Groups that have declined to join the government-sponsored “harmony accord” signed yesterday by some Muslim and Jewish groups, say that the proposed new council is “misaligned” with its aims.

The signed accord was presented at Government House in Auckland.

About 70 people attended, including representatives of the New Zealand Jewish Council, His Highness the Aga Khan Council for Australia and New Zealand and the Jewish Community Security Group, reports RNZ News.

• READ MORE: ‘Gaza is not a religious issue’: Advocates split on government harmony accord

The initiative originated with government recognition that the consequences of Israel’s actions in Gaza are impacting on Jewish and Muslim communities in Aotearoa, as well as the wider community.

While agreeing with that statement of purpose, other Muslim and Jewish groups have chosen to decline the invitation, said some of the disagreeing groups in a joint statement.

They believe that the council, as formulated, is misaligned with its aims.

“Gaza is not a religious issue, and this has never been a conflict between our faiths,” Dr Abdul Monem, a co-founder of ICONZ said.

‘Horrifying humanitarian consequences’
“In Gaza we see a massive violation of international law with horrifying humanitarian consequences.

“We place Israel’s annihilating campaign against Gaza, the complicity of states and economies at the centre of our understanding — not religion.

“The first action to address the suffering in Gaza and ameliorate its effects here in Aotearoa must be government action. Our government needs to comply with international courts and act on this humanitarian calamity.

“That does not require a new council.”

The impetus for this initiative clearly linked international events with their local impacts, but the document does not mention Gaza among the council’s priorities, said the statement.

“Signatories are not required to acknowledge universal human rights, nor the courts which have ruled so decisively and created obligations for the New Zealand government. Social distress is disconnected from its immediate cause.”

The council was open to parties which did not recognise the role of international humanitarian law in Palestine, nor the full human and political rights of their fellow New Zealanders.

‘Overlooks humanitarian law’
Marilyn Garson, co-founder of Alternative Jewish Voices said: “It has broad implications to overlook our rights and international humanitarian law.

“As currently formulated, the council includes no direct Palestinian representation. That’s not good enough.

“How can there be credible discussion of Aotearoa’s ethnic safety — let alone advocacy for international action — without Palestinians?

“Law, human rights and the dignity of every person’s life are not opinions. They are human entitlements and global agreements to which Aotearoa has bound itself.

“No person in Aotearoa should have to enter a room — especially a council created under government auspices — knowing that their fundamental rights will not be upheld. No one should have to begin by asking for that which is theirs.”

The groups outside this new council said they wished to live in a harmonious society, but for them it was unclear why a new council of Jews and Muslims should represent the path to harmony.

“Advocacy that comes from faith can be a powerful force. We already work with numerous interfaith community initiatives, some formed at government initiative and waiting to really find their purpose,” said Dr Muhammad Sajjad Naqvi, president of ICONZ.

Addressing local threats
“Those existing channels include more of the parties needed to address local threats, including Christian nationalism like that of Destiny Church.

“Perhaps government should resource those rather than starting something new.”

The groups who declined to join the council said they had “warm and enduring relationships” with FIANZ and Dayenu, which would take seats at this council table.

“All of the groups share common goals, but not this path,” the statement said.

ICONZ is a national umbrella organisation for New Zealand Shia Muslims for a unified voice. It was established by Muslims who have been born in New Zealand or born to migrants who chose New Zealand to be their home.

Alternative Jewish Voices is a collective of Aotearoa Jews working for Jewish pluralism and anti-racism. It supports the work of Palestinians who seek liberation grounded in law and our equal human rights.

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

In a major new New York Times exposé on health insurance behemoth UnitedHealth, deputy investigations editor David Enrich reveals how the largest insurer in the country works to intimidate and silence critics of its often predatory and exploitative treatment of patients. While “companies do this kind of stuff all the time,” Enrich says, UnitedHealth’s lawyers “were really going after some fairly obscure stuff, and that suggested to me that this was a campaign of desperation.” Enrich’s investigation found instances of this “very aggressive campaign to shut down criticism and scrutiny” from even before the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. UnitedHealthcare is one of two main subsidiaries, alongside Optum, of UnitedHealth. Enrich discusses the experiences of some of these critics, from doctors on TikTok to newspaper reporters like himself.

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

These days, it doesn’t take much to antagonize MAGA, and James Gunn, the director of the new Superman film, scheduled to be released on July 11,  has set off another outrage cycle.

“I mean, Superman is the story of America,” Gunn said in an interview with the Times of London, “An immigrant that came from other places […] but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

Amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, mass deportation plans, and creation of concentration camps like Alligator Alcatraz, Gunn also noted that his film leans into the character’s well-known backstory as an otherworldly refugee, a plot point that has been explored in Superman comics over the years.

MAGA influencers jumped on Gunn speedier than longtime Superman antagonist Lex Luther, General Zod, and Mister Mxyzptlk.  Fox News host Laura Ingraham dismissed the film entirely, declaring it as “another film we won’t be seeing.”

“He’s creating a moat of woke, enlightened opinion around him. He’s got a woke shield,” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld said as an on-screen graphic blared that the “Superwoke” movie embraced “pro-immigrant themes.”

“I’m going to skip seeing Superman now. Director is an absolute moron to say this publicly the week before release,” conservative radio host and OutKick founder Clay Travis complained.

“I can’t believe that we’ve come down to that,” she complained. “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us. I wonder if it will be successful.” MAGA-boosting Fox News host Jesse Watters, meanwhile, followed up by joking that Superman’s cape is now emblazoned with “MS-13.”

The Daily Dot’s Anna Good reported that “Gunn’s version of Superman focuses on empathy, morality, and alienation. These themes have been embedded in the character since his 1938 debut in the first issue of Action Comics. In his interview, Gunn acknowledged that the movie might be received differently in liberal vs. conservative parts of the country.”

Gunn’s take on aligns with the character’s Jewish roots. Created in the 1930s by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, sons of Jewish immigrants who fled the European pogroms, Superman was born of a need for hope during a time of rising anti-Semitism.

“Yes, it’s about politics,” Gunn told The Times of London. “But on another level it’s about morality. Do you never kill no matter what — which is what Superman believes — or do you have some balance, as Lois believes? It’s really about their relationship and the way different opinions on basic moral beliefs can tear two people apart.”

Gunn pointed out that “I’m telling a story about a guy who is uniquely good, and that feels needed now because there is a meanness that has emerged due to cultural figures being mean online.”

“My reaction to [the backlash] is that it is exactly what the movie is about,” he declared. “We support our people, you know? We love our immigrants. Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants and if you don’t like that, you’re not American. People who say no to immigrants are against the American way.”

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

VietJet Air, Vietnam’s biggest private commercial airline, has asked the mayor of Hanoi to take action against people spreading “false information” about the company online.

And the mayor is doing just that.

In a statement published by the Vietnamese government on Monday, the Mayor Tran Sy Thanh ordered relevant agencies to investigate and handle Facebook accounts responsible for disseminating “false information” about Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the billionaire CEO of VietJet.

The post on the government’s official Facebook account, however, was later edited to remove the reference to VietJet’s high-profile CEO.

This is not the first time the government has gone after people for posting negative information about Thao, reputedly the richest woman in Vietnam.

She became the target of online trolling earlier this year after a parody post mocking her and the airline’s service circulated widely on Vietnamese-language social media.

Two individuals who shared the post were later summoned to a police station, where they were compelled to admit wrongdoing and sign a commitment not to repeat their actions.

(Kham/Reuters)

VietJet Air is the country’s largest low-cost carrier, offering more affordable fares than the national flag carrier, Vietnam Airlines. However, the airline is often subject to criticism over delays and customer dissatisfaction. It’s also been dubbed the “bikini airline,” because of ads featuring models in bikinis to promote resort destinations.

Thao is a well-known business leader in Vietnam. She has been at the forefront of Vietnam’s efforts to persuade the Trump administration to lift tariffs on Vietnamese exports to the U.S., and in April joined the delegation that came to Washington for trade negotiations.

Even before Donald Trump took office for his second term, Thao made headlines with a personal encounter with him.

In January, Thao was seen on the golf course with the then-president-elect during a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Video of the encounter was widely shared on social media in Vietnam, including on government accounts.

In the communist country, it is not unusual for private companies to use the government to pressure critics.

VinFast, the country’s well-known car manufacturer, has also reported to police customers who say negative things about it online.

A lawyer in Hanoi lambasted the mayor’s decision to instruct authorities to go after critics of VietJet.

“Because in his position as mayor, he represents the interests of all people in Hanoi, not the interests of a single business,” the lawyer told Radio Free Asia, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

The lawyer added that the company “should use legal means to challenge those they deem to be spreading defamatory statements instead of asking police and politicians to interfere”.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Truong Son for RFA Vietnamese.

A new report in The New York Times takes a deep dive into Project Esther, a policy blueprint to crush the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States from the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank best known for spearheading Project 2025. Project Esther was formed during the Biden administration and lays out plans for surveilling, silencing and punishing pro-Palestinian activists, including deporting non-U.S. citizens and withholding funds from universities. Many of the Heritage Foundation’s proposals appear to have been taken up by the Trump administration.

“Project Esther aims to rebrand all critics of Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters as providing material support for terrorism,” says investigative reporter Katie Baker. “They’re very explicit that this is what they’re doing. … This is all laid out online, and it has been for months.”

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

Photograph Source: SergioOren – CC BY 4.0

In Serbia—perhaps the last corner of the world where Brussels’ viceroys, now impotent even within the EU itself, are still inexplicably consulted—stabilocracy has imploded. Along with the collapse of the SNS (the ruling Serbian Progressive Party) regime, the entire political ecosystem that reliably upheld it for twelve years has come crashing down. Not merely because presidents Vučić’s personal fiefdom could only ever thrive amid the wreckage of a state and society left behind by the Siamese twins of today’s Progressives.

Since the 2012 reshuffling within Serbia’s comprador caste, it is they who have assumed the mantle of an anti-popular opposition—parade-ground, parasitic micro-parties with no foothold beyond the polished pavements of Belgrade and Novi Sad, dedicated solely to hoarding public funds and foreign donations. Having an actual membership with opinions, or an electorate that dares to ask questions, is seen as a bothersome liability. Compared to their Twitter posturing, the crude vote-buying of the poor with cooking oil and flour starts to look like genuine concern for the common folk.

This new breath of popular will and democratic stirrings in Serbia is, ironically, the very byproduct of parliamentary collapse into a tycoon-comprador operetta.

In Serbia today, it is no longer difficult to stand with the students and against Vučić—who, much like the final days of America-backed despot Reza Pahlavi before the Iranian Revolution, has managed to unify the most ideologically disparate factions against himself. Yet beyond the tabloid fever dreams of a “color revolution,” festering like boils on the body of a student movement that has assertively emerged as the primary force in Serbian politics, we see a new crop of Iznogouds—opportunists seeking, through OTPOR (an organization from the 1990s supported by American funding against the regime of Slobodan Milošević)-style tactics and the familiar spiral of jungle law and self-humiliation (the only true legacy of the post-Milošević era), to carve out a fatter slice of the pie for a rival comprador-oligarchic dynasty.

The childish notion that Vučić might engineer his own downfall via an obscure so-called “expert government”—a relic of history’s junkyard, now populated by the SNS’s softer, less radical faces spouting anti-corruption rhetoric (à la Ana Brnabić in her early days)—with Đura Macut as a placeholder prime minister and no serious guarantees for real reform, is the latest lifeline pseudo-oppositional circles are offering the regime’s machinery. A feeble bid to defuse the rising social pressure, which has proven to be the only force capable of pushing Vučić’s satraps onto the defensive.

Peddling technocratic shock therapy as a remedy for an acute political crisis—sidestepping the unified demands of the student plenums—while Serbia cries out for republican dialogue and constitutionalism, is an act of civic illiteracy potentially more damaging than the rabble-rousing street politics it pretends to transcend.

These demagogic slogans were first sounded by the leadership of the internal pressure group Stav, emerging from the cloak of Dinko Gruhonjić and, before him, Milenko Perović—himself a financial-bureaucratic lever of Đukanović’s DPS regime and a leading voice of Austro-Slavic, Štedimlija-style racialism at the University of Novi Sad. Together, they had schemed to use a metaphorical hammer on March 15 against student marshals—young people who, with their blood types written on their forearms, were preventing the student body from becoming cannon fodder for anyone’s agenda.

Meanwhile, the foundation-funded pen of Tomislav Marković, who mourned a supposed lack of solidarity from colleagues who promptly distanced themselves from such vile intrigues, had not lifted a finger over the police crackdown on citizen-journalist Srđa Žunić, nor the arrests of peasant protesters from Mačva.

But the ultimate low point of this kind of filth was reached by Peščanik’s resident pamphleteer from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, Stevan Filipović, who, in his polemical screeds, chastises students in tones reeking of clerical-police condescension—everything but the cassock and badge—accusing them of capitulating to youth-corrupting forces, from Putin’s agents to anarcho-syndicalist utopians (a jab clearly aimed at the assemblies behind the Letter to the People of Serbia). And why? Simply because they refuse to cave to the pedantic blackmail of a hollow, petty-bourgeois secular priesthood, which insists on presenting its own political own goals as divinely inspired directives.

Taking a case all the way to Strasbourg—regardless of perfectly legitimate Euroscepticism—is entirely justified given Serbia’s subordinated position within the EU. This is the same EU that celebrates Giolani’s batons and nullifies the electoral will of Romanian citizens. In this light, legal recourse becomes a form of protest against Brussels’ favoritism toward the tentacles of Vučić’s regime—much like the Serbian peasant in Petar Kočić’s tale threatens the feudal lord with taking him “all the way to the Kaiser,” but without the groveling of petitioning the Sultan for protection from the Dahije.

How deeply such unrequited love can sting was revealed during the Tel Aviv excursion of Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska—a man of extraordinary talent for promoting his own tormentors in venues like West Mostar, Washington, Budapest, or among AfD/FPO neo-Nazis under the cloak of phony anti-imperialism. There, he delivered a tribute of nearly one million taxpayer dollars from Republika Srpska to Mark Zell, Trump’s diaspora envoy, to launder his image in front of American patrons even as the genocide in Gaza raged on.

Taken more broadly, Dodik’s toast on foreign soil—the equating of the anti-colonial struggle of Bosnian Serb peasant masses, as historically materialist Milorad Ekmečić understood it, with the Zionist settler project of displacing Palestinian farmers, orchestrated by British imperialism—is more fitting for Kalaj’s synthetic Bosnian nation project than for any patriot of Republika Srpska. It stands as a profound insult to national honor.

They say the path of revolution winds and twists, while the roads of reaction run straight like arrows. Whatever the outcome of the April maneuverings over the formation of the government, I take quiet sustenance from the thought that Vasa Pelagić and Mita Cenić—nineteenth-century Serbian champions of social justice—would be heartened to cast their eyes once more upon their people. We have shown ourselves not so far beneath them after all. And to write off not only the freshmen—who, after the blockade semester, still have at least five years of university ahead of them—but also the wider citizenry, who, after three decades of degradation, have finally tasted a breath of popular democracy, would be like trying to send rivers back to their sources.

Just like the insurgents of the Sretenje Uprising, who refused to hitch Serbia’s fate to the Romanov or Habsburg fleets, instead hacking out a Robinsonian island of liberty, at first stretching only from Belgrade to Aleksinac—despite imperial power projections that extended from Niš to Djibouti, from Ada Ciganlija to the Elbe—so too does our moment insist: every temporary defeat is a step on the staircase toward final upheaval and transformation.

Or, as Bogdan Žerajić (the assassin of the Austro-Hungarian governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Marijan Varešanin) consoled himself amid the ruin and disorientation of his time:“Nothing. A trifle. There will be people among the youth, in the indestructible and unconquerable Serbian nation.” 

The post Critics of Serbian Students, From Liberals to Neo-Nazis appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Vojislav Durmanović.

