Carrying boxes of over 30,000 petition signatures, organizers demanded that Sen. Gillibrand and other Democratic leaders who have so far withheld clear support publicly affirm Mamdani’s candidacy and reject coordinated efforts by billionaire donors and corporate-aligned groups to reverse the outcome of a democratic primary.

The group attempted to deliver the petitions directly to Gillibrand’s New York City office at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 49th Street, but were repeatedly denied entry by building security, who said the office “does not meet with constituents.” After multiple calls to both the NYC and DC offices, staff refused to accept the petition in person and directed organizers to submit it online—despite the urgent, NYC-specific nature of the issue.

The petition, launched by Our Revolution, continues to gain momentum across grassroots supporters throughout the country and highlights a growing frustration within the party: progressives are expected to unify behind establishment nominees, yet are often met with resistance or silence when they win themselves.

“Democratic leaders love to talk about unity—until a progressive wins,” said Joseph Geevarghese, Executive Director of Our Revolution. “Every cycle, we’re told to fall in line for the good of the party. Well, Zohran Mamdani is the nominee—and yet the establishment’s silence is deafening. It’s time for party leaders to live up to their own standards and stand with Zohran against these billionaire-funded attempts to undo the will of the voters.”

The event was organized to draw attention to the double standard and disconnect between party leadership and grassroots voters, especially in races where big money interests work behind the scenes to push out progressives.

The action was first reported by POLITICO, which highlighted the growing push to pressure top Democrats, including Gillibrand, to defend Mamdani and democracy itself.

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

Three journalists told CPJ that investigative reporting on major economic events, a cornerstone of Hong Kong’s financial transparency, has nearly disappeared amid government pressure and the departure of major outlets. 

The sharp decline in press freedom, the journalists said, is a direct result of the National Security Law. This law, enacted on June 30, 2020, was imposed directly by Beijing, bypassing Hong Kong’s local legislature, and included offenses for secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign forces, with penalties ranging from a three years to life imprisonment.  

In the five years since it was enacted, authorities have shut down media outlets and arrested several journalists, including Jimmy Lai, the founder of one of Hong Kong’s largest newspapers, the pro-democracy Apple Daily. Several major international news organizations have either relocated or downsized their operations in Hong Kong, leading to a decline in reporting on the city and its financial hub.

“Hong Kong’s economic boom happened because journalists could work without interference,” said a veteran reporter with 11 years’ experience in television, newspapers, and digital platforms in Hong Kong, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

While markets still function, at least three media professionals told CPJ that the erosion of press freedom — often overlooked — is a key factor behind Hong Kong’s fading financial appeal to market participants. One reporter described the media as “paralyzed.” 

Another hastily passed security law enacted in March 2024 in Hong Kong further deepened fears that it would be used to suppress press freedom and prosecute journalists.

“There has never been an international financial center in history that operates with restrictions on information,” Simon Lee, an economic commentator and former assistant CEO of Next Digital Group, the parent company of Apple Daily, told CPJ.

Hong Kong long served as a base for reporting on China’s economy and power structures, said a former financial journalist on the condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

“Most Hong Kong-listed companies come from the mainland [China]. Foreign media used Hong Kong to observe China’s economic operations or wealth transfers,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “Now the risks feel similar to reporting from inside China.”

Crackdowns, shutdowns, and an exodus of major media

Since the introduction of the National Security Law in 2020, at least eight media outlets have shut. These included Apple Daily, news and lifestyle magazine Next Magazine, both published by Lai’s Next Digital group, and the online outlet Stand News, after they were raided by authorities.

At least four other media organizations — Post852, DB channel, Citizen News, and FactWire — ceased operations voluntarily, citing concerns over the deteriorating political environment.

Reporting was also criminalized in several cases, with journalists prosecuted for “inciting subversion” or “colluding with foreign forces.”  

China had the world’s highest number of imprisoned journalists in CPJ’s latest prison census — 50 in total, including eight in Hong Kong.

The New York Times moved part of its newsroom to Seoul in 2020. In March 2024, Radio Free Asia closed its Hong Kong office, and in May, The Wall Street Journal relocated its Asia headquarters to Singapore.

 “With fewer foreign correspondents based in the city, there’s simply less reporting on Hong Kong,” the former financial journalist told CPJ. “As a result, the city’s economy may receive less objective attention on the global stage.”

The former financial journalist said that one of the biggest losses after the security law was the disappearance of Apple Daily. Unlike most local media, which focused on routine market updates, Apple Daily connected business to politics and mapped interest networks — an increasingly rare practice.

Next Digital, through Apple Daily, built a reputation for investigative financial reporting. A former staff member told the BBC that the company once spent over 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) tracing dozens of property owners to uncover a developer’s hidden ties with a bank.

“From a financial news perspective, one of our biggest problems is losing Apple Daily,” the former financial journalist told CPJ.

Local business reporting also fades away

As Hong Kong’s financial hub reputation comes under question, stories on high unemployment rates, struggling small businesses, and store closures are increasingly out of sight.

“One direct effect is feeling increasingly unable to grasp what’s happening in the city; important information no longer seems easy to access,” Lee said. “Previously, competition among professional outlets encouraged source sharing and helped maintain a power balance. Now, one-way government-controlled information faces little resistance.”

Lee told CPJ that changes in Hong Kong’s media landscape are particularly evident in major financial events, pointing to the coverage of the 2024 sale of Li Ka-shing’s port assets, in which local outlets failed to question the deal’s structure, rationale, or political implications.

“Beijing called it a national security matter, and the other side of the story disappeared,” Lee told CPJ. “Many focus on the judicial system when discussing fairness, but true fairness also depends on the free flow of information … Without information freedom, public oversight fades, and the market’s system of checks and balances collapses.”

Lee also cited the case of Alvin Chau, a casino tycoon in Macao who was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years for illegal gambling. While foreign media uncovered his alleged links to oil smuggling operations to North Korea, local media offered little follow-up.

“These investigations and reports simply no longer exist,” Lee said.

Sources can’t speak freely

Two journalists told CPJ they have noticed increasing reluctance from interviewees. 

During previous years of the Annual Budget Speech, Hong Kong’s yearly announcement of its public spending and economic plans, the media would host analysis shows with economists debating government spending and policies. 

“We would ask about the fiscal surplus, support for the poor, and whether measures were targeted,” the veteran reporter told CPJ, adding that now, “only one professor is willing to speak openly.”

Lee told CPJ that the atmosphere of “not being allowed to criticize” the broader structure or government policy has also extended to the reporting on how financial markets operate.

Market participants should be free to take either optimistic or pessimistic views of the economic outlook, Lee told CPJ, adding that today in Hong Kong, it is discouraged to express pessimism, and even silently shifting toward defensive investment strategies or risk-averse behavior may be interpreted as making a political statement.

“It’s hard for any place with such high information costs to remain a global financial hub,” Lee said. “Because even pulling back on investment can send a signal. If investors are accused of intentionally dragging down the market just because they try to hedge or take a cautious view, they may decide it’s safer to avoid the market altogether.”

In response to CPJ’s request for comment, a Hong Kong government spokesperson referred CPJ to a statement that said the security law has enabled the city to “make a major transition from chaos to order” and “the business environment has continuously improved,” while press freedom is protected under the law.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ's Asia-Pacific program staff.

Amid uncertainty in the Middle East, one thing remains clear — most Pacific governments continue to align themselves with Israel.

Dr Steven Ratuva, distinguished professor of Pacific Studies at Canterbury University, told RNZ that island leaders are likely to try and keep their distance, but only officially speaking.

“They’d probably feel safer that way, rather than publicly taking sides. But I think quite a few of them would probably be siding with Israel.”

• READ MORE: Iran accuses US over ‘torpedoed diplomacy’ – passes bill to halt UN nuclear watchdog cooperation
• Israel kills more than 80 in Gaza; 3 killed in attack by Israeli settlers
• Other Middle East crisis reports

With Iran and Israel waging a 12-day war earlier this month, Dr Ratuva said that was translating into deeper divisions along religious and political lines in Pacific nations.

“People may not want to admit it, but it’s manifesting itself in different ways.”

Pacific support for Israel runs deep

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on 13 June calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

Pacific support for Israel runs deep
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on June 13 calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

Among the regional community, only Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands voted for the resolution, while others abstained or were absent.

Last week, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, in an interview with The Australian, defended Israel’s actions in Iran as an “act of survival”.

“They cannot survive if there is a big threat capability within range of Israel. Whatever [Israel] are doing now can be seen as preemptive, knocking it out before it’s fired on you.”

In February, Fiji also committed to an embassy in Jerusalem — a recognition of Israel’s claimed right to call the city their capital — mirroring Papua New Guinea in 2023.

Dr Ratuva said that deep, longstanding, religious and political ties with the West are what formed the region’s ties with Israel.

“Most of the Pacific Island states have been aligned with the US since the Cold War and beyond, so the Western sphere of influence is seen as, for many of them, the place to be.”

He noted the rise in Christian evangelism, which is aligned with Zionism and the global push for a Jewish homeland, in pockets throughout the Pacific, particularly in Fiji.

“Small religious organisations which have links with or model selves along the lines of the United States evangelical movement, which has been supportive of Trump, tend to militate towards supporting Israel for religious reasons,” Dr Ratuva said.

“And of course, religion and politics, when you mix them together, become very powerful in terms of one’s positioning [in the world].”

Politics or religion?
In Fijian society, Dr Ratuva said that the war in Gaza has stoked tensions between the Christian majority and the Muslim minority.

According to the CIA World Factbook, roughly 64.5 percent of Fijians are Christian, compared to a Muslim population of 6.3 percent.

“It’s coming out very clearly, in terms of the way in which those belonging to the fundamentalist political orientation tend to make statements which are against non-Christians” Dr Ratuva said.

“People begin to take sides . . . that in some ways deepens the religious divide, particularly in Fiji which is multiethnic and multireligious, and where the Islamic community is relatively significant.”

A statement from the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, released on Wednesday, said that the Pacific wished to be an “ocean of peace”.

“Leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to the “Friends to All, Enemy to None” foreign policy to guide the MSG members’ relationship with countries and development partners.”

It bookends a summit that brought together leaders from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and other Melanesian nations, where the Middle East was discussed, according to local media.

But the Pacific region had been used in a deceptive strategy as the US prepared for the strikes on Iran. On this issue, Melanesian leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

The BBC reported on Monday that B-2 planes flew to Guam from Missouri as a decoy to distract from top-secret flights headed over the Atlantic to Iran.

This sparked outrage from civil society leaders throughout the region, including the head of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwan.

“This use of Pacific airspace and territory for military strikes violates the spirit of the Treaty of Rarotonga, our region’s declaration for being a nuclear, free peace committed zone,” he said.

“Our region has a memory of nuclear testing, occupation and trauma . . .  we don’t forget that when we talk about these issues.”

Reverend Bhagwan told RNZ that there was no popular support in the Pacific for Israel’s most recent actions.

“This is because we have international law . . .  this includes, of course, the US strikes on Iran and perhaps, also, Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

“It is not about religion, it is about people.”

Reverend Bhagwan, whose organisation represents 27 member churches across 17 Pacific nations, refused to say whether he believed there was a link between Christian fundamentalism and Pacific support for Israel.

“We can say that there is a religious contingency within the Pacific that does support Israel . . .  it does not necessarily mean it’s the majority view, but it is one that is seriously considered by those in power.

“It depends on how those [politicians] consider that support they get from those particular aspects of the community.”

Pacific Islanders in the region
For some, the religious commitment runs so deep that they venture to Israel in a kind of pilgrimage.

Dr Ratuva told RNZ that there was a significant population of islanders in the region, many of whom may now be trapped before a ceasefire is finalised.

“There was a time when the Gaza situation began to unfold, when a number of people from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa were there for pilgrimage purposes.”

“At that time there were significant numbers, and Fiji was able to fly over there to evauate them. So this time, I’m not sure whether that might happen.”

Reverend Bhagwan said that the religious ties ran deep.

“They go to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, to the Mount of Olives, to the Golan Heights, where the transfiguration took place. Fiji also is stationed in the Golan Heights as peacekeepers,” he said.

“So there is a correlation, particularly for Pacific or for Fijian communities, on that relationship as peacekeepers in that region.”

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

Amid uncertainty in the Middle East, one thing remains clear — most Pacific governments continue to align themselves with Israel.

Dr Steven Ratuva, distinguished professor of Pacific Studies at Canterbury University, told RNZ that island leaders are likely to try and keep their distance, but only officially speaking.

“They’d probably feel safer that way, rather than publicly taking sides. But I think quite a few of them would probably be siding with Israel.”

• READ MORE: Iran accuses US over ‘torpedoed diplomacy’ – passes bill to halt UN nuclear watchdog cooperation
• Israel kills more than 80 in Gaza; 3 killed in attack by Israeli settlers
• Other Middle East crisis reports

With Iran and Israel waging a 12-day war earlier this month, Dr Ratuva said that was translating into deeper divisions along religious and political lines in Pacific nations.

“People may not want to admit it, but it’s manifesting itself in different ways.”

Pacific support for Israel runs deep

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on 13 June calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

Pacific support for Israel runs deep
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on June 13 calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

Among the regional community, only Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands voted for the resolution, while others abstained or were absent.

Last week, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, in an interview with The Australian, defended Israel’s actions in Iran as an “act of survival”.

“They cannot survive if there is a big threat capability within range of Israel. Whatever [Israel] are doing now can be seen as preemptive, knocking it out before it’s fired on you.”

In February, Fiji also committed to an embassy in Jerusalem — a recognition of Israel’s claimed right to call the city their capital — mirroring Papua New Guinea in 2023.

Dr Ratuva said that deep, longstanding, religious and political ties with the West are what formed the region’s ties with Israel.

“Most of the Pacific Island states have been aligned with the US since the Cold War and beyond, so the Western sphere of influence is seen as, for many of them, the place to be.”

He noted the rise in Christian evangelism, which is aligned with Zionism and the global push for a Jewish homeland, in pockets throughout the Pacific, particularly in Fiji.

“Small religious organisations which have links with or model selves along the lines of the United States evangelical movement, which has been supportive of Trump, tend to militate towards supporting Israel for religious reasons,” Dr Ratuva said.

“And of course, religion and politics, when you mix them together, become very powerful in terms of one’s positioning [in the world].”

Politics or religion?
In Fijian society, Dr Ratuva said that the war in Gaza has stoked tensions between the Christian majority and the Muslim minority.

According to the CIA World Factbook, roughly 64.5 percent of Fijians are Christian, compared to a Muslim population of 6.3 percent.

“It’s coming out very clearly, in terms of the way in which those belonging to the fundamentalist political orientation tend to make statements which are against non-Christians” Dr Ratuva said.

“People begin to take sides . . . that in some ways deepens the religious divide, particularly in Fiji which is multiethnic and multireligious, and where the Islamic community is relatively significant.”

A statement from the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, released on Wednesday, said that the Pacific wished to be an “ocean of peace”.

“Leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to the “Friends to All, Enemy to None” foreign policy to guide the MSG members’ relationship with countries and development partners.”

It bookends a summit that brought together leaders from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and other Melanesian nations, where the Middle East was discussed, according to local media.

But the Pacific region had been used in a deceptive strategy as the US prepared for the strikes on Iran. On this issue, Melanesian leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

The BBC reported on Monday that B-2 planes flew to Guam from Missouri as a decoy to distract from top-secret flights headed over the Atlantic to Iran.

This sparked outrage from civil society leaders throughout the region, including the head of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwan.

“This use of Pacific airspace and territory for military strikes violates the spirit of the Treaty of Rarotonga, our region’s declaration for being a nuclear, free peace committed zone,” he said.

“Our region has a memory of nuclear testing, occupation and trauma . . .  we don’t forget that when we talk about these issues.”

Reverend Bhagwan told RNZ that there was no popular support in the Pacific for Israel’s most recent actions.

“This is because we have international law . . .  this includes, of course, the US strikes on Iran and perhaps, also, Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

“It is not about religion, it is about people.”

Reverend Bhagwan, whose organisation represents 27 member churches across 17 Pacific nations, refused to say whether he believed there was a link between Christian fundamentalism and Pacific support for Israel.

“We can say that there is a religious contingency within the Pacific that does support Israel . . .  it does not necessarily mean it’s the majority view, but it is one that is seriously considered by those in power.

“It depends on how those [politicians] consider that support they get from those particular aspects of the community.”

Pacific Islanders in the region
For some, the religious commitment runs so deep that they venture to Israel in a kind of pilgrimage.

Dr Ratuva told RNZ that there was a significant population of islanders in the region, many of whom may now be trapped before a ceasefire is finalised.

“There was a time when the Gaza situation began to unfold, when a number of people from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa were there for pilgrimage purposes.”

“At that time there were significant numbers, and Fiji was able to fly over there to evauate them. So this time, I’m not sure whether that might happen.”

Reverend Bhagwan said that the religious ties ran deep.

“They go to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, to the Mount of Olives, to the Golan Heights, where the transfiguration took place. Fiji also is stationed in the Golan Heights as peacekeepers,” he said.

“So there is a correlation, particularly for Pacific or for Fijian communities, on that relationship as peacekeepers in that region.”

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

Asia Pacific Report

Ninety-five New Zealand lawyers — including nine king’s counsel — have signed a letter demanding Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and two other ministers urge the government to take a stronger stand against Israel’s “catastrophic” actions in Gaza.

The letter has been sent amid rising tensions in the region, following Israel’s surprise attacks on Iran last Friday, and Iran’s retaliatory attacks.

A statement by the Justice For Palestine advocacy group said the letter’s signatories represented all levels of seniority in the legal community, including senior barristers, law firm partners, legal academics, and in-house lawyers.

• READ MORE: Israel kills at least 70 Palestinians in Gaza’s deadliest day at militarised aid sites
• The full Justice For Palestine letter

The letter cited the 26 July 2024 joint statement by the prime ministers of Canada, Australia and New Zealand which acknowledged: “The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue.”

“But it has continued,” said the letter.  “The plight of the civilian population in Gaza has significantly deteriorated, featuring steadily escalating levels of bombardment, forced displacement of civilians, blockades of aid and deliberate targeting of hospitals, aid workers and journalists.”

The same month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had declared Israel’s continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to be unlawful.

Obligations under international law
In September last year, New Zealand voted in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on all UN member states to comply with their obligations under international law and take concrete steps to address Israel’s ongoing presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said the Justice For Palestine statement.

At the time, New Zealand had noted it expected Israel to take meaningful steps towards compliance with international law, including withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The letter stated that Israel had done nothing of the sort.

The letter points out that last month independent UN experts had demanded immediate international intervention to “end the violence or bear witness to the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza.”

UN experts have observed more than 52,535 deaths, of which 70 percent continue to be women and children, said the statement.

The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, had called for a response “as humanitarians” urging “Humanity, the law and reason must prevail”.

The Justice For Palestine letter urged the government to consider a stronger response, including:

• condemning Israel’s unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
• reviewing immediately all diplomatic and political and economic ties with Israel, and
• imposing further sanctions after New Zealand had imposed sanctions on two extremist Israeli politicians.

Rising concern over Israeli breaches
One of the letter’s signatories, barrister Max Harris, said:

Aedeen Boadita-Cormican, another barrister, who signed the letter, said: “The government could do more to follow through on how it has voted at the United Nations and what it has said internationally.”

“This letter shows the depth of concern in the legal community about Israel’s actions,” she added.

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

The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), InMedia, The Witness, ReNews, and Boomhead are among the outlets that have received backdated tax demands from the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) since November 2023, according to the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), the city’s main press union. The HKJA said it is also under audit.

“Hong Kong is taking a page out of the playbook of authoritarian regimes elsewhere that are using similar intimidation tactics,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Targeting journalists with tax audits without sufficient evidence not only rings alarm bells for press freedom but also raises concerns more broadly about Hong Kong as a safe and reliable location to do business.”

Tax authorities claimed that the news outlets, journalists and some of their family members had not reported their full income from 2017 to 2019, according to HKJA chairperson Selina Cheng, who said the audits contained errors and were “unreasonable.” Cheng and her parents are among those under tax probes.

The HKJA said the IRD sent separate back tax demands to each media outlet and to the association itself, with a combined total of around HK$700,000 (US$89,450), based on the union’s calculations. It added that more than 20 individuals — including journalists, former board members, and some of their family members — also received tax demands, with the total amount requested reaching up to HK$1 million (US$127,900).

In a statement, the HKFP said that it is undergoing a seven-year audit after being “randomly selected” by the IRD.

Hong Kong has seen a dramatic decline in press freedom since the enactment of the Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020. Several independent media outlets, including Apple Daily and Stand News, have been forced to shut down, while journalists have been assaulted, arrested and imprisoned. 

In response to CPJ’s request for comment on the audits, an IRD spokesperson said the department follows “established procedures” and the industry or background of a taxpayer “has no bearing” on such audits.

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

“RNZ is failing in its duty to inform the public of an entirely preventable humanitarian catastrophe.”

Tautoko to Jeremy Rose, Ramon Das and Eugene Doyle for this critique of a review of RNZ’s coverage of a genocide.

Sadly, this highlights RNZ’s failure to report the genocide from the perspective of the very real victims — more journalists killed in Gaza than the whole of World War Two, aid workers murdered and buried, 17,000 children, including babies, who will never ever grow.

• READ MORE: How should the media cover a genocide? New Zealand’s national broadcaster is failing in its duty – Analysis
• Israeli attack on hospital to kill Gaza journalist condemned as ‘heinous’
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

I respect so many RNZ journalists and have always supported this important national broadcaster but it is time for it to pull up its pants, ditch the propaganda and report from the field of truth.

I carry my Jewish ancestors in standing against genocide and calling for reports that show the truth of the travesty.

For reporting on protests I have been pepper sprayed by thugged-up police donning US-style gloves and glasses (illegally carrying pepper spray and tasers).

I was banned from my own town hall when I tried — with my E Tu press card — to attend the deputy leader Winston Peters’ media conference.

This government does not want the truth reported, it seems.

I have reported from the fields of invasion and conflict. I’ve taught journalism and communications. Good journalists remember journalism ethics. Reports from the point of view of the oppressor support the oppressor.

Humanitarianism means not reporting from the perspective of a mercenary army — an army that has been enforcing apartheid for decades, and which is invoking a policy of extermination for expansion.

Please read this media review and think of how you would feel if someone demanded that you leave your home. Palestinians have faced oppression and apartheid and “unhoming” for decades.

Think of the intolerable weight of grief you would carry if a sniper put a bullet between the eyes of a child you love and know.

Report on the victims. And stop subscribing to propaganda.

Saige England is a journalist and author, and a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). She is a frequent contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This was first published as a social media post.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Lawyers for Trump and Paramount, the parent of CBS News, have begun mediation over a lawsuit brought by Trump that accuses ’60 Minutes’ of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Legal experts have called the suit baseless and an easy victory for CBS. But Paramount is entering the talks prepared to make a deal. It has been reported that Shari Redstone, the company’s controlling shareholder, is considering settling with Trump in return for his administration’s approval of Paramount’s $8 billion sale to Skydance.

“This lawsuit is an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment. It has absolutely no merit and it cannot stand,” Sanders and the senators wrote. “In the United States of America, presidents do not get to punish or censor the media for criticizing them. Freedom of the press is what sets us apart from tin pot dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.”

It was also reported that Redstone asked the CEO of CBS to “delay sensitive stories about Trump” until the Skydance merger was completed. If the Skydance merger is approved, the Redstone family could gain up to $2.4 billion.

“Rewarding Trump with tens of millions of dollars for filing this bogus lawsuit will not cause him to back down on his war against the media and a free press. It will only embolden him to shakedown, extort and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like,” the senators continue. “We urge you and the board of directors at Paramount to make it clear to President Trump today that Paramount will not surrender to his attack on the First Amendment.”

Sanders and the senators conclude: “Stand up for freedom of the press and our democracy. Do not capitulate to this dangerous move to authoritarianism.”

Read the text of the letter here.

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

It is no surprise to the Black Alliance for Peace’s (BAP) Africa Team and U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) that aggression is stepping up against the countries in the anti-imperialist Alliance of Sahel States. This was reflected in the flagrantly baseless accusations against Burkina Faso’s leader Ibrahim Traoré. On April 3, 2025, U.S. AFRICOM Commander Michael Langley testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee and claimed without evidence that interim President Traoré is misusing the country’s gold mineral wealth in exchange for protection. Langley provided no details on how these supposed exchanges are carried out or from what Traoré needs protection.

The imperialist modus operandi is at play here and starts with demonizing and criminalizing the leader of a country as the war propaganda pretext for more direct intervention. We have seen this script before. Commander-In-Chief of Economic Fighters League of Ghana and Steering Committee member of the USOAN,  Ernesto Yeboah refutes the liberal framing meant to arrest dissent against what is at stake:

This is not about military vs. civilian rule. This is about imperialism vs. liberation. This is about Africans standing up — finally — and saying: Hands off Africa.

The BAP Africa Team and USOAN are heeding the call emanating across Africa to unite in defense of Burkina Faso. And we further call on all anti-imperialist forces around the world, especially Black forces, to sound the alarm and publicly denounce these designs before this all too familiar strategy takes root. In 2011, Black anti-imperialist forces were unable to effectively counter the heinous plan of the U.S.-EU-NATO Axis of Domination to destroy the revolutionary Pan-Africanist nation of Libya. BAP’s USOAN refuses to allow this fatal mistake to be repeated.

This time the complicity of silence by ECOWAS, the African Union, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the African (Black) comprador class around the world must be exposed.

This is a pivotal time for the struggle against imperialism in Africa. The emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and the revolutionary example of self-determination being set by the people of Burkina Faso represents a historic breakthrough for Pan-Africanism that the U.S. and NATO have been eager to eliminate. The U.S.-EU-NATO axis is desperate to re-colonize Burkina Faso and to halt any further influence across Africa set by the example of the Alliance of Sahel States. What the U.S is angling to undermine is a popular process of decolonization.

Under President Traoré’s leadership, Burkina Faso has advanced toward food sovereignty, established a national gold refinery, and taken critical steps to reclaim its resources for the benefit of its people. The vague and opportunistic accusations issued by AFRICOM are designed to undermine these gains and set the stage for imperialist subversion. When U.S. officials speak of “strategic interests,” they mean the unfettered right to plunder Africa’s mineral wealth, dominate markets, and exploit African labor, all without the consent of African peoples. We must not allow the absurdity of the U.S. and NATO, currently complicit in the genocide of Palestinians, to pose as moral arbiters in Africa.

BAP and USOAN call on all anti-imperialist forces to join in active defense of Burkina Faso, demand the expulsion of AFRICOM from the continent, and ensure that no African nation suffers the fate that befell Libya in 2011.

The time to act is now!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Black Alliance for Peace.

A Palestinian advocacy group has called on NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters to take a firm stand for international law and human rights by following the Maldives with a ban on visiting Israelis.

Maher Nazzal, chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand, said in an open letter sent to both NZ politicians that the “decisive decision” by the Maldives reflected a “growing international demand for accountability and justice”.

He said such a measure would serve as a “peaceful protest against the ongoing violence” with more than 51,000 people — mostly women and children — being killed and more than 116,000 wounded by Israel’s brutal 18-month war on Gaza.

• READ MORE: Contact with US-Israeli captive in Gaza lost after Israeli attack, says Hamas
• Israel’s war on Gaza death toll tracker
• Just six NZ government MPs needed to pass Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill
• NZ imposes travel bans on extremist Israeli settlers
• Other war on Gaza reports

Since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, at least 1630 people have been killed — including at least 500 children — and at least 4302 people have been wounded.

The open letter said:

“Dear Prime Minister Luxon and Minister Peters,

“I am writing to express deep concern over the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to urge the New Zealand government to take a firm stand in support of international law and human rights.

“The Maldives has recently announced a ban on Israeli passport holders entering their country, citing solidarity with the Palestinian people and condemnation of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

“This decisive action reflects a growing international demand for accountability and justice.

“New Zealand has a proud history of advocating for human rights and upholding international law. In line with this tradition, I respectfully request that the New Zealand government consider implementing a temporary suspension on the entry of Israeli passport holders. Such a measure would serve as a peaceful protest against the ongoing violence and a call for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of civilian lives.

“I understand the complexities involved in international relations and the importance of maintaining diplomatic channels. However, taking a stand against actions that result in significant civilian casualties and potential violations of international law is imperative.

“I appreciate your attention to this matter and urge you to consider this request seriously. New Zealand’s voice can contribute meaningfully to the global call for peace and justice.”

Sincerely,
Maher Nazzal
Chair
Palestine Forum of New Zealand

JUST IN: Maldives President officially signs the law banning Israelis from entering the country. pic.twitter.com/rKRnlEw6WK

— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) April 15, 2025

The Middle East Eye reports that Maldives ban on Israelis from entering the country was a protest against Israel’s war on Gaza in “resolute solidarity” with the Palestinian people.

President Mohamed Muizzu signed the legislation after it was passed on Monday by the People’s Majlis, the Maldivian parliament.

Muizzu’s cabinet initially decided to ban all Israeli passport holders from the idyllic island nation in June 2024 until Israel stopped its attacks on Palestine, but progress on the legislation stalled.

A bill was presented in May 2024 in the Maldivian parliament by Meekail Ahmed Naseem, a lawmaker from the main opposition, the Maldivian Democratic Party, which sought to amend the country’s Immigration Act.

The cabinet then decided to change the country’s laws to ban Israeli passport holders, including dual citizens. After several amendments, it passed this week, more than 300 days later.

“The ratification reflects the government’s firm stance in response to the continuing atrocities and ongoing acts of genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people,” Muizzu’s office said in a statement.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that at least 1,613 Palestinians had been killed since 18 March, when a ceasefire collapsed, taking the overall death toll since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023 to 50,983.

The ban went into immediate effect.

“The Maldives reaffirms its resolute solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” the statement added.

Last year, in response to talk of a ban, Israel’s Foreign Ministry advised its citizens against travelling to the country.

The Maldives, a popular tourist destination, has a population of more than 525,000 and about 11,000 Israeli tourists visited there in 2023 before the Israeli war on Gaza began.

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

But one of Republicans’ most dangerous efforts is flying under the radar: the JUDGES Act. This bill would give Trump the power to install 22 new federal judges—handpicked loyalists who would shield Trump from accountability and rubberstamp his extreme agenda, including his attempts to cut essential services like health care, food assistance, and education to fund a tax cut for his billionaire donors.

Here’s what you need to know:

TRUMP HAS ALREADY TRANSFORMED THE COURTS

• During his first term, Trump appointed over 200 judges and packed the Supreme Court with three justices, solidifying the right-wing majority that has gutted abortion rights, weakened gun safety laws, and undermined our freedom to vote. Now, Republicans in Congress want to give him even more judicial seats to fill, cementing his impact on the federal judiciary for generations to come.

TRUMP WANTS MORE JUDGES WHO WILL DO HIS BIDDING—AND THE JUDGES ACT WOULD LET HIM PICK 22.

• H.R.1702 would create 66 new district judgeships between now and 2035. If passed, Trump would get to fill 22 of them before his term ends. That’s 22 opportunities to install loyalists like Judge Aileen Cannon, who twisted precedent to protect Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case—and later dismissed it entirely.

• Trump isn’t even hiding what he’s doing. He calls judges “my judges,” demands loyalty, and recently called for a federal judge to be impeached after a ruling he didn’t like.

THE TIMING OF THIS BILL IS NO COINCIDENCE—IT’S A POWER GRAB.

• Last year, the Senate passed the JUDGES Act to give a future president new judgeships without knowing who would benefit. But House Republicans broke a long-standing tradition and refused to take action until after the 2024 election—when they knew Trump would be back and could stack the bench with MAGA loyalists.

• Now, Trump and Congressional Republicans don’t like that the federal judiciary is standing in the way of Trump’s illegal power grab, so they want to install judges who will say yes to Trump.

• Some Democrats are feeling pressure to support the bill to ease caseloads in their districts—but doing so would give Trump more unchecked power.

To speak with a Stand Up America spokesperson about our campaign to defeat the JUDGES Act, please contact: press@standupamerica.com.

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

On March 31, also known as Cesar Chavez Day, unions and workers from across California converged on Delano, home of the historic Delano Grape Strike that began the struggle of the United Farm Workers. The Real News reports from the ground, speaking with union and community leaders who say workers are coming together across sectors to oppose Trump’s attacks on immigrants and the federal workforce.

Production: Mel Buer
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Additional Footage: Bucky Gonzalez
Additional Sound: Tom Pieczkolon

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mel Buer:

On March 31st, 2025, thousands of workers from all over the state of California met in Delano, California to celebrate the life and legacy of Cesar Chavez, and stand in solidarity with immigrant workers across the United States. One in every three workers in the state of California are immigrants. And raids by ICE and border patrol agencies on immigrant communities have intensified in the months following Donald Trump’s inauguration in mid-January. In California, all across the state, immigrant workers have been detained and deported. Some of the most harrowing experiences have been in Kern County, in California’s Central Valley, where ICE raids have terrorized the immigrant community and left workers uncertain about their future in the country. In a show of solidarity, union workers from all over the state traveled to Delano to remind the country and each other that these attacks on immigrant workers won’t go unchallenged.

David Huerta:

Today’s also, not only a recognition of that, but also really standing united against the attacks against working people and the most particularly, immigrant workers, right? And so I think we stand today in the sense of saying that we stand shoulder to shoulder with one another, all workers for every worker. Doesn’t matter your status, doesn’t matter what language you speak, doesn’t matter. We have to stand united as working people at this moment in time, as we see this president continuous attacks against working people, and most particularly, against the immigrant community.

Mel Buer:

The Real News joined a caravan from Los Angeles to Delano, organized by the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West. Dozens of workers from all over Los Angeles met early in the morning, shared breakfast together, and then made the two and a half hour journey to Delano to march. When asked about the importance of organized labor coming together in support of each other, SEIU President David Huerta had this to say.

David Huerta:

This is the moment in time that as every fight, working people have to stand united. Whether you’re a farm worker, a janitor, a hotel worker, a state worker, a nurse, all of us have to stand together because really with this administration, their attack right now is against federal employees. But that attack against federal employees is just a precursor to what he’s trying to do to the rest of the labor movement, and that’s dismantling. And we cannot allow that to happen because the labor movement is the last line of defense for working people in this country.

Mel Buer:

After arriving in Delano, workers gathered for opening speeches in Memorial Park before beginning the three-mile march to Forty Acres, owned by the United Farm Workers. Members of CWA, the Teamsters, UAW, SEIU, UNITE HERE, and other unions were represented in a massive show of solidarity with immigrant workers in California and the U.S.

