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They went to a Las Vegas conference this month that promised pathways to an “unlimited lifespan.” But at least two attendees left in ambulances and were hospitalized in critical condition, requiring ventilators to breathe.

The two women, who are recovering, fell ill after receiving peptide injections at a conference booth. The doctor who ran the booth was a Los Angeles physician specializing in “age reversal” therapies who did not have permission to practice medicine or dispense prescriptions in Nevada. Public health investigators are trying to determine if anyone else who attended the Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival experienced a similar illness.

The investigation comes as peptides grow in popularity, thanks in part to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promotion of the amino acid chains as a way to fight aging and chronic disease. Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has vowed to end the Food and Drug Administration’s “war on peptides” and other alternative health therapies. Kent Holtorf, the doctor overseeing the booth where the women became ill, also has called for less regulation of alternative therapies and has criticized the FDA for blocking compounds he sees as lifesaving.

Holtorf told ProPublica he is cooperating with the investigation. “Of course, I want to get to the bottom of it. But almost assuredly it will come out that it was not the peptides.”

He said he became convinced the peptides weren’t the cause of the severe reactions after plugging everything he knows about the incident into an artificial intelligence app, which he said gave him a 57-page report that “basically says that it is impossible it was the peptides.” He refused to comment on what the report attributed the illnesses to.

“I don’t think it was the peptides, but I don’t want to try and push the blame and say it wasn’t us,” he said. “We are reassessing everything we are doing.”

Holtorf acknowledged he is not licensed in Nevada but said he hired a practitioner who is and did not personally write prescriptions or administer therapies at his booth. “I knew what was going on but was not hands on,” he said.

He described the situation as “horrific” and “unacceptable” and said he’s “terribly sorry.”

The FDA has approved dozens of peptide-based medications for treating serious health problems such as cancer, obesity and diabetes. But peptide therapies for anti-aging and regenerative health are largely made by compounding pharmacists who use peptide components to formulate drugs that aren’t commercially available or approved for that particular use. Compounded drugs are not reviewed for safety and efficacy by the FDA. The agency also has found “significant safety risks” with at least 18 of the most popular peptide compounding components.

“Anyone who undergoes any sort of medical treatment, no matter how benign, needs to be very wary that even the most benign intervention can have fatal side effects,” said Dr. Amy Gutman, a Florida emergency room doctor who speaks about metabolic research and ketogenic diets and appeared at RAADFest. “And if you are in a hotel and don’t have lifesaving equipment near you, then that is a risk you have to be aware of.”

The two women, a 38-year-old from California and a 51-year-old from Nevada, received injections on July 13 at RAADFest, which is organized by an Arizona-based nonprofit that has built a community hoping to cheat death. According to a police report, both were injected at a booth run by Holtorf, who is licensed in California but not Nevada. Holtorf’s advocacy for alternative therapies has invited controversy in the past, including his criticism of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine in a Fox News interview in 2009. More recently, his practice was advised by the Federal Trade Commission to cease making claims on its website that his peptide therapies could treat or prevent COVID-19. Holtorf said he removed the claims from his website even though he still believes certain peptides can be beneficial in treating COVID-19 and other viral infections.

Both the Southern Nevada Health District and the Nevada Board of Pharmacy confirmed they are investigating what led to the hospitalizations after being notified by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police that possibly as many as seven people at the conference were hospitalized. According to the police report, detectives were unable to confirm whether additional attendees got sick.

Investigators are examining whether the illnesses were caused by an infection, contamination related to the injections or an issue with the medication itself, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. The two women who were taken by ambulance to the hospital reported feeling as if their tongues were swelling and had trouble breathing and increased heart rates. By the time they reached the hospital, one was already intubated and the other had lost muscle control in her neck and couldn’t open her eyes or communicate with doctors, according to the police report.

Holtorf said he was “so freaked out” by what happened because none of the women’s symptoms “made any sense.” In 30 years of providing such treatments, he said he’s never seen such a reaction.

Event organizer James Strole, an Arizona businessman who has built a 50-year career selling the promise of eternal life to followers, said the two patients are recovering after several days in the hospital. He said “it’s not clear the people got sick as a result of treatment from Dr. Holtorf,” adding he’s “anxious” for the illnesses to be “deeply investigated.” He said nothing similar has happened in the 10 years he has been producing RAADFest.

This is the first year Holtorf offered therapies at the conference, Strole said. He added that Holtorf provided the therapies to 60 people at the event and has attempted to reach them to learn whether they experienced any problems. Holtorf said only six patients received peptides.

Strole said the coalition’s science board scrutinizes therapy providers before granting them permission to operate a booth in the conference’s exhibition hall, which organizers referred to as a clinic.

“The big concern is safety,” he said. “We look at who is doing the administering, whether it’s an injection or supplement. We look at the person and the company itself, what the efficacy is, how they operate, their safety measures. We look at all that.”

Strole said peptides are considered “generally safe” when taken under the direction of a doctor, adding that he takes them regularly. Holtorf also said he believes they are safe and that they saved his life when he was a young man suffering from a severe illness.

A review by ProPublica of both the pharmacy and medical board license databases showed no Nevada licenses for Holtorf or his medical practice. Out-of-state doctors who come to provide care at a conference such as RAADfest are required to obtain a special event license from the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners. (As of Friday, 103 doctors had obtained such a license.) To dispense or possess pharmaceuticals, practitioners must also be licensed by the Nevada Board of Pharmacy. RAADFest’s organizers, however, said they were unaware that Holtorf is not licensed to provide medical care or dispense medications in the state.

“In order to practice medicine in the state, you must be licensed,” said David Wuest, executive secretary of the Nevada Board of Pharmacy.

The Nevada Legislature has passed stricter laws as alternative therapies have become popular outside traditional medical settings. In 2017, for example, the state banned so-called Botox parties, requiring the anti-wrinkle injections only be administered in a medical office or spa equipped to deal with life-threatening emergencies. But beyond its standard medical licensing requirements, the state doesn’t have rules governing an event like RAADFest, where attendees receive an array of anti-aging therapies including gene therapies, peptide injections, dialysis-like blood detoxification, bone scans and light therapy.

Strole said he wasn’t aware that providers need a special in-state license to provide the type of therapies Holtorf offered, which he described as “neutraceuticals.”

“I’ve never heard they had to get from the state permission to do that under the auspices of giving a treatment of that nature, that’s not actually treating some disease or something,” Strole said.

According to the police report, Holtorf contracted with a Nevada-licensed nurse practitioner, who administered the injection to one of the women. He also contracted with another doctor, who mixed the vials and administered the injection to the second woman, the report said. That doctor does not appear to have the necessary Nevada licenses.

Holtorf declined to comment on the practitioners he hired for the event, other than to say he had worked with the doctor in the past.

Wuest said multiple providers might be investigated, but he wouldn’t confirm whether Holtorf is a subject of the probe. The board also is investigating whether the therapy provided to the patients required a medical or pharmaceutical license. The FDA is assisting in the investigation to determine what was in the injections, including whether it was a manufactured pharmaceutical or a compounded medication, Wuest said.

Holtorf’s medical practice and the peptide company he founded are affiliated with an organization, Forgotten Formula, that asserts a constitutional right to provide treatments as they see fit. On its website, the private membership association warns “all bodies in the public sector” that they “do not have any jurisdiction” over their doctors. “All doctors, healers, and members are protected under the shield of this organization,” the website says. “We operate member to member. Ignoring this disclaimer can lead to legal consequences against the party at fault.”

According to the police report, Holtorf told officers he obtained the peptides dispensed at the festival from Forgotten Formula. In the interview with ProPublica, however, he denied that, saying he’s not sure which of the many manufacturers he works with provided the peptides used at the booth.

The women received different peptide concoctions, according to the police report. Both included at least one component described by the FDA as posing significant risks when compounded. Holtorf said it is difficult to keep up with which peptides are banned and which are still acceptable for compounding.

“There is so much gray area,” he said. “People know they just get patients better.”

Despite the FDA warnings, peptides were popular among RAADFest attendees who were promised “beautiful life-saving therapies” at the event’s clinic. Event organizers touted that 70 longevity experts would be on hand during the four-day event at the Red Rock Casino Resort Spa but did not list the vendors providing treatments on the event website.

“We have a RAAD clinic, where people will be able to come in at discounted prices and try and do these therapies safely with doctors,” Strole told a Las Vegas TV news program while promoting the event.

Strole is executive director of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Coalition for Radical Life Extension, one of a cluster of for-profit and nonprofit entities devoted to helping people achieve immortality founded by Strole and two “immortalist” business partners. Of the three co-founders, only Strole, who is in his 70s, is still alive.

Charles Brown, the original founder, claimed to have had a spiritual experience in the 1950s that showed him the path to immortality and proclaimed he could share that path with others, according to an Arizona Republic story. Brown died of Parkinson’s disease in 2014. His wife, Bernadeane “Bernie” Brown, who operated the for-profit People Unlimited with Strole, died of breast cancer in 2024. Her body is said to have been cryogenically preserved.

The nonprofit organizes the annual anti-aging festival, which charges more than $400 for a ticket, while People Unlimited offers monthly memberships for as much as $255 a month, according to its website. Members get access to weekly meetings, where Strole delivers motivational sermons on immortality and age reversal, as well as talks by guest speakers on wellness, discounts on “longevity protocols” and access to a community of people who “want you to live as much as they want to live.”

Gutman, the Florida emergency room doctor, spoke at the event earlier this month, her first time attending RAADFest. She left before the last day, when the two women were hospitalized, and hadn’t heard about the incident before a reporter called. But she said their symptoms — swollen tongue, trouble breathing, increased heart rate — sounded like an allergic reaction, which she said isn’t terribly common in peptide injections. But she cautioned that before injection the drugs are mixed with an agent that can sometimes pose problems.

Although she was skeptical of some of the therapies provided at the festival’s clinic, she said everyone she met there seemed to have “their heart in the right place” and genuinely wanted to help others “live their best lives.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Anjeanette Damon.

Russia freed Yesypenko on June 20 after he served a five-year prison sentence on charges of possessing and transporting explosives, which he denied. Karnei, detained for nearly 2 years, was released along with 13 political prisoners, including opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski. The 14 were freed by Belarus on June 21 following a visit to Minsk by senior U.S. official Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general.

“CPJ celebrates that Vladislav Yesypenko and Ihar Karnei are now free and reunited with their families,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “The efforts and pressure of the international community must not stop here, as Russia and Belarus continue to hold dozens of journalists in connection with their work. They all should be released immediately.” 

Russian Federal Security Service officers detained Yesypenko, a freelance correspondent for Krym.Realii, a Crimea-focused outlet run by U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in March 2021 in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea. He was initially sentenced to six years in prison, but the term was reduced by a year on appeal in August 2022.

Karnei, a former freelancer with RFE/RL, was detained in July 2023 and sentenced to three years in March 2024 on charges of participating in an extremist group — the Belarusian Association of Journalists, which had been the largest independent media association in the country until it was dissolved in 2021 and later labeled an extremist group. His sentence was extended by eight months in December 2024.

“RFE/RL extends its deepest gratitude to the U.S. and Ukrainian governments for working with us to ensure that Vlad’s unjust detention was not prolonged,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement.

Karnei and Yesypenko’s releases come after sustained international pressure, including from CPJ, and after Andrey Kuznechyk, another RFE/RL journalist, was freed from a Belarusian prison in February.

Belarus is Europe’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 31 behind bars as of December 1, 2024. Thirteen of the 30 journalists still detained by Russia are Ukrainian. 

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

Russia freed Yesypenko on June 20 after he served a five-year prison sentence on charges of possessing and transporting explosives, which he denied. Karnei, detained for nearly 2 years, was released along with 13 political prisoners, including opposition figure Siarhei Tsikhanouski. The 14 were freed by Belarus on June 21 following a visit to Minsk by senior U.S. official Keith Kellogg, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general.

“CPJ celebrates that Vladislav Yesypenko and Ihar Karnei are now free and reunited with their families,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “The efforts and pressure of the international community must not stop here, as Russia and Belarus continue to hold dozens of journalists in connection with their work. They all should be released immediately.” 

Russian Federal Security Service officers detained Yesypenko, a freelance correspondent for Krym.Realii, a Crimea-focused outlet run by U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), in March 2021 in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea. He was initially sentenced to six years in prison, but the term was reduced by a year on appeal in August 2022.

Karnei, a former freelancer with RFE/RL, was detained in July 2023 and sentenced to three years in March 2024 on charges of participating in an extremist group — the Belarusian Association of Journalists, which had been the largest independent media association in the country until it was dissolved in 2021 and later labeled an extremist group. His sentence was extended by eight months in December 2024.

“RFE/RL extends its deepest gratitude to the U.S. and Ukrainian governments for working with us to ensure that Vlad’s unjust detention was not prolonged,” RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus said in a statement.

Karnei and Yesypenko’s releases come after sustained international pressure, including from CPJ, and after Andrey Kuznechyk, another RFE/RL journalist, was freed from a Belarusian prison in February.

Belarus is Europe’s worst jailer of journalists, with at least 31 behind bars as of December 1, 2024. Thirteen of the 30 journalists still detained by Russia are Ukrainian. 

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

Sherab, the abbot of Yena Monastery in Dege county’s Wangbuding township in Kardze Tibet Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, was sentenced to four years in prison and Gonpo, the chief administrator, sentenced to three years, said the sources, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. It wasn’t immediately clear when the sentences were handed down.

The sources said Gonpo was in critical condition due to torture in detention and has been transferred to an intensive care unit in Chengdu’s West China Hospital.

The two heads of Yena Monastery were detained with hundreds of Tibetan monks and local residents in February 2024 for peacefully appealing for a halt to the construction of the 1,100-megawatt Gangtuo dam on the Drichu river (or Jinsha, in Chinese) that would submerge several monasteries of historical significance, including Yena and Wonto monasteries, and force the resettlement of communities in at least two major villages.

Many of the protestors who were detained were reportedly severely beaten during interrogations with some requiring medical attention, sources told RFA at the time. Most were released by the following month but key monastic and village leaders whom authorities suspected of playing a leading role in the protests – like Wonto Monastery’s senior administrator Tenzin Sangpo and village official Tenzin – were transferred to a larger county detention center.

Yena Monastery has faced particularly severe repression. Authorities have targeted monks for “focused rectification and re-education” of their political ideologies and for their role as “serious informants,” sources told RFA.

“The government really went all-out against Yena Monastery, as if venting their anger,” the first source told RFA. Officials said the two monastery leaders should be “severely punished” specifically for their decision to seek and hire legal representation.

In 2024, video emerged of Yena Monastery’s abbot Sherab holding both his thumbs up in the traditional Tibetan gesture of begging, as he, other Tibetan monks and local residents publicly cried and pleaded before visiting officials on Feb. 20 not to proceed with the planned project.

Collective imprisonment

The area on either side of the Drichu river remains under strict surveillance more than a year after the protests, with movement restrictions imposed on the monks and residents of the monasteries and villages at Wangbuding township, sources told RFA.

Authorities have established multiple checkpoints at the border between Tibetan areas in Sichuan and the Tibet Autonomous Region, strictly controlling all entry and exit, they said.

Only Tibetans holding transit permits issued by the police are allowed passage through the checkpoints installed on roads leading to monasteries like Yena and Wonto that are located near the river, sources said. Even ethnic Han Chinese with transit permits are prohibited from entering, they added.

“The whole area has been effectively sealed off, with nearly 4,000 residents and monks in the villages and monasteries near the river in a state of collective imprisonment, having lost all freedom of movement,” said the second source.

During periods considered politically sensitive by Chinese authorities – such as around the anniversary of the March 10 Tibetan Uprising Day of 1959 or the birthday of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, on July 6 – surveillance is even more heightened, sources said.

During “sensitive periods,” Tibetans without local household registration are refused entry, while local villagers traveling from rural areas to Dege county seat must apply for transit permits, and are often still refused, sources said.

The Gangtuo Dam – which is planned to be located at Kamtok (Gangtuo, in Chinese) in Dege county – is part of a Chinese government project to build a massive 13-tier hydropower complex on the Drichu, with a total planned capacity of 13,920 megawatts.

Chinese officials had indicated after last year’s protests that the project would proceed as planned but sources said there’s no clarity yet on when the construction would be started or if it would at all.

“Even if the project ultimately does not move ahead, the monks and residents of the surrounding villages have already been deeply harmed,” said the first source.

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

The United States has denounced sanctions by Britain and allies — including New Zealand and Australia — against Israeli far-right ministers, saying they should focus instead on the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

New Zealand has banned two Israeli politicians from travelling to the country because of comments about the war in Gaza that Foreign Minister Winston Peters says “actively undermine peace and security”.

New Zealand joins Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing the sanctions on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

• READ MORE: UK and allies to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Ben-Gvir, Smotrich
• Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Peters said they were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

“Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 [2023] and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release all hostages.

“Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government.”

The two ministers were “using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution”, Peters said.

‘Severely and deliberately undermined’ peace
“Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement.”

The sanctions were consistent with New Zealand’s approach to other foreign policy issues, he said.

“New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar.”

New Zealand had been a long-standing supporter of a two-state solution, Peters said, which the international community was also overwhelmingly in favour of.

“New Zealand’s consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law. Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution,” he said.

“The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent. New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East Peace Process.”

‘Outrageous’, says Israel
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the move was “outrageous” and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the “unacceptable decision”.

His comments were made while attending the inauguration of a new Israeli settlement on Palestinian land.

Peters is currently in Europe for the sixth Pacific-France Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice.

US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters: “We find that extremely unhelpful. It will do nothing to get us closer to a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Britain, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia “should focus on the real culprit, which is Hamas”, she said of the sanctions.

“We remain concerned about any step that would further isolate Israel from the international community.”

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.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Invisible Institute and co-published with the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A former Chicago police officer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to felony charges in connection with two incidents of sexual misconduct involving female colleagues — one that occurred while at the police training academy and one at a police precinct.

The case against Eric Tabb was highlighted in an Invisible Institute-ProPublica investigation that found that Chicago police officials have frequently failed to vigorously investigate allegations of sexual misconduct made against city officers.

Tabb, 35, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated battery in a public place, a Class 3 felony, and was sentenced to 30 months of probation. As part of a plea agreement, Tabb’s charges were reduced and he was required to enroll in a sex offender program.

Tabb, who was arrested in December 2023 and fired, is one of 14 officers accused of sexual assault in the past decade who we found had been accused at least once before of sexual misconduct. Investigative files show that five of 17 women in his academy class have given similar accounts of inappropriate sexual contact involving Tabb.

A team of Invisible Institute reporters reviewed more than 300 sexual misconduct and assault complaints against Chicago officers. The complaints were often downplayed or ignored, sometimes allowing officers to abuse again and again. The Chicago Police Department said in a statement for that story that it “takes all allegations of sexual assault seriously, including allegations against CPD members.”

During a hearing before Cook County Judge James B. Novy, Tabb’s two victims, both of whom are police officers, read impact statements in court.

“The women I speak for today, including myself, were women that trusted Eric Tabb, spending eight months with him forming that trust in a police academy. As of today, there is hope that all us women affected can put this in the past,” one of the officers read from a prepared statement.

The judge said he agreed to the plea deal to allow the women to put the cases behind them.

“The only reason I went along with this deal is because of the victims,” said Novy, who warned Tabb that he will send him to prison if he doesn’t follow the terms of his probation. “Everyone wants closure. They want to put this behind them. I’m going to keep a close eye on this.”

The charges stemmed from two incidents. At a birthday party in August 2023 at a Wrigleyville bar, Tabb allegedly approached a fellow female recruit on the dance floor, whispered to her that he wanted to have sex with her, touched her breast, buttock and crotch, and then grabbed her face and tried to kiss her. Tabb was charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse from that incident.

The second incident took place after roll call inside a police precinct in December 2023. Tabb allegedly touched a fellow probationary police officer’s crotch several times when she stood up to adjust her duty belt, according to court records. She had attended the training academy with him.

At an earlier hearing, prosecutors had asked Novy to include two additional incidents that were not charged but were described as part of a pattern of behavior by Tabb. Tabb attended a “star party,” an unofficial celebration for graduating recruits receiving their badge number. At the party, a witness told investigators he saw Tabb grabbing another female recruit’s crotch. That same night, Tabb touched a second recruit’s buttocks, according to interviews with police investigators and court records.

Alexus Byrd-Maxey was the first recruit to report Tabb a few months after she and Tabb started at the academy, but her accusation never became part of the prosecution’s case. According to Byrd-Maxey, she was leaning over a classmate’s computer in March 2023 when Tabb walked behind her. She said she felt his hands on her waist and his body pressed up against her.

Byrd-Maxey tried to report Tabb several times but was unsuccessful. Investigative files obtained by the Invisible Institute and ProPublica show that Tabb told other recruits that Byrd-Maxey overreacted and that he had only tapped her on the shoulder to get to his seat. Other recruits supported his story. Almost three weeks later, there was a confrontation in class in which she allegedly told Tabb to “shut your bitch ass up” and supposedly used gang-related language. Byrd-Maxey denied those allegations but was fired.

Tabb and his attorney, Dan Herbert, declined to comment, but Herbert had previously said Tabb was innocent and blamed Byrd-Maxey for the claims by the other women.

While Byrd-Maxey couldn’t attend the hearing, her mom, Jauntaunne Byrd-Horne, was in the courtroom and later told her daughter about the plea agreement. Byrd-Maxey said she was disappointed.

“He’s been given grace, time and time again. They let him be a free man,” she said. “I feel like it’s still not being taken seriously, again.”

Sebastián Hidalgo contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by María Inés Zamudio, Invisible Institute.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

New laws in Georgia and New Mexico are requiring harsher punishments for students — or anyone else — who make threats against schools, despite growing evidence that a similar law is ensnaring students who posed no risk to others.

ProPublica and WPLN News have documented how a 2024 Tennessee law that made threats of mass violence at school a felony has led to students being arrested based on rumors and for noncredible threats. In one case, a Hamilton County deputy arrested an autistic 13-year-old in August for saying his backpack would blow up, though the teen later said he just wanted to protect the stuffed bunny inside.

In the same county almost two months later, a deputy tracked down and arrested an 11-year-old student at a family birthday party. The child later explained he had overheard one student asking if another was going to shoot up the school tomorrow, and that he answered “yes” for him. Last month, the public charter school agreed to pay the student’s family $100,000 to settle a federal lawsuit claiming school officials wrongly reported him to police. The school also agreed to implement training on how to handle these types of incidents, including reporting only “valid” threats to police.

Tennessee requires schools to assess whether threats of mass violence are valid before expelling students. But the felony law does not hold police to the same standard, which has led to the arrests of students who had no intent to disrupt school or carry out a threat.

In Tennessee’s recent legislative session, civil and disability rights advocates unsuccessfully pushed to change the law to specify that police could arrest only students who make credible threats. They argued that very young students and students who act disruptively as a result of a disability should be excluded from felony charges.

Several Tennessee lawmakers from both parties also voiced their dissatisfaction with the school threats law during the session, citing the harm done to children who did not pose real danger. “I’m still struggling through the unintended consequences because I’m still not entirely happy with what we did before,” Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Republican, said at a committee hearing in April. “We’re still struggling to get that right.”

But Greg Mays, the deputy commissioner of the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, told a committee of lawmakers in March that in his “informed opinion,” the law was having a “deterrent effect” on students who make threats. Mays told ProPublica that the number of threats his office was tracking had decreased since the law went into effect. His office did not immediately release that number and previously denied requests for the number of threats it has tracked, calling the information “confidential.”

According to data ProPublica obtained through a records request, the number of students criminally charged is growing, not shrinking. This past school year through the end of March, the number of charges for threats of mass violence in juvenile court has jumped to 652, compared to 519 the entire previous school year, when it was classified as a misdemeanor. Both years, students were rarely found “delinquent,” which is equivalent to guilty in adult court. The youngest child charged so far this year is 6.

Rather than tempering its approach, Tennessee toughened it this year. The Legislature added another, higher-level felony to the books for anyone who “knowingly” makes a school threat against four or more people if others “reasonably” believe the threat will be carried out. Legal and disability rights advocates told lawmakers they worried the new law would result in even more confusion among police and school officials who handle threats.

Despite the outcry over increased arrests in Tennessee, two states followed its lead by passing laws that will crack down harder on hoax threats.

In New Mexico, lawmakers increased the charge for a shooting threat from a misdemeanor to a felony, in response to the wave of school threats over the previous year. To be charged with a felony, a person must “intentionally and maliciously” communicate the threat to terrorize others, cause the evacuation of a public building or prompt a police response.

Critics of the bill warned that even with the requirement to prove intent, it was written too vaguely and could harm students.

“This broad definition could criminalize what is described as ‘thought crimes’ or ‘idle threats,’ with implications for statements made by children or juveniles without a full appreciation of the consequences,” the public defenders’ office argued, according to a state analysis of an earlier, similar version of the legislation.

After a 14-year-old shot and killed four people at Apalachee High School in Georgia last September, the state’s House Speaker Jon Burns vowed to take tougher action against students who make threats.

He sponsored legislation that makes it a felony to issue a death threat against a person at a school that terrorizes people or causes an evacuation. The law, which went into effect in April, says someone can be charged either if they intend to cause such harm or if they make a threat “in reckless disregard of the risk” of that harm.

Neither Burns nor the sponsor of the New Mexico bill responded to requests for comment.

Georgia also considered a bill that would treat any 13- to 17-year-old who makes a terroristic threat at school as an adult in court. But after pushback from advocates, the bill’s author, Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Republican, removed threats from the list of offenses that could result in transfer to adult court.

During a March committee hearing, Dolezal acknowledged advocates’ concerns with the original bill language. “We recognize that there is actually a difference between people who actually commit these crimes and minors who are unwisely threatening but perhaps without an intent to ever actually follow through on it,” he said.

Other states also considered passing harsher penalties for school threats.

In Alabama, Rep. Alan Baker, a Republican, sponsored a bill that removes the requirement that a threat be “credible and imminent” to result in a criminal charge. The bill passed easily in both chambers but did not go through the final steps necessary to make it through the Legislature.

Baker said the broader version of the penalty was intended to target hoax threats that cause panic at schools. A first offense would be a misdemeanor; any threats after that would be a felony. “You’re just talking about a very disruptive type of scenario, even though it may be determined that it was just a hoax,” Baker said. “That’s why there needed to be something that would be a little bit more harsh.”

Baker told ProPublica that he plans to reintroduce the bill next session.

Pennsylvania is considering legislation that would make threats against schools a felony, regardless of credibility. The bill would also require offenders to pay restitution, including the cost of supplies and compensation for employees’ time spent responding to the threat.

In a memo last December, state Sen. Michele Brooks, a Republican, cited the “cruel and extremely depraved hoax” threats following Nashville’s Covenant School shooting as the reason for the proposal. “These calls triggered a massive emergency response, creating perilous conditions for students, teachers and public safety agencies alike,” she wrote.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania opposes the legislation, calling it a “broad expansion” of current law that could lead to “excessive” costs for children.

Pennsylvania’s Legislature adjourns at the end of December.

Paige Pfleger of WPLN/Nashville Public Radio contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Aliyya Swaby.

In part one of this series, we discussed a number of films which encapsulate the depravity of an America enslaved to unbridled corporate power, and how many of our countrymen dispense with all semblance of morality in order to earn a living. In part two we will revisit this theme, while delving into “the war on terror” and the grave dangers of biofascism.

Up in the Air, directed by Jason Reitman; starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick (2009)

Up in the Air unveils the macabre rotting heart of an America in the throes of late-stage unfettered capitalism. The protagonist, Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), embodies the amorality of many Americans who flourish in this ruthless and unforgiving world. Bingham’s illustrious job is firing people, which he does by flying around the country and terminating American workers whose employers are too cowardly to do this unsavory work themselves.

At one point in the film Clooney’s boss, Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman), gives a pep talk to his team excitedly explaining how housing, retail, the auto industry and other sectors of the economy are in an abysmal state. This is cause for considerable glee he informs his team of hit men, as woeful economic times offer no shortage of people to fire – and this is good for business.

Due to unchecked privatization and the lack of a social safety net, losing one’s job can quickly land an American in a precarious financial position, but as American society has likewise devolved into a Tower of Babel losing one’s job can also bring about a loss of identity, a motif that is raised repeatedly throughout the film.

Like many Americans who have managed to retain a comfortable middle class existence, our protagonist’s conception of success revolves exclusively around money and power. In conjunction with this rather dubious value system, he relishes the prestige of regularly flying for his work and clings to the childish dream of being one of the few to reach ten million frequent flyer miles. The selfishness and lack of empathy for those whose lives he helps destroy is shared by fellow corporate cannibals Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) and Ryan’s protege, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), who adhere to a similar, if not even more, ruthless ethos.

Initially, Ryan lives purely for his career and eschews meaningful long-lasting relationships, a philosophy on display when he grudgingly agrees to attend his sister’s wedding. His estrangement from his family (undoubtedly familiar for many American viewers) is mollified when he inadvertently commits a number of selfless acts to help the young couple.

Ryan’s hyper-individualism is upended when he unwittingly falls in love with the heartless Alex, who ends up treating him precisely how he has treated the thousands of people he has fired over the years, raising the question of whether using human beings like disposable plastic cups is such a great idea after all.

Bingham’s incessant travels hinder his ability to form long-lasting relationships but also unmoor him from belonging to any particular place, thereby mirroring the mercenary existence of corporations; while his apartment is a sterile hotel room devoid of artwork, keepsakes, and warmth.

Deceptively insightful and unerringly astute, Up in the Air casts the spotlight on an America where voracious corporations operate with complete impunity while millions of Americans lack good health insurance and education, unionization; and above all, real communities, without which we are cast into a pit of solitude, despair, and appalling dehumanization. As the timeless Zulu proverb Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu reminds us: “A person is a person through other people;” or more simply, “I am, because you are.”

Equals, directed by Drake Doremus; starring Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart (2015)

Perhaps the most important movie ever made about the informed consent ethic and its inextricable connection to democracy, Equals tells the story of an Orwellian police state where a people known as The Collective have been enslaved to a psychiatric dictatorship and emotionally lobotomized.

Drake Doremus (who incidentally had a bad experience with psychotropic drugs as a child) masterfully demonstrates what can be lost when informed consent and the oath to do no harm are tossed to the wayside and physicians become the servants of a sinister political apparatus.

Shot with an elegant and ethereal cinematography, Equals is likewise a compelling dystopian futuristic film in that it succeeds in fashioning a society anchored in a value system which is very alien and yet simultaneously eerily familiar to our own; and viewers who understand the grievous crimes of the Cult of Psychiatry, the Church of Vaccinology, the Branch Covidians, the opioid epidemic, and the war on informed consent generally will be transfixed by its hallowed and undying message.

Malfunctioning humans who begin to re-experience emotions despite genetic modifications designed to eliminate them are diagnosed with SOS, or “switched-on syndrome,” which the viewer knows to be an imaginary disease but which the characters trapped in this totalitarian hell have been taught from birth to fear as an incurable condition inevitably leading to terrible suffering and death.

Sufferers of SOS who progress from Stage 1 to Stage 4 and fail to commit suicide are committed to the dreaded DEN, or Defective Emotional Neuropathy facility – the police state’s prison and political psych ward. “Coupling” is strictly forbidden and those who fail to seek “treatment” for their illicit emotions are called “hiders.” The supremely powerful police are chillingly referred to as Health and Safety.

Amidst the horrors of this biofascist 1984, a love affair develops between Nia (Kristen Stewart) and Silas (Nicholas Hoult), who eventually realize that it is their “illness” that allows them to experience deep emotions without which they wouldn’t have been able to fall in love and share such special moments together.

Equals depicts a terrifying world where bodily autonomy has ceased to exist, emotions are a disease, and love is the greatest crime of all. A grave warning of what can unfold when health care is weaponized and dissent pathologized, the haunted poetry of Equals will stay locked in your heart long after the final credits have ebbed and melted away.

Camp X-Ray, directed by Peter Sattler; starring Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, and Lane Garrison (2014)

Kristen Stewart is superb as Amy Cole, a young soldier assigned to Guantanamo Bay in Peter Sattler’s Camp X-Ray. From a small Southern town, poorly educated, and indoctrinated to believe that all Muslims are terrorists, she is initially a devout believer in “the mission.”

Her grim ideological ship capsizes when she begins to develop a friendship with one of the prisoners, Ali Amir. As their bond strengthens and she learns to look at Ali as a tortured and wrongfully incarcerated man, she starts to question the veracity of what she has been told about “the war on terror,” and her growing sense of unease about how they are “defending freedom” alienates her from her fellow soldiers.

In this man-made hell the detainees are prisoners of the body, and yet the guards are also prisoners; for they are imprisoned in a cage of lies, ignorance, authoritarianism and the scourge of unreason. They are prisoners of the soul.

Through her growing empathy we observe Amy journey from a callous soldier that unquestioningly follows orders to a more compassionate person who is increasingly loath to blindly believe what she is told. As she comes to look at her only friend at Guantanamo as a suffering human being her humanity is restored, and her soul is duly saved from the plains of demonic nihilism reserved for those who blindly hate another people.

A heartrending tale, Camp X-Ray is nevertheless an uplifting one, and as we gaze within its haunted waters we are reminded that even within the darkest glades of evil there can still be a ray of light.

Redacted, directed by Brian De Palma; starring Patrick Carroll, Rob Devaney, and Izzy Diaz (2007)

Called “one big mess” by the Los Angeles Times and “an almost total failure” by the BBC, Redacted is one of the most devastating anti-war films made in recent decades. A fictionalized reconstruction of the events that led up to a murderous raid on an Iraqi home outside Baghdad by US Army soldiers in which a young girl was raped and murdered along with her family, Redacted is the antithesis of the nauseating American Sniper and other jingoistically depraved Hollywood war movies.

In the sense that the film engages in a retelling of a significant historical event using a fictional documentary format, Redacted is reminiscent of Paul Greengrass’ excellent Bloody Sunday. Yet it is also a masterpiece of the found footage genre, and in this regard shares much in common with the nightmarish Apocalypse Cult (also known as Apocalyptic) and The Blair Witch Project. Merging these two styles while injecting an uncompromising anti-imperialist sentiment, Brian De Palma brings the senseless savagery of the Iraq War into our laps and living rooms. Clinging to our lapels, it doesn’t let us look away.

An unusual example of polyphonic narration in cinema, Redacted is told through a variety of narrative voices, each of which records the Iraq War from a distinct perspective.

Much of the story unfolds through the lens of the unscrupulous Private Angel Salazar, who intends to use the footage he records of his time in the military to get into film school. Additional scenes (some of which are interestingly not even recorded by human beings) are shot by rebel jihadists, a security camera from inside the wire, a camera recording the interrogation of the soldiers who participate in the brutal raid, footage from French TV and Iraqi TV, and a website for a soldier’s wife to share her thoughts.

Many of these scenes initially appear as live footage uploaded to social media, and as the images pass from the eye to the brain a disorientation ensues which forces the viewer to repeatedly question which images are “real” and which are “an illusion.”

As the American education system is rigged to breed sheep, an effective psyop requires information saturation bombing, and this is precisely how the psyops that went hand in hand with the Branch Covidian putsch and the destruction of Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and to a somewhat lesser extent Iraq and Afghanistan were successful. Ironically, while Redacted contains a great deal of truth about Washington’s invasion of Iraq, the legacy media lemmings will invariably dismiss it as sensationalist nonsense, and “just a movie.”

Vividly resurrected are the helpless Iraqi civilians trapped in a hellscape where the rule of law has been dissolved, and the new reigning power is a band of unhinged barbarians. In this same vein, the film underscores the profound ignorance and dehumanization of many American soldiers fighting wars of which they know nothing, in countries of which they know even less, and who harbor a fathomless rage from being relentlessly humiliated all their lives by an unseen hand; a hand, which unbeknownst to these dogs of war, has duped them into fighting for the very government which has so debased them all their lives.

As transpires in Oliver Stone’s Platoon and De Palma’s Casualties of War a rift unfolds within the platoon, with some soldiers objecting to the deliberate targeting of civilians in an attempt to exact revenge for fallen comrades; but as Yeats once bemoaned, “The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.” If a soldier stands by and does nothing while their fellow storm troopers commit a war crime, will they not have to live with this on their conscience until the day they die?

Repeatedly blurring the line between a dramatic film and a documentary, Redacted ponders the significance of launching an illegal war of aggression in an age where mass media and social media, which can work together and which can likewise be at odds with one another, wield enormous power.

Redacted encourages the viewer to think about the ways in which propaganda can be used to manipulate, deceive, and dupe people into thinking that they understand a conflict of which they know nothing (Russia’s “unprovoked invasion” being a perfect example). And yet as war imagery (both still and video) can be used to foment lies, treachery, and deceit, De Palma turns the tables on the presstitutes by demonstrating how it can also be used to reveal the truth.

Shocking, violent, and relentlessly harrowing Redacted vividly portrays the Tartarean horror wrought by Washington’s sacking of Iraq, encapsulated by the diabolical destruction of one innocent and defenseless Iraqi family.

Blackfish, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite (2013)

“There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men” wrote Herman Melville in Moby-Dick, a reality glaringly on display in Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s poignant film Blackfish.

One of the more unsettling documentaries to come out in recent years, Blackfish tells the tragic story of how whales are treated in captivity, where SeaWorld and other marine mammal theme parks treat orcas with great cruelty in order to get them to perform aquatic stunts, an extravaganza of villainy tied to a multi-billion dollar industry.

Indeed, this is yet another instance where what is profitable is simultaneously deeply unethical, and the marine parks that debase these wondrous creatures and ravage their souls also endanger their trainers who are frequently young, naive, and ignorant of the fact that orcas can be very dangerous when held in conditions tantamount to torture and forced to become circus animals.

(Starting about five years ago orcas started ramming small boats and attacking their rudders in the Iberian Peninsula, the Strait of Gibraltar; and to a somewhat lesser extent, off the Shetland Islands. Marine biologists have proposed a number of theories to try and explain this phenomenon. Perhaps these ornery blackfish have seen the same movie, albeit without the screen?)

At the heart of this seminal cinematic work is the excruciating and seemingly never-ending destruction of the orca Tilikum, who is kidnapped from Icelandic waters at the age of two, and is henceforth condemned to a life of wretchedness away from his pod. (Orcas typically stay with their mothers their entire lives). Transferred from one marine park to another, his fate is not unlike that of a slave in the antebellum South. Suffering repeated humiliations and brutalized into becoming a plaything for the amusement of the pseudo sentient, Tilikum becomes increasingly aggressive and ends up killing three people. Are humans fundamentally any different? Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas comes to mind, along with certain demonic practices all too common in American prisons, such as sensory deprivation and pitting prisoners against one another.

(Other imprisoned cetaceans have rebelled against their captors, such as a well publicized dolphin attack of a trainer at the Miami Seaquarium three years ago).

Unlike with violent dogs that are put down, Tilikum’s sperm was used for breeding purposes (a practice also reminiscent of the antebellum South) and his descendants have likewise shown a proclivity towards violence, such as one of his sons, Kyuquot, who nearly drowned his trainer.

Commenting on the dastardly practice of kidnapping orcas, The Whale Sanctuary Project states:

“By any definition and by any standard, keeping these apex predators of the ocean in small tanks for the amusement of tourists is more than just wrong; it is a crime against each of them individually and a sin against nature….”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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British officials told the U.S. they are concerned about the safety of SpaceX’s plans to fly its next Starship rocket over British territories in the Caribbean, where debris fell earlier this year after two of the company’s rockets exploded, according to documents reviewed by ProPublica.

The worries from the U.K. government, detailed in a letter to a top American diplomat on Wednesday, follow the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision last week to grant SpaceX’s request for a fivefold increase in the number of Starship launches allowed this year, from five to 25. Growing the number of launches of the most powerful rocket ever built is a priority for SpaceX head Elon Musk, who is also one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers.

Of particular concern to British officials is the public’s safety in the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands — all of which could fall under Starship 9’s flight path.

After the explosion in January, residents of the Turks and Caicos reported finding pieces of the rocket on beaches and roads. A car was also damaged in the Starship 7 accident. Seven weeks later, after receiving the FAA’s blessing to proceed, SpaceX launched Starship 8 from Boca Chica, Texas, but it too exploded after liftoff. Air traffic in the region was diverted, and burning streaks from the falling rocket were visible in the sky from the Bahamas and Florida’s coast.

The British letter to a U.S. State Department official, Ambassador Lisa Kenna, asks the U.S. to consider changing the launch site or trajectory of Starship 9. If that isn’t possible, the request — from Stephen Doughty, the United Kingdom’s minister of state for Europe, North America and U.K. Overseas Territories — asks that agencies like the FAA consider altering the launch’s timing to minimize safety risks and the economic impact for the British territories.

The letter also requests that the U.S. government provide the United Kingdom more information on increased safety measures that will be put in place before Starship 9 launches, and that British territories be given enough warning to communicate with the public about those measures.

“We have been working closely with US Government partners regarding Starship Flight 9 to protect the safety of the UK Overseas Territories and to ensure appropriate measures are in place,” a  UK government spokesperson said Thursday in response to ProPublica’s questions about the letter.

The State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. But the company has said it learns from its mistakes. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability,” the company said after the Starship 8 accident. “We will conduct a thorough investigation, in coordination with the FAA, and implement corrective actions to make improvements on future Starship flight tests.”

Musk — who sees the uptick in launches as critical to the development of technology that could help land astronauts on the moon and ultimately Mars — has been less diplomatic.

He downplayed the January explosion as “barely a bump in the road” and seemed to brush off safety concerns, posting a video of the flaming debris field with the caption, “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

SpaceX has not announced the date of the Starship 9 launch, but news reports have said it could happen as soon as May 21. The last explosion, however, is still under investigation.

In response to questions for this story, the FAA said it “works closely with our international partners to mitigate risks to public safety for FAA-licensed launches. We are in close contact and collaboration with the United Kingdom and the Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as other regional partners, as we continue to evaluate SpaceX’s license modification request for its proposed Starship Flight 9 launch.”

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which licenses launches and reentries, is undergoing a leadership shakeup. Three top executives, including the head of the office, announced in April that they were accepting voluntary separation offers.

Musk has been leading efforts to shrink the federal government through the departures of thousands of federal workers. Critics say he has an inherent conflict of interest because his businesses are regulated by agencies such as the FAA and rely on their approvals.

Musk said in a February interview that “I’ll recuse myself if it is a conflict.” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said Thursday that “All administration officials will comply with conflict of interest requirements.”

Last year, the FAA proposed $633,000 in fines against SpaceX for violations related to two previous launches. Musk, in turn, accused the FAA of engaging in “lawfare” and threatened to sue it for “regulatory overreach.” The administrative case remains open.

The number of rocket launches has increased dramatically in recent years, leading pilots and academics to warn about a growing danger in the air for flights that have only minutes to get out of harm’s way when a mishap — as explosions and other failures are called in industry parlance — occurs.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia found in a study published in January that the risk space objects pose to aircraft is rising. They said that the chance of an “uncontrolled reentry” from a rocket over a year is as high as 26% for some large, busy areas of airspace, such as those found in the northeastern U.S., in northern Europe or near major cities in the Asia-Pacific region.

A large union for airplane pilots told FAA officials in January that the Starship 7 breakup “raises additional concerns about whether the FAA is providing adequate separation of space operations from airline flights,” according to a letter sent the day after the rocket exploded.

“The ability of the FAA Air Traffic Control to respond in a timely fashion to an unanticipated rocket anomaly needs to be further evaluated,” said the letter from the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 79,000 pilots at 42 U.S. and Canadian airlines. It asked that flight crews receive more information about high-risk areas before a launch so they can “make an informed and timely decision about their need to potentially reject flight plans that route their aircraft underneath space vehicle trajectories.”

In a response, the FAA said it would review its processes to see whether more can be done to prepare flight crews before a launch.

