My grandmother was a taxidermist. When I was growing up, she would give us stuffed wolves, stuffed gila monsters, stuffed birds, bear rugs. I used all of these in our haunted houses. They were pretty silly—we’d blindfold people and put their hands in something and tell them we were feeling eyeballs. The only cool thing was… We had this big walk-in refrigerated locker. I guess you were supposed to put meat in it, but it wasn’t used anymore. I’d open the door and say, “What’s in there? Let’s go look.” Then people would go in, and I’d shut the door and leave them there for a really long time. [laughs]

The film was very much an indie operation; you and [co-director] Zac Farley oversaw everything creatively. Do you have any advice for other filmmakers who are trying to get their indie projects off the ground?

Each of our films was made in a different way. The first one, Like Cattle Towards Glow, was financed through Germany, and it only cost $40,000. You can actually make a film for $40,000, but you have to get a lot of people who really want to do it and do it for basically free. Our second film, Permanent Green Light, was done through grants from the French government. This one was tough because it cost much more than our other films. It took four years to raise the money, and I don’t want to do that again. We want to make our next film inexpensively, so we’re trying to come up with something that we can do easily.

There was another film [at the LA Festival of Movies] called Debut, by this young director named Julian Castronovo. I thought he was a very interesting guy. He made the whole film by himself on his computer for $900. I would encourage people not to get intimidated by this whole thing.

We don’t expect this film to get a big release or anything like that. We’re just going to try to show it at interesting festivals as many times as we can. We were thrilled that [LA Festival of Movies organizers] Micah [Gottlieb] and Sarah [Winshall] wanted it.

At the Los Angeles Festival of Movies Q&A, one of the actors, Charlie Nelson Jacobs, mentioned that his audition process was like nothing he had ever gone through before—he said it involved answering a lot of questions about himself. I’m curious about how exactly you screened the actors and placed everybody in their roles.

The way auditioning worked was, we’d send a questionnaire to prospective performers and they’d film themselves answering the questions just so we could get a sense of who they were. “What do you love to do?” “What are you afraid of?” Stuff to get them to open up a little bit. We like to use people as they are—we don’t try to make them change in some way. We don’t really have a visual idea of the characters before we start casting a film, so we never have actors do extensive line readings. We mostly just sit and talk with them. It’s also about how we vibe, because we work very collaboratively.

You often work with actors who aren’t trained professionally. How do you approach that? Do you give a lot of direction on set, or mostly let them follow their instincts?

We like working with non-actors because they don’t know what they look like when they do anything. They aren’t paying attention to, “How is it going to look if I’m sad, or if I get angry?” They’re just themselves. In rehearsals, we explain what the film and characters are like, and we ask them, “What do you want to do with this?”, and then we might ask them to make adjustments. Once we’re actually shooting, they know what they’re supposed to do. We find the performances very pure. They’re kind of amateurish, but in a beautiful way.

You and Zac are credited as co-directors and co-writers on your various films together. How do you divide up work throughout the creative process?

I mainly do the script, because I’m the writer. We discuss what we want to do with the characters, and then I’ll go home and write, and then I’ll show it to him. He’s a visual person, so sometimes he’ll say, “This is interesting [on the page], but visually it will not be as interesting—can we set this in a different location?”

Other than that, he doesn’t challenge the writing so much. When it comes to directing, he is the director on set—but we’ve discussed everything ahead of time, and we know what’s going to happen, because every other part of the process is completely collaborative, from casting to editing to post-production. It might be too complicated for the DP to have to listen to two people, so Zac takes care of that, and I work on the performances with the actors. Sometimes, he’ll say, “Do you think the performance could be a little more like this?”, and I’ll say, “What do you think about shooting from this angle?”

Has your writing background informed your directing style in any way?

Well, I’ve written all these theater pieces for Gisèlle Vienne, and that’s how I learned to write for a sentient, three-dimensional, solid being that’s going to be speaking the text and moving around. Whatever I know about directing, I learned from theater.

How, in general, do you know when someone is a good collaborator?

It seems like I just fall into collaborations. When I met Gisèlle, I was going to Lyon to do a lecture about my work. She had read my books, and she wrote to me and said, “Do you want to stay a few extra days and try making something together?” And I liked what she sent me. She was working with this musician, Peter Rehberg, whose music I liked, and I said, “Ok, sure, what the fuck?” We made our whole piece in three days. We got along really well.

Usually, when I collaborate, I feel like I’m contributing to somebody else’s vision. I write the text for Gisèlle; I also am a dramaturg with her, but she’s the boss. I did a bunch of performances with Ishmael Houston-Jones in the ’80s in New York, and even though they were very collaborative, it was always Ishmael’s work, you know?

With Zac, it’s different. It’s not my work or his work—it’s our work. My projects with him are the first time I’ve done something like that.

How did you know that Zac specifically would be an ideal collaborator?

We’re totally on the same wavelength—we want the same things, although we have different approaches, which is good. We met through a friend of his who said, “There’s this guy named Zac who likes your work. He seems kind of like he’s at sea. Maybe you guys should meet.” We had a coffee, and I said, “Can I look at your art?” and I really liked it. I don’t know how you can explain these things—we immediately became best friends and started collaborating. We worked on some things that we didn’t end up doing. We were going to do a book about theme parks in Scandinavia—we might still do that one. And we were going to do a live performance with no people in it, in an ice rink—it was more about the machine that cleans the ice. Then the opportunity came up for us to make a film.

Was the book about Scandinavia going to be nonfiction, or was it more like a novel?

What we did was, we rented a car, and we drove up to Scandinavia from Paris, and we spent two and a half weeks driving to every theme park we could find in Scandinavia. We went to maybe 15 theme parks in Norway and Denmark and Sweden, and while we were there, I was writing these fairy tales set in theme parks, slightly inspired by Hans Christian Andersen. We may still put them together and make some kind of book out of them.

You should—that would be so cool. What’s distinct about the theme parks in Scandinavia?

There’s a little more mystical, a little more folksy. There are maybe three or four truly great theme parks there. A lot of them are very old. Our favorite park was in Denmark. It’s called Kungaparken, and what was really great about it is that every single person that worked there was a goth teenager. You’d try to talk to them and they’d be like, “Yeah, yeah.” They weren’t friendly. I don’t know what the owner’s deal was, but it made the whole thing very magical.

You mentioned your hatred for the Frisk movie during your Q&A. Would you ever consider adapting one of your books with Zac?

Oh, no, we wouldn’t want to do that. We’d want to write something specific for us. God Jr., which is kind of my “nice” novel, was optioned for a long time by the people who made Coraline, but that fell by the wayside. People always want to make The Sluts into a film or a play, but they all want to take it off the internet, which is stupid. I mean, it’s about the internet—you can’t.

Yeah, that wouldn’t work. I will say that when I first finished The Sluts, my immediate thought was, “How has this not been made into a movie?” Then I took a second to reflect on it, and I realized you couldn’t adapt it because you never know who’s actually talking or what’s actually happening at any given moment.

Maybe it could be one of those CD-ROM games from the ’90s—you know, when they were very primitive and text based. But I think it’s just not a good idea. My books are really about reading, so I don’t have any desire to have them made into films. If somebody interesting wanted to make one, of course I’d talk to them—but Zac and I don’t want to adapt anything. We want to make our own art.

The books are so much about language—especially when you use internet speak. The first short story from Flunker, “Face Eraser,” comes to mind.

I’ve read it out loud. People think it’s funny, but it’s much more about the page. I used to be really interested in emo; my novel The Marbled Swarm is about emo. There used to be these fascinating emo message boards and chat rooms; everyone talked like that, and it was beautiful. I studied them and stole lines I liked.

When you delve into darker subjects, do you ever find yourself disturbed by your own work during the writing process? If so, how do you deal with that?

No, never. I was disturbed by my brain before I started writing. I was disturbed by what I was thinking and fantasizing about. It scared me and excited me. But when I started writing, I could approach those ideas more formally.

Have you ever gotten messages from fans who write to you with the same obsessive tone as the characters from The Sluts and your other books?

I do, but I always immediately turn the conversation on them, because I’m not interested in that. People will come in as big fans, and I’ll ask them, “Well, what do you do?” And then they’ll say, “I want to be a writer,” and I’ll say, “Tell me more about that,” because I’m much more interested in them. I have this need to be supportive towards people, so I’ll say, “Let’s talk about you.” Then they start opening up about what they’re doing and what they care about. My blog isn’t really about my work at all, so I try to direct people towards other topics. Almost everybody who reads the blog is super interesting and smart and weird. I like for people to get to know each other, so it’s nice when they start talking to each other.

The thing about the blog is that it’s so old-fashioned. It’s from another time—which is what I like about it. Everybody’s doing Substack now, but it seems like that’s mostly about, “I have an interesting brain, and I can make some money off of my interesting brain.” It’s not about interaction.

I was going to ask you about that. With all of the Substack hype, would you ever transfer your blog to Substack?

