terrorists – Radio Free

Palestine Action – terrorists or the real heroes of our time?

APR editor — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 01:53:14 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Nobody has a bad word to say about the French Resistance in the Second World War, right? Who would criticise a group confronting fascism, right?

Yet this month the UK group Palestine Action has been proscribed as a “terrorist” organisation by their government for their non-violent direct action against UK-based industries supplying technology to fuel Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people.

Are they terrorists or the very best of us in the West?

Stéphane Hessel, a leading member of the French Resistance, survived time in Nazi concentration camps, including Buchenwald. After the war he was one of the co-authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a pillar of international law to this day.

The Declaration affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. In later years Hessel (d. 2013), who was Jewish, saw the treatment of the Palestinians as an affront to this and repeatedly called Israel out for crimes against humanity.

Hessel argued people needed to be outraged just as he and his fellow fighters had been during the war.

In 2010, he said: “Today, my strongest feeling of indignation is over Palestine, both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The starting point of my outrage was the appeal launched by courageous Israelis to the Diaspora: you, our older siblings, come and see where our leaders are taking this country and how they are forgetting the fundamental human values of Judaism.”

In his book Indignez-vous (Time for Outrage!) he called for a “peaceful insurrection” and pointed to some of the non-violent forms of protests Palestinians had used over the years.

In Kendal, UK, this fellow wasn’t arrested. In Cardiff, this woman was. Perhaps the “terrorism” isn’t saying you support Palestine Action – it’s saying you oppose genocide?! Image: Private Eye/X/@DefendourJuries

“The Israeli authorities have described these marches as ‘nonviolent terrorism’. Not bad . . . One would have to be Israeli to describe nonviolence as terrorism.”

How wrong Stéphane Hessel was on this point. The British Parliament has just proscribed Palestine Action as “terrorists” despite them having never attacked anyone, never used weapons, but only undertaken destruction of property linked to the arms industry.

Does Palestine Action really bear resemblance to Al Qaeda or ISIS, or Israel’s Stern Gang or the IDF? Or, like the French Resistance, will they eventually be recognised as heroes of our time? Will Hollywood romanticise them in their usual tardy way in 50 years time?

In respect to the Palestinians, Hessel was clear that resistance could take many forms: “We must recognise that when a country is occupied by infinitely superior military means, the popular reaction cannot be only nonviolent,” he said.

In his time, he lived by those words.

Resistance – a precious band of brothers and sisters
Here’s a statistic that should make you think. In the Second World War less than 2 percent of French people played any active role in the Resistance. Most people just sat back and got on with their lives whether they liked the Germans or didn’t.

The Jews and others were dealt to, stamped on and shipped out, while most of the French could trundle on unharassed. The heavy lifting of resistance was done by a small band of brothers and sisters who took it to the enemy.

History salutes them, as we now salute the Suffragettes, the anti-Apartheid activists, the American civil rights groups and Irish liberation fighters. We’re living through something similar now — and our governments are the bad guys.

I first learned that shocking fact about the composition of the Resistance from my history teacher at l’Université de Franche-Comté, in France in the 1980s. He was the distinguished historian Antoine Casanova, a specialist on Napoleon, Corsica and the Resistance.

Perhaps the low level of resistance is not surprising. Most of the people who put their bodies on the line in Occupied France during the Second World War were either communists or Jews. Good on them. Jewish people made up as much as 20 percent of the French Resistance despite numbering only about 1 percent of the population. This massive over-representation can, understandably, be explained as recognition of the existential threat they faced — but many were also passionate communists or socialists, the ideological enemies of the racist, fascist ideology of their occupiers.

Looking at the Israeli State today, many of those same Jewish Resistance fighters would instantly recognise the racism and fascism that they opposed in the 1940s. We should remember our leaders tell us we share values with Israel.

For anyone not in the United Kingdom (where it is illegal to show any support for Palestine Action) I highly recommend the recently released documentary To Kill A War Machine which gives an absolutely riveting account of both the direct action the group has undertaken and the moral and ideological underpinnings of their actions.

Having seen the documentary I can see why the British Labour government is doing everything in its power to silence and censor them. They really do expose who the true terrorists are. Stéphane Hessel would be proud of Palestine Action.

This week a former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made clear what is going on in Gaza.

The “humanitarian city” Israel is planning to build on the ruins of Rafah would be, in his words, a concentration camp. Others have described it as a Warsaw-ghetto or a “death camp”. Olmert says Israel is clearly committing war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank and that the concentration camp for the Gazan population would mark a further escalation.

It would go beyond ethnic cleansing and take the Jewish State of Israel shoulder-to-shoulder with other regimes that built such camps. Israel, we should never forget, is our close ally.

Millions of people have hit the streets in Western countries. A majority clearly repudiate what the US and Israel are doing. But the political leadership of the big Western countries continues to enable the racist, fascist genocidal state of Israel to do its evil work. Lesser powers of the white-dominated broederbond, like Australia and New Zealand, also provide valuable support.

Until our populations in the West mobilise in sufficient numbers to force change on our increasingly criminal ruling elites, the heavy-lifting done by groups like Palestine Action will remain powerful forms of the resistance.

I grew up in the Catholic faith. One of the lines indelibly printed on my consciousness was: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Palestine Action is doing that. Francesca Albanese is doing that. Justice for Palestine and Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa are doing this.

The real question, the burning question each of us must answer is — given there is no middle ground, there is no fence to sit on when it comes to genocide — whose side are you on? And what are you going to do about it? Vive la Resistance! Vive the defenders of the Palestinian cause!

Rest in Peace Stéphane Hessel. Le temps passe, le souvenir reste.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

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

UK lists antiwar group as terrorists while it supports genocide

The Grayzone — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 03:02:05 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

Pahalgam terrorists celebrating? Old video by Kazakhstan content creator falsely viral

Abhishek Kumar — Fri, 02 May 2025 10:56:34 +0000

Following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, a video has been doing the rounds on social media. In the footage, five men are sitting inside a car and heard declaring ‘Assalamu Alaikum’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’. Social media users have shared the video claiming terrorists who carried out the Pahalgam attack were seen celebrating.

An X user named Ujjwal shared the video and wrote that the video showed terrorists of Pahalgam, who have made it viral on social media while celebrating. (Archived link)

Jitendra Pratap Singh, a BJP supporter who amplifies misinformation and communal propaganda on a regular basis, shared the video and wrote that this was a video of terrorists who opened fire on Hindus in Pahalgam after asking about their religion. (Archived link)

ध्यान से देख लो इन्हें,

धर्म पूछ कर @तंक की गोलियां बरसाने वाले,
पहलगाम में मारे गए 28 निर्दोष हिंदुओं के हत्यारे

स्थानीय तुतल!मान की मिलीभगत से रचा गया
नर!संहार का खू!नी खेल। pic.twitter.com/Qr3qVvuC47

— Jitendra pratap singh (@jpsin1) April 24, 2025

A user named Piyush also shared the video with the same claim. (Archived link)

Fact Check

We performed a reverse image search of a few frames taken from the viral video on Google, which led us to the source video which was tweeted on April 12, 2025 by an account named Radio Roma. In other words, this video was posted online 10 days before the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, which occurred on April 22, 2025.

Contrôle au faciès obligatoire pic.twitter.com/8LoMGirqeU

— RADIOROMA (@RadioRomaX) April 12, 2025

Among the search results, we also came across the Instagram account of a user named Sadiq, a content creator from Kazakhstan, where the video was posted on April 11, 2025. Sadiq’s Instagram handle (@_sadiq999_) has more than 2.75 Lakh followers. His timeline had many such videos, almost all of which, including the viral video, have been taken down since the Hindi version of this article was published on April 26, 2025. Here is, however, a screenshot of the timeline before posts were deleted.

Alt News has reached out to Sadiq for a statement on the matter and this article will be updated once we receive a response from him.

To sum up, several users shared a video uploaded by a Kazakhstan-based creator on social media days before the terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, and falsely claimed that it was a video of the terrorists responsible for the attack celebrating after carrying out the violence.

The post Pahalgam terrorists celebrating? Old video by Kazakhstan content creator falsely viral appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abhishek Kumar.

How Fair Was it to Label Hamas “Terrorists”?

Stuart Littlewood — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 16:24:00 +0000

So Hamas have finally got around to appealing against the UK Government branding their political wing a terrorist organisation.

In their legal submission, they say “the proscription has hindered the group’s ability to broker a political solution to the conflict, stifled conversations in securing a long-term political settlement, criminalised ordinary Palestinians residing in Gaza, and undermined the possibility of a peaceful settlement”.

They also argue that being branded terrorists infringes fundamental rights and has a disproportionate impact on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and open debate and political expression, which makes sensible journalism and public discourse on Israel’s actions in Palestine impossible.

Hamas’s submission also points out that Britain’s Terrorism Act “covers all groups and organisations around the world that use violence to achieve political objectives, including the Israeli armed forces, the Ukrainian Army and, indeed, the British armed forces”.

And it claims proscription obstructs humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip because any form of assistance can be labelled “terrorism” if it is “seen as supporting a group that has been labelled a terrorist organisation”.

On the other hand, proscribing Hamas was a clever move because it makes it so much easier for Israel’s stooges at Westminster to avoid having to explain that regime’s far worse war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have to thank Priti Patel who, while International Development Secretary, was so taken-in by Zionist claptrap and so adoring of Israel that, in 2017, she reportedly had around a dozen meetings with Israeli politicians and organisations during a family holiday in Israel without telling the Foreign Office, her civil servants or her boss Theresa May, and without government officials present. This was not only a middle finger to the Ministerial Code of Conduct but a gross breach of security.

She was also said to have tried persuading colleagues to send British taxpayers’ money as aid for an Israeli forces project in the Golan Heights…. and she actually visited the Golan. As everyone and his dog knows, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory stolen in 1967 by the Israelis who have illegally occupied it ever since. Touring it with the thieving occupation army was another serious diplomatic blunder.

Patel’s meetings are said to have been arranged by Lord Polak, an official of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1980s who joined the Conservative Friends of Israel in 1989, and served as its director for 26 years until appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for political service and made a life peer. It’s difficult to see what political service Polak performed for anyone other than the Israeli regime.

Patel was forced to resign but later restored to favour and promoted to Home Secretary. She proscribed Hamas’s political wing in 2021 with hardly a murmur of opposition. There seemed no legitimate reason for doing so unless it was part of the UK/US/Israel axis aim to bring about coercive regime change. But would that be legal? Are the Palestinians to be denied self-determination and the right to choose their own government? Well, yes, so it seems.

What’s to fear from Hamas?

No-one in the UK Government has properly explained, probably because no-one has bothered to sit down and shoot the breeze with them. Instead they eagerly welcome Netanyahu and his thugs with red-carpet hugs, handshakes and vows of affection and endless co-operation, and soak up the nonsense they talk.

And has anyone at Westminster bothered to read Hamas’s 2017 Charter? If so, did they notice Sections 16 and 20? They are reasonably in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.

Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.
Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.

Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources.

JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), who claim to be the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, said of the genocide in Gaza: “We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of US Jews into solidarity with Palestinian freedom struggle.” Here’s an extract from their no-nonsense statement on the hostilities in Palestine.

“The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock.

For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation. In recent weeks, Israeli forces repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem.

For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.

For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians’ homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes orchards, and land that were in their family for generations.

The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.”

The Zionists’ Dalet Plan, or Plan D

It’s not just America’s complicity and Britain’s 110-years of betrayal that have brought us to this appalling situation. Plan D was the Zionists’ terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up 77 years ago by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency, and relentless pursued by the Israeli regime to this day.

Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there.

It’s a sign of the shoddy times we live in that the lawyers involved in the appeal case felt obliged to state that Hamas did not pay them or the experts who provided evidence for their submission, as it is illegal to receive funds from a group designated as a terrorist organisation.

Hopefully their appeal will skewer the Government’s utter hypocrisy and undying support for the real terrorists in the Holy Land. Priti Patel will have to reckon with the consequences of her actions in terms of the huge numbers of innocent lives lost or reduced to unimaginable misery.

I hasten to add that I am no supporter of Hamas. I support truth and justice, simple as that. And of course the Laws of Cricket.

The post How Fair Was it to Label Hamas “Terrorists”? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Tesla Takedown: Protests Grow Across the U.S. as Trump & Musk Brand Activists as Terrorists

Democracy Now! — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 14:59:59 +0000

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

Tesla Takedown: Protests Grow Across the U.S. as Trump & Musk Brand Activists as Terrorists

Democracy Now! — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 12:47:13 +0000

We speak with Valerie Costa, an organizer behind the grassroots Tesla Takedown movement peacefully protesting outside Tesla showrooms to oppose billionaire owner Elon Musk’s role in government. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency have led mass firings of federal workers and dismantled entire agencies. As protests against Tesla grow and sales plummet, the company’s stock has lost about 40% of its value since the start of the year. This week, President Trump personally intervened on behalf of his adviser and held a promotional event with Musk at the White House, where he said he would buy an electric vehicle and declared attacks on Tesla dealerships to be “domestic terrorism.” Meanwhile, Musk personally attacked Costa, falsely accusing her of “committing crimes” in a post on his X social network. “They’re peaceful, nonviolent protests,” says Costa, an activist and organizer in Seattle. “Protesting Tesla … is ultimately about hitting Elon Musk’s bottom line.”

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

Did the US propose that scammers in Myanmar be called terrorists?

Dong Zhe for Asia Fact Check Lab — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 07:44:13 +0000

Some Chinese social media users claimed that the United States proposed scammers in Myanmar be called “terrorists” at the United Nations, which was vetoed by China, citing information provided by Chinese AI chatbot Doubao.

But the claim is false. The U.S. has never made such a proposal. Experts warn that AI responses are not always accurate.

The claim was shared by an X user on Jan. 12 who said China rejected a U.S. proposal at the U.N. to label scammers in Myanmar as terrorists, following the recent high-profile abduction and subsequent rescue of Chinese actor Wang Xing.

Wang was rescued after being lured to Thailand under the pretense of a film role and subsequently trafficked to a scam center in Myanmar. Following his return to China on Jan. 11, Wang revealed in a live stream that approximately 50 other Chinese victims were freed from the same facility.

The X user cited a response from AI chatbot “Duobao” as evidence that the U.S. has proposed calling the scam operators “terrorists.”

Duobao is an advanced artificial intelligence chatbot developed by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

Launched in August 2024, Doubao has rapidly become China’s most popular AI application, boasting 51 million monthly active users as of November 2024.

An AI response was used as evidence that the U.S. had proposed at the U.N. to classify scammers in Myanmar as terrorists

(X)

But the claim is false.

Keyword searches found no official or credible reports to show that the U.S. made such a proposal at the U.N.

A review of minutes of the U.N. Security Council meetings in 2024 also found no such discussion.

Duobao response

AFCL asked Doubao a question about the purported U.S. proposal.

The AI chatbot responded: “There is currently no firm information confirming the U.S. made such a proposal nor that China or any other country vetoed it.”

Doubao said there was no evidence that the U.S. had proposed designating the scammers in Myanmar as terrorists.

(Duobao)

AI systems reflect the material used to “train” them, experts say.

“Doubao is a large-scale language model trained using similar methods and facing similar problems as ChatGPT,” said Hsin-Min Wang, an information science researcher at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.

AFCL has previously reported that Chat GPT is not always credible, as it responds to prompts based on probability calculations after being trained with large amounts of online text.

Ethan Tu, the founder of Taiwan AI Labs, previously told AFCL that AI learns the bias and ideas from the assorted texts of the collected corpus it is being fed for language training.

“Its output reflects the cultural ideas found in the market it was trained in.”

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Dong Zhe for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Who are the Terrorists?

Dissident Voice Communications — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 14:31:38 +0000

The post Who are the Terrorists? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Myanmar junta invites insurgents, ‘terrorists’ to join election

By RFA Burmese — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 05:25:00 +0000

Myanmar’s junta has called on its insurgent enemies to abandon their “terrorist way” and join a planned election but a parallel civilian government spearheading opposition to military rule dismissed the offer as a trick by the junta to burnish its international image.

The junta, which seized power in early 2021 with the overthrow of a government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, says it will hold a “multiparty democratic general election” some time next year, although its opponents say a vote under military rule, with Suu Kyi and hundreds of supporters in jail and her party disbanded, would be a sham.

Giant neighbor China, which has extensive economic interests in Myanmar, including energy pipelines from the Indian Ocean coast, has been pressing Myanmar’s rivals to work out their differences and has offered to help organize the election.

“Ethnic armed organizations and PDF terrorists fighting against the state are invited to contact the state to resolve the political issues through party political or electoral processes in order to be able to join hands with the people to emphasize durable peace and development by discarding the armed terrorist way,” the junta said in a statement published in its media late on Thursday.

Ethnic minority insurgents who have been battling for self-determination for decades have formed alliances with pro-democracy activists who took up arms after the 2021 coup and formed what they call People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, throughout the country.

