Rubio was in Malaysia on his first Asia trip since taking office, looking to stress U.S. commitment to the region at the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum, as countries received notices of U.S. tariffs announced by U.S. President Donald Trump this week.

At a Thursday photo-op before the start of the U.S, Japan, Philippines trilateral meeting, Rubio learned the summit’s signature “ASEAN-way” handshake.

“How do we do that?” Rubio asked.

“The ASEAN-way” replied Philippines’ Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro.

Japan’s Prime Minister Takeshi Iwaya then grabbed Rubio’s hands and crossed them, with the three standing and smiling with the traditional cross-armed handshake for cameras.

Rubio also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov where they discussed the Russia-Ukraine war.

Reporting by Reuters; edited by Charlie Dharapak.

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

• June 18^th is “International Day for Countering Hate Speech”
• Defense Secretary Hegseth grilled by democratic senators over military in US cities
• SFMTA to cut 5 Muni bus lines Saturday, critics see risks for riders and SF climate goals
• Pentagon authorizes mobilization of 700 troops to aid ICE in Florida, Louisiana and Texas
• Democratic senators propose “Insurrection Act of 2025” to limit presidents’ use of troops domestically
• Supreme Court upholds Tennesee ban on gender-affirming care for children, 26 states have similar laws

The post Defense Secretary Hegseth grilled over military in US cities; Muni to cut 5 bus lines Saturday – June 18, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

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

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Two days before President Donald Trump announced dramatic plans for “reciprocal” tariffs on foreign imports, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold stock in almost three dozen companies, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.

The Feb. 11 sales occurred near the stock market’s historic peak, just before it began to slide amid concerns about Trump’s tariff plans and ultimately plummeted after the president unveiled the details of the new tariffs on April 2.

Disclosure records filed by Duffy with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics show he sold between $75,000 and $600,000 of stock two days before Trump’s Feb. 13 announcement, and up to $50,000 more that day.

Transportation secretaries normally have little to do with tariff policy, but Duffy has presented himself as one of the intellectual forefathers of Trump’s current trade agenda. As a congressman in 2019, his last government position before Trump elevated him to his cabinet post, Duffy introduced a bill he named the “United States Reciprocal Trade Act.” The proposed legislation, which did not pass, in many ways mirrors Trump’s reciprocal tariff plan. Duffy worked on that bill with Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro. Trump’s tariffs were “the culmination of that work,” Duffy posted online, referring to his own bill in the House.

Trades by government officials informed by nonpublic information learned in the course of their official duties could violate the law. However, it’s unclear whether Duffy had any information about the timing or scale of Trump’s reciprocal tariff plans before the public did.

Trump had repeatedly promised to institute significant tariffs throughout the campaign. But during the first weeks of his term, investors were not panic selling, seeming to assume Trump wouldn’t adopt the far-reaching levies that led to the market crash following his “Liberation Day” announcement.

In response to questions from ProPublica, a Transportation Department spokesperson said an outside manager made the trades and Duffy “had no input on the timing of the sales” — a defense that ethics experts generally consider one of the strongest against questions of trading on nonpublic information.

His stock transactions “are part of a retirement account and not managed directly by the Secretary. The account managers must follow the guidance of the ethics agreement and they have done so.”

“The Secretary strongly supports the President’s tariff policy, but he isn’t part of the administration’s decisions on tariff levels,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson dismissed the notion that knowledge of Trump’s coming tariffs could constitute insider knowledge because “President Trump has been discussing tariffs since the 1980s.”

Duffy is the second cabinet secretary to have sold stock at an opportune time.

Last week, ProPublica reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media, the president’s social media company, on April 2. A government ethics agreement required Bondi to sell the shares within 90 days of her confirmation, a deadline that would have given her until early May, but why she sold on that date is unclear. After the market closed that day, Trump presented his tariffs, sending the market reeling.

Following ProPublica’s story, at least two Democratic members of Congress called for investigations. Bondi has yet to answer questions about whether she knew anything about Trump’s tariff plans before the public did. The Justice Department has not responded to questions about the trades.

Disclosure forms for securities trading by government officials do not require them to state the exact amount bought or sold but instead to provide a broad range for the totals of each transaction.

Duffy's disclosure records show he sold 34 stocks worth between $90,000 and $650,000 on Feb. 11 and Feb. 13. Per the ethics agreement he signed to avoid conflicts of interest as head of the Transportation Department, he was required to sell off stock in seven of those companies during his first three months in office. Cabinet members are typically required to divest themselves of financial interests that intersect with their department’s oversight role, which in Duffy’s case involve U.S. roadways, aviation and the rest of the nation’s transportation network. The ethics agreement was dated Jan. 13, and Duffy was confirmed by the senate on Jan. 28, meaning he had until late April to sell. His spokesperson said he provided his account manager with the ethics agreement on Feb. 7.

The stocks he sold in the other 27 companies were not subject to the ethics agreement. Those shares were valued somewhere between $27,000 and $405,000, according to the records. Among them were Shopify, whose merchants are impacted by the tariffs, and John Deere, the agricultural machinery manufacturer that has projected hundreds of millions of dollars in new costs because of Trump’s tariffs.

Other companies Duffy sold, like gambling firm DraftKings and food delivery service DoorDash, are less directly vulnerable to tariff disruptions. But even those companies will be impacted if Americans have less disposable cash to spend. Few stocks were not hit hard by Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. The S&P 500, a broadbased index, fell almost 19% in the weeks that followed Duffy’s sales and 13% specifically after Trump unveiled the details of his reciprocal tariff plan. Since Trump unexpectedly walked back much of those initial tariffs, the market has rebounded.

There’s no indication that the cash from Duffy’s sales was immediately reinvested. He appears to have held on to parts of his portfolio, including a Bitcoin fund, treasuries, S&P 500 funds and stock in Madrigal Pharmaceuticals, an American biopharma company. (Duffy also purchased some Microsoft shares, one of the stocks he’s prohibited from holding, days earlier on Feb. 7, only to sell them on Feb. 11 with the rest of his sales.)

Trades by government officials informed by nonpublic information learned through their jobs could violate the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK, Act. The 2012 law clarified that executive and legislative branch employees cannot use nonpublic government information to trade stock and requires them to promptly disclose their trades.

But no cases have ever been brought under the law, and some legal experts have doubts it would hold up to scrutiny from the courts, which in recent years have generally narrowed what constitutes illegal insider trading. Current and former officials have also raised concerns that Trump’s Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission would not aggressively investigate activities by Trump or his allies.

The president’s selection of Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation was somewhat unexpected. Duffy, who came to fame when he starred in the reality show “The Real World” in the late 1990s, had last held public office in 2019 during Trump’s first term when he served as a Wisconsin congressman.

As a lawmaker, Duffy introduced the bill that would have made it easier for Trump, or any president, to levy new tariffs, a role that had long been largely reserved for Congress. The bill would have allowed the president to impose additional tariffs on imported goods if he determined that another country was applying a higher duty rate on the same goods when they were coming from America.

The bill did not pass, but Trump has essentially assumed that power by justifying new tariffs as essential to national security or in response to a national emergency. His Feb. 13 announcement called on his advisers to come up with new tariff rates on goods coming from countries around the world based on a number of restrictions he said those countries were placing on American products — not just through tariffs, but also with their exchange rates and industry subsidies.

Even the public rollout of Duffy’s bill and Trump’s tariffs were similar. Duffy released a spreadsheet showing how other countries tariffed particular goods at a higher rate than the U.S. Trump also used a spreadsheet during his rollout to show that his new tariffs were the same or lower than the trade restrictions other countries had placed on American goods.

More recently, Duffy has been a booster of Trump’s trade policies.

“LIBERATION DAY!!We’re not gonna take it anymore!,” he tweeted two days after Trump unveiled his reciprocal tariffs on April 2. “This week, @POTUS took a historic step towards stopping other countries from ripping off the American worker and restoring Fair Trade. In Congress, I helped lead the US Reciprocal Trade Act with @RealPNavarro and the @WhiteHouse to expand the President’s tariff powers in his first term. I am so proud to have been able to share the culmination of that work, Liberation Day, with my family this week. Thank you at POTUS!”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Robert Faturechi and Brandon Roberts.

“No one denies the need to modernize air traffic control and strengthen the FAA. But you can’t fix the system by rewriting history and dodging responsibility,” said William J. McGee, Senior Fellow for Aviation & Travel at American Economic Liberties Project. “Secretary Sean Duffy has repeatedly failed to support the FAA and ATC modernization when it mattered. Ahead of a busy upcoming summer travel season, finger-pointing at the Biden Administration won’t make flying safer — and it’s especially rich given Secretary Buttigieg was among the few DOT Secretaries in decades to take meaningful steps to modernize our decades-old ATC system.”

“In back-to-back hearings on the FAA Reauthorization Act this week, Congress was blocked from getting straight answers on the health of our air traffic control system—because Secretary Duffy wasn’t there,” McGee added. “Whether he declined to attend or was never invited, the result was the same: lawmakers were left questioning deputies who were unable to answer basic questions about staffing or budgets. One even claimed to be unaware of the 332 FAA employees recently fired—despite widespread reporting on the matter.”

In the wake of repeated ATC failures at Newark Liberty International Airport, Duffy proposed a “big beautiful” modernization of ATC within four years, while the Government Accountability Office recently estimated modernization will take 10-13 years. In response to criticism of the FAA, Duffy has repeatedly stated that all ATC failures are due to former Secretary Pete Buttigieg, despite Buttigieg improving the controller pipeline and FAA’s own website documenting his hiring of 1,500 controllers in 2023.

Duffy’s words and actions have not aligned. As a member of Congress in 2019, he and 179 other Republicans voted against FAA funding. And just this month he warned DOT employees of further DOGE firings amidst worker buyouts. Duffy also ignores how the first Trump administration failed to address FAA staffing shortages and equipment failures and was best known for two crippling government shutdowns that left unpaid controllers “demoralized.”

Economic Liberties and many others have long noted the need for overhauling ATC and strengthening the FAA. But gaslighting about the causes won’t provide a fix; the fact is that Republicans have not acted meaningfully to address these problems and playing the blame game ignores the historical record.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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

No one from the BJP camp or the Union government, including external affairs minister S Jaishankar, has so far publicly condemned the targeted attacks.

Since the launch of Operation Sindoor on May 7, Misri, a 1989-batch officer of the Indian foreign service, addressed four press conferences, some singularly, and some jointly with armed force officials. It is through these briefings that a nation on tenterhooks kept itself abreast of the latest updates about the escalating conflict. What stood out during these sessions were the composure and confidence with which he articulated India’s position on various military, diplomatic and strategic matters.

Misri’s diplomatic acumen and clarity of thought were on display when in the May 7 press briefing, for example, he used the words ‘measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible’, describing the nature of Operation Sindoor. Again, in the May 10 presser, he decimated Pakistan’s efforts to discredit the Indian government by noting that it might be a surprise to a Pakistani to see citizens criticising their own government. “That is the hallmark of an open and functioning democracy. Pakistan’s unfamiliarity with that should be unsurprising,” he observed, with a hint of a smile on his face.

One understands that such dignified professionalism in the face of adversities comes from experiences gathered during a long and distinguished career. Misri, who took charge as foreign secretary on July 15, 2024, had his early postings on the Pakistan desk of the Union ministry of external affairs and stints on the staff of two former foreign ministers, I K Gujral and Pranab Mukherjee. He has served as private secretary to three Prime Ministers, I K Gujral, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi. His international assignments include postings in Brussels, Tunis, Islamabad and Washington D.C. He was the deputy high commissioner in Sri Lanka, consul general in Munich, ambassador to Spain, Myanmar and China. From January 2022 to June 2024, he served as deputy in the NSA for strategic affairs before becoming India’s 35th foreign secretary.

One also understands that such distinctions matter little to the Right-wing trolls. The aplomb and equanimity maintained throughout by Misri did not, perhaps, impress the zealots whose hyper-nationalism often finds expression in memes with leaders breathing fire from laser eyes. And then, on May 10, Misri appeared in a press briefing to announce that India and Pakistan had agreed to stop all firing and military action. This is when the gloves came off and they decided to target Misri, as the timeline analysis later in this article will show.

What’s more horrifying, though perhaps predictable, was that the trolls targeted and doxxed his daughter, Didon, a lawyer based in the UK, for her humanitarian work for Rohingya Muslims and her occasional involvement with The Wire as a columnist. Her contact information was leaked online, and the Misris were labeled as gaddars or traitors.

The trolling and the targeted harassment got so toxic that the foreign secretary had to lock his X handle, restricting public view.

Tracing the Timeline of the Harassment

Alt News traced the online harassment of Didon to two primary accounts, one of which has since been withheld. X user @JayRNair was the first to dox her, back in December 2024, after Misri stated that India did not endorse former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s criticism of the interim government in Bangladesh. The user shared a screenshot of the news report of the statement alongside Didon’s history of humanitarian work. The user also shared a screenshot of Didon’s profile on her company website that clearly showed her phone number. ‘What is most shocking is when you realize what his daughter does. She gave legal assistance to Rohingyas, now in London’, read the tweet.

This account has now been disabled.

The aforementioned tweet was reshared a few times since the launch of Operation Sindoor on May 7. There was one quote-tweet on May 8 and one more on May 9. However, we noticed that the tweet started getting more traction on the intervening night of May 10 and 11.

How did this happen? The second account that has consistently targeted Didon Misri is a user name Indian Kissinger (@kissingerspeaks). We also found two tweets from January and April 2025 that targeted Didon through subtle dog whistles.

The same user started viciously trolling the foreign secretary and his family after the ceasefire announcement was made. One of the earliest tweets targeting Didon Misri in the present context was shared on May 10 at 11:18 pm, which garnered half a million views. “Vikram Misri has to be made the next Sujatha Singh. No wonder his daughter supports Rohingya’s! Shameless Man and Family”, wrote the user.

This user also quote-tweeted user @JayRNair’s tweet doxxing Didon Misri in the comments, which is when more and more people started to interact with it. We noticed a significant increase in quote-tweets of the doxxing tweet within minutes of user @kissingerspeaks’ dog whistle.

Despite @JayRNair’s X handle being blocked, we were able to ascertain the URL of the tweet in which Vikram Misri’s daughter was doxxed. The ‘URL:’ syntax is a way of viewing all of the X users who quote-tweeted the withheld tweet while it was still live. The tweet ID, which is a unique numeric identifier of a certain tweet, often found at the end of the URL of a tweet, is fed into the syntax. We used Twitter’s advanced filters, ‘since:’ and ‘until:’, to set a time frame which makes it easier to track the activity. We used epoch time to set the exact time and date. Therefore, we analysed quote tweets posted between Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at 12:00 am (Epoch time: 1746556200) and Sunday, May 11, 2025, at 6:00 pm (Epoch time: 1746923400).

One quote-tweet read, “His daughter doesn’t care about this country but he comes out every now and then to inform us about ongoing affairs. India is f****d bcoz of these babus who can’t handle their families but try to convince entire nation. F*** u.”

What followed was a night of incessant trolling and harassment, especially targeted at Didon. While some people shared a picture of Misri’s family and labelled them traitors, some dug out a 2016 article that Didon had authored for The Wire, leaving many in the far-Right echo chamber displeased.

One influential far-Right X handle that also dog-whistled against Didon Misri was Squint Neon, run by Chandan Kumar. In a now-deleted tweet, Chandan shared the link to The Wire article authored by Didon, which was enough for his army of followers to rush in while spewing hate.

Since the tweet has been deleted, it’s difficult to determine exactly when Chandan Kumar posted it. However, based on the timestamps of the quote tweets, it can be estimated that it was live by at least 12:52 am on May 11, if not earlier. We observed that the first quote tweet appeared at that time, followed by several others within minutes. We are also estimating that the tweet was deleted sometime just before 10 am on the morning of May 11.

Alt News has consistently flagged Chandan Kumar’s online activities and the problematic content that he shares as ‘Squint Neon’ and ‘Hindutva Knight’, which has repeatedly violated social media guidelines. After the admin came under police scrutiny, nearly 19,000 tweets were deleted from @TheSquind’s account. Originally created as a parody of The Quint in 2017, Squint Neon has been suspended multiple times but continues to resurface with new usernames, including @squintneon and @squintnayan, and now @thesquind, where it remains popular among the far-Right ecosystem.

In November last year, Kumar came under scrutiny after he doxxed journalist Rana Ayyub. Her number was made public by Kumar in a tweet at 1:15 am on November 8, following which she was bombarded with phone calls, video calls and lewd messages throughout the rest of the night. Previously, Kumar had come under fire for morphing an obscene image over that of a Thanthai Periyar statue. Alt News also uncovered, in an elaborate report, a deeply disturbing vigilantism that Kumar engages in wherein he ‘exposes’ Hindu women, including minors, who are involved with Muslim men. Chandan Kumar has previously been on the radar of law enforcement authorities, but has evaded arrest.

No Condemnation yet from the BJP Camp

No one from the BJP or the Union government, including external affairs minister S Jaishankar, has so far publicly condemned the targeted attacks against foreign secretary.

Opposition leaders like Assaduddin Owaisi from the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen took to X to publicly back Misri. “…Our Civil Servants work under the Executive this must be remembered & they shouldn’t be blamed for the decisions taken by The Executive /or any Political leadership…”, he wrote.

Mr Vikram Misri is a decent and an Honest Hard working Diplomat working tirelessly for our Nation.
Our Civil Servants work under the Executive this must be remembered & they shouldn’t be blamed for the decisions taken by The Executive /or any Political leadership running Watan E… https://t.co/yfM3ygfiyt

— Asaduddin Owaisi (@asadowaisi) May 11, 2025

Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav also tweeted his support for Vikram Misri, calling for an investigation into those who had trolled Misri.

निर्णय तो सरकार का होता है; किसी अधिकारी का नहीं।

ये बेहद संवेदनशील, निंदनीय, शर्मनाक, आपत्तिजनक और दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण बात है कि देश के एक बहुत बड़े अधिकारी और उसके परिवार के ख़िलाफ़ कुछ असामाजिक-आपराधिक तत्व सरेआम अपशब्दों की सारी सीमाएं तोड़ रहे हैं लेकिन उनके मान-सम्मान की रक्षा… pic.twitter.com/scIUETtX1e

— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) May 11, 2025

CPI(M) Rajya Sabha leader John Brittas wrote to Union home minister Amit Shah calling for an urgent intervention against the malicious attacks against Misri and his family.

Requested the Hon’ble Home Minister to investigate the malicious and coordinated cyber attacks targeting the Foreign Secretary @VikramMisri and his family in the aftermath of the Indo-Pak ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/guG0IpRVQs

— John Brittas (@JohnBrittas) May 12, 2025

The National Commission for Women has also condemned the targeted harassment that Vikram Misri and Didon Misri had to undergo. In a statement issued by NCW Chairperson Vijaya Rahatkar, the panel denounced the sharing of the young woman’s personal contact details, calling it a “grossly irresponsible act” and a “serious breach of privacy” that endangers her safety. Former diplomat Nirupama Menon Rao also tweeted her condemnation of the harassment.

It’s utterly shameful to troll Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and his family over the India-Pakistan ceasefire announcement. A dedicated diplomat, Misri has served India with professionalism and resolve, and there is no ground whatsoever for his vilification . Doxxing his…

— Nirupama Menon Rao (@NMenonRao) May 11, 2025

Various IAS, IPS officers’ associations, too, have criticized the attacks on Misri and his family, describing them as ‘deplorable personal attacks’ and ‘unwarranted assaults on civil servants committed to their duties…”

The post Ceasefire announcement triggered attacks on foreign secretary Vikram Misri, daughter, shows timeline analysis appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

As the conflict chugs along in pools of blood and bountiful gore, the confused shape of Israel’s intentions continues in all its glorious nebulousness.  Pretend moderation clouds murderous desire.  There is no sense that those unfortunate Israeli hostages captured by Hamas in its assault on October 7, 2023, matter anymore, being merely decorative for the imminent slaughter.  There is even less sense that Hamas will be cleansed and removed from the strip, however attractive this idea continues to be.

Such evident limits have not discouraged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, who have decided that more force, that old province of the unimaginative, is the answer.  According to the PM, the cabinet had agreed on a “forceful operation” to eliminate Hamas and salvage what is left of the hostage situation.

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, Brigadier-General Effie Defrin, has explained on Israeli radio that the offensive will apparently ensure the return of the hostages.  What follows will be “the collapse of the Hamas regime, its defeat, its submission”.  Anywhere up to two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza will be herded into the ruins of the south.  Humanitarian aid will be arranged by the Israeli forces to be possibly distributed through approved contractors.

The IDF chief of staff, Lt. General Eyal Zamir, confirmed that the approved plan will involve “the capture of the Strip and holding the territories, moving the Gazan population south for its defence, denying Hamas the ability to distribute humanitarian supplies, and powerful attacks against Hamas.”

Within the Israeli cabinet, ethnocentric and religious fires burn with bright fanaticism.  The Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich remains a figure who ignores floral subtlety in favour of the blood-stained sledgehammer.  He remains that coherent link between cruel lawmaking and baffling violence.  “Within a few months,” he boasts, “we will be able to declare that we have won.  Gaza will be totally destroyed.”  With pompous certitude, he also claimed that the next six months would see Hamas cease to exist.

Such opinions, expressed at the “Settlements Conference” organised by the Makor Rishon newspaper in Ofra, a West Bank settlement, give a sense of the flavour.  Palestinians are to be “concentrated” on land located between the Egyptian border and the arbitrarily designated Morag Corridor.  As with any potential abuser keen to violate his vulnerable charges while justifying it, Smotrich tried to impress with the idea that this was a “humanitarian” zone that would be free of “Hamas and terrorism”.

The program here is clear in its chilling crudeness.  Expulsion, relocation, transfer.  These are the words famously used to move on populations of a sizeable number in history, often at enormous cost.  That this should involve lawmakers of the Jewish state adds a stunning, if perverse, poignancy to this.  They, the moved on in history, the expelled and the condemned wanderers, shall expel others and condemn them in turn.  Smotrich also points the finger at desperation and hopelessness, the biting incentives that propel migration.  The Palestinians will feel blessed in their banishment.  “They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”

Impossible to ignore in Smotrich’s steaming bile against the Palestinians is the broader view that no Palestinian state can arise, necessitating urgent, preventative poisoning.  In addition to the eventual depopulation of Gaza, plans to reconstitute the contours of the West Bank, ensuring that Israeli and Palestinian traffic are separated to enable building and construction for settlements as a prelude to annexation, are to be implemented.

The issue of twisting and mangling humanitarian aid in favour of Israel’s territorial lust has raised some tart commentary.  A statement from the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a forum led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), does not shy away from the realities on the ground.  All supplies, including those vital to survival, have been blocked for nine weeks.  Bakeries and community kitchens have closed, while warehouses are empty.  Hunger, notably among children, is rampant.  Israel’s plan, as presented, “will mean that large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies.”

The UN Secretary General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator have confirmed that they will not cooperate in the scheme, as it “does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.”

The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have made the same point.  Despite all being solid allies of Israel, they have warned that violations of international law are taking place.  “Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and a Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change”.

To date, a promise lingers that the offensive will only commence once US President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar takes place.  But no ongoing savaging of Gaza with some crude effort at occupation will solve the historical vortex that continues to drag the Jewish state to risk and oblivion.

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

In March, the Trump administration directed employees to immediately cease doing their jobs, including any efforts to wind down operations or transfer any complaints or ongoing investigations to other departments. According to a DHS spokesperson at the time, the offices were closed because they “obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission.”

Congress created the three offices to protect the privacy interests and civil rights of individuals, and to report to Congress and the public about the complaints that the offices received and resolved.

The Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office was established by Congress to investigate complaints involving constitutional rights, such as privacy invasions or excessive force used by Border Patrol agents, or facial recognition technology used at airports. The CIS Ombudsman’s Office helps immigrants who have problems obtaining work permits or applying for green cards. And the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman monitors conditions in detention facilities and handles complaints involving excessive force, sexual abuse, and inadequate medical care, among other issues.

“Eliminating these three offices both undermines the ability of individuals to rein in the overreach of DHS, and violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers, flouting Congress’s express determination that these offices must exist,” said Karla Gilbride, deputy director of Public Citizen Litigation Group and lead counsel on the case. “The Department of Homeland Security is required by law to review and assess information alleging abuses of civil rights and civil liberties. The decision to shutter these offices is an illegal attempt to undermine key civil rights protections and remove vital accountability mechanisms within DHS at a time when they are sorely needed.”

“The decimation of these offices does not make anyone’s lives better or safer – what it does is target the innocent and those who have been placed in vulnerable circumstances. The closure of these offices is part of the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrants in this country and weakening of protections and resources afforded to them,” said Skye Perryman, President & CEO of Democracy Forward. “We will continue to use every legal tool we have to protect people and our democracy.”

"RFK Human Rights has filed complaints with CRCL and OIDO for hundreds of people abused in immigration detention centers across the country, urging investigations into systemic sexual abuse, medical neglect, and deliberate infliction of severe pain amounting to torture,” said Anthony Enriquez, VP of U.S. Advocacy and Litigation, RFK Human Rights. “Congress created and funded oversight agencies to prevent these abuses and no president has the power to single-handedly rewrite those laws."

“Border communities have been calling for real accountability as we endure racial profiling, excessive use of force, arbitrary searches and other abuses by border agents, and the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was one of the few paths for us to seek justice for these gross violations of human rights,” said Lilian Serrano, Director of Southern Border Communities Coalition. “Shutting down these oversight offices within DHS is a blatant attempt by the Trump Administration to shield the department, including CBP—the nation’s largest law enforcement agency—from accountability. The administration cannot erase accountability by dismantling an office Congress created to protect our rights.”

"By gutting and closing these offices, the administration has effectively placed survivors of domestic violence in an untenably dangerous position,” said Alessandra Rosales, supervising attorney of immigration law at Urban Justice Center. “The humanitarian remedies created by Congress for immigrant survivors are a crucial tool in their healing and rebuilding. Removing the mechanism for oversight and enforcement of these legal protections will permit agencies to violate with impunity the civil rights of vulnerable people who have already endured unspeakable trauma and tragedy."

The full complaint can be found here. For additional information on the case, or to request an interview with the litigation team or our plaintiffs, contact Patrick Davis, pdavis@citizen.org.

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

Photograph Source: Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0

Massachuset’s Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira and Secretary of Defense Pete
Hegsmeth have little in common.  Teixeira is serving a 15-year sentence for leaking Pentagon documents on an unclassified web site called 4chan and on Twitter and Telegram.  He then posted printouts of the documents at his parent’s home as well as on an instant messaging platform “Discord.”  The leaked documents were primarily related to the Russo-Ukrainian War, containing operational briefs from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.  The operational details would have been extremely valuable to Russian forces for they identified Ukrainian difficulties in countering Russian flanking maneuvers.

Secretary of Defense Hegseth is a former Army National Guard officer who has academic degrees from Princeton University and Harvard University.  (Teixeira is a high school graduate.)  Hegseth was confirmed by the Senate as the 29th secretary of defense in U.S. history, requiring a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance.  It was only the second time in our history that a Cabinet nominee’s confirmation was decided by a vice president’s vote.  He is the second-youngest person to serve as secretary of defense, after Donald Rumsfeld, who was the youngest in serving President Gerald Ford and the oldest in serving President George W. Bush.  Like Teixeira, however, Hegseth released operational details from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff that identified details of an imminent U.S. military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.  Unlike Teixeira’s information, Hegseth’s operational intelligence could have endangered the lives of naval airmen and compromised the top secret mission.

There is a major difference between the two men regarding outcomes.  Unlike Teixeira, Hegseth has faced no punishment for his failure to comply with Department of Defense policies and procedures and to place the lives of U.S. servicemen at risk.  The Pentagon’s independent watchdog has agreed to a request from the Senate Armed Services Committee to launch a probe into Hegseth’s actions.  The review will determine whether Hegseth was in compliance with classification and records retention requirements.  Hegseth has lied, arguing falsely that no classified military plans has been discussed.

There are several aspects of this illegal activity that finds the two men have something in common.  First of all, Teixeira and Hegseth were engaging in performative actions that compromised national security interests of the United States.  Second, the two men were essentially boasting about their knowledge of extremely sensitive intelligence to what can be fairly described as their peers.  Teixeira’s peers were very young men in their teens and early twenties who seemed to have had no interest in the sensitive information that Teixeira provided, but were awed by Teixeira’s knowledge and access to unusual information available to very few people in the U.S. government.

Hegseth’s peers were high-level members of the Trump national security team who had no need for Hegseth’s information at that time because the decision to attack the Houthis had already been made, which is exactly what deputy chief of staff Steven Miller told the chat group in order to cut off any debate regarding the decision.  In other words, both men—the teenaged airman and the secretary of defense—were boasting about their knowledge of sensitive information for their own self-aggrandizing reasons.

As a result, the young, low-level braggart is in jail for the next 14 years, but the big-time braggart will go completely free; he’s “too big to jail.”  The same could be said for National Security Adviser Mike Waltz who set up the illegal chat room where Hegseth’s military plans were revealed.  Waltz is a particularly pathetic case because he was responsible for placing a liberal journalist in the controversial chat room.  More recently, Waltz’s lack of stature in the Trump administration was manifested when he couldn’t prevent the firing of six senior staffers from his NSC because of the rantings of a crazed conspiracy theorist, Laura Loomer.  Loomer is well known for calling 9/11 an “inside job.”

Hegseth’s escapade fits a larger pattern that finds high-level officials escaping punishment, while lower level officials end up in jail.  Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton received no punishment for her wanton disregard of U.S. laws and national security in using her personal cell phone for storing sensitive materials.  CIA director David Petreaus, a retired four-star general, provided sensitive intelligence to his biographer, who was also his mistress, but received a modest fine that was covered by a few of his speaking fees.  Former national security adviser Sandy Berger stuffed his pants with classified documents from the National Archives, but received a modest fine.