I don’t want to. I don’t want to make money off it. It gets a large audience—like, shockingly large—so I could put ads on there, but I want it to be this weird free thing that people find. I like that it’s kind of secret—people stumble upon it.

At this point, you’ve done films, you’ve done novels, you’ve done poetry, and you’ve done theater. Is there any medium you haven’t yet explored but would like to?

Nothing realistic. I don’t want to make bigger films or television. I can’t really make visual art; it would be nice to be able to do that, but my GIF novels are probably as close as I can get. Right now I just want to keep making films.

So you’re more excited about screenwriting than prose writing right now?

I’m more excited about filmmaking. Screenwriting is just a teeny bit of it. I’ve written novels my whole life. I wrote 10 novels—that’s a fucking lot of novels. Earlier in my life, I was always experimenting, trying to chase new ideas. Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I know what I can do and what I can’t do. I’ve tried so many forms.

I do want to write more novels—but filmmaking is so exciting and so foreign to me. It’s such a complete challenge, and that’s the kind of thing I really like. I miss feeling like novel-writing was a crazy experiment. With the films, I’m still like, “What can we do? How far can we go with this?”

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Brittany Menjivar.

Israel: after 19 months of non-stop genocide where do you stand Mr Cooper?

ku.tnemailrapnull@pm.repooc.nhoj

Dear Mr Cooper,

In your communications to me in February and October last year some remarks were misleading and sounded as if penned by Israel’s propaganda scribblers in Tel Aviv. Given your journalistic background it was hoped you would sniff out and reject such disinformation. With the situation in Gaza now so horrific a more considered reply would be welcome, please, from our representative at Westminster.

• You said: “Israel has suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas.”

But you omitted the context. In the 23 years prior to October 7 Israel had been slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Why overlook this? 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, were held in Israeli jails on that fateful day. Over 1,200 were under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’ (B’Tselem figures). October 7 was therefore a retaliation against extreme provocation. Or were we expecting the Palestinians to take all that lying down?

Evidence is now emerging that the IDF inflicted many of the casualties on their own people that day in order to provide a pretext for their long-planned genocidal assault.

Early in the genocide JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace), the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world, described the situation leading up to October 7 rather well:

The Israeli government may have just declared war, but its war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence…. For the past year, the most racist, fundamentalist, far-right government in Israeli history has ruthlessly escalated its military occupation over Palestinians in the name of Jewish supremacy with violent expulsions and home demolitions, mass killings, military raids on refugee camps, unrelenting siege and daily humiliation….

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

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

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

• You said: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law.”

The UN itself has made it clear that “Israel cannot claim self-defence against a threat that emanates from the territory it occupies”, and many law experts have said the same.

On the other hand the Palestinians’ right to resist is confirmed in UN Resolution 3246 which calls for all States to recognize the right to self-determination and independence for all peoples subject to colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation, and to assist them in their struggle, and reaffirms the Palestinians’ right to use “all available means, including armed struggle” in their fight for freedom.

Furthermore UN Resolution 37/43 gives them an unquestionable right, in their struggle for liberation, to “eliminate the threat posed by Israel by all available means including armed struggle”. And as China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.

• You said “There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”

How right you are! Under international law Palestinians have an inalienable right to self-determination. They properly elected Hamas under international scrutiny in 2006, at the last permitted election. Hamas are the lawful and legitimate rulers in Gaza.

Israel is not the Western-style democracy it pretends to be. It is a deeply unpleasant ethnocracy with recently enacted discriminatory nation-state laws to emphasise its apartheid ‘bottom line’. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, has documented entrenched discrimination and socioeconomic differences in “land, urban planning, housing, infrastructure, economic development, and education.”

• You said: “Leaving Hamas in power in Gaza would be a permanent roadblock to a two-state solution…..A sustainable ceasefire must mean that Hamas is no longer there, able to threaten Israel.”

The US and UK have no right to attempt coercive regime change. Besides, Israel has been a fatal threat to Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) since well before Hamas was even founded.

Sections 16 and 20 of Hamas’s 2017 Charter are in tune with international law while the Israeli government pursues policies that definitely are not.

(s.16) “Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine.

(s.20) “Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.”

The correct and lawful way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is (and always has been) by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, theft of Palestinian resources, and destruction of Palestinian heritage.

• You said: “I support all steps to bring about a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders.”

Palestinians should not have to negotiate their freedom and self-determination. Under international law it’s their basic right and doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as Israel or the US, agreeing to it. The UK disrespects that, otherwise we would long ago have recognised Palestinian statehood along with the vast majority of nations that have already done so. And why is only Israel allowed to be “safe and secure”?

Britain’s refusal to recognise Palestine is disgraceful. We promised the Palestinian Arabs independence in 1915 in return for their help in defeating the Turks but reneged in 1917 (in favour of the shameful Balfour Declaration). We should have granted Palestine provisional independence in 1923 in accordance with our responsibilities under the League of Nations Mandate Agreement, but didn’t. In 1947 the UN Partition Plan allocated the Palestinians a measly portion of their own homeland and, without consulting them, handed the lion’s share to incomer Jews with no ancestral connection to it… thanks in large part to the Balfour betrayal.

The following year Britain walked away from its mandate responsibilities leaving Palestinians at the mercy of Israel’s vicious plan for annexing the Holy Land by military force – “from the river to the sea” – which they’ve pursued relentlessly ever since in defiance of international and humanitarian law, bringing terror, misery, wholesale destruction and ruination to the Palestinians. And now genocide.

Today Britain still refuses to recognise Palestinian independence although 138 other UN member states do.

• You said: “Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”

The Israeli regime has long ignored representations on such issues, so where is the “robust action” you speak of?

According to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights, “The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence…. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.”

Law expert Ralph Wilde provides this opinion:

There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.

Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force….

• You said: “The UK is doing everything it can to get more aid in and open more crossings, and we played a leading role in securing the passage of UN Security Council resolution 2720, which made clear the urgent demand for expanded humanitarian access.”

That went well, didn’t it? It’s sickening how Westminster still won’t accept the truth – that Israel is a depraved and repulsive regime, devoid of humanity, and we should not be supporting it in any way, shape or form.

For decades before October 7 Israel’s illegal control over the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza and military aggression, ethnic cleansing, restrictions on movement of goods and people, dispossession of prime lands, theft of Palestine’s key resources and destruction of its economy have bordered on slow-motion genocide.

And now the International Court of Justice has clarified that “a State’s obligation to prevent, and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or should normally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will be committed. From that moment onwards, if the State has available means likely to have a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonably suspected of harbouring specific intent, it is under a duty to make such use of these means as the circumstances permit”.

The many means available to the British Government include sanctions – which it readily applies to other delinquent nations – and withdrawal of favoured-nation privileges, trade deals, scientific/security collaboration, and cessation of arms supplies. In Israel’s case the British Government, far from using its available deterrent means, has militarily assisted Israel in its genocide.

So let’s remind ourselves of the UK Lawyers’ Open Letter Concerning Gaza of 26 October 2023 which arrived at the UK Government with important warnings regarding breaches of international law — for example:

⦁ The UK is duty-bound to “respect and ensure respect” for international humanitarian law as set out in the Four Geneva Conventions in all circumstances (1949 Geneva Conventions, Common Art 1). That means the UK must not itself assist violations by others.

⦁ The UK Government must immediately halt the export of weapons from the UK to Israel, given the clear risk that they might be used in serious violations of international humanitarian law and in breach of the UK’s domestic Strategic Export Licensing Criteria, including its obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty.

The Department for Business and Trade (whose committee I believe you now sit on) dismissed a petition calling for all licences for arms to Israel to be revoked. Their excuse was that “we rigorously assess every application on a case-by-case basis against strict assessment criteria, the Strategic Export Licensing Criteria (or SELC)…. The SELC provide a thorough risk assessment framework for export licence applications and require us to think hard about the impact of providing equipment and its capabilities. We will not license the export of equipment where to do so would be inconsistent with the SELC.”

But they didn’t explain how Israel managed to satisfy those “strict assessment criteria” and survive such a “rigorous” process. Were we supposed to take it all on trust? There are 8 criteria and, on reading them, any reasonably informed person might conclude that Israel fails to satisfy at least 5.

• You said: “In the longer term, I will continue to support the UK’s long held-position, that there should be a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security for both nations and the wider region.”

Why the longer term? Why not now? If Palestinian statehood had been recognised at the proper time (in 1923, or at least by 1948 when Israeli statehood was ‘accepted’) these unspeakable atrocities would never have happened.

QME and Plan Dalet

These are the never-mentioned driving forces behind the evil that poisons the Holy Land.

In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). It ensures the apartheid regime always has the upper hand over it neighbours. This is central to US Middle East policy and guarantees the region is kept at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.

Sadly the UK has superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for ‘security’ and other dubious reasons.

Plan D, or Plan Dalet, is the Zionist terror blueprint for their brutal takeover of the Palestinian homeland written 77 years ago. It was drawn up by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency and later to become the first president of ‘New Israel’. .