The PDFs, which have been relentlessly attacking junta forces in central, heartland areas like the Sagaing and Mandalay regions, are loyal to a civilian government in exile, the National Unity Government, or NUG, formed by pro-democracy politicians largely from Suu Kyi’s party, after the coup.

A spokesman for the NUG’s Presidential Office dismissed the junta’s invasion as fake.

“The terrorist junta council’s invitation to our revolutionary forces to abandon the armed path and discuss this is just a bogus offer,” the spokesman, Kyaw Zaw, told Radio Free Asia.

“It has never intended there to be political dialogue and now it’s making this deception just to sound good and look good internationally,” he said, adding that if the military was sincere, it would stop its “terrorism that is killing the people” and get out of politics altogether.

There was no immediate response to the junta’s invitation from major ethnic minority insurgent forces.

A new generation in Myanmar risks their lives for change

No limits to lawlessness of Myanmar’s predatory regime

Election record

Myanmar’s military has ruled since 1962, apart from a decade of tentative reform that was snuffed out with the 2021 coup, and is deeply unpopular with most of the population.

Suu Kyi’s party trounced a party organized by the generals in 1990 – the military ignored – and again in 2015, when Suu Kui was allowed to form a government under the generals’ auspices.

Again in late 2020, Suu Kyi’s party swept the polls. The military defended its coup weeks later by saying the voting had been marred by fraud. Election organizers and observers said there was little if any evidence of cheating.

A census that the military is organizing to “ensure the accuracy of voter lists” is due to be launched next week and completed by mid-October but analysts say it will likely only include about 30 million of Myanmar’s estimated 56 million people because only residents of major cities, which the junta still controls, are being counted.

Armed conflict is underway in 233 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, according to the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar in a July report. The junta has said that if the census is not complete by mid-October it will “increase security and extend the date” to finalize it.

The United Nations says about 3 million people have been forced from their homes by fighting between junta troops and those who oppose the military’s coup, many since clashes surged at the beginning of the year.

Hundreds of thousands of people have moved abroad since the coup, escaping repression, conscription into the military and an economy in freefall.

Editing by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang

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

The Accelerationists’ App: How Telegram Became the “Center of Gravity” for a New Breed of Domestic Terrorists

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 10:00:00 +0000

by James Bandler, ProPublica, A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, and Karina Meier, FRONTLINE

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

This story is part of a collaboration between FRONTLINE and ProPublica that includes an upcoming documentary.

In late December, a 26-year-old construction worker in Sarasota County, Florida, used his phone to send a flurry of ominous online posts.

Alexander Lightner, tapping away on his Samsung Galaxy, announced his intention to commit mass murder, according to federal court records. He used the coded language of a new breed of neo-Nazis who call themselves Accelerationists. Lightner wrote that he planned to become a “saint” — the term followers use for someone who advances their racist cause through lethal acts of terror — and to set a new “Highscore,” or death toll.

Lightner launched what federal prosecutors allege were threats on Telegram, the sprawling, no-holds-barred platform that has become a hive for the movement. Accelerationists aim to speed the collapse of modern civilization and create a white ethno-state from the ashes of today’s democracies. Deep in the chatter of the platform’s roughly 900 million users, these extremists have created a constellation of Telegram channels where they encourage followers like Lightner to assassinate political leaders, sabotage power stations and railways, and commit mass murder.

A week after firing off his alleged threats on Telegram, Lightner woke up from a nap at his home to his father’s shouts: “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s this? Are these people here for us?”

Lightner threw an illegal, homemade silencer into a laundry basket, according to a summary of his interview with federal agents. Then he stepped into the sunlight. In his front yard, agents in camouflage and body armor pointed rifles at him. An armored vehicle faced his family home, its massive battering ram aimed at the front door.

An FBI agent asked Lightner if he knew why federal agents were at his door.

Lightner answered simply: “Telegram,” according to court records.

FBI bodycam video shows Alexander Lightner’s arrest at his Florida home. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Late last month, Telegram burst into the news with another arrest related to alleged criminal activity on the giant messaging and social media platform. This time, the man in police custody was the company’s founder, Pavel Durov. French authorities detained the Russian-born billionaire after his plane touched down at an airport a few miles north of Paris.

French prosecutors issued preliminary charges against Durov last Wednesday related to alleged criminal activity on his platform. The allegations include organized fraud, drug trafficking and possession of pornographic images of minors, as well as refusal to cooperate with authorities, according to a press release by the Paris public prosecutor.

David-Olivier Kaminski, a lawyer for Durov, could not be reached for comment. French news reports quoted him saying that it was “totally absurd to think that the person in charge of a social network could be implicated in criminal acts that don’t concern him, directly or indirectly.”

The platform Durov created has long been both applauded and derided for its extreme commitment to free speech and for rebuffing inquiries from both U.S. and foreign law enforcement agencies, which have sought to gather information about alleged criminal activity on the platform.

“They are exceedingly unhelpful,” said Rebecca Weiner, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. Weiner, who oversees one of the world’s largest metropolitan counterterrorism units, said the platform was notable for “being a center of gravity for a wide range of extremist content” and for its “unwillingness to work with law enforcement.”

Telegram’s ease of use, its huge public channels and the ability to encrypt private conversations have helped fuel its global appeal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used the app to rally his compatriots to repel the Russian invasion. Activists in Hong Kong turned to Telegram to organize demonstrations against a repressive law. In Belarus, pro-democracy forces used the platform to fight back against election fraud.

But the platform has also served as the online home of the Russian mercenary company Wagner Group, which has posted gruesome videos of extrajudicial killings. In April, the British government targeted the Terrorgram Collective, a subset of Telegram users who promote racially and ethnically motivated terrorism to people like Lightner, making it a crime to support or belong to the group. And more recently, the service played a key role in fomenting the anti-immigrant riots that swept across the United Kingdom.

ProPublica and FRONTLINE have been investigating Telegram’s role in a string of recent alleged far-right acts of sabotage and murder, and how the company’s inaction allowed extremists to plan and even advertise their crimes. Researchers have long warned that Telegram routinely allows extremists to share propaganda aimed at inciting violence, noting that the Islamic State group and al-Qaida were able to use the service for years with little interference.

“Telegram plays a key role in the perpetuation of militant accelerationism,” said Michael Loadenthal, a research professor at the University of Cincinnati and director of the Prosecution Project, which tracks felony cases involving political violence in the U.S. The company, he said, “has shown that deplatforming violent and hateful content is not its priority.”

Before Durov’s arrest, a Telegram spokesperson responded to questions from ProPublica and FRONTLINE in messages on the platform. The spokesperson said that the company bars users from calling for acts of violence, adding that moderators remove millions of pieces of harmful content from the platform every day. “As Telegram grows, it will continue to solve potential moderation problems with efficiency, innovation and respect for privacy and free speech,” the spokesperson, who used the name Remi Vaughn, said in the messages.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in 2016 (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Yet ProPublica and FRONTLINE found that Telegram today is the main nexus of far-right Accelerationist crime. Law enforcement agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have interrupted a series of criminal schemes, including:

In July, a Georgian man accused of leading an Accelerationist terror group was arrested in Europe for allegedly soliciting people to carry out murders and bombings in the U.S. Michail Chkhikvishvili allegedly used Telegram to communicate and distribute his group’s propaganda and is facing charges in New York. He is being held in Moldova pending extradition, according to Wired. ProPublica and FRONTLINE could not locate counsel for him.
The same month, federal prosecutors charged an Accelerationist named Andrew Takhistov with plotting to destroy an energy facility in New Jersey. They allege he used Telegram to incite racial violence and share a how-to guide for white supremacist terrorism that included instructions on the use of Mylar balloons and Molotov cocktails to damage power substations. An attorney for Takhistov did not respond to a request for comment.
In June, Manhattan prosecutors announced charges against Hayden Espinosa, accusing the Texas man of selling illegal guns and firearm components through a Telegram channel aimed at white supremacists and Accelerationists. Espinosa allegedly used a contraband phone to sell weapons and gun parts while incarcerated in federal prison. He has pleaded not guilty.
A judge in England recently sentenced a British man to eight years in prison for plotting to carry out a suicide bombing at a synagogue. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, 19-year-old Mason Reynolds was “the administrator of a Telegram channel which shared far right extremist, antisemitic and racist views, as well as manuals on bomb building and how to 3D print firearms.”
Brandon Russell, a former leader of the Atomwaffen Division, a now-defunct neo-Nazi group tied to five murders, was charged last year with planning an attack aimed at disabling the power system in Baltimore. Russell and a co-defendant, Sarah Beth Clendaniel, used Telegram to organize the sabotage scheme, according to prosecutors. Clendaniel has pleaded guilty; Russell faces trial later this year. Attorneys for the duo declined to comment.

And then there is Lightner. U.S. prosecutors say in court filings that Lightner went to Telegram to discuss his plans to use a .308-caliber rifle to kill as many people as possible. He remains in jail awaiting trial on federal charges of making threats online and possessing an illegal silencer. He has pleaded not guilty. His attorney declined to comment.

Before Lightner’s arrest, he told an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that he was “blackout drunk” at the time of the posts, distraught over a bad breakup. “I was broken and really upset. And I went drinking, and then I did some stupid thing online,” he said, according to a recording of the conversation. He told other agents that he was not planning an act of violence but just wanted someone to notice him and care.

Lightner told federal agents that he started using Telegram in 2015, about two years after the platform launched. The online service grew steadily over the next few years, with the majority of users coming from outside the U.S. Then in 2021, Telegram’s growth exploded after its rival WhatsApp announced a new privacy policy. Some users feared WhatsApp was poised to begin sharing their confidential messages with parent company Facebook, now called Meta. In a Telegram post, Durov boasted that his platform was experiencing “the largest digital migration in human history,” claiming that 25 million new users joined Telegram in 72 hours.

That same month, in the U.S., Telegram got a bump in users when major social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter ousted former President Donald Trump and many of his most ardent supporters in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Today, Telegram is heavily favored by right-wing extremists, including QAnon followers, Proud Boys, militia members, and white supremacist groups like Patriot Front and the Active Clubs.

Axel Neff, who helped start Telegram, said the company’s core team of about 60 employees, 30 of whom are engineers, is too small to monitor the platform for criminal conduct. “Think about the size of Telegram. There are about a billion users on Telegram every month. A billion!” he said. “Telegram is a massive, massive community. … They are not staffed — and they do not have the capacity — to monitor everything that goes on there.”

Neff said it would be “professional suicide” for Telegram, which has marketed itself as a bastion of unfettered speech, to make a serious effort to moderate content. “I don’t think it is something [Durov] will ever do.”

The company’s privacy policy puts strict parameters around cooperation with law enforcement: “If Telegram receives a court order that confirms you’re a terror suspect, we may disclose your IP address and phone number to the relevant authorities. So far, this has never happened.”

Telegram ignores requests for information from government agencies that aren’t “in line with our values of freedom of speech and protecting people’s private correspondence,” Durov told Tucker Carlson in an interview with the former Fox News host earlier this year. Durov noted that Telegram refused to cooperate with the U.S. congressional committee probing the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Telegram stores “very limited data” on its users, the Telegram spokesperson told ProPublica and FRONTLINE. “In most cases it is impossible for Telegram to access this data in order to provide it for the authorities,” the spokesperson said. “Police, governments and users are able to report content to Telegram they believe is illegal. Telegram processes these reports according to its terms of service.”

ProPublica and FRONTLINE found that much of the most disturbing content is posted in channels maintained by violent, right-wing Accelerationists, whose ideas have attracted neo-Nazis, Charles Manson admirers and anti-government revolutionaries.

The Terrorgram Collective, the group of Telegram users targeted by the British government’s crackdown, is an alliance of Accelerationists who use an ever-evolving array of Telegram channels to promote terrorism. The group has produced at least three e-books, including a manual celebrating white supremacist mass killers that court documents show was found at Lightner’s home in Florida.

David Skiffington, a former British counterterrorism specialist for London’s Metropolitan Police, said the “proliferation of extremist content” on Telegram “cannot be overstated.”

Other social media platforms such as Steam, Discord and Gab also host extremist-related content, Skiffington said. “But Telegram is by far the most widely used and accessible.”

Skiffington, who now runs the counterterrorism consulting firm DBA Insights, has been monitoring the Terrorgram Collective for years. He said the group’s influencers encourage “angry, white, lonely vulnerable individuals … to commit real-world acts of violence.”

It’s unclear how many people are part of the collective, though law enforcement has arrested individuals in Slovakia, Canada and the U.S. who are allegedly linked to the group.

In Florida, Lightner — or someone using his username, “Death.” — participated in at least 17 extremist Telegram channels, according to an analysis by Miro Dittrich, a co-founder of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy, a German organization that studies online disinformation and extremism. Three of the channels were part of the Terrorgram network.

On the day of his arrest, Lightner was asked by a federal agent to explain his most explosive Telegram postings. At first, Lightner said he did not remember the online threats. But when a federal agent read the words back to him, Lightner said he had never seriously considered an act of violence. But he added that he knew that in making the Telegram postings, he was “playing with fire.”

Doris Burke of ProPublica and Tom Jennings and Annie Wong of FRONTLINE contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Christchurch attacks 5 years on: terrorist’s online history gives clues to preventing future atrocities

APR editor — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 09:59:41 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Chris Wilson, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Ethan Renner, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Jack Smylie, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau, and Michal Dziwulski, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

As our research has previously revealed, the man who attacked two mosques in Christchurch on 15 March 2019, killing 51 people, posted publicly online for five years before his terrorist atrocity.

Here we provide further information about Brenton Tarrant’s posting. This article has two main goals.

First, by placing his online posting against his other online and offline activities, we gain a far more complete picture of the path to his attack.

Second, we want to show how his online community played a role in his radicalisation. This is important, as the same can happen to others immersed in that community.

In combining his online and offline activity here we do not seek to attribute blame to those who might have been expected to detect this behaviour. It is exceptionally difficult to identify terrorists online.

And yet, history is full of difficult problems that have been overcome. We use the benefit of hindsight to provide greater understanding of Tarrant’s pathway than has previously been available.

The aim is to prevent similar attacks by better understanding how such people act and how they might be detected.

Words and deeds
In the timeline below, we focus on Tarrant’s activity in 2018, following his first visit to Dunedin’s Bruce Rifle Club on December 14 2017, until his final overseas trip in October. It is for this period that we have the most comprehensive online posting history.

Graphic: The Conversation, CC BY-SA

In 2024, we have both the benefit of hindsight and the accumulation of information relating to the attack. However, this triangulation of online and offline activities illustrates the ways those contemplating terrorist violence might act.

We can now see, for example, that Tarrant bought high-powered firearms on three occasions over a six-week period in March and April 2018. And he posted publicly twice on the online imageboard 4chan about his plans for racially motivated violence, and his veneration of a perpetrator of a similar attack.

Tarrant therefore not only “leaked” his plans for violence, he did so at the very moment he was buying weapons for it.

Over 20 days in July and August, Tarrant presented to hospital with gunshot wounds, and began selling weapons online under the username Mannerheim (the name of a Finnish nationalist leader revered for defeating the communists in the country’s civil war).

He also posted publicly about his anger at the presence of mosques in South Island cities (claiming one had replaced a church). He wrote “soon” when another poster suggested setting fire to these places of worship.

A month later he attempted to sell weapons on online marketplace TradeMe, using a prominent white nationalist slogan — “14 Words” — in his username. (Strangely, this clear red flag was mentioned only once in the royal commission report on the attacks.)

TradeMe removed one of these advertisements for violating its terms of use. That caused Tarrant to move to another forum — NZ Hunting and Shooting Forums — to complain.

Extremist community
Our study has also revealed how important the 4chan community is to the radicalisation of individuals like Tarrant. In contrast to the fleeting human interaction he had with others as he travelled the world, 4chan was Tarrant’s community.

4chan’s /pol/ (politically incorrect) board became his home. Here he interacted with others over long periods, imagining he was speaking to the same people over months and years, and assuming many of them had become his friends.

We have found that, while creating a sense of belonging and community, /pol/ also works to create extremists in both direct and indirect ways.

Its anonymous nature (users are assigned a unique ID number for each thread, rather than a username) has two effects. One is well known, the other identified in our study.

First, anonymity encourages behaviour that would be absent if the poster’s identity was known. Second, anonymity is frustrating for those who wish to “be someone”, who crave respect and notoriety.

We have documented the way Tarrant (and others) strive to gain status in a discussion, only to have to start again when they move to a new thread and are given a new ID. This lack of ongoing recognition is agonising for some individuals, who go to lengths to obtain respect.

Anonymity and peer respect
And just like a real-world fascist movement, /pol/ venerates violent action as necessary for the vitality and regeneration of the community.

When a terrorist attack, school shooting or other violent event occurs, users celebrate these events in so-called “happening” threads. These threads are longer, more emotional and excited than any other discussions. Participants often claim the individual at the centre of the event is “/ourguy/” (a reference to the /pol/ board).

The threads are also highly anticipatory: many users believe this event will finally push society into violent chaos and race war.