Speaker 3:

So I think when we think about what Trump is doing on immigration, it’s an attack on the working class. And not just immigrant workers, the entire working class. When one group of workers is so afraid of getting deported that they’re not willing to talk about wage theft or unsafe working conditions, obviously, that’s bad for them, but that’s also bad for every other worker in that industry. So we’re looking at construction, agriculture, home care, kitchens, janitors, right? If you’re an American worker in those jobs, when undocumented workers who are essential to those industries are in those same battles, they’re afraid to speak out, that’s bad for everyone. So I think it’s literally true that an attack on any worker pushes wages and working conditions down for every worker. And so it’s so important that labor defend immigrant workers. If for no other reason then, we cannot have a labor movement in this country if the immigrant working class, which is such a large and literally essential portion of that working class, is afraid for their very life.

Mel Buer:

For members of the Chavez family, the continuation of their father’s legacy and activism as founder and leader of the United Farm Workers in modern day movements has been a high point of the Cesar Chavez Day in California and beyond.

Paul Chavez:

It’s heartwarming to see that his legacy continues to inspire whole new generations of workers and activists. My dad had commented that it would’ve been a terrible waste of a lot of hard work and sacrifice if his work ended with his life. And the fact that we’re here with people from all walks of life that have come from the many places, and a lot of times from places far away, would put a smile on the face because I think he would say that his work continues even after his passing.

Speaker 5:

And this is a great opportunity for us to do that as a community, as people, especially, people who know the struggles of the people who actually have this country moving forward, those immigrants that at times are abused or do not have the recognition that they should as people that they are. May this moment for all of us be an empowering moment so that we might remember our commitment as Christians to uphold the dignity of those who are voiceless. May we be an inspiration to others to do the same in every aspect of their lives.

Mel Buer:

Reporting from California for The Real News Network, I’m Mel Buer.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Mel Buer.

A lawsuit by several lawyers against Daraj and Megaphone, before the Public Prosecutor’s Office, accused the outlets of “undermining the financial standing of the state” and “receiving suspicious foreign funds with the aim of launching media campaigns that would shake confidence in Lebanon,” among other allegations.

The statement calls on Lebanese authorities to protect independent media outlets and support the country’s economic recovery by ending the weaponization of baseless charges to silence independent media.

Read the full statement here. 

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

In response, Laura Shindell, New York State Director at Food & Water Watch, issued the following statement:

“For years now, New Yorkers have demanded an end to new fossil fuel infrastructure throughout our state. Yet Governor Hochul has caved to fossil fuel interests in recent months by approving the Iroquois pipeline expansion, failing to back the NY HEAT clean energy bill and dragging her feet on state climate goals. Now, with Trump trying to force this long-dead fracked gas pipeline down New Yorkers’ throats, Hochul has a ripe opportunity to demonstrate a renewed commitment to clean energy by reaffirming her unequivocal opposition to this foolish, antiquated pipeline plan.”

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

Image by Teemu Paananen.

My social media networks are abuzz with a bold commentary by D. Earl Stephens, the former Managing Editor of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

Time to “Take a Life-or-Death Stand”

The commentary is titled “There is No Magical Way Out of This — There Will be Blood.”

It excoriates “Americans, and our feeble Democratic politicians in particular,” for “implying by their comatose actions that Democracy is some damn American right and has no end date.” Further:

“America very well might be arriving at hers [her end date, that is –PS] because, yes, it really is that bad right now….Rather than bringing Ping-Pong paddles and groovy, little signs to a fascist hate-fest disguised as a State of the Union speech [see seconds 32-34 here], it would be helpful if our meek, out-of-touch Democratic politicians at least pretended they understood the perilous moment we are standing in right now….

“We are in deep, deep trouble, and now would be a wonderful, necessary time to step in front of your favorite mirror and honestly ask yourself what you are willing to do to fight for our country’s survival. We are but six-plus weeks into the repulsive, wannabe-king’s second term and the damage he and his party are causing are already at catastrophic levels. Our air, water, earned benefits, peace, public safety, civil rights, and human rights are all under immediate threat…

“This is only the first course of many that will be served by the vindictive, orange madman, and his pathetic party of supplicants. The insults, the attacks, endless provocations, and thrashing of our Constitution will continue daily. All this carefully planned evil will be aimed at exactly one thing: breaking us. Everything [Trump] is doing is designed to pound us into submission, and he’s having a grand damn [good time] doing it…. He is telling us what he thinks of America and silly things like the Constitution. Kings don’t pay attention to that kind worthless drivel.”

Stephens calls out “the cautious, too-clever Democratic Party and their weak leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries” for “dither[ing] while Rome burns. They act,” Stephens notes, “as if we have all the time in the world, when time is something that is not guaranteed right now. They seem to somehow have no idea how bad things are about to get, or most certainly will be when elections they seem to be pinning their hopes on roll around next year. …One of the big mistakes of Joe Biden’s presidency was this notion that everything was going to be OK, and that his idea of America matched the actual circumstances of America” (emphasis added).

“At some point,” Stephens writes, Trump :

“will do something so heinous … so anti-America … so dangerous … that the people who truly love our country will be forced into the streets to take a life-or-death stand. Sadly, this is actually the best-case scenario, because the worst case is we just go quietly into the dark, gloomy night and become an authoritarian country, where we have zero rights or say in how we are governed….So the choice is yours: You can continue thinking there is some magical way out of this, or you can begin to take the threat to everything you hold dear seriously, and ACT accordingly” (emphasis added).

Appreciation

That’s some bold and stark language, There’s a lot to be said for Stephens’ rant.

He’s right to call Trump’s March 4^th address to Congress a “fascist hate fest.”

Stephens’ call out of the dithering, dismal, demobilizing Dems – the late Sheldon Wolin’s “inauthentic opposition” and my Hollow Resistance [1] – is also right on. They are in fact acting as if we have more time than we really do to block the onset of “authoritarian rule.”

Stephens is right to say that the existential threat is immediate and that NOW is the time to fight back beneath and beyond the election cycle. As Illinois governor JB Pritzker said in his State of the State Address to the Illinois legislature last month:

“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame. The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame…I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next? All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it…If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this: it took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”

Stephens is right to say, in essence, that the demobilizing, dollar-drenched Dems are bringing butter knives to a sword fight. They do in fact promote a “magical” faith in American democracy and elections. They are in fact drastically underestimating the depth and degree of the existential menace posed by Trump.

Stephens is right that Trump and his movement are trying to break our will and that the Dems are aiding and abetting them with their pathetic weakness.

Stephens is right that it is preferable for blood to be spilled in a “life and death stand” in “the streets” than for the American people to fall quietly into the clutches of authoritarian rule.

Still, there are six interrelated problems with Stephens’ commentary, from my perspective.

Fuhrer, Not King

First, Trump isn’t a “wannabe king,” he’s a wannabe Fuhrer, a wannabe fascist strongman for life. This isn’t the late feudal age of the absolutist state. We are dealing with 21^st century Amerikaner fascism. Trump and Trumpism seek a specific form of “authoritarian rule” that Stephens’ shows only a brief hint of understanding: capitalist-fascist rule. When and if he figures that out, he can join me and other antifascists in rightly calling the Dems simply “Weimar” – a reference to the weak German bourgeois republic that collapsed in the face of Hitler’s Nazi takeover in early 1933.

Blood from Resistance

Second, Stephens would have strengthened his case by pointing out that the aftermath of a successful transition to authoritarian rule (fascist rule to be more precise) in the US will involve far more bloodshed than resisting the transition to authoritarian/fascist rule. People need to know the future blood cost of not acting before they are going to act in ways that could cost blood right now.

Patriotic Liberal America First-ism

Third, Stephens writes about opposition to Trumpist authoritarianism (fascism) he advocates in excessively patriotic terms, framing the struggle that needs to be waged against “anti-America” Trump as a fight “for our country’s survival.” But the fascist Trump regime isn’t about ending the United States. It’s trying to turn the most powerful country in the world into a grave menace to all of humanity, of which the US comprises 4 percent. Noam Chomsky was hauntingly correct when in January of 2020 (right before Trump got his sick little hands on Covid-19) he identified Trump as “the most dangerous criminal in human history…Hitler,” Chomsky said – reflecting on Trump’s tearing up of environmental regulations and nuclear arms protections – “had been perhaps the leading candidate for this honor. His goal was to rid the German-run world of Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other ‘deviants,’ along with tens of millions of Slav ‘Untermenschen.’ But Hitler was not dedicated with fervor to destroying the prospects of organized human life on Earth in the not-distant future (along with millions of other species). Trump is. And those who think he doesn’t know what he’s doing haven’t been looking closely.”[2]

Five years later, the menace to humanity posed by Trump and Trumpism-fascism is further advanced. It isn’t just about “our [US-American] air, water, earned benefits, peace, public safety, civil rights, and human rights.” It isn’t only about “truly lov[ing just] our country.” It’s about genuinely caring about all of humanity and the planet, life itself across national boundaries.

It isn’t just “Rome” – meaning the United States (an appropriate analogy since emperor Nero’s enflamed Rome was a destructive imperial superpower like Trump’s smoldering America) – that is burning. It’s the whole world that’s on fire and “Rome”/the USA is the top fueler of the flames!

And it must be honestly said that Trumpism-fascism is richly rooted in terrible things that “as American as cherry pie” (H. Rap Brown), historically speaking: savage white supremacism, militant misogyny/patriarchy, xenophobic nationalism, genocidal Manifest Destiny, Christian fundamentalism, reckless capitalist anarchy and ecocide and bellicose imperialism. (Please see the sixth chapter, titled “America Was Never Great: On ‘the Soul of This Nation,’” in my 2021 book This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America). And furthermore, it should be acknowledged that much of that terrible and ongoing history is concentrated in “our” nation’s archaic and right-tilted Minority Rule constitution, which has functioned as much as a midwife as a check on the advance of American fascism in recent years.

No Functioning Democracy to Overthrow

Fourth, Stephens seems to assume that there has been some kind of remotely functioning actual US democracy in place for Trump to destroy. But no such thing existed before Trump, which is no small part of why Trumpism-fascism has been able to rise to power. As the brilliant left sociologist Kim Scipes noted in a ZNet review of my 2014 book They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy:

“The contemporary United States,,,is neither a dictatorship nor a democracy.  It is something in between or perhaps different altogether:  a corporate-managed state-capitalist pseudo-democracy that sells the narrow interests of the wealthy business and financial elite as the public interest, closes off critical and independent thought, and subjects culture, politics, policy, institutions, the environment, daily life, and individual minds to the often hidden and unseen authoritarian dictates of money and profits.  It is a corporate and financial plutocracy whose managers generally prefer to rule through outwardly democratic and noncoercive means since leading American corporations and their servants have worked effectively at draining and disabling democracy’s radical and progressive potential by propagandizing, dulling, pacifying, deadening, overextending, overstressing, atomizing and demobilizing the citizenry.  At the same time, American state and capitalist elites remain ready, willing and able to maintain their power with the help from ever more sinister and sophisticated methods and tools of repression, brutality and coercive control.”

Professor Scipes’ review was published in February of 2015, four months before Trump made his infamous escalator ride and announcement of his fateful 2016 presidential candidacy.

Too Much Love for Zelensky

Fifth, Stephens’ commentary is far too complimentary about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. No love and much hate for the fascistic ruler Vladimir Putin here, but Stephens wrongly sees Zelensky as some kind of heroic and rugged man of opposition to authoritarian rule[3] when in fact Zelensky is one of many different ruling class actors who have profited while hundreds of thousands of ordinary people have been maimed and killed in a horrific inter-imperialist war.

No Explicit Call of Conscience for the Removal of the Trump Regime

Last but not at all least, Stephens’ rant includes no specific demand in connection with his call for people to take a “life or death stand” in “the streets.” What exactly does he want such a stand to achieve? Does he wish for the Trump regime to be removed from power as soon as humanly possible, before it can do any more damage than it already has? That seems implicit in his essay but it’s the sort of thing that needs to be made explicit because that’s a damn big and bold thing to call for. It’s also the right thing to demand! .

The organization Refuse Fascism (RF, on whose board I sit) brings zero hesitation to this question. RF is clear as day about the need for the masses to remove Trump from power well before any future election. The demand for Trump’s defeat and ejection is front and center in RF’s recent powerful Call to Conscience and Call to Act:

“We do not accept their future!

“The hour has come for each of us to ask: If we do not act to stop this, what kind of people will we become?

“We stand up and fight for a future in which no human being is enslaved, subjugated, or deemed ‘illegal’ … a future in which the planet can heal and people can be fit caretakers of the earth…

“There can be no conciliation or collaboration between the world we want and the country they want. We have no common cause with MAGA fascism.

“There is a way to defeat this. We, the undersigned, call on the decent people who don’t want to live in a fascist America – who are more than half the country – to courageously rise up as one.

“Those who have dedicated their lives to service – to teach children, to heal the sick, to conduct life-saving research – refusing to comply with fascist decrees, backed up by all justice-loving people.

“Students and young people whose whole future is on the line making schools and campuses centers of resistance and filling the streets.

“Women and LGBTQ people who are furious at being enslaved and erased —bringing their defiance and rage into the public square.

“People of color and everyone sick to death of white supremacy refusing to go back, bringing the experience and fury of centuries of resistance into this fight.

“Artists, writers, clergy, and legal scholars speaking in many voices to say NO! bringing their voices into the struggle.

“With this: Millions in the streets not allowing business as usual when that business is cementing fascist rule with the vilest degrading morality down our throats. MANY VOICES AND BODIES DEMANDING: THE TRUMP FASCIST REGIME MUST GO! With this we can and must create a political crisis in which the Trump regime cannot govern and implement their fascist program or even maintain his hold on power.

“Waiting for the next elections will be too late. We cannot rely on the Democratic Party’s leadership who complacently rely on the very norms and processes that the Trump regime shreds by the hour.”

Read the call here. And listen to RF board member Coco Das’s powerful reflection on the Call to Conscience and Action here, where Das says that the document “justif[ies] a single unifying demand: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go!. Further:

“Imagine this demand resounding through the streets and institutions and airwaves of the country, bringing society to a halt, filling people with the determination to stay in the streets until their demand is met. Until this regime faces that kind of political crisis, it can absorb protests against one attack or another. With their bloody hands on the levers of power and their bloody fangs on people’s necks, the regime will constantly have the initiative while the people will constantly be on the defensive, vulnerable to being divided and conquered and beaten into submission, physically, mentally, and morally.”

Please read the part I italicized above a second time: “Until this regime faces that kind of political crisis, it can absorb protests against one attack or another.” This is a critical point.

Kudos to Dr. Stephens for calling people into the streets to courageously confront the Trump regime and for calling out the inauthentic opposition and hollow resistance pathetically advanced by the Weimar Dems. But RF’s call is the real shit, people. It needs and deserves to become “a thing” across society right now.

Notes

1. Paul Street, Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump, and the Politics of Appeasement (CounterPunch Books, 2020).

2. This quote appears in one of the most poorly titled interviews I’ve ever read: C.J. Polychroniou, “Noam Chomsky: Sanders Threatens the Establishment by Inspiring Popular Movements,” Truthout, February 3, 2020, https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-sanders-threatens-the-establishment-by-inspiring-popular-movements/. The truth is quite the opposite of that title: Sanders serves the establishment by sheep dogging real and potential popular movements into the quicksand of American bourgeois electoral clusterf*#k.

3. “Because Zelenskyy has tasted gun powder and breathed the odious smell of death on the battlefield,” Stephens writes, “he wasn’t about to be pushed around by some morbidly obese, 78-year-old yacht club bully [Trump] and his toady [JD Vance], who think swinging a sand wedge to free a golf ball from some bunker is dangerous business. Zelenskyy punched back and wasn’t having it. He told the truth, and didn’t back down. The future of his country is on the line right now, and he acted like it. And therein lies the playbook for dealing with this sadistic bastard — if only the cautious, too-clever Democratic Party and their weak leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, bothered paying attention.” Please: Zelensky has many gallons of Ukrainian and Russian blood on his hands, as do Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden and other top imperialist and sub-imperialist actors in the criminal Ukraine tragedy. A good source on this is the reporting of Seymour Hersh here.

The post Time to Take a Stand in the Streets: The Trump Regime Must Go appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Paul Street.

Scientists rallied nationwide last Friday in opposition to the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts for scientific research and mass layoffs impacting numerous agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. Thousands gathered at Stand Up for Science protests in over two dozen other cities. We air remarks from speakers in Washington, D.C., including former USAID official Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health.

“I study women’s health, and right now you’re not able to really put into proposals that you are studying women,” says Emma Courtney, Ph.D. candidate at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and co-organizer of Stand Up for Science. She tells Democracy Now! it’s critical for federal policy to be “informed by science and rooted in evidence.”

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

First let us take apart all the idiotic excuses for these unprovoked attacks.

Trade

The ‘master of the deal’ forced the renegotiation of NAFTA, because it was “perhaps the worst trade deal ever made”.

He even got to name the new deal himself in 2018, and make it rhyme with his favourite tune about gay sex; YMCA.  You can see him starting to clumsily groove, just for a blink, during his speech at the signing ceremony: “It, sort of, just works: USMCA.  USMCA.  That’ll be the name, I guess, that, 99 percent of the time, we’ll be hearing: USMCA.  It has a good ring to it.”  (Trigger warning; watching may result in uncontrollable anal leakage.)

He goes on:  “… this new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country…”  And on:  “It means, more than anything else, far more American jobs.  And these are high-quality jobs.”  And on: … it will transform North America back into a manufacturing powerhouse.”  And on “…if you look at this agreement, we formed a great partnership with Mexico and with Canada.”  And on “Once approved, this will be a new dawn for the American auto industry and for the American autoworker.”  And on “We’re going to be a manufacturing powerhouse… “

He grandstanded his way through the entire process, took most of the credit for the final terms, proudly signed off on the new deal; and now he claims we, somehow, screwed him?  Canada’s Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland, put one over on the master of the deal?  No wonder he so openly despises her; a mere female made him look inept.

Complete bullshit.

Drugs

In 2024; estimates range between .3 and .8% of the fentanyl in the States came from Canada.  A US bipartisan committee on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking in 2022 noted: “Canada is not known to be a major source of fentanyl, other synthetic opioids or precursor chemicals to the United States.”   And from a 2020 DEA report “Some fentanyl products are smuggled from Canada into the United States for sale; on a much smaller scale.”

Not to make light of the fact that fentanyl and its family of deliberately poisonous drugs are evil and moving all over the world. Nor that we, like the rest of the world, don’t have our own problems with them.

More bullshit.

Refugees

Yes some humans are entering the US from Canada; but we have the rule of law here; we cannot arrest people for trying to leave the country; so how is that our problem?  Maybe he needs to build another big beautiful wall.  As a side benefit it might even slow down all the illegal guns and drugs smuggled into Canada from the US?  But we will absolutely not be paying for it!

Semi-bullshit.  Desperate people will take desperate steps to escape desperate circumstances.  Only a few years ago, Canada’s borders were being crossed, illegally, by people escaping the US.

But now, here we are.  He pulled the trigger on his tariff threats, and changed them before 24 hours went by.

We cannot spend the next four years being jerked around: tariff – countervailing tariff, tit – tat, kiss the ring – get some kind of break, maybe, or a pause, maybe, or not, maybe.  Nothing will ever be finalized; anything we may think settled, a done deal, can be undone on a whim.  All we can expect are more threats and insults; more deal breaking; more endless bullshit.  There is no dodging this confrontation.

Of course we will, without question, be the bigger losers in a trade war.  The juvenile digs about being the 51^st state do hurt; because they hit awfully too close to home.  We are, economically, a vassal state to America.  Canada bought as heavily into the neo-liberal myth of globalization as any ‘developed’ nation.  Some Canadians still loathe Stephen Harper for signing the first NAFTA in 1994.  But I suspect some form of a deal would have been made no matter which party was in power.  It was a fashion statement of the times.

The fact that many Americans will also suffer because of these stupid tariffs is no solace. We do not wish our fellow humans any ill; they are just more victims of the same blowhard as we are.  I might even suggest that most Canadians have more empathy for the inevitable losers in the States, than their own president does.

But, we must do something.

I hate to agree with Ontario Premier Doug Ford but; don’t pussy foot around does have a certain appeal.  Don’t just raise the price of our energy and resources; refuse to export them to the US; cut them off, cold.  After all “We don’t need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests. We don’t need their oil and gas. We have more than anybody.”  Okay ‘pal’ here’s your chance; prove it.

We must make every effort to find or expand deals with trustworthy trade partners.  Seek out products and markets anywhere but America, preferably in Canada, but anywhere else in the world that meets the environmental and labour standards we espouse.  A lot of the world is on this same path right now anyway; they are closely watching the same buffoon we are dealing with.  I am fully confident we can find willing, and honest, partners.

None of this will be cheap or easy.  The Canadian economy will, most likely, take a catastrophic hit, but sometimes it is better to just rip off the bandage and expose the wound.  Yeah, it’s going to hurt like hell; but in the longer term we will be healthier for it.

“Canadian Pride” has long meant mastery of the humble brag.  “We are better at self-deprecation than anybody.  And, even more annoyingly, we are so much nicer.”  It’s not that we don’t know that we have our strengths and virtues, or that we don’t care about our country.  It’s simply that waving our naughty bits around, and boasting about them, seems a trifle vainglorious; a bit too ‘American’.

I have tried very hard to maintain the Canadian reputation for being hopelessly polite but, occasionally, one must speak of harsher truths with harsher words.

‘Sorry’ but… Donald Trump is an ego onanist, a smelly wet fart in a crowded room, a stain on the species; and proud of it all.  He is, simply put, an unrepentant and irredeemable piece of shit.  ‘Eh’.

The post Oh Canada: We Stand on Guard for Thee appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Michael Kidder.

Zhang, 40, was one of a group of citizen journalists detained, jailed or “disappeared” after they went to the central city of Wuhan to report on the emerging COVID-19 pandemic.

In December 2020, she wasfound guilty of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble” -- a vague charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Communist Party -- and sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

Last June, she was released from that sentence, during which she repeatedly refused food, but then was re-detained in September 2024.

Now, she faces new charges -- also of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble” -- and will likely stand trial at the Pudong New Area People’s Court in Shanghai very soon, a person familiar with the case told Radio Free Asia.

Support for pro-democracy activist

The Weiquanwang rights website reported Jan. 25 [in Chinese] that the new charges are likely linked to a trip Zhang made to the western province of Gansu after her release to help detained pro-democracy activist Zhang Pancheng.

Prosecutors are now seeking a prison sentence of 4-5 years.

“She’s probably going to be tried again soon, and I think she’ll get four years,” said the person, who gave only the surname Song for fear of reprisals.

(Leo Ramirez/AFP)

“She was brought back [to Shanghai] because she went to Zhangye, Gansu province, to see a fellow activist who had spoken up for her,” Song said.

Shanxi-based rights lawyer Zhang Xian said Zhang could get a sentence of five years or more, however.

“Four years is unlikely -- it’s likely she will be sentenced to five years or more, because she was sentenced to four years in prison the first time, and the court’s sentencing will be based on her past criminal record,” Zhang Xian said. “The authorities' policy is that ... it should be heavier than the previous sentence.”

A person familiar with the case also told Radio Free Asia that the prosecution had carried out a psychiatric evaluation and psychological assessment of Zhang and concluded that her mental state was judged to be “normal.”

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Whistleblowing pandemic journalist Zhang Zhan back in detention

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After years of hunger strikes, jailed Chinese citizen journalist is in hospital

Legal expert Lu Chenyuan said Zhang is highly likely to get a harsher sentence this time around, and that the psychiatric assessment makes her more likely to get a harsher term.

“Conducting a psychiatric assessment of Zhang Zhan is a way of stigmatizing her and ... damaging her image,” Lu said. “They will punish Zhang Zhan more severely as a repeat offender.”

Lu said that Zhang has been allowed to meet with her Shanghai-based lawyer, but the lawyer has been warned off making any public statements about the case.

“The lawyer who represents Zhang Zhan is under pressure from the authorities, and doesn’t dare talk about the details of the case,” he said.

Repeated calls to Zhang’s family, the Pudong New Area Detention Center and the District Court rang unanswered during office hours on Monday.

Refusing food

The Weiquanwang rights website reported on Jan. 25 that Zhang is once more refusing food in detention, and has been force-fed by staff.

“The process of force-feeding and the deprivation of adequate medical care constitute cruel and inhumane treatment in violation of the Convention against Torture, which China ratified a long time ago,” the group said in a statement on its website.

“We urge the Pudong Detention Center to stop force-feeding immediately.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.

The oil boom in Alberta, Canada has brought Big Oil in confrontation with First Nations for decades. This year, a breakthrough struggle occurred as the Woodland Cree First Nation established a blockade to stop construction of new oil wells by Obsidian Energy. Demanding respect for their treaty rights and a more equitable deal, the struggle of the Woodland Cree united Treaty 8 First Nations and local non-Indigenous industry owners against Obsidian. Brandi Morin reports from Treaty 8 territory in this exclusive documentary from The Real News and Ricochet Media.

Pre-Production: Brandi Morin, Geordie Day, Maximillian Alvarez, Ethan Cox
Videographer: Geordie Day
Video Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

A transcript will be made available as soon as possible.

Irina Ceric:  WoodLand Cree First Nation Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom is seen taking the injunction and putting it in a nearby fire pit

Brandi Morin:  Throughout the month of May. In a remote region of Northern Alberta, Canada, a standoff took place between a First Nation and an energy company. Sounds typical, right? No, this was more complicated. For starters, an oil and gas company had requested an emergency court hearing to seek the arrest of a Cree chief opposing a drilling project on Indigenous land.

Irina Ceric:  It’s over?

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  It’s over. There was no intent on their part to negotiate.

Brandi Morin:  I’ve covered many confrontations between resource companies and First Nations, but I could tell this one was different as soon as I set foot in Woodland Cree territory,

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  We believe in sharing prosperity. First Nations people are very generous. I think we’re born that way. If we see somebody hungry, we feed them. If we see somebody cold, we help them. That’s just the way we’re brought up.

Brandi Morin:  This pro-industry First Nation and their blockade were supported by many local, non-Indigenous industry owners and workers. They joined the Woodland Cree in asking Obsidian Energy to hire local, mitigate environmental impacts, and share profits with the First Nation. But Obsidian’s confrontational American CEO seemed to think he could bulldoze through local opposition.

Stephen, do you have any time for a brief [crosstalk] interview.

Stephen Loukas:  [Crosstalk] Rangers in six.

Brandi Morin:  After failed attempts to negotiate with the company, the Woodland Cree First Nation erected a blockade in the form of a traditional camp in early May to halt Obsidian Energy’s access to their traditional territory near Peace River. Soon after, Obsidian was granted a civil injunction against them.

It was a conflict that threatened to have far-reaching implications for how resource companies interact with First Nations across Canada. In June, Obsidian reached an agreement with the First Nation to end their blockade.

Although the terms aren’t public, it’s clear Obsidian were forced to walk back from their earlier, more confrontational statements. Could this be the start of a new kind of resource fight, one that pits Indigenous and non-Indigenous locals against corporate investors? This is the story of how one small First Nation partnered with local industry and forced a multinational to listen to them.

Tensions escalated on May 13 when Woodland Cree leadership, including Isaac Laboucan-Avirom, stormed out of a meeting with Obsidian CEO, Stephen Loukas, who jetted in from Calgary. Loukas is American, but the company is based in Calgary. Woodland Cree members suspect he isn’t well-informed on Indigenous rights and the legal duty to consult.

Stephen Loukas:  We’re in the early innings of executing on that plan. I’m very happy with the start that we have to date. We’ve outlined production that was approximately 36,000 BOEs a day.

Brandi Morin:  Some Woodland Cree told me Loukas comes off as arrogant and disinterested in good-faith negotiations. He sure wasn’t interested when I asked for comment

Stephen Loukas:  Rangers in six.

Brandi Morin:  What the heck does that mean?

Speaker 1:  Sports reference.

Brandi Morin:  And my repeated requests for interviews with Obsidian reps have been ignored.

Speaker 2:  I need to transfer your call, but that is the number that I have for the media department… One second. And did you already left a voicemail [crosstalk] —

Brandi Morin:  Yes.

Speaker 2:  — Requesting a call back?

Brandi Morin:  Yes, I have.

This conflict’s been brewing for a while, as far back as two years ago when the Woodland Cree learned the company was planning to drill 200 more wells here. They don’t seem to care that this is unceded territory. First Nations signed treaties with the Canadian government when Canada was established. The treaties stipulated First Nations’ access to traditional territories and rights to maintain their livelihoods. Industries like Obsidian are supposed to consult with First Nation treaty holders about any developments affecting their territories, but that’s not what Obsidian is doing.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Well, this, I believe, is definitely years in the making. This didn’t happen overnight. We acted overnight — Reacted overnight, but this has been definitely an accumulation of many different circumstances.

The campus here is due to an awkward relationship, manipulation, lack of integrity. This company is basically saying, Hey, we don’t gotta work with the locals. But I’m saying, hey, you should work with the locals. Obviously you don’t have to, but you should. It’s the right thing to do. In this Peace area, it hasn’t been as economically hot as other regions in this province.

Brandi Morin:  Obsidian has filed an application that has yet to be heard by the court, an emergency application to specifically have Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom arrested and jailed until the blockade is taken down, and that’s a pretty bold move.

Irina Ceric:  The injunction was not surprising. Research that I participated in the Yellowhead Institute published a couple of years ago makes it very clear that resource extraction companies such as Obsidian have a very strong record of success in obtaining injunctions against First Nations and Indigenous groups, even on traditional territories, even on treaty territories, and this is Treaty 8 territory.

Brandi Morin:  I reached out to Irina Ceric, an expert on injunctions granted against activists and Indigenous groups.

Irina Ceric:  The way that the courts issue injunctions mean that issues such as Indigenous legal orders or the existence of Aboriginal or treaty rights under a treaty or under the Constitution are just not taken into consideration. When these sorts of court orders are obtained by corporations, the corporations can just say, we have this licensed project, regardless of how well that licensing process was carried out, this group of people is impeding our ability to carry out this project and we’re going to be irreparably harmed, meaning that we’re going to lose so much money and time that that cannot be addressed later on. And then the courts tend to take those arguments very seriously, and injunctions of this sort of situation are not unusual at all.

What is really unusual, and you mentioned this yourself, is this attempt by Obsidian to go back to court and attempt to have a second procedure issue, this arrest warrant. And that’s unnecessary on a legal level. Once a court order is issued, there will be an enforcement order within that injunction that says, in this case it’s the RCMP, you can enforce this order; that includes taking people into custody if necessary. So the police have that power. It’s not like the police can’t arrest the chief if they choose to. So what I’m seeing here is an attempt to sidestep the discretion of the police and attempt to have a court issue an unnecessary, and, I think, highly unusual, arrest warrant.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Obviously, that’s outrageous. I think the courts also understand the repercussions that that would have and the precedents that would have, and I don’t think that is a responsible way forward, a respectful way forward. And that’s been the issue all along. I think to move forward, whether it’s with industry, government, even family, you have to have integrity, understanding, respect in response. You know what I mean? There’s principles, and even corporate principles, that have to be met. We’re not just all about the money, but we are, in a way, saying, hey, if you do want to make money, we want to make money for our people as well.

Brandi Morin:  At the heart of this conflict, industry and government circumventing treaty rights, and First Nations have had enough.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  I definitely don’t think there’s a good understanding of traditional rights, treaty rights, land acknowledgement, et cetera. It’s been very intrusive what Obsidian is doing to us, but it’s also showcasing to the world there has to be better ways to get work done, so to speak. I do understand that there is a need for resources to be in the global market. I think it actually might make the world a better place. I think Canada needs to do a better job at getting investors into this country — But working with the First Nations in partnership to get that done. We take responsibility for our destiny. We have our own rights to our own self-determination, and that is definitely different than what others might assume for us.

Janice Makokis:  When our ancestors and the people in Treaty 8 entered into treaty more than a hundred years ago, there was an understanding that the parties were both sovereign entities with unextinguished title to the lands. When they entered into that international treaty agreement, it was two sovereigns. And the Indigenous side of that party understood that they were not giving up anything, including the land and resources of the lands that they would’ve referred to as their territory.

Brandi Morin:  I reached out to Janice Makokis, an Indigenous scholar and member of Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, to understand more about how treaty rights play into this.

Janice Makokis:  And so what happened after that was almost immediately after treaty making happened, the Indian Act was set in play by the federal government, which corral our people onto these small parcels of land referred to now as reserves, but we would be able to have full access to land outside of the reserves for hunting, fishing, trapping, and other things to maintain our livelihood and way of life. And so that territory is inclusive of everything within the treaty territory, so everything within Treaty 8, as the Woodland Cree are under.

So there’s a significant misunderstanding between our people’s understanding of the treaty and the crown, government’s, and industry’s understanding of what that is. And I think that’s where we see these conflicts happening on the land, because we are still exercising our inherent and treaty rights as we understood them when our ancestors made that treaty. And the crown and industry have a completely different understanding, and so that’s why we have these conflicts that exist on the land.

Brandi Morin:  Don’t you think that those different understandings that the government and industry have is pretty convenient for them?

Janice Makokis:  Oh yeah, absolutely. Because it benefits them to continue to oppress and use colonial laws and legal instruments such as injunctions or through the courts to advance their interests in the name of the public good or the good of the company and for economic development reasons, whatever that is, or whatever arguments that they’re making to advance the interest of their company.

Brandi Morin:  But they don’t look at the public interest in regards to the interests of First Nations, whose sovereign territory that is and whose livelihoods are connected to that.

Janice Makokis:  That’s right, exactly. They don’t consider First Nations as a part of the interest when they’re considering the interests, whose rights, lives, and land that they’re impacting when they’re out there doing what they’re doing on the land to make profit from resource extraction taking place.

Brandi Morin:  The Peace oil sands is referred to as the mini Fort McMurray of Alberta. Fort McMurray is the extractive economic engine of Canada, pumping out billions of dollars in annual revenue. The Peace oil sands are also rich in untapped oil reserves. There’s a ton of money to be gleaned out of here, but development goes hand in hand with the destruction of the land.

Frank Whitehead:  And I said, hey, this is the most environmental person you’ll ever see. Because I was born in [inaudible]. I knew where everything is, where the moose licks are, things like that. A lot of times they bury all that when they’re working on oil. They don’t look at what we look at. We look at the whole territory. We look at where you need to put your lease. We have to be doing that, not you guys. A lot of times they don’t let us do that, and they go ahead and do it without consulting us. Consulting us is the very thing that they should be doing. They should not do that, but a lot of times they’ll just do it. Go ahead and do everything.

But my heart cries for Mother Nature a lot of times too, because Mother Nature is the one that gives us this land, that gives us everything that we should respect. We should have no garbage. We should have everything to be cleaned up after. And sometimes if you go, they’re not cleaned up. When they plug a hole and the water comes out with cement. Cement just shoots out, now you have cement all over. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. You have to clean this place. Because to me, sometimes Mother Nature cries so much. They drain so much.

But that’s what I was taught. A lot of times you have to listen to that. You have to listen to the birds, you listen to the animals. You listen to the little creatures. You listen to the little bugs. Because the bugs, if it wasn’t for the bugs, the birds wouldn’t be here.

Brandi Morin:  So Frank, have you been coming and has you and your family been utilizing these specific areas ever since you were [crosstalk].