Capt. Jason Ambrosi, the union’s president, said in a statement emailed to ProPublica that changes are necessary. “Any safety risk posed to commercial airline operations is unacceptable.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Heather Vogell.

With the simmering tension between India and Pakistan since the Pahalgam terrorist attack transforming into a full-scale military conflict, the said advisory has gained wide circulation on social media platforms and messaging app WhatsApp.

BJP leader fro Bengal and former Union minister Debasree Chaudhury shared this advisory on Facebook and wrote, “Don’t panic, be cautious.” However, the politician later deleted this post.

In the Delhi and Ahmedabad subreddits of social media platform Reddit, people posted the viral advisory notice and wrote that it was being shared in society WhatsApp groups with the message that Prime Minister Modi would address the nation. Many users wrote that this was creating panic among the public.

Alt News also received a number of requests related to the viral advisory on its WhatsApp helpline (7600011160).

Apart from this, many users shared this advisory notice and asked whether the government had actually issued this document.

Fact Check

We performed a keyword search using terms related to the advisory notice, but did not find any credible evidence to confirm that it was indeed issued by the government. In this context, we found a tweet by the fact-checking wing of Union government’s Press Information Bureau. It is clearly mentioned here that the claims made in the viral advisory notice are fake and the government had not issued any such notice.

To sum up, the viral advisory notice is being falsely shared in the name of the government. The Indian government has not issued any such notice for its citizens.

The post No, Union govt has not issued advisory on keeping ₹50k cash in hand or stocking two months’ medicines appeared first on Alt News.

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

We speak with two brothers who are fighting Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over its massive data center in Memphis, Tennessee, used to run its chatbot Grok. The facility is next to historically Black neighborhoods and is powered by 35 pollution-spewing methane gas turbines the company is using without legal permits. Musk says he wants to continue expanding the project.

“What’s happening in Memphis is a human rights violation,” says KeShaun Pearson, executive director of the environmental justice organization Memphis Community Against Pollution. “Elon Musk and xAI are violating our human right to clean air and a clean, healthy environment.” His brother Justin J. Pearson, a Tennessee state representative for Memphis, says Musk is “perpetuating environmental racism” by ignoring the wishes of local residents: “They are abusing our community, and they’re exploiting us.”

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

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Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has recalled two dozen generic medicines sold to American patients because the Indian factory that made them failed to comply with U.S. manufacturing standards and the Food and Drug Administration determined that the faulty drugs could harm people, federal records show.

In February, the FDA found problems with cleaning and testing at the plant in Madhya Pradesh, India, which was the subject of a ProPublica investigation last year. The current recalls, listed in an FDA enforcement report last week, cover a wide range of commonly prescribed medicines, including ones that treat epilepsy, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and high blood pressure, among other ailments. ​​A full list of the recalled medications is available here.

The agency determined that the drugs could cause temporary or reversible harm and that the chance of more serious problems was remote. However, the FDA didn’t say what symptoms the flawed drugs could cause. ProPublica asked the FDA and Glenmark for more specifics, but neither responded.

Records show that Glenmark first alerted wholesalers about the recalls in a March 13 letter. That letter suggests that Glenmark pulled the drugs because of potential cross-contamination. Thomas Callaghan, Glenmark’s executive director of regulatory affairs for North America, wrote that 148 batches of the recalled medicines were made “in a shared facility” with two cholesterol-lowering drugs, ezetimibe and a combination of that drug and simvastatin.

That’s a concern because the chemical structure of ezetimibe contains what’s known as a beta-lactam ring. FDA safety experts pay attention to this because many beta-lactam drugs, particularly penicillin, can cause life-threatening allergies and hypersensitivity reactions. It’s the most commonly reported drug allergy in the U.S. Because of that danger, the FDA requires manufacturers to follow special precautions to prevent cross-contamination with drugs that contain a beta-lactam ring, even if they aren’t antibiotics.

The chemical structure of ezetimibe, Callaghan wrote to Glenmark’s wholesalers, shows it is unlikely to cause such hypersensitivity reactions. Nevertheless, Glenmark was recalling the drugs “based on risk assessment and out of an abundance of caution,” Callaghan wrote. He added, “This recall is being made with knowledge of the Food and Drug Administration.”

According to Callaghan’s letter, the potential problem dates back years. The executive wrote that Glenmark began shipping the drugs on Oct. 4, 2022.

In December, ProPublica revealed that the Glenmark factory was responsible for an outsized share of U.S. recalls for pills that didn’t dissolve properly and could harm people. At the time, the FDA hadn’t inspected the plant since before the COVID-19 pandemic, even though one of those recalls had been linked to deaths of American patients.

About two months after that investigation was published, FDA officials returned to the factory — the agency’s first inspection in five years. Inspectors discovered that Glenmark hadn’t properly cleaned equipment to prevent contamination of medicines with residues from other drugs. The federal investigators also noted that Glenmark routinely released some drugs to the U.S. market using test methods that hadn’t been adequately validated, according to the inspection report.

What’s more, when some Glenmark tests found problems with a drug, the company at times declared those results invalid and “retested with new samples to obtain passing results,” the inspection report said. “The batches were ultimately released to the US market.”

In their detailed report, the inspectors listed drugs shipped to U.S. customers who had been affected by the potential contamination and testing problems, but FDA censors redacted page after page, making it impossible to know which medicines may not be safe. An FDA attorney said the information was being withheld because it contained trade secrets or commercial information that was considered privileged or confidential.

ProPublica first asked Glenmark about that inspection on March 7 after obtaining the FDA report through the Freedom of Information Act. Glenmark alerted wholesalers about the recalls less than a week later, but the company and the FDA didn’t tell ProPublica.

Instead, a Glenmark spokesperson sent a statement saying the company was “committed to working diligently with the FDA to ensure compliance with manufacturing operations and quality systems.” And the FDA said it could discuss potential compliance matters only with the company involved.

The FDA first mentioned the recalls publicly in its April 8 enforcement report, which is like an electronic filing cabinet for recalls. The recalls do not appear on the FDA’s recalls website, which compiles press releases written by pharmaceutical companies.

ProPublica asked the FDA and Glenmark why they didn’t alert the public last month that these medicines had been recalled, but neither responded.

Glenmark is embroiled in a federal lawsuit that alleges recalled potassium chloride capsules made at its Madhya Pradesh factory caused the death of a 91-year-old Maine woman in June. The FDA had determined last year that more than 50 million of those recalled Glenmark extended-release capsules had the potential to kill U.S. patients because they didn’t dissolve correctly and could lead to a perilous spike in potassium. In court filings, Glenmark has denied responsibility for the woman’s death.

Since that potassium chloride recall, Glenmark has told federal regulators it has received reports of eight deaths in the U.S. of people who took the recalled capsules, FDA records show. Companies are required to file such reports so the agency can monitor drug safety. The FDA shares few details, though, so ProPublica was unable to independently verify what happened in each case. In general, the FDA says these adverse event reports reflect the opinions of the people who reported the harm and don’t prove that the drug caused it.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Patricia Callahan.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When Max Rykov started reading a Jan. 24 letter sent to the leaders of the country’s 10 refugee resettlement agencies, he found the wording vague but ominous. The agencies were ordered to “stop all work” funded by the Department of State and “not incur any new costs.”

At first, he wondered if the order from the Trump administration was only targeting refugee work in other countries. Rykov, then the director of development and communications at a refugee resettlement partner in Nashville, began texting colleagues at other agencies. “What does it mean?” he asked.

By Monday, three days after the memo, it became clear. The Nashville International Center for Empowerment, along with similar nonprofits across the country, would not have access to the money the government had promised to refugees for their first three months in the United States. That day, NICE laid off 12 of its 56 resettlement staff members and scrambled to free up funds to pay for the basic needs of nearly 170 people dependent on the frozen grants.

Rykov knew exactly what was at stake, and that delivered an additional dose of dread. Born in the former USSR, he and his family arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1993, fleeing the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic devastation and discrimination against Soviet Jews. He was 4 years old, and it was bewildering. Though his family was part of one of the largest waves of refugee resettlement in U.S. history, they ended up in a place with few Russian immigrants.

Life in Birmingham, Alabama, a post-industrial city shaped by the Civil Rights movement and white flight, revolved around Saturday college football games and Sunday church. Rykov said his family felt “barren” in the U.S. away from their culture. Birmingham’s Jewish community was small and the Russian population tiny.

But a local Jewish organization sponsored the Rykovs and paired them with a “friendship family.” The group rented them an apartment and furnished it. Then the organization helped Rykov’s parents find work. And Birmingham’s Jewish community banded together to fund scholarships for Rykov and other Soviet refugee children to attend a private Jewish school, where Rykov felt less isolated.

He went on to attend the University of Alabama and overcame his feeling of otherness. After graduation, he found purpose in bringing people together through his work organizing cultural events, including arts festivals and an adult spelling bee, doing social media outreach for the Birmingham mayor and, in 2021, finding a dream job at a Nashville nonprofit devoted to the very efforts that he believes helped define him.

When Rykov heard that President Donald Trump’s second administration had ordered cuts to the refugee program, his thoughts raced to the Venezuelan refugee family his organization was assisting, an older woman in poor health, her daughter who cared for her and the daughter’s two children, one not yet kindergarten age. None of them spoke English, and there was no plan for how they would cover the rent, which was due in four days.

“This is a promise that we made to these people that we have reneged on,” he said. “Is that really what’s happening? Yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening.”

As the realization of what lay ahead set in, Rykov started to cry.

Over the next two months, the Trump administration carried out and defended its destabilizing cuts to the refugee program. The moves brought wave after wave of uncertainty and chaos to the lives of refugees and those who work to help resettle them.

One of the largest nonprofit agencies that carry out this work, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, laid off a third of its staff in February and said Monday that it would end all of its refugee efforts with the federal government. A Jewish resettlement organization, HIAS, cut 40% of its staff. As the groups fight legal battles to recoup the millions of dollars the government owes them, some have been forced to close resettlement offices entirely.

The Nashville International Center for Empowerment is still struggling to keep its own afloat. Although NICE staff members had anticipated some cuts to refugee programs under Trump, they said they were caught off guard when reimbursements for money already spent failed to appear and by the dwindling opportunities to seek recourse.

After a judge ordered the Trump administration to restart refugee admissions, the administration responded by canceling contracts with existing resettlement agencies and announcing plans to find new partners. And the administration has indicated it will remain resistant, refusing to spend millions appropriated by Congress for refugees.

“Many have lost faith and trust in the American system because of this,” said Wooksoo Kim, director of the Immigrant and Refugee Research Institute at the University of Buffalo. “For many refugees, it may start to feel like it’s no different from where they came from.”

In court documents, lawyers for the Department of Justice argued the U.S. does not have the capacity to support large numbers of refugees.

“The President lawfully exercised his authority to suspend the admission of refugees pending a determination that ‘further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States,’” the motion said.

In Nashville, that anxiety has been playing out week after week in tear-filled offices and in apartment complexes teeming with families who fled war and oppression.

Rykov couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the extreme shift in attitudes about immigrants in just a few years. In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, his family’s dormant fears about Russia were reawakened — but they felt a surge of pride for the U.S. when it stepped up to help Ukraine and welcome its refugees.

Months after the invasion, Ukrainian athletes came to Birmingham for the World Games, which is similar to the Olympics. When they entered the stadium waving the Ukrainian flag, the crowd gave them a standing ovation. His parents, who’d never felt quite at home in the U.S., loudly joined in the “U-S-A” chant that followed.

But now, three years later, was all of America now ready to abandon refugees? Rykov was starting to see the signs, but he refused to believe it and instead recommitted himself to the work.

He and his colleagues reached out to every donor in their network and called an online meeting with local churches who might be able to help with rent payments, food, job searches and transportation.

Agencies would struggle without the help of the churches. And churches don’t have the resources, training or bandwidth to carry out the work of the agencies.

But Rykov knew that for the time being, he’d need more help than ever from church volunteers.

“Without your intervention here, this is gonna be a humanitarian disaster in Nashville,” he told them in the online meeting held about a week after the cuts. “And in every community, obviously, but we were focusing on ours. We’re not gonna be in a position to help in the same way much longer, and this is a stark reality that we’re facing.”

Then he went on the local news, warning that “this immediate funding freeze puts those recently arrived refugees really at risk of homelessness.” The responses on social media reflected the hate and intolerance that had polluted the national conversation about immigration.

“The common theme was, ‘Refugees? Do you mean “illegal invaders”?’” Rykov recalled. “People are so completely misinformed, clearly not reading the article or watching the story, and it’s very disappointing to see that. And I guess it’s sad too that I expect it.”

In late February, church volunteer Abdul Makembe and a program manager from NICE squeezed into the cramped apartment of a family of five from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Both Makembe and NICE had been working with the family for months, but with the loss of funding, NICE could no longer offer support and had asked Makembe to be more involved.

A native of Tanzania, Makembe moved to Tennessee in the late 1970s. After working in infectious disease research and nonprofit management, which involved several trips to Africa, he retired in 2015 and began volunteering to help newly arrived African families. Rykov came to know him as a fixture of the refugee community, always eager to help.

In the apartment, Makembe perched on the edge of a couch and Mungaga Akilimali sat across from him on the floor.

“So, the situation has improved a little bit?” Makembe asked.

The Congolese man ran his hands over his head.

“The situation, so far, not yet,” Akilimali said. “I’m just trying to apply and reapply and reapply, but so far nothing.”

Akilimali and his family fled the Democratic Republic of Congo more than 10 years ago. Since 1996, soldiers and militias have killed 6 million people there and committed atrocities against countless civilians. War, political instability and widespread poverty have displaced millions of others.

Akilimali and his wife settled for a time in South Africa, where they encountered xenophobia and anti-immigrant violence. Immigrants and refugees have become political scapegoats there, spawning a rash of attacks and even murders. His wife, Bulonza Chishamara, nearly died there in 2018 after an ambush by an anti-immigrant mob.

Doctors gave her eight units of blood and Chishamara spent days paralyzed in a hospital bed, Akilimali said. She still walks with a limp.

The family had rejoiced when they got approved for refugee resettlement in 2024 in Tennessee. Their new life in Nashville began with promise. Akilimali, who speaks fluent English and trained as a mechanic, got a driver’s license and a job at Nissan.

However, he lost the job before his probationary period ended due to layoffs, and he hasn’t been able to find another one. NICE used to have a robust staff of employment specialists. But the cuts forced the organization to reassign them.

That left fewer resources for people like Akilimali, who had been in the U.S. longer than the three months during which new refugees were eligible for state department aid but who still needed help finding work.

For Rykov, the work of spreading awareness about the cuts and raising funds to offset them intensified throughout February. He and others working with refugees across the country were hoping that the courts might force the administration to release the federal money — that if they could keep things afloat in the short term, relief would come.

Then, on Feb. 25, a federal judge in Washington ruled in favor of the agencies. He ordered the administration to restore payments and restart refugee admissions.

The relief was short-lived. A day later, the administration canceled contracts with resettlement agencies, and lawyers for the administration have appealed the order. Their argument: The gutted refugee agencies no longer have capacity to restart resettlement, making it impossible to comply with court orders.

Rykov said some of the diminished number of remaining staff members began to look for new jobs.

After that, Rykov and his team kicked into emergency mode. They worked long hours making phone calls and arranging meetings with potential volunteers and donors.

“It was a cocktail of emotions,” he said. The generosity of donors and volunteers filled him with gratitude. But he couldn’t escape the sense of foreboding that consumed the office, where many desks sat empty and remaining employees voiced deepening concerns about the fates of their clients.

Rykov likened the urgent energy at NICE to the aftermath of a natural disaster. “There’s no time to screw around.”

At the same time, staffers worried about the cratering budget and the future of the organization. And it was hard not to notice how much the mood in Tennessee and around the country was shifting. In an order suspending refugee admissions, Trump described immigrants as a “burden” who have “inundated” American towns and cities.NICE had always felt protected, powered by an idealistic and diverse staff who chose to work in refugee resettlement despite the long hours and low pay. The cuts and the discourse eroded that sense of safety, Rykov said.

In February, a tech company offered him a job in Birmingham. It was a chance to be closer to his parents and back in the city where he’d come of age — a reminder of an era that felt kinder than the current one. He took the job.

“Working at NICE, it’s the best job I ever had and the most meaningful job I ever had,” he said.

Rykov packed up a few things from NICE. A Ukrainian flag lapel pin. A signed photograph of him and his coworkers. In his Birmingham apartment, he placed the picture on a bookshelf next to one of him and his parents at his high school graduation.

By the time he left, NICE’s refugee resettlement team was down to 30 employees; it had been 56 before the cuts. For its part, NICE has vowed to carry on. The organization has paired 24 families with volunteer mentors since the funding cuts.

Church volunteers, who were accustomed to helping furnish and decorate apartments for new arrivals, now had to help prevent evictions. They had to track down documents and help complete paperwork lost in the confusion of the nonprofit’s layoffs. And the group of mostly retired professionals now had to assist with the daunting task of finding unskilled jobs for refugees who didn’t speak much English.

On a mid-March morning, Makembe woke at 6 a.m. to begin tackling his volunteer work for NICE. Despite the long hours he clocks volunteering, the 74-year-old has kept his energy level and his spirits up. As he left the garage apartment he shares with his wife in a rough north Nashville neighborhood, he made sure to double-check the locks.

On this day, he was working not with the Akilimali family but with a family of four who recently arrived from Africa. The child needs to see a specialist at the Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

It was Vanderbilt that brought Makembe to Nashville decades ago, for his master’s degree in economic planning. He followed that with a doctorate in health policy and research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over the years that followed, he made repeated trips back to Tanzania to do research on malaria and parasitic infections.

All that took a toll on Makembe’s marriage, and he and his first wife divorced when his two children were very young. They are now grown and successful. His son is an accountant and his daughter recently finished law school and works at a firm in New York. That leaves him more time to spend with refugees.

But the volunteer work does bring some financial stress. He is trying to save $5,000 to apply for a green card for his wife, which is tough. Because he spent much of his career working outside the U.S., Makembe receives less than $1,000 a month from Social Security. He drives a 2004 Toyota that was donated to his church to aid the congregation’s work with refugees, but he pays out of pocket for gas and car insurance. The costs can add up. It’s not uncommon for him to burn a quarter tank of gas a day when he is volunteering.

Makembe’s church, Woodmont Hills Church, is a significant contributor to the city’s refugee resettlement work — an ethos shared by its current congregants but that has led to the loss of members over the years. Though it had a congregation nearing 3,000 members in the late ’90s, attendance shrank as the church’s ideology grew more progressive and Tennessee’s grew more conservative. It’s now down to 800 members.

Yet the church remained steadfast in its commitment to helping refugees. Its leaders invited NICE to hold classes in its empty meeting rooms and made space to house a Swahili church and a Baptist church formed by refugees from Myanmar. And when NICE lost funding, Woodmont Hills members donated their time and money.

Makembe has helped dozens of refugees over the years but was particularly worried for the family he had to take to the Children’s Hospital that March morning, serving as both driver and translator. They arrived right before Trump cut off funding, and they had struggled to get medical care for their 5-year-old’s persistent seizures. A doctor at a local clinic had prescribed antiseizure medication, but it didn’t work, and the child experienced episodes where his muscles tensed and froze for minutes at a time.

Nashville has world-class medical facilities, but NICE no longer had staff available to help the family understand and navigate that care, leaving them frustrated.

It took months for the family to get in to see a specialist. During the long wait, Makembe said, the boy’s father began to lose hope. His son’s seizures had become longer and more frequent. Makembe stepped in to help them get a referral from a doctor at the local clinic.

The child’s father had to miss the doctor’s appointment that March morning so that he could go to an interview at a company that packages computer parts. Both he and his wife had been searching for jobs and striking out. Makembe has tried to help but has run into barriers. He does not have the same connections with labor agencies that NICE staffers did.

Makembe said he wants to get the child enrolled in a special school for the fall and find a wheelchair so his mom won’t have to carry him.

And that’s just this family. Makembe said new refugees have been waiting for months to get job interviews. When he visits the five families he mentors, their neighbors approach him asking for help. Many of their requests are for the assistance NICE and other refugee agencies once offered.

“I’m very much worried,” he said. “I mean, they have no idea of what to do.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Amy Yurkanin.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When Max Rykov started reading a Jan. 24 letter sent to the leaders of the country’s 10 refugee resettlement agencies, he found the wording vague but ominous. The agencies were ordered to “stop all work” funded by the Department of State and “not incur any new costs.”

At first, he wondered if the order from the Trump administration was only targeting refugee work in other countries. Rykov, then the director of development and communications at a refugee resettlement partner in Nashville, began texting colleagues at other agencies. “What does it mean?” he asked.

By Monday, three days after the memo, it became clear. The Nashville International Center for Empowerment, along with similar nonprofits across the country, would not have access to the money the government had promised to refugees for their first three months in the United States. That day, NICE laid off 12 of its 56 resettlement staff members and scrambled to free up funds to pay for the basic needs of nearly 170 people dependent on the frozen grants.

Rykov knew exactly what was at stake, and that delivered an additional dose of dread. Born in the former USSR, he and his family arrived in the U.S. as refugees in 1993, fleeing the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic devastation and discrimination against Soviet Jews. He was 4 years old, and it was bewildering. Though his family was part of one of the largest waves of refugee resettlement in U.S. history, they ended up in a place with few Russian immigrants.

Life in Birmingham, Alabama, a post-industrial city shaped by the Civil Rights movement and white flight, revolved around Saturday college football games and Sunday church. Rykov said his family felt “barren” in the U.S. away from their culture. Birmingham’s Jewish community was small and the Russian population tiny.

But a local Jewish organization sponsored the Rykovs and paired them with a “friendship family.” The group rented them an apartment and furnished it. Then the organization helped Rykov’s parents find work. And Birmingham’s Jewish community banded together to fund scholarships for Rykov and other Soviet refugee children to attend a private Jewish school, where Rykov felt less isolated.

He went on to attend the University of Alabama and overcame his feeling of otherness. After graduation, he found purpose in bringing people together through his work organizing cultural events, including arts festivals and an adult spelling bee, doing social media outreach for the Birmingham mayor and, in 2021, finding a dream job at a Nashville nonprofit devoted to the very efforts that he believes helped define him.

When Rykov heard that President Donald Trump’s second administration had ordered cuts to the refugee program, his thoughts raced to the Venezuelan refugee family his organization was assisting, an older woman in poor health, her daughter who cared for her and the daughter’s two children, one not yet kindergarten age. None of them spoke English, and there was no plan for how they would cover the rent, which was due in four days.

“This is a promise that we made to these people that we have reneged on,” he said. “Is that really what’s happening? Yeah, that’s exactly what’s happening.”

As the realization of what lay ahead set in, Rykov started to cry.

Over the next two months, the Trump administration carried out and defended its destabilizing cuts to the refugee program. The moves brought wave after wave of uncertainty and chaos to the lives of refugees and those who work to help resettle them.

One of the largest nonprofit agencies that carry out this work, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, laid off a third of its staff in February and said Monday that it would end all of its refugee efforts with the federal government. A Jewish resettlement organization, HIAS, cut 40% of its staff. As the groups fight legal battles to recoup the millions of dollars the government owes them, some have been forced to close resettlement offices entirely.

The Nashville International Center for Empowerment is still struggling to keep its own afloat. Although NICE staff members had anticipated some cuts to refugee programs under Trump, they said they were caught off guard when reimbursements for money already spent failed to appear and by the dwindling opportunities to seek recourse.

After a judge ordered the Trump administration to restart refugee admissions, the administration responded by canceling contracts with existing resettlement agencies and announcing plans to find new partners. And the administration has indicated it will remain resistant, refusing to spend millions appropriated by Congress for refugees.

“Many have lost faith and trust in the American system because of this,” said Wooksoo Kim, director of the Immigrant and Refugee Research Institute at the University of Buffalo. “For many refugees, it may start to feel like it’s no different from where they came from.”

In court documents, lawyers for the Department of Justice argued the U.S. does not have the capacity to support large numbers of refugees.

“The President lawfully exercised his authority to suspend the admission of refugees pending a determination that ‘further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States,’” the motion said.

In Nashville, that anxiety has been playing out week after week in tear-filled offices and in apartment complexes teeming with families who fled war and oppression.

Rykov couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the extreme shift in attitudes about immigrants in just a few years. In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, his family’s dormant fears about Russia were reawakened — but they felt a surge of pride for the U.S. when it stepped up to help Ukraine and welcome its refugees.

Months after the invasion, Ukrainian athletes came to Birmingham for the World Games, which is similar to the Olympics. When they entered the stadium waving the Ukrainian flag, the crowd gave them a standing ovation. His parents, who’d never felt quite at home in the U.S., loudly joined in the “U-S-A” chant that followed.

But now, three years later, was all of America now ready to abandon refugees? Rykov was starting to see the signs, but he refused to believe it and instead recommitted himself to the work.

He and his colleagues reached out to every donor in their network and called an online meeting with local churches who might be able to help with rent payments, food, job searches and transportation.

Agencies would struggle without the help of the churches. And churches don’t have the resources, training or bandwidth to carry out the work of the agencies.

But Rykov knew that for the time being, he’d need more help than ever from church volunteers.

“Without your intervention here, this is gonna be a humanitarian disaster in Nashville,” he told them in the online meeting held about a week after the cuts. “And in every community, obviously, but we were focusing on ours. We’re not gonna be in a position to help in the same way much longer, and this is a stark reality that we’re facing.”

Then he went on the local news, warning that “this immediate funding freeze puts those recently arrived refugees really at risk of homelessness.” The responses on social media reflected the hate and intolerance that had polluted the national conversation about immigration.

“The common theme was, ‘Refugees? Do you mean “illegal invaders”?’” Rykov recalled. “People are so completely misinformed, clearly not reading the article or watching the story, and it’s very disappointing to see that. And I guess it’s sad too that I expect it.”

In late February, church volunteer Abdul Makembe and a program manager from NICE squeezed into the cramped apartment of a family of five from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Both Makembe and NICE had been working with the family for months, but with the loss of funding, NICE could no longer offer support and had asked Makembe to be more involved.

A native of Tanzania, Makembe moved to Tennessee in the late 1970s. After working in infectious disease research and nonprofit management, which involved several trips to Africa, he retired in 2015 and began volunteering to help newly arrived African families. Rykov came to know him as a fixture of the refugee community, always eager to help.

In the apartment, Makembe perched on the edge of a couch and Mungaga Akilimali sat across from him on the floor.

“So, the situation has improved a little bit?” Makembe asked.

The Congolese man ran his hands over his head.

“The situation, so far, not yet,” Akilimali said. “I’m just trying to apply and reapply and reapply, but so far nothing.”

Akilimali and his family fled the Democratic Republic of Congo more than 10 years ago. Since 1996, soldiers and militias have killed 6 million people there and committed atrocities against countless civilians. War, political instability and widespread poverty have displaced millions of others.

Akilimali and his wife settled for a time in South Africa, where they encountered xenophobia and anti-immigrant violence. Immigrants and refugees have become political scapegoats there, spawning a rash of attacks and even murders. His wife, Bulonza Chishamara, nearly died there in 2018 after an ambush by an anti-immigrant mob.

Doctors gave her eight units of blood and Chishamara spent days paralyzed in a hospital bed, Akilimali said. She still walks with a limp.

The family had rejoiced when they got approved for refugee resettlement in 2024 in Tennessee. Their new life in Nashville began with promise. Akilimali, who speaks fluent English and trained as a mechanic, got a driver’s license and a job at Nissan.

However, he lost the job before his probationary period ended due to layoffs, and he hasn’t been able to find another one. NICE used to have a robust staff of employment specialists. But the cuts forced the organization to reassign them.

That left fewer resources for people like Akilimali, who had been in the U.S. longer than the three months during which new refugees were eligible for state department aid but who still needed help finding work.

For Rykov, the work of spreading awareness about the cuts and raising funds to offset them intensified throughout February. He and others working with refugees across the country were hoping that the courts might force the administration to release the federal money — that if they could keep things afloat in the short term, relief would come.

Then, on Feb. 25, a federal judge in Washington ruled in favor of the agencies. He ordered the administration to restore payments and restart refugee admissions.

The relief was short-lived. A day later, the administration canceled contracts with resettlement agencies, and lawyers for the administration have appealed the order. Their argument: The gutted refugee agencies no longer have capacity to restart resettlement, making it impossible to comply with court orders.

Rykov said some of the diminished number of remaining staff members began to look for new jobs.

After that, Rykov and his team kicked into emergency mode. They worked long hours making phone calls and arranging meetings with potential volunteers and donors.

“It was a cocktail of emotions,” he said. The generosity of donors and volunteers filled him with gratitude. But he couldn’t escape the sense of foreboding that consumed the office, where many desks sat empty and remaining employees voiced deepening concerns about the fates of their clients.

Rykov likened the urgent energy at NICE to the aftermath of a natural disaster. “There’s no time to screw around.”

At the same time, staffers worried about the cratering budget and the future of the organization. And it was hard not to notice how much the mood in Tennessee and around the country was shifting. In an order suspending refugee admissions, Trump described immigrants as a “burden” who have “inundated” American towns and cities.NICE had always felt protected, powered by an idealistic and diverse staff who chose to work in refugee resettlement despite the long hours and low pay. The cuts and the discourse eroded that sense of safety, Rykov said.

In February, a tech company offered him a job in Birmingham. It was a chance to be closer to his parents and back in the city where he’d come of age — a reminder of an era that felt kinder than the current one. He took the job.

“Working at NICE, it’s the best job I ever had and the most meaningful job I ever had,” he said.

Rykov packed up a few things from NICE. A Ukrainian flag lapel pin. A signed photograph of him and his coworkers. In his Birmingham apartment, he placed the picture on a bookshelf next to one of him and his parents at his high school graduation.

By the time he left, NICE’s refugee resettlement team was down to 30 employees; it had been 56 before the cuts. For its part, NICE has vowed to carry on. The organization has paired 24 families with volunteer mentors since the funding cuts.

Church volunteers, who were accustomed to helping furnish and decorate apartments for new arrivals, now had to help prevent evictions. They had to track down documents and help complete paperwork lost in the confusion of the nonprofit’s layoffs. And the group of mostly retired professionals now had to assist with the daunting task of finding unskilled jobs for refugees who didn’t speak much English.

On a mid-March morning, Makembe woke at 6 a.m. to begin tackling his volunteer work for NICE. Despite the long hours he clocks volunteering, the 74-year-old has kept his energy level and his spirits up. As he left the garage apartment he shares with his wife in a rough north Nashville neighborhood, he made sure to double-check the locks.

On this day, he was working not with the Akilimali family but with a family of four who recently arrived from Africa. The child needs to see a specialist at the Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

It was Vanderbilt that brought Makembe to Nashville decades ago, for his master’s degree in economic planning. He followed that with a doctorate in health policy and research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Over the years that followed, he made repeated trips back to Tanzania to do research on malaria and parasitic infections.

All that took a toll on Makembe’s marriage, and he and his first wife divorced when his two children were very young. They are now grown and successful. His son is an accountant and his daughter recently finished law school and works at a firm in New York. That leaves him more time to spend with refugees.

But the volunteer work does bring some financial stress. He is trying to save $5,000 to apply for a green card for his wife, which is tough. Because he spent much of his career working outside the U.S., Makembe receives less than $1,000 a month from Social Security. He drives a 2004 Toyota that was donated to his church to aid the congregation’s work with refugees, but he pays out of pocket for gas and car insurance. The costs can add up. It’s not uncommon for him to burn a quarter tank of gas a day when he is volunteering.

Makembe’s church, Woodmont Hills Church, is a significant contributor to the city’s refugee resettlement work — an ethos shared by its current congregants but that has led to the loss of members over the years. Though it had a congregation nearing 3,000 members in the late ’90s, attendance shrank as the church’s ideology grew more progressive and Tennessee’s grew more conservative. It’s now down to 800 members.

Yet the church remained steadfast in its commitment to helping refugees. Its leaders invited NICE to hold classes in its empty meeting rooms and made space to house a Swahili church and a Baptist church formed by refugees from Myanmar. And when NICE lost funding, Woodmont Hills members donated their time and money.

Makembe has helped dozens of refugees over the years but was particularly worried for the family he had to take to the Children’s Hospital that March morning, serving as both driver and translator. They arrived right before Trump cut off funding, and they had struggled to get medical care for their 5-year-old’s persistent seizures. A doctor at a local clinic had prescribed antiseizure medication, but it didn’t work, and the child experienced episodes where his muscles tensed and froze for minutes at a time.

Nashville has world-class medical facilities, but NICE no longer had staff available to help the family understand and navigate that care, leaving them frustrated.

It took months for the family to get in to see a specialist. During the long wait, Makembe said, the boy’s father began to lose hope. His son’s seizures had become longer and more frequent. Makembe stepped in to help them get a referral from a doctor at the local clinic.

The child’s father had to miss the doctor’s appointment that March morning so that he could go to an interview at a company that packages computer parts. Both he and his wife had been searching for jobs and striking out. Makembe has tried to help but has run into barriers. He does not have the same connections with labor agencies that NICE staffers did.

Makembe said he wants to get the child enrolled in a special school for the fall and find a wheelchair so his mom won’t have to carry him.

And that’s just this family. Makembe said new refugees have been waiting for months to get job interviews. When he visits the five families he mentors, their neighbors approach him asking for help. Many of their requests are for the assistance NICE and other refugee agencies once offered.

“I’m very much worried,” he said. “I mean, they have no idea of what to do.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Amy Yurkanin.

A rebel army and allied forces near Myanmar’s northwestern border with India have seized towns that were previously under the junta control, sources told Radio Free Asia.

The Chin Brotherhood captured Chin state’s second largest town of Falam, located near the border of Mizoram state in India, according to residents.

The rebel group, which is comprised of six allied Chin insurgent armies, began attacks on Falam on Nov. 5, 2024 and seized the junta’s remaining Battalion 268 on Monday.

“We’re continuing clearance operations now,” said an official from the Chin Brotherhood, declining to be named for fear of reprisals. “Tomorrow and the following day, we’ll release details.”

More than 10,000 residents fled into India to avoid the clash, he added.

Separately, Indaw People’s Defense Force also seized control over the town of Indaw in northern Sagaing region, capturing prisoners of war during the battle, said a junta soldier, who declined to be identified for security reasons.

“The battle for the town has been ongoing since Aug. 16, they captured it today on April 7,” he said. “There were casualties on both sides and about 40 of our soldiers were taken prisoner.”

The group also seized heavy weapons, a cannon and ammunition, he added.

Indaw is located on the Mandalay-Myitkyina highway and is an entry point into Kachin state, making it strategically important, locals said.

Insurgent armies are present in six of nine townships in Chin state, including Paletwa, Matupi, Mindat, Kanpetlet and Tonzang.

The junta has not commented.

Calls to the junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun and Chin state’s spokesperson Aung Cho went unanswered.

According to data published by Myanmar Peace Monitor, a website that documents peace and conflict situations in Myanmar, insurgent groups have captured 95 towns nationwide.

On March 28, 2025, a powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar, causing widespread devastation. As of Monday, the death toll has risen to 3,600, with over 5,000 injured and 160 still missing.

Amid rescue efforts, the junta announced a 20-day ceasefire on Wednesday, which was preceded by ceasefire offers from a major rebel group, the Arakan Army, and the exiled civilian National Unity Government, comprised of members of the democratic government ousted in a 2021 coup.

But the junta’s airstrikes and military checkpoints have hampered rescue efforts, residents told RFA.

The junta’s top military official said on Monday that international aid groups who want to provide assistance to earthquake-hit areas of Myanmar must gain prior approval from junta authorities.

Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Taejun Kang.

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

Engraving of Andrew Hamilton defending John Peter Zenger in court, 1734-5 – Public Domain

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student in child psychology at Tufts University in Medford, was standing alone on a sidewalk last Tuesday when she was surrounded a gang of  unidentified black-clad assailants wearing black masks, Screaming in terror, the 30-year-old woman had her wrists cuffed behind her  back, and was spirited  away to an unmarked SUV even arrested, since her accostors weren’t even sworn officers of the law —  in an unmarked SUV, driven across multiple state lines and brought to a number of government offices in violation of a federal court order. Over a period of 24 hours, during which she may not even have been offered any food, even though when kidnapped she had been on her way to break the Ramadan fast with friends, she was  flown and driven without anyone’s knowledge and dumped in a for-profit privately contracted detention cent in Louisiana, where she now awaits potential deportation. In all that frightening time she was never formally arrested, because the thugs who hd grabbed her were not sworn law-enforcement officers.

The post Two Immigrant First Amendment Heroes Separated by Three Centuries appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Dave Lindorff.

Global media freedom groups have condemned the Israeli occupation forces for assassinating two more Palestinian journalists covering the Gaza genocide, taking the media death toll in the besieged enclave to at least 208 since the war started.

Journalist and contributor to the Qatari-based Al Jazeera Mubasher, Hossam Shabat, is the latest to have been killed.

Witnesses said Hossam’s vehicle was hit in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya. Several pedestrians were also wounded, reports Al Jazeera.

• READ MORE: CPJ denounces Israel’s killing of 2 more Gaza journalists in return to war
• Other Gaza media freedom reports

in a statement, Al Jazeera condemned the killings, saying Hossam had joined the network’s journalists and correspondents killed during the ongoing war on Gaza, including Samer Abudaqa, Hamza Al-Dahdouh, Ismail Al-Ghoul, and Ahmed Al-Louh.

Al Jazeera affirmed its commitment to pursue all legal measures to “prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes against journalists”.

The network also said it stood in “unwavering solidarity with all journalists in Gaza and reaffirms its commitment to achieving justice” by prosecuting the killers of more than 200 journalists in Gaza since October 2023.

The network extended its condolences to Hossam’s family, and called on all human rights and media organisations to condemn the Israeli occupation’s systematic killing of journalists.

Hossam was the second journalist killed in Gaza yesterday.

House targeted
Earlier, the Israeli military killed Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for the Beirut-based Palestine Today television, in an attack targeting a house in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Al Jazeera condemns Israel’s killing of journalist Hossam Shabat in Gaza https://t.co/iJ6lscVahm

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) March 25, 2025

A fellow journalist circulated a video clip of Mansour’s father bidding farewell to his son with heartbreaking words, putting a microphone in his son’s hand and urging the voice that once conveyed the truth to a deaf world.

“Stand up and speak, tell the world, you are the one who tells the truth, for the image alone is not enough,” the father said through tears.

Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), condemned the killings, describing them as war crimes.

The CPJ called for an independent international investigation into whether they were deliberately targeted.

“CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said CPJ’s programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.

‘Nightmare has to end’
“This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour, whose killings may have been targeted.”

Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza on March 18, ending a ceasefire that began on January 19.

The occupation forces continued bombarding Gaza for an eighth consecutive day, killing at least 23 people in predawn attacks including seven children.

A UN official, Olga Cherevko, said Israel’s unhindered attacks on Gaza were a “bloody stain on our collective consciousness”, noting “our calls for this madness to stop have gone unheeded” by the world.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 792 people had been killed and 1663 injured in the week since Israel resumed its war on the Strip.

The total death toll since the war started on October 7, 2023, has risen to 50,144, while 113,704 people have been injured, it said.

West Bank ‘news desert’
Meanwhile, the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said the repression of reporters in the West Bank and East Jerusalem had intensified in recent months despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza before it collapsed.

In the eastern Palestinian territories, Israeli armed forces have shot at journalists, arrested them and restricted their movement.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank and East Jerusalem, has detained Al Jazeera journalists.

RSF warned of a growing crackdown, which was transforming the region into a “news desert”.

One of the co-directors of the Palestinian Oscar-winning film No Other Land, Hamdan Ballal, has been detained by Israeli forces. It happened after he was attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

He was in an ambulance receiving treatment when the doors were opened and he was abducted by the Israeli military. Colleagues say he has “disappeared”.

A number of American activists were also attacked, and video on social media showed them fleeing the settler violence.

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

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The findings were stark. In one investigation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that a Texas state agency had steered $1 billion in disaster mitigation money away from Houston and nearby communities of color after Hurricane Harvey inundated the region in 2017. In another investigation, HUD found that a homeowners association outside of Dallas had created rules to kick poor Black people out of their neighborhood.

The episodes amounted to egregious violations of civil rights laws, officials at the housing agency believed — enough to warrant litigation against the alleged culprits. That, at least, was the view during the presidency of Joe Biden. After the Trump administration took over, HUD quietly took steps that will likely kill both cases, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

Those steps were extremely unusual. Current and former HUD officials said they could not recall the housing agency ever pulling back cases of this magnitude in which the agency had found evidence of discrimination. That leaves the yearslong, high-profile investigations in a state of limbo, with no likely path for the government to advance them, current and former officials said. As a result, the alleged perpetrators of the discrimination could face no government penalties, and the alleged victims could receive no compensation.

“I just think that’s a doggone shame,” said Doris Brown, a Houston resident and a co-founder of a community group that, together with a housing nonprofit, filed the Harvey complaint. Brown saw 3 feet of water flood her home in a predominantly Black neighborhood that still shows damage from the storm. “We might’ve been able to get some more money to help the people that are still suffering,” she said.

On Jan. 15, HUD referred the Houston case to the Department of Justice, a necessary step to a federal lawsuit after the housing agency finds evidence of discrimination. Less than a month later, on Feb. 13, the agency rescinded its referral without public explanation. HUD did the same with the Dallas case not long after.

The development has alarmed some about a rollback of civil rights enforcement at the agency under President Donald Trump and HUD Secretary Scott Turner, who is from Texas. “The new administration is systematically dismantling the fair housing enforcement and education system,” said Sara Pratt, a former HUD official and an attorney for complainants in both Texas cases. “The message is: The federal government no longer takes housing discrimination seriously.”

HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett disagreed, saying there was precedent for the rescinded referrals, which were done to gather more facts and scrutinize the investigations. “We’re taking a fresh look at Biden Administration policies, regulations, and cases. These cases are no exception,” Lovett said in a statement. “HUD will uphold the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act as the department is strongly and wholeheartedly opposed to housing discrimination.”

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The Harvey case concerns a portion of a $4.3 billion grant that HUD gave to Texas after the hurricane inundated low-lying coastal areas, killing at least 89 people and causing more than $100 billion in damage. The money was meant to fund better drainage, flood control systems and other storm mitigation measures.

HUD sent the money to a state agency called the Texas General Land Office, which awarded the first $1 billion in funding to communities affected by Harvey through a grant competition. But the state agency excluded Houston and many of the most exposed coastal areas from eligibility for half of that money, according to HUD’s investigation. And, for the other half, it created award criteria that benefited rural areas at the expense of more populous applicants like Houston.

The result: Of that initial $1 billion, Houston — where nearly half of all homes were damaged by the hurricane — received nothing. Neither did Harris County, where Houston is located, or other coastal areas with large minority populations. Instead, the Texas agency, according to HUD, awarded a disproportionate amount of the aid to more rural, white areas that had suffered less damage in the hurricane. After an outcry, GLO asked HUD a few days later to send $750 million to Harris County, but HUD found that allocation still fell far short of the county’s mitigation needs. And none of that money went directly to Houston.

HUD launched an investigation into the competition in 2021, ultimately finding that GLO had discriminated on the basis of race and national origin, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and possibly the Fair Housing Act as well.

“GLO knowingly developed and operated a competition for the purpose of allocating funds to mitigate storm and flood risk that steered money away from urban Black and Hispanic communities that had the highest storm and flood risk into Whiter, more rural areas with less risk,” the agency wrote. “Despite awareness that its course of action would result in disparate harm for Black and Hispanic individuals, GLO still knowingly and disparately denied these communities critical mitigation funding.”