These dynamics are closely connected. For those who seek recognition and status on the bulletin board, such as Tarrant, the excited attention and adoration given to those who perpetrate high-profile violence is the clearest path to the peer respect that the anonymity of the board otherwise denies them.

As harrowing as this finding is, we contend that gaining respect from their online community is in itself a crucial motivation for some perpetrators of far-right terrorism.

The nature of this extreme but easily accessible corner of the internet means any hope Tarrant was a one-off — and that this won’t happen again — is misguided.

The authors acknowledge the expert contribution of tactical and forensic linguist and independent researcher Julia Kupper. More information about our study will be released at heiaglobal.com. Our research was approved by the University of Auckland Human Participant Ethics Committee. A paper based on this study has been submitted for peer review and publication.

Chris Wilson, co-founder and director of Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa (HEIA) and director, Master of Conflict and Terrorism Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Ethan Renner, researcher, Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Jack Smylie, research analyst, Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau, and Michal Dziwulski, researcher, Hate & Extremism Insights Aotearoa, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

Mozambican authorities accuse journalists of colluding with ‘terrorists’

Committee to Protect Journalists — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 18:50:53 +0000

New York, March 7, 2024—Senior officials in Mozambique’s northern Cabo Delgado province must withdraw comments accusing journalists of colluding with terrorists and publishing false news and the authorities must allow the media to report on the conflict without intimidation, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Thursday.

In a public address on February 17 in the provincial capital of Pemba, Cabo Delgado governor Valige Tauabo accused unnamed journalists and media outlets of striking “deals” with terrorists and being “in sync with terrorists,” according to news reports.

Tauabo said that coverage of the region had an “imprint of evil” because journalists’ views had been “formatted by terrorists” and he warned the media “not to create a situation,” those sources said.

In a February 16 radio interview, Sidónio José, administrator of Quissanga district in Cabo Delgado, accused unnamed journalists of “fabricating false news about terrorism to traumatize communities,” according to the privately owned Integrity Magazine and the Mozambican chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa rights group.

The government has been fighting an Islamic State-linked insurgency in Cabo Delgado since 2017, which has displaced about 1 million people. In 2021, Rwanda and southern African neighbors sent troops to support the government. Since December, a new wave of attacks has forced about 70,000 people to flee their homes, United Nations data shows.

“It is alarming that officials in Cabo Delgado are issuing threats against the media and making inflammatory comments about journalists who already face high levels of risk covering the insurgency in Cabo Delgado,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo from Nairobi. “Cabo Delgado governor Valige Tauabo and Quissanga district administrator Sidónio José must withdraw their comments accusing journalists of colluding with terrorists and fabricating the news. Instead of intimidating the press, authorities should support the journalism that Mozambicans need to make crucial decisions about their lives.”

A local journalist who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, said authorities rarely provided timely responses to journalistic queries about the conflict, creating a “vacuum of official information that feeds disinformation about the security situation.”

Another journalist, who also asked not to be named due to safety concerns, told CPJ that the “narrative of blaming journalists for the difficulties of combating the insurgency” had been a problem for the media for several years.

In 2020, radio journalist Ibraimo Mbaruco disappeared after he texted a colleague that he was “surrounded by soldiers.” Authorities have yet to provide a credible account of his whereabouts.

Radio journalist Amade Abubacar and Arlindo Chissale, editor of Pinnacle News, which specializes in reporting on the insurgency, were arrested and accused of terrorism, in 2019 and 2022 respectively, while reporting in Cabo Delgado.

CPJ’s calls to Tauabo requesting comment on his public address did not receive a response.

When contacted via messaging app, José declined to comment, adding that “only the defense institutions can speak about the delicate situation in the region.”

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

Russia Adds Self-Exiled Former Lawmaker To Terrorists Registry

News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 17:10:53 +0000

A Russian metals tycoon's assets in a company that produces a key component in making steel have reportedly been nationalized days after President Vladimir Putin criticized his management of his company.

Yury Antipov, 69, the owner of Russia’s largest ferroalloy company, was also questioned by investigators in Chelyabinsk, the Urals industrial city where his company is based, and released on February 26, according to local media.

Earlier in the day, the government seized his shares in Kompaniya Etalon, a holding company for three metals plants that reportedly produce as much as 90 percent of Russia’s ferroalloy, a resource critical for steelmaking.

Russia’s Prosecutor-General Office filed a lawsuit on February 5 to seize Etalon, claiming the underlying Soviet-era metals assets were illegally privatized in the 1990s. It also said the strategic company was partially owned by entities in “unfriendly” countries.

While campaigning for a presidential vote next month, Putin criticized Antipov on February 16 without naming him during a visit to Chelyabinsk, whose working-class residents are typical of the president’s electoral base.

Putin told the regional governor that the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant, the largest of Etalon’s five metals factories, had failed to reduce dangerous emissions as agreed in 2019 and the asset would be taken over even though the court had yet to hear the case on privatization.

“I think that all the property should be transferred to state ownership and part of the plant -- [where there is ecologically] harmful production -- should be moved outside the city limits,” Putin told Governor Aleksei Teksler.

In a closed hearing, a Chelyabinsk court approved the transfer of Etalon’s assets to the state, a move potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Antipov ranked 170 on Forbes 2021 list of richest Russians with a net worth of $700 million.

The nationalization of a domestic company owned by a Russian citizen is the latest in a series of about two dozen by the state since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Prosecutors have based their cases on illegal privatization, foreign ownership, criminal activity, or a combination of the three. A rare-metals producer whose owner had been critical of the war effort was among the other assets seized. l

The seizures contradict Putin’s repeated promises in the nearly quarter century he has been in power that he would not review the controversial 1990s privatizations. In return, businessmen were expected to be loyal to the Kremlin and stay out of politics, experts say.

That unofficial social contract had more or less functioned up until the war. Now businessmen are also expected to contribute to the war effort and support the national economy amid sweeping Western sanctions, experts say.

The current trend of state seizures has spooked Russian entrepreneurs and raised questions about whether that social contract is still valid.

U.S. Ties

Antipov began his business career in the 1990s selling nails, fertilizer, dried meats, and other goods. In 1996 he and his business partner plowed their profits into the purchase of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant and subsequently purchased four more metals plants in the ensuing years.

The plants sold some of their output in the United States, where the firm had a trading company.

Antipov received full control of the metals holding in 2020 when he split with his business partner. That year he put 25 percent of the company each in the names of his wife and two eldest sons, Sergei and Aleksei Antipov, according to Russian business registration records.

In 2022, the metal assets were transferred to the Etalon holding company, whose ownership was hidden. Ferroalloy prices surged in 2022 as the war triggered a spike in commodity prices.

A hit piece published by The Moscow Post in December -- six weeks before prosecutors launched the privatization case -- claimed Antipov paid himself a dividend of more than $300 million from 2021-2023 using a structure that avoids capital gains taxes. RFE/RL could not confirm that claim. The Moscow Post is a Russian-language online tabloid that regularly publishes compromising and scandalous stories.

According to public records, Antipov’s two sons own homes in the United States and may be U.S. citizens. Sergei Antipov founded the trading company around the year 2000 in the U.S. state of Indiana. If he and his brother together still own 50 percent of the company, prosecutors could potentially have grounds for seizure.

Russia has changed some laws regulating the purchase of large stakes in strategic assets since its invasion of Ukraine.

One is a 2008 law that requires foreign entities to receive state permission to buy large stakes in strategic assets. An exception had been made for foreign entities controlled by Russian citizens.

Under the change, a Russian citizen with dual citizenship or a residence permit in another country may be considered a “foreign” owner and must receive permission to own an asset.

Nationalization is among the punishments for failure to do so. Thus, if Antipov’s two sons are U.S. citizens or if they have U.S. residency permits, their combined 50 percent stake in the company could be seized.

This already happened to a Russian businessman from St. Petersburg. His business was determined to be strategic and seized after he received foreign residency.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Marape praises security forces in daring kidnap, says lawnessness has ‘destroyed’ PNG

APR editor — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 02:45:07 +0000

By Rebecca Kuku in Port Moresby

Prime Minister James Marape has commended Papua New Guinea’s police, defence force and the local community for their quick action in the release of an Australian pilot and two local workers who were kidnapped in the Highlands yesterday.

The pilot of Hevilift and two locals were at Hela’s Mt Sisa on routine work at a Digicel tower yesterday when they were kidnapped by an armed group in the area.

The group demanded a ransom to be paid.

However, due to quick action by the police, defence and locals in the area, the three were released safely a few hours after their kidnapping.

Marape, also the Tari-Pori MP in Hela, said lawlessness had “destroyed” the country.

“This country does not have any place for lawbreakers. You can hide and run now but you cannot hide forever,” he said.

“The more you hide and run, you will put yourself and your family at risk just like others who are in prison or dead because of their crimes.”

Special force ‘armed to teeth’
Marape said PNG would not tolerate lawbreakers.

“The special police force unit we are building will be armed to the teeth to deal with any crime anywhere, any place,” he said.

“Just as we did in the first kidnapping and this second attempt, we will not tolerate such crimes in our country.”

Police Commissioner David Manning said in a statement the Australian pilot of a Hevilift helicopter and two Papua New Guinean subcontractors were released without harm following “a rapid deployment of security force elements”.

Manning said security forces were mobilised and deployed in the area in large numbers through yesterday afternoon, and through local leaders the abductors had been warned that lethal force would be employed in order to free the captives.

He said the helicopter had since been flown to Hides with the pilot and sub-contractors on board.

Manning said security forces had entered the “direct apprehension” phase of the operation in which the abductors were being tracked so they could face justice.

“If these criminals resist or show any hostility towards police, other security personnel or any member of the public, their fates will be sealed,” he said.

‘Enough of domestic terrorists’
“Our country has had enough of these domestic terrorists who are undermining the safety and security of our communities, and they have no place walking free.

“These criminals will be caught or they will be killed in the process,” Manning said.

The pilot and technicians had been taken captive at a remote site in the vicinity of Mt Sisa, Tari.

It is understood the issue motivated the group was acting in connection with a compensation claim, and demands were being communicated by the group.

“I congratulate security forces personnel who worked together with local leaders and axillary police to bring this situation to a successful and swift conclusion,” Manning added.

Rebecca Kuku is a journalist with The National. Republished with permission from The National and PNG Post-Courier (front page screenshot).

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

Russia Adds Kyiv-Based Veteran Journalist Kiselyov To Terrorists Registry

News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 12:05:08 +0000

Ukraine's military has acknowledged it struck a training ground in occupied Kherson where Russian troops were preparing for an assault on Ukraine's bridgehead at Krynka on the left bank of the Dnieper River, the second time this week a strike has killed scores of Russian personnel.

At the same time, Kyiv denied Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu's claim that Russian forces had captured the Ukrainian bridgehead at Krynka.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

"There were at least three strikes on the concentration of Russian troops at the training ground near Novaya Kakhovka," Nataliya Humenyuk, spokeswoman of the Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine, told RFE/RL on February 22.

"The Russian military was preparing to storm Krynka, which they claimed they had already been captured.... According to preliminary data, commanders of the Dnieper group [of Russian forces] were also there. The information is still being checked," Humenyuk said.

In a separate statement made to Suspilne, Humenyuk said at least 60 Russian soldiers were killed in the attack.

Russia has not commented on the strike, which was first reported by both the Ukrainian Telegram channel DeepState and Russian pro-war bloggers that it resulted in heavy losses. A video of the purported attack consisting of three strikes was also published on Telegram channels.

However, the information could not be independently verified.

At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 20, Shoigu said Krynka "has been cleared," but Ukraine's military said his statement was "a falsification of the facts."

Ukrainian forces in November 2022 liberated Kherson city and the rest of the region on the right bank of the Dnieper forcing Russian troops across the river. Last year, Kyiv's troops managed to also establish a small bridgehead on the Dnieper's left bank, which has come under constant Russian attacks.

The purported Ukrainian strike on Russian forces in Kherson was the second in as many days in which a large number of Russian troops were reportedly killed.

On February 21, BBC Russian reported that a Ukrainian strike on a training ground in Moscow-occupied Donetsk had killed at least 60 Russian troops.

According to the report, Russian soldiers from the 36th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade had been lined up and were waiting for the arrival of Major General Oleg Moiseyev, commander of the 29th Russian Army, when the strike occurred on February 20.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has commented on the report. Pro-Russian social media outlets posted videos and photos purportedly showing dozens of uniformed dead bodies, accusing Moiseyev of making soldiers stand in line waiting for his arrival when they were hit.

Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said on February 22 that since launching the invasion two year ago, Russia has launched more than 8,000 missiles and 4,630 drones -- of which 3,605 have been shot down -- at targets inside Ukraine.

In Moscow, former President Dmitry Medvedev boasted that after Ukrainian forces last week withdrew from the eastern city of Avdiyivka following a monthslong bloody battle, Russian troops would keep advancing deeper into Ukraine.

With the war nearing its two-year mark amid Ukrainian shortages of manpower, more advanced weapons, and ammunition, Medvedev signaled Moscow could again try and seize the capital after being pushed back decisively from the outskirts of Kyiv during the initial days of the invasion in February 2022.

"Where should we stop? I don't know," Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, said in an interview with Russian media.

"Will it be Kyiv? Yes, it probably should be Kyiv. If not now, then after some time, maybe in some other phase of the development of this conflict," he said.

Medvedev was once considered a reformer in Russia, serving as president to allow Vladimir Putin to be prime minister for four years to abide by term limits before returning to the presidency for a third time in 2012.

But the 56-year-old former lawyer has become known more recently for his caustic articles, social media posts, and remarks that echo the outlandish kind of historical revisionism that Putin has used to vilify the West and underpin the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Arrested Russian Activist Udaltsov Added To Russia’s List Of Terrorists

News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 14:23:28 +0000

President Vladimir Putin's interview with Tucker Carlson, a U.S. commentator who has made a name for himself by spreading conspiracy theories and has questioned Washington's support for Kyiv in its fight against invading Russian troops, has been widely criticized for giving the Russian leader a propaganda platform in his first interview with an American journalist since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago.

In the more than two-hour interview, released on Carlson’s website early on February 9, Putin again claimed Ukraine was a threat to Russia because the West was drawing the country into NATO -- an assertion the military alliance has called false -- while avoiding topics such as his brutal crackdown at home on civil society and free speech.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

The interview took place as Putin hopes that Western support for Kyiv will wane and morale among Ukrainians will flag to the point where his war aims are achievable. It also comes as U.S. military support for Kyiv is in question as Republican lawmakers block a $60 billion aid package proposed by President Joe Biden, and a reshuffle of Ukraine's dismissal of the top commander of the armed forces after a counteroffensive fell far short of its goals.

Putin urged the United States to press Kyiv to stop fighting and cut a deal with Russia, which occupies about one-fifth of Ukraine.

Carlson rarely challenged Putin, who gave a long and rambling lecture on the history of Russia and Ukraine, failing to bring up credible accusations from international rights groups that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine -- Putin himself has been issued an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children during the conflict -- or the imprisonment of opposition figures such as Aleksei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza on trumped up charges that appear politically motivated.

"Putin got his message out the way he wanted to," said Ian Bremmer, a New York-based political scientist and president of Eurasiagroup.

Even before the meeting was published, Carlson faced criticism for interviewing Putin when his government is holding Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich and another U.S. journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva of RFE/RL, in jail on charges related to their reporting that both vehemently deny.

Kurmasheva's case was not even mentioned in the interview, while Carlson angered the Wall Street Journal by suggesting that Putin should release the 33-year-old journalist even if “maybe he was breaking your law in some way.”

The U.S. State Department has officially designated Gershkovich as wrongfully detained by Russia.

“Evan is a journalist and journalism is not a crime. Any portrayal to the contrary is total fiction,” the newspaper said in reaction to the interview.

“Evan was unjustly arrested and has been wrongfully detained by Russia for nearly a year for doing his job, and we continue to demand his immediate release.”

Putin said “an agreement can be reached” to free Gershkovich and appeared to suggest that a swap for a “patriotic” Russian national currently serving out a life sentence for murder in Germany -- an apparent reference to Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel from Russia’s domestic spy organization convicted of assassinating a former Chechen fighter in broad daylight in Berlin in 2019.

"There is no taboo to settle this issue. We are willing to solve it, but there are certain terms being discussed via special services channels. I believe an agreement can be reached," Putin told Carlson.

Carlson, a former Fox News host, has made a name for himself by spreading conspiracy theories and has questioned U.S. support for Ukraine in its fight against invading Russian troops. The interview was Putin's first with a Western media figure since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Putin said during the interview Russia has no interest in invading NATO member Poland and could only see one case where he would: "If Poland attacks Russia."

"We have no interest in Poland, Latvia, or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don't have any interest. It's just threat mongering. It is absolutely out of the question," he added.

Describing his decision to interview Putin in an announcement posted on X on February 6, Carlson asserted that U.S. media outlets focus fawningly on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy but that Putin’s voice is not heard in the United States because Western journalists have not “bothered” to interview him since the full-scale invasion.

Carlson has gained a reputation for defending the Russian leader, once claiming that "hating Putin has become the central purpose of America's foreign policy."