President Donald Trump spoke at the Department of Justice Friday in an unprecedented speech in which he threatened to take revenge on his political enemies, from the press to the FBI itself. “It was a typical rambling and hate-filled diatribe,” says Maryland Congressmember Jamie Raskin. “Nobody has ever taken a sledgehammer to the traditional boundary between independent criminal law enforcement, on the one side, and presidential political will and power, on the other.” Raskin, who spoke at a press conference in response to Trump’s address outside of the Department of Justice, is a former constitutional law professor and served as the Democrats’ lead prosecutor for Trump’s second impeachment over the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He also responds to Trump’s “illegal” invocation of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and his attempt to deport foreign-born university students and faculty. Trump’s sweeping efforts to make the United States hostile to immigrants “creates danger for everybody,” warns Raskin. Finally, Raskin responds to recent divisions within the Democratic Party over a GOP spending bill. He urges congressional Democrats to present a “unified plan” and “common strategy” for resisting a Republican supermajority loyal to Trump.

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

The post ICE Solicits Social Media Surveillance Contracts to Identify Critics appeared first on Project Censored.

This content originally appeared on Project Censored and was authored by Kate Horgan.

Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo left the Net Zero Banking Alliance between December and January in what was perceived to be a concession to right-wing criticism of so-called ESG — decision-making driven by environmental, social, and corporate governance considerations. Nineteen Republican attorneys general had issued “civil investigative demands” to those banks in 2022, demanding that they turn over information about their ESG practices. They argued that the alliance was beholden to “the woke climate agenda” and that it violated antitrust laws.

While the banks’ exodus from the alliance certainly looks like a setback for the banking sector’s climate progress, environmental advocates say it is a reminder that voluntary initiatives have never been sufficient to drive the sector’s decarbonization.

“There are other levers that we can use to hold banks accountable,” said Allison Fajans-Turner, a senior energy finance campaigner at the nonprofit Rainforest Action Network, which publishes an annual report on how much money banks commit to fossil fuel projects. In light of the Trump administration’s pro-oil and gas agenda, she said that over the next four years activists and policymakers will have to keep the pressure on and, critically, push for stricter legislation at the state and international levels.

“It is quite clear that major U.S. banks will not police themselves,” she added.

The Net Zero Banking Alliance, or NZBA, launched in 2021 under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative and has about 140 members after the six American banks — and four Canadian ones — exited. The alliance asks member banks to commit to achieving net-zero greenhouse emissions across their operations and “lending and investment portfolios” by 2050, and to set intermediary emissions reduction targets for 2030 and every five years thereafter. It also asks banks to disclose their annual emissions, and sets some recommendations to limit the application of carbon offsets toward banks’ climate goals.

However, much like the Paris Agreement to limit global warming, the NZBA relies on voluntary participation and compliance, and does not have any enforcement authority. It’s been criticized for not asking enough from its members, which are allowed to participate even if they continue underwriting the expansion of oil and gas infrastructure. U.N. proposals that would tighten its requirements — particularly around financing of fossil fuels — faced strong opposition from recently departed banks like JP Morgan and Bank of America.

Even some of the NZBA banks themselves have acknowledged the alliance’s limitations in the face of government inaction. In 2023, Amalgamated Bank’s chief sustainability officer, Ivan Frishberg, told the business publication Responsible Investor that NZBA signatories were “being left alone at the altar” as governments around the world failed to legislate a transition away from fossil fuels. GLS Bank, based in Germany, quit the alliance that same year in protest of other NZBA members’ support for fossil fuel projects in Africa.

Wells Fargo declined to comment on the rationale behind its departure from the NZBA. Goldman Sachs said it had made “significant progress” on its net-zero goals but did not explain why it left the alliance. The other four recently departed banks did not respond to inquiries from Grist. 

Unlike voluntary initiatives, governments have the authority to ensure that banks live up to their stated climate promises and to push them to do more. At an event in New York City last November — notably, even before the NZBA shakeup — the former deputy secretary to the U.S. Treasury, Sarah Bloom Raskin, suggested that states should take on this role.

States “have a unique opportunity to lead,” she said, noting the incoming presidential administration’s hostility to climate action. At the time, California had already passed two laws requiring large businesses, including banks, to report their greenhouse gas emissions annually and disclose their climate-related financial risks biannually. Those laws recently survived a legal challenge from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and New York state lawmakers introduced similar bills in January. A Democratic state representative in Illinois introduced a disclosure bill last month. 

Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel for the shareholder advocacy nonprofit As You Sow, said disclosure is a prerequisite for holding banks to their climate goals. ”We want to understand what it is they’re doing,” she said. Laws like California’s bring to light the financial instability wrought by fossil fuel-driven climate change and — in theory, at least — discourage financing that would exacerbate it.

Of course, merely requiring that banks disclose their emissions and climate-related risks isn’t likely to prevent the worst impacts of global warming. According to a landmark 2021 report from the International Energy Agency, no new oil, gas, and coal infrastructure can be built if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s why Patrick McCully, a senior energy transition analyst for the French nonprofit Reclaim Finance, which advocates for a more sustainable banking sector, said legislators should be “pushing the banks to reduce their financing of fossil fuels.” 

“These companies are acting against the interests of humanity, and we need to stop them,” he told Grist.

Fajans-Turner, however, said a policy of this nature would be difficult to write into law and would likely face legal challenges even in the most progressive states, where natural gas bans on new construction have been beaten back by industry groups. 

Ann Lipton, a business law professor at Tulane University, said a better way for policymakers to limit new fossil fuel projects is to look beyond the banking sector. For instance, lawmakers could require insurance companies to factor in climate-related financial risks when designing their policies — which could make it harder for fossil fuel projects to get coverage. “We would love banks to stop financing risky activities, but at the end of the day the job of a bank is to finance things that are predictably profitable,” she said. “It’s the job of the rest of society to make that [thing] not profitable.”

Another strategy is to require that banks publish a clear decarbonization plan, which can, in theory, be a sort of back door to blocking new fossil fuel investments. “Implicit in having a target is that the bank is taking some kind of action to ensure that it meets that target,” Fugere said. If a plan mentions “net-zero” by a certain date, then to be credible it must involve some sort of scaling back of fossil fuel financing. If it claims to align with a pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C, then it must not enable the expansion of fossil fuels. 

In the U.S., investors like As You Sow have pressured several big banks into voluntarily offering more information about their plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but requests for greater detail were rebuffed last year. (At least one bank, Wells Fargo, has done an about-face, recently dropping its net-zero target altogether.) 

Legislation to require detailed decarbonization plans has seen more success on the international stage. The European Union, for instance, is beginning to use two corporate sustainability directives approved by its parliament to require financial institutions to adopt a “transition plan for climate change mitigation.” The laws require institutions to make their “best efforts” to ensure that their plans are compatible with a pathway toward achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C.

McCully said these regulations are promising but noted growing opposition to them from right-wing governments in Europe. “We need to defeat that pushback to make sure that legislation is going to be able to survive,” he said. 

Even as they push for stronger government oversight of the banking industry, organizations like the Rainforest Action Network and Reclaim Finance say they plan to continue drawing connections between the financing of fossil fuel projects and the harm these projects may cause to communities — whether directly, because of the risk of oil spills and explosions, or indirectly because of accelerating climate change. Mass demonstrations and research publications like Rainforest Action Network’s annual report can theoretically increase the public’s appetite for state, national, and international regulation.

“It’s hard to be optimistic,” said Quentin Aubineau, a policy analyst at the nonprofit BankTrack, which does research and advocacy around banks’ role in the climate crisis and human rights violations. “But we have a lot of people working on the ground, doing a lot of research, and putting a lot of effort together to try to make a change. I think we will get there, even if it’s not the best environment to work in at the moment.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Big banks abandoned a voluntary climate alliance. Now, critics are calling for new laws. on Mar 3, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

The BBC has removed its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone from iPlayer after it was revealed that its teenage narrator is the son of a Hamas official.

The broadcaster stated that it was conducting “further due diligence” following mounting scrutiny.

The film, which aired on BBC Two last Monday, follows 13-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri as he describes life in Gaza.

• READ MORE: Can we trust the BBC on Israel-Gaza? These media experts don’t think so
• Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone
• ‘No safe place’: the BBC documentary showing Gaza through a child’s eyes
• Other Gaza ceasefire reports

However, it later emerged that his father, Ayman Al-Yazouri, serves as the Hamas Deputy Minister of Agriculture in Gaza.

In a statement yesterday, the BBC defended the documentary’s value but acknowledged concerns.

“There have been continuing questions raised about the programme, and in light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company,” the statement said.

The revelation sparked a backlash from figures including Friday Night Dinner actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, literary agent Neil Blair, and former BBC One boss Danny Cohen, who called it “a shocking failure by the BBC and a major crisis for its reputation”.

On Thursday, the BBC admitted that it had not disclosed the family connection but insisted it followed compliance procedures. It has since added a disclaimer acknowledging Abdullah’s ties to Hamas.

UK’s Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said that she would discuss the issue with the BBC, particularly regarding its vetting process.

However, the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians urged the broadcaster to “stand firm against attempts to prevent firsthand accounts of life in Gaza from reaching audiences”.

Others also defended the importance of the documentary made last year before the sheer scale of devastation by the Israeli military forces was exposed — and many months before the ceasefire came into force on January 19.

‘This documentary humanised Palestinian children’
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), criticised the BBC’s decision.

“It’s very regrettable that this documentary has been pulled following pressure from anti-Palestinian activists who have largely shown no sympathy for persons in Gaza suffering from massive bombardment, starvation, and disease,” Middle East Eye quoted him as saying.

Doyle also praised the film’s impact, saying, “This documentary humanised Palestinian children in Gaza and gave valuable insights into life in this horrific war zone.”

Journalist Richard Sanders, who has produced multiple documentaries on Gaza, called the controversy a “huge test” for the BBC and condemned its response as a “cowardly decision”.

Earlier this week, 45 Jewish journalists and media figures, including former BBC governor Ruth Deech, urged the broadcaster to pull the film, calling Ayman Al-Yazouri a “terrorist leader”.

The controversy underscores wider tensions over media coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, with critics accusing the BBC of a vetting failure, while others argue the documentary sheds crucial light on Palestinian children’s suffering.

Pacific Media Watch comments: The BBC has long been accused of an Israeli-bias in its coverage of Palestinian affairs, especially the 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, and this documentary is one of the rare programmes that has restored some balance.

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

Media outlets continue to print headlines about antisemitism based on Anti-Defamation League statistics known to be faulty and politicized. In doing so, they grant undeserved credibility to the ADL as a source.

Producing statistics helps the ADL to claim objectivity when they assert that antisemitism is increasing dramatically, prevalent in all fields of society, and emanating from the left as well as the right. Those “facts” are then used to justify policy recommendations that fail to respond to actual antisemitism, but succeed in undermining the free speech rights of Palestinians and their supporters, including those of us who are Jews.

Smearing Israel critics as antisemites

James Bamford (The Nation, 1/31/24) : “The New York Times, PBS and other mainstream outlets that reach millions are constantly and uncritically promoting the ADL and amplifying the group’s questionable charges.”

While it frames itself as a civil rights organization, the ADL has a long history of actively spying on critics of Israel and collaborating with the Israeli government (Nation, 1/31/24). (FAIR itself was targeted as a “Pinko” group in ADL’s sprawling spying operation in the ’90s.)

Though it professes to document and challenge antisemitism, it openly admits to counting pro-Palestinian activism as antisemitic: In 2023, the ADL changed its methodology for reporting antisemitic incidents to include rallies that feature “anti-Zionist chants and slogans,” even counting anti-war protests led by Jews—including Jewish organizations the ADL designated as “hate groups.”

The ADL’s political motivations are clear in its advocacy for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which alleges that criticizing Israel based on its policies (e.g., “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” or “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis“) is antisemitic. The ADL and their allies also deem speech supporting Palestinian human rights to be coded antisemitism.

Criticism of the ADL is increasing. In 2020, activists launched #DropTheADL to raise awareness among progressives that the ADL is not a civil rights or anti-bias group, but rather an Israel advocacy organization that attacks Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights in order to protect Israel from criticism. Last year, a campaign to Drop the ADL From Schools launched with an exposé in Rethinking Schools magazine, and an open letter to educators, titled “Educators Beware: The Anti-Defamation League Is Not the Social Justice Partner It Claims to Be,” that garnered more than 90 organizational signatories. These efforts build off research that exposes the ADL’s work to normalize Zionism and censor inclusion of Palestinian topics in the media, policy circles, schools and in society at large.

In 2023, some of its own high-profile staff resigned, citing the group’s “dishonest” campaign against Israel’s critics. In June 2024, Wikipedia editors found the ADL regularly labels legitimate political criticism of Israel as antisemitic, leading the popular online encyclopedia to designate the group an unreliable source on Israel/Palestine.

Critiquing the ADL’s statistics does not serve to argue that antisemitism is acceptable or less deserving of attention than other forms of discrimination. Rather, it demonstrates that we can’t rely on the ADL for information about the extent or nature of antisemitism—and neither should media.

A dubious source

This New York Times report (10/6/24) obscured the fact that many of the “antisemitic incidents” counted by the ADL were chants critical of Israel.

And yet corporate media use the ADL uncritically as a source for reports on antisemitism. For instance, the New York Times (10/6/24) not only headlined the ADL’s assertion that “Antisemitic Incidents Reach New High in the US,” it chose to contextualize the ADL’s findings “in the wake of the Hamas attack,” and called the ADL a “civil rights organization.”

Important media outlets like The Hill (4/16/24), with outsized influence on national policy discussions, ran similar headlines, failing to note the ADL’s highly controversial methodology.

At least the Wall Street Journal (1/14/25) acknowledged that the ADL has been challenged for counting criticism of Israel as antisemitism. But it immediately dismissed the applicability of those challenges to the ADL’s Global 100 survey, which found that 46% of adults worldwide hold antisemitic views. (The ADL’s Global 100 survey was criticized for its flawed methodology as far back as 2014, when researchers found it “odd and potentially misleading.”)

The media’s willingness to accept ADL claims without scrutiny is evident in CNN’s choice (12/16/24) not to investigate the ADL’s accusations of antisemitism against speakers at a recent conference of the National Association of Independent Schools, but rather to simply repeat and amplify the ADL’s dishonest and slanderous narrative.

Methodological faults

A Jewish Currents report (6/17/24) concluded that “the ADL’s data is much more poised to capture random swastika graffiti and stray anti-Zionist comments than dangerous Christian nationalist movements.”

Even setting aside the ADL’s prioritization of Israel’s interests over Jewish well-being, the ADL’s statistics should be thrown out due to methodological faults and lack of transparency.

Even FBI statistics, frequently cited by the ADL, don’t tell a clear story. Their claim that 60% of religious hate crimes (not mere bias incidents) target Jews is misleading, given the systemic undercounting of bias against other religious groups. Because of the history of anti-Muslim policing, Muslims are less likely to report than people of other religions.

In fact, a national survey of Muslims found that over two-thirds of respondents had personally encountered Islamophobia, while only 12.5% had reported an incident. Almost two-thirds of respondents who encountered an Islamophobic incident did not know where or how to report it. When Muslims experience hate, it is less likely to be pursued as a hate crime.

On the other hand, the ADL has an unparalleled infrastructure for collecting incident reports. It actively solicits these reports from its own network, and through close relations with police and a growing network of partners like Hillel International and Jewish Federations.

Perpetrators’ motivations are also relevant and should not be inferred. In 2017, Jews were frightened by over 2,000 threats aimed at Jewish institutions in the United States. It turned out that nearly all came from one Jewish Israeli with mental health problems. Without this level of investigation, policymakers could enact misguided policy based on the ADL’s sensationalism, like CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s claim that “antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses.”

Bad-faith accusations

David Klion (Zeteo, 2/4/25): “How did the ADL, which for generations has presented itself as America’s leading antisemitism watchdog, find itself prostrated before the most powerful enabler of white supremacy in recent American history?”

Although critics have long argued that the ADL’s politicized definition of antisemitism and flawed statistics cannot be the basis of effective policy, policymakers continue to rely on media’s deceptive journalism.