And former CIA director John Deutch placed the most sensitive CIA operational materials on his home computer, which was used to access pornographic sites.  Deutch was assessed a fine of $5,000, but received a pardon from President Bill Clinton before prosecutors could file the papers in federal court.  Former attorney general Alberto Gonzales kept sensitive documents about the NSA’s surveillance program at his home, but received no punishment.

Conversely, the “Jack Teixeira’s” of the world get hammered.  John Kiriakou, a CIA operative, received a thirty-month jail sentence in 2014 for giving two journalists the name of a CIA operative, although the name never appeared in the media.  Kiriakou was punished because he was the first CIA officer to reveal the torture and abuse program.  Meanwhile, the authors of the torture memoranda at the Department of Justice—John Yoo and Jay Bybee—received no punishment or even censure.  Moreover, Yoo is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California’s law school in Berkeley, and Bybee is a senior judge of the Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit.

A CIA colleague from the 1970s, Frank Snepp, wrote an important book on the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam that used no classified information, but had to forfeit considerable royalties because the book wasn’t submitted for the agency’s security review.  Meanwhile, former CIA directors Leon Panetta and George Tenet received special treatment from the CIA for their memoirs. (My CIA memoir contained no classified information and took nearly a year to be cleared, requiring the intervention of the ACLU to get the manuscript released.  The ACLU took the case all the way to the Supreme Court before it was predictably dismissed on national security grounds.)

The CIA’s review system is in fact a censorship system that can’t be squared with the Constitution.  At the same time, in the case of Secretary of Defense Hegseth, we find the government doing nothing to protecting bona fide national security secrets.

The post The Insecurities of Airman Teixeira and Secretary of Defense Hegseth appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

Shortly after President Donald Trump’s second term began, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined Trump in taking steps to intimidate leakers and news outlets that have covered him and his administration unfavorably. We’re documenting her efforts in this regularly updated report.

Read about how Trump’s appointees and allies in Congress are striving to chill reporting, revoke funding, censor critical coverage and more here.

This article was first published on March 14, 2025.

March 21, 2025 | Defense Department announces investigation into media leaks

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March 21, 2025 | Defense Department announces investigation into media leaks

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office sent a memo on March 21, 2025, initiating an investigation into “recent unauthorized disclosures of national security information.”

“This investigation will commence immediately and culminate in a report to the Secretary of Defense,” wrote Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff. “I expect to be informed immediately if this effort results in information identifying a party responsible for an unauthorized disclosure, and that such information will be referred to the appropriate criminal law enforcement entity for criminal prosecution.”

The memo also noted that department employees will be subject to polygraph exams “in accordance with applicable law and policy.”

The memo came hours after Elon Musk, head of the new Department of Government Efficiency, posted on social media calling The New York Times’ reporting on the planned content of his briefing at the Pentagon “pure propaganda.”

“I look forward to the prosecutions of those at the Pentagon who are leaking maliciously false information to NYT,” Musk wrote. “They will be found.”

Musk’s meeting with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ultimately did not take place, Reuters reported.

A Times spokesperson told Reuters that leak investigations are “meant to chill communications between journalists and their sources and undermine the ability of a free press to bring out vital information that may otherwise be hidden.”

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/03/pete-hegseth-targets-news-outlets-leakers-as-defense-secretary/feed/ 0 523536 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/24/the-doublespeak-of-energy-secretary-chris-wright/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/24/the-doublespeak-of-energy-secretary-chris-wright/#respond Mon, 24 Mar 2025 14:15:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/energy-secretary-chris-wright-climate-change-double-speak-oil-gas-trump by Abrahm Lustgarten

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

For Chris Wright, there may be no simple truths. At his Senate confirmation hearing on Jan. 15, the man poised to take control of the U.S. Department of Energy and its vast apparatus of technological research and development sat behind a walnut desk wearing a gray suit and a crisply knotted red tie. Wright, the founder and CEO of Liberty Energy, a $3 billion natural gas fracking company, harkened back to his days as a solar energy researcher and offered lawmakers a vision of open-mindedness and innovation. Climate change is an urgent challenge, he reassured them, and he would address it.

“It is a global issue. It is a real issue. It’s a challenging issue. And the solution to climate change is to evolve our energy system,” he told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “I am for improving all energy technologies that can better human lives and reduce emissions.”

Since his confirmation as the secretary of energy on Feb. 3, though, Wright has outlined an anti-climate agenda. Speaking to conservative audiences, he is charismatic, animated and far more zealous. Wright dismissed the transition to renewable energy as nonexistent in a Feb. 18 speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, a gathering associated with the podcast host Jordan Peterson, and called global efforts to boost the use of renewables, which he said drive up the price of energy, “lunacy.”

“The world simply runs on hydrocarbons,” he told the group, “and for most of their uses, we don’t have replacements.”

Before Congress, he pledged to listen and learn and then chart his course. Before Peterson’s group, he announced he already had “a nine-point plan” that would more than double the world’s consumption of the very fuels causing the planet to overheat. “Number one is, get out of the way of the production, export and enhancement of our volumes of coal, oil and gas,” he said. Yes, they cause climate change, he has repeatedly acknowledged, but it amounts to an inconvenient complication.

Over the past several weeks, Wright has delivered speeches not just at Peterson’s conference but also at the Conservative Political Action Conference and at CERAWeek, widely seen as the oil industry’s most influential business event, during which he continued to assert that the world’s economy is primarily dependent on the expansion of hydrocarbons and that alternatives like solar and wind have proved both costly and a failure — characterizations that ignore the swiftly falling costs and rapid adoption of both technologies. “I think the agenda might be different here than climate change,” he mused at Peterson’s forum, referring to “the climate-obsessed people” he’s spoken with. Then he hit on a theme that he emphasized again in the weeks that followed: “It’s certainly been a powerful tool used to grow government power, top-down control and shrink human freedom. This is sinister.”

Chris Wright has different answers for different audiences … … on fossil fuel dependence

In Congress, at the Senate Confirmation Hearing on Jan. 15, 2025, Wright said: “The only pathway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lift up people's quality of life is through energy innovation. And America has been a hotbed of that.”

At the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference on Feb. 17, 2025, Wright said: “The world simply runs on hydrocarbons and for most of their uses, we don't have replacements.”

… on responding to climate change

In Congress, at the Senate Confirmation Hearing on Jan. 15, 2025, Wright said: “I've studied and followed the data and the evolution of climate change for at least 20 years now. It is a global issue. It is a real issue. It's a challenging issue. And the solution to climate change is to evolve our energy system.”

At CERAWeek on March 10, 2025, Wright said: “I'm honored to play a role in reversing what I believe has been very poor direction in energy policy. The previous administration's policy was focused myopically on climate change with people as simply collateral damage.”

… on alternative energy sources

In Congress, at the Senate Confirmation Hearing on Jan. 15, 2025, Wright said: “I will be an unabashed steward for all sources of affordable, reliable and secure American energy and the infrastructure needed to develop, deliver and secure them.”

At CERAWeek on March 10, 2025, Wright said: “Beyond the obvious scale and cost problems, there is simply no physical way that wind, solar and batteries could replace the myriad uses of natural gas. I haven't even mentioned oil or coal yet.”

As Wright’s views have become more public, it suggests that he and the rest of Trump’s cabinet will embrace the premise of climate change but downplay its threat, even building a case that it is a benefit to society. The White House is seeking to reverse the legal definition of carbon dioxide as a climate pollutant and undo scores of rules addressing the economic costs of the extreme warming it causes. “Recently I’ve been called a climate denier or climate skeptic,” Wright told attendees at CERAWeek. “This is simply wrong. I am a climate realist.”

“The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that is a side effect of building the modern world,” he continued. Global life expectancy has soared. Poverty has sharply declined. Modern medicine and telecommunications and airplanes have all resulted. And in the process, “We have indeed raised global atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50%.”

“Everything in life involves trade-offs,” he added. “Everything.”

Such a jarring claim amounts to more than a philosophical difference about the priorities of the world. It is unambiguously dismissive of a climate crisis that the vast majority of global scientists warn will prove devastatingly disruptive. It has given some of the people he addressed in Congress whiplash. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who sits on the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, wrote through a spokesperson in response to questions from ProPublica that Wright stated a willingness to “support all energy sources,” but now that he is prioritizing a fossil fuel agenda, it is “deeply disappointing.”

The one thing it is not, however, is new.

In 2024, Liberty Energy published a little-noticed, 180-page manifesto called “Bettering Human Lives,” connected to the similarly named poverty-alleviation foundation his company created that year to bring cooking fuels to Africa. The document amounts to a spirited moral argument for how energy produced from oil and gas has advanced the developed world and how essential it will be to raise undeveloped countries out of poverty. Wright’s premise is that communities that lack electricity or modern fuels should get the immediate benefit from the cheapest existing energy source available to them. He says that recent climate policies prohibiting U.S. investment in infrastructure that could provide that energy using oil and gas does enormous human harm. But the “Bettering Human Lives” report goes further, suggesting that there is little role for non-hydrocarbon technologies and arguing that if oil and gas production are not expanded globally, billions of people will be held in poverty.

At his senate confirmation, Wright was asked several times to explain his embrace of “all sources” of energy. During one exchange, in which Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., pushed him to expand on what he meant, Wright listed them: wind, nuclear, geothermal, hydropower. “And if I didn’t say solar, it was an oversight.”

The statement is a sharp contrast to what Wright has told his investors in Liberty Energy’s earnings calls, where he has blamed many of those renewables for rising poverty and declining growth and has criticized “the incessant repeating of the simply false term,” referring to “the so-called energy transition.” He argues that for all the years and dollars invested in lowering carbon and subsidizing a transition to cleaner energy, hydrocarbons still fuel roughly the same 85% of global energy supply that they have for decades. Renewables, he says, still account for less than 3%. (The remainder being nuclear and hydroelectric energy, among other sources.)

According to the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy,” the energy industry’s trusted source for global market trends, though, hydrocarbons have dropped to 81.5% of global energy consumption, and renewables now account for roughly 8% of global energy use — more than twice what Wright claims — and are projected to grow sharply over the next few years. Moreover, the report states that solar and wind capacity grew by 67% in 2023, adding more wind and solar capacity than ever before and driving the vast majority of the world’s increase in electricity generation for the year.

Wright, whose office did not respond to a detailed list of questions, has said he rejects similar calculations on methodological grounds.

He also ignores the ways in which the energy transition in the U.S. is already well underway. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the government’s primary energy data office, wind and solar are responsible for substantial growth in American electricity generation while generation from natural gas is forecast to decrease. South Dakota, for example, gets 80% of its electricity from renewables, and Vermont relies on them nearly 100%.

Facts aside, Wright, in his recent remarks, has begun to present his agenda in ideological terms, drawing a straight line between fossil fuel use and conservative fears that Americans’ freedom is under assault. At CPAC, liberated from the necktie he said he’d been compelled to wear since his confirmation hearing, roaming the brightly lit stage with his arms outstretched, he reframed oil and gas not as the cause of climate change the way he’d previously conceded but as a fuel that is patriotic and moral. “Not everyone in the world has access to the liberty and energy we have,” he told the audience. “But in our own country, both of those concepts have been under great threat in the last four years. Maybe that’s why my political career started. Liberty under threat, energy resources under threat.”

It was a whole different message from the one Wright delivered before the Senate.

Amy Westervelt of Drilled contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Abrahm Lustgarten.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/24/the-doublespeak-of-energy-secretary-chris-wright/feed/ 0 521097 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check/#respond Fri, 21 Mar 2025 19:57:52 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check-2671381942 Yesterday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raised the possibility of Americans not receiving their Social Security checks on time on the All In podcast, claiming that seniors like his mother-in-law “wouldn't call and complain," and that only “fraudsters” would raise an issue.

Groundwork Collaborative’s Chief of Policy and Advocacy Alex Jacquez reacted with the following statement:

“The Trump Administration just told seniors that they should shut up and sit down if they don’t receive their Social Security checks on time. The real ‘fraudsters’ are Trump’s out-of-touch billionaire donors and advisors denying seniors their hard-earned benefits to pay for their next tax giveaway.”

Email press@groundworkcollaborative.org to speak with a Groundwork expert about DOGE and the Trump Administration’s assault on Social Security.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check/feed/ 0 520787 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check-2/#respond Fri, 21 Mar 2025 19:30:33 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check Yesterday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raised the possibility of Americans not receiving their Social Security checks on time on the All In podcast, claiming that seniors like his mother-in-law “wouldn't call and complain," and that only “fraudsters” would raise an issue.

Groundwork Collaborative’s Chief of Policy and Advocacy Alex Jacquez reacted with the following statement:

“The Trump Administration just told seniors that they should shut up and sit down if they don’t receive their Social Security checks on time. The real ‘fraudsters’ are Trump’s out-of-touch billionaire donors and advisors denying seniors their hard-earned benefits to pay for their next tax giveaway.”

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/trumps-commerce-secretary-wants-seniors-to-shut-up-and-sit-down-if-they-dont-receive-their-social-security-check-2/feed/ 0 520789 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/campaign-legal-center-files-complaint-against-u-s-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-for-violating-federal-ethics-rules/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/campaign-legal-center-files-complaint-against-u-s-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-for-violating-federal-ethics-rules/#respond Fri, 21 Mar 2025 18:50:26 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/campaign-legal-center-files-complaint-against-u-s-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-for-violating-federal-ethics-rules Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint [see here] with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) and ethics officials at the U.S. Department of Commerce, urging them to hold U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick accountable for encouraging viewers of Fox News to buy stock in Tesla Wednesday evening. Lutnick’s promotion of the car company owned by Elon Musk, a megadonor to President Donald Trump and leader of the so-called U.S. DOGE Service (DOGE), violates federal ethics rules.

“The president’s Cabinet members take an oath to serve the American people, and with that oath comes the ability and privilege to exercise a vast amount of power,” Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel, and senior director of ethics at Campaign Legal Center said in a statement. “Secretary Lutnick’s actions violate the ethics rules that were enacted to hold public officials accountable to the American people. The Office of Government Ethics and Commerce ethics officials should hold Lutnick accountable and reassure the public that their officials will face consequences if they use their public office to enrich themselves or their allies.”

Executive branch officials are prohibited from using their public office to promote any product, service or enterprise. Therefore, Secretary Lutnick violated well-established federal ethics rules by using a television appearance to call on Americans to buy a specific stock while serving in his official capacity as Commerce secretary.

Secretary Lutnick’s promotion of Tesla stock follows a concerning pattern of President Trump and his allies using the system to reward wealthy special interests with political favors and extreme influence.

Senior officials of this administration have thousands of documented conflicts of interest, while robust ethics enforcement appears to be absent. This is a stark contrast to even the first Trump administration, which despite its routine ignoring of ethics rules, still had White House ethics lawyers rebuke Kellyanne Conway for promoting products by Ivanka Trump.

Executive branch officials hold some of the most powerful positions in government and they owe it to the America people to make the public good, not wealthy special interests, their top priority. The Office of Government Ethics and Commerce ethics officials must ensure that Secretary Lutnick is held accountable for a clear violation of federal ethics rules.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/21/campaign-legal-center-files-complaint-against-u-s-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-for-violating-federal-ethics-rules/feed/ 0 520727 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/20/commerce-secretary-howard-lutnicks-call-to-buy-tesla-stock-violates-federal-ethics-rules/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/20/commerce-secretary-howard-lutnicks-call-to-buy-tesla-stock-violates-federal-ethics-rules/#respond Thu, 20 Mar 2025 20:01:58 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/commerce-secretary-howard-lutnicks-call-to-buy-tesla-stock-violates-federal-ethics-rules In an appearance on Fox News yesterday evening, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick encouraged viewers to buy stock in Tesla, the car company owned by Elon Musk, a “special government employee” advising the president and a leader of the so-called U.S. DOGE Service (DOGE).

This continues a worrying pattern, seen since Inauguration Day, of President Donald Trump and his allies attempting to manipulate the system to enrich wealthy donors. Thus far, the second Trump administration has opened the door to a culture of corruption that rewards wealthy special interests with political favors and extreme influence.

Even Trump’s first administration acknowledged that government officials are prohibited from endorsing “any product, service or enterprise” when White House ethics lawyers rebuked Kellyanne Conway for promoting Ivanka Trump’s products.

But the new administration has senior officials with thousands of documented conflicts of interest and apparently no ethics enforcement. By using a television appearance, while in his official capacity as Commerce secretary, to call on Americans to buy a specific stock, Secretary Lutnick has clearly violated well-established federal ethics rules.

Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel, and senior director for ethics at Campaign Legal Center, issued the following statement:

“The president’s Cabinet members take an oath to serve the American people, and with that oath comes the ability and privilege to exercise a vast amount of power. Such power is intended to promote the public interest and is legally barred from promoting personal business interests.

“Secretary Lutnick’s actions violate the ethics rules that were enacted to hold public officials accountable to the American people. His statement is part of a pattern of behavior showing that Trump’s indifference to ethics is trickling down to his most senior officials.

“The American people deserve a government that prioritizes public good. Most people will conclude that promoting a stock is not tied to any public good and ethics laws agree. The Office of Government Ethics and Commerce ethics officials should hold Lutnick accountable and reassure the public that their officials will face consequences if they use their public office to enrich themselves or their allies.”

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/20/commerce-secretary-howard-lutnicks-call-to-buy-tesla-stock-violates-federal-ethics-rules/feed/ 0 520449 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/10/oil-change-response-to-energy-secretary-chris-wrights-speech-at-major-oil-and-gas-conference/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/10/oil-change-response-to-energy-secretary-chris-wrights-speech-at-major-oil-and-gas-conference/#respond Mon, 10 Mar 2025 17:51:48 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/oil-change-response-to-energy-secretary-chris-wrights-speech-at-major-oil-and-gas-conference In response to U.S. Energy Secretary and former fracking CEO Chris Wright’s opening remarks at CERAWeek, the fossil fuel industry’s largest annual conference, Allie Rosenbluth, United States Campaign Manager at Oil Change International, said:

“Chris Wright, a former fracking CEO who essentially purchased his Cabinet position through $450,000 in Trump campaign contributions,[1] personifies the deadly alliance between the Trump administration and the fossil fuel industry. His speech made clear that he and the rest of the Trump administration are ready to sacrifice our communities and climate for the profits of the fossil fuel industry – which spent $445 million in total to influence Trump and Congress last election cycle. His performative extension of Delfin LNG’s export authorization during his speech represents just how deeply intertwined the Trump administration is with the fossil fuel CEOs at CERAWeek.

“As Wright speaks to industry insiders, members of impacted communities, faith leaders, youth, and others are assembling for a ‘March for Future Generations,’ where they’re demanding an end to new fossil fuel projects and government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The movement for a just transition away from fossil fuels, and towards a clean energy economy that works for all of us, is continuing to fight – regardless of how many fracking CEOs Trump puts in his Cabinet.”

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/10/oil-change-response-to-energy-secretary-chris-wrights-speech-at-major-oil-and-gas-conference/feed/ 0 517872 https://grist.org/business/trumps-energy-secretary-pushed-legal-attack-on-green-investing/ https://grist.org/business/trumps-energy-secretary-pushed-legal-attack-on-green-investing/#respond Tue, 04 Mar 2025 09:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=659725 This story is published in partnership with The Examination, a news organization that investigates global health threats. Sign up to subscribe to The Examination’s newsletter.

Say you’re an American worker with a retirement plan. Out of concern for the planet — or how wildfires, heat waves and hurricanes might affect your portfolio — you want the company managing your money to consider the environment in deciding where to invest.

If one of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretaries gets his way, you might not have much choice. 

Chris Wright, recently confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Energy, has been aiming to dismantle a U.S. Department of Labor rule that governs 401(k)s and other private retirement plans for more than 150 million people. The regulation allows asset managers to weigh environmental, social, and governance — or ESG — factors as long as they financially benefit retirees. 

Wright was CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy in 2023 when the company and about two dozen states sued the agency to overturn the rule. Liberty’s case was dismissed in February by a federal judge in Texas, but the battle over ESG finance may be just beginning.  

The fossil fuel industry and its allies have launched a multipronged assault against sustainable investing, suing asset managers and pension funds and federal regulatory agencies that oversee them. ESG investing can illegally put political ideology over the financial interests of retirees, they argue in lawsuits. The conservative policy guide Project 2025 has called for the Trump administration to overturn current rules and prohibit ESG for most retirement plans. 

With roughly $14 trillion held in private retirement funds alone, their approach to investing has high stakes not only for individual retirees but also for the oil and gas industries. 

In January, an investigation by The Examination found the fossil fuel industry taking advantage of sustainable finance. More than $286 billion in a lax form of green finance called sustainability-linked loans were made to companies in polluting industries — from oil and gas to mining and timber — the investigation, published in partnership with Mississippi Today and the Toronto Star, revealed. This money was often counted by banks toward their sustainable investing targets, even though in some cases companies expanded polluting activities and increased their carbon emissions while they benefited from the loans.

But in the months since Trump’s election, fear of political fallout and legal attacks on sustainable investing have prompted many financial institutions to abandon ESG goals altogether.

In January, Texas federal judge Reed O’Connor ruled against American Airlines in a case alleging that the airline’s 401(k) investments with BlackRock violated its duty to retirees because BlackRock considered ESG criteria in its investments and American failed to keep its own corporate interests separate from its obligations to retirement investors. Around the same time, BlackRock dropped out of the Net Zero Asset Managers, an industry group dedicated to achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

BlackRock joined an array of leading U.S. and Canadian banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs, that recently withdrew from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. In a video appearance on February 17, Wright denounced net-zero targets as “sinister” and said they are being used to “shrink human freedom.” 

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Lisa Sachs, director of the Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University, said efforts to ban ESG policies seek to help the fossil fuel industry at the expense of retirees. Prohibiting ESG factors from retirement plans would put blinders on asset managers, she said, forcing them to ignore real financial risks, such as floods affecting real estate value. This would undermine their ability to make safe long-term investments for pensioners, she said.

“This is the exact opposite of free-market ideology,” Sachs said.

ESG faces political backlash

Much of the legal dispute revolves around how ESG investing is defined — and experts agree the term is vague and easily manipulated.

An ESG investment fund is one that takes environmental and social risks into account in its decision-making, not necessarily one that invests for social purposes, Sachs said. She cites Coca-Cola as a company that has a high ESG rating because assessors have deemed it does a good job managing the environmental and social risks to its business, even though its product contributes to obesity and chronic disease worldwide.

Financial companies have misrepresented how ESG considerations are most often used, Sachs said, calling the marketing a form of greenwashing. Sachs said it is largely these misrepresentations that have put ESG policies in the crosshairs.

“The greenwashing is what led to the political backlash,” she said.

Jonathan Berry, the attorney for Liberty Energy in its suit against the labor department, said Liberty’s challenge doesn’t object to asset managers considering environmental factors when they are financially material. Instead, the company opposes a “tiebreaker” provision in the rule that allows asset managers to weigh non-financial ESG factors when deciding between investments that are economically equal. 

“It cracks open the door for divided loyalties,” Berry said.

Berry is also one of the authors of Project 2025, the policy playbook whose proposals have been reflected in many of the Trump administration’s early actions.   

Among Project 2025’s prescriptions: removing ESG considerations from private retirement plans and a similar plan for federal employees, as well as possible enforcement actions against asset managers that have ESG policies while managing federal retirement plans. 

But not all conservatives are on board. Some Project 2025 contributors argue in an “alternative view” section that these recommendations go too far and that workers should be able to decide on investments in their retirement plans for themselves.  

“Even though ESG investing is often not a sound financial strategy, it is not wrong for retirement plans to offer ESG investment options,” the dissenters write.

Berry agreed that the term ESG is “deliberately elastic.” But he said it often works the other way around: ESG investing is defined as considering environmental risks to get a foot in the door, and then used to push for political goals like divesting from fossil fuels. 

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In 2023, conservative groups sued New York City pension funds that divested from fossil fuels, alleging the funds had breached their duties to retirees; that case was dismissed last year.

In February, the campaign against ESG suffered another setback.

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a conservative federal judge in Texas appointed by Trump, dismissed Liberty Energy’s lawsuit seeking to overturn the labor department’s ESG rule. Liberty’s argument that the department cannot apply ESG factors when deciding between financially equal plans, he ruled, would require it to choose based on “arbitrary randomness” instead. 

The ruling means that if the Trump administration wants to restrict financial options and prohibit ESG considerations from the retirement plans of the majority of American workers, it will likely have to act on its own, through the labor department. 

Dan Terpstra, a retired supercomputer scientist at the University of Tennessee, has been careful over the years to ensure his retirement funds are not invested in fossil fuels. 

An active member of the Presbyterian Church and an advocate for sustainable investing, Terpstra worries that a crackdown on ESG policies would be “forcing us away from doing the right thing.”

The prospect of banning such plans, he said, would be “an erosion of our personal freedoms in service of a vision of America that I barely recognize.”   

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s energy secretary pushed legal attack on green investing on Mar 4, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Sasha Chavkin, The Examination.

]]> https://grist.org/business/trumps-energy-secretary-pushed-legal-attack-on-green-investing/feed/ 0 516053 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/19/anniversary-of-japanese-internment-marked-by-protests-against-trump-policies-labor-secretary-nominee-says-shell-implement-trump-agenda-february-19-2025/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/19/anniversary-of-japanese-internment-marked-by-protests-against-trump-policies-labor-secretary-nominee-says-shell-implement-trump-agenda-february-19-2025/#respond Wed, 19 Feb 2025 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=cfcb03b81315d1c8e7eda130d530e305 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• February 19^th marks anniversary of Executive Order 9066 Japanese internment, Newsom proclamation urges standing up for civil rights regardless of immigration status
• Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee tells senators she’ll implement Trump agenda, allays republican qualms over past support for union legislation
• Bay area religious leaders reaffirm support for California sanctuary for migrants on anniversary of WW2 Japanese internment order
• UC Santa Cruz students, faculty walk out in protest of Trump immigration policies
• Stanford designated as hostile campus because of its response to pro-Palestinian activism
• World Health Organization, UNICEF conducting mass vaccinations for polio in Gaza, as new US commission scrutinizes childhood vaccine schedule

The post Anniversary of Japanese internment marked by protests against Trump policies; Labor secretary nominee says she’ll implement Trump agenda – February 19, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/19/anniversary-of-japanese-internment-marked-by-protests-against-trump-policies-labor-secretary-nominee-says-shell-implement-trump-agenda-february-19-2025/feed/ 0 514414 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/13/ctu-responds-to-project-2025s-secretary-of-education-confirmation-hearing/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/13/ctu-responds-to-project-2025s-secretary-of-education-confirmation-hearing/#respond Thu, 13 Feb 2025 21:40:12 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/ctu-responds-to-project-2025s-secretary-of-education-confirmation-hearing In response to the confirmation hearing of Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates issued the following,

“Today’s hearing made clear that Donald Trump is not trying to roll the country back to 1950, he is trying to roll us back to 1850. McMahon’s dog whistles, her promotion of segregationist school choice policies, and her boss’ commitment to converting civil rights protections into tools to police students are all reversals of what formerly enslaved Africans fought for and created during Reconstruction after the civil war.

“Educators report to school every day to provide everything possible for students to succeed and we count on the Department of Education to provide financial support for schools serving children in poverty, opportunities for children with disabilities, and oversight to prevent discrimination in our schools.

“Donald Trump and whoever becomes his Secretary should think twice before dismantling the Department of Education. As a social studies teacher, it’s incumbent on me to provide a brief civics lesson: we have a system of checks and balances that prevents them from doing so. But more importantly, this isn’t an obscure federal office. This is a backbone of the government that millions of families with children in our public schools rely on.

“By continuing to come for our public schools, they are further angering the Black families who count on civil rights protections, the families of children with disabilities who rely on federal standards, the families in poverty who rely on federal support, and anyone who is sickened to see queer and transgender students targeted and bullied by the federal government.

“Education is meant to be the great equalizer for our children, not a great investment opportunity for the billionaires ransacking our federal government.

“Our union is already putting protections in our contract and asking our school district to be a partner in building a forcefield around our students. Now that Project 2025 is in the implementation phase and the Senate on its way to confirming a Secretary who will be their rubber stamp, it is now up to governors, mayors, and school districts to be leaders that fill the gap that will be left by Project 2025’s actions that protect the rights of children, support and fund their schools, and defend their education. Families should demand nothing short of it.”

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/02/13/ctu-responds-to-project-2025s-secretary-of-education-confirmation-hearing/feed/ 0 513977 https://grist.org/climate-energy/trump-chris-wright-energy-secretary/ https://grist.org/climate-energy/trump-chris-wright-energy-secretary/#respond Tue, 04 Feb 2025 09:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=658252 Chris Wright, a Colorado fracking executive, was confirmed on Monday by the U.S. Senate with a vote of 59 to 38 to become the Secretary of Energy.

Wright’s nomination hearing, held last month before the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, was a relatively amiable affair. Though there were interruptions by Sunrise Movement protesters and a heated exchange with California senator Alex Padilla over Wright’s past comments dismissing the link between climate change and wildfires, Wright was not subjected to the contentious questioning that some of President Trump’s other cabinet nominees have faced. He was introduced by Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, as a personal friend, and four of the committee’s Democrats voted for his confirmation.

While he acknowledged that “climate change is a real and global phenomenon,” Wright also insisted that “there isn’t dirty energy and clean energy; all energy is different and they all have different tradeoffs.” He pledged “to unleash American energy at home and abroad to restore our energy dominance,” to “lead the world in innovation and technology breakthroughs,” and to “build things in America again and remove barriers to progress.” Pressed on the policy particulars by the committee members, he expressed support for expanding nuclear power, renewables, and liquefied natural gas, and said he believed the nation’s transmission system needs to be expanded, and that this should be prioritized in future permitting reforms.