Numerous Western journalists rejected the claim, saying they have consistently sought to interview Putin but have been turned away. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later confirmed that, saying his office receives “numerous requests for interviews with the president” but that most of the Western outlets asking are “traditional TV channels and large newspapers that don’t even attempt to appear impartial in their coverage. Of course, there’s no desire to communicate with this kind of media.”

Carlson’s credentials as an independent journalist have been questioned, and in 2020 Fox News won a defamation case against him, with the judge saying in her verdict that when presenting stories, Carlson is not "stating actual facts" about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in "exaggeration" and "'nonliteral commentary."

Carlson was one of Fox News' top-rated hosts before he abruptly left the network last year after Fox settled a separate defamation lawsuit over its reporting of the 2020 presidential election. Fox agreed to pay $787 million to voting machine company Dominion after the company filed a lawsuit alleging the network spread false claims that its machines were rigged against former President Donald Trump.

Carlson has had a rocky relationship at times with the former president, but during Trump's presidency he had Carlson's full backing and he has endorsed Trump in his 2024 run to regain the White House.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Yemen’s Huthis Say U.S.-Owned Ship Hit With Missiles As U.S. Redesignates Them Global Terrorists

News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 16:46:11 +0000

Ukraine's priority this year is to regain control over its skies, the country's foreign minister said, as Russia continues to use aerial attacks to pound its neighbor as the Kremlin's full-scale invasion nears its third year.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 17, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on Ukraine's Western backers to provide advanced weaponry, including long-range missiles and F-16 fighter jets, to help Kyiv "throw Russia out of the sky."

Ukraine has been subjected to a series of unusually intense Russian air strikes since the start of the year that has put its air defenses under massive pressure amid dwindling stocks of ammunition and equipment.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

"In 2024, of course the priority is to throw Russia from the skies," Kuleba said during a panel discussion. "Because the one who controls the skies will define when and how the war will end."

Kuleba's comments echoed remarks by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who said a day earlier at the forum that his country “must gain air superiority.”

"Just as we gained superiority in the Black Sea, we can do it. This will allow progress on the ground.... Partners know what is needed and in what quantity," Zelenskiy said.

Russian missiles later on January 17 struck a town outside Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, killing one person and damaging an educational institution, the regional governor and the military said.

Governor Oleh Synyehubov said on Telegram there were two strikes on the town of Chuhuyev. A female employee of a heating and power plant was killed and another person was injured. A military source, also reporting on Telegram, said the attack involved S-300 missiles.

Russian troops attacked Kharkiv with two S-300 missiles on January 16, wounding 17 people, including 14 who have been hospitalized.

The Ukrainian military also said it destroyed six Iranian-made Shahed drones over the Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions late on January 17.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on January 17 said the Biden administration was "working very hard" to secure additional funding for Ukraine from Congress, warning that failure to do so would be a "real problem."

"If we don't get that money, it's a real problem. It's a real problem for Ukraine. I think it's a problem for us and our leadership around the world," he said.

President Joe Biden convened top congressional leaders at the White House to underscore Ukraine's security needs.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) and other Republicans used the meeting with Biden to push for tougher border security measures.

"We understand that there's concern about the safety, security, and sovereignty of Ukraine," Johnson told reporters after the meeting "But the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty and our safety and our security."

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat-New York) stressed that Biden had repeatedly said he is willing to compromise on certain border measures. He told reporters that there was a "large amount of agreement around the table" on both funding for Ukraine and border security.

The German parliament meanwhile rejected a motion put forward by the conservative opposition that called for the government to send long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. Nearly all lawmakers from the three-party governing coalition -- Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the Free Democrats (FDP) -- opposed to the motion on January 17.

The Greens and the FDP have been pushing Scholz for months to send the missiles, but lawmakers from the two parties said they voted against the proposal because the conservative opposition had linked it to a debate on the annual report on Germany’s military.

As Kuleba made his comments in the Swiss ski resort, Ukrainian authorities were declaring an air-raid alert for the whole country.

The Ukrainian Air Force warned on Telegram that a Russian MiG-31 fighter jet had taken off from the Mozdok airfield in Russia's North Ossetia, while Telegram monitoring channels reported that an Il-78M refueling plane was also airborne.

Earlier on January 17, a Russian drone attack on Odesa wounded three people and caused damage to civilian residential infrastructure, prompting the evacuation of 130 people, regional Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

The Defense Forces of Southern Ukraine said separately that it shot down 11 Iranian-made drones during the attack on Odesa, with the vast majority of the debris falling into the sea.

"Air-defense units worked for almost three hours.... The main efforts of the enemy were concentrated on attacks on Odesa," the military said in a statement.

The latest Russian attacks came as the United Nations said the past several weeks have seen a steep increase in civilian victims in Ukraine due to unusually intense missile and drone strikes.

In December alone, 101 Ukrainian civilians were killed and 491 were wounded in Russian strikes, amounting a 26.5 percent month-to- month increase in verified casualties, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in a report published on January 16.

In Brussels, the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Bob Bauer, said on January 17 that the alliance would keep supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes.

Photo Gallery:

Russia Targets Ukraine's Civilian Infrastructure In Overnight Attacks

Russia launched a late-night attack on January 16 that struck the city center of Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine, as well as the Black Sea port of Odesa early on January 17, wounding civilians and causing widespread destruction to residential buildings.

“Today is the 693rd day of what Russia thought would be a three-day war. Ukraine will have our support for every day that is to come because the outcome of this war will determine the fate of the world,” Bauer said at the start of a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers.

“This war has never been about any real security threat to Russia coming from either Ukraine or NATO,” Bauer added. “This war is about Russia fearing something much more powerful than any physical weapon on Earth: democracy. If people in Ukraine can have democratic rights, then people in Russia will soon crave them too.”

Bauer also urged a fundamental overhaul in the conflict readiness of the 31-member alliance.

“In order to be fully effective, also in the future, we need a war-fighting transformation of NATO,” he said.

With reporting by Reuters and AP

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

‘They call us terrorists’: Inside the Palestinian resistance forces of Jenin, West Bank

The Real News Network — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 19:00:10 +0000

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

Who are the Real Terrorists in the Palestine Story?

Stuart Littlewood — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 10:27:12 +0000

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more sickening speech from a world leader than Biden’s following Hamas’s attack on Israel, the tormentor of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. His crass ignorance, prejudice and subservience to a criminal, apartheid regime, while utterly indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinian people, sets a new low among Western administrations.

Biden says that the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop. There’s never a justification for terrorist attacks and my administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.’’ He added that the people of Israel were “under attack, orchestrated by a terrorist organisation… The United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back. We’ll make sure that they have the help their citizens need and they can continue to defend themselves.”

And Israel’s faithful stooges in the UK and Europe are in perfect harmony:

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: “Shocked by this morning’s attacks by Hamas terrorists… Israel has an absolute right to defend itself.”
UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly: “The UK will always support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey: “Liberal Democrats fully condemn Hamas. This terrorism must cease. Israel has a right to defend itself.”
UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer: “No justification for this act of terror… perpetrated by those who seek to undermine any chance for future peace in the region.”
Head of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen: The attack was “terrorism in its most despicable form… Israel has the right to defend itself against such heinous attacks”.

But who are the real “despicable” terrorists?

The US’s own definition of terrorism fits Israel itself perfectly. Under Section 3 of Executive Order 13224 “Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism”, the term “terrorism” means an activity that:
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended:

to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.

This instrument, signed on 23 September 2001 by George W. Bush, is used to outlaw and crush any organisation, individual or country the US doesn’t like. And the Israeli regime’s “amoral thugs”, as one British MP branded them, have plainly been terrorising Palestinian civilians for decades. Biden is one very confused bunny.

As for the other stooges, their position is demolished by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), said to be the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organisation in the world. “We’re organising a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of US Jews into solidarity with Palestinian freedom struggle,” they say on their website. Here’s an extract from their statement on the hostilities.

The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock.

For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation. In recent weeks, Israeli forces repeatedly stormed the holiest Muslim sites in Jerusalem.

For 16 years, the Israeli government has suffocated Palestinians in Gaza under a draconian air, sea and land military blockade, imprisoning and starving two million people and denying them medical aid. The Israeli government routinely massacres Palestinians in Gaza; ten-year-olds who live in Gaza have already been traumatized by seven major bombing campaigns in their short lives.

For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians, operating an apartheid regime. Palestinian children are dragged from their beds in pre-dawn raids by Israeli soldiers and held without charge in Israeli military prisons. Palestinians homes are torched by mobs of Israeli settlers, or destroyed by the Israeli army. Entire Palestinian villages are forced to flee, abandoning the homes and orchards and land that were in their family for generations.

The bloodshed of today and the past 75 years traces back directly to US complicity in the oppression and horror caused by Israel’s military occupation. The US government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the US enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime.

Meanwhile, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP)’s team on the ground in Gaza have a close-up view of the situation. They say they “are releasing all of our pre-positioned stocks, worth $570,000 USD (approximately £465,000), to ensure hospitals and emergency responders have the supplies they need to cope with an unprecedented influx of casualties”.

Supplies provided by MAP include essential drugs and disposables, laboratory reagents and support for Gaza’s blood bank services. Even before this latest escalation Gaza’s beleaguered health system was struggling, with 48 per cent of essential medicines and 26 per cent of medical disposables unavailable or in critically short supply. Today, the Ministry of Health in Gaza is calling for blood donations for the influx of casualties. Melanie Ward, MAP’s chief executive, says: “We are deeply concerned about the potential for substantial loss of civilian life in the coming days. Gaza’s healthcare services are woefully under-equipped to respond to this emergency, and MAP’s support is needed now more than ever. We call on the international community to take urgent steps to protect civilian life and infrastructure from attack, and to launch immediate humanitarian relief efforts to ensure that health services have the resources they need to save lives and respond to casualties.”

MAP is also committed to bearing witness to the injustices caused by occupation, displacement and conflict. “We speak out in the UK and internationally, and ensure Palestinian voices are heard at the highest levels, to press for the political and social barriers to Palestinian health and dignity to be addressed.”

Self-defence? Really?

And what about this mantra-like claim that Israel, the aggressor and illegal occupier, has a right to defend itself? The West Bank, East Jerusalem (including the Old City) and Gaza are regarded as Palestinian territory under international law and by the United Nations. So what are Israel’s occupation army and armed settlers doing there?

The word “settler” is much too nice. I call these armed thugs “squatters”. They are transferred illegally onto Palestinian territory by the Israeli government to establish “facts on the ground” in the hope of eventually annexing and acquiring the territory for itself. That’s why Israel has never declared its borders – it intends to keep expanding until it has stolen all of the Holy Land.

This of course is a violation of occupation law and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations regarding international law on the use of force. Ending these violations calls for the removal of the squatters and their squats from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force, over the Palestinians’ territory. It is nonsense to suggest that Israel has any right to defend its nationals when misbehaving and committing war crimes on somebody else’s territory.

The UK government is complicit in these crimes, having created the problem in the first place back in 1916/17 (Balfour’s infamous declaration and promise to the Zionists) and even today refuses to sanction Israel’s murderous behaviour and racist policies. As we so often see demonstrated, all our political parties have brainwashed elements within their ruling elite that are obedient to the Israel lobby.

Know your terrorist

Furthermore, there’s nothing anyone can teach Israelis about terrorism. They wrote the manual. If you don’t believe it, read their Dalet Plan, or ‘Plan D’. This was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent and bloody takeover of the Palestinian homeland – some call it the Palestinian holocaust – drawn up in early 1948 by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency.

Plan D anticipated the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood, and plotted the ethnic cleansing that was to follow. Here is a chilling extract setting out guidelines for besieging, occupying and controlling Arab cities:

1. By isolating them from transportation arteries by laying mines, blowing up bridges, and a system of fixed ambushes.
2. If necessary, by occupying high points which overlook transportation arteries leading to enemy cities, and the fortification of our units in these positions.
3. By disrupting vital services, such as electricity, water, and fuel, or by using economic resources available to us, or by sabotage.
4. By launching a naval operation against the cities that can receive supplies by sea, in order to destroy the vessels carrying the provisions, as well as by carrying out acts of sabotage against harbour facilities.

It is one of the vilest documents in history and shows why so many people question Israel’s legitimacy. Jewish terror gangs committed a massacre at Deir Yassin to set the tone and “soften up” the Arabs for expulsion. More atrocities followed the declaration of Israeli statehood on 14 May 1948. Some 750,000 Palestinians were put to flight as Israel’s forces obliterated hundreds of Arab town and villages. The village on which Sderot now stands was one of these. It was designate an Arab town in the UN Partition Plan but that made no difference. To this day its inhabitants have been denied the right to return and received no compensation. Thirty four massacres are said to have been committed in pursuit of the Jewish nation’s racist and territorial ambitions, which immediately overran the generous borders gifted to the Zionists in the Partition Plan.

Biden, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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

Stamping out ‘local terrorism’ a high priority for PNG, says Governor Juffa

APR editor — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 09:34:53 +0000

PNG Post-Courier

Northern Governor Gary Juffa has joined Papua New Guinea’s police chief and the Prime Minister in calling for Papua New Guineans to lay down arms and cease acts of local terrorism.

“I stand with the Commissioner of Police, David Manning, and Prime Minister James Marape to apply the full force of the law to quell all forms of local terrorism in PNG and, particularly, in Northern Province.

“I am particularly concerned as a few weeks ago my Oro Bay RPSC (rural police station commander) Sergeant Terry Giwaya was ruthlessly gunned down only a few kilometres away from his station,” Governor Juffa said.

READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

“I commend Commissioner Manning and his ACP Southern Clement Dalla for their swift action in responding to our plight, seeing through the proficient capture of the alleged thugs and the recovery of an alleged police firearm.

“The success of this operation is attributed also to the provincial police command, our local Northern police personnel,” Juffa said

“All gloves off” was not an order given lightly by any police commissioner or prime minister but with “our ignorance of the rule of law” and the disrespect to its enforcement machinery — the RPNGC — such an order was “timely and very necessary”.

Law and order priority
Juffa added that law and order in Northern Province would always be a priority on a par with health, infrastructure and education and had seen the Northern provincial government spending close to 1 million kina to date.

“Every citizen has a right to move freely without fear and to engage in commerce with the full covering of the laws of our country,” Juffa said.

“I stand with my prime minister and our police commissioner to clamp down on local terrorism and elements that fuel the atrocities.”

Governor Juffa indicated plans were afoot to take the body of Sergeant Giwaya back home, including an official programme scheduled to take place after the September 16 independence celebrations next weekend.

Republished with permission.

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

PNG to upgrade Tribal Fights Act with life in jail for ‘domestic terrorists’

APR editor — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 21:56:22 +0000

PNG Post-Courier

Papua New Guineans engaged in tribal fights will face life imprisonment once Parliament has its way with the amendment of the Tribal Fights Act in October.

And the PNG government is looking at amending laws to also give police additional powers and immunity under special operations to protect the lives of policemen and women.

The “restlessness” in Enga over the last couple of days has been labelled as “domestic terrorism”, which the security forces will be addressing under the special police unit and force that has been instructed to be set up.

READ MORE: Other PNG tribal warfare reports

Prime Minister James Marape enroute to Wabag, Enga Province and then onto Port Vila, Vanuatu, fpor the Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders’ summit yesterday said the October Parliament Session would deal with amending the Tribal Fights Act to stop these “horrific fights” throughout the country.

Under he PNG Constitution there is an Inter-group Fighting Act 1977 with a purpose to discourage fighting between groups of Papua New Guineans by providing for:

The creation of offences in relation to such fighting;
The imposition of severe penalties for such offences;
The collective punishment of the leaders of groups involved in fighting; and
The imprisonment of group leaders for non-payment of penalties imposed on them as a result of their group’s participation in such fighting.

Severe penalties
The Tribal Fights Act, now under a policy directive to be enacted, will be severe and is expected to deal specifically with life imprisonment among other punishments.

“Next October when we go to Parliament, we will be amending the Tribal Fights Act,” Marape said.

“Those who start tribal fights will be receiving life imprisonment, not just for Enga but right across the country.

“We don’t want people to get engaged in tribal fights, those who cause tribal fights we will give them life imprisonment and that is the policy direction my government has given with the necessary legal change happening and being drafted as we speak.

“For now, police have been instructed to look into stepping up their operations.”

Police Commissioner David Manning had put in place an operational order and re-structure to enable the military and police to cooperate — “we try to get a specific command, a high-ranking police officer,” Marape said.

“I will be stepping into Wabag today and will address our people out there . . . and will be appealing to the people out there.

It was not the entire Enga Province involved, it was about four tribal fights based on police intelligence.

“We know who the ring leaders of the tribal fights are,” Marape said.

“In respect to restlessness in our country we are labelling this restlessness as domestic terrorism and so a special police unit being organised will go in full power to specific hotspot areas.”

Republished with permission.

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

‘You will be shot’, PNG’s police chief warns criminals in tough message

APR editor — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 06:47:36 +0000

PNG Post-Courier

Faced with a rise in the number of criminals in Papua New Guinea who are now armed and shooting at the police, Police Commissioner David Manning says “all gloves are off”.