Frank Whitehead:  Yes. Yes.

Brandi Morin:  And so have you seen big changes?

Frank Whitehead:  Oh, man. Like I said, I’ve been here, and we flew this 10 years ago when my brother Joe was the chief there. We flew it and then we see the changes from the helicopter, how it changed. We used to hunt all the routes to walk, instead of now you can just drive anywhere. But what keeps us from that is they’re putting the gates now. This is our hunting grounds, and you put a gate and you put all this. This is where we live.

But I even see animals going away too, because [they’re] scared of everything that’s happening, and you got your trucks all over the place, and we have to watch it.

Brandi Morin:  Industrial activity is transforming the landscape, but there’s another big problem: earthquakes. The Alberta energy regulator found Obsidian Energy responsible for causing a series of quakes here in 2022 after it injected industrial wastewater deep into the ground.

Reporter 1:  Late November, an earthquake shook houses and had people stop in their tracks.

Speaker 3:  [Clip of man playing piano when earthquake starts] Oh my.

Reporter 1:  It happened in the Peace River region and could be felt more than 600 kilometers away.

Ryan Shultz:  But what makes this different or noteworthy is how big this earthquake was.

Reporter 1:  The 5.6 magnitude earthquake is the largest the province has seen. At first, it was thought to be natural, but a study done by Stanford University is suggesting wastewater disposal from oil production triggered it.

Ryan Shultz:  We are confident that this event was a manmade or induced earthquake is what they’re called.

Reporter 1:  This research shows the first link between such a large earthquake and human activities this far away from a mountain range. Researchers say they’ve seen other quakes caused by fracking, but they believe this one is different: it happened after wastewater was injected into a well to extract oil.

Ryan Shultz:  The injection of CO2 also has the potential to cause earthquakes. So this is something to, essentially, start thinking about, and maybe even start monitoring.

Brandi Morin:  One of the quakes was the largest ever recorded in Alberta’s history: it scored a local magnitude of 5.6 — Yet, Obsidian denies it had anything to do with them and is appealing the AER ruling.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  We did make a request for incremental data that really anchored the AER’s decision as well as the characterization that the seismic activity in the Peace River area was solely attributable to Obsidian’s operations. We didn’t agree with that assertion then, we don’t agree with it now. We are in the process of evaluating that data. We will have more to say in that regard in the future.

Brandi Morin:  The memory of this earthquake is seared into the minds of all here, including Chief Isaac.

Can you talk about the earthquakes?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Oh my goodness. I remember that day I had elders calling me. I just dropped my kids off for school. My daughters were calling me from Peace River. I was taking off to a meeting. I believe I was close to the area, ready to turn around. But definitely unexpected and felt by everybody, not just me and my family, but the farmers nearby, industry. I believe it might’ve been one of the biggest in Alberta to date.

Brandi Morin:  So do you feel it, or…?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  We felt it. It was shaking houses, absolutely. I think there were four or five tremors or something that happened. Like I said, I was on the road and I was definitely scared for my children. Obviously, when you hear about earthquakes, because they’re not normal in our area, we wonder what the repercussions would be. Will it rupture pipes? Will it rupture foundational stuff? Will it hurt old homes? We don’t know. Will it contaminate groundwaters?

Brandi Morin:  Will there be more?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Will there be more? That’s one of the biggest questions as well. Will there be more? Are they man-made? Are they industry made?

Brandi Morin:  Chief Isaac, like most Woodland Cree, grew up hunting, fishing, and trapping. He still gets out on the land as often as he can.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  So then my brother comes looking in for me three or four nights after, tries pulling me out, he gets stuck. Then he had to walk out with my little brother to the end of the road. And that must have been… Yeah, it was definitely a few miles.

Brandi Morin:  So then how’d you guys get out then?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Three or four four-by-fours.

Brandi Morin:  [Laughs] Chains?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  And everything. Yeah.

Brandi Morin:  Just moments after sharing stories of being on the land with me, the chief discovered access to his beloved hunting territory was blocked. Obsidian erected a gate to another industry road not far from the Woodland Cree blockade.

Oh, they have a gate up.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Holy fuck.

Brandi Morin:  Notice… Oh, was that there before?

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  No.

Brandi Morin:  This road is closed… Blah, blah, blah. Oh, here’s the security lady. I wonder what she’s going to say to you.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  When was the gate put up?

Security Guard:  Yesterday.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Oh, so they did put it up, hey? I’m the chief. Just wondering what’s going on with this gate. Don’t worry. I’m not going to make a big deal. I just wanted to see if the gate was put up.

Security Guard:  [Inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Oh wow.

Security Guard:  I just don’t like being on video.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Yeah, neither do I [laughs]. Man. Well, this is very, very unfortunate. How many people are up this way?

Security Guard:  I have no idea.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Son of a gun. All right. Yep.

Security Guard:  Well, I’m not letting no one unless they work for… [Inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Which company? Obsidian?

Security Guard:  [Nods][inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Yeah. All right. Is there any other construction going on over there? Just tankers.

Security Guard:  [Shakes head][inaudible].

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Alright, well, I’ll go let them know that they did put up the gate. I thought they were going to wait for us.

Like, holy fuck. The direct attack on treaty from stopping the people who live off of this land from entering their own lands. How it stops us from hunting, gathering, trapping. We were just talking about stories of how we used to just camp forever. And then now we’re being locked out of our traditional territories and places where we found medicine. We were finding medicine over there. They harvested moose over there. We have that and they’ve put a lock on it. Something has to change.

Brandi Morin:  Back at the blockade, Woodland Cree members are set up along the Walrus industry access road, about 40 minutes east of Peace River. It’s a key access road utilized by Obsidian, which is now shut down. The company is losing around $450,000 Canadian dollars a day here.

And the Woodland Cree are not alone. See, I’ve covered a lot of Indigenous defense frontlines. Other than a few non-Native allies that show up sometimes, I’ve never witnessed non-Indigenous industry owners supporting First Nations like they are here. Some have parked their semi-trucks and heavy equipment at the blockade, despite risking being blacklisted by Obsidian.

Dustin Lambert:  My name’s Dustin Lambert. I’m from Peace River, Alberta, area.

Brandi Morin:  And what do you do?

Dustin Lambert:  I work in construction.

Brandi Morin:  Awesome. What do you think about what’s going on here with the camp?

Dustin Lambert:  I think it’s a good thing for the community to stand against the oil companies when they try to take from the communities and not work with the community. People like Obsidian has work, but they want to bring in a large outside contractor. And, as I understand, in Canada, we’re free to work in all areas. However, when you have local contractors, they should have the first opportunity. And when Obsidian goes and tries to bring the larger contractors in that have the potential to take all the work from the companies in the region.

And then with Obsidian trying to go through and not work with the community being like the Woodland Band, or Lubicon, or any of the bands, because we work through them and directly with them. And I’ve worked with these guys on and off pretty much my whole life. Went to school with them and then worked with them.

Brandi Morin:  Meanwhile, Woodland Cree members are well equipped for the long haul if need be.

Frank Whitehead:  Right here.

Brandi Morin:  Blended right in.

Frank Whitehead:  Right here. The snare’s right here.

Brandi Morin:  Wow.

Frank Whitehead:  And that’s how you put it.

And this is where they’re working. And look at what’s happening. They’re taking all our rabbits, everything, animals.

Brandi Morin:  The Woodland Cree have utilized these lands for millennia, but they were forced out of their traditional territories decades ago when oil was discovered here. The band was made to settle on allotted reserve sites about an hour away from here. But they’ve never abandoned their original homelands.

Frank Whitehead:  Well, it’s very important because of our livelihood, our hunting grounds, what’s happening with the fires too, and that’s not helping us. But with the oil companies too now coming in, that’s not helping us no more. It’s just destroying our livelihood right now.

Brandi Morin:  Frank’s been an elected Woodland Cree Nation counselor for over 16 years. He’s seen industry come and go, governments make promises and break them. Foreign companies are even more of a problem, he says.

Frank Whitehead:  I don’t think they know what we do here as First Nations people, especially when somebody else is not from this country. That’s not right because they don’t know. And we try talking to ’em, we tried teaching them, we tried everything. But still, a lot of people won’t understand how we live here. And they need to understand this. We’re from here. We were here, one of the first people that lived in this territory a long time ago. We went up and down these rivers. Every year we canoed down Peace River. So they don’t know what’s going on and they need to know, they need to listen to us too.

But people, you gotta understand that this is our livelihood. This is how we were born. This is how we were raised. This is what we eat. Everything we eat and the herbs and everything that the trees provide for us, the animals. If the animals are going, sometimes when we trap, we don’t… It’s my kids, their livelihood, and it’s gotta continue like this for generations and generations. We cannot stop this. This is how we were born. We have young guys that’s doing that now. This is the young guy that’s trapping, hunting, and he learned.

Brandi Morin:  Woodland Cree Counselor Joe Whitehead Jr. has been helping oversee the camp. Grand chief of the Kee Tas Kee Now Tribal Council and chief of the Woodland Cree, he’s pissed that Obsidian is sidestepping its duty to consult and work with the nation.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  The trust factor for our First Nation is really low with industry because of Obsidian. Obsidian is to blame for everything that’s happening today, where the cops are staging over there to come in here and trying to remove people that are from the land and believe in the land. And we are teaching kids here today, and we’ll still keep doing that.

And we will be here forever. Obsidian might not be here for a long time, until they take the resources away from our land. We’re just asking for that fair, equal share of the resources that go out of here. No more of this construction and all that. We want to be part of the solution and part of the development. That’s all we’re saying. And I encourage First Nations people to stand up because this is our fight together. It’s just not Woodland Crees, it’s us all across this Turtle Island, all of Canada.

We always say we support each other, but let’s have action, any means necessary in terms of trying to educate Canada in terms of who First Nations people are and who we really are, and that’s from the land. And we have to protect it. Any means necessary.

There was a gate put up over here. In our treaty, it states that all gates shall be open in case of hunger. But what they did was they put up a gate and blocked our chief. And that’s wrong. And I’m mad today because of that. This is going to escalate if the government doesn’t step in.

And if Obsidian doesn’t come to the table, what does that say to other industries? They can start putting up gates where we hunt, trap, fish, and gather? That’s our treaty right. That’s nobody else’s right but our First Nations people.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  We’re still in that role as the liaison team.

Speaker 4:  We’re speaking with you, we speak with the other side, for sure. We’re not picking a side. That’s why we need to be able to keep those lines of communication open. If you’re saying —

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  The people be here, they’re not welcome in our company. We can stay over there, take your photos and whatnot. So speak with the chief when he gets here.

Speaker 4:  Oh no, that’s OK. And like I said, we’re not here to pick sides. We’ve always been upfront with you in regards to that.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  Well, all First Nations that have a stake in this, it’s just not Woodland Cree, it’s everybody. We live off this land. And I think industry and government need to be educated more in terms of when they come in and try to develop the resources around us. We will idle no more. We will do what we have to do as a nation to protect the rights, the treaty rights of our people that were signed in 1899.

And I believe that industry needs to wake up in terms of what they’re doing. You need to come to the table and not give us lies and lies after lies. You need to be honest.

Police Officer 1:  …Energy regulator’s going to want to inspect because it’s not been operational. So they might be here tomorrow too.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  We’ll see, we’ll see about that.

Police Officer 1:  The energy regulator?

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  That’s unprecedented because [inaudible].

Brandi Morin:  You guys know if that helicopter that’s been circling, if that’s the industry guys?

Speaker 4:  Yeah.

Brandi Morin:  It is, eh? So they’re just trying to scope things out?

Speaker 4:  They gotta do their checks. Extra police that are going to be in the area just to ensure the safety and security of all involved.

Speaker 1:  So they’re not there to enforce the injunction?

Brandi Morin:  It’s a step up, obvious.

Speaker 4:  Well, we don’t have any information in regards to what’s going to happen in regards to the injunction. We’re [crosstalk] not privy to that information.

Brandi Morin:  — Resources for nothing.

Speaker 4:  We do have extra resources there.

Speaker 5:  But to ensure the safety of all people involved, that’s pretty much the one group. So the only other group was the police officers.

Speaker 4:  Well, we have to be prepared for anything that might happen. So if we didn’t have those police here and something were to happen, then it would be [crosstalk] how are you able to respond?

Speaker 5:  I’m not sure what would happen between them?

Speaker 4:  That’s what we don’t know either, right?

Speaker 5:  Exactly.

Speaker 4:  We never know. We’ve been to lots of these type of events. There’s people who decide that they want to hijack these type of events that people don’t necessarily think the way that everybody here or that you may think. As a result…

Brandi Morin:  Hello!

Police Officer 2:  Hi, how’s it going?

Brandi Morin:  Good, how are you?

Police Officer 2:  Living the dream. [Crosstalk] One day at a time.

Brandi Morin:  You guys are hiding out back here?

Police Officer 2:  You guys are not allowed in here, I’m sorry.

Brandi Morin:  You’re hiding out back here?

Police Officer 2:  No, we’re just here for fun.

Brandi Morin:  Is this C-IRG?

Police Officer 2:  Sorry?

Brandi Morin:  Is this C-IRG? Are you guys C-IRG?

Police Officer 2:  What’s that? Sorry, I don’t know —

Brandi Morin:  Community-Industry Response Group.

Police Officer 2:  No, no, no, no, no.

Brandi Morin:  OK. So obviously —

Police Officer 2:  I’m sorry, I don’t know all the acronyms [laughs].

Brandi Morin:  OK, so you’re staging, obviously, [crosstalk] because you’re hiding.

Police Officer 2:  Well, we tend to stay on the road, right. We need a place to park our vehicles. But you guys are technically not allowed in here because it’s closed.

Brandi Morin:  It’s closed.

Police Officer 2:  This place is closed

Brandi Morin:  By the police, or…?

Police Officer 2:  No, no, no, it’s just closed.

Brandi Morin:  Can you say what you’re doing?

Police Officer 2:  We’re just here working. That’s all we’re doing. There’s nothing to be worried about. If you have any questions, you guys were in touch with the DLTs?

Brandi Morin:  Yeah. OK.

Police Officer 2:  OK? You guys just can’t stay here.

Brandi Morin:  OK.

Police Officer 2:  OK? Alright. Thanks a lot, guys.

Irina Ceric:  There’s another way to address this, which is to look more at the politics and history of these sorts of struggles. This is not the only example of courts refusing to recognize Indigenous jurisdiction. This is not the only example of Canadian law facilitating the extraction of resources at the cost of the environment, the cost of workers, at the cost of, in this case, First Nations. So to me, this is not an unusual outcome of the foundation of Canadian law in both settler-colonialism and in the Canadian foundation in resource extraction as a national preoccupation.

Brandi Morin:  Well, you think that because it’s 2024, because we’ve had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because we’re in so-called building nation-to-nation relationships, you think that things would be different by now.

Irina Ceric:  You would. You absolutely would.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Well, we want to see, obviously, respectful, responsible industry. Obviously we’re not getting respect here, and they’re not being responsible. Just what you asked me about them not hiring local, other people around us. We want to see stuff be sustainable. We do care about our environment. We do care about the lands, the waters. We do feel the encroachment of industry and the accumulative effects of not just industry, but also the environment. The wildfires. The droughts. We’re thankful for this rain. But it’s about finding that balance. We are educating our children now to become the operators, tradespeople, nurses, teachers, et cetera. We want to educate our peoples to adapt to modern society — But as well keep their traditional way of life.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  It’s kind of absurd for Obsidian to start making those recommendations to the province and even to the courts, and even to try and enforce the RCMP to do something, as those that don’t know the treaty. The RCMP officers were presented at the treaty, a day of making treaty, and these were here for our protection against foreigners that would intrude in our way of life. Obsidian, you’re intruding without talking to the people, without doing a proper process because the government, you’re listening to the government more so than the leadership that is sitting at this table.

And I will say when it comes to jailing our people, our chiefs, I think you’ll see a lot of chiefs either in jail, and hopefully that the court systems or that the institutions can hold all of the Canadian First Nations people in jail. Because I think there is an uprising in the making, and I think at some point we need to start making those calls for that support.

Brandi Morin:  Just days after the failed May 13 meeting with Obsidian representatives, the chiefs of Treaty 8 traveled to gather in the same meeting room to support the Woodland Cree.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  I just want to say that Obsidian is changing the dynamics of industry within our backyard and others. For Woodland Cree, we are hoping that they remove the injunctions on myself and my people, that they remove the injunctions of our local joint ventures and their livelihoods.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  And Supreme Court of Canada ruled that there must be consultation with landowners.

Brandi Morin:  Treaty 8 Grand Chief Arthur Noskey called on the province to step in.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  Remove ACO Aboriginal Consultation Office, AER, Alberta Energy Regulator, and the Red Tape Ministry, because these agencies and ministries do not honor the Supreme Court ruling, the duty to consult. Premier Danielle Smith and cabinet, we call upon you to meet with Woodland Cree First Nation leadership and Treaty 8 chiefs to establish a table for revenue sharing talks with the province. It is important that the public and industry know that Alberta government’s First Nations consultation policy is their own policy. We are sovereign nations with our own consultation processes and laws.

Brandi Morin:  For decades, First Nations in Alberta have insisted the province pay up. Alberta makes billions in royalties earned from industry projects in First Nations territories. The province has largely ignored requests to share some of those benefits with Indigenous communities. The current situation could pressure Alberta’s government to change course.

Chief Sheldon Sunshine:  When we talk about the issue that my colleague here, Chief Ivan, and their community has dealt with Obsidian, we feel those impacts all across our territory. We deal with the same issues in our backyard. We’re here to support Chief Isaac and the rest of the Treaty 8 chiefs in solidarity in opposing this issue. It affects all of our First Nation people. And when you take a look at the resource development in our backyard, the government of Alberta has received over $30 billion, and the government of Canada is prospering as well — Yet, while our communities are suffering. This attack on Woodland community is an attack on all of our treaty rights.

Chief Dwayne Lovell Laboucan:  It’s pretty simple from our end: if you’re going to come and make a livelihood in our lands, we must too. That’s our message to oil and gas. You’re not going to come in here and start bullying us. We’re here to stay and we’re ready to fight. Hay-hay.

Brandi Morin:  Ultimately, this isn’t just about what’s happening in Woodland Cree territory. This is about a status quo that’s fundamentally untenable for Indigenous peoples. The status quo must change, says Chief Isaac.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Well just look at the GDP that comes out of our land from the forest sector, the oil and gas sector, even, for the longest time, billions, hundreds of millions come out of this land. Why are, as First Nations, we still administrate poverty? Obviously those comments that are made on greed, it’s people that don’t even understand the current situation and the reality of this country. We shouldn’t have to fight this hard for prosperity when we signed a treaty. A treaty is a nation-to-nation relationship.

And that people ask about our greed? Well, I think it’s actually the other way around. People don’t want to see us lift ourselves up. I’m not looking for a handout. I’m looking to just provide and to protect my people with our own ways and our own rights. We want to be part of the workforce. We want to develop megaprojects. We want to be owners of the resources.

And you’re darn right it is about money. My people shouldn’t be living in poverty. We deserve equalization payments. The chiefs that are around this table are the economic engine of this country, the economic engine of this country. Our resources supply the world with some of our trees, our oil and gas. And we could set a good example, a world-class example of doing things right. And we need that opportunity to do things right and that collaboration with industry, government, and communities — And in solidarity with our chiefs, our brothers and our sisters.

And I really want to commend them, the councilmen, the leadership, the elders, the youth. Our kids need a brighter future. Seven out of 10 of us are going to die sooner than the [rest of] Canada’s population. Seven out of 10 of our kids are in CFS issues. That’s because of poverty. So how is this greed? It’s actually the other way around, where a greedy American company wants to come dictate in our land? I don’t think so.

Grand Chief Arthur Noskey:  You’re talking about landowners that entered into a treaty with the imperial crown. How can there be anything higher than that in our lands? Where is that certificate of ownership, Canada? Where’s the certificate of ownership, province? So these are questions that still remain there. Right now they’re just brokering deals with industry at the expense of our lands, our resources, and just leaving their contaminants behind. They’re greedy for money, and it is obvious. Thank you very much.

Grand Chief Joe Whitehead Jr.:  I just want to make a quick comment in terms of why we’re here today in terms of what we’re doing. And it’s for our people. And I’d like to show you, this is what my daughter does every time I go home. I see her every four hours, and she takes this shirt and covers herself up. And the people need to know that we are fighting for our kids and their kids, for the future, so they don’t keep fighting. That’s one thing that people don’t understand. That we are passionate people. We are humble people, and we like to laugh, but at the same time, we have to protect this land, our treaty rights, for our future generation.

Brandi Morin:  Now you also said that if they were to come to arrest you, that you wouldn’t surrender.

Chief Isaac Laboucan-Avirom:  Surrender. Of course not. I don’t think there’s a Cree word for surrender [laughs] or cede. No. I’m here to maintain the best interest of my community. And if I was, I know there’s a lot of support that I have out there. I think Evander Kane said it best: Sometimes you got to fuck around to find out [laughs].

Brandi Morin:  I’m Brandi Morin, reporting in the traditional territories of the Woodland Cree Nation for The Real News Network, IndigiNews, and Ricochet Media.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Brandi Morin.

“The Constitution is crystal clear: ‘No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.’ But Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have shown over the past six weeks how little respect they have for our Constitution and the rule of law.

“His talk of a third term isn’t a joke or a slip of the tongue. It’s a test to see how far he can go in his quest for unchecked power.

“Today would be a good day for every elected official to reaffirm the oath they took to defend our Constitution, including the 22nd Amendment. Because no one should have power for life.”

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

Prime Minister Mark Brown has survived a motion in the Cook Islands Parliament aimed at ousting his government, the second Pacific Island leader to face a no-confidence vote this week.

In a vote yesterday afternoon (Tuesday, Cook Islands time), the man who has been at the centre of controversy in the past few weeks, defeated the motion by 13 votes to 9. Two government ministers were absent for the vote.

The motion was put forward by the opposition MP Teariki Heather, the leader of the Cook Islands United Party.

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands leadership reports

Ahead of the vote, Heather acknowledged that Brown had majority support in Parliament.

However, he said he was moving the motion on principle after recent decisions by Brown, including a proposal to create a Cook Islands passport and shunning New Zealand from deals it made with China, which has divided Cook Islanders.

“These are the merits that I am presenting before this House. We have the support of our people and those living outside the country, and so it is my challenge. Where do you stand in this House?” Heather said.

Brown said his country has been so successful in its development in recent years that it graduated to first world status in 2020.

‘Engage on equal footing’
“We need to stand on our own two feet, and we need to engage with our partners on an equal footing,” he said.

“Economic and financial independence must come first before political independence, and that was what I discussed and made clear when I met with the New Zealand prime minister and deputy prime minister in Wellington in November.”

Brown said the issues Cook Islanders faced today were not just about passports and agreements but about Cook Islands expressing its self-determination.

“This is not about consultation. This is about control.”

“We cannot compete with New Zealand. When their one-sided messaging is so compelling that even our opposition members will be swayed.

“We never once talked to the New Zealand government about cutting our ties with New Zealand but the message our people received was that we were cutting our ties with New Zealand.

“We have been discussing the comprehensive partnership with New Zealand for months. But the messaging that got out is that we have not consulted.

Cook Islands PM accuses NZ media, experts of thinking ‘we are too dumb’ https://t.co/ADrWN4Yjp9

— RNZ Pacific (@RNZPacific) February 25, 2025

‘We are not a child’
“We are a partner in the relationship with New Zealand. We are not a child.”

He said the motion of no confidence had been built on misinformation to the extent that the mover of the motion has stated publicly that he was moving this motion in support of New Zealand.

“The influence of New Zealand in this motion of no confidence should be of concern to all Cook Islands who value . . . who value our country.

“My job is not to fly the New Zealand flag. My job is to fly my own country’s flag.”

Last week, hundreds of Cook Islanders opposing Brown’s political decisions rallied in Avarua, demanding that he step down for damaging the relationship between Aotearoa and Cook Islands.

The Cook Islands is a self-governing state in free association with New Zealand. It is part of the Realm of New Zealand, sharing the same Head of State.

This year, the island marks its 60th year of self-governance.

According to Cook Islands 2021 Census, its population is less than 15,000.

New Zealand remains the largest home to the Cook Islands community, with over 80,000 Cook Islands Māori, while about 28,000 live in Australia.

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

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

Joining us to unpack this dystopian nightmare, as well as what must be done to overcome this global threat, is Elie Mystal, Justice Correspondent for The Nation and author of the new book Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America. Mystal, a prophetic voice in the fight for democracy, breaks down what Biden and the Democrats should have done to curb Trump and MAGA extremism when they had the chance. (We’ll be shouting we told you so all the way to the gulag!) He explains why Merrick Garland was, as we warned, a threat to democracy, what actions Democrats and the people must take now in the limited time we have left, and why New York State Attorney General Tish James serves as a vital reminder of the importance of local resistance. Most importantly, Mystal calls on world leaders to divest from America, an urgent strategy that helped bring down apartheid. 

This week’s bonus show is our live recording with Russian mafia expert Olga Lautman, who answers listener questions about combating the Russian-backed fascist threat of the Musk/Trump regime. We also discuss Trump and Russia’s attempts to strongarm Ukraine into a deal that would buy Russia time to continue its genocidal invasion. Don’t miss this special episode, coming to you on Friday.

A heartfelt thank you to all our Gaslit Nation supporters. This show wouldn’t be possible without you. Together, we’re shining a light on the truth and fighting for a better future.

Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

Events at Gaslit Nation

• Feb 24 4pm ET – Gaslit Nation Book Club at our Gaslit Nation Salon to discuss Albert Camu’s The Stranger (Matthew Ward translation) and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

• March 17 4pm ET – Dr. Lisa Corrigan joins our Gaslit Nation Salon to discuss America’s private prison crisis in an age of fascist scapegoating 

• NEW! Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join, available on Patreon. 

• ONGOING! Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group, available on Patreon.

• NEW! Climate Crisis Committee launched in the Patreon Chat thanks to a Gaslit Nation listener who holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences

• NEW! Caretaker Committee launched in the Patreon Chat for our listeners who are caretakers and want to share resources, vent, and find community 

• NEW! Public Safety page added to GaslitNationPod.com to help you better protect yourself from this lunacy (i.e. track recalls, virus threats, and more!): https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/public-safety

• ONGOING! Have you taken Gaslit Nation’s HyperNormalization Survey Yet?: https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/survey-reject-hypernormalization

• ONGOING! Gaslit Nation Salons take place Mondays 4pm ET over Zoom and the first ~40 minutes are recorded and shared on Patreon.com/Gaslit for our community 

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

A defiant Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair, John Minto, has appealed to Aotearoa New Zealand to stand with the “majority of humanity” in the world and condemn genocide in Gaza.

Minto has called on Foreign Minister Winston Peters to “ignore the bullying” from pro-Israel Texas Senator Ted Cruz and have the courage to stop welcoming Israeli solders to New Zealand.

Peters has claimed Israeli media stories that New Zealand has stopped Israeli military visiting New Zealand are “fake news”.

• READ MORE: ‘Fake news’: Peters hits back at US senator
• UN rapporteur welcomes ‘best news’ — Hague Group coalition pushing for Palestinian state
• Moral bankruptcy, Israel’s genocide and the betrayal of the Palestinians
• Australia denies Israel soldiers entry, asks about potential role in war crimes
• Other Palestine reports

This @haaretzcom story is fake news, Senator @TedCruz. We are demanding it be corrected.

Israelis do not need visitor visas to travel to New Zealand, let alone have to declare their military service.

And both New Zealand’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner and I – as Foreign… https://t.co/mhrx9pwHyw

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) February 1, 2025

Senator Cruz had quoted Israeli daily Ha’aretz in a tweet which said “It’s difficult to treat New Zealand as a normal ally within the American alliance system, when they denigrate and punish Israeli citizens for defending themselves”.

The Times of Israel had also reported this week that Israelis entering New Zealand were required to detail their military service.

Minto responded in a statement saying that Peters “should not buckle” to a Trump-supporting senator who fully backed Israel’s genocide.

“Ted Cruz believes Israel should continue defending land it has stolen from Palestinians. He supports every Israeli war crime. New Zealand must be different,” he said.

Last September, New Zealand voted against the US at the United Nations General Assembly where the country sided with the majority of humanity — 124 votes in favour, 14 against and 43 abstentions — that ruled that Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was illegal and it should leave within a year.

At the time, Peters declared: “New Zealand’s yes vote is fundamentally a signal of our strong support for international law and the need for a two-state solution.”

‘Different policy position’
“The New Zealand government has a completely different policy position to the US,” said Minto.

“That should be reflected in the actions of the New Zealand government.  We must have an immigration ban on Israeli soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since October 2023 as well as a ban on any Israeli who lives in an illegal Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian land.”

Minto said it was not clear what the current immigration rules were for different entry categories, but it did seem that some longer stay Israeli applicants were required to declare they had not committed human rights violations before they were allowed in.

“That’s what the Australians are doing.  It appears ineffective at preventing Israeli troops having ‘genocide holidays’ in Australia – but it’s a start,” he said.

“We’d like to see a broader, effective, and watertight ban on Israeli troops coming here.

“Instead of bowing to US pressure New Zealand should be joining The Hague Group of countries, as proposed by the Palestine Forum of New Zealand, to take decisive action to prevent and punish Israeli war crimes.”

Immigration New Zealand reports that since 7 October 2023 it had approved 809 of 944 applications received from Israeli nationals across both temporary and residence visa applications.

Last December, Middle East Eye reported that at least two IDF soldiers had been denied entry to Australia and applicants were being required to fill out a document regarding their role in war crimes.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

Unimaginably, Israel's campaign of genocide and elimination escalates, with up to 800 Palestinians killed in 17 days "in full view of the world." Amidst relentless bombardment, displacement, starvation, trauma and shelling so incessant their "bodies don't stop trembling," Gazans recount apocalyptic scenes: limbs and corpses in the streets, body parts "hanging on the walls," children shot filling water jugs, hundreds trapped in homes and hospitals without power, water, food, aid: "All that’s left is the will to breathe."

Surely emboldened by the unceasing flow of arms and blood money from a complicit U.S., and an accompanying silence from much of the world, Israel has undertaken a series of massacres in central and northern Gaza - Nuseirat, Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun - where an estimated 100,000 Palestinians are trapped without food, water or "any illusion of safety." In Beit Lahiya, Israel flattened a crowded five-storey residential building in a "horrifying" attack that killed 93 displaced Palestinians, including at least 20 children. Nabil Al-Khatib, 57, and his family were sheltering in a UNRWA school until Israel began bombing it. Flying shrapnel wounded eight of his children and grandchildren before they could flee during a brief lull. "We picked up the children and ran,” he said. "We left everything behind, our lives as we knew them. But we had each other." He saw others who "have already lost everything - their homes, families, limbs...The horrors we have lived are indescribable. Even mountains cannot hold it."

Survivors describe "a nightmare beyond comprehension," with savage air strikes "vaporizing" victims, corpses crushed under rubble, limbs torn off, people bleeding out on the street from lack of aid. A poet in exile mourned his 7-year-old cousin and 18 trapped members of his family killed in a strike; the day before, he said, "I told everyone tanks and soldiers were besieging them, but no one heard." Often, IDF soldiers invade homes or shelters, evict residents, and set fire to what's left so they cannot return. Despite "catastrophic" conditions, Palestinian civil defense forces have had to suspend operations in the wake of attacks on its teams: "Our work has completely stopped." And while Israel claims it allows civilians to flee south "in a safe manner and through organized routes," the Palestinian Authority says survivors face a far grimmer choice. "The Occupation army is forcing residents to either flee under bombardment, or (stay to) face being killed by a strike "in what resembles a circle of certain death."

Injured young man hugs body of child killed in Israeli strike on Jabalia refugee camp(Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Israeli military leaders' bloody new assault reportedly followed political leaders' approval of an extremist "General's Plan," which entails an ever-more barbarous approach to ethnic cleansing. Among its goals aimed at "changing the doctrine of war" are calls to "move from the concept of deterrence to decisiveness," hiring more "offensive" officers, and focusing on "a clear (if delusional) victory against the enemy." En route, it is hoped, "All of Gaza will starve." And so it is. On Oct. 28, in "a new way to kill children," the Knesset passed a bill banning the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the key source of humanitarian aid for 2.9 million people in some 30 refugee camps. The move to ban UNRWA, which runs 147 medical facilities and schools for 660,000 children along with providing vital food and water, came after months of Israeli efforts to discredit the group's work by charging several employees - 230 of whom Israel has murdered - with taking part in Oct. 7 attacks - a claim both the UN and EU refute for lack of evidence.

Still, after a year of blocking over 80% of humanitarian aid at every turn while denying it was - and with Gazans getting about 10% of the food they need - Israel's latest move, critics say, has hastened "the collapse of the humanitarian system." With their incursions in the north virtually blocking most access to food and water, aid agencies say almost all Gazans face "punishing food scarcity." Most are lucky to eat one skimpy meal a day, nine of 10 children lack the nutrition they need to grow, babies born healthy too often die when their ill-nourished mothers can't breastfeed, about 50,000 children under five need or will soon need urgent treatment for malnutrition, fuel shortages and high prices have caused a “crippling" lack of vital bread, and at least 37 children are dead of malnutrition. "There is nothing," says Oxfam's Mahmoud Alsaqqa, "You are talking about tens of days that they are not receiving any supplies." Says another worker, "In essence, if people don’t die from the war, they face the very real threat of dying from hunger.”

Most harrowingly, hunger, like bombs, hits mostly children. Over 16,700 children have died in Israeli air strikes, including at least 710 babies under 1, their ages listed as "zero"; many thousands more have been maimed and wounded. One aid worker mourns "an entire generation sacrificed," and warns those children who have survived to date "are running out of time." Most distressingly - at least to those who retain the moral clarity to insist that, no matter what, you don't kill children - "Kids aren't terrorists." Many warn that the war risks becoming, for a generation of occupied, traumatized, parentless, understandably enraged Palestinians, a "terrorism-creation factory" for decades to come. Bilal Salem, a photojournalist documenting the carnage in Gaza, breaks down when he describes the way children "cling to their parents, desperate for protection their parents can’t give." “We move through the ruins like ghosts, trying to capture what’s left of people’s lives," he says, "but the truth is, there’s not much left.”

Relatives of Palestinians killed in Israeli attack mourn at al-Awda Hospital (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Meanwhile, after a year of Israel systematically targeting and crippling Gaza’s health system - one war crime among many - most of its 36 hospitals are barely functional, leaving hundreds of thousands of war victims without care. According to data from Gaza's Health Ministry, Israeli forces have killed 1,151 Palestinian health workers, including at least 165 doctors, 260 nurses, 300 support personnel, 184 health associates and 76 pharmacists. More than 300 health workers have been detained, and at least two prominent doctors have died under torture in Israeli custody. Most recently, Médecins Sans Frontières staffer Hasan Suboh was among those killed in one of Israel's attacks on homes in the north; his tattered MSF vest was found under the rubble. "To see it destroyed," said MSF in a statement, "is representative of how in this war, Israel, the U.S. government, and the rest of Israel's allies have disregarded the protection of healthcare workers, and ripped the rules of war to shreds."