Part of the reason for Wright’s friendly reception was that he articulated a coherent, if tendentious, version of the “energy abundance” theory of how increasing the domestic production of energy in all forms — including fossil fuels — could enable the U.S. to adequately address the climate crisis. The vision Wright laid out broadly overlaps with a set of ideas that has gained prominence among energy policy thinkers in both parties — as well as in some sectors of the climate movement who see an opportunity for permitting and transmission reforms and nuclear subsidies as a reasonable tradeoff for increased oil and gas production.

In the committee hearing, Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy — a Republican and the lead sponsor of a bill to tax imports of carbon-intensive goods — told Wright, “I like your emphasis upon abundance.” And both the committee’s Republican chair, Mike Lee, and Democratic ranking member, Martin Heinrich, asked Wright to describe how he would promote energy abundance.

“The term ‘energy abundance’ is definitely having a moment,” said Katie Auth, policy director of the Energy for Growth Hub and a former USAID official. “I have heard it used in many different contexts by many different people who are coming at this from different ideological angles.”

But what, exactly, does it mean?

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Alex Trembath, deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute — the climate think tank perhaps best associated with the term, and a longtime gadfly of the environmental movement — said a core idea of his organization is that “technology and abundant energy can help solve ecological problems, not just cause them.”

Perhaps the most obvious example is the hope that nuclear energy can help speed our transition away from fossil fuels without sacrificing reliability, but self-described “ecomodernists” like Trembath dream of a wide range of possibilities that would be unlocked by sufficient energy. 

“If you had really abundant solar or nuclear, then energy-intensive industrial processes like water desalination or indoor agriculture start to look a lot more economical,” Trembath said. “You could imagine desalinating seawater and not having to deplete rivers and aquifers. You could imagine sparing land that could grow produce and other water-intensive crops.”

To Auth, the term doesn’t just encompass futuristic hopes of unlocking miracle solutions by increasing electricity supply; it has immediate importance for the world’s hundreds of millions who lack access to electricity, and the even greater numbers whose countries’ development is hampered by inadequate power infrastructure.

“Outside of the U.S. and Europe, across Africa and Southeast Asia, we need a lot more power,” Auth said. “People need not only basic electricity services, but they need to build competitive economies, they need to build modern industry, they need to build manufacturing facilities, and to be climate resilient. They need electricity for air conditioning and all sorts of infrastructure. So I think abundance to me means that we need to be extremely ambitious in the scope and speed at which we try to build out energy infrastructure around the world.”

In Wright’s confirmation hearing, he spoke eloquently of the tragedy of energy poverty and the need for electrification in developing countries. “I think we’re going to see more abundant energy resources coming out of our country and hopefully out of the world so that everyone else can live lives like we do,” he said.

“I appreciated Chris Wright drawing attention to the fact that, here in the U.S., we take for granted that the lights will be on and that we have refrigerators and televisions, and that’s just simply not the reality for millions and millions of people,” said Auth, of the Energy for Growth Hub.

But Wright’s commitment to energy abundance stood in marked contrast to the agenda, augured in Project 2025, that seems to underlie Trump’s executive orders so far, which would make it very difficult for Wright to act on his stated priorities of increased energy supply and funding for research and development.

Trump started off his second administration by declaring an “energy emergency” — but followed this up by unilaterally freezing all new permitting and leasing for wind energy in federal lands and waters. The president then attempted last week to freeze many federal grants and loans — an order that threw the government into chaos and whose current status is contested. And Trump’s blanket freeze of foreign aid has already gouged the administration’s ability to make good on Wright’s vision of helping the developing world electrify: Programs like Power Africa, which directed USAID funds toward ending energy poverty in Africa, are now in question and, according to Auth, may have already been halted.

The president’s moves raise the question of how exactly Wright, as energy secretary, can ensure “energy abundance” if his boss isn’t on board.

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“From day one, the incoming Trump administration dispelled any pretense of supporting energy abundance,” said Tyler Norris, a Duke University doctoral fellow and former special adviser at the Department of Energy, in an email. “Instead, it is taking the unprecedented step of leveraging the executive’s emergency powers to block energy resources the president dislikes. To the extent Mr. Wright favors energy abundance, he faces a steep uphill battle against a White House controlled by ideologues who appear more focused on waging tribal energy warfare than solving real-world problems.”

“You see shades of energy abundance in both parties,” Trembath said. On the Republican side, he pointed to the emergence of the term “‘energy dominance’ — which I think is really a Trumpy spin on the idea of energy abundance.” And among Democrats, energy abundance can practically be described as the guiding vision of the last four years’ American energy policy, which combined massive federal investments in green technology with record levels of oil and gas production. “The Biden administration and Democrats in the Department of Energy and Congress had their own vision of abundance articulated in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,” Trembath said.

But both parties also have their corners of resistance to the energy-maximization agenda, for motivations ranging from conservationism on the part of environmental groups to profit on the part of fossil fuel companies who see renewables as an existential threat. And while liberals and the regulations they pass often get cast as the villains in the endlessly proliferating laments about America’s lost industrial age, the new administration is showing its ability to use the same tools to its ends. 

“A very cogent argument could be made that Trump’s executive orders so far are not in the spirit of energy abundance or energy dominance; they’re draping more red tape over projects they don’t like,” Trembath said. “This is the NIMBY proceduralism that Republicans complain about with drilling for oil and gas, but when the shoe’s on the other foot they’re happy to weaponize the National Environmental Policy Act against projects they don’t like.”

Wright’s ability to increase energy production will be hobbled by the fact that the Energy Department simply doesn’t directly control the building or permitting of most new energy infrastructure, or write the rules that govern it. The most substantial portion of the department’s budget is spent on the maintenance of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The DOE’s primary levers of influence over the nation’s electricity grids are the purse strings for investments in new technologies and subsidies for project developers — and even in those areas, the money must be approved by Congress and, politically speaking, ultimately subject to the president’s agenda. 

“EPA actually has more say over regulating energy infrastructure than DOE; the Interior Department has more say over leasing of public lands,” said Trembath. “In terms of building and regulating and permitting infrastructure, it’s largely out of the remit of the DOE. Likewise, Congress is in charge of what gets spent at the DOE.”

There are some arenas in which Wright will have the power to enact his ambitions, like liquefied natural gas terminals, for which Trump has lifted a Biden administration moratorium and the DOE issues permits. Another is buying and selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to stabilize energy prices, a practice heavily used by Biden’s energy secretary Jennifer Granholm. Finally, the Department of Energy controls a once-obscure energy financing agency called the Loan Programs Office, which came into the public eye as the most prominent vehicle for the Biden administration’s climate investments under the leadership of Jigar Shah, a former solar developer who likes to talk about “energy abundance” (the phrase appears in his Twitter bio).

One signal of Wright’s intentions arose during his confirmation hearings, when the energy committee’s Republican chair, Mike Lee, asked him to commit to immediately suspending the issuance of new Loan Programs Office loans on the basis of a Trump-appointed inspector general’s report alleging conflicts of interest in the contracts the office had awarded. Wright said he was aware of the report, but did not commit to suspending new loans.

However, the question — and Wright’s authority to decide how to proceed — was soon preempted by the administration’s funding freeze. For the time being, the office is effectively shut down.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s agenda won’t let his energy secretary achieve ‘energy abundance’ on Feb 4, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Gautama Mehta.

]]> https://grist.org/climate-energy/trump-chris-wright-energy-secretary/feed/ 0 512257 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/16/how-cnn-covered-a-journalist-saying-secretary-of-state-blinken-should-be-in-the-hague/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/16/how-cnn-covered-a-journalist-saying-secretary-of-state-blinken-should-be-in-the-hague/#respond Thu, 16 Jan 2025 20:32:44 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=86b53569302e3926448bb1a7b5262a26
This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by The Intercept.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/16/how-cnn-covered-a-journalist-saying-secretary-of-state-blinken-should-be-in-the-hague/feed/ 0 509948 https://grist.org/indigenous/deb-haaland-americas-first-native-cabinet-secretary-considers-her-legacy/ https://grist.org/indigenous/deb-haaland-americas-first-native-cabinet-secretary-considers-her-legacy/#respond Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:30:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=656591 When Deb Haaland was chosen as the secretary of the Interior by President Joe Biden in 2021, she was the first Native American ever to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. It was a seminal moment for tribal citizens: For more than 150 years, the Interior Department had been the arm of the U.S. government in charge of managing relationships with tribes, which included executing its colonial agenda. The agency helped oversee forced assimilation of Native children through federal boarding schools, where children taken from their parents were barred from speaking their Indigenous languages. Today, the department is best known for managing more than 85 million acres of national parks, many of which sit on land stolen from tribal nations. 

The agency’s mandate is broad: It also oversees federal mining permits, national monuments and sanctuaries, and federal wildlife refuges, making critical decisions about conservation and mining that have implications for global biodiversity and carbon emissions. It is charged with managing U.S. relationships with island territories like Guam and Puerto Rico, and fulfilling federal trust obligations to tribal governments, including funding for health care and education. Most recently, the agency has funneled money to tribes to help them with climate change adaptation and, in some cases, relocation.

When Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, was tapped to lead the agency, she was serving as a congressional representative for New Mexico. 

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” Haaland said in 2021 ahead of her congressional confirmation vote. “Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.” 

Four years later, as Haaland’s tenure ends, her presence in the Interior Department has led to greater collaboration with tribal nations and broader awareness of America’s crimes against its Indigenous peoples. She launched the Indian Boarding School Initiative, which produced an investigative report on the boarding schools and led to an official apology from Biden. Under her leadership, the Interior Department has executed more than 400 co-stewardship agreements to enable Indigenous peoples to have more of a say over their ancestral lands. Haaland also pushed for historic funding for tribal nations and stronger consultation with Indigenous leaders.

But not everything Haaland and the Biden administration have done has been heralded by environmental and Indigenous advocates. Biden reneged on his campaign promise of no new drilling to approve the Willow Project, which opened vast swaths of Alaska for oil drilling and is expected to add more than 249 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over the next three decades. And while progress on co-stewardship and co-management agreements have been welcomed by tribal nations, some continue to question whether the administration has done enough to prioritize returning land back into trust.

Grist spoke with Haaland about her experience and what she hopes her legacy will be. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. 

Q: What do you hope your legacy will be? What part of it are you most proud of?

A: One of those pieces (of my legacy) is the Boarding School Initiative. Nothing had ever been done like that before. This was an era of American history that a lot of mainstream Americans didn’t know about. Indian Country knew about it, and it plagued us. It was generational trauma that so many tribal communities have suffered. But we brought attention to that. We will continue to shine a light on it. And I hope, in a way, that we’ve been able to bring about healing as a result of all of the work that we have done. 

Q: What was the hardest part of your job? 

A: There are so many decisions that are difficult. I can’t really think of one in particular. Some folks don’t realize that there’s a process to everything, and there’s so much that you have to consider when you are making a decision. It’s particularly difficult when you have communities on either side of an issue: One is saying, Please do this. The other one is saying, Please don’t do this. Those are hard decisions to make, right? I promised that I would manage the Department of the Interior and our public lands in a balance. And so, I feel like I’ve really tried to do that. 

Q: At the time that the Willow project was approved, Politico reported that it was a difficult decision for you to make. Looking back, what do you think about the approval of that project? Do you have any regrets? 

A: That was definitely a difficult decision — folks on one side of the issue and other people on the other side of the issue. I think that in the end, the people of Alaska spoke. This wasn’t a new project that just popped up during the Biden administration. There had been contracts that had been signed in years past. It had been going through this process for like 20 years. And so by the time it came to us, it was just really time to make a decision. And there were valid existing rights that we had to consider. We have laws in our country. Contract laws are our contract laws. And when people have valid existing rights, you have to consider those. In the end, I feel like we did what needed to be done at the time. 

Q: The Biden administration has been praised for improving the tribal consultation processes for so many projects, but there are still many that are proceeding against the wishes of the Indigenous peoples. For example, the Dakota Access pipeline, Line 3, even mining at Oak Flat. What would you tell our readers who are concerned about those projects moving forward, and are disappointed that they’re still moving forward even under your tenure? 

A: Just to be clear, we (the Interior Department) don’t have a say in those projects at all. But with respect to the projects that we have, we have to move forward. We have really worked hard to make sure that tribes have a voice. You’re never going to have 100 percent consensus. There’s tribes who are for it. There’s tribes who are against the tribes. They’re not a monolith. They don’t all think the same. They don’t all speak the same. So the public comment periods and the processes that we have in place for these issues, we really just encourage people to make sure that they are using the process to their best ability. 

Q: Recently, you announced a new plan to preserve and revitalize Native languages, counteracting years of systemic suppression. This was exciting to a lot of advocates who’ve been fighting for this, and is particularly timely as climate change threatens Indigenous languages. But where will this money come from now that we’re facing a Republican-controlled Congress and a second Trump administration?

A: Congress holds the purse strings. And so this would be an issue for Congress to take up. And our hope is that there will be enough members of Congress who recognize that this is something worthy of our country getting behind. Something that united all of those communities is that they said, over and over again, Our language was not lost. It was stolen from us. Native languages encompass so much more than just communication. It includes geography. It includes tradition and culture. COVID really worked against the preservation of Native languages, because so many elders passed away during the pandemic. And so it is an urgent issue.

Q: To clarify, there’s no guarantee that this will be funded under the new administration, right? What do you expect its future will be, knowing that such funding is unlikely over the next four years?

A: I was a member of the House, so I recognize how difficult sometimes it is to get things passed through the Congress. But it doesn’t mean you stop trying. And so, as I have told many of my career staff, I’m going to be cheering for them from the sidelines. I think many people across the country and across Indian Country will be pushing the Native language plan forward and hoping that they can convince members of Congress that it is worthy of Congress’ support. 

Q: The Biden administration facilitated more than 400 co-stewardship agreements, which many communities are happy about. At the same time, there are also a lot of people who have been calling for land to be returned back to tribes through the landback movement, putting land back into trust for their Native nations. What would you say to those who think you’ve prioritized co-stewardship over landback? Looking back, what have you accomplished in terms of landback? 

A: I don’t think we’ve prioritized co-stewardship agreements over landback. If tribes want land into trust, they contact us — there’s a process that it goes through in order to put land into trust for tribes. It’s a continuous process. We have put a lot of land into trust for tribes. But it is up to the tribes. We are upholding the trust and treaty obligations of our nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes. If the tribes want something, they contact us, we work on it. I understand how important it is for tribes to have their land into trust. And of course, if that’s what the tribes want, they come to us and we work on helping them in any way we can.

Q: We’re facing a Republican-controlled Congress and the Trump presidency. What parts of your legacy do you think can withstand those forces and prevent being reversed? 

A: Under the Investing in America agenda, President Biden moved $45 billion into Indian country, and that has been used to make the lives of tribal folks better across the country. That is not getting clawed back. We have the Federal Boarding School Initiative that is now in an oral history project stage. President Biden made an apology to Indian Country. He signed a proclamation for a national monument for the boarding schools. He’s apologized. There’s no taking that back. 

You might have heard of Governor Lewis (of the Gila River Indian Community) with an amazing solar energy project on his tribal lands. These are all things that happened under this administration. And so it would be difficult to claw things like that back. I’ll mention one last thing to you: The (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Regulations) regulations: We consulted with tribes. They told us what they wanted. We got those across the finish line. These are all enduring things, enduring progress that we have been able to actually complete during this administration.

What will the next administration do? It’s hard for me to think about hypotheticals. But I can tell you, what I hope is that the career staff will continue to do their amazing work, that tribes will continue to have a voice in their federal government, and that we’ll all be able to continue to move these important issues forward.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Deb Haaland, America’s first Native Cabinet secretary, considers her legacy on Jan 14, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.

]]> https://grist.org/indigenous/deb-haaland-americas-first-native-cabinet-secretary-considers-her-legacy/feed/ 0 509572 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/21/trumps-pick-for-education-secretary-faces-lawsuit-over-alleged-mishandling-child-sexual-abuse-while-poised-to-overhaul-title-ix/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/21/trumps-pick-for-education-secretary-faces-lawsuit-over-alleged-mishandling-child-sexual-abuse-while-poised-to-overhaul-title-ix/#respond Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:21:03 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/trumps-pick-for-education-secretary-faces-lawsuit-over-alleged-mishandling-child-sexual-abuse-while-poised-to-overhaul-title-ix Today, Accountable.US issued a sharp rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education. McMahon, who is being sued by former WWE employees for allegedly knowing sexual abuse was occurring under her leadership, is poised to oversee reforms to Title IX—a federal law critical for preventing sexual violence and discrimination in schools—and will spearhead the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education as outlined in Project 2025. “

Donald Trump’s nomination of Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education is indefensible,” said Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US. “This is someone accused of ignoring rampant sexual abuse under her watch. Putting her in charge of Title IX protections is like handing keys to an arsonist to run the fire department—it’s an insult to survivors and a blatant attack on the safety of students nationwide.”

The lawsuit, filed in October 2024, alleges that McMahon and other WWE executives knowingly allowed a ringside announcer, Mel Phillips, to groom and sexually abuse boys as young as 12. The plaintiffs, all survivors of this abuse, claim WWE leadership failed to intervene despite being aware of Phillips’s actions. The suit describes the abuse as “open and rampant,” facilitated by promises of access to wrestling stars.

“McMahon and her colleagues were reportedly aware of abuse happening right under their noses—and they did nothing,” Ciccone added. “Now she’s been chosen to oversee, and likely overhaul, the very protections designed to stop this kind of harm? The Senate must put an end to this sham of a nomination. She lacks the experience, the judgment, and the track record to protect students from harm. Our students need a champion who will uphold Title IX—not someone who has allegedly turned a blind eye to abuse”

McMahon’s nomination also threatens the progress made under the Biden administration, which expanded Title IX protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Trump’s agenda would roll back these vital safeguards, leaving LGBTQ+ students and survivors of campus sexual violence even more vulnerable.

In addition to her troubling record on abuse, McMahon has little experience in education. Her short tenure on Connecticut’s State Board of Education was marked by criticism over her lack of qualifications, and she resigned after less than a year to pursue an unsuccessful Senate campaign.

Accountable.US is calling on senators to reject McMahon’s confirmation and demand a nominee who will prioritize the safety and well-being of America’s students.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/21/trumps-pick-for-education-secretary-faces-lawsuit-over-alleged-mishandling-child-sexual-abuse-while-poised-to-overhaul-title-ix/feed/ 0 503146 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/20/trump-nominates-wrestling-ceo-linda-mcmahon-as-education-secretary-amid-push-to-abolish-dept-of-ed/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/20/trump-nominates-wrestling-ceo-linda-mcmahon-as-education-secretary-amid-push-to-abolish-dept-of-ed/#respond Wed, 20 Nov 2024 13:49:51 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=6d961c6e7c6d3ec9a082754c917bffdc

President-elect Trump has announced his nomination of billionaire Linda McMahon to head the Department of Education, which Trump has pledged to shut down. McMahon is the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment and also headed the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. “President-elect Trump has a habit of choosing people who have either a desire to destroy the department or who have no experience. She falls into the latter category: She does not have any experience in education,” says education historian Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/20/trump-nominates-wrestling-ceo-linda-mcmahon-as-education-secretary-amid-push-to-abolish-dept-of-ed/feed/ 0 502806 https://rfa.org/english/china/2024/11/13/china-rubio-secretary-of-state-nomination-trump/ https://rfa.org/english/china/2024/11/13/china-rubio-secretary-of-state-nomination-trump/#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2024 22:45:40 +0000 https://rfa.org/english/china/2024/11/13/china-rubio-secretary-of-state-nomination-trump/ WASHINGTON – Marco Rubio, a strident foreign policy “hawk” when it comes to relations with China, has been nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to serve as the next U.S. secretary of state.

The Republican senator from Trump’s adopted home state of Florida is almost certain to be confirmed as America’s top diplomat by his soon-to-be former colleagues, with the Republican Party now controlling the Senate with a 53-47 majority over the Democrats.

Rubio’s nomination Wednesday completes a trifecta of China “hawks” in the three most important foreign policy picks for a president.

He joins Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida, who will be appointed Trump’s national security adviser, and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who has been nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations.

In a statement released on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Rubio “a Highly Respected Leader” and “a very powerful Voice for Freedom” who would represent America well on the world stage.

“He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said, adding that Rubio as a senator had “authored hundreds of new laws, including some that are truly transformational.”

In his own statement, Rubio called the role of secretary of state “a tremendous responsibility” and said that he was “honored by the trust President Trump has placed in me” in making the nomination.

“As Secretary of State, I will work every day to carry out his foreign policy agenda,” he added. “Under the leadership of President Trump, we will deliver peace through strength and always put the interests of Americans and America above all else.”

From foes to friends

It’s a remarkable turnaround in relations between the two Floridians, who along with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were the last three standing candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Trump easily brushed aside Rubio to secure the nomination and then the presidency, referring to the senator derisively and repeatedly as “Little Marco” while accusing him of being in the pocket of lobbyists.

Rubio equally did not hold back, accusing Trump of using “illegal immigrant labor” to build Trump Tower in New York City and of only having found business success because of an inheritance from his father.

But the pair seemed to make peace during Trump’s most recent run for office, with Rubio even being vetted as a possible vice president pick.

Rubio also has some support across the aisle, with Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, indicating that he plans to vote in favor of his nomination to the post.

Sanctioned secretary

If confirmed, Rubio would be the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to have been sanctioned by Beijing, having been blacklisted in retaliation for U.S. sanctions on Chinese officials for the genocide against the Uyghur ethnic minority and for the crackdown in Hong Kong.

But there is already some skepticism of the influence he will have in the Trump administration, even if it is set to be dominated by China hawks.

Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was one of the few Republicans in the House of Representatives to vote to impeach Trump during his last term in office, said he thought Rubio might be kept on a tight leash.

“Marco has shown his ability to kind of change for whatever Donald Trump demands, so it really comes down to, ‘What does Donald Trump demand?’” Kinzinger said in an interview with CNN on Monday.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

]]> https://rfa.org/english/china/2024/11/13/china-rubio-secretary-of-state-nomination-trump/feed/ 0 501786 https://rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/10/30/uyghur-david-lammy-china-trip-criticism/ https://rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/10/30/uyghur-david-lammy-china-trip-criticism/#respond Wed, 30 Oct 2024 20:49:14 +0000 https://rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/10/30/uyghur-david-lammy-china-trip-criticism/ British Foreign Secretary David Lammy is facing blowback for failing to condemn the Uyghur genocide at a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing during a recent two-day trip to China.

In April 2021, British MPs passed a motion declaring that China was committing genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, a vast region in northwestern China that is home to about 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs.

Following Lammy‘s Oct. 18 meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing, Britain’s Foreign Office released a readout which said he raised the issue of rights abuses as a stumbling block in bilateral relations.

“Human Rights were discussed, including in Xinjiang, and the Foreign Secretary referenced this as an area which the UK and China must engage, even where viewpoints diverge,” the statement said.

But opposition members of the UK Parliament and an official from the World Uyghur Congress advocacy group blasted Lammy for not specifically addressing the Uyghur genocide.

“On human rights in Xinjiang, the House of Commons, including the Labour party in opposition, voted that genocide was taking place in Xinjiang, yet the Foreign Office readout simply said: ‘Human rights were discussed,’” Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith told Lammy during a parliamentary session on Oct. 28.

“This is a genocide taking place, with slave labor,” he said. “Why is there not more robust condemnation from the government to China?”

The United States and parliaments of other Western countries have also declared that China has committed genocide or crimes against humanity in Xinjiang based on credible evidence of mass detentions in camps, forced sterilizations of Uyghur woman, and other severe rights abuses.

Sanctions

Duncan Smith, who is also co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, went on to say that he heard there was a move in the Foreign Office to lift British sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for the genocide in Xinjiang as part of a deal to remove sanctions on British lawmakers.

“And I just simply say to the foreign secretary, I must tell him, that I, for one, would never accept such a shameful deal at any price, and I hope he will stamp on that straightaway,” he said.

In March 2021, China imposed sanctions on British organizations and politicians, including Duncan Smith and fellow Conservative MP Neil O’Brien, accusing them of spreading “lies and disinformation” about human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The sanctions came in response to Britain’s decision to implement measures against four Chinese officials.

O’Brien noted at Monday’s parliamentary session that when the Labour party was in opposition, it said there was “clear and compelling evidence” of a genocide in Xinjiang. He asked Lammy if he still believed this to be the case now that Labour is the governing party.

Responding to O’Brien and Duncan Smith during the session, Lammy said he did “raise Xinjiang in the context of human rights” and the issue of sanctioned parliamentarians with both Wang Yi and the foreign affairs spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party.

“I raised that as a matter of huge concern,” Lammy said about the lifting of sanctions on British lawmakers, adding that he also discussed threats and aggression in the South China sea, jailed British national Jimmy Lai and curtailed freedoms in Hong Kong.

“It would be totally unacceptable for any UK Foreign Minister to go to China and not raise those issues of tremendous concern,” he said.

Lammy said he remains “hugely concerned about the human rights abuses in Xinjiang,” but added that it is a matter for the International Criminal Court and others to make a determination of genocide, “not for national government.”

Lammy ‘vocal’ on issues

When asked by Radio Free Asia about reports of a deal to remove sanctions and a clarification of how it classifies rights abuses in Xinjiang, a British government spokesperson said Lammy has been vocal on both issues.

“The Foreign Secretary has called on China to lift its sanctions on UK parliamentarians at every meeting with his counterpart, along with raising the UK’s serious human rights concerns, including in Xinjiang,” the spokesperson said.

“China’s sanctions including against parliamentarians are completely unwarranted and unacceptable and are totally incomparable to the sanctions announced by the UK in 2021, which were based on compelling and widespread evidence of serious and systematic human rights violations in Xinjiang,” the spokesperson added.

Rahima Mahmut, the UK director of the World Uyghur Congress, said she was pleased that O’Brien and Duncan Smith questioned the foreign minister about his failure to raise the Uyghur genocide with Wang Yi.

She added that it is unlikely the British Government would lift sanctions imposed on the Chinese officials.

“This is because the punishment imposed on Chinese officials is based on strong evidence that these officials have committed human rights abuses under international law,” she told RFA.

Edited by Joshua Lipes.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Adile Ablet for RFA Uyghur and Roseanne Gerin for RFA English.

]]> https://rfa.org/english/uyghur/2024/10/30/uyghur-david-lammy-china-trip-criticism/feed/ 0 499708 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/29/oil-gas-leases-under-the-department-of-interior-even-with-deb-haaland-as-secretary-shorts/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/29/oil-gas-leases-under-the-department-of-interior-even-with-deb-haaland-as-secretary-shorts/#respond Tue, 29 Oct 2024 21:00:59 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=8b94d50b22f5890c7995921f7f03a0bf
This content originally appeared on Laura Flanders & Friends and was authored by Laura Flanders & Friends.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/29/oil-gas-leases-under-the-department-of-interior-even-with-deb-haaland-as-secretary-shorts/feed/ 0 499544 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/07/six-takeaways-from-the-uks-decision-on-arms-sales-to-israel-the-media-are-hiding/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/07/six-takeaways-from-the-uks-decision-on-arms-sales-to-israel-the-media-are-hiding/#respond Sat, 07 Sep 2024 02:47:30 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=153340 The Guardian reported this week a source from within the Foreign Office confirming what anyone paying close attention already knew. By last February, according to the source, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, had received official advice that Israel was using British arms components to commit war crimes in Gaza. Cameron sat on that information […]

The post Six takeaways from the UK’s decision on arms sales to Israel the media are hiding first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]>

The Guardian reported this week a source from within the Foreign Office confirming what anyone paying close attention already knew.

By last February, according to the source, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, had received official advice that Israel was using British arms components to commit war crimes in Gaza. Cameron sat on that information for many months, concealing it from the House of Commons and the British public, while Israel continued to butcher tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

Several points need making about the information provided to the Guardian:

1. The source says that the advice to Cameron on Israeli war crimes was “so obvious” it could not have been misunderstood by him or anyone else in the previous government. Given that the new Labour government has been similarly advised, forcing it to partially suspend arms sales, one conclusion only is possible: Cameron is complicit in Israel’s war crimes. The International Criminal Court must immediately investigate him. Its British chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, needs to issue an arrest warrant for Cameron as soon as possible. No ifs or buts.

2. Now in government, Labour has a legal duty to make clear the timeline of the advice Cameron received – and who else received it – to help the ICC in its prosecution of the former Foreign Secretary and other British officials for complicity in Israel’s atrocities.

3. The current furore being kicked up over Labour’s suspension of a tiny fraction of arm sales to Israel needs to be put firmly in context. David Lammy, Cameron’s successor, is keen to evade any risk of complicity charges himself. Leaders of the previous government are denouncing his decision on arms sales only because it exposes their own complicity in war crimes. Their outrage is desperate arse-covering – something the media ought to be highlighting but isn’t.

4. Labour needs to explain why, according to the source, the advice it has published has apparently been watered down from the advice Cameron received. As a result, Lammy has suspended 30 of 350 arms contracts with Israel – or 8 per cent of the total. He has avoided suspending the British components most likely to be assisting Israel in its war crimes: those used in Israel’s F-35 jets, made in the US.

Why? Because that would incur the full wrath of the Biden administration. He and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, dare not take on Washington.

In other words, Lammy’s decision has not only exposed the complicity of Cameron and the previous Tory leadership in Israeli war crimes. It also exposes Lammy and Starmer’s complicity. Put bluntly, following this week’s announcement, they are now 8 per cent less complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity than Cameron and the Tories were.

5. There has been lots of fake indignation from Israel and its lobbyists, especially in Britain’s Jewish community, about how offensive it is that the government should announce its suspension of a small fraction of arms sales to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza the day six Israeli hostages were buried.

The chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, for example, is incensed that the UK is limiting its arming of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, saying it “beggars belief”. He is thereby calling for the UK to trash international law, and ignore its own officials’ advice that Israel risks using British weapons to commit war crimes. He is demanding that the UK facilitate genocide.

The British Board of Deputies, which claims to represent British Jews, has retweeted Mirvis’ comment. The Board’s president has been all over the airwaves similarly decryingLammy’s decision.

Israel would, of course, have always found some reason to be appalled at the timing. There is an obviously far more important consideration than the bogus “sensitivities” of Israel and genocide apologists like Rabbi Mirvis. Each day the UK government delays banning all arms to Israel – not just a small percentage – more Palestinians in Gaza die and the more Britain contributes to Israel’s crimes against humanity.

But equally to the point: according to the rules Starmer imposed on the Labour party – that Britain’s Jewish leaders get to define what offends Jews and what amounts to antisemitism, especially on issues concerning Israel – the Labour government is now, judged by those standards, antisemitic. You can’t have one set of rules for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left, and another for Starmer and the Labour right.

Or rather you can. That is precisely the game the entire British establishment has been playing for the past seven years. A game that has facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza even more than the sales of British weapons to Israel.

6. Many have dismissed the significance of recent rulings against Israel from the International Court of Justice – that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza and that its decades of occupation are illegal and a form of apartheid – as well as moves from the International Criminal Court to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal.

Here we see how mistaken that approach is. Those legal decisions have set the two wings of the British establishment – the Tories and the Starmerite Labour right – at loggerheads. Both are now desperate in their different ways to distance themselves from charges of complicity.

The rulings have also opened up a potential rift with Washington. The State Department spokesman has been shown having to frantically justify why the US is not banning its own arms sales.

Journalist Humeyra Pamuk questioned State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on why the US has not followed the UK's decision to suspend arms sales to Israel over concerns about potential violations of international law. pic.twitter.com/mujwDyblgZ

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) September 4, 2024

Admittedly, these are only small fissures in the western system of oligarchy. But those fissures are weaknesses – weaknesses that those who care about human rights, care about international law, care about stopping a genocide, and care about saving their own humanity can exploit. We have few opportunities. We need to grasp every single one of them.

The post Six takeaways from the UK’s decision on arms sales to Israel the media are hiding first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/07/six-takeaways-from-the-uks-decision-on-arms-sales-to-israel-the-media-are-hiding/feed/ 0 492226 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/06/antonio-guterres-secretary-general-of-the-un-25-july-2024-just-stop-oil/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/06/antonio-guterres-secretary-general-of-the-un-25-july-2024-just-stop-oil/#respond Fri, 06 Sep 2024 22:32:43 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=b94b29fc5d3d4bc54debe9e2f5657aa4
This content originally appeared on Just Stop Oil and was authored by Just Stop Oil.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/06/antonio-guterres-secretary-general-of-the-un-25-july-2024-just-stop-oil/feed/ 0 492807 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/05/craven-tokenism-the-uk-suspension-of-arms-export-licenses-to-israel/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/05/craven-tokenism-the-uk-suspension-of-arms-export-licenses-to-israel/#respond Thu, 05 Sep 2024 09:32:22 +0000 https://dissidentvoice.org/?p=153293 The government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late.  While galloping to victory in the July elections, leaving the British Labour Party a heaving majority, a certain ill-temper could be found among the ranks on his attitudes […]

The post Craven Tokenism: The UK Suspension of Arms Export Licenses to Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.]]> The government of Sir Keir Starmer, despite remaining glued to a foreign policy friendly and accommodating to Israel, has found the strain a bit much of late.  While galloping to victory in the July elections, leaving the British Labour Party a heaving majority, a certain ill-temper could be found among the ranks on his attitudes regarding Israel’s war in Gaza.

Mish Rahman, a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, summed up the mood by professing embarrassment “about my affiliation with Labour” in light of the party’s response to the killings in Gaza.  “It was hard even to tell members of my own extended family to go and knock on doors to tell people to vote for a party that originally gave Israel carte blanche in its response to the horrific 7 October attacks.”

The election itself saw Labour suffer losses among British Muslims, which has dropped as a share between 2019 and 2024.  The loss of Leicester South, held by Shadow Paymaster Jon Ashworth, to independent Shockat Adam, was emblematic.  (The seat has a Muslim population close to 30%.)  The trend was also evident in such otherwise safe Labour strongholds as the seats of Dewsbury and Batley and Birmingham Perry Barr, both with a prominent bloc of Muslim voters.  Combing through the Starmer landslide, one could still find instances of Labour’s electoral bruising.

To offer some mild reassurance to the disgruntled, notably regarding arms sales to Israel, the UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy promised to revisit the policy, editing it, as it were, to see if it stood the test of international humanitarian law.

On September 2, Lammy told fellow parliamentarians “with regret” that the assessment he had received left him “unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there does exist a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

In doing so, he announced that Britain would be suspending 30 of its 350 arms export licenses with Israel. “We recognise, of course, Israel’s need to defend itself against security threats, but we are deeply worried by the methods that Israel’s employed, and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure particularly.”

The measure was one of the weakest imaginable, an example of high-tide gesture politics, paltry in effort, and paltry in effect.  Few gains will be noticed from this change in policy, not least because 30 out of 350 is fractionally embarrassing.  Furthermore, UK arms exports to Israel account for less than 1% of the total arms Israel received.  As a point of comparison, UK arms sales to Israel in 2022 totalled £42 million.  The offering from the United States dwarfs that contribution, annually totalling $US3.8 billion (£2.9 billion).

This very lack of effect was explicitly noted by the minister, begging the question as to what any genuine change might have entailed.  The government, he assured the House, still supported Israel’s right to self-defence.  Had the share of UK weapons to Israel been much larger, would such self-defence still have been justifiably prosecuted with such viciousness?

It is certainly telling what the suspension policy on exports spared.  While the new policy covers various components for military aircraft and vehicles, the F-35 fighters, which have been used with especially murderous effect by the Israeli Air Force, are exempted.  This, explained Defence Secretary John Healey on BBC Breakfast, was “a deliberate and important carve out for these modern fighter jets.”

The rationale is thick with splendid hypocrisy.  Because the support of the F-35 is a global program spanning multiple partners, the UK’s role in it had to be preserved, irrespective of what the fighters were actually used for.  “These are not just jets that the UK or Israel use,” reasoned Healey, “it’s 20 countries and around 1,000 of these jets around the world and the UK makes important, critical components for all those jets that go into a global pool.”

Like an undergraduate student failing to master an all too challenging paper, Healey offers the exoneration that cowardice supplies in readiness.  It was “hard to distinguish those [parts] that may go into Israeli jets and secondly this is a global supply chain with the UK a vital part of that supply chain”.  To disrupt the supply of such parts would, essentially, “risk the operation of fighter jets that are central to our own UK security, that of our allies and of NATO.”

Another knotty point was the legal or ethical value one could ultimately attribute to the decision.  Lammy was adamant that the policy revision was not intended, in any way, to cast aspersions against Israel’s conduct of the war, despite an assessment suggesting otherwise.  “This is a forward looking evaluation, not a determination of guilt, and it does not prejudge any future determinations by the competent courts.”  This routine garbling ignored the assessment’s references to the inordinate number of civilian deaths, the sheer extent of the destruction in Gaza, and “credible claims” that Palestinian detainees had been mistreated.

This latest gesture of tokenistic principle on the part of the UK government elevates impotence to the level of doctrine.  Lammy and Healey were merely taking a line Starmer has courted with numbing consistency: that of the craven, the insignificantly disruptive and the painfully cautious.

The post Craven Tokenism: The UK Suspension of Arms Export Licenses to Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/05/craven-tokenism-the-uk-suspension-of-arms-export-licenses-to-israel/feed/ 0 491912 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/20/u-s-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-ended-his-ninth-visit-to-the-middle-east-since-the-war-in-gaza-began-without-securing-a-cease-fire-deal-august-20-2024/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/20/u-s-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-ended-his-ninth-visit-to-the-middle-east-since-the-war-in-gaza-began-without-securing-a-cease-fire-deal-august-20-2024/#respond Tue, 20 Aug 2024 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ec73ef544077dd8dd60f28968677b746 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his ninth visit to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began without securing a cease-fire deal
• A new report by the CDC shows federal child vaccination program prevented 1.1M deaths over the last 30 years, but gaps persist.
• The Democratic National Convention headed into its second day. Former President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff spoke at the DNC, a day after the unofficial farewell for President Joe Biden, who served eight years as Obama’s vice president.
• The Philadelphia-based Poor People’s Army marched on the Democratic National Convention Monday evening in Chicago, the first day of the convention.
• Trump and Vance hit campaign trail this week, promise increased support for police and closed borders.
• Lawyers representing the activists who took over the Golden Gate Bridge earlier this year to protest the war in Gaza called on San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to recuse herself from the case, citing a conflict of interest.
• Veteran Central Valley journalist Lloyd Carter has passed away. Born and raised in Fresno, Carter covered the Valley for United Press International and The Fresno Bee. His life was dedicated to advocating for equity and fairness in the allocation of the state’s water.

The post U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his ninth visit to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began without securing a cease-fire deal – August 20, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/20/u-s-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-ended-his-ninth-visit-to-the-middle-east-since-the-war-in-gaza-began-without-securing-a-cease-fire-deal-august-20-2024/feed/ 0 489689 https://grist.org/energy/1-7-billion-american-made-evs-explained-secretary-energy/ https://grist.org/energy/1-7-billion-american-made-evs-explained-secretary-energy/#respond Fri, 12 Jul 2024 08:30:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=643017 Along with apple pie, baseball, and tipping, the automobile is classically American. But when it comes to the 21st century passenger car, automakers in the United States — save for Tesla — have been playing catchup, scrambling to counter the rise of China’s electric vehicle boom. Sure, both EVs and internal combustion cars have seats and four wheels, but it’s not so simple as American automakers swapping in a few parts and calling it a day.

So on Thursday, the Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to fund the conversion of 11 auto manufacturing facilities, which had either been shut down or were at risk of shutting down, to make EVs and supplies for the burgeoning industry. Those facilities will be spread across eight states — Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — which the DOE says will create 2,900 new jobs and ensure that more than 15,000 union workers keep theirs. General Motors will get $500 million for one of its plants in Lansing, Michigan, and Fiat Chrysler nearly $600 million total for two of its facilities.

Soon after the announcement, Grist sat down with Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to talk about why domestic EV manufacturing is so important, how those EVs could actually help the grid instead of destroying it, and why even children will benefit from the $1.7 billion even though they can’t drive.

The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

---

Q. Why is the Biden administration providing this funding? Why is it important to the DOE that electric vehicles are made domestically?

A. The funding comes through the Inflation Reduction Act, but the intent behind that, of course, is to make sure that America is reshoring manufacturing, particularly in the clean energy space, and here in the electric vehicle space. We’re competing globally, obviously with China. And we want to make these products here. We want to make them with union workers, and we want to make them in places that have been bruised by globalization. That’s where this particular round of funding really centers — communities that have built automobiles for the past 100 years, and that should be building them for the next 100 years. 

Q. Some of this money is going toward electric buses. Why is it critical to get more of those on the road?

A. Diesel particulates are not healthy for kids — increased asthma, other very serious health impacts. So having an electric bus, which is quiet and clean and healthy, is wonderful for kids. It’s wonderful for fighting climate change. It’s wonderful for communities, and now it is also wonderful for job creation.

Q. How is the Biden administration trying to boost the demand for EVs? 

A. We’re seeing an increase in demand. On top of that, the administration is working on making sure that that demand continues. So how do you do that? By reducing the price. That means those tax credits at the dealership, that are now being used everywhere, brings down the price of an electric vehicle to either be on par and, in many cases, cheaper than an internal combustion engine.

We want to make sure that there’s the infrastructure so that people don’t have range anxiety, and that’s what the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s charging funding for states is doing, to fill in the gap where the private sector hasn’t been installing chargers. So on transportation corridors every 50 miles, we want to see a high-speed charger, and we want it to be not more than a mile off the transportation corridor and [be] app-enabled. Since the president has taken office, the number of publicly available chargers has doubled. The goal is to get to 500,000 of them by 2030. We’re well on track to do that. 

Q. People have also been worrying that if we are deploying more EVs, the grid simply won’t be able to handle that additional load. Do you have a response to that?

A. The president has a goal of getting to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, so we’ve got to continue to deploy, deploy, deploy all these clean energy assets — solar utility-scale, wind, distributed solar, other types of clean energy, like hydroelectric power or geothermal power, or small modular [nuclear] reactors. We will have enough generation capacity for the electrification of transportation.

Q. And with the development of vehicle-to-grid technology, grid operators would actually be able to tap into EVs as a vast network of batteries. In that case, EVs can actually be an asset on the grid, not a liability.

A. One hundred percent. The virtual power plants that are created — by making sure the distributed energy resources like electric vehicle batteries are part of the mix — means that we can add between 20 and 100 gigawatts just from virtual power plants like electric vehicles, or a bunch of electric vehicles connected together. So yes, that is absolutely part of the plan, and part of the funding that DOE does is to encourage those types of pilot projects, to ensure that they can be worked out and then taken to scale.

Q. A few of these facilities that would receive funding are in swing states, and we’ve got an election coming up. I was curious how they were chosen and why now, just before the election? Or is this a matter of: You’re looking more at the facilities that could be converted and less so the state itself.

A. This does not involve the election. It involves a merit process that is selected by professionals and career staff within the Department of Energy who evaluate all these objective factors about where we could make sure that we repurpose these internal combustion engine plants that were closing in this particular case. A lot of these went to historical automaking communities, because that’s what this was geared toward. This was all part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and so that law compels us to continue to award grants, whether we’re in an election year or out of an election year.

Q. Republicans have been making an effort to slow EV adoption. Could they target this sort of funding? And if there’s another Trump administration, would they also be able to reverse any of this?

A. Bottom line is, once these announcements are made and steel is in the ground and people start being hired, which is what’s happening now, it would be political malpractice for any leader of that state or that political party to go in the opposite direction of where their constituents would like to see them go. I mean, people are being hired. It’s a really good thing across the country. So I’m hopeful that any future administration would see the value and the importance of keeping this industrial strategy in place.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The $1.7 billion bet on American-made EVs, explained by the Secretary of Energy on Jul 12, 2024.

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

]]> https://grist.org/energy/1-7-billion-american-made-evs-explained-secretary-energy/feed/ 0 483553 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/09/we-are-at-a-moment-of-truth-antonio-guterres-un-secretary-general-june-2024-just-stop-oil/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/09/we-are-at-a-moment-of-truth-antonio-guterres-un-secretary-general-june-2024-just-stop-oil/#respond Sun, 09 Jun 2024 12:00:35 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=099e73d38fea789d398eff640c4ed13b
This content originally appeared on Just Stop Oil and was authored by Just Stop Oil.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/09/we-are-at-a-moment-of-truth-antonio-guterres-un-secretary-general-june-2024-just-stop-oil/feed/ 0 479541 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/austin-cambodia-06042024033354.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/austin-cambodia-06042024033354.html#respond Tue, 04 Jun 2024 07:48:13 +0000 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/austin-cambodia-06042024033354.html U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday for a brief visit, days after Cambodia and China wrapped up their biggest ever military exercise.

During his one-day visit, Austin will meet top Cambodian officials “to discuss defense issues with the new Cambodian leadership,” the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh said in a statement.  

“This is the first bilateral visit by a U.S. Secretary of Defense, and it is the second for Secretary Austin following his attendance at the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus in November 2022,” it said.

Austin arrived in Cambodia from Singapore where he attended the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum. During the conference, the secretary sought to reassure U.S. allies of Washington’s “iron-clad” commitment in the region in the face of growing rivalry with China.

China and Cambodia have just held a 15-day military exercise, both on land and at sea, with the participation of three Chinese warships, two of which have been in Cambodia for six months at the Ream naval base.

The two corvettes were still seen docked at the base in Sihanoukville on Monday. The U.S government has said it has “serious concerns” about China’s plans for exclusive control over portions of the Ream Naval Base. Cambodia has repeatedly denied handing the base over to China.

U.S.-Cambodian relations have become strained during the past decade partly over U.S. concerns about the suppression of Cambodia’s political opposition.

In 2017, the Cambodian government suspended the joint Angkor Sentinel exercises between the two militaries and in 2018, the U.S. government suspended military assistance to Cambodia in response to its suppression of the  opposition.

Cambodia under veteran leader Hun Sen rejected U.S. criticism of its domestic political conditions and built closer relations with China. Hun Sen stepped down as prime minister last year with his son, Hun Manet, taking over

Turning a new page?

Soon after arriving in Phnom Penh, Austin paid a courtesy call on Hun Sen, who is now president of the Senate. Hun Sen was accompanied by former defense minister Tea Banh in  the meeting.

Austin also met  Prime Minister Hun Manet, a West Point military academy graduate, and Defense Minister Tea Seiha.

Hun Manet and Tea Seiha are Hun Sen’s and Tea Banh’s sons, respectively.

Chhengpor Aun, research fellow at The Future Forum, a Cambodian think-tank, said Austin’s visit gave Cambodia’s new leaders the opportunity to highlight more balance in their country’s diplomacy.

“Secretary Austin will be much welcomed in Phnom Penh in general because his presence will help back up the Cambodian government’s attempt to prove it is still on the course of its promised neutrality in foreign relations,” said Chhengpor Aun.

"The Ream naval base, the ever-growing Sino-Cambodian defense relations, and strained military-to-military ties between Phnom Penh and Washington will highly likely dominate Secretary Austin’s meetings with senior Cambodian officials.”

Another analyst – Nguyen Khac Giang, visiting fellow at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute – said that Austin's decision to visit Cambodia instead of the close ally the Philippines or newly elevated strategic comprehensive partner Vietnam, “reflects the U.S.’s attempt to reconcile deteriorating U.S.-Cambodia relations.”

“With Phnom Penh successfully transitioning leadership from Hun Sen to his son Hun Manet, Washington likely views this as a good moment for rapprochement,” Giang told Radio Free Asia, adding that while sensitive topics such as Chinese influence and the Ream naval base are likely be discussed, he thinks both sides “will focus more on potential cooperation and common interests, particularly as Cambodia will serve as the coordinator of the U.S.-ASEAN Dialogue Relations from 2024 to 2027.”

The state-aligned Khmer Times newspaper said that with Hun Manet’s “outward-looking policies,” there’s a unique prospect to recalibrate any misunderstanding and to start a new chapter in the two countries’ relationship, provided that both sides “are genuinely sincere with each other.”

The article by Pou Sothirak, senior advisor to the Cambodian Center for Regional Studies, and Him Raksmey, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Regional Studies suggested that the first thing for the U.S. to do wais to rethink its policy of targeted sanctions on Cambodian officials and members of the business elite, and restrictions on trade preferences “which are ineffective and counterproductive, compelling Cambodia deeper into economic reliance on China.”

The Future Forum’s Chhengpor Aun agreed that the new generation of Cambodian leaders “presents a window of opportunities for improvement of U.S. relations” as Cambodia wants to secure a stable state of relations with the U.S., now its biggest export destination.

Cambodia sold US$8.89 billion worth of goods to the U.S. in 2023, about 40% of its total exports, according to the Cambodian General Department of Customs and Excise. 

However, “if the visit aims to woo Cambodia away from China or to push political reforms in Phnom Penh, Secretary Austin can be disappointed,” said Chhengpor Aun.

“Sino-Cambodian ties are important for Phnom Penh political elites – be it the old guards or the new princeling generation – in terms of political and regime security,” he said.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

]]> https://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/austin-cambodia-06042024033354.html/feed/ 0 477840 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/27/defense-secretary-austin-icc-only-applies-to-russia/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/27/defense-secretary-austin-icc-only-applies-to-russia/#respond Mon, 27 May 2024 15:56:07 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=f84af3837fdd8341efc117596785bb25
This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/27/defense-secretary-austin-icc-only-applies-to-russia/feed/ 0 476781 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/26/u-s-secretary-of-state-blinken-meets-with-xi-buys-taylor-swift-lp-radio-free-asia-rfa/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/26/u-s-secretary-of-state-blinken-meets-with-xi-buys-taylor-swift-lp-radio-free-asia-rfa/#respond Fri, 26 Apr 2024 19:31:53 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=076a23e5aa87487142c4fefa69e8e1cf
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/04/26/u-s-secretary-of-state-blinken-meets-with-xi-buys-taylor-swift-lp-radio-free-asia-rfa/feed/ 0 471780 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/janet-yellen-trip-04042024142553.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/janet-yellen-trip-04042024142553.html#respond Thu, 04 Apr 2024 19:57:00 +0000 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/janet-yellen-trip-04042024142553.html U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in the Chinese city of Guangzhou on Thursday for a five-day visit that comes amid a growing dispute over a program to stimulate China’s flagging economy that American officials say could hinder U.S. growth.

Yellen last week accused China of “flooding” markets for renewable energy production by heavily subsidizing things like electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar panels as Beijing seeks to turn around economic woes by boosting production of export goods.

American officials say the cut-price Chinese exports threaten to kill competing industries in other countries before they get off the ground, but China’s government has dismissed those concerns as protectionist and accused the United States of using similar subsidies itself.

During the trip, Yellen, who was also chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 2010 to 2014, will travel to Beijing to meet Chinese Central Bank Governor Pan Gongsheng, Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and former Vice Premier Liu He, a key economic advisor to President Xi Jinping.

Yellen plans to “make clear the global economic consequences of Chinese industrial overcapacity undercutting manufacturers in the U.S. and firms around the world,” a Treasury official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity according to pre-set rules.

But it’s unclear how receptive Chinese officials will be. 

Beijing has already largely dismissed the concerns raised by Yellen as hypocritical, pointing to the Biden administration’s tax-breaks tied to electric cars, which exclude many Chinese-made vehicles.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Wednesday that China welcomed Yellen’s trip as a chance to “properly handle differences” and “build up consensus.” But he also rejected complaints about China’s subsidization of emerging and green-energy industries.

Speaking at a daily press briefing, Wang questioned “whether it is ‘excess production capacity’ that the U.S. is truly concerned about,” or if the United States was just upset its businesses were losing out in competition to China due to the “international division of labor.” 

“As for who is engaged in non-market practices, the fact is there for all to see,” he said. “The U.S. side has adopted a string of measures to suppress China’s trade and technology development. This is not ‘de-risking,’ but creating risks. These are typical non-market practices.”

Mushroom for improvement

It’s Yellen’s second trip to China in a year, with the U.S. Treasury secretary having traveled there in July last year amid the early days of the rapprochement between China and the United States.

During that visit, Yellen told CNN after returning, she mistakenly ate hallucinogenic mushrooms, which she called “delicious,” at a chain restaurant in Yunnan province called Yi Zuo Yi Wang, or “In and Out.”

“If the mushrooms are cooked properly, which I’m sure they were at this very good restaurant … they have no impact,” Yellen, who is 77, said. “None of us felt any ill effects from having eaten them.”

Potential psychedelics are less likely to feature on the visit this time, but after nearly a year of warmer ties between Washington and Beijing, the trip does come as cracks are starting to reappear in the relationship between the world’s two biggest economies. 

Beijing, for instance, has raised its strong concerns about a White House-backed bill currently before Congress that would allow the U.S. president to ban popular social media platform TikTok in America if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell the app.

Xi even directly raised his concerns about the bill during a rare phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday, according to John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council.

“Xi raised the issue and President Biden responded,” Kirby said when asked how TikTok came up during the call between the leaders.

Biden told Xi, he said, that “this was not about a ban on TikTok [but] … about divestiture – that this was about preserving the data security of the American people and our own national security interest.”

Diplomacy

Yellen’s visit to China also comes ahead of next Thursday’s high-profile visit to the United States by Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, which is being billed by the White House as the first trilateral meeting of the three countries.

The trio this week announced joint naval drills in the South China Sea amid an ongoing dispute between the Philippines and China over the sea’s Second Thomas Shoal, which belongs to the Philippines under international law but is part of a vast territorial claim by Beijing.

A delegation of U.S. lawmakers led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, also recently arrived back from a trip to meet officials in the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea.

Shaheen said on Thursday the trip allowed the lawmakers to see first-hand the “threats” from China to other countries with claims to the South China Sea, as Chinese coast guard vessels fired water cannons at Philippine vessels trying to resupply a naval station.

“The threatening maneuvers [and] the militarization of the islands in the South China Sea are all motivators to continue the cooperation that we have with the countries in the region,” Shaheen said, summarizing the take-aways of the seven lawmakers after the trip.

“It has significant impacts on not just the potential for mistakes, militarily, that could be misinterpreted and set off a conflict,” she said, “but also in terms of trade and commerce, and the ability to safely navigate those waters and allow trade to move around the world.”

Also on the trip was Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat from New York, Democratic senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Mark Kelly of Arizona and Michael Bennet of Colorado, and Republican senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Roger Marshall of Kansas.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

]]> https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/janet-yellen-trip-04042024142553.html/feed/ 0 468133 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/05/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-february-5-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-back-in-middle-east-on-diplomatic-push-to-end-gaza-war/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/05/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-february-5-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-back-in-middle-east-on-diplomatic-push-to-end-gaza-war/#respond Mon, 05 Feb 2024 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=9bbd52b00bfe16f64c2e87b935b88b4a Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

 

• Secretary of State Blinken back in Middle East on diplomatic push to end Gaza war.
• The Senate announces a bipartisan funding bill for foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and border security.
• Boeing delays shipping 737 planes due to flaws in dozens of fuselages.
• British and Irish leaders meet in Northern Ireland for powersharing agreement talks there.
• Massive storm drenches California causing flooding, mudslides and power outages.
• Britain’s King Charles diagnosed with cancer.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – February 5, 2024 Secretary of State Blinken back in Middle East on diplomatic push to end Gaza war. appeared first on KPFA.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/05/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-february-5-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-back-in-middle-east-on-diplomatic-push-to-end-gaza-war/feed/ 0 457036 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/31/veterans-affairs-secretary-vows-to-increase-staffing-at-clinic-tied-to-two-deadly-shootings/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/31/veterans-affairs-secretary-vows-to-increase-staffing-at-clinic-tied-to-two-deadly-shootings/#respond Wed, 31 Jan 2024 15:10:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/veterans-affairs-secretary-vows-to-increase-staffing-at-clinic-tied-to-deadly-shootings by ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The secretary of veterans affairs, Denis McDonough, visited a clinic in Chico, California, last week and personally pledged to address concerns about inadequate staffing in the VA facility’s mental health unit.

His visit came after a ProPublica investigation revealed serious lapses in the psychiatric care two veterans received at the clinic. After years of struggling to get adequate treatment, and in the midst of mental health crises, the veterans shot and killed their mothers within days of each other in January 2022. The ProPublica story grew out of an inquiry by the VA’s inspector general that examined the agency’s shortcomings in one of the deaths.

At the time of the shootings, the clinic hadn’t had a full-time, on-site psychiatrist in five years, and many of the telehealth providers had recently stopped seeing Chico patients. Clinic employees told ProPublica they had begged regional leaders for help, but the federal health system was slow to respond. The former site manager told ProPublica she had warned colleagues, “We are going to kill someone.”

On Thursday, McDonough, who previously served as White House chief of staff and principal deputy national security adviser during the Obama administration, held a roundtable discussion with front-line mental health workers as well as top leaders from the VA’s regional office in Northern California.

“This is an important opportunity for us to learn really important lessons, and part of my learning today was to come up here to meet with our team to hear directly from them what their experience is right now and what I need to do to make sure that I’m the best possible partner for them,” he told a local news reporter after the meeting. “In that regard, this was a very, very helpful event.”

McDonough said he assured employees “that they would not be unheard in their concerns” and that the VA would “continue to make progress on staffing issues.”

If you or someone you know needs help:

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
• Text the Crisis Text Line from anywhere in the U.S. to reach a crisis counselor: 741741
• If you are a veteran, call the Veterans Crisis Line: 988, then press 1

“We have a very fast-growing veteran population here in Chico,” he added. “We have to make sure that we are growing commensurate with that population so that they can get the timely access to care and the timely access to benefits that they have earned. We’re making progress on that, but there’s still more work to be done, and we will not rest until we get it done.”

In a statement about the visit, VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said, “we take the issues raised by the VA’s inspector general and ProPublica extremely seriously, and we appreciate the oversight — which helps us better serve our nation’s Veterans.”

Hayes declined to say anything more specific about the actions McDonough intends to take.

ProPublica examined the case of Julia Larsen, a 29-year-old woman who was honorably discharged from the Navy in 2016. Upon returning home to California, Larsen was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from combat and military sexual trauma. She began experiencing psychotic symptoms soon after.

Marty Larsen displays a photo of his daughter Julia, which he keeps in his wallet. The photo was taken around the time of her boot camp graduation, just before deployment. (Loren Elliott for ProPublica)

Larsen sought help at the Chico clinic for several years, she told ProPublica and her medical records show. But she said the providers were too busy for talk therapy and focused instead on medications. In late 2021, a virtual nurse practitioner Larsen had never seen prescribed her two drugs that can trigger psychotic or manic symptoms when taken together. It isn’t clear which, if either, she took.

In January 2022, on a morning when Larsen was experiencing an extreme mental health crisis, a nurse at the Chico clinic mistakenly instructed Larsen’s mother to bring her in for an assessment. But the virtual nurse practitioner who was on call was booked and had no time for a consultation, violating VA rules that require patients to be seen in such situations. In addition, a social worker who was supposed to assess Larsen failed to follow protocols and sent her home.

Later that night, the sound of a far-off explosion frightened Larsen and prompted her to fire her handgun several times inside her parents’ home. One bullet pierced her mother in the thigh, damaging a large blood vessel and fatally wounding her.