Plan D was a carefully thought-out, step-by-step plot choreographed ahead of the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood. It correctly assumed that the British authorities would no longer be there to prevent it. As Plan D shows, “expulsion and transfer” (i.e. ethnic cleansing) has always been a key part of the Zionists’ scheme, and Ben-Gurion reminded his military commanders that the prime aim of Plan D was the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

The Deir Yassin massacre signalled the beginning of a deliberate programme to depopulate Arab towns and villages – destroying churches and mosques – in order to make room for incoming Holocaust survivors and other Jews. In July 1948 Israeli terrorist troops seized Lydda, shot up the town and drove out the population. They massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque. The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way. Of all the blood-baths they say this was the biggest. Israel’s great hero Moshe Dayan was responsible.

By 1949 the Zionists had seized nearly 80 percent of Palestine, provoking the resistance backlash we still see today. The knock-on effects have created around 6 million Palestinian refugees registered with the UN plus an estimated 1 million others worldwide.

Israel Lobby

Considering Britain’s obligations towards the Holy Land since WW1, would you please let me know what you and your colleagues are now doing to stop this appalling extermination of the Palestinian people? And I do mean action not empty words. And would you please explain why Conservative Friends of Israel, which works to promote and support Israel in Parliament and at every level of the Party and claims 80% of Conservative MPs as signed-up members, are allowed to flourish at Westminster?.

MPs who put themselves under the influence of an aggressive foreign military power are surely in flagrant breach of the principles of public life (aka the Nolan Principles) which are written into MPs’ code of conduct and the ministerial code.

Being a Friend of Israel, of course, means embracing the terror on which the state of Israel was built, approving the dispossession of the innocent and the oppression of the powerless, and applauding the discriminatory laws against non-Jews who resisted being ejected and inconveniently remain in their homeland.

It means aligning oneself with the vile mindset that abducts civilians — including children — and imprisons and tortures them without trial, imposes hundreds of military checkpoints, severely restricts the movement of people and goods, and interferes with Palestinian life at every level.

And it means giving the thumbs-up to Israeli gunboats shooting up Palestinian fishermen in their own territorial waters, the strangulation of the West Bank’s economy, the cruel 19-year blockade on Gaza and the bloodbaths inflicted on the tiny enclave’s packed population. Also the religious war that humiliates the Holy Land’s Muslims and Christians and prevents them visiting their holy places.

I prefer to think that you know all this but must be mindful that the Israel lobby have Conservative Central Office in their pocket.

Stuart Littlewood

8 May 2025

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

The first large-scale environmental impact assessment of Rio Tinto’s abandoned Panguna mine in Papua New Guinea has found local communities face life-threatening risks from its legacy.

The independent study was initiated after frustrated landowners in PNG’s Autonomous Region of Bougainville took their longstanding grievances against Rio Tinto to the Australian government in 2020.

British-Australian Rio Tinto has accepted the findings of the report released on Friday but has not responded to calls by landowners and affected communities to fund the clean-up.

• READ MORE: Other Panguna mine reports

Rio Tinto abandoned one of the world’s largest gold and copper mines in 1989 when a long-running dispute with landowners over the inequitable distribution of the royalties turned into an armed conflict.

The Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment report found the mine infrastructure, pit and levee banks pose “very high risks,” while landslides and exposure to mine and industrial chemicals present “medium to high” risks to local communities.

Flooding in downstream from Panguna — caused by a billion tons of mine tailings dumped into the Jaba-Kawerong river system — was reported as posing “very high” actual and potential human rights risks.

“The most serious concern is the potential impact to the right to life from unstable structures, and landform collapses and flooding hazards,” the report concluded, with the access to healthy environment, water, food and housing also impacted.

More than 25,000 people are estimated to live in the affected area, on the island of 300,000 in PNG’s east on the border with Solomon Islands.

“Rio Tinto must take responsibility for its legacy and fund the long-term solutions we need so that we can live on our land in safety again,” Theonila Roka Matbob, lead complainant and Bougainville parliamentarian, said in a statement.

“We never chose this mine, but we live with its consequences every day, trying to find ways to survive in the wasteland that has been left behind.”

“What the communities are demanding to know now is what the next step is. A commitment to remediation is where the data is pointing us to, and that’s what the people are waiting for.”

In August, Rio Tinto and its former subsidiary and mine operator Bougainville Copper Limited along with the Autonomous Bougainville Government signed an MoU to mitigate the risks of the ageing infrastructure in the former Panguna mine area.

Last month the three parties struck an agreement to form a “roundtable.”

Rio Tinto in a statement after the report’s release said the roundtable “plans to address the findings and develop a remedy mechanism consistent with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.”

“While we continue to review the report, we recognize the gravity of the impacts identified and accept the findings,” chief executive of Rio Tinto’s Australia operations Kellie Parker said.

Rio Tinto divested its majority stake in the mine to the PNG and ABG governments in 2016, and reportedly wrote to the ABG saying it bore no responsibility.

Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama in welcoming the report thanked Rio Tinto “for opening up to this process and giving it genuine attention and input.”

In a statement he said it was a “significant milestone” that would help with the “move away from the damage and turmoil of the past and strengthen our pathway towards a stronger future.”

Bougainville voted for independence from PNG in 2019, with 97.7 per cent favoring nationhood.

Exploitation of Panguna’s estimated U.S.$60b in ore reserves has been touted as a major future source of income to fund independence. The referendum result has yet to be ratified by PNG’s parliament.

The first report of the Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment identified what needs to be addressed or mitigated and what warrants further investigation.

The second phase of the process will conduct more intensive studies, with a second report to make recommendations on how the “complex” impacts should be remedied.

A 10-year civil war left up to 15,000 dead and 70,000 displaced across Bougainville as PNG forces –supplied with Australian weapons and helicopters – battled the poorly armed Bougainville Revolutionary Army.

Panguna remained a “no-go zone” despite the Bougainville Peace Agreement in 2001, and access has still been restricted in the decades since by a road block of former BRA fighters.

A complaint filed by the Australian-based Human Rights Law Centre on behalf of affected communities with the Australian government initiated the non-binding, international mechanism to report on “responsible business conduct.”

They alleged that Rio Tinto was responsible for “significant breaches of the OECD guidelines relating to the serious, ongoing environmental and human rights violations arising from the operation of its former Panguna mine.”

“This landmark report validates what communities in Bougainville have been saying for decades – the Panguna mine has left them living with an ongoing environmental and human rights disaster,” HRLC legal director Keren Adams said in a statement.

“There are strong expectations in Bougainville that Rio Tinto will now take swift action to help address the impacts and dangers communities are living with.”

The two-year, on-site independent scientific investigation by Australian engineering services company Tetra Tech Coffey made 24 recommendations on impacts to address and what needs further investigation.

Comprehensive field studies included soil, water and food testing, hydrology and geo-morphology analysis, and hundreds of community surveys and interviews.

Outstanding demands from the community include that Rio Tinto publicly commit to addressing the impacts, provide a timetable, contribute to a fund for immediate and long-term remediation and rehabilitation and undertake a formal reconciliation as per Bougainville custom.

A class action lawsuit brought by 5000 Bougainvilleans against Rio Tinto and subsidiary Bougainville Copper Limited for billions in compensation earlier this year is unrelated to the impact assessment reports. Rio Tinto has said it will strongly defend its position.

Republished from BenarNews with permission.

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

“The human rights violations taking place in Gaza have long been at catastrophic levels. Despite knowing this, the UK still hasn’t suspended all transfers of arms to Israel. Stopping some arms isn’t enough, there should be no loopholes and no UK arms to Israel

“The International Court of Justice has warned of a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians by the Israeli authorities. Continuing to allow some arms transfers is not in line with international legal standards and demonstrates a dire need for accountability in arms transfers.”

Our newly-elected MP John Cooper, a Conservative, replied with the sort of pro-Israel froth we’ve heard many times before from his party. Here are some of his remarks, which presumably represent the ‘party line’, and my own responses….

JC began by saying: “Israel suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas, and Palestinian civilians continue to face a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. My thoughts are with the families of those still held hostage.”

Stuart Littlewood: What Israel suffered on October 7 last year was nothing compared with the terror, illegal occupation and dispossession inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel’s brutal occupation forces for the last 76 years. In the 23 years leading up to October 7, Israelis were slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women; Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem).

You seem worried only for Israeli hostages held by Hamas rather than the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, languishing in Israeli jails on the day before the attack. Over 1,200 were imprisoned under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’.

Add the fact that Gaza had been under cruel military blockade for 17 years with Israel regularly “mowing the grass” (you surely know what that means), and October 7 was clearly a retaliation. Or do you think the Palestinians should have taken all that lying down?

JC: “I want to see the Gaza conflict brought to a sustainable end as quickly as possible…. Pauses can also help to create the conditions necessary to bring about a permanent and sustainable end to hostilities.”