The ongoing attacks in northern Gaza have left already frayed hospitals yet more overwhelmed, and literally besieged. Israeli forces have barred the World Health Organization from delivering supplies or evacuating patients, even as they've attacked those trapped inside. At Kamal Adwan Hospital, surgeon Dr Mohammed Obeid says at least 30 people are dead; another 130 patients need urgent care: “There is death in all types and forms. The bombardment does not stop. The artillery does not stop. The planes do not stop.” Dr. Mohammed Salha, director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, says about 180 people - staff, patients, displaced families - are trapped inside as Israeli tanks stand guard and missiles bombard the area. Earlier, forces shelled the hospital's upper floors, killing or wounding over 40 patients and staff; the bombs set off a fire at a nearby school that took out the hospital's power. Israel ordered doctors to evacuate; they refused. “We are just waiting for death to come," said Obeid. "Or a miracle."

Boy injured in Israeli attack on Jabalia Refugee Camp is treated at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital (Photo by Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Amidst the vast devastation of Israel's genocide, survivors are often left with not just rage and sorrow, but a powerful desire to honor those lost to them, to insist on their humanity and tell their stories so "their deaths are recorded for posterity." Thus did Dr. Areej Hijazi, a Gaza obstetrician, write moving obituaries for three colleagues he studied with at Al-Azhar University whose deaths reflect the grievous depth and breadth of his community's losses. "These three dedicated physicians have been taken from us," he writes. "But their memories are alive in our hearts, and their work will continue to inspire us." Dr. Inas Mahmoud Yousef, 29, was a family doctor, mother to 3-year-old son Hassan, and pregnant with her second child when an Israeli missile hit her home last October. It killed her, Hassan, her unborn child; it also killed her husband’s parents, his brother, his wife and their two children. The only survivor was Inas’ husband, Dr. Ali al-Nweiry, an orthopedic surgeon; he had a spinal cord injury and is now a paraplegic.

Dr. Maisara Alrayyes, 28, was a member of Médecins du Monde, with a master’s degree in women's and children’s health from King’s College London. He was killed in a November airstrike with 11 relatives, including his parents and his wife, pregnant with their first child. The next day, Dr. Maisara’s two brothers couldn’t bear to leave their family under the rubble, and went to retrieve the bodies; another Israeli missile killed them. Finally, Dr. Nahed al-Harazin was head of obstetrics and gynecology at Al-Shifa Hospital. She was killed last December in an Israeli attack, along with her mother, two brothers, and their wives and children. Dr. Nahed and her family had refused Israeli orders to evacuate; she was so devoted to work that, during bombings, she'd sometimes walk the four kilometers to Al-Shifa if she had to. Once, Hijazi recalled, she reassured him when there was heavy shelling near Al-Shifa. "Don't be afriad," she told him. "Stand here next to me." "Mark the silence," writes poet Emily De Ferrari. "Mark the scream."

Body of Palestnian killed in Israeli attack on Jabalia lies in street(Photo by Hamza Z. H. Qraiqea/Anadolu via Getty Images)

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

A blogger who last year went missing from Thailand and later resurfaced in Vietnamese police custody is expected to stand trial in Vietnam later this month, his mother told Radio Free Asia.

Duong Van Thai, 42, was living in Thailand when he disappeared on April 13, 2023, in what many believe was an abduction. 

Vietnam has neither confirmed nor denied that he was abducted and taken back to Vietnam, but shortly after his disappearance, authorities announced that they had apprehended him when trying to sneak into the country illegally.

On Friday, his mother Duong Thi Lu, told RFA Vietnamese that she visited him on Thursday and had information regarding his upcoming trial.

“The trial day will be on Oct. 30, but family [members] are not invited to attend,” she said, explaining that her son and the prison guards confirmed the date of the trial.

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Thai had fled to Thailand in late 2018 or early 2019, fearing political persecution for his many posts and videos that criticized the Vietnamese government and leaders of the Communist Party on Facebook and YouTube. 

He had been granted refugee status by the United Nations refugee agency’s office in Bangkok. He was interviewed to resettle in a third country right before his disappearance near his rental home in central Thailand’s Pathum Thani province.  

By mid-2023, the Security Investigation Agency under the Ministry of Public Security announced that Thai was under investigation for anti-state charges under Article 117, a vaguely written law that rights organizations say is used to silence dissent.

If convicted, he could be sentenced to between five and 12 years in prison.

Separated by thick glass

According to Lu, she and her son, separated by two thick layers of glass, spoke through a phone. Neither her son nor the guards could provide any further information regarding the trial.

A source with knowledge of the situation provided RFA with a subpoena from the Hanoi People’s Court, which summoned an individual with 'related rights and obligations' in Thai’s case.

Signed and sealed by Judge Tran Nam Ha on Oct. 9, 2024, the document said the trial would begin at 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 30, 2024, at the headquarters of the Hanoi People’s Court.

The family has hired attorneys Le Dinh Viet and Le Van Luan, but they have not yet received the necessary permits to defend Thai. Therefore, they have not been able to access the case file or meet with their client to prepare for the defense.

RFA attempted to contact the Hanoi People’s Court to verify the information, but phone calls went unanswered.

Translated by Anna Vu. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

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

Chung Pui-kuen received one year and nine months in prison, and Patrick Lam, who received 11 months, was released after the hearing as he had already served 10 months and nine days in pretrial detention, and a judge reduced his sentence by 21 days due to his health condition. Chung served 11 months, which will be credited against his sentence.

“Hong Kong’s conviction and sentencing of former Stand News editors Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam demonstrate that the government has no intention of upholding press freedom in the city,” said Iris Hsu, CPJ’s China representative. “We are pleased that Lam is no longer behind bars, but authorities must also immediately release Chung and stop putting pressure on journalists doing their jobs.”

Hong Kong’s security bureau told CPJ by email in August that “the ideology of Stand News was localism which excluded China, and that it even became a tool to smear and vilify the Central Authorities and the HKSAR Government during the ‘anti-extradition amendment bill incidents.’”   

China was the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with 44 behind bars  at the time of CPJ’s 2023 prison census. Those held include CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award winner Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, who has been behind bars since 2020 and is facing life imprisonment if convicted of foreign collusion under Hong Kong’s national security law. 

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

“Egregious human rights violations occurring in the Uyghur region is one of the greatest, and certainly a generation-defining, human rights crises of our time,” Arfiya Eri, a 35-year-old member of Japan’s more powerful lower house of parliament, told Radio Free Asia.

“The international community, including Japan, must do its part to ensure that we do not set a precedent where such violations go unaccounted for under our watch,” she said, echoing comments she made earlier this month at the Sydney Dialogue, hosted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The annual summit in Sydney focuses on critical, emerging and cyber technologies.

In 2023, Eri was elected to Japan’s Diet, or parliament, as a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party representing a district just east of Tokyo. Raised in Japan, she is the first Japanese of Uyghur background to be elected to the Diet. 

Eri’s perspective carries personal and symbolic weight, highlighting the experiences of those directly affected by human rights abuses in Xinjiang and underscoring a moral imperative for Japan to act, Uyghur activists say.

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For the past decade, China has severely repressed the 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities who live in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, subjecting them to heavy surveillance, restricting their religious practices and detaining them in internment camps and prisons. 

Eri’s call comes amid greater demands by Uyghur activists for the international community to take concrete steps to punish China for its rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

In February 2022, Japan’s Lower House adopted a resolution expressing concern over the human rights situation in China, including the plight of the Uyghurs, and called on Beijing to take measures to address the situation. 

But Eri said nothing has really changed in Tokyo’s stance toward Beijing on this issue.

She said that Japan, “as the strongest democratic economy in Asia, and as a country that holds the values of democracy, human rights, and rule of law as fundamental to its identity, can and must do more for peace, democracy, and human rights worldwide.”

As a board member of a multiparty alliance on human rights diplomacy in Japan, she is engaging her colleagues to “do more in resolving human rights and humanitarian crises worldwide,” Eri said.

Fluent in English, Japanese and Uyghur, Eri previously worked for the Bank of Japan and the United Nations. 

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Mamatjan Juma for RFA Uyghur.

This week's bonus show includes the scandal of "Russians at War," a Western-funded Russian propaganda film that shamelessly leans on the Nuremberg Defense: “We were just following orders.” We also cover Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s visible agony as he admits the debate cost Trump the election, who's actually the greatest danger to our pets, the MAGA/Kremlin nexus fueling anti-American terrorism, and Biden’s latest effort to combat Kremlin disinformation ahead of the 2024 election.

Plus, we feature insights from Michael Podhorzer, hailed by TIME magazine as a key architect of the movement that safeguarded the 2020 election. (The Gaslit Nation community also helped!) This week’s bonus show, available to Truth-teller level subscribers ($5/month) and higher, includes his take on protecting the 2024 election. An excerpt is available for all. To hear the full episode, get all shows ad free, invites to exclusive events like our October 1st VP debate watch party in our Victory Group Chat, and more, subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit to support our independent journalism! Annual discounts available! Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation – we could not make our show without you! 

Show Notes:

Statement by Award-winning Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints, a member of the European Film Academy: https://x.com/RitornellaNYC/status/1834441325631939042

Thread: Alejandra Caraballo, a well-known civil rights attorney and LGBTQ+ activist, has highlighted a range of foreign disinformation and harassment campaigns aimed at deepening divisions within the United States.  https://x.com/Esqueer_/status/1834615931152003295

Opening Clip: GOP Polster Frank Luntz: https://x.com/harris_wins/status/1834014050218393849

Opening Clip: Conservative Chris Wallace: https://x.com/harris_wins/status/1833701778874920970

Opening Clip: Brit Hume on Fox News Saying Kamala Harris Won the Debate: https://x.com/ALT_uscis/status/1833703048339669232

Democratic Strategist Simon Rosenberg on the GOP’s Weaponized Polls: https://x.com/Acyn/status/1834411436413780445

The Kiffness x Donald Trump - Eating the Cats https://x.com/TheKiffness/status/1834585071875158502

They’re Eating the Dogs, They’re Eating the Cats – The Remix https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1834294453369991367

Andrea’s RomneyMobile Video with MoveOn.org: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0vaTJgdEt8

NEW Weekly Political Salon! Ready for meaningful discussions and community building? Join us every Monday at 4 PM ET via Zoom! Let’s share frustrations, ask burning questions, seek support, and help shape Gaslit Nation. Everyone’s voice matters—whether you’re a political junkie or just finding your voice, you belong here! Our salons start back up again on September 16 at 4 PM ET and will continue through the election. Recordings available exclusively on Patreon.

EXCITING EVENTS THIS SEPTEMBER:

Ft. Myers, Florida (Get out the vote + Mr. Jones Fundraiser!):

• Canvassing Party: Saturday, Sept. 28 Link to RSVP

• Mr. Jones Fundraiser Screening Tickets here

• Phonebank Party: Sunday, Sept. 29 Link to RSVP

New York City Live Events:

• September 16 at 7:00 PM ET: Join us at the Ukrainian Institute of America for a live taping celebrating the release of In the Shadow of Stalin. Patreon members get in FREE! Journalist Terrell Starr joins us to discuss Ukraine. Message us for guest list access! Patreon supporters get commemorative tote bags at the event! 

Upcoming Virtual Live Tapings:

• September 17 at 12 PM ET: Join investigative journalist Stephanie Baker, author of Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War.

• September 18 at 4 PM ET: Politics Girl Leigh McGowan talks about her new book, A Return to Common Sense.

• September 24 at 12 PM ET: David Pepper talks Saving Democracy and his Project 2025 art project!

• October 24 7pm ET: How to Make a Podcast workshop – we need your voice! 

All these events, access to our Victory Chat and Art is Survival Chat, ad-free shows, bonus episodes, Q&As, and more await at Patreon.com/Gaslit at the Truth-Teller level and higher. Annual discounts available!

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

By weaponizing the legal system against journalists, China has ruthlessly reneged on guarantees given to Hong Kong, which should enjoy a high degree of autonomy after the former British colony was handed back to Beijing in 1997, the groups said in a joint statement.

Former Stand News editors Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-kuen are due to be sentenced on September 26 and could be jailed for two years.

“We now await with trepidation the outcome of trials targeting senior staff from the defunct Apple Daily newspaper, especially its founder Jimmy Lai who faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars,” they added.

Read the full statement here.

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

“The guilty verdict is another nail in the coffin for Hong Kong’s press freedom,” said Iris Hsu, CPJ’s China representative. “It shows the government’s determination to destroy independent journalism in the city. Hong Kong authorities must stop persecuting the media for their critical reporting.”

The editors of the now defunct independent news site, who are out on bail, are due to be sentenced on September 26 and could be jailed for two years.

In 2021, hundreds of police raided Stand News’ offices and arrested Lam, Chung, and four others affiliated with the outlet. The delivery of the verdict in Lam and Chung’s trial was postponed multiple times since it concluded in June 2023.

Hong Kong Police Force and Chief Executive John Lee’s office did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment.  

China was the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with 44 behind bars, in CPJ’s 2023 prison census. Those held include CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award winner Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, who has been behind bars since 2020 and is facing life imprisonment if convicted of conspiring to collude with foreign forces.  

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

Prominent Chinese rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan stood trial on Wednesday in the eastern city of Suzhou for "subversion" amid tight security that saw another prominent attorney taken away by police ahead of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Beijing.

Yu and Xu were initially detained in April 2023 on suspicion of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" – a charge frequently used to target peaceful critics of the Communist Party – en route to a meeting with European Union officials in Beijing. Brussels has lodging a formal complaint over the incident.

But the pair are now being put on trial for the more serious charge of "incitement to subvert state power" at the Suzhou Intermediate People's Court. Court proceedings were observed by diplomats from 10 countries, the rights website Weiquanwang reported, without giving details.

The trial comes amid tight security across China ahead of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation which runs Sept. 4-6 in Beijing. A prominent rights attorney, Wang Yu, was detained by police in Suzhou shortly after arriving in the city on the first day of Yu's trial, her husband Bao Longjun told RFA Mandarin.

"Wang Yu called me around 7 o'clock this morning," Bao said. "She said she had just left Suzhou station [to meet with a client who is a rights activist], but police blocked him from leaving home."

"I called her again at 10 a.m. but nobody picked up, and I haven't been able to get in touch with her since," he said.

In a later phone call with RFA Mandarin, Bao said police had escorted Wang to meet up with him in the northern city of Handan, where she was released from custody.

‘Key personnel’

President Xi Jinping will deliver a keynote address at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation next week, setting out proposals for "building a high-level community with a shared future for China and Africa," Vice Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong told a news conference last week.

The security measures target critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party known as "key personnel," according to a Beijing resident who gave only the surname Guo for fear of reprisals.

"Security has been very strict in our residential community lately, and they're saying they have to guard against key personnel," Guo said. "I know something big is happening in Beijing."

According to state media and official websites, the term "key personnel" applies to anyone posing a potential threat to public order, national security or disease control and prevention policies, and means an individual is targeted for "monitoring, prevention measures and management by police."

Represented Falun Gong

Yu is a prominent rights attorney who has represented members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, as well as many fellow rights attorneys in the wake of a July 2015 crackdown on public interest law firms and associated rights activists. 

He served an earlier four-year sentence for "subversion" that ended in 2021.

Xu has repeatedly spoken out on her husband's behalf, and was threatened with prosecution after meeting with French officials in 2018 about her husband's case.

Rights groups have warned that both were at risk of torture to elicit a “confession” during detention.

Yu and Xu are being represented by defense attorneys Ge Wenxiu and He Wei at the two-day trial, Weiquanwang reported.

24-hour surveillance

Meanwhile, authorities in Beijing are holding Zhou Shifeng, the former director of the Beijing Fengrui law firm that was shuttered following the July 2015 crackdown, under close surveillance, prompting him to flee the capital for his hometown in Henan province.

"They're about to hold the China-Africa Forum in Beijing, and security guards were put on duty downstairs from Zhou Shifeng's home," his friend Zhang Ning told RFA Mandarin on Wednesday.

"There were private security guards, state security police, and officers from the local police station, five people on each eight-hour shift," Zhang said. "Shifeng had to tell them where he was going, and the state security police would drive him there and escort him."

Zhang said Zhou had eventually chosen to leave the capital and return to his hometown in Anyang city, Henan, in the hope of evading further official attention.

Police have also been closely watching independent political commentator Wu Qiang since late July, according to a friend of his who gave only the surname Li for fear of reprisals.

"There are two police vehicles stationed in the residential community where Wu Qiang lives, 24 hours a day," Li said. "They follow him whenever he goes out."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, Germany, recently gave a 20-mimute TED speech: The Tipping Points of Climate Change. He is a world-class climate scientist specializing in planetary boundary frameworks. Of note, Dr. Rockström is one climate scientist that other scientists pay attention to when he talks.

A summation of what should be categorized as “one of the most important speeches of 2024” is included herein.

It’s fair to say that he views recent abrupt Earth system changes as profoundly disturbing and far beyond the boundaries of what climate science expected. In fact, climate scientists have never seen such rapid transition of what’s normally a slow-moving Earth system now in the wrong direction so rapidly that it’s threatening the existence of key ecosystems that make today’s life possible.

In his words: “The planet is now in a place where we’ve underestimated risks. Abrupt changes are occurring way beyond realistic expectations in science.” It was fifteen years ago when he introduced a planetary boundary framework composed of nine earth system processes to determine the stability, resilience, and life support on planet Earth.

Then, ten years ago 195 countries signed the Paris ’15 climate agreement.

And in 2019, five years ago, the signatories to Paris ‘15 entered the most decisive decade of this generation where their choices this decade determine the future for all generations on Earth.

The scientific state of the planet as of August 2024:

!) We’ve reached 1.2°C mean surface temperature above pre-industrial. This is the warmest in 100,000 years.

2) We touched 1.5°C as an annual mean temperature in 2023.

3) The biggest worry is evidence of an “acceleration of warming.” Over the past 50 years, the rate of warming was 0.18C per decade from 1970 to 2010 but from 2014 onward it’s been 0.26C per decade, or +45%, and if this course continues, we’ll crash thru 2C within 20 years and hit 3C by 2200, a disastrous outcome, caused by humans.

4) But it’s much more than CO2 that’s at issue. Several things are undermining the stability of the planet. For example, over-consumption of fresh water, the 6th mass extinction of species, abusing freshwater systems with nitrogen phosphorus, etc.

A combination of factors has disrupted the Earth system by spreading chaos across the planet, droughts, floods, heat waves, disease patterns, human-caused massive storms, 40°C (104°F) life-threatening heat across all continents in the year 2023. In Mecca, 52°C (126°F) hit over 1,000 worshipers who lost their lives at the Hajj pilgrimage in June 2024. At current rates, by 2050 expect an 18% economic loss of GDP or $38 trillion per year. The abrupt change in Earth systems is starting to hurt in human social costs and economic costs.

And it is happening at only 1.2°C mean surface global temperature. But we’re on a path to 2.7C this century. Will floods, droughts, and heat waves get worse? Without immediate mitigation efforts, yes.

As far back as 3,000,000 years the planet never exceeded 2C. We’ve been living in “The Corridor of Life.” It’s all we’ve got.

Alas, the risks are even more serious. There are two major risks to the planetary system: 1) buffering capacity 2) crossing tipping points. And both are moving in the wrong direction much faster than anybody thought possible.

Buffering capacity is Earth’s ability to dampen shocks and stress; e.g., soaking up greenhouse gases that impact nature on land and ocean. Mother Earth has been very, very forgiving, as 53% of CO2 from fossil fuels have been soaked up by intact nature on land and sea. However, there is increasing scientific evidence of “widening cracks in this system.”

For example, land absorbs 31% of CO2 of greenhouse emissions, but the boreal forests in Canada and temperate mixed forests in Germany and Russia are all starting to lose carbon uptake capacity. More alarming yet, the latest science shows part of Amazon rain forest, the richest biome on terrestrial land, has already tipped and in parts of the forest it is no longer a carbon sink. It’s becoming a carbon source. Yet, the Amazon is vital to the health of the planet, playing a critical role in the global carbon cycle and water cycle and responsible for absorbing billions of tons of emissions. This unique one-of-a-kind force of nature is at risk like never before.

But what’s most cause for concern is the ocean. It absorbs 90% of the heat caused by human-induced climate change. This is well understood. But what’s really worrying is the latest data on temperature all-across the ocean. It has been getting warmer and warmer since 1980. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, in 2023 temperatures went completely off the charts at 0.4C above the warmest temps of all previous years.

What’s happening?

Scientists do not know what’s happening, but it is off the charts and continuing in that same direction in 2024.

Searching for answers, the number one candidate is “energy imbalance caused by humans.” The imbalance is enormous, for example, in one year alone the heat equivalent of 300-times the entire global electricity system is absorbed by the Earth system.

Meanwhile, scientists question whether the ocean is losing its resilience, at risk of releasing heat back into the atmosphere, thus self-amplifying the warming process. Science does not have answers for this, but something totally unprecedented in this regard may be happening right before our eyes.

Here’s what is known for certain… The ocean is sounding the alarm.

The planetary system is now at a point where we’re forced to ask the following questions: Are we are risk of pushing the planet out of the basin of attraction or the stability of the planet where we’ve been since the last ice age? Are we headed to unstoppable Hot House Earth with self-amplified warming and losing life support?

The bigger question is: What could take us there?

The answer is “crossing over tipping points” takes us there.

Crossing tipping points references the big systems (a) Greenland (b) the ice sheets (c) overturning of heat in the North Atlantic (d) the Amazon rain forest, by pushing them too far, thus tipping over from a state that helps us to a state of self-amplifying in the wrong direction. This is taking the planet from a mode of cooling and dampening to self-amplifying and warming.

There are 16 tipping systems that regulate the climate system. Five of these tipping systems are what’s referred to as ground zero in the Arctic connection thru the ocean via the AMOC of the Atlantic overturning heat all the way down to Antarctica. We depend upon this big biophysical system for stability of the planet. At what temperatures is this at risk of tipping?

For the first time, we have an answer. The average temperature at which 5 of 16 are likely to cross the tipping point is at 1.5C, including (1) the Greenland ice sheet (2) West Antarctica ice sheet (3) abrupt thawing permafrost (4) losing all tropical coral reefs and (5) collapse of the Bering Sea ice. The two major ice sheets hold 10M (33-feet) of sea level rise.

(Editorial: According to Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial for the first time in human history for a 12-month period from July 2023 to June 2024, when it averaged 1.64°C)

In all, the more science learns about the climate system, the higher science discovers the risks. We’ve got a planet that’s smack dab in the midst of a high-level danger zone.

For example, the Amazon basin risks tipping into savannah, over time. Currently, the risk is loss of the forest system; tipping can occur at 1.5-2C, assuming loss of 20-25% of forest cover. It’s currently at 17% deforestation. This is very close to a tipping point when there is no turning back.

What must be done to avoid what increasingly looks inevitable?

According to the IPCC, to stay under 1.5C (sustained annually over a few years) we need to operate within the global carbon budget. But all that remains of that budget is 200B tons of CO2. Yet, 40B tons is emitted per year giving 5 years.at current emissions rates before we hit over-budget. Moreover, the IPCC says a pathway for a safe landing is to reduce emissions by 7% per year for a safe landing to net zero by 2050.

(Editorial- that’ll take some serious work: Global CO2 emissions are blasting off to the upside and not looking back)

Status of Atmospheric CO2 (Mauna Loa):

August 2, 2024 – 424.76 ppm

August 2, 2023 – 421.52 ppm

One-year change: 3.24 ppm

1960-year change: 0.71 ppm

Meanwhile, we’ve already overloaded the climate system with gases and other problems that inevitably lead to a period of overshoot. Therefore, society must be prepared for breaching 1.5C between 2030 and 2035 or within 5-to-10 years.

There are two main messages; 1) buckle up- we know 100% for sure it means more droughts, more floods, more heat waves, more human reinforced storms, more disease over one generation, plus, in time. 2023 which was the warmest year on record will be looked back on as a mild year, 2) why would the planet come back to 1.5 after an overshoot?

The health of the planet must be kept intact. We must have a planet that can continue to absorb 50% of CO2 without crossing tipping points. But, of special note and caution, there is no holding to 1.5C by only phasing out fossil fuels. More needs to be done like coming back to nature’s biodiversity and maintaining all the planetary boundaries of nature.

We are at a pivot point for either transforming the world for the better or going over the edge… which will it be.?

We must govern the entire planet…we have the solutions; i.e., (1) rapid transition away from fossil fuels (2) transitioning to a circular business model (3) transitioning to healthy diets (4) scaling regeneration and restoration of marine systems, forests, and wetlands.

Already of serious concern, starting from 2020, emissions had to be cut in half by 2030 to stay out of trouble but halfway into the decade and emissions are steeper than ever. This is what really concerns scientists.

In summation, scientists have issued warnings for years and years, but now even those warnings look too conservative. Problematically, it is obvious that none of the prior warnings were embraced by the 195 countries that committed to mitigate emissions at Paris ’15 UN climate agreement. Since 2015, atmospheric CO2 has steadily climbed, year-by-year, never down, to all-time highs as global mean temperatures sets new records by the month.

The evidence is clear: Paris ’15 has not made a dent in global warming, which is currently cruising up, up and away, all-time records and accelerating with nothing standing in its way. In fact, since 195 countries agreed to tackle the issue, emissions and temperatures have done the opposite of what they agreed to by increasing at the fastest rates in human history.

The Paris ‘15 plans to mitigate emissions are so far behind schedule that it’s questionable whether it’s achievable. What’s to stop emissions and temperatures from getting worse and sea level from flooding coastal mega-cities? Eight of the world’s top ten mega-cities are coastal.

Solution: Opportunity is a prerequisite for a solution and 195 nations opportunistically meet once per year at a UN climate conference. Maybe they’ll adopt an agreement to control greenhouse gas emissions that’s meaningfully enforceable. Voluntary doesn’t work.

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

“There is no journalism without press freedom,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Hong Kong journalists must be allowed to defend their right to report independently without the fear of reprisal or losing their livelihood. If Hong Kong is serious about reviving its slowing economy, then it must improve the media climate swiftly to shake off a reputation as a place with ever-increasing repression.” 

In recent months, officials and pro-Beijing news outlets have heaped pressure on the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), the city’s largest trade union for journalists.

In June, Hong Kong’s security chief Chris Tang accused the HKJA of lacking legitimacy and siding with demonstrators in 2019, while China’s state-backed Global Times in a July report described the group as “disingenuous and dangerous.”

In July, HKJA’s chair Selina Cheng said she was fired from her role at The Wall Street Journal after she was elected to lead the journalists’ union. She had been the sole candidate for the position amid a growing climate of self-censorship in Hong Kong, once a beacon of press freedom in Asia.

Asked for comment, a WSJ spokesperson told CPJ in an email that the outlet made “personnel changes” but could not comment on specific individuals. The spokesperson added that the WSJ advocates for press freedom in Hong Kong, the city which had been WSJ’s Asia headquarters before they were moved to Singapore in May. 

Another foreign correspondent and a local nonprofit adviser resigned immediately after they were elected to the HKJA’s executive committee in the group’s election following Tang’s criticism of the union.

Between May 2023 and March this year, Tang wrote eight letters to various international news outlets over their editorials or opinion articles about Hong Kong, some of which he labeled “extremely misleading,” “scaremongering,” and “lies.” Four of the eight letters were sent to WSJ.

A Hong Kong government spokesman said the city’s media landscape was “as vibrant as ever” with over 200 media organizations registered with local authorities, and that press freedom and the right to join trade unions were both protected under the law.

“As always, the media can exercise their freedom of the press in accordance with the law. Their freedom of commenting on and criticizing government policies remains uninhibited as long as this is not in violation of the law,” the spokesman told CPJ in an email.

Lengthy trials

The HKJA is the main journalists’ union in Hong Kong and has been advocating for press freedom since it was founded in 1968, but has been battling dwindling membership and funds after Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong in 2020 that saw journalists arrested, jailed, and threatened. 

Among them, the then-HKJA chair Ronson Chan was sentenced to five days in jail in 2023 for obstructing a police officer while reporting.

Hong Kong passed its own homegrown national security law in March, and the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia shut its Hong Kong bureau days later over safety concerns for its reporters – joining an exodus of media and journalists who left the city since the 2020 crackdown began.

Journalists who remain point to a rising culture of self-censorship in local newsrooms and an increasing hesitation to criticize the government as Hong Kong loses its shine as a leading global financial hub. The city, once the world’s largest IPO market by value for years, saw proceeds raised from new share listings in the first half of 2024 plunge to a two-decade low.

Journalists also face lengthy delays and repeated postponements in their trials.

This includes the now-shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily’s founder Jimmy Lai, whose trial on national security charges was adjourned again last month to late November. A representative for advocacy group Reporters Without Borders who went to Hong Kong to monitor Lai’s trial was detained and deported upon arrival.

The 76-year-old has been behind bars since 2020. On August 12, Lai lost an appeal against his conviction for taking part in unauthorized anti-government protests.

Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-kuen, former editors of the now-defunct independent news outlet Stand News are expected to hear the verdict in their sedition trial in late August, after a court in April postponed the long-awaited decision. The duo were granted bail in late 2022 after being remanded in custody for nearly a year.

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

“The bipartisan legislative accomplishments of the Democratically-run Senate continue. Current law does little to actually stop members of Congress from engaging in illegal insider trading, using information they learn as our representatives for personal financial gain. This extraordinary ethical failure erodes the public’s trust in Congress and undermines our democracy.”

“We applaud Chair Peters, Senator Merkley, and members of the committee for advancing the ETHICS Act. This bill would prevent corruption and ensure that our elected officials act in the best interest of their constituents. We urge Leader Schumer to bring this critical legislation up for a vote.”

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

New Zealand should join others in calling New Caledonia’s third independence referendum invalid, one of the founders of the Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Network says.

It follows the 10th Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting (PALM10) in Tokyo last week, where New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters called for the Pacific Islands Forum to facilitate mediation in the French territory.

In December 2021, the Kanak population boycotted the referendum to mourn their dead during the covid-19 pandemic, after their calls for the referendum to be delayed was ignored.

• READ MORE: From Kanaky to Palestine, how Paris is weaponising deportations from Pacific
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

As a result, Peters said the referendum saw voter turnout collapse and almost 97 percent of voters who cast a ballot voted “No” to independence.

“Delegitimising the result, in the eyes of pro-independence forces and some neutral observers at least, was the low turnout of only 44 percent.”

Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity group’s David Small said Peters should have aligned with the Melanesian Spearhead Group which has called for a UN mission to New Caledonia.

‘Referendum delegitimised’
“He said that the third referendum was delegitimised in the eyes of some, and did not include New Zealand in that,” Small said.

“It would have been better if he had because that third referendum was indefensible.”

The group said Peters had mentioned the need for dialogue but failed to provide a clear pathway or goal.

“The Kanaky Aotearoa Solidarity Group is deeply disappointed by Peters’ insufficient support for the Kanak people’s struggle.

“His statement at PALM10 represents a missed opportunity for New Zealand to assert its commitment to justice and self-determination for all Pacific peoples.”

‘Fed by disinformation’, claims envoy
However, the top French diplomat in the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, said she had reassured Pacific Islands Forum Leaders (PIF) that attended PALM10 that France’s actions during the third and final independence referendum were fair.

Roger-Lacan spoke to RNZ Pacific from Tokyo following talks with the leaders of Papua New Guinea and Tonga.

She said there was “so much disinformation” surrounding issues in New Caledonia and that Pacific leaders had only heard one side of the story.

“For example, Mark Brown sent a letter to President [Louis] Mapou but he did not try and contact France, kind of ignoring that New Caledonia until further notice is France,” she said.

“We tried to call them, but Mark Brown would not be there to pick up the phone.

“But luckily, the Prime Minister of Tonga, the incoming chair of the PIF and everyone else was there, so that everyone was very happy to hear the information that we were providing.

“We are going to provide full information in writing because it seems that everybody ignores . . . the substance of the matter, and everybody is totally fed by disinformation and propaganda” surrounding issues in New Caledonia.

“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said at a news conference at the PALM10 meeting in Tokyo.

A spokesperson for the New Caledonia President’s office, Charles Wea, has told RNZ Pacific that the high-level group was expected to be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.

“The decision that has been made by the leaders during the meeting in Japan to send a mission to New Caledonia before the annual meeting over the of PIF around the second or third week of August,” he said.

“The objectives of the mission will be to come and listen and discuss with all parties in New Caledonia in order to [prepare] a report [for] the leaders meeting in Tonga.”

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

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

“The start of Gershkovich’s trial comes after he has already spent more than 14 months behind bars for no other reason than his work as a journalist,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities must immediately release Gershkovich, drop all charges against him, and stop prosecuting members of the press for their work.”

The investigation department of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) accused Gershkovich, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, of acting on assignment for the CIA and collecting “secret information” on a Russian tank factory in the Sverdlovsk region, where he was arrested on espionage charges on March 29, 2023, according to a press release by the Sverdlovsk Regional Court, where Gershkovich’s trial will start behind closed doors on June 26.

It is not known how long Gershkovich’s trial will last, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Gershkovich, whose detention has been extended five times since his arrest, faces up to 20 years in prison, according to the Russian criminal code. He is the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War. Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal, and the U.S. government have all denied the espionage allegations.

On June 13, the Russian prosecutor general’s office announced that Gershkovich’s indictment had been finalized and that the case against him was sent to court.

“Evan Gershkovich is facing a false and baseless charge. Russia’s latest move toward a sham trial is, while expected, deeply disappointing and still no less outrageous,” said Almar Latour, CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and Emma Tucker, editor in chief of the publication, in a statement on June 13.

On April 11, 2023, the U.S. State Department designated Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained,” which unlocked a broad government effort to free him.

Russia was the world’s fourth-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 22 behind bars, including Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S.-Russian journalist, when CPJ conducted its most recent annual prison census on December 1, 2023.

CPJ emailed the Sverdlovsk Regional Court and the Russian prosecutor general’s office but did not immediately receive any response.

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

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

— Thomas Jefferson

If America’s schools are to impart principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, they must start by respecting the constitutional rights of their students

Take the case of Lucas Hudson.

With all the negative press being written about today’s young people, it’s refreshing to meet a young person who not only knows his rights but is prepared to stand up for them.

Lucas is a smart kid, a valedictorian of his graduating class at the Collegiate Academy at Armwood High School in Hillsborough County, Fla.

So, when school officials gave Lucas an ultimatum: either remove most of his speech’s religious references from his graduation speech—in which he thanked the people who helped shape his character, reflected on how quickly time goes by, and urged people to use whatever time they have to love others and serve the God who loves us—or he would not be speaking at all, Lucas refused to forfeit his rights.

That’s when Lucas’s father turned to The Rutherford Institute for help.

In coming to Lucas’ defense, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute warned school officials that their attempts to browbeat Lucas into watering down his graduation speech could expose the school to a First Amendment lawsuit.