GLO has consistently disputed the allegations. It contends that many people of color benefited from its allocations. The Texas agency has also argued that the evidence in the case was weak, citing the fact that, in 2023, the Justice Department returned the case to HUD. At the time, the DOJ said it wanted HUD to investigate further. The housing agency then spent more than a year digging deeper into the facts and assembling more evidence before making its short-lived referral in January.

Asked about the rescinded referral, GLO spokesperson Brittany Eck told ProPublica: “Liberal political appointees and advocates spent years spinning false narratives without the facts to build a case. Four years of sensationalized, clickbait rhetoric without evidence is long enough.”

The other HUD case involved Providence Village, a largely white community north of Dallas of around 9,000 people. Purported concerns about crime and property values led the Providence Homeowners Association to adopt a rule in 2022 prohibiting property owners from renting to holders of Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, through which HUD subsidizes the housing costs of poor, elderly and disabled people. There were at least 157 households in Providence Village supported by vouchers, nearly all of them Black families. After the HOA action, some of them began leaving.

The rule attracted national attention, leading the Texas Legislature to prohibit HOAs from banning Section 8 tenants. Undeterred, the Providence HOA adopted amended rules in 2024 that placed restrictions on rental properties, which HUD found would have a similar effect as the previous ban.

Throughout the HOA’s efforts, people peppered community social media groups with racist vitriol about voucher holders, describing them as “wild animals,” “ghetto poverty crime ridden mentality people” and “lazy entitled leeching TR@SH.” One person wrote that “they might just leave in a coroner’s wagon.”

The discord attracted a white nationalist group, which twice protested just outside Providence Village. “The federal government views safe White communities as a problem,” flyers distributed by the group read. “The Section 8 Housing Voucher is a tool used to bring diversity to these neighborhoods.”

In January, HUD formally accused the HOA, its board president, a property management company and one of its property managers of violating the Fair Housing Act. The respondents have disputed the allegation. The HOA has argued its rules were meant to protect property values, support well-maintained homes and address crime concerns. The property management company, FirstService Residential Texas, said it was not responsible for the actions of the HOA.

The HOA and FirstService did not respond to requests for comment. The property manager declined to comment. Mitch Little, a lawyer for the HOA board president, said: “HUD didn’t pursue this case because there’s nothing to pursue. The claims are baseless and unsubstantiated.”

The Providence Village and Houston cases stretched on for years. All it took was two terse emails to undo them. “HUD’s Office of General Counsel withdrew the referral of the above-captioned case to the Department of Justice,” HUD wrote to Pratt this month regarding one of the cases. “We have no further information at this time.” That was the entirety of the message; neither email explained the reasoning behind the decisions.

The cases may have fallen victim to a broader roll-back of civil rights enforcement at the Justice Department, where memos circulated in January ordering a freeze of civil rights cases and investigations.

The development is the latest sign that the Trump administration may dramatically curtail HUD’s housing discrimination work. The agency canceled 78 grants to local fair housing groups last month, sparking a lawsuit by some of them. HUD justified the cancellations by saying each grant “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” (Pratt’s firm, Relman Colfax, is representing the plaintiffs in that suit.) And projections circulating within HUD last month indicated the agency’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity could see its staff cut by 76% under the new administration.

If HUD does not pursue the cases, the complainants could file their own lawsuits. But they may not soon forget the government’s about-face on the issue. “If there is a major flood in Houston, which there almost certainly will be, and people die, and homes get destroyed, the people who made this decision are in large part responsible,” said Ben Hirsch, a member of one of the groups that brought the Harvey complaint. “People will die because of this.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jesse Coburn.

Donald Trump is back in office. Tech mogul Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to the president, is helming a government advisory body with an acronym derived from a memecoin: DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). That organization is sinking its teeth into the federal government, and drawing blood.

Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of federal employees are being laid off this year. Over a dozen agencies have been affected. Executive power is being wielded so wildly that a federal judge has lamented “what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight.”

The Fourth Estate is tasked with serving as a check on abuses of power. But US media were not designed for this.

Though critical in much of their reporting, corporate outlets have at the same time substantially legitimized the project of DOGE. For one, longstanding fearmongering about government spending in the news sections of corporate outlets has elevated precisely the right-wing vision of government animating DOGE.

Even more worryingly, however, criticism of DOGE by major editorial boards has been weak, and in some cases has been overshadowed by these boards’ support for the ideas behind DOGE, or even for DOGE itself.

Government spending ‘skyrocketed’

The New York Times (1/30/25) claims “even progressives now worry about the federal debt”—though an extensive recent analysis (PERI, 4/20) of the impact of debt by progressive economists found that “the relationship between government debt and economic growth is essentially zero.”

Corporate media’s ever-present fearmongering about spending is well-illustrated by the New York Times, which, within a week and a half of Trump’s inauguration, had already run the headline: “Even Progressives Now Worry About the Federal Debt” (1/30/25). The next day, the paper ran a separate article (1/31/25) by Michael Shear, which stated:

The amount of money the government spends has skyrocketed under Democratic and Republican presidents. Total federal spending in 2015 was $4.89 trillion, according to federal data. In 2024, it was $6.75 trillion. Even when accounting for the growth of the overall economy, spending as a percentage of gross domestic product was higher in 2024 than it was eight years earlier.

The paragraph at least avoided the classic tactic of throwing out raw numbers without giving any sort of metric, like GDP, to measure them against. But it nonetheless gave far from the full picture, not even offering numbers for spending as a percentage of GDP, which showed a minor increase of 3 percentage points over this period, to 23%—the same percentage that was spent in 2011.

Even more useful to include than this data, however, would have been international data showing how much the US spends in comparison to other rich countries. As it turns out, the answer is: quite little. And the US taxes even less.

Readers might also be interested to learn that tax cuts, not spending increases, have been primarily responsible for increases in the US’s debt-to-GDP ratio in recent decades, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress (3/27/23). The group emphasized: “Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts, debt as a percentage of the economy would be declining permanently.” Given that reality, CAP concluded:

If Congress wants to decrease deficits, it should look first toward reversing tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy, which were responsible for the United States’ current fiscal outlook.

Federal outlays as a percentage of GDP have been nearly constant for the past 75 years (FRED).

‘The big areas of the budget’

The New York Times‘ Michael Shear (1/31/25) wrote that Trump was attempting “to somehow reverse the seemingly inexorable growth of the federal government, an issue that resonates with some Democrats as well as most Republicans.”

If corporate media like the New York Times were serious about informing readers about the causes of and answers to high government debt, they would, like CAP, debunk right-wing deficit hawk propaganda, rather than reinforce it.

Instead, the Times‘ Shear (1/31/25) decided to provide his readers with extensive quotation from Maya MacGuineas, an extreme deficit hawk who got an early boost in her career “from the patronage of billionaire investment banker and arch-austerian Pete Peterson,” as the New Republic (3/4/21) recounted in a 2021 piece. Shear merely described her as “the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.”

MacGuineas is the only expert Shear cites in the piece, and the article closes with her warning that Musk’s cuts “would not be enough to confront the nation’s burgeoning debt from spending too much over many decades.” “To make a real impact on the debt,” MacGuineas said:

We are going to have to look at the big areas of the budget for savings—Social Security, healthcare and revenues—the very same areas both political parties are tripping over themselves not to address.

The decision to include only an austerity advocate, and to allow her proclamation about the need for cuts to Social Security to end the piece, inevitably grants legitimacy to her claims. These claims are at the very least meant to be taken seriously, even more so since they come from a supposedly independent expert rather than a politician or government official. The decision to include no left-wing expert has a similar effect in reverse.

Meanwhile, in the paper’s piece (1/30/25) from the previous day about “progressive worry,” reporter Lydia DePillis managed to bury the key point in the 21st paragraph:

But mostly, Democrats say, the government simply needs more revenue to support the increasing number of people who are becoming eligible for retirement benefits.

Debt-scolding reporting

The Washington Post (10/8/24) sounds the alarm over the United States having a debt-to-GDP ratio similar to that of Britain, France and Canada—and much lower than Japan’s.

The Times is hardly the only outlet to legitimize alarmism about government spending. In a debt-scolding piece of reporting from last fall, the Washington Post (10/8/24) hammered on the point that runaway spending should be a major concern.

The choice of headline, “US Deficit Hits $1.8 Trillion as Interest Costs Rise,” immediately linked debt concerns to spending, not taxes. The first paragraph described the $1.8 trillion figure as “an enormous sum”—probably equally applicable to any sum over a billion dollars in the average American’s mind—while the fourth paragraph warned:

The nation’s debt compared with the size of the overall economy, a key metric of fiscal stability, is projected to exceed its all-time high of 106% by 2027.

Once again, international comparison would have been helpful here. It could be noted that the US, in fact, has a rather typical amount of debt compared to many other rich countries these days, with Britain, Canada, Spain, France and Italy all posting similar debt-to-GDP numbers. Greece, meanwhile, has a debt-to-GDP ratio close to 170%, while Japan boasts a ratio of around 250%. As Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has noted:

If these countries can sustain debt levels 50–150% higher than our current levels, then the question of whether we can do so has already been answered. Indeed, it does not even need to be asked.

The Post, evidently, had no interest in providing such context. No international figures were cited. Instead, the next lines were a quote from a conservative economist:

A [nearly] $2 trillion deficit is bad news during a recession and war, but completely unprecedented during peace and prosperity…. The danger is the deficit will only get bigger over the next decade due to retiring baby boomers and interest on the debt.

Notice once more the linking of the increase in debt to spending rather than tax cuts.

The ‘soaring’ debt that wasn’t

The federal debt the Wall Street Journal (9/16/24) claimed was “soaring” was a smaller percentage of GDP in 2024 than in 2020.

The piece continued on to cite deficit hawk MacGuineas—described as the president of “a top Washington fiscal watchdog”—denouncing the “patchwork of targeted fiscal bribes” being offered to voters by the presidential candidates. And it ended with a quote from “president of the right-leaning American Action Forum and a former CBO director” Doug Holtz-Eakin, reminding us that debt servicing costs will have to be paid and will crowd out other spending priorities.

Unmentioned by the Post is that Holtz-Eakin held high posts in the George W. Bush administration and the John McCain presidential campaign. He also oversaw the creation of an infamous bogus cost estimate for the Green New Deal. Yet the Post portrays him as just an expert who leans a bit to the right.

Though the Post consulted three right-wing sources, they failed to include a single left-leaning independent expert. It’s not hard to understand how that fails readers, or how it legitimizes a certain set of priorities, while suggesting other views lack credibility.

The Wall Street Journal, for its part, has been more than happy to join the general fretting in corporate media about government spending. Back in the fall, for instance, a piece in its news section (9/16/24) complained that the presidential race was not focusing sufficiently on the issue of rising government debt, and flagged Social Security and Medicare as “the biggest drivers of rising spending.” The headline read: “Federal Debt Is Soaring. Here’s Why Trump and Harris Aren’t Talking About It.”

The problem with that headline? In the fall of 2024, federal debt was decidedly not soaring. This holds whether you look at federal debt in nominal dollar terms or as a percentage of GDP. Federal debt had “soared” briefly in 2020, when the Covid recession hit and the government rapidly expanded its spending to deal with the downturn. But for most of 2024, the quarterly percentage increase in the federal debt in dollar terms was actually below the historical average going back to 1970. And the debt-to-GDP ratio was at roughly the same spot as it had been three-and-a-half years earlier, at the start of Biden’s presidency.

‘Shutting off the lights’

For the Wall Street Journal (2/10/25), refusing to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “is like saying you want to go on a diet except for the beer, chips and ice cream sundaes.”

Even more concerning than corporate media’s penchant for running articles in the news section fearmongering about government spending, though, is what has been going on in corporate outlets’ opinion sections, specifically with the output of their editorial boards. Here, the legitimization of DOGE has reached its highest heights.

Unsurprisingly, the unabashedly right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board has been the prime offender. Most recently, it published an editorial (3/14/25) with the headline “Don’t Cry for the Education Department,” applauding the unconstitutional DOGE-led attack on the Education Department, which the Journal chastened for “harassing schools, states and districts with progressive diktats on everything from transgender bathroom use to Covid-19 mask rules.”

The final paragraph began: “The closer Mr. Trump can get to shutting off the lights at the Education Department, the better.”

This was just one of numerous Journal editorials in recent weeks cheering on the DOGE project. A sampling of other editorials:

• “Hurricane Musk and the USAID Panic” (2/4/25) argued that Musk should be contained, but that he is “also hitting targets that have long deserved scrutiny and reform, which helps explain the wailing over the US Agency for International Development.”
• “The Federal Spending Boom Rolls On” (2/10/25) declared that “DOGE is a good idea,” and claimed that it had not gone far enough: “But for all of Mr. Musk’s frenetic tweeting, and the Beltway cries of Apocalypse Now, so far DOGE is only nibbling at the edges of Washington’s spending problem.”
• “Judge Wants DOGE Facts, Not Fears” (2/19/25) ended, “Democrats hunting for a constitutional crisis might want to show evidence before they cry ‘dictator.’”

In short, then, the Journal editorial board not only approves of a rogue pseudo-agency operating with no transparency or oversight, but has become a crusader in defense of DOGE’s attacks on constitutional checks and balances—which grant Congress, not a right-wing ideologue from the PayPal Mafia, the power of the purse.

Of course, you can expect little else from the Journal than salivation over cuts to federal spending—it has long been the lapdog of right-wing billionaire Rupert Murdoch. But it is jarring to witness exactly how rabid the Journal editorial board can be.

Not ‘audacious’ enough

The Washington Post says it’s “true that the $36 trillion national debt is unsustainable and there’s plenty of bloat in government.”

For its part, the Washington Post editorial board, while describing DOGE as a “circus” (2/24/25), has substantially legitimized DOGE’s mission.

An editorial (2/7/25) from early February is case in point. Headlined “Trump Needs to Erect Guardrails for DOGE,” the piece offered five ways for Trump to “be clear about who is boss,” effectively endorsing the mission of slashing government spending while expressing concern over some of Musk’s tactics.

The first four proposed guardrails in the piece, which include “Vet Musk’s operatives” and “Limit Musk’s access to sensitive files,” are all reasonable, but the fifth proposal reveals the board’s substantive concerns about the spending cuts being executed by DOGE. These concerns are not about whether cuts should be made—it is taken for granted that government spending should be reduced. Rather, they have to do with which spending is cut, aligning with the concerns raised by the Wall Street Journal about DOGE not going far enough.

This proposal, labeled “Focus on the biggest drivers of the national debt,” read:

To have any chance of achieving Musk’s audacious goal of $2 trillion in cuts, Trump will need to work with elected representatives in Congress to reform entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare before they become insolvent. Other sensitive areas of the balance sheet, including the Pentagon budget and veterans’ benefits, cannot stay off the table forever.

For the Post, then, the focus on programs such as USAID is simply too limited. We must put Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits on the table!

‘Embrace the same thinking’

The “DOGE ethos,” according to the Washington Post (3/3/25), means making “governments leaner and more efficient.”

The Washington Post’s preference for substantial cuts to federal government is further illustrated by an editorial (3/3/25) published in early March, following Jeff Bezos’s rebranding of the Post as Wall Street Journal–lite.

The editorial, titled “The DOGE Ethos Comes to State Governments,” showered praise on state governments that are capitalizing on DOGE branding while pursuing a more “thoughtful” approach to reducing government spending.

The piece favorably cited Washington state Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson’s insistence that “I’m not here to defend government…. I’m here to reform it.” The board elaborated:

Democrats in DC ought to embrace the same thinking. It’s foolish to defend a status quo that most voters think doesn’t work well. By fighting Trump and Musk tooth and nail, at the expense of presenting an alternative vision, the opposition risks appearing overly keen to protect hidebound institutions even as the world changes rapidly.

The Post’s take on DOGE? Let’s not center its blatant illegality. Let’s instead focus on what we can learn from it. After all, with a few minor tweaks, it’s exactly what we as a country need.

‘A great American success story’

New York Times says of Elon Musk, “he’s right: The federal government is often wasteful and inefficient.” But he’s going about it the wrong way.

The appallingly low bar set by the competition leaves the New York Times to assume the role of the major national newspaper that will seriously attack DOGE. It takes to this role…poorly.

The Times editorial board’s pushback against DOGE has been embarrassingly feeble. Its most direct assessment of DOGE thus far (3/8/25), for instance, began with an uncomfortably obsequious description of Musk:

Elon Musk’s life is a great American success story. Time and again, he has anticipated where the world was headed, helping to create not just new products but new industries.

The board quickly conceded a major point to Musk:

Mr. Musk claims that the government is a business in need of disruption and that his goal is to eliminate waste and improve efficiency. And he’s right: The federal government is often wasteful and inefficient.

The editorial went on to make a number of criticisms of DOGE, but its critique was undermined by this odd willingness to bend over backwards to appease Musk and his supporters.

Meanwhile, though sharply critical of DOGE’s disregard for the Constitution, the editorial made no attempt at presenting a counter-vision of government. It lamented cuts to a hodgepodge of specific government programs, but it had nothing to say in defense of current levels of government spending, let alone in favor of even higher levels of spending. One would hardly know that many wealthy countries have significantly higher levels of government spending and happier populations—in fact, at least 16 OECD countries register both higher spending and higher happiness than the US.

A gaping hole

This, then, is the state of American corporate media at the start of the Trump presidency. Across arguably the three most important national newspapers—the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal—there is broad agreement that government spending is out of control and that something, perhaps something drastic, needs to be done about it.

Even at the leftmost of these organizations, the New York Times, the editorial board appears incapable of mounting a case for social democratic levels of government spending in the face of extreme attacks on spending by the Trump administration. The Times, instead, finds itself caught between bowing before the titans of American capitalism and confronting their disregard for the US Constitution.

The Washington Post has been able to adopt a somewhat less tortured position, occupying the center/center-right in a way reminiscent of 1990s Democrats, supporting cuts to government, but in a “thoughtful” way.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, is having the time of its life. Finding itself once again in an era when greed and meanness animate the daily actions of government, it must feel freer than it has in years to bare its teeth at the true enemies of the American republic: teachers’ unions and recipients of government aid.

News consumers have no major paper espousing a truly progressive perspective. On the topic of government spending, at least, the window of acceptable thought appears to span from the center to the far right. There is no direct marketing reason for this—there’s a sizeable audience in the US that would welcome a progressive outlet, the same way there’s a sizeable audience for right-wing outlets like the Wall Street Journal or Fox News.

Who doesn’t want such an outlet to appear? Ultra-wealthy right-wing Americans of the sort that own and sponsor much of the media landscape. If wealthy people aren’t willing to finance a progressive media outlet that can compete with major papers, it seems that such an outlet simply won’t exist. Crowdfunding could help progressive media overcome this issue, but the playing field is not level.

As it stands, a major progressive outlet that can compete with the existing dominant players does not exist, and does not seem to be coming anytime soon. The gaping hole left as a result is becoming only more apparent as we speed into Trump administration 2.0.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Conor Smyth.

Upon his return to Skopje, journalists asked whether this marked a shift in Macedonia’s foreign policy, which had so far been dictated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU). His response was: ‘We are among the first to take to the pitch. That is my style; there is no second chance to make a first impression. We are on the pitch, and others can come behind us. We must find a place for ourselves in the new normal.’

But what exactly is the ‘new normal’ for a country on the periphery of Europe? Until recently, Macedonia had no major foreign policy dilemmas simply because it had no foreign policy! Elites followed Brussels’s directives. NATO and EU membership became substitutes for the former socialist ideology – more than that, they became a secular religion, a dogma that no one dared to question. Just before joining NATO, following an unconstitutional and imposed change of the country’s constitution and name, a representative of the ruling coalition (later a deputy prime minister) stated: ‘For us, the sun rises in the West!’ But now, it seems there are two suns – both rising in the West – leaving small and dependent states facing an impossible choice.

Trump’s ‘second coming’ has shattered the illusion of Western unity, exposing deep fractures within what was once considered a monolithic Atlantic bloc. His (still hypothetical and undeveloped) peace plan for Ukraine has thrown NATO into disarray—if not outright paralysis. Some analysts already speak of a post-NATO world. Others describe the alliance as a ‘zombie’ structure, a relic of the first Cold War, while still others predict its partial or complete transformation. NATO’s fate, like so much else, now hinges entirely on the will of the United States.

The frequent summits of select European countries, forming structures that are neither fully NATO nor entirely EU, only add to the confusion. Some EU member states have rushed to align with different factions within the transatlantic divide, reflecting the growing disunity. At the same time, the EU has lost its moral compass and strategic purpose, shifting from a welfare to a warfare agenda.

The ongoing confusion in Macedonia is not just a matter of foreign policy; it is deeply rooted in domestic politics as well. Elites incapable of building a sustainable state that functions in the collective interest have relied on the promise that ‘NATO will defend us, and the EU will feed us.’ In religious terms, this would be akin to waiting for the afterlife, where all earthly suffering will be overcome.

Indeed, since 2020, Macedonia has become a NATO member, but EU membership is now more distant than ever. This is especially evident given that Brussels has begun accession talks with Ukraine in the midst of a war, while Macedonia faces demands for constitutional changes that have no connection to the Copenhagen criteria and are practically impossible to fulfil. The aspiration for NATO and EU membership also served as a pacifier for internal tensions. Every conflict had a standard resolution: look forward to European integration, forget the past, and even ignore the grim present.

During the Polish ambassador’s address to the Macedonian Parliament on 10 March 2025 regarding Poland’s EU presidency priorities, an opposition MP noted that the word ‘enlargement’ was not mentioned at all. He then concluded, ‘While listening to the ambassador, I realise that the EU’s fantasies revolve around another war with the Russian Federation.’ Meanwhile, the deputy speaker of Parliament Antonio Milošoski, from the ruling conservative party VMRO-DPMNE (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity) attempted a diplomatic quip. Milošoski urged Poland and other member states to restore the transatlantic dialogue as soon as possible, emphasising that on the question of ‘whom we support’, the best answer now is: ‘We are for Donald (meaning Trump and Tusk)’ – referring to Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland.

The new Foreign Minister has announced a ‘three-pillar’ policy: NATO, the EU, and the USA. However, this supposedly new formula is not the result of strategic thinking but rather an attempt to avoid choosing between two competing Western factions – one that insists on prolonging the war in Ukraine (the EU) and another that grudgingly accepts the ‘new geopolitical reality’ and seeks a peace settlement with Russia (the United States). Macedonia’s elites have simply emphasised an additional ‘pillar’ (i.e. the United States) within the fractured Western bloc, pretending they can balance between diverging interests.

The fundamental problem is that none of these three pillars are stable. There is no common Western strategy on any major issue. The three entities on which Macedonia has staked its future – NATO, the EU, and the US – are themselves deeply divided, consumed by internal contradictions, and driven by short-term transactional logic. All three rely on and sustain the military-industrial complex. The US empire is undergoing internal erosion. NATO and the EU are over-militarizing and indebting themselves—and worse, they are not sleepwalking but rushing toward a global war.

This small country, Macedonia, which has already paid a bizarre yet deeply painful price for NATO membership – sacrificing its constitutional sovereignty, changing its state name, and altering its national identity – now faces mounting demands, regardless of which Western faction it turns to. Each power center demands loyalty and sacrifice, yet none offers anything in return. Macedonia lacks strategic resources, rare metals, or economic leverage. It cannot fulfil US demands to increase military spending for NATO – not because its elites wouldn’t comply, but because the country is over-indebted and impoverished. Cynically speaking, it can hardly provide ‘cannon fodder,’ as its young population is steadily emigrating. Yet, the Defense Minister announced that six new military equipment contracts with the US were passed at a closed government session. It is obviously a way to meet Trump’s transactional scheme and appease him.

The Macedonian government is not the only one grappling with the unresolvable dilemma of trying to ‘have your cake and eat it too’. The answer is simple for those willing to pull their heads out of the sand: the sun, after all, rises in the east (with a small ‘e’), and the world has four directions where new friends can be found.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The post Macedonia’s Foreign Policy Between Two Suns appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Biljana Vankovska.

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On a Monday last month, after a conservative Maine legislator expressed outrage on Facebook about a transgender girl winning a high school pole vaulting event, the hammer of the federal government began to swing.

By Friday of that week, Feb. 21, President Donald Trump singled out Maine’s governor during a White House event and threatened to cut off the state’s federal funding. “See you in court,” Gov. Janet Mills shot back.

Then came a barrage of investigations and threats: The U.S. Department of Education opened inquiries into the Maine Department of Education and the student’s school district, alleging they had violated federal civil rights law. The same day, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services targeted the Maine Education Department, too, as well as the state’s university system.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture then launched an investigation into the university system; and on Tuesday, the university said the USDA had halted funding as the agency investigates “prospective” civil rights violations, records show.

The U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter that “Maine should be on notice” that the agency was poised to sue. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration even pulled $4.5 million for marine research, but it didn’t touch the 33 other grantees who get similar funding.

Then last week, the Social Security Administration briefly became the sixth federal agency to target Maine, canceling contracts that allowed hospitals to automatically report births and funeral homes to report deaths.

Although the Social Security contracts were reinstated, and the state may reapply for the marine research funding, the moves had already wreaked havoc.

Now, more federal agencies are pressing down on Maine than there are transgender girls competing in girls’ sports in the state. Only two transgender girls are competing this school year, according to the Maine Principals’ Association.

“The president is trying to crush the opposition. He’s trying to crush Maine,” said David Webbert, a longtime civil rights attorney in Maine. To Webbert, it’s as if Trump is saying: “‘Maine believes in transgender rights? Well, you’re going to see what happens to you.’”

Some view Maine as a test case for how the Trump administration may try to force its policies on states, regardless of existing state laws. In public comments, residents have invoked the state’s motto to rally Mainers: “Dirigo,” Latin for “I lead.”

“It’s Maine now, but what state is it going to be next? This is not just a Maine issue, but Maine spoke up. So right now, it’s, ‘Let’s make an example out of Maine,’” said Kris Pitts, executive co-director of the nonprofit MaineTransNet.

State officials, thrust into the spotlight, have been trying to avoid becoming more of a target, carefully choosing their words and declining interviews with reporters. And Mills hasn’t challenged Trump again publicly on this issue.

There are signs the administration is preparing to force other states to follow the president’s directives: The DOJ recently sent letters to California and Minnesota threatening to sue those states if they don’t ban transgender girls from athletics.

The Trump administration also is taking a multiagency approach with Columbia University. On Friday, several federal agencies canceled a combined $400 million in grants and contracts because, the administration alleged, the university was not sufficiently combatting antisemitism.

The press release announcing the multimillion-dollar punishment contained a caution for noncompliant institutions: “Doing business with the Federal Government is a privilege.”

Nearly everything about the blitz of investigations in Maine, including how they’re being carried out, is not ordinary.

Federal agencies that don’t usually enforce civil rights laws in schools launched inquiries. HHS, for instance, usually focuses on health care access for people with disabilities or language translation, and there’s no evidence it’s conducted an investigation of Maine in the past 20 years.

Not only did it dive into Maine’s policies on transgender athletes, it reached a conclusion with unprecedented speed.

Investigations like this typically take months, if not years, according to a review of federal investigation data and records by ProPublica and the Bangor Daily News. But just one business day after announcing the investigation, the federal agency decided the Maine Department of Education wasn’t giving girls equal opportunities and had violated Title IX “by allowing male athletes to compete against female athletes,” according to a letter from HHS to the state.

It sent that finding to the general inbox at the Maine attorney general’s office after interviewing no one from that office, the Education Department, governor’s office or officials from two high schools cited in the letter for allowing transgender athletes to compete against girls, according to those agencies and schools.

The Maine attorney general’s office pointed out that the letter cited an incorrect sum of federal funding that flows to the state. Legal experts also viewed its interpretation of Title IX as problematic. Trump’s Feb. 5 “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order asserted that transgender girls can’t play girls’ sports under that federal law. But Title IX has never required schools to exclude them, and Trump’s order can’t rewrite federal law, said Deborah Brake, a professor at University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

“The president can put out an executive order saying anything he wants,” Brake said, but “there has never been a court decision interpreting Title IX to require the exclusion of transgender girls from girls’ sports.”

The president is trying to crush the opposition. He’s trying to crush Maine.

In a statement, the agency reiterated that Maine could lose federal funding if it didn’t comply with its position. “HHS will investigate and enforce Title IX to the full extent permitted by law to uphold fairness, safety, dignity, and biological truth in women’s and girls’ educational athletic opportunities. Men have no place in women’s sports,” it said.

The USDA investigation of the University of Maine, launched on a Saturday, the day after Mills’ exchange with Trump, also is unusual. In announcing the investigation, the department said $100 million to the university was at risk because of the state’s “blatant disregard” of Trump’s order; a university system spokesperson said that amount reflected multiple years of funding.

Then came a series of questions, according to records obtained by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica. At 10:50 a.m. the following Tuesday, a USDA official sent a University of Maine official 10 yes-or-no questions about its transgender athlete policies — and gave her 1 hour, 10 minutes to respond. The officials agreed to discuss the questions over a Zoom call, and, about five hours after that call, the USDA sent a list of follow-up questions. The agency wanted those answers by 1 p.m. the following day.

Sherron Jernigan, a USDA civil rights director for the animal and plant inspection service, sent the questions:

“Does the University of Maine System provide sex-separated toilet, locker room, and shower facilities for male student athletes and female student athletes?” The university answered “yes.”

“Does the University of Maine System permit a biological male to participate in individual or team contact sports with biological females?” The university answered “no.”

The university’s Title IX coordinator told the USDA that none of the seven universities within the system has transgender athletes participating in NCAA-sanctioned sports. (Of the more than 500,000 students who compete on NCAA teams across the country, fewer than 10 are transgender, the league’s president recently told a U.S. Senate panel.)

In her response to follow-up questions, Liz Lavoie, the university’s Title IX coordinator, added that the USDA had not given the university “any explanation as to the basis or scope of its inquiry, or the steps in the process.”

“Further, we have been given mere hours to respond to both sets of questions and we are responding in good faith but find the approach concerning given the lack of official service and the informal nature that the questions and interview have been presented,” Lavoie wrote.

The USDA did not issue any findings after the questioning, but the agency already is taking action. On Tuesday, the university said the USDA had frozen funding that could affect research on everything from the contamination of Maine farms by forever chemicals to the sustainability of Maine’s lobster industry. Last fiscal year, the USDA awarded nearly $30 million to the University of Maine.

A USDA spokesperson said the agency would not comment on a pending investigation.

Webbert, the civil rights attorney, called the federal government’s inquiries “a show.”

“It’s a political move dressed up, very barely, with a legal process, but it’s a fake legal process. So it is very concerning because they’re not even trying to make it look like it’s due process,” he said. “It reeks of pure politics.”

Doing business with the Federal Government is a privilege.

The federal government has made no effort to hide the ideological perspective that its various inquiries are seeking to enforce in Maine and the rest of the county, according to documents obtained by ProPublica and the Bangor Daily News. In announcing its action in Maine, HHS said it wanted to “restore biological truth to the federal government” and in its findings cited an article from OutKick, a Fox-owned conservative news site with a mission of “exposing the destructive nature of ‘woke’ activism.”

Meanwhile, the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education — which does have a mandate to investigate gender-based discrimination in schools and, with more than 500 people, dwarfs most of the nation’s civil rights enforcement divisions — seemed to conclude that Maine was violating Title IX before it finished investigating.

The press release announcing the launch of the investigation quoted the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, Craig Trainor: “It is shameful that Governor Mills refuses to stand with women and girls. Her rejection of the antidiscrimination obligations that Maine voluntarily accepted when it agreed to receive federal taxpayer dollars is unlawful.”

Trainor linked to “credible local reporting” around the pole vaulter in his letter to Maine officials announcing the civil rights investigation. The report came from the Maine Wire, an online outlet founded by a conservative think tank based in the state. The office hasn’t made contact with Maine since it notified state agencies of its investigation, according to the Maine agencies.

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Maine’s governor never believed her state would receive an impartial investigation. “I imagine that the outcome of this politically directed investigation is all but predetermined,” Mills said in a statement after the Education Department investigation began. She has since declined to discuss her view of Maine’s transgender athlete policy.

But she has reiterated that Trump legally can’t force the state to violate its own law, the Maine Human Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on gender identity.

Mainers aren’t sure what this full-court press will mean for their state; keeping up with it is hard enough. State Sen. Joe Rafferty, a Democrat who co-chairs the Legislature’s committee on education and cultural affairs, expressed disbelief when a reporter informed him that HHS’ investigation only lasted four days. He wasn’t aware it had officially started.

“That is why I think part of this is a mirage,” he said of the various investigations. The eventual resolution, he said, is more likely to be settled in a courtroom.

Indeed, HHS referred its finding to the DOJ, which can sue Maine to remove its federal funding. (The health agency also expanded its investigation last week to include the Maine Principals’ Association and the Maine high school where the pole vaulter is a student, according to the agency.) The results of that lawsuit could have significant implications, said Brake, the law professor. Not once since Congress enacted Title IX in 1972 has the DOJ ever cut off funding for a violation.

All the federal attention has been unsettling to some Mainers, welcomed by others who don’t want transgender girls playing girls’ sports and disruptive to the 625-student Greely High School, which the transgender pole vaulter attends.

“It’s just upsetting to everybody at school to be the center of attention and focus. It’s unnerving to go to school and the school is surrounded by police and reporters on every corner,” Gia Drew, who leads a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy group called EqualityMaine, said of what she’s hearing from the community. “It’s hard to focus on a calculus test when your friends are under attack. It affects not just trans people but everyone who is part of a school system.”

After state Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican from Auburn, singled out the student on her Facebook page and brought Trump’s attention to Maine, parents in the school district planned to show support by displaying signs and handing out treats before classes began, said state Rep. Christina Mitchell, a Democrat who represents Cumberland, home to Greely High School. She’s also a school board member in the district.

But there were television trucks and a police presence surrounding the school, so parents decided not to add to the commotion.

The Bangor Daily News and ProPublica reached out to the family of the student athlete but received no response. Mitchell said other students, including the transgender student’s teammates and competitors, are supportive of her. “Nobody was making a fuss,” she said.

And many in Maine don’t want a fuss. Even as Mills’ response to Trump made some proud — you can now buy “See you in court” T-shirts — others recognized that it launched Maine into the nation’s consciousness. “You watch it and feel like: ‘Oh, all eyes will be here. This will be something big,’” said Pitts, with MaineTransNet.

Libby and other Republican lawmakers have welcomed the chance to amplify their viewpoint that allowing transgender girls in sports is unsafe and discriminates against girls. Another Republican lawmaker introduced a bill to the Legislature to require transgender athletes to compete on teams matching the gender they were assigned at birth.

“All of the accomplishments of women over the years are being erased by men masquerading as women, erasing us from the history books,” Libby said in a weekly address from Maine House Republicans.

While Libby has been censured by Democrats who control the Maine House for her initial Facebook post about the pole vaulter, she has continued to make appearances on right-wing media to urge the governor to stop supporting the right of transgender girls to compete in girls’ sports. On Tuesday, she filed a lawsuit in Maine District Court against the state’s House speaker over the censure, accusing him of stripping her voting rights “in retaliation for protected speech on a highly important and hotly debated matter of public concern,” according to the complaint. Her party has rallied around her and her cause.

“Allowing biological boys to compete with our girls, is not only unpopular, and unfair, but it is also illegal,” Republican House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor said in a written statement. “Governor Mills should abandon this indefensible position and uphold Title IX protections for our girls.”

Maine institutions being targeted by the federal government have continued to follow state law. And at a regularly scheduled school board meeting at Greely High School on Thursday night, the board president pledged the district’s “unwavering support” of all students.

Mitchell said that Maine may be the federal government’s target now, but other states could be next.

“I think you have to stand up to it. Whatever you think is right, you have to stand up for it, because, if you don’t, it’ll just keep going and spread to other places,” Mitchell said. “We’re a small state, but if you give an inch, you know?”

Eli Hager contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

President Donald J. Trump visits and speaks with workers, as he is joined by Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH Moet Hennessy. Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

Nine of the world’s ten wealthiest billionaires now call the United States home. The remaining one? He lives in France. And that one — Bernard Arnault, the 76-year-old who owns just about half the world’s largest maker of luxury goods — is now feeling some heat.

What has Arnault and his fellow French deep pockets beginning to sweat? Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have just given a green light to the world’s first significant tax on billionaire wealth.

“The tax impunity of billionaires,” the measure’s prime sponsor, the Ecologist Party’s Eva Sas, exulted last month, “is over.”

Sas had good reason for exulting. In the French National Assembly debate over whether to start levying a 2 percent annual tax on wealth over 100 million euros — the equivalent of $108 million — the leader of the chamber’s hands-off-our-rich lawmakers introduced 26 amendments designed to undercut this landmark tax-the-rich initiative. All 26 of these amendments failed.

But France’s 4,000 or so deep pockets worth over 100 million euros — the nation’s richest 0.01 percent — don’t have to open up their checkbooks just quite yet. The French Senate’s right-wing-majority has no intention of backing the National Assembly’s new levy, and, even if the Senate did, France’s highest court would most likely dismiss the measure.

French president Emmanuel Macron, for his part, has spent most of the last decade cutting corporate tax rates and axing taxes on investment assets. And his budget minister has blasted last month’s National Assembly tax-the-rich move as both “confiscatory and ineffective.”

None of this opposition, believes the French economist who inspired the National Assembly’s new tax move, should give us cause to doubt that move’s significance. The annual tax on grand fortune that the Assembly’s lawmakers have passed, says the UC-Berkeley analyst Gabriel Zucman, represents “amazing progress” that has the potential to set a bold new global precedent.

What makes the National Assembly’s tax legislation even more significant? That tax-the-rich vote has come at a time when the most powerful nation on Earth — the United States — is moving in the exact opposite direction. The new Trump administration, with the help of the world’s single richest individual, is now busily hollowing out the tax-the-rich capacity of the Internal Revenue Service.

The post An Inequality Tale of Two Capital Cities appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sam Pizzigati.

And if you watched their program, part of France 2’s “Cash Investigation” series, you might be convinced that they found astonishing and scandalous evidence.

The fact of the matter, though, is that the show’s creators used blatant lies to come to that conclusion, and I have all the evidence on today’s show.

What is even more delicious is that the show also featured seasoned anti-China “academic” Adrian Zenz, who has ended up being exposed by this show at the same time. Two birds with one stone!

Grab a cuppa and come with me as I explain all of the tricks the two female reporters used, and highlight clearly why they are lies.

This is Reports on China, I’m Andy Boreham in Shanghai. Let’s get reporting!

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

After his meeting in the White House with a truculent Trump and JD Vance, Zelenskyy headed to London for a summit of 19 leaders, including Justin Trudeau, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Nato chief Mark Rutte. This time there were no verbal fisticuffs, and with hugs all round, Zelenskyy basked in the company of friends.

Donald Trump criticised European leaders including Sir Keir Starmer on Monday, deriding their weekend talks over Ukraine and launching a furious new attack on Volodymyr Zelensky for saying a peace deal is still “very, very far away”.

In what could be a major setback in ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, the US president fired off a tirade just as the prime minister was on his feet in the Commons insisting America was vital, sincere and indispensable in the path to peace.

Sir Keir rejected calls from MPs for Britain to shun Mr Trump and America after last week’s extraordinary ambush on Mr Zelensky in the White House Oval Office.

However, in a hint the US could be prepared to withdraw military aid to Ukraine, the president said in a social media post: “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky, and America will not put up with it for much longer! This guy doesn’t want there to be peace as long as he has America’s backing.”

And in a sideswipe at Sir Keir and other European leaders, he added: “In the meeting they had with Zelensky, [they] stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the US – probably not a great statement to have been made in terms of a show of strength against Russia. What are they thinking?”

    Trump says ‘no room left’ to avoid massive tax hikes on Canadian and Mexican importsTrump says ‘no room left’ to avoid massive tax hikes on Canadian and Mexican imports

Later on Monday night, Mr Trump warned Mr Zelensky “won’t be around very long” if he did not end the war soon.

At a press conference at the White House, Mr Trump told reporters: “The deal could be made very fast. It should not be that hard a deal to make. Now, maybe somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, and if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, I think that person won’t be around very long.”

It was a deepening of the diplomatic crisis that began on Friday when Mr Zelensky was asked to leave the White House after being bullied in front of the world’s media by Mr Trump and vice-president JD Vance.

But he appears to be at odds with the French president Emmanuel Macron about the “coalition of the willing” that Britain and France are meant to lead.

When he came to the House of Commons to outline his proposals, the prime minister received praise for his diplomacy but also a number of awkward questions about his support for Mr Trump.

Starmer updated MPs following intensive diplomatic efforts around the Ukraine crisis

Starmer updated MPs following intensive diplomatic efforts around the Ukraine crisis (PA Wire)

The SNP and Tory shadow minister Alicia Kearns called for the invitation from the King for a second state visit – which Sir Keir brandished at the White House last week – to be rescinded.

The prime minister rejected those demands and warned MPs that any solution to Ukraine and European security would need to be achieved by working “more closely” with the US president.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said the UK needs to “reduce our dependency on the United States” as he fears “that President Trump is not a reliable ally with respect to Russia”.

He told the Commons: “We’ve entered a new era, one where the United States prefers to align itself with tyrants like Putin rather than its democratic partners. We need to reduce our dependency on the United States because I say with deep regret that I fear that President Trump is not a reliable ally with respect to Russia.”

Sir Keir said: “I welcome the understanding from our dialogue that our two nations will work together on security arrangements for a lasting peace in Ukraine. I also welcome the president’s continued commitment to that peace, which nobody in this House should doubt for a second is sincere.”

He added: “Our defence, our security, our intelligence are completely intertwined, no two countries are as close as our two countries and it’d be a huge mistake at a time like this to suggest that any weakening of that link is the way forward for security and defence in Europe.”

Emily Thornberry is critical of the decision to cut the overseas aid budget

Emily Thornberry is critical of the decision to cut the overseas aid budget (PA Archive)

He also avoided answering a question about Britain’s ambassador to the US, Lord Mandelson, making statements in support of Mr Trump that defence minister Luke Pollard said did not reflect government policy. The diplomat claimed that Mr Trump’s mineral deal initiative to end the war was “the only show in town”.

Sir Keir said: “The plan is clear, we’re working, particularly with the French, I’ve had extensive conversations with President Macron over the last week, intensively over the weekend, talking to Ukraine as well, those are going on at the moment.”

In a further clash, he accused Nigel Farage of “fawning over Putin” when the Reform UK leader asked him how many British troops would be stationed in Ukraine.

The prime minister also faced a backlash from senior Labour MPs over his decision to cut the overseas aid budget to fund an increase in defence spending.

The post Keir Starmer Tries to Ride Two Horses Simultaneously appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

In the nearly fifty years since the Vietnam War ended, Vietnam has evolved from ecological and economic devastation into a must stop for American tourists. Ukraine recently approached Vietnam as a mediator in its “dispute” with Russia.[1] America, meanwhile, continues to suffer from the Vietnam Syndrome, as discussed in my book Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire from which the following chapters are excerpted. The book is written as a daily journal. As autobiography, it reveals why investigating the CIA was both a social quest to understand the dark side of the American psyche, and a personal quest to better understand myself and where I fit within my country. I embarked, fittingly, as the sun was about to enter Pisces, the astrological sign ruling deception, espionage, foreign things, prisons and religion. (Part One can be read here.)

Robby in the Lobby: Wednesday, 27 February 1991

“Straighten out your affairs. Slow down your pace. Stop worrying about things you cannot change.  Prepare for the full Moon.”

In the summer of 1992, a team of British zoologists traveled to the Vu Quang Nature Reserve in Central Vietnam to search for the elusive “forest goat,” otherwise known as the “Asian unicorn.” They weren’t even sure it was a goat. It might have been a miniature ox, or a tiny water buffalo, or an antelope. As of 1992, no Western zoologist had ever seen one and thus they did not officially exist. That any creatures still existed in the region was in itself remarkable, given the millions of bombs the US military dropped on it and in neighboring Cambodia and Laos during the war.