Massachusetts State Sen. John Velis cited ADL statistics to claim the state has “earned the ignominious reputation as a hub of antisemitic activity,” and therefore needs a special antisemitism commission. In Michigan, ADL reports of escalating antisemitism led to a resolution that will affect policy in schools across the state. In Connecticut, the ADL referenced its statistics in a government announcement about changes to the state’s hate crimes laws. The ADL’s statistics undergirded the logic of President Joe Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.

But how can politically distorted research be the foundation for effective policy?

Antisemitism is surely increasing. Hate crimes have increased in general—most targeting Black people—especially since the first Trump presidency, and hate incidents generally rise during violent outbreaks like the war on Gaza, and during election periods. But since most antisemitism originates in the white nationalist right wing, why focus primarily on people—including Jews—who are legitimately protesting their own government’s support for Israeli actions against Palestinians? Or on Palestinians themselves, who have every right to promote the humanity and rights of their people?

The ADL’s bad-faith accusations weaponize antisemitism to protect Israel at the expense of democratic and anti-racist principles. Anyone who doubted the ADL’s politics should be convinced by its abhorrent defense of Elon Musk’s Nazi salute (FAIR.org, 1/23/25) and its support for Donald Trump.

To pursue effective public policy, policymakers and the public should refuse to cite the ADL’s flawed statistics, and instead develop thoughtful and nuanced ways to understand and address antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and discrimination. Media can play a key role by exposing the politicization of antisemitism by the ADL, including its prioritization of protection for Israel from criticism over the free speech that is fundamental to democratic discourse.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Nora Lester Murad.

As the annual high-level Munich Security Conference gets underway, the Russia-Ukraine war is dominating the agenda, and we speak to two guests protesting the conference. Economist, progressive leader and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis says the European project started with a noble goal of promoting peace but finds itself today “cornered” between Russian and NATO militarism. “Europe has been caught in a frenzy of warmongering,” says Varoufakis.

We also speak with German lawyer Melanie Schweizer, who was suspended from her job at the German Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs after being doxxed in an article published in the German tabloid Bild, owned by media giant Axel Springer SE, for her pro-Palestinian online statements. She is running for German parliament with the progressive party MERA25 in this month’s elections and warns the country’s political establishment is increasingly adopting the rhetoric and policies of the far right. “We see fascism playing out in real time, and it’s getting worse by the day,” says Schweizer.

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

The Miss Pacific Islands Pageant (MPIP) Committee has finally issued a statement — 5 days after damaging social media attacks following the 2025 Pageant finals hosted by the Solomon Islands last Saturday.

The statement yesterday simply said the committee recognised and deeply regretted the distress caused by recent disputes concerning the result on the pageant night.

“Unfortunately, these allegations have escalated to the extent of subjecting contestants to degrading treatment and issuing threats against the lives of certain judges, thereby, detrimentally impacting the camaraderie and ethos of the pageant,” it said.

• READ MORE: Other Miss Pacific beauty pageant reports

However, the statement did not address the judging controversy despite calls from around the Pacific for a proper investigation and to hold the person responsible for the false allegations of results rigging against the pageant’s head judge, Leiataualesa Jerry Brunt.

A former pageant organiser told Talamua that the statement had come “too late — too little, the damage has been done”.

The organiser said there were policies and regulations that must be followed to ensure the successful progress of the pageant and steps to be taken if such events like the allegations against a judge surfaced.

She told Talamua that the MPIP committee should have issued a statement within 24 hours of the allegations.

Opened the door to conflict
She believes that if MPIP had issued a statement earlier, it would have prevented the harsh attacks on the contestants and the head judge, but the delay had opened the door for the exchange between Samoans and Tongans on social media.

The statement did not offer an apology or reasons why a statement was not issued earlier.

It only gave an explanation on why such a pageant had been established and then acknowledged Miss Samoa Litara Ieremia Allan, the contestants, all involved in the pageant, and the host country.

According to the former pageant organiser, the MPIP seemed to take the stop notices issued on the pageant judges very lightly, which drew an unprecedented involvement of both the Solomon Islands and Samoan governments.

Although the detained judges have returned to their respectful countries, a statement from the Solomon Islands government issued yesterday said investigation was continuing based on the complaint and that formal charges would then be determined.

It should not have gone this far if the MPIP committee had done their part, said a former pageant organiser.

Republished from Talamua Online News.

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

A national Palestine advocacy group has hit back at critics of its “genocide hotline” campaign against soldiers involved in Israel’s war against Gaza, saying New Zealand should be actively following international law.

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) dismissed a “predictable lineup of apologists for Israel” for their criticisms of the PSNA campaign.

“Why is concern for the sensitivities of soldiers from a genocidal Israeli campaign more important than condemning the genocide itself?,” asked PSNA national chair John Minto in a statement.

• READ MORE:  HRC calls for hotline to report Israeli soldiers holidaying in NZ to end
• How Israeli soldiers abroad are facing arrest for war crimes in Gaza
• ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas commander
• Other Israeli soldier reports

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters, the Chief Human Rights Commissioner Stephen Rainbow and the New Zealand Jewish Council have made statements “protecting” Israeli soldiers who come to New Zealand on “rest and recreation” from the industrial-scale killing of 47,000 Palestinians in Gaza until a truce went into force on January 19.

“We are not surprised to see such a predictable lineup of apologists for Israel and its genocide in Gaza from lining up to attack a PSNA campaign with false smears of anti-semitism,” Minto said.

He said that over 16 months Peters had done “absolutely nothing” to put any pressure on Israel to end its genocidal behaviour.

“But he is full of bluff and bluster and outright lies to denounce those who demand Israel be held to account.”

Deny illegal settler visas
Minto said that if Peters was doing his job as Foreign Minister, he would not only stop Israeli soldiers coming to Aotearoa New Zealand — as with Russian soldiers in the Ukraine war — he would also deny visas to any Israeli with an address in an illegal Israeli settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The Human Rights Commission had issued a “disingenuous media release”, he said.

“Our campaign has nothing to do with Israelis or Jews — it is a campaign to stop Israeli soldiers coming here for rest and recreation after a campaign of wholesale killing of Palestinians in Gaza,” Minto said.

“To imply the campaign is targeting Jews is disgusting and despicable.

“Some of the soldiers will be Druse, some Palestinian Arabs and others will be Jews.”

Israeli soldiers are facing a growing risk of being arrested abroad for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza, with around 50 criminal complaints filed so far in courts in several countries around the world.

Earlier this month, a former Israeli soldier abruptly ended his holiday in Brazil and was “smuggled” out of the country after a Federal Court ordered police to open a war crimes investigation against him. The man fled to Argentina.

A complaint lodged by the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) included more than 500 pages of court records linking the suspect to the demolition of civilian homes in Gaza.

‘Historic’ court ruling against soldier
The foundation called the Brazilian court’s decision “historic”, saying it marked a significant precedent for a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to enforce Rome Statute provisions domestically in the 15-month Israeli war on Gaza.

The foundation is named in honour of five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed on 29 January 2024 by Israel soldiers while pleading for help in a car after her six family members were dead.

According to The New Arab, the foundation has so far tracked and sent the names of 1000 Israeli soldiers to the ICC and Interpol, and has been pursuing legal cases in a number of countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Cyprus, France, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, together with a former Hamas commander, citing allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Minto accused the New Zealand Jewish Council of being “deeply racist” and said it regularly “makes a meal of false smears of anti-semitism”.

“It’s deeply problematic that this Jewish Council strategy takes attention away from the real anti-semitism which exists in New Zealand and around the world.

“The priority of the Jewish Council is to protect Israel from criticism and protect it from accountability for its apartheid policies, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

“We are demanding that accountability.”

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

The Washington Post (1/3/25) argued that “serious accountability is possible” in Israel—by which it meant that Ariel Sharon once had to change his cabinet job after he let thousands of civilians be murdered.

In two instances in the past couple of weeks, the Washington Post has acknowledged criticisms made by FAIR activists and others. Post editors may not be backing down, but they are hearing you.

The first response was a Washington Post editorial (1/3/25) headlined “Readers Disagreed With Us on Israel and the ICC. Here’s Our Response.” This was an attempt to defend an earlier Post editorial, “The International Criminal Court Is Not the Venue to Hold Israel to Account” (11/24/24), which had been the subject of a FAIR Action Alert (11/26/24) and widespread criticism elsewhere (e.g., X, 11/25/24).

The centerpiece of the Post‘s defense of its editorial that said the ICC should not hold Israeli leaders responsible for war crimes was its claim that “serious accountability is possible, even probable,” from Israel’s own institutions.

Oddly, the evidence the paper offered for this was that after the IDF allowed right-wing Lebanese militias to slaughter thousands of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee in 1982, Israel formed a commission to investigate the mass murder, and as a result, then–Defense Minister Ariel Sharon was made to resign from his post. This outcome was widely viewed as “show[ing] Israelis were willing to hold their top leaders to account,” the Post wrote.

The Post did not note that while stepping down as Defense minister, Sharon remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio, held one cabinet ministry after another throughout most of the 1980s and ’90s, and became prime minister of Israel from 2001–06. If that’s the Post‘s best example of Israelis “hold[ing] their top leaders to account,” hopes that anyone will face real justice in Israel for the war crimes against Gaza are very slim.

‘Extra careful…when it comes to our owner’

One of a dozen cartoons (Greater Quiet, 1/7/25) drawn in solidarity with the muzzled Ann Telnaes—this one by Ted Littleford of the New Haven Independent.

Post editorial page editor David Shipley made another retort to a criticism in a FAIR Action Alert (1/7/25) in an internal memo published by the media news site Status (1/10/25). Along with many others (e.g., Pennsylvania Capital-Star, 1/10/25), FAIR had criticized Shipley and the Post for killing a cartoon that lampooned billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos’ obsequious relationship with Donald Trump, leading to the resignation of cartoonist Ann Telnaes.

FAIR’s Pete Tucker said it was “bizarre” for Shipley (New York Times, 1/3/25) to claim that he spiked Telnaes’ cartoon because an earlier column mentioned in passing Bezos dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Shipley claimed that his only bias was “against repetition”—as if the Post, like other papers, doesn’t routinely run cartoons on topics that columnists are also writing about. FAIR cited examples from recent weeks of Post cartoons that echoed Post columns.

In his memo, Shipley seemed to acknowledge this line of criticism: “It’s obviously true that we have published other pieces that are redundant and duplicative.” He admitted that he was being “extra careful,” and that his “scrutiny is on high when it comes to our owner.”

He defended this approach as necessary “to ensure the overall independence of our report.” By “exercising care” in coverage of their owner, “we preserve the ability to do what we are in business to do: to speak forthrightly and without fear about things that matter.”

In other words, if the Post doesn’t watch how it talks about Bezos, he might stop subsidizing it to the tune of 0.04% of his net worth annually—and then the paper won’t be able to talk “about things that matter.”

As if anything matters more than the nation’s most powerful oligarchs forming an alliance with Trump.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Jim Naureckas.

Three months ago, a group of lawyers in Aotearoa New Zealand called for a first-of-its-kind inquiry into New Zealand spy agencies over whether they have been helping Israel’s war in Gaza.

In a letter to the chief of intelligence and security (IGIS) on 12 September 2024, three lawyers argued that the country was in danger of aiding international war crimes.

Inspector-General Brendan Horsley, who had previously indicated he would look into conflict-related spying this year, confirmed he would consider the request.

• READ MORE: Behind settler colonial NZ’s paranoia about dissident ‘persons of interest’
• Other SIS security reports

At least one of the lawyers was confident of a positive response.

“I’m actually very optimistic,” noted University of Auckland associate professor Treasa Dunworth in a media interview about their argument that New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) intelligence might be making its way to Israel via the US, “because our request is very, detailed, backed up with credible evidence, [and] is very careful.”

But she got a disappointing result. A month later, on October 9 — just seven weeks before the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Foreign Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity — Inspector-General Horsley ruled out an inquiry at this time.

He said he didn’t want to “stop-the-clock” and tie up his office’s meagre resources while armed conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine were currently “active and dynamic”.

Rapid deterioration
Yet rapidly the 15-month Israeli war has deteriorated since then with Israel’s main backer President-elect Donald Trump due to take office later this month on January 10.
As the humanitarian situation in Gaza worsens with intensified attacks on hospitals and civilians, a breakdown of law and order at the border, and more than 50 complaints filed against Israel soldiers for war crimes in multiple countries, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has urged medical professionals worldwide to sever all ties with the pariah state.

I urge medical professionals worldwide to pursue the severance of all ties with Israel as a concrete way to forcefully denounce Israel’s full destruction of the Palestinian healthcare system in Gaza, a critical tool of its ongoing genocide.#FreeDrHussanAbuSafiya https://t.co/qzZ7CqufI6

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) December 30, 2024

Ironically, the New Zealand intelligence “debate” has coincided with the publication of a new book that has debunked the view that the SIS and GCSB have been working in the interests of New Zealand. The reality, argues social justice movement historian and activist Maire Leadbeater in The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of the State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand is that these agencies (now combined) have been working in the interests of the so-called “Five Eyes” partners, including the United States.

Her essential argument in this robust and comprehensive 427-page book is that New Zealand’s state surveillance has been part of a structure of state control that “serves to undermine movements for social change and marginalise or punish those who challenge the established order. It had a deeply destructive impact on democracy.”

As she states, her primary focus is on the work of New Zealand’s main intelligence agencies, the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) “and their forerunners, the political police”.

The author explains that she is not concerned with the “socially useful work of the contemporary police in the detection of criminal activity, including politically motivated crime”. She notes also that unlike the domestic spies, police detection work is subject to detailed warrants, there is due process over arrests and the process is open to public scrutiny.

Leadbeater points out that while New Zealand experience with terrorism has been limited, neither of the country’s two main intelligence agencies were much help in investigating the three notorious examples — the unsolved 1984 Wellington Trades Hall bombing that killed one, the 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland that also killed one (but the casualties could easily have been higher), and the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings that murdered 51.

The regular police were the key investigators in all three cases.

Also, there is the failure of the SIS to discover Mossad agents operating in NZ on fake passports.

Working for ‘Five Eyes’ interests
Instead of working for the benefit of New Zealand, the intelligence agencies were set up to work closely with the country’s traditional allies and the so-called “Five Eyes” network — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

An example of this was Algerian professor and parliamentarian Ahmed Zaoui who arrived in New Zealand in 2002 as an asylum seeker after a military coup against the elected government in his home country. Within nine days of arriving, his confidentiality was breached and he was falsely branded by The New Zealand Herald as an “international terrorism suspect”.

He was jailed for two years without charge (part of that time held in solitary confinement) because of an SIS-imposed National Security Risk certificate and this could have have led to “deportation of this honourable man” but for the tireless work of his lawyers and a well-informed public campaign, as told by Leadbeater in this book, and also by journalist Selwyn Manning in his 2004 book I Almost Forgot about the Moon: The Disinformation Campaign Against Ahmed Zaoui.

Set free and granted asylum, he later became a New Zealand citizen in 2014. (However, on a visit to Algeria in 2023 he was arrested at gunpoint in a house in Médéa and charged with “subversion”).

Leadbeater says a strong case could be made that New Zealand’s democracy “would be stronger and more viable without the repressive laws that currently support the secretive operations of the SIS and the GCSB”. The author laments that the resources and focus of the intelligence agencies have focused too much, and wastefully, on ordinary people who are perceived to be “dissenters”.

“Dissent is the lifeblood of democracy but SIS operations targeted many of our brightest and best, damaging their personal and professional lives in the process,” Leadbeater says.

Among those who have been targeted have been the author herself, and others in her “left-wing family milieu” — including her late brother longtime Green Party foreign affairs spokesperson Keith Locke, as well as her parents Elsie and Jack, originally Communist Party activists prior to 1956.

The core of the book is based on primary sources, including declassified police records held in the National Archives and the declassified records of the SIS which have been released to individual activists – including her and she discovered she had been spied on since the age of 10 due to state paranoia.

At the launch of her book in Auckland last November, guest speaker and retired First Union general secretary Robert Reid — whose file also features in the book — said what a fitting way the narrative begins by outlining the important role the Locke family have played in Aotearoa over the many years.