Thankfully for Lucas, the school backed down, and he was able to deliver his speech as written.

It doesn’t always work out so well, unfortunately.

Over the course of The Rutherford Institute’s 42-year history, we have defended countless young people who found themselves censored, silenced and denied their basic First Amendment rights, especially when they chose to exercise their rights to free speech and religious freedom.

In case after case, we encounter an appalling level of ignorance on the part of public school officials who mistakenly believe that the law requires anything religious be banned from public schools.

Here’s where government officials get it wrong: while the government may not establish or compel a particular religion, it also may not silence and suppress religious speech merely because others might take offense.

People are free to ignore, disagree with, or counter the religious speech of others, but the government cannot censor private religious speech.

Unfortunately, you can only defend your rights when you know them, and the American people—and those who represent them—are utterly ignorant about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.

As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”

More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.

As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free.

Unfortunately, the American people have existed in a technology-laden, entertainment-fueled, perpetual state of cluelessness for so long that civic illiteracy has become the new normal for the citizenry.

In fact, most immigrants who aspire to become citizens know more about national civics than native-born Americans. Surveys indicate that half of native-born Americans couldn’t correctly answer 70% of the civics questions on the U.S. Citizenship test.

Not even the government bureaucrats who are supposed to represent us know much about civics, American history and geography, or the Constitution although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic.”

For instance, a couple attempting to get a marriage license was recently forced to prove to a government official that New Mexico is, in fact, one of the 50 states and not a foreign country.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. The government’s purpose is to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.”

Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. As Thomas Paine recognized, “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”

You have no rights unless you exercise them.

Still, you can’t exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.

“If Americans do not understand the Constitution and the institutions and processes through which we are governed, we cannot rationally evaluate important legislation and the efforts of our elected officials, nor can we preserve the national unity necessary to meaningfully confront the multiple problems we face today,” warns the Brennan Center in its Civic Literacy Report Card. “Rather, every act of government will be measured only by its individual value or cost, without concern for its larger impact. More and more we will ‘want what we want, and [will be] convinced that the system that is stopping us is wrong, flawed, broken or outmoded.’”

Education precedes action.

As the Brennan Center concludes “America, unlike most of the world’s nations, is not a country defined by blood or belief. America is an idea, or a set of ideas, about freedom and opportunity. It is these ideas that bind us together as Americans and have kept us free, strong, and prosperous. But these ideas do not perpetuate themselves. They must be taught and learned anew with each generation.”

There is a movement underway to require that all public-school students pass the civics portion of the U.S. naturalization test—100 basic facts about U.S. history and civics—before receiving their high-school diploma, and that’s a start.

Lucas Hudson would have passed such a test with flying colors.

On graduation day, Lucas stepped up to the podium and delivered his uncensored valedictorian speech as written, without any interference by school censors.

As Lucas’s father relayed to The Rutherford Institute:

In the end, Lucas got to give his entire speech the way he wanted to give it, and everybody was paying attention.  Nobody got hurt.  Nothing bad happened.  It was just a young man using the First Amendment rights to speak his mind regarding his personal beliefs. [Lucas] never thought a few sentences in a speech would create such a controversy in his world, but this speech turned into a defining moment for him.  He will never be the same after this experience, but this permanent change is a good thing.  When it mattered, Lucas stood up for himself, and when those he stood up against tried to push him down, [The Rutherford Institute] came to his aide and backed him up to make it a fair fight. I am comforted to know you are defending the rights of the people.  These fights matter.  Every time you defend the rights of one person, you defend the rights of every person.  You helped my son fight for his rights against the school, and, in doing so, Hillsborough County Public Schools will think twice before infringing on the rights of future students. Your defense of Lucas became an inspiration for the students in his school and sparked a healthy and meaningful debate among the teachers, students, and parents about the value of the First Amendment and the need for limits on government control over our personal beliefs.  You are fighting for good and doing important work.  Don’t ever stop. Thank you, Rutherford Institute, for being there for my son when he needed you most.

America needs more freedom fighters like Lucas Hudson and The Rutherford Institute.

It’s up to us.

We have the power to make and break the government.

We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.

We must act—and act responsibly.

A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s our job to keep freedom alive using every nonviolent means available to us.

As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized in a speech delivered on December 5, 1955, just four days after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her seat on a Montgomery city bus: “Democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth.”

Know your rights. Exercise your rights. Defend your rights. If not, you will lose them.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

Thousands of students across Aotearoa New Zealand protested in a nationwide rally at seven universities across the country in a global day of solidarity with Palestine, calling on their universities to divest all partnerships with Israel.

A combined group of students and academic staff from the country’s two largest universities chanted “AUT take a stand” at their rally in the Hikuwai Plaza in the heart of Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Students from the neighbouring University of Auckland (UOA) also took part.

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The students carried placards such as “Educators against genocide”, “Stand for students. Stand for justice. Stand with Palestine”, “Maite Te Awa Ki Te Moana” – te reo for “From the river to the sea – Free Palestine”.

Another sign said, “No universities left in Gaza”, referring to Israeli military forces having destroyed all 12 universities in the besieged enclave during the war now in its eighth month.

“We urge all students, alumni, and staff from universities across Aotearoa to sign the University Students’ Open Letter,” said organisers.

“Let’s hold our institutions accountable, demanding they meet our calls for action and adhere to the guidelines of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

‘Gross injustices’
“Together, we can push for change and recognise Israel’s violations for what they are — gross injustices against humanity.

“Stand with us in this global movement of solidarity with Palestine.”

The rally was in support of thousands of students around the world demonstrating against the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Their aim with their universities:

* Declare and recognise Palestine as an independent and sovereign state;
* Disclose and divest all partnerships with Israel; and
* Denounce antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination.

Ali, the “voice of Free Palestine”.      Video: Café Pacific

A declaration said that the nationwide protest expressed “our unapologetic solidarity with Palestinians and our commitment to the Palestinian struggle for liberation “.

“We refuse to be silent or complicit in genocide, and we reject all forms of cooperation between our institutions and the Israeli state.

‘Major win’ at Melbourne University
Meanwhile, in Melbourne pro-Palestine protesters who occupied a university building last week called off their encampment.

Protest leaders told a media conference at the University of Melbourne that had agreed to end the protest after the institution had agreed to disclose research partnerships with weapons manufacturers.

“After months of campaigning, rallies, petitions, meetings and in recent weeks, the encampment, the University of Melbourne has finally agreed to meet an important demand of our campaign,” a spokesperson later told the ABC.

“This is a major win.”

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

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The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – May 14, 2024 Michael Cohen’s second day on witness stand at Trump hush money trial details his role in Daniels pay off. appeared first on KPFA.

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

Independent photojournalist Javier Soriano was arrested while covering a pro-Palestinian protest in New York City on March 30, 2024, according to social media posts and court records reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

In a post on social media, Soriano wrote that he was arrested by New York Police Department officers while covering a “Land Day” march from Manhattan’s City Hall Park to Union Square to commemorate a deadly 1976 protest in Israel over the seizure of Palestinian land.

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

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Nearly two years after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, investigations have offered strikingly different assessments of the botched law enforcement response, fueling frustrations and additional calls for transparency from victims’ families.

Many families had expressed hope that law enforcement officers would be held accountable after a scathing Justice Department report in January detailed “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.” At an associated news conference, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said lives could have been saved had law enforcement acted sooner. But just two months later, Uvalde residents said they felt whipsawed when a private investigator hired by the city cleared all local police officers of wrongdoing, even praising some of their actions.

Now, families anxiously await the results of the only remaining investigation: a criminal case brought by Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell, for which a grand jury began reviewing evidence in January. It will determine whether any of the nearly 400 federal, state and local officers are criminally charged.

“For the most part, we just feel like we’ve been let down,” said Jesse Rizo, an uncle to 9-year-old Jackie Cazares, who died during the May 2022 shooting.

Families continue to push for transparency but feel like they are getting little help from elected officials, Rizo said.

He added, “We feel betrayed.”

If history is any indication, bringing charges against officers will be difficult. The only known previous attempt to prosecute an officer for such inaction during a mass shooting came after the 2018 school massacre in Parkland, Florida. The effort failed last year after a jury acquitted him.

Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, said that in the 17 years she has studied mass shootings, she has never seen the level of inaction that took place in Uvalde. But Schildkraut said that, in most instances, federal protections shield law enforcement officers from prosecution for doing their jobs. Aside from that, she said, the sheer number of responding officers in Uvalde makes it difficult to single out individuals responsible for the “catastrophic failure.”

“You don't have one person in question as being part of this issue in Uvalde,” Schildkraut said. “You have 380 people potentially being in question.”

In the absence of clear answers from government officials, families have filed civil lawsuits and are supporting litigation by multiple news organizations, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, that are seeking the release of body-camera footage, police radio recordings and other records related to the shooting.

Last year, a state district court ruled that such records must be released, but the Texas Department of Public Safety appealed that ruling. DPS and Mitchell have argued that their release could interfere with any potential criminal prosecution. Neither Mitchell nor DPS responded to multiple questions.

“There is simply no reason to keep the investigative file under wraps because of a grand jury that may or may not act,” said Laura Prather, an attorney representing the news organizations in the lawsuits. (Prather also represents ProPublica in an unrelated legal matter.)

Prather said releasing the records would have “zero impact” on a possible criminal trial because evidence has already been collected and will not change.

“This is really just the fox guarding the hen house,” she said.

Below is a list of where the investigations and publicly known personnel actions stand as victims’ families await the grand jury’s decision.

At least six investigations have been launched since the shooting. They include:

• More than a month after the shooting, Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, which the FBI has rated as the national standard in active shooter training, released an initial report on the response at the request of DPS. The analysis, which relied on limited information provided by DPS, including a briefing with investigators, a timeline provided by the agency and surveillance footage, was intended to identify training gaps. Once released, the analysis drew criticism from some for reinforcing the narrative put forward by DPS that local law enforcement was mostly to blame, although hundreds of state and federal officers also rushed to the school.

• Two weeks later, on July 17, 2022, a state House committee appointed by Republican Speaker Dade Phelan released a 77-page report that provided the first official government assessment of the flawed response. The report relied on radio communications, body-camera footage and interviews lawmakers conducted with responding officers, as well as accounts collected by DPS investigators. It found an “overall lackadaisical approach” by responding officers, adding that many “were given and relied upon inaccurate information. For others, they had enough information to know better.”

• The Texas Rangers, the investigative arm of DPS, probed law enforcement officers’ actions, including those of 91 of their colleagues in the department who responded to the shooting. A DPS spokesperson told the Tribune in January 2023 that the agency’s initial investigation had been completed. A final report was later delivered to Mitchell so that she could determine whether to press charges. The report has not been publicly released.

• The DOJ conducted a federal after-action review at the behest of former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin. In January, the nation’s highest law enforcement agency released a 600-page report faulting the response. Among its biggest findings was that officers often had insufficient training, which mirrored findings from an earlier ProPublica, Tribune and FRONTLINE investigation. During a news conference announcing the probe’s results, Garland urged departments across the country to prioritize active shooter instruction.

• On March 7, the city of Uvalde released an independent review it commissioned. It found that about two dozen city police officers, three dispatchers, the fire marshal and the acting police chief largely followed policy. In the wake of those findings, Brett Cross, father of 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who was slain during the shooting, camped outside of the Uvalde Police Department for a week, demanding accountability. “There’s no moving on when you’ve lost a kid,” he said. “You can try to move forward with your new life because it's just a totally strange existence. But we still can't even do that when there's just blatant disrespect by our city and not holding these officers accountable.” Retired Austin police detective Jesse Prado, who conducted the analysis, wrote in the report that he was able to review information only as permitted by the district attorney. (The city has sued her office over that lack of access to records.) Prado declined to comment on the report.

• At Mitchell’s request, a Uvalde state district judge convened a grand jury in January to hear evidence related to law enforcement’s response to the shooting. Mitchell has said that her office conducted its own probe in addition to the DPS investigation. She has declined to say what charges may be brought and which officers could be prosecuted, citing the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. At the request of the Texas Rangers, Austin’s chief medical officer, Dr. Mark Escott, was examining whether lives could have been saved had victims received quicker treatment, but he said that Mitchell halted his probelast year and never sent him key records. Escott believed at least one person could have been saved but said that the lack of records, including autopsy reports, hindered a final determination. ProPublica, the Tribune, and The Washington Post reported in December 2022 that at least two children and a teacher who died still had a pulse when they were rescued from the school more than an hour after the shooting.

Of the nearly 400 federal, state and local officers who responded to the shooting, about a dozen have been fired, have been suspended or retired. In some cases, the actions were clearly related to the response, but the reasons are less clear for others.

• Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District: The district fired Police Chief Pete Arredondo three months after the shooting. A nearly 30-year law enforcement veteran, Arredondo was listed as incident commander on the school district’s active shooter response plan, meaning he was supposed to take control. He later told the Tribune and a state House committee that he never considered himself in charge. On the day Arredondo was fired, his attorney argued in a statement that he was being scapegoated. Nearly all of the officers who were with the district’s police department at the time of the shooting also resigned or retired.

• Uvalde Police Department: Mariano Pargas, who was the acting police chief during the shooting, retired in November 2022 before the City Council was set to vote on his termination. Pargas was the highest-ranked officer initially at the school other than Arredondo, according to the Justice Department report, which said that, as acting chief, Pargas “should have assumed a leadership role.” Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez, who was out of town during the shooting, resigned this month following the release of the city-commissioned investigation. Rodriguez cited family reasons for his decision to depart, saying in a statement that he was “not forced, asked or pressured” to quit. Many officers in Rodriguez’s department lacked sufficient training to respond to a shooting, according to a ProPublica, Tribune and FRONTLINE analysis of records and the Justice Department’s report. Additionally, five other Uvalde police officers have left the department since the shooting, according to the city’s report. None of those officers faced any publicly known discipline. A city spokesperson did not respond to questions about the report. A lawyer representing Uvalde police officers, including Pargas and Rodriguez, said that he and they declined to comment, citing reasons that included the ongoing criminal proceedings.

• Texas Department of Public Safety: The agency said in October 2022 that it had fired Sgt. Juan Maldonado. A 23-year veteran, Maldonado was one of the highest-ranking state troopers initially on the scene, arriving within four minutes of the shooting. He told investigators that he mostly stayed outside of the shooter’s wing because he was focused on maintaining the perimeter. DPS did not comment on the reasons for his termination. Another trooper, Crimson Elizondo, resigned the same year while under investigation by the department. She quickly joined the Uvalde school district police but was fired after parents raised concerns about her inaction. She was the first state trooper at the scene. Separately, Texas Ranger Ryan Kindell was suspended with pay in September 2022 for failing to perform his duties. In January 2023, the director of DPS, Col. Steve McCraw, issued Kindell a preliminary decision to terminate him. That came with an opportunity to meet with McCraw before the decision was finalized. But that meeting will not occur until the grand jury has made a decision on criminal charges, a DPS spokesperson said. Kindell is still being paid, in accordance with department policy, she said. Kindell, the other state troopers and their lawyers didn't respond to a request for comment. In addition, the agency’s two highest-ranking Texas Rangers, who did not respond to the shooting but initially oversaw the law enforcement investigation, retired in 2022. Chief Chance Collins and Assistant Chief Brian Burzynski could not be reached for comment, but Burzynski told Austin television station KXAN that Uvalde was “an important factor” in his decision.

• Customs and Border Protection: A spokesperson for the federal agency, which sent the majority of officers to the scene, said in November that an internal investigation into the response was ongoing. The agency did not respond to emails and phone calls about the current status of the probe.

Ruben Torres, the father of Khloie, a survivor who was 10 at the time of the shooting and called 911 after the gunman killed her classmates, said that unlike many other families, he does not seek criminal prosecutions of officers. But he said he wishes they would lose their licenses and be barred from a calling he feels their actions have shown they have no right to participate in.

“Go find another fucking job, another profession, because you suck at this one,” Torres said.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Lomi Kriel and Lexi Churchill.

Two wars dominate world politics today–and the U.S. is involved in both, although in very different ways. Washington enables Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza with weapons, funds and political support while providing direct military backing through airstrikes in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. In Ukraine, however, the U.S. opposes Russia’s also-genocidal attack on its culture and people, and has provided weapons, funds, and political backing to the Ukraine government. Washington’s double standards and hypocrisy are obvious to the millions of people around the world who have taken to the streets in solidarity with Palestine.

The staggering cynicism of the Biden administration–denouncing Russian missiles that destroy schools and hospitals in Ukraine while sending weapons to perform such atrocities in Gaza–may lead some activists to conclude that U.S. backing for Ukraine delegitimizes its people’s struggle against Russia. Yet a closer look shows that both Ukraine and Palestine are facing wars waged on them by powers that seek not only to subjugate them militarily but to erase them as a people with their own national identity.

Consider the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He justified the 2022 invasion by claiming that Ukraine is led by Nazis, is not a “real” country and therefore has no legitimate claim to national self-determination. Then look at the map that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu held up at the United Nations General Assembly in 2023–one that showed Israel with Gaza and the Occupied Territories on the West Bank completely erased. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov even likened Israel’s war aims in Gaza to those of Russia in Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lined up behind the U.S. in supporting Israel, which has made many in the Palestine solidarity movement skeptical about supporting Ukraine’s resistance against Russia. However, even if Zelensky backs Israel at the same time he is attacking workers’ union rights in Ukraine, the Ukrainian people have the right to defend themselves against Russian imperialist invaders and to get the weapons they need anywhere they can. Regardless of what their President says, Ukrainians are worthy of our solidarity, just as the struggles of American Black people, other oppressed groups and workers deserve international support no matter what the US President says. The same is true for Palestine: it is possible to criticize Hamas’ politics and actions while supporting the struggle for self-determination for Palestinians and the international movement to support that goal. In particular we support worker-to-worker solidarity, including aid convoys, to Palestine and Ukraine.

Both Ukrainians and Palestinians are standing against imperialist aggression. As a statement by more than 300 prominent Ukrainian activists, journalists and scholars put it:

Watching the Israeli targeting civilian infrastructure in Gaza, the Israeli humanitarian blockade and occupation of land resonates especially painfully with us. From this place of pain of experience and solidarity, we call on our fellow Ukrainians globally and all the people to raise their voices in support of the Palestinian people and condemn the ongoing Israeli mass ethnic cleansing.

We reject the Ukrainian government statements that express unconditional support for Israel’s military actions, and we consider the calls to avoid [Palestinian] civilian casualties by Ukraine’s [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] belated and insufficient. This position is a retreat from the support of Palestinian rights and condemnation of the Israeli occupation, which Ukraine has followed for decades, including voting in the UN.

For its part, the U.S. government backs Israel’s war to crush Gaza because it serves its interest to have a loyal, militarily powerful ally in the Middle East. It supported Ukraine–with plenty of strings attached–because Washington wishes to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia. This calculated approach to achieving U.S. imperialist goals lies behind the Biden administration’s hypocrisy and double standards regarding Palestine and Ukraine. Factions in the Republican Party oppose even that support, some because they share Putin’s white nationalist ultraconservatism and some because they see U.S. confrontation with China as the main foreign policy objective.

We also support many other important movements for national liberation, from Western Sahara to the struggle of the Kurds in the Middle East and the fight for self-determination in Puerto Rico, Kashmir and beyond. We focus today on Ukraine and Palestine not because these and other struggles are unimportant, but because the major contending imperialist powers have made Ukraine and Palestine a testing ground for new imperialist wars of aggression and genocide. If they succeed, it will be a blow to democracy and national self-determination everywhere.

As the situation in Gaza grows ever more desperate and another year passes in Russia’s war against Ukraine, we seek to build links between these struggles of resistance and to put forward an alternative of self-determination and justice. As many Jewish participants in the Palestine solidarity movement have pointed out, the genocide against Jews in the Second World War is being used to justify both genocide against Palestinians today and the attempt to erase Ukraine.

Never again for Jews. Never again for Palestinians. Never again for Ukrainians. Never again for anyone anywhere.

Find out more about the Ukraine Solidarity Network.

The post Stand Against Genocide and Imperialism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by CounterPunch News Service.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Just two years ago, conservative justices appointed to the Florida Supreme Court by Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly quashed efforts to move toward legalized recreational cannabis.

The court, which DeSantis has stacked with allies, issued three rulings in as many months that blocked the expansion of access in the state’s medical cannabis industry, one case relating to regulations and two to ballot initiatives. The rulings were in line with conservatives in Florida, including DeSantis and Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody, who broadly oppose pot legalization.

The current battle at hand is a ballot initiative that would legalize recreational cannabis — a newer version of the initiatives that were struck down two years ago by the judges of the state Supreme Court, including DeSantis loyalists.

This time, however, things might be different: Earlier this week, just days before dropping out of the Republican presidential primary, DeSantis conceded that the court was likely to approve the measure.

What’s different? Not DeSantis. Under the governor’s direction, Moody is fighting to keep the measure off the 2024 ballot.

Instead, what has shifted in the last two years is the appearance of new players who stand to benefit the most from the impact of legalization — especially the major GOP donors now invested in the state’s burgeoning legal cannabis industry. Several major Republican donors are invested in the tightly regulated medical cannabis companies that stand to reap windfall profits if recreational weed is legalized and they expand their businesses.

“Clearly there are economic motives here, including for Republican donors, to maintain the current system of vertical integration.”

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who has helped lead the push to legalize weed, said Republicans are changing their tune for financial reasons.

“We should absolutely legalize recreational cannabis — my preference is for the system to be more open to everyday people and allow folks to grow their own cannabis versus have to purchase it from a distributor,” Eskamani told The Intercept. “Clearly there are economic motives here, including for Republican donors, to maintain the current system of vertical integration and legalize cannabis for recreational use.”

With GOP donors coming around to legal weed, Republican apparatchiks and even judges have shifted their stances. At least two justices close to DeSantis have signaled that they might rule against the governor’s position.

Florida Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz swears in a member of the House of Representatives in Tallahassee, Fla., on Jan. 9, 2024.

Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz, a DeSantis appointee, and Justice Charles Canady, whose wife is DeSantis’s pick to be the next Florida state House speaker, suggested in oral arguments in November that they disagreed with the state’s position.

Lawyers for the state had said the ballot language was misleading because it didn’t clarify that even if Florida legalized cannabis, it would still be illegal under federal law. The judges questioned the idea. Canady said he did not understand how a voter could be confused by the ballot language as proposed. “I’m baffled by the argument,” he said. “Maybe it’s just me.”

Grand Old Pot Industry

The owners of several of the state’s biggest medical cannabis companies have contributed to myriad of Republican causes. They have given to DeSantis’s campaigns, including his state PAC, before his presidential campaign converted it to a federal committee. And they have spread their money around the party, giving to state Republicans, including the state Republican Party, state legislative campaigns, and related committees.

Among the companies whose top officials are major GOP donors is Trulieve. One of Florida’s biggest cannabis companies and one of the first to receive a coveted medical license, Trulieve is also bankrolling the ballot initiative to legalize recreational weed.

Trulieve company officials have given at least $41 million to Republicans and Democrats in Florida since 2017 and at least $25,000 to DeSantis’s state PAC in 2020. They also donated $450,000 to the state Republican Party since 2019, including $125,000 five months before DeSantis’s 2022 reelection and another $100,000 in November.

According to disclosures, Trulieve is responsible for 97 percent — $38 million — of the total funding to the political action committee sponsoring the recreational ballot initiative, Smart & Safe Florida. The PAC is run by David Bellamy, a musician and half of the country-pop duo the Bellamy Brothers.

Like all the 22 tightly regulated medical cannabis companies licensed by the state, Trulieve is already expanding production to prepare should voters approve the ballot measure.

Surterra Wellness, another of the state’s biggest medical cannabis firms, has given at least $63,000 to DeSantis state PACs since his 2018 campaign. Surterra’s former chief executive officer, William Wrigley Jr. II, of the Wrigley candy empire, gave $100,000 to the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down in June, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. His firm, Palm Beach Enterprises, gave another $100,000 on the same day. (Surterra became part of Parallel, another cannabis firm, in 2019. Wrigley left Surterra in 2021.)

Hackney Nursery, another major cannabis company in the state, gave $10,000 to DeSantis’s state PAC in 2021. Other cannabis companies including Planet 13 Holdings, Curaleaf, Cresco Labs, and its subsidiary VidaCann have also given more than $112,000 to state Republicans and GOP committees since 2018.

In oral arguments last month, the state and the Florida Chamber of Commerce argued that Canady and other justices had ruled against similar cases. During the court’s last reviews of ballot language on the issue in 2021, Canady and Muñiz were among five justices who ruled to prohibit voters from considering a ballot measure on legal cannabis. They concluded that two previous measures included misleading language and should not appear on the ballot because they failed to comply with state law. Both justices said the language currently before the court was different.

The court will decide by April whether voters can consider the measure, which would decriminalize personal cannabis use for adults and allow the state to expand licensing beyond medical facilities to allow recreational companies to produce, distribute, and sell cannabis. If approved, it would go into effect in May 2025.

For now, medical sales are exempt from Florida’s sales tax, but the levy would apply if the state were to legalize recreational. According to a financial impact analysis published in July by the Financial Impact Estimating Conference, comprised of economists from DeSantis’s office and the state legislature, legalization would boost state sales tax revenue at least $200 million a year.

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

The court is being asked by Pretoria to issue an immediate injunction ordering Israel to halt its military assault on the tiny enclave, to avoid further casualties.

Some 23,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed by Israel so far, a majority of them women and children, and many thousands more are believed to be lying under the rubble. Tens of thousands are seriously wounded. A majority of the population have lost their homes to the three-month bombing campaign.

Israel has intensively and repeatedly targeted the supposedly “safe zones” to which it has ordered Palestinian civilians to flee.

It has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s infrastructure and is blocking most aid from reaching the enclave. Famine and disease are likely to rapidly increase the death toll.

South Africa’s 84-page brief argues that Israel’s bombing campaign and siege breaches the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel expects support from western capitals because they have nearly as much to fear from a verdict against Israel as Israel itself. They have staunchly backed the killing spree, with the US and UK, in particular, sending weapons that are being used against the people of Gaza, making both potentially complicit.

According to a cable from the Israeli foreign ministry, leaked to the Axios website, Israel hopes that, given the difficulties of making a legal case in defence of its actions, diplomatic and political pressure on the court’s justices will win the day instead.

The Biden administration led the way late last week in dismissing South Africa’s detailed legal brief as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”.

That would sound patently ridiculous to western audiences had they been provided with serious coverage of Gaza. But Israel has been heavily restricting access to the enclave, while killing Palestinian journalists there at an unprecedented rate to stop their reporting.

In addition, western media are willingly – and secretly – submitting to an onerous Israeli censorship regime.

Incitement to genocide

Israel’s “strategic goal” at the court, according to the leaked cable, is to dissuade the judges from making a determination that it is committing genocide. But more pressing is Israel’s need to prevent the Hague court from ordering an interim halt to the attack.

Israeli officials will argue, Axios reports, that its sustained assault on Gaza fails to reach the threshold of genocide, which requires “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population, together with the intent to annihilate it”.

Israel will try to convince the judges that it has been seeking to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and minimise the toll on civilians.

Its argument flies in the face of the evidence South Africa has amassed.

Its brief contains nine pages of declarations by Israeli leaders showing clear genocidal intent, including statements from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, senior figures in the cabinet, President Isaac Herzog and many serving and former Israeli military commanders.

Giora Eiland, an adviser to war council minister, Benny Gantz, has called Israel’s goal the creation of “conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable”. An Israeli military spokesman stated from the outset that the aim was to inflict “maximum damage” on Gaza.

Herzog suggests the entire civilian population is a legitimate military target, while Netanyahu refers to the Palestinians as “Amalek”, a biblical enemy. In the Old Testament, God commands the Israelites to annihilate the Amalekites, putting “to death men and women, children and infants”.

One of the provisions of the Genocide Convention is an absolute prohibition on incitement to genocide. Israel’s most senior politicians and military commanders have indisputably breached that section of the convention.

A letter to Israel’s attorney general last week from a group of Israeli academics, lawyers, human rights activists and journalists underscored that point. They warned that incitement to genocide had become “an everyday matter in Israel”.

The letter added: “Normalised discourse which calls for annihilation, erasure, devastation and the like is liable to impact the manner by which soldiers [in Gaza] conduct themselves.”

Taking the gloves off

But dehumanisation – the precursor to genocide – is not the only problem.

Israel’s prosecution of what it terms a “war to eradicate Hamas” has fully met its own definition of genocide. “Conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population” were already being created long before the onslaught Israel unleashed immediately after Hamas broke out from Gaza on 7 October. Some 1,140 Israelis and other nationals were killed in the ensuing carnage.

The BBC and other media outlets keep revisiting the crimes Hamas committed on October 7, but have failed to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens that day, often in grotesque fashion.

My latest article can be read here: https://t.co/MHxdUxRrCV

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 15, 2023

Mostly forgotten in the back and forth about what is unfolding in the enclave is the context: United Nations officials warned nearly a decade ago that Israel’s siege of Gaza – now 17 years in duration – was designed to make the enclave “uninhabitable”.

In other words, Israel was precisely “creating conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”.

Even before its current, extended assault, Israel had placed severe restrictions on access to water for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants. As a direct result, overstretched aquifers under Gaza were allowing in seawater, making the enclave’s drinking water unfit for human consumption.

Food was similarly in short supply. Back in 2012, Israeli human rights groups managed to make public a secret document showing that the army had been tightly controlling food going into Gaza from 2008 onwards. As a result, two-thirds of the population was food insecure, and every 10th child was stunted by malnutrition. The aim was to induce long-term food poverty, effectively putting the population on a starvation diet.

Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza over the past 15 years – what Israel calls “mowing the grass” – destroyed many of its homes and much of the infrastructure, creating ever greater overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.

Israel’s repeated bombing of Gaza’s only power station, and its chokehold on supplying additional energy, limited electricity to a few hours a day.

The Israeli siege blocked medicines and medical equipment from entering the enclave, often making serious health conditions difficult or impossible to treat. And given the Israeli-imposed restrictions of goods in and out of Gaza, the economy was already in ruins, with nearly half the population unemployed.

Long ago, back in 2016, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Herzi Halevi, warned that the catastrophe Israel was engineering in Gaza could blow up in its face – as indeed it did on 7 October.

Israel’s three-month rampage has simply accelerated and intensified all the genocidal policies that had long been established. Hamas’s break-out simply gave Israel licence to take the gloves off.

Gaza ‘uninhabitable’

This is why the UN’s head of humanitarian affairs, Martin Griffiths, declared last week that Gaza had reached the point where it was indeed “uninhabitable”.

He added: “People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner.”

With the vast majority of the population homeless and most hospitals no longer functioning, infectious disease was spreading.

Israel’s “complete siege” policy meant aid could not get in. According to Griffiths, Israel had destroyed roads, blocked communication systems, and was shooting at UN trucks and killing aid workers.

Returning from a visit to the border crossing with Egypt, two US senators observed at the weekend that Israel had imposed unreasonable conditions creating endless delays that prevented aid from reaching the people of Gaza.

In other words, Israel has now successfully “created conditions that don’t allow the survival of the population”.

The aim of the 1948 Genocide Convention, drafted in the immediate wake of the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, was not simply to punish those who carry out genocides.

It was designed to help identify a genocide in its early stages, and create a mechanism – through the rulings of the International Court of Justice – by which it could be halted.

In other words, the purpose of South Africa’s case is not to arbitrate what happens once Israel has annihilated the Palestinians of Gaza, as far too many observers appear to imagine. It is to stop Israel from annihilating the people of Gaza before it is too late.

Based on strange logic, Israel’s supporters imply that the genocide charge is unwarranted because the real aim is not to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza but to induce them to flee.

Israeli leaders have encouraged this assumption. In an interview on Sunday, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, noted of Gaza’s population that – after being bombed, made homeless, starved and left vulnerable to disease – “hundreds of thousands will leave now”. Duplicitiously, he termed this a “voluntary” mass emigration.

But such an outcome – itself a crime against humanity – entirely depends on Egypt opening its borders to allow Palestinians to flee the killing fields. If Cairo refuses to submit to Israel’s violent blackmail, it will be Israel’s bombs, the famine it inflicted, and the lethal diseases it unleashed that decimate Gaza’s population.

The International Court of Justice must not adopt a wait-and-see approach, pondering whether Israel’s bombing campaign and siege lead to extermination or “only” ethnic cleansing. That would strip international humanitarian law of all relevance.

Line in the sand

If Israel and its western allies fail to bludgeon the court into submission, and South Africa’s case is accepted, it will not only be Israel in legal difficulties.

A genocide ruling from the court will impose obligations on other states: both to refuse to assist in Israel’s genocide, such as by providing arms and diplomatic cover, and to sanction Israel should it fail to comply.

An interim order halting Israel’s attack will serve as a line in the sand. Once made, any state that fails to act on the injunction risks becoming complicit in genocide.

That will put the West in a serious legal bind. After all, it has not just been turning a blind eye to the genocide in Gaza; it has been actively cheering it on and colluding in it.

Leaders in the UK such as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer have steadfastly opposed a ceasefire and thrown their weight behind a central pillar of Israel’s genocidal policy: the “complete siege” of Gaza that has left the population starving and facing lethal epidemics.

The British and US governments have rejected all calls to stop the flow of arms. The Biden administration has even bypassed Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including indiscriminate “dumb” bombs that are laying waste to civilian areas.

Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, has regularly been featured by British media making genocidal statements. Just last week, when an interviewer noted that she appeared to be calling for the destruction of the whole of Gaza – every school, mosque and home – she answered: “Do you have another solution?”

British and US media have given airtime to Israeli officials who openly incite genocide.

All that would have to stop immediately after a ruling. The police in western nations would be expected to investigate and the courts prosecute those inciting genocide or providing a platform for incitement.

States would be expected to deny Israel weapons and impose economic sanctions on Israel – as well as on any states that collude in the genocide.

Israeli officials would risk arrest for travelling to western countries.

Double standards

In practice, of course, none of that is likely to happen. Israel is far too important to the West – as a projection of its power into the oil-rich Middle East – to be sacrificed.

Any effort to enforce a genocide ruling through the UN Security Council will be blocked by the Biden administration.

Meanwhile, the UK, along with Canada, Germany, Denmark, France and the Netherlands, have already demonstrated how unabashed they are about their own double standards.

Weeks ago they submitted formal arguments to the International Court of Justice that Myanmar was committing genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group. Their central argument was that the Rohingya were being subjected “to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes, and the induction of essential medical services below minimum requirement”.

But none of these western states is backing South Africa’s genocide submission to the same court – even though conditions in Gaza engineered by Israel are even worse.

The truth is that a genocide ruling by the court will open up a can of worms for the West, and its readiness to accept that the provisions of international law apply to it too.

Israel has been at the forefront of efforts to unravel international law in Gaza for more than a decade. Now it is ostentatiously flaunting its perpetration of the crime of genocide, as if daring the world to stop it.

Perversely, it is reversing the very international safeguards put in place to stop a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust.