Larsen’s case was the subject of a February 2023 report by the VA’s Office of Inspector General, which found the Chico clinic had failed to manage her medication, provide same-day access to care and assess her risk of violence. Larsen was later committed to a state-run forensic psychiatric hospital.

Andrew Iles, an Air Force veteran who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, also struggled to get consistent treatment at the clinic, ProPublica found. His providers changed repeatedly. He was sometimes assigned to a pharmacist instead of a psychiatrist or psychologist.

A photo of Andrew Iles at boot camp is pictured at the home of his older sister, Ashley Hill. The family moved to Texas for a fresh start after Iles killed his mother. (Loren Elliott for ProPublica)

Over time, Iles’ delusions grew more extreme, and he came to believe his immediate family was trying to kill him. He shot his mother in January 2022, killing her in the home they shared.

After ProPublica’s investigation was published, Iles, 35, was found not guilty by reason of insanity. As a result, he will be committed to a state psychiatric hospital instead of facing prison time.

In a press release announcing the case’s resolution, the local district attorney, Michael L. Ramsey, linked to and cited ProPublica’s reporting, saying it showed Iles “had difficulty establishing consistent care with a mental health provider through the VA.”

In addition to the two cases, ProPublica analyzed more than 300 studies conducted by the agency’s inspector general over the last four years. The analysis found repeated failures in mental health care, some of which had fatal consequences.

Andrew’s older sister, Ashley Hill, said this week that she was disappointed the VA hadn’t reached out to her family directly or published an inspector general’s report on her brother’s case.

“If this leads to some kind of change,” she said of the secretary’s visit to Chico, “that’s the best thing my family can hope for.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by ProPublica.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/31/veterans-affairs-secretary-vows-to-increase-staffing-at-clinic-tied-to-two-deadly-shootings/feed/ 0 456022 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/30/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-30-2024-house-republicans-move-ahead-with-impeachment-vote-of-homeland-security-secretary-mayorkas/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/30/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-30-2024-house-republicans-move-ahead-with-impeachment-vote-of-homeland-security-secretary-mayorkas/#respond Tue, 30 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=7317231906e90d62b1304003c48dcf84 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• House Republicans move ahead with impeachment vote of Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.
• Senate agrees to bipartisan foreign aid funding bill with border security added, House Speaker says its nonstarter.
• Trump allowed to remain on Illinois primary ballot.
• UN health officials urge donor nations to reconsider cutting funding to UNRWA.
• State water officials conduct second Sierra snowpack survey of the year.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/30/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-30-2024-house-republicans-move-ahead-with-impeachment-vote-of-homeland-security-secretary-mayorkas/feed/ 0 455897 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-10-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-continues-middle-east-diplomatic-tour-to-head-off-expansion-of-israel-hamas-war-to-region/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-10-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-continues-middle-east-diplomatic-tour-to-head-off-expansion-of-israel-hamas-war-to-region/#respond Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=03bf6b6fdd2c9bfe3e56e91896ad0118 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Secretary of State Blinken continues Middle East diplomatic tour to head off expansion of Israel Hamas war to region.
• Allied warships fend off Iranian-backed Houthi rebel attacks on Red Sea shipping.
• Governor Newsom unveils $291 billion 2024 budget plan, budget deficit smaller than expected.
• House Republicans begin impeachment hearing of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
• Alaska airlines grounds flights of Boeing 737 Max 9 jet through Saturday, after mid air blowout incident.
• State legislature debates offshore oil lease termination bill.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – January 10, 2024 Secretary of State Blinken continues Middle East diplomatic tour to head off expansion of Israel Hamas war to region. appeared first on KPFA.

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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-10-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-continues-middle-east-diplomatic-tour-to-head-off-expansion-of-israel-hamas-war-to-region/feed/ 0 450928 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-10-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-continues-middle-east-diplomatic-tour-to-head-off-expansion-of-israel-hamas-war-to-region-2/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-10-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-continues-middle-east-diplomatic-tour-to-head-off-expansion-of-israel-hamas-war-to-region-2/#respond Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=03bf6b6fdd2c9bfe3e56e91896ad0118 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Secretary of State Blinken continues Middle East diplomatic tour to head off expansion of Israel Hamas war to region.
• Allied warships fend off Iranian-backed Houthi rebel attacks on Red Sea shipping.
• Governor Newsom unveils $291 billion 2024 budget plan, budget deficit smaller than expected.
• House Republicans begin impeachment hearing of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
• Alaska airlines grounds flights of Boeing 737 Max 9 jet through Saturday, after mid air blowout incident.
• State legislature debates offshore oil lease termination bill.

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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/10/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-january-10-2024-secretary-of-state-blinken-continues-middle-east-diplomatic-tour-to-head-off-expansion-of-israel-hamas-war-to-region-2/feed/ 0 450929 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/01/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-december-1-2023-secretary-of-state-blinken-concludes-middle-east-diplomatic-trip-with-stop-at-cop28-summit-in-dubai/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/01/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-december-1-2023-secretary-of-state-blinken-concludes-middle-east-diplomatic-trip-with-stop-at-cop28-summit-in-dubai/#respond Fri, 01 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=f0db5fbb112f120dfc66dbcea1986bfc Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

 

• Secretary of State Blinken concludes Middle East diplomatic trip with stop at COP28 Summit in Dubai.
• Federal appeals court rules Donald Trump can be sued over his role in January 6 riot.
• House votes Congressman George Santos out over ethical violations.
• World leaders address the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai, say more needs to be done to slow warming.
• Activists mark 35th annual World Aids Day with Golden Gate Park ceremony.
• Environmentalists criticize Governor Newsom’s environmental record.  

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 1, 2023 Secretary of State Blinken concludes Middle East diplomatic trip with stop at COP28 Summit in Dubai. appeared first on KPFA.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/01/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-december-1-2023-secretary-of-state-blinken-concludes-middle-east-diplomatic-trip-with-stop-at-cop28-summit-in-dubai/feed/ 0 443189 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/30/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-november-30-2023-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-heads-back-to-middle-east-to-try-and-extend-temporary-ceasefire/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/30/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-november-30-2023-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-heads-back-to-middle-east-to-try-and-extend-temporary-ceasefire/#respond Thu, 30 Nov 2023 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=59b2090d391fe5c5b8ced5ff32e67fc5 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Hamas releases eight more hostages, Israel releases dozens more prisoners as shaky truce enters seventh day.
• New York Appeals Court judge reinstates gag order on Donald Trump in fraud trial.
• Republican Congressman George Santos defends his record in House debate on whether to expel him.
• UN Cop 28 Climate Summit opens in Dubai amid controversy over fossil fuel deals from host country.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads back to Middle East to try and extend temporary ceasefire.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – November 30, 2023 Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads back to Middle East to try and extend temporary ceasefire. appeared first on KPFA.

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

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/30/the-pacifica-evening-news-weekdays-november-30-2023-secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-heads-back-to-middle-east-to-try-and-extend-temporary-ceasefire/feed/ 0 442885 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/kissinger-obit-11292023223941.html https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/kissinger-obit-11292023223941.html#respond Thu, 30 Nov 2023 03:41:00 +0000 https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/kissinger-obit-11292023223941.html Updated Nov. 30, 2023, 01:40 a.m. ET.

Henry Kissinger, who served under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford died Wednesday at the age of 100, his consulting firm said.

A controversial figure, who played a pivotal role in the United States’s withdrawal from Vietnam and helped build bridges with China, Kissinger continued to be involved in foreign policy up to his later years, albeit in an unofficial capacity, meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in July when he was hailed as an “old friend.”

Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize but was heavily criticized for his policies on Southeast Asia and support for Latin American dictators, helping orchestrate the toppling of Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.

He was also described as a war criminal by his detractors partly due to the massive U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia.

As secretary of state under Nixon, Kissinger helped bring about the opening up of China to the West, arms control talks with the USSR, improved relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors and the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam that ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Serving under President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, Kissinger emerged relatively unscathed and continued in his role as Secretary of State under Gerald Ford although he was stripped of his role as national security advisor.

When Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976, Kissinger left government to set up a consulting firm, advising corporate leaders, writing books and appearing regularly in the media.

“The world has lost a tireless advocate for peace,” Winston Lord, a former U.S. ambassador to China and Kissinger’s former special assistant at the National Security Council told Reuters. 

“America has lost a towering champion for the national interest. I have lost a cherished friend and mentor. Henry blended the European sense of tragedy and the American immigrant’s sense of hope. 

“During more than seven decades, he transformed America’s role in the world, held the nation together during a constitutional crisis, crafted visionary volumes, counseled world leaders, and enriched the national and international discourse.”

Born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Germany in 1923, Kissinger moved to the U.S. in 1938, escaping the Nazi holocaust.

He became an American citizen in 1943 and served in the U.S. army in World War Two.

He was married twice, to Ann Fleischer with whom he had two children, and then Nancy Maginnes.

Kissinger visited China more than 100 times. State broadcaster CCTV hailed his "historic contribution to the opening of the door to US-China relations," AFP reported.

It called Kissinger "an important witness who experienced the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States and the development of the relationship between the two countries".

China’s ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng said he was “deeply shocked and saddened” to learn of Kissinger’s death.

“History will remember what the centenarian had contributed to China-U.S. relations,” he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“He will always remain alive in the hearts of the Chinese people as a most valued old friend.”

Edited by Taejun Kang and Elaine Chan.

Updated to include comments from CCTV and China's ambassador to the U.S.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Mike Firn for RFA.

]]> https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/kissinger-obit-11292023223941.html/feed/ 0 442650 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/27/chinese-foreign-minister-meets-with-us-secretary-of-state-tony-blinken-radio-free-asia-rfa/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/27/chinese-foreign-minister-meets-with-us-secretary-of-state-tony-blinken-radio-free-asia-rfa/#respond Fri, 27 Oct 2023 20:19:04 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=6e5fa8bc0bacfd2c690e2b76656c8e24
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/27/chinese-foreign-minister-meets-with-us-secretary-of-state-tony-blinken-radio-free-asia-rfa/feed/ 0 437061 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/25/advocates-technologists-to-u-s-secretary-of-education-cell-phones-are-a-k-12-crisis/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/10/25/advocates-technologists-to-u-s-secretary-of-education-cell-phones-are-a-k-12-crisis/#respond Wed, 25 Oct 2023 13:02:58 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/advocates-technologists-to-u-s-secretary-of-education-cell-phones-are-a-k-12-crisis

A strong, loud call-to-action landed on the desk of U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona this week urging issuance of a national Advisory regarding student cell phone use in U.S. K-12 schools.

The letter, signed by over 60 parents and experts in the fields of psychology, early childhood development, education, and technology, comes on the heels of Britain’s plan to ban cell phones at school, and the release of the 2023 UN Global Education Monitoring Report 2023: Technology in Education, which makes a worldwide recommendation to remove smart phones from the classroom to improve learning and decrease cyberbullying.

Signers include: author and social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt; Founding Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Sherry Turkle; Child Psychiatrist and author, Dr. Victoria Dunkley; Wild Child author Dr. Richard Freed; Screenagers director and pediatrician, Delaney Ruston; iGen author and professor, Jean Twenge; and the prime unifying scientist of Microsoft, Jaron Lanier.

“Phones are polluting our schools. They sabotage the teaching and learning processes,” said Lisa Cline of the Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay for Kids, who spear-headed the effort. “We know empirically that they are distracting — by design — so it’s not a fair fight. How can we expect kids to learn and teachers to teach when there are concerts, movies, parties, cyberbullies, shopping malls, and drug dealers in their pockets.”

Over 20+ studies are cited in the letter, including research proving that the mere presence of a smartphone — even by a neighboring student — decreases test performance by an average of 6%. Co-founders of the Phone-Free Schools Movement find this especially disturbing. “Research is clear that phones disrupt students’ growth, both academically and socially. A phone-free school day is a must in order for our children to thrive in school and in life. As parents, educators, leaders, and members of the community we need to understand one thing: Our kids will not get back this important developmental stage of their lives! We must change the culture in our schools to allow kids the freedom to focus and engage so they become healthy, thriving, young adults.”

Signers encourage Secretary Cardona to model Surgeon General Vivek Murthy who spoke out last spring in a report on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, calling for “the American people’s attention to an urgent public health issue.”

Julie Scelfo, a former New York Times journalist and founder of MAMA (Mothers Against Media Addiction), was among the prominent signers. She’s outspoken on the institutional dismissal of tech’s impact on kids, calling out the American Psychological Association in the SFChronicle for failing to “caution the public against allowing adolescents to use social media.” She draws a similar parallel to the Department of Education’s blind eye to tech’s effects on kids.

Cline quantifies the crisis. “A teacher at a Maryland school said he loses 45 minutes a week to policing cell phones,” she said. “That’s an entire class period a week, or the equivalent of skipping all of your classes for seven weeks each school a year.”

Phase Two of the effort includes a petition campaign led by the Phone-Free Schools Movement.

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

The letter, signed by over 60 parents and experts in the fields of psychology, early childhood development, education, and technology, comes on the heels of Britain’s plan to ban cell phones at school, and the release of the 2023 UN Global Education Monitoring Report 2023: Technology in Education, which makes a worldwide recommendation to remove smart phones from the classroom to improve learning and decrease cyberbullying.

Signers include: author and social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt; Founding Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, Sherry Turkle; Child Psychiatrist and author, Dr. Victoria Dunkley; Wild Child author Dr. Richard Freed; Screenagers director and pediatrician, Delaney Ruston; iGen author and professor, Jean Twenge; and the prime unifying scientist of Microsoft, Jaron Lanier.

“Phones are polluting our schools. They sabotage the teaching and learning processes,” said Lisa Cline of the Screen Time Action Network at Fairplay for Kids, who spear-headed the effort. “We know empirically that they are distracting — by design — so it’s not a fair fight. How can we expect kids to learn and teachers to teach when there are concerts, movies, parties, cyberbullies, shopping malls, and drug dealers in their pockets.”

Over 20+ studies are cited in the letter, including research proving that the mere presence of a smartphone — even by a neighboring student — decreases test performance by an average of 6%. Co-founders of the Phone-Free Schools Movement find this especially disturbing. “Research is clear that phones disrupt students’ growth, both academically and socially. A phone-free school day is a must in order for our children to thrive in school and in life. As parents, educators, leaders, and members of the community we need to understand one thing: Our kids will not get back this important developmental stage of their lives! We must change the culture in our schools to allow kids the freedom to focus and engage so they become healthy, thriving, young adults.”

Signers encourage Secretary Cardona to model Surgeon General Vivek Murthy who spoke out last spring in a report on Social Media and Youth Mental Health, calling for “the American people’s attention to an urgent public health issue.”

Julie Scelfo, a former New York Times journalist and founder of MAMA (Mothers Against Media Addiction), was among the prominent signers. She’s outspoken on the institutional dismissal of tech’s impact on kids, calling out the American Psychological Association in the SFChronicle for failing to “caution the public against allowing adolescents to use social media.” She draws a similar parallel to the Department of Education’s blind eye to tech’s effects on kids.

Cline quantifies the crisis. “A teacher at a Maryland school said he loses 45 minutes a week to policing cell phones,” she said. “That’s an entire class period a week, or the equivalent of skipping all of your classes for seven weeks each school a year.”

Phase Two of the effort includes a petition campaign led by the Phone-Free Schools Movement.

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

“If you wanted to put a tagline to the trip and the mission, it is: protect what we must and promote where we can,” Raimondo said to reporters in the U.S. before leaving for Beijing.

On Monday, Raimondo told her Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao in Beijing that the U.S. does not aim to stifle China’s economic growth, adding that it seeks a “stable economic relationship that benefits both nations.”

“It’s complex and challenging. While we'll disagree on some points, I believe direct, open, and practical dialogue can lead to progress,” Raimondo said.

Raimondo is the fourth top U.S. official to visit China in three months. Her trip comes as the Biden administration is set to finalize restrictions on advanced semiconductors established last year and as China struggles to find its feet after last year’s pandemic lockdowns and amid a wide-ranging downturn in the property sector.

The commerce secretary said she aimed to improve travel and tourism between the U.S. and China, adding that bringing Chinese visitor numbers back to the levels before the pandemic could mean tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.

Among the “many challenges” to getting the U.S. and China back on the track to normalized trade relations, she said, are Beijing’s “unfair trade practices,” an expression that is sure to rankle with the Chinese Communist Party elite.

Beijing is already smarting at restrictions on exports of semiconductors, technology equipment and expertise, which are regarded as an attempt to hold back China’s emergence as a technology leader. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on President Biden to drop the restrictions.

Meanwhile, Raimondo is reportedly in high demand, both in China, which hacked her unclassified email earlier this year, and with the international business community, especially the semiconductor sector, but her visit coincides with a host of external events that underscore the rifts between the world’s two leading superpowers.

Cloudy horizon

Just two weeks ago the U.S. struck a deal with Japan and South Korea that included defense cooperation commitments and vows to combat “economic coercion” – in obvious references to China. China in turn accused the U.S. of trying to divide the region and damage China’s interests.

In further words that were unlikely to be music to Beijing’s ears, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said all three countries would be members of the U.N. Security Council next year and they should put pressure on Beijing’s expansion and Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

Meanwhile, in another sign that U.S.-China tensions remain high, during last week’s BRICS summit in South Africa, Raimondo’s counterpart Wang Wentao read a statement from President Xi – who was unexpectedly unable to give the speech himself – that criticized the U.S. for its “hegemonic” tendencies.

Wang, via Xi, warned against “a new cold war” and criticized a nation “obsessed with maintaining hegemony” for undermining emerging markets and developing countries.

All the same, some observers conjecture that there are signs the two nations may be cautiously inching toward a more conciliatory space.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang has recently said the countries can benefit from trade cooperation and maintaining stable global supply chains, while the U.S. removed trade restrictions on 27 Chinese firms, a move that has received the nod from Beijing.

Separately, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it has agreed to add six more flights operated by Chinese airlines, effective Sept. 1.

“Such moves indicate that the Biden administration is gradually realizing that relentless suppression and restraint of China's development will impact America's own interests,” Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Saturday.

But ahead of her current Beijing mission, Raimondo, speaking to reporters in the U.S., was not pulling any punches on U.S. expectations of her trip.

“I want to be clear with you around what my goal is for the visit, which is to promote a healthy competition,” Raimondo said before she left for China. “And by that, I mean a competition on a level playing field, playing by the rules, because on a level playing field, nobody can outcompete American businesses or American workers.”

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

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

The treason becomes all the more indigestible for its inevitable result: Australian territory is being shaped, readied, and purposed for war under the auspices of closer defence ties with an old ally.  The security rentiers, the servitors, the paid-up pundits all see this as a splendid thing.  War, or at least its preparations, can offer wonderful returns.

The US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin III, was particularly delighted, though watchful of his hosts.  His remit was clear: detect any wobbliness, call out any indecision.  But there was nothing to be worried about.  His Australian hosts, for instance, proved accommodating and crawling.

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, for instance, standing alongside Austin, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Australian Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, declared that there was “a commitment to increase American force posture in respect of our northern bases, in respect to our maritime patrols and our reconnaissance aircraft; further force posture initiatives involving US Army watercraft; and in respect of logistics and stores, which have been very central to Exercise Talisman Sabre.”  To the untutored eye, Marles might have simply been another Pentagon spokesman of middle-rank.

The acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines was a process that was well underway (Marles seemed untroubled by grumbling voices in the Republican Party that the US Navy was short-changing itself by transferring three Virginia-class boats to the Royal Australian Navy) and taking place “in terms of an increased force posture of America within Australia.”  Speaking with confidence, Marles was also looking forward to “an increased tempo of visits from American nuclear-powered submarines to our waters as we look towards the establishment of a US submarine rotation, HMS Sterling, later in this decade.”

Australian real estate would be given over to greater “space cooperation”, alongside creating “a guided weapons and explosive ordnance enterprise in this country, and doing so in a way where we hope to see manufacturing of missiles commence in Australia in two years’ time as part of a collective industrial base between the two countries.”  Chillingly, Marles went on to reiterate what has become something of a favourite in his middle-management lexicon.  The efforts to fiddle the export-defense export control legislation by the Biden administration would create “a more seamless defence industrial base between our countries.”  Seamless, here, is the thick nail in the coffin of sovereignty.

Moves are also underway to engage in redevelopment of bases in northern Australia, in anticipation of the increased, ongoing US military presence.  The RAAF Base Tindal, located 320km south-east of Darwin in the Northern Territory, is the subject of considerable investment “to address functional deficiencies and capacity constraints in existing facilities and infrastructure.”  The AUSMIN talks further revealed that scoping upgrades would take place at two new locations: RAAF Base Scherger and RAAF Curtin.

Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation will also be colonised by what is being termed a “Combined Intelligence Centre – Australia” by 2024.  This is purportedly intended to “enhance long-standing intelligence cooperation” while essentially subordinating Australian intelligence operations to their US overlords.  Marles saw the arrangement as part of a drive towards “seamless” (that hideous word again) intelligence ties between Canberra and Washington.  “This is a unit which is going to produce intelligence for both of our defence forces … and I think that’s important.”

In the pro-war press outlets such as The Australian, Greg Sheridan complained that AUSMIN talks had revealed “the appalling state of our defences”.  What bothered him was the expectation that Washington do everything in terms of addressing such inadequacies, while leaving the Australian defence base reliant and emaciated.  “Under the Albanese government we have reverted completely to our worst selves on defence.  We’re going to do almost nothing consequential over the next 10 years other than get the Americans to do more on our land.”  Well, Sheridan, don’t give up hope: Australia might be at war with China under US-direction before a decade is up, vassalized warriors eager to kill and be killed.

From his vantage point as the Australian Financial Review’s international editor, historian James Curran glumly noted that, “The permanent American military presence on Australian soil is now at a scale unprecedented since the Second World War.”  While the US-Australian relationship had previously stressed the value of deterrence, the focus seemed increasingly on the “projection” of power.  “The change from the mid-1990s has been nothing short of staggering.”

The most striking matter in this whole business was the utter absence of parliamentary outrage in Canberra.  There was no registered protest, no red mist rage in the streets, and no debate to speak off, nor even an eloquent funeral oration.  You might even say that AUSMIN 2023 was one of history’s most successful coups, implemented in plain sight by all too willing collaborators.  Its victim, Australian sovereignty, has been laid to rest.

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

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday during a visit to Papua New Guinea that Washington was not seeking a permanent military base in the Pacific island nation under a new defense deal.

The United States and Papua New Guinea signed a defense cooperation agreement in May that gives the U.S. military “unimpeded access” to develop and deploy forces from six ports and airports, including the Lombrum Naval Base.

The deal has been criticized by some in the Pacific nation for being overly accommodative to American interests and possibly upsetting for China, a major trading partner. But Austin on Thursday stressed U.S. commitment to the sovereignty and autonomy of Papua New Guinea.

“I just want to be clear, we are not seeking a permanent base in PNG,” Austin said during a joint press conference with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape.

“Our goal is to strengthen PNG’s ability to defend itself and protect its interests.”

The agreement, signed on May 22, is part of Washington’s efforts to counter Beijing’s growing influence in the Pacific.

China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and build its own set of global institutions. 

Last year, China signed a security pact with Solomon Islands, alarming the U.S. and its allies such as Australia and underlining the heightened geopolitical competition in the region.

Marape on Thursday said the defense cooperation agreement, which is yet to be ratified by Parliament, formalized the ad-hoc relationship that Papua New Guinea already had with the U.S. military.

Papua New Guinea was building its defense capabilities to keep the country safe, including from illegal fishing and transnational crime, “not for joint war preparation.”

“I want to give assurance to everybody here that this is not about setting out for war, but setting a presence for nation building in PNG and this part of the Pacific,” he said.

Austin is on his way to Brisbane, Australia where he and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet their Australian counterparts for the annual Australia–U.S. Ministerial Consultations.

‘Door open’ to AUKUS

Blinken on Wednesday visited the tiny Pacific kingdom of Tonga, where the U.S. opened a new embassy in May, and touched down for a series of meetings in New Zealand on Thursday.

At a press conference in Wellington, Blinken said that the “door is very much open” for New Zealand to engage with the second pillar of the AUKUS security pact between the U.S., Britain and Australia.

“New Zealand is a deeply trusted partner … We've long worked together on the most important national security issues. And so as we further develop AUKUS, as I said, the door is open to engagement.”

One of the primary goals of AUKUS is a plan for the Australians to acquire nuclear-powered submarines to help America police the Indo-Pacific super region.

The second pillar focuses on cooperation in advanced military technology.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta said the country is exploring the full extent of pillar two opportunities under AUKUS, but stressed that Wellington was “not prepared to compromise or change our nuclear-free position.”

The U.S., United Kingdom and France carried out more than 300 nuclear detonations in the Pacific from 1946 to 1966 as part of their weapons programs.

The testing hardened public opinion against nuclear weapons in New Zealand, which banned visits by nuclear-propelled warships in the mid-1980s and later passed legislation making the country a nuclear-free zone.

New Zealand’s refusal to allow the port call of USS Buchanan in 1985, after the ship would not confirm if it had no nuclear weapons onboard, resulted in Washington downgrading its diplomatic relationship with Wellington. The U.S. suspended its security guarantee under the trilateral ANZUS treaty, effectively freezing New Zealand out.

Diplomatic ties between the two nations have found common ground in regional security interests in recent years, especially over China’s growing assertiveness.

When asked about China’s police and security agreements with Solomon Islands, Mahuta on Thursday said that New Zealand respected Honiara’s sovereignty, but the “lack of openness and transparency” surrounding them had raised concerns.

“We will continue to push on the Solomon Islands [Prime Minister Manasseh] Sogavare to make clear what the full extent of those arrangements are so we can assess what that means for our region,” she said.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Harry Pearl for BenarNews.

Such a trip would be the fourth to China by a member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet since last month, with Raimondo following on the heels of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and climate envoy John Kerry amid a cooling of bilateral relations.

U.S. officials have cast the trips as an attempted reset in ties with Beijing after nearly a year of increasing tensions that started when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August visited the democratic island of Taiwan, which China claims as sovereign territory.

It has since been inflamed by U.S. bans on the export of high-end microchips to China, which has been led by Raimondo’s Department of  Commerce, and February’s high-profile spy balloon incident.

Raimondo told an event at the Wilson Center on Tuesday that she had to walk a fine line in promoting American business interests in China – America’s third-largest export market after Canada and Mexico – while ensuring the country’s national security interests are protected.

“I do plan to travel later this summer. We’re still finalizing a date and plans,” Raimondo said. “At a high level, we need to do business with China, wherever we can. We need to promote [American businesses] wherever we can, but we need to protect wherever we can.”

Balancing act

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress, officials in the U.S. Commerce Department and even the president have said the ban on exports of advanced microchips to China is a key national security priority, arguing that China is using the chips for military purposes.

The bans – and billions of dollars in subsidies for chipmakers in the United States – have led to complaints from Beijing, which has called the moves examples of a “Cold War mentality” and protectionism.

But Raimondo said she believed she can still promote American business in China while standing firm on the Biden administration’s chip export bans, even if that can be a difficult balancing act.

“There are many industries – food, entertainment,” she said of areas where America could expand trade with China at little risk. “I was recently with [CEO] Bob Iger of Disney –  their Shanghai park is growing gangbusters. Starbucks is opening a store a day in China.”

She also pointed to the “health and beauty product space” as U.S. industries that could be promoted in China while still “working with our allies to deny” Beijing the technology it needs to build its military.

“There is no national security risk to the United States selling coffee and beauty aids to China. It creates jobs in America,” Raimondo said. “Having said that, we have to protect what we must, and be eyes-wide-open about the threats, and strategic competition.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns for RFA.

Such a trip would be the fourth to China by a member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet since last month, with Raimondo following on the heels of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and climate envoy John Kerry amid a cooling of bilateral relations.

U.S. officials have cast the trips as an attempted reset in ties with Beijing after nearly a year of increasing tensions that started when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August visited the democratic island of Taiwan, which China claims as sovereign territory.

It has since been inflamed by U.S. bans on the export of high-end microchips to China, which has been led by Raimondo’s Department of  Commerce, and February’s high-profile spy balloon incident.

Raimondo told an event at the Wilson Center on Tuesday that she had to walk a fine line in promoting American business interests in China – America’s third-largest export market after Canada and Mexico – while ensuring the country’s national security interests are protected.

“I do plan to travel later this summer. We’re still finalizing a date and plans,” Raimondo said. “At a high level, we need to do business with China, wherever we can. We need to promote [American businesses] wherever we can, but we need to protect wherever we can.”

Balancing act

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in Congress, officials in the U.S. Commerce Department and even the president have said the ban on exports of advanced microchips to China is a key national security priority, arguing that China is using the chips for military purposes.

The bans – and billions of dollars in subsidies for chipmakers in the United States – have led to complaints from Beijing, which has called the moves examples of a “Cold War mentality” and protectionism.

But Raimondo said she believed she can still promote American business in China while standing firm on the Biden administration’s chip export bans, even if that can be a difficult balancing act.

“There are many industries – food, entertainment,” she said of areas where America could expand trade with China at little risk. “I was recently with [CEO] Bob Iger of Disney –  their Shanghai park is growing gangbusters. Starbucks is opening a store a day in China.”

She also pointed to the “health and beauty product space” as U.S. industries that could be promoted in China while still “working with our allies to deny” Beijing the technology it needs to build its military.

“There is no national security risk to the United States selling coffee and beauty aids to China. It creates jobs in America,” Raimondo said. “Having said that, we have to protect what we must, and be eyes-wide-open about the threats, and strategic competition.”

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns for RFA.

Papua New Guinea’s sidelined Secretary for Justice Dr Eric Kwa has been acquitted by the committal court on allegations of dangerous driving causing death.

