“He feedeth on ashes: a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? 20 He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?” Isaiah 44:20”

My maternal family, being Jews in 1930s Germany, were forced to affix yellow stars upon their clothing and were subject to daily public harassment. Finally, my mother and her sister, a few small family valuables sown by their mother into the lining of their clothes, escaped the madness on a Kindertransport, their father arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

At present, and since the inception of the Zionist state, in the name of those who survived Nazi inflicted brutality and blood lust, Palestinians suffer the Zionist’s version of crimes against humanity — that includes a type of Final Solution being enacted upon the inhabitants of Gaza.

War, in general, should be as outmoded among people possessed of heart, mind, and soul as is cannibalism, incest, and public lynching. Yet the political elite of the West not only permit Israel to perpetrate genocide but supply the weaponry that enable mass slaughter.

While, in the US, ICE thugs, with jackboots for minds, come for blameless human beings, as the Gestapo did my grandfather, as the worst among us cheer them on. The concept of Alligator Alcatraz (and the fact MAGA miscreants find it all so amusing) seems like a comic book version of Nazi evil. Himmel might have averred, “Das ist ein bisschen stark! Ist das eine Art Witz”! (“That’s a bit much! Is this some kind of a joke?”). The joke would have gone over like a flaming zeppelin at a Berghof dinner party.

Treblinka, Hiroshima, Wounded Knee and the US government-planned mass starvation of people of the American Great Plains, and Gaza are regarded as aberrations in human events. Yet, on closer examination, the demarcation point between civilization and human barbarity is nebulous at best.

Which side, one should ask oneself, again and again, of the tattered and torn divide are you on?

(Pictured: My son and I, in Berlin, in 2019, standing in front of the house stolen from our family by the Nazis. Palestinians, throughout Israel, could stage their version of the scene.)

Every action nations commit in war would be a crime in times of peace in a just society. Israeli actions, committed, by the IDF and the Zionist settler class, even before the Gaza genocide campaign, transgressed the boundaries of human decency. It is known, abused people, long after their horrible experiences, can become abusers. But whole societies? A cultural mythos of perpetual victimhood, it seems, can lead a people, once wronged, to become convinced they can do no wrong. Hence, the tragedy of a culture of grievance creates a compassion-bereft position towards outsiders.

A late uncle of mine, when a Jewish boy growing up in The Bronx in the 1920s, he and his brothers had to cross through treacherous-to-outsiders Irish, Black, and Italian city blocks when returning from school and other daily rounds. Often, they had to dodge barrages of thrown rocks and other threats to bodily safety. In adulthood, the European Holocaust re-enforced his animus toward the other and he conflated the survival of global Jewry with the existence of Israel.

Uncle Sol would pace the house and he was given to fulminate, even sans context, “an Arab is a Jew with his brains knocked out. Bomb them, that is all they understand.”

As a middle aged and elderly man, he was still dodging stones. His younger brother’s, an orthodox Jew by conviction, children became Israeli citizens and joined the ethnocentric ranks of the Zionist settler class. From the Bronx to Ramallah, through the generations, the madness perpetuates.

Uncle Sol, in his last years, as he descended into Alzheimer’s related dementia, hallucinated Palestinians marauders moved in stealth through his house; a stone-throwing Intifada of the mind shook the old man to his very core. There were peaceful days when he minded an imaginary nursery (he had attended to the care of his younger brother). He was prone to shouting, “Leave the children alone! Let them play!” How is it possible, by his bunker mentality worldview, that Palestinian children could not be viewed as human and that they were deserving of a homeland and a childhood?

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me…” — Exodus 20:5.

Problematic passage, to say the least. How does one transform the rage and concomitant tragedy that seems to be passed forward by consanguinity. Furies rule the blood. Is there anything under heaven that will end the blood-drenched madness inherent to generational trauma turned by-reflex into animus?

My DNA reveals, my ancestors were European e.g., Spanish, French, Germanic, with four percent coming from Northern Iraq and Iran. This is crucial: nada from ancient Israel. How is it I have a “right to return” to a land where my ancestors never dwelled but Palestinians, whose blood states that they are descendants of the original Jews of the Old Testament are forbidden to return to the land stolen from them?

Whenever the concept of a One State Solution is suggested to Zionists, they are stricken by the thought that Palestinians, now a majority of the population, would inflict the same brutal, dehumanizing treatment on Jewish citizens that they suffered during Zionist rule. In the childhood city of my birth, Birmingham, Alabama, the White overclass, during the civil rights era, expressed similar trepidation thus resisted granting African-Americans equal rights and protection under the law. The same mindset ruled Apartheid South Africa. The psychological projection is a de facto admission of guilt.

Israel is bleeding population. A new Exodus is extant. Jews, in large numbers, are leaving the Zionist state. Perpetrating Genocide and other acts of perpetual aggression have bankrupted Israeli society, both economically and morally. As the Ashkenazi elite exit the country, the zealots remain, and like my Uncle Sol, in his decline, they are dwelling in an hallucinated, and, in steep decline, version of the world.

Regarding a related false and death-besotted cultural mythos:

It is all over but Trump’s et al. palaver in public declaration and SHOUTING in pixel

Independence Day in the US… the lie of the mind of it all. More than two and a half centuries of the lie. Independence from the crown; then subservience to the moneyed class. Life (taking the lives of the original people of the land). Liberty (being at liberty to be exploited by those whose idea of liberty is enslavement and land theft). The pursuit of happiness (perhaps the most profound delusion promulgated there is manic pursuit – but scant happiness is on display. Only the micro frauds that maintain the macro fraud).

An imposter culture instructs – coerces the individual – to manufacture an imposter self – a social mask so that the culture itself does not destroy you.

Result: The grifter, the predator capitalist, the hollow to the core politician, and the anxious and depressed. Do you want to drive yourself even crazier and make the world even worse in its madness. Refuse to admit your own madness and the madness of simply being human unlooses upon the world.

When you face the abyss – that is, the realization we, all of us, are alone. When you are devoured by it – that is where and when you gain the company of others who feel and grieve for the sadness of the earth; of those who transform mortification witnessing human folly into humor and poetry. Then welcome home, lost and weary traveler. You have gained independence. You have shaken off dependence on the American lie.

In the macro sense; The lies promote nationalism in general; of Zionism; of militarism; of earth decimating, soul-defying cultures of greed and exploitation.

Once, the rancid lies have gone to compost, the green of the novel can rise and bloom. A dreams, yes. But so are the nightmares that are self-resonate feedback loops of past and ongoing tragedy. The legacy of violence begetting violent reprisal is as human and tragic as human and tragic can be. Moving forward, we have a choice: implement a just peace or else be plagued, in perpetuity, by endless torment inflicted by grievance-maddened furies.

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man by Salvador Dalí

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Philip A. Faruggio.

Through the looking glass.

Mike Ferner, of Veterans For Peace, threw blood at the US mission to the UN today: “Here, United States, have some blood! You like shedding it all over the world so much? There you go! How about some blood? A small amount of the blood — the blood money — that corporations make taking us to war all the time. No. More. Killing. Please. Stop it.”

He and 28 others were reportedly arrested today. He had been participated in #FastForGaza

Most arrests took place at the Israeli mission to the UN where a mass action was. Joy Metzler, co-founder of Servicemembers For Ceasefire, was among those arrested there. She’s been doing #FastForGaza outside the US mission to the UN for the last 40 days. They limited themselves to “250 calories per day, considered medically to be a starvation diet and the amount reported early this year as the average available” to Palestinians in Gaza. Joy left the Air Force and became a conscientious objector, citing US aggression in the Middle East and the continued ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine and the ongoing mass massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.

One of the last times I saw Mike he was railing about “fuckers” killing “fucking babies”.

Mike is a former Navy corpsman and author of Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq. Mike participated in the 40-day #FastForGaza until he had to be taken to the ER a few weeks ago. I repeatedly asked the UN about the fasters and if UNSG António Guterres would meet with them, but he never did: 35 Days of Fasting: UN Secretary General Won’t Meet With Gaza Hunger Strikers…

While I was in NYC recently, I repeatedly questioned the UN Secretary General’s spokespersons about Gaza and if he would meet with the Veterans and Allies who are on day 35 of a 40 day fast in front of the UN — it ends Monday — as well as other issues: Read full story.

In contrast to the lack of coverage of the Fast For Gaza, in 1965, Roger Allen LaPorte immolated himself outside the UN over war, resulting a front page New York Times piece (self-immolators against the Iraq invasion were largely ignored): Holocaust, Immolation, Sacrifice and “An Extreme Act of Protest”.

[Aaron Bushnell immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., a year ago today. A slightly edited version of this article appeared in the Nov/Dec 2024 issue of The Capitol Hill Citizen — which is only available in print. Read full story.

• Thanks to folks who took videos and Kelley Lane for editing.

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

Activists from around the world are arriving in Egypt ahead of the Global March to Gaza, set to launch June 15, when thousands plan to march to the Rafah border to call for an end to Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and its blockade of the territory. Dozens who flew to Cairo for the march have reportedly been detained, interrogated and deported by Egyptian security forces, but organizers say the event will proceed as planned. Former U.S. diplomat Hala Rharrit, who is taking part in the march, spoke with Democracy Now! earlier this week and said she could not turn a “blind eye” to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. “What type of world are we going to be allowing our children to grow up in, if we stand by while an entire civilian population is forcibly starved?” Rharrit asks.

Rharrit was the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department before she resigned in 2024 to protest the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. She accuses her former colleague Matthew Miller of “careerism” after he recently admitted on a podcast that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, even though he regularly denied that while serving as a spokesperson for the State Department under Biden.

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

Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their ‘criticisms’ of the genocide – just as they earlier coordinated on their support for the slaughter

After 19 months of being presented with dissembling accounts of Gaza from their governments, western publics are now being served up a different – but equally deceitful – narrative.

With the finishing line in sight for Israel’s programme of genocidal ethnic cleansing, the West’s Gaza script is being hastily rewritten. But make no mistake: it is the same web of self-serving lies.

As if under the direction of a hidden conductor, Britain, France and Canada – key US allies – erupted this week into a chorus of condemnation of Israel.

They called Israel’s plans to level the last fragments of Gaza still standing “disproportionate”, while Israel’s intensification of its months-long starvation of more than two million Palestinian civilians was “intolerable”.

The change of tone was preceded, as I noted in these pages last week, by new, harsher language against Israel from the western press corps.

The establishment media’s narrative had to shift first, so that the sudden outpouring of moral and political concern at Gaza’s suffering from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney – after more than a year and a half of indifference – did not appear too abrupt, or too strange.

They are acting as if some corner has been turned in Israel’s genocide. But genocides don’t have corners. They just progress relentlessly until stopped.

The media and politicians are carefully managing any cognitive dissonance for their publics.

But the deeper reality is that western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their “criticisms” of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – just as they earlier coordinated their support for it.

As much was conceded by a senior Israeli official to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Referring to the sudden change of tone, he said: “The past 24 hours were all part of a planned ambush we knew about. This was a coordinated sequence of moves ahead of the EU meeting in Brussels, and thanks to joint efforts by our ambassadors and the foreign minister, we managed to moderate the outcome.”

The handwringing is just another bit of stagecraft, little different from the earlier mix of silence and talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself”. And it is to the same purpose: to buy Israel time to “finish the job” – that is, to complete its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The West is still promoting phoney “debates”, entirely confected by Israel, about whether Hamas is stealing aid, what constitutes sufficient aid, and how that aid should be delivered.

It is all meant as noise, to distract us from the only pertinent issue: that Israel is committing genocide by slaughtering and starving Gaza’s population, as the West has aided and abetted that genocide.

PR exercise

With stocks of food completely exhausted by Israel’s blockade, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC on Tuesday that some 14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours without immediate aid reaching them.

The longer-term prognosis is bleaker still.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to let in a trickle of aid, releasing five trucks, some containing baby formula, from the thousands of vehicles Israel has held up at entry points for nearly three months. That was less than one percent of the number of trucks experts say must enter daily just to keep deadly starvation at bay.

On Tuesday, as the clamour grew, the number of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza reportedly climbed to nearly 100 – or less than a fifth of the bare minimum. None of the aid was reported to have reached the enclave’s population by the time of writing.

Netanyahu was clear to the Israeli public – most of whom appear enthusiastic for the engineered starvation to continue – that he was not doing this out of any humanitarian impulse.

This was purely a public relations exercise to hold western capitals in check, he said. The goal was to ease the demands on these leaders from their own publics to penalise Israel and stop the continuing slaughter of Gaza’s population.

Or as Netanyahu put it: “Our best friends worldwide, the most pro-Israel senators [in the US] … they tell us they’re providing all the aid, weapons, support and protection in the UN Security Council, but they can’t support images of mass hunger.”

Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was even clearer: “On our way to destroying Hamas, we are destroying everything that’s left of the [Gaza] Strip.” He also spoke of “cleansing” the enclave.

‘Back to the Stone Age’

Western publics have been watching this destruction unfold for the past 19 months – or at least they’ve seen partial snapshots, when the West’s establishment media has bothered to report on the slaughter.

Israel has systematically eradicated everything necessary for the survival of Gaza’s people: their homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries, water systems and community kitchens.

Israel has finally implemented what it had been threatening for 20 years to do to the Palestinian people if they refused to be ethnically cleansed from their homeland. It has sent them “back to the Stone Age”.

A survey of the world’s leading genocide scholars published last week by the Dutch newspaper NRC found that all conclusively agreed Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Most think the genocide has reached its final stages.

This week, Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s main centrist party and a former deputy head of the Israeli military, expressed the same sentiments in more graphic form. He accused the government of “killing babies as a hobby”. Predictably, Netanyahu accused Golan of “antisemitism”.

The joint statement from Starmer, Macron and Carney was far tamer, of course – and was greeted by Netanyahu with a relatively muted response that the three leaders were giving Hamas a “huge prize”.

Their statement noted: “The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable.” Presumably, until now, they have viewed the hellscape endured by Gaza’s Palestinians for a year and a half as “tolerable”.

David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary who in the midst of the genocide was happy to be photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu, opined in parliament this week that Gaza was facing a “dark new phase”.

That’s a convenient interpretation for him. In truth, it’s been midnight in Gaza for a very long time.

A senior European diplomatic source involved in the discussions between the three leaders told the BBC that their new tone reflected a “real sense of growing political anger at the humanitarian situation, of a line being crossed, and of this Israeli government appearing to act with impunity”.

This should serve as a reminder that until now, western capitals were fine with all the other lines crossed by Israel, including its destruction of most of Gaza’s homes; its eradication of Gaza’s hospitals and other essential humanitarian infrastructure; its herding of Palestinian civilians into “safe” zones, only to bomb them there; its slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children; and its active starvation of a population of more than two million.

Played for fools

The three western leaders are now threatening to take “further concrete actions” against Israel, including what they term “targeted sanctions”.

If that sounds positive, think again. The European Union and Britain have dithered for decades about whether and how to label goods imported from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The existence of these ever-expanding settlements, built on stolen Palestinian territory and blocking the creation of a Palestinian state, is a war crime; no country should be aiding them.

In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that it must be made clear to European consumers which products come from Israel and which from the settlements.

In all that time, European officials never considered a ban on products from the settlements, let alone “targeted sanctions” on Israel, even though the illegality of the settlements is unambiguous. In fact, officials have readily smeared those calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel as “Jew haters” and “antisemites”.

The truth is that western leaders and establishment media are playing us for fools once again, just as they have been for the past 19 months.

“Further concrete actions” suggest that there are already concrete actions imposed on Israel. That’s the same Israel that recently finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest. Protesters who call for Israel to be excluded from the competition – as Russia has been for invading Ukraine – are smeared and denounced.

When western leaders can’t even impose a meaningful symbolic penalty on Israel, why should we believe they are capable of taking substantive action against it?

No will for action

On Tuesday, it became clearer what the UK meant by “concrete actions”. The Israeli ambassador was called in for what we were told was a dressing down. She must be quaking.

And Britain suspended – that is, delayed – negotiations on a new free trade agreement, a proposed expansion of Britain’s already extensive trading ties with Israel. Those talks can doubtless wait a few months.

Meanwhile, 17 European Union members out of 27 voted to review the legal basis of the EU–Israel Association Agreement – providing Israel with special trading status – though a very unlikely consensus would be needed to actually revoke it.

Such a review to see if Israel is showing “respect for human rights and democratic principles” is simple time-wasting. Investigations last year showed it was committing widespread atrocities and crimes against humanity.

Speaking to the British parliament, Lammy said: “The Netanyahu government’s actions have made this necessary.”

There are plenty of far more serious “concrete actions” that Britain and other western capitals could take, and could have taken many months ago.

A flavour was provided by Britain and the EU on Tuesday when they announced sweeping additional sanctions on Russia – not for committing a genocide, but for hesitating over a ceasefire with Ukraine.

Ultimately, the West wants to punish Moscow for refusing to return the territories in Ukraine that it occupies – something western powers have never meaningfully required of Israel, even though Israel has been occupying the Palestinian territories for decades.

The new sanctions on Russia target entities supporting its military efforts and energy exports – on top of existing severe economic sanctions and an oil embargo. Nothing even vaguely comparable is being proposed for Israel.

The UK and Europe could have stopped providing Israel with the weapons to butcher Palestinian children in Gaza. Back in September, Starmer promised to cut arms sales to Israel by around eight percent – but his government actually sent more weapons to arm Israel’s genocide in the three months that followed than the Tories did in the entire period between 2020 and 2023.

Britain could also stop transporting other countries’ weapons and carrying out surveillance flights over Gaza on Israel’s behalf. Flight tracking information showed that on one night this week, the UK sent a military transport plane, which can carry weapons and soldiers, from a Royal Air Force base on Cyprus to Tel Aviv, and then dispatched a spy plane over Gaza to collect intelligence to assist Israel in its slaughter.

Britain could, of course, take the “concrete action” of recognising the state of Palestine, as Ireland and Spain have already done – and it could do so at a moment’s notice.

The UK could impose sanctions on Israeli government ministers. It could declare its readiness to enforce Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes, in line with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, if he visits Britain. And it could deny Israel access to sporting events, turning it into a pariah state, as was done to Russia.

It could announce that any Britons returning from military service in Gaza risk arrest and prosecution for war crimes.

And of course, the UK could impose sweeping economic sanctions on Israel, again as was done to Russia.

All of these “concrete actions”, and more, could be easily implemented. The truth is there is no political will to do it. There is simply a desire for better public relations, for putting a better gloss on Britain’s complicity in a genocide that can no longer be hidden.

Wolf exposed

The problem for the West is that Israel now stands stripped of the lamb’s clothing in which it has been adorned by western capitals for decades.

Israel is all too evidently a predatory wolf. Its brutal, colonial behaviours towards the Palestinian people are fully on show. There is no hiding place.

This is why Netanyahu and western leaders are now engaged in an increasingly difficult tango. The colonial, apartheid, genocidal project of Israel – the West’s militarised client-bully in the oil-rich Middle East – needs to be protected.

Until now, that had involved western leaders like Starmer deflecting criticism of Israel’s crimes, as well as British complicity. It involved endlessly and mindlessly reciting Israel’s “right to defend itself”, and the need to “eliminate Hamas”.

But the endgame of Israel’s genocide involves starving two million people to death – or forcing them out of Gaza, whichever comes first. Neither is compatible with the goals western politicians have been selling us.

So the new narrative must accentuate Netanyahu’s personal responsibility for the carnage – as though the genocide is not the logical endpoint of everything Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people for many decades.

Most Israelis are on board, too, with the genocide. The only meaningful voices of dissent are from the families of the Israeli hostages – and then chiefly because of the danger posed to their loved ones by Israel’s assault.

The aim of Starmer, Macron and Carney is to craft a new narrative, in which they claim to have only belatedly realised that Netanyahu has “gone too far” and that he needs to be reined in. They can then gradually up the noise against the Israeli prime minister, lobby Israel to change tack, and, when it resists or demurs, be seen to press Washington for “concrete action”.

The new narrative, unlike the worn-thin old one, can be spun out for yet more weeks or months – which may be just long enough to get the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza either over the finish line, or near enough as to make no difference.

That is the hope – yes, hope – in western capitals.

Blood on their hands

Starmer, Macron and Carney’s new make-believe narrative has several advantages. It washes Gaza’s blood from their hands. They were deceived. They were too charitable. Vital domestic struggles against antisemitism distracted them.

It lays the blame squarely at the feet of one man: Netanyahu.

Without him, a violent, highly militarised, apartheid state of Israel can continue as before, as though the genocide was an unfortunate misstep in Israel’s otherwise unblemished record.

New supposed “terror” threats – from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran – can be hyped to draw us back into cheerleading narratives about a plucky western outpost of civilisation defending us from barbarians in the East.

The new narrative does not even require that Netanyahu face justice.

As news emerges of the true extent of the atrocities and death toll, a faux-remorseful Netanyahu can placate the West with revived talk of a two-state solution – a solution whose realisation has been avoided for decades and can continue to be avoided for decades more.

We will be subjected to yet more years of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” finally being about to turn a corner.

Even were a chastened Netanyahu forced to step down, he would pass the baton to one of the other Jewish supremacist, genocidal monsters waiting in the wings.

After Gaza’s destruction, the crushing of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem will simply have to return to an earlier, slower pace – one that has allowed it to be kept off the western public’s radar for 58 years.

Will it really work out like this? Only in the imaginations of western elites. In truth, burying nearly two years of a genocide all too visible to large swaths of western publics will be a far trickier task.

Too many people in Europe and the US have had their eyes opened over the past 19 months. They cannot unsee what has been live-streamed to them, or ignore what it says about their own political and media classes.

Starmer and co will continue vigorously distancing themselves from the genocide in Gaza, but there will be no escape. Whatever they say or do, the trail of blood leads straight back to their door.

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

On Jan. 19, 2025, a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect—and, for an all-too-brief moment, the slaughter in Gaza halted. TRNN was on the ground in Gaza speaking with displaced Palestinians about their reactions to the ceasefire, the incalculable losses and horrors they had experienced during the previous 15 months, and their hopes for the future once they returned to the ruins of their homes. “I haven’t seen my family for 430 days,” journalist Mustafa Zarzour says. “I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war.”

Since the filming of this report, Israel broke the ceasefire agreement and re-launched its assault on Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that Israel had “resumed combat in full force.” Netanyahu further stated Israel’s intent this week to conquer and control the Gaza Strip, adding that Gaza’s remaining Palestinian population “will be moved.” According to the UN, 90% of Gaza’s remaining population have been forced from their homes, and no aid has been allowed into the Gaza Strip since March 2, 2025—the longest period of aid blockage since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

Khalil Khater:

Honestly, I felt happy but not so much. You feel like your heart is split. I mean, it’s true people are returning to their homes, but I don’t have a home. And still, it’s bittersweet. I lost my brother and his children. It felt like he died again when they announced the ceasefire.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

A huge joy that can’t be described—I was overjoyed. The first thing I thought was: I will find my son and bury him. I want to go to Gaza City, find my house and bury my son and look for reminders of him—pictures, or some mementos of him. Anything really, that has his scent. God is greater. God is greater. God is greater. There is no God but Allah.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

Frankly, there are mixed feelings. Between joy and the fact that we have forgotten the meaning of joy. Because we’ve spent 470 days witnessing bloodshed, air strikes, explosions, displacement. But today, something has returned to us—something like joy. Despite all the blood and all the loss—we have all lost—I lost my brother. This joy is because despite all that happened we are still steadfast.

Mohammed Rayan – Head of Admissions, Shuhada Al Aqsa Hospital:

Frankly, our pain is vast and our wounds are big, there’s not really a lot of room for joy, honestly. What we will do is visit the graves of our martyrs and pay our respects to them. Our feelings swing between happiness and despair, pain and loss, hope, and the immense suffering that our people will continue to endure in the coming days. The loss—because there is no home in the Gaza Strip that has not suffered loss.

Khalil Khater:

I love your uncle and your cousins, sweetheart. OK, I’ll stop crying—for you. We’ll go to Gaza, God willing, and see your grandpa. You can play with your cousins, because you miss them a lot, right?

Chantings:

God is greater. God is greater.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

I lost my brother, my son, and my brother’s children. I lost two brothers who were taken prisoner. My family had already lost 18 martyrs. My mother, the embrace of my loving mother. My siblings in the North, I’ve missed them so much.

Khalil Khater:

What did the war take? First it took my health. I’m really exhausted. It took the most important people from me. It took them. That’s what it took from me. I lost my work—I was a kindergarten teacher. I lost my home, where I used to feel safe, where I raised my children. Life in a tent is really, really hard. And I lost my brother, of course I can’t get him back, only memories remain. God rest his soul. God rest his soul. Praise be to God in every circumstance.

Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:

I shall search for my second martyred son, who hasn’t been buried. Then we will return to our homes and fill them. We will rebuild them to say: we rebuild our nation, no matter what the occupation destroys.

Khalil Khater:

I don’t want to return to our old neighborhood because that’s it—we were kicked out of our home. There’s no place for us there. Our neighborhood was near the border, there are a lot of houses that were destroyed, and the building we were in was bombed many times. The tower block next to us was also bombed repeatedly.

Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:

My house is destroyed, but I will return to it. Despite all the circumstances, I will set up a tent on its ruins or beside it. I will stay on my land, beside my house. We won’t go far. We won’t abandon Gaza, and we won’t emigrate, because we are steadfast—like the mountains. We will stay beside it in the same area, God willing.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

Our house was struck six times. It’s just rubble now, but we will organize this rubble and build again, God willing. What will I find? I’ll find rubble. Blood mixed with rubble. I’ll find ashes. I’ll find… body parts. I won’t find any people, but I’ll return, rebuild it, and live there. We will thank God and continue with our lives. We will move forward, get married, have children—all of us will do this, God willing.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

My house was destroyed early in the war, on day four. I think I’ll find it bulldozed. I hope I will find some photos of my son. Some of his belongings, to remind us of him. All will be well, God willing. We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Khalil Khater:

We’ve been waiting for a ceasefire for a long time. I didn’t sleep all night. I waited until 08:30 to hear them announce a ceasefire.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

One and a half years. From the beginning of the war, I kept saying: “Tomorrow it will be over, tomorrow it will be over.” Hopefully—thank God—today, it’s over. God willing.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

I haven’t seen my family for 430 days. I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war. From day one, I’ve been praying for it to end. We go, we come back again. We’ve been waiting to return for 470 days. Today, the feelings… I literally don’t know how to describe them. Beyond description. Peace means the oppressor and occupier leave all of Palestine—not just Gaza, and not just a ceasefire. Because this is a war of extermination. A war of extermination—where they committed every kind of war crime. It’s not two states. There is only one Palestine. They are the brutal occupier. So our peace is when the occupation leaves.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

Peace and safety mean no massacres, no bodies, no mass extermination. No martyrs, no jets, no drones, no tanks.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

God rest his soul—my older brother, who was my father’s successor, died. I want to see his kids. His kids are now my responsibility. So the first thing I want to do is see my brother’s children.

Khalil Khater:

When I truly believe that the war is over, I will go and throw myself into my mother’s arms. I don’t know… I’m sure that Gaza City will have changed. All its landmarks will have changed.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Belal Awad, Leo Erhadt, Ruwaida Amer and Mahmoud Al Mashharawi.

Not so coincidentally, Blood and Politics was one of nearly 400 titles included in the purge of books from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library, as part of a Trump administration directive to eliminate materials promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Prior to founding the Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights, a social justice and public affairs watchdog organization, Zeskind worked in heavy industry as a first class structural steel fitter, on automobile assembly lines, as a welder and other jobs. He was a community activist, and a human rights advocate, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially called the “Genius Grant.”

Zeskind was early in spotting the dangers of an anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. In a 2009 interview, he talked about the “anti-immigrant movement—[and] the lobbyists, Minuteman vigilantes, and racist think tanks that support them. It is here that the idea that the United States is or should be a ‘white’ country takes on the form of a policy issue. If you follow the discussion among anti-immigrant groups, the dominant discourse is about how the United States is becoming a ‘Third World’ country because of all the brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people crossing the Rio Grande—never mind the fact that these same people have been on this side of the border ever since 1845.”

Zeskind, an internationally recognized expert on white nationalist movements, was a historian, storyteller, and philosopher poet. He loved poetry and poets; he lived the spirit of the beats. He read philosophical works for pleasure. If you ever had a question about Existentialism, Stoicism, Phenomenology, Kantianism, or other isms, he would more likely than not be able to explain the differences and nuances.

I first met Lenny in 1968 when he came to Kansas University (see my poem “The First Time I Saw Him” at the end of this piece). We worked on the alternative newspaper Vortex (nee Reconstruction), and lived together in what was called the Michigan Street House, a commune in a formerly old-folks home. Although we focused on different anti-democratic movements (I on Christian nationalism, Lenny on white nationalists) and even though living in different cities, we kept in touch. We loved each other. He was Uncle Lenny to my daughter Leah … and will always be.

In 2009, shortly after the publication of Blood and Politics, I interviewed Zeskind. Now, some sixteen years later, in the aftermath of January 6, this year’s pardons of the J6 insurrectionists, and the rollout of Project 2025, the mainstream media is examining the white nationalist movement’s Christian roots, anti-Semitism, and racist beliefs. (For a listing of Zeskind’s extraordinary multi-decade written contributions to our understanding of white nationalism, see here.)

Bill Berkowitz: How did you get started monitoring and investigating these movements?

Leonard Zeskind: I came to the age of social consciousness when the black freedom movement was very strong and civil rights were high on the national agenda. I was taken by the notion, articulated during the mid-1960s, that white people should focus on organizing other white people to oppose racism. As a grassroots activist that idea stayed with me. In 1970, I started doing anti-racist work with impoverished working class young white people who had previously been at odds with poor black people living virtually in the same neighborhood. For thirteen years I worked as a welder, an ironworker, and on assembly lines. Around 1978, I noticed that Klan and neo-Nazi activity had picked up, and so it was my interest in racism in general that led me to research and write about the white supremacy movement. Between 1985 and 1994, I was the research director at the Center for Democratic Renewal (formerly the National Anti-Klan Network).

BB: Why did you decide to write Blood and Politics?

LZ: It became apparent to me that much of the received wisdom about white supremacists was simply wrong. And I wanted to write a book that did not just say what I thought was correct, but I wanted to show it through specific characters, scenes of action and analysis. These white-ists are not just a bunch of uneducated bumpkins down on their economic luck. Instead, they are demographically much like the rest of white Americans, working class and middle class with a significant stratum of middle class professionals—professors, lawyers, chiropractors, etc.—as their leaders.

And, these are not a string of disconnected organizations sharing only a common set of hatreds. Rather, this is a single movement, with a common set of leaders and interlocking memberships that hold a complete and sometimes sophisticated ideology. Further, the white nationalist movement today is organized around the notion that the power of whites to control government and social policy has already been overthrown by people of color and Jews, rather unlike the Klan of the 1960s which sought to defend a system of racial apartheid in the South.

BB: How do the religious beliefs of the movement’s different constituencies—the Christian patriots, neo-Confederates, survivalists, white power skinheads, Holocaust deniers, scientific racists, and others—manifest themselves?

LZ: For some, religion is simply a way of expressing group identity. That is most obviously true among the pagans and Odinists in the skinhead scene, where the invocation of the old Norse gods is not about theology or even ethics, but about style and promoting their subculture. In a similar sense, there are neo-Confederates and white nationalists who believe that “Christian-ness” is one aspect of their Western civilization—along with respect for tradition, authority, and whites-only citizenship rights. For this wing of the movement, best exemplified in my book by a now-deceased Washington Times columnist Sam Francis, opposition to abortion is less a theological imperative and more a program plank alongside support for gun rights and opposition to immigration.

Then there are the so-called Christian patriots and Posse Comitatus-types for whom a specific theological strain known as “Christian Identity” defines their notions of themselves as white people, and their ideas of national identity and governmental power. They hold Bible camp retreats for families where they teach each other how to live and what to believe. They also promote their belief that the United States is a white Christian republic rather than a multiracial democracy. And in a number of cases they turn their conviction that white Christians have superior civil and political rights—over those they deem “Fourteenth Amendment” citizens (everybody else)—into fraudulent schemes with fake money. In other instances, they establish “Christian” courts and militia groups that act as if they are legitimate arms of “lawful” government.

In this belief system, whites from northern Europe—the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Teutonic and Lombard peoples—are the real descendants of the biblical people of Israel. As such, Jews are fakes and considered either satanic by nature or Satan himself incarnate. In this schema, black people and other people of color are considered “pre-Adamic,” that is before Adam: not fully human in the way white people are. In this telling, interracial marriage is a sin akin to bestiality, and the presence of Jews in their Christian society is a crime against their God. While such ideas may seem ridiculous on their face, Christian Identity followers derive their entire belief system from their Bible.

BB: What are the differences between the beliefs of these groups and those of the Christian Right?

LZ: Much like the Christian right types, Identity believers oppose abortion and homosexuality as violations of what they deem to be God’s Law. Similarly, they view women’s role in the family and society as subordinate to men. They also support prayer in school and oppose secularism in society. But Christian Identity is much more forthright in its anti-Semitism and racism. They are decidedly not “Christian Zionists,” and do not have an eschatology, or theory of the End Times, with Israel at its center. In fact, they tend to call themselves “End Times Overcomers,” and believe the final conflict is a race war that they win. And Christian Identity has a much more highly defined theory of Satan.

BB: Explain the Christian Identity theory of the Devil.

LZ: Actually they have two competing theories of Satan and Jews. In one case, they believe that the snake in the Garden of Eden was Satan, and that he impregnated Eve, and that Cain was not only Satan’s offspring, but also that Jews are descendants of Cain, and Satan incarnate. In a second case, they believe that Satan worked through Esau, and that the Jews are descendants of Esau (Edomites) and do the Devil’s work here on Earth. Blood and Politics details this belief system and its implications, and even readers already vaguely familiar with the ideas of Christian Identity will find this discussion helpful. Indeed, it is my argument that without a proper understanding of these devil theories, the average person cannot actually understand what Christian Identity is about.

BB: Why do you describe this movement as “white nationalist”?

LZ: Most obviously because the movement’s foremost aspect is its regard for white skin color as a badge of national identity. Many of the organizations and leaders look back to the Constitutional order prior to the Civil War, when the national-state was a whites-only republic. Others look forward to the creation of a new white nation-state carved out of the lands of North America. While these ideas were present in the movement from its re-inception in the mid-1970s, they only became dominant in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War ushered in a new era. Across the globe, nationalism became a language of opposition to the New Global Order, and racial and ethnic nationalism became more salient than its liberal civic opposition. Books such as Blood and Belonging and Jihad vs. McWorld explored these issues globally. In the United States, racial nationalism meant white nationalism, and the old white supremacist movement was thus transformed into 21st-century white nationalism.

BB: You argue in the book (and the title references it) that white nationalists have successfully moved from the “margins to the mainstream.” How did this happen?

LZ: Through a combination of factors. First, through the slow accretion of organizing week-in, week-out events: Klan rallies, Bible camps, survivalist and gun shows, white-power music concerts, etc., many of which are described in my book. Second, when David Duke won a majority of white votes while running in two Louisiana statewide elections in 1990 and 1991, he uncovered a middle-American constituency that supported at least a portion of his national socialist ideas. Third, a group of respected (if not respectable) ultra-conservatives broke with the Bush 41-era Republican consensus during the first Persian Gulf War and headed in the white direction. These were the Buchananites [led by current television commentator and author Pat Buchanan] and they helped create a realignment of forces that continues to plague us today.

BB: How does that show itself today?

LZ: Primarily in the anti-immigrant movement—the lobbyists, Minuteman vigilantes, and racist think tanks that support them. It is here that the idea that the United States is or should be a “white” country takes on the form of a policy issue. If you follow the discussion among anti-immigrant groups, the dominant discourse is about how the United States is becoming a “Third World” country because of all the brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people crossing the Rio Grande—never mind the fact that these same people have been on this side of the border ever since 1845.

From this perspective, one of the most interesting Republican pieces of legislation languishing in Congress is a proposal to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to parents lacking the proper documents. If such a measure was enacted, it would run smack dab into the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship and equality before the law. In this sense, the Republicans who signed onto this bill are proposing measures that the Christian patriots and Posse Comitatus-types talked about twenty-five years ago. It is important for us to be able to connect these dots.

BB: Now that the economy is in a severe tailspin, what are the implications for the white nationalist movement?

LZ: Although I loathe predicting the future, I will say that in the past, hard economic times have not automatically translated into an expansion for white nationalists. There was a growth surge during the Clinton years, for example, which were generally considered better economic conditions for middle class people. In the past, the politics of race and nation mattered more than economic hard times. White nationalists will support protectionist measures, and they oppose free trade in capital goods because they oppose free trade (or open borders) for labor. Whether or not they gain traction by claiming that the stock market and banks are controlled by Jews depends on whether people of goodwill are able to offer a more compelling vision of change.

With Obama in the White House, I think we can expect more of the same, plus some. Some white nationalists will focus on tending to their current base—which is not inconsiderable. They will continue to push for secessionist-style white enclaves and might engage in militia-style violence. Others will attempt to widen their base, and carve out a larger niche among conservative Republicans. Without an electoral vehicle of their own, they will suffer from the vicissitudes of the Republican leadership. Their natural base, however, will be the five percent of white voters who told pollsters last summer that they would never vote for a black person for president. More than Rush Limbaugh will get ugly.

*****

On a personal note, here is a poem I wrote about encountering a young Leonard Zeskind.

The First Time I Saw Him for Leonard Zeskind

The first time I saw him,
it was a crisp fall morning.
He wore a long, Hasidic-like overcoat,
black jeans, scuffed engineer boots,
and a black wool cap—
from which his dark curls spilled
like secrets.

He was eighteen,
newly arrived at the University of Kansas,
after some time adrift at Florida.
How he ended up in Gainesville
was always a mystery to me.

Years later, he told me:
a professor there had spoken
of a Heidegger scholar—
someone in Kansas,
someone he had to study with.

He was hell-bent on Heidegger.

But the day before he set foot on campus,
that scholar died—
a car crash on an empty road.
Fate, it seemed,
was already writing footnotes
in the margins of his life.

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

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

To begin to correct the injustices that generations of Palestinians have faced, and to become “a society that can live with its conscience,” the story of Palestine and its people must be told.   

After the Second World War, the United States made the decision to tie its destiny to the ethno-nationalist settler-colonial state of Israel.  And since then, the Palestinian people have stood alone in their struggle.

The establishment of Israel was a violent process that has never ended.  Beginning in 1947, Zionist paramilitary forces launched large-scale attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, leading ultimately to the Nakba (the catastrophe)—the culminating stage of the Zionist ethnic cleansing project.

During the Nakba, 531 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed, 15,000 Palestinians were murdered, 800,000 were forcibly driven from their homeland to the West Bank, Gaza Strip and to neighboring Arab countries, and 70 massacres were committed.      

Before Israel’s declaration of statehood on 14 May 1948, Zionist militias had committed numerous massacres, whose histories have largely been suppressed:

+ Baldat al-Sheikh, 31 December 1947:  70 Palestinians massacred.

+ Sa’sa, 14 February 1948:  16 houses and their 6 inhabitants blown up. 

+ Deir Yasin, 9 April 1948:  107 killed, including scores of children, women and elders.  Some victims were found maimed, raped and then killed.  Masses of men were put on trucks and paraded across Jerusalem before being taken to a quarry to be executed.  These atrocities were committed by Irgun and Stern Gangs led by Menachim Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, respectively, who would later become prime ministers of Israel. 

+ Abu Shusha, 13 May 1948:  Despite efforts of the residents to protect their homes, the village fell to occupation; 60 Palestinians massacred.    

During the 1948 war, Zionist and Israeli forces committed more than 30 documented massacres in Palestine. Israeli military historian, Uri Milstein, has suggested that there were more than 100.  In ensuing years, Israel continued its campaigns of forced displacement and massacres. 

Notably, it was the Qibya massacre of 14 October 1953 that gave birth to what would become the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.  Born in the blood of the natives of Palestine, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has spared no efforts to insure that Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians be kept hidden from the American people. 

It is important to know the origins of the Israeli lobby to realize the significant sway it has had on American politics and politicians.  For that, we have to go back in time to post-World War II history:  

Harry S. Truman is president of the United States and running for reelection with few prospects and little support; until the Israeli lobby literally enters the campaign in the person of Abraham Feinberg, a hosiery/manufacturing magnate.  And the rest, as they say, is history—Israeli history.  

The man who made Truman’s 1948 election victory possible explained how it was done in an interview conducted in 1973 for the Harry S. Truman Library—“Oral History Interview with Abraham Feinberg.”  He stated in the interview that “without Truman, Israel would have had very difficult days and times trying to even come into existence.”

Israel’s American enforcers faced challenges during the Eisenhower years (1953-1961) from an administration inclined toward a more nuanced policy.  During the president’s first year in office, news of the massacre in the Palestinian village of Qibya sparked widespread disapproval.  

Time magazine, for example, carried the story describing how Israeli soldiers “shot every man, woman and child they could find, then turned their fire on the cattle;” reporting also that soldiers were seen “slouching in the doorways of Palestinian homes, smoking and joking.”  Sixty-six people were killed that night, 45 were blown up in their homes that had been dynamited by soldiers.  The New York Times ran excerpts from the United Nations Mixed Armistice Commission—in charge of the 1949 truce— deploring the act as “coldblooded murder” and refuting Israeli lies about the assault.  

Israel’s defenders quickly gathered for damage control.   Isaiah L. Kenen, founder of the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (AZCPA), the forerunner of AIPAC, wrote of the ill effect it would have on what he called “our propaganda.”  

To manage the Qibya fallout and to prepare for future cover-ups, Kenen created AZCPA in 1954.  Under his leadership, the group grew stronger and richer when it joined with the new Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, an association of top Jewish leaders who promoted Israel’s interests with U.S. politicians, that included presidents and secretaries of state.  

Influencers like Abraham Feinberg and Kenen were instrumental in selling Israel to Americans and influencing policies favoring Israel.  By the time Kenen died in 1988, AIPAC had gained an outsized role in shaping U.S. policy in the Middle East.  

Over the years, AIPAC has demonstrated that nothing will diminish its vested interest in Israel, including genocide.  Since 7 October 2023, the death and destruction Israel’s defenders have been willing to accept are woefully incomprehensible.   For example, 26 days into its bombardment of Gaza, the Israeli military had dropped 25,000 tons of bombs (American made), on 12,000 targets—50 bombs dropped every hour.  By that date, Gaza had been bombarded with the equivalent of two nuclear bombs over an area smaller than Hiroshima in 1945.  Israel has also used banned cluster and white phosphorous munitions, that can cause permanent environmental damage.

The pain of that destruction was explicit in the words of 61-year-old Gazan farmer, Sami Abu Amir, trying to revive a patch of his once productive ground: “It is as if they wanted to kill the land before they killed us.”  

After dropping more than 85,000 tons of toxic bombs on the small enclave for 15 months, it is obvious that Israel intended to poison the soil, to make Gaza uninhabitable for survivors.  

A November 2024 report published by the Environmental Quality Authority—an independent agency established in the 1990s by the Palestinian Authority—concluded that as a result of the bombing, the soil of Gaza has become so polluted with toxic chemicals that it will “hinder agriculture for decades.”  

Unable to defeat the Palestinian resistance with bombs and lethal ground forces, the Tel Aviv regime has reimposed a total blockade once again on Gaza, returning to its October 2023 weapon of war—starvation and deprivation.  In addition to halting humanitarian aid, Israel threatened the resistance with additional consequences if they refused to extend phase one of the January ceasefire agreement and accept its new proposal.  

It is clear that Israel has no intention of putting an end to this human catastrophe that has been in the making for over 80 years.  There will be no resolution until Palestinians recapture their land.  

Against this history and backdrop, Arab “leaders” met in Cairo on 4 March 2025 to find a “day after” plan for the quagmire Israel and the United States have weighted the region with in Gaza.  Essentially, Israel destroys and the Arab world, not Tel Aviv, is expected to pick up the tab of reconstruction. 

American politicians and Israel’s influencers lack an understanding of Palestinians’ connection to and determination to remain steadfast on their land.  It is the force that has enabled them to withstand unimaginable hardships.  The inseparability and steadfastness were expressed by those who survived the genocide, returning to what was left of their homes, determined to rebuild.   

Amir Karaja, for example, told CNN that he would “rather eat the rubble” than be forced to leave his homeland; and Khan Younis survivor, Ahmed Safi, stressed that “We prefer Gaza’s hell than the paradise of any other country…if we are given all the money in the world, we won’t leave this land.” 

When discussing the Palestinian experience and identity, the words of Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), remind us that “The metaphor for Palestine is stronger than the Palestine of reality.” To the detriment of Palestinians and the entire region, Israel and its defenders are determined the metaphor never becomes a political reality.

The post The U.S. and Israel: An Alliance of Blood, Politics and Money appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by M. Reza Behnam.