SL: How would pauses bring about a permanent end to hostilities? Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources. Wouldn’t that be a more sensible way forward?

JC: “In the longer term, I continue to support a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.”

SL: The Israeli regime has said repeatedly that it will not permit or accept a Palestinian state.

The only credible pathway was mapped by international law decades ago but never followed because it doesn’t suit Western powers’ ambitions in the region. They prefer lopsided negotiations through dishonest brokers like the US (and unfortunately the UK). This ensures the problem drags on indefinitely while Israel continues annexing Palestinian land and creating irreversible ‘facts on the ground’.

There can be no peace without law and justice. Failure to understand that simple truth has brought us all to the present horrific crisis.

JC: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law. Indeed, it is important that international humanitarian law be respected and civilians protected….”

SL: Indeed it is. But Israel has no claim to self-defence against a threat from the territory it belligerently occupies. That has been made perfectly clear by the UN and many other authorities. It’s the Palestinians who have a cast-iron right to self-defence, using “armed struggle” if necessary, against Israel’s illegal military occupation and murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246). As China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.

It does no good to keep saying that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has advertised its evil intent very clearly for a very long time. As is well documented, it was a criminal enterprise from the start.

JC: “The UK’s position, which I support, is clear and longstanding. There should be a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, with Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a fair and realistic settlement for refugees. The UK has consistently called – bilaterally and via the UN – for an immediate end to all actions that undermine the viability of the two-state solution.”

Longstanding is the word. So longstanding that you might ask why it hasn’t happened yet. It’s because Britain has played a leading part in blocking the two-state idea. We promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 in return for Arab help in defeating the Turks but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continue to sidestep the issue. The UK position is anything but clear.

What would this “negotiated” two-state solution look like? Our Government can’t or won’t describe it. Why must Israel be “safe and secure” and Palestine only “viable”? One’s security is no more important than the other’s. The UK still stands in the way of Palestinian statehood while 140+ other nations have recognised it. At the same time the UK has done nothing to prevent Israel overstepping its 1947 UN Partition boundaries and seizing swathes of Palestinian land and key resources at gunpoint. And the UKGov (of both flavours) has been shamefully supportive of Israel’s year-long genocide and war of extermination which has sickened all decent-minded people.

In any case, why should Palestinians have to negotiate their freedom in their own homeland? Notice how keywords like law and justice are always missing in the UK’s position statements.

JC: “The Government’s decision to announce an arms embargo on the day that Israel was burying murdered hostages, and within weeks of British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian attack, was difficult to swallow…. We must be clear that there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”

SL: Yes indeed, there is no moral equivalence. Hamas were democratically elected under the scrutiny of international observers at the last election permitted in Palestine (2006). Israel is no Western-style democracy with Western values — it is an unpleasant ethnocracy which recently enacted discriminatory nation state laws to prove it.

‘Think Hamas, think terror’ is what UKGov and mainstream media teach us. Branding Hamas a terrorist organisation was a propaganda masterstroke. It has allowed Zionists and other pro-Israel elements within our Government to avoid having to explain Israel’s far greater terror record, and instead focus hatred on Hamas (and now Hezbollah).

But the inescapable fact is, the Israelis wrote the manual on terrorism long before Hamas (and Hezbollah) came into being. Read their Dalet Plan, or ‘Plan D’. This was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent and bloody takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up in early 1948 by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency. Plan D anticipated the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood, and plotted the ethnic cleansing that was to follow. They have pursued it relentlessly ever since.

You mention British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian counter-attack. Why weren’t they defending Palestinian women and children from Israeli genocide?

JC: “For many years, the UK has been very clear that Settlements are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability and delivery of a two-state solution. Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”

SL: Agreed. But it’s pointless merely “raising” these issues with the Israeli Government. Settlements have been key to Israel’s expansionist ambitions since 1967. Pointless also sanctioning settler organisations. Many of the settlers are racist thugs on a terror mission. You need to sanction the criminals who send them into Palestinian territory, pay them and arm them – and that’s the Israeli Government itself.

Respected legal opinion (Ralph Wilde) puts it this way:

“There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.

“Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force.…”

JC also mentioned: “the planned new Free Trade Agreement with Israel”.

SL: This is now is being championed by Jonathan Reynolds, the new Business Secretary. For him and the Starmer Government it’s business as usual with the apartheid regime while it conducts its non-stop genocide against the women and children of the Holy Land. No surprise there when you realise that Reynolds is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel which, it seems to me, puts him in breach of the Government’s Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life which (see ‘Integrity’) state: “Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work….. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.” Like all the other Israel stooges embedded in Westminster he doesn’t.

Question 1 – Why is the UK so head-over-heels in love with a depraved, criminal regime like Israel?

It is certainly not because we the British people share the Israelis’ moral values (although some in leadership positions at Westminster apparently do). The answer is probably to be found in America’s QME doctrine. In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). This ensures the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours. It is central to US Middle East policy and guaranteed to keep the region at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.

The UK seems to have superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for security reasons and in the hope of profiting from the misery and unrest, though it would never admit this. But the world, and especially the Middle East, is changing. Our track record out there is abysmal and we’re increasingly disliked.

Question 2 – Why prolong the UK’s century of betrayal by still not recognising Palestinian statehood?

Freedom and self-determination are a basic right which doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as the US-UK-Israel axis, agreeing to it. The UK thinks otherwise when we should be among the vast majority of nations that have already recognised Palestinian statehood. When 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, it had the legal effect of establishing statehood. But the UK and other Western influencers who are dragging their feet need to finally accept it before statehood become effective on the world stage.

UKGov recognised Israeli statehood quickly enough in 1949 after Zionist gangs carried out countless atrocities including massacres at the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin, Lydda and elsewhere, trashed 500 Palestinian towns and villages, drove 700,000 civilians out of their national homeland, and made clear Israel’s ambition to dominate the entire Holy Land “from the river to the sea”.

It’s time our political leaders understood that the British public don’t want to be tainted by defending and protecting a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wanton destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and has been contemptuous of human rights and norms of decency for as long as most of us can remember.

Kind regards, etc.

Stuart Littlewood

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

We continue our July 5 special broadcast by revisiting our recent conversation with Christian Cooper, author of Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World and host of the Emmy Award-winning show Extraordinary Birder. We spoke with Cooper after New York City’s chapter of the Audubon Society officially changed its name to the New York City Bird Alliance as part of an effort to distance itself from its former namesake John James Audubon, the so-called founding father of American birding. The 19th century naturalist enslaved at least nine people and espoused racist views. Christian Cooper is a Black birder and a longtime board member of the newly minted New York City Bird Alliance. In 2020, he made headlines after a white woman in Central Park called 911 and falsely claimed Cooper was threatening her life. Cooper also shares stories of his life and career, including his longtime LGBTQ activism and how his father’s work as a science educator inspired his lifetime passion for birdwatching.

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

We continue our conversation with Christian Cooper, author of Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World and host of the Emmy Award-winning show Extraordinary Birder. Cooper shares stories of his life and career, including his longtime LGBTQ activism and how his father’s work as a science educator inspired his lifetime passion for birdwatching. “Birding forces you outside of yourself [and] whatever your woes are,” says Cooper. “It makes you feel connected to the whole planet. It engages your senses, your intellect. It is incredibly healing. … For people whose history is about being enslaved, for us to be able to relate to this bird, it’s liberating.”

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

New York City’s chapter of the Audubon Society has officially changed its name to the New York City Bird Alliance as part of an effort to distance itself from its former namesake John James Audubon, the so-called founding father of American birding. The 19th century naturalist enslaved at least nine people and espoused racist views. Christian Cooper is a Black birder and a longtime board member of the newly minted New York City Bird Alliance. In 2020, he made headlines after a white woman in Central Park called 911 and falsely claimed Cooper was threatening her life. He joins Democracy Now! to discuss Audubon’s legacy, which “put North American birds on the map” yet “was funded by the trafficking [of] other human beings,” and the significance of the birdwatching community’s efforts to detach Audubon’s association with the pastime. “We’re trying to diversify birding, which traditionally has been a very, very white activity,” says Cooper, who also discusses the 2020 park incident, which occurred on the same day that George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis.

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

Janine Jackson interviewed Media Matters’ Evlondo Cooper about climate coverage for the March 22, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

Janine Jackson: Climate disruption is, of course, one of the most disastrous phenomena of today’s life, affecting every corner of the globe. It’s also one of the most addressable. We know what causes it, we know what meaningful intervention would entail. So it’s a human-made tragedy unfolding in real time before our eyes.

To understate wildly, we need to be talking about it, learning about it, hearing about it urgently, which is why the results of our next guest’s research are so alarming. I’ll just spoil it: Broadcast news coverage of the climate crisis is going down.

Evlondo Cooper is a senior writer with the Climate and Energy Program at Media Matters for America. He joins us now by phone from Washington state. Welcome to CounterSpin, Evlondo Cooper.