He was discharged on Thursday because there was insufficient evidence to support the charge.

Police had alleged that he had driven dangerously causing an accident that led to the death of Lucy Shirong.

• READ MORE: Other Dr Kwa reports

Presiding Magistrate Hilda Aipi upheld Dr Kwa’s submission that police failed to establish and provide sufficient evidence to have him tried before the National Court. She struck it out for lack of evidence.

In his submissions, Dr Kwa had disputed the allegations of dangerous driving causing death.

He had taken issues with police witness statements and evidence on grounds that the eye witness was the one who was involved in the accident on October 17, 2022, that allegedly took the life of late Lucy Shirong.

Police key witness Maiyawa Abel and his accomplice Yugu Kandea were the ones present during the time of the accident.

Vehicle overturned
Abel told the police that he was driving a Ford Ranger and stopped at the left side of the road to take a break when a white Ford passed by. The white Ford was driven at high speed and veered to the right and then to the left again, which caused the vehicle to overturn several times.

Kwa questioned the statement, saying it was not true in its entirety and argued that he had no reason to veer right because the road in question runs straight for about 3km. The conduct of the arresting officer was imprudent in ignoring Dr Kwa’s evidence that was tiven police.

He further raised issues over the autopsy report provided by Dr Seth Fose with its findings that the cause of death was acute subarachnoid hemorrhage due to blunt force trauma to the head because of the motor vehicle incident.

The autopsy report by Dr Fose is devoid of any consultation with the attending physician, and the treatment that Shirong received while she was admitted to hospital was not considered.

The medical report from the attending physician stated that the deceased was diagnosed with diabetes following her admission and the cause of death was due to complications associated with diabetes and not from any injuries, stated Kwa.

Magistrate Hilda Aipi in her determination upheld the submission by Dr Kwa and struck out the allegation for lack of police evidence.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Malot Asi hinted that the case would be handed to the public prosecutor to see if the accused had a case to answer and make a decision on whether to file for an ex-officio indictment.

Prudence Auvita Ipape is a Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

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

The post Assessing Treasury Secretary Yellen’s Beijing Journey appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mel Gurtov.

Photograph Source: US Department of Labor – Public Domain

It wasn’t enough for owners of lucrative Southern California car washes to cheat their workers out of wages and overtime.

They made workers pay for the towels they used to clean cars, denied them rest breaks, forced them to toil in filthy water that bred foot fungus, and even required the so-called “carwasheros” to hand-wash vehicles with skin-burning solvents.

Outraged members of United Steelworkers (USW) Local 675 launched an effort to help these workers about a dozen years ago, just as the state’s new labor commissioner, Julie Su, kicked off her own battle against the state’s shadow economy.

In a one-two punch that still reverberates through the industry, the USW empowered carwasheros at the negotiating table while Su ramped up enforcement of labor laws, pursued millions in back wages, and filed criminal charges against unscrupulous bosses.

Given this and other fights Su waged on behalf of ordinary people, it’s no surprise that workers across the country are demanding her confirmation as the next U.S. secretary of labor. President Joe Biden nominated Su for the Cabinet post on February 28, but the Senate has yet to vote.

The labor secretary enforces workers’ rights along with federal wage, overtime, and child labor laws. The nation’s top labor cop also fights discrimination, oversees workplace safety agencies, administers pension security programs, and polices employer compliance with shutdown and layoff rules.

To truly make a difference, however, the secretary needs the ardor for working people and impatience for change that define Su’s career.

“It’s one thing to be a policy person. It’s another to connect with people on an emotional level,” said David Campbell, secretary-treasurer of Local 675, recalling not only the skill but the passion and tenacity that Su brought to the fight for car wash workers.

The multi-million industry preyed on recent immigrants, the homeless, and other vulnerable people, said Campbell, noting one “was paid with the privilege of sleeping in the car wash bathroom at night.”

“The car washes knew there was a special enforcement program going on with the labor commissioner. So that made them—at least some of them—more amenable to collective bargaining agreements,” which increased wages, improved working conditions, and gave workers a voice, explained Campbell, whose local worked with several community partners on the initiative.

Su tirelessly helps workers build better lives.

In the 1990s, as a 26-year-old attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Su helped 72 Thai workers start over after federal agents freed them from a garment sweatshop in El Monte, Calif., where they were imprisoned by barbed wire, watched by armed guards and paid by the cent.

Su won $4 million in back wages and legal protections for the workers. But she recalled being most gratified by how “the workers stood up, learned they had power, and, against all odds, defied the message they had heard their whole lives—that they should keep their heads down and know their place.”

After her appointment as California labor commissioner in 2011, Su fought not only for the carwasheros but for poorly paid workers who cleaned buildings, harvested crops, and performed other essential yet largely invisible tasks in the state’s underground economy.

She also stepped up to tackle other pressing issues, such as vigorously enforcing a California law requiring health care facilities to develop customized violence-prevention plans to protect workers like the thousands of USW members who work in hospitals and other medical settings.

And Su helped implement a law protecting workers whom unscrupulous employers deliberately misclassified as contractors so they could skimp on wages, benefits and workplace safety. That work spoke not only to Su’s drive to help workers but to her long-held conviction about the need to provide a “level playing field for honest employers to prosper and thrive.”

“Julie Su was able to greenlight important issues rather than let them founder in an uncaring bureaucracy,” observed Campbell, noting that low wages and poor working conditions for some workers drag everyone down in the long run.

“The obvious move is to raise the floor, and that’s what we should do,” noting that unions and labor enforcers have a “common interest” to protect workers and fuel the economy.

Biden tapped Su to be deputy labor secretary, the department’s No. 2 position in 2021, and then nominated her for the top role upon Secretary Marty Walsh’s departure last winter. The USW, along with dozens of unions, social justice groups, and other organizations, quickly sent senators a letter urging Su’s confirmation because of her record of accomplishments and ability to confront current challenges.

Just a couple of weeks ago, for example, she helped employers and dock workers negotiate a tentative contract that keeps West Coast seaports—and America’s economy—operating. Her work on that case drew praise from both union workers and the Pacific Maritime Association, a trade group.

Americans need Su to watch their backs more than ever, especially as a growing number of workers join unions on the heels of the pandemic and advocates push for a national version of the California law protecting health care workers.

“If she asked me to knock on doors for her, I’d be out there knocking,” said David Simmons, a member of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) from Pasadena, Calif., explaining his eagerness to build support for Su’s nomination.

Simmons, who worked on the car wash initiative, remembers not only Su’s commitment to the workers but how she galvanized her entire agency to a mission that previous labor commissioners neglected.

“I think she’d make a great secretary of labor,” he said.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Tom Conway.

In his key address to the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore on Saturday, Austin said that he is “deeply concerned that the PRC has been unwilling to engage more seriously on better mechanisms for crisis management between our two militaries.”

The defense secretary referred to China by its official name the People’s Republic of China.

“For responsible defense leaders, the right time to talk is anytime, the right time to talk is everytime and the right time to talk is now,” he said, adding that “dialogue is not a reward. It is a necessity.”

“And the more that we talk, the more that we can avoid the misunderstandings and miscalculations that could lead to crisis or conflict.”

Secretary Austin and Chinese Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu, who has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018, shared a brief handshake before an official dinner on Friday but did not speak to each other nor is a bilateral meeting between them anticipated.

"A cordial handshake over dinner is no substitute for a substantive engagement," Austin said.

The U.S. defense chief slammed China which, he said, “continues to conduct an alarming number of risky intercepts of U.S. and allied aircraft flying lawfully in international airspace.”

Just last week, the U.S. military accused a Chinese J-16 fighter jet of performing an "unnecessarily aggressive" maneuver during the intercept of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft.

“We do not seek conflict or confrontation, but we will not flinch in the face of bullying or coercion,” Austin said.

The obvious rift between the two powers has “become the new reality,” said Huong Le Thu, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Regional countries have to accept it whether “they like it or not,” she told RFA.

“But they can contribute to managing the tensions by lowering the heat through facilitating and encouraging dialogues between the U.S. and China,” the analyst added.

Shared vision 

Carlito Galvez Jr., Senior Undersecretary and Officer-in-Charge at the Philippine Defense Department, said Manila believes that “the international law is the greatest equalizer among states.”

The Philippines won a legal case against China’s claims in the South China Sea at a U.N. tribunal in 2016 but Beijing has so far refused to accept the ruling.

The two countries have recently been embroiled in a new spat over their sovereignty in some of the islands in the Spratly archipelago.

"As the old adage goes, good fences make good neighbors," Galvez said. 

"It is only when neighbors have clear boundaries and respect for set boundaries that relations remain genuinely amicable," the acting defense secretary said.

Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto said it is “imperative for us to overcome our geopolitical rivalries, our territorial disputes through dialogues, negotiations and win-win solutions.”

“Compromise is the only way that communities and societies can prosper,” he said, warning that the rivalry between superpowers “has turned into a Cold War” and in any war, “the danger of a catastrophe is always near.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Austin, however, insisted that his country “does not seek a new Cold War.”

“Competition must never spill over into conflict. And the region should never be split into hostile blocs,” he said.

Austin said Washington is not creating nor willing to create a new NATO in the Indo-Pacific as China has repeatedly alleged.

Yet the U.S. wishes to build “nimble coalitions to advance our shared vision” in order to make the Indo-Pacific “more stable and more resilient,” Austin said.

Washington lists Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand as its “staunch allies” in the region and sees India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore as “valued partners.”

Speaking about self-ruled Taiwan, Austin said his country “remains deeply committed to preserving the status quo there, consistent with our longstanding one-China policy, and with fulfilling our well-established obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act.”

“Conflict is neither imminent nor inevitable. Deterrence is strong today, and it’s our job to keep it that way,” the secretary stated.

Beijing considers Taiwan a Chinese province and resolutely protests against any involvement by “external forces” in the island’s politics. 

Lt. Gen. Jing Jianfeng, deputy chief of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Staff Department, hit back at Lloyd Austin’s speech about Taiwan, saying it was “completely wrong.”

“There’s only one China in the world, and Taiwan is a sacred and inalienable part of Chinese territory,” Jing said, adding that “it is the common aspiration and sacred responsibility of all Chinese people, including our Taiwan compatriots, to complete the reunification of the motherland.”

China’s counterattack 

A researcher at People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Academy of Military Sciences, Senior Col. Zhao Xiaozhuo, said that it is the U.S. who has been trying to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

“The Taiwan Strait was pretty stable in the last ten years or so but the U.S. wants to destroy this stability,” Zhao told reporters at the Shangri-La Dialogue. 

“That way they can sell weapons to Taiwan and make a lot of money,” he said.

Chinese participants at the security forum in Singapore have taken a proactive approach to counter criticism from the U.S. and its allies.

Senior Col. Zhao said that Washington needs to change what he calls “erroneous actions” in the way it interacts with others.

“When it comes to dialogue you have to take care of the opposite party’s interests,” he said, accusing the U.S. side of not understanding this basic principle.

Another Chinese delegate, Senior Col. Zhang Chi from the National Security College at China’s National Defense University, questioned whether Washington had contradicted itself by establishing multilateral institutions while promoting the centrality of the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Tang Yongshen, former deputy commandant of the same college, hit back at Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand for calling China a disruptive force in the region.

“China has made great efforts to maintain peace and stability in the region,” Tang said. 

“In fact, what you said is disruptive,” he added bluntly.

A Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the Global Times, quoted a military official as saying in a report on Saturday that “China is confident to step on the stage and raise its voices.”

“Despite knowing the Shangri-La Dialogue is a platform dominated by Western countries to attack China, China comes anyway,” the paper said.

China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu will deliver a major speech on Beijing’s new security initiatives on Sunday, the last day of the forum.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

We have come to Cape Cod for a few days to forget the man-made world that is too much with us. I have asked my forgettery to get to work. As my childhood friends used to say to me, “Eddy spaghetti, use you forgetty.” The adults had no idea what they meant. Many still do not.

Here slowness reigns and forgetting seems possible, even if for just a few days.  In mid-May, the beaches are deserted except for the swooping gulls, the sandpipers prancing across the sand, and a few seals eyeing you from just off-shore.  An occasional frigate bird glides past. The wind rushes through your ears, making conversation almost impossible.

But no words are needed here, for the ocean speaks its own language and the tales it tells are deep.  You can only hear them if you shut up and listen. It utters reminders of the immensity of creation and the puniness of human aspirations. The sea dismisses with a roar the pretensions to power of the Lilliputians.

One minute it glistens in the bright blue sunshine and says all is well; then suddenly, as now, the sky and sea turn very dark and foreboding, the increased wind whipping the whitecaps into a maniacal threat.  There are limits, it wails, and do not try to exceed them, for if, in your hubris, you attempt it, you will discover that when you think you’re on the top, you’ll be heading for the bottom.

As the Greeks knew so well, Nemesis awaits your response.

If you stand on the forty mile long strand of the sandy outer beach and look out to sea, you realize that no matter how well you sail through life, and how deftly you tack your boat, you are not ultimately in control.  Those who seek to control others lack the spirit of the wind, the unseen mystery through which we move.

Henry David Thoreau stood on this beach looking out to sea and wrote:

A man may stand there and put all America behind him.

I wish it were so simple.  To forget the man-made world that is too much with us isn’t easy.  Ironically, it can only be briefly forgotten, for when we come to a beautiful and wild sea shore like Cape Cod when rarely a soul is around, the contemplation of its majesty implicitly draws us to compare it to human endeavors.  I look out across the wide Atlantic and see not just its wild power but the feeble pretensions of the Atlanticist countries that think they can still control the world.  Their illusions die hard as their sand castle empire crumbles before the incoming waves.

And here on this long stretch between bay and ocean, it is hard to forget that 10,000 years before the Pilgrims came ashore, the native peoples lived here and were eventually driven from their land.  Not far from where I stand sits the Nauset Light house, named for the Nauset original free people that once lived here.  You can travel all across the United States and even if you wish to forget, there are constant reminders of the genocide of the native peoples by the European settlers.  You bow your head in shameful remembrance.

Of course, to forget, it is crucial to remember to try to forget, and in doing so you are caught in the human web of thought.

We tell ourselves, let us go then, you and I, to contemplate the sea and sky, to let go of all the world’s woes and pack up our sorrows and give them to the elements as we vacate our minds.  Then – ouch! – we are jerked back by the sight of a dead sea gull on the sand or a plaque informing you that the long stretch of outer beach you walk with the ghost of Thoreau was preserved as the Cape Cod National Seashore by President Kennedy in 1961.  You find yourself walking with many ghosts: dead writers, sailors drowned in shipwrecks, ancient dead horseshoe crabs along the strand, and an assassinated president who loved this sea and land.  You realize that nature, while beautifully majestic, is also a cruel taskmaster, but not as cruel as humans, so many of whom seem to revel in killing.

You struggle to dismiss the thoughts associated with these aperçus, yet you immediately wonder if they are auguries of past events or harbingers of something else.  You feel you have been ambushed by another reality.  You hear Billy Joel’s words from his historical song, We Didn’t Start the Fire, “JFK blown away, what else do I have to say.”

You is I, of course, and although these words are addressed to those who might read them, I am also writing for myself, and I sense my word usage was a way to distance myself from what I sometimes find hard to accept: that for some reason of character or experience or both, it is my fate to be unable to escape for long from what my perceptions suggest to me.  Wherever I have gone on that strange word “vacation,” I have been trailed by thoughts that others may consider inappropriate for the occasion.  Un-vacation thoughts.  Wherever I have traveled I have always felt like William Blake as he wandered through each chartered street of London:

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

Is it a blessing or curse?  I don’t know.  Such knowing is overrated.  My father, an eloquent and brilliant man with deep religious faith, used to end his letters to me with the words: quién sabe (who knows)?

There is, however, another form of knowing that is vastly underrated; it is historical, a knowledge of history that illuminates the present.  I mentioned the Nauset people who lived on Cape Cod when the Pilgrims first temporarily dropped anchor in what is now called Provincetown Harbor.  The Nauset people’s story, like those of the other native people’s across the United States, is tied to the U.S. history of empire in significant ways.

This country was conceived in the blood of all the original free peoples who lived here for eons.  They were massacred to make way for the white technologists who sent their iron horses west as they slaughtered the horse riding nations – including the Pueblo, Pawnee, Comanche and Lakota – and other natives who went by shanks mare.

This history is crucial knowledge, for without it one cannot grasp the demonic nature of today’s U.S. wars throughout the world.  The history has always been demonic.  Nemesis is surely watching now, for what began in the blood of others, has a tendency to blow back on those who first unleashed the fire.  Those of us alive today might not have started the fire, but if we don’t know and recognize its long-term spiritual effects, we can’t understand today’s U.S. provoked war against Russia via Ukraine or much else.

If you wish to praise the American Revolution, you should be sure to emphasize its demonic side.  The mythology of the shining city on the hill needs to be abandoned.  American exceptionalism needs to be jettisoned together with reminders of Washington and Jefferson, both rich slave holders. There are no exceptional countries.  The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution read beautifully on paper as ideals, but those who promoted them were far from it.

Is it exceptional to massacre the native peoples and steal their land?

Is it exceptional to have built an economy on the backs of slaves kidnapped from Africa?

Is it exceptional to plunder foreign lands and make them part of your own?

Is it exceptional to wage endless foreign wars, assassinate at will, and steal the resources of other people to fuel a deranged consumer society?

Is it exceptional to grant full freedom to criminal corporations to pollute the land and water?

Is it exceptional to create endless crises and use propaganda to transfer vast sums of wealth from regular people to the super rich?

Exceptional perhaps, but only in the sense that other past empires considered themselves god-like and immune to Nemesis’s warning of retribution for such crimes?

A dark wind is blowing across the beach now. The sand stings. I see a storm coming, so we will leave for now and go to the nearest restaurant where we will order a dozen oysters for a buck a piece and drink some wine to enjoy our last day here.  When the dozen are gone, perhaps another dozen will taste even better.  All will be well for a small slice of time. I will remember to forget.

I might later remember a photo of Gabriel García Márquez’s face, the look of a bon vivant who told stories to preserve the mystery of our ordinary, extraordinary lives. The fierce journalist who exposed the mystifications that are used by the powerful to deny regular people their democratic rights.  A man who could enjoy life and oppose oppression.

If you can believe it, I will remember that he spoke of “the mission assigned to us by fate.”  And that the great English essayist John Berger says of him, when comparing his face to that of Rembrandt’s blind Homer:

There is nothing pretentious in this comparison: we, Death’s secretaries, all carry the same sense of duties, the same oblique shame (as we have survived, the best have departed) and the same obscure pride which belongs to us personally no more than the stories we tell.

Berger adds that Death’s secretaries are handed a file by Death that is filled with sheets of black paper which they can somehow read and out of which they make stories for the living.  No matter how fantastic they may seem, only one’s incredulity blocks one from entering their truths.

JFK had a secretary named Lincoln, Evelyn Lincoln, who late one night when tidying up his desk, found a slip of paper in his handwriting on the floor. It wasn’t black. On it was written a prayer Kennedy loved. It was a message from Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: “I know there is a God – and I see a storm coming. If he has a place for me, I believe that I am ready.”

It’s worth remembering that was soon after the Bay of Pigs when Kennedy said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds,” (As reported by Tom Wicker, John W. Finney,Max Frankel, E. W. Kensworthy, “CIA: Maker of Policy or Tool?” New York Times, April 25, 1966, p 20.) [“The Real Story Behind That JFK Quote About Destroying the CIA” — DV ed] and that he had just returned from a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev where he was shocked by Khrushchev’s apparent insouciance to an accelerating threat of nuclear war.

Death’s secretary can’t forget.

And yet those oysters.  Their taste upon the tongue!  So exquisite!  The sea’s sweetness in every swallow.

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

• House Republicans approve bill banning transgender athletes in most women’s or girl’s school sports
• Julie Su’s nomination to serve as Labor Secretary faces opposition from Republicans and big business — and maybe some Democrats
• Attorney John Burris files federal civil rights lawsuit against Antioch and its police department
• Attorney Generals in 17 states want a recall of Kia and Hyundai cars because they’re too easy to steal

The post House Republicans vote to ban transgender students from women’s and girl’s school sports; Labor Secretary nominee Julie Su faces Republican opposition at confirmation hearing; Federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Antioch and its police department: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – April 20, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

The post Biden and Interior Secretary Haaland Must Stop Yellowstone Buffalo Slaughter appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mike Garrity.

Manalo is in Washington this week to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken as part of the “2+2 Ministerial Dialogue,” which will also include Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, amid Manila’s preparations to open four more U.S. military outposts on its territory. 

But the trip comes as Beijing carries out naval military drills around the self-governing island – about two hours’ flight from Manila – following Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s recent trips to the United States, which included a meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.  

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies ahead of his meetings, Manalo said that the Philippines was closely monitoring the situation given the self-governing island is “right next door.” 

But he said that he believed Beijing’s response this time around had not been quite as aggressive as in the aftermath of the trip to Taiwan by McCarthy’s predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, in August last year. 

“Well, that really escalated tensions,” Manalo said of Pelosi’s trip to the island that Beijing considers a renegade province. “But so far, we see now that this visit is – hopefully – it’s not as it was in August.”

“This could hopefully pave the way, let’s say, for calming the situation a bit on the straits [and] between China and the United States,” he said.

South China Sea

Manalo also said that the maintenance of peace in the South China Sea, which he often referred to as the “West Philippine Sea,” was a priority for Manila as competing claims for the maritime territory are negotiated with Beijing and other claimants in Southeast Asia.

But in an apparent reference to Beijing’s unilateral moves to build-up coral reefs into naval bases in the disputed waters, he defended the “international rule-based order” as the fairest way to arbitrate control of the waters but said Manila would always “uphold its sovereignty.”

The Philippines was “at the heart of this seascape,” he said, and “the South China Sea, for us, is also about people,” with Philippine citizens relying on the waters for fishing. He said Manila would therefore not accept any “harassment” or “denial of access” to the waters.

“The Philippines has been clear and consistent about our interest in maintaining the South China Sea as a sea of peace and stability – and [about] our aim to boost our defense capabilities,” he said. 

Manalo meets with Blinken and Austin on Tuesday.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alex Willemyns for RFA.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Bychawski.

A coalition of 185 organizations, and 191 individuals, today sent a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. They urged her, for the third time, to yet again reject Holtec International’s requested $1.2 billion dollar federal bailout, for restarting the closed-for-good Palisades atomic reactor on the southwest Michigan shoreline of Lake Michigan, near South Haven in Van Buren County.

The coalition includes the 75-member group Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, across Lake Michigan — source of drinking water for many millions in four states — from the Palisades atomic reactor. It also includes the five-member group Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE) in New Mexico, concerned about past, present, and future impacts of uranium mining on Indigenous Peoples’ lands — such as that needed to fuel Palisades’ proposed resumed operations out to 2031, or even beyond that.

The coalition letter points out that Palisades does not qualify for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Civil Nuclear Credit (CNC) program, because it violates a number of required criteria for eligibility, as clearly spelled out in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This includes the fact that Palisades is no longer operational, does not compete in a competitive marketplace, and does not meet numerous additional requirements.

Perhaps most significantly, in terms of health, safety, security, and the environment, is Palisades’ inability to operate safely, due to a litany of chronic and acute problems associated with age-related degradation and neglected maintenance on safety-significant systems, structures, and components. This includes the worst neutron-embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the country and perhaps the world, at risk of pressurized thermal shock through-wall fracture, which would lead to reactor core meltdown. But additional pathways to catastrophic meltdown include a reactor lid, as well as steam generators, that have needed replacement for 17 years or longer. Palisades’ control rod drive mechanism seal leaks have been uniquely bad in all of industry, for more than a half-century. Now added to this long list is Holtec’s neglect of vital maintenance, such as of the turbo-generator, bending under its own immense weight, as well as the steam generators, to name but two examples.

“DOE’s recently issued amended ‘Guidance,’ which was specifically rewritten to enable Holtec to apply for $1.2 billion of federal taxpayer funds, is not legal under the IIJA,” said Terry Lodge, Toledo, Ohio-based attorney and legal counsel for lead groups of the coalition, Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan.

In addition, Holtec recently applied to DOE for a billion dollar federal taxpayer-backed nuclear loan guarantee under the Inflation Reduction Act, which it would use to promote the reactor restart scheme, hoping to pay it back over time with the CNC program bailout. Holtec is also seeking a more than billion dollar subsidy from the State of Michigan, as well as yet another lucrative, above market rate Power Purchase Agreement with an unnamed utility company in the area. Also, Holtec has applied to DOE for $7.4 billion in federal nuclear loan guarantees, authorized under the 2005 Energy Policy Act and congressionally appropriated on December 23, 2007, for the design certification, construction, and operation of four Small Modular (Nuclear) Reactors, more than one of which would also be located at the Palisades site.

“This more than $10 billion in ratepayer and taxpayer robbery would merely fund an insanely high-risk game of radioactive Russian roulette on the Lake Michigan shoreline,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, and board member of Don’t Waste Michigan, representing his hometown Kalamazoo chapter.

“Both extremes of the risk spectrum would be co-located at the Palisades site, if Holtec gets its way,” Kamps explained. “The ever worsening breakdown phase risks at the old reactor would exist alongside the break-in phase risks of the new reactors, risking a Chornobyl-scale catastrophe, with the potential for Fukushima-style, domino-effect, multiple meltdowns,” Kamps added.

Similar coalition letters were sent to Energy Secretary Granholm, a former Michigan governor as well as attorney general, on January 23, 2023, and September 22, 2022. (Similarly, the coalition wrote to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on June 8, 2022, urging her to "cease and desist" from her wasteful, unwise, and dangerous "zombie reactor" bailout and restart scheme at Palisades.) Both previous coalition letters to DOE also expressed opposition to Holtec’s first bailout application, filed secretly on July 5, 2022, little more than a week after Holtec took ownership of Palisades, under the false pretense of decommissioning it. Holtec, as well as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, first publicly announced their joint bailout and restart scheme on September 9, 2022, although Whitmer had been advocating for it since April 2022. However, DOE rejected Holtec’s first Palisades bailout bid on November 18, 2022, as announced by Holtec that day.

But, on December 19, 2022, Holtec announced it would again seek the DOE CNC bailout during a second round of funding allocations. DOE’s revised CNC guidance, issued in early March 2023, clearly seems tailored to shoe-horn Palisades for bailout approval, despite its glaring violation of numerous required IIJA eligibility criteria.

Of the $6 billion in this old reactor CNC program bailout funding, $4.9 billion currently remains. Just days after DOE rejected Holtec’s application for Palisades last November, the agency awarded a $1.1 billion bailout to Pacific Gas & Electric, in order to operate Diablo Canyon Units 1 and 2 in California past their current 2024 and 2025 license expirations. In addition, last year the governor and state legislature in California controversially granted PG&E another $1.3 billion in state-level bailouts for the extended operations. Similarly, Holtec has demanded state-level bailouts from Michigan for Palisades’ restart, for an amount rumored to be more than a billion dollars.

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

A few weeks ago, Bernie phoned.

“Bob?”

The Brooklyn patois was unmistakable.

“Bernie!”

“Listen, I want you to know that I recommended you to be the next secretary of labor.”

Bernie is not one for small talk.

“But I’ve been there. Done that. Don’t want to do it again.”

“Just wanted to give you a heads up. You’ll be getting some calls from the media.”

Did Bernie even hear what I said?

“Thanks, Bernie.”

“Bye.”

“Bye, and …” He was already off the phone.

Let me just come right out and say it: I love Bernie Sanders.

I love his authenticity. Some people like Donald Trump becausehe says whatever he wants and he’s an asshole. Bernie’s authenticity comes from saying what he wants and speaking the truth. And although he’s blunt, he’s anything but an asshole. When he growls “this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is immoral,” he means it. And he’s right.

I love his chutzpah. On Tuesday, Bernie announced that Starbucks’s anti-labor CEO, Howard Schultz, has agreed to testify before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which Bernie chairs. The National Labor Relations Board has filed more than 80 complaints against Starbucks for refusing to negotiate in good faith with its workers in more than 280 Starbucks stores that have voted to unionize. Schultz had refused the committee’s request to appear until Bernie threatened to subpoena him. "I look forward to hearing from Mr. Schultz as to when he intends to end his illegal anti-union activities and begin signing fair first contracts with the unions," Bernie said.

I love him because he sounds like a vintage record (even his voice has the crackle of worn vinyl).

I love him because he’s never been afraid to call himself a democratic socialist. Soon after he began running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, his campaign manager warned me he was about make a speech to “introduce” the public to democratic socialism. I was impressed that he had the guts to do this but worried about his timing. “Does he haveto do it now?” I asked. The campaign manager told me Bernie was committed to doing it and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. It was pure Bernie.

Ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed for Social Security, Republicans have used “socialism” to scare Americans away from doing anything big that we need done.

But America is changing. As early as 2011, the Pew Research Center found that almost half of all voters under the age of 30 held a positive view of socialism while only 46 percent held a positive view of capitalism. In the 2016 Democratic primaries and then again in 2020, young people all over America wore buttons reading “Feel the Bern.” They were like the young admirers of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another warrior who combined progressive conviction with elder crankiness.

I love Bernie because he has endless patience for important things and no patience for small talk. In 2010, he delivered an eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the Senate floor to protest the extension of tax cuts instituted during George W. Bush’s presidency. I was in the Capitol at the time and dropped by his office to congratulate him on his marathon. He quickly thanked me, then waved me off to take a phone call.

Just before the California Democratic primary in 2020, he gave a stemwinder of a speech in Oakland. We had a late dinner at a small dive on Shattuck Avenue that was empty except for the two of us — until a supporter spied us through the window and came bounding in with a Bernie poster.

“Senator, would you sign my …?”

“Not now! We’re eating!” Bernie barked.

In all my years of politics, I’d never come across a candidate willing to do this.