EDITORIAL: By the OCCRP editors

“OCCRP is a deep state operation.
“OCCRP is connected to the CIA.
“OCCRP was tasked by USAID to overthrow President Donald Trump.”

How did we end up getting this kind of attention? Old fashioned investigative journalism.

We wrote a simple story in 2019 about how Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine for some opposition research and ended up working with people connected to organised crime who misled him.

Unbeknown to us, a whistleblower found the story online and added it to a complaint that was the basis of President Trump’s first impeachment. We also wrote a story about Hunter Biden‘s business partners and their ties to organised crime but that hasn’t received the same attention.

• READ MORE: Trump’s foreign aid freeze throws independent journalism into chaos
• Other Pacific media freedom reports

Journalism has become a blood sport. It’s harder and harder to tell the truth without someone’s interests getting stepped on.

OCCRP prides itself on being independent and nonpartisan. No donor has any say in our reporting, but we often find ourselves under attack for our funding.

It’s not just political interests but organised crime, businesses, enablers, and other journalists who regularly attack us. What’s common in all of these attacks is that the truth doesn’t matter and it will not protect you.

Few attack the facts in our reporting. Instead we’re left perplexed by how to respond to wild conspiracy theories, outright disinformation, and hyperbolic hatred.

At the same time, we’ve lost 29 percent of our funding because of the US foreign aid freeze. This includes 82 percent of the money we give to newsrooms in our network, many of which operate in places [Pacific Media Watch: Such as in the Pacific] where no one else will support them.

This money did not only fund groundbreaking, prize-winning collaborative journalism but it also trained young investigative reporters to expose wrongdoing. It’s money that kept journalists safe from physical and digital attacks and supported those in exile who continued to report on crooks and dictators back in their home countries.

OCCRP now has 43 less journalists and staff to do our work.

No attack or funding freeze will stop us from trying to fulfill our mission. Just in the past week, OCCRP and its partners revealed how Russia’s shadow fleet sources its ships, how taxes haven’t been paid on Roman Abramovich’s yachts, and how Syrian intelligence spied on journalists.

Next week, we’ll take on another set of powerful actors to defend the public interest. And another set the week after that.

We are determined to stay in the fight and keep reporting on organised crime and the corrupt who enable and benefit from it. But it’s getting harder and we need help.

• How to donate to the OCCRP project.

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

Grotesquely, profanely, the U.S. government just approved another $8 billion in arms to Israel for its genocide in Gaza, where babies are freezing to death - parents find them "cold as ice," "stiff like a board" - famine lurks - "Hunger is everywhere" - families huddle in torn tents, toddlers caught in blasts have their legs amputated, and Israeli soldiers unwind at a resort with cotton candy. Gazans plead that the world "look at us with mercy"; Biden sent billions more to kill, maim, freeze, starve them.

In its final days, "violating US and international law one last time on their way out," the Biden administration said it will send a deadly arsenal of medium-range missiles, long range projectile artillery shells, Hellfire AGM-114 missiles, 500-pound bombs and other weapons of annihilation to help Israel continue murdering children, doctors, journalists, aid workers and other civilians, perhaps in hopes of getting the deaths of innocents to 46,000, a nice round number. Outrage greeted the news as "willful madness" from a "morally bankrupt" president who doggedly refused to use his power to urge a ceasefire, instead persisting in feeding the genocidal fire. "Only racists who do not view people of color as equally human, and sociopaths who delight in funding mass slaughter" could keep abetting Netanyahu as he "exterminates the last survivors," said CAIR. From one Palestinian-American activist, "Too many kids still alive in Gaza for Joe Biden's liking."

To many, what filmmaker Adam McKay calls the "blood spattered madness" is final sorry proof of the failings of a spineless Democratic party so afraid to take a stand - or even call genocide by its name - it stays silent before war crimes committed daily for over a year. To one critic, Biden encapsulates the Party, "this sundowning butcher, this lamest of lame ducks, doddering out of the Rose Garden to press the KILL MORE PALESTINIANS button for the 100th time." Their complicity, in turn, has spurred Israel to ever viler lows. In a letter last week, eight rightwing Israeli lawmakers urged Defense Minister Israel Katz to wrap up the genocide already with "elimination" of all energy sources, food sources and "anyone who moves in the area and does not exit with a white flag." When those actions are completed, they argue, the IDF "must enter gradually and conduct a full cleansing of the enemy nests."

Toward that end, how will Biden's $8 billion help? Let us count the grisly ways.

The $8 billion will serve to perpetuate the Israeli lie of "safe" or "humanitarian" zones amidst the carnage, like the "safe zone" of al-Mawasi along the southern coast; known as "the Basket of Food" for its fertile soil, sweet water and bountiful farming, it's now a vast displacement camp for hundreds of thousands told to go shelter there. In recent weeks, it's been hit by relentless Israeli warplanes and artillery; each no-warning, pre-dawn attack kills 7, 71, a family of 15, the Chief of Gaza's police, all buried under rubble or "shredded to pieces." In the chaos and dark of one attack, with terrified children running and crying, one resident tried to hide his paralyzed 80-year-old father, but soldiers found him and shot him dead. In another, a young woman thrown by the blast lay in the street, seemingly dead; survivors felt a faint breath and carried her to the hospital, where a medic eventually told them she had a fractured spine and could only move her eyes.

Biden's $8 billion will facilitate Israel's strikes in central Gaza. One just killed at least 26 people, including eight members of a committee who worked to secure aid convoys. In al-Maghazi, where strikes have killed up to 100 at a time, a young medic was called to a targeted civilian vehicle that held a dead woman and three injured children, one a 10-year-old boy bleeding internally and vomiting blood. The medic worked to stabilize the boy till they got him to the hospital; then he went back for the dead woman. When he uncovered her face, he saw it was his mother; shrapnel had pierced her eye, exiting through her skull. Hours earlier, she'd prepared him tea and a sandwich for work, telling him when he left to take care. In another strike on Jabalia, journalist Mohammad Hijazi was one of nearly 90 killed. "I refuse a cheap death,” he wrote in August. "l count the days we have lived as a historic achievement, while awaiting what is coming with (a) spirit that fights until the end of the road.”

Biden's $8 billion will likely embolden the war crime that has been Israel's pitiless destruction of Gaza's health system, its recent attack on and razing of Kamal-Adwan, the last functioning hospital in the north, and the arrest of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the 51-year-old pediatrician and director of the hospital who for months had kept it barely running while repeatedly refusing Israeli orders to leave. A "model of patience and rigor" and "the voice of Gaza's decimated health sector,” Abu Safiya had long pleaded for aid in increasingly distraught videos - "Instead of receiving aid, we received tanks" - while recording horrors like a bloodied intensive care unit, windows blown out, where shrapnel had shattered a nurse's skull. He'd also seen his 15-year-old son Ibrahim killed in a drone strike at the hospital gate - Israel's punishment of him for refusing to leave, he charged - and been badly wounded by shrapnel in November as he exited the operating room.

On Dec. 27, Israeli forces raided and set fire to the hospital, forced staff and patients out, ordered them to strip, beat or detained many, and after denying it, acknowledged they'd arrested Abu Safiya.for "suspected involvement in terrorist activities," aka saving hundreds of innocent lives. The last surreal images of the doctor show him trudging through rubble, still in white coat, and entering an Israeli tank to politely negotiate with murderers. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has reports he was brought to a field interrogation site in Jabalia, made to strip, whipped with thick wire, and taken to brutal Sde Teyman prison. His family has urged his release "before it's too late"; his wife said soldiers told him and other staff they'd be taken to Indonesian Hospital to care for patients, but "the Israelis were telling us lies." Euro-Med says they've heard Abu Safiya's health has deteriorated; they have called for his release and warned his life is in danger "due to torture."

Evidently unbeknownst to an $8 billion-wielding U.S. administration, meanwhile, countless more Gazan lives remain in danger. Palestinian authorities say at least 3,500 children are at risk of starving, a quarter of Gaza's population faces "catastrophic" levels of food insecurity, and the entire population is enduring "acute food insecurity." Given ongoing Israeli blockades, aid workers say they're only able to bring in about a third of the basic food that's needed, and "hunger is everywhere." So is winter, with its cold, wind and, for the last few weeks, rains that have flooded hundreds of thin, tattered tents that are "nothing more than plastic bags" where thousands huddle without heat, fuel, food, electricity, or enough clothes or blankets. And still the bombings go on: In recent weeks, especially in the north, Israeli forces have launched over 100 strikes in three days, killing over 200, still mostly women and children, now shivering in tents.

Most gruesomely, America's $8 billion - which God knows could be used for how many thousands of shelters, blankets, mattresses, pillows, coats, toys, hot meals, new schools and other niceties of life - will allow more infants to freeze to death. The ghastly headlines tell of it: "20-Day-Old Baby Dies of Cold in Gaza," "Another Baby Freezes to Death," "Gaza Baby Freezes to Death as Israel Kills 88 Palestinians In A Day." Children, particularly infants, suffer the most from winter's hardships: Their small bodies, which generate less body heat, are illl-equipped to fight off the cold, especially when they're already weakened by hunger. Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, at Nasser hospital, sees more than five cases a day of children, usually infants under a month old, suffering from hypothermia. Most, he says, can be treated and saved. But some arrive in "extremely critical condition," and can't be. To date, the youngest to die has been three days old.

Most of those who've died were in al-Mawasi's “humanitarian zone,” living on a beach with brutal winds in gossamer tents with no food and sparse blankets. Aisha, Yousef, Sila. Four children shared 2 blankets, a family of eight shared four. Tents that "feel like a refrigerator." Weeping mothers: “He slept next to me and in the morning I found him frozen and dead." "Her face and lips were blue - she looked like a piece of ice.” "We can't even warm ourselves, we can't warm our children." Yahya al-Batran, 39, woke to his wife Noura screaming after she found 20-day-old Jumaa and his twin brother Ali frozen on the morning of Dec. 29. Jumaa was "stiff, like a piece of wood, his head cold as ice.” Ali was breathing slowly. They rushed both infants to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Jumaa was already dead. Ali survived, but died the next day. "Look at his color - do you see how frozen he is?" asks their father. "My children are dying in front of my eyes."

Biden's $8 billion also comes too late to do anything useful for Hanan al-Daqqi, three, or her 22-month-old sister Misk, who have spent four months in Al-Aqsa Hospital after an Israeli strike on their house funded by earlier American billions killed their mother Shaima, hurling her body onto a neighbor's house, and tore through both little girls' legs. Hanan, who'd been in her mother's lap, had to have both legs amputated, one above the knee, one below; she also had wounds to her face and intestines, and needed surgery to remove part of her bowels. Misk had her left foot amputated. Their father Mohammed, 31, was in intensive care for two weeks with a brain haemorrhage and chest injuries, and had several fingers amputated. The strike on Sept. 3 came the day after Shaima, who'd been so terrified for her daughters she could barely eat or sleep for months, had taken them for polio vaccines, determined they would at least have that protection.

Their father’s sister Shefa al-Daqqi, 28, who'd been on the phone with their mother when the blast hit, has been caring for her nieces. A mother of three, she alternates with their grandmother and their uncle, who stays with them at night, brings them little treats and takes them on tours of the hospital. Shefa has brought in her daughter Hala, also three, who used to play with Hanan. The first time, she painfully recalls, "I'll never forget Hanan’s look. She would stare at Hala’s legs and then at her own amputated legs, confused." Both girls cling to their aunt in fear and panic; Hanan sometimes asks, "Where's Mama?" or "Where did my legs go?" She tries to comfort them, telling them their mother's in heaven, but she broods about what to say the inevitable day when Hanan, who especially loved getting dressed up, asks for pretty dresses or shoes. "Look at what happened to our children," she mourns. "There's no future. There's no childhood."

Happily for Israeli soldiers, though, thanks to Biden's billions there is espresso, massage, barbecue, spiritual retreat and "sweet cotton-candy at the heart of the valley of killings" at a posh holiday resort where about 200 IDF soldiers can chill every ten days of their slaughter service. In the Israeli Ynet, reporter Yoav Zitun describes a destination spa with cafe, lounge, video games, popcorn machines, a desalination facility, meat on an eternal grill, a "hotel breakfast" with Belgian waffles and ice cream when it's wam where, "We make dreams come true for soldiers." Of this "bubble in a concentration camp," alongside kids scavenging for water or a scrap of food and dogs eating human body parts in the ravaged streets, one sage cites Zionism's "extraordinary talent for training its faithful to see only what serves its purposes while erasing everything else." In Gaza, it's not enough to simply erase Palestinians: "Israel must invent an entire alternate reality."

America's newest $8 billion contribution to an increasingly normalized genocide and its bloody, barbarous, macabre delusions will ensure more of the same. As Gazans plead for mercy and reason from an uncaring world, they in truth know and say they have "nothing but God." And still the bombs fall. On Monday, they killed Dr. Thabat Saleem, a volunteer neo-natal doctor who worked "tirelessly" for nearly a year, she was killed in an Israeli strike on her house in Nuseirat refugee camp. 28 Palestinians were killed in another strike; 40 were injured when a drone bombed a school sheltering hundreds of displaced people; several more were injured when Israel fired at a clearly marked aid convoy and a food distribution site as nobody blinked. And an eighth Gazan baby, Yousef Ahmad, froze to death in a tent. He was 35 days old.

IImam Abu Suaied prays over the bodies of Jumaa and another baby who died at birth in Deir el-Balah (Photo by Abdel Kareem Hana/AP)

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

Again. Four people were murdered in a Georgia school shooting in a blood-soaked country that fixates on the unborn, spends $840 billion on defense, bans books despite zero mass reading deaths yet somehow can't protect their children from routine, rampant slaughter. It was the 8th school shooting of a shiny new school year; it happened on the 2nd day of school; the killer was 14 years old. Fucking unreal. Cue witless thoughts and prayers. From the deceased: "Thanks."

Wednesday's rampage at Apalachee High school, in the small city of Winder northeast of Atlanta, killed two 14-year-old students, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, and two math teachers, Christina Irimie, and Richard Aspinwall; at least nine others were wounded and taken to the hospital. Less than shockingly, authorities said the baby-faced killer, 14-year-old Colt Gray, was armed with a “black semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle,” which his father had bought him for Christmas; given Colt's tender age, some bitterly wondered how he even managed to get the bulky weapon into the school: "Surely, his Spiderman backpack must have sagged a little?" Colt surrendered to police, including two resource officers, minutes after the shootings. He has been charged as an adult with four counts of felony murder, and authorities say more charges will be coming. At the scene, Sheriff Jud Smith offered "our sympathies" to the community, adding, "Obviously, what you see behind us is an evil thing today."

Evil, yes. Rare, no. The killing fields that are now America's schools have seen so many shootings and gun deaths in the past two decades the awful data can't keep up with them. According to the Gun Violence Archive, this is the 385th mass shooting in the US this year with over 11,500 people killed by guns, excluding suicide. It was the 45th shooting on school grounds in 2024 - though the number soars to 218 including more varied situations - causing at least 38 deaths and 81 injuries in a country where, said Joe Biden, students now learn "how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write." It's also a country of barricaded schools and bulletproof backpacks where four people gunned down barely made the news, shooting drills are universal, firemen and first responders wear body armor, classrooms can boast sawdust-filled buckets in case of an extended lockdown, and surreal debates rage about the wisdom of arming underpaid, over-worked teachers who never signed up for this.

That's especially true of Georgia, ranked 46th with some of the country's weakest gun laws. Gun-control advocates give the state an "F" and its gun violence - at least 1,927 people killed each year - is well over the national average thanks to Gov. Brian Kemp, who loves guns so much he once ran an ad where he held a shotgun on a kid. Kemp and God-fearing GOP pols oppose red flag laws but passed a law requiring colleges to allow guns on campus; you can buy an assault rifle without a permit or background check, carry a concealed weapon without a license, leave guns out for your kids to find, shoot and kill someone even if you can walk away instead. Kemp has bragged he wears his "F" gun-safety rating ''as a badge of honor" and touted a $103.9 million plan to "harden" schools, with a $10,000 bonus to teachers willing to carry. On Wednesday, he said he was "heartbroken" by the shooting, urged thoughts and prayers, and called it "a day every parent dreads" by dint of his murderous actions.

Also, of course, Colt Gray's, though as a sick kid he's far less culpable. It turns out he'd been on the FBI's radar since last year, after they got several anonymous tips he was making online threats about shooting up a school. They interviewed him and his father, who said he had guns in the home for hunting but his son didn't have access to them; Colt, then 13, denied making the threats, and the FBI determined there was "no probable cause for arrest" or other action. This week, fellow students said Colt was quiet and reserved - "he never really talked" - and he often skipped classes. On Tuesday, the first day of school, he reportedly left classes early to go to a counselor's office because he was anxious. Wednesday, he left math class still going; when he tried to re-enter - killing fields/school doors lock automatically - a classmate started to let him in, saw his gun, and backed away. As she and other kids dropped to the floor, crawled to the back and huddled together, she heard him open fire in the hallway.

Later, dazed students described the bedlam: The screams, blood, terror, crying, teachers frantically yelling to get down, hands shaking as they tried to text family, 10 or 15 thunderous rounds of gunshots. Harrowing details emerged. His family thought and hoped Mason Schermerhorn, who had mild autism, "had just run away to get away from everything." Christian Angulo's father said they'd moved there from California "in search of peace.” Teacher Christina Irimie, a joyful, beloved member of the Romanian community, had baked a cake and brought pizza to school to celebrate her birthday with "her kids." Richard Aspinwall, also a football coach, was "as great as they come. Would do anything for anyone." He was teaching math when he heard the turmoil; he told his kids to stay put and went into the hallway to try to protect them. A few minutes later, they found him lying prone and bloody at the door of the classroom. Said one student, "He was trying to crawl back to us."

Christmas cards sent out by gun-fetishist GOP lawmakers and their families. Photos from Twitter

There's been so much carnage - so much bloodshed, anguish, rage, grief - it's unfathomable that nothing has changed, that no substantive gun control measures have passed, that none of the morons and sociopaths who send out Christmas cards of their smirking kids cradling fucking assault weapons have stopped doing it, that none of these witless gun freaks have seen slaughter follow slaughter and not come even this excruciatingly slowly to the realization that, in the words of one gun-control advocate, "There is no world in which this is acceptable." Hell, even a Fox News host, in an interview after the Georgia shooting, exclaimed to his guest, "To be honest, this is so frequent it's almost surreal." Almost? In truth, many Americans have come to the sorrowful conclusion that if Sandy Hook didn't change any hearts and minds - those 20, small, shredded, shattered bodies - then nothing would. Which is why, even now, the inane thoughts and prayers and platitudes are still flowing.

"Let us join together in prayer for the victims," nattered Marjorie I'll-Take-Whatever-Publicity-I-Can-Get Greene, who's opposed a federal program to help states pass "red flag” laws, filmed herself accosting Parkland survivor David Hogg, pushed bonkers conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook and other tragedies, and made campaign ads featuring her shooting or giving away massive assault weapons. "This you?" asked multiple people re-posting those horrors. "Hey MTG," wrote John Pavlovitz. "How do you type with so much blood on your hands?" "And the guns?" asked another critic. "Or is this a bad time to mention them?" As always, probably. On Fox, a Blue Lives Matter spokesman argued it's all the fault of violent video games: "Human life has less value because many of the social mores have changed...It hardens the heart, if you will." Actually, experts say they won't, citing studies finding "absolutely no causal evidence" of a link between video games and "gun violence in real life.”

As mainstream news did a quick, deep, thoughts-and-prayers dive into the Georgia killings, they naturally entirely ignored those in Gaza City, where an Israeli air strike killed more children, including Tala Abu Ajwa, 10, hit minutes after her mother gave in to her pleas to let her go outside to roller blade. Seeking her body after the blast, her father recognized the pink skate on her foot. In this country, we have technology to aid in that search: Officials praised school faculty as "heroes" who likely saved lives by using a new panic button alarm that notifies police of an "active situation." Still, students were spooked and angry about being left to fend for themselves in a hapless, bloodied country, echoing a 10-year-old Onion headline: "No Way To Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens." "I really don't want to go back," said one girl. "I want to go to school worrying about my GPA (and) my career. I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying about dying.”

Of course teachers also were and will remain traumatized in a mix of grief, guilt, rage. Writing online about "planning no teacher should ever have to plan for and fear no one (teacher, child, parent, or anyone else) should ever have to experience," Jennifer Carter wrote, "I lied to my kids today in second period. I told them it was just a drill. I told them to get behind my couches (thank GOD I ditched desks and have bulky furniture!) and be quiet...The more quiet we are, the faster the drill will end." Trauma on trauma, victim after victim. In back-to-back hearings Friday, Colt Gray appeared in court - small, blank, bleach blond - followed shortly after by his father Colin Gray, 54, who wept and rocked in his seat as the judge calmly spoke. Colin is charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children. Behind them sat victims' families and other supporters; court workers had set out tissue boxes at intervals.

Away from court, the story of Colt Gray's broken, "hostile," gun-obsessed home, where a Stars and Stripes flies and child services often visited, emerged. His mother Marcee has a long rap sheet spanning 17 years for buying/selling drugs, mostly meth and fentanyl, with arrests for domestic violence, bad checks, vehicle misdemeanors. With the parents locked in an ugly separation and custody battle - she has the two younger kids, he had Colt - Marcee charges Colin with abuse, and they were evicted. Neighbors describe "devastating," "constant" abuse: no food or clean clothes, Marcee driving drunk to take the youngest to day care, passing out in the driveway, locking the kids out of the house in winter, them banging on the door, crying, screaming, "Mom!" A former landlord said Colin was "trying (to) be a stand-up guy - I think the man really went through it." As to Colt, "This child has fallen between the cracks." Colt's aunt said he'd been "begging for help for months, but the adults around him failed him."

In response to Georgia's shootings, Dems offered empathy and cogent calls for gun control measures most Americans support. The GOP, short on empathy or cogent calls for anything and not up to domestic tragedies, stall in their thoughts-and-prayers shtick. In another dreadful speech, Vance, who took $493,000 from the NRA to declare school shootings "a fake problem," said it 's too bad about kids and teachers being gunned down, but with schools "soft targets, we’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to." He doesn't like school shootings but they're "a fact of life," says "the coward ass bitch guy standing behind bulletproof glass" who doesn't seem to get that "lots of horrible things were once facts of life until the government did something about them." So: women should both have kids and accept they might be shot dead at school. Give this guy a bulletproof Spiderman backpack, pray for the dead, fight for the living.

"Here's the smell of the blood still. What, will these hands ne’er be clean?" - Lady Macbeth

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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

Unimaginably, Gazans continue to endure the atrocities of a heedless Israel: Strikes on schools that kill mostly children, polio-tainted sewage "everywhere," catastrophic hunger, universal trauma, gutted hospitals, shattered families seeking small bodies rotting under rubble. To many, the ongoing savagery through 10 bloody months marks the moral deterioration of an Occupation increasingly acquiescent to the concept "there are certain groups of people who can be killed...They are not like us."

While it's tumbled off most front pages, Israel's blithe defiance of both world censure and ICJ rulings goes on apace. This week, the U.N's largest body of human rights experts hailed an earlier "historic" ICJ finding that Israel's Occupation is "unlawful" and must end; they declared Palestinians' right to "freedom from foreign military occupation, racial segregation and apartheid is absolutely non-negotiable," adding, "Israel must stop acting as if uniquely above the law." But that shift feels woefully distant in the wake of Netanyahu's chilling, rabid avowal before Congress to press on until "total victory." Meanwhile, 86% of Gaza is under ever-unrolling evacuation orders, with thousands perpetually forced to uproot; 96% of Gazans face acute food shortages, with communities "wasting away" and children "sleeping hungry" while often going up to 3 days without food; and public health experts cite the "ticking time bomb" of a polio epidemic from overflowing sewage - "The smell is killing us, we are begging to be saved from the sewers" - along with soaring cases of hepatitis, dysentery, gastrointestinal disease and skin infections.

Almost 40,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed, with over 90,000 wounded; visiting doctors say the actual death toll could top 90,000, with over 10,000 still missing under rubble, over half likely children. Officials say more than 14,000 children, about half unidentified, have been killed; the fate of another 21,000 is unknown - buried in unmarked and mass graves, detained by Israeli forces, brought to hospitals to be deemed WCNSF - Wounded Child, No Surviving Family - or lost in the chaos. Daily, the awful search for bodies, decomposing in the summer heat under 40 million tons of rubble that could take 15 years to clear, drags on. Families plead on social media for news of children as young as two: "Every day, we search for him among the living and the dead." Anas Juha, 28, lost 117 members of his family in an Israeli strike on their home on Gaza City; about half the bodies remain under the ruins; he has yet to find his parents, siblings, wife, and five and three-year-old children. The hardest thing is not knowing what happened to them: Did they survive the blast but then suffocate under debris?

After months of attacks across Gaza, Israeli forces are now launching assaults on areas where they already claimed to have eliminated Hamas. With each withdrawal, they leave hundreds of bodies; with each new assault, they issue displacement orders to thousands of people ceaselessly uprooted, targeted as they flee, often leaving their dead children behind. "We have been displaced under iron and fire," says one man. "We have been decimated. We are tired in Gaza." And of course there is no truly safe place to go: Officials sometimes order them to what is "not a safe zone, but a safer place than any other." Earlier this month, an air strike in the south killed at least 90 people in Khan Younis, a "humanitarian zone" where residents have returned to an "uninhabitable wasteland" to live in the remnants of their destroyed homes. Survivors describe evening quiet ripped by a blast, then screaming, wailing, running, people feverishly combing through body parts for their missing children. After a frantic search, one woman found her 8-year-old daughter; she was alive, but ravaged by shrapnel in her back and chest.

In a recent atrocity on Saturday, after a second evacuation order in a week, Israel killed at least 30 people and wounded over 100 when it bombed central Gaza's Khadija Girls' School in Deir al-Balah, another "humanitarian zone," where over 4,000 people were sheltering and a field hospital was operating. Video shows survivors keening, shrieking, scrabbling with bare hands through dust and rubble. Inside the school, people described blood-spattered walls, "children, women, heads, arms, legs, a scene of ghosts." A girl had been split in two, another was decapitated, a boy who'd already had his leg amputated was killed when the blast severed his other leg from his body. A mother found pieces of her dead daughter's body: "She found Tala’s small hand next to a plate of lentils...Then she found her daughter’s left foot." Most of the wounded were children, often with severe burns; they were brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital, which was overwhelmed. "We are swimming in a pool of blood," said one furious medic. "We demand the countries of the world and the leaders of the world to look at us."

"Swimming in a pool of blood": Gaza medic pleads for aid after Israeli strike kills at least 37 www.youtube.com

Many others desperately seek an end to the awful carnage. In a letter to a complicit Biden administration still incomprehensibly funding it, 45 foreign doctors who worked in Gaza with the World Health Organization and other relief groups wrote to demand a prompt ceasefire and Gazan access to food, water, health care and medical supplies. 'We wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned - dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them," they wrote. "We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget." With "marginal exceptions," they added, "everyone in Gaza is sick, injured or both. This includes every national aid worker, every international volunteer and probably every Israeli hostage: every man, woman and child." Haunted by daily treating children shot in the head, ravaged by severe burns, gored by shrapnel from likely illegal weapons, they noted, "We are not politicians. We are simply doctors who cannot remain silent about what we saw in Gaza."

In interviews, some have tried to describe the "unspeakable" devastation they witnessed. A US plastic surgeon and former Army combat trauma surgeon who treated mostly children at European Gaza Hospital, performing about 115 reconstructive surgeries on gunshot wounds to the face along with amputations and care for severe burns, said it was more horrific than working in Sarajevo and Iraq. An orthopedic surgeon wrote, “Gaza was the first time I held a baby’s brains in my hand. The first of many." "Every day I saw babies die," said a pediatric nurse practitioner trying to provide maternity care. "They had been born healthy, but their mothers were so malnourished they couldn't breastfeed, and there was no formula or clean water. So they starved." "You try to save the ones you can save," said a Jewish American orthopedic surgeon who described two six-year-olds who ultimately died from two "perfect" gunshot wounds to head and chest. Specifically targeted?, he was asked. "Definitively," he said. "No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the 'world's best snipers.'"

Doctors say civilian casualties are almost always children: "I've seen more shredded, incinerated children than I've ever seen - missing body parts, crushed by buildings, bomb explosions, shrapnel." The Palestine Children's Relief Fund has evacuated about 200 to Chicago for care. One boy on their list had "shrapnels in back and chest with spinal cord injury resulting in post- traumatic paraplegia, multiple surgeries, intracranial hemorrhage"; he died before they could get him out. Hazem Rahma and his wife ran an orphanage in Gaza City for 22 small children, over half disabled, until Israeli attacks forced them to flee, strangers helping carry the distressed kids, Rahma carrying Iyas, a blind, deaf, five-year-old with cerebral palsy. In Khan Younis, Iyas died of infections when his medicine ran out: "He was a very sweet boy and was suffering a lot." Now they are in al-Mawasi - "Fear fills our hearts" - with three-month-old Malek, two-month-old Yazan, infant Yaffa with Down’s Syndrome: "We have no idea where they are from. God willing, we will be their family for now. We will try to make up for what they have lost...Life has no meaning if it does not have mercy."

In truth, mercy has been grievously scarce amidst the suffering - from the "first grey children pulled from the rubble" and civilians picked off by drone missiles to the disabled young man attacked in his home by an IDF dog and left to die and the man caring for his mother with Alzheimer's shot, detained and only freed two months later, long after neighbors found her dead on her bed. Last week, after months of targeting water supplies "to create a situation of thirst and hunger," IDF forces blew up a key water reservoir in Rafah that U.S. activist Rachel Corrie spent her last month protecting. In a post on Instagram, a soldier celebrated the act "in honor of Shabbat" with a video of the explosion and a song vowing, "We will burn Gaza." It's been deleted; denial is vital to Israel. "The IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target children," they said in response to outrage over another child-slaughtering air strike always meant to target "a Hamas command center" with "precise munitions" after taking "numerous steps" to "minimize civilian harm." Still, they added, "Remaining in an active combat zone has inherent risks."

"Israel On the Brink of Savagery," declared a recent Ha'aretz article. On the brink of? That obscene ship sailed long ago. They were referencing Monday's storming by a right-wing mob, including Knesset members and lawmakers, of Sde Teiman, an IDF base that's become a notorious, Guantánamo-like detention center from hell for Palestiniains. Harrowing whistleblower accounts describe inmates subjected to torture, sexual abuse, revenge beatings, dog attacks, horrific filth, 18-hour days of handcuffed, blindfolded, silenced, crouched stress positions causing such severe injuries detainees have had limbs amputated, where the wounded are strapped to hospital beds in diapers, force-fed through straws, and "stripped of anything that (resembles) human beings," and where, since Oct. 7, nearly 40 detainees have died. This week's incursion, however, was not to protest that widely alleged, long-ignored brutality - conditions in regular prisons, where Israel has banned the Red Cross, aren't much better - but to angrily denounce the "vanishingly rare" arrest of nine IDF soldiers for inflicting it.

In Israel's longstanding culture of impunity, excessively violent soldiers, like rampaging settlers, are almost never held to account; just 4.4 % of alleged soldier abuses of prisoners are ever prosecuted. This week's arrest came almost entirely because after the victim, a Hamas suspect, was admitted to the hospital with grave injuries that required surgery, the hospital followed protocol for sexual assault victims and notified authorities. With the legal process underway, Israel military police - possibly aware of a world and world court watching them? - were obliged to raid Sde Teiman, arresting nine soldiers suspected of severe torture and sexual abuse of a detainee. In response, several hundred right-wing extremists, incensed that nice Zionist boys were being punished for doing whatever grotesquerie they did to a helpless Palestinian in their deranged, unbridled power, broke into the base and attacked soldiers holding them. It took teargas and several hours to disperse an enraged throng that, despite their government's countless crimes, for the first time included elected officials in its violent ranks.

For many, the spectacle of those in power rioting on behalf of sadistic thugs evinced the "deep moral deterioration" of a nation already deemed barbaric by much of the world - ghastly proof, writes Nesrine Malik, that despite rulings and protests, the war "has found its place, nestled within the status quo" of an apartheid Israel where there are no innocents in Gaza and "the most abject Palestinian suffering (is) normalized as just a part of life." This "dissolution (of) a fundamental human law...seems to say: Yes, this is the world we live in now. Get used to it," says Malik. "What does getting used to it look like? It looks like accepting that there are certain groups of people who can be killed...That it is, in fact, reasonable and necessary that they should die in order to maintain a political system (built) on the inequality of human life, (where) we exist and deserve freedom from hunger, fear and persecution (and) others have demonstrated some quality that shows they are not owed the same." "Justice, justice shall you pursue," Judaism teaches. In Genesis 18:19, "We are called to be just and righteous." God, if She's implausibly watching, weeps.

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

In a landmark case in Florida, a federal jury has ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay over $38 million in damages to the families of eight Colombian men who were killed by paramilitaries the banana giant funded. Chiquita previously pleaded guilty to paying the far-right United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia paramilitary group, or AUC, $1.7 million from 2001 to 2004. Though Chiquita argued the payments were meant to protect company employees, the AUC has been found responsible for committing mass human rights abuses and murdering civilians from 1997 to 2006. “Chiquita essentially had a partnership with the paramilitaries,” says Marco Simons, general counsel for EarthRights International. “They voluntarily paid these groups in order to protect Chiquita against left-wing guerrillas and essentially to pacify the operating environment in the banana-growing region of Colombia.” Chiquita is one of the world’s largest banana producers and says it plans to appeal the jury’s verdict. The company is due to face a second so-called bellwether trial starting July 15. “For the past 17 years, we have been trying to get justice,” says Simons. “This is only the start of the judicial reckoning for Chiquita.”

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

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Kris Hansen had worked as a chemist at the 3M Corporation for about a year when her boss, an affable senior scientist named Jim Johnson, gave her a strange assignment. 3M had invented Scotch Tape and Post-­it notes; it sold everything from sandpaper to kitchen sponges. But on this day, in 1997, Johnson wanted Hansen to test human blood for chemical contamination.

Several of 3M’s most successful products contained man-made compounds called fluorochemicals. In a spray called Scotchgard, fluorochemicals protected leather and fabric from stains. In a coating known as Scotchban, they prevented food packaging from getting soggy. In a soapy foam used by firefighters, they helped extinguish jet-fuel fires. Johnson explained to Hansen that one of the company’s fluorochemicals, PFOS — short for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid — often found its way into the bodies of 3M factory workers. Although he said that they were unharmed, he had recently hired an outside lab to measure the levels in their blood. The lab had just reported something odd, however. For the sake of comparison, it had tested blood samples from the American Red Cross, which came from the general population and should have been free of fluorochemicals. Instead, it kept finding a contaminant in the blood.

Johnson asked Hansen to figure out whether the lab had made a mistake. Detecting trace levels of chemicals was her specialty: She had recently written a doctoral dissertation about tiny particles in the atmosphere. Hansen’s team of lab technicians and junior scientists fetched a blood sample from a lab-­supply company and prepped it for analysis. Then Hansen switched on an oven-­size box known as a mass spectrometer, which weighs molecules so that scientists can identify them.

As the lab equipment hummed around her, Hansen loaded a sample into the machine. A graph appeared on the mass spectrometer’s display; it suggested that there was a compound in the blood that could be PFOS. That’s weird, Hansen thought. Why would a chemical produced by 3M show up in people who had never worked for the company?

Hansen didn’t want to share her results until she was certain that they were correct, so she and her team spent several weeks analyzing more blood, often in time-consuming overnight tests. All the samples appeared to be contaminated. When Hansen used a more precise method, liquid chromatography, the results left little doubt that the chemical in the Red Cross blood was PFOS.

Hansen now felt obligated to update her boss. Johnson was a towering, bearded man, and she liked him: He seemed to trust her expertise, and he found something to laugh about in most conversations. But, when she shared her findings, his response was cryptic. “This changes everything,” he said. Before she could ask him what he meant, he went into his office and closed the door.

This was not the first time that Hansen had found a chemical where it didn’t belong. A wiry woman who grew up skiing competitively, Hansen had always liked to spend time outdoors; for her chemistry thesis at Williams College, she had kayaked around the former site of an electric company on the Hoosic River, collecting crayfish and testing them for industrial pollutants called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Her research, which showed that a drainage ditch at the site was leaking the chemicals, prompted a news story and contributed to a cleanup effort overseen by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. At 3M, Hansen assumed that her bosses would respond to her findings with the same kind of diligence and care.

Hansen stayed near Johnson’s office for the rest of the day, anxiously waiting for him to react to her research. He never did. In the days that followed, Hansen sensed that Johnson had notified some of his superiors. She remembers his boss, Dale Bacon, a paunchy fellow with gray hair, stopping by her desk and suggesting that she had made a mistake. “I don’t think so,” she told him. In subsequent weeks, Hansen and her team ordered fresh blood samples from every supplier that 3M worked with. Each of the samples tested positive for PFOS.

In the middle of this testing, Johnson suddenly announced that he would be taking early retirement. After he packed up his office and left, Hansen felt adrift. She was so new to corporate life that her office clothes — pleated pants and dress shirts — still felt like a costume. Johnson had always guided her research, and he hadn’t told Hansen what she should do next. She reminded herself of what he had said — that the chemical wasn’t harmful in factory workers. But she couldn’t be sure that it was harmless. She knew that PCBs, for example, were mass-produced for years before studies showed that they accumulate in the food chain and cause a range of health issues, including damage to the brain. The most reliable way to gauge the safety of chemicals is to study them over time, in animals and, if possible, in humans.

What Hansen didn’t know was that 3M had already conducted animal studies — two decades earlier. They had shown PFOS to be toxic, yet the results remained secret, even to many at the company. In one early experiment, conducted in the late ’70s, a group of 3M scientists fed PFOS to rats on a daily basis. Starting at the second-lowest dose that the scientists tested, about 10 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight, the rats showed signs of possible harm to their livers, and half of them died. At higher doses, every rat died. Soon afterward, 3M scientists found that a relatively low daily dose, 4.5 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight, could kill a monkey within weeks. (Based on this result, the chemical would currently fall into the highest of five toxicity levels recognized by the United Nations.) This daily dose of PFOS was orders of magnitude greater than the amount that the average person would ingest, but it was still relatively low — roughly comparable to the dose of aspirin in a standard tablet.

In 1979, an internal company report deemed PFOS “certainly more toxic than anticipated” and recommended longer-term studies. That year, 3M executives flew to San Francisco to consult Harold Hodge, a respected toxicologist. They told Hodge only part of what they knew: that PFOS had sickened and even killed laboratory animals and had caused liver abnormalities in factory workers. According to a 3M document that was marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” Hodge urged the executives to study whether the company’s fluorochemicals caused reproductive issues or cancer. After reviewing more data, he told one of them to find out whether the chemicals were present “in man,” and he added, “If the levels are high and widespread and the half-life is long, we could have a serious problem.” Yet Hodge’s warning was omitted from official meeting notes, and the company’s fluorochemical production increased over time.

Hansen’s bosses never told her that PFOS was toxic. In the weeks after Johnson left 3M, however, she felt that she was under a new level of scrutiny. One of her superiors suggested that her equipment might be contaminated, so she cleaned the mass spectrometer and then the entire lab. Her results didn’t change. Another encouraged her to repeatedly analyze her syringes, bags and test tubes, in case they had tainted the blood. (They had not.) Her managers were less concerned about PFOS, it seemed to Hansen, than about the chance that she was wrong.

Sometimes Hansen doubted herself. She was 28 and had only recently earned her Ph.D. But she continued her experiments, if only to respond to the questions of her managers. 3M bought three additional mass spectrometers, which each cost more than a car, and Hansen used them to test more blood samples. In late 1997, her new boss, Bacon, even had her fly out to the company that manufactured the machines, so that she could repeat her tests there. She studied the blood of hundreds of people from more than a dozen blood banks in various states. Each sample contained PFOS. The chemical seemed to be everywhere.

When 3M was founded, in 1902, it was known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. After its mining operations flopped, the company pivoted to sandpaper and then to a series of clever inventions aimed at improving everyday life. An early employee noticed that autoworkers were struggling to paint two-tone cars, which were popular at the time; he eventually invented masking tape, using crêpe paper and cabinetmaker’s glue. Another 3M employee created Post-it notes to help him bookmark passages in his church hymnal. An official history of 3M, published for the company’s 100th anniversary, celebrated its “tolerance for tinkerers.”

Fluorochemicals had their origins in the American effort to build the atomic bomb. During the Second World War, scientists for the Manhattan Project developed one of the first safe processes for bonding carbon to fluorine, a dangerously reactive element that experts had nicknamed “the wildest hellcat” of chemistry. After the war, 3M hired some Manhattan Project chemists and began mass-producing chains of carbon atoms bonded to fluorine atoms. The resulting chemicals proved to be astonishingly versatile, in part because they resist oil, water and heat. They are also incredibly long-lasting, earning them the moniker “forever chemicals.”

In the early ’50s, 3M began selling one of its fluorochemicals, PFOA, to the chemical company DuPont for use in Teflon. Then, a couple of years later, a dollop of fluorochemical goo landed on a 3M employee’s tennis shoe, where it proved impervious to stains and impossible to wipe off. 3M now had the idea for Scotchgard and Scotchban. By the time Hansen was in elementary school, in the ’70s, both products were ubiquitous. Restaurants served French fries in Scotchban-treated packaging. Hansen’s mother sprayed Scotchgard on the living-­room couch.

Hansen grew up in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, not far from 3M’s headquarters. Her father was one of the company’s star engineers and was even inducted into its hall of fame in 1979; he had helped to create Scotch-Brite scouring pads and Coban wrap, a soft alternative to sticky bandages. Once, he molded some fibers into cups, thinking that they might make a good bra. They turned out to be miserably uncomfortable, so he and his colleagues placed them over their mouths, giving the company the inspiration for its signature N95 mask.

Hansen never intended to follow her father to the company. She spent her childhood summers catching turtles and leopard frogs at the lake and hoped to have a career in environmental conservation. Her first job after earning her chemistry Ph.D. was on a boat, which took her to remote parts of the Pacific Ocean. But the voyage left her so seasick that she lost 20 pounds, and she soon retreated to Minnesota. In 1996, at her father’s suggestion, Hansen applied for a position in 3M’s environmental lab.

After Hansen started her PFOS research, her relationships with some colleagues seemed to deteriorate. One afternoon in 1998, a trim 3M epidemiologist named Geary Olsen arrived with several vials of blood and asked her to test them. The next morning, she read the results to him and several colleagues — positive for PFOS. As Hansen remembers it, Olsen looked triumphant. “Those samples came from my horse,” he said — and his horse certainly wasn’t eating at McDonald’s or trotting on Scotchgarded carpets. Hansen felt that he was trying to humiliate her. (Olsen did not respond to requests for comment.) What Hansen wanted to know was how PFOS was making its way into animals.

She found an answer in data from lab rats, which also appeared to have fluorochemicals in their blood. Rats that had more fish meal in their diets, she discovered, tended to have higher levels of PFOS, suggesting that the chemical had spread through the food chain and perhaps through water. In male lab rats, PFOS levels rose with age, indicating that the chemical accumulated in the body. But, curiously, in female rats the levels sometimes fell. Hansen was unsettled when toxicology reports indicated why: Mother rats seemed to be offloading the chemical to their pups. Exposure to PFOS could begin before birth.

Another study confirmed that Scotchban and Scotchgard were sources of the chemical. PFOS wasn’t an official ingredient in either product, but both ­contained other fluorochemicals that, the study showed, broke down into PFOS in the bodies of lab rats. Hansen and her team ultimately found PFOS in eagles, chickens, rabbits, cows, pigs and other animals. They also found 14 ­additional fluorochemicals in human blood, including several produced by 3M. Some were present in wastewater from a 3M factory.

At one point, Hansen told her father, Paul, that she was frustrated by the way senior colleagues kept questioning her work. Paul had recently retired, but he had confidence in 3M’s top executives, and he suggested that she take her findings directly to them. But as a relatively new employee — and one of the few women scientists at a company of about 75,000 people — Hansen found the idea preposterous. When Paul offered to talk to some of 3M’s executives himself, she was mortified at the idea of her father interceding.

Hansen knew that if she could find a blood sample that didn’t contain PFOS then she might be able to convince her colleagues that the other samples did. She and her team began to study historical blood from the early decades of PFOS production. They soon found the chemical in blood from a 1969-71 Michigan breast cancer study. Then they ran an overnight test on blood that had been collected in rural China during the ’80s and ’90s. If any place were PFOS-free, she figured, it would be somewhere remote, where 3M products weren’t in widespread use.