Evlondo Cooper: Thank you for having me. I’m excited about our conversation today.

JJ: We’re talking about the latest of Media Matters’ annual studies of climate crisis coverage. First of all, just tell us briefly what media you are looking at in these studies.

EC: So we’re looking at corporate broadcast network coverage. That’s ABC, CBS and NBC. And for the Sunday morning shows, we also include Fox Broadcasting—Fox News Sunday.

JJ: All right. And then, for context, this decline in coverage that you found in the most recent study, that’s down from very little to even less.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

EC: Yeah, so a little context: 2021 and 2022 were both record years for climate coverage, and that coverage was a little bit more than 1%. This year, we saw a 25% decrease from 2022, which brought coverage to a little bit less than 1%. We want to encourage more coverage, but even in the years where they were doing phenomenal, it was only about 1% of total coverage. And so this retrenchment by approximately 25% in 2023 is not a welcome sign, especially in a year where we saw record catastrophic extreme weather events, and scientists are predicting that 2024 might be even worse than ’23.

JJ: Let’s break out some of the things that you found. We’re talking about such small numbers—when you say 1%, that’s 1% of all of the broadcast coverage; of their stories, 1% were devoted to the climate crisis. But we’ve seen, there’s little things within it. For example, we are hearing more from actual climate scientists?

EC: That was a very encouraging sign, where this year we saw 41 climate scientists appeared, which was 10% of the featured guests in 2023, and that’s up from 4% in 2022. So in terms of quality of coverage, I think we’re seeing improvements. We’re seeing a lot of the work being done by dedicated climate correspondents, and meteorologists who are including climate coverage as part of their weather reports and their own correspondents’ segments, a bigger part of their reporting.

So there are some encouraging signs. I think what concerns us is that these improvements, while important and necessary and appreciated, are not keeping up with the escalating scale of climate change.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

JJ: It’s just not appropriate to the seriousness of the topic. And then another thing is, you could say the dominance of white men in the conversation, which I know is another finding, that’s just kind of par for the elite media course; when folks are talked to, they are overwhelmingly white men. But it might bear some relation to what you’re seeing as an underrepresentation of climate-impacted populations, looking at folks at the sharp end of climate disruption. That’s something you also consider.

EC: Yeah, we look at coverage of, broadly, climate justice. I think a lot of people believe it’s representation for representation’s sake, but I think when people most impacted by climate change—and we’re talking about communities of color, we’re talking about low-income communities, we’re talking about low-wealth rural communities—when these folks are left out of the conversation, you’re missing important context about how climate change is impacting them, in many cases, first and worse. And you’re missing important context about the solutions that these communities are trying to employ to deal with it. And I think you’re missing an opportunity to humanize and broaden support for climate solutions at the public policy level.

So these aren’t communities where these random acts of God are occurring; these are policy decisions, or indecisions, that have created an environment where these communities are being most harmed, but least talked about, and they’re receiving the least redress to their challenges. And so those voices are necessary to tell those stories to a broad audience on the corporate broadcast networks.

JJ: Yes, absolutely.

CBS (7/17/23)

Another finding that I thought was very interesting was that extreme weather seemed to be the biggest driver of climate coverage, and that, to me, suggests that the way corporate broadcast media are coming at climate disruption is reactive: “Look at what happened.”

EC: Totally.

JJ:  And even when they say, “Look at what’s happening,” and you know what, folks pretty much agree that this is due to climate disruption, these houses sliding into the river, it’s still not saying, “While you look at this disaster, know that this is preventable, and here is who is keeping us from acting on it and why.”

EC: Yeah, that is so insightful, because that’s a core critique of even the best coverage we see, that there is no accountability for the fossil fuel industry and other industries that are driving the crisis. And then there’s no real—solutions are mentioned in about 20% of climate segments this year. But the solutions are siloed, like there are solution “segments.”

But to your point, when we’re talking about extreme weather, when you have the most eyeballs hearing about climate change, to me, it would be very impactful to connect what’s happening in that moment—these wildfires, these droughts, these heat waves, these hurricanes and storms and flooding—to connect that to a key driver, fossil fuel industry, and talk about some potential solutions to mitigate these impacts while people are actually paying the most attention.

CNN (3/3/23)

JJ: And then take it to your next story about Congress, or your next story about funding, and connect those dots.

EC: Exactly. I mean, climate is too often siloed. So you could see a really great segment, for instance, on the Willow Project, at the top of the hour—and this is on cable, but the example remains—and then later in the hour, you saw a story about an extreme weather event. But those things aren’t connected, they’re siloed.

And so a key to improving coverage in an immediate way would be to understand that the climate crisis is the background for a range of issues, socioeconomic, political. Begin incorporating climate coverage in a much broader swath of stories that, whether you know it or not, indirectly or directly, are being impacted by global warming.

JJ: It’s almost as though corporate media have decided that another horrible disaster due to climate change, while it’s a story, it’s basically now like a dog-bites-man story. And if they aren’t going to explore these other angles, well, then there really isn’t anything to report until the next drought or the next mudslide. And that’s just a world away from what appropriate, fearless, future-believing journalism would be doing right now.

Evlondo Cooper: “It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action.”

EC: It’s out of step, right? Pull up the poll showing bipartisan support for government climate action, because, whether people know it or not, as far as the science, —and there’s some deniers out there, but anecdotally, people know something is happening, something is changing in their lives. We’re seeing record-breaking things that no one’s ever experienced, and they want the government to do something about it.

And so it’s important to cover extreme weather and to cover these catastrophes. And I know there’s a range of thought out there that says if you’re just focusing on devastating impacts, it could dampen public action. But to me, to your point, report on it and connect it to solutions, empower people to call their congressperson, their representative, their senator, to vote in ways that have local impacts to deal with the local climate impacts.

It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action in their own lives, and to galvanize public support.

And the public wants it. The public is asking for this. So I think just being responsive to what these polls are showing would be a way to immediately improve the way that they cover climate change right now.

JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Evlondo Cooper of Media Matters for America. You can find this work and much else at MediaMatters.org. Evlondo Cooper, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

EC: Thank you for having me.

The post ‘In Even the Best Coverage There Is No Accountability for the Fossil Fuel Industry’<br></em><span class='not-on-index' style='color:#000000; font-size: 23px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 25px; font-family: 'Open Sans','sans-serif'; padding-bottom: -10px;'>CounterSpin interview with Evlondo Cooper on climate coverage appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Janine Jackson interviewed Media Matters’ Evlondo Cooper about climate coverage for the March 22, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

Janine Jackson: Climate disruption is, of course, one of the most disastrous phenomena of today’s life, affecting every corner of the globe. It’s also one of the most addressable. We know what causes it, we know what meaningful intervention would entail. So it’s a human-made tragedy unfolding in real time before our eyes.

To understate wildly, we need to be talking about it, learning about it, hearing about it urgently, which is why the results of our next guest’s research are so alarming. I’ll just spoil it: Broadcast news coverage of the climate crisis is going down.

Evlondo Cooper is a senior writer with the Climate and Energy Program at Media Matters for America. He joins us now by phone from Washington state. Welcome to CounterSpin, Evlondo Cooper.

Evlondo Cooper: Thank you for having me. I’m excited about our conversation today.

JJ: We’re talking about the latest of Media Matters’ annual studies of climate crisis coverage. First of all, just tell us briefly what media you are looking at in these studies.

EC: So we’re looking at corporate broadcast network coverage. That’s ABC, CBS and NBC. And for the Sunday morning shows, we also include Fox Broadcasting—Fox News Sunday.

JJ: All right. And then, for context, this decline in coverage that you found in the most recent study, that’s down from very little to even less.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

EC: Yeah, so a little context: 2021 and 2022 were both record years for climate coverage, and that coverage was a little bit more than 1%. This year, we saw a 25% decrease from 2022, which brought coverage to a little bit less than 1%. We want to encourage more coverage, but even in the years where they were doing phenomenal, it was only about 1% of total coverage. And so this retrenchment by approximately 25% in 2023 is not a welcome sign, especially in a year where we saw record catastrophic extreme weather events, and scientists are predicting that 2024 might be even worse than ’23.

JJ: Let’s break out some of the things that you found. We’re talking about such small numbers—when you say 1%, that’s 1% of all of the broadcast coverage; of their stories, 1% were devoted to the climate crisis. But we’ve seen, there’s little things within it. For example, we are hearing more from actual climate scientists?

EC: That was a very encouraging sign, where this year we saw 41 climate scientists appeared, which was 10% of the featured guests in 2023, and that’s up from 4% in 2022. So in terms of quality of coverage, I think we’re seeing improvements. We’re seeing a lot of the work being done by dedicated climate correspondents, and meteorologists who are including climate coverage as part of their weather reports and their own correspondents’ segments, a bigger part of their reporting.

So there are some encouraging signs. I think what concerns us is that these improvements, while important and necessary and appreciated, are not keeping up with the escalating scale of climate change.