Will the West defy Israel or the court? The post-war consensus that serves as the foundation for international law – already shaken by the failure to address the West’s war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – is on the verge of complete collapse.

And no one will be happier with that outcome than the state of Israel.

• First published in Middle East Eye

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

Reporting Israel’s war on Gaza has become the greatest credibility challenge for journalists and media of our times. The latest targeted killing of an Al Jazeera photojournalist yesterday while documenting atrocities has prompted a leading analyst to appeal to global journalists to “take a stand” to protect the profession.

The killing of Hamza Dahdoud, the 27-year-old eldest son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, along with freelancer Mustafa Thuraya, has taken the death toll of Palestinian journalists to 109 (according to Al Jazeera sources while global media freedom watchdogs report slightly lower figures).

Emotional responses and a wave of condemnation has thrown the spotlight on the toll faced by reporters and their families.

• READ MORE: War on Gaza: The voices that really matter are the journalists on the ground
• Safe zones: Israel’s technologies of genocide
• This Israel has no future in the Middle East – Marwan Bishara

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son on October 25 in an earlier Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in. After mourning for several hours, Dahdouh senior was back on the job documenting the war.

Just under 20 months ago, Al Jazeera’s best known correspondent, Shireen Abu Akleh, was fatally shot by an Israeli sniper while reporting on the Occupied West Bank on 11 May 2022 in what Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned by saying this “systematic Israeli impunity is outrageous.”

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists protested about the killing of Hamza Dahdoud and Thuraya, saying it “must be independently investigated, and those behind their deaths must be held accountable”.

But few journalists would accept that this is anything other a targeted killing, as most of the deaths of Palestinian journalists in the latest Gaza war have been – a war on Palestinian journalism in an attempt to suppress the truth.

‘Nowhere safe in Gaza’
Certainly, Al Jazeera’s Palestinian-Israeli political affairs analyst and Marwan Bishara, who was born in Nazareth, has no doubts.

Speaking on the 24-hour Qatari world news channel, with at least 22,835 people killed in Gaza – 70 percent of them women and children — he said: “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and no journalists are safe . . . That tells us something.

“Killing the messenger”: Marwan Bishara’s interview with Al Jazeera — more tampering over the message? There is nothing “sensitive” in this clip.

“It is understood they are war journalists. But still the fact that more than 100 journalists were killed within three months is breaking yet another record in terms of killing children, and destruction of hospitals and schools, and the killing of United Nations staff.

“And now with 109 journalists killed this definitely requires a certain stand on the part of our colleagues around the world. Not just in a higher up institution.

“I am talking about journalists around the world – those who came to cover the World Cup in Doha for labour rights, or whatever. Those who are shedding tears in the Ukraine, those who are trying to cover Xinjiang in China [persecution of the Uyghur people], those who are claiming there are genocides happening right, left and centre – from China to Ukraine, to elsewhere.

“The same journalists who see in plain sight what is happening in Gaza should – regardless if we disagree on Israel’s motives, or Israel’s objectives in this war – must agree that the protection of journalists and their families is indispensable for our profession. And for their profession,” Bishara said.

“Journalists, and journalism associations and syndicates around the world – especially in those countries with influence on Israel, as in Europe, or the United States; journalists need to take a stand on what is going on in Gaza.

‘Cannot go unanswered’
“This cannot continue and go on unanswered. What about them?

“They’re going to be from various media outlets deploying journalists in war-stricken areas. They will have to call for the defence of journalists and their lives and their protection.

“This cannot go on like this unabated in Gaza,” Bishara added, as Israeli defence officials have warned the fighting could go on for another year.

The South African genocide case filed against Israel in the International Court of Justice seeking an interim injunction for a ceasefire and due for a hearing later this week could pose the best chance for an end to the war.

Bishara has partially blamed Western news networks for failing to report the war on Gaza accurately and fairly, a criticism he has made in the past and his articles about Israel are insightful and damning.

His call for a stand by journalists has in fact been echoed in some quarters where “media bias” has been challenged, opening divisions among media groups about fairness and balance that have become the most bitter since the climate change and covid pandemic debates when media “deniers” and “bothsideism” threatened to undermine science.

In November, more than 1500 journalists from scores of US media organisations signed an open letter calling for integrity in Western media’s coverage of “Israeli atrocities against Palestinians”.

Israel has blocked foreign press entry, heavily restricted telecommunications and bombed press offices. Some 50 media headquarters in Gaza have been hit in the past month.

Israeli forces explicitly warned newsrooms they “cannot guarantee” the safety of their employees from airstrikes. Taken with a decades-long pattern of lethally targeting journalists, Israel’s actions show wide scale suppression of speech.

In the United Kingdom, eight BBC journalists wrote an open letter in late November to Al Jazeera accusing the British broadcaster of bias in its coverage of Gaza.

A 2300-word letter claimed that the BBC had a “double standard” and was failing to tell the Israel-Palestine conflict accurately, “investing greater effort in humanising Israeli victims compared with Palestinians, and omitting key historical context in coverage”.

In Australia, another open letter by scores of journalists and the national media union MEAA called for “integrity, transparency and rigour” in the coverage of the war and joined the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), RSF and others condemning the Israeli attacks on journalists and journalism.

Leading Australian newspaper editors of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and the Nine network hit back by banning staff who had signed the letter. According to the independent Crikey, a senior Nine staff journalist resigned and readers were angrily cancelling their newspaper subscriptions over the ban.

Crikey later exposed many editors and journalists who had made junket trips to Israel and is currently keeping an inventory of these “influenced” media people — at least 77 have been named so far.

In The Daily Blog, editor Martyn Bradbury has also questioned how many New Zealand journalists have also been influenced by Israeli media massaging. Bradbury wrote:

“If Israel has sunk that much time and resource charming Australian journalists and politicians, the question has to be asked, [has] the pro-Israel lobby sent NZ journalists and politicians on these junkets and if they have, who are they?”

He wrote to the NZ Press Gallery, the “journalist union” and media companies requesting a list of names.

Pacific journalists ought to be also added to the list.

I have just returned from a two-month trip in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Australia. After a steady diet of comprehensive and well backgrounded reporting from global news channels such as TRT World News and Al Jazeera (which contrasted sharply in quality, depth and fairness with stereotypical Western coverage such as from BBC and CNN), I was stunned by the blatant bias of much of the Australian news media, particularly News Corp titles such as The Australian and The Advertiser in Adelaide.

Some examples of the bias and my commentaries can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.

A pithy indictment of much of the Western reporting — including in New Zealand — can be read in the Middle Eastern Eye and other publications.

Exposing much of the Israeli propaganda and fabricated claims since October 7 (and even from time of The Nakba in 1948), award-winning columnist Peter Osborne wrote:

“I am haunted by one other consideration. It is not just that Western commentators, columnists and chat show hosts often don’t know what they are talking about. It’s not even that they pretend they do.

“It’s the comfort of their lives. They sit in warm, pleasant studios where they earn six-figure sums for their opinions. They take no risks and convey no truths.”

A polar opposite from the Gaza carnage and the risks that courageous Palestinian journalists face daily to bear witness. They are an inspiration to the rest of us.

Dr David Robie is editor and publisher of Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

President Joe Biden has called the over 20,000 Palestinian deaths from 75 days of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip “tragic,” while Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Israel’s military will be expected to shift to a “lower-intensity phase” of its assault on the territory. Phyllis Bennis, author and fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, says Biden must move from protecting and funding Israel’s war crimes to holding Israel accountable. “There’s no way that Israel feels compelled to respond to that until the requests become requirements, and the requirements come with conditions that make a difference,” says Bennis. At the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. continues to delay and threaten to veto measures calling for a ceasefire after days of negotiations. “Not only is the U.S. isolated at the United Nations, but the Biden administration, on this issue, is massively isolated within the United States itself,” says Bennis.

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

Photograph Source: Antonio Cruz/ABr – CC BY 3.0br

This coming January 1 marks the 30th anniversary of the trade pact originally known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), now called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). It also marks the 30th anniversary of the historic Zapatista uprising in southern Mexico that denounced the pact over concerns about threats to indigenous people and food security.

Three decades later, it’s clear the Zapatistas were right.

For Mexico, NAFTA meant abandoning food sovereignty in favor of imports of basic grains, causing an increase in inequality and migration. It meant abandoning the countryside and opening borders to trade, creating a vacuum that organized crime has filled.

But, for a handful of transnational agribusiness corporations — such as Bimbo, Maseca, Monsanto, and Cargill — NAFTA has delivered huge profits.

La Jornada reports that, today, food shortages and dependence continue to worsen while imports of basic grains in Mexico are growing to unprecedented levels — accounting for more than half of consumption.

In 2020, the three North American governments renegotiated some aspects of NAFTA. But as La Jornada op-ed coordinator and columnist Luis Hernandez Navarro explained then, “in the agricultural area, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is more of the same, but worse. It is a central instrument for oligopolies to strip control of farmers’ seeds from those who have developed and cared for them for thousands of years. It’s a key piece of the neoliberal order in the region.”

Thus, under the USMCA, Mexico now has to defend itself tooth and nail against plans of the United States, supported by Canada, to flood the country with genetically modified corn.

Last August, the United States filed a claim under the treaty’s dispute settlement framework over a February 13, 2023 Mexican government decree that prohibits the use of biotech corn in tortillas and dough and phases out its use in all products for human and animal consumption.

The U.S. government charges that Mexico’s anti-GM corn policy lacks sufficient scientific basis and undermines the market access that the country agreed to in the trade treaty.

This attack on Mexican sovereignty has reactivated the trinational solidarity of Mexican, American, and Canadian organizations — a transcontinental bond strengthened in the decades since NAFTA was negotiated behind the people’s backs.

The post Mexico Must Stand up to Agribusiness Oligopolies on GM Corn Ban appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Manuel Perez-Rocha.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, with a few notable exceptions, have been critical of Israel’s ongoing campaign of genocide in Gaza. Perhaps more than any other region, they have expressed their solidarity with Palestine. Most recognize that the partnership between US imperialism and Israeli Zionism applies not only to Palestine, but also to Israel’s role as attendant to US domination in this hemisphere.

President Gabriel Boric of Chile condemned Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. The largest Palestinian population outside of the Middle East (more properly West Asia) resides in Chile. Belize and Peru, likewise, joined the denunciation of Israel. Bolivia, meanwhile, has severed diplomatic relations with Israel, while Honduras and Colombia recalled their ambassadors.

Cuba had cut relations back in 1973 and Venezuela in 2009. Except for Panama, almost all of the region’s states recognize Palestine. Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela all have sent aid to Gaza. Even Argentina, with the largest Jewish population in the region, censured Israel over its violations of international law when hostilities first flared up.

Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, addressed the General Assembly on November 23: “It is repugnant to see how, despite the cruelty…the government of the United States of America and its satellites aim to justify the unjustifiable.”

Cuba and Iran called for a global coalition to protect the rights of Palestinians on December 4, noting that the world community has failed to stop the US-backed genocide.

A month before the October 7 offensive by Hamas, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia had presciently taken the occasion of the opening of the United Nations session to call for a united world effort at achieving peace in Israel-Palestine (along with Ukraine).

Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador and ironically of Palestinian heritage, stood out in his support of Israel among the regional heads of state. That is until the militantly pro-Zionist Javier Milei assumed the presidency of Argentina two months after the most recent eruption of aggressions.

Henchman for the hegemon

The head of Colombia publicly criticizing Israel would have been unthinkable until Gustavo Petro won the presidency in 2022. The former M19 guerilla turned center-left politician was the first president from the portside in the entire history of Colombia. Pre-Petro, Colombia was known as Washington’s closest client in the region, the largest recipient of US military aid, and the only NATO global partner in Latin America.

Back in 2013, then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos reflected on his country’s status as the regional equivalent to the US’s proxy state in the Middle East. He proclaimed that he was proud that Colombia is considered the “Israel of Latin America.” Indeed, Israel had an extensive role as a henchman for the US hegemon in Colombia. The right-wing linked Colombian military and paramilitaries had long been closely intermeshed with the Zionist state.

The United Self-Defenses of Colombia (AUC in its Spanish initials), a drug trafficking cartel with a reputed 10,000-20,000 combatants at its peak, was one of the largest paramilitary groups in South America. The AUC was used by the US-allied official Colombian military to do its dirty work against left campesino and worker organizations. AUC militaries were trained by Israeli operatives. Some fifty of its most promising cadre received “scholarships” to Israel. Operating out of Guatemala, the Israeli arms supplier GIRSA sold Kalashnikov rifles and ammunition to the AUC paramilitaries in Colombia.

Another Latin American country with a closely intertwined relationship with Israel was Nicaragua before the Sandinista revolution. During the long US-backed Somoza dictatorship, Israel maintained a “special relationship” with this dynasty of ruthless autocrats. In the last days of the dictatorship, the US cut off arms supplies in response to public revulsion over atrocities committed by Somoza’s forces. Undaunted, Israel continued to supply them with military equipment. Then, when the US instigated the counterinsurgency after the successful Sandinista-led national liberation, Israel again served as supplier of the contras. Paralleling the Somoza-Israel bond were the Sandinista-Palestine ties, which continue to this day.

Israel’s partnership with US imperialism in the region

For the 31^st time in November, the UN nearly unanimously condemned the US blockade of Cuba for its devasting effects on civilians and as a violation of the UN Charter. The vote would have been unanimous except for “no” votes cast by the US and Israel along with an abstention from Ukraine. The latter, which is now essentially a US dependency, is a newcomer. But Tel Aviv, on the other hand, has consistently stood with Washington in support of its coercive and illegal economic measures that have created a dire crisis in Cuba. 

In fact, Israel has served as Washington’s partner in training reactionary death squads and supplying repressive militaries throughout the region for decades. Al Jazeera reported that Israel has trained, supplied, and advised militaries in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela in addition to Colombia and Nicaragua.

Not only was Israel entangled with the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, but it had a similar relationship to the 29-year Duvalier dynasty in Haiti, selling arms for the dictators’ repressive forces. Ditto for the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, the 17-year Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and the military dictatorships in Argentina and Brazil. Likewise, Israel was the supplier of arms and trainer of death squads in the “dirty” wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. In all these grisly ventures, Tel Aviv was joined at the hip with Washington.

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) explains that many right-leaning Latin American countries see a “close military relationship with Israel as a political asset in restoring or maintaining military and political ties with Washington.”

When reactionary regimes in the region need coercive muscle for hire, Israel is a prime choice. After right-winger David Noboa won the Ecuadorian presidency last month, he called in Israel to help restore government control of its prison system, which had been taken over by criminal gangs. Israel is also being tapped to design maximum security prisons in Ecuador.

According to Israeli psychologist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s The Israeli Connection, “Israel is generally admired in Latin American military circles for its macho image of firmness, ruthlessness, and efficiency…Latin American military establishment is where most of Israel’s friends are found and where Israel continues to cultivate support.”

A case in point is the far-right Javier Milei, who assumed the presidency of Argentina on December 10. He campaigned on the promise to realign the second-largest economy in South America with the US and Israel and away from its largest trading partners Brazil and China. On his first trip abroad after his election victory, Milei went to the US where he made what was described as a pilgrimage to the grave of an ultra-orthodox Jewish rabbi and announced his intention to convert from Catholicism to Judaism. The self-described anarcho-capitalist had accused the Argentina-born pope of being a communist and a false prophet.

Palestine’s friends and foes

Support of Israeli Zionism is a unifying issue for the fractious far right in the region, where virulent antisemites buddy up with Jewish nationalists, wrapping themselves – literally as in the case of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – in the Israeli flag.

When the now disgraced and exiled Juan Guaidó first got the nod from the US to self-declare himself “interim president” of Venezuela in 2019, he staged the announcement on a street corner in Caracas with an Israeli flag flying behind him. Just as the red flag has been adopted as the banner for the left, the pennant of Israel has become the insignia of the right. That blue and white banner can be seen at right-wing political rallies and at market stands owned by evangelicals throughout the region.

A growing evangelical Christian movement views Israel as a crucial part of their theology of the “end times” and is becoming an influential political force in the electorates of Guatemala (42%), Costa Rica (26%), Brazil (25%), Venezuela (22%), and elsewhere. The evangelicals have yet to exert a significant pro-Zionist political influence in the region. But that potential should not be discounted as events unfold.

On December 12, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a ceasefire in Gaza. Only Guatemala and Paraguay in Latin America voted “nay,” joining the US and Israel, while Uruguay, Argentina, and Panama abstained. The rest of the region united with the world supermajority of 153 nations supporting the resolution.

For now, Latin America and the Caribbean remain a bastion of support for Palestinian freedom. Palestine’s cause is popular with countries striving for independence from the US. Factors contributing to that stance are large Arab diasporas in the region, small pro-Zionist Jewish populations, and no powerful lobbies like AIPAC. For many, the struggle to assert national self-determination under US hegemony finds a kindred affinity with the cause of Palestine.

The post Why Latin America and the Caribbean Stand With Palestine appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Roger Harris.

President Gabriel Boric of Chile condemned Israeli’s attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. The largest Palestinian population outside of the Middle East (more properly West Asia) resides in Chile. Belize and Peru, likewise, joined the denunciation of Israel. Bolivia, meanwhile, has severed diplomatic relations with Israel, while Honduras and Colombia recalled their ambassadors.

Cuba had cut relations back in 1973 and Venezuela in 2009. Except for Panama, almost all of the region’s states recognize Palestine. Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela all have sent aid to Gaza. Even Argentina, with the largest Jewish population in the region, censured Israel over its violations of international law when hostilities first flared up.

Samuel Moncada, Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, addressed the General Assembly on November 23: “It is repugnant to see how, despite the cruelty…the government of the United States of America and its satellites aim to justify the unjustifiable.”

Cuba and Iran called for a global coalition to protect the rights of Palestinians on December 4, noting that the world community has failed to stop the US-backed genocide.

A month before the October 7 offensive by Hamas, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia had presciently taken the occasion of the opening of the United Nations session to call for a united world effort at achieving peace in Israel-Palestine (along with Ukraine).

Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador and ironically of Palestinian heritage, stood out in his support of Israel among the regional heads of state. That is, until the militantly pro-Zionist Javier Milei assumed the presidency of Argentina two months after the most recent eruption of aggressions.

Henchman for the hegemon

The head of Colombia publicly criticizing Israel would have been unthinkable until Gustavo Petro won the presidency in 2022. The former M19 guerilla turned center-left politician was the first president from the portside in the entire history of Colombia. Pre-Petro, Colombia was known as Washington’s closest client in the region, the largest recipient of US military aid, and the only NATO global partner in Latin America.

Back in 2013, then Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos reflected on his country’s status as the regional equivalent to the US’s proxy state in the Middle East. He proclaimed that he was proud that Colombia is considered the “Israel of Latin America.” Indeed, Israel had an extensive role as henchman for the US hegemon in Colombia. The right-wing linked Colombian military and paramilitaries had long been closely intermeshed with the Zionist state.

The United Self-Defenses of Colombia (AUC in its Spanish initials), a drug trafficking cartel with a reputed 10,000-20,000 combatants at its peak, was one of the largest paramilitary groups in South America. The AUC was used by the US-allied official Colombian military to do its dirty work against left campesino and worker organizations. AUC militaries were trained by Israeli operatives. Some fifty of its most promising cadre received “scholarships” to Israel. Operating out of Guatemala, the Israeli arms supplier GIRSA sold Kalashnikov rifles and ammunition to the AUC paramilitaries in Colombia.

Another Latin American country with a closely intertwined relationship with Israel was Nicaragua before the Sandinista revolution. During the long US-backed Somoza dictatorship, Israel maintained a “special relationship” with this dynasty of ruthless autocrats. In the last days of the dictatorship, the US cut off arms supplies in response to public revulsion over atrocities committed by Somoza’s forces. Undaunted, Israel continued to supply them with military equipment. Then, when the US instigated the counterinsurgency after the successful Sandinista-led national liberation, Israel again served as supplier of the contras. Paralleling the Somoza-Israel bond were the Sandinista-Palestine ties, which continue to this day.

Israel’s partnership with US imperialism in the region

For the 31st time in November, the UN nearly unanimously condemned the US blockade of Cuba for its devastating effects on civilians and as a violation of the UN Charter. The vote would have been unanimous except for “no” votes cast by the US and Israel along with an abstention from Ukraine. The latter, which is now essentially a US dependency, is a newcomer. But Tel Aviv, on the other hand, has consistently stood with Washington in support of its coercive and illegal economic measures that have created a dire crisis in Cuba.

 In fact, Israel has served as Washington’s partner in training reactionary death squads and supplying repressive militaries throughout the region for decades. Al Jazeera reported that Israel has trained, supplied, and advised militaries in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela in addition to Colombia and Nicaragua.

Not only was Israel entangled with the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, but it had a similar relationship to the 29-year Duvalier dynasty in Haiti, selling arms for the dictators’ repressive forces. Ditto for the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, the 17-year Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and the military dictatorships in Argentina and Brazil. Likewise, Israel was the supplier of arms and trainer of death squads in the “dirty” wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. In all these grisly ventures, Tel Aviv was joined at the hip with Washington.

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) explains that many right-leaning Latin American countries see a “close military relationship with Israel as a political asset in restoring or maintaining military and political ties with Washington.”

When reactionary regimes in the region need coercive muscle for hire, Israel is a prime choice. After right-winger David Noboa won the Ecuadorian presidency last month, he called in Israel to help restore government control of its prison system, which had been taken over by criminal gangs. Israel is also being tapped to design maximum security prisons in Ecuador.

According to Israeli psychologist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s The Israeli Connection, “Israel is generally admired in Latin American military circles for its macho image of firmness, ruthlessness, and efficiency…Latin American military establishment is where most of Israel’s friends are found and where Israel continues to cultivate support.”

Case in point is the far-right Javier Milei, who assumed the presidency of Argentina on December 10. He campaigned on the promise to realign the second largest economy in South America with the US and Israel and away from its largest trading partners Brazil and China. On his first trip abroad after his election victory, Milei went to the US where he made what was described as a pilgrimage to the grave of an ultra-orthodox Jewish rabbi and announced his intention to convert from Catholicism to Judaism. The self-described anarcho-capitalist had accused the Argentina-born pope of being a communist and a false prophet.

Palestine’s friends and foes

Support of Israeli Zionism is a unifying issue for the fractious far right in the region, where virulent antisemites buddy up with Jewish nationalists, wrapping themselves – literally as in the case of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro – in the Israeli flag.

When the now disgraced and exiled Juan Guaidó first got the nod from the US to self-declare himself “interim president” of Venezuela in 2019, he staged the announcement on a street corner in Caracas with an Israeli flag flying behind him. Just as the red flag has been adopted as the banner for the left, the pennant of Israeli has become the insignia of the right. That blue and white banner can be seen at right-wing political rallies and at market stands owned by evangelicals throughout the region.

A growing evangelical Christian movement views Israel as a crucial part of their theology of the “end times” and is becoming an influential political force in the electorates of Guatemala (42%), Costa Rica (26%), Brazil (25%), Venezuela (22%), and elsewhere. The evangelicals have yet to exert a significant pro-Zionist political influence in the region. But that potential should not be discounted as events unfold.

On December 12, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a ceasefire in Gaza. Only Guatemala and Paraguay in Latin America voted “nay,” joining the US and Israel, while Uruguay, Argentina, and Panama abstained. The rest of the region united with the world supermajority of 153 nations supporting the resolution.

For now, Latin America and the Caribbean remain a bastion of support for Palestinian freedom. Palestine’s cause is popular with countries striving for independence from the US. Factors contributing to that stance are large Arab diasporas in the region, small pro-Zionist Jewish populations, and no powerful lobbies like AIPAC. For many, the struggle to assert national self-determination under US hegemony finds a kindred affinity with the cause of Palestine.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Roger D. Harris.

The groups delivered the petition signatures to the White House on Wednesday as the world waited to see if a temporary truce would be extended. The initial four-day pause in fighting—during which Hamas freed some hostages taken last month and Israel released some Palestinian prisoners—was extended by two days on Monday, but as of press time, no new announcement had been made.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday to meet with Israel's leaders to discuss extending the temporary cease-fire, during which two American Israelis have been released—Liat Atzili and Abigail Idan, who is 4 years old.

"It's inspiring to see the groundswell of support across the United States for an immediate cease-fire to end Israel's reckless military campaign and the total blockade of Gaza."

"The resumption of fighting for Palestinians means that there's going to be no humanitarian aid that will be allowed into the Gaza Strip. It also means there are going to be more casualties and victims alongside mass destruction of civil infrastructure and civilian homes," Al Jazeera's Abu Azzoum reported from Khan Younis. Israeli forces have already killed 15,000 people in Gaza.

MoveOn executive director Rahna Epting said in a statement Wednesday that "civilians are being killed at what is being described a 'historic pace,' the majority women and children. The loss of life is devastating."

"We must end collective punishment, return those taken hostage or wrongfully imprisoned, and let in humanitarian aid," Epting argued. "The current pause is a good step toward what is needed: a permanent cease-fire."

Demand Progress foreign policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian similarly asserted that "there is no military solution to the current conflict, and further violence will continue to erode the safety and security of Palestinians and Israelis. Only a negotiated cease-fire can pave the way to addressing the current humanitarian crisis, the release of all hostages, and a long-term solution to this conflict."

Paul O'Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, pointed out that the nearly 1 million people who signed the petitions "represent just a fraction of Americans who support a cease-fire today, as reflected by poll after poll."

"They know that the way the Israeli military and Hamas have been engaging in this conflict is in violation of international law," he continued. "They know that a short pause in the fighting—even as it is welcome—will do nothing to assure that this will change."

Hassan El-Tayyab, FCNL's legislative director for Middle East policy, said that "it's inspiring to see the groundswell of support across the United States for an immediate cease-fire to end Israel's reckless military campaign and the total blockade of Gaza."

"It's critical that Congress and the administration listen to these voices, and the vast majority of U.S. citizens, who want an end to this nightmare before more innocent lives are lost," El-Tayyab added.

Since October 7, the list of members of Congress calling for a Gaza cease-fire has grown to about four dozen—though as The Intercept's Prem Thakker noted Wednesday, "a closer look at some lawmakers' statements raises questions about whether they are truly pushing for an end to the violence."

The United States already gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid—and after the Hamas attack, Biden announced his "unwavering" support for the country and asked Congress for $14.3 billion for its war effort.

Oxfam's petition declares that "President Biden and Congress must help immediately de-escalate this dangerous situation; failing to do so will unwittingly place a U.S. seal of approval on the suffering that is sure to only deepen."

El-Tayyab highlighted that "every major humanitarian organization working in Gaza is pleading with the international community to reach an immediate cease-fire and open up aid access so they can continue their vital work in the Gaza Strip."

Throughout Israel's air and ground assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have waged what some critics have called a "war against hospitals," three-quarters of which have had to shut down. Margaret Harris, a World Health Organization spokesperson, warned Tuesday that "eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system."

The civil society groups behind the petitions shared the testimony of a practicing nurse volunteering in a Gaza hospital: "We heard nearby explosions. I rushed to assist, only to discover it was my own family. Witnessing their extraction was heartbreaking. Some lost their lives, while others were wounded. They started pulling out dead children from under the rubble in front of me."

"This is the hardest war Gaza has ever experienced. It's the first I witnessed such injuries: amputations, burns, unprecedented in its severity," the nurse added. "Dealing with 60 to 70 people simultaneously in an emergency room designed for 13 or 14 beds poses a challenge. We have no choice but to treat some on the floor."

As Oxfam's Scott Paul put it Wednesday: "We need a permanent cease-fire in order to enable humanitarian organizations to deliver much-needed aid safely and securely. More violence is not going to produce the safety and human rights that Israelis and Palestinians deserve, but it is sure to immeasurably deepen suffering in Gaza."

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

In response to a question from lawmaker Ha Tae-keung during a parliament hearing on Friday, as to whether Seoul discussed the issue of Moscow’s military support for Pyongyang with Russia, Park confirmed it did. 

Park’s comments came during a question-and-answer session with Ha over communications between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the South Korean embassy in Moscow after last month’s Russia-North Korea summit.

When Ha asked how Russia briefed South Korea, Park said: “There was a dialogue on various issues to promote friendship and relations between the two countries (North Korea and Russia),” adding, “There were no specifics on military cooperation.”

Ha also repeatedly inquired if he had asked whether Russia had agreed to hand over the missile technology or weapons North Korea was demanding. Park responded: “We have asked Russia to confirm that as well.”

Park also said Seoul is paying close attention to the situation through various information sources and has its own understanding of how it is developing, but avoided specifics on the evidence of North Korea’s arms delivery to Russia.

Park’s remarks came a day after the United States and its allies issued a stern warning against Russia and North Korea as they verified an arms trade deal between the two countries that could bolster Moscow’s aggression towards Ukraine.

“The United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) strongly condemn the provision of military equipment and munitions by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the Russian Federation for use against the government and people of Ukraine,” the joint statement said Thursday, referring to the two Koreas’ formal names.

China’s repatriation of North Koreans

Separately, Park also said that he has conveyed his stance over North Korean defectors to Chinese Central Politburo member and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

“We conveyed our concerns through diplomatic channels and made it clear that North Korean defectors should not be forcibly repatriated,” Park said in the same hearing. 

While stressing the importance of relations with China, Park noted that the issue of North Korean defectors is an issue related to international human rights.

“We need to make efforts to help North Koreans go where they want to go, including to South Korea, so we are actively explaining South Korea’s position to China and urging China to play a constructive role,” he said.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch reported that Chinese authorities had forcibly returned over 500 North Koreans to the reclusive nation. The majority of these North Koreans were civilians and religious leaders attempting to travel to South Korea from China, Radio Free Asia has learned. 

Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.

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

In response to a question from lawmaker Ha Tae-keung during a parliament hearing on Friday, as to whether Seoul discussed the issue of Moscow’s military support for Pyongyang with Russia, Park confirmed it did. 

Park’s comments came during a question-and-answer session with Ha over communications between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the South Korean embassy in Moscow after last month’s Russia-North Korea summit.

When Ha asked how Russia briefed South Korea, Park said: “There was a dialogue on various issues to promote friendship and relations between the two countries (North Korea and Russia),” adding, “There were no specifics on military cooperation.”

Ha also repeatedly inquired if he had asked whether Russia had agreed to hand over the missile technology or weapons North Korea was demanding. Park responded: “We have asked Russia to confirm that as well.”

Park also said Seoul is paying close attention to the situation through various information sources and has its own understanding of how it is developing, but avoided specifics on the evidence of North Korea’s arms delivery to Russia.

Park’s remarks came a day after the United States and its allies issued a stern warning against Russia and North Korea as they verified an arms trade deal between the two countries that could bolster Moscow’s aggression towards Ukraine.

“The United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) strongly condemn the provision of military equipment and munitions by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the Russian Federation for use against the government and people of Ukraine,” the joint statement said Thursday, referring to the two Koreas’ formal names.

China’s repatriation of North Koreans

Separately, Park also said that he has conveyed his stance over North Korean defectors to Chinese Central Politburo member and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

“We conveyed our concerns through diplomatic channels and made it clear that North Korean defectors should not be forcibly repatriated,” Park said in the same hearing. 

While stressing the importance of relations with China, Park noted that the issue of North Korean defectors is an issue related to international human rights.

“We need to make efforts to help North Koreans go where they want to go, including to South Korea, so we are actively explaining South Korea’s position to China and urging China to play a constructive role,” he said.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch reported that Chinese authorities had forcibly returned over 500 North Koreans to the reclusive nation. The majority of these North Koreans were civilians and religious leaders attempting to travel to South Korea from China, Radio Free Asia has learned. 

Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.

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

Now that Rep. Mike Johnson has been elected the new speaker of the House of Representatives, Republicans in the House are talking about a return to “the business of legislating.” Workers across the country have a simple question: Legislating for whom?

If Speaker Johnson’s atrocious record is any indication, his election will mean more legislating for wealthy corporations and attacking the health, safety and well-being of America’s working people. On the issues that matter most to working people, Johnson has voted consistently with the most extreme elements of the Republican Party—and been a driving force behind resolutions that would cut trillions of dollars from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act. He has voted against infrastructure packages to put Americans back to work, and opposed legislation that raises wages and helps workers join a union, and rejected bills time and again that would compassionately protect America’s workers, including veterans and pregnant workers. Based on his track record, his election will mean legislating against working people; against LGBTQ+ rights; against reproductive health care; and against democracy.

The “business of legislating” is only worthwhile if it serves working people. The labor movement and workers all over this country will fight every day to make sure our new speaker remembers this point—and we will stand in solidarity to keep the government open, oppose drastic cuts that hurt families and improve the lives of workers all over this country.

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

We speak with Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, who is usually based in Ramallah and attended Wednesday’s anti-occupation protest in Washington, D.C., organized by American Jewish peace groups. Hass is the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. She decries the marginalization and suppression of the Israeli left, as “extreme fascists” in the Netanyahu government have whipped the Israeli public into one that is “drunk with the will to take revenge.”

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

Nothing is accomplished with an abstract support of Palestine when it’s convenient. It is when the empire’s ideological apparatuses are pumping out atrocity propaganda to dehumanize Palestinian anti-colonial resistance that support for Palestinian freedom struggles count.

The recent events have shown who is willing to stand for Palestine in the concrete, when the people grab arms to throw off their occupying force. “Decolonization,” as the great Frantz Fanon noted, “is always a violent phenomenon.”

If your purity fetish requests a bloodless anti-colonial revolution, you’ll be doomed to always condemning freedom movements of colonized peoples. You’ll be chained to playing the role of the defenders of empire from the ‘left’. Your ‘siding’ with the oppressed will always be conditioned by their being oppressed; you’ll be with them only insofar as they’re the victim, but never when they fight back and become an emancipatory force.

The Western left’s treatment of violence, like everything else, is abstract. It is unable to distinguish between particular forms of violence, between the ever-present violence of the oppressor, and the emancipatory violence of the oppressed. As Maximillien Robespierre noted, to equate the violence of the people’s struggle for freedom to the violence of their exploitative and oppressive rulers is as folly and empty as saying that “the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed.”

The key issue here is violence by whom, against whom, and towards what ends. The Palestinian uprising is a legitimate, self-defensive, violence of a people against an apartheid occupational state. It is the violence of the colonized, against the colonizers, for freedom. It is a violence that has been taken up as the last resort in a long struggle against Zionist colonialism. It is the only route the colonizers have left for Palestinians to fight for their freedom. Violence, as Fidel Castro noted, is the route the oppressors force on the people, it is taken up when all other means of struggle have been exhausted. We must remember the words of Paulo Freire, “Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.”

But their struggle for freedom is not limited to Palestinians. A defeat of Israel, the US empire’s outpost in the so-called Middle East –  the “baby child of imperialism in the Middle East” as Kwame Ture said –  would be a victory for all of humanity.