The next morning, anxious to see the results, Hansen arrived at the lab before anyone else. For the first time since she had begun testing blood, some of the samples showed no trace of PFOS. She was so struck that she called her husband. There was nothing wrong with her equipment or methodology; PFOS, a man-made chemical produced by her employer, really was in human blood, practically everywhere. Hansen’s team found it in Swedish blood samples from 1957 and 1971. After that, her lab analyzed blood that had been collected before 3M created PFOS. It tested negative. Apparently, fluorochemicals had entered human blood after the company started selling products that contained them. They had leached out of 3M’s sprays, coatings and factories — and into all of us.

That summer, an in-house librarian at 3M delivered a surprising article to Hansen’s office mailbox. It had been written in 1981 by 3M scientists, and it described a method for measuring fluorine in blood, indicating that even back then the company was testing for fluorochemicals. One scientist mentioned in the article, Richard Newmark, still worked for 3M, in a low-lying structure nicknamed the “nerdy building.” Hansen arranged to meet with him there.

Newmark, a collegial man with a compact build, told Hansen that, more than 20 years before, two academic scientists, Donald Taves and Warren Guy, had discovered a fluorochemical in human blood. They had wondered whether Scotchgard might be its source, so they approached 3M. Newmark told her that his subsequent experiments had confirmed their suspicions — the chemical was PFOS — but 3M lawyers had urged his lab not to admit it.

As Hansen wrote all this down in a notebook, she felt anger rising inside her. Why had so many colleagues doubted the soundness of her results if earlier 3M experiments had already proved the same thing? After the meeting, she hurried back to the lab to find Bacon. “He knew!” she told him.

Bacon’s face remained expressionless. He told Hansen to type up her notes for him. She remembers him telling her not to email them. (In response to questions about Hansen’s account, Bacon said that he didn’t remember specifics. When I called Newmark, he told me that he could not remember her or anything about PFOS. “It’s been a very long time, and I’m in my mid-80s, and just do not remember stuff that well,” he said.)

A few months later, in early 1999, Bacon invited Hansen to an extraordinary meeting: She would have the chance to present her findings to 3M’s CEO, Livio D. DeSimone. Hansen spent several days rehearsing while driving and making dinner. On the day of the meeting, she took an elevator up to the executive suite; her stomach turned as a secretary pointed her to a conference room. Men in suits sat around a long table. Her boss, Bacon, was there. DeSimone, a portly man with white hair, sat at the head of the table.

Almost as soon as Hansen placed her first transparency on the projector, the attendees began interrogating her: Why did she do this research? Who directed her to do it? Whom did she inform of the results? The executives seemed to view her diligence as a betrayal: Her data could be damaging to the company. She remembers defending herself, mentioning Newmark’s similar work in the ’70s and trying, unsuccessfully, to direct the conversation back to her research. While the executives talked over her, Hansen noticed that DeSimone’s eyes had closed and that his chin was resting on his dress shirt. The CEO appeared to have fallen asleep. (DeSimone died in 2017. A company spokesperson did not answer my questions about the meeting.)

After that meeting, Hansen remembers learning from Bacon that her job would be changing. She would only be allowed to do experiments that a supervisor had specifically requested, and she was to share her data with only that person. She would spend most of her time analyzing samples for studies that other employees were conducting, and she should not ask questions about what the results meant. Several members of her team were also being reassigned. Bacon explained that a different scientist at 3M would lead research into PFOS going forward. Hansen felt that she was being punished and struggled not to cry.

Even as Hansen was being sidelined, the results of her research were quietly making their way into the files of the Environmental Protection Agency. Since the ’70s, federal law has required that companies tell the EPA about any evidence indicating that a company’s products present “a substantial risk of injury to health or the environment.” In May 1998, 3M officials notified the agency, without informing Hansen, that the company had measured PFOS in blood samples from around the U.S. — a clear reference to Hansen’s work. It did not mention its animal research from the ’70s, and it said that the chemical caused “no adverse effects” at the levels the company had measured in its workers. A year later, 3M sent the EPA another letter, again without telling Hansen. This time, it informed the agency about the 14 other fluorochemicals, several of them made by 3M, that Hansen’s team had detected in human blood. The company reiterated that it did not believe that its products presented a substantial risk to human health.

Hansen recalls that in the summer of 1999, at an annual picnic that her parents hosted for 3M scientists, she was grilling corn when one of the creators of Scotchgard, a gray-haired man in glasses, confronted her. He accused her of trying to tear down the work of her colleagues. Did it make her feel powerful ruining other people’s careers? he asked. Hansen didn’t know how to respond, and he walked away.

Several of Hansen’s superiors had stopped greeting her in the hallways. When she presented a poster of her research at a 3M event, nobody asked her about it. She lost her appetite, and her pleated pants grew baggy. She started to worry that an angry co-worker might confront or even harm her in the company’s dark parking lot. She got into the habit of calling her husband before walking to her car.

A year after Hansen’s meeting with the CEO, 3M, under pressure from the EPA, made a very costly decision: It was going to discontinue its entire portfolio of PFOS-­related chemicals. In May 2000, for the first time, 3M officials revealed to the press that it had detected the chemical in blood banks. One executive claimed that the discovery was a “complete surprise.” The company’s medical director told The New York Times, “This isn’t a health issue now, and it won’t be a health issue.” But the newspaper also quoted a professor of toxicology. “The real issue is this stuff accumulates,” the professor said. “No chemical is totally innocuous, and it seems inconceivable that anything that accumulates would not eventually become toxic.”

Hansen was now pregnant with twins. Although she was heartened by 3M’s announcement — she saw it as evidence that her work had forced the company to act — she was also ready to leave the environmental lab, where she felt marginalized. After giving birth, she joined 3M’s medical devices team. But first, she decided to have one last blood sample tested for PFOS: her own. The results showed one of the lowest readings she’d seen in human blood. Immediately, she thought of the rats that had passed the chemical on to their pups.

Hansen told me that, for the next 19 years, she avoided the subject of fluorochemicals with the same intensity with which she had once pursued it. She focused on raising her kids and coaching a cross-country ski team; she worked a variety of jobs at 3M, none related to fluorochemicals. In 2002, when 3M announced that it would be replacing PFOS with another fluorochemical, PFBS, Hansen knew that it, too, would remain in the environment indefinitely. Still, she decided not to involve herself. She skipped over articles about the chemicals in scientific journals and newspapers, where they were starting to be linked to possible developmental, immune system and liver problems. (In 2006, after the EPA accused 3M of violating the Toxic Substances Control Act, in part by repeatedly ­failing to disclose the harms of fluorochemicals promptly, the company agreed to pay a small penalty of $1.5 million, without admitting wrongdoing.)

During that time, forever chemicals gained a new scientific name — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, an acronym that is vexingly similar to the specific fluorochemical PFOS. A swath of 150 square miles around 3M’s headquarters was found to be polluted with PFAS; scientists discovered PFOS and PFBS in local fish and various fluorochemicals in water that roughly 125,000 Minnesotans drank. Hansen’s husband, Peter, told me that, when friends asked Hansen about PFAS, she would change the subject. Still, she repeatedly told him — and herself — that the chemicals were safe.

In the 2016 book “Secrecy at Work,” two management theorists, Jana Costas and Christopher Grey, argue that there is nothing inherently wrong or harmful about keeping secrets. Trade secrets, for example, are protected by federal and state law on the grounds that they promote innovation and contribute to the economy. The authors draw on a large body of sociological research to illustrate the many ways that information can be concealed. An organization can compartmentalize a secret by slicing it into smaller components, preventing any one person from piecing together the whole. Managers who don’t want to disclose sensitive information may employ “stone-faced silence.” Secret-keepers can form a kind of tribe, dependent on one another’s continued discretion; in this way, even the existence of a secret can be kept secret. Such techniques become pernicious, Costas and Grey write, when a company keeps a dark secret, a secret about wrongdoing.

Certain unpredictable events — a leak, a lawsuit, a news story — can start to unspool a secret. In the case of forever chemicals, the unspooling began on a cattle farm. In 1998, a West Virginia farmer told a lawyer, Robert Bilott, that wastewater from a DuPont site seemed to be poisoning his cows: They had started to foam at the mouth, their teeth grew black and more than a hundred eventually fell over and died. Bilott sued and obtained tens of thousands of internal documents, which helped push forever chemicals into the public consciousness. The documents revealed that the farm’s water contained PFOA, the fluorochemical that DuPont had bought from 3M, and that both companies had long understood it to be toxic. (The lawsuit, which ended in a settlement, was dramatized in the film “Dark Waters,” starring Mark Ruffalo as Bilott.) Bilott later sued 3M over contamination in Minnesota, but the judge prohibited discussion of health repercussions; a jury ultimately decided in 3M’s favor. Finally, in 2010, the Minnesota attorney general’s office filed its own suit, alleging that 3M had harmed the environment and polluted drinking water. The company paid $850 million in a settlement, without an admission of fault or liability. The AG also released thousands more internal 3M records to the public.

The AG’s records helped me report a series of stories for The Intercept about forever chemicals. Much of my reporting, which started in 2015, focused on what 3M and DuPont knew, even as they continued to produce PFAS. But, as I reported on the cover-up, I wondered what it meant for a sprawling multinational company to know that its products were dangerous. Who knew? How much, exactly, did they know? And how had the company kept its secret? For many years, no one inside 3M would agree to speak with me.

Then, in 2021, John Oliver did a segment on his comedy news show, “Last Week Tonight,” about forever chemicals. The segment, which mentioned my reporting, said that they could cause cancer, immune-system issues and other problems. “The world is basically soaked in the Devil’s piss right now,” Oliver said. “And not in a remotely hot way.” One of Hansen’s former professors sent her the segment, and Hansen watched it at her kitchen table — a moment that would eventually lead her to me.

“This actually made me sad as there are so many inaccuracies,” Hansen wrote to her professor in response. But, when the professor asked her what was incorrect, Hansen didn’t know what to say. For the first time, she Googled the health effects of PFOS.

Hansen was deeply troubled by what she read. One paper, published in 2012 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that, in children, as PFOS levels rose so did the chance that vaccines were ineffective. Children with high levels of PFOS and other fluorochemicals were more likely to experience fevers, according to a 2016 study. Other research linked the chemicals to increased rates of infectious diseases, food allergies and asthma in children. Dozens of scientific papers had found that, in adults, even very low levels of PFOS could interfere with hormones, fertility, liver and thyroid function, cholesterol levels and fetal development. Even PFBS, the chemical that 3M chose as a replacement for PFOS, caused developmental and reproductive irregularities in animals, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

Reading these studies, Hansen felt a paradoxical kind of relief: As bad as PFOS seemed to be, at least independent scientists were studying it. But she also felt enraged at the company and at herself. For years, she had repeated the company’s claim that PFOS was not harmful. “I’m not proud of that,” she told me. She felt “dirty” for ever collecting a 3M paycheck. When she read the documents released by the Minnesota AG, she was horrified by how much the company had known and how little it had told her. She found records of studies that she had conducted, as well as the typed notes from her meeting with Newmark.

In October 2022, after Hansen had been at 3M for 26 years, her job was eliminated, and she chose not to apply for a new one. Three months later, she wrote me an email, offering to speak about what she had witnessed inside the company. “If you’d be interested in talking further, please let me know,” she wrote. The next day, we had the first of dozens of conversations.

When Hansen first told me about her experiences, I felt conflicted. Her work seemed to have helped force 3M to stop making a number of toxic chemicals, but I kept thinking about the 20 years in which she had kept quiet. During my first visit to Hansen’s home, in February 2023, we sat in her kitchen, eating bread that her husband had just baked. She showed me pictures of her father and shared a color-coded timeline of 3M’s history with forever chemicals. On a bitterly cold walk in a local park, we tried to figure out if any of her colleagues, besides Newmark, had known that PFOS was in everyone’s blood. She often sprinkled her stories with such Midwesternisms as “holy ­buckets!”

During my second trip, this past August, I asked her why, as a scientist who was trained to ask questions, she hadn’t been more skeptical of claims that PFOS was harmless. In the awkward silence that followed, I looked out the window at some hummingbirds.

Hansen’s superiors had given her the same explanation that they gave journalists, she finally said — that factory workers were fine, so people with lower levels would be, too. Her specialty was the detection of chemicals, not their harms. “You’ve got literally the medical director of 3M saying, ‘We studied this, there are no effects,’” she told me. “I wasn’t about to challenge that.” Her income had helped to support a family of five. Perhaps, I wondered aloud, she hadn’t really wanted to know whether her company was poisoning the public.

To my surprise, Hansen readily agreed. “It almost would have been too much to bear at the time,” she told me. 3M had successfully compartmentalized its secret; Hansen had only seen one slice. (When I sent the company detailed questions about Hansen’s account, a spokesperson responded without answering most of them or mentioning Hansen by name.)

Recently, I thought back on Taves and Guy, the academic scientists who, in the ’70s, came so close to proving that 3M’s chemicals were accumulating in humans. Taves is 97, but when I called him he told me that he still remembers clearly when company representatives visited his lab at the University of Rochester. “They wanted to know everything about what we were doing,” he told me. But the exchange was not reciprocal. “I soon found out that they weren’t going to tell me anything.” 3M never confirmed to Taves or Guy, who was a postdoctoral student at the time, that its fluorochemicals were in human blood. “I’m sort of kicking myself for not having followed up on this more, but I didn’t have any research money,” Guy told me. He eventually became a dentist to support his wife and family. (He died this year at 81.) Taves, too, left the field, to become a psychiatrist, and the trail ended there.

Last year, while reading about the thousands of PFAS-related lawsuits that 3M was facing, I was intrigued to learn that one of them, filed by cities and towns with polluted water, had produced a new set of internal 3M documents. When I requested several from the plaintiff’s legal team, I saw two names that I recognized. In a document from 1991, a 3M scientist talked about using a mass spectrometer — the same tool that Hansen would use years later — to devise a technique for measuring PFOS in biological fluid. The author was Jim Johnson — and he had sent the report to his boss, Dale Bacon.

This revelation made me gasp. Johnson had been Hansen’s first boss and had instigated her research into PFOS. Bacon had questioned her findings and ultimately told her to stop her work. (In a sworn deposition, Bacon said that by the ’80s he had heard, during a water-cooler chat with a colleague, that Taves and Guy had found PFOS in human blood.) What I couldn’t understand was why Johnson would ask Hansen to investigate something that he had already studied himself — and then act surprised by the results.

Jim Johnson, who is now an 81-year-old widower, lives with several dogs in a pale-yellow house in North Dakota. When I first called him, he said that he had begun researching PFOS in the ’70s. “I did a lot of the very original work on it,” he told me. He said that when he saw the chemical’s structure he understood “within 20 minutes” that it would not break down in nature. Shortly thereafter, one of his experiments revealed that PFOS was binding to proteins in the body, causing the chemical to accumulate over time. He told me that he also looked for PFOS in an informal test of blood from the general population, around the late ’70s, and was not surprised when he found it there.

Johnson initially cited “480 pounds of dog” as a reason that I shouldn’t visit him, but he later relented. When I arrived, on a chilly day in November, we spent a few minutes standing outside his house, watching Snozzle, Sadie and Junkyard press their slobbery snouts against his living ­room window. Then we decamped to the nearest IHOP. Johnson, who was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt, was so tall that he couldn’t comfortably fit into a booth. We sat at a table and ordered two bottomless coffees.

In an experiment in the early ’80s, Johnson fed a component of Scotchban to rats and found that PFOS accumulated in their livers, a result that suggested how the chemical would behave in humans. When I asked why that mattered to the company, he took a sip of coffee and said, “It meant they were screwed.”

At the time, Johnson said, he didn’t think PFOS caused significant health problems. Still, he told me, “it was obviously bad,” because man-made compounds from household products didn’t belong in the human body. He said that he argued against using fluorochemicals in toothpaste and diapers. Contrac­tors working for 3M had shaved rabbits, he said, and smeared them with the company’s fluorochemicals to see if PFOS showed up in their bodies. “They’d send me the livers and, yup, there it was,” he told me. “I killed a lot of rabbits.” But he considered his efforts largely futile. “These idiots were already putting it in food packaging,” he said.

Johnson told me, with seeming pride, that one reason he didn’t do more was that he was a “loyal soldier,” committed to protecting 3M from liability. Some of his assignments had come directly from company lawyers, he added, and he couldn’t discuss them with me. “I didn’t even report it to my boss, or anybody,” he said. “There are some things you take to your grave.” At one point, he also told me that, if he were asked to testify in a PFOS-related lawsuit, he would probably be of little help. “I’m an old man, and so I think they would find that I got extremely forgetful all of a sudden,” he said, and chuckled.

Out the windows of IHOP, I watched a light dusting of snow fall on the parking lot. In Johnson’s telling, a tacit rule prevailed at 3M: Not all questions needed to be asked, or answered. His realization that PFOS was in the general public’s blood “wasn’t something anyone cared to hear,” he said. He wasn’t, for instance, putting his research on posters and expecting a warm reception. Over the years, he tried to convince several executives to stop making PFOS altogether, he told me, but they had good reason not to. “These people were selling fluorochemicals,” he said. He retired as the second-highest-­ranked scientist in his division, but he claimed that important business decisions were out of his control. “It wasn’t for me to jump up and start saying, ‘This is bullshit!’” he said, and he was “not really too interested in getting my butt fired.” And so his portion of 3M’s secret stayed in a compartment, both known and not known.

Johnson said that he eventually tired of arguing with the few colleagues with whom he could speak openly about PFOS. “It was time,” he said. So he hired an outside lab to look for the chemical in the blood of 3M workers, knowing that it would also test blood bank samples for comparison — the first domino in a chain that would ultimately take the compound off the market. Oddly, he compared the head of the lab to a vending machine. “He gave me what I paid for,” Johnson said. “I knew what would happen.” Then Johnson tasked Hansen with something that he had long avoided: going beyond his initial experiments and meticulously documenting the chemical’s ubiquity. While Hansen took the heat, he took early retirement.

Johnson described Hansen as though she were a vending machine, too. “She did what she was supposed to do with the tools I left her,” he said.

I pointed out that Hansen had suffered professionally and personally, and that she now feels those experiences tainted her career. “I didn’t say I was a nice guy,” Johnson replied, and laughed. After four hours, we were nearing the bottom of our bottomless coffees.

Johnson has strayed from evidence-­based science in recent years. He now believes, for instance, that the theory of evolution is wrong, and that COVID-19 vaccines cause “turbo-cancers.” But his account of what happened at 3M closely matched Hansen’s, and when I asked him about meetings and experiments described in court documents he remembered them clearly.

When I called Hansen about my conversation with Johnson, she grew angrier than I’d ever heard her. “He knew the whole time!” she said. Then she had to get off the phone for an appointment. “So glad I’m going to see my therapist,” she added, and hung up.

I once thought of secrets as discrete, explosive truths that a heroic person could suddenly reveal. In the 1983 film “Silkwood,” which is based on real events, Karen Silkwood, a worker at a plutonium plant, assembles a thick folder documenting her employer’s shoddy safety practices; while driving to share them with a reporter, she dies in a mysterious one-car crash. In another adaptation of a true story, the 2015 film “Spotlight,” a source delivers a box of critical documents to The Boston Globe, helping the paper to publish an investigation into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Talking to Hansen and Johnson, though, I saw that the truth can come out piecemeal over many years, and that the same people who keep secrets can help divulge them. Some slices of 3M’s secret are only now coming to light, and others may never come out.

Between 1951 and 2000, 3M produced at least 100 million pounds of PFOS and chemicals that degrade into PFOS. This is roughly the weight of the Titanic. After the late ’70s, when 3M scientists established that the chemical was toxic in animals and was accumulating in humans, it produced millions of pounds per year. Scientists are still struggling to grasp all the biological consequences. They have learned, just as Johnson did decades ago, that proteins in the body bind to PFOS. It enters our cells and organs, where even tiny amounts can cause stress and interfere with basic biological functions. It contributes to diseases that take many years to develop; at the time of a diagnosis, one’s PFOS level may have fallen, making it difficult to establish causation with any certainty.

The other day, I called Brad Creacey, who became an Air Force firefighter in the ’70s at the age of 18. He told me that several times a year, for practice, he and his comrades put on rubber boots and heavy silver uniforms that looked like spacesuits. Then a “torch man,” holding a stick tipped with a burning rag, ignited jet fuel that had been poured into an open-air pit. To extinguish the 100-foot-tall flames, Creacey and his colleagues sprayed them with aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF. 3M manufactured it from several forever chemicals, including PFOS.

Creacey remembers that AFFF felt slick and sudsy, almost like soap, and dried out the skin on his hands until it cracked. To celebrate his last day on a military base in Germany, his friends dumped a ceremonial bucket on him. Only later, after working with firefighting foam at an airport in Monterey, California, did he start to wonder if a string of ailments — cysts on his liver, a nodule near his thyroid — were connected to the foam. He had high cholesterol, which diet and exercise were unable to change. Then he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “It makes me feel like I was a lab rat, like we were all disposable,” Creacey told me. “I’ve lost faith in human beings.”

It may be tempting to think of Creacey and his peers as unwitting research subjects; indeed, recent studies show that PFOS is associated with an increased risk of thyroid cancer and, in Air Force servicemen, an elevated risk of testicular cancer. But it is probably more accurate to say that we are all part of the experiment. Average levels of PFOS are falling, but nearly all people have at least one forever chemical in their blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “When you have a contaminated site, you can clean it up,” Elsie Sunderland, an environmental chemist at Harvard University, told me. “When you ubiquitously introduce a toxicant at a global scale, so that it’s detectable in everyone ... we’re reducing public health on an incredibly large scale.” Once everyone’s blood is contaminated, there is no control group with which to compare, making it difficult to establish responsibility.

New health effects continue to be discovered. Researchers have found that exposure to PFAS during pregnancy can lead to developmental delays in children. Numerous recent studies have linked the chemicals to diabetes and obesity. This year, a study discovered 13 forever chemicals, including PFOS, in weeks-old fetuses from terminated pregnancies and linked the chemicals to biomarkers associated with liver problems. A team of New York University researchers estimated in 2018 that the costs of just two forever chemicals, PFOA and PFOS — in terms of disease burden, disability and health-care expenses — amounted to as much as $62 billion in a single year. This exceeds the current market value of 3M.

Philippe Grandjean, a physician who helped discover that PFAS harm the immune system, believes that anyone exposed to these chemicals — essentially everyone — may have an elevated risk of cancer. Our immune systems often find and kill abnormal cells before they turn into tumors. “PFAS interfere with the immune system, and likely also this critical function,” he told me. Grandjean, who served as an expert witness in the Minnesota AG’s case, has studied many environmental contaminants, including mercury. The impact of PFAS was so much more extreme, he said, that one of his colleagues initially thought it was the result of nuclear radiation.

In April, the EPA took two historic steps to reduce exposure to PFAS. It said that PFOS and PFOA are “likely to cause cancer” and that no level of either chemical is considered safe; it deemed them hazardous substances under the Superfund law, increasing the government’s power to force polluters to clean them up. The agency also set limits for six PFAS in drinking water. In a few years, when the EPA begins enforcing the new regulations, local utilities will be required to test their water and remove any amount of PFOS or PFOA which exceeds four parts per trillion — the equivalent of one drop dissolved in several Olympic swimming pools. 3M has produced enough PFOS and chemicals that degrade into PFOS to exceed this level in all of the freshwater on earth. Meanwhile, many other PFAS continue to be used, and companies are still developing new ones. Thousands of the compounds have been produced; the Department of Defense still depends on many for use in explosives, semiconductors, cleaning fluids and batteries. PFAS can be found in nonstick cookware, guitar strings, dental floss, makeup, hand sanitizer, brake fluid, ski wax, fishing lines and countless other products.

In a statement, a 3M spokesperson told me that the company “is proactively managing PFAS,” and that 3M’s approach to the chemicals has evolved along with “the science and technology of PFAS, societal and regulatory expectations, and our expectations of ourselves.” He directed me to a fact sheet about their continued importance in society. “These substances are critical to multiple industries — including the cars we drive, planes we fly, computers and smart phones we use to stay connected, and more,” the fact sheet read.

Recently, 3M settled the lawsuit filed by cities and towns with polluted water. It will pay up to $12.5 billion to cover the costs of filtering out PFAS, depending on how many water systems need the chemicals removed. The settlement, however, doesn’t approach the scale of the problem. At least 45% of U.S. tap water is estimated to contain one or more forever chemicals, and one drinking water expert told me that the cost of removing them all would likely reach $100 billion.

In 2022, 3M said that it would stop making PFAS and would “work to discontinue the use of PFAS across its product portfolio,” by the end of 2025 — a pledge that it called “another example of how we are positioning 3M for continued sustainable growth.” But it acknowledged that more than 16,000 of its products still contained PFAS. Direct sales of the chemicals were generating $1.3 billion annually. 3M’s regulatory filings also allow for the possibility that a full phaseout won’t happen — for example, if 3M fails to find substitutes. “We are continuing to make progress on our announcement to exit PFAS manufacturing,” 3M’s spokesperson told me. The company and its scientists have not admitted wrong­doing or faced criminal liability for producing forever chemicals or for concealing their harms.

Hansen often wonders what her father would say about 3M if he were still alive. A few years ago, he began to show signs of dementia, which worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Every time Hansen explained to him that a novel coronavirus was sickening people around the world, he asked how he might contribute — forgetting that the N95 mask he helped to create was already protecting millions of people from infection. When he died, in January 2021, Hansen noticed some Coban wrap on his arm. It was shielding his delicate skin from tears, just as he had designed it to. “He invented that,” Hansen told the hospice nurse, who smiled politely.

After she left 3M, Hansen began volunteering at a local nature preserve, where she works to clear paths and protect native plants. Last August, she took me there, and we walked to a creek where she often spends time. The water is home to three species of trout, she told me. It is also polluted by forever chemicals that 3M once dumped upstream.

For most of our hike, a thick wall of flowers — purple joe-pye weed and goldenrod — made it impossible to see the creek bank. Then we came to a wooden bench. I climbed on top of it and looked down on the creek. As I listened to the gurgling of water and the buzzing of insects, I thought I understood why Hansen liked to come here. It was too late to save the creek from pollution; 3M’s chemicals could be there for thousands of years to come. Hansen just wanted to appreciate what was left and to leave the place a little better than she’d found it.

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Kirsten Berg contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Sharon Lerner, photography by Haruka Sakaguchi, special to ProPublica.

Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from some areas in the northeastern region of Kharkiv as Russian forces continue a new offensive that has displaced thousands. This latest setback for Ukraine comes more than two years after Russia invaded the country. Human Rights Watch has documented several incidents of Russian soldiers summarily executing surrendering Ukrainian soldiers, with drone footage showing the killings “in clear detail,” says Belkis Wille, associate director with the Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch. “They take off their vests, they put down their helmets, they lie on the ground and put their hands up. And then we see them being executed by Russian soldiers in cold blood.”

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

Nearly 300 peaceful protesters were arrested over the weekend as student-led Gaza solidarity encampments across U.S. university and college campuses face an intensifying crackdown. Democracy Now! spoke with Columbia University professors and students Monday as they were threatened with suspension but voted to continue the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which began almost two weeks ago. “Hundreds of our students have been disciplined in the past six months on unfair premises,” said Sueda Polat, a Columbia student organizer who is studying human rights. “We are willing to put a lot on the line for this cause. My right to education shouldn’t come before the right to education of Gazans.”

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

An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces.

“A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in his open letter marking the debt protest — “unless that promise is made by the Australian government.”

After the successes of Australian and US troops against the Japanese in New Guinea, the Allies continued the advance through what was then Dutch New Guinea then on to the Philippines.

• READ MORE: Other West Papua reports

The first landing was at Hollandia (now Jayapura) in April 1944, which involved the Australian navy and air force.

Aubrey said in his letter:

“The Australian government’s WWII remembrance oath to Papuan and Timorese allies by the RAAF in flyers dropped over East Timor and the island of New Guinea — ‘FRIENDS, WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU!’ — is in reality one of history’s most heinous bastard acts in war
and diplomacy.

“Betrayal is the reality of this blood debt and includes consecutive Australian governments’ treachery and culpability as a criminal accomplice and accessory to six decades of the Indonesian government’s crimes against humanity.

“Barbarity that shames us! Genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and relentless ethnic cleansing.

Aubrey, spokesperson for Genocide Rebellion and the Free West Papua International Coalition, said that he and supporters were commemorating the Second World War “Papuan sacrifice for us” — Australian and American servicemen and women — four days before ANZAC Day without inviting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese or any government minister [and] without inviting US President Biden.

“To have them with us on this special solemn occasion, while honouring the fact that many of us — children and grandchildren – would not be here if it were not for Papuan courage, loyalty, and sacrifice so steadfastly given to our forebears, would be dishonourable.

‘Heartless complicity’
“We condemn outright their heartless complicity and premeditated exploitation of Papuans in their time of peril. A blood debt not honoured by a single Australian government or US administration!

“Lest We Forget . . .  six decades of providing the Republic of Indonesia with an environment of impunity for crimes against humanity — 500,000 victims in Western New Guinea, 250,000 in East Timor [now Timor-Leste after the 1999 liberation].

“Future historians will teach their undergraduates that Australian governments did forget! That Australian governments also contravened Commonwealth and State criminal codes by helping the Indonesian government prevent the legal decolonisation of Western New Guinea and achieve their subsequent unlawful annexation; and by concealing and destroying evidence of the 1998 Biak Island Massacre.

“It is not only a matter of honour and truth, it’s personal. I have only just discovered that my father and my uncle were Australian servicemen in the Pacific Theatre campaigns across New Guinea.

“Honourable Australians and Americans, however, only need to know our duty of care and our international obligations cannot be compromised for political and economic plunder. The victims of crimes against humanity deserve the support and the protection they are by law, by right, and decency entitled to.

“Pacific Island nations look to the East for a relationship of integrity in their international affairs. Who can blame them with Australian governments track record of treachery, dishonour, and their demeaning elitism and history in the genocide of indigenous peoples.”

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

Cruelty upon cruelty: Today is Mother's Day in Gaza, and across the Arab world. Still the slaughter, the wounding, trauma, hunger go on. Israel has killed over 12,000 Palestinian children, with many thousands more injured or orphaned ; each day, 37 more mothers are killed. Those who survive battle to keep their children alive, and mourn those they've lost. "The children are always ours," said James Baldwin. But in Gaza, says one mother, "Today, like all mothers, I feel broken."

This year, the Mother's Day marked each March 21 is, for Gazans, a bloody travesty. The numbers still numb: More than 31,988 people have been killed in the ongoing) Israeli assault; another 74,188 have been injured, including over 32,800 children and 25,000 women, and 25,000 children have lost one or both parents. The Palestine Red Crescent Society estimates this Mother's Day would have been commemorated by 37 mothers killed; it was also marked by Israeli forces denying 28 Palestinian detained mothers from seeing their children. To date, Israel's "there-are-no-innocents" air campaign has dropped over 29,000 bombs, many of them 2,000-pound munitions that maim or kill within a quarter mile - often in so-called "safe zones" or "safe corridors" where Israel has told Gazans to go. Meanwhile, their relentless blockade has left at least half the population at imminent risk of famine; in recent weeks, at least several dozen children have starved to death.

When children are present in a time of genocide, writes Palestinian pediatrician Sabreen Akhter, they are always the most afflicted and the most in need of protection. When children are present in a place that is bombed, they die more often than adults due to their smaller bodies and organs: "When you bomb a place with children in it, your primary intention is to kill all the children first." When they're present in a place lacking food and water, they die more quickly: "When you cut off water and food to a population with children, your primary intention is to starve all the children first." When they're in a place with no housing and exposed to the elements, they are more traumatized, and they die more rapidly. At least, urges Al-Jazeera, "Know their names." Last month, they compiled perhaps half the names of young dead known to them when the total was about 11,500; even then, it takes over seven minutes to scroll through them. It's the least we can do.

Palestinian children killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza | Al Jazeera Newsfeed www.youtube.com

For mothers who survive, their daily mission is to keep alive the children who remain to them. A 29-year-old mother of three whose husband was killed in a recent "flour massacre" - while trying to feed his children - struggles to feed her five-month-old, because her breasts have almost no milk from lack of food and "deep sadness": "The baby keeps crying all day and night." A 49-year-old mother hasn't seen her only son, Ahmed, 16, since he rushed to the nearby scene of an Israeli air strike in October; she believes he was killed but has been unable to find or retrieve his body from the rubble. Nada Abu Aita, a 32-year-old "mother missing her mother" - who fled to Rafah - gave birth to her first son a month before the war and is fighting to "keep him alive, or stay alive for him." "I sometimes look into (his) eyes and I want to apologize for bringing him into this life," she says. "I am afraid I will lose him, and I am afraid I will be killed because he would be left alone."

And Alaa el-Qatrawi, a 33-year-old, PhD-educated poet and teacher, lost all four of her children in December. Separated from her husband, she saw them only part-time and last heard from them trapped amidst fighting when they called to beg, "Mama, get us out of here" - which she tried, but failed to do. Much later, her brother-in-law found their bodies. Lovingly, she names them: "Yamen, eight years old. The twins Orchid and Kanan, six years old. And Carmel, three years old.” She speaks of them in the present tense: "They're beautiful...They're so smart and funny...Kenan loves fruit...I would put some next to him when he sleeps (for) when he wakes up." She had been trying to arrange to move her children to Dubai "for a better future"; she'd bought Orchid "a princess dress" for summer, "and now summer will come and Orchid isn't here to wear it." In earlier wars, she'd written prose or poetry; in this one, she can't. "What can a grieving mother say about her children?" she asks. No words.

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

In recent months, the military has increasingly turned to air power after suffering a number of losses on the ground in its fight against rebel groups around the country, often with devastating effect to communities caught in the crossfire.

Since the February 2021 coup d’etat until the end of December 2023, the military carried out more than 1,650 airstrikes, killing nearly 1,000 people and injuring more than 900, according to data from the Nyan Lin Thay research group. Around 30 hospitals and 75 schools were damaged in the attacks, the group said.

Blood Money kicked off its “Global Campaign” on March 10, urging individuals and organizations at home and abroad to join its fight to end aviation fuel sales to the junta.

A leading organizer of the campaign said he expects it will have a major effect on the junta’s ability to wage war. But he acknowledged that it would "have a gradual impact instead of immediate effect,” speaking to RFA on condition that he only be identified as “Mike” due to security concerns.

In addition to lobbying efforts to stem the flow of fuel to the junta, Mike said Blood Money will also work with local communities to prevent casualties from airstrikes.

The group joins efforts to ban fuel sales to the junta by the shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, whose spokesman Kyaw Zaw told RFA it hopes to spearhead a binding resolution at the United Nations Security Council.

"In addition to [targeting] the companies importing jet fuel to Myanmar, we are trying to put pressure on companies that sell insurance for jet fuel cargo vessels shipping to Myanmar,” he said.

Data compiled by RFA found that between the coup and the end of January this year, airstrikes and artillery attacks killed 1,429 people and injured 2,641 others. The figures include 149 civilians killed and 267 injured in January alone.

Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesman Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment on the campaign went unanswered Thursday. The junta has said it does not intentionally target civilians.

Air force ‘crucial’ for junta

On Aug. 23, 2023, the United States and Britain announced sanctions against companies that import jet fuel to the junta, but the military has continued to carry out airstrikes on a near-daily basis.

London-based rights group Amnesty International announced on Jan. 30 that its researchers had documented new ways that the junta is skirting sanctions. The group said that aviation fuel was shipped directly from Vietnam to Myanmar at least seven times last year.

Khin Ohnmar, the founder of Progress Voice, which is participating in Blood Money’s campaign, said that a shift in policy by governments and international bodies, such as the U.N. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,or ASEAN, is “vital for the movement to have effect.”

“We need to make clear their responsibilities in terms of political will and international law,” she said.

Other observers said that targeting fuel shipments will both help end the junta’s harming of civilians and loosen its grip on power.

“The air force is really crucial for the military regime, so [this] is a good targeted campaign," said Thomas Kean, the International Crisis Group's Brussels-based senior consultant on Myanmar.

Nonetheless, he acknowledged that ending fuel sales entirely will be difficult, due to nations such as Russia, China, Thailand, and India, which are unwilling to impose sanctions on the junta.

In February 2022, former U.S. Rep. Tom Andrews, who serves as U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said in a report to the U.N. Security Council that countries should stop selling arms to the junta, citing a brutal crackdown on civilians since the coup.

The report called out permanent Security Council members China and Russia, as well as India, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, Serbia, Pakistan and South Korea, for selling the weapons, which Andrews said are almost certainly being used by the military to kill innocent people.

Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

Nguyen Thi Thu Ha said the family went to a detention center in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province in November, bringing two shirts for her son. 

Phuong didn’t receive the shirts even though they were listed on his receipt record. When he complained to the warden, Phuong said he was sworn at and beaten by several guards until he coughed blood.

Phuong was convicted of “propaganda against the state" in 2022. He was transferred this month to Xuyen Moc prison to serve out the sentence, along with one for possessing and using drugs.

On Jan. 5, his mother visited her son and heard about the incident with the warden. 

“[A guard] took a mineral water bottle and hit him in the face. Two or three [guards] rushed in, beat him and then locked him in a single room,” she told RFA Vietnamese on Monday.

Phuong was then told to write a report stating that his family did not send him the shirts. When he refused, he told his mother, a group of policemen attacked him.

When Phuong returned to the cell, he was coughing up blood, and told his mother he still has shoulder pains.

The prison also punished Phuong by refusing a family visit last December.

Phuong’s mother called the detention center and spoke to an officer named Nhat. She said Nhat admitted the incident happened, but said it was because Phuong "spoke insolently." 

On Jan. 8, Ha went to the provincial police detention center where a supervisor named Luan apologized to her family and asked her not to make a big deal of the case.

RFA phoned the officer called Nhat but no one answered. The reporter also sent an email to Ba Ria-Vung Tau provincial police asking for information about the alleged beating but had not received a reply by time of publication.

Phuong, 33, was a member of the No-U Saigon group, a group in Ho Chi Minh City that opposes China’s “nine dash” or "cow tongue” line that demarcates Beijing’s disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea.

While studying in Japan he protested against Vietnamese laws that opponents said favored foreign companies in Special Economic Zones and cracked down on freedom of the internet.

On Aug. 30, 2022, he was arrested and detained for "possession and use of drugs." He was then investigated on charges of "propaganda against the state" under Article 117 of the Penal Code for posts on Facebook.

On Dec. 26, 2022, Phuong was sentenced to five years in prison and three years of probation.

In March last year, he was sentenced to a further 15 months in prison on drug-related charges that his family said were fabricated. 

Phuong appealed saying he hadn’t signed statements used as evidence against him but the court upheld his sentence.

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.

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

CSPAN screengrab.

Lefties still struggling even now with Trump’s Fascism Denial Syndrome (TFDS) might want to look at the orange “populist’s” recent statement on immigrants:

“They are poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they have done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

This is straight up Hitlerian rhetoric, replete with eugenicist, Darwinian, white supremacist, and genocidal  suggestions that nonwhite people are despoiling the genetic stock of the white fatherland.

Donald “Vermin” (see below) Trump has long been a fan of Adolph Hitler. He once kept My New Order, a volume Hitler speeches, by his bedside table. Ivana Trump, his first wife, saw him reading the book with great interest. During a trip to France in 2018, Donald “Retribution” Trump told his chief of staff John F. Kelly that “Hitler did a lot of good things.” The former president  complained to Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, that US generals didn’t treat him with the kind of obedience the Nazi Third Reich’s military commanders showed to Hitler. “Why can’t you be like the German generals in World War II?” he asked Kelly.

Hitler’s vile 1926 autobiography Mein Kampf contained a chapter titled “Race and People” in which he wrote that “All the great civilizations of the past became decadent because the originally creative race died out, as a result of contamination of the blood.” Hitler linked “the poison which has invaded the national body” to an “influx of foreign blood” that threatened the “purity” of “the Aryan race.”

Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump’s reference to “mental institutions” ought to raise alarms.  The Nazi Third Reich’s first victims of genocidal extermination included mentally handicapped people considered by Hitler and his party to be genetic poison and “useless eaters.”

The Trump statement quoted above was made two weeks ago in Durham New Hampshire.  It was not the first time that Herr Donald used the phrase “poisoning the blood of our country” in relation to immigrants, millions of whom he plans to put in giant concentration camps when he gets back in the White House. He used those five words last October during an interview with the neofascist website “The National Pulse.”

What’s new in Trump’s latest “poisoning our blood” comment is his explicit specification of the nonwhite origins of the immigrants he accuses of contaminating US-Amerikan body fluids and pedigree (South America, Africa, Asia being directly mentioned) and his disturbing reference to “mental institutions.” (It’s true that Trump also said, “all over the world,” but we know very well from his previous comments that he does not mean white Europe.  Recall that in 2018 Trump referred to African nations,  Haiti, and El Salvador as “shithole countries” and asked why the US couldn’t get more immigrants from “places,” that is white nations, “like Norway.”)

Trump these days is more than merely “echoing” Mein Kampf; he’s giving textbook expressions of Hitler’s hateful volume. During a Veterans Day speech last November, Trump pledged to “root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within,” Trump said, channeling the virulent, paranoid, and palingenetic ultranationalist “stabbed in back” language and spirit of Hitler.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told the Washington Post that “calling people ‘vermin’ was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.”

Not just any violence. As the psychologist Allan Kanner wrote two days ago here on CounterPunch, “If Trump’s opponents are vermin, why not exterminate them? Germans were capable of that behavior. Are Americans really that different?”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung had a fasci[st]nating response to those who pointed out that Trump was sounding like Hitler with his shocking “vermin” statement. “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly…suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire sad and miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House,” Cheung told The Washington Post.

Here’s the point at which a half-smart Trumpenlefty (there’s a couple of those) might say “oh yeah? Well what about Genocide Joe Biden?  He is actively backing actual full on racist genocide in Gaza.  The US under Biden is funding, equipping, and protecting the racist, Ziofascist occupation and apartheid state of Israel as it conducts a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing that has so far killed more than 21,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.”

To which my response is the following: 100% correct. I hold no brief for Sleepwalker Joe. I don’t need the lecture.  I’ve been denouncing the mass-murderous imperialism of the Democratic Party since I first became politically conscious, in the late 1970s. I’ve been in the streets protesting what I call the US-Israel Crucifixion of Gaza, leading chants like the following: “Hey Israel, USA, how many kids did you kill today?”

The common Trumpenlefty charge that (in essence) one somehow embraces the capitalist-imperialist Dems because one has the elementary knowledge base and decency to describe the ever more openly Hitlerian Trump Republican Party as fascist is childish nonsense. It is a truly idiotic accusation to level at people who, like me, have long condemned the Democrats as a repellent capitalist-imperialist organization[1] and indeed as the bigger war criminal of the two reigning US-imperialist political parties.

Let’s say that my neighbor has two vicious and sociopathic dogs, both of which menace my neighborhood and both of which I have denounced.  But then let’s imagine that only one of these two dangerous canines has recently been infected by rabies. If I point out that one of the dogs is now rabid, does that mean I am somehow embracing the non-rabid dog? Of course it doesn’t.

(Here I might add that it has been Trump Republicans and not Democrats who have been most eager to openly embrace the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gazans and who have done so in openly racist ways.  The Democratic Party base is far less comfortable with Israel’s horrific military actions than the Republican base.)

To carry the absurdity of the “Trumpenleft” criticism further, let’s imagine that I have consistently pointed out that the non-rabid dog has been a complicit enabler and conciliator of the rabies that has infected the other dog – and further that I have argued that the dominant social and political order that both of those dogs support is the generator or the rabies that now threatens life on our block. (That’s pretty much my take on the Weimar Democratic Party and on the underlying system that both of the dominant US parties uphold.[1]).

The end of the latest year under the rolling and accelerating apocalypse that is capitalism-imperialism is a good time to reflect on what we think we are doing with our lives that is better and more important than organizing to overthrow a system whose notion of a meaningful people’s choice is going as individuals into a voting booth once every four years for two minutes to make a mark next to the name of a Sick Imperialist Bastard like “Genocide Joe” Biden or next to the name of an Orange Fascist Maniac like Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump.

Endnote

+1. Please see my following books: Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Routledge, 2004); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: A Living Black Chicago History (Rowman&Littlefield, 2007); Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Routledge, 2008); The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (Routledge, 2010); They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Routledge, 2014); Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump, and the Politics of Appeasement (CounterPunch Books, 2020); This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals and the Trumping of America (Routledge, 2021).

The post Adolph Trump and Genocide Joe: Race, Blood, Vermin, and Weimar appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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

An Ogiek family retrieves belongings from their destroyed home. Photo courtesy of Ogiek Peoples Development Program.

Sasimwani, Kenya.

You’ve heard of blood diamonds – extracted by violence, slavery, and displacement then processed through accounting magic and slick marketing until the finished product appears clean. Like the carbon atoms that make up these diamonds, under extreme pressure and buried far out of sight, the ravaged lives of millions of people are transformed into a sparkling symbol of eternal love for purchase. The ghoulishness of the irony is surpassed only by the profit margins.

