requesting comment did not receive any replies. 

Kholod Massalha is a CPJ consultant on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a researcher with years of experience in press freedom and freedom of expression issues.

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

It is still very indescribable. I’m still processing it. As much as I appreciate everyone sort of directing the thanks and congratulations to me, I also always want to take this opportunity to try to redirect that to all the folks that worked on the book with me, Tony Washington, who did the coloring, and obviously the original creators. I always, always, always want to kick back to them. It was the whole reason we did the thing. It is an honor and I’m still working through it basically.

It’s an interesting feeling to win something and in a way be the face because in a lot of ways you’re the face of the project and the face of the effort to bring it back, but not necessarily the creator. There are other people who are involved in that. It’s an interesting balance to strike of making sure that you’re passing on the right amount of recognition, but also not resting your laurels, being confident in your win, but not resting your laurels on it.

To that end, how has winning an award of this scale impacted you personally? You’ve been in comics for a while now. Did you walk away from this with more wind in your sails, with a confidence boost? Are you like, “Great, I won an Eisner,” and now you’re like, “And here’s all the other shit that I need to do,” and just sort of going back and focusing on the work? Where is your head at?

Confidence is a funny thing. I’ve never actually ever had the problem of needing more of it or needing to work myself up like, “Can I do this?” I’ve never really had Imposter syndrome.

You’re lucky. I don’t think that’s a common experience for people in comics.

Absolutely, it’s a thing that a lot of creators discuss and I’m glad for that, but I personally have never identified with that issue. Still, I haven’t seen any big impact or offers. Nothing has come out of the woodwork to surprise me as a direct result of that win just yet. We’re getting low on the stock of the first printing. Then, it’s sort of a question mark as to what happens beyond that. Obviously, I don’t want it to fall out of print. That’s another reason we did it, for it to be in print and available places, but it is in print and available places. I’ll have to figure out what the next steps are to keep it in print “in perpetuity” as they say.

I get that. It’s not really the climax. You did the campaign, and it was successful. You’ve had a good release. You’ve won an award, but the book is still out there still being circulated. It’s not the end, but there is sort of this undetermined future for it. Let’s talk a little bit more just about the process of the book for those people who didn’t follow along the journey of the campaign. What was the process of bringing this historical book back to life? What was the remastering process like? I know that was a big part of the campaign.

This was tough because I’d never been into “old” comics. You know what I mean? Golden Age comics are sort of new territory for me in general. There was a long period of educating myself as to what people expect in this category, reading a lot of Dark Horse Creepy Archives and that type of stuff, and looking at un-remastered old comics, looking at the Marvel and DC Golden Age reprints, seeing how everyone in this space, in this market, tackles this kind of project. It was a lot of reading!

I did also try to—and it’s tough because it’s very out of print and very hard to find—but I tried to find as many different scans of ANC #1 as I could to sort of determine what was a defect that is just in the copy that I’m looking at versus other copies—did they all have a certain scratch in a panel? If that’s in every copy, I want to keep it. That type of thing.

Right.

That’s a very, very small sample size, but that was part of the process. That was my part, but then the real work of it all doesn’t begin until we kick it over to Tony Washington. He went in and did a lot. He sent me one of the Photoshop files where it’s very layered, a lot of separations. He redid the blacks, probably the most important addition for true readability since all the text is in black. We recentered every page so it was a standardized thing. That way there was sort of uniformity throughout for the reading experience in the book, which I think that’s a necessary thing. I’m trying to think of what else detail-wise we kept, but it was a lot. Tony deserves all the credit for getting it to where it needed to be.

Under every page is sort of a yellowed paper texture because we never wanted it to feel like something that was printed yesterday. We’re not trying to hide the fact that this is from 1947. With the title All-Negro Comics, I think you can’t run away from the fact that this is old. But the paper texture trick was something I learned from working on Ed Piskor’s X-Men: Grand Design books. When you look at some of the Marvel and DC reprints, they would print them on clean white paper and working with Ed was the first time I understood how anachronistic that is.

I was going to say it’s so interesting hearing about the minutia of what do we do to not in a way modernize this, but, like you said, restructure it or re-stabilize it for readability and then still keep the historical integrity of it? That’s such an interesting balance to strike because I’m sure you have to really be particular about the calls that you make. It’s cool to hear about that. I don’t have as much insight into that process.

Me neither! This is a learned process that I don’t know that I’m going to do again. It’s very unique and it’s kind of a one-off. I will say one thing. Me and Tony talked about the process at length in one of our project updates. So, our backers were aware of what was going into it while it was being worked on, which was very cool, and I think a lot of them appreciated that information.

Side by side comparison of a typical page of All-Negro Comics #1 versus the corresponding remastered page in ANC75.

It’s cool to hear that people were so receptive to it. You touched on it a little bit. Now I’m like, “Oh, I wonder what kind of answer will come out,” but are there any other hidden pieces of comics history or comics culture that you feel deserve a similar remastered treatment? I’m thinking of, I don’t know how familiar with Bubbles you are, the magazine.