The final chapter is devoted to another “Person of interest: Keith Locke” – “Maire’s much-loved friend and comrade.”

“In between these pages is a treasure trove of commentary and stories of the development of the surveillance state in the settler colony of NZ and the impact that this has had on the lives of ordinary — no, extra-ordinary — people within this country,” Reid said.

“The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.”

Surveillance stories and files
Among others whose surveillance stories and files have been featured are trade unionist and former Socialist Action League activist Mike Treen; Halt All Racist Tours founder Trevor Richards; economics lecturer Dr Wolfgang Rosenberg’s sons George and Bill; Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) organiser Murray Horton; antiwar activist and Peace Movement research Owen Wilkes; investigative journalist Nicky Hager; Dr Bill Sutch, who was tried and acquitted on a charge laid under the Official Secrets Act in 1975; and internet entrepreneur and political activist Kim Dotcom.

State paranoia in New Zealand was driven by issues of peace, anti-conscription, anti-nuclear, decolonisation, unemployed workers and left trade unionism and socialist and communist thought.

Leadbeater reflects that she had never accepted that “anyone in my family ever threatened state security. Moreover, the solidarity, antinuclear and anti-apartheid organisations that I took part in should not have been spied on. Such groups were and are a vital part of a healthy democracy.”

At one stage when many activists were seeking copies of their surveillance files in the mid-2000s through OIA requests or later under the Privacy Act, I also applied due to my association with several of the protagonists in this book and my involvement as a writer on decolonisation and environmental justice issues.

I merely received a “neither confirm or deny” form letter on the existence of a file, and never bothered to reapply later when information became more readily available.

But I have had my own brushes with surveillance and threatened arrest as a journalist in global settings such as New Caledonia, including when I was detained by soldiers in January 1987 for taking photographs of French military camps for a planned report about the systematic intimidation of pro-independence Kanak villagers.

This was perfectly legal, of course, and the attempt by authorities to silence me did not work; my articles appeared on the front page of the New Zealand Sunday Times the following weekend and featured on the cover of Fiji’s Islands Business news magazine.

Watched become the watchers
The structure of The Enemy Within is in three parts. As the author explains, the first part focuses on the period from 920 to the end of the First World War, and the second on the impact of the Cold War and the Western anti-communist hysteria between 1945 and 1955.

The final part covers the period from 1955 to the present, when the intelligence and security services have been under greater public scrutiny and faced campaigns for their reform or abolition.

As Leadbeater notes, “the watched, to some extent, have become the watchers”.

Because of my Asia-Pacific and decolonisation interests, I found a chapter on “colonial repression in Samoa” and the Black Saturday massacre of the Mau resistance of particular interest and a shameful stain on NZ history.

As Leadbeater notes, it was an “unexpected find in the Archives New Zealand” to stumble across a record of the surveillance of the “citizens who mounted an opposition to the New Zealand government’s colonial rule in Samoa”.

She pays tribute to the “vibrant solidarity movement” in the late 1920s and early 1930s, inspired by the peaceful Mau movement and its motto “Samoa mo Samoa” — Samoa for the Samoans — in their resistance to New Zealand’s colonial project.

This solidarity movement was in the face of a “prevailing attitude of white settlement” and its leaders were influenced by the Parihaka resistance of the 1880s.

Leadbeater is critical of New Zealand media, such as The New Zealand Herald, for siding with the colonial establishment and becoming “positively hostile to the Mau movement”.

New Zealand administrators under the League of Mandate to govern Samoa following German rule were arrogant and regarded Samoans as “inferior” and were “aghast” at Samoan and European leaders collaborating in resistance.

Black Saturday massacre
On 28 December 1929, what became dubbed the “Black Saturday massacre” happened in Apia. A peaceful Mau procession marches to the Apia wharf to welcome home exiled trader Alfred Smyth.

Police tried to arrest the Mau secretary, Mata’ūtia Karaunu, but the marchers protected him. More police were despatched to “assert colonial authority”, shots were fired at the crowd and in the upheaval a police constable was clubbed to death.

A police sergeant the fired a Lewis machine gun from the police station over the heads of the crowd, while other police fired directly into the crowd with their rifles.

Paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, dressed in white and calling for peace, was mortally wounded and at least eight other marchers were also killed. The massacre was chronicled in journalist Michael Field’s books Mau and later Black Saturday: New Zealand’s Tragic Blunders in Samoa.

Protests followed and the Mau Movement was declared a “seditious organisation” and the wearing of Mau outfits or badges became illegal.

A crackdown ensued on Mau activists with heavy surveillance and harassment and in New Zealand public figures and community leaders called for an “independent inquiry into Samoan affairs”.

Eventually, the Labour Party victory in the 1935 elections changed the dynamic and the following year the Mau was recognised as a legitimate political movement.

After the Second World War, New Zealand became committed to self-government in Western Samoa with indigenous custom and tradition “as an important foundation”. However, full independence did not come until 1962.

Four decades later, in 2002, Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologised to the people of Samoa for the “inept and incompetent early administration of Samoa by New Zealand”.

She cited officials allowing the “influenza” ship Talune to dock in Apia in 1918, and the Black Saturday massacre as key examples of this incompetence.

However, Leadbeater notes that the “saga of surveillance and sedition charges” outlined in her book could well be added to the list. She adds that Samoans remember the Mau Movement and its martyrs with “pride and gratitude”.

“For New Zealanders, this chapter in our colonial history is one of shame that should be far better known and understood. The New Zealand Samoa Defence League was ahead of its time, and thankfully so.”

Leadbeater notes in her book that the SIS budget alone in 2021 was about $100 million with about 400 staff. Yet the intelligence services have been spending this sport of money for more than a century looking for “subversives and terrorists” — but in the wrong places.

This book is an excellent tribute to the many activists and dissidents who have had their lives disrupted and hounded by state spies, and is essential reading for all those committed to democracy.

Following her section on more contemporary events and massive surveillance failures and wrongs, such as the 2007 Tūhoe raids, Leadbeater calls for a massive rethink on New Zealand’s approach to security.

“It is time to leave crime, including terrorist crime, to the country’s police and court system, with their built-in accountability procedures,” she concludes.

“It is time for the state to stop spying on society’s critics.”

• The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa/New Zealand, by Maire Leadbeater. Potton & Burton, 2024. 427 pages.

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

Palestinian history is “deliberately ignored” and is being effectively “erased” as part of Western news media narratives, while establishment forces work to shut down anyone speaking out against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, academics have told a university conference of legal and Middle East experts.

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

We speak with journalist Mehdi Hasan, founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, about the incoming U.S. administration and President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for key roles, including lawyer Kash Patel to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump reportedly considered Patel for FBI deputy director during his first term but dropped the idea after pushback from within his own administration. Hasan describes Patel as a “toady” whose threats against political opponents and journalists should be disqualifying, but that he aligns with Trump’s goals of further politicizing the FBI. “He wants to use it as an instrument of vengeance.”

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

The father, retired senior military officer Sok Sunnareth, was arrested on Wednesday by military forces in southern Kampong Speu province, according to Sorn Dara.

A family member who asked for anonymity for security purposes, confirmed the arrest in a brief interview with Radio Free Asia on Thursday.

The 70-year-old is being held in Kampong Speu Provincial Prison, the relative said. RFA was unable to reach provincial authorities on Thursday.

Thousands of viewers watch Sorn Dara’s talk shows on Facebook during which he has routinely attacked Hun Sen. Sorn Dara lives in exile in France and has sought asylum there.

His political commentary prompted then-Prime Minister Hun Sen in May 2023 to threaten to fire Sorn Dara’s relatives from their government jobs

“You want to try me if your parents don’t teach you lessons. I will fire your parents – including your relatives – from their jobs,” he said at a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh.

“You are so rude. I will invite your father and your sister-in-law to learn some lessons and don’t complain that I am taking your relatives as hostages,” an apparent reference to firing them.

At the time of Hun Sen’s comments, Sok Sunnareth was an army colonel and the deputy chief of staff of the Kampong Speu Provincial Operations Area. He’s also a longtime supporter of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, or CPP.

Sorn Dara’s sister-in-law works at the Ministry of Interior.

‘I have no intention or hate’

Sorn Dara’s parents appeared in a short video in February 2023 that was posted by the pro-government Fresh News, saying they had severed ties with their son. Sok Sunnareth publicly implored his son on Feb. 22 to stop criticizing Hun Sen and his government.

Sorn Dara is a former official of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, which was dissolved by the country’s Supreme Court in November 2017. He said his father disowned him that same year because he had refused to join the CPP.

Sorn Dara has continued to criticize Hun Sen and the government on his Facebook live show. He said on Thursday that he cut contact with his parents long ago, and urged authorities not to punish his father for his comments.

“I would like to reiterate that I have nothing to do with my parents,” he said. “I have no intention or hate for Samdech and the ruling party, CPP.”

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Samdech is an honorific often used to refer to Hun Sen. Sorn Dara added that his father had served loyally in the military.

“I think Hun Sen can consider and have sympathy for him and Samdech should target me instead,” he said.

Hun Sen continues to use hardball political tactics to target critics and opposition activists, said Seng Sary, a Cambodian political analyst who was granted asylum in Australia.

The arrest of Sok Sunnareth is reminiscent of Hay Vanna, a Japan-based overseas activist whose brother was arrested in August while trying to flee the country following similar public threats against Hay Vanna’s family from Hun Sen.

Last month, Hay Vanna apologized to Hun Sen and Prime Minister Hun Manet for his role in organizing protests among overseas Cambodian workers in August in Japan, South Korea, Canada and Australia. He also announced that he was joining the CPP.

On the same day, Phnom Penh Municipal Court Judge Yi Sokvouch signed a warrant ordering the release of Hay Vanna’s brother from Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison, pending his upcoming trial.

The strategy of targeting a family member was effective for Hun Sen and could also work for him in his effort to quell Sorn Dara, Seng Sary told RFA.

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

Spraying pesticides to kill fully-grown mosquitoes, a technique known as adulticiding, is a central pillar of cities’ public health strategy as mosquito populations expand, migrate to new areas, and appear earlier in the season, driven in part by a changing climate. Some of them are spreading diseases that were previously limited to tropical areas, like West Nile, malaria, and dengue. An outbreak of the rare but deadly eastern equine encephalitis, or EEE, is currently underway in the Northeast; one person in New Hampshire and another in New York have died of the disease. 

But the use of toxic chemicals to control mosquito populations — which officials say is necessary to safeguard public health — has long run into opposition from environmental and community groups, who say that the strategy endangers the very neighborhoods it’s meant to protect. They argue that the potential health effects of these substances, particularly on the endocrine system, are not taken into account when planning mosquito control strategies, and urge public agencies to focus more on prevention and public education. Jay Feldman, director of the environmental group Beyond Pesticides, called the rise in mosquito-borne illnesses “a concern that must be taken seriously,” particularly as climate change increases pressure on governments to protect vulnerable people. 

“But like other decisions to use toxic chemicals over broad swathes of the population, those decisions have to be made with transparency,” Feldman said. “And that’s where I think we have failed the public.” 

Americans have long sought to combat the nuisance — and public health threat — posed by mosquitoes through spraying. In the 1950s and ’60s, trucks spread dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane — an insecticide developed in the 1940s and known more commonly as DDT — across farm fields and residential neighborhoods, aiming to combat diseases like malaria and typhus. It was banned nationwide in 1972 after Rachel Carson exposed its harmful effects on wildlife in her book Silent Spring, jumpstarting the environmental movement. But even after DDT was phased out, adulticiding with other chemicals remained common, both by public agencies and by pest control companies like Orkin and Terminix. 

City and county public health departments and mosquito control agencies across the country utilize adulticiding in combination with other tools. These include larvicide  — chemicals that kill mosquito larvae before they have a chance to develop into adults, and are typically less toxic to other organisms than adulticides — and eliminating mosquito habitat, such as pools of standing water. The New York City Department of Health has sprayed adulticides 137 times between 2018 and 2023, according to city data, and another 20 times this year. There are more than 1,100 vector control agencies around the country, and many of them utilize adulticides, including in California, Florida, and Texas. 

The main goal of mosquito spraying programs is to prevent the outbreak of diseases like West Nile virus, which has killed more than 2,300 people across the United States over the past 25 years. The CDC has so far reported 748 cases of West Nile virus this year in 43 states, while deaths have occurred in states ranging from Illinois to Mississippi to New Jersey. 

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Climate change is now supercharging the spread of diseases like West Nile, as warmer temperatures push mosquitoes to develop faster, bite more frequently, and become better incubators for viruses. Milder winters allow disease-carrying mosquitoes to survive into the following summer, while increased rainfall — like that recently unleashed across the South by Hurricane Helene — creates standing pools of water that serve as breeding grounds for the insects. Earlier hurricanes, meanwhile, are driving outbreaks in damaged areas. Other factors are at play, too; growing urbanization is also putting mosquitoes in more frequent contact with humans, while the decay of leftover amounts of DDT in the environment has allowed populations of the insect to rebound. 

“We have to be more aggressive,” New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan told Grist about the city’s mosquito control efforts this year, when officials have had to increase spraying as well as other measures in response to higher-than-normal rates of West Nile virus in the mosquito population. “This is now the new normal in terms of what public health looks like in the face of a changing climate.” 

But as the need to deal with deadly mosquitoes grows more urgent, advocates are calling for officials to take a closer look at the application of adulticides, raising concerns about their potential harms to human health and the environment. The main adulticides used by the New York City health department are Anvil 10+10 and Duet, both of which contain synthetic pyrethroids, a class of chemicals that kill insects by targeting their nervous system. Pyrethroids such as sumithrin, the active ingredient in both Anvil 10+10 and Duet, are also endocrine disruptors, which can mimic hormones in the body and are particularly dangerous to unborn children. A study published in May in the journal Frontiers in Toxicology found that although data on the health impacts of endocrine-disrupting pesticides is scarce, pyrethroids have been associated with lower sperm count in men. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not screen pesticides for their potential effects on the endocrine system. Feldman of Beyond Pesticides said that means compounds like Anvil 10+10 shouldn’t be considered safe just because they’re approved by the federal government. Other chemicals present in the insecticides have also been linked with health problems; the cancer-causing “forever chemicals” known as PFAS have been found in pesticides including Anvil 10+10, mainly from storing them in shipping containers coated with the substances. Anvil also contains piperonyl butoxide, an additive used to increase the potency of the pesticide, which the EPA considers a possible human carcinogen. 

New York City’s health department says mosquito spraying takes place at low enough concentrations that it does not pose a danger to human health, although the agency recommends people stay indoors while their neighborhoods are being sprayed and warns that people with respiratory conditions or others “who are sensitive to spray ingredients may experience short-term eye or throat irritation, or a rash.” An environmental impact statement conducted by the city in 2001 concluded that any adverse public health effects from adulticides “would not be considered significant” compared to the risks to public health from allowing mosquitoes to proliferate.

Clarke, the manufacturer of Anvil 10+10 and Duet, told Grist that its products were reviewed by the EPA and that “adult mosquito control — used in concert with larviciding and source reduction — is the best tool to reduce adult mosquito populations in areas experiencing an outbreak.” A Clarke spokesperson also told Politifact last year that droplets of the company’s pesticides are specifically designed to work on mosquitoes, and that they break down once they touch the ground.

But advocates say adulticides are at best a temporary solution because of the tendency of mosquitoes to evolve resistance to these substances. Recent research from Arizona State University found that some mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the main pesticides used to control them. This creates a “treadmill effect,” Feldman said, where greater amounts of chemicals, as well as new kinds of pesticides, are needed to kill increasingly tolerant insects. 

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In its 2024 Comprehensive Mosquito Control and Surveillance Plan, New York City said it only applies adulticides as a last resort. This reflects best practices in the mosquito control industry, said Dan Markowski, the technical advisor for the American Mosquito Control Association, a professional association of mosquito control workers, public agencies, and private mosquito control applicators across the country, which receives funding from pesticide makers including Clarke. The organization is working to build a nationwide database for mosquito surveillance, track pesticide resistance, and develop a model for spraying based on real-time weather data, with the goal of helping its members target and reduce their adulticide use. 