The story of blood diamonds is a cautionary tale of what happens when injustice is allowed to be washed clean by tricks of words and numbers, when something as sacred and fundamental to humanity as love can be hijacked and commodified into products of untold suffering. Our deepest desires, it turns out, can be excellent leverage for increasing demand. The dark side of the market is a realm of manipulation, of industries that work tirelessly and unscrupulously to generate and even invent their own demand, and of accounting that allows the “externalization” of real costs, including lives.

If this is starting to sound familiar, it is. In the age of fossil fuel-capitalism, our troubled relationship with other forms of pressurized carbon – coal, oil, and gas – is experiencing similar forces at work. Our desire for life itself, for a habitable planet, is being hijacked, manipulated, and commodified for profit and paid for in blood.

Between the inaugural African Climate Summit in September and the final gavel closing out COP28 this week, there have been quiet, yet swift machinations paving the way for what could become the biggest land grabs and mass displacements in human history, all in the name of carbon, yet all in the service of profit.

The proliferation of words around sustainability, transition, nature-based solutions, and mitigation are amounting to nothing more than the same old tricks of accounting and marketing that make dirty business look clean. This time it’s not only dangerous greenwashing, but is in fact the full diamond-treatment. Welcome to the age of blood carbon.

Land grabs and mass evictions

The UAE’s hunger for carbon credits is causing the violent eviction of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Kenya. With the support of a US consultancy firm, UAE carbon trading companies pledged to invest $450 million in carbon credits at the recent African Climate Summit in Nairobi. A stipulation of their agreement with the Kenyan government was to reduce emissions from any forests covered by the scheme. Immediately after the deal was signed, Kenyan President Ruto ordered the eviction of all people living in these forests, the 10 Water Towers of Kenya, to “protect forests from encroachment”.

Countless people, mostly indigenous, may lose everything. According to the International Criminal Court, mass evictions are a crime against humanity: one that is now being funded by carbon credits. The destruction of homes has already started in the Mau Forest, despite court orders that ruled the indigenous Ogiek people have community rights over their land and cannot be evicted.

“We are calling for an immediate cessation of ongoing demolitions and the evictions,” said Cyrus Maweu, deputy director of Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

“We are living in absolute fear,” said Daniel Kobei, the executive director of the Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program. “The first day they started bringing down houses using axes, hammers and pangas [machetes]. They brought down the school, and on the second day they even started burning some houses. Now, they have gone back with heavy machines to bring down houses that were not completely destroyed. They are really bringing down everything.”

President Ruto claims that indigenous people are degrading forests, yet there is scientific consensus that indigenous communities are fundamental to conservation. In reality, it is the corporations, governments, and their eco-guards, including the Kenya Forest Service, that are cutting trees illegally.

There is also no guarantee that any long term environmental protection will be achieved via selling off Kenya’s forests. Two months before the African Climate Summit, the Kenyan government rammed through legislation overriding customary land laws, stating that the land covered by a carbon trading permit “includes any area either above or below the land and airspace of the Republic of Kenya including forests, internal and territorial waters and the seabed underlying these waters”. Such language could just as easily be used to protect a permit owner’s right to extract as it could their obligation to protect – what is abundantly clear is that it protects ownership by corporations and governments, not the rights of local communities.

What is the carbon market? Theory vs practice

If only we could financially incentivize behavior that reduces emissions, like leaving carbon in the ground, and protecting forests, mangroves, and other natural carbon sinks, we could perhaps make gains towards preventing the worst of the climate crisis. Perhaps doing so could even channel desperately needed funding for adaptation, mitigation, and sustainable development from wealthy nations to the indebted Global South, who are disproportionately less responsible for emissions yet suffering more from climate crises.

This is the supposed (though terrifyingly misapplied) positive premise behind the theoretical carbon market. It has never functioned as such to date. Looked at in practice, it is an outright manipulation by fossil-capitalists that pretends to champion the desires of most of humanity in order to carry on polluting and profiting, externalizing deadly costs, while strategically accumulating more power and resources.

The ice cream problem

One basic yet fundamental problem, among many, is that an effective emissions reductions strategy is not an ala carte menu with free choice about which actions to pick. Rather, it is a science-backed prescription that must be followed in full to achieve results.

A popular analogy imagines that you are trying to lose weight. You continue your habit of eating a tub of ice cream with every meal but try to offset it by also eating a big salad. You can call it a salad credit and enter it into your accounts as a balance to your ice cream deposit, but off the books, in real life your strategy is flawed. To lose weight, you must stop eating so much ice cream, no matter how much additional salad you eat.

Julia Jones, a conservation scientist at Bangor University in Wales explains: “Globally, we need to both stop further loss of forests and drastically cut emissions. Using one to offset the other, without very substantial investment in reducing emissions, is problematic.” To reign in greenhouse gas emissions and other surpassed boundaries down to safe levels, it is necessary to reduce emissions AND to protect carbon sinks like forests.

Carbon credits fund violent displacement

Land rights are a major issue that is overlooked and misrepresented in the carbon market scheme. In many cases, indigenous and customary landowners have been evicted to clear the way for carbon credit projects, as they witness their homes, once deemed nearly valueless, transformed into cash cows for polluting companies and countries.

According to Survival International, “selling carbon credits from Protected Areas will be a disaster for people and the climate. It unites all the human rights abuses caused by fortress conservation, with all the environmental problems linked to greenwashing.”

The Forest Peoples Programme says that such evictions have become more common in Kenya since it began allocating land for carbon credits. “Those in control of Africa’s forests stand to earn a lot of money, and corporations appear to be pursuing a new ‘scramble for Africa,’” says Justin Kenrick, a senior policy advisor at the Forest Peoples Programme. “Meanwhile such ‘conservation’ in Kenya persists with a failed colonial approach of evicting the very communities who know best how to conserve their forests.”

Judith Nguliso is an Ogiek community member whose home has been burned down, together with the granary where her family stored food: “They are treating us like animals. Children are suffering and don’t have shelter in this rainy season. If the government who should be taking care of us are against us, then who will?”

Human rights organizations, independent investigations, and governmental inquiries have clearly documented over many years how the creation of Protected Areas, especially in Africa and Asia, are accompanied by increased militarization and violence. They are imposed without the consent of the original inhabitants, Indigenous or local communities, who lose their ancestral lands and are tortured, raped, or killed if they try to access them. Protected Areas destroy the best guardians of the natural world, Indigenous peoples, in whose lands 80% of biodiversity is found.

The final theory promoted by the carbon market is that it will generate desperately needed funds to help precarious communities deal with climate crises. As evidenced by past projects, in practice the profits made from carbon credits don’t go to the communities in whose lands that carbon is being absorbed or stored. Developing carbon projects in Protected Areas increases conservation industry funding, likely to fuel a huge expansion and militarization of Protected Areas. In practice, money supposedly going to “climate mitigation” will be used to cover the expensive work of evicting people from their lands – funding rangers’ salaries and military equipment used to commit human rights violations against Indigenous people.

A license to pollute 

The UAE is leading industry and petrostate attempts to sell the lie that carbon credits are the solution to the climate crisis. The oft repeated myth that one-third of greenhouse gas emission reductions can be met through “nature-based solutions” and traded as carbon credits is based on a series of extraordinary assumptions that do not stand up to critical analysis.

Corporations, governments, and individuals can claim they’re offsetting pollution without actually cutting emissions by purchasing control over land and evicting indigenous communities to “protect forests”. “They’re not reducing their emissions. But now they’re buying a license to pollute. And that license to pollute is called the carbon market,” says Fadhel Kaboub, a senior adviser with Power Shift Africa. It is a crime against humanity and blatant greenwashing.

The offsets sold in carbon trading schemes are created through fraudulent ‘carbon accounting’, for example by claiming that an area would have been very rapidly destroyed without the carbon-saving project, whereas in fact it was not really under threat. In other cases, projects supposedly preventing deforestation in one area simply resulted in trees being cut down and carbon released elsewhere instead, with zero benefit for the climate.

Recent investigations have revealed that more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by the biggest private certifier are worthless. These ‘phantom credits’ worsen global heating, allowing corporations to falsely offer carbon neutral products and governments to claim to have reduced net emissions. The public are told the problem is solved, that continued overconsumption can be climate friendly and no change is necessary.

Barbara Haya, the director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, has been researching carbon credits for 20 years, hoping to find a way to make the system function. She admits, “companies are using credits to make claims of reducing emissions when most of these credits don’t represent emissions reductions at all. Rainforest protection credits are the most common type on the market at the moment. And it’s exploding, so these findings really matter. But these problems are not just limited to this credit type. These problems exist with nearly every kind of credit. We need an alternative process. The offset market is broken.”

A pivotal moment

Carbon land grabs are not new, but the size, scope, and speed of the UAE’s recent land grabs are unprecedented. Blue Carbon, a carbon brokerage firm run by a member of the Emirati royal family and founded only a year ago with no experience managing carbon offset projects, has already signed deals for 24.5 million hectares in five African countries as well as in Suriname. Local communities have not been consulted in these dealings, in violation of local and national land laws.

The scale is enormous: the negotiations involve potential deals for about a tenth of Liberia’s land mass, a fifth of Zimbabwe’s, and swaths of Kenya, Zambia, and Tanzania. Blue Carbon’s goal is to generate vast numbers of cheap carbon credits that can be bought by the UAE to “offset” their ballooning fossil fuel emissions planned over the coming decades.

In the process, Blue Carbon aimed to steer negotiations at COP28 towards developing “suitable market infrastructure” so the UAE can use carbon credits to sustain business as usual for as long as possible. At COP28, the rules of how to buy and sell these very carbon credits were being decided. Blue Carbon and its fossil fuel clients are using these deals to promote the magic-wand of carbon credits as a bigger part of the climate solution.

We face a pivotal moment where carbon land grabs could sweep the Global South. If the UAE succeeds, money meant for environmental protection will instead fund and legitimize mass displacement, and the erasure of indigenous people.

Stripped down from all the manipulative framing and accounting, carbon credits are merely reputation in money form. Their price and popularity has crashed before, in part thanks to activist and investigative outcry, and they can be crashed again.

People in Kenya and communities around the world are resisting this massive fraud and speaking out in solidarity with the Ogiek and other forest communities. A growing alliance of organizations are fighting against incorporation of carbon offsetting schemes. The Blood Carbon Scam can be stopped – but only if we spread the truth.

Sign this petition to stop the eviction of the Ogiek community in Kenya.

The post Blood Carbon: Kenyans are Being Erased so the UAE can Greenwash appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alexandria Shaner.

In gratitude, we mark the death of Henry Kissinger, America's peerless war criminal. As U.S officials laud an "elder statesman" and "erudite strategist," the rest of us, and surely millions of brown-skinned people, celebrate the end of an "iconic napalm rights advocate" whose lies, hubris, towering inhumanity and many blood-soaked foreign policy follies left a legacy - in Vietnam, Chile, Cambodia, Argentina - of an "enormous pile of corpses" that may number four million. The consensus: "Burn hot, Henry."

The news of Dr. Death's demise at 100 was predictably, fawningly covered by an establishment press the master of access journalism had long courted: "I'll tell you about some sleazy transgressions if you don't say I committed them and what it cost in lives or money." There were thoughts and prayers and cheesy accolades for a "towering American diplomat" who "shaped US Cold War history" and left "an undeniable legacy" - true but probably not the way they mean it. Tim Scott: "While this is an incredible loss for our nation, his legacy will live on for generations to come." McConnell: "A titan among America's most consequential statesmen" whose "sheer force of will...changed the course of history." Chris Christie bemoaned "a very sad night" that "leaves a void all around the world." Echoing Trump's "many people say," the WaPo hedged their bets, queasily conceding with "a detached bloodlessness" like Kissinger's that "critics held" he was kinda a sociopathic monster but who knows. Stephen Miller won the WTF-Are-You-Talking-About Award with, "May God bless Henry Kissinger, who devoted his life to the pursuit of peace," albeit with carpet bombing. Spencer Ackerman: "America, like every empire, champions its state murderers."

Some cited his inexplicable Nobel Peace Prize for ending a war that kept going - "Perhaps the vetting process needs a better vetting process"; Al Jazeera noted "the Nobel Prize-wining warmonger" had died; nobody mentioned the award was the reason Tom Lehrer retired: "Political satire became obsolete.” Few identified him as the ruthless architect of a murderous, empire-building "evil circle of power" now known as "a rules-based international order" whose deadly flaws and repercussions we still live with today, and whose crimes were so vast - of commission in Cambodia and Chile, omission in Iran and East Timor - he had to limit where he traveled to not land in the Hague. Still, Jeff Tiedrich insists, facts owe. "Good fucking riddance to Henry fucking Kissinger," he wrote of "the war criminal elephant in the room" who "never met a democratically-elected government he didn't want to topple" if they stood in his way. "There’s nothing complicated about (his) legacy. He overthrew democratic governments and bombed children on Christmas Eve" even as "DC's "power elite "sucked up to "the West Wing Playboy: "Everyone wanted this blood-spattered fuck at their dinner party." Sorry, not sorry. Voltaire: "We owe respect to the living. To the dead we owe only truth."

The truth, says historian Greg Grandin, is that during his years as National Security Adviser and then Secretary of State, Kissinger abetted or orchestrated the deaths of between three and four million civilians. His atrocities in Southeast Asia ranged from 1972's Christmas bombing of North Vietnam and Hanoi's main hospital, to devious efforts to sabotage the Paris Peace talks by passing information from them to Nixon in hopes of staying in power, to his apocalyptic, covert B-52 carpet-bombing of Cambodia, a country we were not at war with, with 540,000 tons of munitions - during all of World War ll, the U.S. dropped 160,000 tons of bombs on Japan - killing between 150,000 and 500,000 civilians in one of history's most deadly air campaigns. He and Nixon were reportedly "really excited" about the campaign - freakishly named Operation MENU, with BREAKFAST, LUNCH, SNACK, DINNER etc - born of Kissinger's order to hit "anything that moves," approving 3,875 sorties over what he claimed were unpopulated areas yielding "no significant civilian casualties." He thus galvanized Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, laying the groundwork for a genocide that killed millions; once they came to power, he secretly said they were "murderous thugs" but the U.S. "won’t let that stand in our way."

Over 10 years ago, investigative reporter Nick Turse uncovered evidence from an archive of U.S. military documents that Kissinger, who for decades dodged questions about Cambodia's killing fields, was responsible for even more civilian deaths than was known. In interviews with over 75 Cambodian survivors and U.S. witnesses, he heard tearful accounts of daily, random massacres that would kill neighbors, relatives, half a hamlet's population; of Army Rangers wildly shooting women and children before grabbing chickens, duck, cigarettes, a motorcycle; of "terrifying" air attacks by "lobster-leg" Huey Cobras wiping out families even as U.S. forces abided by the Nixon argument that, "As long as we didn’t set foot on that ground, we basically weren’t there"; of systemic disregard for, and lies about, "civilian harm" and deaths. Over his ensuing decades of impunity, Kissinger became "a visionary example for our 21st-century age of unaccountable power," a sinister template for U.S. leaders who learned they'd never face consequences for their actions in office - starting illegal wars, approving torture, dispatching drones on Afghans at a wedding - thus setting the stage for the civilian carnage of our so-called War on Terror around the world.

First came the 1973 overthrow of Socialist Salvador Allende's democratic election in Chile because, Kissinger argued, the U.S. can't “stand idly by and watch a country go communist...We will not let Chile go down the drain." Cue 17 years of of terror delivered by his military junta: Santiago's football stadium turned concentration camp with two lines - "We called them the line of life and the line of death" - wiping out "a whole generation of the working class"; entire newspaper staffs gunned down; tens of thousands imprisoned and tortured; women standing daily at bridges to look for the bodies of disappeared husbands or sons floating downriver, headless corpses with arms tied behind, fingernails ripped out, legs broken, testicles smashed, eyes gouged by cigarettes; and, later, unions decimated, multinationals enriched. Before Allende, his palace surrounded, killed himself, he urged an aide, "Tell the world." Eventually Pinochet, living in London, was extradited but ultimately let off, even as his junta agents in Operation Condor killed a former ambassador and political opponent in a D.C car bombing. Still, Kissinger stood by Pinochet, a brutal kindred spirit, telling him, "You are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world.”

And he was everywhere. In 1970, he turned a blind eye to Pakistan's slaughter of 300,000 Bengalis, most of them Hindu. In 1975, he similarly ignored Indonesian President Suharto's brutal invasion of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony moving toward independence, that killed over 200,000. In 1976, he brushed aside a military junta in Argentina that overthrew Isabel Perón and launched a savage Dirty War that "disappeared" over 30,000 civilians; when a junta official told Kissinger their main problem was "terrorism," the esteemed elder statesman responded, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.” A Republican truly ahead of his time, he even decried democracy in his own country, telling Nixon, "We’ve got to break the back of this generation of Democratic leaders (and) destroy the confidence of people in the American establishment." And he was a Jew who escaped the Nazis only to become the flunky for a vicious anti-Semite who blamed “dirty rotten Jews from New York” (Seymour Hersh) and "Jews at Harvard for exposing the My Lai massacre. "Well, Mr. President," Kissinger responded, "there are Jews and Jews." Another time he mused, "Any people who has been persecuted for 2,000 years must be doing something wrong."

Burn hot, Henry, indeed. It's equally forbidding to confront the "horrifying catastrophe" that was the man, the malignant machine that facilitated his rise to power, and the fact he was left free to shape history and the war-torn, post-truth, self-serving world we now inhabit. There was never a trip to the Hague, of course, but his awfulness didn't go unnoticed. One story has the venerable Gore Vidal coming upon Kissinger at the Vatican "gazing thoughtfully” at the Hell section of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. “Look,” said Vidal to a friend, "he’s apartment hunting." The late great chef Anthony Bourdain was likewise not a fan. "Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands," he wrote in a 2001 memoir about "that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag." When he turned 100 last May and dreadful think pieces pondered "What He Can Tell Us About the World," The Nation noted he was "still at large (but) he should have gone down the rest of them. "Still a war criminal," reported David Corn. "As he blows out all those candles, let's call the roll" - Cambodia, Chile, Iran et al. "The Cubans say there is no evil that lasts 100 years," Grandin wrote. "Kissinger is making a run to prove them wrong."

With his death, many people, bitter to droll, chimed in. They suggested humans should have a shorter shelf life, he should've died "with a rope around his war criminal neck," his body should be airdropped on Cambodia "for them to defile it as they please, he belongs to the ash-heap. Many lamented they don't believe in hell but hope his apartment in the World to Come is a tiny, dark, 4th floor walk-up for groceries.They said, "Let he who has not carpet-bombed Cambodia throw the first stone," he "put Cambodia on the map and almost took it off," "Collateral damage tested much better with audiences than 'innocent victims.'" They cited Monty Python's song - 'Henry Kissinger/how I'm missing yer" - comparing him to a German parakeet and positing, like the parrot, he's "just resting" or "pining for the fjords." There were questions: Is Cheney the most evil living American now? Who gets the peace prize - Santos, Putin, Miller? Is there room for him in Hell with all the other fascist creeps? Did he have more blood on his hands than any other homicidal sociopath? When he signed a check, did he use a pen or the severed limb of a dead brown child? They said rest in piss, rest in perfidy, and in a lousy year, "It's a glorious day." And the person who runs a "Did-Kissinger-Die-Yet" account answered, finally, "YES."

Not a moment too soon, "the world awoke a little less poisoned," wrote Charles Pierce, who quoted the Revelation of St. John: "And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard (the) beast say, 'Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him." "Kissinger lived for over half a century in the world he had made. He was its hubris," wrote Spencer Ackerman in a fine, detailed piece on a "War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class," a headline he'd earlier prepped; it's also tagged, "Good Riddance." "The infamy of Nixon's foreign-policy architect sits, eternally, beside that of history's worst mass murderers. A deeper shame attaches to the country that celebrates him." Still, "no infamy will find Kissinger." Over 50 years, the millions of deaths didn't make a dent. He got rich, voiced no regrets, mocked his war criminal label, was extolled by the likes of Hillary Clinton as "a friend" whose counsel she sought in the name of a neoliberalism birthed in "Pinochet's torture chambers...a baby delivered bloody and screaming by Henry Kissinger" as U.S leaders today routinely bomb countries we're not at war with. The goal of Cold War statecraft: To maximize America's freedom to "inflict (its) will on the world, measured in impunity... The organizing principle of American exceptionalism: America acts; it is not acted upon." And it still is.

"He who lives only to benefit himself confers on the world a benefit when he dies." - the early Christian theologian Tertullian, (160-240 A.D) of Carthage, thought to have produce the first extensive body of Latin Christian literature.

Pinochet's terrifying Chile, with the help of the U.S.Getty Image

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

The 2023 war between Hamas and Israel elicits many different explanations. As with previous regional hostilities, here too, the pundits and commentators have numerous overlapping processes to draw on – from the struggle between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements, to the deep hostility between the Rabbinate and Islamic churches, to the many conflicts between Israel and Arab/Muslim states, the contentions between the declining superpowers (United States and Russia) and their rising contenders (like China, Iran, Turkey), the rift between western and eastern cultures, and so on.

The experts also highlight the growing importance of local militias – from Jewish settler organizations, to ISIS, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthi movement, the Wagner Group and Kadyrovites Chechens – groups that operate under different political, religious and criminal guises, with varying financing and support from local, governmental and international sources to proxy and/or challenge different states. [2]

Our article does not deal with these specificities. Instead of focusing on the particular and unique, we concentrate on the general and universal. Concretely, we argue that the current war between Hamas and Israel shares an important common denominator with prior clashes in the region – namely, that it constitutes an energy conflict and that it correlates with the differential nature of capital accumulation. We coined these two terms in the late 1980s and have studied their underpinnings and implications for the Middle East and beyond ever since. [3] Our purpose in this paper is to highlight our theoretical arguments, update some of our key empirical evidence and show how both the theory and findings apply to the current Hamas-Israel war.

2. OPEC and the Petro Core

The late 1960s witnessed the emergence of a loose coalition between OPEC, the large oil companies, armament contractors, global construction firms and financial institutions, surrounded by shabby arms dealers, politicians, local militias, terrorist groups and media influencers – all connected, directly and indirectly, to military conflicts and energy crises in the Middle East. We labelled this alliance the ‘Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition’.

The uniting force of this coalition is the price of oil. The gyrations of oil prices cause the incomes and profits of coalition members to soar and sink, as their interests diverge and converge with the ebb and flow of regional conflicts and energy crises.

The process ping-pongs, somewhat mechanically, between arms races, open conflicts, energy crises, rising oil prices, increasing state revenues and soaring corporate profit. The Middle East, soaked in multiple tensions, superpower confrontations and mutual suspicions, generates periodic wars at alternating hotspots. These wars help create a sense of ‘energy scarcity’, leading to ‘oil crises’, higher oil prices, rising oil exports and increasing oil-company profit. Soaring oil revenues are in part recycled by financial institutions into global stock and bond markets, but they also help refuel an arms race of imported weapons and military facilities that enrich swarms of international military contractors and construction companies, while equipping potential combatants for yet another round of hostilities and even higher oil prices, so the lethal creation of wealth can start anew.

Let’s unpack these relations, starting with OPEC and the large oil companies. During the 1960s, oil producing countries embarked on a seemingly independent course, limiting oil company concessions, demanding higher royalties and eventually nationalizing their oil resources and facilities. Initially, these developments seemed congruent with the postwar decolonization movement, but soon enough they metamorphosed into a new, post-imperial alliance between the countries and the companies. On the face of it, the large oil oligopolies were stripped of their physical Middle East assets, but their new collaboration with OPEC’s overlords enabled them to achieve something they could have never accomplished on their own: a large, sustainable increase in the price of oil. Between 1972 and 1980, the price of oil, expressed in constant U.S. dollars, rose more than sevenfold.

The merits of this new arrangement were aptly summarized by Saudi oil minister, Sheikh Yamani, in 1969, well before the first ‘oil crisis’:

For our part, we do not want the [oil] majors to lose their power and be forced to abandon their role as a buffer element between the producers and the consumers. We want the present setup to continue as long as possible and at all costs to avoid any disastrous clash of interests which would shake the foundations of the whole oil industry (cited in Barnet 1980: 61).

The arrangement proved that, in matters of income and profit, prices were often far more important than output; or more accurately, that the threat of restricted output helped solidify prices so that profit could rise by even more. To illustrate, the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran deprived British Petroleum of access to 40 per cent of its global crude supplies; yet, in that year, BP’s profit soared by 296 per cent – more than that of any other major company (Turner 1983: 204; Yergin 1991: 484-487; Fortune 500, 1978, 1979).

Figure 1 shows the intimate connection between OPEC and a Petro Core made up of the world’s leading listed oil companies. The dashed line represents OPEC’s aggregate oil exports (left scale), whereas the solid line shows the combined net profit of the Petro Core (right scale). We show both in constant 2022 dollars.

According to the chart, the flow of oil exports is roughly one order of magnitude larger than the flow of oil profit. But contrary to the politically correct view where OPEC represents the peripheral world (or Global South, in today’s lingo) and the oil companies stand for the West, the data indicate that the interests of the two groups are one and the same. Over the 1960-2022 period, the movements of OPEC’s oil exports and the Petro Core’s net profit have been positively and tightly correlated, with a Pearson coefficient of +0.8 out of a maximum value of 1. In other words, insofar as energy conflicts (or their absence) have enriched (or depleted) the oil companies, they have also enriched/depleted OPEC – and vice versa.

Zeroing in on the more recent period, we can see how the 2010s were disastrous for both groups. By 2020, the Petro Core saw its net profit collapse by a whopping 150 per cent relative to its early-decade highs, leaving it with record losses. OPEC’s downturn seemed a bit less severe, with oil exports falling by ‘only’ 75 per cent. However, considering the organization’s rapid demographic growth – roughly 350 per cent since 1960 – it follows that, in per capita terms, OPEC was back to where it started, before the arrival of the blessed oil crises.

But that was the abyss. Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine helped reverse the downturn with rising OPEC exports and exploding oil company profit, and the 2023 hostilities between Hamas and Israel, although yet to be imprinted on the oil books, could end up boosting them further.

3. It’s all in the price

The tight co-movement of OPEC’s oil exports and the oil companies’ net profit is no coincidence. It arises from their co-dependence on oil prices and is affirmed by their common obsession with differential performance. Let’s see how.

Figure 2 shows the global differential earnings per share (EPS) of listed oil & gas firms, measured as the ratio between their average EPS and the average EPS of all listed firms in the world (solid series, left scale). For context, our theory of capital as power (CasP) argues that, contrary to what mainstream economists tell us, corporations and capitalists are driven not to maximize their profit and wealth in order to increase their hedonic pleasure, but to ‘beat the average’ and exceed the ‘normal rate of return’ in order to augment their organized societal power (Nitzan and Bichler 2009). From this viewpoint, a rise in the differential EPS of the oil companies indicates that they beat the average and increase their power, while a decline suggests that they trail the average and see their power fall.

The figure also plots the relative price of oil, measured as the ratio between the dollar price of crude oil and the U.S. Consumer Price Index, or CPI (dashed series, right scale). [4] An increase in the relative price of oil means that the dollar price of oil rises faster (or falls more slowly) than that of the benchmark basket, while a decrease suggests that it falls faster (or rises more slowly).

So, we have a conceptual correspondence: our differential EPS compares the net profit per share of oil & gas companies to that of all companies, while our relative price relates the price of oil to the average price of commodities sold by all companies.

Before proceeding, note that since crude oil is mostly an input for the oil companies, it takes time for it to be processed/refined, marked up and translated into profit. For this reason, our chart juxtaposes the differential EPS series with the relative prices prevailing 12 months earlier. Also, to smooth out short-term fluctuations, we express both series as 12-month trailing averages.

And the results leave little to the imagination: based on the R², the variance of the relative price of oil explains 66 per cent of the variance of the differential EPS of the oil companies since December 1973, and as much as 73 per cent since January 1980. In other words, oil companies increase their differential EPS mostly through differential inflation. And given the close correlation between net oil profit and OPEC’s oil exports shown in Figure 1, we might expect relative prices to have had a similar impact on the share of OPEC’s oil revenues in global GDP.

This parsimonious relation allows us to dump a lot of unnecessary baggage. To predict next year’s differential EPS of the oil companies (and OPEC’s relative oil exports), we no longer need economists to lecture us about supply, demand and equilibrium, sophisticated analysts to overcharge us for hedged econometric prophecies, strategists to guess future demand from China and supply conditions in Saudi Arabia, and researchers to study the shifting balance between fracking and green energy. [5] All we need to do is simply observe the relative price of crude oil here and now, plug this price into Figure 2 and draw the resulting value for differential EPS 12 months later. Bottom line: it’s all in the price.

And this reductionist rule, although half-a-century old, continues to work like new. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine helped double the relative price of oil from its two-decade low, and according to Figure 2, 12 months later this rise helped multiply the differential EPS of the oil companies (and OPEC’s oil exports) many times over from their half-a-century nadir. And if the current Hamas-Israel war continues and even expands, it is not hard to imagine yet another synchronized rise in differential oil prices, exports and EPS.

4. Energy conflicts and differential returns

So far, we have shown that the net profit of the oil companies and the oil exports of OPEC, measured in constant dollars, are tightly correlated (Figure 1), and that changes in differential oil EPS (and presumably also in OPEC’s oil exports relative to global GDP) correlate tightly with changes in relative oil prices (Figure 2). In this section, we connect these two processes to the periodic eruption of energy conflicts.

The vertical bars in Figure 3 show the differential return on equity of the Petro Core relative to that of the Fortune 500. We compute this differential first by calculating the ratio of net profit to owners’ equity for both the Petro Core and the Fortune 500, and then by subtracting the latter from the former. If the difference is positive (grey bars), it means that the Petro Core beats the average with a higher return on equity. If it is negative (black bars), it implies that the Petro Core trails the average, with a lower return on equity.

For reasons that will become clear in a moment, we consider a stretch of negative differential returns a danger zone – i.e., a period during which an energy conflict is likely to erupt. The breakout of each energy conflict is marked by an explosion sign and named in the notes underneath the figure.

And here there arise three remarkable regularities.

First, and most importantly, every energy conflict save one was preceded by the Petro Core trailing the average. In other words, for a Middle East energy conflict to erupt, the leading oil companies first must differentially decumulate. [6] The only exception to this rule is the 2011 burst of the Arab Spring and the subsequent blooming of ‘outsourced wars’ (our term for the fighting in Lebanon-Syria-Iraq that was financed and supported by a multitude of governments and NGOs in and outside the region). That specific round erupted without a prior danger zone – although the Petro Core was very close to falling below the average. In 2010, its differential return on equity dropped to a razor-thin 0.4 per cent, down from around 25 per cent in both 2008 and 2009.

Second, every energy conflict save one – the multiple interventions in 2014 – was followed by the oil companies beating the average. In other words, war and conflict in the region – processes that customarily are blamed for rattling, distorting and undermining the aggregate economy – have served the differential interest of the large oil companies (and OPEC) at the expense of leading non-oil firms (and countries). [7] This finding, however striking, should not surprise us. As we have seen, differential oil profit is intimately correlated with the relative price of oil (Figure 2); the relative price of oil in turn is highly responsive to Middle East ‘risk’ perceptions, real or imaginary; these risk perceptions tend to jump in preparation for and during armed conflict; and as risks mount, they raise the relative price of oil and therefore the differential profit of the oil companies.

Third and finally, according to these data, the Petro Core never managed to beat the average without there first being an energy conflict in the region. In other words, the differential performance of the oil companies depends not on production, but on the most extreme form of sabotage: war.

With these regularities in mind, the recent decade has been truly exceptional. We have already seen how the 2010s collapse of OPEC’s ‘real’ oil revenues, expressed in per capita terms, rolled these countries back half a century, and how, during that period, the Petro Core sustained its biggest losses ever. This is the picture in absolute terms.

In relative terms – which is the measure capitalists and state rulers revere the most – the situation was equally bad, if not worse. As Figure 3 shows, beginning in 2013, the Petro Core trailed the average with unprecedented differential losses that even the multiple conflicts of 2014 failed to alleviate. On the face of it, the Petro Core’s inability to pull itself out of the danger zone suggested it was withering away, unable to rejuvenate its profit let alone lead the capitalist pack.

But existential crises often tease unity out of division – in this case, unity between the rulers of the losing countries and companies. And indeed, when all seemed lost, the oil market started smelling war: in 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine, and a year later Hamas burst into Israel. The 2022 differential performance of the Petro Core turned positive, and if the ongoing Hamas-Israel fighting continues – and possibly expands into a border war – these increases, along with OPEC’s relative oil revenues, could be augmented even further.

5. The broader picture

Now, admittedly, our reductionism, although statistically robust, does seem excessive. How can a single variable – in this case, the differential profit of the oil companies – explain more than half a century of Middle East conflicts (and be predicted by these very conflicts to boot)? Can this variable substitute for the region’s local and global complexities? Even if we complemented it with the shenanigans of the superpowers, oil and weapon companies and OPEC executives, the resulting vista would still be too narrow. It would leave out a hugely rich canvas, interwoven by a great many experts from different disciplines, including international relations, economics, culture, orientalism, religion, gender, race, geology, climate and the environment. Is this complex canvas totally irrelevant?

These are valid questions. As noted at the beginning of our paper, the history of Middle East conflicts is affected by numerous interlaced causes: intra-state ethnic tensions, authoritarian regimes exporting their internal conflicts, shifting inter-state alliances and rivalries, superpower confrontations and the rise of contending powers, the disintegration of the old global order, clashes of ideology, nationalism, clericalism and cultural traditions, population growth and water shortages. The list goes on.

But here is the problem. The very specificity of these explanations fractures and disconnects them from each other, and these fractures and disconnections make it difficult if not impossible to capture the general picture we present. Moreover, because these specific explanations are oblivious to the abiding differential logic of the capitalist mode of power, they do not – and cannot – say anything about the overriding regularities of the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition and Middle East energy conflicts.

Put somewhat differently, our theoretical approach does not preclude or contest existing explanations of specific conflicts as such; instead, it offers a general perspective that seems to underpin them all. At times, this general perspective coincides or sits side by side with existing explanations of particular conflicts; at others, it transcends them.

Now, although temporally robust, our approach remains historical. And while it is true that the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition is still crucial for understanding Middle East conflicts, it is by no means eternal.

Over the past half century, the position of this coalition has been adversely affected by two important developments. One is that the United States and Russia, besieged by rising inequalities, soaring debts and impoverished populations, have seen their world supremacy challenged by China, India and other big ‘emerging markets’ and their leverage in the Middle East contested by regional powers like Iran and Turkey. The other is that the old-economy emphasis on energy and weapons has been increasingly undermined by a new economy that relies on high technology, communications, pharmaceuticals and biotech.

One result of these developments, crucial to our story, is highlighted in Figure 4. The solid series shows the power of the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition, proxied by the global net profit share of listed aerospace companies and integrated oil & gas firms. [8] The series demonstrates that, during the 1970s and 1980s, the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition reigned supreme, muscling roughly 1/5^th of all net profit earned by the world’s listed companies. But it also shows that from then on, the Coalition’s power trended southward. Despite repeated energy conflicts with large-scale military hostilities, millions of casualties, horrific civilian massacres, mass incarceration, deportation and the wholesale destruction of societal infrastructures that together brought oil-market panics, systemic instability and the disintegration of states, the global net profit share of the armament and oil firms has continued to shrink.

By 2000, this share was down to a mere 4 per cent – 80 per cent below its all-time peak in the early 1980s. The bellicose aftermath of September 11, 2001, gave the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition a facelift, pushing its global net profit share to 12 per cent by the end of the decade. But the recovery was short lived. In the 2010s, the Coalition’s net profit share drifted further down, and in 2017 it hit a 3 per cent nadir. The 2022 Russia-Ukraine and 2023 Hamas-Israel wars seem to have once again revived the Coalition’s dwindling prospects, but whether this revival marks the onset of a long-term uptrend or a temporary blip in its continued decline is anyone’s guess.

This long-term descent is mirrored by the uptrend of the ‘Technodollar-Pharmadollar Coalition’, made up of listed technology, pharmaceutical and biotech firms. The differential power of this new alliance, measured by its global net profit share, is shown by the dashed red series, which, in the early 2020s reached 20 per cent – almost as high as the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition’s peak of the early 1980s. Significantly, the chart also shows that the two coalitions move countercyclically over shorter periods.

This inverse performance is not difficult to explain. The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition is ‘brick and mortar’. It sells tangible stuff and profits differentially from the relative inflation induced by international instability and chaos. By contrast, the Technodollar-Pharmadollar Coalition relies primarily on ‘intangible’ commodities. Its differential profit comes from privatizing collective societal knowledge as intellectual property, appropriating the rights to this property, and upping the relative markup on those rights.

And here is the key point: the general conditions necessary for the spread, imposition and inflationary appreciation of intellectual property rights are opposite to those conducive to the inflation of weapon and oil prices. They require not instability, naked force and open violence, but the appearance of stability, both domestic and international, and the seeming prevalence of ‘law and order’.

In other words, the overall settings that boost one coalition tend to undermine the other – and vice versa. And since both coalitions have considerable leverage in domestic policy and international relations, it makes the conflict between them crucial for the fate of the Middle East and beyond.

And this is not a new phenomenon. The potential significance of intraclass conflicts was illustrated during the 1960s by Michael Kalecki. In his essays ‘The Fascism of Our Times’ (1964) and ‘Vietnam and U.S. Big Business’ (1967), he predicted that continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam would increase the dichotomy between the ‘old’, largely civilian business groups located mainly on the U.S. East Coast, and the ‘new’ militarized business groups, primarily the arms contractors, of the West Coast. The rise in military budgets, he anticipated, would force a redistribution of income from the old to the new groups. The ‘angry elements’ within the U.S. ruling class would then be significantly strengthened, pushing for a more aggressive foreign policy and a war economy: ‘It is a sad world indeed where the fate of all mankind depends upon the fight between two competing groups within American big business. This, however, is not quite new: many far-reaching upheavals in human history started from a cleavage at the top of the ruling class’ (Kalecki 1967: 114).

ENDNOTES

[1] The article’s title pays homage to Lev Nussimbaum’s riveting historical novel, Blood and Oil in the Orient (Bey 1932; This is the second time we borrow his title. The first was in Bichler and Nitzan 2017a). Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan teach political economy at colleges and universities in Israel and Canada, respectively. All their publications are available for free on The Bichler & Nitzan Archives (https://bnarchives.net). Work on this paper was partly supported by SSHRC.

[2] Note that militias are also growing in number and importance elsewhere in the world. In our view, this worldwide phenomenon reflects, at least in part, the widening mismatches and contradictions between the nation state and global accumulation.

[3] On the connection between energy conflicts and differential accumulation, see Bichler and Nitzan (1996, 2004, 2015, 2017a, 2017b, 2018, 2020), Bichler, Nitzan and Rowley (1989), Bichler, Rowley and Nitzan (1989), Nitzan and Bichler (1995; 2002: Ch. 5; 2006), Nitzan, Rowley and Bichler (1989) and Rowley, Bichler and Nitzan (1989).

[4] Since the CPI covers only consumer goods and services, it might seem better to use the comprehensive GDP deflator. The drawback is that, unlike the CPI, which is a monthly fixed-basket index, the basket of the GDP deflator changes continuously, and the index itself is estimated only quarterly. Fortunately, the two measures tend to move in tandem, so we use the more familiar CPI.

[5] Surprising as it may sound, mainstream economists cannot explain actual profits and prices, and for the simplest of reasons: their key explanatory categories of supply, demand and equilibrium – and therefore of scarcity – can be neither observed nor measured. They are purely imaginary (Bichler and Nitzan 2021; Nitzan and Bichler 2009: Chs. 5 and 8). The practical implications of this theoretical vacuum for the oil business are examined in Nitzan and Bichler (1995: 487-492) and Bichler and Nitzan (2015: 50-54; 75-76).

[6] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, and again during the 2000s, differential decumulation was sometimes followed by a string of conflicts stretching over several years. In these instances, the result was a longer time lag between the initial spell of differential decumulation and some of the subsequent conflicts.

[7] A key point to note here is the effect of energy conflicts not on absolute but differential oil returns. For example, in 1969-1970, 1975, 1980-1982, 1985, 1991, 2001-2002, 2006-2007, 2009 and 2012, the rate of return on equity of the Petro Core fell; but in all cases the fall was either slower than that of the Fortune 500 or too small to close the positive gap between them, so despite the absolute decline, the Petro Core continued to beat the average.

[8] Note that this measure focuses on overall net profit, which is different from the one based on EPS in Figure 2.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and expert on international human rights, calls for Israel to act within international law in response to Hamas’s attack on civilians Saturday. “My government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes,” says Sfard. “They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back the dear ones that are gone.” Sfard says Israel should end its bombing and lift the blockade on Gaza because civilians do not deserve punishment for militant attacks. “Modern international law prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment.”

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

Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0

It has been a few days of slaughter-filled accounts. Starting on October 7 on the Jewish day of Simchat Torah, the State of Israel has faced assaults from hundreds of Hamas militants. Directed from southwards in the country, the mayhem has rattled the security and intelligence establishment smugly convinced in their reading of Palestinian motivations and capabilities. But outside the conflict, the commemorations for the dead are to be held according to a specific blueprint.

Across a slew of Western capitals and cities – self-described their presses as The World, blue and white lights have splashed buildings, offering a plaster of virtue over the policies of a state. It would be futile, and tiresome, to document each example of such selective privileging. But for those countries aligned or sympathetic to Israel, some particularly reluctant to decry policies that have violated, with breezy disdain, the dictates of international law, you will not see buildings illuminated by the flag colours of Palestine.

The Berlin Wall received such treatment. Ditto the Berlaymont, the headquarters of the European Commission’s building in Brussels. But surely no country, in terms of number, came close to the United States, Israel’s unqualified political and military backer. In New York alone, under direction by Governor Kathy Hochul, such landmarks as the One World Trade Centre, the Moynihan Train Hall and the Empire State Building received the nocturnal blue-white bathing of light. “New York stands with Israel – today and every day,” Hochul reiterated.

Very clear statements have been made in taking such a position: to the dead we owe the truth, but only a certain truth, and only to certain dead. There are some truths to be told slant and circuitous, and others to be avoided altogether.

A noisy, agitated example of this unfolded in response to the decision made by the New South Wales government to illuminate Australia’s most famous architectural construction in the colours of the Israeli flag. Reporters went about sniffing to see whether the protests organised by Palestinian activists outside the Sydney Opera House emitted a certain antisemitic tang. If not antisemitic, anything that could be seen as pro-Hamas or laudatory of attacks on the Israeli state would also be picked up.

Political figures did not wait long before the red mist descended. Had the protesters been pro-Israel, Jewish and celebrating Israel, that would have been a different matter. But here, we saw protests by Palestinians against the decision to bathe the Opera House’s famous sails in such selective illumination. A prudent measure might have been to avoid doing so altogether: once sides are taken, other sides are excluded.

The focus, however, was not on the building’s preferential lighting scheme but the insensitive audacity of the Palestinian protesters who turned up like desecraters at a holy event. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed the view that “people need to really take a step back,” and that the march be abandoned.

Allegra Spender, the independent federal MP for the Sydney seat of Wentworth, made it clear where her side of the vote counted. She called protests outside the Opera Hall “abhorrent. At a time when there should be solidarity with our Jewish community, they have been subject to appalling abuse.” She demanded to know how such an unsympathetic rabble had been permitted to protest in the first place. No mention that the protest was directly challenging the illumination of the edifice in the colours of a flag associated with the military and economic incarceration of Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank, the brake on recognising Palestine as a sovereign state.

Attacks by Hamas, Spender raged in a separate statement, were not seen as “acts of resistance” but those of a crazed terrorist outfit. “People should not let sympathy for the Palestinian’s legitimate aspirations for statehood blind them to the fact that Hamas remains dedicated to a Palestinian state where Israel does not exist.” Spender could also have noted that the stillborn nature of Palestinian statehood has become the default policy of the Netanyahu government.

Former diplomat Dave Sharma, who had also previously served as a Liberal MP for Wentworth, expressed his “outrage” on ABC News Breakfast because the protesters should have “picked another evening” to march. This should have been Israel’s day, the day for Jews. The Palestinian marchers should have protested appropriately, always the mealymouthed recipe for the ducking brigade who favour power over principle. NSW Premier, Chris Minns, fumed Sharma, should never have given the state police permission for the protests to take place.

For his part, Minns managed to aggravate a goodly number by permitting the illumination of the Opera House to take place, not disallowing the rally in response to that decision while warning the Jewish community to stay away for reasons of safety. Regarding the protests themselves, they were, according to the Premier’s office, “horrible” and did “not represent the people of NSW.” As horrible as they were, not a single arrest took place.