No, what’s that?

Bubbles is a magazine out of Richmond, Virginia. They’re a real just comics culture magazine, but the reason I bring them up is they’ve recently been doing releases of pre-World War II manga. It’s kids sports manga, specifically Bat Kid and Igaguri, both of which I really love.

I don’t think it’s at the same scale as All-Negro Comics, but it’s great to see that stuff come out in a more modern format that you wouldn’t really get through a VIZ or a TOKYOPOP or a Vertical Comics. I’m wondering if you have anything else that you personally are interested in, maybe not slated for another project, but you’re like, “Oh, man, I’ve always loved this aspect of comics culture, and I’d love to see somebody bring it to the modern age.”

I’m not a historian. I don’t look at old comics that frequently. It’s really by chance that I even stumbled upon All-Negro Comics #1 in the first place. But looking at that era, I think that it would be super cool to see Voodah, which is this Matt Baker comic, a jungle guy type of superhero comic. There’s not that much of it as far as I know. A very funny thing is that the character was colored with a Caucasian skin tone on the front covers and then he was Black in the interiors, which I think is hilarious. I think maybe that would be one thing I would fix if I oversaw a reprint. I would say he should probably just be Black the whole time.

I think Voodah would be super cool. I don’t know. With comics, there’s just so much out there that I don’t know about. You know what I mean? This Bubbles thing, I just Googled it very quickly. That’s super cool. I am glad that there are folks out there digging stuff up and resurfacing it. That’s how ANC75 happened. I saw the original. I was like, “Man, this should be resurfaced.” Then 10 years went by, and nobody did it, so I did it myself.

I think that’s my favorite attitude of creative professionals. I mean I think it got a little ruined by the Thanos meme that goes around, but it’s like I’m just going to do it myself. I’ve had similar projects like that where you’re like, “Oh, this thing doesn’t exist. Guess I have a new project or a new creative job that I’m going to do.”

It’s great to be able to see more of that stuff come out and have it been well received because it just gives you fire to do more or it’s the proving ground that I can do this. It gives you license to be very particular about the things that you want to do because when it feels special and genuine then it actually, I think continues to just prove to be a successful thing rather than it being a cash grab for the sake of just doing it.

100%, my big struggle is “Am I excited enough about this to spend the time and effort to do it to my standards?” You know what I mean? That’s a short list. I’ll have ideas all the time where I’m like, “Oh, that’s cool,” and I’ll write it on my board. Then, two weeks later I’m like, “Never mind.” Are we excited enough about it to do it? That’s a big question to me.

One thing I loved about the campaign was the focus on giving back to the community. Your rewards gave backers the ability to not only get a book up, but to send a copy to a local school, prison, or detention center. What kind of response have you gotten from those communities who’ve received copies?

This was a much more popular reward than I thought it was going to be. It ended up being 500 copies and then when I started looking into sending the book beyond the handful of places that I already had connections to it was like, “Oh, wow, this is much more complex than I gave it credit for.” There are a lot of rules about donating books like this. Actually, I had to start getting help from librarians pointing me to the way of like, “Check this place out. Here’s this organization,” that type of thing.

I think the one I’m most proud of is the Philadelphia Free Public Library System. I was able to send them all copies. Every branch in Philadelphia has a copy, which is great because ANC comes from Philadelphia.

That is probably the one that I’m most happy about, but it was a great idea. I’ve seen other campaigns since grab the idea. Hey, if your book fits the bill, do it. Get it out there and get it into these places.

Kelly Richards, President/Director of the Free Library of Philadelphia holding a donated copy of ANC75.

I agree. I hope the people who read this interview, that is one of the big takeaways coming out of this. I do think there’s a lot of opportunity. It’s not really education so much as it is just like awareness, continued cultural awareness, just continued exposure, not for the sake of money and sales. I always think about when I come from a retail perspective or I am just thinking about where books end up the unknown, unknown customer.

Who is the kid or the adult who’s going to find this who knows nothing about it who’s really excited about it? They’re the people that I’m always thinking about. It’s just like, “I got to get this out there for them. I don’t know who they are or what they need, but this is going to change somebody’s life and it’s important that it’s there.” Getting it into schools and libraries, man, the Philadelphia Free Public Library System, that’s huge. What a great get.

The last question I had for you, Chris, is you have quite the storied career with one of the big highlights being you created the first Marvel’s Voices anthology comic series. That’s still running today as far as I can see. What is it about anthologies that you think works so well across comics?

I mean comics start with anthologies to some degree. Even today, although they never really went away, people like to say they don’t sell. I think on Kickstarter specifically, it’s a great way to share the journey.

Every individual comic is a group effort, but then anthologies are just a multiplier of that. In terms of breaking in, if you’re getting started–my first comic that I produced myself with Kickstarter was Fearless Future, which was a sci-fi/horror “Black Mirror” short stories type of thing—That’s a great place to start.

Also if you’re not cutting your teeth and you’ve been in the industry for a long time, it’s a nice way to get a little taste of something different—experiment. Do a little story that you’re not committing an endless amount of time to because comics are, as we all know, very time consuming to make. It’s kind of like, “Hey, we’re just going to do eight pages. That’s it.”