“No one wants to apply pesticides in a wide area, but you very often have to because none of the other methods are 100 percent effective,” Markowski said. “And when you have an outbreak … at that point, you don’t have a lot of other options.” 

Some governments are also experimenting with releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild to breed sterile offspring, reducing mosquito populations. Nanopesticides, which are less toxic to mammals but still affect mosquitoes, are also a promising area of research. However, advocates say that the most proven way to deal with mosquitoes is by reducing their ability to breed — by clearing away pools of standing water and utilizing larvicides — and educating the public to protect themselves using long clothing and repellents. 

Feldman pointed to the success of programs in cities like Boulder, Colorado, and Washington, D.C., as proof that adulticides don’t need to be a major part of mosquito control efforts. The agency responsible for tracking and preventing the spread of West Nile virus in the nation’s capital, for example, does not use adulticides; instead, the D.C. Department of Health concentrates its efforts on larviciding, even handing out free larvicides for residents to apply in their own neighborhoods. Boulder, meanwhile, utilizes an explicitly “ecological” approach; boosting biodiversity, local officials have found, can lower populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes by forcing them to compete for resources with other species of mosquitoes as well as other kinds of insects.

“Until we start thinking systematically about these problems,” Feldman said, “we’re going to be chasing our tail on chemical after chemical, disease after disease, insect after insect, as we see escalating pressure on society to find the silver bullet that doesn’t exist.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As climate change helps mosquitoes spread disease, critics push for alternatives to pesticides on Oct 1, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Diana Kruzman.

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In the spring of 2021, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faced multiple crises.

The trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd was coming to a close. As the one-year anniversary of Floyd’s death approached, authorities were preparing for the kind of unrest that had damaged or destroyed long stretches of the city in 2020. Meanwhile, a package of police reform bills was stalled in the divided Minnesota state Legislature.

Then, on April 11, 2021, a police officer shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in the northern Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center, touching off a fresh round of protests, clashes with the police, and criticism of Walz after he sent in hundreds of officers and armored vehicles that had been readied in anticipation of the trial’s aftermath.

In the midst of all this, Walz still saw an opening to bring police reform to Minnesota and provide a national model for systemic change. He feared the 2021 session would be his last, best chance to do so. But he told the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who made repeated trips to Minneapolis during the upheaval after Floyd’s death, that local politics were getting in the way.

“I wish I could report more on our progress,” Walz told Jackson in a call transcribed by a staff member. “Both you and President Obama mentioned that Minnesota should be the state that could get this right. That’s a responsibility that we have in Minnesota.”

The clamorous close of the 2021 legislative session, and Walz’s role in trying to enact police reform in response to the police killings of Floyd and Wright, plays out in a cache of thousands of internal emails from the Walz administration obtained by ProPublica and the Minnesota Reformer. The emails were requested that summer by independent journalist Tony Webster, but the administration only recently finished turning them over. Webster shared them with the news organizations.

Though the emails are limited, covering about 11 weeks from April to June 2021, they provide a closer, more detailed look at how Walz tried to leverage his influence on the legislative process. They reveal a politician who seems to be a careful listener in one-on-one conversations with grieving mothers and Black activists, freely giving out his personal cellphone number and invitations to the governor’s mansion.

And they show how Walz struggled to balance the need for order in the streets against his credibility with activist allies, while simultaneously trying to bridge the ideological divide between progressives in his party and pro-law-enforcement conservatives.

“He likes being liked,” former state Rep. Patrick Garofalo, a Republican, said of how Walz operates. “He’s thinking about political survival, and it’s nothing more complicated than that. The guy’s not an ideologue.”

Since Vice President Kamala Harris selected Walz to be her running mate, the governor has rocketed to national prominence, praised by Democrats for his progressive “Midwestern dad” image while labeled a “dangerously liberal extremist” who wants to defund the police by Harris’ opponent, former President Donald Trump. Walz has never advocated defunding the police.

The Trump campaign has also tried to cast Walz’s response to the 2020 unrest as weak and ineffectual, despite the fact that, at the time, Trump praised Walz for deploying the National Guard, calling it a “beautiful thing to watch.”

In the end, Walz emerged from the 2021 special legislative session with a compromise bill on police reform that seemingly satisfied no one. For some Democrats, it didn’t go far enough. Many called the bill a disappointment. Some Republicans felt it went too far. The next year, facing reelection, Walz received no major law enforcement endorsements.

“He is not a radical,” said Michelle Phelps, a University of Minnesota sociology professor and author of “The Minneapolis Reckoning.” “He is, I think, a sort of a vanguard of what a more progressive, but still centrist, liberal Democratic wing of the party could look like.”

In response to questions, Teddy Tschann, a spokesperson for Walz, said in a statement that the governor “is committed to bringing people with different views and backgrounds together to find common ground and get things done.”

After Wright was killed, as demonstrations escalated outside the Brooklyn Center police station, texts streamed into Walz’s phone.

“Can you please get those cops out of there and send in the national guard?” one Democratic lawmaker texted him.

That night residents, protesters and journalists in Brooklyn Center met with members of Operation Safety Net, an aggressive coalition of Minnesota National Guard soldiers, state troopers and local police who used tear gas and flash-bangs to clear the streets. A prominent union leader texted Walz less than 24 hours later: “Escalating with tanks and national guard is not helping. You can calm the situation, but this isn’t the way.”

An attorney representing 30 national and local media organizations would later write to Walz with a detailed list of documented abuses the group said journalists were subjected to at the hands of law enforcement, warning that the state agencies under Walz’s control seemed to have no regard for the First Amendment.

Despite renewed tension and unrest, emails from Walz staffers document his outreach to members of Black activist groups and the families of people killed by police in Minnesota. On April 20, the day a jury found Chauvin guilty of murdering Floyd, Walz staff logged phone conversations with the Floyd family, the Rev. Al Sharpton and former President Barack Obama. In one phone conversation on the anniversary of Floyd’s death — a day on which Walz called for 9 minutes and 29 seconds of silence acknowledging the length of time Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck — Walz reflected on his own “inherent racial bias.”

“I wanted to be thoughtful and be intentional around race and the murder of George Floyd. I am trying to learn this year,” he said, according to a staffer’s transcript of a call with the leader of a local foundation. “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a lot of villages to raise a governor.”

With Walz, some advocates felt acknowledged in a way that was initially refreshing.

“The governor looked me in my eyes and said, ‘John, I need you to get me some legislation,’” said Johnathon McClellan, president of the Minnesota Justice Coalition, a racial equity nonprofit that advocates for social justice reform. “He understood the protests. He understood what the people were asking for.”

Walz received a flood of advice and opinions on what the next legislative steps should be, some from less-expected entities. The Minnesota Business Partnership, a group representing the CEOs of companies like 3M and Cargill as well as other business leaders, urged Walz to advocate for training policy changes and measures to make it harder to hire police officers who’d engaged in misconduct, while stressing that the group was broadly pro-law enforcement.

“Minnesota’s reputation matters,” said Charlie Weaver, the partnership’s executive director at the time. “If we had a reputation as a hostile environment for minority workers, that’s a big problem for our large companies.”

The Walz administration leapt at the chance to arrange a meeting between lawmakers and Weaver, a former chief of staff for Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty. “We need their help pushing key issues in the Senate,” wrote one policy adviser.

But the leadership of the Republican-controlled Senate criticized broader reform efforts as “anti-police.” Behind the scenes, according to an internal memo, the Senate agreed to just three of the dozens of proposals the Democrat-controlled House had advanced and Walz had supported.

“I wasn’t going to take things that I knew would hinder a good police officer from doing their job, and also hinder us from getting quality police in the future,” said then-Senate majority leader Paul Gazelka in an interview.

In response, Walz brokered a meeting between Gazelka and Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence. The group’s founder, Toshira Garraway, lost her fiance in 2009 after he was chased by the St. Paul police and later found dead in a bin at a recycling facility. She wanted to advocate for a bill eliminating the statute of limitations on wrongful death suits against police. (Garraway did not respond to requests for comment.) Gazelka said that the request for the meeting, coming straight from Walz, was unusual.

“I certainly was willing to do that, and did listen to them,” Gazelka said.

That meeting took place on June 3, 2021, the same day that a U.S. Marshals Service task force shot and killed Winston Smith Jr. in a parking garage in Minneapolis while trying to arrest him on an outstanding warrant. Walz’s office once again put the National Guard on notice and made repeated requests to the Biden administration to address its role in the incident and ease pressure on local authorities.

“DOJ in DC is a hard ‘no’ on doing a press conference,” staffers wrote in the days after Smith’s death. A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment.

Walz couldn’t avoid blowback, even from prominent local activists with whom he shared a cordial relationship. A letter sent by Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and the founder of the Racial Justice Network who was in contact with the administration throughout the spring, demanded that Walz create an independent entity to investigate Smith’s death, criticizing the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension as hopelessly biased. Staff from both Walz’s office and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety wrote a draft of a response that said the BCA, which investigates incidents where police kill people, had the administration’s “utmost trust and confidence.” Although Levy Armstrong could not confirm that she got the reply, the BCA retained control of the case.

Protests over Smith’s death continued until a drunk driver plowed into a group of demonstrators, killing one woman and injuring others. The next day, on June 14, the Minnesota Legislature entered a special session with no movement on police reform and the threat of a government shutdown looming over negotiations. Roughly 38,000 potential layoff notices had already been sent to state employees, and Walz and Senate and House lawmakers had two and a half weeks to come to an agreement. Republicans were particularly eager to pass a bill that would end Walz’s COVID-19-era emergency powers.

“It was very nerve-wracking,” said House Speaker Melissa Hortman, a Democrat. “There were two pressures coming for a shutdown: the Republicans were interested in shutting down the government if the governor didn’t give up his emergency powers. My caucus was interested in shutting down the government if we didn’t have some public safety reforms.”

After the first day of the special session, Walz staffers noted that Senate Republicans had “retracted policy concessions” and seemed “withdrawn from negotiations.” Around the same time, Walz policy advisers were also doing damage control after sending an email that erroneously announced that the Minnesota Justice Coalition and Families Supporting Families Against Police Violence had pared down their list of desired legislation from nine bills to four, prompting an angry press release from the groups: “WE WANT TO MAKE IT CRYSTAL CLEAR THAT WE MADE NO SUCH AGREEMENT.” Kristin Beckmann, then Walz’s deputy chief of staff, admonished the policy advisers for speaking out of turn.

“This is a major set back in that trust. It’s really frustrating,” she wrote. Beckmann did not respond to requests for comment.

The emails end in mid-June with Walz’s schedulers batting away invitations and meetings to allow for all-day negotiation sessions while staffers tried to craft messaging for increasingly anxious state employees. “We’re getting a lot of internal pushback that we haven’t been able to provide enough information,” one state communications worker wrote.

Reform advocates had been urging Walz for weeks to take a hard-line stance during the final budget negotiations, even allowing the government to shut down to force more sweeping changes. But the governor made it clear that was a line he would not cross, according to staff notes on the conversations.

Walz said that he “had concerns over shutting down the government and that this hurts many of the people the administration is trying to help. He said he was hopeful on a few items passing this year,” according to the summation of a phone call with McClellan, the president of the Minnesota Justice Coalition. “He made it clear it was unlikely that everything he’s pushing for will pass.”

The notes proved prophetic. Three days before the deadline, Walz, Gazelka and Hortman announced a deal. The final bill included new restrictions on no-knock warrants, a law requiring 911 operators to alert mental health crisis teams under certain circumstances, and the creation of a kind of warrant that doesn’t require police to take suspects into custody. The package also included salary increases for state law enforcement, money for body cameras and enhanced penalties for the attempted murder of officers.

Through an executive action, Walz also directed state law enforcement agencies to turn over body camera footage from deadly police encounters to the affected families within five days.

Garraway’s bill to eliminate the statute of limitations on wrongful death suits against the police hit the cutting room floor, as did bills that would disallow police from making a number of equipment-related traffic stops, like ones for expired registration tags, and a bill that would form a civilian oversight board. In an interview with The Washington Post, Walz said he felt he’d “failed” Garraway.

At the end of one of Walz’s last press conferences that session, Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and one of the people the Walz administration had kept in close contact with that spring, pushed through reporters to ask Walz to veto the compromise bill, saying it actually provided more cover for police. Walz, looking tired, listened, addressed Hussein by his first name and said he would not veto the bill.

“This is the challenge of democracy,” Walz said. “There are going to be a lot of people in this moment [who] see this as not acceptable. I understand that.”

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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Democracy can be considered a commodity with multitude of varieties. Each elite ruling class claims theirs is the best suitable for its people, and thus imposes it on them. Mind you, not pure democracy — government of the people, by the people, for the people” — because that would amount to nothing less than socialism. The “democracy” that countries profess to practice is nothing but an interpretation of the ruling class in those countries with the aim to control its general populace.

India has Modi-cracy where one man, Narendra Modi, is running the show. A year ago, he boasted: “India is the mother of democracy.” If India is the mother of democracy, then Modi must be the illegitimate father of democracy who was till last month busy Hindu-izing the country. (He did not get a simple majority in the June 2024 elections, so his Hindu-ization project has slowed down, but it remains doubtful he’ll give up so easily. He could instigate a war with Pakistan, declare an emergency, and assume extraordinaire power. Never underestimate the power of elected fascists.)

England has monacracy and the taxpayers bear the burden of monarchy which can’t be called a true democracy.

The United States has oligacracy where a small group of extremely wealthy people decide the fate of more than 335 million common people in the name of democracy. Biden could fight the proxy war against Russia or support the genocide of Palestinians and nothing changes; but he loses a debate against Trump and the wealthy halt $90 million in donations.

Military Power

Then there is Pakistan’s militocracy. The military has ruled that country, directly or indirectly, for most of that nation’s existence. When the military favors a politician, that person becomes the prime minister but has to be subservient because the rein (important portfolios such as foreign policy, defense, etc.) is always determined by the military. When the premier tries to control the entire government machinery, that person is deposed and could be sent to prison. Politicians are at the army’s mercy.

The Pakistan military and governments constantly plead and beg the IMF, Saudi rulers, and UAE rulers for a billion dollars or more.

The military torpedoed Nawaz Sharis’s past efforts to improve relations with India. But it now wants better relations. The increase in trade with India can help Pakistan to overcome its dire economic and financial condition.

The 2018 election saw cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party become the Prime Minister, with the military’s blessing . But when Khan tried to do things his own way, a vote of no-confidence was engineered and Khan was ousted in 2022. At present, he’s in jail with over 100 cases registered against him. Even when a case is dismissed, police or some agency person issues another arrest warrant and he gets re-arrested. Khan, his wife Bushra Bibi, and some PTI members are entangled in this vicious cycle.

After more than a year in various prisons all over Pakistan, Sanam Javed of PTI was released on July 10, 2024 by the Lahore High Court (in Punjab province) but soon after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested her and took her to Islamabad. On July 14, she was let go but was re-arrested by the police of Balochistan. She was freed on July 15 by the Islamabad High Court which restrained police from arresting her till July 18. The IHC justice asked her to “avoid unnecessary rhetoric” or else the court would reverse its order. In other words, keep your mouth shut. Her lawyer guaranteed that she would refrain from such language. On June 18, the IHC considered her arrest to be illegal and she was set free. Immediately, the Punjab government challenged IHC verdict.

While in power, Khan had visited Russia the day it had launched the special military operation into Ukraine. Khan was also critical of the US. The US is never too busy not to interfere in other countries’ affairs. David Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, asked Pakistan’s then ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, to get rid of Khan.

The army’s open hostility and its tactics to break up Khan’s party PTI by levying various charges and arresting and re-arresting PTI members, including Khan, saw Khan’s supporters out on the streets on May 9, 2023; they did some damage to military installations. The army in response, came up with an event called Youm-e-Takreem Shuhada-e-Pakistan or Martyrs’ Reverence Day to be celebrated on May 25 every year to remember the soldiers who lose their lives while serving.

Seven and a half months after Khan was ousted, in November 2022, the retiring army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa conceded the army’s meddling in politics.