While Australian politicians complained and sniffed, Israel has imposed another blockade of Gaza, with news reporters limply avoiding the point that the enclave of two million inhabitants was already blockaded. Such a political entity was barely breathing to begin with, but the promise now is to cut off water (97% of the water in Gaza is already contaminated), food, fuel and access to electricity (this was already subject to regular outages) is seen as a logical, natural barbarism. Searching for the appropriate word, the Israeli forces had dubbed this latest measure a “siege”.

During a visit to the Israeli Air Force’s underground command centre, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant summed up the attitude to this approach of even deeper deprivation against an already exhausted civilian population. “We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.”

Hardly the voice of a restraint-filled, law abiding official. But back in Australia, Sharma was full of greasy apologetics: “You have to understand, this is a war.” And whenever it waged war, Israel would only do “in accordance with international law”. Hardly – but at least we can light up a few buildings in blue and white.

The post Blue Light, Green Blood: Edifice Politics for Israel appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd says Western reaction to Israel’s assault on Gaza has once again highlighted the double standard when it comes to how Israeli and Palestinian lives are valued. Israel is bombarding the densely populated coastal territory in retaliation for Saturday’s Hamas attack on southern Israel, as well as tightening the existing siege even further. Israeli officials have vowed to wipe out Hamas despite warnings of massive civilian casualties inside Gaza. “One wonders how much bloodshed, how much Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this violence to end.” El-Kurd also accuses Israeli officials and Western media outlets of using Islamophobic tropes by spreading as-yet-unverified claims of sexual violence and beheadings by Hamas fighters, while downplaying the documented death and devastation being inflicted on Gaza residents.

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

Across a slew of Western capitals and cities – self-described their presses as The World, blue and white lights have splashed buildings, offering a plaster of virtue over the policies of a state. It would be futile, and tiresome, to document each example of such selective privileging. But for those countries aligned or sympathetic to Israel, some particularly reluctant to decry policies that have violated, with breezy disdain, the dictates of international law, you will not see buildings illuminated by the flag colours of Palestine.

The Berlin Wall received such treatment. Ditto the Berlaymont, the headquarters of the European Commission’s building in Brussels. But surely no country, in terms of number, came close to the United States, Israel’s unqualified political and military backer. In New York alone, under direction by Governor Kathy Hochul, such landmarks as the One World Trade Centre, the Moynihan Train Hall and the Empire State Building received the nocturnal blue-white bathing of light. “New York stands with Israel – today and every day,” Hochul reiterated.

Very clear statements have been made in taking such a position: to the dead we owe the truth, but only a certain truth, and only to certain dead. There are some truths to be told slant and circuitous, and others to be avoided altogether.

A noisy, agitated example of this unfolded in response to the decision made by the New South Wales government to illuminate Australia’s most famous architectural construction in the colours of the Israeli flag. Reporters went about sniffing to see whether the protests organised by Palestinian activists outside the Sydney Opera House emitted a certain antisemitic tang. If not antisemitic, anything that could be seen as pro-Hamas or laudatory of attacks on the Israeli state would also be picked up.

Political figures did not wait long before the red mist descended. Had the protesters been pro-Israel, Jewish and celebrating Israel, that would have been a different matter. But here, we saw protests by Palestinians against the decision to bathe the Opera House’s famous sails in such selective illumination. A prudent measure might have been to avoid doing so altogether: once sides are taken, other sides are excluded.

The focus, however, was not on the building’s preferential lighting scheme but the insensitive audacity of the Palestinian protesters who turned up like desecraters at a holy event. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expressed the view that “people need to really take a step back,” and that the march be abandoned.

Allegra Spender, the independent federal MP for the Sydney seat of Wentworth, made it clear where her side of the vote counted. She called protests outside the Opera Hall “abhorrent. At a time when there should be solidarity with our Jewish community, they have been subject to appalling abuse.” She demanded to know how such an unsympathetic rabble had been permitted to protest in the first place. No mention that the protest was directly challenging the illumination of the edifice in the colours of a flag associated with the military and economic incarceration of Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank, the brake on recognising Palestine as a sovereign state.

Attacks by Hamas, Spender raged in a separate statement, were not seen as “acts of resistance” but those of a crazed terrorist outfit. “People should not let sympathy for the Palestinian’s legitimate aspirations for statehood blind them to the fact that Hamas remains dedicated to a Palestinian state where Israel does not exist.” Spender could also have noted that the stillborn nature of Palestinian statehood has become the default policy of the Netanyahu government.

Former diplomat Dave Sharma, who had also previously served as a Liberal MP for Wentworth, expressed his “outrage” on ABC News Breakfast because the protesters should have “picked another evening” to march. This should have been Israel’s day, the day for Jews. The Palestinian marchers should have protested appropriately, always the mealymouthed recipe for the ducking brigade who favour power over principle. NSW Premier, Chris Minns, fumed Sharma, should never have given the state police permission for the protests to take place.

For his part, Minns managed to aggravate a goodly number by permitting the illumination of the Opera House to take place, not disallowing the rally in response to that decision while warning the Jewish community to stay away for reasons of safety. Regarding the protests themselves, they were, according to the Premier’s office, “horrible” and did “not represent the people of NSW.” As horrible as they were, not a single arrest took place.

While Australian politicians complained and sniffed, Israel has imposed another blockade of Gaza, with news reporters limply avoiding the point that the enclave of two million inhabitants was already blockaded. Such a political entity was barely breathing to begin with, but the promise now is to cut off water (97% of the water in Gaza is already contaminated), food, fuel and access to electricity (this was already subject to regular outages) is seen as a logical, natural barbarism. Searching for the appropriate word, the Israeli forces had dubbed this latest measure a “siege”.

During a visit to the Israeli Air Force’s underground command centre, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant summed up the attitude to this approach of even deeper deprivation against an already exhausted civilian population. “We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.”

Hardly the voice of a restraint-filled, law abiding official. But back in Australia, Sharma was full of greasy apologetics: “You have to understand, this is a war.” And whenever it waged war, Israel would only do “in accordance with international law”. Hardly – but at least we can light up a few buildings in blue and white.

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

Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is correct to condemn Hamas killing Israeli civilians in its attacks on Israel this week.

The killing of civilians or taking them hostage is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and should be universally condemned.

However, the Labour government has been deathly silent on the war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians under Labour’s watch these past six years.

• READ MORE: War on Hamas: Gaza health ministry appeals for ‘safe corridor’ amid heavy bombardment
• Gaza-Israel war: Death toll rises as Israeli attacks continue to pound Gaza – live updates
• What is Hamas? A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group
• Systemic NZ misreporting on Israeli occupation of Palestine and Palestinian resistance
• Al Jazeera coverage of the war
• Other Palestine reports

Under his prime ministerial watch this year, Chris Hipkins has looked the other way while Israel has built more illegal Israeli settlement homes on Palestinian land; killed more than 250 Palestinian civilians; supported Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank and encouraged highly-provocative Israeli ministerial and settler incursions into the Al Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Why does he only wake up when Israelis are killed? Why does he think Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives?

The Prime Minister’s pro-Israel stance is one-sided and blatantly racist.

New Zealand, along with other Western countries, bears heavy responsibility for the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis in recent days because we have never held Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

We have given Israel a free pass to murder and abuse Palestinians and this led to the inevitable tragedy last weekend.

It is precisely the attitude of Western leaders such as our Prime Minister which has meant so many lives have been lost.

The Prime Minister has the blood of Palestinians and Israelis on his hands.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

The besieged Gaza Strip
The Palestinian enclave — home to about 2.3 million people — has been under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade since 2007, reports Al Jazeera.
More than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and thousands have taken shelter in UN schools as Israeli attacks intensify, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes.

Buildings, mosques and offices have been targeted as Netanyahu promised “mighty vengeance” for the deadly attacks that has sent shockwaves across Israel.

Harrowing images from inside Gaza have emerged with 19 members of a family killed when an air strike on Sunday hit their residential building. More than 60 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes currently in Israel.

Israel has maintained a land, sea and air blockade on Gaza since 2007, a year after Hamas was democratically elected into power. The voting came nearly two years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from the enclave.

The blockade gives Israel control of Gaza’s borders, and Egypt has stepped in to enforce the western border.

Israel has stated it has blocked the borders to protect its citizens from Hamas, but the act of collective punishment violates the Geneva Conventions and has long been considered illegal by groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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

Aotearoa New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins is correct to condemn Hamas killing Israeli civilians in its attacks on Israel this week.

The killing of civilians or taking them hostage is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and should be universally condemned.

However, the Labour government has been deathly silent on the war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians under Labour’s watch these past six years.

• READ MORE: War on Hamas: Gaza health ministry appeals for ‘safe corridor’ amid heavy bombardment
• Gaza-Israel war: Death toll rises as Israeli attacks continue to pound Gaza – live updates
• What is Hamas? A simple guide to the armed Palestinian group
• Systemic NZ misreporting on Israeli occupation of Palestine and Palestinian resistance
• Al Jazeera coverage of the war
• Other Palestine reports

Under his prime ministerial watch this year, Chris Hipkins has looked the other way while Israel has built more illegal Israeli settlement homes on Palestinian land; killed more than 250 Palestinian civilians; supported Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinian towns and villages across the occupied West Bank and encouraged highly-provocative Israeli ministerial and settler incursions into the Al Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

Why does he only wake up when Israelis are killed? Why does he think Israeli lives are more important than Palestinian lives?

The Prime Minister’s pro-Israel stance is one-sided and blatantly racist.

New Zealand, along with other Western countries, bears heavy responsibility for the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis in recent days because we have never held Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people.

We have given Israel a free pass to murder and abuse Palestinians and this led to the inevitable tragedy last weekend.

It is precisely the attitude of Western leaders such as our Prime Minister which has meant so many lives have been lost.

The Prime Minister has the blood of Palestinians and Israelis on his hands.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

The besieged Gaza Strip
The Palestinian enclave — home to about 2.3 million people — has been under an Israeli air, land and sea blockade since 2007, reports Al Jazeera.
More than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced and thousands have taken shelter in UN schools as Israeli attacks intensify, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes.

Buildings, mosques and offices have been targeted as Netanyahu promised “mighty vengeance” for the deadly attacks that has sent shockwaves across Israel.

Harrowing images from inside Gaza have emerged with 19 members of a family killed when an air strike on Sunday hit their residential building. More than 60 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their homes currently in Israel.

Israel has maintained a land, sea and air blockade on Gaza since 2007, a year after Hamas was democratically elected into power. The voting came nearly two years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from the enclave.

The blockade gives Israel control of Gaza’s borders, and Egypt has stepped in to enforce the western border.

Israel has stated it has blocked the borders to protect its citizens from Hamas, but the act of collective punishment violates the Geneva Conventions and has long been considered illegal by groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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

A West Papuan leader has condemned the Melanesian Spearhead Group for abandoning the West Papuan cause in favour of a “corrupt alliance” with Indonesia.

Jeffrey P Bomanak, chairman of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM), declared last week’s MSG Leaders’ Summit ruling on West Papua a “betrayal” of the Papuan people and called for the regional group to be dissolved.

His response was among mounting criticism of the MSG’s denial of full membership for the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) alongside the Melanesian sovereign states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and the Kanak and Socialist and National Liberation Front (FLNKS) that is seeking independence for Kanaky New Caledonia from France.

• READ MORE: MSG throws away golden chance to reset peace and justice for West Papua
• MSG leaders defer Papua membership decision to Pacific Islands Forum
• Flashback: Fiji, PNG lead betrayal, but still West Papuans triumph (in 2015)
• Other MSG reports

The upgrade from observer status to full members had been widely expected. Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG even though it is an Asian sovereign state.

“The act of deferring any decision on justice, sovereignty, and freedom for West Papua is because the MSG Secretariat and various MSG leaders have placed more importance on receiving Jakarta’s blood money than on the victims of Jakarta’s barbarity,” Bomanak declared in a statement today.

“For West Papuans, Melanesia is a symbol of genuine solidarity, where the value of brotherhood and sisterhood is not some abstract sentiment, but an ideal of kinship that is the pillar of our existence.

“Until last week, this ideal was still able to be expressed with hope.”

‘Chalice of betrayal’
The MSG had “quenched its thirst” for an unprincipled economic progress from the “chalice of betrayal”, Bomanak said.

“In doing so has fatally speared the heart of Melanesian kinship. Melanesia as our divine ideal in a unique ancestral affinity is dead.”

The OPM leader said that 25 August 2023 would be recorded by history as the day kinship was abandoned by the Melanesian Spearhead Group.

“It will be remembered as a day of infamy where our family nations joined the international abandonment of West Papua’s right to freedom, nation-state sovereignty, and to an end of the Holocaust Indonesia has brought into our island nation.”

The MSG was now a “fully-fledged member of the moral and ethical cancer” in international diplomacy where nations had no dilemma over the hundreds of thousands of West Papuan victims that was the cost of doing business with Indonesia.

“The military occupation of our ancestral lands by Indonesia, and the barbarity that we have been subjected to for six decades, leaves no room for ambiguity.

“Indonesia is our enemy, and our war of liberation will never stop until Indonesia has left our ancestral lands.

‘Freedom right intact’
“Our right to freedom remains intact even after every drop of our blood is spilled, after every village and family home is destroyed, after our Melanesian kin have acted in spiritual servitude to Indonesia’s batik diplomacy — selling their ancestral souls for generosity in blood money while we remain enslaved and refugees in our own land.”

Bomanak appealed to the remaining leaders of MSG nations which honoured “the true value of our kinship” to withdraw from the MSG.

The OPM has waged a diplomatic and military struggle against Indonesian rule since the 1970s.

Critics of the MSG stance claim that the Indonesian right to govern the West Papua region is contestable, even illegal.

West Papua and the Right to Self Determination under International Law – Melinda Janki
The Act of Free Choice 1969 which handed control of West Papua to Indonesia was a violation of international law. West Papua has never exercised its legal right to self https://t.co/mY4cmvm2e9… pic.twitter.com/QSZSykxiYY

— Lewis Prai : West Papuan Diplomat (@PapuaWeb) March 13, 2023

A 2010 paper researched by one of the founders of International Lawyers for West Papua, Melinda Janki, called for a “proper act of self-determination” in accordance with international law.

In 1969, West Papua, then a former Dutch colony, was classified as an Indonesian province following a so-called “Act of Free Choice” carried out under Indonesian administration, but with only 1022 Papuan tribal representatives taking part in a referendum under duress.

Janki’s paper examined the process and concluded that it was a violation of the right of self-determination held by the West Papuan people under international law.

It studied Indonesia’s territorial claims and argued that these claims did not justify Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua.

The paper concluded that Indonesia’s presence in West Papua was illegal and
that this illegality is the basis for continuing conflict in West Papua.

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

Sunday — May 14 — was an important date for Fiji.

It is recorded in history as a day set aside to commemorate the Girmitiya.

Sometimes we need a reminder to appreciate the importance of history, and what it means to us as a nation.

• READ MORE: Girmit Day – Overcast skies fail to deter Fijians
• Historic Girmit Day apology accepted as Fiji enters new era of unity and reconciliation
• Other Girmitya reports

We need to be reminded about events that contributed to making Fiji the nation that it is today.

So Sunday was about reflecting on history.

It was about appreciating the role history has in shaping our future.

We live in a country that was shaped through hard work, through blood, sweat and tears and tightly woven in there is the history of our Girmitiya.

It was on 14 May 1879 that the first group of indentured labourers arrived from India, into our waters.

We have grown as a nation and we should be appreciative of the place of the Girmitiya in how our nation has turned out.

It may be difficult to understand what transpired then.

It may be difficult to appreciate the sense of uncertainty, frustration, fear and shock when the first lot of indentured labourers sailed away from their motherland.

They were headed for a new beginning.

Life was very different from what they were accustomed to back home.

There was the weather to contend with, the food, and an environment they weren’t familiar with.

But they survived, and they adapted to a new way of life.

Yesterday was about acknowledging their sacrifice, hard work, and contribution to the development of a young nation.

We remind ourselves of the importance of history because it can help us appreciate what we have now.

History can reinforce our appreciation of who we are as a people, and as a nation.

To move forward, let’s get our bearings through history and take care never to repeat mistakes of the past.

The Girmit era should invoke in us a sense of appreciation of the early years of our economic progress as a nation.

It should also acknowledge the great sacrifices made by every indentured labourer.

History teaches us values.

Today let’s be reminded about something former US President George Bush said in a speech on 17 September 2002 which has deep meaning.

He told Americans: “Our history is not a story of perfection. It’s a story of imperfect people working toward great ideals.

“This flawed nation is also a really good nation, and the principles we hold are the hope of all mankind. When children are given the real history of America, they will also learn to love America.

“Ignorance of American history and civics weakens our sense of citizenship. To be an American is not just a matter of blood or birth; we are bound by ideals, and our children must know those ideals.”

They were powerful words which stood out then as they should today.

They are relevant and should serve as a reminder for us to remember our history.

On Sunday, emotions were on over-drive.

Tears flowed and we captured that on the front page today and inside.

There was a great feeling.

There was acceptance of the need for reconciliation.

There was forgiveness!

We remember thousands of people had an impact on the birth of our nation.

We remember the Girmitiya.

This Fiji Times editorial was published on 15 May 2023 under the original title “Girmit Day – We remember” and is republished here with permission.

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

The shadowy pro-junta militia sows terror by targeting opponents of Myanmar’s military for death and leaves a chilling calling card by their victims with their logo – an image of a Burmese warrior holding two swords.

Since emerging about a year ago, the group is believed responsible for the deaths of nearly 60 people, many of them members of the deposed National League for Democracy, or NLD, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party that ruled the country before the February 2021 coup.

“They are neither the police nor the military – they are just the junta’s stooges,” said a Mandalay resident who spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity for fear of his life. They  emerged because “rule of law ceased to exist immediately after the military coup.”

After a string of killings last year, the Blood Comrades went quiet for several months. 

But in April, they resurfaced, killing three people, including two NLD members.

On April 2, a 40-year-old man was found dead near the U Pwar bridge in the Chan Mya Thar Si township outside Mandalay with a sign bearing the logo of the Thway Thauk, or “Blood Comrades.”

The following day, the bodies of two NLD members were found at an intersection of the East Amara Htarni ward of Mandalay’s Aung Myay Thar Zan township. They too bore cards with the Blood Comrades’ logo.

Attacks by the Blood Comrades illustrate how the conflict that has engulfed Myanmar isn’t a clear-cut war between the junta’s troops and members of the People’s Defense Forces, ordinary citizens who have taken up arms against the military, or the ethnic armies such as the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Liberation Army, who have been fighting the government for more autonomy for decades.

Numerous pro-junta militias have aided the junta, including the Pyu Saw Htee militia, which has been responsible for some of the most brutal raids on civilian villages over the past two years.

Others include Thway Thitsar, or “Loyal Bloods, in the capital Naypyidaw, the Yangon Castigators in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon, the Patriotic Coalition in Bago region’s Pyay township, and the Soon Ye (Kite Force) in Tanintharyi region. 

But the Blood Comrades are the most-feared, residents say.

Unclear identity

The group seems to operate mostly in the central region around Mandalay, but its makeup is unclear. 

Some members are believed to belong to the Pyu Saw Htee militia, or perhaps were formed by family members of those killed by the armed resistance for allegedly acting as junta informers. Or they may be members of a far-right nationalist Buddhist monk group called Ma Ba Tha or supporters of the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party, or USDP.

Junta Deputy Information Minister Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun has denied links between the Blood Comrades and the military.

The group appears to have come out of hibernation after the PDF recently began targeting USDP members and other supporters of the junta.

The Blood Comrades’ first known act was a April 21, 2021, post to the Telegram social media network that said it was targeting for assassination members of the NLD, PDF fighters and other opponents of military rule in Myanmar.

The group has also threatened reporters and editors working for news outlets in Myanmar including The Irrawaddy, Mizzima, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), and The Irrawaddy Times, as well as their family members.

Photos obtained by RFA show leaflets or cards bearing the Blood Comrades’ logo left near the corpses of NLD members and supporters.

Operating with impunity

Bo Bo Oo, the NLD’s Sanchaung township deputy chairman, told RFA that the Blood Comrades are believed to have killed at least 58 of his party’s members.

He said that even if the junta is not directly responsible for forming the Blood Comrades, it likely approves of the group’s stated goals and has created an environment in which it can operate with impunity.

“These kinds of assassinations often occur in countries with authoritarian regimes,” he said. “When there are difficulties in directly confronting the resistance forces due to some legal stipulations, the junta raises and financially supports gangs or murderers and thugs to handle the opposition for it.”

Justice lawyer Kyee Myint expressed concern that members of groups like the Blood Comrades “believe that the only way they can get involved in politics is to kill people.”

But he said that the existence of such groups is unsurprising, given that they enjoy the tacit support of the junta.

“They kill openly in the middle of the city in broad daylight,” he said. “There is no reason why law enforcement agencies cannot track them down, but they have failed to take any action.”

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

“White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday discussed the brutal slaying of five people in Texas,” the New York Post whines, “without noting the fugitive accused of the heinous crime is an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported four times.”

Francisco Oropesa, the subject of a continuing manhunt as I write this, allegedly murdered several of his neighbors after they complained about his noisy behavior (shooting in his back yard while intoxicated).

What does Oropesa’s immigration status have to do with anything? I’m tempted to say “nothing,” but on further thought this strikes me as a teachable moment.

The usual suspects, of course, want us to take this incident as confirmation that “illegal” immigration is an inherently terrible thing, and that the US government needs to dramatically increase its funding ($25 billion is the number in president Joe Biden’s 2023 budget request) and manpower (more than 40,000 government employees between the US Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement) dedicated to “immigration enforcement.”

The REAL lesson is that throwing tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people at “immigration enforcement,” turning a 100-mile strip around the edges of the United States into a “constitution-free” zone where native and immigrants alike are subjected to warrantless searches and other predatory government behavior, and abducting and deporting people multiple times:

HAS. NOT. WORKED.

Nor is it about to suddenly, magically START working.

The borders of the United States have always been open (by constitutional mandate until the late 1800s, when the Supreme Court decided to start ignoring the Constitution and just let Congress do whatever it felt like).

The borders of the United States are open now. People who want to get in, get in. Some of them are abducted and deported. And those who still want to be here get BACK in.

The borders of the United States will always be open. With 95,500 miles of border and coastline, “securing the border” wouldn’t be an option even if the government put every member of the US armed forces, plus every state and local cop, on nothing but the business of “securing the border.”

Our choices are:

Open borders; or Open borders AND a $25-billion, 40,000-guard, 100-mile-wide police state dedicated to the preposterous claim that we can have something other than open borders.

Pick one.

Either way,  Oropoesa’s victims remain exactly as dead as they would be if he was from Peoria.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Thomas Knapp.

The post Blood, Golf and Saudi Arabia appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

This vulgar display of denial and indulgence was typified by the face of Australian golf, Greg Norman. After three days of competition at The Grange, The Advertiser ran with the painful headline: “LIV-ing the dream: Golf’s boom weekend for SA.” The South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, who scandalously threw his state’s money into a mix also funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (his government refuses to say how much), was also glowing. “To everyone who turned up and showed what Australia is about – thank you.”

When questioned about the Riyadh connection and its blotchy human rights record, the insufferable South Australian Tourism Minister, Zoe Bettison, proved to be a well of useless information. “I’m aware of the issues that people have raised,” she stated. “But each and every one of us here uses equipment [and] different businesses every day that the Saudis are invested in.” Presumably she does not mean hacksaws, which, in Saudi hands, have a habit of finding their way onto the necks of critical journalists.

Golfing professionals such as the unprincipled Mammon follower Dustin Johnson also expressed delight at the way the tournament had gone. “The support we’ve had from the fans and the city … awesome. Obviously, the crowds were unbelievable this week, so it was a lot of fun.”

Peter Uihlein dreamily speculated about future numbers, burgeoning in their promise: 90,000 attendees over three days in the 12th event would surely mean even greater numbers by the 40th or 50th? “People lose sight of that a little bit. This is literally the 12th event. The sky is the limit.”

There were efforts made by the organisers to mimic their PGA Tour rivals, who, to be fair, are also corrupt, but not in the capital punishment-killing journalists sense of the term. A ticket to the “Cellar Door” Marquee back of the 12th green, Guardian Australia reports, was called the “Watering Hole”; the PGA equivalent would have been the “Party Hole” in Arizona. The price of admission: $1200. For that price, those attending the sports wash session could also be bored by Norman, Premier Malinauskas, and former Australian Treasurer and US ambassador Joe Hockey, talk about golf as “a force for good”.

The Kingdom has made no secret of its use of sport in softening a cruel, barbaric image, rinsing it in the progressive tones of sporting improvement. Obscene amounts of cash have and are being put into sporting tournaments by Riyadh’s Public Investment Fund. And they have such charming ignoramuses as Norman to play the role of useful, distracting dolt, able to bring on board other dolts bedazzled by the dosh.

In the first season of LIV Golf events, each regular-season event’s total value was counted at $25 million, split between $20 million for the individual event, and $5 million for the team competition. The winner’s earnings came in at $4 million, with the last-placed participant getting $120,000.

There have also been the individual mercenaries, the condottieri of the golf circuit. They have taken the manna from Norman, and encouraged to forget the bloodthirsty, vicious tendencies of the medieval House of Saud; focus, instead, on a more tangible hatred golfers can understand: the PGA tour organisers. It is those stuffed shirts Norman has never forgiven in undermining his previous efforts to run a tournament, and it is an animosity that he has bred from.

In Adelaide, when asked about what the PGA boss Jay Monaghan might feel about the tournament, Johnson was instant in his reaction. “We don’t give a damn how he feels. We know how he feels about us, so it’s mutual.”

Others, like Bruce Koepka, focused on the golf-as-golf theme: players on the LIV circuit and the PGA tour were playing the same game. At the recent Masters, he could “run into 15 (PGA) Tour guys if [he] wanted to in a day and nobody really had any negative feedback, any negative thing to say – and that would be the time to say it.”

One can never accuse professional golfers of shaking the tree of knowledge, and 2020 US Open Winner and LIV participant Bryson DeChambeau proved that point. “We talked about that [Saudi sportswashing] last year, and we already kind of kicked that to the kerb. It’s something that I truthfully believe is inaccurate.”

When asked last week if he had ever had a conversation with bin Salman, the man US intelligence agencies are certain ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, nothing was forthcoming. “No, I have not,” he replied.

As to why such a meeting had never happened, the answer was childish, though far from endearingly so. “Because I’m the chairman and CEO of LIV Golf Investments, and that’s where I focus. I focus on golf. I’ve been involved with golf … as a player, as well as golf course design. I’ve built golf courses in third-world countries. I’ve built golf courses in Communist countries.” Here we have the Albert Speer of golf, dedicated to the building enterprises, riding high, and without fear. Speer, at the very least, faced a tribunal and received due punishment.

There have been a few indignant spoilsports. Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea made a few ripples in the ABC for noting that, “Saudi Arabia has experienced some of its worst periods for human rights in its modern history.” In March 2022, she reminds us, 81 people were executed in one day.

Strangely enough for a state Liberal opposition leader, David Speirs had also detected some principle in the tangle of sporting sponsorship. Why take “dirty money” from a “despotic”, fundamentalist government while condemning Russia?

Malinauskas had a reply for his sparring opponent: Speirs had supported the Harvest Rock Festival, run by Live Nation, yet another Public Investment Fund recipient. No matter, retorted Speirs. “We’re paying for print advertising, social media advertising … we’re normalising the Saudi regime.” That normalisation, at least at the State level in Australia, is nigh complete.

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

Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr said ahead of a scheduled legislative session in the state House on Friday that she is "ready to speak" on behalf her constituents, but Republican leaders have given no indication that they'll allow her to do so after silencing her this week in retaliation for comments she made about transgender rights.

State House Speaker Matt Regier (R-4) has refused to acknowledge Zephyr (D-100), the state's only transgender lawmaker, on Thursday when she tried to speak during a debate about a bill that would include binary definitions of "male" and "female" in the state code, and other legislation unrelated to the rights of transgender and nonbinary people.

The Republicans' refusal to allow Zephyr to speak on the House floor follows her comments made on Tuesday about a bill that would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youths.

"If you are denying gender-affirming care and forcing a trans child to go through puberty, that is tantamount to torture, and this body should be ashamed," said Zephyr. "If you vote yes on this bill, I hope the next time you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands."

Soon after, the right-wing Montana Freedom Caucus wrote a letter to the Legislature—posted on Twitter along with a message that misgendered Zephyr—calling for the lawmaker to be censured for using "inappropriate and uncalled-for language" during the debate, unless she issued a formal apology.

Zephyr has refused to do so, saying in a statement that the Republicans' goal is not securing an apology, but "silence as they take away the rights of queer and trans Montanans."

"The Montana GOP has pushed over a dozen anti-trans bills this year—targeting our art forms, our stories, our healthcare, and our very existence," said Zephyr. "It is particularly troubling that the moment they were confronted with the impact their legislation has, they chose to silence the only trans woman elected to public office in Montana as opposed to doing the right thing and voting down this harmful legislation."

"My light is on and I am ready to speak," she added.

When he refused to acknowledge Zephyr on Thursday, Regier said he was doing so "to protect the dignity and integrity" of the legislative body.

All 32 Democratic House members rose in solidarity with Zephyr on Thursday, and groups including the Montana American Indian Caucus and the Missoula County Democrats have expressed support for her.

House Republicans, said the Missoula County Democrats, are "silencing not only the voice of Rep. Zephyr, but also the voices of roughly 11,000 Montanans in House District 100."

Bolstering her statement that Republicans have "blood on their hands," Zephyr on Tuesday shared a letter state lawmakers received last month from an emergency physician who treated a transgender teenager who said the GOP's opposition to gender-affirming healthcare such as puberty blockers, hormonal treatment, and surgery had contributed to their suicidal ideation.

"Every yes vote on a discriminatory bill targeting transgender Montanans contributed to this child being driven to the point of wanting to kill themselves," the doctor wrote.

As Zephyr noted in her remarks on Tuesday, access to gender-affirming treatment for youths suffering from gender dysphoria is strongly supported by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and other medical organizations—and cutting access to such treatment is linked to far higher rates of suicide and depression among transgender and nonbinary teens.

"When there are bills targeting the LGBTQ community, I stand up to defend my community," Zephyr told the Associated Press Friday. "And I choose my words with clarity and precision and I spoke to the real harms that these bills bring."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Students across the United States walked out of their classrooms Wednesday to take part in a nationwide protest demanding gun control legislation amid relentless shootings that have already claimed more than 10,000 lives in a little over three months this year.

Wednesday's National School Walkout followed a smaller demonstration Monday in Nashville, Tennessee, where six people including three 9-year-old children were shot dead last week at the Covenant School.

"We've grown up in the midst of America's gun violence crisis. In fact, we've been called the 'school shooting generation,'" protest organizer Students Demand Action explained. "Now we're rising up and organizing in our high schools, colleges, and communities across the country to demand action to end gun violence."

Among those participating in Wednesday's walkout were a group of students from Uvalde High School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and three adults including the shooter were killed during a May 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School.

The teens chanted slogans including "our blood, your hands" as they walked off campus and marched downtown.

"If people do not start walking out, do not try to start making change, nothing will, and we want change," one student told the San Antonio Express-News. "We're tired of being scared."

Javier Casares, whose 9-year-old daughter Jackie was murdered at Robb Elementary School, told the Express-News he thinks Wednesday's walkout was "something awesome."

"I think we should be seeing this here all over the world," he said, "and I wish more students would have the courage to do so."

In New York City, one student protester said that "it's unfair for little kids to be paranoid all the time coming to school when school's supposed to be... a safe space for you to learn."

Another New York demonstrator said that "it's not fair how people are banning some books and not guns."

In Memphis, Tennessee, students shouted "no more silence, no more gun violence" as they rallied outside White Station High School.

"We have to stand up. We have to change the legislation. We have to have safety," said White Station 12th grader Presley Spiller, an organizer of the rally. "We cannot have academics if we are not safe."

In Boulder, Colorado—where a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle massacred 10 people in a supermarket in 2021—students rallied outside of the county courthouse and chanted, "Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids did you kill today?"

"We don't want to be killed. We don't want to be a face in the newspaper," Boulder High School sophomore Alex Berk toldTheDenver Post.

Eliana Monahan, another Boulder sophomore, told the paper that "we shouldn't be afraid to go to school and get killed."

"We had a scare a few months ago where we thought there was going to be a school shooting," Monahan added, "and that shouldn't be a fear that we have, that our friends and teachers are gonna get shot."

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

Image Source: Alejandro Lecuna – CC BY-SA 4.0

The extraordinary March 10, 2023 announcement that China’s top diplomat, Mr. Wang Yi, helped broker a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran suggests that major powers can benefit from believing that, as Albert Camus once put it, “words are more powerful than munitions.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gearing up for a major offensive before the spring thaw, Russia’s government announced it would pay a bonus to troops that destroy weapons used by Ukrainian soldiers which were sent from abroad. The blood money bonus is chilling, but on an exponentially greater level, major weapons manufacturers have accrued a steady bonanza of “bonuses” since the war began.

In the last year alone, the United States sent $27.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, providing “armored vehicles, including Stryker armored personnel carriers, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled vehicles.” The package also included air defense support for Ukraine, night vision devices, and small arms ammunition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Blood, Money and Imperial War appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.

American football has always been a blood sport.

It needs to change or die.

Tackle must end.  Flags must come.

And they will.

Why?  Because human lives are at stake…and with them, a trillion-dollar industry.

A century ago, football players were maimed and died in droves.  The college game was a cross between rugby, mixed martial arts and all-out trench warfare.

Merciless scrums brought on bloody body piles in which players did their very best to gouge and permanently harm their opponents.  Often they succeeded.

Where helmets were worn, they were virtually useless leather gloves, perhaps functional in keeping cracked skulls from falling apart during a game, but that was about it.  The death toll for a given year of the college game was substantial and undeniable.  Long-term post-season repercussions were undiscussed, unstudied…and permanent.

Early in the twentieth century, both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson intervened.  By the time the pro game caught hold after World War 2, hard helmets, shoulder pads, body cushioning and tightened rules significantly lowered the kill ratio.

One could attribute that in part to an evolution of human compassion.  But owners were now investing significant money in players whose health had financial value.  And make no mistake—-that again will help motivate change.

Fast-forward to this past Monday night.  In a critical game between two top teams, on the National Football League’s premier weekly televised showcase, we were caught in a life-and-death crap shoot.

About ten minutes into the first quarter, with more than 65,000 fans packed into Cincinnati’s stadium, Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin (age 24) slammed into Bengals receiver Tee Higgins.

It appeared to be a “routine” hit.  As is the game’s macho custom, those involved jumped up as if it was a day at the beach.

But in fact, a stack of bodies had slammed into each other with enough raw force to devastate “regular people” with excruciating—-likely permanent—injury.  You, me and 99% of the rest of us reading this article or watching these games would be utterly ravaged by a hit like that…writhing in pain if still conscious, maimed for life.

Hamlin had certainly absorbed scores of such hits in his high school, college, and brief pro careers.  He was in fact subbing for another player who’d been hurt earlier in the season.

After Monday’s hit, he bounced up and took two steps.

Then the world turned upside down. Damar Hamlin fell face forward and hit the turf unconscious.

(The “turf” in Cincinnati is actual grass, which may have made been a saving grace.  Most NFL gridirons are essentially a thin felt pad stretched over a rock-solid concrete platform.  Those much-hated killing fields are the bitter source of rightful labor strife now certain to escalate).

With Hamlin lying face down, the NFL’s medical team raced onto the field.  They TWICE resuscitated him—-ie brought him back from actual death—-then raced him to a nearby hospital.

Official details are scarce.  Hamlin may have suffered at least one cardiac arrest.  He may have taken a one-in-a-million chest hit precisely timed to disrupt his heart.  He may have had a pre-existing condition that should have been caught beforehand.

His brain was likely deprived of significant oxygen.  The medical team reportedly induced a coma to minimize permanent damage.

Whatever the case, a historic line has been crossed.

Under “normal football conditions” over the past century-plus, the league would’ve been content to have the body carted off and thrown into an ambulance, taken out of sight and mind.  After a five-minute break, the game would’ve restarted.

Some critics charge that’s what the NFL was about to do.  Some of the players—-including the Cincinnati quarterback—-went into warm-up mode, apparently assuming battle would soon resume.

But others broke down in tears and knelt.  A large circle locked arms to pray.

Soon—-and the decision path is here murky—-the coaches and the league somehow agreed to call off the game.

It was an astonishing moment.  A huge stadium full of rabid fans in very expensive seats was forced to get up and leave.  Thousands had to drive back to Buffalo without having seen a game in which they’d invested enormous amounts of time, money and emotional capital.

Millions of TV viewers saw something never witnessed in the annals of American sport—-the cancellation of a pivotal event due to an on-the-field injury.  Carefully coiffed sportscasters completely unprepared to discuss the medical, political or emotional implications of what they’d just seen sat speechless.  Three hours of hyper-expensive prime time stretched out before them…empty.

The only comparable event in recent history occurred at 5:04pm Pacific Time, October 17, 1989, just prior to game three of baseball’s World Series.  A magnitude 6.9 earthquake killed nearly 70 people nearby, forcing the very dicey evacuation of San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, which thankfully did not collapse.  No one died there.  But it was a damn close call.

Now a very different kind of tremor has struck to the core of America’s Game.  Its roots run deep.

Without immediate medical care, Damar Hamlin would have died on the field.  The exact medical circumstances remain shrouded in official murk.  But his injuries clearly came from the brute force of a “routine” NFL hit.

So the question must be asked:  will we, as a “civilized” society, continue showcasing this kind of brutality?

Medically, Hamlin’s catastrophic injury is the tip of the iceberg.

For decades it’s been clear that the concussions at football’s core have been doing immeasurable long-term human damage.

Far more insidious than the obvious on-the-field injuries, the head-banging is lethal.  Each play hosts four or more bone-crushing collisions between extremely strong men beating the hell out of each other.  On the line, during the pass rush, at the corners, amidst the down-field pass receptions, the full force collisions are hard to fathom.

Unlike Damar Hamlin’s collapse for all to see, the inescapable injuries from these ceaseless smash-ups are tangible and cumulative.  Except for the kickers, virtually every NFL player suffers a serious injury.  That includes even the most elite quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, each of whom has missed major playing time in their abnormally long careers.

The league well knows its human inventory is being steadily destroyed by head hits causing long-term brain damage.  Not even insanely agile athletes weighing 300 pounds get out whole.

As seen in the 2016 film “Concussion” starring Will Smith, it took a Pittsburgh mortician dissecting the brain of a tragically demented former football star to uncover CTE, the degenerative disease that’s caused so much agony and early death.

Like the tobacco, nuclear power, and chemical pesticide industries, the barons of pro football have done all they can to deny the damage and destroy its discoverers.

But after years of angry litigation, and billions of dollars in tortious damages, CTE and the devastating impacts of on-the-field concussions are now indisputable.

So the league has installed “protocols” whereby certifiably injured players are taken out of a game until they can “recover”.

But such “precautions” come after the fact.  Once a player suffers an NFL-scale concussion, the long-term effects are inescapable.  Briefly benching a player can’t stop the inevitable next hit, whose impacts are likely to be exponential.

This year’s case in point has been Tua Tagovailoa.  Early this season, the star Dolphins quarterback took a brutal head hit.  But he went back into the game and got hit again.

He was pulled again.  But then back in he went.

In the fourth quarter of a pivotal game against the Green Bay Packers, after being hit yet again, Tua threw three uncharacteristic interceptions, costing the Dolphins the game and maybe their place in the playoffs..

Did the head injuries do that?

Whatever the case, this twenty-something kid now faces a lifetime of questions about the likely length of his life shy of dementia.

As do hundreds more like him…including Damar Hamlin.

Going forward, do we as a society really want to pay to see these young men—-from high school on up—-sacrifice their bodies and their coming lives for our brief viewing pleasure?

Some 80% of the NFL’s players are black.  Racial tensions and social justice issues are constant and escalating.  Sooner or later, the loyalty of the viewing public is certain to crack.

So too the owners.  Teams with hurt quarterbacks replaced by mediocre substitutes aren’t worth watching.  They never bring the payoffs that come with the playoffs.

Kansas City recently signed quarterback Patrick Mahomes for nearly a half-billion dollars (that’s NOT a typo).  For a mere quarter-billion, the Cleveland Browns have hired a quarterback who’s faced some two dozen charges of sexual assault.

Yet one errant hit from a 300-pound pass rusher could evaporate all that invested capital…along with the health and well-being of yet another young victim.

Nothing will improve without basic changes to the nature of the game.  Concussion protocols, better helmets, stricter penalty calling…all can help.  But they tip-toe around the perimeter.

At the core of all tackle football is the hard hit…the unrestrained flinging of one body against another.  Helmets, shoulder pads, knee braces—-they all have their place.

But none can prevent the devastating damage of the ceaseless collisions that define this sport, filling it with shaky investments and making it progressively less watchable.

So let’s try Flag football.

It’s a game played by millions of amateurs unwilling to risk their heads and health.

Tackling is not allowed.  Instead, there’s a flag stuck into the back of your pants.  You’re brought down—-the play ends—-when your opponent throws it (not you) to the ground.

Knee, leg, and shoulder pulls, strains and tears are still with us.  But hits to the head and body are gone.

That can sound seriously wimpy to many a fan who doesn’t play.

But the game is exciting and graceful. The humanitarian imperatives are undeniable.

And so are the financials.

All these big-time teams should be owned by the communities in which they play.  The era of the billionaire owner should be long gone.

But in the meantime, those who run this insanely profitable industry must know that their cash cow is in danger.

Take Monday night’s clearing of the Cincinnati stadium.  What if that had been the Super Bowl?  Calculate the costs on that one (hint:  it’s in the many billions).

Throughout the US, parents (like mine) are forbidding their kids from playing this game.  At the grassroots, the up flow of talent and of future spectators is in deep jeopardy.

The industry is also rife with racial and class issues.  These guys DO have a union, and have fought against CTE with epic power.

And then there’s the competition.

“European football”—-soccer—-is by far humankind’s most popular sport.  The “beautiful game” does incur brain injuries from “heading” the ball.

But the carnage does not approach American football.  A whole new generation is opting for soccer…especially after the stunning success of the world-champion American women.

So sooner or later, the twain must meet.  A mostly non-violent sport is the world’s most popular.  And our own brutal brand of football is less lethal than it was a century ago…but has a long way to go.

Today’s high-tech helmets, concussion protocols and willingness to clear a stadium for a mere fatal injury would be as alien to the old timers as flag football to today’s macho headbangers.

But something further must be done.

So let’s start by sticking a flag in the back of the quarterbacks’ pants.

End a passing play by throwing that flag—-not the actual player—-to the ground.  Eject anybody who hits a QB behind the line of scrimmage.

Spread the practice from the quarterbacks to the receivers (who are also ridiculously vulnerable) and then to the runners.

The old schoolers will yell.  But the game has changed before and now must change yet again.

Near-death show-stoppers like Monday night’s in Cincinnati are unsustainable.  So are the concussions that quietly maim and kill for decades to come.

The players and their families cannot survive them.  Nor can American football.

Sanity beckons.  So does soccer.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Harvey Wasserman.

The baby in Aotearoa New Zealand whose parents did not want him to receive blood from people who may have had the covid vaccine underwent urgent heart surgery today.

Anti-vaccination lawyer Sue Grey confirmed to RNZ Checkpoint late this afternoon that the baby, known as baby W, had undergone surgery today.

Grey said she had received a text message from the baby’s parents confirming the surgery was finished and the six-month-old was doing well.

• READ MORE: No appeal against ruling in NZ baby blood case, surgery to go ahead
• Other blood case baby reports

Baby W was this week placed under the guardianship of the High Court until the completion of the surgery and post-operative recovery.

Te Whatu Ora asked the High Court to take guardianship of the baby this week to allow the surgery to go ahead with blood from the NZ Blood Service.

Doctors from Te Whatu Ora were made agents of the court to carry out the surgery, including the administration of any blood products, while his parents were agents of the court for all of his other care.

Protesters gathered near Auckland’s Starship Hospital today to support the parents.

Protesters near hospital
About 60 protesters were near the hospital many with signs such as “do not experiment on our children” as they awaited an update on whether the operation had gone ahead this morning.

A new ruling last night ordered the parents not to obstruct health staff at Starship Hospital.

In a statement this morning, police confirmed they were present at the hospital yesterday evening and overnight.

In a statement last night, Justice Gault said he had been informed by the lawyer acting for Te Whatu Ora that the baby’s parents had prevented doctors from taking blood tests, performing a chest X-ray and an anaesthetic assessment.

The parents objected and the hospital asked the police for help.

A new ruling last night ordered the parents not to prevent medical staff from carrying out their work.