Media Matters (3/14/24)

JJ: It’s just not appropriate to the seriousness of the topic. And then another thing is, you could say the dominance of white men in the conversation, which I know is another finding, that’s just kind of par for the elite media course; when folks are talked to, they are overwhelmingly white men. But it might bear some relation to what you’re seeing as an underrepresentation of climate-impacted populations, looking at folks at the sharp end of climate disruption. That’s something you also consider.

EC: Yeah, we look at coverage of, broadly, climate justice. I think a lot of people believe it’s representation for representation’s sake, but I think when people most impacted by climate change—and we’re talking about communities of color, we’re talking about low-income communities, we’re talking about low-wealth rural communities—when these folks are left out of the conversation, you’re missing important context about how climate change is impacting them, in many cases, first and worse. And you’re missing important context about the solutions that these communities are trying to employ to deal with it. And I think you’re missing an opportunity to humanize and broaden support for climate solutions at the public policy level.

So these aren’t communities where these random acts of God are occurring; these are policy decisions, or indecisions, that have created an environment where these communities are being most harmed, but least talked about, and they’re receiving the least redress to their challenges. And so those voices are necessary to tell those stories to a broad audience on the corporate broadcast networks.

JJ: Yes, absolutely.

CBS (7/17/23)

Another finding that I thought was very interesting was that extreme weather seemed to be the biggest driver of climate coverage, and that, to me, suggests that the way corporate broadcast media are coming at climate disruption is reactive: “Look at what happened.”

EC: Totally.

JJ:  And even when they say, “Look at what’s happening,” and you know what, folks pretty much agree that this is due to climate disruption, these houses sliding into the river, it’s still not saying, “While you look at this disaster, know that this is preventable, and here is who is keeping us from acting on it and why.”

EC: Yeah, that is so insightful, because that’s a core critique of even the best coverage we see, that there is no accountability for the fossil fuel industry and other industries that are driving the crisis. And then there’s no real—solutions are mentioned in about 20% of climate segments this year. But the solutions are siloed, like there are solution “segments.”

But to your point, when we’re talking about extreme weather, when you have the most eyeballs hearing about climate change, to me, it would be very impactful to connect what’s happening in that moment—these wildfires, these droughts, these heat waves, these hurricanes and storms and flooding—to connect that to a key driver, fossil fuel industry, and talk about some potential solutions to mitigate these impacts while people are actually paying the most attention.

CNN (3/3/23)

JJ: And then take it to your next story about Congress, or your next story about funding, and connect those dots.

EC: Exactly. I mean, climate is too often siloed. So you could see a really great segment, for instance, on the Willow Project, at the top of the hour—and this is on cable, but the example remains—and then later in the hour, you saw a story about an extreme weather event. But those things aren’t connected, they’re siloed.

And so a key to improving coverage in an immediate way would be to understand that the climate crisis is the background for a range of issues, socioeconomic, political. Begin incorporating climate coverage in a much broader swath of stories that, whether you know it or not, indirectly or directly, are being impacted by global warming.

JJ: It’s almost as though corporate media have decided that another horrible disaster due to climate change, while it’s a story, it’s basically now like a dog-bites-man story. And if they aren’t going to explore these other angles, well, then there really isn’t anything to report until the next drought or the next mudslide. And that’s just a world away from what appropriate, fearless, future-believing journalism would be doing right now.

Evlondo Cooper: “It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action.”

EC: It’s out of step, right? Pull up the poll showing bipartisan support for government climate action, because, whether people know it or not, as far as the science, —and there’s some deniers out there, but anecdotally, people know something is happening, something is changing in their lives. We’re seeing record-breaking things that no one’s ever experienced, and they want the government to do something about it.

And so it’s important to cover extreme weather and to cover these catastrophes. And I know there’s a range of thought out there that says if you’re just focusing on devastating impacts, it could dampen public action. But to me, to your point, report on it and connect it to solutions, empower people to call their congressperson, their representative, their senator, to vote in ways that have local impacts to deal with the local climate impacts.

It doesn’t have to be about just showing the destruction and carnage. There are ways that you can empower people to take action in their own lives, and to galvanize public support.

And the public wants it. The public is asking for this. So I think just being responsive to what these polls are showing would be a way to immediately improve the way that they cover climate change right now.

JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with Evlondo Cooper of Media Matters for America. You can find this work and much else at MediaMatters.org. Evlondo Cooper, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

EC: Thank you for having me.

The post ‘In Even the Best Coverage There Is No Accountability for the Fossil Fuel Industry’<br></em><span class='not-on-index' style='color:#000000; font-size: 23px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 25px; font-family: 'Open Sans','sans-serif'; padding-bottom: -10px;'>CounterSpin interview with Evlondo Cooper on climate coverage appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

KXAS (3/19/24)

This week on CounterSpin: 2023 was the warmest year on record. The World Meteorological Organization announced records once again broken, “in some cases smashed” (their words), for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea-level rise, Antarctic sea ice and glacier retreat.

Climate disruption is the prime mover of a cascade of interrelated crises. At the same time, we’re told that basic journalism says that when it comes to problems that people need solved, yet somehow aren’t solved, rule No. 1 is “follow the money.” Yet even as elite media talk about the climate crisis they still…can’t… quite…connect images of floods or fires to the triumphant shareholder meetings of the fossil fuel companies.

Narrating the nightmare is not enough. We’ll talk about the latest research on climate coverage with Evlondo Cooper, senior writer at Media Matters.

Also on the show: Part of what FAIR’s been saying since our start in 1986—when it was a fringe idea, that meant you were either alarmist or benighted or both—is that there is an inescapable conflict between media as a business and journalism as a public service. For a while, it was mainly about “fear and favor”—the ways corporate owners and sponsors influence the content of coverage.  It’s more bare-knuckled now: Mass layoffs and takeovers force us to see how what you may think of as your local newspaper is really just an “asset” in a megacorporation’s portfolio, and will be treated that way—with zero evidence that a source of vital news and information is any different from a soap factory.

Rick Goldsmith’s new film is called Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink. We’ll hear from him about the film and the change it hopes to part of.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent coverage of Israel’s flour massacre.

The post Evlondo Cooper on Climate Coverage, Rick Goldsmith on Stripped for Parts appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

– Desmond Tutu

It was just over a year ago that Don Luce, whom I described in The Man Who Exposed the Truth About the Tiger Cagesas a kindred spirit and one of my heroes, passed away. Closer to home, literally and emotionally, longtime friend George Cooper breathed his last on the morning of November 30^th in familiar surroundings at his home in Phnom Penh.

As is often the case with this wretched disease, the lung cancer for which he was successfully treated several years ago returned with a vengeance, spread beyond his lungs, and metastasized to his brain. His decline was swift and merciless. George would have turned 76 next month.

I first met George in January 1999 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, six months after he arrived. He was still an expat newbie, learning Khmer, a language he would eventually master, and becoming familiar with Cambodian culture.

We stayed in touched while I was still living in the US and after I moved to Vietnam 2005. The closer proximity allowed for visits in Hanoi and Phnom Penh. In between the occasional face-to-face contact, our communication consisted mostly of a steady stream of sharing articles, ideas, information, opinions, and insights via email.

What we shared, besides being members of the same generation, more or less (I’m 10 years younger) and the fact that both of us lost our fathers at a young age were an abiding interest in Asia and a commitment to social and economic justice.

After his initial lung cancer diagnosis, I sent George periodic inquiries about his latest lung x-ray, knowing how quickly cancer cells can multiply and spread. I was reassured by his updates that revealed he continued to be cancer-free. Maybe he beat this, I thought to myself.

On October 11, I sent him an essay I wrote about my father, who also died of lung and brain cancer. His reply: “That was moving, to put it mildly, and well-written as usual.” Little did I know that the same disease was methodically destroying his body. We talked about lighter topics such as baseball heroes and cards. Mine was Roberto Clemente and George was still looking for that elusive Babe Ruth card.

On November 7, 2023, I sent George a link via encrypted chat to a recent blog post I had written. His matter-of-fact response shocked me: “Good morning, now in Sunrise (Japan) Hospital to get a first dose of chemo because I have cancer. But I still read most of what you wrote and liked it. Waiting for the doctor to come with the chemo and get this show on the road.” I replied that I had been thinking about him recently.

He informed me that the cancer had spread to his thoracic cavity, which virtually guarantees a low survival rate. “Early stage?,” I asked hopefully. “Stage 4 and ‘very advanced’ is what my doctor said about both of these,” he replied. In other words, the countdown to his mortal departure from this world had begun. A day later, I offered to schedule a video chat but of course he was too sick for that.

The decision to visit George was easy. Three days later, I informed him that we had made all the arrangements and would arrive the evening of the 22^nd. He asked, “Is this a work trip? See you guys when you’re here.” I told him that the main purpose of our trip was to see him and his wife Solita. I could hear his voice when he excitedly exclaimed, “My god. You’re coming here mainly to see me! And Solita.” We briefly spoke the evening before our flight to Phnom Penh. His voice sounded weak, and he seemed disoriented, an obvious effect of brain cancer.