       As proof of existence, the zoologists had two long, slender antlers the unicorns used to fend off tigers and other predators. The antlers were obtained through Vietnamese scientists in contact with members of the Bru people living in the nature reserve. The Bru were familiar with the forest goat and for generations had ground its horn into powder for use as an aphrodisiac. Like many indigenous tribes throughout Southeast Asia, the Bru hunted with crossbows and blowguns, cannibalized their enemies and practiced sorcery.

       As I’m sure the Bru would agree, the effects of a full moon are inescapable. And this particular full moon would peak at nine degrees in the sign of Virgo – exactly where the moon had been when I was born – activating the Pisces-Virgo axis that existed at the moment of my birth. Helen described it as “the most delicate axis in the Zodiac: Virgo is the awareness and settling of your karmic affairs: Pisces is their inevitable dissolution into the whole. But the prevailing instinct now is to maintain individual integrity at all costs.”

       Settling my affairs meant smoothing things over with the Vietnamese authorities and getting to Thailand for my interviews. The authorities had done nothing to lead me to believe I was in trouble. I’d registered the car before I left and the Tay Ninh cops had treated me well. I believed they were flexible and forgiving. Unlike BBC. I didn’t trust BBC to tell the truth about anything. To appease the CIA, they’d isolated me without any translation services or support of any kind. It was a mean-spirited set-up and I was not about to follow their edict to stay in the hotel.

       I slept a few hours and felt somewhat refreshed, and after breakfast I walked over to the Vietnam Air office to confirm my flight. And there I discovered that all was not well. The English-speaking clerk told me, in a perfunctory and unpleasant manner, that my name was not on the manifest. My flight out of Vietnam had not been confirmed. I couldn’t leave.

       The Caravelle Hotel was a few blocks away, so I walked over to see Julie. I rang her room at the front desk and she said she’d be right down. While waiting, I asked if Lillian Morton was there. She was not. Lillian had gone north to Hanoi on the second leg of her journey.

      Julie appeared moments later and we sat in the lobby amid a group of lounging Vietnamese. Their stares made her squirm in her seat. She asked if I was feeling better. I said I was adapting and asked how she was doing. “I can’t wait to go home,” she replied. At the thought of home, a tear glistened in the corner of one eye. She was haggard, fidgeting, a nervous wreck. I felt sorry for her. “I’ve been here nearly a month,” she added emotionally.

       Stiffening her upper lip, Julie got down to business. She said the Vietnamese were upset and that I must stay in my hotel room until Mrs. Huong from the Ministry of Culture, Information, Sports and Tourism contacted me. She said I was under house arrest and that my departure from Vietnam had been indefinitely postponed until my status was resolved. She asked, disapprovingly, if I’d gotten her note telling me to stay in my room.

       I said I had but that it hadn’t mentioned anything about my being under house arrest – let alone confined to my room. “As you know,” I said, “I’m required to confirm my flight and it wasn’t until I got to Vietnam Air that I learned it’s been delayed.”

       During our chat Julie had become so disconcerted by the unabashed staring and listening of the Vietnamese around us that she stood and said rather brusquely that she had some pressing chores to do for Molloy. She asked if we could continue our chat over lunch at the Majestic. I agreed and returned to my hotel. I’d been in my room for two minutes when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Huong from the Ministry of Culture. “Mr. Valentine,” she said frantically, “I’ve been trying to reach you for days!”

       “Hello, Mrs. Huong,” I replied. “How are you?”

       “I’m fine, Mr. Valentine,” she said, nonplused. “How are you?”

       “I’m okay, thanks. But I’m concerned. I was just at the Vietnam Air office and they said my flight to Bangkok tomorrow was indefinitely postponed. I have important business in Thailand. I hope we can straighten things out quickly.”

       “Mr. Valentine!” she exclaimed, peeved by my insouciance. She let my name hang in the air while she composed herself. “Mr. Valentine,’ she repeated angrily. “You must explain what you’ve been doing before you can leave Vietnam. We cannot have tourists traveling around the countryside without permission. Everyone must follow the rules.” I didn’t respond, so she continued. “We’re sending someone to your hotel to speak to you. He’ll be there at six-thirty this evening. You must stay in your hotel until he arrives and this matter is straightened out. Do you understand?’

       I understood.

       “Good. You are in serious trouble, Mr. Valentine. I hope you will comply with our wishes.”

       “Of course, Mrs. Huong,” I said. “But you’ll find that the problem is not of my making.”

       “We’ll see, Mr. Valentine. Goodbye.”

***

       I walked onto the balcony and contemplated what it meant to be under house arrest in a country that didn’t have diplomatic relations with mine. Not that any US official would ever help me, but there was nowhere to go for help. Not a soul in my address book I could call for help, either. More distressing was the prospect of a missed opportunity of a lifetime. Saigon was spread out before me and beyond was Thailand, waiting to be explored. But I was trapped and the feeling led to a moment of panic, like I was in a car skidding out-of-control on black ice, hurtling headlong at on-coming traffic. The next few moments were filled with crushing loneliness and apprehension so profound I literally had an out of body experience. I felt my consciousness leave my body, as if it were trying to travel back home on the astral plane.  I pulled myself together, focused on the street scene, spied the cyclo driver with the baseball cap.  He was smiling and looking up at me from the corner. He waved merrily. In The Quiet American, a cyclo driver in Fowler’s employ signals Pyle’s doom. Synchronicity?

       I chuckled and realized I was being melodramatic. I wasn’t facing time behind bars. They might chew me out but no one was going to break my arm. “Stop worrying about things you cannot change,” Helen had advised. Which is what a writer does when he can’t get involved. He records. So I wrote about everything that had happened and then I did some tai chi.

       At 12:45 the desk clerk called to say Julie was downstairs. I’d run out of Lomotil and Septra and had flushed my malaria pills down the toilet. The health crisis had passed but I needed a joint.

       I met Julie in the lobby and asked where she’d like to sit. She chose a table as far from the veranda as possible. She was cocooning and didn’t want to see the street. It was all she could do not to gripe about the heat and the heathens. I asked what she wanted for lunch. She blanched at the mention of food and ordered a chicken sandwich. When it arrived, she was horrified to find that it was not the white meat and mayonnaise kind of sandwich she had envisioned. The meat was dark and stringy and came on the bone. “Some people say it’s pigeon,” I cruelly observed. She gagged.

       While we talked, Julie used her fork to pull short strips of stringy meat off the bone. She manically segregated the meat on a corner of her plate and nibbled the dry parts of bread that hadn’t touched it. A part of me sympathized, but I couldn’t tolerate her contempt for the Vietnamese. And for me. She looked down her long thin nose at me like a sniper aligning the Patridge sights on a rifle.

       We made small talk. I asked if BBC was accomplishing what it had set out to do. Had they gotten into the National Interrogation Center in Saigon or any province interrogation centers?

       Julie said things had gone “as well as could be expected in Vietnam.” BBC had done a lot of filming in Long An Province. They’d shot scenes of village life and yes, they’d gotten into the province interrogation center, which was “shabby, like everything else in Vietnam.” The film crew had asked to get into the National Interrogation Center but it was being used and was off limits.

       I mentioned that I’d been to the Cao Dai Temple, and she said that BBC had filmed a service there. They’d also been to Vung Tau, southeast of Saigon on the coast. Vung Tau was where the CIA had trained its counter-terror and political action cadres.

       Filming at the Cao Dai Temple, Vung Tau and an interrogation center were things I’d suggested they do. Giving me credit, however, was not in BBC’s script. Sensing that she had told me too much, she turned the conversation back to my situation. “Doug,” she said with a sniff, “You do know that you’re being detained and that you’ll have to stay in the hotel today? I believe Mrs. Huong is sending someone to speak to you tonight. Isn’t that right?”

       “That’s right,” I acknowledged.

       “If all goes well, you’ll only be detained for one day. You’ll be leaving on Friday instead of Thursday. Incidentally, Friday is Orderly Departure Program Day, the day each week when refugees are allowed to leave Vietnam. ODP Day gets to be something of a madhouse, but if you follow instructions, it should all go well. In any event, as soon as the people from the Ministry give us the green light, we’ll straighten out your hotel bill and then you can go. Okay?”

       “Great,” I said agreeably. That was encouraging news, though between the lines she was hinting that BBC would not pay my hotel bill unless I toed the line. Which was okay. I was not about to make a fuss. I asked if she would contact the Mandarin in Bangkok and change my hotel reservation. She said I should call myself, that BBC would be paying my phone bill as well.

       “Thanks,” I said dubiously.

       “You know, Doug,” Julie said indignantly, “people in your predicament have been detained for up to a month! The people from the Ministry held one of our film crews in some wretched village for a week, simply because one of our people didn’t have the proper clearances.”

       Should have had a few Benjamins, I thought, but didn’t say it. Julie had raised the subject of my arrest, however, so I asked what had happened “at their end” that fateful day. Peter, she said, had gotten furious about my “escapade.” The ministry people had contacted BBC on Tuesday morning about my paperwork, prompting Julie to send the first note. Later that day, while BBC was on location in Long An, the police appeared on the set and suspended filming while they sorted out my status. During that time, several phone calls had gone back and forth from Tay Ninh to Saigon and the film crew had to sit around and watch the precious daylight fade.

       There was more, of course, to the story. Julie did not mention the ten grand I had carried or that Molloy had denied that I worked for BBC. But I’d already decided not to press the issue. Instead, I politely asked if she had read my first book?

       “No,’ she replied. She seemed interested. “What’s it about?”

       I told her my father had been a POW in the Philippines, the only American in a camp with 120 Australians and 44 Brits. The camp commander was an English major who, on Christmas Eve, 1943, informed on four Australians who had escaped that night. The Japanese re-captured the Aussies and beheaded them on Christmas morning. That same night the Aussies held a war council, drew straws and sent three men, including my father, to murder the major.

       I believe Julie was a good person doing her boss’s bidding. Frightening her was not something I enjoyed. But I wanted to let Molloy know I had horns too.

       Julie got the point. Knowing I was unrepentant and angry, she abruptly left, dabbing at her lips with her napkin, warning me not to walk alone in the park at night.

***

Thuan our driver at Giau’s house.

        After Julie left, I walked over to the cubby hole bar by the veranda and ordered a Grand Marnier. I peered over the topiary on the veranda onto Bach Dang at the parade of motorbikes and cyclos, conical hats and black pajamas. Across the sun-drenched park, assorted barges and boats plowed up and down the Saigon River, flying the red Vietnamese flag with its single yellow star. To accompany my second soothing brandy, I asked the black jacketed bartender for a cup of coffee. He poured the lukewarm, syrupy liquid from a thermos.

       I was alone and feeling as blue as can be when from out of nowhere a pack of Parliament Lights landed on the bar beside me. I was overcome with nostalgia. Parliament Lights were my brand. I looked at the pack lying there invitingly and I wondered – could it be that an American was standing beside me?

       I heard the man order a beer in English. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing in my horoscope had foretold this. Loneliness and the desire for an American cigarette compelled me to turn and ask, “Can I bum one of your smokes?”

       “Sure,” he replied, causally shaking one out of the pack. He gave me a light with a steady hand.

       Feeling awkward and wanting to return the favor, I asked if I could pay for his beer.

       “Oh, no,” he said, “that’s not necessary.”

        “Please. It’d make me feel better. It’s really only fair.”

        “Well in that case, sure,” he smiled. “Take as many as you want. I got a carton back in my room.”

       “You came prepared,” I observed. “Where’re you staying?”

       “Two blocks up at the Bong Seng. There’s much more going on in Vietnam this time than the last time I was here. So much more business this time, I couldn’t get a room at Cuu Long or Saigon Mini. A good friend of mine lives at the Mini. How about you? Where are you staying?”

       “Right here,” I said, introducing myself. We shook hands and he introduced himself as Robby from upstate New York. He was medium built with short brown hair, shaggy mustache, soft brown eyes, casually dressed in blue jeans and a pale blue, short sleeved shirt. Everything about him put me at ease. I asked him what he did for a living.

       Robby was an engineer for a company out of Chicago. The company had a contract with the US government inspecting hydraulic systems on military aircraft. Robby had learned his trade as a technician on fast attack submarines in the navy. He’d gone to work for this company right after leaving the navy in 1979.  He’d worked all over the world since then doing instrumentation and calibration. “Avionics,” he called it.

       His story got interesting. He’d been working in Kuwait when Iraq invaded. Curious to know what that experience was like, I offered to buy another round. Robby had nothing to do that afternoon, so we took our drinks to a table in the shade on the veranda where he described how he and a co-worker had driven a company jeep out of Kuwait mere hours ahead of the encroaching Iraqi tanks.

       The day was bright and hot as we watched the boats on the river. It was dreamy, sitting on the veranda sipping drinks and listening to the tring-a-linging of cyclos and the sweet voices of kids peering over the hedges trying to sell us chewing gum. Robby described how he and his colleague drove across the desert on a dusty “half-assed” road jammed with traffic and refugees most of whom were “Pakistanis carrying bundles tied with string.” At the end of the road was a crowded Saudi army outpost where he and his buddy were processed and given three-day visas.

       I asked if he knew how the war was progressing. He said that Saddam was trying to withdraw his troops, but US warplanes were mercilessly bombing the retreating columns. The Americans, he said, had already taken about 30,000 prisoners.

       I asked him why he thought Bush was reacting so violently.

       “Money,” he said without hesitation. “No one stepped into Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge, because no one had any financial interests there to protect. But Bush’s family and friends have heavy financial interests in Kuwait. Oil interests. Protecting those interests is the military’s top priority. For ten years they’ve been preparing for a fight, building underground complexes, stocking them with supplies, waiting for the day when they could establish a permanent military presence in Iraq. That’s why they sold Saddam so many guns. And that’s why they told him it was okay to invade Kuwait when he found out it was slant drilling into Iraq. It was a provocation, something to get Saddam to overreact.”

       “Like the ‘provoked response’ in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964,” I said.

       “Same thing but more sophisticated.”

       “Why are you in Vietnam?” I asked.

       He laughed. “I can’t go back to Kuwait until they’ve cleaned up the mess. Meanwhile I get to fly anywhere I want for free. Been to Thailand sixteen times. That’s the place I really like. I’m going there for a few weeks to do the raft and elephant thing, spend some time in Bangkok. Then to the Philippines. Thought I’d stop here for a few days along the way. It’s my second time. The first time, last year, I couldn’t get out of Saigon. This time around I want to check out the beach at Vung Tau, the tunnels of Chu Chi, get up to Hue. I’m going to try to get into Laos too.”

       I asked if he always traveled alone and he said, “Yeah.” When I asked him why, he said without hesitation, “Total independence.”

       “What about getting lonely?”

       “Getting lonely is the price you pay for independence. If you get lonely, do something.”

       That was great advice. Robby was articulate and forthright, so I asked him, “How does your family feel about your traveling around the world alone?”

       “I’m thirty-eight,” he said. “Been married since just after high school. Got a couple of kids. I’m making more money than I ever imagined and that keeps my wife happy. She likes taking care of the house, living in town near her family, having security. I always wanted to travel; you know, ‘See the world.’ I’m restless as hell, can’t help it,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Get cranky if I sit at home. So my wife doesn’t mind. We’ve been married twenty years. It works.

       “What about you?” he asked. “What brings you to Saigon?”

       I told him I’d written a book about the Phoenix program and was working for BBC as a consultant for a series they were doing on the CIA in Vietnam.  I told him about The Hotel Tacloban too.

       “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I had an uncle who was a POW in Korea. He’d really like to read that book.”

       We agreed that I’d send him a copy when I got home. Then we sat in comfortable silence for a while, sipping our drinks, watching the boats on the river. I mentioned that I was going to Thailand and he recommended places to visit in Bangkok – the Golden Buddha, the Floating Market, the Reclining Buddha – as well as bars catering to Americans in Bangkok’s red-light districts on Patpong Road and Soi Cowboy. He also recommended hotels that specialized in servicing sex tourists and gave me the name of a reliable female escort. Evidently, sex was another reason Robby traveled abroad.

       Robby said he was meeting an Australian friend named Chapman for dinner and graciously invited me along. I explained that I was under house arrest and due to meet a person from the Ministry at 6:30.  “That’s the sort of thing that happens in Vietnam all the time,” he sighed. Concerned about my well-being, he made me promise to call him later that evening. We agreed that if things worked out we’d spend time together on Thursday. Then he went off to meet Chapman and I went up to my room to prepare to meet the ministry man. I washed, put on a tie, grappled with my apprehensions. At 8:00, the desk clerk rang to say that a man was waiting for me in the lobby.

+++

       The ministry man was a tough looking character, dark and tall. He did not speak English and our stilted conversation was conducted through the desk clerk, a nervous middle-aged woman.  There was no need for her to be intimidated. Despite his imposing presence, the ministry man was relaxed and low-key. He said the Ministry was sending a van to pick me up at 9:00 am tomorrow for a meeting at its offices on the other side of town. He kindly asked if I had any concerns. When I asked permission to eat at Jackie’s, a nearby Chinese restaurant that Robby had recommended, he said with a big grin that I was free to do what I wanted as long as I didn’t leave Saigon.

       So much for house arrest. Nevertheless, my meeting with the ministry man had a visible impact on the hotel staff, with the faint of heart taking a few steps back as I passed, while the adventurous sought to get me alone and tell their war stories.

       I was hungry as hell and walked alone through the park to Jackie’s, across from the floating hotel not far from the Saigon Mini where Chapman was staying. It was a decent meal – fluffy rice, white chicken meat, a cold beer that settled my stomach and made me feel optimistic. There was no rest for a weary American in Saigon in 1991, however, and on the way out the door I was buttonholed by a middle-aged waiter. A former officer in South Vietnam’s air force, he’d been recruited by the CIA and was wondering why he’d been left behind by those he’d served so loyally. He said he once had responsibility, respect and power, but now had nothing. Desperate for answers and escape, he asked me why none of his former sponsors would help him get into the US.

       I asked him for the names of the people he’d worked for, but he wouldn’t say. I told him without knowing who his bosses were, I couldn’t possibly help. Dejected, he went back inside.

       I walked to the Majestic alone through the park, thinking how ironic it was that the same CIA officers who had raped Saigon twenty years earlier were now holed up with their BBC cohorts re-writing history – telling, like Morley Safer had, how some mythical Vietnamese ally had “died for democracy” while the real thing, like the air force major who had believed their promises and done their dirty deeds, waited tables or sold postcards and wondered where their saviors were.

       I bought a few bottles of beer at the hotel bar and walked up to the forbidden top floor to honor the full moon. I stood amid the charred remains of what had once been a disco lounge, pulled a padded chair over to the balcony and gazed at the silvery reflection of the moon in the Saigon River, the floating hotel, a Konica sign in the park, the shadowy past, at me.

       According to Helen, my Virgo Moon makes me selective in expressing my feelings. “This self-censoring quality prevents you from becoming an emotional wreck and helps you effect your need to be useful. You know where you begin and others end.”

       Maybe so. I was going to find out soon enough.

Vinh and the author in Tay Ninh.

Madre Cadre: Thursday, 28 February 1991

“Full Moon. Strive for simplicity.”

I was in a bark canoe on Nauro Creek in New Guinea. Standing aft like a gondolier was a Papuan with a long wooden paddle and an ivory bone stuck horizontally through his wide flared nostrils. His curly hair was a black halo. A machete dangled from his loin cloth. Sitting behind me was Bill Shakespeare dressed like the joker in a deck of cards with red pointed shoes, a blue hat with bells, and a ruffled collar. Bill was writing love sonnets. Someone sat in front of me holding the sides of the canoe for balance. His back was a maze of runic tattoos. Birds squawked and huge iridescent butterflies swooped at us from the shoreline as the canoe hurtled past jutting boulders and under moss laden tree branches dripping with deadly green and red snakes. We skated the churning white rapids toward a waterfall and just as we were about to shoot over, the tattooed man turned and I woke up sweating, distraught, tangled in the sheets, trying to forget what I saw.

       Morning in Saigon. Sitting and spinning on Saturn’s rings. Settling down, trying to remember when and where, what and why. In a few hours, the people from the Ministry would arrive to collect me. A moment of choking angst. Give us this day our daily dread.

       I decided to go to the park to stretch. No point hiding in my room, twiddling my thumbs. Might as well get my blood pumping among the tai chi and badminton players. The few minutes I spent there, however, made me feel like a freakish intruder. Everyone stared with eyes like icicles.

       Back at the hotel, I stopped to see if there’d been any messages while I was out. The desk clerk, Cuc, said “No messages,” and gave me a quizzical look. The hotel staff knew I was under house arrest. No one wanted to get in trouble by associating with me, but curiosity got the better of Cuc. She asked what I was doing in Vietnam. I told her.

       “You’re a writer, not a journalist?” she said. “So why do you work for BBC?”

       I shrugged. Cuc said she’d been a journalist for a Japanese newspaper for seven years before “the Liberation.” She sighed. Times were hard and like many people, she longed for the occupation.

       It occurred to me that if BBC were, indeed, paying my bill, the staff would know. I asked Cuc if BBC had arranged to pay my bill. They hadn’t. Trouble was brewing.

       Back in my room I placed a call to Robby and we agreed to meet upon my return from the Ministry. Four people from the Ministry of Culture arrived at 9:00 am in a van. We drove to the International Service Centre at 58 Quan Su Street. It reminded me of a ride I had in a paddy wagon in January 1973 in San Francisco. The four people were Messrs. Dung, Trien and Dang, plus my designated contact, Mrs. Huong. Madre Cadre. We sat in chairs and sofas in the corner of a vast empty room on an upper floor wrapped in windows, with a panoramic view of Saigon. Tea was served. Everyone was casually dressed but edgy. Mrs. Huong led the discussion. They had called Saigon Tourist to check my story and were satisfied. The issue was my relationship with BBC. She asked me to explain.

       I told her that Molloy knew that I’d written a book on the Phoenix program and that in order to get access to my sources in the CIA, he hired me as a consultant for the BBC documentary. I handed Mrs. Huong The Phoenix Programdust jacket, which I’d brought along just in case. She passed it around. I had everyone’s undivided attention.

       Molloy came to my house, I said, and while he was there, I told him how the CIA was organized and operated in South Vietnam. After he left, he contacted all of my CIA sources, some of whom were principals in the documentary. In exchange I was to receive credit and an all-expenses paid, round trip to Vietnam. I produced a copy of the contract, which I’d also brought along just in case. They made a copy.

       Their jaws dropped when I added that I’d carried ten-thousand cash, for which I never even received a “thank you” from Molloy. Despite all my good faith efforts, I said, BBC isolated me at the insistence of its contingent of CIA officers. They treated me like a leper and despite our agreement, denied me the rare chance to participate in the filming of the documentary. I’d asked for a driver and interpreter but was denied that too. When I told them I was going to Thanh Ta and Tay Ninh, they made no effort to dissuade me. They merely asked if I had any names of people for them to contact. When I read the list of revolutionaries and progressives, Molloy had recoiled in horror, I said. He was only interested in spewing the right-wing revisionist story.

       As further proof of its bad faith, I recalled how BBC had told the Tay Ninh police that I had no business with them. Then I showed them the letter Julie sent me saying BBC would pay for my accommodations. I mentioned that I still had not gotten my plane ticket and was concerned they were not going to pay the hotel bill, either. Then I expressed my belief that former CIA officers Tom Polgar, Frank Snepp and Orrin DeForest, who were consultants to BBC and currently in Saigon, were war criminals determined to revise history under the guidance of reactionary screenwriter John Ranelagh, in order to protect themselves and their CIA sponsors. The CIA hated me for writing the Phoenix book, I said, and in my opinion, BBC had served the CIA by putting me in a separate hotel and cutting me off. They set me up, I said, and in my humble opinion, they were setting up the Vietnamese, too. I rested my case.

       “We knew nothing about any of this,” said incredulous Mrs. Huong. Then, holding the Phoenix dust jacket, she asked, “How could you write book about the war without having been here?”

       It was a good question. “I did a lot of interviews,” I meekly replied.

+++

Mrs. Huong said I could relax. It was like we were best friends. She gave me her business card and said Desert Storm had ended and the US now occupied Kuwait City.  Then the happy gang drove me back to the Majestic. All was well. There was a note from Julie saying my plane ticket had been arranged and that I should call the Mandarin in Bangkok to tell them I was coming. Then she asked me to meet her at the Caravelle at 4:30. I agreed, hoping she would settle my hotel bill then.

       I called Robby and we agreed to meet for lunch. It was fun. We took a walk, saw some sights, had a few drinks and a leisurely chat atop the Rex Hotel. Then he asked if I would like to visit a man he knew in the Cholon underground. It didn’t occur to me that someone who had only been to Saigon once would have a contact in the Cholon underground, but I agreed. It was 4:00, however, and first I had to see Julie.

       Walking up Dong Khoi, I felt a little like Fowler hoping the police would not revoke his “order of circulation.” I was tired when I met Julie in the Caravelle’s gaudy lounge. A guy was listening, of course, and Julie was cold. Molloy, she said, was terribly upset. After speaking to me, the ministry people had read him the riot act. He wanted to meet for dinner at 7:00 to discuss the situation.

       Julie had affected her constipated smirk and she nearly fainted when I politely told her to tell Molloy, “No, thanks.” That I was going to dinner with friends.

       Fifteen minutes later I met Robby at the Saigon Mini for a cyclo ride to Cholon to meet his friend Lac Long. It was the only time I actually felt in danger while in Vietnam. Guilty too, riding like a pasha with a coolie working his ass off to move me around. The streets were level, and that helped, but lined with sullen people. We passed a little girl lying under a shroud on the sidewalk. I thought she might be dead. The streets got narrower and more congested the deeper we got into Cholon. The cyclo driver weaved in between people staring hard at me.

       Robby showed no concern. He was not embarrassed about being an American. “Don’t make eye contact,” he said. The cyclo drivers parked and vanished as we peered in the window of Lac Long’s curio shop. His sons were there but he was at home. One son went to get him. Robby, apparently, was important. While we waited, people appeared and disappeared inside the shop as if from the woodwork. Robby stood casually, his elbow resting on top of a cabinet of curiosities: rocks and minerals, Buddhas and dolls, carved animals, good luck charms. Everyone wants good luck. The ones who have it are favored by the gods.

       Lac Long looked at me angrily when he arrived and said he could only stay a minute. Robby shrugged it off. Then Lac Long gave a short lesson on the realities of why people were forced to create the underground economy that existed in Vietnam. He said, “Being at war changed the meaning of freedom.”

       I’ll paraphrase the rest. The US-backed government forced people from their ancestral homes into cities, where boys became drug dealers and tens of thousands of girls became sex slaves to American men so their families could survive. If Morley Safer were honest, he would have said, “They sucked dick for democracy.”

       Thank you for your service, girls.

       Then Nixon and Kissinger sold out South Vietnam to gain China as a trading partner. But the revolutionaries understood what sanctions meant and allowed the underground to thrive; and BBC to make its documentary; and me to bring in ten-grand in cash. The brutal truth is that everyone has to move on.

+++

       I was in a sober mood when we met Robby’s friend Keith Chapman back at the Saigon Mini. An Australian agriculturalist with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Keith was a stocky man with a beard and brown eyes. He knew everyone. When we got back to the Majestic and took a table outside, two cute little girls hopped over the hedge to talk to him. Keith was knowledgeable as well as popular. He said the rural Vietnamese still flocked to Saigon but would be better off in the countryside where food was plentiful. He also said not to worry, that they would survive and prosper. Unlike us, they had plenty of fuel and food and didn’t need imports. The problem, he said, was the environmental disaster the Americans had visited upon Vietnam, thus giving me the authoritative information I needed about Agent Orange poisoning for Fred Dick. Keith compared it to what was happening in Iraq.

       Robby, Keith and I drank Hungarian wine and ate good steaks at Maxim’s while watching the floorshows: traditional Vietnamese musicians, singers and dancers followed by a Filipino band playing rock ‘n’ roll. A raucous party of Eastern Europeans sat nearby. After dinner we sat on the Majestic’s veranda for drinks. At one point I went to the front desk and was told that BBC refused to pay my hotel bill. I told Robby and Keith to wait a minute, walked to the Caravelle, told the panicked desk clerk – loudly, for the benefit of the attentive listeners – that I’d call my cop friends if BBC didn’t pay my bill by midnight.

       Robby and Keith laughed when I told them what I’d done. They said they had a surprise for me and I should follow them. Which I did, without asking for any explanations. After several twists and turns, we found ourselves walking down a dark, narrow alley. As we approached the end of the alley, I saw a door to my left with a tiny sign above it: Lan Thanh. Against the opposite wall, a tiny charcoal fire cast the flickering shadows of huddled figures squatting on their haunches, sharing paraphernalia, smoking opium. Three girls dressed in dark, long-sleeved jackets and singing a silvery song, emerged from the door and ushered us inside. An older white man wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt, with a white beard to his belt, stood at the corner of the bar near the door looking hypnotically down at his beer, as if high on heroin. I was sure he was American and suppressed the urge to ask, “What the fuck are you doing here?” The only other customer, a pimp I suppose, sat mid-bar fiddling with an ash tray and cigarette. The three giggling bar girls hustled us into the back of the room. Keith knew them well and they acted like they knew Robby too. The hierophants and their initiate.

       We squeezed into a semi-circular leather booth at the rear of the saloon. As part of the ritual, the girls washed our arms and faces with damp cloths. While we ordered beers, they ceremoniously peeled fruit (juju with salt and oranges) and then sat perfectly still. In the deep darkness, all I could see was the radiant, beautiful face of the girl across from me. She smiled, her wide eyes saying “Yes, you can have me. Do you want me? Just say so. Why do you shy away? Don’t be ashamed of your desire. We can all see it here.”

       Robby laughed at me and said, “Don’t make eye contact. That means you want to hire her.”

       Anything you want you can get with just a look.

       I told them about my bizarre canoe dream. Keith and Robby talked about their recurring MSG nightmares. The food is soaked in MSG, they said; it makes you wake up in a sweat, your heart racing. It’s a phenomenon that happens after you’ve been there about a week. The coffee gets into your system, cleans out the Western man. You start smelling like an Asian, acting like an Asian, thinking like an Asian, no pretensions, no hang-ups. After 30 days you’re taking advantage of every amenity the East has to offer. The price is MSG nightmares.

       I started dozing off as they discussed the benefits of women with pelvic thrust backwards as opposed to pelvic thrust forward. They wanted to stay, and the bar girls wanted us to buy more drinks, but I needed rest. So Keith and Robby graciously led me out of the maze back to the hotel where we said a fond farewell. On my way to the elevator I passed the desk clerk without bothering to ask if the bill had been paid. I didn’t want to show concern. Too much pride.

       Too much anxiety to sleep, too. But not anxiety about being detained in Vietnam. You can negotiate anything here. I was afraid of not succumbing. And of the loneliness I projected onto everyone around me.

The post The Dark Arts of Empire: Part Two appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Douglas Valentine.

This article was produced for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network in partnership with KYUK and NPR's Station Investigations Team, which supports local investigative journalism. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Nearly two dozen children in the tiny village of Sleetmute, Alaska, arrive for school each morning to a small brown building that is on the verge of collapse.

Every year for the past 19 years, the local school district has asked the state for money to help repair a leaky roof. But again and again, the state said no. Over time, water ran down into the building, causing the supporting beams to rot. A windowpane cracked under pressure as heavy snow and ice built up on the roof each winter. Eventually, an entire wall started to buckle, leaving a gaping hole in the exterior siding.

In 2021, an architect concluded that the school, which primarily serves Alaska Native students, “should be condemned as it is unsafe for occupancy.”

The following year, Taylor Hayden, a resident who helps with school maintenance, opened a hatch in the floor to fix a heating problem and discovered a pool of water under the building, where years of rain and snowmelt had reduced several concrete footings to rubble.

“Just like someone took a jackhammer to it,” Hayden said.

The Sleetmute school, nestled on the upper reaches of the Kuskokwim River, amid the spruce and birch forest of Alaska’s Interior, has few options. Like many schools in Alaska, it’s owned by the state, which is required by law to pay for construction and maintenance projects.

Yet over the past 25 years, state officials have largely ignored hundreds of requests by rural school districts to fix the problems that have left public schools across Alaska crumbling, according to an investigation by KYUK and ProPublica.

Local school districts are generally responsible for building and maintaining public schools in the United States and largely pay for those projects with property taxes. But in Alaska, the state owns just under half of the 128 schools in its rural districts, a KYUK and ProPublica review of deeds and other documents found. These sparsely populated areas rely almost entirely on the state to finance school facilities because they serve unincorporated communities that have no tax base.

To get help for repairs, school districts are required to apply for funding each year, and then the state compiles a priority list. Since 1998, at least 135 rural school projects have waited for state funding for five years or more, an analysis of data from Alaska’s Department of Education and Early Development shows. Thirty-three of those projects have languished on the state’s funding list for more than a decade.

The state’s Indigenous children suffer the greatest consequences because most rural school districts are predominantly Alaska Native — a population that was long forced to attend separate and unequal schools.

State education Commissioner Deena Bishop acknowledged that the state’s capital improvement program isn’t working. But she said her department is limited by state lawmakers’ funding decisions.

Rep. Bryce Edgmon, an Alaska Native and speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives, also said the program isn’t working.

“I think the evidence speaks for itself,” he said after touring the Sleetmute school in October. “These bright young children show up every morning to go to school in a building that’s not fit for even anything but being ready to be demolished.”

Edgmon, who co-chaired the House Finance Committee for the past two years, conceded he and other lawmakers could have done more and promised to “raise some Cain” in the state Capitol. This year’s legislative session has seen a lot of debate about education funding. Alaska has no statewide income or sales tax and instead relies on oil revenue, which has declined in recent years.

As rural school districts wait for funding, the buildings continue to deteriorate, posing public health and safety risks to students, teachers and staff. Over the past year, KYUK and ProPublica crawled under buildings and climbed into attics in schools across the state and found black mold, bat guano and a pool of raw sewage — health hazards that can cause respiratory problems, headaches and fatigue. The conditions exacerbate the risks for Alaska Natives, who already face some of the highest rates of chronic illness in the nation.

In Venetie, a village 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle, exposed electrical wiring hangs close to flammable insulation. Thorne Bay, on an island in Southeast Alaska, has requested money to replace the fire sprinklers 17 times, without success. And in the Bering Sea coastal village of Newtok, the school’s pipes froze and broke, so for most of the last school year, kids rode a four-wheeler, known as the “bathroom bus,” twice a day to relieve themselves at home.

After Hayden’s discovery in Sleetmute, the portion of the building that posed the most serious safety risk, which includes the wood shop, the boys’ bathroom and the gym, was closed. Now, kids ranging in age from 4 to 17 are confined to three classrooms and an atrium lined with portraits of the community’s Yup’ik and Athabascan elders.

“There’s not much we can do anymore,” said Neal Sanford, 17, who misses playing basketball and learning carpentry and woodworking. He left the village of fewer than 100 people after his sophomore year last spring to attend a state-run boarding school more than 800 miles away.

In October, it was quiet outside the Jack Egnaty Sr. School in Sleetmute, save for a dog that barked now and then and the distant revving of a four-wheeler. The air smelled of wood smoke and two-stroke engine exhaust. Without a gym to play in, the kids bundled up for recess as temperatures dipped below freezing.

“Cold hands,” said fourth grader Loretta Sakar, as she shook out her fingers after crossing the monkey bars. Her squeals and giggles echoed across the playground while other kids played soccer or spun on a tire swing.

Watch video ➜

Andrea John, a single mom whose three kids, including Loretta, go to the Sleetmute school, said the state wouldn’t treat Alaska’s urban kids this way.

“They should have helped us when we needed help in the beginning, not wait 20 years,” she said. “They are choosing to look the other way and say the hell with us.”

When Alaska became a state in 1959, its constitution promised a public school system “open to all children of the State.” But for decades, it was far from that. Many Indigenous children attended schools owned and operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Alaska’s plan was to eventually take over those schools, but the state repeatedly argued it didn’t have enough money to pay for them. The development of Alaska’s oil industry, starting in the 1960s, brought in revenue for education, but state officials noted that BIA schools were in bad shape and insisted the federal government fix them before the state assumed responsibility.

Many Alaska children “go to school in buildings that should be condemned as fire traps or unsafe dwellings,” then-U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel said during a 1971 congressional hearing. It wasn’t until well into the 1980s that all BIA schools were transferred to the state.

Yet even as the state began to take over, education remained inequitable for Alaska Natives. Many small villages didn’t have high schools, so students had to attend boarding schools or receive and submit assignments by mail. A group of those students sued the state in the 1970s to change that. Known as the Molly Hootch case, the suit resulted in a consent decree that forced the state to build 126 new schools in rural communities.

In the early 1990s, the Alaska Legislature started a program to fund school construction and major maintenance projects. Schools districts would apply for grants, and the state education department would rank projects based on need. But the Legislature provided little money for the need-based program. Instead, a small group of powerful lawmakers allocated funding to projects in their own districts, favoring urban areas.

In 1997, a group of Alaska Native parents sued the state, arguing that the funding system violated Alaska’s constitution and the federal Civil Rights Act. State Superior Court Judge John Reese agreed.

“Because of the funding system, rural schools are not getting the money they need to maintain their schools,” he wrote in a 1999 order. “Deficiencies include roofs falling in, no drinkable water, sewage backing up, and enrollment up to 187% of capacity. Some rural schools have been at the top of the priority list for a number of years, yet have received no funding.”

In another order, he called the state’s system “arbitrary, inadequate and racially discriminatory,” and said the state had a responsibility to provide education to Alaska Native children “even if it costs more in the rural areas.”

A 2011 consent decree and settlement required the state to build five new rural schools, and the Legislature passed a bill that was supposed to more equitably allocate funds to rural districts.

Yet more than a decade later, the problems pointed out by Reese persist. Every year, rural school districts make more than 100 requests, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. But the Legislature funds only a tiny fraction of those projects. In five of the last 11 years, it has approved fewer than five requests.

An analysis by KYUK and ProPublica shows that Alaska’s education department has received 1,789 funding proposals from rural school districts since 1998. But only 14% of them have received funding. This year, requests from rural school districts to the state’s construction and maintenance program stand at $478 million.

Edgmon acknowledged that the Legislature’s funding decisions don’t come close to meeting the needs of Alaska’s rural public schools. “We have not upheld our constitutional duty to provide that quality of education that the courts have said time and again we’re bound to be providing,” he said.

When pressed on why funding is so hard to secure, state education commissioner Bishop told KYUK last year that rural schools were good for the community. “But, at the same token, it’s unsustainable to have $50 million go to 10 students,” she said. “I mean, think about the unsustainability of that in the long run.”

Allowing projects to sit on a waitlist for years also means they can become more expensive over time. The Kuspuk School District’s first request to repair Sleetmute’s school was for just over $411,000 in 2007. By 2024, the request had climbed to $1.6 million — more than twice the original cost, even after adjusting for inflation.

“To me that’s neglectful,” Kuspuk Superintendent Madeline Aguillard said. “Our cries for help haven’t been heard.”

Roughly 200 miles southwest, the coastal village of Quinhagak waited 15 years for a renovation and addition to its Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat School that would allow it to meet the state’s space requirements. The school serves 200 students, more than twice the number it was designed for.

In addition to its fire sprinklers, Thorne Bay in the Southeast Island School District has asked the state 18 times to replace a pair of aging underground heating-fuel tanks that the district worries could start to leak. Superintendent Rod Morrison, whose district spans an area of Alaska’s southern archipelago that’s roughly the size of Connecticut, said his district’s list of maintenance needs is seemingly endless.

“Education is supposed to be the big equalizer,” said Morrison. “It is not equal in the state of Alaska.”

Rural school district officials say, given their scarce resources, the state’s construction and maintenance program creates burdens. The application for funding comes with a 37-page guidance document, loaded with references to state statute and administrative code. It also requires districts to include a six-year capital improvement plan. Meeting these requirements can be challenging in rural school districts, where administrative turnover is high and staffing is limited.

To increase the likelihood that a project gets funded, some rural superintendents say they feel pressure to provide engineering inspections or site condition surveys with their applications.

“There’s only a few needles that you can move,” said David Landis of the Southeast Regional Resource Center, a nonprofit that, among other things, helps school districts compile their applications for a fee.

Landis said inspections and surveys are likely to increase the ranking for a project proposal, but “those documents are really foundational and expensive. They might very well be over $100,000.”

The Kuspuk School District has spent more than $200,000 since 2021 to beef up its applications for the Sleetmute school, Aguillard said. It’s also paid tens of thousands of dollars to a lobbyist to persuade legislators to increase maintenance funding for schools the state itself owns.

Some school districts said they simply can’t afford such costs. “We don’t have that ability,” said Morrison of the Southeast Island School District. “We’d have to cut a teacher or two to make that happen.”

Last summer, Sleetmute got some good news. After ignoring 19 requests, the state had finally approved its roof repair after Alaska legislators passed a bill that boosted school maintenance and construction funding to its highest level in more than a decade.

But it’s “too little, too late,” Aguillard said. The building’s condition has deteriorated so much that Sleetmute now needs a new school.

As a result, the district has asked if it could use the roof repair money to shore up the school to prevent a collapse, to bring in modular classrooms or to have school in another community building. But, Aguillard said, Alaska’s education department has been reluctant to approve any of those options. Instead, she said, the department made a baffling request: It asked for proof that the state had never paid to repair Sleetmute’s leaking roof — something clearly outlined in state records — and that the neglect had caused the additional damage.

In an email, the education department wrote, “This step was taken to ensure proper use of funds and to understand the full scope of work required.”

Watch video ➜

A KYUK and ProPublica analysis found that in at least 20 cases, funding requests waited for so long that cheaper repairs morphed into proposals to tear down and replace schools. Those schools that were rebuilt cost the state tens of millions of dollars more than the initial estimates.

The Auntie Mary Nicoli Elementary School project in Aniak, about 100 miles downriver from Sleetmute, started as a $9.5 million renovation in 2007. But after waiting 11 years, the state spent $18.6 million to replace it in 2018.

A few districts are still waiting for schools they say need to be replaced. The first request for the Johnnie John Sr. School project in Crooked Creek, 40 miles downriver from Sleetmute, in 1998 was for a $4.8 million addition. But by 2009, the district was asking for a $19 million replacement. The Legislature failed to fund the project even after the district pared down its request. Unable to secure funding for a new school, the district is now trying to stretch $1.9 million it received from the state last year to make the most necessary repairs: upgrades to heating and electrical systems and the removal of hazardous materials.

In most of Alaska’s rural communities, life often requires making do with what’s available: People keep piles of old machinery in their yards to mine for parts. In villages that aren’t on the road system, almost everything is either shipped in by barge or delivered by air. In Sleetmute, a 24-pack of soda costs $54 — about four times the price in the Lower 48.

Watch video ➜

This is also why construction projects are extremely expensive: Skilled workers have to be flown in, housed and fed. Heavy equipment has to zigzag up the Kuskokwim River, which is frozen for half the year. The school district was hoping to reduce costs by sharing machinery with a project to upgrade the community’s runway. But when that project wrapped up this fall, the state transportation department shipped its equipment out of Sleetmute.

So the school is left to make do. Everyone has to share one bathroom. A manila folder hangs from a pink thread on the door. It reads “Boys” on one side and “Girls” on the other to indicate whose turn it is.

Sleetmute’s school is also full of black mold that covers the buckling wall in the wood shop, a gear closet in the gym and a huge section of drywall in the ceiling just above the door to the kitchen.

This fall the community discovered another problem. Sheree Smith, who has taught in Sleetmute for 12 years, found herself swinging a tennis racket at a bat that swooped through her classroom as her middle and high school students sat reading quietly. The bats live above the gym bleachers in a small utility closet, where the floor is covered in guano.