The health service said officials would not be commenting on specific details of individual patient care or providing clinical status updates for ethical and privacy reasons.

Person trespassed
Te Whatu Ora Te Toka Tumai Auckland Interim Director Dr Mike Shepherd had said it remained a priority to work alongside the baby’s whānau to care for him.

“In addition, we’re doing everything we can to support our teams through a difficult situation for all involved,” he said.

He confirmed a person had been trespassed from the hospital.

“As general comment, from time to time, it may be necessary to trespass an individual or individuals from our site, sometimes only for a few hours, if they are impacting on our clinical team’s ability to care for patients.”

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.

Photograph Source: eilidh_wag – CC BY 2.0

Last week, thousands of railroad workers ready to strike got stabbed in the back by Biden and congress. These trainmen, constantly on call and without even one paid sick day, object to being worked to death. They aren’t the only ones. Another massive strike in another business sector was already underway: Forty-eight thousand academic workers struck in California November 14. They walked off the job in one of the biggest labor actions of the century and the largest in higher education history, due to starvation wages. Their employer, the University of California, has not reacted well, has in fact taken a divide and conquer approach, according to Nelson Lichtenstein in the Guardian December 5. This means offering some spoils for those who are already better compensated and a very hard line toward those at the bottom of the pay scale, namely graduate students. Because of course.

The striking researchers, postdocs, graders and teaching assistants want a minimum annual salary of $54,000 for graduate students and $70,000 for postdocs – something commensurate with the cost of living in California, where the average annual rent in Los Angeles surpasses $36,000 a year. For teaching assistants earning $24,000 that often means sleeping in their cars. Lots of these workers resort to selling blood to make ends meet. Welcome to the lousy underside of academic labor in America, famishing scholars so parasites in university administrations can bloat up on six-figure salaries.

United Auto Workers bargains for these workers. Its president of “Local 5810, which represents more than 11,000 UC postdocs and academic workers,” according to the Washington Post November 14, accuses the university of acting unlawfully at the bargaining table. This is probably a gross understatement. Negotiations have already dragged out over a year, so you can imagine the sorts of brazen shenanigans pulled by university poohbahs protecting their pelf. For those besotted with a tinsel image of these hacks, who cry, No! However on earth could it be? University luminaries twisting the financial knife with bargaining mischief? Shocking! To such people I can only say, the blood of impoverished intellectuals waters the groves of American academe, literally, and has done so for decades. The fact that “the University of California strike is also the largest strike in higher education in U.S. history, according to the UAW,” per the Post has more than a little to do with the nonsense labor has had to tolerate at the bargaining table.

The tenure-track model for these workers is a thing of the past. According to one academic striker quoted by the New Yorker November 29, “You don’t make very much as a grad student, and you’re expected to do menial tasks for your professors…for many of us, that same deal [eventual tenure] that made the whole thing function is really no longer on the table, which means that the way we’re paid in the meantime is much more significant.” In other words, these academics have accepted the reality that they are working stiffs.

“The University of California Strike Has Been 50 Years in the Making,” headlined a story in New York magazine November 18. In addition to higher wages, New York reports that these workers demand childcare stipends, transit passes and paid leave, the sorts of things essential to the survival of your average prole and one his or her bosses fiercely resist providing, “in a state where the cost of living has skyrocketed in recent years.”

The roots of the strike, however, reach back, according to New York, to Proposition 13, the property tax-slashing law adopted in California 44 years ago. “This bled the state of much-needed income,” with a recent estimate “that if just the state’s commercial-property owners were taxed at fair market value, it would provide California an additional $11.5 billion in annual tax revenue – most of which would be paid by giant corporations.” Without that money, the state struggles to support amenities like its flagship university system, and thus, at the bargaining table, officials claim poverty. Such protestations, however, omit the wildly expensive metastasizing class of university administrators who pull down small fortunes and whose utility is negligible. After all, prior to the late 1970s, most schools got along just fine without them. Universities ran much more cheaply and could afford to give postdocs and grad students salaries more in line with the cost of living. Those salaries were, in absolute terms, smaller than what they get today, but so were expenses.

So far, the rank and file has rejected the university’s stingy pay increases. “Many teaching assistants would earn less than $30,000 a year,” with what management offers, according to the Post. The proposed annual childcare stipend “would barely cover a month of childcare,” workers were quoted. One wonders what their employers expect these parents to do for the remaining eleven months? Lock their kids in the car and hope they’re alive when they return from the job? “Teaching assistants at UCLA earn an average of $24,000 a year,” the union told the newspaper. Students’ parents shelling out many tens of thousands of dollars a year in exorbitant tuition thus pay a fortune for instructors who must sleep in their vehicles. As for the children of those teachers, well, they’re not the university’s problem, or at least that’s the official attitude.

Lest you think this gigantic strike is somehow an isolated one-off, think again. All over the country, education workers have walked off the job. Massachusetts teachers defied a strike ban by walking out illegally three times recently, and six thousand Seattle teachers struck September 7. “The top issue was the district’s proposal…to end student-teacher ratios for many categories of special education,” labornotes reported. Almost a week later, bargaining got results, and members ended the strike. And 2022 featured other job actions in education as well.

Back in California, a wave of wildcat strikes hit UC Santa Cruz and other UC campuses in 2021. “Workers demanded cost-of-living stipends to account for the soaring price of housing in the state,” according to the Post. “Following the strikes, UC Santa Cruz agreed to increase housing stipends for teaching assistants.” Those assistants told the Post they commute hours for affordable housing. They, doubtless, are the lucky ones who actually have roofs over their heads.

One doctoral student described donating “blood plasma twice a week for roughly $200 in extra income.” Another teaching assistant mentioned skipping meals. So it’s no wonder that in August 2021 UAW “gained 17,000 student researchers, in the largest union victory of that year.” More recently, this month, “UAW announced that 97 percent of more than 36,000 workers who voted across the UC system had authorized an unfair labor practice strike.”

The UAW is now an old hand at organizing traditionally non-blue-collar workers. Years ago, as a UAW shop steward in the newspaper business, regularly filing grievances, I saw close up how this union works. People may complain about its performance lately in the more traditional automobile organizing field, but in journalism and academe, it has thrown desperate workers a life-line. The union officials who decided to expand in this way were prescient, correctly perceiving that employers who expect their underlings to survive on their jobs’ prestige exploit labor almost as badly as sweat shops. UAW’s expansion in these areas rescued a whole class of desperate employees. Lots of previously abused workers, who labor with their brains for a pittance, are grateful.

That’s why it was dismaying to read in Truthout December 2 that UAW negotiators told striking academics their original demands were “unreasonable.” This week, “the bargaining team sacrificed workers with disabilities, for zero concessions from UC and with zero accountability in addition to slashing child care in half and dropping dependent care,” according to Magally A. Miranda Alcazar, who cites other givebacks very unpopular with a rank and file now united under the banner of “No COLA, no contract!” The union hierarchy should listen to this protest. Especially at this dangerous juncture with the strike in its fourth week, and, as noted in the Guardian, management trying to split the strikers by dangling a decent offer to a smaller group of them, while leaving the largest cohort, that is grad students, out in the cold (literally). The union certainly has no business siding with the boss, not least because such a failure will only prolong the strike. The UAW must do what it’s there for: representing the interests of rank-and-file workers with unshakable solidarity. Anything else is a betrayal.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Eve Ottenberg.

The parents of a New Zealand baby at the centre of a legal dispute that has made global headlines will not be appealing against a judge’s decision to hand guardianship of the child to the High Court.

The four-month-old — known only as Baby W — requires urgent open heart surgery, with both blood and blood products required for the operation and potentially its aftermath.

Te Whatu Ora/Health New Zealand took the case to court because the parents refused to allow blood transfusions from anyone who might have had the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine.

• READ MORE: Vaccinated donor blood: Parents’ meeting with doctors ‘hijacked’ by anti-vax support person
• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: Interview with University of Otago bioethics lecturer Josephine Johnstone duration

The NZ Blood Service does not differentiate between blood from vaccinated and non-vaccinated people, saying there was “no evidence that previous vaccination affects the quality of blood for transfusion”.

A judge on Wednesday ruled in favour of Te Whatu Ora, allowing the surgery to go ahead with whatever product the NZ Blood Service provides. Doctors, having been made agents of the court for the surgery, said on Wednesday afternoon they would be ready to operate within 48 hours.

The family’s lawyer Sue Grey and high-profile media supporter Liz Gunn said this morning there was no time to appeal against the court’s decision, but they had confidence the child would “get the best possible care with the best, safest blood” because “the government cannot afford anything to go wrong for Baby W as the world is watching”.

“The priority for the family is to enjoy a peaceful time with their baby until the operation, and to support him through the operation,” the pair said in a post on the New Zealand Outdoors and Freedom Party Facebook page.

Grey co-leads the party.

The baby will be in intensive care for up to a week and under Te Whatu Ora’s guardianship possibly until the end of January, allowing time for their recovery. The doctors were told to keep the parents “informed at all reasonable times of the nature and progress of [the baby’s] condition and treatment”.

Te Whatu Ora has been approached for comment.

Judge’s ruling expected
The ruling should not have come as a surprise, University of Otago bioethics lecturer  Josephine Johnstone told Morning Report on Thursday.

“This may seem like a very 2022 case and it is in many ways, but it connects to lines of decision over time where there have been disputes about what’s in the best interests of a child that has very serious medical needs,” she said.

“So this is consistent with previous cases around the refusal of blood products for children whose parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses… or refusal of medical care for cancer treatment for children whose parents have alternative health and science[ views, which is sort of similar to this. In many ways it’s consistent with those decisions. It’s not really a break in that way.”

Johnstone said the parents’ authority over their child’s health and upbringing was being limited in only a very minor way.

“The parents still have all of the other decision-making authority that parents have. And parents do have enormous latitude to make decisions about how to raise their children — what religion to raise them, what kinds of beliefs, what kinds of home to create, what kind of traditions, they have enormous decision-making power about children’s [medical treatment], but it’s not unlimited.

“In very rare cases where it’s a life-and-death situation, we can expect the courts to step in — and that’s exactly what happened.”

Johnstone’s view was backed up by Rebecca Keenan, a former nurse who now works as a barrister, specialising in medical law.

Put child ‘firmly first’
“[The court has] put the child firmly first and have gone by the evidence and supported the health board,” she told Morning Report.

“From reading the judgment, you can see that the parents have been taking their baby out of hospital, against medical opinion, and there’s obviously been a real breakdown in the relationship between the parents and the medical staff.”

Wednesday’s judgment outlined a meeting in late November during which the parents’ support person “proceeded to pressurise the specialists with her theory about conspiracies in New Zealand and even said that deaths in infants getting transfusions were occurring in Starship Hospital”.

Johnstone said while having a support person in meetings with medical staff was a right, it was clear in this case they were not helpful.

“One has to imagine that the involvement of some of the anti-vaccine campaigners has escalated not just this case at the national level, but even the discussions between the family and their medical team, so that’s explicitly mentioned in the case and is definitely a factor in how things must have got to the point where a court order would be needed.”

While not an unexpected ruling, Johnstone fears it might further strain the relationship between parents with alternative views on medical matters and their doctors.

“Any family who has these views and has a very sick child, their healthcare providers are going to have to work that much harder to keep them engaged and keep their trust … a big challenge,” she said.

Pleased over care
Speaking to RNZ’s First Up earlier on Thursday morning, Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson said he was “pleased” Baby W would soon be getting the care he needs.

“Nobody underestimates the emotion and the challenge and the difficulty here, but we have to do what’s right for the child.”

The case has made headlines globally, with coverage on BBC News, CNN and The Guardian.

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.

One press conference question at a Prime Ministerial summit in Aotearoa New Zealand kicked off a wave of social media scorn this week — and even criticism and international headlines about sexism. But media made a better fist of the awkward questions thrown up by parents withholding consent for the treatment of their sick baby and their supporters.

At a press conference involving Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her Finnish counterpart Sanna Marin on Wednesday, November 30, a Newstalk ZB journalist unloaded a question which generated an immediate tsunami of criticism.

“A lot of people will be wondering are you two meeting because you’re similar in age and you’ve got a lot of common stuff there, when you got into politics and stuff. Or can Kiwis actually expect to see more deals between our two countries down the line?”

“I wonder whether or not anyone ever asked Barack Obama and John Key whether they met because they’re of similar age. We of course have a higher proportion of men in politics, it’s reality. Because two women meet it’s not simply because of their gender,” she said.

Marin was even more succinct.

“We are meeting because we are both prime ministers,” she said.

After that the criticism started flooding in on social media.

Then it came from those in the wider New Zealand media.

Question’s premise
On Today FM, Lloyd Burr took aim at the question’s premise.

“Just because they’re both young women Prime Ministers? You think that’s why they’re meeting?

“Do you think she’s come all the way to New Zealand to talk fashion and beauty tips, childbearing, menstruation, maybe anti-aging tips,” he asked, sarcastically.

The criticism continued in the international media.

CBS News in the US took aim at the reporter’s “sexist question” in a headline, while videos of the exchange posted by organisations like SBS News and The Washington Post garnered millions of views.

There are questions on why Marin is here, given our two countries are not huge trading partners.

Thankfully she kindly pointed some of those reasons out, saying she was worried about countries becoming dependent on trading with authoritarian regimes and wanted to establish closer ties with democratic allies.

Angle covered
Other reporters, including TVNZ’s Katie Bradford on 1News, covered that angle.

A simple “What are you here to achieve?” would have got a similar response without generating any international headlines about sexism.

Newstalk ZB may have produced a near-global consensus on that poor question to Marin and Ardern, but it did a lot better covering the bulletin-leading case of two parents who had refused to consent to their sick child getting a desperately-needed operation.

They were afraid the baby might receive a transfusion of blood from a donor who hd been vaccinated against covid-19.

Lawyer and Outdoors Party leader Sue Grey is representing the family in court — and in the media.

That was awkward for media wary of giving their platforms to her anti-vax views and it resulted in some on-air flare-ups.

Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan cut Grey off when she started airing anti-vax talking points.

“I don’t want to go into your beliefs on this,” du Plessis-Allan told Grey.

“I’ve got to be honest with you, I just can’t go there. I just cannot be bothered with this.”

Similar scenario
A similar scenario played out the following day on RNZ’s Morning Report when Corin Dann interviewed Grey.

That devolved into a lengthy oscillation between Grey’s attempts to recite anti-vax talking points and Dann’s increasingly exasperated interruptions.

Predictably, Grey’s supporters have taken this treatment as evidence of a vast media cover-up.

Meanwhile, the out-of-context or inaccurate claims about vaccines she did get to broadcast might have worried some listeners.

But having told listeners to trust experts, and not laypeople, Morning Report and other media also allowed experts airtime.

Dann talked to haematologist Jim Faed later on Morning Report the same day and immunology professor Nikki Turner appeared on Heather du Plessis-Allan’s ZB show and on Three’s The Project. Experts like her provided a useful corrective, but another way to avoid broadcasting misinformation is to just not book people who spread it.

Dann sounded a little agonised over interviewing Grey while previewing Morning Report on RNZ’s First Up with Nathan Rarere.

“We’ll talk to the lawyer of the mother about this,” he said. “This is obviously a very tricky story, a very sensitive story, but nonetheless one that is in the court.”

Led news bulletins
Not only was it a matter before the court — it was a story that led news bulletins and filled front pages, including that of the New Zealand Herald on Thursday.

Sue Grey and conspiracy theorist Liz Gunn featured in the front page photo along with the child in question — all under the headline “We’re not prisoners”.

It was probably not realistic to ban Grey from media appearances under those circumstances.

In The Spinoff, Stewart Sowman-Lund recognised those factors compelling the media coverage, before suggesting an approach for reporters interviewing Grey.

“Those interviewing her should either be fully prepared to counter — in detail — her anti-vaccination rhetoric or — given the likelihood it will quickly descend into conspiracy territory — cut it off early.”

Maybe Dann and Du Plessis-Allan could have been better served committing to one of those two roads.

But at least their questions were incisive and on-topic, even if they weren’t met with useful responses.

If this week’s prime ministerial press conference showed us anything, it is that it is less embarrassing for our journalists to have it that way round than the opposite.

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.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) tracked down and confirmed the pro-Putin Telegram channel Breaking Mash as the disinformation’s source. Further inquiries by the Ukraine-based fact-checking organization StopFake caused the Ukrainian government to release a formal statement debunking the disinformation. 

On Nov. 3, Guyan Muchan, a widely followed Weibo user, published a post claiming to reveal a tainted blood scandal involving NATO and Ukraine. The statement reads:

“Ukraine asked NATO to provide more than 60,000 liters of blood for wounded soldiers in the Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Zaporozhye regions. NATO member countries provided Ukraine with canned blood.

However, Ukrainian medical staff found HIV and hepatitis B and C viruses in the blood after random examinations. Kiev has written to NATO requesting an independent assessment of the donor blood and asking that blood “not be collected on the African continent.”

In the first group, 6.3% of the samples had HIV, 7.4% had hepatitis B and 3.2% had hepatitis C. 

In the second group: 5.9%, 6.8% and 3.1%, respectively.

The information is obtained by leaked files after the Ukrainian government office computers were hacked.”

The post contained three images. The first was a picture of a statement that hackers allegedly had obtained confidential documents from Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal’s email. The second was an alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health to Shmyhal. The third was the English translation of the letter. Each image’s background contained the word “mash” as a watermark, which AFCL used to trace the post back to its original source.  

Guyan Muchan is one of China’s “patriotic” influencers who in recent years rose to fame by pandering to domestic nationalist sentiment. Her post claiming the use of tainted blood was liked by hundreds of people, with other influential social media figures reposting it to millions more. This “news” swiftly spread on a number of Chinese language websites, including the popular internet news portal 163.com. 

What is the claim's source?

AFCL was unable to find any reports about the claim from credible English media outlets. A few English websites with poor news credibility did repost it, including the pro-Russia website info.news and the gun-lover community forum snipershide.com. A slew of unreliable Twitter accounts have also posted the claim in English. Chief among them is ZOKA, a user with more than 105,000 followers. Marcus Kolga, director at DisinfoWatch, a fact-checking project under the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Canada, told AFCL that ZOKA is a “well-known pro-Kremlin account.”

AFCL also found the Russian version of the claim being spread on many websites, forums and social media platforms. After comparing both the publishing time and watermark, AFCL traced the claim back to a post on the Telegram channel “Breaking Mash,” first published at 1 a.m. on Nov. 3. The original post has since gained over 1a million views.

Breaking Mash is the official Telegram channel of the Russian-language website Mash.ru. The website’s content is full of lies and is highly aligned with Moscow’s propaganda, according to Christine Eliashevsky-Chraibi, a media veteran and translator at Euromaidan Press. Mash senior staff are suspected of being close to the Russian government, with company executive Stepan Kovalchuk’s uncles, Kirill and Yuri Kovalchuk, marked as “elites close to Putin” by the United States.S.

In sum, both the claim’s original Russian source along with the English websites and social media accounts that spread the claim all suffer from low credibility. 

Is the claim true?

AFCL deems the Guyan Muchan post to be false. It came from a pro-Russia Telegram channel with low credibility. The Ukraine Ministry of Health refuted the claim in a statement offering more details about blood donation in Ukraine.

The claim alleges that the “scoop” was leaked from the hacked email of Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal. But no credible media outlets reported on the leaked emails.

The statements the claim relies on use questionable language that normally would not be appropriate for official documents. For example, the claim alleges that the mMinister of hHealth demanded that NATO’s donor blood “not be collected on the African continent.” The possibility of such racist language appearing in a formal government document is unlikely.

Eliashevsky-Chraibi said the alleged government letter is “very suspicious” as there's “no date, no signature, no stamp” and it was “not formal procedure.” 

Through the Ukraine based fact-checking organization StopFake, AFCL checked with the Ukrainian government regarding the veracity of this claim. On Nov. 7, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health published a statement on its official website refuting the claim.

Ukraine has never requested blood donations from any organization outside of the country, and all donor blood needed for the battlefield comes from within Ukraine and meets European standards, according to the ministry’s statement. Whenever there is an urgent need at a blood center, people respond quickly to requests for donations, negating the need for any supplies from outside of the country.

The statement adds that Ukraine does not have a "random sampling" system of donor blood. Instead, it tests all donations to ensure they are safe and reliable. 

The alleged letter from Ukraine’s Minister of Health is a forgery, the statement says. 

Background Information

In late October, the Kyiv Post, a leading English newspaper in Ukraine, published a report that Russia’s Wagner private military company had recruited Russian prisoners suffering from severe infectious diseases, in particular HIV and hepatitis C. This news bears some similarities with the claim made on the Breaking Mash Telegram channel, including the mention of HIV, hepatitis and the war, but makes no mention of NATO or donor blood. The disinformation published by Mash could be meant to discredit NATO as part of Russia’s information warfare.  

Fabricating and spreading virus-related disinformation has been one of Russia's oft-used tactics since the days of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, the KGB and its East German counterpart the Stasi carried out the disinformation campaign “Operation Denver.”

The campaign claimed that HIV was a U.S.-made biological weapon; that the virus had been tested on prisoners, ethnic minorities and homosexuals; and that the virus originated in Africa. Since the outbreak of both COVID and the Russia-Ukraine war, “virus” has become a buzzword in public discourse, often attached to false or misleading information. 

References

1. Guyan Muchan’s Weibo Post

https://weibo.com/2150758415/MdmEqF9Zu?from=page_1005052150758415_profile&wvr=6&mod=weibotime 

2. ZOKA’s Twitter post

https://twitter.com/200_zoka/status/1588134915064971264

3. The original source in the “Breaking Mash” Telegram channel

https://tlgrm.ru/channels/@breakingmash/39593 

4. Proekt report about Mash Telegram channel: Cart from the Kremlin

https://web.archive.org/web/20190111184923/https://www.proekt.media/narrative/telegram-kanaly/

5. Statement from the Ministry of Health of Ukraine: We refute yet another Russian fake about low-quality blood for patients

https://moz.gov.ua/article/news/sprostovuemo-chergovij-rosijskij-fejk-pro-nejakisnu-krov-dlja-pacientiv?fbclid=IwAR1_HkjYI78ueYZfhsCwPj0GuEwM5mEvVIDsnzpoCwaD29iAC5rlwdx5vB4

6. Wagner Recruits Prisoners With HIV and Hepatitis C

https://www.kyivpost.com/russias-war/wagner-recruits-prisoners-with-hiv-and-hepatitis-c.html

7. Operation “Denver”: KGB and Stasi Disinformation regarding AIDS

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/operation-denver-kgb-and-stasi-disinformation-regarding-aids

8. Guyanmuchan spoke at a forum by youth.cn

https://qnzz.youth.cn/tegao/201612/t20161217_8958271.htm

Asia Fact Check Lab is a new branch of RFA, established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. Our journalists publish both daily and special reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our reader's understanding of public issues. 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Cynthia M., Asia Fact Check Lab.

The post Saudi Blood Money, Golf and Adelaide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The post Saudi Blood Money, Golf and Adelaide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The press release from the premier’s office claimed that the rights to host the LIV Golf event had been “hotly contested” (governments across the world are gagging for it – queue up and wait your turn). It would take place over school holidays, thereby boosting the economy with the arrival of international and interstate visitors. They would fork out and help “pack out restaurants, bars, hotels, shops and other businesses, many of which suffered through the pandemic.”

The glitz of the programme, an “innovative new format featuring team and individual play”, was also something to point out, not to mention the celebrities who would be turning up: Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed. Dishonour boards in sports have rarely been so long.

South Australian voters can also be assured of state government money from the Major Events Fund co-mingling with Saudi cash. By implication, it means that Malinauskas has linked the treasury of his government with a regime that continues to attack freedom of expression, association and assembly, target dissidents and women human rights defenders, indulge the death penalty with relish, run sham trials and subject migrant workers to horrendous abuse.

Riyadh is also prosecuting a vicious war in Yemen which has led, according to the latest UNDP report, to the deaths of 377,000. Of those, 60% were attributed to hunger and preventable disease, much of it arising from the coalition’s blockade. The death toll amongst children has been astonishing, notably amongst children under the age of five.

All these ghastly blemishes have been touched up by one of the world’s most expensive public relations campaigns. The campaign has been particularly aggressive in sports, where the Public Investment Fund has played a big part. To that end, sportswashing is all the rage as investments are made towards buying sporting clubs and host tournaments in the hope of winning weak hearts and even weaker minds.

Norman revealed the news to members of The Grange Golf Club.  It was wonderful for him, the place where he secured his first ever victory in professional golf in 1976. His comments, as one has come to expect from a man called the Great Shark, are stripped of any ethical or moral awareness. He is the well remunerated useful idiot, a dolt who fantasises about golf instead of mourning the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered on orders by his employer, the usurping crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.  “Passion for sport is at the core of Australian culture, and LIV Golf is proud to bring its global league to a country deserving of the world’s top competition.”

Norman’s approach is that of a child oblivious to the hangman who passes by. “This is an opportunity to grow the game with generations of Australians while connecting them with star players like Cameron Smith who are building a new platform for golf around the globe.  There is massive potential for Australia to play a bigger role in this great sport, and I couldn’t be more excited to showcase Adelaide for our league’s debut year.”

The Grange Golf Club’s President Nicolle Rantanen Reynolds was also all about the golf. As the moral vacuum tightened around her remarks, the familiar themes emerged: South Australian pride, “fantastic for our state”, and the fact that, “All golfers love to see great golf, and we will get to see the best in the world.”

The Shark’s charm, aided by a huge cash reserve from a murderous desert regime, has convinced the premier that he could not do without the event. Such is the nature of cash: it automatically creates its own irrefutable premise. “Securing the first Australian LIV Golf tournament is an exciting coup for South Australia.” The tournament was “exactly what our economy needs as we emerge from the pandemic, in particular our hospitality sector which has done it tough over the past couple of years.” In full promotions mode, the premier could merely iterate that, “LIV Golf will bring some of the world’s best golfers to SA for an event the likes of which our country has never seen before.”

When the large elephant in the room could no longer keep quiet, the Premier revealed a moral calculus common among leaders across the Western world. In dealing with Saudi Arabia, economic considerations should always come first. “I just encourage a moment of pause and caution, and a rational analysis of basic facts and what our nation’s relationship is with other countries around the world.”

What did such a rational analysis reveal? “The simple truth is this is an unparalleled opportunity for our state and our country in a way that is utterly appropriate and one that we’ve got an obligation to pursue.” When engaged in unprincipled conduct, the defence of duty and obligation is never far away.

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

If wealthy countries think the Covid-19 pandemic is over, as U.S. President Joe Biden claimed earlier this week, they should do everything in their power to help low-income nations get to that point as well, a World Health Organization official said Friday.

"The best chance to stop this pandemic is to make vaccines available for everyone, everywhere."

In an interview, WHO senior adviser Bruce Aylward told Reuters: "When I hear them say, 'Well, we're so comfortable here,' it's like, 'Great, now you can really help us get the rest of the world done.'"

"If you go to sleep right now and this wave hits us in three months... God—blood on your hands," he added, urging rich nations not to retreat amid what remains an "acute global emergency," in the words of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Aylward's comments come just days after Biden said "the pandemic is over"—an assertion he made as Covid-19 kills nearly 11,000 people across the planet each week, including roughly 3,000 in the U.S. alone. More than 1 million people worldwide died from the disease during the first eight months of 2022, and the number of fatalities caused directly and indirectly by the ongoing public health crisis that began in late 2019 surpassed 15 million earlier this year.

According to Reuters, "Aylward said that the group he coordinates, which focuses on equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines, treatments, and tests worldwide, is not yet ready to move out of the emergency phase of tackling the pandemic and that countries need to be ready and have treatments in place for any further waves of infection."

Experts are anticipating a coronavirus surge this fall and winter that could infect hundreds of millions of people around the world, potentially leading to millions of hospitalizations and hundreds of thousands of additional deaths.

While the U.S. has had comparatively good access to vaccines, tests, and treatments for the duration of the pandemic, the money undergirding their free provision is disappearing. Although Biden has pleaded with Congress to authorize billions of dollars in additional spending—including funds that would be directed toward international efforts—Senate Republicans have refused, and his recent downplaying of the pandemic has bolstered their demands for austerity.

People in impoverished countries, meanwhile, have never had the same access to lifesaving Covid-19 medical tools. Billions of people in Africa and other parts of the Global South remain completely unprotected due to a combination of dose hoarding by high-income nations and knowledge hoarding by pharmaceutical corporations.

This deadly inequality was further cemented in June when Big Pharma-aligned policymakers—most of them from highly vaccinated parts of Europe—defeated a widely supported proposal to temporarily waive the World Trade Organization's (WTO) corporate-friendly intellectual property rules, which sought to unleash generic production and boost the global supply of jabs, diagnostics, and therapeutics.

Last week, The Lancet's Covid-19 commission declared that "widespread failures during the Covid-19 pandemic at multiple levels worldwide have led to millions of preventable deaths and a reversal in progress towards sustainable development for many countries."

In a recent tweet, economist Philip Schellekens wrote, "Not only is the pandemic not over, the world remains underprepared to deal with the adverse contingency of a highly contagious and potentially more lethal variant."

Epidemiologists have long warned that the persistence of a massive inoculation gap between rich and poor countries allows the coronavirus to keep circulating and mutating, increasing the likelihood of a vaccine-resistant variant emerging.

"The best chance to stop this pandemic is to make vaccines available for everyone, everywhere," a pair of experts wrote in Lancet Infectious Diseases earlier this week. "The efforts to provide booster doses should be balanced with the efforts to attain vaccine equity."

As Reuters reported:

Aylward coordinates the ACT-Accelerator, a partnership between WHO and other global health bodies to help poorer countries access Covid-19 tools. The effort, which includes the vaccine-focused COVAX, has reached billions of people worldwide but has faced criticism for not acting quickly enough. There had been some speculation that the effort may wind up this autumn, but Aylward said it was simply changing its focus as the pandemic changes.

Over the next six months, the partnership will aim particularly at delivering vaccines to the roughly one-quarter of the world's healthcare workers and elderly who have still not had a shot, as well as on improving access to test-and-treat particularly with Pfizer's Paxlovid, he said.

It will also look to the future as Covid is "here to stay," and unless systems are put in place, support will collapse once other industrialized nations also think the pandemic is over, said Aylward.

Although several rich countries refused to support the popular campaign to suspend coronavirus-related patents at the WTO—adopting a watered-down alternative that critics have described as worse than the status quo—other initiatives to expand vaccine manufacturing are underway.

That includes the WHO's mRNA Vaccine Technology Transfer Hub, which seeks to facilitate the sharing of know-how and ramp up local production capacity in developing countries.

The first consortium—based at Afrigen Biologics in Cape Town, South Africa—has successfully replicated the mRNA Covid-19 vaccine co-created by Moderna and the U.S. National Institutes of Health despite Big Pharma's ruthless attempt to undermine their work.

As of April, 15 manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries have been named as "spokes," or recipients of mRNA technology and training from the Afrigen hub. In addition, the WHO has partnered with South Korea to establish a global teaching facility that can share best practices.

U.S. government scientists in July agreed to share technical knowledge related to the development of next-generation mRNA vaccines and treatments with Afrigen in an effort to end the current pandemic and combat other infectious diseases and cancer.

During a Friday event at the United Nations General Assembly hosted by the People's Vaccine Alliance, Public Citizen, UNAIDS, Global Citizen, Medicines Patent Pool, Afrigen, and South Africa's Health Department, Assistant U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Loyce Pace said that global health "cannot be just about charity" and reiterated that the Biden administration is "committed to" decentralized mRNA vaccine production.

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

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This story was co-published with ARD German TV.

A federal district judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered immigration officials to allow Mexican citizens with visas to sell their blood plasma in the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan granted a preliminary injunction overturning a policy announced last year by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials that barred Mexican visitors from participating in what had become a multibillion-dollar business along the border.

Judge Chutkan ruled that CBP officials had “failed to consider” the extent to which blood plasma companies were relying on Mexican donors and that they had failed to adequately justify the policy.

In issuing the preliminary injunction, the judge found that the companies had shown they had a “likelihood of success” to overturn the ban if the case went to trial. She noted that the costs of opening collection centers in other regions to make up the shortfall — $2.5 million to $4 million per center — would be “substantial.’’

A spokesperson for CBP declined to say whether the agency planned to appeal the ruling, saying “this matter is still under litigation.”

U.S. officials had long acknowledged that the role of Mexican citizens in the blood plasma business along the border was a “gray area”in immigration law, with some Border Patrol agents refusing to let people enter the U.S. for donations while others allowed it.

Many people living on the Mexican side of the border hold visas that allow them to come to the United States to shop or visit relatives. After the CBP imposed its ban, they risked losing those visas if they were caught selling blood plasma.

ProPublica, ARD German TV and Searchlight New Mexico reported in 2019 that thousands of Mexicans were crossing the border to donate blood as often as twice a week, lured by bonus payments and hefty cash rewards, an economic lifeline for many of them. Mexican law bars people from selling plasma.

In Facebook posts, the Spain-based pharmaceutical company Grifols, which had teamed up with its Australia-based rival CSL Plasma to sue CBP over the ban, is already inviting Mexican donors back to the U.S. plasma centers. Some plasma donors are still warning others to be careful at the border to avoid having their visas confiscated. “As if you would tell them on the bridge where you go,” a comment in Spanish says.

Some donors interviewed by ProPublica said they would welcome the legal clarity provided by the court decision. “Finally, we can cross without fear,” said Gamaliel, a resident of Ciudad Juárez who previously told his story of being a donor. “It was always so risky.” Nevertheless, he said, he would still only go back to donate in case of a financial emergency, because of the health risks associated with frequent plasma donations. As ProPublica and ARD found, frequent plasma donation was harming the health of some Mexican citizens who relied on the system for money. Some frequent donors were underweight and showed low levels of antibodies.

In her ruling, Chutkan, who was named by then-President Barack Obama to the bench, wrote that she had considered health risks for the donors, quoting studies analyzing potential negative long-term effects of plasma donations.

She rejected the companies’ argument that Mexican blood donors were no different from couriers ferrying laboratory samples across the border, since both were “carrying a substance that ‘originates in Mexico.’”

“The comparison is unpersuasive,” Chutkan responded in her ruling. “A person is more than just a shopping cart of biological products to be bought and sold at a later date.” She said that her decision to grant a preliminary injunction reflected the crucial need for blood plasma in manufacturing lifesaving medications.

“The decision recognizes the critical importance of the need for plasma in the manufacture of life-saving therapies for hundreds of thousands of people. We are excited to welcome back Mexican donors,” a spokesperson with CSL Behring, CSL’s U.S. subsidiary, said in a statement provided to ProPublica. A Grifols spokesperson said: “The decision is good news for the patients in the U.S. and worldwide who depend on the lifesaving medicines made from plasma.”  

The pharmaceutical companies are now scrambling to reorganize their centers along the border after the ban on Mexican donors had prompted layoffs of employees in a reduction in operating hours. Grifols announced it would provide buses beginning today to transport donors from the U.S.-Mexican border to its plasma centers. The Mexican newspaper Diario Frontera posted a picture of people sitting in line in the dark in front of a plasma center in Brownsville, Texas. 

In the suit challenging the ban, the companies had acknowledged for the first time the extent to which Mexicans contribute to the world’s supply of blood plasma: Up to 10% of the blood plasma collected in the U.S. — millions of liters a year — came from Mexicans who crossed the border with visas that allow brief visits for business and tourism. The U.S. accounts for approximately 60% of plasma collected worldwide. It is the only country that allows people to donate plasma as many as 104 times a year.

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This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Stefanie Dodt, ARD German TV.

The post The Harlot’s Score: Blood Money and the LIV Golf Tournament appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

"My cousins last night spent Ukraine's independence day sleeping in a bomb shelter. Citibank, this is what you are enabling. The blood of innocent Ukrainians, it's on your hands."

After six months of war crimes and the slaughter of civilians, those banks have continued providing financial services to them, and, by proxy, Vladimir Putin and his military.

These are the words of an American-Ukrainian activist last week, standing alongside dozens of people calling for Citi to completely pull out of Russian fossil fuel companies. With Citi's support, those companies, which are the engine of the Russian economy, have directly funded Putin's genocidal war on Ukraine. 

Citi is not alone. Together with JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and Crédit Agricole, it collectively provided more than 12 billion dollars of loans for Russian oil and gas companies in the run up to Russia's full scale military invasion. After six months of war crimes and the slaughter of civilians, those banks have continued providing financial services to them, and, by proxy, Vladimir Putin and his military.

In July Oleh Ustenko, chief economic adviser of president Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote a letter to the four banks urging them to cut all ties with Russian oil and gas and stop doing business with Russia. They are major lenders of Russian oil and gas companies and still hold billions in their bonds.

Ustenko made it clear that these institutions will not be allowed to participate in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. Also, Ukrainian special services are collecting information about the cooperation of top managers of these banks with Russia. After the end of the war, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine is going to refer this matter to the International Criminal Court.

Citi provides loans, bond issuance, and revolving credit to Russian oil and gas giants Lukoil and Gazprom and the trading company Vitol. HSBC holds shares in Lukoil, Tatneft, Novatek, Gazprom and Rosneft. JPMorgan invested billions in Putin's oil and gas and holds high stakes in Gazprom, Lukoil, Sberbank and Rosneft.

By maintaining ties with Russian oil and gas, banks are prolonging a genocidal war in Ukraine. Propped up by record revenues from fossil fuel trade, the Kremlin has turned the country into a crime scene, with the International Criminal Court dispatching the largest team of detectives ever to aid in investigations, including examinations of mass graves in Mariupol', Bucha, Borodyanka, and other towns and settlements. The ethical implications of complicity in Putin's war crimes should place the social license of these institutions into question.  

Exports of oil and gas are responsible for over 40% of Russia's federal budget income. Over the last six months, big banks have been profiteering on Putin's war and helping him to fund it, as they provide financial services to Russian fossil fuel producers and companies that are involved in export supplies.

Last month, together with more than twenty Ukrainian civil society organizations, we reiterated the demand to cut ties with the Russian oil and gas industry in letters to senior managers of these four banks. We demand they immediately stop extending loans for Russian fossil fuel companies and companies trading Russian oil and gas.

Activists showed up at Citi headquarters in New York and made these demands very clear. The following day, they disrupted one of Citi's flagship sponsorship events, the Taste of Tennis, and made sure attendees, customers, and clients understood Citi's complicity in war crimes. 

Less than 24 hours after the protest outside Citi's offices, the bank put out a press release announcing that it would wind down some operations in Russia. Although this is progress, it is only a start. The bank has said it will take over two years to wind down these businesses, and the bank has stayed silent on its plans for the rest of its fossil fuel business.

The amazing work that Ukrainians and New Yorkers did together pushed Citi into a partial exit from Russia that will cost the bank $170 million. But Citi must immediately end its financing of Russian fossil fuels. 

Today I call on everyone who stands for peace and justice to challenge the boards of the global  banks that are financing Putin's war. We must force them to stop extending loans and other financial services to Russian fossil fuel producers and traders. Without big banks standing behind him, Putin's power will shrivel. Without fossil fuel income he would no longer be able to plow billions of dollars into the destruction of Ukraine and Ukrainians. An end to the support of these banks will be the beginning of the end for Putin's bloody war—and a return of peace to Europe.

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

"My cousins last night spent Ukraine's independence day sleeping in a bomb shelter. Citibank, this is what you are enabling. The blood of innocent Ukrainians, it's on your hands."

After six months of war crimes and the slaughter of civilians, those banks have continued providing financial services to them, and, by proxy, Vladimir Putin and his military.

These are the words of an American-Ukrainian activist last week, standing alongside dozens of people calling for Citi to completely pull out of Russian fossil fuel companies. With Citi's support, those companies, which are the engine of the Russian economy, have directly funded Putin's genocidal war on Ukraine. 

Citi is not alone. Together with JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and Crédit Agricole, it collectively provided more than 12 billion dollars of loans for Russian oil and gas companies in the run up to Russia's full scale military invasion. After six months of war crimes and the slaughter of civilians, those banks have continued providing financial services to them, and, by proxy, Vladimir Putin and his military.

In July Oleh Ustenko, chief economic adviser of president Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote a letter to the four banks urging them to cut all ties with Russian oil and gas and stop doing business with Russia. They are major lenders of Russian oil and gas companies and still hold billions in their bonds.

Ustenko made it clear that these institutions will not be allowed to participate in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. Also, Ukrainian special services are collecting information about the cooperation of top managers of these banks with Russia. After the end of the war, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine is going to refer this matter to the International Criminal Court.

Citi provides loans, bond issuance, and revolving credit to Russian oil and gas giants Lukoil and Gazprom and the trading company Vitol. HSBC holds shares in Lukoil, Tatneft, Novatek, Gazprom and Rosneft. JPMorgan invested billions in Putin's oil and gas and holds high stakes in Gazprom, Lukoil, Sberbank and Rosneft.

By maintaining ties with Russian oil and gas, banks are prolonging a genocidal war in Ukraine. Propped up by record revenues from fossil fuel trade, the Kremlin has turned the country into a crime scene, with the International Criminal Court dispatching the largest team of detectives ever to aid in investigations, including examinations of mass graves in Mariupol', Bucha, Borodyanka, and other towns and settlements. The ethical implications of complicity in Putin's war crimes should place the social license of these institutions into question.  

Exports of oil and gas are responsible for over 40% of Russia's federal budget income. Over the last six months, big banks have been profiteering on Putin's war and helping him to fund it, as they provide financial services to Russian fossil fuel producers and companies that are involved in export supplies.

Last month, together with more than twenty Ukrainian civil society organizations, we reiterated the demand to cut ties with the Russian oil and gas industry in letters to senior managers of these four banks. We demand they immediately stop extending loans for Russian fossil fuel companies and companies trading Russian oil and gas.

Activists showed up at Citi headquarters in New York and made these demands very clear. The following day, they disrupted one of Citi's flagship sponsorship events, the Taste of Tennis, and made sure attendees, customers, and clients understood Citi's complicity in war crimes. 

Less than 24 hours after the protest outside Citi's offices, the bank put out a press release announcing that it would wind down some operations in Russia. Although this is progress, it is only a start. The bank has said it will take over two years to wind down these businesses, and the bank has stayed silent on its plans for the rest of its fossil fuel business.

The amazing work that Ukrainians and New Yorkers did together pushed Citi into a partial exit from Russia that will cost the bank $170 million. But Citi must immediately end its financing of Russian fossil fuels. 

Today I call on everyone who stands for peace and justice to challenge the boards of the global  banks that are financing Putin's war. We must force them to stop extending loans and other financial services to Russian fossil fuel producers and traders. Without big banks standing behind him, Putin's power will shrivel. Without fossil fuel income he would no longer be able to plow billions of dollars into the destruction of Ukraine and Ukrainians. An end to the support of these banks will be the beginning of the end for Putin's bloody war—and a return of peace to Europe.

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

Some aspects of this are also a touch sinister.  Last month, the Wall Street Journal revealed the details of a draft LIV contract that has been offered to players.  Provisions of the contract include requirements for the players to don LIV apparel when playing both LIV and non-LIV events.   Non-LIV logos, at least for the most part, need to be cleared with management.  This also covers logos used on branded products that might be used at the events.  The contract provisions stipulate one exception: players can wear “the brand of a third-party supplier of golf equipment on the side of their hat.”

The claws of management also go deeper than logo approvals.  Tight rein is maintained over player interviews relating to an “event or league activity”.  Participation in the tournament also comes with the proselytising proviso: recruited golfers will, in turn, recruit other golfers for the tournament.  Players must agree to “where requested, assist the League Operator in seeking to persuade players to enter into multiyear player participation agreements with the League Operator.”

The first three LIV Invitational events have seen rich splashings of $25 million in individual and team prize money.  No participant has earned less than $120,000.  It has also been reported that a number of golfers with profiles – Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka – have signed contracts of the eight- and nine-figure sort.  In one of the tournaments under the LIV umbrella, the eventual winner, Henrik Stenson, left $4 million richer.

The success of such operations is based less on intelligence and integrity than gain and bulging bank balances.  If PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was hoping for something more than that, he was seriously misreading the mood.  Hank Haney, Tiger Woods’ former coach, sees LIV Golf as “great for the players that left and for the players that stayed.”  He has suggested that the tournament format co-exist with the PGA Tour.  Norman, for his part, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour, claiming that its actions in banning participants from participating in its competition are unlawful.

Woods has himself raised a number of suspicions for his opposition to LIV, having turned down a $700-800 million offer from the Saudis.  Hardly a moralist, though very much a student of the game, he is being tasked by the PGA Tour establishment to come up with some countering format.  As Alan Shipnuck, writing in Golf Digest asks, “what is the payoff for Woods to go all-in with the PGA Tour?”  Best not ask.

This is the sort of amoral mindset that conveniently ignores how an ensemble of murderous skyscraper building oil-rich kleptocrats have globalised their footprint across a number of sports as part of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s “Vision 2030”.