“We will not be practising any leniency and we will neutralise the criminals through any means — meaning they will be shot and killed,” he said.

Last month in Northern province, a policeman was shot and killed by armed 16-year-olds who had access to firearms and were committing crimes in the province.

This week settlers who were allegedly evicted opened fire at police officers with a stray bullet wounding a female reporter.

The escalating law and order problems even got Prime Minister James Marape and former prime minister Peter O’Neill “yelling” and blaming each other over daily killings nationwide.

O’Neill challenged Marape to explain what the government’s plans were on tackling the escalating law and order situation nationwide.

Countering aggression
However, Manning said: “The RPNGC [Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary] is moving from what had been an overarching emphasis on crime prevention over recent decades to focus on responding to criminal activity and countering aggression head-on.

“Standing orders for police officers to neutralise violent offenders through the escalated and reasonable use of force are being reinforced across units.”

The RPNGC, with the support of the Marape government, is repositioning police personnel and assets to take a harder stand against violent offenders and domestic terrorists.”

“The ‘soft glove’ approach as the frontline policy has not worked, and now the gloves are off and the frontline is the confrontation and neutralisation of criminal activity at its roots,” Manning said.

Police officers were trained in the escalated use of force when confronting criminal activities — up to and including the use of lethal force — and they had sworn an oath to fulfil this duty, he added.

Empowering commands
Commissioner Manning said that an important component of this direction included further empowering provincial police commands to engage with provincial administrations to respond to local crime problems.

“Legislation is being developed that clearly articulates actions of domestic terrorism, and the changes in our police force counter-terrorism approach will be reflected in this policy development.

According to information received, the estimated number of firearms possessed by civilians stands at “tens of thousands”.

With the high number of the proliferation of firearms since 2022, the number of firearms has increased to an unknown figure.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

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

CIVICUS protests to Marcos over ‘judicial harassment’, ‘terrorist’ label on human rights activists

APR editor — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 12:25:30 +0000

Asia Pacific Report

A global alliance of civil society organisations has protested to Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in an open letter over the “judicial harassment” of human rights defenders and the designation of five indigenous rights activists as “terrorists“.

CIVICUS, representing some 15,000 members in 75 countries, says the harassment is putting the defenders “at great risk”.

It has also condemned the “draconian” Republic Act No. 11479 — the Anti-Terrorism Act — for its “weaponisation’ against political dissent and human rights work and advocacy in the Philippines.

The CIVICUS open letter said there were “dire implications on the rights to due process and against warrantless arrests, among others”.

The letter called on the Philippine authorities to:

Immediately end the judicial harassment against 10 human rights defenders by withdrawing the petition in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84;
Repeal Resolution No. 35 (2022) designating the six human rights defenders as terrorist individuals and unfreeze their property and funds immediately and unconditionally;
Drop all charges under the ATA against activists in the Southern Tagalog region; and
Halt all forms of intimidation and attacks on human rights defenders, ensure an enabling environment for human rights defenders and enact a law for their protection.

The full letter states:

President of the Republic of the Philippines
Malacañang Palace Compound
P. Laurel St., San Miguel, Manila
The Philippines.

Dear President Marcos, Jr.,

Philippines: Halt harassment against human rights defenders

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation is a global alliance of civil society organisations (CSOs) and activists dedicated to strengthening citizen action and civil society worldwide. Founded in 1993, CIVICUS has over 15,000 members in 175 countries.

We are writing to you regarding a number of cases where human rights defenders are facing judicial harassment or have been designated as terrorists, putting them at great risk.

Judicial harassment against previously acquitted human rights defenders
CIVICUS is concerned about renewed judicial harassment against ten human rights defenders that had been previously acquitted for perjury. In March 2023, a petition was filed by prosecutors from the Quezon City Office of the Prosecutor, with General Esperon and current NSA General Eduardo Ano seeking a review of a lower court’s decision against the ten human rights defenders. They include Karapatan National Council members Elisa Tita Lubi, Cristina Palabay, Roneo Clamor, Gabriela Krista Dalena, Dr. Edita Burgos, Jose Mari Callueng and Fr. Wilfredo Ruazol as well as Joan May Salvador and Gertrudes Libang of GABRIELA and Sr Elenita Belardo of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP).

The petition also includes the judge that presided over the case Judge Aimee Marie B. Alcera. They alleged that Judge Alcera committed “grave abuse of discretion” in acquitting the defenders. The petition is now pending before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84 Presiding Judge Luisito Galvez Cortez, who has asked the respondents to comment on Esperon’s motion this July and has scheduled a hearing on 29 August 2023.

Human rights defenders designated as terrorists
CIVICUS is also concerned that on 7 June 2023, the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) signed Resolution No. 41 (2022) designating five indigenous peoples’ leaders and advocates – Sarah Abellon Alikes, Jennifer R. Awingan, Windel Bolinget, Stephen Tauli, and May Casilao – as terrorist individuals. The resolution also freezes their property and funds, including related accounts.

The four indigenous peoples’ human rights defenders – Alikes, Awingan, Bolinget and Tauli — are leaders of the Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA). May Casilao has been active in Panalipdan! Mindanao (Defend Mindanao), a Mindanao-wide interfaith network of various sectoral organizations and individuals focused on providing education on, and conducting campaigns against, threats to the environment and people of the island, especially the Lumad. Previously, on 7 December 2022, the ATC signed Resolution No. 35 (2022) designating indigenous peoples’ rights defender Ma. Natividad “Doc Naty” Castro, former National Council member of Karapatan and a community-based health worker, as a “terrorist individual.”

The arbitrary and baseless designation of these human rights defenders highlights the concerns of human rights organizations against Republic Act No. 11479 or the Anti-Terrorism Act, particularly on the weaponization of the draconian law against political dissent and human rights work and advocacy in the Philippines and the dire implications on the rights to due process and against warrantless arrests, among others.

Anti-terrorism law deployed against activists in the Southern Tagalog region
We are also concerned about reports that the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) has been deployed to suppress and persecute human rights defenders in the Southern Tagalog region, which has the most number of human rights defenders and other political activists criminalised by this law. As of July 2023, up to 13 human rights defenders from Southern Tagalog face trumped-up criminal complaints citing violations under the ATA. Among those targeted include Rev. Glofie Baluntong, Hailey Pecayo, Kenneth Rementilla and Jasmin Rubio.

International human rights obligations
The Philippines government has made repeated assurances to other states that it will protect human rights defenders including most recently during its Universal Periodic Review in November 2022. However, the cases above highlight that an ongoing and unchanging pattern of the government targeting human rights defenders.

These actions are also inconsistent with Philippines’ international human rights obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which Philippines ratified in 1986. These include obligations to respect and protect fundamental freedoms which are also guaranteed in the Philippines Constitution. The Philippines government also has an obligation to protect human rights defenders as provided for in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and to prevent any reprisals against them for their activism.

Therefore, we call on the Philippines authorities to:

Immediately end the judicial harassment against the ten human rights defenders by withdrawing the petition in the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84;
Repeal Resolution No. 35 (2022) designating the six human rights defenders as terrorist individuals and unfreeze their property and funds immediately and unconditionally;Drop all charges under the ATA against activists in the Southern Tagalog region;
Halt all forms of intimidation and attacks on human rights defenders, ensure an enabling environment for human rights defenders and enact a law for their protection.

We urge your government to look into these concerns as a matter of priority and we hope to hear from you regarding our inquiries as soon as possible.

Regards,

Sincerely,

David Kode
Advocacy & Campaigns Lead
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation

Cc: Eduardo Año, National Security Adviser and Director General of the National Security Council
Jesus Crispin C. Remulla, Secretary, Department of Justice of the Philippines
Atty. Richard Palpal-latoc, Chairperson, Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines

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

Tough new PNG police powers won’t work, says Transparency chief

APR editor — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 11:23:22 +0000

By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

Papua New Guinea’s amended Criminal Code Act will give police the power to deal with what they are calling “domestic terrorists”.

The impetus for the new legislation has been the rash of kidnappings carried out in a remote part of the Southern Highlands.

In Bosavi, gangs of youths have captured at least three groups, held them for ransom, and in the case of 17 teenage girls allegedly raped them.

Police Commissioner David Manning said the kidnappings and ransom demands constituted domestic terrorism.

“The amendments establish clear legal process for the escalated use of up to (sic) lethal force, powers of search and seizure, and detention, for acts of domestic terrorism,” he said.

“It is high time that we call these criminals domestic terrorists, because that is what they are, and we need harsher measures to bring them to justice one way or another.”

PNG Police Commissioner David Manning . . . “It is high time that we call these criminals domestic terrorists.” Image: PNG police/RNZ Pacific

Manning, in a statement, went on to say domestic terrorism included the “deliberate use of violence against people and communities to murder, injure and intimidate, including kidnapping and ransoms, and the destruction of properties.

Includes hate crimes
“An accurate definition of domestic terrorism also includes hate crimes, including tribal fights and sorcery-related violence.”

Transparency International Papua New Guinea chair Peter Aitsi said he doubted the new law would be effective.

He said police already had lethal powers.

“I think in terms of changing the act to give them more power, I think they already have it,” he said.

“But I doubt whether it will have any significant improvement in terms of the response to this emerging problem we are having now, of hostage taking and ransom seeking.”

Aiitsi said that in the Highlands there was a proliferation of guns, and government authority had been overwhelmed by one or two individuals with the money and guns to maintain power.

“So in this type of environment you can see the police and authorities, so-called authorities, would be powerless, because it’s these individuals that control these large sections of these communities, that are now well armed, that are the power in these areas.”

PNG authorities “would be powerless, because it’s [some] individuals that control these large sections of these communities, that are now well armed”. Image: Koroi Hawkins/RNZ Pacific

Call For a different approach

Cathy Alex was one of a group kidnapped in February, along with a New Zealand-born Australian archaeologist and two others.

She said she had got some insight into the age and temperament of the kidnappers.

“Young boys, 16 and up, a few others,” she said.

“No Tok Pisin, no English. It’s a generation that’s been out there that has had no opportunities.

“What is happening in Bosavi is a glimpse, a dark glimpse, of where our country is heading to.”

She said there was a need for a focus on providing services to the rural areas as soon as possible.

Transparency International PNG’s Peter Aitsi . . . PNG has allowed its government system to be undermined by political elites with “our people really being pushed to the real margins of our development”. Image: Transparency International PNG/RNZ Pacific

Peter Aitsi said that over the past 20 years PNG had allowed its government system to be undermined with political elites taking control of sub-national services.

He said this had led to “our people really being pushed to the real margins of our development”.

Not engaged in society
“So as a result they are not engaged in the process of society building or even nationhood.”

Aitsi said this results in the lawless conduct.

“Their interest is to serve those who can put food on the table for them, and essentially what they see as people who care about their welfare, but they are just using them for their individual outcomes.”

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.

PNG law change empowers police to use lethal force in kidnapping, domestic terrorism

APR editor — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:35:34 +0000

By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby

Papua New Guinea police will be able to use lethal force to deal with crimes that come under “domestic terrorism” through the amendments to the Criminal Code Act.

Police Commissioner David Manning said this as the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC) continue to work for stronger law enforcement powers to fight against domestic terrorists causing havoc in some parts of the country, such as in the mountainous Bosavi region.

Commissioner Manning said that the kidnappings and held-for-ransom cases were part of “domestic terrorism”.

“The amendments establish clear legal process for the escalated use of up to lethal force, powers of search and seizure, and detention for acts of domestic terrorism.

“It is high time that we call these criminals as domestic terrorists, because that is what they are and we need harsher measures to bring them to justice one way or another,” he said.

“Domestic terrorism includes the deliberate use of violence against people and communities to murder, injure and intimidate, including kidnapping and ransom, and the destruction of properties.

“An accurate definition of domestic terrorism also includes hate crimes, including tribal fight and sorcery and related violence.”

New crime trend
A new crime trend has emerged in PNG with kidnappings and held-for-ransom cases happening over the last six years with more than six kidnappings and ransom demands occurring since 2014.

However, it took the kidnapping of the New Zealand-born Australian professor and the demand for ransom this year to bring to light several years of continued kidnappings and demand for ransoms on expatriates and locals working at logging camps and elsewhere in Western province and the Highlands region.

Localised kidnappings have also continued with successful returns of victims particularly children.

Other domestic terrorism crimes include:

Organised crimes;
Weapons smuggling;
Illegal drug production and distribution; and
People trafficking.

“The RPNGC, through the Minister for Internal Security, is putting forward amendments to the Criminal Code Act that will strengthen police capacity to search, investigate, intercept and prosecute people and groups involved in domestic terrorism,” Manning said.

Commissioner Manning said the way criminals operated had changed, particularly in the use of information and communications technologies, and police powers needed to be strengthened.

“The amendments will enable more effective lawful communications interception of channels and electronic devices used by domestic terrorists,” he said.

Criminal internet use
“Many of our laws do not take sufficient account of the way criminals, including domestic terrorists, use the internet and phone systems in carrying out violent crimes, and this is a key area for reform.”

Commissioner Manning said the new amendments would build on previous related legislation, and go even further to tip the balance of justice and public safety away from the criminals.

“Amendments have been made to the Criminal Code, such as in 2022 by the government to strengthen laws against so-called glassman or glassmeri [people with the power to accuse women and men of witchcraft and sorcery] and the vile crimes they commit — especially against women, children and the elderly.

“The amendments will further improve law and order co-operation and collaboration with international partners through training, equipment, technical advice and the use of new technologies and resources.

“Having interoperability with domestic and international partners requires the proper and recognised definition of a domestic terrorist and acts of domestic terrorism, as will be clear in the amendments.”

According to information put together by the PNG Post-Courier since 2014 there have been a string of kidnappings that have occurred with a report of K300,000 (NZ$140,000) paid for the return of six expatriates held by armed men allegedly from the Southern Highlands.

The latest kidnapping saw 17 girls, two of whom were married, taken by armed men in the Bosavi LLG, also in Southern Highlands. They were later released with about K3000 (NZ$1400) paid and several pigs offered to the kidnappers.

Police have remained quiet with Post-Courier understanding that investigations continue to be carried out in the latest kidnapping incident and the case of the abducted professor and local researchers.

Miriam Zarriga is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

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

The Rebellious Youths of Jenin are Not Terrorists

Gush Shalom — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 12:53:10 +0000

On 20 June, the army invaded with great force the city of Jenin and killed several of its inhabitants. Today, Palestinians took an act of revenge and killed Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Eli. The cycle of bloodshed continues to turn and claim ever more and more victims, of both peoples. The Israelis killed today in the settlement of Eli, like the Palestinians killed yesterday in Jenin, are all victims of the continued and aggravated occupation.

Those who deepen the occupation and build ever more settlements are guaranteeing the continuation of bloodshed. Those who call for a “major military operation” to defeat the Palestinians are perpetuating a dangerous delusion. It is enough to remember that this entire occupation, with its 56 years, resulted from what seemed the fastest and most decisive victory in the history of Israel, the defeat of three armies in six days. But all that this victory brought Israel was the perpetuation and deepening of the conflict with the Palestinians, with the army required to repeatedly reconquer the same places, repeatedly invade the same cities and villages – and for all that it did not succeed and will not succeed in defeating the Palestinian resistance.

Only a peaceful solution that will enable the Palestinians to live a sovereign life in their own independent state can bring a future of peace to Israel.

*****Gush Shalom: This is not terrorism, the city of Jenin is rebelling against the oppressive occupation regime.

The residents of Jenin fight and sacrifice their lives in a just struggle to be a free people in their country. Gush Shalom calls on the soldiers of the occupation army to refuse orders and fill the military prison.

The media reports tell of soldiers fighting against “terrorism”.

The Palestinians who fight, with inadequate arms, against the most powerful army in the Middle East are stigmatised as “terrorists” and their killing is described as an “elimination” or a “liquidation”. This terminology is nothing but false and ugly propaganda. There is no terror in Jenin except for the terror that the occupation army tries to intimidate the city’s residents. Jenin is a rebel city, a city whose inhabitants have had enough of fifty six years of oppressive occupation and embarked on an all-out rebellion.

While masses of protesters against the Netanyhau government’s anti-democratic “reforms”coup crowd the streets of Tel Aviv, singing the Israeli national anthem and emphasize the words “To be a free people in our country”, a short drive away young Palestinians are ready to fight and sacrifice their lives in a justified struggle to be a free people in their own country. This is a battle that the State of Israel cannot and should not win.

What is happening currently in Jenin is a sign of things to come.The day might not be far when also in Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah the occupation soldiers will encounter stubborn resistance and ambushes of explosive charges.The Palestinian Authority with its security forces would be forced to join the liberation struggle of its people, or it will be swept away and disappear.

In the later 1940s, when Jewish underground organizations were struggling against British rule, Chaim Weizmann — future President of Israel — said “a people do not get their liberty on a silver platter.” This later inspired a famous Israeli poem, often read on memorial ceremonies, where the fallen youths are commemorated as “The silver platter on which Israel got its statehood.” In the present moment, many young Palestinians are ready and willing to be the silver platter on which Palestinian independence will be presented to their people.