Without a gym, students miss out on events that connect the school to both the community and the outside world. Every year, the Sleetmute school would host basketball tournaments and movie nights to raise money for field trips to places like Anchorage and Washington, D.C. — a luxury for many families in Sleetmute and other rural communities in Alaska. The students “feel the pain of that, like just not having the extra opportunities,” said Angela Hayden, Sleetmute’s lead teacher.

Over the holiday break, the school district reinforced the back end of the building with floor-to-ceiling supports to keep the woodshop from collapsing.

But it’s only a temporary fix. The roof has been leaking since Hayden started teaching there 17 years ago.

“When I come in the building, especially after a lot of rain or a lot of snow,” she said, “I just think, ‘OK, what am I going to have to deal with before I can deal with my classroom?’”

If you have information about school conditions in Alaska, contact Emily Schwing at emilyschwing@gmail.com.

Emily Schwing reported this story while participating in the University of Southern California, Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship. She also received support from the Center’s Fund for Reporting on Child Well-being and its Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism.

Mollie Simon contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Emily Schwing, KYUK.

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Other Cook Islands leadership reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— RNZ Pacific (@RNZPacific) February 25, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Caribbean jungles of Quintana Roo, two Mayan brothers lived.

They were fierce warriors, and also very different. One was cold and arrogant. The other, they say, was gentle, kind, and giving.

And they both fell for the same woman: Nicté-Ha.

They battled to win her love.

But, like the brothers in the Greek tragedy Antigone, they killed each other in battle.

In the afterlife, they pleaded to the gods to let them return to be with Nicté-Ha.

And the gods agreed. They sent them back in the form of two trees. 

The first brother, who was arrogant and cold, was turned into el Chechén: a poisonous tree with bark that seems to peel, and leaves and branches that leave thick rashes and burns on those who come in contact with it.

The other brother was also reborn. The gods transformed him into el Chacá: a tree that is never far away from el Chechén, and which heals those touched by his brother.

Nicté-Há died of sadness at the tragic death of her warriors. 

The gods transformed her into a water lily, a beautiful white flower that blooms over the cenotes of the region, never far from el Chechén and el Chacá.

But that is only the beginning of the story.

Along the banks of the clear turquoise waters of Bacalar Lagoon in the southern Yucatan, there is an area where el Chechén and el Chacá grow in abundance.

A veritable forest of poisonous trees, they line the channel that leads into Bacalar Lagoon from the open ocean. This was the route taken by the Spanish—and later, pirates—to invade the region.

They say Mayan warriors planted the Chechén forest here to guard against these invaders, who would mistakenly rub against the trees without knowledge of their poison and the curative attributes of their brother Chacá just nearby.

Others say it was the gods who planted the forest. Either way, these two Mayan warriors are still defending their land, in the jungles of Quintana Roo.

This is the fifth episode of Stories of Resistance.

Stories of Resistance is a new project, co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.

We’ve recently launched a Kickstarter to help get the series off the ground. You can support it by clicking here: Stories of Resistance: Inspiration for Dark Times Kickstarter

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

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

Two credentialed journalists were removed from Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s final news briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 16, 2025, after they interrupted his remarks with questions and comments concerning the Biden administration’s role in the Israel-Gaza war.

In a PBS News livestream of the briefing, Blinken is heard starting his remarks by thanking the press corps for the work that they’ve done and their professionalism.

“I have even greater respect, even greater appreciation for you asking the tough questions, for you holding us to account,” he said. “Being on the receiving end, sometimes that’s not always the most comfortable thing, not always the most enjoyable thing, but it is the most necessary thing in our democracy.”

As Blinken finished those comments, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal can be heard calling out about the number of journalists in Gaza who were “on the receiving end of your bombs.” Blumenthal continued making statements and asking questions about the administration’s actions around the war, and Blinken responded only by saying that he would address questions after he had completed his remarks.

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

Amaghlobeli, founder and director of independent news outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti, and Murvanidze, also from Batumelebi, were arrested in the western city of Batumi on January 11 during protests calling for a re-run of Georgia’s disputed October 2024 election.

On January 14, Batumi City Court sentenced Murvanidze, who was filming the protests, to eight days’ detention on charges of minor hooliganism and disobeying police orders. The court also ordered Amaghlobeli to be held in pretrial detention on charges of attacking a police officer.

Amaghlobeli was not covering the protests when she was arrested, but her lawyer and local human rights activists believe that her detention and the charge against her–punishable by a mandatory prison term of between four and seven years–are a punitive response to her outlets’ regular reporting on alleged abuses by national and local authorities, including the police.

“The lengthy prison term facing Mzia Amaghlobeli appears disproportionate and raises legitimate concerns that her prosecution is being used to silence the media outlets she runs,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Georgian authorities should release Amaghlobeli and Batumelebi video reporter Guram Murvanidze, and ensure an impartial investigation of the circumstances of Amaghlobeli’s detention.”

Georgia’s Public Defender’s Office criticized the court for failing to justify its decision to detain Amaghlobeli pending trial and her lawyer, Juba Katamadze, told CPJ that the journalist’s slapping of Batumi police chief Irakli Dgebuadze did not warrant the serious “attack” charge. The local office of anticorruption NGO Transparency International expressed a similar view. 

Batumelebi journalist Irma Dimitradze told CPJ that Dgebuadze was “certainly” aware of Amaghlobeli’s identity prior to their confrontation. Murvanidze told his lawyer that Dgebuadze told police to take his phone after he identified himself as a Batumelebi journalist. 
 
CPJ emailed the Prosecutors’ Office of Georgia and messaged the spokesperson for Adjara Regional Police Department for comment on the two cases but did not receive any replies.

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

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Two families have sued an East Tennessee school district in federal court, arguing that school officials violated students’ rights when they called the police under a Tennessee law that seeks to severely punish threats of mass violence.

One 11-year-old was arrested at a restaurant even though he denied making a threat. A 13-year-old with disabilities was handcuffed for saying his backpack would blow up, even though only a stuffed animal was inside.

ProPublica and WPLN News wrote about both cases last year as part of a larger investigation into how new state laws result in children being kicked out of school and arrested on felony charges, sometimes because of rumors and misunderstandings. Our reporting in Hamilton County found that police were arresting, handcuffing and detaining kids, even though school officials labeled most of the incidents as “low level” with “no evidence of motive.” The students arrested were disproportionately Black and had disabilities, compared to those groups’ overall share of the district’s population.

The lawsuits against Hamilton County’s school district, filed this month in federal court in Chattanooga, are two of several brought against school officials in Tennessee in response to the threats of mass violence law. Advocates hope to push for changes to the law in the legislative session that begins this month. But the law’s Republican sponsor, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, told ProPublica and WPLN News that he is “not looking to make any changes to the law.”

“The zero-tolerance policy for even uttering the words ‘shoot’ or ‘gun’ is an unconstitutional kneejerk reaction by the legislature, and has led school administrators to make rash decisions concerning student discipline,” states one of the lawsuits, filed Thursday on behalf of the 11-year-old autistic student arrested at the restaurant.

When asked by another student last September if he was going to shoot up the school, the 11-year-old said, “Yeah,” according to the lawsuit. The school reported the comment to the police, who tracked him down and arrested him.

The other federal lawsuit, filed Jan. 3, involves the 13-year-old student with “serious intellectual impairments,” who told his teacher last fall that the school would “blow up” if she looked inside his backpack. The teacher found just a stuffed animal in the backpack, but school officials reported the incident to police anyway.

“Despite the clear absence of any true threat, and in the context of a student with Doe’s intellectual and emotional impairments, Doe was isolated, handcuffed by the [student resource officer], and transported to juvenile detention,” the lawsuit reads. (Both suits refer to the children involved as John Doe to keep them anonymous.) The school later determined that the student’s behavior was a manifestation of his autism, according to documentation included in the lawsuit.

Both lawsuits allege that district officials violated state law by allowing students receiving special education services to be physically restrained and by failing to follow proper procedure before facilitating the students’ arrests. The school district “infringed on Doe’s First Amendment rights and did so with deliberate indifference,” both lawsuits read.

The juvenile court cases against both students have been dismissed.

The Hamilton County Schools superintendent referred a request for comment to the school board’s attorney, citing pending litigation. The attorney did not immediately respond to a subsequent request for comment. The district has not yet filed a response to either lawsuit.

Disability rights advocates fought for a broader exception in the law that would have prevented police from charging kids who might, as a result of their disability, say or do something that could be construed as a threat.

“What we’re seeing coming out with all of these lawsuits, it’s sort of exactly what we were trying to educate about last year,” said Zoe Jamail, the policy coordinator for Disability Rights Tennessee.

Instead, lawmakers only excluded people with “intellectual disabilities,” failing to address students with other disabilities that affect their communication or behavior. The law does not state how police should determine whether a child has an intellectual disability before charging them. In fact, our reporting found that police arrested the 13-year-old in the lawsuit although school records showed he did have an intellectual disability.

Disability Rights Tennessee and other organizations plan to push for an amendment to the law this legislative session to protect more students with disabilities, especially when the threat is not credible. “The question should really be how can we better support those young people in the school environment, and how can we handle these cases with compassion and reason, rather than reacting and interpreting the law in a way that is not really reasonable,” Jamail said.

A federal judge allowed a lawsuit against a suburban Nashville school board to move forward in November. Two parents had sued Williamson County’s school board on behalf of their children, claiming they were wrongfully suspended and arrested after being accused of making threats of mass violence at school.

The families, Judge Aleta Trauger ruled, had a “plausible claim” that the school board violated the students’ due process rights by suspending them.

Part of the lawsuit involved a middle school student referred to as “H.M.” Teased by friends in a group chat about “looking Mexican,” she jokingly texted her friends, “On Thursday we kill all the Mexicos.” The school board argued in a legal filing that state law required officials to suspend the student and call the police, regardless of whether the threat was serious. In response to a request from ProPublica and WPLN, a school board official declined to comment further.

Trauger questioned Williamson County school board’s analysis of the law, which she said “leads to absurdity.”

“The implausibility of an action — here, a middle school student killing all Mexicans — ought to affect the threat analysis,” she wrote. “What if, for example, H.M. had threatened to cast a magical killing spell on a large group of people? What if H.M. had threatened to fly to the moon and shoot at people using a space laser?”

She denied the Williamson County school board’s motion to completely dismiss the lawsuit. The suit is pending.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Aliyya Swaby, ProPublica, and Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio.

Three vehicular attacks in public areas shocked the world this past holiday season. First was the attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, which killed six people and injured dozens (Reuters, 1/6/25). Then there was the New Year’s attack in New Orleans’ French Quarter, killing at least 14 people and injuring more (CNN, 1/2/25). A suicide car explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day only killed the attacker, but injured bystanders (NBC, 1/1/25).

In the German case, the Saudi-born suspect, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, had a history of dark social media posts, including a declaration of far-right, anti-Islamic positions. In New Orleans, the killer, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who did not survive the attack, declared his support for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In Las Vegas, the suspected suicide bomber, former Green Beret Matthew Livelsberger, left behind chaotic anti-government, pro-Trump rants.

Corporate media framed these attacks differently, focusing on Jabbar’s Islamist beliefs but downplaying Abdulmohsen and Livelsberger’s political stances. The right-wing press, predictably, did this to an extreme.

‘The US homeland isn’t safe’

Washington Post (1/3/24): “Islamic State…is still a potent source of radicalization.”

In the New Orleans case, the New York Times (e.g., 1/2/25, 1/4/25) focused on Jabbar’s Islamic radicalization and support for ISIS, using these facts in the leads and sometimes headlines. “New Orleans Attacker Was ‘Inspired’ by ISIS, Biden Says,” read the headline of an early Times report (1/1/25).

The Washington Post did the same, in articles like “Attacker With ISIS Flag Drives Truck Into New Orleans Crowd, Killing 15” (1/2/24) and “Inspired by ISIS: From a Taylor Swift Plot in Vienna to Carnage in New Orleans” (1/3/24).

Jabbar is believed to have acted alone (Wall Street Journal, 1/2/25), although he was clearly inspired by the notorious entity. Because both he and the Las Vegas attacker had served many years in the US military, the incidents raised questions about mental health for active service members and veterans (The Hill, 1/4/25). Jabbar’s brother speculated that mental health issues could have been at play (ABC, 1/2/25).

Yet the acronym ISIS still loomed large in the news stories and headlines, and it is clearly one that can spark fear in the hearts of news consumers.

‘Puzzled over the motive’

Reporting on the Germany attack, CBS (12/30/24) highlighted the possibility of mental illness, not the suspect’s far-right views.

Just as the “Islamic radicalism” framing can whip up anti-Islamic sentiment in the United States, where a notorious Islamophobe is set to become president, the Magdeburg suspect’s Saudi origin has explosive potential in Germany’s polarized political moment. The far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) has used the situation to advance its anti-immigrant agenda (Al Jazeera, 12/23/24; Le Monde, 12/24/24). But there’s a twist: Abdulmohsen held and voiced similar political views to the AfD’s.

The New York Times (12/22/24) and the Washington Post (12/21/24), to their credit, did put this fact up top in their coverage. But elsewhere, the coverage was more muddled, focusing more on the possibility of mental illness rather than Abdulmohsen’s professed extremism.

CBS (12/30/24) coverage of the attack placed suspected mental illness in its headline and lead; it wasn’t until the ninth paragraph that we learned that the suspect “has in the past voiced strongly anti-Islam views and sympathies with the far right in his social media posts,” and showed “anger at Germany for allowing in too many Muslim war refugees and other asylum-seekers.”

NPR’s All Things Considered (12/23/24) began by talking about how the far-right AfD is using the attack to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment ahead of the country’s snap election. It wasn’t until about halfway through that the story acknowledged that police “say, if anything, the suspect claimed, especially on social media, to be an anti-Islamist.”

In other words, coverage of the New Orleans attack centered Jabbar’s professed devotion to ISIS, while coverage of the German attack downplayed Abdulmohsen’s politics, treating them as part of a constellation of factors, including possible mental illness, that could have contributed to the bloodshed.

‘No ill will toward Trump’

A Newsweek headline (1/4/25) declared the Las Vegas attack “not politically motivated”—despite the suspect’s expressed hope that his actions would inspire “military and vets [to] move on DC starting now…to get the Dems out of the fed government.”

The same journalistic approach used in the Magdeburg case was taken when a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. While that juxtaposition might make it easy to assume that this was some kind of anti-Republican terrorism, that would be incorrect, according to Talking Points Memo (1/4/25): Documents left by Livelsberger, the truck’s driver who died in the blast,

denounce Democrats and demand they be “culled” from Washington, by violence if necessary, and express the hope that his own death will serve as a kind of bell clap for a national rebirth of masculinity under the leadership of Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy Jr.

TPM lamented that news headlines “report only that [Livelsberger] warned of national decline and bore ‘no ill will toward Mr. Trump,’ in the words of one of the investigators,” rendering his political motives vague and outside of the central framing.

For example, an AP article (1/3/25) said only that Livelsberger’s “letters covered a range of topics including political grievances, societal problems and both domestic and international issues, including the war in Ukraine,” and that he believed the US was “‘terminally ill and headed toward collapse.’”

ABC‘s report (1/4/25) addressed Livelsberger’s support for the president-elect seven paragraphs in. CNN (1/4/25) gave one line in passing to Livelsberger’s support for Trump, Musk and Kennedy. Using a quote from one former Department of Homeland Security official, Newsweek (1/4/25) declared that the attack in Las Vegas was “not politically motivated.” A piece in The Hill (1/2/25) on “extremism in the military” started by citing Jabbar and Livelsberger as examples, but while it described Jabbar’s Islamacist views, it said only that “less is known about the motivation of Livelsberger.”

Fox News (1/2/25) did acknowledge that Livelsberger’s uncle said of him, “He loved Trump, and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American,” but it is buried after many other details. Interestingly, it was the New York Post (1/2/25) who directly framed Livelsberger as a super-macho Trump lover, while a long Wall Street Journal piece (1/2/25) on Livelsberger published the same day detailed the man’s personal life with hardly a mention of his political beliefs.

‘War on Christmas’

The Wall Street Journal (1/5/25) tied the German attack into the “war on Christmas” the Murdoch empire has been pushing for two decades.

The US right-wing press was far worse. After the New Orleans attack, Fox News (1/2/25) featured guests who warned that more Islamic terrorism could be on the way, because the attack “could embolden the terrorist organization to radicalize more Americans.”

“It occurred just days after a pro-ISIS outlet called on Muslims to wage Islamic jihad in the US, Europe and Russia,” the right-wing network (1/1/25) reported.

“One obvious message is that the forces of Islamic radicalism haven’t gone away,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board (1/1/25) wrote. “They are still looking for security weaknesses to exploit for mass murder, and the US homeland isn’t safe from foreign-influenced or -planned attacks.”

Meanwhile, Abdulmohsen’s right-wing, anti-Islamic politics didn’t stop the Wall Street Journal (1/5/25) from giving column space to neoconservative pundit Daniel Pipes, who cited the incident in a piece titled “Why Jihadists Wage War on Christmas (and Other Holidays),” with the subhead, “They despise celebrations not sanctioned by Islam, and see Christmas as a crime against Allah.”

The New York Post (1/2/25) did something similar, allowing Douglas Murray—a younger, British version of Pipes—to cite the German attack in a piece called “From College Campuses to Afghanistan, We Let Islamic Terrorism Rise Again.”

It simply didn’t matter to these Murdoch outlets that Abdulmohsen shared Pipes’ and Murray’s politics. He is Saudi and he committed a crime in Europe, therefore he must be the second coming of Osama bin Laden.

Right-wing terror on the rise

Fox News (1/3/25) used the New Orleans attack to chide Democrats for talking about right-wing terrorism—ignoring the Las Vegas attack the next day that aimed to get Americans to “rally around the Trump, Musk, Kennedy.”

Meanwhile, Fox News (1/3/25) used the New Orleans attack to say that the Biden administration had focused too much on right-wing extremism over ISIS threats:

Democrats and liberal media outlets were focused on hyping up terror threats linked to white supremacy while downplaying threats from jihadist terrorist groups like ISIS prior to the New Orleans terrorist attack.

There’s a reason right-wing violence has been in the spotlight, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (6/17/20) noted a few years ago:

Between 1994 and 2020, there were 893 terrorist attacks and plots in the United States. Overall, right-wing terrorists perpetrated the majority—57%—of all attacks and plots during this period, compared to 25% committed by left-wing terrorists, 15% by religious terrorists, 3% by ethnonationalists, and 0.7% by terrorists with other motives.

The Anti-Defamation League (1/15/23) reported that “right-wing extremist terror incidents in the US have been increasing since the mid-2000s, but the past six years have seen their sharpest rise yet.” The ADL noted that “right-wing terror attacks during this period also resulted in more deaths (58) from such attacks than any of the previous six-year periods since the time of the Oklahoma City bombing,” the white supremacist attack that remains the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in US history.

A report from the National Institute of Justice (1/4/24) said the “number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”

Clearly right-wing political violence remains a threat that requires attention. The handling of the recent vehicle attacks illustrates, however, that corporate media’s instinct is to look away.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

Israel is forcing two hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate under threat of attack as its ethnic cleansing campaign continues.

Israeli forces have surrounded the Indonesian Hospital, where many staff and patients sought shelter after nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was destroyed in an Israeli raid last week, reports Al Jazeera.

Late on Friday, a forced order to evacuate was also issued for the al-Awda Hospital, where 100 people are believed to be sheltering.

• READ MORE: ‘Suspend Israel ties’ plea to global medical professionals – Auckland hospital protest vigil over Gaza
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

The evacuation order came today as New Zealand Palestine solidarity protesters followed a silent vigil outside Auckland Hospital yesterday with a rally in downtown Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square today, where doctors and other professional health staff called for support for Gaza’s besieged health facilities and protection for medical workers.

When one New Zealand medical professional recalled the first time that the Israel military bombed a hospital in in Gaza November 2023, the world was “ready to accept the the lies that Israel told then”.

“Of course, they wouldn’t bomb a hospital, who would bomb a hospital? That’s a horrible war crime, if must have been Hamas that bombed themselves.

“And the world let Israel get away with it. That’s the time that we knew if the world let Israel get away with it once, they would repeat it again and again and we would allow a dangerous precedent to be set where health care workers and health care centres would become targets over and over again.

“In the past year it is exactly what we have seen,” he said to cries of shame.

“We have seen not only the targeting of health care infrastructure, but the targeting of healthcare workers.

“The murdering of healthcare workers, of aid workers all across Gaza at the hands of Israel — openly without any word of opposition from our government, without a word of opposition from any global government about these war crimes and genocidal actions until today.”

In an impassioned speech about the devastating price that Gazans were paying for the Israeli war, New Zealand Palestinian doctor and Gaza survivor Dr Abdallah Gouda vowed that his people would keep their dream for an independent state of Palestine and “we will never leave Gaza”.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an investigation into the Israeli attacks on Gaza hospitals and medical workers.

Volker Türk told the UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East that Israeli claims of Hamas launching attacks from hospitals in Gaza were often “vague” and sometimes “contradicted by publicly available information”.

Palestine urges UN to end Gaza genocide, ‘Israeli impunity’
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, said: “It is our collective responsibility to bring this hell to an end. It is our collective responsibility to bring this genocide to an end.”

Norway is the latest country to condemn the attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and medical workers.

On X, the country’s Foreign Ministry said that “urgent action” was needed to restore north Gaza’s hospitals, which were continuously subjected to Israeli attack.

Without naming Israel, the ministry said that “health workers, patients and hospitals are not lawful targets”.

Urgent action is needed to restore North Gaza’s hospitals and uphold international humanitarian law.

Protecting healthcare saves lives.
We share WHOs concern at #UNSC

Health workers, patients, and hospitals are not lawful targets. https://t.co/VWswcGhCex

— Norway MFA (@NorwayMFA) January 3, 2025

Israel ‘deprives 40,000’ of healthcare in northern Gaza
The Israeli military is systematically destroying hospitals in northern Gaza, the Gaza Government Media Office said.

In a statement, it said: “The Israeli occupation continues its heinous crimes and arbitrary aggression against hospitals and medical teams in northern Gaza, reflecting a dangerous and deliberate escalation.”

These acts, it added, were being carried out amid “unjustified silence of the international community and the UN Security Council”, violating international humanitarian law and human rights conventions.

The statement highlighted the destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital, where its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, was arrested and reportedly subjected to physical and psychological abuse.

The GMO described these acts as “full-fledged war crimes”.

According to a recent report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Israeli military had conducted more than 136 air raids on at least 27 hospitals and 12 medical facilities across Gaza in the past eight months.

The GMO report demanded an independent international investigation into these violations and accountability for Israel in international courts.

Amnesty International criticises detention of Kamal Adwan doctor
Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of the human rights watchdog Amnesty International, said Israel’s detention of Dr Hussam Abu Safia underscored a pattern of “genocidal intent and genocidal acts” by Israel in Gaza.

“Dr Abu Safia’s unlawful detention is emblematic of the broader attacks on the healthcare sector in Gaza and Israel’s attempts to annihilate it,” Callamard said in a social media post.

“None of the medical staff abducted by Israeli forces since November 2023 from Gaza during raids on hospitals and clinics has been charged or put before a trial; those released after enduring unimaginable torture were never charged and did not stand trial.

“Those still detained remain held without charges or trial under inhumane conditions and at risk of torture,” she added.

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

Just a few weeks later, young people holding up blank sheets of paper started gathering in their thousands in public places and university campuses across China, sparked by a fatal lockdown fire in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi, calling on Xi to step down and amid growing calls for pandemic restrictions to end.

Within days, a new policy had been announced, and authorities across the country began abandoning Xi’s pet policy, lifting quarantine requirements and travel bans in a bid to rescue the country’s flagging economy.

Two years after the easing of restrictions, many who were there still have vivid memories of being sealed up in their apartments, and of the wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths that ripped through the country once restrictions were lifted.

Guo Bin was living at his parents' home in the northeastern city of Changchun in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in Wuhan and spread around the country and to the rest of the world.

His father wasn’t allowed to leave the factory where he worked, while Guo and his mother were barricaded into their alleyway by police and local unemployed youths pressed into service to enforce isolation orders.

Guo and his mother were left to get by on potatoes and cabbage, while they heard of elderly people who lived alone without internet access starving to death that winter.

Their home province of Jilin was locked down for another month in the winter of 2021, just in time for Lunar New Year, he said.

“I was depressed, in such a low mood,” Guo recalled of that time, drawing parallels with the Mao era of mass social controls. “I was exposed to propaganda every day that was similar to the Cultural Revolution.”

“I was trapped in a few dozen square meters with no access to fresh air, freedom of movement or communication with the outside,” he said. “It wasn’t like being in prison; it was a prison.”

Mask orders for prisoners

Citizen journalist Fang Bin, who served three years in jail after blowing the whistle on the extent of the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan in early 2020, endured strict restrictions in prison, too.

“In prison, you had to wear a mask 24 hours a day,” Fang said. “You weren’t allowed to take it off even to sleep.”

“Anyone not wearing one would be forced to stand for three hours every day.”

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Former Inner Mongolia official Du Wen said the mask orders didn’t always protect prisoners.

“A lot of people around us were dying, but the authorities wouldn’t admit it was COVID-19,” Du told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview. “Nobody dared to admit it.”

“At one point, 350 people in the Hohhot No. 2 Prison had a fever, but they still didn’t admit it was COVID,” Du said. “Because if they did, everyone from the prison bureau to the director to the prison guards would be sanctioned [under the zero-COVID policy].”

“Some people died because of this, and they said it was tuberculosis.”

Waves of deaths

When restrictions were eventually lifted, the timing meant that the newly emerged Omicron variant of COVID-19 ripped through the population, causing huge waves of deaths that have never been confirmed or fully reported, according to anecdotal evidence from funeral parlors and social statistics.

At the peak of the wave, mortuaries and funeral homes in Beijing were overwhelmed, with a weeks-long backlog of bodies awaiting cremation.

Bodies piled up in hospitals and in people’s homes awaiting cremation across China, as funeral homes recruited more staff to transport the dead.

Overseas researchers estimated that cases peaked at 4.8 million a day with 62 million infections predicted across the Lunar New Year holiday of 2023.

Fang Bin remembers that time well.

“I was in the Jiang’an District Detention Center, and masks were no longer being worn, and everyone was infected,” Fang said. “More than 1,000 people in the detention center were infected.”

Guo, who has since fled the country, said China should learn the lesson that cover-ups never help an emerging public health crisis.

“Politics always comes first, rather than human life,” he said. “I hope we can all remember these ridiculous, absurd, painful, sad and random stories, and the suffering we have been through as a nation.”

He said if the government had listened to whistleblowers like Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang instead of suppressing them, the outcome could have been very different.

“We owe the world an explanation,” Guo said. “An apology, or at least some self-reflection.”

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

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

Myanmar’s military is fighting to retake territory lost to anti-junta fighters and killed 11 villagers in its latest assaults, a pro-democracy militia member said on Thursday, after two ethnic minority forces agreed to ceasefires, leaving their pro-democracy allies on their own.

Ethnic minority groups fighting for autonomy have linked up over the past year with pro-democracy militias to seize large parts of Myanmar, including in the Mandalay region, on the approaches to Myanmar’s second-largest city.

But two minority rebel groups based in Shan state – the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, or MNDAA - have recently agreed, under Chinese pressure, to ceasefires and talks with the junta.

Now the junta appears to be focusing its fire on the pro-democracy militias known as People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, who have not been included in the ceasefires.

“The military is trying hard to capture their lost territories,” said a representative of a pro-democracy militia known as the Myin Chan District PDF, in the Mandalay region.

The PDF tried to consolidate its position in Natogyi township, about 75 kilometers (46 miles) southwest of Mandalay, with an attack on a police station in Pyin Si village this week but the military responded with force on surrounding villages killing 11 civilians.

“They want revenge,” the PDF representative said.

One resident told of a pre-dawn air attack on Aung Pan Kone village

“The plane opened fire because it saw light from the fires as people were cooking their rice,” said the witness, who declined to be identified for safety reasons. “In one family the son, mother and father were all killed.”

A 70-year-old man was killed in Let Wea village while four people were killed in airstrikes on Na Be Myit and Kun Ohn villages, residents said.

An airstrike on a monastery in Tha Man Taw village on Wednesday killed three children, another resident told RFA.

RFA attempted to reach Mandalay region’s junta spokesperson Thein Htay for information on the offensive but he did not respond.

Residents of the area told Radio Free Asia the attacks on five villages starting on Monday had displaced nearly 3,000 people.

“They’re terrified and in hiding,” one resident said.

While the ethnic minority forces like the TNLA and the MNDAA are fighting for self-determination in the regions in which their people live, the PDFs are loyal to the shadow National Unity Government in exile, made up of supporters of the elected government ousted in an early 2021 coup.

The NUG is seeking an end to military rule and for the building of a democratic, federal Myanmar.

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Under the gun in Myanmar

Talks with the two groups that have agreed to ceasefire have yet to start.

China, which has extensive economic interests in Myanmar, has been putting pressure on the Shan state minority insurgents to make peace with the junta it backs by closing the border to rebel zones, cutting off essential supplies to the groups and the civilians under their control.

From January to November, nearly 600 people have been killed by airstrikes throughout the country, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners human rights monitoring group.

Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.

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

• Special counsel Jack Smith moves to drop two criminal cases against Trump, citing presidential immunity.
• Global south nations, activists slam COP29 climate deal for falling short on funding.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene, appointed to lead House subcommittee on government funding cuts, pledges crackdown on sanctuary cities.
• Service workers strike at American Airlines’ Charlotte hub over wages.
• Judge dismisses most of the charges against 26 activists who shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in protest over the war in Gaza.

The post Special counsel moves to drop two criminal cases against Trump, citing presidential immunity – November 25, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

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

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Register for our Nov. 21 virtual discussion, where our reporters take you inside ProPublica’s reproductive health coverage.

Georgia officials have dismissed all members of a state committee charged with investigating deaths of pregnant women. The move came in response to ProPublica having obtained internal reports detailing two deaths.

ProPublica reported in September on the deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, which the state maternal mortality review committee had determined were preventable. They were the first reported cases of women who died without access to care restricted by a state abortion ban, and they unleashed a torrent of outrage over the fatal consequences of such laws. The women’s stories became a central discussion in the presidential campaign and ballot initiatives involving abortion access in 10 states.

“Confidential information provided to the Maternal Mortality Review Committee was inappropriately shared with outside individuals,” Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, wrote in a letter dated Nov. 8 and addressed to members of the committee. “Even though this disclosure was investigated, the investigation was unable to uncover which individual(s) disclosed confidential information.

“Therefore, effective immediately the current MMRC is disbanded, and all member seats will be filled through a new application process.”

A health department spokesperson declined to comment on the decision to dismiss the committee, saying that the letter, which the department provided to ProPublica, “speaks for itself.” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s office also declined to comment, referring questions to the health department.

Under Georgia law, the work of the maternal mortality review committee is confidential, and members must sign confidentiality agreements. Those members see only summaries of medical records stripped of personal details, and their findings on individual cases are not supposed to be shared with the public — not even with hospitals or with family members of women who died.

The health department’s letter states that there could be new steps to keep the board’s deliberations from public view. The letter said officials might change “other procedures for on-boarding committee members better ensuring confidentiality, committee oversight and MMRC organizational structure.”

Maternal mortality review committees exist in every state. They are tasked with examining deaths of women during a pregnancy or up to a year after and determining whether they could have been prevented.

Georgia’s had 32 standing members from a variety of backgrounds, including OB-GYNs, cardiologists, mental health care providers, a medical examiner, health policy experts and community advocates. They are volunteer positions that pay a small honorarium.

Their job is to collect data and make recommendations aimed at combatting systemic issues that could help reduce deaths and publish them in reports. The Georgia committee’s most recent report found that of 113 pregnancy-related deaths from 2018 through 2020, 101 had at least some chance of being prevented. Its recommendations have led to changes in hospital care to improve the response to emergencies during labor and delivery and to new programs to increase access to psychiatric treatment.

The health department’s letter states that the “change to the current committee will not result in a delay in the MMRC’s responsibilities.” But at least one other state has experienced a lag as a result of reshaping its committee. Idaho let its maternal mortality review committee legislation expire in July 2023, effectively disbanding the committee after lobbyist groups attacked members for recommending that the state expand Medicaid for postpartum women. Earlier this year, Idaho’s Legislature reestablished the committee, but new members weren’t announced until Nov. 15. There is now more than a yearlong delay in the review process.

Reproductive rights advocates say Georgia’s decision to dismiss and restructure its committee also could have a chilling effect on the committee’s work, potentially dissuading its members from delving as deeply as they have into the circumstances of pregnant women’s deaths if it could be politically sensitive.

“They did what they were supposed to do. This is why we need them,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, one of the groups challenging Georgia’s abortion ban in court. “To have this abrupt disbandment, my concern is what we are going to lose in the process, in terms of time and data?”

One objective of any maternal mortality review committee is to look at the circumstances of a death holistically to identify root causes that may be able to help other women in the future.

In the case of Candi Miller, the most prominent detail in a state medical examiner’s report of her death was that she had a lethal combination of painkillers in her system, including fentanyl. It attributed the cause of death to drug intoxication.

But the Georgia committee looked at the facts of the death with a different objective: to consider the broader context. A summary of Miller’s case prepared for the committee, drawn from hospital records and the medical examiner’s report, included that Miller had multiple health conditions that can be exacerbated by pregnancy, that she had ordered abortion pills from overseas and that she had unexpelled fetal tissue, which showed the abortion had not fully completed. It also stated that her family had told the coroner she didn’t visit a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.”

The committee found her death was “preventable” and blamed the state’s abortion ban.

“The fact that she felt that she had to make these decisions, that she didn’t have adequate choices here in Georgia, we felt that definitely influenced her case,” one committee member told ProPublica in September. “She’s absolutely responding to this legislation.”

For Miller’s family, the committee’s findings were painful but wanted. “It seems like that is essential information that you would share with the family,” said Miller’s sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, who was not aware of the committee’s work until ProPublica contacted her.

She also said it’s upsetting to hear that the committee’s members were dismissed partly as a result of her sister’s case being disclosed to the public. “I don’t understand how this is even possible,” she said.

The committee also investigated the case of Amber Thurman, who died just one month after Georgia’s six-week abortion law went into effect. The medical examiner’s report stated that Thurman died of “sepsis” and “retained products of conception” and that she had received a dilation and curettage, or D&C, and a hysterectomy after an at-home abortion.

When the committee members received a summary of her hospital stay, they saw a timeline with additional factors: The hospital had delayed providing a D&C — a routine procedure to clear fetal tissue from the uterus — for 20 hours, which Thurman needed for rare complications she’d developed after taking abortion medication. The state had recently attached criminal penalties to performing a D&C, with few exceptions. The summary showed doctors discussed providing the D&C twice, but by the time they performed the procedure it was too late. Committee members found that there was a “good chance” Thurman’s death could have been prevented if she had received the D&C sooner.

Doctors and a nurse involved in Thurman’s care did not answer questions from ProPublica for its September story. The hospital also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Thurman’s family also told ProPublica they had wanted the information about her death disclosed.

Some experts say that keeping the reports of maternal mortality review committees confidential is important for a committee to serve its purpose. They are set up not to assign blame but instead to create a space for clinicians to investigate broad causes of maternal health failures. But others say the lack of transparency can serve to obscure the biggest disruption to maternal health care in half a century.

“We know that the reports that have come out of that committee are anonymized and synthesized in order to provide a 50,000-foot view,” said Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, which provides abortion care. “But my worry is that in an effort to protect the state, there will be less information that will be available to people who could shift their actions, shift their protocols, shift their strategies, shift their behaviors in order to make a difference in maternal health outcomes.”

Two states did make shifts to their committees — Idaho, after members made a recommendation to expand Medicaid that Republicans opposed, and Texas, after a member publicly criticized the state.

In 2022, Texas committee member Nakeenya Wilson, a community advocate, spoke out against the state’s decision to delay the release of its report during an election year. The following year, the Legislature passed a law that created a second community advocate position on the committee, redefined the position and had Wilson reapply. She was not reappointed. The state instead filled one of the slots with a prominent anti-abortion activist.

Wilson said Georgia’s decision to dismiss its committee could cause greater harm.

“What message is being said to the families who lost their loved ones?” she said. “There’s going to be even less accountability for this to not happen again.”

Ziva Branstetter, Kavitha Surana, Cassandra Jaramillo and Anna Barry-Jester contributed reporting. Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Amy Yurkanin.

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Weeks after ProPublica reported on the deaths of two pregnant women whose miscarriages went untreated in Texas, state lawmakers have filed bills that would create new exceptions to the state’s strict abortion laws, broadening doctors’ ability to intervene when their patients face health risks.

The legislation comes after the lawmaker who wrote one of Texas’ recent abortion bans wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle defending the current exceptions as “plenty clear.”

But more than 100 Texas OB-GYNs disagree with his position. In a public letter, written in response to ProPublica’s reporting, they urged changes. “As OB-GYNs in Texas, we know firsthand how much these laws restrict our ability to provide our patients with quality, evidence-based care,” they said.

Texas’ abortion ban threatens up to 99 years in prison, $100,000 in fines and loss of medical license for doctors who provide abortions. The state’s health and safety code currently includes exceptions if a pregnant woman “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.” A separate exception exists that provides doctors with some legal protections if they perform an abortion for an ectopic pregnancy or in cases when a patient’s water breaks.

The bills, filed in the state House and Senate last week, create new health exceptions. They would allow doctors to induce or perform abortions necessary to preserve the mental or physical health of a patient, including preserving the patient’s fertility. Doctors could also provide abortions in cases where the fetus had an anomaly that would make it unable to survive outside the womb or able to survive only with “extraordinary medical interventions.”

State Rep. Donna Howard, who filed the bill in the Texas House, said ProPublica’s recent reporting adds to evidence that the current legislation is a threat to the safety of pregnant women in Texas and increases the urgency to make changes. “This is my reaction,” she said. “It’s one of extreme sadness and disbelief that we are at a point where we are allowing women to die because we haven’t been able to clarify the law,” she said.

Investigations by ProPublica have found that at least four women, including two in Texas, died after they could not access timely reproductive care in states that ban abortion. There are almost certainly others.

In Houston, Josseli Barnica died in September 2021, just days after the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect. Barnica, 28, was miscarrying at 17 weeks, but doctors did not offer her the medical standard of care — to speed up labor or empty her uterus — for 40 hours, until after the fetal heartbeat had stopped. Her husband said she was told it would be a “crime” to intervene. This left her seriously exposed to infection, experts told ProPublica. Three days later, she died from an infection, leaving behind a young daughter.

Her death was “preventable,” according to more than a dozen medical experts who reviewed a summary of her hospital and autopsy records at ProPublica’s request; they called her case “horrific,” “astounding” and “egregious.”

The doctors involved in Barnica’s care at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest did not respond to multiple requests for comment on her case. In a statement, HCA Healthcare said, “Our responsibility is to be in compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations,” and that physicians exercise their independent judgment. The company did not respond to detailed questions about its policy.

Nevaeh Crain, 18, made three trips to emergency rooms in rural southeast Texas last year for vomiting and abdominal pain, waiting 20 hours before doctors admitted her. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to document “fetal demise” as Crain’s vital signs grew more alarming. By the time they rushed to operate, sepsis had spread throughout her body and her organs failed.

Experts who reviewed a summary of Crain’s medical records for ProPublica said it may have been possible to save both the teenager and her pregnancy if she had been admitted earlier for close monitoring and continuous treatment.

Doctors involved in Crain’s care did not respond to several requests for comment. The two hospitals — Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas and Christus Southeast Texas St. Elizabeth — declined to answer questions about her treatment.

The cases highlight how abortion laws can interfere with maternal health care, even for those who want to have a child.

Much of the confusion hinges on the definition of a “medical emergency.” In many cases, women experiencing a miscarriage or a pregnancy complication may be stable. But requiring them to wait for an abortion until signs of sickness are documented or the fetal cardiac activity stops violates the professional standard of care, putting them at higher risk that a life-threatening infection or other complications could develop and be harder to control.

Attaching criminal penalties to abortion procedures has led to a chilling effect, making some physicians more hesitant to care for patients experiencing pregnancy complications in general, doctors told ProPublica.

After ProPublica’s reporting, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of one of the state’s abortion bans, wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle. He said the women were “wrongfully denied care,” but he blamed media outlets including ProPublica for publishing stories that made doctors “afraid to treat the women.”

“When a mother’s life or major bodily function are in jeopardy, doctors are not only allowed to act, but they are legally required to act,” he wrote. “And contrary to what ProPublica would have us believe, Texas law does not prevent them from aiding their patients and saving their lives.”

He argued that the medical emergency exceptions in Texas’ new abortion bans use the same language as abortion laws from the 1800s. “We did not want to risk confusing medical providers by changing the definition,” he said. But that language was written at a time when many more women died in pregnancy and childbirth — before medical innovations such as suction devices to empty the uterus and lower the risk of sepsis helped make maternal care vastly safer.

Hughes is a licensed attorney who lists no medical training on his Senate webpage.

ProPublica repeatedly requested an interview with Hughes to further understand his interpretation of how doctors should apply the law in specific scenarios. He did not respond to a detailed list of questions and requests to comment for this article.

There is no state office that doctors can call to make sure their decisions in miscarriage cases do not violate the law. Yet Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has made it clear he will not hesitate to prosecute doctors if the abortions they provide do not meet his interpretation of a medical emergency.

Last year, a Dallas woman asked a court for approval to end her pregnancy because her fetus was not viable and she faced health risks if she carried it to term. Paxton fought to keep her pregnant, arguing that her doctor hadn’t proved her situation was an emergency, and threatened to prosecute anyone who helped her. The courts sided with him, and the woman traveled out of state for the abortion.

After reading ProPublica’s stories, 111 Texas OB-GYNs signed a letter placing blame for the deaths squarely on state abortion law that “does not allow us as medical professionals to do our jobs.”

“The law does not allow Texas women to get the lifesaving care they need and threatens physicians with life imprisonment and loss of licensure for doing what is often medically necessary for the patient’s health and future fertility,” they wrote.

Their letter adds to years of warnings from the medical community and from patients themselves: 20 women who were denied abortions for miscarriages and high-risk pregnancy complications joined a lawsuit against the state. They asked the courts to clarify the law’s exceptions, but the Texas Supreme Court refused.

Dr. Austin Dennard, a Dallas OB-GYN, is one of the women represented in the lawsuit. She has seen the consequences of the laws from both sides. As a doctor, she has to call a hospital lawyer any time she wants to provide abortion care to patients facing emergencies. She also was personally affected when she was pregnant and learned her fetus had anencephaly — a condition in which the brain and skull do not fully develop. Texas’ law would have forced her to carry to term, putting her through more health risks and making her wait longer to try again for another pregnancy, so she traveled out of state for an abortion.

She said lawmakers have failed for years to listen to the doctors who have to navigate these laws.

In response to Hughes’s op-ed, she said: “We’re the ones with their boots on the ground. We’re the ones taking care of these patients, and we’re the ones telling you it is very nebulous and confusing, and we’re all terrified,” Dennard said.

State Sen. Carol Alvarado, who filed the Senate version of the bill, said she worked with physicians who represent major medical organizations to draft the exceptions.

“This bill is not about politics — it’s about ensuring that doctors can provide life-saving care without hesitation or fear of prosecution,” Alvarado said. “This bill is about restoring trust in our health care system and ensuring that no one has to endure the heartbreak of wondering whether more timely medical care could have saved their loved one.”

Molly Duane, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights who represents women who are suing the state, said the bill, if passed, could help save some lives, but cautioned that without removing the threat of criminal penalties, some doctors might still deny care.