I love Bernie because he’s a true populist — a word that has gotten a terrible rap since Trump but should be redeemed. It means for the people and against the powerful. Trump pretends to be a populist, but he’s always wanted to be one of the powerful and has forever been in their pockets. Bernie is a true populist.

I love Bernie because he has almost single-handedly changed the national conversation — turning proposals that had once been on the Democratic fringe into respectable, and in some cases mainstream, Democratic positions. Creating jobs by rebuilding infrastructure. Providing free tuition at public universities. Breaking up the big banks. Guaranteeing workers paid medical and family leave.

The policies no longer seem far-fetched. And now that he’s chair of a powerful Senate committee, Bernie might be able to usher some of them through, if Democrats regain control of the House next year.

I love Bernie because even at the age of 81, his indignation hasn’t faded. Nor has his energy.

When he entered Congress in 1991 as an independent, he wasn’t particularly well liked. That may have had something to do with his telling the press that Congress “is not working. It is failing. Change is not going to take place until many hundreds of these people are thrown out of their offices,” and charging that “Congress does not have the courage to stand up to the powerful interests. I have the freedom to speak my mind.”

At the time, Congressman Barney Frank shot back: “Bernie alienates his natural allies. His holier-than-thou attitude — saying, in a very loud voice, he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else — really undercuts his effectiveness.” Joe Moakley, another Massachusetts Democrat, then chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, complained that Bernie “screams and hollers, but he is all alone.”

Bernie’s lack of popularity on Capitol Hill didn’t hold him back. He was reelected to the House seven times and was one of the founding members and the first chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which has grown steadily from six members in 1991 to 71 today.

His ascent to the Senate in 2006 was astonishing — beating the Republican candidate, Richard Tarrant, one of the wealthiest men in Vermont, by 33 percentage points.

I backed Bernie in 2016 when he ran for the Democratic nomination for president against Hillary Clinton and backed him again in 2020. I took some crap for doing this from Clinton people, but I’m glad I did it. The system needed shaking up. It needed Bernie’s candidacy even if he wasn’t going to get the nomination.

I love Bernie because he has more guts than any politician I know. Hell, he has more guts than just about anyone I know.

But I’m still not going to be labor secretary again.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Robert Reich.

When bureaucrats get big promotions, they tend to receive congratulations from their friends, but after Christopher Miller landed the biggest job of his life, his wife and some of his colleagues were horrified.

It was November 9, 2020, the day President Donald Trump fired his secretary of defense, Mark Esper. It was widely assumed that Trump would install an acolyte who would do whatever was needed to help the defeated president stay in power. Esper, just days before, had confided to a journalist, “Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real yes man. And then God help us.”

Trump appointed Miller, an unknown whose rise was so far-fetched that the secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy, had to Google his new boss to figure out who he was. Wikipedia was useless because at the time, Miller didn’t merit an entry.

After retiring from the Army as a Special Forces colonel in 2014, Miller moved from one mid-level job to another in Washington, D.C., a nobody in a city of somebodies. Things began to pick up after Trump’s election, and by August 2020, he was promoted to director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Just three months later, he was summoned to the Oval Office and put in charge of the world’s most powerful military.

“I’m at work on a Monday morning, and the phone rings, and they’re like, ‘Get your ass down here,’” Miller said in an interview, referring to the moment he was called to the White House. “I was like, ‘Oh, shit.’”

Miller knew his name was circulating in the White House, but the announcement came abruptly and was not greeted with warmth by his life partner. “Yeah, my wife is like, ‘The only thing we have is our name and you’re ruining it,’” Miller recalled. “She’s like, ‘You’re an idiot. I think this is the stupidest thing that’s ever happened.’ And I’m like, ‘Yes dear, I know that.’”

Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and his wife Kathryn make prerecorded remarks for the Military Spouse Employment Partnership New Partner Induction Ceremony at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 4, 2020.

Photo: Department of Defense

His rhetoric is a profane blend of MAGA and Noam Chomsky.

Christopher Miller displays his recently published book “Soldier Secretary” on his home bookshelf on Feb. 7, 2023.

Photo: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept

Related

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

“We should have kept it to about 500 people, just let that be the special operations theater.”

Christopher Miller in old photos from his time in Afghanistan, left, and Iraq, right.Photos: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept

“You can mess up a piece of paperwork and get run out of the Army. But you can lose a damn war and nobody is held accountable.”

Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, center left, walks with Lt. Gen. John Deedrick after arriving to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Dec. 22, 2020.

Photo: Staff Sgt. Jack Sanders/DoD

Kash Patel, former chief of staff to then-Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, departs from a deposition meeting on Capitol Hill with the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack, on Dec. 9, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Pictured, from left, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, Vice Adm. Sean Buck, President Donald Trump, Lt. Gen. Darryl Williams, and Chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley before the start of a game at Michie Stadium on Dec. 12, 2020, in West Point, N.Y.

Photo: Dustin Satloff/Getty Images

Miller’s anger is real, but his target is poorly chosen, which is the story of America after 9/11.

A video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on a phone call with Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, is played during a hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, in Washington, D.C. on October 13, 2022.

Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Members of the Washington D.C. National Guard arrive to keep rioters away from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Christopher Miller poses for a portrait in between media interviews at his home office on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. His book “Soldier Secretary” was released that day.

Photo: Alyssa Schukar for The Intercept

At some point in the future, we’ll just have more of what we’ve already endured, and perhaps it will be a variant of militarism and racism that’s more potent still.

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

• Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russia’s Sergei Lavrov hold brief talks at G-20 meeting
• San Bernardino County tries to get food and medicine to snowed in mountain residents
• House Ethics Committee announces investigation of New York Republican George Santos
• Senate hearing seeks to reauthorize funding for community health clinics before it runs out
• Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg announces he has terminal cancer

Image: courtesy of San Bernardino County

The post G-20 meeting forum for brief talks between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart; State and county officials tell snowed in San Bernardino residents help is on the way; Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says he has terminal cancer: Pacifica Evening News March 2, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

Progressives on Tuesday applauded as U.S. President Joe Biden nominated Julie Su to succeed outgoing Labor Secretary Marty Walsh—a choice the nation's largest federation of unions said will "continue the Department of Labor's historic legacy of pro-union leadership."

"Julie Su is a leader who stands up for dignity, safety, and fair pay for all working families including immigrant and marginalized communities," continued the AFL-CIO, calling on the U.S. Senate to promptly confirm Su, who is currently Biden's deputy labor secretary.

The president noted that before working in the Biden administration, Su "led the largest state labor department in the nation" as California's labor commissioner from 2011-18.

In that role, Su oversaw "a renaissance in enforcement activity" against employers who violated labor laws, according to the U.S. Labor Department. She launched a historic, multilingual "Wage Theft Is a Crime" campaign, using multimedia to reach low-wage workers, inform them about their rights, and encourage them to feel safe speaking out against abuses of labor law.

"Julie Su is the real deal and she will do everything in her power to put working people central to the agenda."

Years before leading California's Labor Department, in the mid-1990s as a recent law school graduate, Su helped defend more than 70 Thai undocumented immigrants who had been enslaved in a garment sweatshop in El Monte, California. The case is widely studied in law school classes and by advocates and rights organizers, NBC News reported in 2021 when Su was nominated to serve as deputy labor secretary.

"What an inspiring pick," Helen Brosnan of the advocacy group Fight Corporate Monopolies tweeted, noting Su's anti-slavery case.

Biden said Su has proven herself to be "a champion for workers" as she has "cracked down on wage theft, fought to protect trafficked workers, increased the minimum wage, created good-paying, high-quality jobs, and established and enforced workplace safety standards."

The president selected Su after reportedly being urged by House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to nominate former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chair Sean Patrick Maloney, who was a member of the corporate-friendly New Democrat Coalition before losing his reelection campaign last year and who has been blamed for allowing the Democrats to lose control of the U.S. House.

"Great to hear that we won't see Sean Patrick Maloney return to power anytime soon," said organizer Joshua Sauberman.

A number of progressives strongly urgedBiden to nominate Sara Nelson, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, to succeed Walsh, with Sen. Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.) telling the president in a letter that Nelson "has been a leading voice for worker rights and is a very strong communicator of progressive values."

Nelson has been a vocal critic of a widening gap between CEO and worker pay and was a key negotiator of provisions in the pandemic-era CARES Act, which temporarily banned airline stock buybacks and capped executive compensation.

Despite his support for Nelson, Sanders was one of the first lawmakers to respond to the news of Su's nomination, expressing confidence that she "will be an excellent secretary of labor."

Nelson also expressed strong support for Biden's choice, saying the nomination is "fantastic news for the country!"

Other labor advocates shared their hope that as secretary of labor, Su will push forward efforts to strengthen workers' rights in the fast-growing renewable energy sector.

"Renewables workers—and our planet—need someone like Su at the helm of the Department of Labor to push for and deliver on much-needed change. Right now, renewable energy jobs are scaling up across the country to meet the demand of the Inflation Reduction Act's unprecedented investment in clean energy," said Matthew Mayers, executive director of the Green Workers Alliance. "But the industry still relies on low-road subcontractors and temp agencies, who frequently short-change workers and promise jobs that never materialize."

"This industry—and many more across America—will need to fundamentally change," Mayers added. "Julie Su knows this from first-hand experience. She has been a fighter to win these changes, and we look forward to working with her as we demand more and better green jobs."

Immigrant rights groups have also pushed Biden to nominate Su, with the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) saying earlier this month that her "track record shows her commitment to protecting everyone's fundamental rights at work."

"She's really been a champion her entire career for all workers," Raha Wala of the NILC toldBloomberg Law Tuesday, "regardless of immigration status, regardless of economic status."

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

Progressives are looking at U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh's expected departure as an opportunity for President Joe Biden to demonstrate his professed commitment to workers' rights by placing at the helm of the Labor Department a leader who will unabashedly call out the corporate greed that has left millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet in the face of historic inequality.

After hockey news outlet The Daily Faceoff first reported earlier this month that Walsh is planning to step down from the Labor Department to lead the National Hockey League's Players' Association, Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote to Biden to put forward two potential nominees, urging him to select someone who is "a champion of workers."

In a letter dated February 10, Sanders recommended former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who served for four years under former President Bill Clinton and has since written and spoken out extensively about income inequality, or Association of Flight Attendants-CWA International President Sara Nelson, one of the best-known labor leaders in the United States today.

"There are a wealth of potential avenues an ambitious, fearless, hard-nosed labor secretary may take to actually make a real material impact on the survival of the American labor movement."

"Reich," said Sanders, "would hit the ground running. He has been instrumental in advancing workplace protections, workforce development, and worker power for decades."

Nelson "has been a union member for nearly 30 years, has been a leading voice for worker rights and is a very strong communicator of progressive values," wrote the senator, who chairs the Senate committee that would hold confirmation hearings on a nominee.

"She has a thorough understanding of federal labor laws and how these laws apply to workers, and her experience sets her up for success in this job," he added.

Sanders' recommendation of Nelson was bolstered on Thursday by an opinion piece written by Fast Company editor Morgan Clendaniel, who said Walsh's imminent departure leaves Biden with "a renewed chance to fulfill his stated desire to be considered "the most pro-union president you've ever seen," as Biden promised he would be.

Nelson has spoken out against corporate greed, saying the labor movement is "the only check" against an economic system in which CEO compensation surged nearly 1,000% between 1978 and 2018, while workers were paid just 12% more on average.

A deep understanding and engagement with the realities of soaring income inequality could help ensure the Labor Department is helmed by a leader who is on the side of labor, wrote Clendaniel.

"The president talks a good game for workers, and you can see the visceral thrill it gives him in speeches when he calls for the passage of thelabor-friendly PRO Act or when he met with [Amazon Labor Union leader Christian] Smalls and supported his efforts, saying, 'Amazon, here we come,'" he wrote. "But what better way for President Biden to show that he actually has labor's back than elevating Nelson?"

As a union leader, Nelson played a key role in negotiating provisions in the pandemic-era CARES Act that temporarily banned airline stock buybacks, capped executive pay, and tied rules that centered workers' rights to funding for the airline industry.

"U.S. workers deserve a labor secretary that is unapologetically pro-worker," former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, an ally of Sanders, said last week.

Former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), has also been suggested by former labor reporter Steven Greenhouse as a possible contender who could draw from his experience as a trade union organizer and leading his state's Labor Department, while Deputy Secretary Julie Su has been named as a likely interim secretary and a potential nominee for the permanent role.

The National Immigration Law Center, National Education Association president Becky Pringle, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have expressed support for Su, who previously served as California's labor commissioner and launched a statewide "Wage Theft Is a Crime" campaign.

Silicon Valley companies Uber and Lyft, which have aggressively campaigned against workers' rights legislation, are reportedly lobbying against Su's potential nomination.

Meanwhile, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is reportedly pushing the White House to nominate former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), a corporate Democrat who progressives have blamed for the party's failure to maintain control of the House after the midterms in November, as he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at the time.

"Progressives really don't want Maloney, but neither really does anyone else except Pelosi," a veteran Democratic strategist toldThe Hill Thursday. "He has literally absolutely no qualifications for this job and it's so random."

While Walsh was "incredibly" the first labor secretary to stand on a picket line alongside workers without also meeting with anti-union management, wrote independent reporter Kim Kelly at Fast Company on Tuesday, the former Boston mayor's position at the Labor Department amounted to a missed opportunity, according to critics.

Walsh sided with railroad companies over workers during negotiations regarding a contract that employees were ultimately forced to accept, even though it included no paid sick leave, and he has not addressed the Warrior Met Coal strike in Alabama, which has now been going on for nearly two years as workers demand fair pay, benefits, and working conditions.

The outgoing labor secretary "rose to power during a time when the institutions of organized labor grew sclerotic, and privately accepted their own inability to create fundamental change," wrote Hamilton Nolan at MSNBC last week. "In 2022, the percentage of workers who are union members in America declined once again."

Walsh has left the next labor secretary with "a lot of catching up to do," wrote Kelly at Fast Company. "During a moment of historically high public approval for unions and historically low union membership, there are a wealth of potential avenues an ambitious, fearless, hard-nosed labor secretary may take to actually make a real material impact on the survival of the American labor movement."

"Here's hoping we get one of those next time," she added.

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

"The Obama administration attempted to prevent dangerous derailments like the one in East Palestine by mandating better brake systems on freight trains. But this effort was watered down thanks to corporate pressure, first by writing in many exemptions to the proposed rules and then, under Trump, by repealing the requirement altogether."

"Reporting from The Lever indicates that Secretary Pete Buttigieg has no intention of reinstating or strengthening the brake rule rescinded under Trump. Additionally, The Lever reports that the train was not being regulated as a high-hazard flammable train, despite it clearly being both high-hazard and flammable. These types of failures to protect the public are invited by perpetual lax enforcement and laziness toward even getting back to the too-low regulatory standards under Obama."

"Now, all eyes are on Secretary Buttigieg. For too long he has been content to continue the legacy of his deregulatory predecessor, Elaine Chao, rather than immediately moving to reverse her legacy upon becoming Secretary. Norfolk Southern's environmental disaster is the latest in a long string of corporate malfeasance committed right under the Secretary's nose. As I've warned before, corporations do not respect Buttigieg as a regulator.

"Chao justified letting trains run without proper brakes because the safety requirement failed a so-called cost-benefit analysis. As we've covered before, this type of analysis is invariably weighted against fully accounting for the health and environmental benefits a regulation provides. Secretary Buttigieg should call out the brake rule repeal for the horrendous decision it was, start working to implement a new rule, take Norfolk-Southern to task, and push back on corporations deciding how the DOT regulates them. Anything short of that only signals to the railroads that this type of incident will be tolerated. That is not an acceptable message from the Secretary of Transportation."

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

Progressives pushed back strongly Thursday to reports that Nancy Pelosi is lobbying the Biden administration to nominate former congressman Sean Patrick Maloney for U.S. labor secretary, with one critic accusing the former House speaker of "doing a last bit of Silicon Valley donor service" for someone who "has no real relationship with labor."

According toNBC News, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been making calls on behalf of Maloney urging the White House and union leaders to back the former five-term corporate Democrat for labor chief. Current Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is expected to resign in the near future so he can take a job heading the National Hockey League Players Association, although the White House has not yet confirmed his departure.

While Deputy Labor Secretary Julie Su, a progressive who formerly headed California's labor agency, is believed to be the favorite to replace Walsh, Pelosi's push for Maloney—an adept fundraiser who led the Democrats' campaign arm in the House and was a member of the corporate-friendly New Democrat Coalition—is a cause for concern and consternation among worker advocates.

Opponents of Maloney's nomination noted he's a corporate-friendly centrist who not only lost his midterm reelection bid in "humiliating" fashion but, as ex-chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was widely blamed for his party's failure to hold control of the House.

"Make no mistake, Maloney is a corporate hack: he was a member of the New Democrat Coalition, the caucus of Congressional Democrats that exists to do the bidding of giant companies under a pretense of being 'moderate,'" Max Moran, the personnel team research director at the Revolving Door Project, said in a statement Thursday. "Nothing in his record indicates any unique relationship with labor, but he has quite strong relationships with the CEOs and executives who often try to undermine labor."

"There's no reason for Maloney to wield power or influence over federal politics for the foreseeable future, and certainly no reason to promote him to labor secretary," Moran argued.

Two words dominated the social media conversation surrounding Maloney's prospective nomination: failing upwards.

"If your boss gave you an important assignment that you failed to accomplish, and it made your boss' job immensely harder, would you expect a promotion?" Moran asked rhetorically.

As Moran explained:

As the leader of House Democrats' campaign arm in 2022, Sean Patrick Maloney failed to hold the Democratic majority. He is the first Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair to lose his own race in 40 years. Some of his biggest failures were in his home state of deep-blue New York! This was the guy who was supposed to keep Rep. George Santos [R-N.Y.] from winning! His failure has all but demolished any hopes of major new legislation for the remainder of this Presidential term.

He wasn't trying especially hard at this crucial job: Maloney spent part of October partying with European millionaires under the auspices of fundraising, instead of pumping money into battleground races and campaigning. Imagine promoting a DCCC chair who didn't even campaign in his own district, let alone for his colleagues. Imagine promoting a politician who wasn't even in the country in the home stretch of an election!

"If after his excellent, blue-collar State of the Union, President [Joe] Biden lets a corporate hack fail upwards into the Labor Department, it would send a message to the public to believe exactly none of what he said," Moran added.

On Wednesday, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus endorsed Su for labor secretary, noting there are no Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander cabinet secretaries in the Biden administration.

"Deputy Secretary Su has dedicated her career to the promotion of workers' rights and fair labor practices and to advancing equity and opportunities for all workers, including ones from historically underserved communities," the caucus said in a statement." She would be a stellar, exceptionally qualified candidate to be secretary of labor and would deliver results for American workers and the Biden-Harris administration immediately upon her confirmation."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Less than a year after the right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and cleared the way for at least 13 states to impose bans on abortion care, a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would cause fresh "chaos" in the reproductive care landscape, according to abortion provider Dr. Kristyn Brandi. If Kacsmaryk rules in favor of the right-wing group, mifepristone would be banned even in states where abortion remains legal.

"A court case in Texas could easily turn into a nationwide ban on the most commonly prescribed medication abortion in the coming weeks through underhanded judicial tactics."

More than 3.7 million people have used mifepristone, which is taken alongside misoprostol in order to induce an abortion, since it was approved in the United States. Medication abortions now account for 53% of abortions in the U.S., and the FDA in recent years has made them more accessible by allowing patients to obtain the pills at telehealth visits and to get them through the mail and, last month, by allowing certified pharmacies to dispense the medication.

Alliance Defending Freedom and other pro-forced pregnancy groups have claimed the FDA was careless with patients' health when it approved mifepristone, even as clinical trials have shown it to be safer than penicillin, Viagra, and Tylenol.

Advocates say the reversal of the FDA's approval would endanger millions of people who need abortions, as many would be left with only the option of a surgical abortion in clinics, which have become overburdened as people travel from states that have banned or severely restricted access.

"This ruling could be devastating for abortion care," Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, toldThe Guardian on Thursday. "Cutting off critical access to abortion medication—which is the preferred method for more than half of abortion patients in the country—would cause significant harm, especially at a time when Dobbs has made it difficult or impossible for many to get care at clinics."

Some clinics have begun mobilizing to prepare healthcare workers to provide misoprostol-only medication abortions.

"No matter the case outcome, Planned Parenthood health centers will remain committed to doing whatever possible to ensure patients can choose the method of abortion that is best for their circumstances, including medication abortion," Danika Severino Wynn, vice president of abortion access at Planned Parenthood, told Jezebel on Tuesday.

Taking only misoprostol to induce an abortion has a lower success rate than taking the combination of pills—88% compared to 98%—and misoprostol-only abortions carry a greater risk of side effects. Both factors could complicate matters for people who live in states with abortion bans and decide to travel out-of-state to receive care to avoid potential prosecution. As The 19threported on Tuesday:

Some patients will have to decide if they want to take the pills in their home state, where it is outlawed, or if they want to take them before traveling home, navigating severe cramps and even vomiting while making an hours-long drive or flight.

And because misoprostol only has a higher failure rate, patients traveling out of state could face other risks. If they return home and learn the abortion has failed, multiple experts said, patients may not know where or how to find safe care in their home states, or may need to make another expensive trip across state lines.

"It's really hard as a provider to know there's a medication that works better than other options and not be able to offer that because of politics," Brandi, who chairs the board of the advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Health, told The 19th.

Greer Donley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, noted that in addition to harming pregnant people, a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would have "serious and broad implications" for all drugs approved by the FDA and for the agency's authority.

Rights advocates this week noted that Kacsmaryk recently ruled against a federal program that allows teenagers in Texas to access birth control without their parents' permission.

Rights groups Women's March and UltraViolet on Thursday announced plans for a rally and march on Saturday in Amarillo, Texas, where the ruling will be handed down.

"A court case in Texas could easily turn into a nationwide ban on the most commonly prescribed medication abortion in the coming weeks through underhanded judicial tactics," said Rachel Carmona, executive director of Women's March. "This isn't about what the overwhelming majority of Americans want; it's about a small group of people who want control over women’s freedom to choose, and will seek any means to achieve it."

"This fight is bigger than Roe," she added. "This is about freedom, democracy, and fundamental human rights.”

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

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Palestinians protest while Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian leaders
• U.N. Rapporteur on Myanmar urges no support for upcoming “sham” elections planned by military junta
• New Alameda County District Attorney reopens two death in police custody cases closed by previous D.A.
• Tyre Nichols family gathers with supporters before tomorrow’s funeral

Image of Mahmoud Abbas: Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

The post Palestinians protest visit of Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Opponents of Myanmar regime call plans for elections this year a sham; New Alameda County D.A. reopens two death in police custody cases: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – January 31, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

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

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

On Friday night, two additional Democratic candidates for secretary of state defeated Republicans who endorsed former President Donald Trump's "Big Lie" that the 2020 presidential contest was stolen, delivering another blow to far-right conspiracy theorists running for top elections posts.

In Arizona, Democrat Adrian Fontes beat his Republican opponent Mark Finchem, a state lawmaker with ties to the Oath Keepers who was at the U.S. Capitol during the deadly January 6 insurrection and who said he would not have certified Biden's victory in the state.

In Nevada, Democrat Cisco Aguilar won his race against Republican election denier Jim Marchant, who organized a nationwide coalition of voter suppression advocates to campaign for top election oversight roles.

"There's an emerging blue wave in secretary of state races," journalist John Nichols wrote on social media.

Fontes said that Finchem "represented a danger to democracy if he had won," The Associated Press reported. "The secretary of state, working with the governor and attorney general, has broad authority to rewrite the state's election rules and plays a role in the certification of results."

"Finchem had emerged as one of the most prominent Republicans running for secretary of state positions around the country who falsely claimed that Biden was not elected legitimately," the AP noted. "He had argued for significant changes to Arizona's elections after Biden won the state in 2020 and had been endorsed by Trump."

As the outlet reported:

After winning the state's primary election in August, Finchem said he wanted to restore the rule of law to elections in the state, declaring: "Right now, we have lawlessness."

There was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections, including in Arizona, where reviews of the voting upheld Biden's narrow victory.

He joined with Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor, in a lawsuit seeking to get rid of the machines that tabulate votes for the midterm elections and replace that process with a hand-count of all ballots in the state. Election experts say full hand-counts can be painfully slow, are prone to human error and are not as accurate as machine tallies.

The lawsuit alleged that the vote-counting machines used in Arizona aren't reliable, a claim for which there is no evidence. They are appealing a decision by a federal judge to dismiss their lawsuit.

More than 210 GOP candidates who spread doubt and lies about Biden's 2020 victory have won congressional seats and races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general so far, but the vast majority of them are headed to the U.S. House and Senate.

Election-denying candidates for the top three statewide positions have fared significantly worse across the nation, especially in swing states, where midterm voters have largely rejected the MAGA loyalists who supported overturning Trump's 2020 loss.

"Without a doubt, election denial is alive and well, and this is a continuing threat," Joanna Lydgate of States United told AP earlier this week. But Tuesday "was a really good night for democracy."

That assessment was shared by Arizona State University professor Thom Reilly, who wrote this week that "people by and large rejected election deniers serving as chief election officials." However, he warned, "more hyperpartisan candidates will likely run for the chief election offices in more states in the future."

"This kind of partisan control of election administration poses problems at this point in the U.S., as it faces threats to democracy," wrote Reilly. "It erodes public trust and intensifies partisan gamesmanship, which in turn further erodes public trust."

He continued:

The U.S. is the only democracy in the world that elects its election officials, and one of the very few to allow high-ranking party members to lead election administration.

In the past, these down-ballot, statewide offices generated little attention. After all, studies have shown both local Democratic and Republican chief election officials acted in impartial ways.

However, there is growing evidence that trust in this important office—often in charge of running and certifying elections of their local, state, and national leaders—may be eroding.

It is important to keep in mind that a secretary of state or chief election officer can't single-handedly change election's results. But they do have a good deal of influence over elections and voting processes before, during, and after an election in a state.

They can refuse to certify the results of an election, triggering a governor or courts to become involved. They influence which issues become ballot measures and how they are described, and they can decertify voting machines.

"This election season raises questions, and exposes flaws, about how senior election officials are selected in the U.S.," Reilly added. "The platforms of these election deniers who appeared on the 2022 midterm ballot illustrate the risk that this dynamic poses to ongoing voter trust and future election results."

In yet-to-be-decided Arizona races, far-right gubernatorial candidate Lake is currently losing to Democrat Katie Hobbs by more than 30,000 votes with 83% of ballots tallied. Arizona's Republican candidate for AG, Abraham Hamadeh, is trailing Democrat Kris Mayes by nearly 20,000 votes with the same percentage of ballots in. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and is the state's most populous, is not expected to finish counting until after the weekend.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, Democratic AG candidate Aaron Ford defeated Republican Sigal Chattah. However, in a departure from the state's emerging pattern of rejecting Trump-backed candidates for top statewide positions, Republican Joe Lombardo, a Las Vegas-area sheriff, beat incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak.

Also on Friday night, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona took down GOP challenger Blake Masters, bringing the race for control of Congress' upper chamber to a dead heat.

At the same time, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada pulled closer to Republican Adam Laxalt. With most of the uncounted mail-in ballots coming from the state's Democratic-leaning metropolitan regions, Cortez Masto is within striking distance of winning the race. If that happens, her party would retain its razor-thing Senate majority.

The final makeup of the Senate will depend on the outcome of next month's runoff election in Georgia between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, a right-wing former football star.

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

Local police officers confirmed the demonstrations and authorities punished three Han Chinese men for spreading rumors about the highly contagious respiratory infection.

Ma Xingrui visited districts and counties in Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi) hit by the recent wave of COVID-19 that struck Xinjiang in early August and impacted by the protests

His visit included the Tianshan, Shayibak, Shuimogou, High-tech Zone, and Midong districts of Urumqi, following last week’s protest, to inspect and investigate epidemic prevention and control measures, community management services, and hospitals, according to a Monday report by state-controlled Xinjiang Daily. He also went to the Xinjiang Medical University next to the Liyushan Road where one protest took place.  

Ma emphasized the need to resolutely implement the decisions of the Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council, and to adhere to the overall strategy for epidemic prevention and control.

The article did not mention the protests, though the article mentioned that Ma stressed “strengthen[ing] the management and control of online public opinion” concerning the epidemic and “crack[ing] down on fabrication and spreading rumors in accordance with the law.

Meanwhile, two new videos of public protests appeared on social media over the weekend, though RFA could not independently verify them. 

In the videos, the protesters are speaking Mandarin Chinese, not the language spoken by Xinjiang’s indigenous Uyghurs, who face persecution from Chinese authorities in the region.

“Don’t be afraid! You’re right! Today we must lift the lockdown!” the protesters can be heard saying on one of the videos.

Police cite ‘state secrets’

Officers at two Urumqi police stations confirmed to RFA Uyghur that the protest occurred. Two others declined to answer on national security grounds.

Some police officers in Urumqi contacted by RFA declined to provide information due to heightened alert and the sensitivity of the protest, while others cited national security grounds, and two confirmed that the protest occurred. 

A police officer at the Urumqi Midong South Road Police Station said the protest didn’t take place in his district. “It took place at Xinshiqu [New Town] district,” he told RFA.

Another officer at the Urumqi Hetan Road Police Station said he didn’t know how many people attended the protest in his area.

“Too many,” he said, adding that the protesters were demonstrating against the COVID-19 lockdown.

When asked about their demands, he said that the police officers would have a meeting soon to learn about the details.

The officer went on to say that he didn’t know how many people were detained for participating in this protest, but that it was illegal.

“Any act that’s against the lockdown is illegal,” he said.