The Bittersweet Visit

The original plan was to visit George at home. The rapid spread of cancer changed that. We arrived at the Sunrise Japan Hospital where we thought he was only to discover that he had been moved to the Orange Cancer Clinic across town.  On the drive over I wondered if I could maintain my composure. I did because the focus was on him not on the profound sadness and sense of impending loss I was feeling.

We arrived and talked with Solita and some friends in the lobby. I was gratified and deeply touched by how much support they were receiving from friends and colleagues in Cambodia and abroad. George’s illness that brought us all together if only for a fleeting moment.

We asked George if he knew what holiday it was in the US. He paused, looked up, and said “Thanksgiving!” We were thankful to be able to see him for what I knew would be the last time. One comment he made that I’ll always remember was a request that he did not want to return to the US, a country he left nearly over two and a half decades ago. In the fog of cancer, he was probably thinking that he might have to go there for treatment or even burial. Everyone reassured him he would remain in Cambodia.

In the precious time that we had, I had the chance to pay George a simple yet supreme compliment, namely, that he’s a good man. (He signaled a back atcha.) The world desperately needs more people like him. We held his hand, told him not to worry about anything, and reminded him of all the love and support, including financial, that was flowing to him from around the world.

George’s sister, Kathy Cooper Kolgut in Alexandria, Virginia, set up a GoFundMe account that raised nearly $28,000, money that went to his wife and soon-to-be widow Solita, in addition to cash-filled envelopes that were handed to her to cover medical, funeral, and other expenses. (George asked for his phone so he could see the GoFundMe page and who was contributing.)

In her message, Kathy described her older brother as “a devoted husband, a cherished friend, and an inspiring mentor, has left an indelible mark on countless lives. His unwavering support and willingness to go above and beyond for others have made him a cornerstone in our lives.”

As it turned out, the chemotherapy treatment that she spoke of in another part of the message was short-lived when faced with the painful reality that events had overtaken perceptions and wishful thinking.

George’s funeral and cremation, according to Cambodian tradition, were on Saturday, December 2^nd, an unseasonably cool day in tropical Phnom Penh. I believe that George, the one-time Catholic school boy from Virginia, was looking down on his Buddhist funeral with a smile – at peace.

His Life

A 1970 cum laude graduate of College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts with a BA degree in political science. George moved to Hawaii the same year and later completed a law degree at the University of Hawaii at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law in 1978. He remained there until 1996 when he pulled up stakes, traveling extensively throughout Asia before deciding to settle in Cambodia in 1998 to begin the next chapter of his life.

On George’s LinkedIn profile he describes himself as “an American lawyer based in Cambodia, and working mainly in Cambodia since 1998 on behalf of the poor. I’ve concentrated on property issues but have also represented families of murder victims, have handled international adoptions that have humanitarian aspects, and have worked on a number of other issues. I’ve worked for a legal aid organization, a German government overseas technical assistance agency, the World Bank, NGOs, and I’ve worked on cases as an individual legal advisor.”

A Hawaiian alternative media publication Honolulu Civil Beat published an obituary ‘Land And Power’ Author Geoorge Cooper Dead At 75 that referred to him as a co-author of “one of the most influential books in modern Hawaii history. The book Land and Power in Hawaii: The Democratic Years, published in 1985, “took personal financial interests into account in their actions as public officials,” described by one publisher as “a pervasive way of conducting private and public affairs.” George’s experience with this pivotal issue would serve him well in Cambodia.

The December 30, 1985 edition of The New York Times published a review that described of Land and Power as “a privately printed book crammed full of the driest of data from real estate records and legislative dockets” that became “has become a local best seller here in only two months. The book… draws on public records in asserting that many members of Hawaii’s ruling Democratic Party faction, now in office more than 30 years, profited as developers, lawyers, contractors, investors and sometimes as influence peddlers in the development that changed the face of the islands. The Democrats took power in 1954, after half a century of control by Republican landowners, promising to change a system in which most of the land was owned by a few. Instead, according to the book, individual Democratic officials cut themselves in on real estate profiteering.”

In a 2022 essay for Civil Beat, George wrote, “My aim — which I never thought would be realized — was to raise by just one step up only the general conversation in Hawaii about land and power, to acknowledge there was a connection. It seems to have done that: To my amazement the term ‘land and power’ passed into the general vocabulary of Hawaii as a kind of condition that has been forever true in Hawaii, and in the years our book covered, who owned the land and held the power changed but the basic condition had not, and it seems it never will.”

In a 2017, interview for the Kokua Hawaii Oral History Project conducted via email by Gary T. Kubota, George reflected on his involvement with the island activist group Kokua Hawaii.

GK: What surprised you once you met Kokua Hawaii members? Could you describe the style of leadership, your encounters with them, and where they took you? How did they help you?

GC: I was surprised by all that I learned about Hawaii and its history from them. I found them to be strong and self-confident but not arrogant. I thought they were very principled, and well-organized. I was at first afraid they wouldn’t like me because I’m white, but that wasn’t the case at all. I liked all of this very much. They made me feel that I could contribute to the kind of work they were doing. It was like they opened the door for me to that work. I’m still doing that work today.

George referred to the Kalama Valley struggle as “a great turning point” that “put me on a course in life that led to working in land struggles in Kauai and Oahu, to co-writing Land and Power in Hawaii, and to today working in land struggles in Cambodia.”

The Hawaiian word “kokua” means “help” in the sense of helping others without expecting anything in return, a form of selflessness that is the essence of social interdependence in Hawaiian culture. This is perhaps the finest description of George Cooper’s raison d’être in life.

His Legacy

The outpouring of grief upon George’s passing reflects the impact he had on people in Cambodia, the US, and many other countries. Inclusive Development International (IDI), a US-based NGO that partners “with grassroots organizations and local communities around the world to defend their land, natural resources and human rights against threats from harmful investment projects,” published an article In Memoriam: George William Cooper on the day he died. It traced George’s linear path from working with “Indigenous communities resisting forced eviction for resort developments in the Kalama Valley of Oahu” in Hawaii to his work as a senior attorney for IDI on land rights and forced eviction cases. IDI noted that “his advice and support on the cases we’ve worked on in Cambodia helped stop forced evictions and secure the land tenure of hundreds of families.”

The article ended this with heartfelt reflection that resonates with anyone who knew him: “George touched so many people throughout his life with his endless kindness and generosity. He was a man of immense integrity, which endeared him to everyone he worked with inside and outside of government and made him so effective at getting results for the people he helped.”

Chanrithy Him, a child survivor of the Khmer Rouge, US refugee, and author of the award-winning memoir When Broken Glass Floats – Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge, echoed this sentiment when she spoke of “the deep gratitude I had toward him for devoting his time and energy that he spent to rebuild Cambodia. He was selfless and I sensed he took upon himself to help anyone who needed assistance,” referring to him as “a good man, a man with integrity and good character who would make time for those were in need even he was super busy. He was a generous and honest lawyer.”

When Chanrithy was looking for leads for the script of a movie version of her book with a major Hollywood studio, her lawyer tried to cheat her. “Most lawyers are assholes,” George told her wryly.

Ha Thi Nguyen, director of assessment and evaluation of STEM Programs at Rice University, knew George for two and half decades. She first met him in 1998 when she was a freshman studying English in Hanoi and George visited Vietnam as a tourist. He was volunteering at an English center in Hanoi at the time, and her roommate was a student in his class. As she recalls, she met him a few weeks later with some friends at a bia hơi (draft beer) restaurant in the city’s Old Quarter.

After losing contact for a year, George returned in late 1999 and inquired about Ha at her university. It was a time in Vietnam when very few people had Internet access and many couldn’t afford to own a phone, making communication difficult for most. Eventually, he found a way to contact Ha again. They remained in touch until his passing, including the night before he died.

Ha remembers George as “one of the very few Americans that I got to know since a student. Knowing that I am a first generation college student, he inspired me to go study in America and was the one who introduced me to the East-West Center and the University of Hawaii. That’s where I found the scholarship for my master’s degree in public administration. He helped edit my scholarship essays, and taught me how to write proper English. I traveled with him a few times on bicycles, riding through rural areas of Hanoi and exploring the countryside. He is a very thoughtful, careful, caring, and loving person and through the interaction with him, I learned so much to become a professional and a good person. He is one of the most generous people I know.”

Ha describes his legacy as one of “humility, generosity, kindness, caring for people, and working for a more a just and better world. Every friend I know who knows George loves him.” After he died, she told her kids how sad she was at losing a great friend. Their response was she should continue living the way George did. “That’s his legacy,” she added.