“Exceptions don’t work in reality, no matter how clear they are,” Duane said. “We’ve seen hospitals turn away Texans facing life-threatening ectopic pregnancies, even though providing an abortion in these cases is legal under state law. As long as doctors face the threat of jail time and loss of license, they will be terrified to provide care.”

In his op-ed, Hughes said that the Texas Medical Board has issued guidance that an emergency doesn’t need to be “imminent” to keep physicians “from doing what is medically necessary” under the law.

But Dennard, echoing many doctors who spoke to ProPublica, said the board was “incredibly unhelpful.” The guidance instructed doctors on ways they could document why the abortion was necessary and still left open the question of how lawyers and courts might interpret “medically necessary.”

“None of them want to face the reality of the situation, which is that the laws that were put in place are directly harming pregnant people, and it is their fault,” she said.

The board, whose members are appointed by the governor, issued the guidance earlier this year after declining for more than two years to respond to questions about how the law should be interpreted, even as patients facing health risks publicly shared their stories of being denied abortion care and journalists asked the board to respond. The board issued guidance only after the Texas Supreme Court directed it to do so.

The president of the board, Dr. Sherif Zaafran, said in an interview that it would have been “inappropriate” to weigh in without that direction.

“Somebody could easily sue the medical board and say, ‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ and then we’d be in limbo also, and that could have actually dragged things out even longer.”

In the meantime, women’s lives were left in the balance.

Last year, lawmakers created a new exception for two conditions that the original law had not addressed: ectopic pregnancies and previable premature rupture of membranes, when a patient’s water breaks too early, causing a miscarriage.

But the exception is small comfort, some doctors say. It’s written in a way that only allows doctors to make an “affirmative defense” for a legal penalty. An affirmative defense, if found credible by a judge or jury, means the defendant wouldn’t be liable for the alleged acts even if he or she committed them.

“Nobody wants to be that poster child,” said Dr. Robert Carpenter, a Houston OB-GYN who signed the letter.

The Houston Chronicle also published 10 letters to the editor in response to Hughes’ editorial, eight of them arguing against his claim that the Texas abortion ban is clear.

Among them was Trevor M. Bibler, an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

“If doctors weren’t threatened with jail time and accused of murder just for upholding a basic standard of care, then these tragedies wouldn’t happen,” he wrote. “The possibility that the cause of these tragedies are the doctors who read the writings of the left-wing media rather than the law is absurd, disingenuous and not at all convincing. His law, not the media, is the cause.”

Howard said she’s hopeful the Texas Legislature will listen to the medical community and the public and create health and other exceptions in the abortion laws. She also pointed out that President-elect Donald Trump has said that he supports exceptions in cases of rape and incest, which Texas’ ban does not include. She filed a separate bill to propose such exceptions.

“It’s really just unbelievable, from a state that considers itself to be pro-life, that these obstacles will be put in place that are the antithesis of pro-life,” Howard said.

As other states assess whether to ban or protect abortion rights, Texas is providing an example of what to expect.

In Wisconsin, state Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky recently pressed an attorney for the state to explain whether an abortion ban on the books from 1849 would stop doctors from providing abortion care to patients who were experiencing miscarriages if the court allowed it to go into effect.

Describing Barnica’s case, she asked for clarification: “She suffered an infection that killed her because medical providers were unwilling or unable to give her the health care that she needed,” she said. “That’s a scenario that could easily — and perhaps has easily — play out here in Wisconsin under your interpretation of [the law], couldn’t it?”

“I’m not sure, Justice Karofsky,” the attorney responded. “I’m not a doctor.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Cassandra Jaramillo, Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Ziva Branstetter.

Emotions are running high as the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti has been welcomed to Laurie Hill Park in Whangārei by mana whenua.

Thousands have arrived to support the kaupapa — young and old, tangata whenua and tangata tiriti, all to make a stand for the rights of Māori.

The crowd have joined in waiata before being addressed by rangatira.

• READ MORE: Hīkoi mō te Tiriti day one: ‘Lets make this hīkoi build a nation’
• RNZ live hīkoi news feed

An RNZ reporter at the scene says among the crowd, emotions are high and tears can be seen in some people’s eyes.

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.

“In October, billionaire Mark Cuban bragged about his role in exiling a Harris surrogate and former Elizabeth Warren staffer for the sin of supporting a wealth tax during a television appearance. This claim was bolstered this month by reporting in The Atlantic that suggests that Uber General Counsel (and VP Harris’ brother-in-law) Tony West convinced Vice President Harris to ratchet down her populist messaging lest it upset the Silicon Valley and Wall Street elites he was courting on her behalf.

On November 5th, Harris ran far stronger in the states that she saturated with television ads than the ones she did not. Those tv ads were, as Semafor’s David Weigel observed, “grinding on this economic message (anti-price gouging, Medicare covering home care, etc).”

It’s impossible to know whether the additional 2 points or less needed by Harris in the pivotal states would have been secured by basing her public “earned media” and social media messaging on the same populist economic platform which informed her television ads. However, it is clear that the more successful paid media message was more populist and less informed by plutocrats like Cuban and West. Further, it seems exceedingly likely that downballot Democrats outside the swing states would have benefitted from an ecosystem featuring the type of messaging we heard at the Democratic Convention.

In a populist moment in which the candidates were battling for the mantle of change, the sitting Vice President had to be identified as clearly against some powerful institutions. Her campaign showed early signs of an aggressive message, arguing that her record as California Attorney General included taking on crooked big banks and shady student loan servicers. While VP Harris stuck to a comparably anti-plutocratic message in her television ads, she did not in her interviews and public appearances. This divergence appears to have been based on the advice of plutocrats.

Hopefully future candidates will learn from this, and oppose plutocrats consistently.”

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

In February 2017, as Donald Trump took office, The Washington Post adopted the first slogan in its 140-year history: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.

How ironic, then, that it should now be helping to extinguish the flame of American democracy by refusing to endorse a candidate for the forthcoming presidential election.

This decision, and a similar one by the second of America’s big three newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, disgraces journalism, disgraces the papers’ own heritage and represents an abandonment of civic responsibility at a moment when United States faces its most consequential presidential election since the Civil War.

• READ MORE: Furor over Washington Post’s decision to not endorse presidential candidate: ‘stab in the back’, ‘dying in darkness’
• LA Times owner’s decision not to endorse in presidential race sparks resignations, questions

At stake is whether the United States remains a functioning democracy or descends into a corrupt plutocracy led by a convicted criminal who has already incited violence to overturn a presidential election and has shown contempt for the conventions on which democracy rests.

Everyone should cancel their Washington Post subscription after Bezos copped out on a presidential endorsement. It is shameful how far a once great newspaper has fallen. I cancelled today.

— Allan Lichtman (@AllanLichtman) October 26, 2024

Why did they do it?
Why would two of the Western world’s finest newspapers take such a recklessly irresponsible decision?

It cannot be on the basis of any rational assessment of the respective fitness for office of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

It also cannot be on the basis of their own reporting and analysis of the candidates, where the lies and threats issued by Trump have been fearlessly recorded. In this context, the decision to not endorse a candidate is a betrayal of their own editorial staff. The Post’s editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, resigned in protest at the paper’s decision not to endorse Harris.

This leaves, in my view, a combination of cowardice and greed as the only feasible explanation. Both newspapers are owned by billionaire American businessmen: The Post by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, and the LA Times by Patrick Soon-Shiong, who made his billions through biotechnology.

Bezos bought The Post in 2013 through his private investment company Nash Holdings, and Soon-Shiong bought the LA Times in 2018 through his investment firm Nant Capital. Both run the personal risk of suffering financially should a Trump presidency turn out to be hostile towards them.

During the election campaign, Trump has made many threats of retaliation against those in the media who oppose him. He has indicated that if he regains the White House, he will exact vengeance on news outlets that anger him, toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he doesn’t like.

Trump threatens to jail political opponents.  Video: CBS News

Logic would suggest that in the face of these threats, the media would do all in their power to oppose a Trump presidency, if not out of respect for democracy and free speech then at least in the interests of self-preservation. But fear and greed are among the most powerful of human impulses.

The purchase of these two giants of the American press by wealthy businessmen is a consequence of the financial pressures exerted on the professional mass media by the internet and social media.

Bezos was welcomed with open arms by the Graham family, which had owned The Post for four generations. But the paper faced unsustainable financial losses arising from the loss of advertising to the internet.

At first he was seen not just by the Grahams but by the executive editor, Marty Baron, as a saviour. He injected large sums of money into the paper, enabling it to regain much of the prestige and journalistic capacity it had lost.

Baron, in his book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post, was full of praise for Bezos’s financial commitment to the paper, and for his courage in the face of Trumpian hostility. During Trump’s presidency, the paper kept a log of his lies, tallying them up at 30,573 over the four years.

Against this history, the paper’s abdication of its responsibilities now is explicable only by reference to a loss of heart by Bezos.

At the LA Times, the ownership of the Otis-Chandler families also spanned four generations, but the impact of the internet took a savage toll there as well. Between 2000 and 2018 its ownership passed through three hands, ending up with Soon-Shiong.

Both newspapers reached the zenith of their journalistic accomplishments during the last three decades of the 20th century, winning Pulitzer Prices and, in the case of The Post, becoming globally famous for its coverage of the Watergate scandal.

This, in the days when American democracy was functioning according to convention, led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president.

The two reporters responsible for this coverage, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, issued a statement about the decision to not endorse a candidate:

Statement on Washington Post’s refusal to endorse presidential candidate. pic.twitter.com/r8jrMPW5GR

— Carl Bernstein (@carlbernstein) October 26, 2024

Marty Baron, who was a ferociously tough editor, posted on X: “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”

Now, of the big three, only The New York Times is prepared to endorse a candidate for next month’s election. It has endorsed Harris, saying of Trump: “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States.”

Why does it matter?
It matters because in democracies the media are the means by which voters learn not just about facts but about the informed opinion of those who, by virtue of access and close acquaintance, are well placed to make assessments of candidates between whom those voters are to choose. It is a core function of the media in democratic societies.

Their failure is symptomatic of the malaise into which American democracy has sunk.

In 2018, two professors of government at Harvard, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a book, How Democracies Die. It was both reflective and prophetic. Noting that the United States was now more polarised than at any time since the Civil War, they wrote:

America is no longer a democratic model. A country whose president attacks the press, threatens to lock up his rival, and declares he might not accept the election results cannot credibly defend democracy. Both potential and existing autocrats are likely to be emboldened with Trump in the White House.

Symbolically, that The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times should have gone dark at this moment is reminiscent of the remark made in 1914 by Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey:

The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

Dr Denis Muller is senior research fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne. 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 Pacific Media Watch.

Due to the people’s rising consciousness about all of this, a consciousness which exists independent of their individual wills, a feature of this election is the failure of the “Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils” argument. This is the argument routinely used to promote the view that the only choice citizens have is one despicable candidate over the other. For some time, the argument has been an integral part of state-organized disinformation to stop the people from setting their own agenda and plan.

It is interesting how in this election there is no attempt to even present these candidates as representatives of the people, though they claim to be “for the people.” Instead, they are presented as the agents of change. It is even said that this one or that one provides “more space for resistance.”

Everything is done to avert any discussion on what kind of change the people need and what kind of change these candidates stand for. To be debated is what either one may or may not do and say but not what they are already doing and what this tells of where the rulers as a class and the country are headed.

Everyone is to be diverted from thinking and action, analyzing how best to advance and unify the movements of the peoples for change which favours their interests. It shows that establishing the starting point for discussion among the people is key if change is not to be a casualty in this election once again.

In this regard, the idea that the role the U.S. working class and people can play is to choose the “lesser of two evils” is not catching fire as it did in the 2016 election where one candidate, Trump, was painted as a “fascist” and the other, Hillary Clinton, was painted as a “progressive,” her use of extreme violence abroad completely silenced. Those pushing this campaign were clearly shocked when Clinton lost the election to Trump following which they declared the “uneducated white working class” to be racist, fascist, homophobic and many other slanders. It was an attempt to further divide working people from coast to coast.

The more the peoples’ movements tackled the blatant injustices on all fronts, the more attempts to divide the people by those claiming to be progressive and “politically correct” were left behind. All of this is now to be dismissed. The advances and increased unity of the peoples’ movements are to be ignored. Kamala Harris is to be the people’s champion now, a champion promoted and backed by the same ruling factions which supported Hillary Clinton against Trump in the 2016 election and Biden against Trump in the 2020 election.

Unfolding events and unity in action of the peoples from all walks of life exposed these various efforts of the rulers as false and disinforming, designed by those with state-backing to split the peoples’ ranks. Instead of stopping their attempts to label people on a racist and false basis, now the notion of “voting blocs” is promoted night and day. The claim is individual votes can somehow be aggregated into blocs — the Black vote, the Latinx vote, the youth vote, the women’s vote, the racist voters, the homophobic voters, the LGBTQ2S+ votes, the progressive voters and so on.

The promotion of “voting blocs” and how they will line up, and organizing on this basis continues but is such a fraud that it does not hold sway. The promotion of the fraudulent idea of “voting blocs” is linked to the promotion of “issues” the rulers declare the people of the United States care about. The existence of these “voting blocs” has been proven to be a figment of the imagination of the rulers and their candidates and elections time and time again but, nonetheless, they persist in declaring what the “issues” are and linking these “issues” to “voting blocs.” They do not permit the people to play any role in deciding anything.

Workers, women and youth and the forces fighting against racial discrimination and for justice over the past decades especially are fed up with these efforts to divide the people on a racist and fabricated basis and secure support for aggression and wars abroad and repression at home.

To deal with this, in this election a diversion is to present “extremes” as a problem and measures are consistently taken to criminalize those seen to be extremist when they uphold the rights of the peoples. According to Trump, the extreme “left” is a menace while the Harris forces say the danger comes from Trump and his right-wing “extremists.” And Trump himself is again called a fascist while Harris, who supports genocide in Palestine in the name of Israel’s right to self-defence is not.

Harris is presented as a “new way forward” even though she espouses what is essentially the worn out neo-liberal “third way” as originally presented by Tony Blair and his New Labour in Britain, and taken up by the Clintons and others who have caused disasters both at home and abroad. So too Barack Obama, the Liberals in Canada headed by Justin Trudeau, and liberal think-tanks and pundits desperately try to block change by claiming they stand for change, women’s rights, human rights, a green environment and more.

A key part of this “third way” is the promotion of the view that the executive power knows what is and is not good for the country and the entire world. Under its aegis, political parties have been destroyed and everyone must fend for themselves. In the name of defending human rights, free speech and democracy, “colour revolutions” for regime change are organized when countries uphold their sovereign right to determine their own affairs. This “third way” is the same old way of preserving the existing state structures which keep the people out of power.

The peoples are demanding and fighting for change in their favour and striving to ensure the election does not divert and disrupt this striving and their growing unity. Campaigns like “No Votes for Genocide” and “Abandon Killer Kamala” are evidence of this, as are continuing actions on campuses, in cities and towns, large and small, in support of Palestine and for an arms embargo and ceasefire now. The issue of U.S./Zionist genocide remains front and center.

Workers from all sectors of the economy are bringing forward answers, as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic, as strikes by health care workers, Boeing workers and East Coast longshoremen indicate. Working people can better govern the country but political power is kept out of their hands. Elections are designed to hide this while ensuring power and institutions of government remain in the hands of the private oligopolies with their pro-war, anti-social agendas.

It is the U.S. working class and people continuing their battles for the rights of all, at home and abroad that represent the modern democracy needed today. Refusing to be drawn into the pro and con debates of the election campaigns and advancing the fight for empowerment by persisting in defiantly speaking in our own name and refusing to allow the rich and their candidates to speak for us — will carry forward the fight for change that favours the people.

Boeing workers strike rally, October 15, 2024, day 33 of their strike.

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

But some have taken a stand, pushing back against Beijing’s rhetoric by choosing to congratulate the 1911 Republic of China – Taiwan’s formal name – on its National Day.

Taiwanese actor Wu Kang-ren, winner of Best Actor at last year’s Golden Horse awards, made his celebratory post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, reposting an Oct. 1 article from the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily.

His post was followed soon afterward by a handwritten congratulatory message from singer Chiao Anpu, released via her management company.

While their good wishes came along with statements from a plethora of other Taiwanese artists who have increasingly toed a line in public laid down by Beijing in recent years, Chiao and Wu have previously been publicly critical of China’s claims on Taiwan, which has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the People’s Republic of China.

While comments on their posts showed many in China didn’t actually believe that the pair believed what they wrote, they were castigated on Taiwanese social media for “abandoning their principles” to make money in China, according to multiple media reports.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te vowed on Thursday to defend the island’s freedoms against Chinese “annexation or encroachment,” as Chinese military planes and vessels launched exercises timed to coincide with the “Double Tenth” celebrations.

Meanwhile, Singer A Chi said he had been asked by the video-sharing platform Douyin to make a video for China’s Oct. 1 National Day.

‘Everyone is duplicitous anyway’

A Taiwanese man who gave only the surname Chu said it’s easy to criticize, but that everyone needs to make a living.

“What someone says may not be what they really mean,” he told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview. “If you cherish your country deep down, then nothing will shake that patriotic feeling.”

A woman who gave the surname Sha said she would likely do the same in their shoes.

“We’re all just trying to survive, right?” she said. “We all have to tolerate annoying bosses and superiors in the workplace, because we all want to make money.”

“I don’t think it’s a big deal – everyone is duplicitous anyway,” Sha said. 

Yet the messages apparently prompted Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te to hit back at the idea that China was Taiwan’s “motherland,” saying the 1911 Republic of China that rules the island is 113 years old, and could actually be seen as the “motherland” of the 75-year-old People’s Republic of China.

Nine days later, some artists took to social media to mark the Republic of China’s National Day on Oct. 10.

The Republic of China is a sovereign state founded with the Chinese revolution of 1911 that still formally controls the islands of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu after losing control of the rest of China with the communist civil war victory in 1949.

Showing Taiwan’s flag

The first Taiwan-born artist to mark their own National Day was singer Hsieh Hexian, who released a track titled “Song of Taiwan,” writing on Facebook: “Happy Birthday Taiwan, Republic of China!”

And 55-year-old supermodel Hu Wenying posted photos of herself in a bikini emblazoned with the flag of the Republic of China.

Hong Kong-born Chapman To took to Facebook to congratulate the Republic of China, which ruled the whole of China from the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 through to its defeat in the civil war with Mao Zedong’s communists in 1949, on its 113th anniversary.

“Happy Birthday to the Republic of China!” To wrote on his Facebook account on Thursday.

In Malaysia, rapper Namewee, who has been outspokenly critical of the Chinese Communist Party and its “little pink” supporters, posted a selfie with the Malaysian and Taiwanese flag to Facebook, along with the words: “Wishing our friends in Taiwan a happy Double Tenth National Day!” and took to the streets to interview people on the streets of Kuala Lumpur about the anniversary for his YouTube channel.

Most of his interviewees said they didn’t recognize the Republic of China flag that is now used by Taiwan.

One Chinese tourist said “the Republic of China is a thing of the past,” while a Singaporean visitor told Namewee that they had never seen it before.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Ray Chung for RFA Cantonese.

“The Cuban government continues to be nothing short of draconian in its efforts to squash independent reporting on the island,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen in Washington, D.C. “Cuban authorities must release journalist Yeris Curbelo Aguilera and should stop harassing Rafa Escalona.”

Curbelo Aguilera, a 39-year-old journalist and civil rights activist with the non-state media outlet Palenque Visión, was arrested June 16 and released on bail June 18 following a physical altercation with local youths, whom his family alleged were acting as government agents in the confrontation. One of the youths was also prosecuted for the incident but was acquitted at trial, his wife claimed.

The court convicted Curbelo Aguilera of causing “minor injuries” in the incident, according to Cuban local media.

Curbelo Aguilera has stated that he was prosecuted in retaliation for his reporting on anti-government protests in the eastern town of Caimanera in 2023.

In a separate incident, the local music news outlet, Magazine AMPM, announced in an online statement that it was suspending publication and taking “an indefinite pause” due to Cuban counterintelligence agencies “increasing pressure and harassment” of its editor, Rafa Escalona. According to AMPM, Escalona was interrogated and threatened with legal action by Cuban state security agents over grant money recently awarded to the magazine.

In recent years, Cuba’s non-state journalists have come under intense pressure from the government, which does not legally recognize the rights of news outlets outside official state media. Cuban law prohibits news outlets from receiving foreign funding and journalists who receive foreign funding can be accused of an act of “subversion.”

A Cuban government representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment about either case.

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

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Women in Georgia can once again legally obtain abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, following a judge’s strongly worded order this week tossing the state’s ban. While Gov. Brian Kemp spoke out against the decision and Georgia’s attorney general quickly appealed it, providers told ProPublica they have immediately resumed offering such care.

Planned Parenthood’s four clinics in Georgia are fielding an influx of calls from within the state and those around it where most abortions remain banned, said Jaylen Black, vice president of marketing and communications for the organization’s Southeast region. Workers are also calling patients they have previously had to turn away. “We’ve been able to get them rescheduled,” Black said.

The new, if temporary, access is the latest in a wave of developments in the two weeks since ProPublica told the stories of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, Georgia women who died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state. A committee of maternal health experts, including 10 doctors, deemed their deaths “preventable,” shifting the discussion about such outcomes from hypothetical to a new American reality.

“This isn’t something that the state will easily be able to sweep under the rug,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the ban. “It is now a national issue.”

Watch video ➜

The women’s stories reverberated through the U.S. Senate, the vice presidential debate and a demonstration outside the Georgia Capitol. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to one of their families alongside Oprah Winfrey, then traveled to Atlanta to give a speech about them. “Now we know that at least two women — and those are only the stories we know — here in the state of Georgia died — died because of a Trump abortion ban,” she told the crowd. Before launching into the details of the first, she led the crowd in a chant to “speak her name: Amber Nicole Thurman, Amber Nicole Thurman, Amber Nicole Thurman.”

Thurman died on Aug. 19, 2022, one month after Georgia’s law went into effect banning abortion before many women know they’re even pregnant. Thurman had traveled to North Carolina, where she obtained abortion medication, and had not fully expelled the fetal tissue.

She sought care for the rare complication at a suburban Atlanta hospital, where she was diagnosed with sepsis, a life-threatening infection. As her condition deteriorated, doctors discussed a procedure to empty the uterus called a dilation and curettage, or D&C; the state had recently attached criminal penalties to performing it, with few exceptions. It took 20 hours after Thurman’s arrival for doctors to do so, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. It came too late.

Miller, who died Nov. 12, 2022, had lupus, diabetes and hypertension, and doctors warned another pregnancy could kill her. She ordered abortion pills online, but she also did not expel all the fetal tissue and needed a D&C. Her family later told a coroner she hadn’t visited a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.” Her children watched her suffer in bed for days, moaning in pain. She ultimately took a lethal combination of painkillers.

Georgia’s maternal mortality review committee, tasked with studying deaths of pregnant women and new mothers to recommend improvements in care, directly blamed the state’s abortion ban for Miller’s death, according to members who spoke to ProPublica on the condition of anonymity. The committee found that the hospital’s delay in performing the critical procedure on Thurman had a “large” impact on her “preventable” outcome. The hospital and doctors involved in her care have not explained the delay or commented on her case; an attorney hired by Thurman’s family said the hospital was within its legal rights to perform the procedure.

While defenders of the ban have said it includes an exception to save the life of the mother, doctors have told ProPublica that the language doesn’t account for the fast-moving realities of emergency medicine or the complexities of maternal health.

Though Miller’s underlying conditions would have made her pregnancy riskier as it progressed, that alone did not qualify her for an abortion. And once she and Thurman needed a D&C to clear the fetal tissue, neither of their cases appeared to clearly fit the language of the ban’s exception allowing doctors to perform it.

It allows doctors to remove “a dead unborn child” that resulted from a “spontaneous abortion” defined as “naturally occurring” from a miscarriage or a stillbirth. Thurman had told doctors her miscarriage was not spontaneous but the result of abortion pills. Most bans including Georgia’s also allow abortions “necessary in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or the substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” There is no standard protocol for how providers should interpret such language, doctors have told ProPublica — or how far gone a patient needs to be to qualify.

Forty-one senators introduced a resolution inspired by ProPublica’s reporting that calls on hospitals in all states to provide emergency abortion care when their patients need it. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregan Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has a pending request for information from the hospital that treated Thurman to determine whether doctors violated a federal law that requires them to provide emergency care. (The hospital has not responded to ProPublica’s requests seeking comment on those questions about its adherence to the law.)

And in Georgia on Monday, Fulton County Superior Judge Robert C. I. McBurney struck down key parts of the state’s ban criminalizing nearly all abortions after about six weeks.

“It is not for a legislator, a judge, or a Commander from ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ to tell these women what to do with their bodies during this period when the fetus cannot survive outside the womb,” McBurney’s ruling states.

“The Court finds that, until the pregnancy is viable, a woman’s right to make decisions about her body and her health remains private and protected, i.e., remains her business and her business alone. When someone other than the pregnant woman is able to sustain the fetus, then — and only then — should those other voices have a say in the discussion about the decisions the pregnant woman makes concerning her body and what is growing within it.”

In reversing the six-week ban, McBurney reverted to the state’s previous standard, which allowed abortion up until a fetus was deemed viable, at about the 22nd week of pregnancy.

Kemp, a Republican who said he was “overjoyed” when the ban first went into effect, said this week through a spokesperson: “Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives has been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge.”

The ruling marks the second time McBurney has blocked the state abortion ban.

In 2022, he issued a ruling that the law was unconstitutional when the state legislature passed it in 2019, frozen in the books until after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal constitutional right to abortion three years later. The state appealed, and its Supreme Court reinstated the ban until it could review McBurney’s ruling.

About a year later, with the ban still in place, the state Supreme Court rejected the argument, sending the case back to McBurney to consider the lawsuit’s underlying question: Whether the Georgia Constitution protects the right to privacy and, if so, if that right includes abortion. McBurney’s ruling Monday emphatically says it does.

While McBurney allowed abortions to resume in Georgia, the Supreme Court could, once again, stay the judge’s ruling until it takes up the case.

The last time it did so, the window of abortion access in Georgia lasted eight days.

The urgency and impermanence of this moment in Georgia was palpable in conversations with providers. “I think this type of moment definitely feels like a demand to provide a lot of care to as many people as possible,” said Kristen Baker, public affairs manager and lobbyist for the Feminist Women’s Health Center, which operates a clinic in Georgia.

Black said that Planned Parenthood staff is doing all it can — “for the time being” — to meet the demand and “getting people in our doors as soon as possible.”

Kavitha Surana contributed reporting. Mariam Elba and Cassandra Jaramillo contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Ziva Branstetter.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, or TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and is closely monitored by traders and the broader industry for any possible disruption to supply chains.

TSMC said it had activated routine typhoon alert preparation procedures at all its fabs and construction sites, adding it did not expect any significant impact on its operations.

Heavy winds and rain unleashed by Krathon killed two people, while two others were missing and 102 were injured as of 8 p.m. on Wednesday, according to the island’s Central Emergency Operation Center.

The typhoon disrupted traffic and forced the suspension of flights for a second day on Thursday. Power was cut to nearly 55,000 homes, authorities said.

As well as the stock market, schools, government offices, many private businesses and other financial institutions were closed. 

People flocked to supermarkets and convenience stores to stock up, emptying the shelves in produce sections, according to media.

As of 10 a.m. on Thursday, Krathon was  30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of the city of Kaohsiung moving north-northeast at a speed of 8 kilometers per hour (5 mph), data from Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration showed. 

The storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 126 kph (78 mph), with gusts of up to 162 kph (100 mph). 

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

Democracy Now! speaks with the Green Party’s presidential ticket, Jill Stein and her running mate Butch Ware, after the Green Party suffered a setback Friday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined a request to put Stein on the ballot in Nevada. The Democratic Party had sued to keep Stein off the ballot for failing to submit the proper forms. In this campaign cycle, Democrats have fought to keep the Green Party off the ballot, while some Trump supporters, including a former Trump lawyer, have helped the Green Party obtain ballot access. “They are terrified of actually meeting us in the court of public opinion and having a real debate about the crises the American people face and the real solutions that we alone have put on the table,” says Stein. “The American people are in crisis in virtually every dimension of our lives.” Stein’s third run for the presidency is receiving support in some areas over Vice President Kamala Harris’s refusal to call for an arms embargo on Israel. The Council on American-Islamic Relations recently published a survey that showed Stein is leading Harris among Muslim voters in three battleground states: Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin. “This effort to try to pin an inevitable defeat of the Democrats upon third parties or upon Muslims is at best disingenuous,” says Ware, a Muslim historian and professor. “Every effort to protect Team Blue, to protect the Democrats from facing accountability for the evil that their own hands have wrought is equally evil.”

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

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The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.

The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid. Israel has been largely dependent on American bombs and other weapons in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

But Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden did not accept either finding. Days later, on May 10, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Prior to his report, USAID had sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct. The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.

Lifesaving food was stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border in an Israeli port, including enough flour to feed about 1.5 million Palestinians for five months, according to the memo. But in February the Israeli government had prohibited the transfer of flour, saying its recipient was the United Nations’ Palestinian branch that had been accused of having ties with Hamas.

Separately, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration had also determined that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.

The U.N. has declared a famine in parts of Gaza. The world’s leading independent panel of aid experts found that nearly half of the Palestinians in the enclave are struggling with hunger. Many go days without eating. Local authorities say dozens of children have starved to death — likely a significant undercount. Health care workers are battling a lack of immunizations compounded by a sanitation crisis. Last month, a little boy became Gaza’s first confirmed case of polio in 25 years.

The USAID officials wrote that because of Israel’s behavior, the U.S. should pause additional arms sales to the country. ProPublica obtained a copy of the agency’s April memo along with the list of evidence that the officials cited to back up their findings.

USAID, which is led by longtime diplomat Samantha Power, said the looming famine in Gaza was the result of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction, and impediments of U.S. humanitarian assistance,” according to the memo. It also acknowledged Hamas had played a role in the humanitarian crisis. USAID, which receives overall policy guidance from the secretary of state, is an independent agency responsible for international development and disaster relief. The agency had for months tried and failed to deliver enough food and medicine to a starving and desperate Palestinian population.

It is, USAID concluded, “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world.”

In response to detailed questions for this story, the State Department said that it had pressured the Israelis to increase the flow of aid. “As we made clear in May when [our] report was released, the US had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed to a lack of sustained delivery of needed humanitarian assistance,” a spokesperson wrote. “Israel subsequently took steps to facilitate increased humanitarian access and aid flow into Gaza.”

Government experts and human rights advocates said while the State Department may have secured a number of important commitments from the Israelis, the level of aid going to Palestinians is as inadequate as when the two determinations were reached. “The implication that the humanitarian situation has markedly improved in Gaza is a farce,” said Scott Paul, an associate director at Oxfam. “The emergence of polio in the last couple months tells you all that you need to know.”

The USAID memo was an indication of a deep rift within the Biden administration on the issue of military aid to Israel. In March, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, sent Blinken a cable arguing that Israel’s war cabinet, which includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, should be trusted to facilitate aid shipments to the Palestinians.

Lew acknowledged that “other parts of the Israeli government have tried to impede the movement of [humanitarian assistance,]” according to a copy of his cable obtained by ProPublica. But he recommended continuing to provide military assistance because he had “assessed that Israel will not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede U.S. provided or supported” shipments of food and medicine.

Lew said Israeli officials regularly cite “overwhelming negative Israeli public opinion against” allowing aid to the Palestinians, “especially when Hamas seizes portions of it and when hostages remain in Gaza.” The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment but has said in the past that it follows the laws of war, unlike Hamas.

In the months leading up to that cable, Lew had been told repeatedly about instances of the Israelis blocking humanitarian assistance, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the embassy operations but, like others quoted in this story, not authorized to speak about them. “No other nation has ever provided so much humanitarian assistance to their enemies,” Lew responded to subordinates at the time, according to two of the officials, who said the comments drew widespread consternation.

“That put people over the edge,” one of the officials told ProPublica. “He’d be a great spokesperson for the Israeli government.”

A second official said Lew had access to the same information as USAID leaders in Washington, in addition to evidence collected by the local State Department diplomats working in Jerusalem. “But his instincts are to defend Israel,” said a third official.

“Ambassador Lew has been at the forefront of the United States’ work to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, as well as diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement that would secure the release of hostages, alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and bring an end to the conflict,” the State Department spokesperson wrote.

The question of whether Israel was impeding humanitarian aid has garnered widespread attention. Before Blinken’s statement to Congress, Reuters reported concerns from USAID about the death toll in Gaza, which now stands at about 42,000, and that some officials inside the State Department, including the refugees bureau, had warned him that the Israelis’ assurances were not credible. The existence of USAID’s memo and its broad conclusion was also previously reported by the global development publication Devex.

But the full accounting of USAID’s evidence, the determination of the refugees bureau in April and the statements from experts at the embassy — along with Lew’s decision to undermine them — reveal new aspects of the striking split within the Biden administration and how the highest-ranking American diplomats have justified his policy of continuing to flood Israel with arms over the objections of their own experts.

Stacy Gilbert, a former senior civil military adviser in the refugees bureau who had been working on drafts of Blinken’s report to Congress, resigned over the language in the final version. “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” she wrote in a statement shortly after leaving, which The Washington Post and other outlets reported on. “To deny this is absurd and shameful.

“That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”

The State Department’s headquarters in Washington did not always welcome that kind of information from U.S. experts on the ground, according to a person familiar with the embassy operations. That was especially true when experts reported the small number of aid trucks being allowed in.

“A lot of times they would not accept it because it was lower than what the Israelis said,” the person told ProPublica. “The sentiment from Washington was, ‘We want to see the aid increasing because Israel told us it would.’”

While Israel has its own arms industry, the country relies heavily on American jets, bombs and other weapons in Gaza. Since October, the U.S. has shipped more than 50,000 tons of weaponry, which the Israeli military says has been “crucial for sustaining” the Israel Defense Forces’ “operational capabilities during the ongoing war.”

The U.S. gives the Israeli government about $3.8 billion every year as a baseline and significantly more during wartime — money the Israelis use to buy American-made bombs and equipment. Congress and the executive branch have imposed legal guardrails on how Israel and other partners can use that money.

One of them is the Foreign Assistance Act. The humanitarian aid portion of the law is known as 620I, which dates back to Turkey’s embargo of Armenia during the 1990s. That part of the law has never been widely implemented. But this year, advocacy groups and some democrats in Congress brought it out of obscurity and called for Biden to use 620I to pressure the Israelis to allow aid freely into Gaza.

In response, the Biden administration announced a policy called the National Security Memorandum, or NSM-20, to require the State Department to vet Israel’s assurances about whether it was blocking aid and then report its findings to lawmakers. If Blinken determined the Israelis were not facilitating aid and were instead arbitrarily restricting it, then the government would be required by the law to halt military assistance.

Blinken submitted the agency’s official position on May 10, siding with Lew, which meant that the military support would continue.

In a statement that same day, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., criticized the administration for choosing “to disregard the requirements of NSM-20.”

“Whether or not Israel is at this moment complying with international standards with respect to facilitating humanitarian assistance to desperate, starving citizens may be debatable,” Van Hollen said. “What is undeniable — for those who don’t look the other way — is that it has repeatedly violated those standards over the last 7 months.”

As of early March, at least 930 trucks full of food, medicine and other supplies were stuck in Egypt awaiting approval from the Israelis, according to USAID’s memo.

The officials wrote that the Israeli government frequently blocks aid by imposing bureaucratic delays. The Israelis took weeks or months to respond to humanitarian groups that had submitted specific items to be approved for passage past government checkpoints. Israel would then often deny those submissions outright or accept them some days but not others. The Israeli government “doesn’t provide justification, issues blanket rejections, or cites arbitrary factors for the denial of certain items,” the memo said.

Israeli officials told State Department attorneys that the Israeli government has “scaled up its security check capacity and asserted that it imposes no limits on the number of trucks that can be inspected and enter Gaza,” according to a separate memo sent to Blinken and obtained by ProPublica. Those officials blamed most of the holdups on the humanitarian groups for not having enough capacity to get food and medicine in. USAID and State Department experts who work directly with those groups say that is not true.

In separate emails obtained by ProPublica, aid officials identified items in trucks that were banned by the Israelis, including emergency shelter gear, solar lamps, cooking stoves and desalination kits, because they were deemed “dual use,” which means Hamas could co-opt the materials. Some of the trucks that were turned away had also been carrying American-funded items like hygiene kits, the emails show.

In its memo to Blinken, USAID also cited numerous publicly reported incidents in which aid facilities and workers were hit by Israeli airstrikes even sometimes after they had shared their locations with the IDF and received approval, a process known as “deconfliction.” The Israeli government has maintained that most of those incidents were mistakes.

USAID found the Israelis often promised to take adequate measures to prevent such incidents but frequently failed to follow through. On Nov. 18, for instance, a convoy of aid workers was trying to evacuate along a route assigned to them by the IDF. The convoy was denied permission to cross a military checkpoint — despite previous IDF authorization.

Then, while en route back to their facility, the IDF opened fire on the aid workers, killing two of them.

Inside the State Department and ahead of Blinken’s report to Congress, some of the agency’s highest-ranking officials had a separate exchange about whether Israel was blocking humanitarian aid. ProPublica obtained an email thread documenting the episode.

On April 17, a Department of Defense official reached out to Mira Resnick, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department who has been described as the agency’s driving force behind arms sales to Israel and other partners this year. The official alerted Resnick to the fact that there was about $827 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars sitting in limbo.

Resnick turned to the Counselor of the State Department and said, “We need to be able to move the rest of the” financing so that Israel could pay off bills for past weapons purchases. The financing she referenced came from American tax dollars.

The counselor, one of the highest posts at the agency, agreed with Resnick. “I think we need to move these funds,” he wrote.

But there was a hurdle, according to the agency’s top attorney: All the relevant bureaus inside the State Department would need to sign off on and agree that Israel was not preventing humanitarian aid shipments. “The principal thing we would need to see is that no bureau currently assesses that the restriction in 620i is triggered,” Richard Visek, the agency’s acting legal adviser, wrote.

The bureaus started to fall in line. The Middle East and human rights divisions agreed and determined the law hadn’t been triggered, “in light of Netanyahu’s commitments and the steps Israel has announced so far,” while noting that they still have “significant concerns about Israeli actions.”

By April 25, all had signed off but one. The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration was the holdout. That was notable because the bureau had among the most firsthand knowledge of the situation after months of working closely with USAID and humanitarian groups to try to get food and medicine to the Palestinians.

“While we agree there have been positive steps on some commitments related to humanitarian assistance, we continue to assess that the facts on the ground indicate U.S. humanitarian assistance is being restricted,” an official in the bureau wrote to the group.

It was a potentially explosive stance to take. One of Resnick’s subordinates in the arms transfer bureau replied and asked for clarification: “Is PRM saying 620I has been triggered for Israel?”

Yes, replied Julieta Valls Noyes, its assistant secretary, that was indeed the bureau’s view. In her email, she cited a meeting from the previous day between Blinken’s deputy secretary and other top aides in the administration. All the bureaus on the email thread had provided talking points to the deputy secretary, including one that said Israel had “failed to meet most of its commitments to the president.” (None of these officials responded to a request for comment.)

But, after a series of in-person conversations, Valls Noyes backed down, according to a person familiar with the episode. When asked during a staff meeting later why she had punted on the issue, Valls Noyes replied, “There will be other opportunities,” the person said.

The financing appears to have ultimately gone through.

Less than two weeks later, Blinken delivered his report to Congress.

Do you have information about how the U.S. arms foreign partners? Contact Brett Murphy on Signal at 508-523-5195 or by email at brett.murphy@propublica.org.

Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Brett Murphy.

French police have shot and killed two men in New Caledonia, stoking tensions with pro-independence groups days ahead of a public holiday marking France’s annexation of the Pacific archipelago.

The pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) decried the deaths yesterday as “barbaric and humiliating methods” used by French police resulting in a “summary execution” and called for an independent investigation.

The shootings bring the number of deaths in the Pacific territory to 13 since unrest began in May over French government changes to a voting law that indigenous Kanak people feared would compromise their push for independence.

• READ MORE: France boosts Pacific security forces as symbolic ‘September 24’ date looms
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia crisis reports

The men were killed in a confrontation between French gendarmerie and Kanak protesters in the tribal village of Saint Louis, a heartland of the independence movement near the capital Nouméa.

Public Prosecutor Yves Dupas said in a media statement the police operation using armoured vehicles was to arrest suspects for attempted murder of officers and for armed robbery on the Saint Louis road, with “nearly 300 shots noted in recent months.”

“The two deceased persons were the subject of a search warrant, among a total of 13 persons implicated, sought and located in the Saint Louis tribe,” Dupas said, adding they had failed to respond to summonses.

Dupas ordered two investigations, one over the attempted murders of police officers and the second into “death without the intention of causing it relating to the use of weapons by the GIGN gendarmerie (elite police tactical unit) and the consequent death of the two persons sought”.

Push back ‘peaceful solution’
Union Calédonienne (UC) secretary-general Dominique Fochi said yesterday the actions of French security forces “only worsen the situation on the ground and push back the prospect of a peaceful solution.”

“The FLNKS denounces the barbaric and humiliating methods used by the police, who did not hesitate to carry out a summary execution of one of the young people in question,” Fochi read from a FLNKS statement at a press conference.

“We demand an immediate de-escalation of military interventions in the south of our country, particularly in Saint Louis, where militarisation and pressure continue on the population, which can only lead to more human drama.”

The statement called for an immediate “independent and impartial investigation to shed light on the circumstances of these assassinations in order to establish responsibilities”.

Prosecutor Dupas said police came under fire from up to five people during the operation in Saint Louis and responded with two shots.

“The first shot from the policeman hit a man, aged 30, positioned as a lone sniper, who was wounded in the right flank. The second shot hit a 29-year-old man in the chest,” Dupas said, adding three rifles and ammunition had been seized.

One of the men died at the scene, while the other escaped and later died after arriving at a local hospital.

Deaths raise Citizenship Day tensions
The deaths are likely to raise tensions ahead of Citizenship Day on Tuesday, which will mark the 171st anniversary of France’s takeover of New Caledonia.

For many Kanaks, the anniversary is a reminder of France’s brutal colonisation of the archipelago that is located roughly halfway between Australia and Fiji.

Paris has beefed up security ahead of Citizenship Day, with High Commissioner Louis Le Franc saying nearly 7000 French soldiers, police and gendarmes are now in New Caledonia.

“I have requested reinforcements, which have been granted,” he told local station Radio Rythme Bleu last week.

“This has never been seen before, even during the toughest times of the events in 1984 and 1988 — we have never had this,” he said, referring to a Kanak revolt in the 1980s that only ended with the promise of an independence referendum.

Authorities have also imposed a strict curfew from 6 pm to 6 am between September 21-24, restricted alcohol sales, the transport of fuel and possession of firearms.

Kanaks make up about 40 percent of New Caledonia’s 270,000 people but are marginalised in their own land — they have lower incomes and poorer health outcomes than Europeans who make up a third of the population and occupy most positions of power in the territory.

UN decolonisation process
New Caledonia voted by modest majorities to remain part of France in referendums held in 2018 and 2020 under a UN-mandated decolonisation process. Three votes were part of the Noumea Accord to increase Kanaks’ political power following deadly violence in the 1980s.

A contentious final referendum in 2021 was overwhelmingly in favour of continuing with the status quo.

However, supporters of independence have rejected its legitimacy due to very low turnout — it was boycotted by the independence movement — and because it was held during a serious phase of the covid-19 pandemic, which restricted campaigning.

Earlier this year, the president of Union Calédonienne proposed Septemnber 24 as the date by which sovereignty should be declared from France. The party later revised the date to 2025, but the comments underscored how self-determination is firmly in the minds of local independence leaders.