I think that’s what makes anthologies the best. We’re all making a comic together and you have your chocolate. You have your peanut butter. You have your rainbow whatever, so many different flavors. I personally love anthologies. Anytime I see an anthology out there, I am predisposed to give it a shot.

Anthologies, man, I can’t say enough good things about them. Back in my Marvel comics days, I would always look at the other short stories collections and just see who’s interesting—who’s got something to say?

Anthologies, they’re super fun and don’t take them too seriously, but also, they could lead you to bigger and better things very quickly.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sam Kusek.

The Elders chair Mary Robinson has highlighted the unique leverage that the United States has with Israel and called on the Biden administration to stop giving it military assistance for its assault on the Gaza Strip.

Robinson, the former president of Ireland, conducted an on-camera interview with Irish public broadcaster Raidió Teilifís Éireann just before her country’s Prime Minister, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, was due to meet US President Joe Biden on Friday at the White House.

“Yes the humanitarian situation is utterly catastrophic and dire, reducing a people to famine, undermining all our values, but the message I want to deliver on behalf of the Elders is a direct message to our Taoiseach Leo Varadkar,” Robinson said.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Dozens killed near Gaza’s Nuseirat camp
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“We need a ceasefire and we need the opening up of Gaza with every avenue . . .  for aid to get in.”

In his meeting with Biden, Varadkar “should not spend too much time on the dire humanitarian situation, and the ships, and the rest of it,” she said.

“He has the opportunity to deliver a political message in a very direct way. The United States can influence Israel by not continuing to provide arms. It has provided a lot of the arms . . . that have been used on the Palestinian people.”

Elders’ Chair Mary Robinson says President Biden should not continue to provide arms to Israel.

“The United States can influence Israel by not continuing to provide arms… The Government of Prime Minister Netanyahu is on the wrong side of history, completely. It’s making the… pic.twitter.com/fN3ptMjktz

— The Elders (@TheElders) March 15, 2024

More than 31,490 killed
Since Israel declared war in response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7, Israeli forces have killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza — including people seeking food aid — and wounded another 73,439. The assault has also devastated civilian infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques, and displaced the vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents.

Israel is also restricting desperately needed humanitarian aid into the Hamas-governed territory, and Palestinians have begun starving to death — which people around the world point to as further proof that the Israeli government is defying an International Court of Justice (ICJ) order to prevent genocidal acts as the South Africa-led case moves forward at The Hague.

The United States gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid, and since October 7, Biden — who faces a genocide complicity case in federal court — has fought for another $14.3 billion while his administration has repeatedly bypassed Congress to arm Israeli forces.

Critics, including some lawmakers, argue that continuing to send weapons to Israel violates US law.

The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is on the wrong side of history, completely — is making the United States complicit in reducing a people to famine, making the world complicit,” Robinson told RTÉ. “We’re all watching. It is absolutely horrific what is happening.”

“So Leo Varadkar has access today to President Biden,” she said. “He must use this completely politically at all levels with the speaker of the House, with everyone, to make it clear that Israel depends on the United States for military aid and for money. That’s what will change everything.”

“We need a ceasefire and we need the opening up of Gaza with every avenue . . .  for aid to get in, because the situation’s so bad, and we need the political way forward, which is the two-state solution,” she added.

‘Only US can put pressure’
“So we need an Israeli government agreeing to that, and only the United States can put the pressure [on Israel].”

Robinson, who spent five years as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights after her presidency ended in 1997, has been part of the Elders since Nelson Mandela, the late anti-apartheid South African president, announced the group in 2007.

She has made multiple statements during the five-month Israeli assault on Gaza, including calling on Israel to comply with the ICJ’s January ruling and warning Biden the previous month that his “support for Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Gaza is losing him respect all over the world.”

“The US is increasingly isolated, with allies like Australia, Canada, India, Japan, and Poland switching their votes in the UN General Assembly to support an immediate humanitarian cease-fire,” she said in December.

“The destruction of Gaza is making Israel less safe. President Biden’s continuing support for Israel’s actions is also making the world less safe, the Security Council less effective, and US leadership less respected. It is time to stop the killing.”

Speaking to press at the Oval Office alongside Biden on Friday, Varadkar said that he was “keen to talk about the situation in Gaza,” and noted his view “that we need to have a ceasefire as soon as possible to get food and medicine in” to the besieged territory.

“On Sunday, the taoiseach will also gift Mr Biden a bowl of shamrock as part of an annual tradition to mark St Patrick’s Day,” RTÉ reported. “Mr Varadkar started the trip on Monday, and since then has spoken several times . . .  about how he will use the special platform of the St Patrick’s Day visit to press Mr Biden to back a ceasefire in the Gaza, while also thanking the US for leadership in support for Ukraine.”

Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and writer for Common Dreams, an independent progressive nonprofit news service. Republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence.