This year, the London-based human rights organisation Grant Liberty released a report noting that the Kingdom had spent something in the order of $2.1 billion on a number of international sporting events and the acquisition of sporting assets, such as the Newcastle United football team.  Regarding the latter, the exiled UK-based Abdullah al Ghamdi made a plea “to all football supporters and players at St James Park to put pressure on the Saudi Government to release all those victims of its relentless crackdown.”

This sportswashing project gathers pace even as the theocrats pursue internal repressive policies against their citizenry, despite the reformist pretensions of the Crown Prince.  The House of Saud has also shown itself to be a keen pursuer of dissenting citizens in other jurisdictions, evidenced by the savage carving up of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The link between this gruesome assassination and the Crown Prince was confirmed by US intelligence officials in an unclassified report released in February last year.  The report found that bin Salman was in “control of decision making in the Kingdom” and supported “violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi”.

In terms of foreign policy, Riyadh continues its sponsorship of humanitarian misery in its vicious war in Yemen against the Iranian-backed Houthis.  The Yemen conflict, one that has seen the displacement of a million people, the threat of famine, medicine shortages and cholera outbreaks, has been just about forgotten by those in Washington, Canberra and various European capitals, transfixed by all things Russian.  With the war in Ukraine, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been anointed the omnipresent bogeyman and oppressor, while the thuggish antics of the petulant bin Salman slip gently under radar and consciousness.

Sports figures the world over should be soul wary about a regime that uses cash to conceal the bodies of protesters thrown into prison, activists tormented and disappeared, and murdered journalists.  But Riyadh have their number, cunningly seductive, and aware of perennial weakness.  With its vast sovereign wealth fund, the Kingdom is willing to splash out, and sports figures are willing to be bought.  They know the harlot’s score.

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

Law professor and cleric, Father Ricardo Rezende, told Le Monde he spent four decades gathering information on Volkswagen’s complicity in the Brazilian slave trade. The farm named Companhia do Vale do Rio Cristalino allegedly held indebted itinerant workers against their will, without pay, and did not provide adequate accommodation or sanitary facilities. Mr. Garcia Rodrigues is certain Volkswagen “was perfectly aware of the criminal practices underway”.

These embarrassing accusations emerge less than a decade after the scandal-prone company finally agreed to compensate retired factory workers in São Paulo for handing them over to the secret police under Brazil’s military dictatorship. Another chapter in Volkswagen’s egregious record is about to begin.

Scholars like Ulrike Lindner, Steven Press, Jan-Georg Deutsch, Andreas Eckert, and Michael Long amply demonstrated that German companies and missionaries have a very long and disturbing history of making use of slave labor.

In the early 1900s, shortly after waging a genocidal counterinsurgency war against the Herero and Nama peoples in South-West Africa (present-day Namibia), the German Colonial Corporation for Southwest Africa press-ganged Ovambo tribesmen to extract diamonds in the fittingly named “Forbidden Zone”. Hundreds died of exhaustion and disease as a result.

Similar scenes unfolded in the German Empire’s colonies in Cameroon and Togoland. Professor Philippe Blaise Essomba told journalists that when German soldiers pacified unruly villages or regions, defeated locals ended up in forced labor camps.

Papa André Pegha Kooh Mbous never forgot the construction process of a German railway line: “Some of us started working as soon as the sun came up…This work was carried out in chains and with lashes so that no one rested…Whenever we went from one place to another, our bodies would convulse under the blows of sticks. Some collapsed and many died. That’s how it was…”

The German East Africa Company in Tanzania imported 500 Chinese coolies from Singapore in the 1890s to work on major infrastructure projects. Terrible mistreatment at the hands of German foremen convinced many coolies to return home after barely two year’s service.

Legal scholars Klaus Bachmann and Gerhard Kemp say that at the height of the Maji Maji rebellion in Tanzania, which saw German troops using scorched-earth tactics that killed between 250,000-300,000 indigenous peoples due to starvation or disease, Commander Theodore von Hirsch confessed in his diary that he felt “like a murderer, arsonist, and slave trader”.

German firms based in the Pacific, such as DHPG (Deutsche Handels und Plantagen Gesellschaft), often “collected” Melanesians from the Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea and shipped them to coffee, coconut, and pineapple plantations in German Samoa, according to Gerard Hindmarsh.

Lurking beneath the façade of a fairy tale landscape, to paraphrase author Robert Louis Stevenson, plantation overseers whipped Melanesians and controlled every facet of their lives. A German commissioner casually admitted in his correspondence that Germans preferred imported Melanesians to native Samoans because “they hardly ever complain, even when ill-treated”.

Colonial cruelties nominally reserved for “lesser races” in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific soon made their way to mainland Europe during World War 2. From June 1940 onwards, Volkswagen conscripted captured Russians, Poles, Scandinavians, and Jews, among many other nationalities, to work as slaves in German factories. Ulrich Herbert estimated that, depending on the week and month, 70% of the company’s workforce was mainly Eastern European.

Additionally, Volkswagen managers and executives implemented their very own extermination program without any input from Nazi authorities. A company-run nursery in Rühen, according to historian Neal Gabler, sadistically and systematically starved to death hundreds of infants born to Polish and Russian slaves. Nurse Kathe Pisters exclaimed to fellow staff “We will take care that not so many Russian and Polish children will grow up”. The company even made mothers like Anna Snopczyk pay for the burial of her murdered son.

Volkswagen’s subsidiaries across the globe collaborated, to varying degrees, with unsavoury regimes long after the Nuremberg trials ignored the company’s considerable contribution to the Nazi war machine. Knud Andresen says around fifty West German companies ran manufacturing plants in South Africa and conveniently turned a blind eye to the apartheid state’s heinous crimes until the 1970s. Black labour strikes in Volkswagen of South Africa eventually persuaded the company to press Pretoria for reforms.

Christopher Kopper’s extensive research proves beyond doubt that Volkswagen do Brasil’s managers welcomed the Brazilian military coup d’état in 1964. The ouster of a left-leaning president marked not a brutal blow to democracy or freedom of speech, but the “restoration of a rational political order”. VW board member Friedrich Schultz-Wenk rejoiced when secret police arrested trade union leaders on factory premises and effectively endorsed a regime that perceived its own citizens as mindless automatons, committed widespread torture, ran hidden concentration camps to repress uncooperative indigenous tribes, and precipitated the environmental destruction of the Amazon.

However, Volkswagen is not the only multinational corporation with Brazilian blood on its hands. Many other companies handsomely profited from the military regime’s abhorrent conduct towards factory workers and indigenous peoples.

Journalists like Santiago Navarro emphasize that Mitsubishi, Anderson Clayton, Goodyear, Nestlé, Swift, Ludwig, Mappin, Bordon, Codeara, Camargo Correa, Bradesco, and Bamerindus all made a killing out of the dictatorship’s suppression of labor rights and genocidal occupation of the Amazon—and most so far have escaped the methodical scrutiny and relentless media condemnation Volkswagen has undergone in recent years.

For posterity’s sake, academics, reporters, and concerned citizens need to pool their resources and expertise to carry out thorough investigations and uncover the true extent of corporate malfeasance under military rule in Brazil.

Yet it is worth emphasizing that slavery never disappeared in Brazil. The German confectionary giant Haribo allegedly still relies on slave labor to harvest carnauba wax. Westdeutscher Rundfunk released a documentary in 2017 that revealed Brazilian carnauba pickers lived in squalor, slept outside in adverse weather conditions with no access to clean drinking water, and received pay amounting to barely twelve dollars a day.

Environmentalist Binka Le Breton witnessed firsthand what happens to itinerant and often illiterate laborers the deceitful gatos (contractors) lure into the murky depths of the Amazon with false promises of fortune and glory. An anonymous slave vividly recalled his hellish experience in a far-flung estate: “It was a nightmare. There was one day I was so hungry I ate a dead rat… They thrashed me with a whip; I can still remember the pain of it”.

Foremen armed with guns forced slaves like Batista to get up before dawn and toil till nightfall. He rarely complained about not getting paid or eating terrible food, when it was available at all, to avoid torture or worse. Beatings and wanton brutality paralyze dissent and prevent slaves from fleeing isolated plantations.

Unbearable working conditions ensure numerous slaves never return home either. Le Breton says illicit gold mining operations are especially dangerous. Rumors abound about the existence of clandestine cemeteries in Rondônia, where 15-20 labourers perished in a cassiterite mine on a weekly basis in the early nineties.

Professor Kevin Bales argues that Brazilian authorities have many options to choose from if they truly wish to combat modern slavery. A well-funded national task force spread out across the Amazon’s frontiers can make a real difference on the ground. Federal courts should hand down much quicker and harsher sentences to punish human traffickers and slaveholders. Sweeping legislative reforms must take aim at endemic police corruption as well: it is not uncommon for policemen to warn slaveholders about an impending raid on their property.

Above all else, anti-slavery bodies like GERTRAF( Executive Group for the Repression of Forced Labour) and the Flying Squads (consisting of labour inspectors and federal policemen) are in dire need of funding. Le Breton found that between 2010 and 2020, the annual budget allotted to eradicating slavery fell from 65 to 25 million real.

Moreover, the number of federal labour inspectors continues to plummet—not a single one has been hired since 2013. At least 1544 out of 3644 labour inspector positions remain unfilled. Considering the department investigates approximately 20% of suspected slave labour cases at the best of times, and only 45% of those prove the existence of slavery, these staff shortages are a disaster.

Additionally, powerful agricultural lobbies in the Brazilian Congress block the publication of the “Lista Suja”. This registry of offenders names and shames individuals or businesses guilty of owning slaves and forbids them access to state, federal, or bank funding for two years. Labour inspectors still compile extensive databases despite this obstruction, yet the list is useless if no one can see it.

Jair Bolsonaro’s administration has done nothing to alleviate these problems. On the contrary, the president believes the sanctity of private property trumps human dignity–  much to the delight of the Parliamentary Agricultural Front (FPA), a lobby whose members rank among Bolsonaro’s staunchest supporters, according to Reuters.

The president is adamantly opposed to legislation allowing for the confiscation of land where slaves are exploited. In May 2021, Bolsonaro declared his government will not make into law constitutional amendment 81, which states that rural properties hosting forced labour would be expropriated as it poses a serious threat to private property in Brazil, as stated in Globo.

The Intercept added that Bolsonaro first expressed his disdain for amendment 81 following the trial of Cyro Pires Xavier, a member of the wealthy agribusiness-owning Xavier family in Mato Grosso, who was found guilty of keeping 23 workers (including a pregnant woman) in conditions “analogous to slavery” on a farm. The judge said labourers had no protective gear for handling pesticides, no cleaning products, and not even toilet paper. The pregnant woman had no choice but to defecate in a ditch covered in banana leaves.

The Xaviers are repeat offenders when it comes to taking advantage of vulnerable labourers and their children. The Public Ministry of Labour in Mato Grosso says that five separate raids saved 324 workers from slavery on Xavier family property over the years. The “Lista Suja” includes the names of patriarch Sebastião Bueno Xavier’s two sons.

Ultimately, a labour court in October 2018 jointly condemned seven members of the Xavier dynasty to pay six million real in damages, although judges nearly invoked amendment 81 to seize Cyro Pires Xavier’s farm. In a bid to further bolster his burgeoning popularity among rural elites, Bolsonaro, then a presidential candidate, castigated judges rightfully clamping down on slavery for their “judicial activism”.

Furthermore, iG Brasil reported that on the campaign trail in 2018, Bolsonaro also claimed he would dismantle anti-child labour laws, saying “ The ECA (Brazilian Child and Adolescent Statute) needs to be torn up and thrown down the toilet” for being “ a stimulus for vagrancy and childish trickery”.

The PT (Workers’ Party) might make a difference in the war on slavery if it returned to power after this year’s presidential elections. The Institute of the Pact for Eradicating Slavery made great strides towards identifying and eliminating slave labour in the value chains of various products and industries under the reigns of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. If elected, the PT could build upon these achievements and finally banish slavery into the past where it belongs.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jean-Philippe Stone.

Firearm companies have raked in over $1 billion from selling AR-15-style rifles over the past decade, a U.S. congressional committee revealed in a report ahead of a Wednesday hearing, prompting calls from Democratic lawmakers and gun control advocates for a renewed assault weapons ban.

"The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless."

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held the hearing on gunmakers' responsibility for a national crisis that costs tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

In the wake of recent massacres in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York, the House panel queried five leading gun manufacturers—Bushmaster, Daniel Defense, Ruger, Sig Sauer, and Smith & Wesson—about their sales and marketing of AR-15-like and other assault-style semi-automatic rifles. Such weaponry is used in around three-quarters of mass shootings, attacks that are far deadlier when they involve assault weapons, according to the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

"How much are the lives of America's children, teachers, parents, and families worth to gun manufacturers? My committee's investigation has revealed that the country's major gun manufacturers have collected more than $1 billion in revenue from selling military-style assault weapons to civilians," House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a statement ahead of the hearing.

"These companies are selling the weapon of choice for mass murderers who terrorize young children at school, hunt down worshippers at churches and synagogues, and slaughter families on the Fourth of July," she continued. "In short, the gun industry is profiting off the blood of innocent Americans."

"My committee has found that the business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless," Maloney said. "These companies use aggressive marketing tactics to target young people—especially young men—and some even evoke symbols of white supremacy. Yet we found that none of these companies bothers to keep track of the death and destruction caused by their products."

Among the panel's findings:

• Sales of assault-style weapons are increasing as gun deaths and mass shootings rise;
• Gun companies utilize a variety of financing tactics and manipulative marketing campaigns to sell assault weapons to customers, including teens;
• Firearm manufacturers fail to track or monitor deaths, injuries, or crimes that occur using their products, or when their products have been illegally modified.

"Congress must act to rein in the irresponsible business practices of the gun industry, prohibit the sale of dangerous weapons of war to civilians, and reassess the liability protections that prevent the American people from accessing the courts to hold gun manufacturers accountable for the deadly effects of their business decisions," the committee concluded.

The panel added:

Congress and federal agencies should also consider requiring death and crime reporting requirements for the gun industry, similar to those imposed on other industries, which will force manufacturers to develop compliance systems and take reasonable precautious to ensure their products are not misused. Additionally, Congress should consider imposing reasonable regulations on how the gun industry advertises its products, such as age limitations, content warnings, and further enabling agencies like the Federal Trade Commission to regulate misleading advertisements.

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), who is not a member of the committee, was even blunter, tweeting, "ban assault weapons NOW."

"These companies made a BILLION dollars selling weapons of war. Assault rifles are designed to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible," she added. "They irreparably shatter families and communities. They have no place in our country."

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

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna on Monday called out the Biden administration for not participating in an upcoming congressional hearing about leaded aviation fuel harming human health and the environment.

"Many airplanes continue to utilize leaded fuel, putting the health and safety of Americans—especially children—at risk."

Khanna (D-Calif.), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's Subcommittee on Environment, plans to hold the hearing on how the fuel "is poisoning America's children" on Thursday at 2:00 pm ET.

Along with announcing the event, Khanna sent a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan and acting Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Billy Nolen expressing his frustration that neither agency will be represented.

Khanna says in the letter that the subcommittee was recently told that the heads of the EPA and FAA were unavailable for the hearing, "so we offered to let the deputy administrators or other senior officials testify as a compromise. This option was rejected."

"To try and further accommodate you, we offered to change the scope of the hearing so that both your agencies would be comfortable testifying," the letter continues. "Unfortunately, both your agencies are flatly refusing to cooperate in any way with this hearing that is going forward next Thursday."

While the EPA did not respond to a request for comment, the FAA said in a statement that the agency "has told the committee it is more than willing to testify, but acting Administrator Nolen is unavailable due to a long-standing and full-day commitment on July 28 at the EAA AirVenture, the country's largest general aviation gathering."

"In fact, there he will speak about the agency's efforts to move safely to unleaded avgas," the statement added. "As the FAA has reiterated multiple times to congressional staff, the FAA remains committed to finding a date that works for everyone's schedules."

The FAA also said that "where a child lives, the color of their skin, or their economic status should not determine the quality of air they breathe. We share the committee's goal to create a lead-free future, and this effort has the commitment of the agency's top leaders."

The subcommittee's preview of the hearing highlights that airports are often located in low-income areas and communities of color, describes lead exposure from aviation fuel as "an ongoing environmental justice crisis," and says that this week's discussion will address "the urgency of permanently phasing out the dangerous substance."

"Lead is highly toxic and a probable carcinogen, causing health effects such as brain damage, learning disabilities, reduced fertility, nerve damage, and death," the panel noted. "Despite the dangers associated with it, many airplanes continue to utilize leaded fuel, putting the health and safety of Americans—especially children—at risk."

The subcommittee also charged that the EPA and FAA "have failed for many years to take meaningful action to curb the use" of leaded fuel while the aviation and fossil fuel industries have lobbied to delay efforts to phase it out.

The hybrid hearing, which will be livestreamed on YouTube and the panel's website, is set to include testimony from Marciela Lechuga, a resident Reid-Hillview Airport buffer zone in San Jose, California; Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez; and Bruce Lanphear, a health sciences professor at Canada's Simon Fraser University.

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

The ruling Pangu Pati has drawn first blood in the Papua New Guinea national general elections with its leader and deputy leader retaining their seats on first count alone.

Of the five seats declared as of yesterday, Pangu has a head start with four MPs, James Marape (Tari-Pori); John Rosso (Lae), Philip Undialu (Hela Regional), Manasseh Makiba (Magarima) and the lone People’s National Congress (PNC) winner to date Elias Kapavore (Pomio).

While it is early days in an election marred by violence and alleged fraud, Pangu’s early gain, is a tiny foothold in a process that is expected to be completed by the return of writs on July 29.

• READ MORE: Other PNG general election reports

At the time of going to press, three more declarations were expected last night or early today.

Marape remains caretaker Prime Minister with his deputy John Rosso also as caretaker deputy PM.

Marape picked up 40,913 votes to retain his seat by a landslide in the first count.

This was 12,000 more votes than the number he picked up in 2017.

Undialu wins big
Undialu picked up a staggering 118,131 votes to come home, which was 79,910 votes more than the number he scored in 2017 elections.

Meanwhile, in Lae, Morobe Province, incumbent John Rosso scored a convicing 26,818 of the primary votes to emerge winner from the total allowable ballots of 57,144.

“Lae Open seat deserves a transparent leader and its needs good precise leadership,” Rosso said soon after his declaration by the returning officer.

“For my people of Lae to give me the mandate on absolute majority of 26,818 on first count is humbling.

“I am going to perform to the best of my ability as the Lae MP and a national leader.”

In Hela Province, Manasseh Makiba picked up 10,481 votes to run out winner, beating the mark he set in 2017 national election by 2500 more votes, while Pomio MP Elias Kapavore was declared winner by Returning Officer John Liskia at Palmalmal.

Pomio had a total allowable 23,355 ballots and Kapavore was re-elected with an absolute majority vote of 11,949 votes from the primary count.

Three other electorates
Meanwhile, three other electorates expected to be declared last night or early today were the New Ireland Regional, Namatanai and Kavieng Open seats.

People’s Progress Party leader Sir Julius Chan had taken a comfortable lead with 25,101 votes.

Treasurer and Pangu Party candidate Ian Ling-Stuckey was leading with 6898 votes and National Alliance candidate and Civil Aviation Minister Walter Schnaubelt was expected to retain his Kavieng Open seat.

Counting in the rest of the provinces are continuing and the Post-Courier online news is bringing the latest updates for readers across the country.

Counting for National Capital District, Jiwaka, Western Highlands and Chimbu has not started.

Western Highlands, Jiwaka went to the polls on Friday while Chimbu polled yesterday.

Peter Korugl is a PNG Post-Courier journalist. Republished with permission.

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

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This story was co-published with ARD German TV.

In the year since the United States blocked Mexicans from entering the country to sell their blood, the two global pharmaceutical companies that operate the largest number of plasma clinics along the border say they have seen a sharp drop in supply.

In a suit challenging the ban, the companies acknowledged for the first time the extent to which Mexicans visiting the U.S. on short-term visas contribute to the world’s supply of blood plasma. In court filings, the companies revealed that up to 10% of the blood plasma collected in the U.S. — millions of liters a year — came from Mexicans who crossed the border with visas that allow brief visits for business and tourism.

The legal challenge by Spain-based Grifols and CSL of Australia relates to an announcement last June that U.S. Customs and Border Protection doesn’t permit Mexican citizens to cross into the U.S. on temporary visas to sell their blood plasma. The suit was initially dismissed by a federal judge but reinstated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The drug companies’ lawyers have said in court filings that the sharp reduction in Mexicans selling blood to the border clinics is contributing to a worldwide shortage of plasma and is “precipitating a worldwide public-health crisis that is costing patients dearly.”

ProPublica, ARD German TV and Searchlight Mexico reported in 2019 that thousands of Mexicans were crossing the border to donate blood as often as twice a week, earning as much as $400 per month. Selling blood has been illegal in Mexico since 1987.

Many countries place strict limits on blood donations — Germany, for example, allows a maximum of 60 donations per year with intensive checkups before every fifth donation. But the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t require comparable donor checkups and allows people visiting American clinics to sell their blood twice a week, or up to 104 times a year.

The limits that other countries set on blood donations have made the U.S. one of the world’s leading exporters of blood. In 2020, U.S. facilities collected 38.2 million liters of plasma for the production of medicine, accounting for approximately 60% of such blood plasma collected worldwide.

Until now, it has been unclear how much of the U.S. blood plasma supply came from Mexican citizens, and pharmaceutical companies had downplayed border clinics’ role in meeting demand for plasma. Grifols noted in 2019 that “more than 93% of the centers [are] at a far distance from the border between the U.S. and Mexico.”

But in its recent court filings, Grifols stressed the importance of the border clinics. A statement from a company executive disclosed that at the company’s Texas centers alone, there were “approximately 30,000 Mexican nationals donating and supplying over 600,000 liters of plasma [a year].” He describes Mexican donors as “loyal and selfless in their commitment to donating plasma.”

According to a filing by Grifols and CSL, the 24 border centers run by Grifols alone account for an “annual economic impact of well over $150 million” and represent approximately 1,000 jobs.

The trade organization for the pharmaceutical companies, the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association, has similarly reframed its arguments on the issue. In a 2019 statement, the association urged reporters not to attach any significance to “donation centers that happen to fall within areas states define as border zones.” It said then that it had no estimate of how much blood was being bought at the border or whether the amount was disproportionate when compared to the rest of the country.

But a recent court filing by the association said there are 52 plasma centers in the border zone, and “the average center along the border collects higher than average (31% more) plasma than the average center nationwide.”

Some of those donation centers were set up just steps away from the U.S.-Mexico border. Their location, court papers make clear, was part of a strategic effort to bring in Mexican donors: A memorandum written by the companies’ lawyers acknowledged that the centers were located to “facilitate” donations made by Mexican nationals, and that Grifols and CSL “have also spent ‘several million dollars in the last several years’ on advertising to encourage Mexican citizens to donate plasma in exchange for payment at the centers located along the border.” The memorandum did not specify if the ads were published in Mexico, but advertising for paid plasma donations is illegal in Mexico.

The Mexican nationals selling their blood previously entered the U.S. on what are known as B-1 or B-2 visas, documents that allow visitors to shop, do business or visit tourist sites. U.S. Customs and Border Protection had long viewed the practice of selling blood as a “gray area,” with some officials allowing short-term visitors to go to the centers while others did not. In 2021, about a year and a half after we published our 2019 story, the Border Patrol issued internal guidance that barred short-term visa holders from selling blood.

CSL and Grifols challenged that action, asserting that for 30 years, CBP had “largely allowed B-1/B-2 visa holders from Mexico to enter this country for the purpose of donating their plasma at collection centers that provide a payment to donors.” The CPB disagreed. Matthew Davies, a supervisory border security officer, told the court that selling plasma for compensation had never been a permissible activity.

On June 14, 2021, CBP sent out “clarifying guidance” that selling plasma on a visitor visa was not allowed. The announcement created chaos at the border centers. Two days later, Grifols wrote — and later deleted — a post on its Spanish-language Facebook page that said, “We are replying to the hundreds of messages asking when people with a visa can come back to donate. For the moment, the response is, you can’t.” An angry reply stated “Now, we’re no longer heroes who are saving lives. They just used us.”

Since then, donations at border centers have dropped dramatically. The pharmaceutical companies told the court that a survey of 12 centers in Texas found a 20% to 90% decline. “One particularly large center, which normally collects 5000+ donations per week, has decreased to a level closer to 200,” said the plasma association president, Amy Efantis.

Some previous donors interviewed by ProPublica said they would welcome a court ruling that set clear rules for people crossing the border to sell their blood. Genesis, a 23-year-old student from Ciudad Juárez, said she had worried about losing her visa when she entered the United States for her regular visits to the border clinics.

A current manager of a plasma collection center at the border, who asked not to be named because of the ongoing court case, said that he had to lay off about two-thirds of his employees and cut the center’s hours. “It would be good if they allowed [Mexicans] to donate again,” he said. “People are depending on this, on both sides.”

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This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Stefanie Dodt, ARD German TV.

Polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of chemicals that are used in many industrial activities and consumer products. Their properties made them popular additives in stain-resistant and non-stick inventions, despite the fact that they do not break down easily and can persist for hundreds of years under standard environmental conditions. 

PFAS began sparking health concerns after scientists found they were bioaccumulating – building up in soils, drinking water, and even livestock. In fact, PFAS are now so widespread that nearly all Americans have detectable concentrations of at least one one PFAS compound in their blood. 

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Past studies have raised concerns that PFAS could impact cardiovascular health or even lower birth weights – a risk factor associated with higher rates of infant mortality. Now, a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan has found a stronger link between PFAS blood levels and high blood-pressure in a cohort of middle-aged women. 

The long-term study looked at initial PFAS levels in a group of over a thousand women ranging in age from 42 to 52 years old, comprised of various ethnic backgrounds. After 18 years, nearly 45 percent of the women in the study developed high blood-pressure. Those who did tended to have much higher blood PFAS concentrations at the outset of the study. In fact, women with the highest levels of one particular PFAS compound – perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA – had an almost 50 percent higher chance of developing high blood-pressure than women with the lowest PFOA blood-level concentrations.

“We have known for some time that PFAS disrupt metabolism in the body, yet, we didn’t expect the strength of the association we found,” said Sung Kyun Park, one of the study’s senior authors. “We hope that these findings alert clinicians about the importance of PFAS and that they need to understand and recognize PFAS as an important potential risk factor for blood pressure control.”

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is the leading cause of death and disability in the world. When taken together, women in the study who were in the highest one-third of PFAS blood concentrations across all seven contaminants measured had a 71 percent higher chance of developing hypertension. (While it’s possible this association is also true of other groups, such as middle-age men or younger people, the researchers limited their findings to the demographics of the cohort.) 

Acknowledging concerns about PFAS contamination in drinking water, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, released new PFAS drinking water standards on Wednesday. The agency drastically reduced the health advisory level for contaminants like PFOA from 70 parts per trillion to a nearly undetectable 0.004 parts per trillion. 

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Lina Tran

Radhika Fox, EPA Assistant Administrator for Water, said that this move is part of the agency’s “commitment to use the best available science to tackle PFAS pollution, protect public health, and provide critical information quickly and transparently.” These new drinking water standards rely on manufacturers to mitigate their waste streams. Park highlighted that this might require companies to change which compounds they use in their products.

“Our findings make it clear that strategies to limit the widespread use of PFAS in products need to be developed,” he said. “Switching to alternative options may help reduce the incidence of high blood pressure risk in midlife women.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Study links ‘forever chemicals’ to high blood pressure in middle-aged women on Jun 16, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Chad Small.

The second witness who testified live in the first primetime hearing of the House select January 6 committee was Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as she tried to hold the line outside the Capitol with fellow officers. She was with officer Brian Sicknick, who she said appeared to have been sprayed in the face and was extremely pale. Sicknick died the next day. Sicknick’s fiancee sat behind Edwards as she testified. Edwards said the pro-Trump mob included Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs, who is now facing federal seditious conspiracy charges. “What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I’d seen out of the movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding,” recalled Edwards. “I was slipping in people’s blood. … It was carnage. It was chaos.”

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

The post “Blood on the Scarecrow”: John Mellencamp, the Death of the Family Farmer, and the “Free Market” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Masciotra.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday took aim at lax gun control laws in mostly Republican-run states and the firearm industry lobby, which she accused of spending hundreds of millions of dollars in "blood money" to obstruct reforms supported by most Americans.

"Let's talk about one thing more important to lobbyists and the gun industry than children... Let's talk about profit."

The New York Democrat, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, spoke during a panel hearing at which people affected by mass shootings including last month's massacres in New York and Texas gave harrowing testimonies of how the epidemic of U.S. gun violence has forever changed their lives.

"Let's talk facts here," she said. "There's no discussion about gun violence in New York City without discussing the 'Iron Pipeline,' that is Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and honorable mention to Ohio, where 70% of likely illegal trafficked guns in New York City come from."

"There's no discussion of gun violence in Chicago without talking about Indiana," the Squad member added. "Because the... mothers we have to comfort are losing children due to the guns and the carnage and the lawlessness unleashed by those states."

Comparing the 288 U.S. school shootings between 2009 and 2018 with the five such incidents that took place in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom combined during that same period, Ocasio-Cortez contended that "this is not normal."

"Not only is it not normal, it is internationally embarrassing and delegitimizing to the United States," she said. "For all the billions and trillions that this body authorizes in the name of national security, we can't even keep our kids safe from their schools being turned into a war zone."

"Now let's talk about why," the congresswoman continued. Let's talk about one thing more important to lobbyists and the gun industry than children... Let's talk about profit."

"This is about blood money," she asserted, later noting that the National Rifle Association (NRA) "spent about $250 million in 2020 alone" on lobbying against gun control legislation, or more than twice the salary of all 535 members of Congress combined.

"There's also this discussion about anything but a gun, but that [mass shootings] are about violent people," Ocasio-Cortez added. "But yet we aren't doing anything about addressing the actual root cause of misogyny where two-thirds of mass shootings are connected to domestic violence, or the emergence of white supremacy, radicalization, mass incarceration, and poverty."

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

If you're looking for someone or something to blame for the mass shootings that have left our schools, streets and communities soaked in blood, don't just point your finger at the deranged punks who pull the triggers, or the NRA and their lackeys in the Republican Party. Save at least some of your ire for the Supreme Court. 

In any sane democracy, one might expect the highest court in the land to step in and do something to uphold sensible gun-control regulations when given the opportunity.

In 2008, the Supreme Court sold its soul to the gun lobby. In a 5-4 majority opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own firearms. 

Prior to Heller, the great weight of academic scholarship as well as the court's 1939 decision in United States v. Miller had construed the Second Amendment, in keeping with the actual debates of the Constitutional Convention, as protecting gun ownership only in connection with service in long-since antiquated state militias. 

In 2010, the court again genuflected to the gun lobby. In another 5-4 opinion in McDonald v. Chicago, this time written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court extended Heller, holding that the individual right to keep and bear arms is "incorporated" by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause and is therefore applicable to the states and local governments. 

The Second Amendment, as interpreted by Scalia and Alito, thus became the law of the land. The amendment has since been elevated in rightwing circles to the status of holy writ. 

Both Heller and McDonald were based on the implausible and perverse judicial philosophy known as "originalism." 

Originalism has led the court to enter a legal fantasy world in which the answers to contemporary questions about such matters as voting rights and gerrymandering, union organizing, the death penalty, abortion and gun control are to be found solely in the meaning that the Constitution had for the Founding Fathers in the late 18^th Century. For originalists, the meaning of the Constitution is forever fixed, and can only be altered by constitutional amendments.

As a tool of judicial decision-making, originalism has been around a long time. One of its earliest expressions came in the Dred Scott case of 1857, perhaps the most odious decision ever issued by the Supreme Court, which held that Black Americans of African descent could never be U.S. Citizens. Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation even after the ratification of the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments, is another originalist landmark.

But as an explicit judicial theory, originalism came into its own in the early 1980s. Initially, as popularized by Reagan-era Attorney General Ed Meese and the late failed-Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, the doctrine asserted that the most important terms and provisions that appear in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights should be understood according to the "original intent" of the Founding Fathers, rather than as broad concepts that acquire depth, content and more complete meaning over time in response to changing social conditions.

When critics noted that the framers of the Constitution were a diverse group and that their actual intentions were varied and often ambiguous, proponents of the doctrine refined their approach. The current version—call it "new originalism"—focuses on the "original public meaning" of Constitutional provisions, which, they contend, can be ascertained from the recorded debates of the founding era and from such sources as late eighteenth-century dictionaries.

All originalists—whether of the old or new iteration—believe that their approach limits the subjectivity of judges and acts as a restraint on judicial activism.

In fact, originalism does nothing of the sort. As Fordham University history professor Saul Cornell, one of the foremost authorities on the history of the Second Amendment, noted in a scathing critique published in 2011 in Dissent magazine:

[I]f one looks carefully at the murky methodology and dubious practices of new originalism, it is clear that its historical foundations are even shakier than that of old originalism. The new theory is little more than an intellectual shell game in which contemporary political preferences are shuffled around and made to appear part of the Constitution's original meaning."

The actual history of the Second Amendment is quite different from the fantasy versions advanced by Scalia and Alito. As the late Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by three of his colleagues, wrote for the minority in Heller:

"The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States. Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms."

Although Heller and McDonald were the products of extreme rightwing judicial activism, they were technically limited in scope, as they dealt with the right to keep guns in the home. Ever since those cases were decided, however, the gun lobby has worked to bring a new test case to the Supreme Court to extend the right to bear arms beyond the home. 

The lobby has finally found its vehicle in a new case--New York State Pistol Association v. Bruen-- that will be decided by the end of June, when the court completes its current term.

Bruen was brought by two individuals and the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association to overturn a New York law that places limits on the issuance of concealed weapons permits to carry guns outside the home. Under New York's regulatory scheme, people seeking such permits are required to demonstrate a special need for protection —"proper cause" in the words of the statute—to qualify. The NRA contends the law is unconstitutional.

After losing in the lower courts, the Bruen plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, where they are likely to prevail. With the addition of three Trump appointees—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—conservatives now hold a solid 6-3 majority on the bench. No longer constrained by the need for caution and compromise, they are set to dramatically extend gun rights under the Second Amendment.

Originalism was front and center during the oral arguments the court heard in the case last November.   

During the arguments, the Justices paid scant attention to the dire consequences of unleashing more guns on the streets and subways of present-day New York City. They instead peppered the attorneys for both sides with questions about the origins under Anglo-American law of the right to carry arms in public places. At several points in the two-hour session, the attorneys were asked to share their thoughts on whether the Statute of Northampton, an act of the English Parliament passed in 1328, banned the carrying of weapons other than by the king's servants in fairs and markets.

The questioning would have made for an amusing Saturday Night Live or Monty Python skit, but this was no stand-up bit. Commenting on the oral arguments, Professor Cornell told the BBC it was "beyond ironic" that anyone would look to Medieval England for resolution of the case. "It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever to anyone who really understands the complexity of English history. Obviously, that doesn't include many people in the gun rights community or many people sitting on some courts in America."

Should the New York statute be declared unconstitutional, similar measures in California, New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and elsewhere will likely fall, with dire and deadly consequences for public safety. Worse still, depending on the scope of the court's ruling, other gun-control laws on background checks and the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines could become vulnerable to constitutional challenges.

The gun homicide rate in the United States is nearly eight times higher than the rate in Canada, and a whopping 100 times higher than in Britain. This year is shaping up to be particularly horrific. As of May 30, the United States had recorded 17,817 deaths from firearms, counting both suicides and unlawful killings, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Gun Violence Archive. We also had recorded 228 mass shootings (defined as an event involving four or more victims).

In any sane democracy, one might expect the highest court in the land to step in and do something to uphold sensible gun-control regulations when given the opportunity. But in fact, our Supreme Court is poised to do just the opposite. Keep that in mind when the next mass shooting inevitably occurs, perhaps in a neighborhood close to your own.

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

After two years of denying the pandemic had penetrated its closed borders, North Korea in May declared a “maximum emergency” and acknowledged the virus had begun to spread among participants of a large-scale military parade the previous month.

Medicine to treat the disease is in short supply and the stocks that are available are getting sent to Pyongyang, home of the country’s wealthiest and most privileged citizens. The drug shortage has left an opening for a black market of unproven traditional medicine to emerge, with some citizens offering dried deer blood as a COVID remedy. Counterfeit versions of fever reducers like aspirin and acetaminophen are also on the rise, sources said.

“All pharmacies are open 24 hours a day in this maximum emergency, but there is a huge difference between Pyongyang and the provincial areas, so people out here are really dissatisfied,” a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Expectations were high as the central quarantine command had intensive discussions where they agreed to quickly distribute the reserve stocks of medicines for the emergency, but we were greatly disappointed when that medicine was given to people in Pyongyang and to the military,” he said.

In the city of Sinuiju, which lies across the Yalu River border from China, no one can find even basic medicines like fever reducers and painkillers, the source said.

“Reserve medicines were supplied in very small amounts to hospitals, and pharmacy shelves are empty,” he said.

“At least some pharmacies in Sinuiju are stocked with herbal medicines used as a cold medicine, but county-level pharmacies are completely empty. However, the pharmacies are ordered to be open 24 hours a day unconditionally,” he said, adding that salespeople and security guards are sitting around at the pharmacies day and night, even if they have nothing to sell.

In the city of Chongjin in northeastern province of North Hamgyong, patients complaining of a high fever and cough have increased, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

North Korea lacks adequate testing capabilities to confirm coronavirus cases but has been tracking numbers of patients reporting “fever.”

“An acquaintance who is a doctor at a provincial hospital told me that even when patients with coronavirus symptoms come to the hospital, they are unable to receive the proper treatment because there is no medicine,” said the second source.

“According to my acquaintance, medicines are normally supplied to hospitals and pharmacies in Pyongyang, and patients with fever in Pyongyang are receiving intensive treatment at quarantine facilities. But even though pharmacies in Chongjin are open 24 hours a day, but there is no medicine or only herbal medicines whose efficacy has not been verified. So it is not helpful to patients at all,” he said. 

“They complain saying, ‘Are Pyongyangers the only citizens of the state? Is it okay for us in the provinces to just die?’” the source said. 

To deal with the shortage of medicine in the provinces, people are turning to the black market, where unproven traditional remedies like deer blood are sold.

In Pyongysong, South Pyongan province, north of Pyongyang, people are illegally selling deer blood from their homes, touting its medicinal properties as effective against COVID-19, a resident there told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“The types of deer blood traded on the black market are raw blood and dried blood powder. Raw blood in a tiny penicillin bottle is 10,000 won [about US$1.80], and powdered blood in a penicillin bottle is 5,000 won [about US$0.90],” she said.

“If you catch a deer, you can drain its blood. Then you put the blood in a plastic bag,” she said. “Raw blood spoils, so it’s hard to sell. So, people dry the blood and sell it. When a deer gives birth, there is placenta coming out. They also dry it and sell it as a treatment for coronavirus.”

The deer blood remedy is available in North Pyongan as well, a resident there, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told RFA.

She said that rather than catching the deer in the wild, the workers on a deer farm that supplies meat and other byproducts for Kim Jong Un, his family, and other high-ranking officials, are illicitly selling the blood on the black market.

“The musk or placenta of deer are vacuum packed and usually sent to the Central Committee, but the people who work there are secretly selling it.”

Counterfeit medicines that look like the real thing but have no effect at all are also being sold. Fakes have made their way to the local marketplaces in Chongjin, a source there told RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“The authorities are making a fuss saying they are responding to coronavirus by releasing the national reserve medicines, but there’s still a shortage here so counterfeiters are taking advantage of this opportunity,” the second Chongjin source told RFA.

“A few days ago, the head of the neighborhood watch unit circulated a notice from the district to each household. The notice warns of the fake drugs out in circulation. There are many people around me who bought fake medicines and suffered from taking them,” the second Chongjin source said.

“There are various types of counterfeit medicines, such as antipyretic analgesics such as aspirin and acetaminophen [Tylenol], and multivitamins, which are frequently sought by people to treat coronavirus infection. A friend from my workplace had a fever, so he bought acetaminophen at the market and took it for two days. But it was fake and didn’t work at all,” the second Chongjin source said.

The counterfeit was indistinguishable from the real deal, according to the second Chongjin resident.

“I saw the fake medicine that my friend bought. The packaging looked quite real. It appears to have been made using a pharmaceutical factory facility, with foreign characters engraved on one side of the pill. I’ve heard that medicine dealers bribe pharmaceutical factory officials and rent factory equipment at night to make fake medicines secretly.”

Traveling merchants bring the fakes to distant parts of the country where they know there is a shortage, a resident of Taehongdan county, in the northern province of Ryanggang, told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“Last week, some people in my neighborhood bought aspirin and other meds from a travelling merchant who visited our village. One of the people with cold symptoms took the medicine, but it did not work. So he showed the aspirin and multivitamins he bought to the doctor,” the Ryanggang source said.

“The doctor tested it by biting a pill and burning it. He then said the multivitamins tasted wrong and the aspirin was too hard, so it seems as if the medicines were fakes made of wheat flour.”

Though North Korea has acknowledged that the virus is spreading inside the country, it has only reported a handful of confirmed COVID-19 cases. Data published on the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center showed North Korea with only one confirmed COVID-19 case and six deaths as of Tuesday evening.

The country is, however, keeping track of numbers of people who exhibit symptoms of COVID-19.

About 3.6 million people have been hit by outbreaks of fever, 69 of whom have died, according to data based on the most recent reports from North Korean state media published by 38 North. Around 3.5 million are reported to have made recoveries, while around 182,900 are undergoing treatment.

The state-run Korea Central News Agency reported Sunday that the country’s powerful Political Bureau positively evaluated the national pandemic response, saying the pandemic situation was “being controlled and improved across the country.”

Translated by Claire Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jieun Kim, Hyemin Son, and Changgyu Ahn for RFA Korean.

Former political prisoner Cristina Bawagan still has the dress she wore the day she was arrested, tortured and sexually abused by soldiers during the late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s brutal era of martial law.

Bawagan fears the horrors of Marcos’s rule would be diminished if his namesake son wins the presidency in Monday’s election, a victory that would cap a three-decade political fightback for a family driven out in a 1986 “people power” uprising.

Also known as “Bongbong”, Marcos Jr has benefited from what some political analysts describe as a decades-long public relations effort to alter perceptions of his family, accused of living lavishly at the helm of one of Asia’s most notorious kleptocracies.

• READ MORE: Other Philippines election reports
• More pictures from the NZ Kakampink rally for democracy today

As Philippine president, Marcos could control hunt for his family’s wealth

Rivals of the family say the presidential run is an attempt to rewrite history, and change a narrative of corruption and authoritarianism associated with his father’s era.

“This election is not just a fight for elected positions. It is also a fight against disinformation, fake news, and historical revisionism,” Vice-President Leni Robredo, Marcos’s main rival in the presidential race, told supporters in March.

TSEK.PH, a fact-checking initiative for the May 9 vote, reported that it had debunked scores of martial law-related disinformation it said was used to rehabilitate, erase or burnish the discreditable record of Marcos Sr.

No reply to questions
Marcos Jr.’s camp did not reply to written requests for comment on Bawagan’s story.

Marcos Jr., who last week called his late father a “political genius”, has previously denied claims of spreading misinformation and his spokesperson has said Marcos does not engage in negative campaigning.

Bawagan, 67, said martial law victims like her needed to share their stories to counter the portrayal of the elder Marcos’s regime as a peaceful, golden age for the Southeast Asian country.

“It is very important they see primary evidence that it really happened,” said Bawagan while showing the printed dress which had a tear below the neckline where her torturer passed a blade across her chest and fondled her breasts.

The elder Marcos ruled for two decades from 1965, almost half of it under martial law.

During that time, 70,000 people were imprisoned, 34,000 were tortured, and 3240 were killed, according to figures from Amnesty International — figures which Marcos Jr. questioned in a January interview.

Bawagan, an activist, was arrested on 27 May 1981 by soldiers in the province of Nueva Ecija for alleged subversion and brought to a “safehouse” where she was beaten as they tried to extract a confession from her.

“I would receive slaps on my face every time they were not satisfied with my answers and that was all the time,” Bawagan said. “They hit strongly at my thighs and clapped my ears. They tore my duster (dress) and fondled my breasts.”

“The hardest thing was when they put an object in my vagina. That was the worst part of it and all throughout I was screaming. No one seemed to hear,” said Bawagan, a mother of two.

‘No arrests’
In a conversation with Marcos Jr. that appeared on YouTube in 2018, Juan Ponce Enrile, who served as the late dictator’s defence minister, said not one person was arrested for their political and religious views, or for criticising the elder Marcos.