The unrest that erupted in May was the worst outbreak of violence in decades and has left the New Caledonian economy on the brink of collapse, with damages estimated to be at least 1.2 billion euros (US $1.3 billion).

Some 35,000 people are out of a job.

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

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

French police shot and killed two men in New Caledonia on Thursday morning, stoking tensions with pro-independence groups days ahead of a public holiday marking France’s annexation of the Pacific archipelago. 

The pro-independence FLNKS decried the deaths as "barbaric and humiliating methods” used by French police resulting in a “summary execution” and called for an independent investigation.

The shootings bring the number of deaths in the Pacific territory to 13 since unrest began in May over French government changes to a voting law that indigenous Kanak people feared would compromise their push for independence. 

The men were killed in a confrontation between French gendarmerie and Kanak protesters in the tribal village of Saint Louis, a heartland of the independence movement near the capital Noumea.

Public prosecutor Yves Dupas in a media statement said the police operation using armored vehicles was to arrest suspects for attempted murder of officers and for armed robbery on the Saint Louis road, with “nearly 300 shots noted in recent months.”

“The two deceased persons were the subject of a search warrant, among a total of 13 persons implicated, sought and located in the Saint Louis tribe,” Dupas said, adding they had failed to respond to summonses.

Dupas ordered two investigations, one over the attempted murders of police officers and the second into “death without the intention of causing it relating to the use of weapons by the GIGN gendarmerie [elite police tactical unit] and the consequent death of the two persons sought.”

Union Caledonie secretary general Dominique Fochi said on Thursday the actions of French security forces “only worsen the situation on the ground and push back the prospect of a peaceful solution.”

“The FLNKS denounces the barbaric and humiliating methods used by the police, who did not hesitate to carry out a summary execution of one of the young people in question,” Fochi read from a Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front statement at a press conference in Noumea.

“We demand an immediate de-escalation of military interventions in the south of our country, particularly in Saint Louis, where militarization and pressure continue on the population, which can only lead to more human drama.”

The statement called for an immediate “independent and impartial investigation to shed light on the circumstances of these assassinations in order to establish responsibilities.”

Prosecutor Dupas said police came under fire from up to five people  during the operation in Saint Louis and responded with two shots.

“The first shot from the policeman hit a man, aged 30, positioned as a lone sniper, who was wounded in the right flank. The second shot hit a 29-year-old man in the chest,” Dupas said, adding three rifles and ammunition had been seized.

One of the men died at the scene, while the other escaped and later died after arriving at a local hospital.

The deaths are likely to raise tensions ahead of Citizenship Day next Tuesday, which will mark the 171st anniversary of France’s takeover of New Caledonia.

For many Kanaks, the anniversary is a reminder of France's brutal colonization of the archipelago that is located roughly halfway between Australia and Fiji.

Paris has beefed up security ahead of Citizenship Day, with High Commissioner Louis Le Franc saying nearly 7,000 French soldiers, police and gendarmes are now in New Caledonia.

“I have requested reinforcements, which have been granted,” he told local station Radio Rythme Bleu last week. 

“This has never been seen before, even during the toughest times of the events in 1984 and 1988 – we have never had this,” he said, referring to a Kanak revolt in the 1980s that only ended with the promise of an independence referendum.

Authorities have also imposed a strict curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m between Sept. 21-24, restricted alcohol sales, the transport of fuel and possession of firearms. 

Kanaks make up about 40% of New Caledonia’s 270,000 people but are marginalized in their own land – they have lower incomes and poorer health outcomes than Europeans who make up a third of the population and occupy most positions of power in the territory.

New Caledonia voted by modest majorities to remain part of France in referendums held in 2018 and 2020 under a U.N.-mandated decolonization process. Three votes were part of the Noumea Accord to increase Kanaks’ political power following deadly violence in the 1980s.

A contentious final referendum in 2021 was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing with the status quo. However supporters of independence have rejected its legitimacy due to very low turnout – it was boycotted by the independence movement – and because it was held during a serious phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted campaigning.

Earlier this year, the president of Union Caledonian proposed Sept. 24 as the date by which sovereignty should be declared from France. The party later revised the date to 2025, but the comments underscored how self-determination is firmly in the minds of local independence leaders. 

The unrest that erupted in May was the worst outbreak of violence in decades and has left the New Caledonian economy on the brink of collapse, with damages estimated to be at least 1.2 billion euros (U.S. $1.3 billion). Some 35,000 people are out of a job. 

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

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

• The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by an unusually large half-point, a dramatic shift after more than two years of high rates that helped tame inflation but made borrowing more expensive for consumers.
• The U.N. General Assembly strongly supported a nonbinding Palestinian resolution demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in Gaza and the occupied West Bank within a year.
• The House rejected Speaker Mike Johnson’s proposal that would have linked temporary federal funding with a mandate for states to require proof of citizenship for voter registration.
• Democratic and Republican senators traded barbs in hearing on hate crimes
• The U.S. Justice Department is suing the owner and manager of the cargo ship that caused the Baltimore bridge collapse earlier this year.
• The city of Oakland initiated closure of significant homeless encampment near Martin Luther King Jr. Way

The post Fed cuts interest rate by half-point in major shift after two years of high rates – September 18, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

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

At least two women in Georgia have died since the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Candi Miller and Amber Thurman, both Black women and mothers to young children, died after they were unable to access care for rare but typically treatable complications caused by medication abortion. We hear more from ProPublica editor Ziva Branstetter, whose publication reported on the preventable deaths of Miller and Thurman, and from reproductive justice advocate Monica Simpson. “We are in a maternal healthcare crisis in our state,” says Simpson, the executive director of SisterSong, an organization that works throughout the southern United States on behalf of communities of color, which disproportionately suffer the impacts of restrictions on abortion care.

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

Earlier this month, reports emerged that the Biden administration is preparing to block the nearly $15 billion merger on the grounds that it presents a threat to America’s national security interests. The United Steelworkers union opposes it, fearing future layoffs and weaker labor protections under new ownership. So do both major candidates for president, who are vying for votes in the Rust Belt. Supporters of the deal, like the Washington Post editorial board and the nonpartisan think tank The Atlantic Council, have cast the politicians’ opposition as election-season pandering, and argued that the national security rationale on which Biden may block it is flimsy. But one area, in which the question of whether the merger goes through could be particularly consequential, has gone largely unremarked upon in the conversation: what it means for the climate.

Some environmentalists say the deal could slow the crucial progress that the steel industry must make in order to decarbonize. Their argument stems from the fact that both U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have been slow, compared to industry peers, to adopt the most impactful decarbonization technologies, even with federal funding available in the U.S. to do so.

The most common process by which primary steel is produced is massively carbon-intensive. The reasons for this lie in chemistry. Steel is made from iron, but the form in which iron ore occurs in the Earth’s crust is mostly iron oxide (similar to rust). In order to get usable iron from it, one needs to remove the oxygen. For centuries, iron-makers have accomplished this by using coke, a fuel made from coal, which is heated alongside iron ore in a blast furnace at such high temperatures that the iron melts into a liquid while the oxygen bonds with the carbon in the coke and produces carbon dioxide.

Blast furnaces are responsible for the lion’s share of carbon emissions from steelmaking, and the inextricability of carbon emissions from the ironmaking process is a large part of the reason why, overall, steelmaking is responsible for 7 percent of global carbon emissions, and a quarter of industrial carbon emissions. These percentages will likely grow as other sectors of the economy are decarbonized. In the U.S., demand for steel is also expected to grow dramatically over the next decade to provide the raw material of the industrial growth sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act and the planned buildout of clean energy infrastructure and transmission lines. For these reasons, the task of decarbonizing steel is as urgent as it is difficult and expensive.

Fortunately, there is a solution on offer that has recently become viable due to new technological advances — and one that the Biden administration has sought to heavily subsidize: replacing blast furnaces with a process called direct reduction, and using hydrogen as a reducing agent in place of carbon, ultimately discharging water rather than carbon dioxide. “The chemistry is sound, it’s being built, it’s been piloted and demonstrated,” said Yong Kwon, a senior advisor with the Sierra Club’s Industrial Transformation Campaign. “The question is now: Will industries adopt it?”

There are eight operating steel mills in the United States that make “primary” steel (newly created steel, rather than the generally lower-quality “secondary” steel produced from scrap metal). Three are owned by U.S. Steel. Cleveland-Cliffs, the owner of the other five, has also made an offer to buy U.S. Steel and has been much more proactive in making the shift to greener production. “The Department of Energy has made available a great deal of money to do partnerships with industry to demonstrate the value of decarbonized projects,” said Todd Tucker, director of the industrial policy and trade program at the Roosevelt Institute. “Cleveland-Cliffs has partnered on two projects and U.S. Steel has partnered on nothing.”

One of the recently announced Cleveland-Cliffs projects will replace a blast furnace at a steel mill in Middletown, Ohio, with a direct reduced iron plant — part of a $575 million award from the Department of Energy. It will not be fossil fuel-free at first. While the company works to secure a reliable source of hydrogen, that plant will initially rely on natural gas to make iron, a process which will still produce carbon emissions, though fewer than the current coal-based process. But in the long term, as low-carbon or carbon-free “green hydrogen” is developed, the new technology presents an opportunity for steel mills to shed their carbon footprint and the Rust Belt to regain lost jobs.

The stakes of the potential U.S. Steel-Nippon Steel merger are perhaps best illustrated in the city of Gary, Indiana, which was built in 1906 by U.S. Steel to house workers at its Gary Works steel mill. That mill is home to the country’s largest and most carbon-emitting blast furnace — and it’s nearing the end of its lifespan. This situation hypothetically presents the furnace’s owner with an ideal opportunity to switch to a cleaner technology, with federal funding on the table to do so. But in August, Nippon Steel announced its prospective plans for Gary Works, which include a $300 million investment in relining the furnace to extend its lifespan for another 20 years. With this announcement, Kwon said, “Not only have they back in Japan not pursued solutions that we feel are responsible; they’ve now explicitly come out and said that they’re not going to pursue the solution that is on the table for reducing the climate change and public health harms that are currently produced by the iron-making process.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The potential merger of two steel industry titans has environmentalists worried on Sep 13, 2024.

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

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From the start of U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the question of whether the Saudi government might have been involved has hovered over the case.

The FBI, after the most extensive criminal probe in its history, concluded that a low-level Saudi official who helped the first two hijackers in California met them by chance and aided them unwittingly. The CIA said it saw no evidence of a higher-level Saudi role. The bipartisan 9/11 commission adopted those findings. A small FBI team continued to dig into the question, turning up information that raised doubts about some of those conclusions.

But now, 23 years after the attacks, new evidence has emerged to suggest more strongly than ever that at least two Saudi officials deliberately assisted the first Qaida hijackers when they arrived in the United States in January 2000.

Whether the Saudis knew the men were terrorists remains unclear. But the new information shows that both officials worked with Saudi and other religious figures who had ties to al-Qaida and other extremist groups.

Most of the evidence has been gathered in a long-running federal lawsuit against the Saudi government by survivors of the attacks and relatives of those who died. That lawsuit has reached a critical moment, with a judge in New York preparing to rule on a Saudi motion to dismiss the case.

Already, though, information put forward in the plaintiffs’ case — which includes videos, telephone records and other documents that were collected soon after the attacks but were never shared with key investigators — argues for a fundamental reassessment of the Saudi government’s possible involvement with the hijackers.

The court files also raise questions about whether the FBI and CIA, which repeatedly dismissed the significance of Saudi links to the hijackers, mishandled or deliberately downplayed evidence of the kingdom’s possible complicity in the attacks that killed 2,977 people and injured thousands more.

“Why is this information coming out now?” asked retired FBI agent Daniel Gonzalez, who pursued the Saudi connections for almost 15 years. “We should have had all of this three or four weeks after 9/11.”

Saudi officials have long denied any involvement in the plot, emphasizing that they were at war with al-Qaida well before 2001.

They have also leaned on earlier U.S. assessments, especially the one-page summary of a joint FBI-CIA report that was publicly released by the Bush administration in 2005. That summary said there was no evidence that “the Saudi Government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support” for the attacks.

Pages of the report that were declassified in 2022 are more critical of the Saudi role, describing extensive Saudi funding for Islamic charities linked to al-Qaida and the reluctance of senior Saudi officials to cooperate with U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

The plaintiffs’ account still leaves significant gaps in the story of how two known al-Qaida operatives, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, avoided CIA surveillance overseas, flew into Los Angeles under their own names and then — despite speaking no English and ostensibly knowing no one — settled in Southern California to start preparing for the attacks.

Still, the lawsuit has exposed layers of contradictions and deceit in the Saudi government’s portrayal of Omar al-Bayoumi, a middle-aged Saudi graduate student in San Diego who was the central figure in the hijackers’ support network.

Almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, FBI agents identified Bayoumi as having helped the two young Saudis rent an apartment, set up a bank account and take care of other needs. Bayoumi, then 42, was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, in Birmingham, England, where he had moved to continue graduate studies in business. Scotland Yard terrorism investigators questioned him for a week in London as two FBI agents monitored the sessions.

Bayoumi dissembled from the start, newly released transcripts of the interrogations show. He said he barely remembered the two Qaida operatives, having met them by chance in a halal cafe in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City, after he stopped at the Saudi Consulate to renew his passport. The evidence shows he actually renewed his passport the day before the encounter in the cafe, one of many indications that his meeting with the hijackers was planned.

After pressure from Saudi diplomats, Bayoumi was freed by the British authorities without being charged. U.S. officials did not try to have him extradited.

Two years later, in Saudi Arabia, Bayoumi sat for interviews with the FBI and the 9/11 commission that were overseen by Saudi intelligence officials. Again, he insisted that he was just being hospitable to the hijackers. He knew nothing of their plans, he said, and was opposed to violent jihad.

Gonzalez and other FBI agents were dubious. Though Bayoumi was supposedly a student, he did almost no studying. He was far more active in setting up a Saudi-funded mosque in San Diego and spreading money around the Muslim community. (The Saudi government paid him surreptitiously through an aviation-services company in Houston.)

FBI officials in Washington accepted the Saudi depiction of Bayoumi as an amiable, somewhat bumbling government accountant trying to improve his skills, and as a devout but moderate Muslim — and not a spy. The lead agent on the FBI team that investigated him, Jacqueline Maguire, told the 9/11 commission that by “all indications,” Bayoumi’s connection with the hijackers had been the result of “a random encounter” at the cafe.

The 9/11 commission accepted that assessment. The commission’s investigators noted Bayoumi’s “obliging and gregarious” manner in interviews and called him “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists.” The panel found “no credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups.”

But in 2017, the FBI concluded that Bayoumi was, in fact, a Saudi spy — although it kept that finding secret until 2022, after President Joe Biden ordered agencies to declassify more documents from the 9/11 files.

Exactly whom in the Saudi government Bayoumi was working for remains unclear. FBI reports describe him as a “cooptee,” or part-time agent, of the Saudi intelligence service, but say he reported to the kingdom’s powerful former ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. (Lawyers for the Saudi government have continued to repeat Bayoumi’s earlier denials that he ever had “any assignment” for Saudi intelligence.)

Another layer of Bayoumi’s hidden identity has emerged from documents, videotapes and other materials that were seized from his home and office at the time of his arrest in England. The plaintiffs had sought that information from the Justice Department for years but received almost nothing until the British authorities began sharing their copies of the material in 2023.

Although Saudi officials insist that Bayoumi merely volunteered at a local mosque, the British evidence points to his deeper collaboration with the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The Saudi royals had established the ministry in 1993 as part of a governing pact with the powerful clergy. In return for political support, they gave the clerics effective control over domestic religious matters and funded their efforts to spread their fundamentalist Wahhabi brand of Islam overseas.

From the start of the FBI’s 9/11 investigation, agents pored over a short excerpt of a videotape recorded at a party that Bayoumi hosted for some two dozen Muslim men in February 2000, soon after Hazmi and Mihdhar arrived in San Diego.

It was another coincidence, Bayoumi claimed, that he held the event in the hijackers’ apartment. The two young Saudis had nothing really to do with the gathering, he said, but he needed to keep his wife and other women in his own apartment, sequestered from male guests according to conservative Muslim custom.

The FBI did not share a full copy of the VHS recording with either its own field agents or the 9/11 families, who sought it repeatedly. (An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the bureau’s handling of the Bayoumi evidence.) But the full recording was provided to the plaintiffs by the British police last December.

The longer version casts Bayoumi’s gathering in a different light. Although the nominal guest of honor is a visiting Saudi cleric, the two hijackers are carefully introduced to the other guests and are seemingly at the center of the proceedings.

After identifying many of the party guests for the first time, the plaintiffs’ lawyers were able to document that many went on to play significant roles in the hijackers’ support network, helping them set up internet and telephone service, sign up for English classes and buy a used car.

“Bayoumi hand-picked these individuals because he knew and assessed that they were well-suited to provide the Al Qaeda operatives with important forms of support,” the lawyers wrote of the party guests.

Another videotape taken from Bayoumi’s Birmingham home is even more at odds with the image he conveyed to the FBI and the 9/11 commission. The video follows Bayoumi as he tours Washington, D.C., with two visiting Saudi clerics early in the summer of 1999.

Lawyers for the Saudi government called the recording an innocent souvenir — “a tourist video that includes footage of artwork, flowerbeds, and a squirrel on the White House lawn.” But the plaintiffs’ lawyers posit a more ominous purpose, especially as Bayoumi focuses on his main subject: an extensive presentation of the Capitol building, which is shown from a series of vantage points and in relation to other Washington landmarks.

“We greet you, the esteemed brothers, and we welcome you from Washington,” Bayoumi says on the video. Later, standing before the camera, he reports as “Omar al-Bayoumi from Capitol Hill, the Capitol building.”

The footage shows the Capitol from various angles, noting architectural features, entrances and the movement of security guards. Bayoumi sprinkles his narration with religious language and refers to a “plan.”

“Bayoumi’s video footage and his narration are not that of a tourist,” the plaintiffs contend in one court document, citing the analysis of a former FBI expert. The video, they add, “bears the hallmarks of terror planning operations identified by law enforcement and counterterrorism investigators in operational videos seized from terror groups including Al Qaeda.”

Lawyers for the Saudi government dismissed this conclusion as preposterous.

But the video’s timing is noteworthy. According to the 9/11 commission report, Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders began discussing their “planes operation” in the spring of 1999. Although they disagreed on which U.S. landmarks to strike, the report states, “all of them wanted to hit the Capitol.”

The two Saudi clerics who joined Bayoumi on the trip, Adel al-Sadhan and Mutaeb al-Sudairy, were so-called propagators — emissaries of the Islamic Affairs ministry sent to proselytize abroad. U.S. investigators later linked them to a handful of Islamist militants.

Most notably, Sudairy, whom Bayoumi describes as the emir, or leader, of the Washington trip, spent several months living in Columbia, Missouri, with Ziyad Khaleel, a Palestinian-American al-Qaida member who delivered a satellite phone to bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. The Qaida leader used the phone to coordinate the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, FBI officials have said.

Sudairy and Sadhan, who had diplomatic status, had previously visited California, working with Bayoumi and staying at a small San Diego guesthouse where the hijackers later lived. Many new details of their travels were revealed in the British documents. The two Saudis had previously denied even knowing Bayoumi, one of many false claims in depositions coordinated by the Saudi government.

The new evidence also shows that Sadhan and Sudairy worked with the other key Saudi official linked to the hijackers, the cleric Fahad al-Thumairy. According to one FBI source, it was Thumairy, the 32-year-old imam of a prominent Saudi mosque in Culver City, who received the hijackers when they arrived on Jan. 15, 2000, and arranged for their temporary housing and other needs.

Thumairy, a Ministry of Islamic Affairs official who was also assigned to the Saudi consulate, insisted he had no memory of Hazmi and Mihdhar, although the three were seen together by several FBI informants. Thumairy also denied knowing Bayoumi, despite telephone records that show at least five dozen calls between them. Thumairy’s diplomatic visa was withdrawn by the State Department in 2003 because of his suspected involvement with terrorist activity.

In an extensive analysis of telephone records produced by the FBI and the British authorities, the plaintiffs also documented what they called patterns of coordination involving Bayoumi, Thumairy and other Saudi officials. (Lawyers for the Saudi government said the calls were about mundane religious matters.)

Two weeks before the hijackers’ arrival, for example, the records show calls among Bayoumi, Thumairy and the Islamic Affairs director at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Bayoumi and Thumairy also made a number of calls around that time to a noted Yemeni American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who later emerged as an important Qaida leader in Yemen.

It has long been known that Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011, had some contact with Hazmi and Mihdhar in San Diego and met two other 9/11 hijackers after moving to a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. But many FBI investigators believed he was radicalized well after 9/11 and may not have known the hijackers’ plans.

New evidence filed in the court case points to a more significant relationship. Awlaki appears to have met Hazmi and Mihdhar as soon as they arrived in San Diego. He joined Bayoumi in helping them rent an apartment and set up bank accounts, and he was seen by others to have served as a trusted spiritual advisor.

Awlaki’s worldview “matched quite closely to al-Qaida’s at the time,” said Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, a biographer of Awlaki who served as an expert for the plaintiffs. “The new information now becoming public, on top of what we already know about his teachings and associations, makes it reasonable to conclude that Awlaki knew the hijackers were part of the al-Qaeda network.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Tim Golden.

The Israeli military has launched its biggest operation in the occupied West Bank in close to two decades, with hundreds of troops, backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones, conducting simultaneous raids in the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarm. At least nine Palestinians were killed overnight, with an additional 11 injured. In total, at least 652 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October — nearly 150 of them children — most of them during near-daily raids by the Israeli military. Israeli officials have indicated that the raids are just the first stage of an even larger operation in the West Bank. “They are trying to repeat the Nakba. … They are trying to repeat the same ethnic cleansing, the same genocide that is committed in Gaza,” says Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who joins us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. “Their goal is ethnic cleansing. Their goal is annexation of the West Bank.”

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

August 24th is Ukraine’s Independence Day. To celebrate, this week’s bonus show highlights an innovative new documentary on the war, Rule of Two Walls. A Tribeca Film Festival Award-winner, Rule of Two Walls tells the story of Ukrainian artists on the frontlines, transforming horror into hope and defiance into inspiring art. Their stories serve as a powerful reminder that art is survival. 

In the full episode, exclusively for Patreon supporters at the Truth-teller ($5/month) tier and higher, Andrea shares why she declined an invitation to the Democratic National Convention and what that decision taught her about processing trauma during our global struggle of democracy vs. fascism.

Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!

Join us at a Gaslit Nation event! Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters at the Truth-teller level and higher, join the conversation at our live-tapings! Meet these incredible authors! You can also drop your questions in the chat or send them ahead of time through Patreon! Subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit to join the fun!

• September 16 at 7:00 PM ET: In-person live taping with Andrea and Terrel Starr at the Ukrainian Institute of America in NYC. Celebrate the release of In the Shadow of Stalin, the graphic novel adaptation of Andrea’s film Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland. Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters get in free – so message us on Patreon to be added to the guest list. Everyone else can RSVP here: https://ukrainianinstitute.org/event/books-at-the-institute-chalupa/

• September 17 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with investigative journalist Stephanie Baker, author of Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia. Her book has been highly praised by Bill Browder, the advocate behind the Magnitsky Act to combat Russian corruption. 

• September 18 at 4:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with the one and only Politics Girl, Leigh McGowan, author of A Return to Common Sense: How to Fix America Before We Really Blow It.

• September 24 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with David Pepper, author of Saving Democracy. Join us as David discusses his new art project based on Project 2025.

Show Notes

Rule of Two Walls https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rule_of_two_walls

Artist: Palindrom Song: “Sparkle” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE_-BlVgjKg

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

“We are deeply saddened by the tragic August 23 drone strike that killed two journalists and injured a third in Iraqi Kurdistan,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Turkish authorities should swiftly investigate this attack and determine if the reporting team was targeted for their work.”

The attack killed Gulistan Tara, a 40-year-old Turkish journalist, and Hero Bahadin, a 27-year-old Iraqi video editor. All three journalists worked for Chatr Multimedia Production Company, which operates Sterk TV and Aryen TV, news channels funded by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK.) Turkey, the U.S., and the European Union have designated the PKK as a terrorist organization, and Iraq’s National Security Council banned the group earlier this year.

Turkey has escalated its military operations in the Kurdistan Region, targeting the PKK, which has been engaged in a decades-long conflict with Turkey. On July 8, a Turkish strike in Sinjar, northern Iraq, led to the death of a Çira TV reporter.

Rebin Bakir, an Iraqi video editor and social media officer injured in the August 23 attack, is in stable condition after treatment at Shar Hospital in Sulaymaniyah for broken legs and hands, according to Hawzhin Shwan, a Sterk TV reporter and anchor, who spoke to CPJ.

The three were on a reporting mission in an unmarked car along the Sulaymaniyah-Halabja road near the village of Goptapa when they were hit, Kamal Hamaraza, head of Chatr Multimedia Production Company, told CPJ, adding that they were journalists “with no direct or indirect connection to politics or military activities.”

“We have faced ongoing threats from Turkish attacks due to our consistent coverage of their operations and violations in the Kurdistan region,” Hamaraza said.

Salam Abdulkhaliq, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region Security Agency, told CPJ that the agency “will publish publicly if they issue anything.” 

CPJ’s email requesting comment from the Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations did not receive a response.

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

The Democratic National Convention wrapped up in Chicago on Thursday with Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepting the presidential nomination, capping a week of political showmanship and celebration for many party members. “One of the things that struck me most was the level of choreographed mass spectacle of this convention that would be really worthy of Leni Riefenstahl,” says Democracy Now! co-host Juan González. He says Democrats and Republicans presented “the two faces of American capitalism” at their respective conventions this summer, with the GOP home to “white supremacist capitalism” while Democrats promote a “multiracial neoliberal capitalism.” He adds that despite the constant chants of “U.S.A.” throughout the week, “the reality is that the United States has never been lower in its prestige and never more discredited around the world than it is today.”

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

The troops raided reporter Htet Myat Thu’s home in Mon state on Wednesday after receiving a tip-off that insurgents were meeting there.

Since the military seized power and toppled a civilian government more than three years ago, junta officials have closed independent media outlets and arrested and tortured some reporters, victims and rights groups say.

Junta soldiers opened fire on the home of Htet Myat Thu in Kyaikto township on suspicion the people there were members of a pro-democracy insurgent group called the Kyaikto Revolutionary Force, the associates of the men said. 

The second reporter killed in the raid was Win Htut Oo, 28, a freelance journalist who worked for the Democratic Voice of Burma and The Nation Voice, one of his employers told RFA. 

About 30 soldiers raided the home, said a source close to one of the victims who declined to be identified for security reasons. 

“Htet Myat Thu was shot first when he opened the door. Another man, Kyin Wak, was shot in the leg when he jumped out of a window,” said the source. 

“Win Htut Oo and another man, Ah Win, were shot at the back of home while they were trying to flee.”

Ah Win was a member of the Kyaikto Revolutionary Force but the other man, Kyin Wak, just lived in the house and had no militia affiliations, associates said.

Authorities did not return the bodies to their relatives but cremated them, they added. 

Twenty-six-year-old Htet Myat Thu worked for the Voice of Thanbyuzayat news outlet. He was arrested once before while reporting on protests that followed the 2021 coup but continued his work as a journalist after being released.

Nay Aung, chief editor of The Nation Voice, dismissed any suggestion that either of the reporters was a member of an insurgent group. 

"The journalists are just trying to report the right information in a timely way while they’re out in the field,” he said. “But the junta viewed this as an attack on the military and retaliated against them, step by step.”

Pro-junta channels on messaging app Telegram reported that four Kyaikto Revolutionary Force soldiers were killed in a shootout during a raid on a home where rebel soldiers were gathering. 

RFA tried to contact Mon state’s junta spokesperson Saw Kyi Naing for comment but he did not respond. 

According to data from the Independent Myanmar Journalists Association, 176 journalists have been arrested since the 2021 coup. Of these, five have been killed and 52 remain in custody.

Myanmar ranks ninth for number of journalists killed and second for the number of jailed journalists worldwide, according to the 2023 Global Impunity Index released by the Committee to Protect Journalists press freedom group.

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Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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

As Chicago hosts the 2024 Democratic National Convention, we look at the city’s long history of police misconduct, including the use of torture under police commander Jon Burge, accused of leading a torture ring that interrogated more than 100 African American men in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s using electric shocks and suffocation, among other methods, to extract false confessions from men who were later exonerated. Illinois has one of the highest rates of wrongful convictions in the United States, and a disproportionate number of the wrongfully convicted are Black or Brown people. For more, we speak with two men from Chicago who were exonerated after serving decades in prison: Stanley Howard spent 16 years of his life on death row for a 1984 murder that he confessed to after being tortured; Jimmy Soto was released from an Illinois prison in December after a 42-year fight to prove his innocence.

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

Needless is it for me to say to the thinking workingman that he has no choice between these two capitalist parties, that they are both pledged to the same system and that whether the one or the other succeeds, he will still remain the wage-working slave he is today.

— Eugene V Debs, “Outlook for Socialism in the United States,” International Socialist Review, September, 1900

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

“Floriane Irangabiye’s imprisonment was deeply unjust, and it is a great relief that she has finally been freed after two years behind bars,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo, in Nairobi. “Authorities in Burundi must now ensure that no other journalist faces imprisonment for their work and that the media can work freely, without state interference or harassment.”

Irangabiye was arrested on August 30, 2022. In January 2023 she was convicted of undermining the integrity of Burundi’s national territory, charges that stemmed from her commentary criticizing the government on Radio Igicaniro, a Rwanda-based online outlet that she co-founded. On August 14, 2024, Burundi’s President Évariste Ndayishimiye signed a decree pardoning her. A person familiar with her case, speaking on condition of anonymity due to safety concerns, told CPJ she was released from prison on Friday evening.

CPJ has documented that journalists in Burundi work amid government regulatory and national security pressures, facing arrests, physical attacks, and intimidation for their work.

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

Now the rule is coming under fire from two directions. In early July, groups representing environmental advocates and the medical-supply industry both filed separate lawsuits against the EPA. 

Studies have connected ethylene oxide exposure to cancers of the stomach, breasts, and lungs, and have found that it can alter DNA, causing negative health effects in unborn children. The chemical has the unique ability to disinfect products without damaging their heat-sensitive components, making it an essential part of the medical device supply chain. The FDA estimates that about half of all medical devices manufactured in the U.S. pass through ethylene oxide sterilization facilities, making these plants hotspots of ethylene oxide exposure. (Globally, ethylene oxide is also used to sterilize food products, cosmetics, and textiles.) The EPA’s new rule targets these operations and requires them to install equipment that can capture and destroy more than 99 percent of their ethylene oxide emissions within the next two to three years. 

But environmental and community advocates, who’ve long pushed the agency to more carefully scrutinize the sterilization industry, don’t believe the rule goes far enough to protect residents and are trying to force tougher standards in court. They also contend that the compliance deadline is too far off. By giving companies up to three years to comply, the EPA is “illegally and arbitrarily prolonging [residents’] exposure to toxic emissions of ethylene oxide,” their initial court filings argued. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of members of the Sierra Club, California Communities Against Toxics, and the Union of Concerned Scientists as well as community groups in Lake County, Illinois; Laredo, Texas; and Salinas, Puerto Rico — all places where sterilizers release hundreds of pounds of ethylene oxide into the air each year.

The EPA’s rule does not require sterilization companies to monitor the air around their facilities for ethylene oxide — a requirement that could help residents gauge the effectiveness of the emission reduction equipment the EPA is mandating — and continues to consider sterilization facilities “minor” sources of toxic emissions despite their disparate impact on public health. The advocates argue that by refusing to require these added protections, the EPA is denying residents “access to pertinent information about the danger posed by the commercial sterilization facilities in their neighborhoods.” 

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Meanwhile, in its own legal filings, the Ethylene Oxide Sterilization Association, or EOSA, a trade group representing sterilizers and medical device manufacturers, contends that the EPA’s regulations use inappropriate cancer risk estimates for ethylene oxide, set an unrealistic compliance deadline, and do not adequately consider the cost of installing equipment to capture emissions.

For companies affected by the rule, a key point of contention stems from the EPA’s decision to conduct a second analysis of the cancer risk posed by ethylene oxide. The first standards for ethylene oxide sterilization were promulgated in 1994, and the EPA surveyed the health risk posed by the sector in 2006. According to the Clean Air Act, the EPA is supposed to review the standards for these facilities every eight years, but regulators failed to fulfill this obligation in 2014 and again in 2022, at which point environmental groups sued. The resulting court decision led the agency to include in its new rule a second review of the risk the facilities pose to communities using an updated toxicity value for ethylene oxide. Industry groups claim that the EPA does not have authority to conduct this second review.

The American Petroleum Institute has sought to intervene in both lawsuits, in part because it believes the second risk review — which the EPA rarely, if ever, conducts — sets a precedent that could apply to other petrochemical and industrial facilities. 

Both environmental groups and EOSA have filed motions to intervene in the other group’s lawsuit. The cases will be litigated in the D.C. Court of Appeals. Speaking on background, a source with knowledge of the case told Grist that it is in its “very, very early stages,” without a clear timeline for what comes next. What is clear is that the fight to regulate medical sterilization facilities — one the EPA was hoping to put to bed with its new rule — is far from over. 

The health of about 14 million people who reside within a 5-mile radius of these facilities may hang in the balance.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Two lawsuits challenge the EPA’s regulation of ethylene oxide on Aug 16, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

So, my second trial for alleged thoughtcrime-tweeting is going ahead as planned on August 15 in Berlin Superior Court (Das Kammergericht). Full-blown anti-terrorism security protocols will be in effect in the courtroom. Yes, that’s right, the Berlin Superior Court denied my attorney’s motion to rescind their special Security Order, so the German authorities will be putting on an elaborate official show of force, which everyone is welcome to attend!

Or, actually, according to the Security Order, only 35 people are welcome to attend. That’s one of the anti-terrorism security protocols. Also, if you do attend, you’ll have to surrender all your personal possessions (i.e., notebooks, phones, wallets, pens, pencils, other writing instruments, wristwatches, hats, and other head coverings, etc.) and any outwear (i.e., jackets, scarves, etc.) and totally empty your pockets of all items, presumably into a plastic bin like the ones they use at airport security, which the Court’s security personnel will carry away and store somewhere while you attend the trial, and which the Superior Court expressly denies any liability for (i.e., for your items). Once you have surrendered all your possessions, and have been body-scanned and metal-detected, and possibly physically patted down, you will be admitted into Room 145a, where you will have to sit in the rear five rows of the gallery, behind a presumably bullet-proof security barrier, so that the security staff can monitor you during the proceedings.

OK, I know what you’re probably thinking, but the Superior Court’s Security Order is not at all intended to prevent members of the press from attending and reporting on the trial. Members of the press are absolutely welcome! It’s just that they will have to surrender their cameras and phones and their pens and other writing instruments to the security staff before they enter the courtroom. But they are welcome to attend and report on the trial! The security personnel will even provide them with pencils — presumably those little child-sized pencils, which are harder to use as Jason-Bourne-style stabbing weapons — and sheets of paper that they can position on their knees and attempt to make notes on during the trial.

Same goes for all you members of the public. This Security Order is not in any way intended to discourage you from attending the trial, or to intimidate or humiliate you by subjecting you to pointless “security protocols” and treating you like suspected terrorists. No, you are absolutely welcome to attend! You just might want to think about what you bring with you. Sharp objects are probably not a good idea. Likewise anything the Court might construe to be a camera or an audio-recording device. The Security Order is clear about that … there is to be no photographic or audio record of the proceedings.

Oh, and, definitely do not bring any state-of-the-art terrorist “wiretapping technology” with you. The Court is particularly worried about that stuff. Hence the need to subject everyone to TSA-style body-scanning, and pat-downs, and to confiscate their personal possessions, i.e., to ensure that no one smuggles in some sort of remotely-activated wiretapping technology that will infect the judges’ smartphones with some kind of untraceable surveillance software that will secretly record everything they say and transmit it to Tehran, or Moscow, or wherever.

You probably think I’m joking. I’m not. Here’s how one of the Superior Court judges justified the Court’s Security Order in his denial of our motion to have the Order rescinded …

I cannot see the unreasonable restriction of the press and your defense that you are concerned about, nor any violation of the guarantee of a fair trial. I admit that the restrictions imposed by the Security Order are quite significant; however, they are by no means unreasonable. They are objectively required both by the overall tense security situation (e.g. publicly announced threats of attacks against judges of the Superior Court) and the increased special security requirements in at least one criminal trial conducted in the same courtroom. Since only the courtroom in question is assigned to the Criminal Division (and the other divisions) as a permanent courtroom, and a regular search of the courtroom following every session using suitable technology for recently introduced wiretapping technology represents an objectively unjustifiable burden, its introduction must be prevented from the outset if possible.

Yes, you read the judge’s explanation right. Apparently, the Court is worried that my readers, or maybe members of the German independent press, might be planning to launch an “attack” on the judges, presumably with their phones and writing instruments, and possibly their head coverings and outerwear (for example, their scarves, which I suppose, in the hands of trained terrorist assassins, could be used to strangle them). In any event, they clearly believe that an “overall tense security situation” exists, one which necessitates these anti-terrorism security protocols at the trial of a 62-year-old playwright, author, and political satirist.

OK, I probably should have mentioned that earlier for the benefit of anyone not familiar with my case. I’m not a terrorist, or in any way terrorist adjacent. I’m just an author and a political satirist. The German authorities are prosecuting me because I criticized them and their Covid mask mandates.

As I explained in my most recent column …

The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets … Basically, I am being prosecuted for ‘spreading pro-Nazi propaganda’ because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich. Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.

My punishment for doing that (i.e., criticizing the Covid mask mandates, not spreading Nazi propaganda) has been … well, here I am, on trial, again, in The People’s Court of New Normal Germany. The German authorities had my Tweets censored by Twitter. They reported me to The Federal Criminal Police Office, which is kind of the German FBI. They reported me to The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency. My book is banned in Germany. They have damaged my income and reputation as an author. They have forced me to spend thousands of Euros in attorney’s fees to defend myself against these blatantly trumped-up charges. And now they are going to subject me, and my attorney, and anyone who attends my trial, to this humiliating, ham-fisted, official show of force.

If you’re an American (or a Brit, or Australian, or whatever), and you’re thinking this is just a story about Germany, or the EU … well, I’m sorry, but it isn’t. My case is just one of countless examples of the criminalization of dissent that is happening throughout the West. A lot of Americans don’t realize it, but freedom of speech is protected in the German constitution.

My story is not about the differences between the German and American freedom-of-speech protections. It is about the authorities prosecuting government critics like me on fabricated charges, banning our books, and censoring our political speech.

Once a government starts doing that, the protections in its constitution no longer matter. You are no longer dealing with questions of law. You are dealing with the exercise of authoritarian power. That is what my story is about. Any Americans (and any other non-Germans) who have been paying attention to recent events will recognize what I’m talking about.

As I’ve been saying, repeatedly, for the last four years or so, the global-capitalist power system (or the “corporatocracy,” or “The Powers That Be,” or whatever other name you need to call it) is going totalitarian on us. It dominates the entire planet, so it doesn’t have anything else to do. It is conducting a global “Clear and Hold” op. It is neutralizing internal resistance … any and all forms of internal resistance. The criminalization of dissent is an essential part of that. I’ve been documenting this process in my columns and in my books, and specifically in The Rise of the New Normal Reich — which you can read, unless you live in Germany — so forgive me if I don’t rehash it all here.

The point is, we’re not in Kansas anymore. All that democracy and rule of law stuff is over. It is being gradually, and not so gradually, phased out.

I get that most people don’t believe that. Most people won’t, until it’s too late. That’s how these transitions generally work. Most people can’t see what is coming until it gets here. I see it, but not because I’m a prophet. I’m just a loudmouth, and the loudmouths get crushed first.

Anyway, if you are in Berlin on August 15, and would like to observe The People’s Court of New Normal Germany in action, or just get groped by a German law enforcement officer, the trial is scheduled to start at 10:30AM. Seating is on a first-come-first-served basis. So you may want to show up a little early, given all the scanning and screening and groping, and the “overall tense security situation.”

The address is Elßholzstraße 30-33.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by C.J. Hopkins.

In July, two separate People’s Defense Forces took control of the Alpha Cement factory in Mandalay region and the Tagaung Taung nickel mine in Sagaing region.

Junta troops attacked the cement factory, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the junta’s Central Command, and tried to burn down buildings inside the compound while fleeing a successful assault by the Mandalay People’s Defense Force militia, Myanmar Now reported. 

The military has conducted daily airstrikes on the cement plant, owned by Myanmar’s Myint Investment Group and and China’s Anhui Conch Cement Co., since militia forces capturing it, the report said.

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A People’s Defense Force in northwestern Myanmar’s Sagaing region took over a major Chinese-backed nickel-production plant from junta forces in July without a fight on the border between Mandalay region’s Thabeikkyin township and Sagaing region’s Tigyaing township, Myanmar Now said in another report.

About 60 junta soldiers and police abandoned 64 weapons and ammunition at the Tagaung Taung mine compound and left, Nay Phone Latt, spokesman of the Prime Minister’s Office of the shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, told Radio Free Asia. 

The NUG is now responsible for the safety of the factory and its employees, he said.

The seizure of the cement factory and nickel mine comes as the junta continues to lose ground to People's Defense Forces, or PDFs, loyal to the NUG and allied ethnic armed groups — almost four years into a civil war that shows no sign of abating.

The incidents also indicate that the junta cannot fully safeguard Chinese-invested projects in Myanmar and that increased discussions between Beijing and the NUG may be forthcoming, said political analyst Than Soe Naing.

“China will need to decide whether to rely on the military council or the PDFs and ethnic armed forces to protect its interests in Myanmar,” he said. 

The NUG has not issued instructions for the two factories to cease operations, and they are able to continue normal operations, despite the fighting, said Nay Phone Latt.

The Chinese Embassy in Myanmar said it may investigate the situation of the factories seized by the PDFs, but it did not respond to RFA’s request for comment.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular press conference in Beijing on July 25 that conflicts in Myanmar should not interfere with domestic Chinese projects, businesses or the security of Chinese citizens.

The NUG will not recognize businesses established under contracts signed with the State Administration Council, the formal name of the ruling junta, but will accept those that operated under contracts signed by previous governments, Nay Phone Latt said.

International companies operating in Myanmar must pay taxes to the NUG instead of to the military council, he added.

The NUG said its policy is to protect all legal foreign investments in Myanmar, not just those from China.

Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun and spokesmen for Mandalay and Sagaing regions did not respond to requests for comment.

Translated by Kalyar Lwin by RFA Burmese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

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

“For two years now, José Rubén Zamora has been behind bars in horrific conditions, despite a court order for a retrial,” said Cristina Zahar, CPJ’s Latin America program coordinator. “This disgraceful travesty of justice suggests a breakdown in the country’s rule of law and punitive retaliation against independent journalists. Zamora must be freed immediately.”  

Zamora, 67, remains in pretrial isolation in conditions at Mariscal Zavala military jail in Guatemala City that his lawyers say amount to torture. Their urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment said that this included deprivation of light and water, aggressive and humiliating treatment, unsanitary conditions, and limited access to medical care.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has declared his imprisonment to be in violation of international law, and a February report by TrialWatch concluded that there were breaches of both international and regional fair-trial standards, and that Zamora’s prosecution and conviction are likely retaliation for his journalism.

Zamora, president of the now defunct elPeriódico newspaper, received a six-year prison sentence on money laundering charges in June 2023. An appeals court overturned his conviction in October 2023, but numerous delays have prevented the start of the court-ordered retrial.

On May 15, 2024, a Guatemalan court ordered that the journalist be released to house arrest to await trial. However, authorities kept him in jail, as bail applications remained pending in two other cases. On June 26, an appeals court revoked the lower court’s order for his conditional release.