However many acts of oppression will be perpetrated against them, they cannot be defeated.

Gush Shalom calls on the IDF soldiers who are required to attack Jenin and the other Palestinian cities to refuse these orders and fill up the military prison. The army gave its brand new military prison, established in the town of Kfar Yona, the name “Neve Tzedek” — “Abode of Justice”. Soldiers who refuse to take part in the dirty work of the occupation can expect little military justice there. But they can help do justice to the Palestinians who strive for their liberty.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gush Shalom.

Debt Ceiling Reminder for Democrats: ‘You Can’t Negotiate With Terrorists’

Brett Wilkins — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 20:58:45 +0000

U.S. progressives escalated their warnings this week as they accused House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of holding the debt limit "hostage" in service of the GOP's pro-billionaire agenda, while urging President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats to firmly oppose GOP legislation linking any debt ceiling increase to painful spending cuts targeting poor and working people.

As the clock ticks toward what would be an unprecedented and catastrophic U.S. debt default, McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Republicans are hoping to force Biden to the negotiating table to discuss their newly passed Limit, Save, Grow Act, which progressive watchdog Accountable.US warned, if passed, would inflict "extreme, harmful cuts against average Americans to protect billionaire tax breaks."

"It's not a good faith negotiation if one side has a gun to the hostage's head."

Although the bill would raise the federal government's arbitrary borrowing limit in order to avert default, it would also limit non-military domestic spending over the next 10 years while enacting fossil fuel-friendly energy policies, restricting regulations, imposing work requirements for social programs, blocking President Joe Biden's student debt relief plan, and rescinding Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funds earmarked for fighting tax-dodging by ultra-wealthy and corporate tax cheats.

"Kevin McCarthy and the House GOP are holding the federal [government] and the U.S. Constitution hostage," Talking Points Memo founder and editor-in-chief Josh Marshall tweeted Friday. "They have issued a series of demands and said that if their demands are not met they will force the U.S. government into bankruptcy for the first time in almost 250 years."

\u201cIt\u2019s worth reminding everyone over and over in the coming days what most establishment reporters will not or cannot. Kevin McCarthy and the House GOP are holding the federal govt and the US constitution hostage. They have issued a series of demands and said that if their \u2026\u201d
— Josh Marshall (@Josh Marshall) 1682699246

"Here's how they plan to do it," Marshall continued:

Congress already passed a law requiring Joe Biden to spend money to run the federal government. The GOP House now proposes to make it illegal for President Biden to get the money he needs to buy the things Congress passed a law forcing him to buy. This isn't budget-making. It's just more parliamentary terrorism. It will crater the U.S., crater the global economy, violate the U.S. Constitution and imperil the U.S.' privileged role in the global order.

"But you will hear lots of reporters say that since Kevin McCarthy has now sent out a list of demands from the bank vault where he's holding the hostages that he's done the responsible thing and Joe Biden must negotiate with him because McCarthy is acting in 'good faith,'" Marshall wrote.

"There's no such thing as good faith hostage-taking," he added. "There's no responsible way to engage in parliamentary terrorism."

"You can't negotiate with terrorists," Marshall stressed. "There's an actual budget process where these questions get hashed out. That's for next years budget. It's not a good faith negotiation if one side has a gun to the hostage's head. We shouldn't let anyone forget that's what's happening."

Marshall's tweets echoed remarks by other progressives.

"What the Republicans are doing is they're taking our economy and the global economy hostage," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) told HuffPost on Thursday. "I think that there is time to have budget negotiations and have those conversations but they should not be tied to raising the debt ceiling."

\u201cKevin McCarthy and the GOP are threatening to crash the economy if Biden doesn\u2019t go along with their massive cuts to veterans benefits and green energy programs. People think they\u2019d never risk that kind of damage to the US economy. People are wrong.\n\nhttps://t.co/vI9CUf86PI\u201d
— Thom Hartmann (@Thom Hartmann) 1682689254

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said earlier this week that the GOP bill will be "dead on arrival" in the upper chamber.

Likewise, Biden said Wednesday that he is open to talks with McCarthy, "but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended."

"That's not negotiable," the president added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

A new bill in Oregon could target environmental protesters as terrorists

Naveena Sadasivam — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 10:00:00 +0000

A bill that could stifle environmental protests has emerged in an unlikely place: the Democrat-controlled Oregon state legislature. Lawmakers in the Beaver State are considering a bill that could make “disruption of services” provided by so-called critical infrastructure, which includes roads, pipelines, electrical substations, and some oil and gas infrastructure, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. The bill labels such activity “domestic terrorism.”

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Representative Paul Evans, and other proponents argue that the legislation is necessary to adequately punish extremists who may seek to damage facilities that provide essential public services. The bill appears to be a direct response to the 2020 racial justice protests that turned violent in Portland and the breach of the state capitol in Salem by far-right protesters the same year. A recent report by the Oregon Secretary of State claims that the state has experienced one of the highest rates of domestic violent extremism in the country and that critical infrastructure “continues to be a high-risk target.”

“What happens when someone decides that for a fun evening they’re going to go out and destroy an electrical substation that cripples a community for a day, a week?” Evans said during a committee hearing. “The fact is we have some gaps in the way in which we approach those sorts of crimes.”

But existing state laws already make trespassing and property damage criminal offenses, and environmental and civil liberties advocates are concerned that decreeing “disruption of services” to be domestic terrorism could result in charges for nonviolent protesters who may block a road, bridge, or oil and gas site during a protest.

“That’s stuff that could happen at ordinary protests,” said Nick Caleb, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Breach Collective. Caleb said that this bill may not have received much traction prior to 2020, but that the violent events of that year changed the calculus for many lawmakers. “Suddenly there’s enough Democrats that also think labeling things as terrorism will have an effect on stopping that type of disruptive activity,” he said.

The bill is still in the early stages of consideration. It successfully passed out of a state House committee and has received a hearing, but it has several more hurdles to clear in both chambers before it can become law.

Plea to PNG prime minister to tell truth about ransom paid to ‘terrorists’

APR editor — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 06:12:54 +0000

PNG Post-Courier

A recent cash payment by Papua New Guinea for the release of three hostages held captive by armed gunmen in Southern Highlands province has set a “dangerous precedent”, says the opposition.

Deputy opposition leader Douglas Tomuriesa said in a statement that the Marape government had set a bad precedent in allowing ransom money to be paid to the kidnappers for the release of the three hostages late last month instead of eliminating the gunmen.

The shadow treasurer said that thankfully the three captives had been set free without any harm but he expressed sadness that such a bad precedent had been set for the country which was likely to spur similar hostage-taking incidents in future.

How the Post-Courier’s front page reported the release of the hostages on February 27. Image: PNG Post-Courier screenshot APR

Tomuriesa said since the hostages were now free, Police Commissioner David Manning must ensure that the culprits would be brought to justice and face the full force of the law.

He said it was “shameful” that the Prime Minister had contradicted his Police Commissioner by initially denying that any ransom had been paid.

“I now demand the Prime Minister tell the truth and reveal the actual amount of ransom paid to the criminals and why a third party was involved,” Tomuriesa said.

One of three women captives was released on February 23 while the other two were released with Australia-based New Zealand academic Professor Bryce Barker on February 26 after K100,000 (NZ$46,000) had been paid, according to one news report.

“If all the government can do is pay ransom to terrorists, then PNG can forget about promoting tourism and foreign investment in the country as investors will view the country as too dangerous.

“By very quickly resorting to allowing payment of ransom money, the government has now realised that the PNG police and military are very ill-equipped to deal with a dangerous hostage-taking situation.

“The whole country will remain at risk unless the gunmen are made to surrender all their guns, including the high-powered machines stolen from the PNG Defence Force armoury.”

Tomuriesa said the government must now seek specialised training and assistance from friendly countries like Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, or the United States to establish and train a special task force for the PNG police and military.

The special force would need to be capable of undertaking search and rescue operations should similar hostage-taking situations arise in future.

Republished from the PNG Post-Courier with permission.

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

We Are All Domestic Terrorists

Abby Zimet — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 05:53:23 +0000

Hoo boy. Another CPAC. Shriveled but still stubbornly demented, it offered a carnival of vengeful, bigoted, delusional, fear-mongering crackpots of the far-right universe raging that a woke apocalyptic "they" - communists, trans people, drag queens, socialist rainbow flags - are "coming for you" to destroy your lives. Topping it off was their barking mad overlord - "I am your retribution" - babbling about windmills, baby bonuses, flying cars. What else must we endure, you ask? Try the J6 Prison Choir.

In what even the right-wing Washington Examiner dubbed a "less-than-triumphant" return to D.C., this weekend's CPAC, held at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, was dogged by overpriced tickets - $300 to $7,000 ("Only 12 left!") - low attendance, nasty infighting, and lurid sexual assault accusations against its Chairman Matt Schlapp, who allegedly "grabbed the junk" of a former male staffer for now-vanished Herschel Walker. The seedy result: Many of its myriad speakers faced a vast, deserted wasteland of largely empty rooms, which both they and the cameras - Fox, nowhere in sight, was replaced by Newsmax and fringey outlets like Real America’s Voice, Proverbs Media Group, Lindell TV, Frontline Flash - labored hard to ignore. The often palpable sense of insecurity surfaced in the first 15 seconds of Schlapp's opening speech as he noted, "There's a lot of chatter in the media about who's here and who's not here" - like Mike Pence, Kevin McCarthy and Ron 'What-Can-We-Ban-This-Week' DeSantis, who was instead attending a concurrent donor retreat with the Club for Growth that to some marked "shots fired" in a war for "the future of the party," such as it is. Still, Schlapp did dubiously boast he was there with "possibly the most powerful man in Washington D.C.," seditionist embodiment of mediocrity Gym Jordan. Cue meme of them under a CPAC marquee reading, "We Are All Domestic Terrorists."

With only about 2,200 attendees, CPAC's usually expansive swag-filled MAGA Mall was limited to one long table. But the merch was as classy as ever: caps, buttons, t-shirts declaring "Let's Go Brandon," "Ultra MAGA," "I Could Shit A Better President," "Trump Forever," "God, Guns and Trump," and "Biden/Fetterman 2024: It's a No-Brainer." There was also a display for "Jan. 6 Political Prisoners and Lost Loved Ones"; its banner declared, "You are not alone." The theme of this year's confab, "Protecting America Now," focused on the ostensible goal of saving the Republic from Marxist overreach and making government "so small we don't even know it's there," never mind the right's frantic efforts to strip half the population of bodily autonomy, kill Social Security and Medicare, slash LGBTQ/trans rights and ban every book they find icky, because who needs the police or fire department and "that's how a nation of 332,000,000 people works - like magic!" Many of the lunatic panels carried a whiff of end-of-times paranoia: "Open Borders Kill," "The Biden Crime Family," "No Chinese Balloons Over Tennessee," "The Red Menace Comes to the Americas,""Sacking the Woke Playbook," "The New Axis of Evil: Soros, Schwab, and Fink" - no we're not anti-Semitic why do you ask - and No Dominus Vobiscum,” or "the Lord is not with you.” “The Old Gods, Ba’al and Moloch, the god (sic) of death, are moving in,” intoned the President of Concerned Women for America. "We are seeing it now, and it’s Satanic.”

A gazillion third-rate, grievance-laden speakers echoed them: Sebastian Gorka! Candace Owens! Wayne LaPierre! James O'Keefe, fresh from being booted from Project Veritas, now a newly minted "guerrilla journalist" with a 7:45 a.m. time slot in the Cherry Blossom Ballroom. (All their slots In the schedule read "Speech" except My Pillow Guy, who got "My Speech.") Attack Biden and the "radical left," no more trans weirdness, kill "wokeness" before it kills us. "When it comes to destroying our freedom, the socialist Democrats will never stop,“ declaimed Nikki Haley. "Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic." Hilariously, despite its deadly ubiquity, it seemed few attendees could define wokeness. "That's a loaded question," stalled one. "It covers so many things." Another: “The children and in the schools and trying to make the transgender, and it came to so many things...which is wrong in this country,” also rainbow flags in classrooms. From a Mom for Liberty: "It's anything that’s anti-American, anti-common sense, anti-really in the sense of education, what education was meant to do..It’s like a garden, you’re getting rid of the weeds so the things you actually want to grow...Woke communism is where they’re trying to take over based on people’s feelings." In other words, CPAC is "like day-time SNL, but not funny." Also, "a kind of Coachella for misinformation, bigotry and religious zealotry." Or a dystopian dumpster fire, its small flame drawing hapless losers in from the cold.

Speeches marked by rage and incoherence were often packaged in tidy, witless sound-bites. Nigel Farage on COVID: "When laws become enemies of men, men become enemy of laws." Lara Trump on mid-terms: "A wise man once said that sometimes by losing a battle, you find a new way to win the war.” Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy: "The climate religion has about as much to do with the climate as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ." A bellicose Steve Bannon hissed, "There's no longer a gathering storm. The storm is here," but mostly saved his vitriol for Fox: "OK, Murdoch, here's the way it's gonna be - you've disrespected Donald J. Trump long enough." Mike Pompeo is big on theocracy: "We are equal in the eyes of the Lord is the antidote to the poisonous lie of equity, wokeness and identity politics...They can cancel some things, but they're not gonna cancel God." Don Jr. played "an incompetent Willy Wonka," bribing listeners with chocolate bars under their seats that were VIP tickets to his loveless father's speech; he also claimed Dems funded "10-month abortions," called Jon Fetterman "a vegetable" who should "work as a bag guy at a grocery store," ranted about slings/arrows, called leftists "insane." Kim Guilfoyle shrieked the media is "destroying all our lives" and "IT IS TIME...TO PUT...AMERICA...FIRST!"; later, she urged people to stop doing business "with woke companies that hate you" and buy Kim's Metals instead. Also, Ted Cruz still wants to jail Dr. Fauci, and Ben Carson got played offstage after interminably mumbling about...Normandy?

It got worse. Lying, hateful, transphobic Marjorie Taylor Greene, having falsely charged Biden "laughs at mothers of children who've died of fentanyl poisoning" to cover her own inane blunders, smugly told the crowd of her upcoming "Protect Children's Innocence Act" making it a felony "to provide anything to do with gender-affirming care" to minors, sure to help all those at-risk kids who've become scapegoats for the right's fear and loathing. Online, her claim "the left has told us they're coming for our children" got the day's most riotous responses: "I don't want nobody's children - I already raised my own," "I missed the memo. When are we heading out to get the kids? I have dinner plans tonight, but I’m free tomorrow," "No Marge, those are school buses. Every weekday morning. They...ugh, never mind," "I don't want her children," and, "My concern is storage." There was also creepy, smirking Matt Gaetz, who called for abolishing the FBI, CDC, DOJ etc "if they do not come to heel" before gloating he had an "update on an important update" about what he doesn't seem to realize are the utterly discredited "dozens of whistleblowers" - aka three sketchy paid conspiracy theorists - touted by Gym Jordan as proof of the "weaponization" of government. There was Lauren Boebert yelling, "Truth is on our side...Use God’s word...You are to speak to that mountain," and in perhaps the most chilling moment amidst days of obsessive attention to the genitals of our most vulnerable minority, there was the edict that "transgenderism... must be eradicated from public life entirely."

Finally, after his autocratic bestie Bolsonaro, there was Trump - sweaty, wrathful, babbling, raving, an old sick man "just shy of drooling" spewing word salad to declare himself the "only hope" of our "filthy communist country" where "they're coming after you," as the media soberly analyzes delirious pronouncements like, "You ever see television, used to be, you know, our military, we were proud of it, we'd be doing all things, now all you see is investigation investigation..." What the ever-loving fuck. "Look at all these people," he said of a gaping empty room. "They’re up to the rafters." "The wall was sitting there waiting to be installed, and Biden, they took it away, they hid it, they put it in a hiding area..." He'll "prevent - and very easily - World War III." Also, "We'll "take the homeless and drug-addicted and severely deranged and get them off our streets and create tent cities...We'll invite governors of all 50 spates (sic) to join us in a great beautification campaign...We will rename our schools and boulevards not after communists... We will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom! Oh, you men are so lucky," and please buy my gold coins. Whew. Kudos to the tireless Aaron Rupar for "watching CPAC so you don't have to," and covering this madness, blow by bonkers blow. The final, surreal, unthinkable one: A new sedition anthem by Trump and the "J6 Prison Choir," a group of Jan. 6 inmates in D.C's jail who recorded it over a jailhouse phone. "Not looking forward to more from this 'artist,'" was one review. Another: "He will be joining the choir soon, hopefully." For now - lest we forget, FYI, beware - he and his noxious cohorts are still out here.