A defeat of empire in any corner of the earth, as Che Guevara noted, must be celebrated cheerfully by every communist, every person driven by a deep love of humanity. The imperialists hate humanity; their capitalist system undermines, as Marx had noted, the “original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.” The Palestinian struggle against the racist Israeli colonial US-outpost is a struggle for humanity – for the exploited and oppressed across the earth. It is a struggle for life, a struggle against the Israeli imperialist death machine.

Paradoxically, a Palestinian victory would be the conditions for the possibility of current Israeli settlers experiencing real freedom. As the Peruvian indigenous politician Dionisio Yupanqui says in his 1810 speech to the Cortes de Cádiz, “a people that oppresses another cannot be free.” The Israeli settlers cannot be free, cannot experience genuine human autonomy, insofar as their existence necessitates the oppression and extermination of Palestinian people. In their oppression of the Palestinian they stifle their capacity to live fully human lives. As Plato had long ago noted, injustice against an other corrupts the soul; the worst evil we can be inflicted with is that which we do to ourselves when we harm others. A society predicated on such disdain and obliteration of its “other” destroys itself from within. Like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Israel’s sins against the Palestinians are making a monstrosity out of the soul of its people.

Palestinian freedom must be acquired, in the words of Malcolm X, “by any means necessary.” A victorious Palestinian struggle is in the interests of all of humanity – of all working and oppressed peoples of the world.

US socialists must stand, as some comrades have been doing, with the Palestinian struggle for freedom. We must push back against Zionist genocidal efforts, and those echoed by our morally hollow capitalist politicians.

It is difficult to imagine that Israeli intelligence was truly caught by surprise. It is plausible to suspect that they have allowing events to play out so that they may intensify their genocidal war against Palestine while using atrocity propaganda to legitimize their efforts.

This does not change, however, the fact that Palestinians are up in arms fighting for their freedom. Neither does it change the fact that, like all hubris-filled Goliaths, this apartheid-colonial state – as we currently know it – may fall.

Humanity sees itself in the struggle of the Palestinians.

Because this great humanity has said: Enough! and has started walking. And their march of giants will no longer stop until they achieve true independence, for which they have already died more than once in vain. Now, in any case, those who will die, will die like those of Cuba, those of Playa Girón, will die for their only, true, inalienable independence!
– Che Guevara.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Carlos L. Garrido.

Nothing is accomplished with an abstract support of Palestine when it’s convenient. It is when the empire’s ideological apparatuses are pumping out atrocity propaganda to dehumanize Palestinian anti-colonial resistance that support for Palestinian freedom struggles count.

The recent events have shown who is willing to stand for Palestine in the concrete, when the people grab arms to throw off their occupying force. “Decolonization,” as the great Frantz Fanon noted, “is always a violent phenomenon.”

If your purity fetish requests a bloodless anti-colonial revolution, you’ll be doomed to always condemning freedom movements of colonized peoples. You’ll be chained to playing the role of the defenders of empire from the ‘left’. Your ‘siding’ with the oppressed will always be conditioned by their being oppressed; you’ll be with them only insofar as they’re the victim, but never when they fight back and become an emancipatory force.

The Western left’s treatment of violence, like everything else, is abstract. It is unable to distinguish between particular forms of violence, between the ever-present violence of the oppressor, and the emancipatory violence of the oppressed. As Maximillien Robespierre noted, to equate the violence of the people’s struggle for freedom to the violence of their exploitative and oppressive rulers is as folly and empty as saying that “the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed.”

The key issue here is violence by whom, against whom, and towards what ends. The Palestinian uprising is a legitimate, self-defensive, violence of a people against an apartheid occupational state. It is the violence of the colonized, against the colonizers, for freedom. It is a violence that has been taken up as the last resort in a long struggle against Zionist colonialism. It is the only route the colonizers have left for Palestinians to fight for their freedom. Violence, as Fidel Castro noted, is the route the oppressors force on the people, it is taken up when all other means of struggle have been exhausted. We must remember the words of Paulo Freire, “Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed.”

But their struggle for freedom is not limited to Palestinians. A defeat of Israel, the US empire’s outpost in the so-called Middle East –  the “baby child of imperialism in the Middle East” as Kwame Ture said –  would be a victory for all of humanity.

A defeat of empire in any corner of the earth, as Che Guevara noted, must be celebrated cheerfully by every communist, every person driven by a deep love of humanity. The imperialists hate humanity; their capitalist system undermines, as Marx had noted, the “original sources of all wealth – the soil and the worker.” The Palestinian struggle against the racist Israeli colonial US-outpost is a struggle for humanity – for the exploited and oppressed across the earth. It is a struggle for life, a struggle against the Israeli imperialist death machine.

Paradoxically, a Palestinian victory would be the conditions for the possibility of current Israeli settlers experiencing real freedom. As the Peruvian indigenous politician Dionisio Yupanqui says in his 1810 speech to the Cortes de Cádiz, “a people that oppresses another cannot be free.” The Israeli settlers cannot be free, cannot experience genuine human autonomy, insofar as their existence necessitates the oppression and extermination of Palestinian people. In their oppression of the Palestinian they stifle their capacity to live fully human lives. As Plato had long ago noted, injustice against an other corrupts the soul; the worst evil we can be inflicted with is that which we do to ourselves when we harm others. A society predicated on such disdain and obliteration of its “other” destroys itself from within. Like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Israel’s sins against the Palestinians are making a monstrosity out of the soul of its people.

Palestinian freedom must be acquired, in the words of Malcolm X, “by any means necessary.” A victorious Palestinian struggle is in the interests of all of humanity – of all working and oppressed peoples of the world.

US socialists must stand, as some comrades have been doing, with the Palestinian struggle for freedom. We must push back against Zionist genocidal efforts, and those echoed by our morally hollow capitalist politicians.

It is difficult to imagine that Israeli intelligence was truly caught by surprise. It is plausible to suspect that they have allowing events to play out so that they may intensify their genocidal war against Palestine while using atrocity propaganda to legitimize their efforts.

This does not change, however, the fact that Palestinians are up in arms fighting for their freedom. Neither does it change the fact that, like all hubris-filled Goliaths, this apartheid-colonial state – as we currently know it – may fall.

Humanity sees itself in the struggle of the Palestinians.

Because this great humanity has said: Enough! and has started walking. And their march of giants will no longer stop until they achieve true independence, for which they have already died more than once in vain. Now, in any case, those who will die, will die like those of Cuba, those of Playa Girón, will die for their only, true, inalienable independence!
– Che Guevara.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Carlos L. Garrido.

Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, criticized the industry for using their influence to lobby against effective climate action.

"The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis."

"The fossil fuel companies, given their record today, are far more effective at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions," he said.

Now, he warned, the sector had set its sights on the United Nations COP28 climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates with the appointment of the UAE's state oil company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber to lead the talks.

"That's just, like, taking the disguise off," Gore said, as The New York Times reported. "They've been trying to capture this process for a long time."

Gore's remarks reflect a recent shift in the tone of his climate advocacy. In a TED Talk filmed in July and released in August, Gore made many of the same arguments about fossil fuel lobbying and Al Jaber's appointment.

"The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis," he said. "The solutions are going to come from a discussion and collaboration about phasing out fossil fuels."

After listening to the talk, journalist Emily Atkin wrote in her newsletter Heated:

With this new talk, it's become clear that the man who made An Inconvenient Truth famous is no longer primarily focused on convincing people that the climate crisis is real or dangerous. He's turned a corner, and is now focused on convincing people that if they truly care about solving the climate crisis, they must turn their ire toward the fossil fuel industry—and boot them from the negotiating table before it's too late.

Gore acknowledged the shift in his thinking himself on Thursday.

"I was one of many who felt for a long time that the fossil fuel companies, or at least many of them, were sincere in saying that they wanted to be a meaningful part of bringing solutions to this crisis," Gore said, as The Independent reported. "But I think that it's now clear they are not. Fossil fuel industry speaks with forked tongue."

While he acknowledged that it was not fair to expect the industry to solve a crisis its business model encouraged it to perpetuate, "it's more than fair to ask them to get out of the way, and stop blocking the efforts of everybody else to solve this crisis," he said. "I think it's time to call them out."

Gore's remarks came as world leaders and climate activists and experts gathered in New York for the U.N. General Assembly and Secretary-General António Guterres' Climate Ambition Summit, held the day before.

He is also not the only prominent mainstream climate voice to have turned on the fossil fuel sector.

Former Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres, who helped negotiate the Paris agreement, said that she did not think the industry should be invited to COP28.

"If they are going to be there only to be obstructors, and only to put spanners into the system, they should not be there," she said at a conference Thursday organized by Covering Climate Now, as The Guardian reported.

Her remarks echoed an opinion piece she wrote for Al Jazeera in July, in which she said she was wrong to believe that the sector could be part of the solution.

"My patience ran out, and I say this with sadness," she said Thursday.

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

Sibley, 28, was a Philadelphia native who moved to New York City in 2019 for his dance career - Mayor Eric Adams: "He was coming to the city to express himself the way New Yorkers are allowed to do" - and was returning from the beach on the steamy night of July 30 when he and his friends stopped for gas at a Mobil station in Midwood, Brooklyn. As one friend fueled up, the others began dancing, or voguing - a stylized, improvisational dance of model-like poses originating in 1980s Harlem and now popular in the LGBTQ+ ballroom scene. As they danced, shirtless in the heat, to Beyoncé’s latest album Renaissance, several white teenagers emerged from the station, demanded the group of black gay dancers stop, and began hurling slurs at them like, “Get that gay shit out of here." "You don’t know us - we’re just having a good time and enjoying our lives," Sibley reportedly told the men. "It's all respect, we’re allowed to be here just like you." Surveillance video shows the two groups in a heated encounter; at some point, most of the young men left but one remained face-to-face with Sibley alongside a friend, taunting them; they began scuffling, and the teen eventually stabbed Sibley in the chest, puncturing his heart.

Sibley stumbled back, falling into the arms of Otis Peña, a close friend whose birthday the group was celebrating that day. In a tearful Facebook video hours after the attack, Peña recalled holding Sibley, his blood soaking Peña's hands and clothes as he lost "the one thing I had closest to my heart." Sibley had “the power to touch everyone’s heart," he said; his friend died "just because he's trying to let people know that we're gay, we exist....We’re not going to live in fear. We’re not going to live in hiding." Sibley's funeral last week in Philadelphia, where he grew up and performed with the dance company Philadanco, drew over 200 relatives and friends, among them Peña, who reiterated his sense of Sibley as "a beacon." "Just when I thought the world couldn't get any darker, it went black," he said in tears. "I know O'Shae would've done everything in his power to stand up for what he believed in...He encouraged us to stand out and be us. He danced with us, he made us sing, even though he sounded like a cat" - bittersweet laughs from the crowd - "but there was a beauty in it all. It was the power of brotherhood, the power of family, the power of community." "Remember, in dark times there is always light," Peña ended. "And for everyone in this room, that light is O'Shae."

Sibley's murder sent shockwaves through New York's LGBTQ community and beyond at a time when violence and threats against LGBTQ+ people have soared nationwide, with nasty rhetoric increasingly spiraling into "real world harm." While hate crimes generally, and those targeting LGBTQ people specifically, are hard to document and famously under-reported, experts cite at least 356 anti-LGBTQ "incidents" in the last year and up to 11,000 hate crimes in 2021, the most recent data available, up 12% from the year before. Calling Sibley's death "a sobering snapshot" of the hate targeting the LGBTQ community, advocates hope it can "serve as a wake-up call." "We have to call out hate for hate," said the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt. "Homophobia is homophobia, and a violent act predicated on prejudice is not a point of view. It is an act of hate." Still, even a brief, queasy look at comments about Sibley's death also serve as a wake-up call to the malevolence unleashed by today's right-wing bigotry. As in: "Stop exaggerating the special treatment for these people....Celebrate Me, Celebrate Me, Celebrate Me! It's just getting old...If they minded their own business and left kids alone they would be all right. People are getting tired of them shoving their lifestyle in their faces...You DON'T need to prance around while getting gas. Get your gas, and move on." (And otherwise, clearly, die.)

On Aug. 10, a week after Sibley's death, his assailant Dmitry Popov turned himself in. A 17-year-old high school senior who lives nearby with his Russian mother, he has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime, second-degree murder, two counts of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime, first-degree manslaughter, fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, second-degree menacing and second-degree aggravated harassment. A spokesperson for the D.A's office explained the double hate-crime counts stem from legal theories based on "intentional” violence and “depraved indifference." Popov will be tried as an adult; he faces a minimum of 20 years in prison, and has pleaded not guilty. His grandmother says he was defending himself from Sibley and his friends: "There were four of them...Strong big men and intoxicated...If he did not do it, (they) would have killed him." She also refuted initial reports the family is Muslim; she said they're Christian, her grandson isn't racist, and "he does not understand gay or not gay." "We are going to stand up for Mr. Sibley: for the right he has to dance, to be exuberant, (to not) stop dancing because it offended someone else," said D.A. Eric Gonzalez of the charges, citing today's "intolerance (of) people who are different than ourselves." "That's a right all New Yorkers share..to not (be) afraid to live your true self."

New Yorkers have, nonetheless, been shaken by the "cold-blooded murder" of "a gentle spirit (who) loved dancing" on the streets of "the best city in the world to be yourself." Still, notes a local, "Being visibly queer in this world, even in a ‘liberal’ city like New York, is like walking outside with a target on your head.” For those like Sibley who've found a safe space in the ballroom scene, voguing is seen as "the dance of our people" and "an act of resistance." Said one dancer. "We come to ballroom to be peaceful, and that’s exactly who O’Shae was." His death reverberated through a close-knit Black queer community where "we have each other's backs (because) it's so much against us already" and "it could have been so many of us....We all listen to Beyoncé. We all dance...It could have been anybody...To be Black and gay, we share one skin.” Since the murder, people have held vigils, marches, memorials, dance pits, at the gas station and Chelsea's LGBTQ+ Center, wearing orange (O'Shae's fave) and bearing signs: "Stop Hate," "Dancing Isn't A Crime - Murder Is," "We're Here, We're Queer, Get Used To It." They've wept, laughed, danced, grieved, declared, "This is our city too" and vowed to "continue to live out loud" in an America where "being Black and queer...always feels like you’re being left behind." “O’Shae Sibley should be alive," yelled activist Qween Jean at the gas station. “We are done dying in silence."

Activist Qween Jean spoke at a memorial for dancer O'Shae SibleyPhoto by Hyperallergic

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.

1. What's a book you think everyone should read and why?
2. What's a documentary everyone should watch and why?
3. What's a dramatic film everyone should watch and why?
4. Who are some historical mentors who inspire you?
5. What's the best concert you've ever been to?
6. What are some songs on your playlist for battling the dark forces?
7. Who or what inspires you to stay engaged and stay in the fight?
8. What's the best advice you've ever gotten?
9. What's your favorite place you've ever visited?
10. What's your favorite work of art and why?

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior and was authored by Andrea Chalupa & Sarah Kendzior.

Stand Up America’s spokesperson, Sarah Harris, issued the following statement:

“Tim Scott has tried to cultivate the image of a Republican who stays above the MAGA fray, but his voting record says otherwise. From championing tax giveaways to the richest Americans and corporations to opposing federal legislation to protect voting rights, Scott has built his career voting against the interests of everyday Americans in South Carolina and across the country.

“As we look ahead to the 2024 election, it’s critical that voters understand that the current roster of GOP candidates for president––Trump, Haley, DeSantis, and Scott––are all MAGA extremists who are a threat to our democracy and our freedoms. We must do everything in our power to ensure they are not sent to the Oval Office in 2025.”

Scott has long been a champion for right-wing causes. As Senator, Scott has voted in lockstep with the MAGA agenda – opposing key legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act for gun safety legislation. Scott has also been a vocal supporter of tax cuts for billionaires and federal limits on reproductive justice. Despite his “moderate” persona, he remains a strong ally of Donald Trump and continues to perpetuate MAGA misinformation and vote against the interests of the American people.

Stand Up America was founded in 2016 as a digital-first grassroots community working to resist Donald Trump and his cronies’ corruption, racism, and his threats to our democracy. From 2017 to 2021, our members made 1.7 million calls to Congress to oppose the MAGA extremist agenda.

In 2020, our volunteers contacted 25 million voters to help defeat Trump and elect Joe Biden to the presidency. During the 2022 midterms, our team helped build a firewall for democracy ahead of 2024 by electing pro-democracy Secretaries of State in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Nevada, passing key democracy ballot initiatives, and mobilizing our members to get out the vote for progressive candidates nationwide.

In 2024, our community will continue mobilizing to elect candidates who will stand up for our freedoms and our democracy.

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

With the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee back at full force with the return of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the progressive group Stand Up America declared Thursday that "it's time to subpoena Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow," a right-wing Supreme Court justice and his billionaire friend who has spent decades lavishing him with secret gifts.

Facing calls to resign, Feinstein (D-Calif.)—who plans to retire after this term—came back to Capitol Hill this week after being absent for more than two months while recovering from shingles. Although advised by her doctors "to work a lighter schedule" for now, the 89-year-old joined the Senate panel Thursday to advance stalled judicial nominations.

"Now that Sen. Feinstein has returned, Senate Judiciary Democrats have no valid excuse not to subpoena Justice Thomas and begin an aggressive investigation into the extent of his wrongdoing," argued Brett Edkins, Stand Up America's managing director for policy and political affairs.

"Now that Sen. Feinstein has returned, Senate Judiciary Democrats have no valid excuse not to subpoena Justice Thomas."

"Our system of checks and balances demands that the Senate hold the Supreme Court accountable by compelling Thomas to testify publicly," Edkins said. "Harlan Crow, Leonard Leo, and others involved in Thomas' numerous misdeeds should also be forced to answer questions from committee members."

Recent reporting by ProPublica revealed that Crow, a GOP megadonor, has treated Thomas to luxury travel, paid for his grandnephew's private school tuition, and bought and remodeled the justice's mother's home. Crow has also notably given Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee more than $450,000 in campaign cash, collectively.

Amid calls for investigation and even impeachment in response to revelations about Thomas' ties to Crow, The Washington Post reported last week that the justice's wife, Ginni Thomas, received tens of thousands of dollars from a right-wing nonprofit—and Leo used his role as an adviser to the Judicial Education Project to keep her name off the financial records.

"Our nation's highest court must be free from corruption and undue influence," said Edkins. "The Senate Judiciary Committee must use the full extent of its authority to hold Justice Thomas accountable. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty."

The panel, led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), isn't alone in probing Crow's gifts to Thomas, which the justice did not disclose. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has also set his sights on their relationship.

After the billionaire's attorney rebuffed Wyden's request for a "full accounting" of gifts he provided to Thomas' family, the senator pledged Tuesday to "send a full response to Mr. Crow's attorney in the coming days" and "discuss with my committee colleagues how best to compel answers to the questions I put forward last month, including by using any of the tools at our disposal."

Concerns about potential conflicts of interest and corruption involving the nation's top court extend beyond Thomas. Reports about Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch have also fueled calls for Congress to pass sweeping ethics rules.

Roberts last month declined Durbin's invitation to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee—and due to Feinstein's absence and Republicans' refusal to allow a temporary replacement on the panel, the chair could not subpoena the chief justice.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Bangladesh-based Rohingya who were taken to Myanmar’s Rakhine state Friday to see preparations for refugee repatriation said they wouldn’t return without citizenship rights, recognition of their Rohingya identity, and a guarantee that they could resettle in their home villages.

Twenty Rohingya and seven Bangladeshi government officials traveled to Maungdaw township in northern Rakhine, where the Burmese junta had invited them to inspect preparations as part of a China-backed effort to repatriate a small portion of the 1 million Rohingya refugees sheltering in southeastern Bangladesh. 

The delegation boarded a boat in the morning to cross the Naf River that separates Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district from Rakhine, and returned on Friday evening.

Speaking to RFA-affiliated news service BenarNews when they got back, some Rohingya delegates expressed concern about temporary housing constructed in guarded camps. The group reached Maungdaw at around 10 a.m. and visited the Nagpura, Baulibazar and Kazirbil neighborhoods where Myanmar authorities have built makeshift camps with Chinese support.

“After many years, we got the chance to see our motherland. We visited Myanmar and we saw new camps there,” Rohingya Mohammad Selim told BenarNews. “We asked them – why the camps and for whom? They replied those were for us.”

Selim said the Rohingya want to return to their original homesteads, adding they did not find the camps to be safe.

About 740,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Rakhine following a Myanmar military crackdown against the Muslim-minority group in August 2017.

“We asked them what would happen to us if we do not get citizenship or if our safety is not guaranteed. In reply they said we must take national verification cards,” he said. “If we accept the card, it will mean that we are guests, but we are the residents, not guests.”

He said if Rohingya are not granted citizenship, they would not be able to own land in Myanmar.

“We have demanded that they return our homesteads and land. We will build our own houses on our land – unless we are given citizenship and our homesteads back, we will not return,” he said.

Another Rohingya, Abu Sufian, echoed Selim’s concerns.

“We visited many villages in Maungdaw. The Myanmar government built many IDP camps in the villages. In these circumstances, I do not see any possibility of returning there,” he told BenarNews, referring to camps for internally displaced persons.

Myanmar’s military council announced that 750 plots of land in 15 villages in the northern part of Maungdaw township had been prepared for the Rohingya repatriation. It announced that returnees were to be scrutinized and accepted before temporarily being placed in refugee camp for two months. 

Rohingya Subia Khatun, who fled to Cox’s Bazar following the military crackdown, said she visited her old village.

“My green village has been converted into a fortified camp. I feel bad to see the makeshift houses. We will not go to the camps – we want to live in our villages,” Khatun told BenarNews.

Repatriation efforts

In recent months, Myanmar has shown interest in repatriating some Rohingya under a small pilot project. 

A Myanmar delegation recently visited Teknaf in Bangladesh and identified more than 1,100 Rohingya for potential repatriation. 

According to the agreement between the two countries, repatriation must be safe, voluntary and dignified. No Rohingya can be sent back forcibly.

“The arrangement is not bad at all. The enclaves are not IDP camps,” Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s refugee relief and repatriation commissioner who led the delegation to Rakhine on Friday, told BenarNews. 

“The trip was for building the confidence of the Rohingya. A team from the Myanmar government is supposed to come to discuss issues, then we will decide about the repatriation.”

Aung Kyaw Moe, who advises Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) on Rohingya issues, questioned the military council’s repatriation efforts and said the refugees should focus on getting justice for the genocide they suffered.

Hundreds of Rohingya were killed by the military during clearance operations in 2017, forcing thousands to leave. The U.S. State Department has declared this is an act of genocide. 

“The military junta has never had a good intention or goodwill toward the Rohingya. Nor will they have any in the future,” he told RFA.

Aung Kyaw Moe said the Myanmar military had failed in persuading Rohingya to return.

“They tried many times in the past, too but they did not succeed because the Rohingya have firsthand experience of the junta’s genocide against them and its inhumane violation of human rights and crimes against humanity. That’s why they will never come back unless justice is served for them.”

Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Rohingya Liberation Coalition, said China had a big role in the repatriation effort.

“The military cannot refuse China’s pressure. On the other hand, some of China’s largest investments are in Bangladesh, too,” he told RFA. “Both countries are under a lot of pressure from China, therefore, they are trying to make this repatriation project happen due to China’s pressure.”

Spokesmen for the Myanmar junta and Rakhine state did not respond to RFA requests for comment.

Kamran Reza Chowdhury for BenarNews in Dhaka contributed to this report.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Abdur Rahman for BenarNews and RFA Burmese.

In October 2022, Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the U.S., announced plans to acquire Albertsons, the second largest, for $24.6 billion—a deal that faces antitrust scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission and state regulators. Historically, antitrust concerns have focused on the damage to consumers caused by concentration in product markets that gives large firms pricing power. However, a recent wave of economic research has called attention to potential damages to workers’ bargaining power over wages stemming from concentration in labor markets. In this policy memo, we discuss these labor market implications of the proposed merger. We find that the merger of two of the largest supermarket chains in the country will increase employer concentration and reduce the wages of all grocery store workers in affected cities across the country.

Workers’ ability to negotiate better pay and working conditions rests on their capacity to switch jobs. By decreasing the number of outside options available to workers, the merger will limit competition for hiring and retaining employees, and grocery store worker earnings will fall as a result. Crucially, the wage effects we identify are solely driven by this increase in labor market concentration. If the merger also leads to layoffs or hours cuts, this would add another dimension of damage to affected workers.

Our analysis uses grocery store employment and earnings data and the specific locations of Kroger and Albertsons stores. We find that:

• The merger will lower wages for 746,000 grocery store workers in over 50 metropolitan areas of the U.S. Increased concentration will suppress wages for all grocery store workers in affected cities—not only those workers currently employed by Kroger or Albertsons;
• The total annual earnings of grocery store workers will fall by $334 million in affected metropolitan areas;
• Because Kroger and Albertsons employ about one quarter of all grocery store employees, most of the wage losses caused by the merger will be a negative externality that falls on grocery store workers employed by other firms. On average, all grocery workers in affected markets will lose about $450 per year in wage income;
• Earnings losses will be smaller in areas with a stronger union presence or a tighter labor market. In areas with weaker worker bargaining power, workers will experience larger wage declines; and
• The expected earnings losses are a pure windfall for the employers. In our analysis, wages fall solely because of a change in labor market power brought about by increased concentration. Quantitatively, this windfall represents a significant transfer of income from wages to profits: The decrease in wages is equivalent to 2% of Kroger and Albertsons’ profits or three times the companies’ CEO compensation.

Analysis

Recent research has established that concentrated labor markets can reduce worker pay. As explained in Abdela and Steinbaum (2018), much of this research estimates the expected change in average wages for a given change in employer concentration in a particular industry- or occupation-specific labor market.

This analysis uses estimates from that research and applies them to labor markets, which we define as grocery store industry employers or employees in metropolitan areas using the 4-digit North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) industry 4451, Grocery and Convenience Retailers. For each of these metropolitan area labor markets, total grocery store wage losses are calculated by estimating percent changes in employer concentration due to the merger and multiplying those concentration changes by the wage responses estimated in the research literature described above.

To estimate the percent change in concentration due to the merger, we first estimate the level difference in the metropolitan area grocery store industry concentration before and after the merger and then divide that level change by an estimate of the baseline, pre-merger concentration.

On average, each of the affected 746,000 workers will lose about $450 in annual wage income.

To estimate the pre-merger concentration levels, we choose an average pre-merger concentration level by relying on the existing research literature that calculates trends in retail or grocery concentration. Measuring concentration as the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) for 4-digit NAICS industries in commuting zones, Rinz (2022) found that the average HHI for the retail trade sector trended between 0.1 and 0.2 between 1976 and 2015. Zeballos, Dong, and Islamaj (2023) also calculated that the average HHI for two 6-digit industries associated with food retail markets in metropolitan areas rose from about 0.1 in 1990 to about 0.2 in 2019. In the following analysis, we choose a constant 0.15 as the average pre-merger concentration level in metropolitan areas for the grocery store industry. Coincidentally, 0.15 is the threshold at which the Department of Justice considers a market to be “moderately concentrated.”

In our analysis, the pre- and post-merger difference in concentration levels assumes Kroger and Albertsons act as two separate firms prior to the merger and as one single firm after the merger, and then we calculate the level change in HHI where it is possible to estimate store-level employment for each Kroger and Albertsons store. This estimate is a linear prediction based on a subset of 153 stores for which we have employment estimates, square footage data, and Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) metropolitan area-level average employment per establishment.

All told, this analysis covers 205 metropolitan areas containing 3,770 Kroger and Albertsons stores for which we can estimate store-level employment—and hence potential concentration changes—and for which we have 2022 QCEW data for baseline metropolitan area grocery store employment and earnings levels. According to the 2022 QCEW data, there are about 1.6 million grocery store workers in these cities and about 2.8 million grocery store workers nationwide. In 55 of these metropolitan areas, concentration will increase after the merger because these areas contain both Kroger and Albertsons stores.

Wages will fall on average for all grocery store workers in these areas due to the decrease in employer competition. (In other metropolitan areas, we assume there will be no wage change due to the merger because there is no estimated change in concentration.) The exact magnitude of the wage response is based on estimates published in Rinz (2022): Specifically, our analysis assumes that a 10% increase in concentration in a labor market will lower the average wage by 0.4%.

Table 1 summarizes the results. The metropolitan areas with concentration increases contain 746,000 grocery store workers, and the total annual wage bill is $26.3 billion. Across these areas, earnings-weighted average concentration will increase by 32% because of the merger. As a result, wages will decline by 1.3%, given the assumed elasticity of wages with respect to a concentration of -0.04. The Kroger-Albertsons merger will cause annual wages to fall in these affected cities by a total of $334 million. On average, each of the affected 746,000 workers will lose about $450 in annual wage income.

Because the wage losses will, on average, affect every grocery store worker in a metropolitan area where there is a merger of Kroger and Albertsons’ stores, cities with large grocery employment bases will experience particularly large losses in total wage income. Table 2 shows the 10 largest wage losses by metropolitan area. For example, the merger will cause annual grocery store wages to fall by $51 million in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, California, metropolitan area and $32 million in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin, metropolitan area

The effects described above represent average losses, and some individual workers may experience larger or smaller wage declines. In particular, the losses may be reduced in labor markets where workers have more bargaining power. Benmelech, Bergman and Kim (2022), in the case of manufacturing, and Prager and Schmitt (2021), in the case of hospital workers, show that the negative wage effects of employer concentration are larger in areas where union density is below average or right-to-work laws reduce unions’ bargaining power. For example, union coverage rates in the grocery store industry are only 8% in the South, but 20% in the Northeast.

As wage declines entail significant losses for grocery store workers, they simultaneously represent sizable parts of Kroger and Albertsons’ bottom lines. Some reports estimate total employment at Kroger and Albertsons to be about 710,000 workers, about one quarter of the total 2.8 million employees in the grocery store industry. Accordingly, a reasonable expectation for wage losses for employees at Kroger and Albertsons is one quarter of the $334 million, or about $84 million. Since Kroger’s profits were $2.3 billion and Albertsons profits were $1.5 billion in 2022, the merger-induced decline in grocery store worker wages is equivalent to about a 2% increase in Kroger and Albertsons’ profits. Because grocery profits were relatively high in 2022, the wage reductions would represent an even higher share of “normal” pre-pandemic profits. The wage losses also represent a significant windfall for company executives: Wage losses for workers at Kroger and Albertsons are about three times the size of the total CEO compensation of the two companies.

Conclusion

The Kroger and Albertsons merger will reduce the number of outside employment options available to workers and place downward pressure on grocery store workers’ wages. Based on existing empirical research showing the labor market effects of employer concentration, we find that the merger will permanently reduce the wages of 776,000 grocery store workers. Their annual earnings will fall by $334 million—about a $450 loss in annual wages per worker. If unionization rates were significantly higher in areas affected by the merger, union contracts and bargaining power could mitigate some of these losses.

For additional notes and references, see the original Economic Policy Institute report.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Ben Zipperer.

The use of “dawn raid” tactics have trampled on Immigration NZ’s “very special relationship” with the Pacific communities, says Māngere MP Aupito William Sio.

The Minister of Immigration, six Pacific MPs and the head of Immigration NZ will meet in South Auckland tomorrow, following the revelation “dawn raid” tactics are still being used in Aotearoa.

“I was appalled, really appalling, I would describe it as Ua soli le mā, (a Samoan saying that roughly translates to ‘you’re trampling on the shame’).

• READ MORE: Other Dawn Raids era reports

“Meaning the way Immigration are conducting the use of their powers of deportation have trampled on a very special relationship with our Pacific communities of Aotearoa,” said Aupito, the former Minister for Pacific Peoples.

Senior Pacific lawyer Soane Foliaki broke the news, sharing a story of his client who was taken into custody after police knocked on his door in the early hours of the morning, frightening his children.

Aupito believes it is his responsibility to hold Immigration to account with recent events demonstrating there is a complete “lack of cultural intelligence” within the ministry.

“And I think Immigration needs to address that immediately,” he said.

In a statement, an Immigration New Zealand spokesperson said it had launched a review into “out of hours compliance visits” and pressed pause on all such operations until the review had been completed.

Tongan community leader Pakilau Manase Lua is not letting this moment slip by either.

In February this year Prime Minister Chris Hipkins told RNZ Pacific he would look at an overstayer petition that was launched by Pacific community leaders almost three years ago.

To be clear, this was a petition, not just for Pasifika, but for all overstayers in Aotearoa, Pakilau said.

When Hipkins was questioned on whether he would make changes to the government’s policy, he said: “I haven’t had an opportunity to look at that issue yet but I absolutely intend to look at it.”

Three months have passed and no changes have been made.

Pakilau has been fighting for change for years. The people he has been fighting for have legitimate reasons to stay and deserve compassion, he says.

“They might have been here during the lockdowns and they couldn’t go back. Or they were here on a temporary visa and it was difficult to go back due to the eruption,” Pakilau told RNZ Pacific in February.

For him the issue is personal — his uncle Teni is a Dawn Raids survivor.

“Teni was here with us in Auckland during the Dawn Raids of the 1970s as part of a migrant work scheme that brought him and countless thousands here to NZ to do work nobody here wanted to do,” he said.

He remembers his uncle calling from Mount Eden prison to say goodbye as he was deported back to Tonga.

Apology ‘still stands’
Jacinda Ardern humbled herself and apologised for the actions of the government in the 1970s.

For many, finding out similar tactics are still being used is painful and even retraumatising.

Aupito said the stakes were very high, the legacy of a very important apology which in his view “still stands” has been “trampled on” by Immigration New Zealand.

He wants Immigration to take a good hard look at its operations.

“I’m gutted, I’m just gutted that the the Ministry of Immigration does not seem to have understood at all the principles that the Ministry of MFAT are using as guiding principles for engagement; manaakitanga, kaitiakitanga, arohatanga,” Aupito said.

He has spoken with the Minister of Immigration, the new Pacific Peoples Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister who he says all feel the same way.

While Aupito has not spoken with Ardern this week, he has confidence in Michael Wood.

“I have faith that Minister Wood is someone from South Auckland and he understands what is at stake here and he will pursue that,” he said.

Time to front up
Wood and immigration officials will front up tomorrow at a community meeting.

Overstayers are called to turn up and be heard, not to hide in the shadows afraid.

“This is our time, people. Come and have your voices heard in our own backyard of Auckland,” Tongan community leader Pakilau Manase Lua said.

“Don’t worry if you are worried about being an overstayer they need to hear you. Don’t leave it too late. We are here. We stand with you.”

Aupito has a message for the family that lawyer Foliaki acts on behalf of.

“I just apologise to the family for the behaviour of Immigration,” he said.

• The meeting is at 10am, May 6, at 25 Princes Street, Otahuhu.

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

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

“Do you know what forgiveness means? It’s a decision we make to release a person from the feelings of anger we have against them.”

These are the words of Fred Rogers. Yeah, as in “Mister Rogers.”

You know what else Fred said? Try this on for size: “The only thing evil can’t stand is forgiveness.”

It might be the second-greatest quote about forgiveness I’ve ever heard. Do I really need to tell you the first-greatest?