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

The Fijiana women’s sevens rugby team have lost both pool matches at the Paris Olympics today and look set to miss the quarterfinals in the process.

Bronze medallists at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Fijians lost 17-14 to Canada in their first pool game.

China then handed the Fijians an upset 40-12 thrashing.

• READ MORE: Other Paris Olympics 2024 reports

These results means Fijiana must beat New Zealand and hope to progress as one of the two best third place teams.

China displayed Fiji’s own style of play, throwing the ball around, taking the tackles and still off-loading and put on a strong defensive display when they pressure Fiji.

FBC Sports said the contribution of former coaches Osea Kolinisau and Setefano Cakau was evident in how China played.

Kolinisau and Cakau are currently coaching the Fiji men’s team and had stints as coaches with the Chinese in 2021-2022.

NZ connections
China now has the services of former New Zealand sevens rep Rocky Khan and longtime New Zealand 7s mentor Sir Gordon Tietjens.

Pool matches will continue on Tuesday, with Fiji taking on New Zealand in their third and final pool game.

Hosts France, the USA, New Zealand and Australia have recorded two wins each so far and are now confirmed for the quarterfinals.

France did not concede a point in their two games so far.

A record crowd of 66,000 fans packed into Stade de France to set a new record for a women’s rugby event.

World Rugby says that beats the previous record of 58,498 at Twickenham for England v France in 2023.

Australia’s Maddison Levi scored an incredible sevens tries in two matches to take her Olympic total to 10.

Australia got off to a flying start against South Africa in their opener, winning 34-5.

They took on Great Britain in their second outing, coming out with a 36-5 victory.

Great Britain, however, will head into day two second in the pool after they beat Ireland 21-12 in their opening game.

Strong USA start
USA got their Olympic campaign off to a strong start as they defeated Japan 36-7 in Pool C.

A 24-5 win against Brazil in their second game took them into day two unbeaten, with a showdown against France to decide the pool in store.

Hosts France thrilled the boisterous home crowd by also ending the day unbeaten after convincing wins against Brazil and Japan without conceding a point.

They won 26-0 in their opener against the South Americans before a bombarding performance against Japan ended 49-0 in their favour, scoring seven tries on their way to the Pool C summit.

World Rugby chair Sir Bill Beaumont said “after a scintillating men’s competition at these special coming of age Games for Rugby Sevens”:

“It is fitting that yet another record has been smashed. With the world’s best women’s sevens players shining brightly on sport’s biggest stage, 66,000 fans were gripped by the action, while an unprecedented broadcast and digital audience will ensure that more young people in more nations and communities will be inspired by these awesome athletes, who are amongst the best in the world in sport.”

Seeking a medal
Australia captain Charlotte Caslick says they want to win a medal this time around, having missed out on Tokyo in 2020.

“It is a part of sport that it brings highs and lows. But we have achieved a lot since then so we have definitely moved on and are really looking forward to this campaign. That loss in Tokyo has really helped us to grow.

“We have a lot of girls coming back after injuries. We just have to keep doing what we do, to keep performing. We don’t do it for recognition, we do it because we love each other and we love this sport. Hopefully, if we’re successful here we’ll go a long way.”

New Zealand captain Sarah Hirini, making a return from injury, says she is excited for her team’s chances.

“It means a lot. It’s been a tough journey but I’m so grateful to the people around me to get me back to this point. I’m so happy to be back with the team and on the big stage.

“I’m so proud to be back representing my family, everyone back in New Zealand. Wearing this black jersey means everything. It gives you superpowers.

“It has such a legacy and it’s one of the most powerful tools we can hold on to for a set amount of time. And when the time comes you give it to the next person.”

Women’s sevens rugby results from Day One:
China 40 Fiji 7
France 49 Japan 0
USA 24 Brazil 5
Australia 36 Great Britain 5
Ireland 38 South Africa 0
New Zealand 43 China 5
Canada 17 Fiji 14
France 26 Brazil 0
USA 36 Japan 7
Australia 34 South Africa 5
Great Britain 21 Ireland 12
New Zealand 33 Canada 7

One silver for Team Pasifika
The Fiji men’s sevens team has recorded the only medal so far for Team Pasifika.

They won silver in the competition, following their 28-7 final loss to France on Sunday morning (NZ time).

Meanwhile, Fijian captain Jerry Tuwai has apologised to Fijian fans for the final loss, saying they had let fans down because they had aimed to win the gold medal again.

Speaking at the post match press conference, Tuwai said France was just too good.

“I just want to thank the fans back home for the support and the prayers, we would like to apologize for falling short to a very good French side, they deserve it, thanks very much for the support through the years and we’ll see you back home,” he said.

Head coach Osea Kolinisau added to that and said they will now focus on the HSBC SVNS Series, which kicks off later this year.

In other sports:

PNG and Tonga fail in boxing
Papua New Guinea’s John Ume is out of the Paris Olympics after he was beaten in his preliminary bout on Sunday morning (NZ Time).

Team PNG said Ume, who fought in the men’s 63.5 kg category, lost to Cuba’s Erislandy Alvarez Borges.

Borges stopped Ume in the second round.

Team PNG said Ume was an inspiration.

“John received the call to join the team just seven days before his bout, following an unfortunate injury to a boxer from Solomon Islands,” Team PNG said in a statement.

“Despite not being in peak form due to the unexpected nature of his invitation, John answered the call with pride and courage. John faced the formidable Cuban athlete Erislandy Alvarez Borges in his Olympic debut.

“Alvarez, a highly accomplished boxer with a silver medal from the 2023 World Championships and an undefeated professional record, proved to be a tough opponent.

“John fought valiantly, showcasing the spirit and tenacity that define Team PNG. However, in the second round, the referee stopped the match, awarding the victory to Alvarez.

“John’s participation in the Olympics, despite the short notice, is a testament to his resilience and dedication.”

Team PNG added that despite the outcome, Ume’s participation in Paris 2024 has made his country proud.

“Team PNG stands proud of John’s remarkable effort and unwavering resilience on the Olympic stage.”

And Tongan female boxer Fe’ofa’aki Epenisa also lost her first fight.

Aki, the island kingdom’s first female boxer to fight at the Games, could not upset Vietnam’s Thi Linh Ha in the women’s 60 kg category.

Linh won the fight 5-0 on the scorecards.

ONOC says the USA based boxer fought well and tried her best, which was not enough to get her into the next stage.

Boxing continues tomorrow, with gold medal finals also on the programme.

Swimmers hit the pool
Pacific Island swimmers at the Paris Olympics have been in action in the pool over the first two days of competition.

ONOC says the list included Lanihei Connolly of the Cook Islands in the women’s 100m Breaststroke Preliminary heats..

Connolly competed in Heat 2, finishing her race with a time of 1 minute 10.45 seconds.

Tonga’s Alan Uhi swam in the men’s 100m Backstroke, finishing with a time of 1 minute 0.62 seconds.

The Tonga Association of National Olympic Committee commended Uhi’s performance.

“Our youngest Olympian to Paris 2024 swam in the first Heat of the men’s 100m backstroke at the Paris La Defense Arena!

“Great attempt at your first Olympic appearance, certainly won’t be your last!”

FSM’s Tasi Limtiaco completed his 100m Breaststroke event in 1 minute :4.14 seconds.

American Samoa’s Micah Masei competed in the Men’s 100m Breaststroke, finishing third in his heat with a time of 1 minute 05.95 seconds.

Swimming continues tomorrow.

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

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

ProPublica’s journalists live and work all over the country. We’re both based in Chicago, and, along with several of our colleagues, we are focused on telling stories about the Midwest. In recent years, the two of us have teamed up to cover ticketing and the use of seclusion and restraint in Illinois school districts.

But if you’ve seen our work lately, you know we’ve been reporting on troubling conditions at an unregulated, for-profit boarding school for autistic students in New York — not exactly in our backyard. We’d been getting tips for a while from local sources who were worried about the effect of a 2022 Illinois law that made it easier for school districts to use public money to send students with disabilities to far-away schools.

And then we heard concerns that students were being mistreated at one of those schools: Shrub Oak International School in Mohegan Lake, New York. Black eyes and bruises. Insufficient staffing. Medical neglect. No kitchen.

At least 15 Illinois students were enrolled there this past school year using state and local taxpayer dollars at $573,200 each. No state outside of New York sends more students to Shrub Oak than Illinois.

Students from 13 states and Puerto Rico — including Michigan and Indiana in the Midwest — went to Shrub Oak this past school year. Families’ decisions to cross state borders for an education often come after they have struggled to find a place for their children. For journalists, this trend and its impact are not easy to follow. It means education reporters sometimes also have to go beyond their borders both to follow the flow of public money and to see how students are treated when they leave their communities.

So this was a Midwest story, after all.

The more we dug into the situation at Shrub Oak, the more implications we found for local families. We learned that Illinois’ new law required the Illinois State Board of Education to pay for schools like Shrub Oak, but it did not allow the agency to monitor them. That left Illinois students at Shrub Oak vulnerable, because Shrub Oak is not monitored by any government agency in New York, either. Families and workers who tried to report their concerns to several New York agencies were turned away because the private, for-profit school had chosen not to seek approval from the New York State Education Department and therefore did not fall under the state’s jurisdiction.

We also learned that a Chicago student was harmed by a Shrub Oak worker while she was there. (The now-former worker pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a disabled person last month in Westchester County court. Shrub Oak previously told us that it acts quickly to involve law enforcement when it thinks an investigation is warranted. The school has said it works with students who have autism and who struggle with “significant self-injurious behaviors,” aggression and property destruction.)

News publications have republished or cited our stories to amplify the reporting in their own communities, from The Daily Herald in Illinois to the Hartford Courant and CT Mirror in Connecticut.

Illinois has no plans to stop sending students to Shrub Oak — and Chicago Public Schools this month approved sending a new student there — but some other states have begun to investigate or even bring students back home. One state agency in Connecticut, for example, described the facility as looking “more akin to a penal institution than an educational campus” and has decided to stop sending students there.

Several families have also told us that they’re happy with Shrub Oak and that the school has helped their children. In some cases, it was the only school that accepted their children, and they don’t want states to stop paying tuition there.

Since we published our first story in May, we’ve learned more about what the lack of oversight by the state of New York means. We recently obtained records that we had requested in January in an effort to learn more about what the state Education Department knew about Shrub Oak and students’ welfare there. (A ProPublica lawyer helped us get the documents after Shrub Oak intervened legally to urge the department not to release the records.)

We found that in 2023, Shrub Oak provided a list of staff members to the New York’s Education Department that included the names of 30 individuals who the school said were all “certified special education teachers.” But there was one problem: New York teacher certification records indicated that only 11 of the people listed are certified by the state as special-education teachers.

The staff list was submitted as the school was amending its filing with the state to operate a school business. An Education Department spokesperson told us that even though the state requires the information, it does not verify whether the teachers are certified because private schools don’t need to have certified teachers. The spokesperson did not respond to a question asking why the state requests information that it doesn’t verify.

As we’ve learned more, we’ve continued to send questions to Shrub Oak. Shrub Oak told ProPublica in an email that although the list was submitted to the state, it was still in draft form and the school intended to update it. The Education Department told us Thursday that it had rejected the school’s amended filing; Shrub Oak told us it decided the filing was not needed and it abandoned the process.

Recent email responses from the school have been unsigned and sent from its “press office.” The school would not identify who sent the emails. The emails criticized our reporting and said individuals were hesitant to be named because the reporting included “misrepresenting and twisting statements.”

The school said we relied on “isolated incidents and the perspectives of a few individuals” and asked us to highlight some parents’ positive experiences at Shrub Oak. The email also noted that “each member of our staff is carefully selected based on their qualifications, experience, and commitment to the field of special education.” Shrub Oak previously told us that while operating a round-the-clock school is challenging, its staff is adequate. A kitchen will open as soon as electrical work is complete, Shrub Oak has said.

It’s not clear if New York’s Education Department plans to intervene at Shrub Oak. But if it does, we’ll report on it — even though it’s hundreds of miles away from the Midwest.

If you have anything to share about education or other tips in the Midwest, please reach out to us: jennifer.smithrichards@propublica.org and jodi.cohen@propublica.org. You can find more information about how to contact ProPublica reporters securely on our tips page.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen.

One short-range ballistic missile was launched from the Jangyon area in South Hwanghae Province at about 5:05 a.m. in a northeastern direction, said the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS.

Another unidentified ballistic missile was launched at around 5:15 a.m, it added, without providing further details. 

“While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance against additional launches, our military is maintaining a full-readiness posture while sharing North Korean ballistic missile data with U.S. and Japanese authorities,” the JCS said in a text message to reporters.

The North vowed on Sunday to take “offensive and overwhelming countermeasures” to protect its sovereignty as it condemned South Korea, the United States and Japan for their recent joint military exercises.

North Korea will “never overlook the moves of the U.S. and its followers to strengthen the military bloc ... but firmly defend the sovereignty, security and interests of the state and peace in the region through offensive and overwhelming countermeasures,” the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The ministry did not elaborate on what it meant by countermeasures.

On Saturday, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan wrapped up their first, three-day trilateral multi-domain military exercise, codenamed “Freedom Edge,” aimed at strengthening their deterrence against North Korean threats.

The three countries have staged combined maritime and aerial exercises before, but Freedom Edge was the first trilateral exercise held across multiple domains, including air, maritime, underwater and cyber.

Monday’s launch came five days after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over the sea off its east coast.

The North claimed the next day to have successfully conducted a multiple warhead missile test but the South dismissed that as a “deception,” saying the launch ended in failure when the missile exploded in midair.

The latest launch comes amid deepening military cooperation between North Korea and Russia after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” treaty during a summit last month in Pyongyang.

The pact includes a pledge by the two countries to offer military assistance “without delay” if either is attacked.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

One short-range ballistic missile was launched from the Jangyon area in South Hwanghae Province at about 5:05 a.m. in a northeastern direction, said the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS.

Another unidentified ballistic missile was launched at around 5:15 a.m, it added, without providing further details. 

“While strengthening our monitoring and vigilance against additional launches, our military is maintaining a full-readiness posture while sharing North Korean ballistic missile data with U.S. and Japanese authorities,” the JCS said in a text message to reporters.

The North vowed on Sunday to take “offensive and overwhelming countermeasures” to protect its sovereignty as it condemned South Korea, the United States and Japan for their recent joint military exercises.

North Korea will “never overlook the moves of the U.S. and its followers to strengthen the military bloc ... but firmly defend the sovereignty, security and interests of the state and peace in the region through offensive and overwhelming countermeasures,” the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

The ministry did not elaborate on what it meant by countermeasures.

On Saturday, South Korea, the U.S. and Japan wrapped up their first, three-day trilateral multi-domain military exercise, codenamed “Freedom Edge,” aimed at strengthening their deterrence against North Korean threats.

The three countries have staged combined maritime and aerial exercises before, but Freedom Edge was the first trilateral exercise held across multiple domains, including air, maritime, underwater and cyber.

Monday’s launch came five days after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over the sea off its east coast.

The North claimed the next day to have successfully conducted a multiple warhead missile test but the South dismissed that as a “deception,” saying the launch ended in failure when the missile exploded in midair.

The latest launch comes amid deepening military cooperation between North Korea and Russia after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” treaty during a summit last month in Pyongyang.

The pact includes a pledge by the two countries to offer military assistance “without delay” if either is attacked.

Edited by Mike Firn.

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

• Boeing victims relatives call on federal government to fine the company $25 billion over two crashes.
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• Richmond City Council approves Chevron refinery tax.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – June 19, 2024. Boeing victims relatives call on federal government to fine the company $25 billion over two crashes. appeared first on KPFA.

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

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Last fall, out of public view, the North Carolina Supreme Court squashed disciplinary action against two Republican judges who had admitted that they had violated the state’s judicial code of conduct, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the decisions.

One of the judges had ordered, without legal justification, that a witness be jailed. The other had escalated a courtroom argument with a defendant, which led to a police officer shooting the defendant to death. The Judicial Standards Commission, the arm of the state Supreme Court that investigates judicial misconduct by judges, had recommended that the court publicly reprimand both women. The majority-Republican court gave no public explanation for rejecting the recommendations — indeed, state law mandates that such decisions remain confidential.

The sources spoke to ProPublica on the condition of anonymity because many of the actions and decisions of both institutions are confidential and because the sources said they feared retaliation.

When it comes to disciplining judges, North Carolina is one of the most secretive states in America, according to data from the National Center for State Courts’ Center for Judicial Ethics. Over half of states make disciplinary proceedings against judges public once charges are filed with their judicial ethics commission. Another dozen make them public if they reach the state’s supreme court. North Carolina is one of only three states, in addition to the District of Columbia, to release information only at the last possible stage of the process — after the Supreme Court orders discipline.

Stephen Gillers, a professor emeritus at New York University’s law school who specializes in legal and judicial ethics, said that making some parts of disciplinary cases against judges confidential can be necessary to protect private or personal information. But North Carolina goes too far, he added. “While secrecy has a place in judicial discipline, it can be used to conceal wrongdoing,” Gillers said. “Once there is a finding of wrongdoing by a disciplinary commission, the case should become public.”

The North Carolina Supreme Court’s decisions not to publicly discipline the two judges, which have not previously been reported, appear to be the only instances in more than a decade in which the Supreme Court did not follow the commission’s recommendation to issue punishment. Those decisions come at a time of accusations and recriminations about politics influencing North Carolina’s high court. Last year, Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, sued the commission after it launched an investigation into comments she made suggesting that Republican justices were influenced by conservative ideology, remarks that she defended as free speech. And a Republican justice personally attacked Earls in a Supreme Court order in September. In addition, the year before, outside groups sought recusals of more than half of the court’s justices over various conflict-of-interest accusations.

Spokespeople for the North Carolina Supreme Court and the Judicial Standards Commission declined to comment or respond to a detailed list of questions.

Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University, explained that in the 2010s, North Carolina had policies designed to keep the judiciary above the political fray, such as nonpartisan judicial elections. However, the gradual dismantling of these policies by the Republican-controlled legislature has driven the court’s polarization, according to Hildebrand.

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Do you have any information about the North Carolina Supreme Court or state court system that we should know? Contact reporter Doug Bock Clark at doug.clark@propublica.org or 678-243-0784. He can be reached securely on Signal at 678-243-0784. If you’re concerned about confidentiality, check out our advice on the most secure ways to share tips.

“While we might long for the days when courts were perceived as being above politics, courts are very much a partisan battleground,” he said.

Bob Orr, a former Republican justice, said partisan disputes over the judicial standards process have intensified in recent years.

“The judicial standards process needs a major overhaul in that I don’t think it was set up to deal with the current political atmosphere that judges have been embroiled in,” said Orr, who back in the early 2000s was investigated and received a private warning from the then-Democratic-controlled commission over comments that it deemed to be an impermissible political endorsement. He left the Republican Party in 2021 after being a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump.

Orr added, “It’s important for all the decision-makers in the judicial standards process — the commission, its staff and the Supreme Court — to act in a nonpartisan way to increase trust in the judicial system.”

Since 2011, North Carolina’s Judicial Standards Commission has referred 19 cases to the Supreme Court for judicial discipline, according to the court’s annual reports. In that time, the court has issued 17 public disciplinary orders, ranging from reprimands to suspensions without pay.

Had the Supreme Court followed the commission’s recommendations in the cases of the two Republican judges, it would have meant publicly reprimanding them ahead of elections for both in 2024. Judge Lori Hamilton, a longtime Republican, had campaigned with the slogan, “the ideal conservative.” Judge Caroline Burnette had previously been a Democrat — but she switched her registration before her case got to the Supreme Court, according to public records.

In September 2021, Burnette was conducting a trial when she got into a shouting match with the defendant, Christopher Vaughan, who was facing charges of false imprisonment. Court recordings later published by WRAL News captured a three-minute argument, which escalated after Burnette told Vaughan to “shut up.” When Burnette ordered the bailiff to “take him,” Vaughan rushed Burnette. The bailiff blocked him, the two grappled, and the bailiff shouted that Vaughan had his gun. A police officer who was in the courtroom to testify shot Vaughan in the head, killing him, an incident that was widely reported.

The commission’s work is confidential, but sources say that it soon began investigating Burnette, who had potentially violated multiple parts of the judicial code, including the requirements that a “judge should maintain order and decorum in proceedings” and a “judge should be patient, dignified and courteous.” Burnette declined to comment. A spokesperson for the state court system said Burnette would not respond to ProPublica’s detailed list of questions.

Not long after, in November 2021, Hamilton was overseeing the trial of a man charged with sex crimes against minors. According to court transcripts, Hamilton accused the victims’ mother of bringing them to court late and previously being uncooperative with the state’s lawyers. “I’m going to take you into protective custody to ensure your appearance here at trial,” Hamilton told the mother, ordering that she be handcuffed, detained throughout the trial and denied an attorney. Hamilton also said that the victims should be turned over to Child Protective Services. Court staff were so unsure of how to execute their orders that the bailiff explained to Hamilton that they “don’t know how to book” the mother.

The mother of the victims, whose name is being withheld to protect the identities of her children, said she spent her four days of incarceration worrying about her daughters, crying and asking court staff, “How can you hold me if I’m not charged with nothing?”

The commission soon launched an investigation into Hamilton, sources say. She had potentially violated multiple canons, including that “a judge should uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary” and that a “judge should be faithful to the law and maintain professional competence in it.” In response to a detailed list of questions from ProPublica, Hamilton answered only one, which asked if she thought that her political affiliation had anything to do with the conservative majority of the Supreme Court going against the commission’s recommendation. “No, I do not,” she replied.

During the commission’s investigations and hearings process, both Hamilton and Burnette stipulated that they had violated the judicial code, according to sources. Those sources said that the commission sent the cases to the Supreme Court to determine final discipline and that the commission recommended that the court give them public reprimands. When the commission determines there to be minor violations, it issues a letter of caution or a verbal warning, which remains private. The vast majority of disciplinary action falls into these categories. But all judicial discipline serious enough to be issued by the Supreme Court becomes public, according to the rules of the commission.

Months after the Supreme Court decided in the fall of 2023 to let Hamilton and Burnette off without public consequences, it issued its most recent disciplinary order. In March 2024, the court concurred with the commission’s recommendation for punishment of Angela Foster, a Black Democratic judge who had pressured a court official to reduce a bond for her son and had taken over a courtroom reserved for other court officials, thereby delaying over 100 cases. The Supreme Court suspended her without pay for 120 days.

At the same time as the court was considering how to handle the two white Republican judges, the commission was weighing another fraught matter.

In March 2023, Earls, the Supreme Court’s lone Black justice and a Democrat, received a letter from the commission informing her that she was under investigation. The letter stated that Earls had been accused of disclosing “confidential information concerning matters being currently deliberated in conference by the Supreme Court.” If the commission found evidence of a serious violation, it could send the case to the Supreme Court, which would make a final determination and could go as far as to expel her.

At the center of the anonymous complaint was the allegation that Earls had told lawmakers and state bar members at two different meetings about proposed rule changes that would give more power to the Republican justices. The complaint, which was made after WRAL News published an article describing the meetings, also alleged that she’d provided confidential information to a reporter.

In her response to the letter, which later was filed in court, her lawyer argued that it had been standard practice for justices to discuss the court’s rule changes with affected parties and that no information had been leaked. Earls’ lawyer also wrote that if the matter proceeded to a hearing, Earls planned to make the investigation public and subpoena “current and former Justices” about their “actions.” In May, the commission dismissed the complaint, providing Earls with verbal and written warnings “to be mindful of your public comments,” according to court documents.

In June, Earls, the only person of color on the court, gave an interview to Law360 in which she criticized Chief Justice Paul Newby and other conservative justices for refusing to address the lack of diversity in the state’s court system. She revealed that Newby had effectively killed its Commission on Fairness and Equity by not reappointing its members and that he had ended implicit bias trainings for judges, which Earls had helped set up. Much of the interview was framed around a Law360 analysis and an outside study that found that the vast majority of state appellate court judges, and the attorneys arguing before them, were white and male. In reference to the findings, Earls said that “our court system, like any other court system, is made up of human beings and I believe the research that shows that we all have implicit biases.” She said that her five Republican colleagues “very much see themselves as a conservative bloc” and that “their allegiance is to their ideology, not to the institution.”

In August, Earls received another letter from the commission alerting her that it had “reopened” the former investigation. The letter warned: “Publicly alleging that another judge makes decisions based on a motivation not allowed under” the code, such as racial or political biases, without “definitive proof runs contrary to a judge’s duty to promote public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary.”

Rather than letting the investigation proceed in secret again, Earls sued the commission in federal court, seeking an injunction to stop “an on-going campaign” by the commission to “stifle the First Amendment free-speech rights of Justice Earls and expose her to punishment.”

Two weeks after the lawsuit was filed, Democratic state lawmakers held a press conference to call the investigation into Earls “a political hit job” — and one state representative accused Newby of pushing it, though he said he could not reveal his sources. Four sources knowledgeable about Newby’s or the commission’s actions told ProPublica that the chief justice encouraged the investigation. The sources requested anonymity because the inner workings of the commission are confidential and because they feared retaliation.

Newby and Earls declined to comment through a North Carolina Supreme Court spokesperson. Neither responded to questions submitted to the North Carolina Judicial Branch.

The lawsuit led to public outcry, which was fiercely critical of the investigation and which was partially fueled by the fact that Newby had himself made remarkably similar statements alleging that his Democratic colleagues were biased. In the summer of 2019, when Newby was a justice campaigning to become chief justice, he made a speech, first reported by WRAL News, in which he called Earls an “AOC” — referencing progressive U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He also accused Earls of wanting “to cause social change through our judicial branch,” suggested that she was part of a Democratic strategy to “sue till you’re blue” and warned, “See what kind of judicial activism occurs on your North Carolina court.”

After the speech, the commission, which at the time was under a Democratic court, fielded complaints about Newby. The existence of those complaints has not been previously reported. According to multiple sources, the commission issued Newby a confidential verbal warning, emphasizing he should not so overtly criticize his fellow justices again.

At the time, experts told news outlets that Newby’s statements about Earls were probably protected by the fact that he was campaigning, as the code allows justices greater leeway when seeking reelection. However, in 2023, Earls was also technically in campaign mode and subject to the same protections as Newby. According to Earls’ lawsuit, she had declared her candidacy for her next election many years in advance, as had become standard practice among justices.

Two sources with direct knowledge of the investigations into both Newby and Earls said that Earls faced more scrutiny in terms of both the length and depth of the investigative process. One of those sources, however, said that “there was no bias” in the treatment of Earls. The source chalked up the difference between the two investigations to the fact that in the intervening years, the commission had intensified efforts to rein in the justices as they became more openly contentious about their differing political views.

In January 2024, as Earls’ lawsuit barreled toward a trial, the commission abruptly dropped its investigation. It did not recommend the Supreme Court take any disciplinary action against her.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Doug Bock Clark.

Meanwhile there are even respectable, Establishment scholars who appear to have overcome their indoctrination or institutional discipline to express views on the current campaign in the eternal war of the Anglo-American Empire although at variance—if not deviance—from the positions they have been known to hold in the past or those that continue to prevail among the ruling class, its prelates, acolytes and fanatical hordes.

Tucker Carlson has continued to sail full speed ahead in the same manner with which he confronted the Establishment’s re-enactment of the Reichstag fire (1933) in 2021 and exhibited the strongest circumstantial evidence that the farce staged on 6 January was quite obviously anything but what the Establishment has insisted it was to this day. Then he exposed millions of traditionally ignorant US Americans to the intelligence and immanent sanity of the Russian federal president, Vladimir Putin. Just last week he released an extensive interview with Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. Although Sachs is probably still invited to parties and other events of the New York and Washington season, this prior preacher of shock therapy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union—of whose legal dissolution he was personally informed by US stooge Boris Yeltsin—has arrived, on his own it seems, at an independence he could scarcely have been accused of exhibiting for much of his career. That said, just because he has said things with which critical historically conscious people can even violently disagree does not mean that his basic intellectual integrity is fraudulent.

On the contrary, in the cult of individual personality that drives Western society there is also a compulsion to see every human as isomorphic with the verbal behaviour in which he or she engages. However since there is no immanent meaning in language—words—but only judged responses to verbal activity—it takes considerable energy and force to preserve dogmatic personalities of the kind with which we are routinely presented in mass media and wherever substantial power is exerted without corresponding challenge. What I mean is the judgement that anyone is inconsistent (as a liar or an idiot) relies on a more or less static and hence stereotypical or cliché-formed notion of the person whose behaviour is being judged. Hegel made this point more than two-hundred years ago in his journalistic essay “Who thinks abstractly?” (Wer denkt abstrakt?) It is not necessary to take vows of holy matrimony in order to have intimate and confidential relations—although as I child I did believe that children were mysteriously generated by the legal act.

The education of Jeffrey Sachs, although far from complete, induced him to repudiate his role in the destruction of the Soviet economy while sitting on a New York Times panel discussing China. He was heavily criticized for that as well as his unwillingness to categorically condemn the Chinese State—especially by Western standards. However the economist is still ready to believe that the UN Sustainability Goals are benevolent policies driven by the sincere pursuit of human welfare. It appears that he does not advertise his destructive role in post-Soviet Eurasia. In speaking to Tucker Carlson he retained the positive version of his political-economic engagement. However he recounted an element of his epiphany when the very policy recommendations deemed a success in Poland (for reasons that are too extensive to explain here) were categorically rejected when it came to restoring Russia to the Western political-economic fold. The refusal of his masters to approve recommendations he had successfully implemented in the CIA-infested Catholic republic east of the Oder was by his own admission a stage of his Kairos. Apparently oblivious to actual Polish politics he assumed—not unlike the worshippers of Ludwig Erhard in Germany—that wonders come from liberal economics in lieu of canonized saints or the deity itself. This failure does not invalidate the lesson he learned, namely that the masters’ were not about to let their servant treat the hereditary enemy of Anglo-American Empire (I find hegemony an insufferable euphemism) in any other manner than destructive. Perhaps it should be said here that the very intelligence which elevated Jeffrey Sachs to the professorship and fellowship of Harvard University at such an early age was complemented by the spiritual-intellectual dependency sought in the loyal cadre. Repeatedly during the interview Professor Sachs refers to himself as naive or perhaps naive. That naïveté is cultivated among the bright, once talent-spotters have recruited them for the Establishment. He called the “neo-cons” “true believers”—a term popularized by Erich Fromm—but seems unable to recognise that he too was a true believer, spoiled with rewards that confirmed his own merit but ultimately had little to do with his undeniable intellectual capacity.

Jeffrey Sachs, as a meanwhile marginalized if not banned regime critic, is important for two reasons. In the first place the credibility he enjoys because of his decades of devotion to the ruling cult lends some authority to the criticisms raised by those with little or no access to the apparatus of power. In the second place, Professor Sachs provides evidence of the permeability of a certain—albeit small—segment of the Establishment. His statements are evidence of the mendacity of his masters and ours. Although, unlike Tucker Carlson, Jeffrey Sachs is not willing to call his masters evil, he has at least reached the point of calling them insane. If we need proof that the evil 1% ought to be neutralized (to adopt a term favoured in those heights) there is at least testimony that the insanity requires us to act in our own defence.

This interview was not unlike the Putin interview in one respect. Both Vladimir Putin and Jeffrey Sachs live in the world of diplomacy, civilized behaviour even among antagonists. Although of very different rank and station, Putin and Sachs demonstrate that there are limits to what one may say in public. The conversation Tucker Carlson conducted permitted him to interpolate or extrapolate from the statements made by his interlocutor. Hence we cannot know how critical Professor Sachs really is or how much he really understands beyond the framework his precocious academic career constructed.

This is no where more evident than in the synthesis by which Professor Sachs asserts that none of the current crisis arose from spontaneous errors or miscalculations. On the contrary he argues very clearly that today’s brinkmanship derives at least from the policies (and culture) of Old Harrovian Henry Temple, 3d Viscount Palmerston and the Crimean War. The Old Etonian, David Cameron, who bowled Britain’s first innings against Russia until 2016 has continued that tradition in his assault as foreign secretary—recently on record as calling for direct assaults on Russia with British (and NATO) weaponry. In a discussion of his conclusions as chair of a committee appointed to investigate the origins of the so-called COVID-19 pandemic, Sachs traced the story back at least to 2008 and the ambiguity of US regime claims to research “biodefense”. He also asserted that the 1963 assassination of POTUS John F. Kennedy could no longer be explained credibly by the fantastic story recorded and certified by the late Chief Justice Earl Warren et al. Moreover he concurred with a view meanwhile widely held that the assassination was a coup d’etat at least organized by the US national security apparatus (e.g. CIA). In all these Candide-like remarks—with Pangloss implied—Jeffrey Sachs demonstrated that even the most well-rewarded prodigies can under certain circumstances be induced to question many if not all of the fundamental assumptions by which they were recruited.

Another admission—certainly rare among those of his rank and station—is that he actually values the lives of his family beyond the balance sheets and capital accounts with which political economy is obsessed. The idea that atomic war should be avoided because it kills the innocent (not necessarily the warriors) is foreign to any living Western politician or Establishment intellectual. As in the case of the settler-colonial regime in Palestine, the ideological standard is that mass killing of women and children “is worth it” (as the finally late Madeleine Albright proudly proclaimed for half a million dead Iraqi children). Sadism is an implicit prerequisite for high office and senior civil or military service. Corporations have departments dedicated to it. For Jeffrey Sachs the annihilation of his children and all the children like his was reason enough to oppose the insanity of the ruling oligarchy.

Nonetheless as thoroughly confessional and sincere as Professor Sachs was in his conversation with Tucker Carlson, there were numerous loose ends. Perhaps the loosest of those is the de-contextualization of George Kennan’s anti-Sovietism. While it is true that in later years Kennan criticized much of the Establishment policy toward the Soviet Union he never went so far as to violate the sanctity of Chatham House, so to speak. Candidly this true believer accurately asserted that without military force the US would not be able to retain control over some 60% of the world’s consumption with 4% of its population. He also predicted that the damage the West had done to the Soviet Union would require at least 20 years to repair. In other words those who had ultimately backed the Hitler Wehrmacht as a means of destroying the Soviet Union had succeeded in creating the living conditions claimed to be the fruits of socialism. When despite that devastation the Soviet Union recovered ahead of schedule, the war intensified.

By missing the essence of Kennan’s policy papers, Jeffrey Sachs fails to understand that the atomic weapons developed by the Manhattan Project— the largest single government research project at the time—were always intended for use against the Soviet Union, not against the German Reich or Japanese empire. Perhaps he never saw the de-classified Sandia oral history of US strategic policy. Yet Curtis LeMay was really no exception among the centurions. It was the Soviet Union that preserved what we in the West experienced to varying degrees as peace and prosperity, not the US. Even the story of the arms race taught in the West conceals this fact so as to blame the USSR for what was always unilateral, not mutually, assured destruction.

What was the fundamental change in 1989? Professor Sachs says it was the “neo-con” ascendency. However Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were already embedded in the Nixon administration. Richard Holbrooke and his slightly older roommate began their careers as Phoenix counter-insurgency managers in the Mekong Delta (VietnamI)—that is junior mass murderers for the CIA before the official “neo-con” tracts were published. The dramatis personae of American empire has been incestuously linked to Britannia’s (in fact the City of London) destiny ever since Cecil Rhodes and Lord Rothschild founded what would become the Royal Institute of International Affairs franchise and the Council on Foreign Relations. A century of continuous class war, for convenience launched in 1913 with such paragons of legislation as the Federal Reserve Act and the South African Native Lands Act, has been waged by the “banking” class, guided by its dogma of world population reduction. In 1989, the triumph of the 1.0% meant that the horrific labour (human) intensive industrialization process could finally be transcended. The merger of eugenics and ecology, exemplified in the Club of Rome, prepared the ideological foundation for elimination of 20-40% of the world’s population, instead of merely 20% of selected target populations (China, Soviet Union, Central America, African states). The United Nations organisation—mainly the plethora of “specialized agencies” and the Anglo-American dominated Security Council and Secretariat—provided deniability for genocide in Korea, Indochina, Indonesia and the Congo or Haiti and of course Palestine. What seems unmentionable is the global enclosures program being implemented behind the facade of UN Sustainable Development Goals. The WHO—originally founded as a shell organization for the Rockefeller petrochemical pharmaceuticals cartel—has openly taken the point for biochemical herd culling/ eradication. The pejoratively denoted “Woke” ideology has emerged very much like Huxley and Orwell described—under the pretext of a vacuous and hypocritical morality, human kind are to be replaced by NCEs, i.e. numerically controlled entities. The abolition of biological sex, both in microsocial and macrosocial senses, accompanies the total commodification of “identity”. It only takes a cogent sense of consistency to see that when there are no essentially human qualities, then there can be no human rights.

Fictive wealth can be indefinitely maintained by the minuscule tribe of monsters with the elimination of sufficient numbers of human beings (20-40% or more). Injecting genetically-engineered toxins into a billion people at a time is entirely consistent with pushing Russia into what could be politely called an atomic exchange.

To the extent Russia and China oppose this nihilism it is because, unlike the West, they have actually been on the receiving end of previous culling campaigns (millions murdered by Western warrior-terrorists). However even there one can hear the grunts of members in the “big club”. Resistance to evil and insanity is far from uniform, especially among those committed to AI and contract pharmaceuticals manufacture.

Nikki Haley is meanwhile standing in for that character played by Slim Pickens in Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. As can be seen on the banks of the Hudson, Thames, Seine and Spree, between the River Jordan and the sea, the entire Western political class is compromised and or complicit in this accelerating democide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by T.P. Wilkinson.

During the annual Jerusalem Day Flag March, which commemorates the June 5 capture of East Jerusalem by Israeli forces in the 1967 war, Israeli settlers and far right protesters assaulted Palestinian freelance journalist Saif Kwasmi, who contributes to the local news agency Al-Asiman News, and Israeli journalist Nir Hasson, a reporter for the Israeli daily Haaretz, according to the journalists’ employers, and Kwasmi and Hasson, who spoke to CPJ in person and on the phone on June 5 and 6, respectively.

“Israeli security forces stood idly by while protesters harassed and assaulted Palestinian and Israeli journalists who were reporting on the march. Not only did they fail to do their duty, but they blamed Palestinian journalist Saif Kwasmi for protecting himself from aggression,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martìnez de la Serna. “We call on Israeli authorities to investigate these incidents, identify the culprits and hold them to account.”  

Kwasmi told CPJ that he was filming the closure of local shops in Jerusalem’s Old City after Israeli police ordered the businesses to shut down during the march.

“I was wearing my vest marked with the word ‘press’ and the card given to us by the police spokesperson. A group of young Israeli settlers started to harass us and tried to attack (Palestinian journalist) Diala Jweihan. They began to push me and tried to snatch my cell phone. I had to protect myself and tried to push them away from us because there were more than 20 settlers assaulting us,” Kwasmi said.

Kwasmi explained that the Israeli border police officers did nothing to assist them until they realized that an Israeli journalist (Nir Hasson) was also under attack. Only then did they begin to push settlers away. 

“An Israeli police officer started hitting me and took me to a side street to arrest me. I told him that I am a journalist and produced my card. They escorted the journalists outside of the Old City and to a place for journalists,” Kwasmi explained. 

Later that day, two border police officers approached Kwasmi at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate and questioned him for about half an hour about his work and his reason for being there. A police commander and a member of the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet subsequently joined them and accused Kwasmi of incitement, a claim that he denied. Kwasmi told them he is a journalist and holds a card from the Israeli Journalists’ Union, but they told him that in order to work as a journalist he needs permission from the Israeli Government Press Office.    

A witness from CPJ who was at the march saw Israeli radical activist Yedydya Epstein, who is famous for disrupting the work of Al-Jazeera reporters in Israel, on the scene filming the questioning of Kwasmi and urging the police to arrest him.

For his part, Haaretz reporter Nir Hasson told CPJ that, hours before the start of the march, a group of Israeli settlers were marching on Jerusalem’s Old City terrorizing the locals and attacking the journalists systematically to prevent them from covering the attacks on the local residents.

“At some point the settlers attacked Saif and two other journalists in front of Israeli border police officers who just stood there and did nothing at first so I had to step in to stop the attack. I was pushed to the ground and beaten by the settlers. I didn’t sustain any serious injuries,” Hasson said.

Hasson added that the Israeli police didn’t allow journalists to work freely and failed to protect them.

“They gathered all the journalists in a place away from settlers instead of stopping the attackers. They prevented journalists from covering what was happening to the local residents,” he said.  

According to CPJ research, Israeli police officers briefly detained and assaulted Kwasmi in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque in April 2024. 

CPJ had documented numerous assaults on journalists since the start of the Israel-Gaza war on October 7.

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

On May 29, an unknown number of unidentified gunmen on three motorbikes stopped Mastoi, a reporter for Sindh News TV and Times News media outlets, and shot him four times while he was on his way home in Rohri town, located in Pakistan’s Sukkur District, according to press freedom nonprofit the Pakistan Press Foundation and the independent daily Dawn. The armed men also beat Pitafi, a cameraman accompanying Mastoi during the attack, according to the Pakistan Press Foundation.

On May 30, armed men on two motorbikes shot Ikhlaq while he was returning to his native town Bewal from Gujar Khan city in Punjab province, according to media reports. The independent daily newspaper Nation reported that Ikhlaq is a correspondent for the Daily Express and a member of the Bewal Khan Press Club.

“Pakistani authorities must swiftly investigate the attacks on journalists Haider Mastoi, Chaudhry Ikhlaq, and Khan Muhammad Pitafi, and hold the perpetrators to account,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government must stop this alarming rise in attacks against journalists, and end this cycle of impunity that fuels a culture of violence against Pakistan media.”

Pakistan remains politically volatile after a February election—marred by campaign violence and widely described as flawed—led to the formation of a coalition government.

Although the motive behind the attacks on the journalists remains unclear, media reports indicated that Ikhlaq had received death threats from local influential individuals for his critical coverage of Pakistani nationals who have left the country. 

According to reports, Mastoi and Ikhlaq are in stable condition and are recovering in the hospital.

Sukkur police have detained an unidentified number of suspects in connection with the attack on Mastoi, according to Rauf Abbasi, a local journalist in Sukkur, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Earlier in May, four journalists were killed in separate incidents in Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. CPJ is investigating whether the journalists were killed in retaliation for their reporting.

Police in Sindh and Punjab provinces did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment about the attacks on Mastoi and Ikhlaq.

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

At Morehouse College, students and faculty were divided over inviting President Joe Biden to receive an honorary degree and give a speech at the school’s commencement ceremony. Morehouse valedictorian DeAngelo Fletcher, who had a Palestinian flag affixed to his graduation cap, called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza during his speech, and assistant professor of sociology Taura Taylor stood with her fist raised, facing away from Biden as he addressed the crowd. “I wanted to take it upon myself to, one, stand up for my principles, and then also kind of stand in solidarity for my students as well as my other fellow faculty members who felt that we were caught in this moment where it seemed like we, as a community, selected Biden, when we all did not,” says Taylor. We also speak with Samuel Livingston, an associate professor of Africana studies, who held a flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo behind Biden as he spoke. “We held up the flag because the people of the Congo do not get enough media attention in terms of the active genocide that the United States is supporting through its support of Rwanda,” says Livingston. “Congo deserves justice, reparations from the United States for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, conspiring in that assassination, and the people today deserve a country that is built on peace and justice.”

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

• Day two of jury selection in Trump New York hush money criminal trial.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson defies far-right opposition to push Ukraine, Israel aid package.
• Biden pushed economic vision in first leg of three day campaign push in Pennsylvania.
• House Republicans send impeachment articles against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to Senate.
• California homeless encampment removal bill fails to clear legislative committee. 
• Activists push for housing bond for California fall election.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – April 16, 2024 Day two of jury selection in Trump New York hush money criminal trial. appeared first on KPFA.

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