When RFA asked a police officer at the Urumqi Yinchuan Road Police Station if the protest on the Liyushan Road was still happening, he refused to provide information

“This is information on state secrets. We cannot tell you anything,” he said. 

Another policeman at the Urumqi Hangzhou Road Police Station also said he could not provide any information on the protest without the approval of the Urumqi Public Security Bureau.

“This is confidential information belonging to state secrets,” he said. 

Authorities detain three men

On Nov. 3, the Urumqi Public Security Bureau announced the detainment of the three Chinese for encouraging the public to protest against the COVID lockdown.  

Urumqi’s Public Security Bureau issued a notice on Nov. 3 that it has handled many cases of citizens violating epidemic prevention and control regulations, such as the spreading of “rumors” about COVID. 

“Those who violate the relevant regulations on epidemic prevention and control will be seriously investigated and dealt with by the public security organs,” the announcement said.

Authorities cited the case of Mou Mouhong, 33, of Tianshan district, who received a 10-day administrative detention penalty for posting comments on a WeChat group on Nov. 1 that incited people to protest, causing a risk of the spread of the virus.  

Another Han Chinese, Wang Moubiao, 32 who lives in the city’s Economic and Technological Development Zone, was detained for five days for posting “inflammatory remarks related to the epidemic” on WeChat on Nov. 1.

Authorities also detained Ming Mouqin, 46, who resides in Urumqi’s High-tech Zone, for five days for inciting residents to protest via a WeChat group.

Chinese officials imposed strict lockdowns in Xinjiang in August and September that resulted in some deaths of Uyghurs from starvation and a lack of medicine or medical care. Authorities detained 600 Uyghurs from a village in Ghulja (Yining) in the northern part of Xinjiang after they protested the lockdown.

Prior to the protest, state-run Xinjiang TV had warned residents that they would be arrested for separatism, a charge often used to detain Uyghurs, if they “spread rumors” about a COVID outbreak in the area.

Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the region also have been subjected to severe human rights violations during a years-long crackdown that Beijing has said is part of a broad “anti-terrorism” campaign. 

A report issued in late August by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights found that “the scale of the arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang ‘may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” China denounced the report, which it said was the result of pressure from western governments.

Translated by Alim Seytoff and Shahrezad Ghayrat for RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shohret Hoshur for RFA Uyghur.

Guterres’ visit on Friday and Saturday commemorates the 45th anniversary of Hanoi’s membership in the United Nations. Earlier this month, Vietnam was elected to a three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Council despite critics pointing to its track record of rights abuses.

In a joint open letter penned Thursday, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the other organizations demanded the release of Nguy Thi Khanh, director of the Green Innovation and Development Centre; Dang Dinh Bach, director of the Research Center for Law and Policy for Sustainable Development, Mai Phan Loi, chairman of the Committee for Science Affairs at the Center for Media in Educating Community; and Bach Hung Duong, MEC’s director. 

The four were sentenced to two to five years in prison in separate trials earlier this year. 

 “These political prisoners are emblematic victims of a new wave of repression in Vietnam which, through a combination of threats and judicial harassment, is threatening progress in combating climate change, protecting human rights and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” the letter said.

“We call on you to remind Vietnam that, as a newly elected member of the U.N. Human Rights Council, it has an obligation to uphold the highest human rights standards,” it said.

U.N. agencies in Vietnam must be more transparent and proactive in urging the country to improve its human rights record, said Jessica Nguyen, advocacy officer from the Illinois-based 88 Project, which maintains a database of imprisoned political activists in Vietnam, and was one of the 14 signatories of the joint letter. 

“To do so, the U.N. agencies themselves have to improve their accountability in human rights issues in Vietnam, particularly [making themselves more accountable] to civil society organizations,” she said.

Environmental protection is on the agenda for Guterres’ trip, presenting a seeming contradiction in a country where the four environmental activists are in prison on “bogus ‘tax evasion’ charges,” Phil Robertson, deputy head of Human Rights Watch’s Asia-Pacific Division, told RFA.

“The U.N. leader wants to talk in Hanoi about climate change policies, but how can Vietnam really move forward when it is busy jailing key civil society partners who are critical to national efforts to stop global warming?” Robertson said. This contradiction cannot stand, and the U.N. needs to tell the Vietnamese government that it must end its repression of civil society organizations and NGO leaders.”

 “Every day Vietnam is defying its obligations to uphold human rights, and we’re demanding that the U.N. call them out on it, and press Hanoi to do much better,” he said, adding that the international community seemingly has not noticed that Vietnam’s jails are filled with people who dared to criticize the government. 

Guterres needs to state clearly that “Vietnam’s continued repression of activists and civil society groups will jeopardize the country’s ability to meet the SDGs that are so near and dear to the U.N.’s heart,” he said.

Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Bychawski.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Rosemary Forest.

The post Meet Our New “Secretary Of State”…Nancy Pelosi appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Melvin Goodman.

Last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the accomplishments of U.S. Africa Command, commending its leaders and personnel for tackling terrorism and making the continent more secure and stable. “Every day, AFRICOM works alongside our friends as full partners — to strengthen bonds, to tackle common threats, and to advance a shared vision of an Africa whose people are safe and prosperous,” he announced at a ceremony honoring the new AFRICOM commander, Gen. Michael Langley.

That very same day, the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, issued a devastating report that directly refuted Austin’s positive assessments. “Militant Islamist group violence in Africa has risen inexorably over the past decade, expanding by 300 percent during this time,” reads the analysis. “Violent events linked to militant Islamist groups have doubled since 2019.”

“The policy to address protracted conflict in Somalia has been largely militaristic even though the required solution is chiefly political.”

A U.S. Army instructor walks next to Malian soldiers during an anti-terrorism exercise at the Kamboinsé-General Bila Zagre military camp on April 12, 2018, near Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.

Photo: Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images

Just before the forever wars got underway after 9/11, the United States searched for terrorist threats in Africa but failed to locate them.

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

With just 10 days until a moratorium on federal student loan payments is set to expire, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Sunday that "within the next week or so" the American people will hear from the Biden administration about any future action it will take to address the debt crisis.

Cardona's comments to NBC News' Chuck Todd at the end of a "Meet the Press" interview that mostly focused on the nation's teacher shortage came as campaigners and progressives in Congress are ramping up pressure on President Joe Biden to support sweeping debt cancellation for all federal borrowers—not just those who make under a certain annual income.

"We know August 31 is a date that many people are waiting to hear something from," he said, noting when the pandemic-related payment pause could end. "We've been talking daily about this, and I can tell you that the American people will hear within the next week or so from the president and Department of Education about what we're going to be doing around that."

Meanwhile, activists and lawmakers who support bold student debt cancellation came out on Sunday with fresh calls directed at Biden—who, unlike some 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, ran on only canceling $10,000 per borrower.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) pointed out that "student debt cancellation will help reduce the racial wealth gap by nearly 30% and help millions of Black and brown folks build generational wealth."

"This is a racial and economic justice issue, and [the president} must #CancelStudentDebt," she said.

The Debt Collective highlighted the impact that Biden's debt cancellation decision could have on the November midterm elections, in which Democrats could lose control of Congress after two years of struggling to advance progressive priorities due in part to the party's narrow majorities and the filibuster.

"Has anyone considered that maybe we should look at student debt cancellation as a policy that will simply help Democrats keep/expand their majority?" the group said. "And that the alternative is, not to be dramatic, ecological destruction and the collapse of democracy."

"I went to a college that cost $50 a semester and had the opportunity to follow my dreams. But too many people don't have that opportunity today," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). "It's time to fix our broken student loan system and #CancelStudentDebt."

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

Secretary of State Antony Blinken
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20520

Sent via email

Dear Secretary Blinken,

As the one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan approaches, we the undersigned press freedom and journalist safety organizations write to urge you and the Department of State to take every possible step to expedite the processing of Priority 2-referred Afghans under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) and Special Immigrant Visa applications (P-2 and SIV) from at-risk Afghan citizens, and in particular journalists. While all human rights defenders remain in peril and are in urgent need of attention, Afghan journalists formed a critical component of two decades of democratization efforts in Afghanistan. They made it possible for the rest of the world to access and understand the inner workings of the country. Following the U.S. withdrawal, Afghanistan’s vibrant media sector was immediately targeted and continues to be under threat. The lives and livelihoods of hundreds of journalists and media workers depend on the U.S. making good on the commitments it made to ensure a swift process for qualified applicants to reach safety.

We are grateful for the public commitments you and President Joe Biden made in the weeks and months following the evacuation. However, one year later, the need remains immense and time is of the essence, particularly for those who are now stranded in a third country and facing the imminent possibility of being forced to return to Afghanistan.

The signatories of this letter are all members of the Journalists in Distress (JiD) Network, a group of 24 organizations that provide emergency assistance and safety support to journalists and media workers in crises globally. All our members are engaged in efforts to provide emergency funds, relocation support, and other resources in response to a growing demand from journalists and media workers under duress. Our organizations have helped in the evacuation, relocation, and provision of emergency support to hundreds of Afghan journalists since August 2021.

Collectively over the past year, our organizations, along with other members of the JiD, have received daily requests for assistance from displaced Afghan journalists with no access to immigration support or guidance, no insight into the timeline for processing visas, and no knowledge of what to do to get themselves and their families to safety. In many cases, they are now stranded in countries where they cannot work, or where their temporary visas—issued while awaiting P-2 and SIV processing—are now due to expire. Reports on the pace of P-2 processing paint a troubling picture. For journalists in this position the options are limited: risk homelessness, hunger, and potential legal consequences should they overstay their temporary visas or face the harrowing decision to return to Afghanistan.

Journalists in Afghanistan risked their lives to report the news, providing a vital public service and shining a light on circumstances often shrouded in darkness. They also acted as fixers, producers, and co-reporters to countless U.S. journalists and outlets, efforts for which this country owes them a debt of gratitude—and a lifeline.

From the initial days of the U.S. withdrawal, the Biden administration has repeatedly stated a commitment to protecting the most vulnerable and ensuring that those eligible for P-2 and SIV would be processed and moved to safety efficiently. A year later, there is little to show for it. Journalists remain in immigration limbo, from Islamabad to Mexico City, with little idea of when they can expect to receive an official update on their applications or be reunited with their families.

We understand that immigration processes must be thorough and that the demand is great, but it has now been a year and the situation is no less urgent than it was in August 2021. Therefore, we call on the Biden administration to:

1. Publicly commit to expediting the timeline for processing P-2-referred Afghans’ applications.
2. Work with governments where P-2-referred Afghans now reside to secure commitments that these governments will not deport the Afghans who are waiting for their applications to be approved.
3. Consider allowing P-2 applicants to claim asylum and allow Afghans who have entered the United States as parolees to be granted the legal status and benefits of resettled refugees, which we understand is within your legal authority.
4. Expand the range of immigration options available by supporting a congressional proposal to create an emergency pathway specifically for at-risk journalists, and identifying an alternative option for the many journalists that were ineligible for SIV or P-2, and lacked a pathway altogether.

Our organizations stand ready to support this process. Journalists’ lives depend on it.

Sincerely,

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
English PEN
European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)
Free Press Unlimited (FPU)
Freedom House
International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN)
International Media Support (IMS)
International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)
PEN International
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
Rory Peck Trust (RPT)

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

It is claimed that this is an incident from Rewa in Madhya Pradesh where a BJP leader has mercilessly beaten the Panchayat Secretary.

Sharing this video, the official Twitter handle of the Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress wrote that in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh when the Panchayat Secretary did not send his ‘share’, the BJP leader called him over to his office and abused him. The Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress has also shared this video on Facebook with the same claim.

#भाजपा_का_गुंडाराज

मध्यप्रदेश के #रीवा में #पंचायत_सचिव ने हिस्सा नहीं पहुंचाया तो #भाजपा के जोशीले नेता जी ने पंचायत_सचिव को बेरहमी से पीटा उठक बैठक लगवाई और मुर्गा बनाकर रखा।

“शर्मनाक कृत्य” pic.twitter.com/x8Yo2XZzP4

— MP Youth Congress (@IYCMadhya) August 1, 2022

Dainik Bhaskar Journalist, Ashish Urmaliya also shared the clip and made a similar claim. (Archive link)

मध्यप्रदेश रीवा जिले का भाजपा नेता बताया जा रहा है। पंचायत सचिव को बेरहमी से मार रहा है क्योंकि हिस्सा नहीं मिला। वाह! @ChouhanShivraj @RewaCollector @narottam1272
What the hell? pic.twitter.com/uoW1AW0f4z

— Ashish Urmaliya (@TheJournalistIN) July 30, 2022

Narendra Saluja, the media coordinator for the former Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath also tweeted the video and wrote that it should be investigated. “Somebody says this is from Rewa, while others claim that the man being abused is a Panchayat Secretary. The truth of this matter should be brought to light,” tweeted Saluja. (Archive Link)

सोशल मीडिया पर वाइरल इस विडीओ की जाँच होना चाहिये…

कोई इसे रीवा का बता रहा है कोई कही और जगह का…?

कोई मार खाने वाले को पंचायत सचिव बता रहा है…

सच क्या है , सामने आना चाहिये..
पीटने वाला और मार खाने वाला कौन है , यह सच्चाई सामने आना चाहिये… pic.twitter.com/Apgmjxco97

— Narendra Saluja (@NarendraSaluja) July 22, 2022

A user named Prakash Raj (Parody) also made a similar claim while tweeting this video. (Archive link)

This video is massively viral on Facebook and Twitter with the same claim.

Fact-check

We performed a reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video, which led us to a report by Dainik Bhaskar related to this incident. The report was published on April 14, 2022. According to this article, this viral video is from the Shahjahanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Speaking to the media at that time, SP Anand told that the police were not aware of the incident and action will be taken once a case is registered.

While tweeting the video on April 15, Journalist Ranvijay Singh mentioned that this video is from Shahjahanpur. Furthermore, replying to this tweet on April 16, the Shahjahanpur Police shared the statement of Sanjay Kumar, Additional Superintendent of Police.

https://t.co/O1YM4QEwfA

— SHAHJAHANPUR POLICE (@shahjahanpurpol) April 16, 2022

In his video statement, SP Sanjay Kumar said that the name of the accused is Prateek Tiwari and the name of the victim is Rajiv Bhardwaj, a resident of Chowk. The victim told the police that he had failed to disclose the information of a boy working for Prateek Tiwari, due to which the accused had abused him. Based on this information the police registered a case against Prateek Tiwari, Samittar and four other unknown people. Moreover, two accused had been arrested in the case and necessary action was ensured against them, while efforts were being made to arrest the rest.

Alt News got access to a copy of the FIR registered at Sadar Bazar police station in Shahjahanpur on April 16, 2022. In FIR number 354, a case was registered against two named accused Prateek Tiwari, Samittar and four other unknown people under sections 147, 323, and 506 of the IPC.

To sum it up, a four-month-old video of a man being beaten up in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh was shared with the false claim that a Panchayat Secretary in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, was beaten by a BJP leader.

The post Fact-check: Panchayat secretary abused and beaten by BJP leader in Madhya Pradesh? appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

“The extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face trial on charges under the century-old Espionage Act is a blow to press freedom with implications for journalists everywhere,” said CPJ Executive Director Robert Mahoney. “We urge the Biden Administration to live up to its stated commitment to a free press by dropping all charges against the Wikileaks founder.”

U.S. prosecutors have indicted Assange on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of thousands of leaked military and diplomatic documents. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison.

Wikileaks released a statement saying it would appeal the decision, according to news reports. The Home Office said Assange has 14 days to appeal.

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

Austin spoke for half an hour at the First Plenary Session of the Shangri-La Dialogue 2022 security forum in Singapore.

While reiterating that the U.S. stays “deeply invested” and committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific, the defense secretary said: “We do not seek confrontation and conflict and we do not seek a new Cold War, an Asian NATO or a region split into hostile blocs.”

The United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific have recently expressed concern over China’s increasingly assertive military posture in the region.

Beijing, on its part, has been complaining about what it sees as attempts by the U.S. and its partners to form a defense alliance in the region.

When leaders from the U.S., Japan, India and Australia met last month for a summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, China cried foul. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Washington was “keen to gang up with ‘small circles’ and change China’s neighborhood environment,” making Asia-Pacific countries serve as "pawns" of the U.S. hegemony.

“I think Secretary Austin made it very clear that there’s no appetite for an Asian NATO,” said Blake Herzinger, a Singapore-based defense analyst.

“The U.S. values collective partnerships with shared visions and priorities, without the need to form a defense alliance,” he told RFA.

'A region free from coercion and bullying'

The U.S will “continue to stand by our friends as they uphold their rights,” said Austin, adding that the commitment is “especially important as the People’s Republic of China adopts a more coercive and aggressive approach to its territorial claims."

He spoke of the Chinese air force’s almost daily incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and an "alarming" increase in the number of unsafe and unprofessional encounters between Chinese planes and vessels with those of other countries.

Most recently, U.S. ally Australia accused China of conducting a “dangerous intercept,” of one of its surveillance aircraft near the Paracel islands in the South China Sea.

Austin met with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue on Friday. During the meeting, which lasted nearly an hour, the two sides discussed how to better manage their relationship and prevent accidents from happening but did not reach any concrete resolution.

Austin used Saturday’s speech to remind Beijing that “big powers carry big responsibilities,” saying “we’ll do our part to manage these tensions responsibly — to prevent conflict, and to pursue peace and prosperity."

The Indo-Pacific is the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) "priority theater," he noted, adding that his department’s fiscal year 2023 budget request calls for one of the largest investments in history to preserve the region's security. 

This includes U.S. $6.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to strengthen multilateral information-sharing and support training and experimentation with partners. 

The budget also seeks to encourage innovation across all domains, including space and cyberspace, “to develop new capabilities that will allow us to deter aggression even more surely,” he said.

The U.S. military is expanding exercises and training programs with regional partners, the defense secretary said. Later in June, the Pentagon will host the 28th Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise with forces from 26 countries, 38 ships and nearly 25,000 personnel.

Next year a Coast Guard cutter will be deployed to Southeast Asia and Oceania, he said, “the first major U.S. Coast Guard cutter permanently stationed in the region.”

Protecting Taiwan

"Secretary Austin offered a compelling vision, grounded in American resolve to uphold freedom from coercion and oppose the dangerously outmoded concept of aggressively-carved spheres of influence,” said Andrew Erickson, Research Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, speaking in a personal capacity.

“The key will be for Washington to match Austin’s rhetoric with requisite resolve and resources long after today’s Dialogue is over,” said Erickson. 

 “It is that follow-through that will determine much in what President Biden rightly calls the ‘Decisive Decade’,” he added.

Last month in Tokyo Biden announced a new Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) that Austin said would provide better access to space-based, maritime domain awareness to countries across the region.

The U.S. defense secretary spoke at length about his government’s policy towards Taiwan, saying “we’re determined to uphold the status quo that has served this region so well for so long.”

While remaining committed to the longstanding one-China policy, the U.S. categorically opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.”

“We do not support Taiwan independence. And we stand firmly behind the principle that cross-strait differences must be resolved by peaceful means," Austin said.

The U.S. continues assisting Taiwan in maintaining self-defense capability and this week approved the sale of U.S. $120 million in spare parts and technical assistance for the Taiwanese navy.

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

Six of the educators from Ili Pedagogical University in Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining) are being held in detention, including Abdullah Ismail of the Marxism Institute. He was abducted in 2018 and charged with being “two-faced,” the sources said. The CCP uses the term to describe an official or party member who is either corrupt or ideologically disloyal to the party.

The source in Ghulja, who has knowledge of the situation, sent RFA the names and phone numbers of two people who had worked closely with the school on Abdullah Ismail’s case.

When RFA called one of them, a staff member in the school’s Education Department, reluctantly acknowledged that she knew him but refrained from commenting on his situation.

Parhat Kadir, Abdullah Ismail’s former high school classmate who now lives in the Netherlands and is the former chairman of the Dutch East Turkistan Uyghur Union, said Ismail was well-liked in high school, where he was a top student and a skilled soccer player.

“Abdullah was my classmate from first to 10th grade,” he told RFA. “He was an honest and hardworking kid.”

Abdullah Ismail, who was born in 1962 in Ghulja’s Suidong township, was admitted to the Literature Department of the Ili Pedagogical University in 1981, Kadir said. After he graduated four years later, he began teaching at the school.

As secretary of the Marxism Institute, Ismail published research papers on Marxist theory in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Ili Gazette, the source said.

Ismail later was included on the list of suspicious persons in the school in 2017 when China stepped up its crackdown on Uyghurs by detaining them in “re-education” camps, and had been interrogated intermittently, the source from Ghulja said. He was charged with several criminal charges, though the source did not name them.

The preliminary questioning was conducted by the School Discipline Commission, according to the source who provided the phone number of a disciplinary officer in charge of the investigation that year.

The disciplinary officer confirmed that Ismail had been a member of school administration and was abducted in 2018.

He also said he met the teacher four or five years ago and had sent material he collected during his investigation to the relevant authorities.

“It was in 2017 that I was asked to collect and give his material to the school disciplinary committee,” he told RFA. “He was charged with being a two-faced person.

“He was a member of school administration before being CCP secretary of the Marxism Institute at Ili Pedagogical University,” the disciplinary officer said. “He was the secretary when he was arrested. Nobody knows or nobody told us how many years he was sentenced to [following arrest] in 2018.”

Behtiyar Nasir, deputy inspector general of the World Uyghur Congress, said he attended Ili Pedagogical University in the late 1980s when Ismail was a teacher there. He said Ismail had received a doctorate in philosophy from a university in Beijing.

Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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

The post War Secretary Austin Wants a Long War in Ukraine, Not a Quick Peace appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dave Lindorff.

Anti-war campaigners warned that British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss' aggressive rhetoric at an event in London Wednesday could dangerously provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin, who warned the same day that further intervention by NATO countries in the war in Ukraine will be met with "lightning-fast" retaliation.

Truss suggested to a gathering of government officials that Western allies must go further than just supporting and helping to defend Ukraine two months into Russia's invasion, urging the West to view a Ukrainian victory as a "strategic imperative" for NATO and Europe.

"The war in Ukraine is our war—it is everyone's war... because Ukraine's victory is a strategic imperative for all of us," the foreign secretary said, calling for the allies to consider bolstering defenses in countries including Moldova and Georgia as well as Ukraine. "Heavy weapons, tanks, airplanes—digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production. We need to do all of this."

"A ceasefire and peace talks are the urgent need, not fueling a conflict that will see thousands more Ukrainian people killed and will risk escalation into an all out NATO-Russia war."

Russia must be pushed out of "the whole of Ukraine," Truss said, suggesting that NATO should ensure Putin gives up control of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and parts of the eastern Donbas region.

In light of Putin's invasion, the NATO target calling for 2% of national spending to be used for defense should be seen as a "floor, not a ceiling," Truss added.

Truss' comments coincided with Putin's warning that countries will face dire consequences if they "intervene in the ongoing events from the outside and create strategic threats for Russia that are unacceptable to us."

The Stop the War Coalition cautioned that Truss' rhetoric was "packed with provocative and dangerous statements that will only serve to escalate an incredibly volatile international situation."

"Liz Truss is playing with fire and it is the Ukrainian people who will get burnt," said Andrew Murray, deputy president of the coalition. "Her rhetoric is a demand for endless war. A ceasefire and peace talks are the urgent need, not fueling a conflict that will see thousands more Ukrainian people killed and will risk escalation into an all out NATO-Russia war."

Truss is not the only Western leader whose recent comments have concerned anti-war groups and international experts. In Kiev this week, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Biden administration wants to see "Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine."

In recent days, the U.S. has approved $300 million more in military aid for Ukraine, bringing the total amount it has spent on weapons in the country to $3.7 billion since Russia's invasion in February. NATO's ramp-up of military aid for Ukraine was cited by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week when he accused Western countries of fighting, "in essence," a proxy war.

At the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft on Wednesday, Anatol Lieven echoed Murray's warning that aggressive rhetoric from the U.K. and its allies could lead to "endless war":

A U.S. strategy of using the war in Ukraine to weaken Russia is also of course completely incompatible with the search for a ceasefire and even a provisional peace settlement. It would require Washington to oppose any such settlement and to keep the war going.

Russia's latest warning to NATO follows its state-owned energy company Gazprom's decision to cut off gas supplies to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria—a move that was denounced as "blackmail" by the European Union—and comes amid reports of explosions in a Russian separatist region in Moldova and in three districts in Russia. Those explosions have prompted fears that the war is spreading outside of Ukraine.

Instead of further provoking Putin and inflaming tensions in the region, said the Stop the War Coalition, the British government must "stop talking up war in Ukraine and throw its weight behind a negotiated peace immediately."

Despite recent rhetoric from the U.K. and U.S., wrote CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and journalist Nicolas J.S. Davies at Common Dreams Thursday, "neither side will benefit from a protracted war that lasts for many months or years. The lives of millions of Ukrainians will be lost and ruined, while Russia will be mired in the kind of military quagmire that both the U.S.S.R. and the United States already experienced in Afghanistan, and that most recent U.S. wars have turned into."

Leaders including Truss and Austin must change course and "diplomatically support peace negotiations and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace agreement with Russia," Benjamin and Davies wrote.

"Policy decisions by the United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine," they added, "or only a much longer and bloodier war."

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

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin provided a revealing and disturbing glimpse into a darker element of US policy at a press conference held April 25 at the Poland/Ukraine border. The press event followed a trip to Kiev by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Austin.

The US government must not be guided by any notion that a quagmire in Ukraine would drain Russian resources, diminish Russian influence and power globally, and possibly lead to regime change.

Austin was asked how he defines "America's goals for success" in Ukraine. He first said that the US wants to see "Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country, able to protect its sovereign territory." But then he added: "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kind things that it has done in invading Ukraine." I had feared that geopolitical strategizing is affecting the US approach, but this is the first public indication of that I have seen.

It cannot be said too strongly: The US government must not be guided by any notion that a quagmire in Ukraine would drain Russian resources, diminish Russian influence and power globally, and possibly lead to regime change. The United States instead should do all within its power to help bring the war to a close rapidly in order to limit suffering; to eliminate risks that the conflict will widen and escalate, possibly to nuclear war; and to limit the negative global economic and food security repercussions.

A broader reason for determined efforts to end the war is the need to work toward restoring a relationship with Russia enabling cooperation on nuclear arms control and disarmament, climate protection, public health, and other vital matters of global concern.

US energy in helping bring the war to a close is also appropriate in view of the political responsibility of the United States, together with NATO, since the late 1990s in helping to create the conditions for a crisis. Actions having this effect included precipitously withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2003, subsequently establishing missile defense facilities in Romania and Poland, and opening the door to Ukraine's membership in NATO in 2008.

In a recent paper, End the War, Stop the War Crimes, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy outlines already widely discussed elements of an approach to ending the war. In brief, Russia and Ukraine should quickly agree to a cease-fire to enable negotiation of a settlement.

Negotiations should then aim to end the war immediately and to resolve the overarching disputes concerning governance of the Donbas region and the status of Crimea. A long-term consultative mechanism could be put in place to resolve time-intensive or recurring issues and to help maintain peace and human security. Ukraine appears ready to forswear any possibility of joining NATO, so long as some form of guaranteed neutrality can be established, but seeks to join the European Union. The overall aim should be the preservation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the UN Charter.

In addition to any role they can play, behind the scenes or not, in bringing about a cease-fire and negotiating a settlement, the United States and other states must be ready to lift war-related sanctions and to accept and support some form of neutrality for Ukraine should Ukraine choose that.

Russia's war on Ukraine is already causing appalling suffering and devastation. It is playing with fire—even nuclear fire—to allow the war to go on indefinitely and potentially to widen and escalate, at least partly with the aim of weakening Russia. The right course is to making ending the war on acceptable, if not perfect, terms the highest priority.

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

Following a district court order referring the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back to the United Kingdom’s Home Office, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has launched a new petition calling on Home Secretary Priti Patel to reject Assange’s extradition to the United States.

RSF urges supporters to join the call on the Home Secretary to #FreeAssange by signing and sharing the petition before May 18.

On April 20, the Westminster Magistrates’ Court issued an order referring Julian Assange’s extradition back to the Home Office, reports RSF.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the Julian Assange case

Following a four-week period that will now be given to the defence for representations, Home Secretary Priti Patel must approve or reject the US government’s extradition request.

As Assange’s fate has again become a political decision, RSF has launched a new #FreeAssange petition, urging supporters to sign before May 18 to call on the Home Secretary to protect journalism and press freedom by rejecting Assange’s extradition to the US and ensuring his release without further delay.

“The next four weeks will prove crucial in the fight to block extradition and secure the release of Julian Assange,” said RSF’s director of operations and campaigns Rebecca Vincent, who monitored proceedings on RSF’s behalf.

“Through this petition, we are seeking to unite those who care about journalism and press freedom to hold the UK government to account.

“The Home Secretary must act now to protect journalism and adhere to the UK’s commitment to media freedom by rejecting the extradition order and releasing Assange.”

Patel’s predecessor, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid initially greenlit the extradition request in June 2019, initiating more than two years of proceedings in UK courts.

This resulted in a district court decision barring extradition on mental health grounds in January 2021; a High Court ruling overturning that ruling in December 2021; and finally, refusal by the Supreme Court to consider the case in March 2022.

RSF’s prior petition calling on the UK government not to comply with the US extradition request gathered more than 90,000 signatures (108,000 including additional signatures on a German version of the petition), and was delivered to Downing Street, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office ahead of the historic first-instance decision in the case on 4 January 2021.

The UK is ranked 33rd out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

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

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

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Backs Trump’s Election Challenge.

Supreme Court to Hear Affordable Care Act Challenge.

Governor Newsom Warns California Counties Reopening Setback as Covid Cases Surge.

The post Trump Sacks Defense Secretary, McConnell Backs Trump’s Election Challenge appeared first on KPFA.

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