“… our army which day and night remains busy in serving the nation, is often made the subject of criticism.” “A major reason for this is the army’s interference in politics for the last 70 years which is unconstitutional.

“This is why in February last year [2021] the army, after great deliberation, decided that it would never interfere in any political matter. I assure you we are strictly adamant on this and will remain so.”

One wonders why leaders accept their lies and mistakes, or talk peace and the danger of military-industrial complex, etc only when they’re leaving or have left. Bajwa was lying.

Today, the army is still omnipresent. The current army Chief Asim Munir meets with the business community, invites winning athletes, issues regular statements, and so on. The current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took over power after military approval. His older brother and former three-incomplete-term prime minister Nawaz Sharif came back from exile with military’s approval.

Disappearing Critics

The intelligence agencies in Pakistan such as MI (Military Intelligence), IB (Intelligence Bureau), ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), etc. take care of the critics — journalists and common people — who write, speak, or protest against the military interference in government affairs.

Sometimes they are abducted, tortured, and then released. Other times they are killed with no clues left.

In 2011, the Islamabad Bureau Chief of Asia Times, Syed Saleem Shahzad was tortured and murdered. News anchor and journalist Arshad Sharif, a critic of military, was shot dead in 2022, by police in Nairobi, Kenya. In May 2024, four journalists were murdered. Since 1992, more than 60 journalists have lost their lives. Then there are those who have disappeared and never reappeared. In many instances, the victims are harassed and blackmailed, their phones are tapped, and they are detained illegally. The agencies never issue any kind of statement because that would be tantamount to accepting guilt.

Thousands of people are missing in Pakistan, without any clue as to where they are. The number of enforced disappearances in 2023 was 51.

Then there is the Pakistani province of Balochistan — a vast land mass with the smallest population that is underdeveloped and ignored by governments. This has caused resentment among the Balochis that has resulted in insurgency. The first six months of 2024 saw 197 persons missing — most of them Balochis. On July 28, three persons died and eight were injured during a clash between Balochistan Yakjehti Committee (BYC) and security forces. People from the province overcame roadblocks set up by the authorities and met at Gwader’s Marine Drive for the Baloch Rajee Muchi (Baloch National Gathering). BYC leader Dr Mahrang Baloch asked security officials to free the apprehended protestors. She proclaimed:

“Until the release of our people, the sit-in will continue at Marine Drive.”

More than 5,000 Balochis are missing. Families of missing and/or killed Balochis demonstrate holding photos of victims every now and then but to no avail. In protests, Baloch women are in the forefront. They live in a tortured state of mind not knowing whether their sons, husbands, fathers are alive or not. In January 2024, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, got mad at Baloch protestors and called supporters and “relatives of those fighting against the state” as “advocates of terrorists in Balochistan.” Kakar himself hails from Balochistan.

On the night of May 14, 2024, the Kashmiri poet, journalist Ahmed Farhad Shah was kidnapped by four men outside his home while returning from a dinner. A petition from his family was filed with Islamabad High Court (IHC) saying that Shah was abducted for his criticism of ISI. According to his wife, Syeda Urooj Zainab, the agencies felt that Shah was a PTI and Imran Khan supporter, so they were after him. Zainab refutes that impression and says he has also supported PML-N when it was under pressure by the Pakistan’s military. One of the judges at IHC, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, initiated an enquiry and ordered that Shah be found and produced before the court. Two weeks later, it was reported that he was in police custody. But then the federal government asked the IHC on June 1 to close the case. On June 4, his bail was rejected by an anti-terrorism court in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Critics are treated as terrorists! Since then, there has been no news on Shah, it is doubtful if they’ve found him.

The Advocate Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, a Baloch, who is Shah’s counsel, has herself been harassed, threatened, arrested, re-arrested, for calling the Pakistan army “terrorists” and for supporting the protesting Baloch students.

Ahmed Farhad Shah is a poet whose poems are critical of the army. Here is the translation of one of his poems originally written in Hindi/Urdu.

he thinks of his own freewill

he thinks of his own freewill, pick him up
he’s somewhat different than our henchmen, pick him up
the arrogant ones we abducted before him, pick him up
he’s is enquiring about them, pick him up
he was clearly ordered what to speak and what not to, but he speaks his own mind, pick him up
the minions whom we honored with positions and rewards, he’s laughing at those clever souls, pick him up
he questions why there’s peace and security problem, he is the peace and security problem, pick him up*
he was told to see only what we show him, but he uses his own discretion, pick him up
this lunatic is questioning extent of our power, he has crossed the line, pick him up

* Farhad reminds his audience that just for raising the question of peace and security, fifty people were imprisoned.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by B.R. Gowani.

Most people balk at the idea of paying more for anything, and congestion pricing plans are no exception. No more than about one-quarter of New Yorkers favored the measure, according to one poll, with support falling among residents of outer boroughs like Staten Island. Yet widespread opposition, and the political turmoil it can create, is a feature, not a bug, of these efforts. In almost every city that has adopted congestion pricing, including London and Stockholm, it was extremely unpopular at first.

“Obviously, if people previously didn’t have to pay a congestion charge, no one’s gonna say, ‘Yes, I’d love to pay more,’” said Alina Tuerk, strategy and planning manager at Transport for London, the government agency in charge of that city’s sprawling transport system. 

Yet surprisingly, public favor grew in nearly all cities as people adapted to the policy and, more importantly, witnessed tangible improvements. Most Londoners, for example, vehemently opposed the idea before it was implemented in 2003. But as many as six in 10 people supported it within the first year as they saw almost immediate benefits. Now most people don’t even think about it.

“Because it’s been in place for over 20 years, it’s become almost business as usual,” Tuerk said.

Transportation experts say shifting public attitudes requires proving the charges actually reduce traffic, improve air quality, and finance more climate-friendly modes of transit. Proponents of New York’s congestion pricing plan, which would have taken effect June 30, have argued it would ease traffic by 17 percent, reduce particulate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the downtown area by more than 12 percent and 11 percent respectively, and generate as much as $1 billion annually for mass transit. (That money would have been bonded or invested to generate $15 billion to improve transit infrastructure.) 

But that isn’t always enough, because there’s something more at play: a fiddly bit of human psychology called status quo bias. People tend to prefer the current state of affairs over a big change regardless of any expected benefits it may bring. And that, more often than not, leads them to initially oppose congestion pricing, said Jonas Eliasson, director of transport access at the Swedish National Transport Administration. 

Yet that tendency also goes both ways: Once a change occurs, people often learn to accept their new circumstances and eventually view them more positively. In other words, they just get used to it. And once you do, the concept is “not so strange anymore,” Eliasson said.

According to a poll by Siena College in April, only 25 percent of New York state voters approved of the proposed pricing plan, with 63 percent opposed. Many opponents worried that the proposal would increase pollution in outer boroughs as vehicles avoided downtown. Others expressed concerns about the impact on low-income residents. Powerful interests ranging from New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and the state trucking association sued to stop it.

That pushback eerily echoes early opposition seen abroad. Before London’s policy took effect in early 2003, only 40 percent of residents supported it and Mayor Ken Livingstone predicted a “desperately bloody day” ahead of its implementation. In Stockholm, two-thirds of residents opposed even a six-month trial that was announced in 2002 and started in 2006. “I was actually surprised by not just the strength of the backlash, but also the longevity of the protest,” Eliasson said. “For all of this time, this was virtually in the news every day.” 

Opponents raised many of the same objections voiced by New Yorkers. So it was surprising when, shortly after congestion charges were introduced, public attitudes turned overwhelmingly positive. In London, nearly 60 percent of people supported congestion charges several months after the policy started, with as few as 25 percent of residents remaining opposed. Stockholm saw an even more dramatic shift to around 70 percent in support by 2011. (Voters made congestion pricing permanent through a referendum in 2007.) 

Many of those skeptics were swayed by the results. London saw dramatic changes: downtown congestion dropped 30 percent as overall traffic fell 15 percent. The city also added 300 buses to the central London network on the same day the charge took effect, boosting a shift from driving to mass transit. 

“We saw bus use go up by about a third, and another 10 percent of people switched from driving to using public transport, walking, and cycling,” Tuerk said. “That helped set positive attitudes toward the project, because people could see what they were getting from it.”

Stockholm saw impressive improvements as well. Downtown traffic fell more than 22 percent and vehicle emissions dropped by as much as 15 percent. 

Both cities used the revenue to invest heavily in mass transit and other transportation infrastructure, including roads, bridges, sidewalks, and bike lanes. But one of the biggest benefits has been a change in cultural norms around transportation and levying fees for a public good. “People have now on a subconscious level accepted that street space is something that you can actually price, just as you can have traffic signals and speed limits and parking charges,” Eliasson said. “You can discuss whether they should be higher or lower, whether they should be tweaked — but the sort of moral question of whether streets can be priced, that’s not really an issue anymore.”

Benefits aside, researchers have found that status quo bias is one of the biggest reasons attitudes change over time. Put one way, people accept the idea, and come to embrace it. One study in Germany found that drivers who believed a congestion charge was imminent were more likely to view it positively, in part because people find it discomforting to reject their current reality. Another study in Gothenburg, Sweden, found that status quo bias played the biggest role in increasing support for that city’s congestion pricing plan upon its introduction. A similar phenomenon has played out in Stockholm and other cities around the world, Eliasson said.

“If you don’t have congestion pricing, you have the psychological tendency to say that things are relatively good as they are; I don’t want to change things,” said Eliasson, who co-authored the study in Gothenburg and others on the topic. But once the policy takes effect, people shift their thinking to, “Now we have congestion pricing, I like it the way we have it now, why should we change everything,” Eliasson said. The human nature to favor the status quo means policymakers “will always face this resistance toward changing anything.”

That makes strong political leadership, and a willingness to endure inevitable short-term opposition, essential to the success of bold moves like congestion pricing. Livingstone provided crucial support in London, while in Stockholm the proposal was backed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party and other center-left political parties.

That level of support is missing in the Empire State and the Big Apple. Once Hochul waffled in her support, New York Mayor Eric Adams supported her decision and said the city will find other ways to fund now-postponed transit infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, some 700,000 vehicles continue to crowd into Manhattan each weekday.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Critics of congestion pricing often end up supporting it. Here’s why. on Jul 29, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Akielly Hu.

On July 19, shortly after state media reported Trong’s death after 13 years in Vietnam’s top government job, former prisoner of conscience Pham Thanh Nghien posted a Facebook story titled “Why is NPT exempted from being judged right now and instead we must wait for history’s judgment?”

“No need to wait for history, Vietnamese people should have the right to judge him straight away,” wrote Nghien, who lives in exile in the U.S. with her family. A day earlier, she posted a commentary discussing President To Lam taking over the general secretary role if Trong died and recalling an incident in which Lam, then minister of public security, was photographed eating gold-coated steak at an upscale restaurant in London in 2021.

On July 22, she received a Facebook notification in both English and Vietnamese regarding the two posts.

“Your post is unavailable in Vietnam. [Because of] a legal request from the Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communications (MOIC), we have to restrict access to your post,” Facebook said.

Explaining the decision, the Meta subsidiary said that it had “evaluated legal requests before taking action upon legal requests or requests by governments” and “taken into consideration human rights impacts.”

Facebook suggested Nghien contact the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications if she had any questions.

The former political prisoner said Facebook had blocked interactions, removed her stories, and even shut down her account many times over the years. She sometimes received company notifications about their action but this time, she said, Meta had not provided a concrete and clear explanation regarding the communication ministry’s intervention.

Nghien, who served four years in prison for protesting against China’s claim to islands in the South China Sea, accused Facebook, which used to be a platform where many Vietnamese raised dissenting voices, of trading human rights for profits. 

“Facebook has already surrendered,” she told Radio Free Asia.” They are pursuing profits and abandoning their commitment to ensure freedom of speech while doing business in Vietnam. It appears that they are cooperating or even compromising with the Communist Party of Vietnam in censoring Facebook accounts of political dissidents and posts with content disliked by the Vietnamese government.”

RFA emailed the MOIC to verify whether it had asked Facebook to block Nghien's articles in Vietnam but did not receive any responses at time of publication.

RFA also contacted Facebook to verify that it had restricted access to Nghien’s posts in response to Vietnamese government requests but did not receive an immediate response.

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Journalist Le Trung Khoa, who lives in Germany, said he received similar notifications from Facebook. The owner of the Thoibao.de website, which publishes articles critical of the Vietnamese government, said on Tuesday Facebook notified him that his stories about Nguyen Phu Trong were not available in Vietnam.

“This morning, I received notification from Facebook that four of my stories were not available in Vietnam upon MOIC request,” he said. “This is new, as Facebook used to quietly block posts in Vietnam without any notifications for the past year.”

California-based Facebook said in a transparency report, that from July 2023 to December 2023, it restricted access in Vietnam to more than 2,300 items in response to reports from the MOIC, the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information and the Ministry of Public Security for allegedly violating local laws on proving information that distorts, slanders, or insults the reputation of an organization or the honor and dignity of an individual under Article 5.1 (D) Decree no. 72/2013/ND-CP. The remaining items were restricted for alleged violations of other Vietnamese laws.

Facebookers fined, even beaten

Vietnamese authorities also cracked down on domestic dissenters who turned to social media to criticize what Trong had done or failed to do during his tenure.

State media cited Ho Chi Minh City police as saying that after Trong’s death, a number of individuals used social media to post information that was “fabricated, distorting, attacking, and undermining the great national unity, lowering the prestige of the Party and State.”

State media also reported that on July 20 and 21 Ho Chi Minh City police had fined three people VND7.5 million (US$300) each for posting material about Trong, ordering them to pledge not to repeat the violations.

“Hanoi is trying to frame Trong as a ‘new Uncle Ho’ to repolish old-fashioned values of the Communist Party,” said a Hanoi-based political commentator who requested anonymity, referring to revolutionary leader and former president Ho Chi Minh. 

“The efforts to clarify Trong’s [legacy] and criticize the Communist Party now become a felony and are heavily suppressed."

An activist from Ho Chi Minh City, who also wanted to remain anonymous for security reasons, told RFA that the police had summoned him to discuss a post on his Facebook page in which he expressed his disagreement with a government “order” asking the whole country to mourn Trong.

He said police beat him and forced him to acknowledge that the Facebook account and post were his. However, he refused to do so, or to sign any documents. He said that before freeing him, police told him that they would summon him again in the course of their work on the case..

Translated by Anna Vu for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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

Acclaimed author Arundhati Roy could soon face trial under India’s contested “anti-terror” laws in a case that has drawn outrage from free speech advocates in India and beyond. An official from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-right ruling Bharatiya Janata Party gave the go-ahead on Friday for Roy’s prosecution over comments she made about Kashmir in 2010. This comes as Modi was sworn in last week to his third term as prime minister after the BJP won the most seats in Indian’s Parliament, but lost its outright majority. “This case is so convoluted, it’s hard to say where it begins and where it ends — and that’s the point. The process is the punishment,” says Indian author and journalist Siddhartha Deb, who teaches at The New School in New York. Deb says Modi is trying to show that “everything is normal” despite the shocking electoral setback, with the case against Roy being used to placate his “rabid attack dogs of Hindu nationalism.”

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

Premier Cho Jung-tai said Lai's administration, known as the Executive Yuan, will be looking at the possibility of bouncing the new legislation back to lawmakers for review, based on the Additional Articles of the island's constitution.

"When the Executive Yuan receives the documents from the Legislative Yuan, it will deliberate carefully over how the constitutional organs can best fulfill their responsibilities," Cho said in  comments reported by Taiwan's Central News Agency. 

Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, which holds the presidency but which has lost control of the legislature, has called for a constitutional interpretation of the controversial amendments.

Pro-China lawmakers voted through a package of legislative amendments as tens of thousands of people protested outside the Legislative Yuan on Tuesday, giving themselves new investigative powers, the power to hold hearings and the ability to sanction officials if they don't comply with requests.

One amendment requires the president to report to the Legislative Yuan annually and to submit to questioning by lawmakers.