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

So it might come as a surprise that Robinson’s next move was a climate change PSA. “I’m sick and tired of scientists telling us mean, bad facts about our world in confusing ways,” Robinson shouts at the camera in a recent sketch. Playing a TV host named Ted Rack, he invites a climate scientist on his show “You Expect Me to Believe That?” for a messaging makeover. 

It’s produced by Yellow Dot Studios, a project by Adam McKay (of Don’t Look Up fame) that’s recently been releasing comedic videos to draw attention to a global problem that most people would probably rather not think about. Sometimes the resulting videos are only mildly amusing: In a recent one, Rainn Wilson, Dwight from The Office, presents the case against fossil fuels to the court from Game of Thrones. But for a comedian like Robinson who thrives on a sense of unease, talking about climate change isn’t just a public service; it’s prime material. 

In the sketch, the subject of the Queer Eye-style makeover is Henri Drake, a real-life professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine. Ted Rack’s first step is to outfit Drake in a jersey with the number 69. “Let’s focus on making your messaging a little more appealing to someone like me,” Rack says. “Someone who, like, when I hear it, I get a little mad because I don’t understand it.” Robinson is famous for his facial acrobatics, and his expressions grow increasingly perturbed as Drake describes how fossil fuels have warped Earth’s “radiation balance.” By the end, Rack is holding his head in his hands. “I gotta be honest,” he says. “What you’re saying to me makes me want to fight you a little.”

The video struck a chord with the public, racking up 100,000 views on TikTok and almost a quarter million on YouTube. It also resonated with some scientists. “I immediately understood where this is coming from,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, after watching the video. “I feel the same pressures, I get the same complaints.” After he gives scientific talks, the most common response he hears is along the lines of “Oh my god, you’re just so depressing.” 

The sketch touches on similar themes as Don’t Look Up, McKay’s 2021 film that portrays a distracted, celebrity-obsessed world ignoring scientists’ warnings of an approaching asteroid.  Rack, though, wants to help avoid the disaster that ensues when no one pays attention to scientists’ “terrible message,” and he finds ridiculous ways to make climate science relatable. “Here’s what you should say,” he instructs Drake. “‘Your house is about to be part of the ocean … A shark could swim in there and eat a picture of your daddy.’”

As a scientist with a self-described dark sense of humor, Swain enjoyed the sketch. He thought it did a good job satirizing the expectation that scientists, as the bearers of bad news, should be “cheery cheerleaders.” At the same time, though, Swain thinks a lot of climate scientists really could use a communication makeover. “I absolutely agree that a lot of times where the scientists engaged with the wider world are really ineffective,” he said. Jargon scares people off.  And even if people stick around for technical discussions of, say, Earth’s radiation balance, they might disengage when the conversation turns to ecological collapse, even though it’s the crux of why the topic matters at all. The story of how humans have made the world hotter and more hostile is a difficult one to hear, especially when accepting it means you might be a tiny part of the problem.

If experts are having trouble talking about climate change, you can bet that the general public does, too. Two-thirds of Americans say climate change is personally important to them, but only about half that number, just over a third, actually talk to their friends and family about it, according to the most recent survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. People might be hesitant to express their thoughts because they mistakenly believe that their opinions are unpopular, or simply because scary things are just hard to talk about.

Weirdly enough, that’s what makes climate change a good subject for a Robinson sketch. A recent profile of the comedian in The New York Times Magazine — which begins with Robinson spooning an absurd amount of hot chiles over his noodles at a restaurant — compares an affinity for spicy food to the appeal of cringe comedy. “In a harsh world, it can be soothing to microdose shots of controlled pain,” wrote Sam Anderson, the author of the profile. “Comforting, to touch the scary parts of life without putting ourselves in real danger. Humor has always served this function; it allows us to express threatening things in safe ways. Cringe comedy is like social chile powder: a way to feel the burn without getting burned.”

Climate scientists, too, could spice up their talking points — if they were given resources to do so. “I think everyone kind of understands why this exists and is funny,” Swain said. “But the reason why that’s the case — why there aren’t engaging, funny climate scientists out there on TV — is nobody is facilitating that in any setting.” The real barrier, Swain says, is that the places where scientists work don’t generally support public communication as part of their job. 

Swain is just one of a handful of climate scientists with a very high level of public visibility, appearing all over TV news, articles, YouTube, and social media. He thinks he’s been featured on more podcasts than he’s ever listened to in his life. But he’s concerned that funding for his communications work will soon run out, with nothing to replace it. “I am still working through this myself,” Swain said. “I mean, I don’t know what my employment’s going to be in six months, because I can’t find anybody to really support this on a deeper level.”

Finding a climate scientist who had time to talk about a silly, five-minute video was also a bit of a challenge. Zeke Hausfather, another media favorite, was swamped; Drake, from the video, apologized but said that it was the busiest week of the year; other scientists didn’t respond. The initial email to Swain resulted in an auto-reply advising patience amid his “inbox meltdown.” As a one-man team, Swain wrote, he could only respond to a fraction of the correspondence coming in.