However, more than 11,000 victims of state brutality during Martial Law later received reparations using millions from Marcos’s Swiss bank deposits, part of the billions the family siphoned off from the country’s coffers that were recovered by the Philippine government.

Among them was Felix Dalisay, who was detained for 17 months from August 1973 after he was beaten and tortured by soldiers trying to force him to inform on other activists, causing him to suffer hearing loss.

“They kicked me even before I boarded the military jeep so I fell and hit my face on the ground,” Dalisay said, showing a scar on his right eye as he recounted the day he was arrested.

When they reached the military headquarters, Dalisay said he was brought to an interrogation room, where soldiers repeatedly clapped his ears, kicked and hit him, sometimes with a butt of a rifle, during questioning.

“They started by inserting bullets used in a .45 calibre gun between my fingers and they would squeeze my hand. That really hurt. If they were not satisfied with my answers, they would hit me,” Dalisay pointing to different parts of his body.

The return of a Marcos to the country’s seat of power is unthinkable for Dalisay, who turned 70 this month.

“Our blood is boiling at that thought,” said Dalisay.

“Marcos Sr declared martial law then they will say nobody was arrested, and tortured? We are here speaking while we are still alive.”

Republished with permission from Rappler.

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

All eight of the victims, who were members of the deposed National League for Democracy (NLD) or supporters of the party, were found brutally murdered with badges or cards on their bodies displaying the insignia of a group calling itself the Mandalay branch of the Thway Thauk, or “Blood Comrades,” militia.

A woman close to the Mandalay NLD, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal, said the killings had created a sense of panic among party members in the city.

“The situation’s getting worse these days. There’s much more reason to be afraid,” she said.

“Some people won’t even dare stay in their own homes because [Thway Thauk] could come in with guns and take them away. They’d leave the body the next morning. Some [victims] were party members and some weren’t — just party supporters. But everyone is scared.”

She said death threats were also recently found at the homes of some NLD members and supporters.

A Mandalay resident, who also declined to be named, said he believes the attacks are meant to send a message to those protesting the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

“It’s revenge because soldiers, the police and their families have [since] been attacked [by the armed opposition], so they’re doing the same thing,” he said.

“This group is in civilian clothes, but they must be from the military. In the past, they would at least arrest people under vague laws before killing them. Now, they are openly committing murder.”

Another member of the Mandalay NLD told RFA that several party supporters who have received death threats have fled their homes, fearing that they may become the Thway Thauk’s next victims.

On April 21, the group announced via the Telegram social media platform that it had launched “Operation Red” to “destroy” members of the NLD party and its supporters, as well as anti-junta paramilitaries with the People’s Defense Force (PDF).

Three days later, the body of an NLD village chairman from Mandalay’s Maha Aungmyay township was found along a road by residents of nearby Aungmyay Tharzan township, who told RFA’s Myanmar Service that a Thway Thauk badge had been conspicuously placed on the victim.

The same day, Khin Maung Thein — the owner of the Sein Win Win Tea Shop in Mandalay’s Chan Aye Tharzan township — his wife, Daw Kha Kha, and his brother, U Tin, were reported missing in an apparent abduction.

On Monday morning, residents found Khin Maung Thein’s stabbed and bullet-ridden body in front of the district NLD office in Mandalay along with his severely injured wife, sources close to the NLD told RFA. His brother’s body was discovered later that day near a low-income housing unit on Mandalay’s Strand Road.

The bodies of both men had Thway Thauk badges affixed to them, the sources said. Daw Kha Kha is currently receiving treatment at an area hospital, they said.

Thway Thauk issued a statement on Monday claiming responsibility for the killings and warning of more to come. It said the operation had expanded to include “PDF supporters, members of the fake news media, people living abroad and inciting murder on social media, people who are not part of the armed opposition but are calling for the death of so-called ‘Dalans’ [military informers] … and their family members.”

In the statement, Thway Thauk claimed that it is “not affiliated with the police” or the pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia that has sworn loyalty to the military and targeted civilians in attacks in Myanmar’s remote border regions.

On Monday evening, two more men were found shot to death in Mandalay’s Patheingyi township, according to sources, who said the pair had yet to be identified. On Tuesday, residents of Maha Aungmyay township found the body of an unidentified man who had been stabbed in the neck and the body of another man was discovered floating in Mandalay’s Palace Moat.

Sources told RFA that all five of the bodies discovered since Monday exhibited gunshot and stab wounds and had cards reading “Thway Thauk Group - Operation Red MDY” attached to them.

Ko Moe, the brother of Maha Aungmyay township NLD lawmaker Zaw Zaw Aung, became the eighth victim in six days when his body was discovered Wednesday morning near Mandalay’s Thingaza Creek on 26^th Street. He had been abducted by an unidentified group two days earlier, according to his family.

Group affiliation

When asked about the killings on Wednesday, junta deputy information minister, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, said that “only one militia group has been formed and no other,” in an apparent reference to the pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee.

In a statement issued Wednesday, the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) said that “action will be taken against those committing terror acts against supporters of the NUG and their families, including the Pyu Saw Htee, in accordance with the law.”

Speaking to RFA, Myanmar-based political analyst Than Soe Naing echoed Mandalay residents who said they believe the Thway Thauk was formed by pro-junta elements to retaliate against the opposition after “hundreds of their village and ward administrators were assassinated,” mostly by members of the PDF.

“I don’t think the junta itself would directly form such groups,” he said. “It may have been formed by junta’s supporters or the Pyu Saw Htee. And I’m sure the junta forces would encourage them or support them.”

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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

The BBC reports that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, during an interview, accused Germany and Hungary of paying "blood money" for Russian petroleum.

Russia could earn $320 billion from energy exports in 2022, fueling Moscow's war machine.

Zelensky is perhaps making an analogy to blood diamonds, an issue Aryn Baker explained at Time. Some diamonds come out of conflict zones in Africa where gangs used forced labor to mine them and sell them to finance mass murder. Ethical people are now trying to avoid buying blood diamonds. They will find that avoiding blood oil, though, is impossible.

A massive government program to accelerate the move to wind and solar energy, batteries, and electric cars is the obvious way forward, but the Greens see this more clearly than does Scholz.

President Zelensky is right that buying gasoline and other petroleum products is paying blood money. This maxim is especially true of Russia at the moment, given what it is doing to children, women and noncombatant men in Bucha, Mariupul and other Ukrainian cities. Russian oil is likewise "blood oil."

But I would add that purchasing gasoline or diesel, etc., is always blood money no matter whom you get it from. The petroleum industry is wrecking the planet with carbon dioxide emissions, which have the potential of killing millions of people and making hundreds of millions homeless. That is not even to mention all the people who sicken or even die from air pollution, all the people harmed by dangerous oil and chemical leaks, all the people displaced and harmed by drilling operations. That is blood money on a vast scale.

Even regarding Russia, you are paying Moscow blood money even when you don't buy directly from Lukoil, since oil is a single global market. Any purchase anywhere from anyone of this commodity supports the price, and helps all the producers.

Not everyone can afford a hybrid or an electric car, though tens of millions who can afford one don't buy one. Not everyone can take public transport, but millions who could, don't. Not everyone can bike to work, but many more could than do. And it would be good for their health and help them live longer if they did. And we can all make sure to vote only for those politicians who will use the levers of government to make the big infrastructural changes that will end the evil of petroleum.

Why is Zelensky especially angry at Berlin and Budapest? Inside the European Union, Germany and Hungary have so far blocked a ban on Russian oil purchases by countries in the union.

Germany has backed some boycotts of Russia. It has joined in a boycott of Russian coal, for instance, and has paused the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline from Russia through the Baltic Sea. The latter may be a dead letter.

But Germany imports 25% of its petroleum and 40% of its methane gas from Russia, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz maintains that boycotting those commodities is a more complex proposition. His stance has infuriated his coalition partners in the Green Party.

Paul Carrel at Reuters reports that German Greens are more eager to send military aid to Ukraine than is Scholz and his Social Democratic Party, which, being on the left, has long sought correct relations with Moscow in the teeth of US opposition. The SPD, however, seems not to have noticed that Russia's government is now barracuda capitalist and authoritarian, so I'm not sure what that has to do with socialism.

But German Greens are also more eager to get off fossil fuels than Scholz.

The Ukraine crisis is thus straining the ruling coalition in Berlin.

Of course if Germany boycotted Russian oil, it would have to buy from other producers. Since keeping Russian oil in the ground via a boycott would reduce global supply, it would cause higher prices. So Germany would have to pay a premium to new exporters, which might not be popular with voters. Hence, Scholz's reluctance. A massive government program to accelerate the move to wind and solar energy, batteries, and electric cars is the obvious way forward, but the Greens see this more clearly than does Scholz.

Zelensky told the BBC,"Some of our friends and partners understand that it is a different time now, that it is no longer an issue of business and money. That it is an issue of survival."

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

Photograph Source: Anton Holoborodko (Антон Голобородько) – http://www.ex.ua/76677715 – CC BY-SA 3.0

In my lifetime, the world has always been at war. Most of the wars have involved the United States. As I watched these wars unfold, explode and then end, the point of them has mostly escaped me. This isn’t to say I am blind to why they occurred. During the US war on Vietnam, I ultimately supported the Vietnamese people in their resistance to the bloody US military operation and believed their cause was just. Still, I knew instinctively at the time that the resolution of their struggle would be found in the political arena. The Vietnamese liberation forces knew that, too. The role of the fighters in the NLF and northern Vietnamese military was to make a victory by Washington too costly to try and achieve. Even though their fight on the ground and against the US air force was the crucial element in the struggle for an independent Vietnam, it was the worldwide movement against the US war there in all its manifestations that provided the political space necessary to keep Washington’s military from committing even greater war crimes than those they did commit. Foremost among those was the decision by Nixon and Kissinger not to use nuclear weapons. It is often said that this decision was the result of the massive antiwar protests in October and November of 1969. Washington’s cavalier attitude to the blood being spilled is what prolonged that war. The peace treaty that was agreed to in 1973 could have been had twenty years earlier except for Washington’s desire for hegemony and war.

As for subsequent wars started by Washington, I supported the FMLN in El Salvador and the Sandinista in Nicaragua. Like the Vietnamese freedom fighters, their struggle was a defensive struggle that was a direct response to the murderous nature of the governments they opposed. Naturally, these governments were supported and maintained by Washington. Although my ideal approach to overthrowing such governments would be nonviolent, it was apparent that nonviolence in any of those wars would have only given the oppressive regimes an easier path to the killing fields they seemed intent on creating.

Here’s a little story that I hope helps explain that previous paragraph. In 1981 I was arrested and detained along with a couple of thousand other people during a protest against the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila, California. The detention center was an unused army camp near San Luis Obispo and was a fairly relaxed affair for a jail. There were no bars and we were free to walk around in certain areas of the camp during the day. Roll call was taken once in the morning. The detainees included a few popular figures—Jackson Browne, Wavy Gravy, Robert Blake, and Reverend Cecil Williams, to name just a few. Jackson Browne and Wavy Gravy organized a talent show while they were being held that featured Browne singing and playing a guitar lent to him by one of the California National Guard called up to guard the detention center. Robert Blake didn’t stay long. Reverend Williams spent his time in detention conversing with anyone who approached him.

The conversation I never forgot was one regarding nonviolence and the wars that were heating up in Central America. A dogmatic pacifist insisted that the only way for the people of El Salvador to truly liberate themselves from the US-sponsored death squads and the government was through massive nonviolent resistance. In the same breath, this same fellow criticized the Sandinista revolution—which had overthrown the dictatorial Somoza government barely a year earlier. After suggesting to the guy that he could make his point just as easily without yelling, Williams pointed out that the certain result of nonviolent protest in El Salvador was mass murder of the protesters. He continued by reminding those of us in the discussion that the Sandinistas and the resistance forces in El Salvador (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) had begun with nonviolent protest and that their becoming an armed force was a defensive response. In both countries, the move towards armed defense had only occurred after years of military and police violence by the state. The move was not a choice easily made. It was self-defense, plain and simple. It was the US and its client regimes in those countries that wanted the war, not the people ultimately joining the resistance.

This was not the case in Ukraine. Until 2014, the various governments in Kyiv since the dissolution of the USSR interacted with Russia in a peaceful manner. This was often in spite of an increasing amount of provocation from Washington and ultra-nationalist/fascist forces in Ukraine. As things evolved, these provocateurs would eventually find themselves working in tandem against Moscow and in support of a greater inclusion of the fascists in Ukraine’s government and society. It’s not that Washington necessarily was happy to work with fascists, but its determination to keep Moscow at bay overrode any concerns some in the CIA and State Department might have had about the politics of some of their Ukrainian friends. The most important thing for DC and Wall Street was assimilating Kyiv into the US capitalist sphere. It’s not like the CIA is known for having moral qualms; it did arm and help train numerous fascist and right wing groups around the world during the Cold War and was instrumental in the creation of Al Queda.

In other words, Ukraine did not have to be in the war they are now in. Russia had not pushed them into a corner like the ones the Nicaraguan and El Salvadorean people found themselves in some forty and fifty years ago. The people of Ukraine were not being disappeared by Russian security forces and protesters were not being shot down in the streets—at least not since the US-engineered overthrow of the elected government in 2014. They did not find themselves in dire economic straits; their children going hungry while the plutocrats in the country feasted. Yes, like any capitalist economy, serious inequality exists, but certainly no more than is found in the United States. A war between separatists and Ukrainian forces encouraged by fascists existed in the eastern part of the country, but most Ukrainians lived peacefully. Still, the Zelenskyy government in Kyiv, having thrown its lot in with the empire across the Atlantic, blindly (or not so blindly?) moved ahead with its war on the separatists, ignoring the Minsk 2 agreements which would likely have settled that war and other issues peacefully. After rejecting an agreement reached by the previous government, Zelenskyy tempted fate.

Moscow, like its competitor the United States has done so many times in its history, grew tired of talking and invaded. This is what brutal superpowers do. Like cops on a SWAT team, their final answer is brutality, blood and death. Negotiations strain their limited patience; a patience stemming from their arrogance and hubris, among other things. This is in spite of the fact that almost every war ends at a negotiating table. Even US National Security Council member under Donald Trump, Alexander Vindman, said in an interview in the Washington Post regarding the current war in Ukraine: “One way or another, this ends in some sort of negotiated solution. The question is, how much blood is spilled?” (3/27/2022)

Instead of that question, we should be asking before any war begins, why spill any blood?

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.

"If we want to build a world based on equity, peace, and stability then we must urgently accelerate the move towards renewable energy."

The new briefing from Greenpeace USA, Global Witness, and Oil Change International targets eight companies: BP, Equinor, ExxonMobil, OMV, Shell, TotalEnergies, Trafigura, and Wintershall Dea.

The analysis tracks back to 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea—a region that most countries still consider to be part of Ukraine. Putin launched a full-blown invasion of Ukraine in late February, a war now in its second month.

"While the Russian government has benefited from majority state-owned or state-controlled oil companies such as Gazprom and Rosneft," the document states, "European and U.S.-based corporations have also spearheaded large oil and gas projects that filled Putin's coffers."

The report, which features "BP's and TotalEnergies' share of the royalties and taxes paid by the Russian companies, proportional to their equity stakes," specifically calls out BP, which the researchers say was responsible for over 80% of the $95.4 billion because of its Rosneft stock. Asked to comment on the findings, BP told Global Witness that "we simply do not recognize the numbers you cite or, indeed, any suggestion that BP was somehow 'responsible for paying' Russia 'an estimated $78.4' billion since 2014.'"

Responding to BP's statement, the briefing says that "we included these values to provide greater transparency and a full accounting of these companies' activities in Russia on the principle that a company's responsibilities are proportional to its share in the companies it owns stakes in, in the same way that the benefits it enjoys are."

"Although BP has announced it will divest its stake in Rosneft," the report adds, "the past impact of this equity stake cannot be negated—both in terms of the benefit to Rosneft from the capital provided, and the cash flowing as a result to the Russian state."

"BP and other big energy companies are now trumpeting their withdrawals from Russia but do they expect us to forget the almost $100 billion they're responsible for putting into Putin's pockets in recent years?" asked Murray Worthy, gas campaign leader at Global Witness.

Worthy said that "whilst BP might deny accountability for the consequences of its stake in Rosneft and the payments made to Putin's war chest, it has always been more than happy to benefit from the billions that have flowed from its involvement in the company."

"The Russian energy industry is Putin's biggest earner and companies like BP that turned a blind eye to the Crimean invasion, continuing to support money pouring into his war chest, should surely be questioning whether they now have Ukrainian blood on their hands," he added.

As for the other companies, a statement from the green groups outlined:

Trafigura stated that it had made no direct payments to the Russian government as a result of its share in an oil project. Equinor, ExxonMobil, OMV, and Total did not dispute the figures provided, Wintershall Dea stated it was not able to verify our findings, and BP, Equinor, OMV and Shell referred to their payments to governments data as part of their annual financial reports. Shell stated that it was unable to provide comment on the figures in this briefing in the timeframe proposed.

Campaigners from the groups behind the analysis argued that their findings provide even more evidence of the need to swiftly shift to clean energy.

"Fossil fuels are the currency of despots, dictators, and warmongers," declared Lorne Stockman, research co-director at Oil Change International. "Our global reliance on oil and gas is not only killing our planet but also making the world a less safe and equal place."

"Big Western polluters like BP and Shell have been all too happy to work in countries with despicable human rights records for over a century," Stockman said. "They must avoid looking to other autocratic regimes to replace the resources they have foregone in Russia. Now is the moment to end the fossil fuel era."

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Greenpeace USA research manager Tim Donaghy said that "if we want to build a world based on equity, peace, and stability then we must urgently accelerate the move towards renewable energy."

"This is the single best way to cut off both the money and soft power yielded by the likes of Putin to carry out the sort of atrocities we are now seeing in Ukraine," he asserted. "And when energy companies try to fight this transition, politicians should remember the billions of dollars they have given to Putin."

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The report comes not only in the midst of war but also as U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday announced a highly anticipated plan to boost exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to European Union countries so they can reduce their reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

"Doubling down on gas is not the solution, whether it comes from Russia or the U.S.," said Worthy. "Instead of lining the pockets of American fracking companies, Europe should focus its energy investments on lasting solutions such as improving building insulation, heat pumps, and renewable energy sources."

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

It seems not a day goes by without learning someone in our inner circle of family, friends and colleagues has covid. When we ask how unwell our acquaintance is, the responses vary from “they’re really crook” to “you wouldn’t even know they had it”.

This is in line with studies that report moderate to severe illness in a minority of people (usually older with other risk factors) and that up to one in three positive people exhibit no symptoms.

Given the ubiquitous presence of this highly infectious coronavirus in our community and the high rate of asymptomatic illness, those who have not been diagnosed with covid might wonder, “how would I know if I had been infected?”

And, “does it matter if I have?”.

• READ MORE: Has Australia really had 60,000 undiagnosed COVID-19 cases?
• How accurate is your RAT? 3 scenarios show it’s about more than looking for lines
• Here’s why you might need a 4th covid vaccine dose this winter

How covid is diagnosed
Most people know they’ve had covid because they had a fever or upper respiratory tract symptoms and/or were exposed to an infected person AND had a swab test (PCR or rapid antigen) that detected the covid virus (SARS-CoV-2) in the upper airway.

At the beginning of 2022, many people with consistent symptoms or high-risk exposures were not able to access PCRs or RATs to confirm their diagnosis, but instead presumed themselves positive and quarantined.

It is possible to diagnose past infection in those who never tested positive. A blood test can look for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies (also known as immunoglobulins). When we are infected with SARS-CoV-2, our immune system launches a precision counter strike by producing antibodies against viral targets, specifically the Spike (S) and Nucleocapsid (N) proteins.

Covid vaccination induces a similar immune response against the S protein only. The S antibody “neutralises” the invader by preventing the virus from attaching to human cells.

These antibodies can be detected within one to three weeks after infection and persist for at least six months — potentially much longer. A blood test that shows antibodies to S and N proteins indicates someone has been previously infected. Detection of antibodies to the S protein only indicates vaccination (but not infection).

The problem with antibody tests
Before you rush off to get a covid antibody test, there are a few notes of caution. There is still much to learn about the characteristics of the immune response to covid infection.

Not everyone mounts a detectable antibody response following infection and levels can decline to undetectable levels after several months in some people.

Because there are other circulating seasonal coronaviruses (such as those that cause the common cold), tests may also pick up antibodies to non-SARS-CoV-2 strains, leading to “false positive” results.

Commercial and public hospital pathology labs can perform SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing, but the interpretation of results should be undertaken carefully.

So, antibody testing should really only be done when there’s a good reason to: say, when confirming past infection or effectiveness of vaccination is important for the current care of an individual.

Diagnosing a post-infectious complication or eligibility for a specific treatment, for example. It could also be useful for contact tracing or for assessing the background population rate of infection.

Antibody testing a population
“Seroprevalence studies” test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in repositories of stored blood that are representative of the general population, such as from a blood bank. This data helps to understand the true extent of covid infection and vaccination status in the community (and informs our assessment of population susceptibility to future infection and reinfection). It’s more useful than daily reported case numbers, which are skewed towards symptomatic individuals and those with access to swab testing.

New research from the World Health Organisation, which is yet to be reviewed by other scientists, reported the results of a meta-analysis of over 800 seroprevalence studies performed around the world since 2020. They estimated that by July 2021, 45.2 percent of the global population had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies due to past infection or vaccination, eight times the estimate (5.5 percent) from a year earlier.

There are plans to conduct fresh seroprevalence studies in Australia in the coming year, which will update local data and help us understand to what extent the omicron wave has washed through the population.

Even after ‘mild’ cases, a new study by this @CurtinUni expert finds “long COVID” symptoms may persist. This includes “brain fog”, fatigue, and problems with concentration and memory. https://t.co/4lckYrks0Y

— The Conversation (@ConversationEDU) March 7, 2022

Does it matter if I have had covid and didn’t know?
For most people, knowing your covid infection status is unlikely to be more than a topic of dinnertime conversation.

While some studies have pointed to a less robust and durable antibody response following mild or asymptomatic infection compared with severe illness, it is not known how this influences protection from reinfection. Certainly, the knowledge we have antibodies from past infection should not deter us from being fully up-to-date with covid vaccination, which remains the best protection against severe illness.

There are reports of people with mild or asymptomatic covid infection developing ‘long covid’ — persistent or relapsing symptoms that last several months after initial infection. Symptoms can include shortness of breath, physical and mental fatigue, exercise intolerance, headaches, and muscle and joint pain.

However, the likelihood of developing this condition appears higher in those who suffer a heavier initial bout of covid illness. This might be linked with higher viral load at that time.

Bottom line
As we enter the third year of the covid pandemic and given that up to one in three infections may be asymptomatic, it is likely many of us have been infected without knowing it.

If you are experiencing lingering fatigue, brain fog or other symptoms that could be long covid, you should talk to your GP. Otherwise, knowing our covid infection status is unlikely to be of much practical benefit. Antibody testing should be reserved for specific medical or public health indications.

Being up-to-date with covid vaccination is still our best defence against severe illness moving forward.

Dr Ashwin Swaminathan is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University in Canberra. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

Never in my imagination, just five years ago even, would I have figured I’d be here, that is, stuck in the USA, blessed to be in a relationship (it’s good, but again, people in my life do need me somewhat sane to handle varying degrees of their own trauma), and pigeon-holed as a malcontent who is also unemployable.

The fact that people in the fields I venture into are less than middling, and the fact that lives hang in the balance tied to vax mandates, and forced boosters, and proof of mRNA life (I hear people, through the fog of the propaganda madmen, that mRNA a la Pfizer and Moderna, is better than the J & J, Janssen, which is not the same vax, but is now being discontinued. Imagine, J & J was a single dose experimental jab, but the Mengele actors in the CDC and Big Pharma move the goal posts daily so J & J single dose, has to be seconded to be a full-vax record —  after a five month lapse between the two. However, the J & J is cancelled, no more manufacturing, so anyone trying to stay away from mRNA now, after their one shot of J & J has to submit to a completely different platform for this SARS-CoV2 mass experimentation game).

These are experimental. The blasphemy is, a, forced vaccinations on everyone, no discussion about the alternatives, or the safety; then, forcing these on youth, age six months; then, the lack of choice of all the vaxxes around the world, including China’s and Cuba’s; then, complete liability for death and injury for the big Pharma thugs; then, of course, we, the taxpayer foot the bill for R & D, for the salaries of these thieves, and then we buy the vials, and when they are contaminated, or when they expire, we end up watching 30 million doses down the drain, and then we, the taxpayer, foot the bill for the replacements. Money and more money, that is the planne pandemic.

Pre-Planned Demic — forced vaccinations for college students, and then, how many for kids going to kindergarten, K12, have to be vaxxxed? Then, the HPV, and I have written about that here —

“My Fate as a Social Worker Sealed by a Vaccine named Gardasil”

“Death by a Thousand Cuts: When the Cures of Big Pharma are Worse than the Diseases”

I got screwed, blued and tatooed by the powers that be. Big Pharma, Planned Parenthood and the nonprofit industrial complex. Try that out for size!

So, what is in the discontinued Johnson & Johnson (J&J)/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine?

Ingredients:

The J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine contains a piece of a modified virus that is not the virus that causes COVID-19. This modified virus is called the vector virus. The vector virus cannot reproduce itself, so it cannot cause COVID-19. This vector virus gives instructions to cells in the body to create an immune response. This response helps protect you from getting sick with COVID-19 in the future. After the body produces an immune response, it gets rid of all of the vaccine ingredients just as it would discard any information that cells no longer need. This process is a part of normal body functioning.

Full list of ingredients: The J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine contains the following ingredients:

A harmless version of a virus unrelated to the COVID-19 virus: Recombinant, replication-incompetent Ad26 vector, encoding a stabilized variant of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike (S) protein. Provides instructions the body uses to build a harmless piece of a protein from the virus that causes COVID-19. This protein causes an immune response that helps protect the body from getting sick with COVID-19 in the future.

Sugars, salts, acid, and acid stabilizer:

• Polysorbate-80
• 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin
• Trisodium citrate dihydrate
• Sodium chloride (basic table salt)
• Citric acid monohydrate (closely related to lemon juice)
• Ethanol (a type of alcohol)

These work together to help keep the vaccine molecules stable while the vaccine is manufactured, shipped, and stored until it is ready to be given to a vaccine recipient.

Alas, I teach a class at the community college here, OCCC. One student asked first day of class who was vaccinated and boosted. I massaged that into, “Well, we have to wear masks, per college requirements, but there is not vax mandate. Best we not ask people personal questions about their health issues and decisions.”

My marching orders were that if I asked once and then twice for a student to mask, and if they refused, the course would be cancelled.

That is the absurdity of this entire dress rehersal for bigger and more systematic totalitarian methods of control. The mob, the bandwagon, the transfer of Fauci’s credentials to infer credibility. Pissing matches now on which vax and booster you get.

I do not know if many DV readers get the totality of this Western Mentality for Ordering People Around at work, school, in public, everywhere. Again, pre-SARS-CoV2, and conccurently — people I have gotten jobs for are working 14 hour shifts, in sub-freezing warehouses, moving frozen goods/foods along frozen floors with forklifts sliding all over the place. Imagine, coming home and still five hours after the shift frozen fingers and core temperature still not normal. Forced drug screening, forced background checks, forced credit checks, checks on prior evictions, driving record checks, physicals, all medications listed, reference checks, in-case-of-emergency references, and more, including being paid every two weeks, on a fucking Visa card.

Toil, weathering, mean as cuss bosses and supervisors, repetitive deadening work. No talking on the job. Keep those headphones and ear buds off. I’ve challenged the honchos driving up in Mercedes and Teslas how the hell do they look at themselves in the mirror at night or in the morning without seeing a monster of exploitation. Big jacked up $60,000 pickups while my clients have to take rotten and rotting public buses, many lines of which stop a mile or two away from the facility.

Work, baby, the great resignation, sure. But, here we are now — who owns us? How do we put that roof over our heads and that john in the corner and kitchen next to the bed?

“America’s Largest Landlord Just Got Bigger: Blackstone Buys 17,000 Houses For $6 Billion” by Tyler Durden

Wall Street won’t rest until it become the biggest – and perhaps only – landlord in the US.

At least that’s the impression one gets by observing the behavior of the two Wall Street “black” giants, Blackrock and Blackstone. As a reminder, the WSJ sparked widespread outrage recently when it exposed what most industry insiders had known for a long time, namely that Blackrock (and other institutional investors) have been ravenously gobbling up US real estate. Now it’s Blackstone’s turn.

On Tuesday, the WSJ reported that Blackstone – which already is not only America’s largest landlord but also the world’s largest real estate company with a $325 billion portfolio – has agreed to buy single-family rental company Home Partners of America for $6 billion, betting the demand for suburban housing will stay hot even as the pandemic eases. Home Partners owns more than 17,000 houses in the United States; the company buys, rents out and eventually offers its tenants a chance to buy them. Now all those functions will be done by the largest US private equity firm.

And so, I, like millions, are at the whim of the followers, the sheeple, for sure, and we play their game, and STILL, we can’t be in their sandboxes. All those state and city and county and even nonprofit jobs tied to state, city, county contracts (grants) I apply for caveat the application in big bold notations — Upon hire, the candidate must submit proof of full Covid-19 vaccination. That means, of course, those agencies have the power to go straight to CDC/STATE records of the shot sheet. Not a paper copy of the CDC shot record, but the proof has had to be recorded into the data field; i.e. computer.

I was going to cross that bridge if and when I got any sense of being offered a job, but, alas, there are not job offers for schmucks like me. That is, of course, the lamentation here. But as always, I attempt to make my little Paul’s World tie into a larger frame, some universal set of lessons.

• age
• gender
• politics
• over-educated
• too many different jobs over time
• moving too many times
• too confident
• too willing to discussion many aspects of the job in the Q & A
• too much on the internet, easily searchable vis Google
• blacklisted through checking off, “no, it is not okay to contact previous employer”
• more

There are so many reasons why “they” don’t hire folks like “me.” Strike up the ageism and sexism band, for sure. I am 65, a male, and the jobs I am attempting to get are in the social services/education/editing/writing arena.

Educational navigator, state and county jobs, even city jobs. The writing is on the wall, in a rural county, and, when I do get interviews, it’s four to six women on Zoom. I’ve had 12 people in a room for one job interview I actually drove 40 miles to attend in person. I was asked to apply by the ED. Very good back and forth, and they liked me, thought I was smart, a fit, but not a perfect fit. The rejection letter from the Executive Director was all complimentary. But, again, here I am, on the job market. Many times an interview is couched with “we are a tight-knit family, a very close team so how do you think you’d be part of that?”

I’ve had to ask several time, at the end of interviews when they ask me if I have questions, what ways do the people on the team work with people like me, an obvious outsider, to be part of a team that they call family? Really, what makes it easy for a male with education to fit into a tight knit team, which from the outside seems like a clique?

I am a great interview, and I am able to put on many faces,  in addition to bringing up interesting connections to my long work experience and my education to each respective job I’ve applied for.

And, that small-knit female group is not wanting to have an outsider, someone who doesn’t look like them. These people, to be blunt, are seated inside a nanny mentality, and drawn into paperwork world while following procedures to the letter. They are not giving and creative souls, not in any real sense. Also, they seem to be pretty one-dimensional. I get through the screening, then the interview, then the email a week or weeks later, which is a form letter, that states in mealy mouthed terms, I was rejected:

PAUL — Thank you for interviewing for the position of Permanency Workers (Social Services Specialist 1) Newport . Although you have not been selected for the position, we enjoyed learning about your background and experience in greater detail.

Again, thank you for your time and interest. We encourage you to apply for other opportunities in the future.

Thank you.”

Yep, my mother told me I should have continued at the U of Arizona and got the medical degree. Even a law degree. That was way back when, at 19 years of age and having the gift of gab, the gift of testing to a high level, above 89 or 90. Gifts . . . now, at 65, feeling, well, embarassed that, a, I have to look for work with no retirement, in this shit hole country, and in any shit hole state (you name it). Democratic or Republican governor, the scum rises to the top. With so much scum below them. And, b, I am pissed off and in this predictament. And, c, that I even feel this way — useless, a throw-away, disposable, nothing (I don’t feel these for many minutes in a day, but still, feeling this shit is like hot lead down one’s gullet).

One of the questions from the above committee of three was around “Many people perceive the CPS (child protective services) has having a lot of power. Rightly or wrongly, how would you deal with this perception?”

Well, of course, I know a few things or two about CPS and foster care and removing children from families. And, I thought I could give the CPS a bit of perspective, AND, while the gender police want to top load professions that are traditionally not full of women with women, you would think those female-filled social services centers would want a few wise males in their ranks.

That’s just hopeful thinking. Well, here, from an old article, Atlantic, from a CPS worker:

It seems there is always some sort of story in the media regarding one form of child abuse or neglect or another. Recently, I came across two such stories, one about a working mother who allowed her 9-year-old daughter to play unsupervised at a playground near her work and was subsequently arrested and her daughter put into foster care; and another, actually, about the mass shut-off of water services in an underprivileged Detroit neighborhood which brought up the fact that many don’t complain about the issue due to fears of having their children immediately removed from their homes as lack of water service is, allegedly, grounds for this in the city. These stories always hit home for me. Besides being a parent, I previously worked for Children’s Protective Services in Ohio.

Opinions usually fell into one of two predictable camps: as a CPS worker you were either accused of doing too little to protect the children involved, or of being too invasive, at best another mindless bureaucrat and at worst a power-happy sadist that got off on telling others how to raise their kids. In truth, both are often correct. I’ve seen them personally. And it’s a problem. Most workers, however, fall somewhere along the wide spectrum in between, and where they fall will be influenced more by their local inter-and-intra-agency culture than any statute.

Thinking of the mother of the 9-year-old, I realize I am not privy to the details of the case. I understand there is a lot I don’t know. Things like, does this mom have a history of abusing or neglecting this child or other children? Did the child have any special needs that made her especially vulnerable to being unsupervised? Did the child have any other signs of abuse like severe bruising or physical injuries, or of neglect such as obvious malnutrition or chronic head lice, or any other incalculable number of things? These would no doubt make a huge impact on my opinion of the situation, but as it stands what I read is this: a 9-year-old girl was left with a cellular phone at a playground near her mother’s workplace with adequate shade and access to water. Upon learning that her mother was not present, an adult called the police. So far, I vilify neither the caller for calling nor the police for responding. It is what happens next that I strongly question.

Apparently, the best answer to this case was to remove the child from her mother’s custody, put her in foster care, and arrest the mother. I’ll be blunt: this is insane.

Well, of course, I handled ALL the questions well, but then, the rejection. All those rejections. All those terrible people lifted through the prostitution called politics of bureaucracies. There are so many mean, dog-eat-dog, I-got-mine-too-bad-you-don’t-got-yours fucking Americanos. Yankee or Stars and Bars, most are cut from the same shit-hole Mayflower cloth. There are some mean folks I have met in Child Protective Services. In Portland, in Seattle, in Spokane, in El Paso!

This is the shape of things to come, for many of us, who are self-avowed radicals, willing to say and write and publish things that are definitely outside the bold lines of the center fold of American meanness. American group think. American belonging in the bandwagon. Infantalized. Disneyfied. Now, get stuck in a rural arena, with few opportunities, and this is the weekly routine —

• change up the resume
• write a new cover letter
• do an on-line application
• sometimes complete these timed tests, many of which are psycho personality tests — sick stuff
• attest at the end of the application, before hitting submit, that all stuff is truthful, and that they, the prospective employer, has the right to go back into all manner of work and legal and living history

And it is almost impossible during this process, and while consuming corporate, commercial, un-News news, to not get jaded, cynical, pissed off and, well, dejected. Since all the stories are about the beautiful people, the celebrities, all the crap around thespian stars and sports stars. All the felonies committed by politicians, corporate heads, even those in positions of state-county-city government.

There are so many undeserving folk in positions of big and minimal power. Yep, we know that. And to hear any manner of these people who get quoted or get the limelight for me is to hear monsters who have zero idea how the 80 percent live.

Nepotism, favoritism, cancelling, xenophobia, bandwagoning, credentialism, and other -isms rule the day. Then, to see folks circling their wagons interviewing me only because they may be checking off something on their diversity list — “get a white old male in the mix to look like we are diversity mavens” — to have at least three people in the pool. I have had my application stopped because not enought applicants hit the pool. Imagine that.

Then, there’s this blasphemy — more and more staffing firms, the bane of humanity, controlling the hiring process. That culprit, Indeed, has gotten into staffing. LinkedIn? All of them, rotten to the core, and many jobs are now conduited through those chosen people’s job screening-prepping-hiring headhunter systems that are all relying upon algorithms and Salesforce techniques:

Contracting is Worker Exploitation — (source). I have written about this in the past. Broken records abound:

Staffing agencies perpetuate this ugly cycle because they make a hefty profit exploiting contractors. Staffing agency recruiters will lie about the length of the contract and specific requirements, they’ll alter resumes without your knowledge, and make little to no effort to find another assignment once a contract ends. Some of these staffing agencies are so unprofessional, they’ve sent me emails meant for other people they’re trying to recruit. Staffing agencies are the worst. They don’t disclose how much they charge a company for a contractor’s services to maximize their profits. For example, for one of my recent contracting gigs, the company paid the staffing agency $60 an hour. I received $40 an hour while the staffing agency received $20 an hour for every hour of my work. The staffing agency received $800 a week for doing practically nothing, while I did all the work. These are the risks of contracting work, but it doesn’t make it right or ethical.

+–+

“This Is One of the Most Important Legal Battles for Labor in Decades” (In These Times)

Over the last few decades, a growing number of American workers have effectively lost many of their labor rights because of the way their bosses structure the employment relationship. These workers are contractors who are hired by one company but work for another: the Hyatt Hotel housekeepers who actually work for Hospitality Staffing Solutions, the Microsoft tech workers who actually work for a temp agency called Lionbridge Technologies, and the Amazon warehouse workers who actually work for Integrity Staffing Solutions. These workers often perform the same work at the same place as other workers, frequently on a permanent basis.

But because their employers have entered into complicated contracts with each other, these workers have been unable to exercise their labor rights. If the workers can only bargain with the staffing company and not the lead company where they actually work, they are negotiating with the party that often has no power to change the terms of their employment. For that reason, workers have fought for a more inclusive definition under the National Labor Relations Act of what constitutes an employer — and when two employers are joint employers.

Here, in my neck of the woods, the Lincoln County School District, again, sell outs at the top, and the bizarre superintendent and her VPs and thug principals in league with her meglamania, the District gives shit about workers:

Educational Staffing Solutions (New Jersey, Tennessee) is a staffing firm specializing in placing highly qualified staff in daily, long-term, and permanent K-12 school district positions, including paraprofessionals, substitute teachers, and other support staff. The company innovates education staffing to provide dynamic solutions to schools and professional opportunities to passionate educators. ESS provides its employees with the ability to work for schools across the country and competitive training, flexible work schedules, and professional development. The company’s partner schools receive personalized solutions, hands-on management, technology, and program reporting and analytics. ESS was founded in 2000, and its headquarter is located in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, United States. The firm’s expert professionals serve more than 3 million students with a pool of 60,000 substitute and permanent employees throughout the United States. ESS provides healthcare benefits and other perks to its employees.

So these schools, public schools, have sold out their food services to profiteers (Sodexo, et al), given up cleaning to the janitorial profiteers (Sodexo; Bon Apetite), contracted out the buses (Student First, et al), and their hiring of staff, teachers, administrators, too, sold out to the profit gougers. Staffing firms and those all-American welfare cheats who look, sound, smell like, well, good people. This is what the average person has to confront.

A national labor phenomenon known as “The Great Resignation,” or “The Big Quit,” began to take hold in January 2021 and has since grown. Millions of workers in the United States have turned the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic into opportunities to rethink their professions and reframe their lives.

The trend is especially pronounced in the accommodation and food services sector, which experienced more than 5 percent worker attrition each month from June to October of last year.

Online, people flooded a Reddit forum called “r/antiwork” for commiseration and solidarity; by year’s end, the page had reached 1.5 million members. In the streets, thousands of unionized workers in manufacturing, health care, and higher education went on strike last fall for fair pay and protections. (source)

So, with two master’s degrees, and three dozen years teaching, and some of that including substituting K12 in Washington and Texas, I have to face jobs where $14.89 an hour, no benefits, on-call, at will, are the options. But add to this paltry pay: a substitute teacher needs to pay a fee to get a substitute certification, which is $350 in Oregon. I even had to take a civics test, here in Oregon, a test that was so fucking easy that, well, another fee to pay in order to get a shitty $14.89 an hour.

Here, some of my work with students, K12:

“Professor Pablo and Fourth Grade Enlightenment in Lincoln City“

And, then, being banned from teaching, another story, here at DV —

“Take Down this Blog, or Else!” — No job interview, no job offer, targeting by city, county, state honchos, watched by the pigs, shadowed by all the sub humans

You will not hear VP Harris or Jill Biden talking about this blasphemy, or Henry Giroux or Chris Hedges writing about this stuff. Believe you me, this is below them, to be blunt. I am part of a legion of older folk caught in several levels or circles of THEIR hell: the arbitrators, the people in high and mid office, making some of the worst decisions ever. We are at the whim of lock-step fearful folk. We are at the beck and call of the most uncreative people on earth. I have seen the antithesis of education, of journalism, of social work, of college teaching in my many decades of wandering the planet as a writer who should have gone the route of med school or law.

I’m sixty-five and really part of the growing throw-away contingency of millions in this Western Culture who are just the flesh and blood (and data mines) in a pipeline for more rich and super rich and almost rich people to take their pound of flesh — fees, penalties, late charges, triple taxation, tickets, surcharges, foreclosures, evictions, repossessions, code infractions, add-ons.

Oh, cry for me, United Snakes of America. Evictions, uh? They — the landlords, the BlackRocks, the BlackStones, the Banks and the Insurance and the Real Estate monsters, they are the Stinkin’ Badges!

I’ve written about this before, so again, broken DVD/record:

Never forget who we are:

In 2019, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren blasted Blackstone for “shamelessly” profiting from the U.S. foreclosure crisis, arguing that Wall Street’s investment in single-family homes was a “huge loss for America’s renters.” (source)

Never mind, though, old Elizabeth states she is through and through a capitalist. Haha, rhetoric, yakking, and not a fucking thing is done. Huge loss for America’s renters? This is life and death, again, these people at the top are clueless, intentionally, or just because they do not know what it is to be us.

But then, forgetting is in the water:

And, you can’t get Whoopied when you got no millions:

Unemployment, on the dole, on the fiddle, under the table, riff-raff, deplorable, welfare king, trash, undesirable, vermin, dreg of society, scum, outcast — terms thrown at me and my people. Hell, just look at the Chosen People’s movie channels — all those narratives, those Hulu and Netflix and Amazon series and movie crap,  how they depict (they never really depict real struggle) us commoners, those of us who still have a few good years left to be “contributors,” but for many reasons, will never get the third, fourth, tenth chance. Watch closely how they depict the working class. Take notes. We are dregs, man. Broken, mean, thieves, fornicators, dumb, and deplorables.

Remote Area Medical? Shit, we are an underperforming country, intentional, vis-a-vis the corporate whores, the lot of them:

Scale this shit up. Dental clinics, care homes, medical clinics. Free, of course. Reroute that Biden-Trump-Bush-Obama-Clinton war money to what we need: Stan Brock, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom:

A debate over healthcare has been raging nationwide, but what’s been lost in the discussion are the American citizens who live day after day, year after year without solutions for their most basic needs. Remote Area Medical documents the annual three-day “pop-up” medical clinic organized by the non-profit Remote Area Medical (RAM) in Bristol, Tennessee’s NASCAR speedway. Instead of a film about policy, Remote Area Medical is a film about people, about a proud Appalachian community banding together to try and provide some relief for friends and neighbors who are simply out of options.

Fucking amazing Stan Brock — they don’t make people like him anymore!

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

Image by Freddy Kearney.

“If the language of power – medicalese, legalese, bureaucratese, corporatese – drains the blood from words,” poet, essayist, and translator, Martín Espada, said when I interviewed him, “Poets can put the blood back in the words.” Our conversation took place merely weeks after Espada won the National Book Award for his latest collection of poetry, Floaters.

There are few living artists who can better execute the magic of simultaneously dissecting and enlarging language than Espada. A former tenant lawyer and committed activist, the “left wing, Puerto Rican poet,” to quote his self-identification, manages to hover between two planes, with one foot always in the territory of the imagination, and another firmly dug into the mud of politics, oppression and defiance, and history. The imagination, especially with an orientation toward hope, as Espada would have it, performs the essential service that his late friend, Howard Zinn, described with characteristic eloquence on the closing page of his memoir, “If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.”

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The post “Put the Blood Back In”: Martín Espada on Poetry, Book Banning, and Radical Politics appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Masciotra.

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This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Vins.