'Bluebird Movement'

Protesters, some of whom held up effigies of blue birds, pushed large balloons into the legislature on Tuesday night emblazoned with the "Citizens Defend Democracy" and "Reject Chinese Interference in Politics," while one DPP lawmaker threw a paper aircraft made from blue paper at the podium.

But the amendments were passed by the pro-China Kuomintang and the Taiwan People's Party, which together command a majority of 60 out of the 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan, as crowds gathered in protests that are being dubbed the "Bluebird Movement."

President Lai Ching-te's DPP, which holds just 51 seats following January's general election, has called for a constitutional interpretation of the new laws, which critics say will open up the island's government to manipulation and sanction by politicians with close ties to Beijing.

Lai called on Beijing in his May 20 inauguration speech to stop threatening his country, and respect the will of its 23 million people, the majority of whom have no wish to be ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.

National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen warned on Wednesday that Beijing is planning to take advantage of the DPP's loss of control over the legislature by stepping up contacts with lawmakers, local politicians and religious and business groups, using a strategy of exchanges with friendly associations while attacking those that refuse to cooperate.

Beijing vowed in January to step up its efforts to achieve "peaceful unification" with the island after Taiwanese voters in January elected Lai, Beijing's least favorite candidate.

Tsai said his agency is "closely monitoring developments, having obtained both public and secret intelligence about relevant policy discussions inside China’s establishment," Taiwan's Central News Agency reported.

'Taiwan belongs to all'

The Kuomintang, or KMT, whose former president Ma Ying-jeou recently met with Xi Jinping, says the new laws will allow the island's democracy to be more transparent and accountable, after eight years of domination by the ruling DPP, immediately announcing it would set up a "private special investigation team" to go after "corrupt" DPP officials.

Kuomintang caucus convenor Fu Kun-chi told journalists: "Taiwan doesn't belong to the Democratic Progressive Party, nor does it belong to Lai Ching-te. Taiwan belongs to all of its people."

"Starting today, we will expose every instance of Democratic Progressive Party corruption, one by one," said Fu.

DPP Legislative Yuan caucus leader Ker Chien-ming said Tuesday's vote was "a day of national humiliation," accusing parliamentary speaker and pro-China politician Han Kuo-yu of failing to abide by procedural justice in his handling of the legislative amendments.

"We will definitely propose a constitutional interpretation, which can only be put forward after the president's announcement," Ker said. "The DPP will abide by the legal requirements and procedures for constitutional interpretation."

'Last breath'

A protester who gave only the nickname Chili told Radio Free Asia outside the Legislative Yuan on Tuesday night: "I feel very heavy, and sad, very sad. The [KMT and TPP] totally ignored the rules of procedure and refused to discuss the issue with the Democratic Progressive Party."

He said protesters would start issuing recall proceedings for KMT and TPP lawmakers from their respective constituencies.

Many in the crowd were refugees from an ongoing crackdown on political dissent under Chinese Communist Party rule in Hong Kong.

"I may not be able to achieve anything special, but I will keep on coming out, time and again, as a person who is from Hong Kong and Taiwan," a protester who gave only the nickname Ah K for fear of reprisals told RFA on Tuesday night. 

Another Hong Konger said she had brought her children along to "take a last breath of free and democratic air before their eyes were blindfolded" by government propaganda on their return.

Wu Jui-jen, an associate history researcher at Taiwan's Academia Sinica, called on protesters to "go back home, go back to school, go back to work, and start organizing and acting, learning and discussing, and build a movement to strengthen civil society."

Wu said he expects pro-China lawmakers to boost trade ties with China, amend national security legislation to dismantle the island's defenses against political infiltration, and even sign the island up to Chinese President Xi Jinping's Belt and Road international influence and infrastructure program, and begin the process of controlling Taiwan's economy, society and culture.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alice Yam for RFA Cantonese and Huang Chun-mei for RFA Mandarin.

Image by Hany Osman.

College campuses and universities across the country have organized some of the largest peace activities and anti-war protests since 1969. As the social movement points in specific directions in calling for Palestinian liberation, over 100 schools scattered across the United States from American to Yale University have participated and issued their own sets of “Five Demands.”

College students especially are utilizing and expanding their educational experiences and cutting their activist teeth on campus in the form of teach-ins, demonstrations, lectures, speeches, and creative art, largely on their own but also with facilitation and professors in solidarity. Further, it’s not lost on young people elsewhere, as news of the movement reached the Gazan children along with families expressing their gratitude.

A common reaction to the widespread nature and success stories on the part of the student activists has been for naysayers to label and paint the demonstrators and demonstrations as antisemites engaging in antisemitic activity. Perhaps a tool and offshoot from the modern hasbara playbook. Its purpose is to draw suspicion over a real and authentic concern of historical and current antisemitism.

There are several ways critics and campus protest skeptics have constructed their own reality to undermine student resistance. The methods include counter-protesting, the calling of police, message distortion, flimsy polling data, and the utilization of the mainstream press.

From the look of the counter-protesting, the goals look fairly obvious. First, counter-protesting presupposes that the Mideast world was a tidy and peaceful place on October 6th and that Iranian and Lebanese proxies simply created a need for power and dominance to defend “good states” (US, Israel, Saudi Arabia) from “bad states” (Yemen, Iran, Syria) on October 7th.  As reported by journalist Joshua Frank, one Columbia professor’s motivation to counter-protest wasn’t based on any intellectual argument at all but rather significant familial ties to arms manufacturing.

Secondly, counter-protesting invites people to think that Israeli force and Palestinian resistance present a “both sides” argument (bad) and this ranges to counter-protesting that characterizes Netanyahu policy as self-defense (worse). Another motivation of counter-protesting is to draw ire and/or elicit a slip up in words or actions from budding activists in a further effort to categorize them as antisemitic. Hecklers of the encampments have tried to test random students with gotcha questions regarding geography (re: from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea), to sending in staged distractions to enhance the possibility of media spectacle. These techniques haven’t amounted to much but the proposition alone that they are feasible is enough to warrant a concern regarding perhaps the ultimate goal of counter-protesting – to necessitate a presence for law enforcement.

The idea and symbolic presence of law enforcement in the face of the encampment promotes the idea that the cops are there to catch bad people and to ensure that good kids can safely get to class (they always could) when in fact the role of the police hasn’t changed since the days of ancient societies. That is, the main roles of the police are to protect private property and concentrations of wealth and power from well-organized outside forces of resistance. Often, it is the police force’s duty to make sure that mass movements and mobilization techniques are struck down while maintaining a highly stratified society based on law and order. Universities are complicit businesses that must carry on undisturbed just as free enterprise must remain steady.

It does not help the students either that almost all of New York City’s political class, as an example, is tied to the established order and Biden’s bipartisan consensus when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although they differ from Republicans, Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul are poised to undermine the student’s resistance just as they are to cut public resources whenever their respective donor classes apply economic or political pressure. When a mayor or governor cannot deviate very far from the established order, the police become willing combatants against the students and professors. The misinformation on the part of the police was best illustrated when the NYPD Commissioner held up a copy of Oxford’s Very Short Introduction Series (Terrorism) believing it was a student’s “how to” book. It served as a microcosm for how the entirety of the encampments have been misunderstood by people with authority.

One of the more bizarre aspects of the politics of encampment are how the detractors purposefully change the meaning of protest rhetoric as a scare tactic. In response, it reached a level of such carelessness that a Peace Action Group in New York went out of its way to prohibit signs, slogans, and chants at one of their pro-Palestine rallies. They feared that saying such words as “decolonize,” “intifada,” and “revolution,” (even when Jewish activists wanted to use these words) all constituted terms beyond their control. This form of liberal respectability unfortunately played into the hands of the forces attempting to “other” the campus protests. This wasn’t liberal rationality to eliminate infantile leftism as a knee jerk reaction, but servility to power and privilege to protect their organization.

It gets worse. In a recent Hillel Poll, it found that 61% of college students surveyed cited antisemitism on campus in the wave of protests and encampments. If that wasn’t bad enough, they also concluded that intimidation and assault were increasing because of the protests, while disrupting the ability to attend class (as if student engagement is not a part of higher educations’ purpose). Sociologist Eman Abdelhadi has documented the dialogue and mutual respect found in the encampments that counters Hillel’s forms of cooked data that frames hand selected polls to intentionally distort specific points of view.

Although Hillel’s polling might be more of a political reaction to the reality that many campus demonstrators are in fact Jewish, and not antisemites, it nonetheless sounds convincing, especially when you do not wish to deny a student’s experience or feelings on the matter.

International relations scholar Richard Falk indicated to me that Hillel polls are suspect for a variety of reasons. First, the polls serve as ways to discourage activism that a strong majority of Hillel students may have previously opposed on its merits. Second, facts get in the way of the polls. 15 of 17 ICJ judges (of the two dissenters, one was the ad hoc Israel judge, the other a juridically deviant Ugandan judge with poor prior reputation) have views aligned with the student protests, and not the government. And on an urgent issue of genocide, they support the right of protest. Falk posited further, “Would we accept a comparable argument that anti-Nazi protests in the late 1930s should be suspended because they made German students uncomfortable? Would anyone dare make such an argument?” “Deconstructing the polls is an important issue,” Falk asserted, “given their manipulative role in the present context as justification for encroaching upon the core role of academic freedom in a democratic society.” Middle East historian Lawrence Davidson stated that historically, white students said similar things when schools attempted integration.

Professor and author Stephen Zunes explained to me that Hillel potentially reaches out to students that reinforce their organizational mission. Since Hillel has moved to the right over the last ten years or so, “[they are] essentially saying non-Zionist Jewish students are unwelcomed.” He continued by stating, “even if they did reach out to a more representative sampling, non-Zionist Jewish students might not want to respond if they knew it was from Hillel.” Zunes also pointed out to me: “If [students] are being told repeatedly that ‘River to the Sea’ is not a call for a democratic secular state but the killing/expelling of Israeli Jews and that ‘globalize the intifada’ is not a call for civil resistance but for terrorism against Jews, it would not be surprising that they would say they encountered language that was ‘antisemitic, threatening or derogatory toward Jewish people.’”

Collectively it seems, the goals of the counter-protestors, police, politicians, polls, and corporate media, are to conflate student support for Palestine with the center-right Hamas (who won with less than 50% of the vote in 2006) while categorizing them as a single entity without social, political, economic, or military wings. Perhaps no journalist is more skillful in this enterprise as New York Times reporter Bret Stephens. In his recent “What a ‘Free Palestine’ Actually Means,” he points out that “Israeli settlers have run riot against their Palestinian neighbors,” but cynically asserts it’s all for naught since “under Hamas” there will simply be no democracy for LGBTQ+ people, thanks to college students. He also oversimplifies and cites corrupt Arab leadership to lessen the burden on Western human rights abuses, as his underlying goal in the piece is to delegitimize any view outside of the political center. Stephens further presumes that the student protestors’ only choices are reactionary forms of ethnic nationalism on either side but to avoid the side they don’t know, Palestine. It reads as an unfortunate concoction of patronizing, gaslighting, and victim blaming.

In this writing, I looked at the ways in which campus protest skeptics have developed methods to disparage the encampments. To label them, detractors have crafted an alternate reality or, “big lie” to make the students look hateful, unorganized, unknowing, and disruptive, when they have in fact been the exact opposite. On all counts, the students have been effective in carrying out one of the prime educative examples found in many school mission statements – making extensions beyond the classroom – a feature that institutions advertise, but fear happening because it involves young people questioning the legitimacy of authority and the abuses of power.

The post Critics of Campus Protests are Weaponizing Anti-Semitism to Undermine Student Resistance appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Daniel Falcone.

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Last month, former President Donald Trump announced he would not pursue a federal abortion ban, as many of his supporters hoped, and he criticized states with bans that make no exception for rape or incest.

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who at the time was on a short list of candidates to become Trump’s pick for vice president, responded immediately. Even though her state’s ban has neither exception and is considered one of the strictest in the country, Noem highlighted the parts of Trump’s message that she agreed with and sidestepped the rest.

“.@realDonaldTrump is exactly right… this is about ‘precious babies.’ It should be easier for moms, dads, and families to have babies — not harder,” she wrote on X following Trump’s announcement. “South Dakota is proud to stand for LIFE and support babies, moms, and families.”

But some state lawmakers, health care advocates and political observers in South Dakota say that Noem does not always follow through on that rhetorical promise. Since she became the first female governor of South Dakota in 2019, she has rejected programs and millions of dollars in federal funds that would have benefited pregnant people, parents and children — policies that might be at odds with her vision of limited government.

That Noem doesn’t always follow through on her talk is an oft-repeated criticism, said Jon Schaff, a political science professor at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, who put it another way: Noem, he said, is “all hat and no cattle.”

“You look like a cowboy, but you’re not one,” Schaff said of the well-worn phrase. “I think there’s been a sense that she’s maybe overly concerned about sort of the imagery of politics rather than the substance.”

Much of that criticism has been eclipsed by the fallout from Noem’s memoir, “No Going Back,” in which she provides an account of shooting and killing a pet hunting dog called Cricket two decades ago. Still, Noem has pitched herself as a governor, rancher and mom passionate about family values and a second Trump presidency. For his part, Trump has not yet publicly eliminated her as a potential running mate, so her record on taking “care of moms and their babies both before birth and after” bears examination.

Noem’s office declined to comment, saying responses from state agencies were sufficient. But her record does, in fact, include measures that support families. In 2020, she helped create the first paid family leave policy for state employees, and she expanded it last year from eight to 12 weeks. She extended the length of time that people in prison can spend with their newborns in a “mother-infant program” from 1 month to 30 months. And she expanded a program called Bright Start, which pairs nurses with first-time parents, to cover the entire state with a $2.5 million budget increase.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the South Dakota Department of Health wrote that Noem is “committed to freedom for life” and pointed to a recently launched mobile health clinic called Wellness on Wheels, which provides services to rural communities such as connections with federal Women, Infants and Children benefits and pregnancy risk assessments. Over half the state counties are defined as a maternal care desert.

“DOH programs like Bright Start, Wellness on Wheels, WIC, pregnancy care and many more support this initiative in ensuring our future generations are healthy and strong,” the statement said.

At times, Noem has tried to put distance between herself and the state’s abortion ban, which was put in place by a trigger law that was passed before she took office. The ban only allows the procedure to “preserve the life of the pregnant female.” But she has not embraced opportunities to add exceptions to the ban’s language, even after calls to do so from within her own party.

Three female Republican lawmakers attempted to enact legislation to add “risk of death or of a substantial and irreversible physical impairment of … major bodily functions” to the permissible circumstances for an abortion. Rep. Taylor Rehfeldt, Sen. Sydney Davis and Sen. Erin Tobin — all registered nurses who identify as pro-life — met several times with Noem staffers as they tried to build support for the measure, and they believed they had Noem’s support. But as opposition emerged from anti-abortion advocates, principally South Dakota Right to Life, Noem did not help. Rehfeldt withdrew the bill.

“I never got an official statement from her office,” Rehfeldt said. “But I will tell you that there was consensus, and then all of a sudden there wasn’t.”

In the next legislative session, Rehfeldt brought a new bill that mandated that the Department of Health and the state attorney general create an educational video intended to clarify — but not change — the ban’s language; Noem signed that one in March. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America released a statement thanking Noem “for making South Dakota the first state to protect women’s lives with a Med Ed law.”

Maternal and infant health outcomes are particularly alarming in the state’s Native American population. About 44% of all pregnancy-associated deaths from 2012 to 2021 were Native Americans and Alaska Natives. In 2023, more than 3% of all Native American babies born in South Dakota had syphilis, part of an unprecedented modern outbreak.

One component of the problem is the chronically underfunded Indian Health Service hospitals and clinics, which are overseen by the federal government. If South Dakota expanded eligibility for its Medicaid program, as 39 other states and the District of Columbia have done, it would infuse IHS facilities with badly needed additional money from newly covered patients.

“That may be like a job position for a new doctor or salary for a dentist,” said Janelle Cantrell, head of the Medicaid and health care exchange enrollment program at Great Plains Tribal Leaders’ Health Board in Rapid City, South Dakota.