Talking to a journalist about comedy clearly isn’t at the top of the priority list for most scientists. But Swain doesn’t think it’s a waste of time. By now, he’d hoped that climate change would have a bigger role in comedy sketches, bad movies, and trashy TV shows, meeting people where they already are. “Where is the pop culture with climate science? It’s not where I thought it would be at this point,” he said. “But pop culture changes quickly. It responds fast to new things that are injected into the discourse.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Talking about climate change can be awkward. Just ask Tim Robinson. on Feb 16, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

Randall Kennedy is Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He is the author of several books, including Contracts: Happiness and Heartbreak, For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law, and Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture.

You’ve chosen three very interesting people [Randall Robinson, Harry Belafonte, and Glen Ford]. And I think that one thing that the listeners should keep in mind is that the three that you’ve chosen are all progressive; they are very different… Because the tent of progressivism should be a large tent— not everybody’s going to think the same, and indeed there’s going to be some friction between various tendencies among progressives.

Randall Kennedy

I don’t think that progressives pay enough attention to the people who have been in their camp. We don’t pay enough attention to people who have passed away. We don’t pay enough attention to recalling people who have been heroic in our midst. And, again, I say this as a person who is sometimes extremely critical of some of the people that you’ve mentioned.

Randall Kennedy

We need people like Glen Ford to pull in one direction uncompromisingly—because the corporate interests always pull in the other direction uncompromisingly—and then we need people who are in between and sometimes have to face the hard realities you’ve pointed out.

Ralph Nader

In Case You Haven’t Heard

1. The Wall Street Journal and the Corporate Crime Reporter have announced that, following decades of citizen pressure, and action last year by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, the Department of Justice has finally created a Corporate Crime Database. Under President Biden, the Justice Department has taken a tougher rhetorical stance on corporate crime, but as Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco notes, the department “cannot ignore the data showing overall decline in corporate criminal prosecutions over the last decade...We need to do more and move faster.” Among civic groups, The Center for Study of Responsive Law and Public Citizen lead the charge to create these corporate rap sheets and are already working to expand and strengthen this new resource for corporate crime data.

2. If you live on the East Coast, you have likely experienced dangerous levels of air pollution in the last week due to smoke moving South from Canadian wildfires. Yet, the Lever reports that under current air quality rules, fossil fuel producers will not have to curb their emissions to offset this spike in air pollution because they have successfully lobbied for a loophole protecting themselves in the case of “exceptional events” outside their control. Environmental regulators are currently mulling a new rule to clamp down on this type of air pollution, but face stiff opposition from industry groups.

3. The Washington Post reports that, in an exercise of his leverage in the tightly divided Senate, Bernie Sanders has vowed to oppose all Biden health nominees until the administration produces a “comprehensive” plan to lower prescription drug prices. Sanders’ role as Chair of the Health Education Labor and Pensions committee means these nominees cannot advance without his blessing. This notably includes Biden’s nominee for director of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. Sanders said “Politicians for years have talked about the high cost of prescription drugs, relatively little has been done, and it’s time that we act decisively.”

4. The Progressive International has issued a statement decrying the “soft coup” underway against left-wing President Gustavo Petro in Colombia. Their statement reads “Ever since the election of the country’s first progressive government...Colombia’s traditional powers have been organizing to restore an order marked by extreme inequality, environmental destruction, and state-sponsored violence.” The statement goes on to excoriate officials who have sought to undermine the Petro administration and “former generals, colonels, and members of the Colombian military [who] have not only proclaimed their opposition to President...Petro — but even marched outside Congress to call for a coup d’état against his government.” Signatories to this letter include over 400 political and industrial leaders, including Noam Chomsky, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean Luc Mélenchon, and Former Leftist President of Ecuador Rafael Correa.

5. The City, a news site covering New York, reports that food delivery drivers in NYC have won a substantial wage increase. This victory caps off a 3-year long campaign by Los Deliveristas Unidos, and makes New York the “first major U.S. city to establish and implement pay requirements for delivery workers.” These workers currently take home about $11 per hour; this will go up to $17.96 an hour starting July 12th, and will increase to $19.96 per hour by 2025.

6. In a surprise decision last week, the Supreme Court voted five-four in favor of Black voters in Alabama who argued the state had unlawfully diluted their voting power, POLITICO reports. Over a quarter of Alabama residents are Black, but the state crammed most Black Alabamians into a single congressional district following the 2020 census, running afoul of the Voting Rights Act. Many expected the ultra-conservative court to reject the challenge and further hollow out the VRA; instead, this ruling could significantly augment the chances of Democrats retaking the House in 2024.

7. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has instituted a “highly successful” ban on opium. To cite one example, “In Helmand, by far Afghanistan’s largest opium-producing province, the area of poppy cultivation was cut from over 129,000 hectares in 2022 to only 740 as of April 2023.” However, some in the West – including the US Institute for Peace – believe this could have disastrous implications for the Afghan economy. It remains to be seen whether the new government can find a viable economic alternative fast enough to offset these losses. The Taliban had previously banned opium cultivation when they held power in 2000 and 2001, and achieved a 90% reduction at that time.