Mark Bo, a friend and former colleague, first met George in 2008 when he was working for a land rights organization. He credited his friend with helping him “look at things differently. He was acutely aware of the injustices that surround us and the violations of people’s rights that go on every day. Whereas I was prone to becoming angry and eventually hopeless, George was analytical and rational. George was no less outraged, but he channeled his energy into focusing on what he could actually do help people. I think I learned a lot from how he approached things analytically and pragmatically, and channeled all his energies into finding solutions.” This is the same George Cooper I knew.

Mark praised George’s impact on the lives of so many, noting that, “If George could help you in any way he would. He built friendships with many people in Cambodia. When he saw good in people, he would provide support, help them with job applications, proof read thesis proposals, give legal advice, or whatever he could, and never asked for anything in return.

When George fell ill, I spent a lot of time with him and his wife Solita at the hospital. I knew that over the years he had helped many people, but during the relatively short period after he was taken into hospital, I met an endless stream of people I had never met before, and every one had a different story about how George had helped them. As hard as it was to see a good friend’s life coming to an end, I was moved to see how many people he had touched during his life, and to witness how much gratitude and love there was for him. I think these small stories are his real legacy.”

Phan Sin, a Cambodian attorney and legal consultant who had known George since 2005, referred to him as a “role model for many, including me,” and described him as “very open, kind, and helpful…he was just there for us.” He highlighted George’s work in helping rural and low-income households and indigenous peoples.

In one of many noteworthy examples of service and selflessness, George crossed figurative paths with Christopher Howes and his interpreter Houen Hourth who were kidnapped and shot to death by Khmer Rouge guerillas in March 1996. (They were 36 and 19-years-old, respectively.) Howes was working for the global landmine clearance charity The Mines Advisory Group (MAG) as a member of a team clearing landmines near the Angkor Wat complex near Siem Reap. The tattered remnants of the Khmer Rouge were defeated once and for all two years later.

While his name does not appear in this 2008 Guardian article about the trial and verdicts, George was instrumental in bringing the four murderers to justice. Longtime Cambodia observer Andy Brouwer, who was present when the guilty verdicts were announced, noted on his blog that “Another key figure in the investigation into what happened is George Cooper. In 2002, George Cooper, an American legal aid lawyer based in Cambodia, took up the case in his spare time and painstakingly combed through the evidence for six years until he had enough to put the suspects on trial. His work, combined with the evidence from Dixon (Scotland Yard superintendent) and his Cambodian colleagues, prompted by the persistent calls from the Howes family, the British Embassy here in Cambodia and MAG, all had the desired effect when the suspects were arrested at the back end of last year and earlier this year.”

The Measure of the Man

Like others who knew him, what I remember most about George are his kindness and compassion. I’m reminded of George Saunders commencement address to Syracuse University’s class of 2013 in which he talked about failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

George was a living example of this humane and enlightened approach to life, a testament to his heartfelt commitment to both charity and justice. He had no regrets in this regard.

Fred Rogers, US television host, author, producer, and minister, once spoke about how he was taught to look for helpers in a world characterized by violence, exploitation, instability, and oppression. When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster’, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world. I try to look for those people and I see them everywhere, not just the haters and those who act on their hatred. George was one of the helpers.

When I think of George, Tom Joad in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and his lines about choosing the side of the exploited and oppressed came to mind: “I’ll be all around in the dark. I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.” George was always there for people in need helping them in the spirit of kokua.

One of the comments in response to George’s 2022 essay illustrates George’s far-reaching impact over time. Vicky wrote, “George, each time I canvass for a community cause or show up at a town hall to voice a concern I think about how you inspired me to get involved and to be aware of what’s going on in my backyard. In the early 1970s, you came knocking on my door on Niumalu Rd. in Nawiliwili, Kauai to sound the alarm that a developer had plans to rezone the area known as the Alekoko Menehune Fish Pond. The master plan was to turn the area into a development that would have gentrified the neighborhood with a marina and condominiums. We went to the county building and researched how the rezoning would environmentally impact the area and displace many of the residents who had lived there for generations. You called on Patsy Mink to speak to everyone with reassurance that the development would not take place. Years later, I worked at a bookstore on Maui when Land and Power was published. We could not keep enough copies in the store. Thank you for your wisdom and for educating the masses.”

Like my hero Don Luce, whom I knew from a distance, and others who gave so much of themselves to their fellow human beings and to make the world a better place, George is an up-close-and-personal hero whose life exemplifies the Buddha’s Fifth Remembrance:

My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.

Paraphrasing the Vietnamese Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh, George’s life is his message. He always chose the side of the oppressed, the poor, the downtrodden, and did what he could to make their lives better be it with time, money, and/or expertise.

George’s life and work conjure up a popular meme that draws on multiple sources: Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

Let us follow in George’s humble footsteps and continue his work whoever and wherever we are. Let us reflect on “What would George do? in every relevant situation. Like him, let us be the Tom Joads and helpers in a troubled world. It is our only hope as human beings.

The post Godspeed to George William Cooper, Activist and Purveyor of Kindness appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Mark Ashwill.

A pro-forced pregnancy bill passed in North Carolina late Thursday is likely to become law despite the objections of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper thanks largely to a sudden decision by state Rep. Tricia Cotham last month to join the Republican Party after years as a pro-choice Democrat—giving the GOP a veto-proof majority.

The state Senate on Thursday passed Senate Bill 20, which includes a ban on abortion care after 12 weeks of pregnancy along with other restrictions, less than 48 hours after they unveiled the legislation at a press conference on Tuesday. The bill was inserted into a separate piece of legislation instead of being officially introduced in the Legislature, taking Democrats and advocacy groups by surprise and allowing no time for public hearings.

According to The Washington Post, Republicans were deliberately secretive about the crafting of the legislation, which was written in secret meetings in recent weeks where members were forbidden from having their own copies of documents to avoid leaks, in order to prevent advocates from organizing protests at the state Capitol.

Planned Parenthood South Atlantic still managed to spearhead a rally on Wednesday, where state Attorney General Josh Stein warned the bill is a "massive first step" toward a total abortion ban, despite Republican claims that a 12-week ban is more "mainstream" than bans starting at six weeks of gestation or at any stage in pregnancy, which have been passed in 15 states including the majority of states in the Southeast.

\u201cProtestors await today\u2019s session.\u201d

— Shelby Swanson (she/her) (@Shelby Swanson (she/her)) 1683133341

The bill includes "exceptions" for pregnancies that result from rape or incest through 20 weeks, certain fetal abnormalities through 24 weeks, and for life-threatening complications for a pregnant person.

Numerous cases since the right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June have shown that such exceptions put patients through weeks of physical and emotional trauma as doctors and hospitals—fearing litigation under the new laws—refuse to provide treatment until their lives are sufficiently in danger.

S.B. 20 also includes restrictions such a requirement that anyone who obtains an abortion before 12 weeks of pregnancy also see their medical provider 72 hours before the procedure, likely cutting off access to out-of-state people, many of whom have traveled to North Carolina from other parts of the South since Roe was overturned, and to people who don't have paid leave or access to childcare.

If the bill becomes law, said NARAL Pro-Choice America, "abortion access across the Southeast will be further decimated."

Cooper told the Post he plans to veto the bill after a delay of up to 10 days to give North Carolina residents time to "digest this very complicated, burdensome legislation that they haven't had a chance to even see," but the governor will have to convince at least one Republican to break the party's veto-proof majority to stop the bill from becoming law.

Because Cotham (R-112) announced just last month that she was joining the GOP, the party now has the 72 House seats it needs to override a veto in the 120-seat state House.

Politics in the state are shifting to the right "with extraordinary speed," said Daniel Nichanian of Bolts.

\u201cPolitics of North Carolina have shifted with extraordinary speed. Weeks ago, a Dem from a safe blue district who ran as a staunch proponents of abortion rights became a Republican, giving them supermajority.\n\nNow GOP rushing thru a 12 week-abortion ban. https://t.co/WboXU3vQcL\u201d

— Taniel (@Taniel) 1683141343

Cotham announced her decision to change parties three months after co-sponsoring a bill to codify abortion rights in state law, and five months after winning her election following a vehemently pro-choice campaign. She also spoke about her own abortion on the state House floor in 2015 during a debate over abortion restrictions. On Wednesday, she voted with the Republicans in favor of S.B. 20.

"The people of North Carolina did not give Republicans a supermajority of the state House," said the progressive group Carolina Forward. "Only the duplicity and corruption of Tricia Cotham did these things."

\u201cThe people of North Carolina did not give Republicans a supermajority of the state House.\n\nThey certainly did not vote in favor of radical new anti-abortion restrictions, either.\n\nOnly the duplicity and corruption of @triciacotham did these things.\n\nFor shame. #ncpol\u201d

— Carolina Forward (@Carolina Forward) 1683247265

Cooper told the Post he plans to lobby Republicans who have claimed to support abortion rights—including state Rep. Ted Davis (R-19), who did not vote on Wednesday—to tank the GOP's effort to override his veto.

Republicans are "trying to dress this up as a reasonable 12-week ban," the governor told the Post. "It's not."

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