Empty seats at CPACTwitter photo

Kimberly Guilfoyle It's Time to Put America First youtu.be

Justice for All www.youtube.com

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

Turkey adds journalist Can Dündar to list of wanted terrorists; at least 14 other journalists also listed

Erik Crouch — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 20:12:44 +0000

New York, January 3, 2023 – Turkish authorities should ensure that journalists are not included on the country’s lists of wanted terrorists, and should stop harassing members of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

On December 30, exiled Turkish journalist Can Dündar revealed that he had been added to the so-called terrorist “gray list,” a database published by the Turkish Interior Ministry that identifies alleged terrorists and offers rewards for their capture, according to news reports.

Dündar’s name and photograph appear on the gray list’s webpage, which offers a reward of 500,000 lira (US$26,697) to anyone who can aid in his arrest. Dündar received CPJ’s 2016 International Press Freedom Award in recognition of his work amid government repression.

CPJ has identified at least 14 other members of the press included on the Interior Ministry’s gray list.

“Turkish authorities should refrain from treating exiled journalists like terrorists, and should not include them on wanted lists, which are blatant attempts to intimidate journalists from doing their jobs,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Gulnoza Said. “Authorities should immediately remove the names of all journalists on such lists, and stop treating members of the press like criminals.”

The gray list webpage also includes 14 other Turkish journalists living in exile: Bülent Keneş, Abdullah Bozkurt, Ahmet Dönmez, Cevheri Güven, Tarık Toros, Adem Yavuz Arslan, Said Sefa, Arzu Yıldız, Levent Kenez, Hasan Cücük, Sevgi Akarçeşme, Erhan Başyurt, Bülent Korucu, and Hamit Bilici.

The webpage says those journalists are wanted for their alleged ties to the exiled preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom the Turkish government accuses of maintaining a terrorist organization and “parallel state structure,” and of masterminding a July 15, 2016, failed military coup.

Dündar, who reported on alleged weapon smuggling from Turkey to Syria in 2014, was convicted of aiding Gülen’s organization in 2020. If returned to Turkey, he faces nearly 30 years in prison.

CPJ emailed the Interior Ministry of Turkey for comment but did not immediately receive any reply.

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

Brazil Ramps Up Security for Lula Inauguration Amid Concerns Over Right-Wing ‘Terrorists’

Jake Johnson — Wed, 28 Dec 2022 13:00:00 +0000

With Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva set to be inaugurated on Sunday, the country's authorities are ramping up security measures amid fears that supporters of defeated far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro will attempt to cause chaos and possibly launch a violent attack on the ceremony.

Such concerns grew over the weekend after Brazil's capital police arrested a man who planted a bomb near Brasilia's airport, close to where Lula was staying.

"On December 24, Brasilia police said they had foiled a bomb plot, arresting a man with ties to a group of pro-Bolsonaro election deniers camped outside the army headquarters, who have been urging the military to overturn Lula's victory," Reutersreported Tuesday. "George Washington Sousa, who confessed to making the device and plotting with other camp-dwellers to detonate it, said he had hoped that the bomb would 'provoke a military intervention... to prevent the installation of communism in Brazil.'"

A day after Sousa's arrest, Brazil's incoming justice minister took to Twitter to assure the public that efforts are underway to guarantee the inauguration is peaceful.

"All procedures will be reassessed, with a view to strengthening security," Flávio Dino tweeted. "And the fight against terrorists and rioters will be intensified. Democracy has won and will win."

To secure the inauguration and head off any potential violence, "100% of the police forces" of Brasilia will be mobilized to "ensure the safety not only of the president, but also of foreign delegations and the public," Dino told reporters Tuesday.

Bolsonaro spent the months leading up to Brazil's October presidential election spreading lies about voter fraud and ginning up his right-wing supporters, who responded to the president's loss with fury and violence. Earlier this month, Bolsonaro loyalists attempted to invade Brasilia's police headquarters, an incident that drew comparisons to the January 6, 2021 insurrection in the United States.

While he has allowed the transition process to move forward, Bolsonaro has yet to publicly admit his defeat to Lula. In late November, Bolsonaro formally contested his loss—a challenge that Brazil's electoral court swiftly rejected.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Israel’s Religious Terrorists

Mel Gurtov - Larry Kirsch — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 06:43:49 +0000

The Threat to Human Rights

No one should be surprised to find Benjamin Netanyahu back as prime minister of Israel, with decisive support from far-right religious extremists. With the recent election, the religious bloc called Religious Zionism put Netanyahu’s Likud party comfortably over the top in the Knesset and now, as a leading member of the governing coalition, it is strongly positioned to pursue its volatile agenda aimed at reclaiming Israel as a Jewish state.

Among things that might follow, based on their leaders’ public statements, are the deportation of “disloyal” Palestinian citizens, legal challenges to Palestinian-owned buildings in the West Bank, restrictions on access to Al-Aqsa–the Temple Mount in Jerusalem sacred to both Jews and Palestinians–and massive changes in Israel’s legal system pertaining to the selection of judges and the authority of the Supreme Court to overrule laws on constitutional grounds.

This is obviously a very troubling development for US policymakers and more generally, for human rights advocates everywhere. Regrettably, the initial US response, which came from the State Department’s spokesman, avoided direct comment on the extremists’ takeover:

“We hope that all Israeli government officials will continue to share the values of an open, democratic society including tolerance and respect for all in civil society, particularly for minority groups. You’ve heard us speak to the commitment we have to a future two-state solution and to equal measures of security, freedom, justice and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Two years ago, Lehava, the virulent Israeli citizen’s group at the epicenter of armed attacks, race-mongering, and incitement of terror against Palestinians, was inextricably bound-up and politically enabled by Otzma Yehudit (translated as “Jewish Power”), an extremist right-wing political party that became a key player within Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition. Otzma represents one of the factional players Netanyahu needed most to assure his political survival and as important, to support a vote in the Knesset that would effectively eliminate pending legal charges against him in his trial on charges of breach of public trust and corruption.

US Policy Options

The voters of Israel have now spoken and the Netanyahu government and Knesset will predictably veer to the extreme right at least for the immediate future.

Senator Robert Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of Israel’s most ardent and important political supporters, had reportedly warned Netanyahu about the adverse consequences for congressional support of bringing the extremist Religious Zionism bloc into the government. His candid pre-election cautions apparently evoked the ire of Netanyahu (“pissed him off”) but they doubtless hit the mark.

Menendez’s comments also resonated with Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at Washington’s Middle East Institute, who wrote in Foreign Policy magazine:

“The most important thing Washington could do would be to stop giving Israeli leaders a pass. Washington’s reluctance to hold Israel accountable for any excesses—whether in terms of human rights abuses against Palestinians, continued settlement expansion, home demolitions, evictions, or other violations—while continuing to shield Israel from the costs and consequences of its own actions in the international arena has fueled the sense of impunity and triumphalism of Israeli leaders and the far-right extremists they have empowered.”

When these far-right groups first appeared in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the newly formed Biden administration was besieged with increasing fervor by voices on all sides of the unfolding tragedy.

At that time we argued that the President could take an executive action to undermine Israeli extremism without the risk of fracturing his base or reputation at home or around the world. He could ask the State Department to consider whether Lehava and Otzma Yehudit should be added to the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) list. It had been widely reported, both in Israel and the United States, that these organizations and their leaders had received support from US donors through a cryptic network of religious and service organizations designed to provide cover as charitable institutions.

T’ruah, a leading American human rights organization representing two thousand rabbis and cantors, filed a series of official complaints with the IRS documenting the abuse of the US tax laws for so-called “charitable contributions” that ultimately went to support Lehava and Otzma.

Although Biden knows far better than to be seen meddling directly in another government’s internal politics, putting an Israeli political organization on a US-sponsored list geared to eliminating a tax exemption for the support of terrorist activity could be highly influential and well within the bounds of propriety. There is historic precedent for doing so. The legislation authorizing that move in 1996 was drafted by Ron Klain, then a lawyer serving in the Department of Justice, with support from then-Senator Biden. The President should consider taking this action now.

While it is far from clear precisely how US policymakers will express their opposition to Israeli extremism—whether indirectly, through the FTO list as we have suggested, or more directly through diplomatic or legislative means—most important is that the US government deter terrorism sponsored by entities close to the heart of the incoming Israeli government.

Those who rightly decry Palestinian terrorism need to take a hard look at what Israelis have just voted in—a coalition that has prominent advocates of violence against innocent Arab citizens. Doing so would give substance to US support of human rights, not only in Israel but in the Middle East generally.

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

America Still Doesn’t Designate Violent Domestic Extremists as Terrorists

Mike Lofgren — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 15:04:11 +0000

It garnered little notice, but New Zealand, half a world away from the events of January 6th, has designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization, making it "illegal . . . to fund, recruit or participate in the groups, and obligating authorities to take action against them."

Republicans have made it politically impossible either to update statutes or shape social expectations to deal effectively with domestic terrorist threats.

But the government that the Proud Boys helped nearly overthrow does not so designate them. The United States formally labels only foreign-based violent extremist groups like ISIS as terrorist entities. Why is this?

A Brookings piece suggests that social norms about maximal free speech and a tendency to downplay incidents perpetrated by white males play a role. The Congressional Research Service ascribes it to our criminal statutes, saying that "while the participants' actions on Jan. 6 may be consistent with the definition of domestic terrorism . . . domestic terrorism is not a chargeable offense on its own."

But these analyses dance around a distasteful truth: Republicans have made it politically impossible either to update statutes or shape social expectations to deal effectively with domestic terrorist threats.

GOP stonewalling of measures to identify and preempt domestic terrorism goes back to a 2009 Homeland Security Department initiative to analyze the potential for political radicalization of veterans after a number of killings of police by ex-military members. Veterans made politically extreme by overseas duties have figured in politically-motivated violence since Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in 1995, and were overrepresented among the Capitol rioters. The Republican outrage machine, distorting it as an attack on veterans, killed the study.

Killings motivated by right-wing beliefs have outstripped those of Islamist fundamentalists in the U.S. since 9/11, yet the legal tools and the funding to counter the former are a tiny fraction of the authorities and resources poured into the Global War on Terrorism. During the Trump administration and culminating in the January 6th attacks, right-wing extremism skyrocketed, including not only violent incidents but a surge in death threats against elected officials, election workers, and public school teachers, all of it intended to render impossible the normal functioning of society. Since the Mar-a-Lago search for classified documents, even the FBI is being targeted.

What is the Republican response? GOP congressional leadership refused to participate in the investigation of the violent attack on their own institution, an attack endangering their very lives. In July, all House Republicans voted against an amendment to the defense bill that required a report on countering threats created by white supremacy and neo-Nazism in the military. Republicans have refused to condemn the spate of threats against the FBI, instead stoking potential violence by criticizing the bureau and insinuating to their voters that federal law enforcement "is coming for you." Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene even tweeted "defund the FBI!" while Lindsey Graham coyly walked the line between predicting right-wing riots and inciting them.

The Base, another white supremacist group designated as a terrorist entity by New Zealand, is led by Rinaldo Nazzaro, an American who has run the group from Russia. Other American extremist ringleaders as well are involved with Russia, which has been coordinating a propaganda and disinformation campaign on behalf of these groups. This shows not only that the distinction between domestic and foreign terrorism is increasingly irrelevant, but that the flood of disinformation on social media, much of it Russian, is linked with violent extremism.

Monitoring this disinformation will be necessary in order to help stem recruitment into these groups. Accordingly, the Homeland Security Department announced an effort to combat disinformation. It fell victim to, you guessed it, disinformation and false rumors generated by Republican politicians and conservative media.

(Obviously, a free society must ensure stringent oversight of any government entity tasked to identify disinformation to guarantee that the agency is not swayed by partisan politics or suppressing legitimate discourse. But that is not the same as denying that disinformation campaigns exist – and certainly Republicans protest too much about their precious freedoms when, at the state and local level, their operatives are attempting to ban books at libraries).

The United States faces the most serious domestic security threat since the Civil War. It needs the legal tools to block membership in and recruitment by domestic terrorist groups, neutralize their propaganda and disinformation, prohibit material support to them, and seize their assets. Yet just as the "Copperheads" obstructed the suppression of insurrectists during the Civil War, the Republican Party is obstinately blocking the means to combat a new breed of violent insurrectionist.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Mike Lofgren.

The world must not wash its hands of Afghanistan’s misery

APR editor — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 04:15:50 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Mohammad Sadiq Sohail, an East-West Centre research specialist in Honolulu

Part 1 of a two-part series on the one-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover. Read part 2 tomorrow: The Taliban’s Return Has Robbed Afghanistan’s Women and Girls of Their Future

A year after the fall of Kabul and the end of the US military mission in Afghanistan, the country remains a place of misery.

No foreign government has recognised the Taliban as the legitimate government, and much of the modern economy has collapsed. The new rulers have not kept earlier promises, including high-school level education for girls and an amnesty for former Afghan government soldiers and civil servants.

Following a survey earlier this year, the United Nations pointed to many outrageous deficiencies in internationally recognised human rights. Moreover, the July 31 drone killing of 9-11 mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri in a safe house in central Kabul showed that key elements of the Taliban leadership still harbour international terrorists, the original cause of the US intervention 21 years ago.

READ MORE: Other reports on Afghanistan since the Taliban takover

Fragile rule
Afghanistan seems trapped in a vicious circle, and the 38 million people living in the country are the frontline victims of a profound and still deepening tragedy. Without human rights, the Taliban regime will not enjoy UN membership, widespread diplomatic recognition, robust international humanitarian assistance or a broader base of legitimacy.

Without outside support, which financially accounted for 40 to 50 percent of the Afghan GNP prior to the Taliban takeover, Taliban rule remains fragile.

The one positive element in this bleak picture is that military violence has lessened. Despite some resistance from the competing Islamic State Khorasan terrorist group, or ISIS-K, and various other factions, Taliban rule appears unchallenged in the short term.

But in the longer term, the inflexibility and fragility of the Taliban authorities raise fundamental questions about whether their victory a year ago was just another phase in a longer civil war.

In some rural areas of the south long under Taliban control, life goes on much as before. But the loss of jobs in the more modern urban sectors and the scarcity of food has forced many Afghans back into an almost primitive economy, selling household possessions and sometimes even children to survive.

The world cannot simply wash its hands of this situation. There are three overriding US and NATO interests; ensuring that Afghanistan does not again becomes a haven and training ground for international terrorists; easing the world’s largest humanitarian/human rights crisis; and assisting endangered Afghans eligible for emigration.

Honoring US commitments
The al-Zawahiri case demonstrated the need for a strong reminder to the Taliban of their obligation not to harbour terrorists. However, this goes beyond monitoring known terror groups and must include steps to prevent the rise of a new generation of extremists. There are reports and video evidence of madrassa religious schools being established all over Afghanistan, primarily by Pakistani extremist groups.

This must be a high priority in any international discussions with the Taliban.

On the humanitarian and human rights fronts, in the wake of the al-Zawahiri case the US initially terminated talks with the Taliban over a possible release of former Afghan government financial reserves for humanitarian assistance. But recently American officials decided to go ahead with the talks after all, in light of fears over a looming hunger crisis in the coming winter months.

Other humanitarian assistance is needed, but must be administered through established international humanitarian groups, not the Taliban itself. Moreover, the world needs to remain united in not recognising the Taliban until they extend fundamental, universally-recognised human rights to all citizens, including female ones.

Finally, the United States needs to honour its commitments to the thousands of Afghans who loyally and bravely assisted US forces as doctors, technicians, interpreters or otherwise. Many such allies and their dependents remain in horrific or life-threatening positions in Afghanistan, some with US passports and others as qualified applicants under the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) programme approved by Congress.

Some languish in third countries, such as Pakistan, waiting for their applications to be processed. While the US government has recently eased some of the burdensome entry requirements, more needs to be done to reach out to these people and assist in their release and successful integration into new host societies.

Mohammad Sadiq Sohail was an adviser to the Ministry of Justice and a university instructor in political science in Afghanistan before he was forced to leave the country following the Taliban takeover last August.

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

Facebook Labels Abortion Rights Vandals as Terrorists Following Roe Reversal

Sam Biddle — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 17:02:08 +0000

The day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, internally designated the abortion rights group Jane’s Revenge as a terrorist organization, according to company materials reviewed by The Intercept, subjecting discussion of the group and its actions to the company’s most stringent censorship policies. Experts say the decision, Meta’s first known policy response for the post-Roe era, threatens free expression around abortion rights at a critical moment.

The brief internal bulletin from Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Instagram and Facebook, was titled “[EMERGENCY Micro Policy Update] [Terrorism] Jane’s Revenge” and filed to the company’s internal Dangerous Individuals and Organizations rulebook, meaning that the abortion rights group, which has so far committed only acts of vandalism, will be treated with the same speech restrictions against “praise, support, and representation” applied to the Islamic State and Hitler. The memo, circulated to Meta moderators on June 25, describes Jane’s Revenge as “a far-left extremist group that has claimed responsibility on its website for an attack against an anti-abortion group’s office in Madison, Wisconsin in May 2022. The group is responsible for multiple arson and vandalism attacks on pro-life institutions.” Terrorist groups receive Meta’s strictest “Tier 1” speech limits, treatment the company says is reserved for the world’s most dangerous and violent entities, along with hate groups, drug cartels, and mass murderers.