8. New York Governor Kathy Hochul is again licking her wounds after her nominee for the New York Power Authority was blocked by the State Senate, in a similar fashion as her nominee for the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state. Justin Driscoll, whom Hochul had appointed on an interim basis and was seeking to appoint permanently, raised red flags with New York Senate Democrats due to his ingratiation in conservative politics – Driscoll is a registered Republican who has ties to figures like Chris Christie and John Cornyn. Driscoll also opposed the Build Public Renewables Act and has been embroiled in accusations of racial discrimination during his time as general counsel for the Power Authority. On June 9th, POLITICO reported that Senate Democrats will not schedule a vote for Driscoll.

9. Projectionists at an Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in New York City have filed an NLRB petition to unionize. However, instead of coming to the negotiating table, the theater chain sent out an internal email “notifying staff of the company's intention to do away with the projectionist position and replace it with a more expansive ‘technical engineer’ role.” This reflects how the struggle for labor rights in entertainment goes far beyond Hollywood writers and actors. This from 1010 Wins.

10. Last week, Henry Kissinger – President Nixon’s controversial National Security Advisor and alleged war criminal – celebrated his 100th birthday. The Real News Network reports that this centennial bash was attended by some of the most prominent diplomatic figures in the country, including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and head of the international development agency USAID, Samantha Power. Jonathan Guyer of VOX, documented many other attendees as well, including Larry Summers, Robert Kraft, General David Petreaus, CIA Director Bill Burns, and Michael Bloomberg. The gang’s all here!

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

The first book was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. In this very important fictional book, a massive heat wave in India that kills tens of millions of people in 2025 leads to the emergence of an organized underground group which begins executing CEO climate criminals, with drones being the primary means of doing so.

The second was Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, from which a movie has been produced and is about to hit the theatres. The first 2/3rds of the book is an argument in favor of property destruction: “Damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed. If we can’t get a prohibition [of all new CO2-emitting devices], we can impose a de facto one with our bodies and any other means necessary.”

Then, two-thirds into the book, he seems to have serious second thought.s.

He writes that “strict selectivity would need to be observed… It will be states that ram through the transition or no one will… [With] a Green New Deal or some similar policy package, property destruction would appear superfluous to many.” In addition, sabotage carries political risks. “In the eyes of the public, in the early twentieth-first century and particularly in the global North, property destruction does tend to come off as violent… Because of the magnitude of the stakes in the climate crisis, negative effects could be unusually ruinous here.”

Which brings us to the third book: Altar to an Erupting Sun, a novel by Chuck Collins, to be published next month. The shero in this book, 69 year old, longtime activist and organizer Rae Kalliher, suffering from terminal cancer with not long to live, is introduced at the beginning of the book arriving early one Easter morning at a compound with a mansion set back from the road behind an eight foot high wall. Clearly having done some scouting, she stops a Humvee as it drives out from behind the walls. When she recognizes her target—“the Oil Baron”–inside the car, she pushes a button on her vest, killing her, him and two members of his family.

The book then shifts back 50 years to 1973 and the awakening of a young Rae to issues of oppression and injustice. Much of the book is a recounting of the life experiences of a young person who becomes a dedicated progressive activist and organizer in the New England region of the USA and how, through those experiences and a commitment to helping to create a better world, she ends up doing what she did. Those experiences included:

-active involvement in the 70s with the movement against nuclear power, including the toppling by Sam Lovejoy of a huge tower part of plans to build a nuke plant in Franklin Country, Massachusetts, and the Clamshell Alliance campaign which successfully defeated plans for a nuke plant in southern New Hampshire;

-involvement in the 80s with Vietnam war veteran Brian Willson and the movement in support of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FSLN in El Salvador in their efforts to overthrow military dictatorships and build more just societies;

-involvement in the 90s with Fr. Roy Bourgeois and the campaign to close the School of the Americas in Georgia, as well as groups in Boston working in support of the rights of tenants and against unjust evictions, into the 2000s;

-and in the latter years of the 2000s into the 2010s, helping to develop Mutual Aid groups, taking up permaculture in Vermont, followed by a growing understanding into the pandemic years of this decade of the seriousness of the climate crisis, learning about FERC and pipelines and taking action accordingly.

At one point author Collins has Rae exclaiming, “Get this: around 1978 Exxon’s own internal scientists studied climate change to analyze the risks to their business. They knew! Fifty years ago… The fuckers. This is the face of evil. There is a special ring in Hell for those who knowingly profit from the destruction of a habitable Earth.”

In 2022, after learning that she has terminal cancer, she tells Reggie, her lover/husband, one night, “I want to go out in an action. I want to make a statement about climate disruption, taking one of those fossil fuel CEOs with me. One of the guys who knew for decades about the harms of their business, but covered it up so they could grab more money.”

The closing chapter of the book is about a celebration in the community on what would have been Rae’s 76th birthday in 2030. Reggie, speaking about Rae, makes clear that seven years later, as deeply as he loved and respected her to the end, “what she did was wrong.”