Just in case: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

So, let’s back up and talk about offering and asking for forgiveness.

We cannot control how everything plays out, but we can control our part in it. This means accepting those seemingly inevitable moments when we will be in a position to either receive or deliver a sincere, heartfelt apology.

The 4 Elements of an Authentic Apology

1. Request Permission to Apologize
This is the forgotten first step. Regardless of how severe (or not) you perceive your transgression to be, you do not have agency when it comes to forgiveness. The wronged person has every right to reject any apology attempt until they are ready.

2. Take Full Responsibility: Show Remorse
“I’m sorry you feel that way” is not remorseful. You don’t apologize for someone else’s feelings. “If anyone was offended, I apologize”? Again: zero contrition. Hold yourself accountable. Let them know that you realize you hurt them. Show regret. Express guilt. Clearly articulate why you are apologizing.

3. No Excuses: Promise to Make Amends and That You Won’t Do it Again
It’s time to put your remorse into an actionable context. That means NO excuses. Communicate with the wronged person to learn how you can best make amends for your affront. Make up for a mistake and do the work to be certain it does not re-occur. Display your remorse in word and deed.

4. Formally Ask for Forgiveness
Like step #1, this one is often neglected. But forgiveness is a dialogue. After the first three steps have been satisfactorily completed, do not assume you’ve automatically been forgiven. Ask for forgiveness and be ready to enter into an open discussion of what that means. Be aware that it doesn’t always mean a reconciliation is imminent.

And speaking of forgiveness. With conflict on the rise and emotions in turmoil, you may also find yourself on the other end of an apology. Pro tip: That part of the process is not as simple as saying “Fine” or “It’s okay.”

5 Ways to Be a Forgiving Person

1. Understand It

Forgiving someone is not the same as condoning their actions. It also doesn’t mean things will or even can return to where they were. Forgiveness is your way to release yourself (and possibly others) from the unhealthy burden of anger and resentment.

2. Honor What You Feel

If you’ve been hurt, let yourself feel that pain. As the victim, you must work through this process before you can calmly address apologies and forgiveness.

3. Choose Your Words and Actions Wisely

Resist the urge to speak disparagingly to others about the person who hurt you. Perhaps more importantly, reject any thoughts of revenge. To be in the position to forgive requires us to eschew behaviors that stem from our reflexive urges.

4. Operate From a Place of Humility

How many times in your life have you messed up and had to face the music? How many more times will something like this occur? Keep this in mind when interacting with any person who has crossed you. Again, you don’t have to condone their actions but you can hold space to understand and forgive them.

5. Release the Need For Blame 

An authentic apology has been offered. You have opted to accept it and forgive the other person. Now… let it go. The time for blame has passed. In fact, if you find yourself still holding a grudge, it is quite possible you’re the one who needs to do some serious introspection.

This brings us back to good, evil, and “Forgive them, Father.”

Check out the short clip above (2.5 minutes). Father Stu makes a good point. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

It’s a deal. You might even say it’s a covenant.

We want our debts forgiven. Cool. But whose debt are we forgiving? If this sounds too hard, if you’re stuck on who wronged you — especially since March 2020 — remember, this is a spiritual war. And, to come full circle, the only thing evil can’t stand is forgiveness.

We’ve got the blueprint. The covenant was offered a long time ago. Now, how ready are we to hold up our end and say “They know not what they do”?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

President Joe Biden made his reelection campaign official Tuesday morning as he evoked the threat to foundational and hard-won rights and freedoms posed by the increasingly fascist Republican Party.

"Every generation has a moment where they have had to stand up for democracy. To stand up for their fundamental freedoms," Biden declared in an early morning post to social media. "I believe this is ours."

While Biden had long said he would seek another term, he states in his campaign's kickoff video that the key to his run will be warding off any possible victory from the increasingly anti-democratic GOP, including his predecessor Donald Trump, the GOP's leading contender, or other hopefuls like Nikki Haley, who launched her campaign in February, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to throw his hat in the ring later this year.

Biden accused "MAGA extremists" around the country for their persistent assault against "bedrock freedoms" and liberal democracy while they also threaten cuts on Social Security, eviscerate reproductive choice and abortion care, ban books, attack the LGBTQI+ community, and actively work to make voting for Americans.

"When I ran for President four years ago, I said we were in the battle for the soul of America," Biden says in the launch video. "And we still are."

"If President Biden is serious about defeating the fascists and right-wing nominee in 2024, he must run on a progressive platform and use the final year of this term to rack up more wins for our generation."

With the Republicans hungry to retake both Congress and the White House, Biden warns that now "is not time to be complacent" and that "this is our moment" to stand up to defend the nation and the values it claims to value.

Not wholly unchallenged on the Democratic side, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have launched presidential campaigns to offer an alternative to the incumbent. On the Republican side, Trump's popularity—despite a recent criminal indictment and his role in triggering the January 6. insurrection effort on the U.S. government in 2021—remains the overall favorite to win the GOP nomination.

While the Democratic National Committee will clear a path for Biden, progressives disappointed in the president's failures or shortcomings, including repeated failures to live up to his commitments on climate, say Biden cannot afford to ignore them if he hopes to beat Trump for a second time.

"If he wants to win," said the youth-led Sunrise Movement on Tuesday, "he must energize the young voters who have been carrying the Democratic Party since 2018. He can't take our generation for granted."

In a statement, Sunrise's executive director Varshini Prakash said: "Let's be clear—President Biden ran and won in 2020 by mobilizing our generation on the promise of bold, Green New Deal-style climate plans, and it's how Democrats won again in 2022 after passing the Inflation Reduction Act."

"If President Biden is serious about defeating the fascists and right-wing nominee in 2024, he must run on a progressive platform and use the final year of this term to rack up more wins for our generation," Prakash added. "The steps backward on policy that the administration has taken—especially on Willow and drilling projects—make our job of getting young people out to vote all the more difficult, and this is a fight we can't afford to lose."

According to Sean Eldridge, president and founder of the advocacy group Stand Up America, said Biden helped "save American democracy by defeating Donald Trump in 2020, and he did it again by opposing MAGA extremists in last year’s midterm elections."

It's very possible Biden could face off against Trump in the general election again, said Eldridge.

"The future of our democracy will once again be on the ballot in 2024," he said. "As the Republican field is beginning to take shape, voters should be alarmed by the election deniers, January 6 enablers, and other anti-democratic politicians throwing their hats into the ring. Our community of nearly two million members is ready to mobilize in 2024 to support democracy defenders up and down the ballot."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jon Queally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Crump, another civil rights attorney who is representing Yarl's family, told the Kansas City Star that prosecutors should charge the man regardless of Missouri's pro-gun laws.

"You can't just shoot people without having justification when somebody comes knocking on your door and knocking on your door is not justification," Crump said. "This guy should be charged."

As Common Dreamsreported last year, a study by public health researchers found that stand your ground laws that went into into effect between 2000 and 2016 were linked to an "abrupt and sustained" 11% spike in gun deaths.

Missouri saw one of the most dramatic increases in gun deaths over those years, with a 31% rise.

Civil rights advocate Bernice King noted that justice is "a continuum" and won't be secured in Yarl's case just through criminal charges for the suspect.

Justice, she said, "means the man who did this should be charged AND we need to work for the legislative and heart change to prevent these tragedies."

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

New revelations about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's business dealings with Texas Republican megadonor Harlan Crow on Thursday led to intensified calls for the right-wing justice's impeachment, as ProPublicareported on a previously undisclosed real estate transaction between the two men.

A week after the first report on Crow's funding of Thomas' travel was published, ProPublica revealed that Crow purchased two vacant lots and the home where Thomas' mother lived, all owned by Thomas and his family, in Savannah, Georgia in 2014.

The purchase, completed for $133,363, marked "the first known instance of money flowing from Crow to the Supreme Court justice," the news outlet reported.

Federal disclosure laws state that in most cases, Supreme Court justices and other government officials must disclose real estate transactions over $1,000.

"Thomas did not disclose the purchase as required by law. He must be impeached," said Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett.

Exceptions to the law include cases in which someone sells "property used solely as a personal residence of the reporting individual or the individual's spouse," but legal experts confirmed to ProPublica that the sale of the Savannah properties did not meet the criteria for any of the exemptions.

"He needed to report his interest in the sale," Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel at watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told ProPublica.

The news outlet's previous reporting on Crow and Thomas revealed that the billionaire paid for Thomas to travel on a Bombardier Global 5000 jet, to Crow's ranch in Texas, and to his private resort in the Adirondacks—all of which was left off federal disclosure forms.

"Given the role Crow has played in subsidizing the lifestyle of Thomas and his wife, you have to wonder if this was an effort to put cash in their pockets," Canter said of the real estate sale in Savannah.

Crow released a statement on Thursday saying he had purchased Thomas' family home—which he still owns and where the justice's mother continued living until at least 2020, according to public records—to "one day create a public museum at the Thomas home dedicated to telling the story of our nation's second black Supreme Court Justice."

"I approached the Thomas family about my desire to maintain this historic site so future generations could learn about the inspiring life of one of our greatest Americans," said Crow.

Critics suggested the statement raised more questions than it answered.

"Clarence Thomas previously said that free flights on Harlan Crow's private jet counted as 'hospitality' and thus did not have to be disclosed," saidSlate journalist Mark Joseph Stern. "That made no sense, but this is even worse. How is a covert real estate deal that enriched Thomas 'hospitality'? This is pretty brazen."

Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs for Stand Up America, said the new reporting offers clear evidence that "Justice Thomas' vote on the Supreme Court is bought and paid for by right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow."

"Crow is not, as Thomas claims, his 'dearest friend' so much as his corrupt benefactor," said Edkins. "Thomas is unfit to serve on any court, let alone our nation's highest court. His failure to disclose his close financial dealings with a GOP billionaire has single-handedly destroyed what little credibility this MAGA Court had left."

"Failing to hold Justice Thomas accountable, hold hearings, and pass a Supreme Court code of ethics," he added, would be a dereliction of duty by federal lawmakers.

Demand Justice released polling data showing that 70% of Americans would back a federal investigation into alleged ethics violations of Supreme Court justices.

"This shady land deal amounts to a payoff of a sitting Supreme Court justice, plain and simple. Senate Democrats need to announce a thorough investigation into the details of Clarence Thomas' ties to Harlan Crow, including calling witnesses to get to the bottom of their financial relationship and Thomas' apparent lawbreaking," said Demand Justice executive director Brian Fallon.

"[Former Supreme Court Justice] Abe Fortas resigned under threat of impeachment for less," he noted, "and while impeachment may not be possible here with Republicans in control of the House, Thomas needs to face real accountability for his likely illegal behavior. Polls show that if Senate Democrats act, the public will strongly support them."

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

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott drew widespread condemnation from legal experts after he said Saturday that he is "working as swiftly" as the law allows to pardon a man who was convicted the previous day of murdering a racial justice protester in 2020.

Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, was convicted by an Austin jury on Friday of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, an armed Air Force veteran participating in a Black Lives Matter protest in the Texas capital following George Floyd's murder by Minneapolis police.

After tweeting that he "might have to kill a few people on my way to work" as an Uber driver, Perry accelerated his car into a crowd of racial justice protesters in downtown Austin on July 25, 2020. As Foster approached Perry's vehicle carrying—but not aiming—an AK-47 rifle in accordance with Texas law, Perry opened his window and shot Foster four times in the chest and abdomen with his .357 Magnum pistol. When asked by police if Foster had pointed his rifle at him, Perry admitted that he did not, but said that "I didn't want to give him a chance to aim at me."

After an eight-day trial and 17 hours of deliberation, the Austin jury rejected Perry's claim of self-defense. However, Abbott tweeted that "Texas has one of the strongest 'stand your ground' laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney," a reference to Travis County District Attorney José Garza, a Democrat.

"Unlike the president or some other states, the Texas Constitution limits the governor's pardon authority to only act on a recommendation by the Board of Pardons and Paroles," Abbott wrote. "Texas law does allow the governor to request the Board of Pardons and Paroles to determine if a person should be granted a pardon. I have made that request and instructed the Board to expedite its review."

"I look forward to approving the board's pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk," he added.

Rick Cofer, a partner at the Austin law firm of Cofer & Connelly, noted that "Garrett Foster was killed protesting the killing of George Floyd," and that "in 2022, the Texas Board of Pardons unanimously recommended that Floyd be pardoned for a drug charge, in which a crooked cop planted drugs."

"Facing pressure, Abbott got the board to yank the recommendation," Cofer added. "Now the man who killed Garrett Foster, while Foster protested George Floyd's murder, will be pardoned. George Floyd's pardon is still stuck with the Board of Pardons. If a fiction author wrote this, no one would believe it."

David Wahlberg, a former Travis County criminal court judge, said he has never heard of a case in which a governor sought to pardon a convicted felon before their verdict was appealed.

"I think it's outrageously presumptuous for someone to make a judgment about the verdict of 12 unanimous jurors without actually hearing the evidence in person," Wahlberg told the Austin American-Statesman.

Wendy Davis, an attorney and former Texas state lawmaker and Fort Worth city councilmember, called Abbott's move "nothing more than a craven political maneuver."

"Our democracy is imperiled when any branch of government moves to usurp another," Davis argued on Twitter. "And it's happening all over this country on a regular basis."

Abbott's announcement came less than 24 hours after Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson sharply criticized the governor on his show, claiming that "there is no right of self-defense in Texas."

The governor also faced pressure from right-wing figures including Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of murder and other charges after he shot dead two racial justice protesters and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.

Abbott has also threatened to "exonerate" 19 Austin police officers indicted for attacking and injuring Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, asserting that "those officers should be praised for their efforts, not prosecuted."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be impeached by the U.S. House in the wake of ProPublica reporting that exposed the judge's billionaire-funded luxury vacations.

"This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of corruption is shocking—almost cartoonish. Thomas must be impeached," Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who demanded Thomas' resignation last year amid a separate ethics scandal, wrote on Twitter.

"Barring some dramatic change," she added, "this is what the Roberts court will be known for: rank corruption, erosion of democracy, and the stripping of human rights."

The new investigative reporting revealed that Thomas has taken trips funded by billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow "virtually every year" for more than two decades.

Thomas did not disclose any of the vacations, which experts and watchdog organizations said is likely a violation of federal law.

"Thomas failed even to follow the obscenely weak ethics standards on the books for Supreme Court justices," Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, said in a statement.

"If the information in this report is correct—and there is no reason at all to believe that it isn't—and if the point of the United States judiciary is still to neutrally interpret and uphold the law, then it is obvious what should happen next," said Hauser. "The House of Representatives must immediately draw articles of impeachment against Justice Clarence Thomas."

This isn't the first time Thomas has come under fire for failing to adhere to federal disclosure requirements, which were recently strengthened for Supreme Court justices and other federal judges thanks to a pressure campaign led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

Between 1997 and 2007, Thomas failed to disclose income that his wife, right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, received from the conservative Heritage Foundation and other sources. The justice amended his disclosures in 2011, claiming he misunderstood the filing instructions—an explanation that watchdogs met with skepticism.

And while ProPublica's reporting offered the most detailed look yet at Thomas' relationship with Crow, the ties between the two were spotlighted more than a decade ago by The New York Times, which noted in a 2011 story the billionaire "has done many favors for the justice and his wife... helping finance a Savannah library project dedicated to Justice Thomas, presenting him with a Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass, and reportedly providing $500,000 for Ms. Thomas to start a Tea Party-related group."

"These actions are part of a pattern of corruption that betrays Thomas' deep-seated contempt for the rule of law."

Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and political affairs for the progressive advocacy group Stand Up America, said Thursday that Thomas' repeated failure to disclose gifts from Crow represents "a shameless abuse of power and an affront to the American people."

"Sadly, these actions are part of a pattern of corruption that betrays Thomas' deep-seated contempt for the rule of law. No one is above the law—not even Supreme Court justices," said Edkins. "Our highest court must be held to a higher ethical standard. Congress has a constitutional duty to act quickly by passing a Supreme Court code of ethics and investigating the full extent of Justice Thomas' wrongdoing."

The Supreme Court is the only court in the U.S. that does not currently have a binding ethics code, opening the door to the kinds of conflicts of interest that have plagued the powerful judicial body for decades.

Hauser argued that because the House is highly unlikely to launch impeachment proceedings given the GOP's control of the chamber, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) should "immediately begin extensive investigations into Thomas' violations of ethics laws and norms as well as the broader collapse of the Supreme Court's integrity."

"Anyone who believes that the law is only legitimate if it applies to everyone should understand and endorse that Durbin must immediately investigate these allegations, that the House must immediately draw articles of impeachment, and that if this information proves accurate, Thomas must immediately leave the bench," Hauser said. "Moreover, it should be indisputable that the judiciary as a whole, and the Supreme Court especially, needs far stronger ethical rules and enforcement."

In a statement, Durbin said that Thomas' behavior is "simply inconsistent with the ethical standards the American people expect of any public servant, let alone a justice on the Supreme Court."

"The ProPublica report is a call to action," he added, "and the Senate Judiciary Committee will act."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

A top United Nations official said Wednesday that “Afghanistan under the Taliban remains the most repressive country in the world regarding women’s rights.” Since taking power nearly 19 months ago, the Taliban has moved systematically to erase women from public life by banning women and girls from schools, from working with nongovernmental organizations and from traveling without a male relative. “Afghanistan is now effectively one of the biggest prisons in the world for women,” says Zahra Nader, a freelance Afghan journalist who was formerly a reporter for The New York Times in Kabul and is now based in Canada. She is the editor-in-chief of Zan Times, a new Afghan women-led outlet documenting human rights issues in Afghanistan.

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

In addition to toughening the 15-week ban approved by Florida Republicans last year, the legislation aims to bar the use of public money to subsidize travel to other states for abortion care as well as the use of telehealth for abortion care, including mailing abortion pills. Medication abortion became the most common method in the U.S. for terminating a pregnancy in 2020.

The measure also seeks to prohibit "any person other than a physician from inducing a termination of pregnancy," language that criminalizes self-managed abortions. Anyone who "willfully performs or actively participates in a termination of pregnancy" in violation of these restrictions can be charged with a third-degree felony and put behind bars for up to five years.

The draconian plan threatens to cut off access to lifesaving reproductive healthcare for Floridians and, as HuffPostnoted, "a large swath of the Southeast." Many people in the region have long relied on Florida's relatively looser abortion restrictions, especially since their states enacted six-week abortion bans after the U.S. Supreme Court's reactionary majority struck downRoe v. Wade last summer―a decision experts say has opened the door to violations of international human rights law.

Florida's proposed six-week ban already has the support of far-right Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said during his Tuesday State of the State address that "we are proud to be pro-family and we are proud to be pro-life."

DeSantis, a presumed 2024 GOP presidential candidate, told reporters after his speech that he would sign the bill into law as soon as it reaches his desk.

"We should open up access to healthcare for impacted communities; not control their decisions and force Floridians into giving birth."

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani (47), a former Planned Parenthood patient and employee, said in a statement that "Florida Republicans have once again demonstrated a complete disregard for the women of our state and for our collective freedoms."

"As we've already seen in other states, a six-week ban is extreme, dangerous, and will force millions of people out of state to seek care and others will be forced into pregnancy," said Eskamani. "Most people do not even know they are pregnant until after six weeks, so this six-week ban might as well be a complete ban."

"Let me be clear: each of us should be free to live our lives with dignity and to make the decisions that are best for our lives, families, and communities," Eskamani continued. "No one wants Ron DeSantis in the exam room with us; personal medical decisions should be between me, my family, my doctor, and my faith—not politicians."

The lawmaker pointed out that "abortion bans impact all people, but especially those without means to travel to other states to seek care."

"These bans have the most profoundly negative effect on marginalized and vulnerable communities," Eskamani stressed. "We should open up access to healthcare for impacted communities; not control their decisions and force Floridians into giving birth."

As HuffPost reported, Florida's proposed six-week abortion ban "includes exceptions for rape and incest, but only up until 15 weeks of pregnancy―and in order to get one, the survivor 'must provide a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record, or other court order or documentation' to prove she was a victim of rape or incest."

"The proposed legislation also includes an exception for the life of the pregnant person if two physicians certify in writing that the woman will die if she continues the pregnancy," the outlet noted. However, "exceptions to abortion bans are often useless and are only included to make extreme restrictions seem more reasonable."

As Common Dreamsreported earlier on Tuesday, abortion rights advocates say that a new, first-of-its-kind lawsuit challenging Texas' six-week ban demonstrates that "there is no such thing as an abortion exception."

"We will continue to fight like hell against this ban, and all new abortion bans."

State Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book (D-32) told HuffPost that "Florida Republicans have gone scorched earth with what is effectively an all-out abortion ban―with threats to criminalize women and their doctors."

"Today, women who suffer miscarriages are sent home to get sicker and risk death before they can receive medical care," she continued. "Today, child victims of incest are forced to flee the state as medical refugees to get care. And with this bill, it will only get worse."

Given the Florida GOP's supermajorities in the House and Senate, Democrats have little recourse to prevent the legislation from advancing, though Book saidthat "if it's a war they want, it's a war they will get."

"This issue bridges the partisan divide, and we will not go down as easily as they believe," she added. "On behalf of my daughter all women and girls in our state, that's a promise."

Eskamani echoed her colleague's message and called on people across the state to fight back against the GOP's life-threatening proposal.

"We are going to need every Floridian to wake up, show up, and demand that their lawmakers vote no on this bill," said the Orange County Democrat.

"Regardless of political affiliation, we know that Floridians time and time again have supported the right to privacy and have opposed extreme abortion bans," said Eskamani.

"We won't be truly free until everyone can make decisions about their own bodies, lives, reproductive care, and futures," she added, "which is why we will continue to fight like hell against this ban, and all new abortion bans."

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

As the U.S. House Committee on Ethics announced an investigation into embattled Congressman George Santos, progressives on Thursday renewed calls for the New York Republican to be expelled from office over his elaborate lies and controversies.

"Why did it take the MAGA House nearly two months to do anything about it?" asked Accountable.US spokesperson Derek Martin.

Santos, who was sworn in to represent New York's 3rd District in January, has faced criticism for dishonesty about his education, employment history, and religious background, and concerns have mounted about his net worth, claims of fraud in Brazil and the United States, potential campaign finance violations, and alleged sexual harassment of a former staffer.

"George Santos' extensive lies were exposed even before he was sworn in," Martin noted. "Everyone knows George Santos is a total fraud—even his own constituents have called for him to resign."

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) "should've called for Santos to resign on Day 1," he argued. "It's too little, too late from the MAGA majority."

House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) and Ranking Member Susan Wild (D-Pa.) said in a statement that in accordance with chamber rules, the panel unanimously voted on Tuesday to establish an investigative subcommittee led by Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio.) He is joined by Wild as well as Congressmen John Rutherford (R-Fla.) and Glenn Ivey (D-Md.).

Guest and Wild explained that the subcommittee has jurisdiction to determine whether Santos "engaged in unlawful activity with respect to his 2022 congressional campaign; failed to properly disclose required information on statements filed with the House; violated federal conflict of interest laws in connection with his role in a firm providing fiduciary services; and/or engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual seeking employment in his congressional office."

Santos' office said Thursday that "the House Committee on Ethics has opened an investigation, and Congressman George Santos is fully cooperating. There will be no further comment made at this time."

Meanwhile, Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey said that "George Santos deceived voters in New York's 3rd Congressional District about his résumé, background, and the source of his campaign funds. The House Ethics Committee should condemn Santos in the strongest possible terms and recommend his expulsion from the House of Representatives."

"Speaker McCarthy has promised to remove Santos if he is found to have broken the law, and we will hold him to his word," Harvey continued. "Santos' constituents deserve real representation at home and in Washington, instead of a liar and a fraud with zero credibility."

Stand Up America also joined with Common Cause and more than 50 other groups based in New York this week for a letter calling on the state's congressional delegation "to commit to voting to expel Rep. Santos from Congress."

"As New York state in recent years has made strides toward becoming a national leader on campaign finance issues, voters expect our federal delegation to hold their colleagues to a higher standard of transparency and accountability," they wrote. "Federal prosecutors and regulators are already doing their job. It's time for every member of New York's congressional delegation to make it clear that they are prepared to hold Rep. Santos accountable."

"Failing to do so," they warned, "is putting political gain over the interests of New York voters."

As The Hillnoted Thursday, "The Ethics Committee probe is just one of several investigations into Santos, who is also coming under scrutiny from the Nassau County District Attorney, the New York state attorney general, the Queens district attorney, and reportedly by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Declaring that "Californians deserve a strong, progressive leader who has delivered real change," Democratic California Congresswoman Barbara Lee on Tuesday officially announced her entry into the race for Dianne Feinstein's U.S. Senate seat, a contest that's expected to be one of the most closely watched—and expensive—of 2024.

"For those who say my time has passed, well, when does making change go out of style?" the 76-year-old former Black Panther said in a three-minute video announcing her run. "I don't quit. I don't give up. Come on. That's not in my DNA."

Lee said she "didn't quit" when, despite "countless death threats," she was the only member of Congress—the vote was 518-1—to vote against giving then-President George W. Bush "completely unlimited war powers" after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Lee—who was first elected to represent the heavily Democratic congressional district containing cities including Oakland, Berkeley, and Alameda in 1998—recounted some of her life's challenges and achievements.

"I was the girl they didn't allow in, who couldn't drink from the water fountain, who had an abortion in a back alley when they all were illegal," the Texas native said.

"I escaped a violent marriage, became a single mom, a homeless mom, a mom who couldn't afford childcare, and brought her kids to class with her," she added.

"When there weren't protections for survivors of domestic violence, I wrote California's first Violence Against Women Act," the former California state legislator said.

"When it was legal to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community, I wrote the Hate Crimes Reduction Act and got a Republican governor to sign it into law," the co-founder of the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus added. "When no one wanted to talk about global AIDS funding, I got President George W. Bush to make it a priority."

Lee also chaired both the Congressional Black and Progressive caucuses.

"We have to ease the burden on the middle class. We have to find a solution to poverty and homelessness," Lee asserted in the video. "We have to take on the climate crisis. And we have to stop these MAGA extremists who think they can control people's bodies and dismantle our democracy."

Noting that "there are no African-American women in the United States Senate," Lee vowed that "we won't let that stop us either."

"Because when you stand on the side of justice, you don't quit if they don't give you a seat at the table," she said.

Lee's announcement had been expected for weeks. She joins Democratic House colleagues Katie Porter and Adam Schiff in vying for the Senate seat that will be vacated by Feinstein (D-Calif.), who at 89 is the oldest sitting senator and who recently said she will not seek another term in office.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Lee brushed off concerns about replacing an octogenarian senator with a septuagenarian.

"Bernie Sanders is older than myself, and he won California," Lee saidof the Independent senator from Vermont who twice ran for president. "It's about speaking to the voters. If Bernie Sanders can win a primary in California, then Barbara Lee certainly can win to be the next United States senator. Come on."

Because Porter and Schiff enjoy a tremendous fundraising advantage over a candidate who has not faced a competitive race in a quarter century, Lee will rely upon a super PAC, She Speaks for Me, that can accept unlimited campaign contributions—even though such organizations are anathema to many progressives.

"The idea is to help level the playing field for someone who hasn't had to raise huge amounts in the past for her races locally and doesn't have the war chest that her opponents have," adviser Brian Brokaw told the Los Angeles Times.

Lee is expected to draw the endorsement of prominent progressive politicians and groups. Meanwhile, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is supporting Schiff, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.) is backing Porter.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Following former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley's launch of her 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday, progressives cautioned that while the Republican has spent years cultivating a so-called "moderate" public persona, her policy positions make it abundantly clear that as president, she would promote a right-wing agenda similar to the Trump administration, in which she served for nearly two years.

Haley, who also served as South Carolina's governor before joining the administration of former President Donald Trump in 2017, has advanced right-wing policies both domestically and abroad, and since leaving public office four years ago, has used her platform to promote "extreme hardline positions on foreign policy," wrote Daniel Larison at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

The Republican has strived to center her response to the 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston by a white supremacist as evidence of her moderation, including in her campaign launch video footage of the speech she gave weeks after the massacre when signing a bill to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.

Progressive strategist Sawyer Hackett noted, however, that moments earlier in the video she denied that the deep history of institutional racism has contributed to persistent inequality in the United States.

\u201cIn this ad, Nikki Haley explicitly rejects the idea of institutional racism\u2014then goes on to highlight her role responding to the the white supremacist massacre in Charleston.\nhttps://t.co/kTwHTqKkYZ\u201d

— Sawyer Hackett (@Sawyer Hackett) 1676379744

"Make no mistake: Nikki Haley is no moderate," said Christina Harvey, executive director of progressive advocacy group Stand Up America. "From her support of Trump's policy of putting children in cages and the regressive reproductive health policies she pushed as governor of South Carolina to her opposition to federal voting rights legislation and her unwavering support of Donald Trump—even after he incited the January 6 insurrection—Nikki Haley has shown her true colors."

During her six years as governor of South Carolina, Haley signed anti-reproductive rights bills including one that banned abortion care after 19 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

With anti-abortion rights Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expected to also announce a run for the GOP presidential nomination, NARAL Pro-Choice America president Mini Timmaraju said the primary is already becoming "a race to the bottom."

"Whether it's serving in Donald Trump's Cabinet or signing an extreme abortion ban into law, Nikki Haley's record is chock full of red flags," said Timmaraju. "Haley's views on abortion are just as extreme as others gunning for the Republican nomination, and we look forward to working alongside our members to defeat the Republican nominee, whoever it may be."

Haley's campaign launch ad also included a claim that President Joe Biden is promoting a "socialist" agenda, which Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. William Barber II interpreted as an attack on those who "believe in living wages, voting rights, and healthcare for all."

\u201cEverything Nikki Haley says in her new ad attacking Biden/Harris et al as \u201csocialist\u201d if they believe in living wages, voting rights, & healthcare for all is the same politics of lies & division that Trump used, just in a softer voice.\u201d

— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II) 1676383516

During Haley's two years as U.N. ambassador under the Trump administration, she was a strong proponent of the president's so-called "zero tolerance" policy under which thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents and guardians, Trump's push to pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, and the administration's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Though she briefly criticized Trump for inciting the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results, Haley soon after defended the former president and called on Democratic lawmakers to "give the man a break" as they impeached Trump for a second time.

"When we needed leaders to stand up for our democracy and our freedoms, Haley fell in line with Donald Trump, again and again," said Harvey. "That's exactly the opposite of what our country needs. Unfortunately, it doesn't make her unique. Whether the Republican nominee is Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, or someone else, there will likely be a MAGA Republican with a track record of undermining our democracy on the GOP ticket come November 2024."

At the Quincy Institute, Larison wrote that Haley's effort to cast herself as a moderating voice in the Republican Party while also defending the former president has left her "with no obvious base of support" and has likely rendered her a long-shot candidate.

"There is so little daylight between Haley's own positions and those of Trump that it will be difficult for her to criticize anything he did as president," Larison wrote. "Haley's foreign policy record is bound up with Trump's to such an extent that she will struggle to distinguish herself from him."

Barber called on voters to focus on "the main message: None of the Republicans planning on running disagree with Trump on policy."

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

The bill would accomplish this by lifting the cap on the maximum amount of income subject to the Social Security payroll tax—a change that would not raise taxes on the 93% of U.S. households that make $250,000 or less per year, according to an analysis conducted by the Social Security Administration at the request of Sanders.

Currently, annual earnings above $160,200 are not subject to the Social Security payroll tax, which means that millionaires will stop contributing to the program later this month. The legislation proposes lifting this cap and subjecting all income above $250,000 per year to the Social Security payroll tax. If enacted, the bill would have raised more than $3.4 billion from the nation's top 11 highest-paid CEOs alone in 2021, including $2.9 billion from Tesla and Twitter executive Elon Musk.

"The legislation that we are introducing today will expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and will extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 75 years."

"At a time when nearly half of older Americans have no retirement savings and almost 50% of our nation's seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $25,000 a year, our job is not to cut Social Security," Sanders said in a statement.

“Our job is to expand Social Security so that every senior in America can retire with the dignity that they deserve and every person with a disability can live with the security they need," the chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions continued. "The legislation that we are introducing today will expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and will extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 75 years by making sure that the wealthiest people in our society pay their fair share into the system."

"Right now, a Wall Street CEO who makes $30 million pays the same amount into Social Security as someone who makes $160,000 a year," the Vermont Independent added. "Our bill puts an end to that absurdity which will allow us to protect Social Security for generations to come while lifting millions of seniors out of poverty."

As Sanders' office noted:

Before 1935, when it was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, about 50% of the nation's seniors were living in poverty, as well as countless Americans living with disabilities and surviving dependents of deceased workers. Nearly 90 years later, the senior poverty rate is down to 10.3% and in 2021 alone, during the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, Social Security lifted 26.3 million Americans out of poverty, including more than 18 million seniors.

Despite this long legacy of combatting poverty, more must be done to strengthen the program, not cut it. While the average Social Security benefit is only $1,688 a month, nearly 40% of seniors rely on Social Security for a majority of their income; one in seven rely on it for more than 90% of their income; and nearly half of Americans aged 55 and older have no retirement savings at all.

Schakowsky warned that "instead of working to protect Social Security, my Republican colleagues are plotting to cut benefits and raise the retirement age."

Contrary to the claims of GOP lawmakers who are clamoring to slash benefits and postpone eligibility, the latest annual Social Security trustees report showed that the program has a $2.85 trillion surplus in its trust fund, enabling it to pay 100% of promised benefits through 2035, 90% for the next 25 years, and 80% for the next 75 years.

"While House Republicans are willing to put Social Security on the chopping block, we are fighting hard to protect Americans' hard-earned benefits and expand coverage," said Hoyle. "With the rising cost of living, it's time to modernize and expand the program."

"While House Republicans are willing to put Social Security on the chopping block, we are fighting hard to protect Americans' hard-earned benefits and expand coverage."

In addition to lifting the tax cap to boost benefits by $200 each month for all recipients, the Social Security Expansion Act would increase Cost-Of-Living-Adjustments by adopting a more accurate measure of inflation, improve the Special Minimum Benefit to help keep low-income workers out of poverty, and restore student benefits up to age 22 for children of disabled or deceased workers.

Endorsed by 56 labor unions and progressive advocacy groups, the legislation is overwhelmingly popular among voters, who have consistently expressed opposition to cutting or privatizing Social Security.

According to polling results published Monday by Data for Progress, 78% of likely voters support the Social Security Expansion Act, including 85% of Democrats, 75% of Independents, and 72% of Republicans. The survey, commissioned by Social Security Works, was conducted online from January 27 to January 30.

"Social Security Works is proud to endorse the Social Security Expansion Act," the group's executive director, Alex Lawson, said in a statement. "This bill is the answer to any politician or pundit who claims we 'can't afford' Social Security. It protects and expands benefits, and it is fully paid for by finally requiring the wealthy to contribute their fair share."

"During the State of the Union, nearly every member of Congress stood and clapped for protecting seniors," Lawson noted. "They should prove it by passing this bill into law."

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