Although The Intercept published a snapshot of the entire secret Dangerous Individuals and Organizations list last year, Meta does not disclose or explain additions to the public, despite the urging of scholars, activists, and its own Oversight Board. Speech advocates and civil society groups have criticized the policy for its secrecy, bias toward U.S. governmental priorities, and tendency to inaccurately delete nonviolent political speech. According to Meta’s most recent quarterly transparency report, the company restored nearly half a million posts between January and March in the terrorism category alone after determining that they had been censored erroneously.

Discussion of Jane’s Revenge was already technically subject to Tier 1 censorship stemming from another previously unreported internal speech restriction enacted by Meta last month. In May, just days after Politico published a leaked Supreme Court decision auguring the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the office of Wisconsin Family Action, an anti-abortion group, was vandalized. The very next day, Meta silently banned its roughly 2 billion users from “praising, supporting, or representing” the vandalism or its perpetrators, according to company materials reviewed by The Intercept. While these event-based restrictions are often temporary, the more recent use of the formal “terror” label suggests a more permanent policy position.

“This designation is difficult to square with Meta’s placement of the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters in Tier 3, which is subject to far fewer restrictions, despite their role organizing and participating in the January 6 Capitol attack,” said Mary Pat Dwyer, academic program director of Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy. “And while it’s possible Meta has moved those groups into Tier 1 more recently, that only highlights the lack of transparency into when and how these decisions, which have a huge impact on people’s abilities to discuss current events and important political issues, are made.”

The Wisconsin incident, which consisted of a small fire and graffiti denouncing the group’s anti-abortion stance, resulted in only minor property damage to the empty office. But the vandalism was rapidly designated a “Violating Violent Event,” a kind of ad hoc speech restriction that Meta distributes to its content moderation staff to limit discussion across its platforms in response to breaking news and various international crises, typically prominent events like the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, terrorism, public shootings, or ethnic bloodshed.

“We are internally classifying this as a Violating Violent Event (General Designation),” reads the May 11 internal memo, obtained by The Intercept. “All content praising, supporting or representing the event and/or perpetrator(s) should be removed from the platform.” The dispatch instructed moderators to censor depiction and discussion of the vandalism under the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy framework, which restricts speech about violent actors like terror cells, neo-Nazis, and drug cartels. “The office of a conservative political organization that lobbies against abortion rights was vandalized and damaged by fire in Madison, Wisconsin,” the memo continued. “A group called Jane’s Revenge took credit for the attack.” The number of victims of the “Violating Violent Event” is marked as “0.”

The Wisconsin Family Action designation is notable not only for the relative low severity of the attack itself, which Madison police are investigating as an act of arson, but also because it marks a rare foray by Facebook into limiting speech around abortion. Striking as well is the company’s choice to censor abortion rights action, even destructive action, given that throughout the long history of the American abortion debate, the overwhelming majority of violence has been conducted by those seeking to thwart access to the procedure via bombings and assassinations, not expand it. Earlier this month, Axios reported that “assaults directed at abortion clinic staff and patients increased 128% last year over 2020,” according to a report from the National Abortion Federation. And yet of the more than 4,000 names on the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations list, only two are associated with anti-abortion violence or terrorism: the Army of God Christian terrorist cell and one of its affiliates, the notorious bomber Eric Rudolph. While extremely little is known about Jane’s Revenge, including whether the vandalism is even being committed by the same actors and to what extent it is even a group, prominent right-wing politicians have begun demanding that the property damage be treated as domestic terrorism, a stance now essentially endorsed by Meta.

But the company also appears to have avoided censoring discussion of more recent anti-abortion acts comparable to the Wisconsin fire. On New Year’s Eve, arsonists destroyed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee, that had been riddled with bullets earlier in the year on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. According to multiple sources familiar with Facebook’s content moderation policies, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to speak to the press, the New Year’s Eve Planned Parenthood torching was never similarly designated a “Violating Violent Event.” While anti-abortion advocates are still barred from inciting further violence against Planned Parenthood clinics (or anything else), Meta users now have far greater latitude to discuss — or even praise — that instance of anti-abortion violence than comparable acts from the other side.

The frequently malfunctioning nature of Facebook’s global censorship rules also means that the Wisconsin-specific update and more recent terror label, even if intended only to thwart future real-world acts of violence from either side of the abortion debate, could end up stifling legitimate political speech. While the company’s general purpose “Community Standards” rulebook places a blanket prohibition against any explicit calls for violence, only explicitly flagged people, groups, and events are subject to Meta’s far more stringent bans against “praise, support, and representation,” restrictions that bar users from quoting, depicting, or speaking positively of the entity or action in question. But the ambiguous formulation and frequently uneven enforcement of these rules means that speech far short of crossing the red line of violent incitement is subject to deletion. The Dangerous Individuals and Organizations ban on “praise, support, and representation” has been frequently cited by Facebook when deleting posts documenting or protesting Israeli state violence against Palestinians, for example, instances of which have at times been designated “Violating Violent Events” as well.

Jane’s Revenge is poorly understood, controversial, and subject to intense debate at precisely the time the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations designations mean that billions of people are limited in what they can say about the perpetrators, their motives, or their methods. Anything that could be construed as “praise,” however tentative, risks deletion. Indeed, even Facebook’s public description of the “praise, support, and representation” standard notes that any posts “Legitimizing the cause of a designated entity by making claims that their hateful, violent, or criminal conduct is legally, morally, or otherwise justified or acceptable” are prohibited.

“There are legitimate concerns that this might shut down debate.”

The company’s internal overview of the “praise” standard, obtained and published by The Intercept last year, directs moderators to delete anything that “engages in value-based statements and emotive argument” or “seeks to make others think more positively” of the sanctioned entity or event. While these internal rules permit “Academic debate and informative, educational discourse” of a violent entity or event, what meets the threshold for “academic debate” or “informative discourse” is left to Facebook’s thousands of overworked, low-paid hourly contractors to determine.

Content moderation experts who spoke to The Intercept said the policy threatens discussion and debate of abortion rights protests at a time when such speech is of profound national importance. “What we’ve seen in the past is that when Facebook bans certain types of harmful speech, they often catch counterspeech and other types of commentary in their content moderation net,” said Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “For example, efforts to ban terrorist content often result in the removal of counterspeech against terrorism or the sharing of documentation. The use of automated technologies only exacerbates this; therefore, it isn’t difficult to imagine that an attempt to ban vandalism against an anti-abortion group could also ban legitimate speech against such a group.”

Evelyn Douek, a Harvard Law School lecturer and fellow with the Knight First Amendment Institute, described the ad hoc censorship of “violating events” via the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations framework as “extremely capacious” and “one of Facebook’s most controversial and problematic policies,” both because these designations are made in secret and because they are so likely to constitute subjective political determinations. While Meta moderators are provided with an extensive rulebook containing this designation and countless others, the combination of the company’s increasing reliance on automated algorithmic content screening and the personal judgment calls of low-paid, overworked contractors creates erratic, faulty results. “There are legitimate concerns that this might shut down debate,” said Douek.

“Ukrainians get to say violent shit, Palestinians don’t. White supremacists do, pro-choice people don’t.”

Douek said the opacity of the censorship policy, paired with Facebook’s “incredibly blunt and error-prone” enforcement of speech restrictions, poses a threat to political discussion and debate around both abortion per se and the broader reproductive rights movement. Even those who don’t condone the methods of Jane’s Revenge have an interest in talking about them and perhaps even entertaining them: There is a vast universe of discourse about political direct action and violence, even vandalism, that isn’t in and of itself incitement, a swath of speech that could be vacuumed up by Facebook’s bludgeon approach to speech rules. “[Saying] you support the goals, the underlying policy of what Jane’s Revenge is fighting for, even if you disagree with their tactics, there’s all sorts of conversation here that we have about lots of different groups in society on the margins that I’m worried about losing.”

Significant as well is the fact that a free expression around relatively minor acts of violence would not only be censored in the first place but also subjected to the same limits Facebook uses for Al Qaeda and the Third Reich. “It’s somewhat remarkable that this act of vandalism was so quickly added to the list. It really is intended to be reserved for the most serious kind of incidents” like hate crimes, gun massacres, and terrorist attacks, Douek explained, “a policy that’s really targeted at the worst of the worst.” The decision to censor free discussion of Jane’s Revenge, responsible for a failed firebombing and a series of threatening graffiti incidents, makes the fact that Facebook did not similarly limit discussion of the Tennessee Planned Parenthood arson even more puzzling. Douek and York place that decision in a long history of Facebook putting its finger on the scales of political discourse in a way that often appears ideologically motivated, or on other occasions completely arbitrary. “It’s precisely the issue raised by their constant picking and choosing of ‘winners,’” York told The Intercept. “Ukrainians get to say violent shit, Palestinians don’t. White supremacists do, pro-choice people don’t.”

In an email to The Intercept, Meta spokesperson Devon Kearns confirmed the terror designation of Jane’s Revenge and said that the company “will remove content that praises, supports, or represents the organization.” Kearns stated that the company has a multifaceted process when determining which people and groups are restricted under the Dangerous Organizations policy, but did not say what it was or why Jane’s Revenge had been flagged but not other actors committing violence to advance their stance on abortion. Kearns further noted that users may appeal deletions made through the Dangerous Organizations policy if they believe it was made in error.

Assessing the merits of a decision made and implemented in secret is exceedingly difficult. Although Meta provides a generalized, big-picture overview of what sort of speech is barred from its platforms with a handful of uncontroversial examples (e.g., “If you want to fight for the Caliphate, DM me”), the specifics of the rules are concealed from the billions of people expected to heed them, as is any rationale as to why the rules were drafted in the first place. York told The Intercept that the Jane’s Revenge move is another indication that Meta needs to “immediately institute the Santa Clara Principles,” a content moderation policy charter that mandates “clear and precise rules and policies relating to when action will be taken with respect to users’ content or accounts,” among many other items.

Without the entirety of the company’s rules and their justification provided to the public, Meta, which exercises an enormous degree of control over what speech is allowed on the internet, leaves billions posting in the dark. Meta’s claim has always been that it takes no sides on any issue and only deletes speech in the name of safety, a claim the public generally has to take as an article of faith given the company’s deep secrecy in both what the rules are and how they’re enforced. “For a platform that is consistently insisting that it’s neutral and doesn’t have its finger on the scale, it’s really incumbent on Meta to be much more forthcoming,” Douek added. “These are highly charged political decisions, and they need to be able to defend them.”

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

Audio: Kellogg’s Executive Described Union as “Terrorists” Emboldened by Social Media

Lee Fang — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 10:00:59 +0000

Earlier this week, in a meeting of employer-side attorneys and union suppression consultants, Ken Hurley, the vice president of human resources and labor relations at The Kellogg Co., spoke candidly about a new environment that has shifted the traditional power of employers and emboldened workers and labor unions.

In hushed tones, Hurley described the tactics employed by activists during a nearly 10-week cereal plant strike last fall. The strike prevented concessions from workers and forced Kellogg’s to back off a plan to expand its two-tier wage system. “In my view,” Hurley said, “the union leadership at the bargaining table were behaving more like terrorists than partners.”

The conversation was hosted by a human resources and labor relations trade group called CUE. Hurley said he was surprised by the aggressive nature of the union, which generally has not engaged in confrontational tactics or strikes. Hurley claimed that the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union, which represented workers at Kellogg’s cereal plants, “really became somewhat intoxicated” by other strikes last year, including work stoppages at plants owned by Frito-Lay and Nabisco.

What’s more, he said, workers at the plants benefited from outside support that hasn’t existed in the recent past. Plant employees and union activists galvanized support on social media, including Facebook and TikTok, while Kellogg’s management had trouble connecting with workers.

And in an unprecedented moment, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh walked in solidarity along the picket line with Kellogg’s workers in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. President Joe Biden later in December issued a statement sharply criticizing efforts by Kellogg’s to bring in nonunion replacement workers during the strike.

The Biden statement, said Hurley, was “basically an anti-Kellogg public release. … We were really getting it from both barrels.”

Reached for comment, Kellogg Chairman and CEO Steve Cahillane issued a statement in response to Hurley’s presentation at CUE. “We are just learning about these statements, as they were not authorized by Kellogg. We are embarrassed as a company – the comments and the tone in which they were delivered do not reflect the values of our organization or our position,” wrote Cahillane. “We sincerely apologize. We have a long and productive history of working with our unions. We fully expect that will continue moving forward.”

Trevor Bidelman, president of BCTGM Local 3G, which represents workers at the Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg’s plant, bristled at the description of his union as “terrorists.”

“This is a company that keeps coming to the table with hundreds of millions of dollars of profit yet thinks it’s OK to take away from the worker. That’s what this strike boiled down to,” said Bidelman.

The negotiations centered on a two-tier system of pay for many workers, with lower wages of $9 an hour and partial benefits for “transitional workers.” This was a sticking point for union activists, in addition to higher overall wages. The final contract, signed in December, provides cost-of-living adjustments and a pathway for low-paid transitional workers to become full-time “legacy” employees, who make nearly three times as much.

“You know, Ken Hurley fully believes that U.S. Kellogg’s workers have too much and we should be giving things back to make sure the business succeeds,” said Bidelman. “Well, I’m sorry, nobody stood up for 20 years and everybody kept acquiescing to the fact that CEOs get paid $10 million and stock profits,” he added.

“This is a company that keeps coming to the table with hundreds of millions of dollars of profit yet thinks it’s OK to take away from the worker. That’s what this strike boiled down to.”

At the conference, Hurley also spoke in awe and derision of a new media startup that covers labor activism, More Perfect Union, which brought viral attention to the strike by interviewing workers and spotlighting creative attempts on Reddit to stifle strike-breaking attempts by Kellogg’s. More Perfect Union was founded in 2021 by Faiz Shakir, formerly Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign manager.

A reporter for More Perfect Union, Hurley said, “ambushed” him when he went to Washington, D.C., for negotiations with BCTGM. “It’s a George Soros-funded, pro-union activist organization; they had a camera, and a reporter was asking us questions as we entered the room,” said Hurley.

Later, during a question-and-answer portion of the conference, Hurley called More Perfect Union a “worthy adversary” and “very sophisticated.” The media outlet, he added, churns out “very impactful videos, and they’re a force to be reckoned with. … I will say, it’s really impossible for a company, a large company, to combat the kind of cinematography and emotion that comes out of those social media posts when they’re produced so well.”

The negotiation “ambush” interview, he said, “was all set up by the union.”

Kellogg’s comments did not surprise Shakir, who laughed at Hurley’s characterization of his small media team as more powerful than Kellogg’s, which has a market capitalization of over $23 billion and teams of lobbyists, lawyers, and public relations experts. He clarified that his organization has received grant money from the Open Society Foundations, a philanthropic network backed by billionaire George Soros.

“The purpose of covering the stories of working people is to make them feel like they have power, and that’s exactly what these union-busters are responding to.”

More Perfect Union, Shakir said, did not coordinate with the union and does not “accept any funding, not one penny, from any union.” The labor union establishment, added Shakir, doesn’t want his media outlet involved in contract negotiations and is generally opposed to confrontational tactics on behalf of workers.

During the meeting this week, Hurley warned the other employers in attendance — including representatives of John Deere, Ross Stores, and Lowe’s — that companies need to “think in new ways and more creatively about how to connect on a personal level with their workforce.” Kellogg’s, Hurley said, set up a special contract negotiations website, monitored social media posts, and communicated almost every day of the contract talks. But it was too little, too late. “We needed to start that four years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago, so that we engage our workforce directly.”

“You got to throw out the playbook. You’ve got to get aggressive, you’ve got to take some risks, you’ve got to get your story out there,” said Hurley.

For proponents of labor power, the Kellogg’s executive’s comments simply reinforce the notion that more labor activism yields greater impact and more victories for working-class Americans. “After strikes at Kellogg’s and John Deere and Kroger, and the victory at Amazon, so many workers now take inspiration from each other,” said Shakir.

“The purpose of covering the stories of working people is to make them feel like they have power,” continued Shakir, “and that’s exactly what these union-busters are responding to. They are fearful and afraid of the fact workers might be taking matters into their own hands to reclaim power and rights that are rightfully theirs.”

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

Long After Leaving Iran, Dual Nationals Now Labeled Terrorists — Because of Mandatory Military Service

Intercepted — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 10:01:33 +0000

Talks with Iran to revive the nuclear deal appear to be progressing, but in recent weeks, the United States’s designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, as a terror group has emerged as a major obstacle. The listing isn’t just about nuclear diplomacy: Countless Iranians who served in the IRGC are now labeled as terrorists — including hundreds of thousands who were conscripted without a choice. This week on Intercepted, senior news editor Ali Gharib and reporter Murtaza Hussain examine the effects the terrorist designation has had on former conscripts who have lived for decades in the West. These dual nationals have been banned from the U.S., lost jobs, and separated from family as a result of the policy.

Transcript coming soon.

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

Long After Leaving Iran, Dual Nationals Now Labeled Terrorists — Because of Mandatory Military Service

The Intercept — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 09:30:31 +0000

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

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