In his book, Collins raises up the issue of elders in their final years taking risks or even deliberately giving their lives for Mother Earth and future generations. He does not write about Rae’s action being repeated by others. Instead he “reports” on a group of six grandmothers “calling themselves Good Ancestors immolating themselves in the lobby of ExxonMobil, capturing the attention of the world with their sacrificial witness. In the last year, there has been a steady stream of individual actions, most additional self-sacrifices.”

What Collins did not “report” on was massive, sustained, essentially nonviolent mass actions involving hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, for days and weeks on end, disrupting the operations of the fossil fuel industry or the banks which finance them.

These were the kinds of actions that took place in the repressive, racist USA South in the 50s and 60s. These actions broke the back of deeply-rooted Jim Crow segregation. Martin Luther King, Jr., a primary leader from the beginning of these actions, has written persuasively in Stride Toward Freedom, Why We Can’t Wait and Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community?, about this tactic as THE tactic which, he learned from experience, has the power to bring about substantive and transformative change.

Collins’ book is an important contribution to our urgent, existential battle for the future. It is a good read, thought provoking, informative history and inspiring. Thank you Chuck Collins.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ted Glick.

We continue to remember the lawyer and human rights activist Randall Robinson, the founder of the racial justice group TransAfrica, who died last week at age 81. Robinson was a leader in the U.S. movement against South African apartheid and was a prominent critic of U.S. policy in Haiti, including the U.S.-backed coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Democracy Now! spoke to Robinson in 2007 about that episode and how foreign powers have interfered in Haiti throughout the country’s history, beginning with the slave revolt against France that established Haiti as the first free republic in the Americas in 1804. “The Haitians believed that anybody who was enslaved anywhere had a home and a refuge in Haiti. Anybody seeking freedom had a sympathetic ear in Haiti. But because of that, the United States and France and the other Western governments, even the Vatican, made them pay for so terribly long,” said Robinson, who had just published the book An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.

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

We remember the human rights activist and lawyer Randall Robinson, the founder of TransAfrica, who died Friday at the age of 81. Robinson played a critical role in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States and was a prominent critic of U.S. policy in Haiti. In 2004, he helped expose the U.S. role in the coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We air excerpts from a 2013 interview Robinson did with Democracy Now! about his work.

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

This concept was also acknowledged by General Mark Milley, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff who said on January 20, 2023, that he believes Russia’s war in Ukraine will conclude with negotiations rather than on the battlefield. In November of 2022, asked about prospects for diplomacy in Ukraine, Milley noted that the early refusal to negotiate in World War One compounded human suffering and led to millions more casualties.

“So when there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved … seize the moment,” Milley told the Economic Club of New York.

Twenty years ago, in Baghdad, I shared quarters with Iraqis and internationals in a small hotel, the Al-Fanar, which had been home base for numerous Voices in the Wilderness delegations acting in open defiance of the economic sanctions against Iraq. U.S. government officials charged us as criminals for delivering medicines to Iraqi hospitals. In response, we told them we understood the penalties they threatened us with (twelve years in prison and a $1 million fine), but we couldn’t be governed by unjust laws primarily punishing children. And we invited government officials to join us. Instead, we were steadily joined by other peace groups longing to prevent a looming war.

In late January 2003, I still hoped war could be averted. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report was imminent. If it declared that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMD), U.S. allies might drop out of the attack plans, in spite of the massive military buildup we were witnessing on nightly television. Then came Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003, United Nations briefing, when he insisted that Iraq did indeed possess WMD. His presentation was eventually proven to be fraudulent on every count, but it tragically gave the United States enough credibility to proceed at full throttle with its “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign.

Beginning in mid-March 2003, the ghastly aerial attacks pounded Iraq day and night. In our hotel, parents and grandparents prayed to survive ear-splitting blasts and sickening thuds. A lively, engaging nine-year-old girl completely lost control over her bladder. Toddlers devised games to mimic the sounds of bombs and pretended to use small flashlights as guns.

Our team visited hospital wards where maimed children moaned as they recovered from surgeries. I remember sitting on a bench outside of an emergency room. Next to me, a woman convulsed in sobs asking, “How will I tell him? What will I say?” She needed to tell her nephew, who was undergoing emergency surgery, that he had not only lost both his arms but also that she was now his only surviving relative. A U.S. bomb had hit Ali Abbas’s family as they shared a lunch outside their home. A surgeon later reported that he had already told Ali that they had amputated both of his arms. “But,” Ali had asked him, “will I always be this way?”

I returned to the Al-Fanar Hotel that evening feeling overwhelmed by anger and shame. Alone in my room, I pounded my pillow, tearfully murmuring, “Will we always be this way?”

Throughout the Forever Wars of the past two decades, U.S. elites in the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex have manifested an insatiable appetite for war. They seldom heed the wreckage they have left behind after “ending” a war of choice.

Following the 2003 “Shock and Awe” war in Iraq, Iraqi novelist Sinan Antoon created a main character, Jawad, in The Corpse Washer, who felt overwhelmed by the rising numbers of corpses for whom he must care.

“I felt as if we had been struck by an earthquake which had changed everything,” Jawad reflects. “For decades to come, we would be groping our way around in the rubble it left behind. In the past there were streams between Sunnis and Shi͑ites, or this group and that, which could be easily crossed or were invisible at times. Now, after the earthquake, the earth had all these fissures and the streams had become rivers. The rivers became torrents filled with blood, and whoever tried to cross drowned. The images of those on the other side of the river had been inflated and disfigured . . . concrete walls rose to seal the tragedy.”

“War is worse than an earthquake,” a surgeon, Saeed Abuhassan, told me during Israel’s 2008-2009 bombing of Gaza, called Operation Cast Lead. He pointed out that rescuers come from all over the world following an earthquake, but when wars are waged, governments send only more munitions, prolonging the agony.

He explained the effects of weapons that had maimed patients undergoing surgery in Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital as the bombs continued to fall. Dense inert metal explosives lop off people’s limbs in ways that surgeons can’t repair. White phosphorus bomb fragments, embedded subcutaneously in human flesh, continue to burn when exposed to oxygen, asphyxiating the surgeons trying to remove the sinister material.

“You know, the most important thing you can tell people in your country is that U.S. people paid for many of the weapons used to kill people in Gaza,” Abuhassan said. “And this also is why it’s worse than an earthquake.”

As the world enters the second year of war between Ukraine and Russia, some say it’s unconscionable for peace activists to clamor for a cease-fire and immediate negotiations. Is it more honorable to watch the pile-up of body bags, the funerals, the grave digging, the towns becoming uninhabitable, and the escalation that could lead to a world war or even a nuclear war?

U.S. mainstream media rarely engages with professor Noam Chomsky, whose wise and pragmatic analysis rests on indisputable facts. In June 2022, four months into the Russia-Ukraine war, Chomsky spoke of two options, one being a negotiated diplomatic settlement. “The other,” he said, “is just to drag it out and see how much everybody will suffer, how many Ukrainians will die, how much Russia will suffer, how many millions of people will starve to death in Asia and Africa, how much we’ll proceed toward heating the environment to the point where there will be no possibility for a livable human existence.”

UNICEF reports how months of escalating devastation and displacement affect Ukrainian children: “Children continue to be killed, wounded, and deeply traumatized by violence that has sparked displacement on a scale and speed not seen since World War II. Schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure on which they depend continue to be damaged or destroyed. Families have been separated and lives torn apart.”

Estimates of Russian and Ukrainian military casualties vary, but some have suggested that more than 200,000 soldiers on both sides have been killed or wounded.

Gearing up for a major offensive before the spring thaw, Russia’s government announced it would pay a bonus to troops that destroy weapons used by Ukrainian soldiers which were sent from abroad. The blood money bonus is chilling, but on an exponentially greater level, major weapons manufacturers have accrued a steady bonanza of “bonuses” since the war began.
In the last year alone, the United States sent $27.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, providing “armored vehicles, including Stryker armored personnel carriers, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled vehicles.” The package also included air defense support for Ukraine, night vision devices, and small arms ammunition.

Shortly after Western countries agreed to send sophisticated Abrams and Leopard tanks to Ukraine, an adviser to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, Yuriy Sak, spoke confidently about getting F-16 fighter jets next. “They didn’t want to give us heavy artillery, then they did. They didn’t want to give us Himars systems, then they did. They didn’t want to give us tanks, now they’re giving us tanks. Apart from nuclear weapons, there is nothing left that we will not get,” he told Reuters.

Ukraine isn’t likely to get nuclear weapons, but the danger of nuclear war was clarified in a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists statement on January 24, which set the Doomsday Clock for 2023 to ninety seconds before the metaphorical “midnight.” The scientists warned that effects of the Russia-Ukraine war are not limited to an alarming increase in nuclear danger; they also undermine global efforts to combat climate change. “Countries dependent on Russian oil and gas have sought to diversify their supplies and suppliers,” the report notes, “leading to expanded investment in natural gas exactly when such investment should have been shrinking.”

Mary Robinson, the former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says the Doomsday Clock sounds an alarm for all humanity. “We are on the brink of a precipice,” she said. “But our leaders are not acting at sufficient speed or scale to secure a peaceful and livable planet. From cutting carbon emissions to strengthening arms control treaties and investing in pandemic preparedness, we know what needs to be done. The science is clear, but the political will is lacking. This must change in 2023 if we are to avert catastrophe. We are facing multiple existential crises. Leaders need a crisis mindset.”

As do we all. The Doomsday Clock indicates we’re living on borrowed time. We needn’t “always be this way.”

Over the past decade, I was fortunate to be hosted in dozens of trips to Kabul, Afghanistan, by young Afghans who fervently believed that words could be stronger than weapons. They espoused a simple, pragmatic proverb: “Blood does not wash away blood.”

We owe to future generations every possible effort to renounce all war and protect the planet.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kathy Kelly.