But Noem has opposed and delayed expansion. In 2022, South Dakota voters took the decision out of her hands by approving a ballot initiative for Medicaid expansion. According to state Rep. Linda Duba, a Democrat, Noem has dragged her feet on the expansion, which has resulted in far fewer residents enrolling than expected. At the same time, Noem supports adding a work requirement to Medicaid eligibility, which is popular among GOP governors.

“There’s nothing proactive going on,” Duba said. “That comes from the administration. They didn’t want Medicaid expansion. They’re doing everything they can to slow-walk it and keep the enrollments down.”

Department of Social Services Cabinet Secretary Matt Althoff said in a statement that Medicaid expansion enrollment is going “efficiently and smoothly,” and that he expects a monthly average of 40,000 enrollees a month in the next fiscal year. He pointed to the state’s low unemployment rate and rising per capita personal income as an explanation for below-expected enrollment.

South Dakota has no state-funded preschool program. Noem’s administration declined to apply for $7.5 million in federal money to pay for a free summer meal program for low-income children, something several GOP governors have also done. She also helped defeat proposals to pay for school lunches for eligible students and once called subsidized child care a “line in the sand” she wouldn’t cross.

“I just don’t think it’s the government’s job to pay or to raise people’s children for them,” she said in a radio interview in December 2023.

Some of Noem’s own initiatives have fallen flat. A pledge to eliminate the state’s 4.5% grocery tax, a full sales tax on all food items that only South Dakota and Mississippi charge, was a cornerstone of her 2022 reelection campaign. Repealing the tax, she said, would help “single moms who may rent an apartment and have a tough time feeding their kids with the rising food costs that we have.”

But the bill to repeal the tax failed to pass one of its first committee hearings, despite the Legislature’s Republican supermajority.

“It is amazing to me how much of a national profile that Kristi Noem has, in some ways not being all that successful in terms of achieving legislative agendas,” said state Sen. Reynold F. Nesiba, a Democrat and the chamber’s minority leader.

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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop.

Scientists agree that such technologies will be necessary to limit global warming. But Oxy’s plans for them appear to be less about sustainability and more about creating a “license to pollute,” according to a new analysis from the nonprofit Carbon Market Watch. The analysis describes Oxy’s focus on carbon capture and removal as a “costly fig leaf for business as usual,” allowing the company to claim emissions reductions while continuing to profit from the sale of fossil fuels — rebranded as “net-zero oil” and “sustainable aviation fuels.”

The company “makes this whole spiel about meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals, but it’s very clearly flying in the face of that,” said Marlène Ramón Hernández, an expert on carbon removal at Carbon Market Watch and a co-author of the report. “What we have to do is phase out fossil fuels, not perpetuate their life.”

Oxy first outlined its net-zero strategy in 2020, making it the first American oil major to do so. Today, Oxy describes that strategy using four R’s: The company says it will “reduce” operational emissions, “revolutionize” carbon management, “remove” carbon from the atmosphere, and “reuse/recycle” it to produce new low-carbon or zero-emissions products. Its overarching goal is to achieve net-zero emissions for its operations and indirect energy use by 2040. 

This is where the problems begin, according to Carbon Market Watch. Despite Oxy’s net-zero pledge for its operation and energy use, it is much vaguer about the emissions associated with the oil and gas it sells. These emissions, known as Scope 3 emissions, represented more than 90 percent of Oxy’s greenhouse gas footprint in 2022. The company has asserted an “ambition” to zero them out by 2050. 

However, Oxy does not plan to reduce Scope 3 emissions by phasing down the production of oil and gas, but through investments in carbon removal. Direct air capture, or DAC — a technology that uses large fans and chemical reactions to separate carbon dioxide from the air — is a main focus. An Oxy subsidiary called Oxy Low Carbon Ventures announced in 2022 that it would deploy up to 135 DAC plants by 2035, and last year Oxy bought a major DAC technology company for $1.1 billion. 

Some of Oxy’s DAC projects are already in the pipeline. The largest, called Stratos, is under construction in the Permian Basin, a massive oil field, in Texas. If it reaches its nameplate capacity of capturing half a million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year — which Oxy says it will do by mid-2025 — it will be 14 times larger than the biggest DAC facility in the world. (That facility, owned by the Swiss company Climeworks, began operating in Iceland this week with a nominal capacity of 36,000 metric tons of CO2 per year.)

In order for DAC to result in net removal of carbon dioxide, however, captured carbon has to be kept out of the atmosphere for good. This is usually achieved by locking it up in rock formations. Oxy CEO Vicki Hollub, however, has said this would be a “waste of a valuable product,” and instead plans to use the captured carbon. In one application, it would be converted into synthetic electrofuels — low-carbon fuels produced from their chemical constituents using electricity — and sold to other companies. 

The other major application is for a process known as enhanced oil recovery, where CO2 is injected into oil and gas wells in order to extract hard-to-reach reserves of fossil fuels. This forms the basis for Oxy’s “net-zero oil” claims. According to the company’s logic, the atmospheric carbon dioxide injected into the ground cancels out any new emissions from the oil and gas it’s used to pull up. In an interview with NPR last December, Hollub said this approach means that “there’s no reason not to produce oil and gas forever.”

Before that, at a conference last March, Hollub told audience members that DAC would be “the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time,” extending its social license to operate for “60, 70, 80 years.”

Neither Carbon Market Watch nor the independent experts Grist spoke to look favorably on these approaches. Charles Harvey, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT who was not involved in the report, called it “absurd” to use captured carbon to make so-called sustainable aviation fuels; these fuels will eventually be burned, re-releasing the captured carbon back into the atmosphere. 

In fact, the whole process may result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, since DAC is an energy-intensive process that is often powered by fossil fuels. Oxy has no publicly announced plans to power its carbon capture and removal facilities with renewable energy. “They’ll be releasing more CO2 than they’re capturing,” Harvey said.

As for “net-zero oil,” Carbon Market Watch calls it an “oxymoron and a logical fallacy.” A 2021 analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory suggests that this application would also result in net-positive emissions — both because it takes so much energy (likely supplied by fossil fuels) just to run a DAC plant, and, because every metric ton of carbon dioxide injected into oil fields extracts two to three barrels of oil. Each barrel of oil generates half a metric ton of carbon dioxide when burned, which means each metric ton of carbon dioxide used for Oxy’s net-zero oil may create 1 to 1.5 tons of CO2 emissions.

Hernández said she is also concerned about Oxy’s plans to generate carbon credits from its DAC projects. Even though none of its planned DAC facilities has been built yet, Oxy has already pre-sold or is in negotiations to sell DAC-generated carbon credits representing between 1.63 million and 1.98 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to Carbon Market Watch’s calculations. If the company uses the same captured carbon to offset its own emissions and generate credits, which can be used to offset the emissions of another company, “This is a blatant issue of double-counting,” Hernandez told Grist. 

Oxy did not respond to Grist’s request for comment.

Holly Jean Buck, an assistant professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Buffalo, said it’s possible to pursue DAC responsibly. Even a moonshot project like Stratos could be seen as having an important demonstration or research value. “The point is to figure out if the technology is going to work at a real-world level,” she told Grist. 

That said, she agreed there are ways Oxy could make its DAC agenda more credible. “They could make a commitment to building renewable power to power it,” she offered, or donate the technology to developing countries.

Buck and some other academics say fossil fuel companies should be doing more of this research — or at least footing the bill for it — in order to take responsibility for their role in the climate crisis. Harvey, however, argues there’s an opportunity cost to such research and deployment, which is expensive. He and other researchers have estimated that it will cost Oxy’s Stratos facility $500 to capture each metric ton of carbon dioxide. (The company predicts costs will fall to around $200 per ton by 2030.)

Every dollar spent on DAC means a dollar not spent on more reliable, immediate emissions reductions. “There’s low-hanging fruit to do before you get there,” he said, like building renewable energy for non-DAC purposes, insulating houses, installing heat pumps, or putting more batteries on the grid with existing renewables.

“Almost anything is better” than DAC, Harvey said. 

As an essential first step toward a more credible net-zero strategy, Hernández suggested that Oxy abandon its aggressive plans to extract more oil and gas, since doing so is misaligned with scientists’ call for a dramatic cut in production in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). “It’s actually planning to increase its oil production, so there is clearly no intention there to transition to net-zero,” she said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Occidental Petroleum’s net-zero strategy is a ‘license to pollute,’ critics say on May 9, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

I wrote last November (FAIR.org, 11/22/23) about how Twitter owner Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Media Matters—alleging the group’s research “manipulated” data in an effort to “destroy” Musk’s social media platform—was an episode of a right-wing corporate media mogul using his wealth to crush free speech.

“Much appreciated!” declared Elon Musk in response to the Missouri attorney general’s probe (Riverfront Times, 3/25/24). “Media Matters is doing everything it can to undermine the First Amendment. Truly an evil organization.”

Now Musk’s friends in government are joining his efforts to silence his critics. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is suing Media Matters to demand internal documents, because he, like Musk, believes the group “manipulated Twitter‘s algorithm to create a report showing advertisements for normal companies on the platform appeared next to not-normal content, or what Bailey calls ‘contrived controversial posts,’” causing advertisers to flee (Riverfront Times, 3/25/24).

Bailey said in a statement (3/25/24):

My office has reason to believe Media Matters engaged in fraudulent activities to solicit donations from Missourians to intimidate advertisers into leaving X, the last social media platform committed to free speech in America….

Media Matters has pursued an activist agenda in its attempt to destroy X, because they cannot control it. And because they cannot control it, or the free speech platform it provides to Missourians to express their own viewpoints in the public square, the radical “progressives” at Media Matters have resorted to fraud to, as Benjamin Franklin once said, mark X “for the odium of the public, as an enemy to the liberty of the press.” Missourians will not be manipulated by “progressive” activists masquerading as news outlets, and they will not be defrauded in the process.

Bailey clearly wants to get into the fray that has caught up with right-wing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton (11/20/23) announced he was launching an investigation into “Media Matters, a radical anti-free speech organization.” He cited Texas’ Deceptive Trade Practices Act as grounds for looking into whether Media Matters “fraudulently manipulated data on X.com“:

We are examining the issue closely to ensure that the public has not been deceived by the schemes of radical left-wing organizations who would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square.

As the government of Texas threatened to bring charges against a nonprofit organization for publishing a study of a multi-billion-dollar corporation, Musk posted the attorney general’s press release on X (11/20/23) and gloated, “Fraud has both civil and criminal penalties.”

McCarthyist witch hunt

It’s easy to write off Bailey and Paxton as partisan hacks who are using the power of the state as a public relations tool to win adulation in MAGA-land. But Musk’s ability to use the partisan prosecutors and the courts to engage in a McCarthyist witch hunt against the corporation’s critics is highly concerning.

A federal judge dismissed Musk’s complaint that the Center for Countering Digital Hate had “embarked on a scare campaign” (Verge, 3/25/24).

At around the same time as Bailey announced his crusade, federal Judge Charles Breyer dismissed Twitter’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (Verge, 3/25/24), saying that the company suing CCDH for researching hate speech on the site was “about punishing the defendants for their speech.” It’s good news that a sensible judge can protect free speech. But how long can that last against one of the world’s richest people, who has made it clear he has an agenda to silence critics, and the collaboration of powerful officials?

Former President Donald Trump left his mark on the judiciary, appointing “more than 200 judges to the federal bench, including nearly as many powerful federal appeals court judges in four years as Barack Obama appointed in eight” (Pew Research, 1/13/21). And Bailey and Paxton are not the only state attorneys general who are aligned with Trump and his political positions; Paxton was able to get 16 others to join with him in petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn the 2020 election (New York Times, 12/9/20).

Rather than turning Twitter into an open free-speech utopia, Musk’s administration of Twitter has been marked by aggressive censorship (Al Jazeera, 5/2/23). Reporters Without Borders (10/26/23) said that Musk’s removal of guardrails against disinformation has been so disastrous that it “regards X as the embodiment of the threat that online platforms pose to democracies.” After the National Labor Relations Board said that Musk’s SpaceX fired workers critical of him (Bloomberg, 1/3/24), the company argued that the NLRB’s structure was unconstitutional (Reuters, 2/15/24).

Musk is clearly inclined to use courts and friendly officials to censor his critics, as well as to shred labor rights. If Trump is elected later this year—which is entirely possible (CNN, 3/9/24)—Musk will have the ability to fuse his desire and resources to shut down critics with emboldened far-right government allies.

Bailey’s outrageous statement might seem silly and destined for the same fate as Musk’s case against the CCDH, but it portends a highly chilling environment if the courts and government agencies fall further into the hands of the right.

The post ‘Free Speech’ Fan Elon Musk Enlists State Allies to Silence Critics appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

The International Court of Justice (ICC) has held its last day of hearings examining the legality of Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian lands.

Fifty two countries and three international organisations have addressed the court in the hearings that ended on Monday.

Most called for Israel’s occupation to be declared illegal and for it to end, with some calling for reparations to be paid by Israel to the state of Palestine.

• READ MORE: The ICJ hearings

Only the representatives of the United States, United Kingdom and Fiji claimed the occupation was legal while non-government organisations and opposition politicians in Fiji condemned their country’s surprise position.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst and a Middle East expert, said the final legal arguments had “demolished the shameless defences” of Israel’s illegal occupation.

“Ireland, Algeria and South Africa . . . projected their own experience, their own narrative, their own history, their own struggle with [colonial] occupation, and their own experience with liberation as well,” he said.

“Hence it was both instructive, if you will, not I mean liberating, not depressing.

ICJ hearing: Final Israeli occupation arguments.  Video: Al Jazeera

“I want to say it was instructive that they did share with us that but then we had this disingenuous, selective, mind boggling, if not, you know, mind insulting presentations by the United States and the United Kingdom that I think set everyone back.

“You know they were trampling over international law, expropriating international law, confiscating international legality in order to fit their own little geopolitical calculus on behalf of their little client Israel.

“So it was a bit shameful, it was a bit shameless to be honest and that’s why today we’ve heard from the Arab League and the [Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)], legal opinions that were basically set or apparently revised in order to counter the arguments of the UK and the US and in that way I thought it was brilliant and it was entertaining almost.”

The African Union lawyers argued that “occuopatiion” and “self-determination” could not exist in the same place at the same time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

U.S. Ties

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, they said, Vietnam’s liberal use of the death sentence is part of a bid by the government to keep its citizens in line and burnish its international image through regularly announced acts of clemency.

On Dec. 27, Thuong granted amnesty to 18 death row inmates, commuting their sentences to life in prison. More than a month later, five other death row inmates had their sentences similarly reduced after they filed a petition to Thuong.

California-based activist Nguyen Ba Tung of the Vietnam Human Rights Network told RFA Vietnamese that the amnesty was simply part of a bid by the government to “beautify Vietnam’s image on the world stage.”

“The government retains the death penalty as a way to menace the people,” he said in a phone interview. “At the end of the year, or on special holidays, they let the president grant an amnesty to show that they are ‘humane.’ But international human rights groups can see through this act.”

Vietnam’s judiciary is notorious for its application of the death sentence. Eighteen criminal charges in the country’s penal code carry maximum sentences of execution – most of which are related to drug crimes.

Amnesty International’s latest annual report on death sentences and executions, released in May 2023, ranked Vietnam as eighth among nations with the most recorded death sentences in 2022, with at least 102.

Just weeks prior to Thuong’s decision to grant amnesty to the five death row inmates, a court in Nghe An province handed down nine death sentences to convicted traffickers from a busted drug ring.

Amnesty ‘not a progressive act’

Nguyen Van Dai, a veteran lawyer in the capital Hanoi, told RFA that the application and commutation of the death sentence is all part of a strategy by the government to threaten its citizens at home and avoid criticism abroad.

“Every year, Vietnam hands out hundreds of death sentences to drug traffickers and murderers,” he said. “If all the death inmates were executed, the international community would pillory Vietnam. So they find inmates who were sentenced to death for less heinous criminal acts and grant them amnesty.”

Dai dismissed the idea of amnesty for death row inmates as progress or a sign of judicial reform.

“Progress means that clemency should be granted to all prisoners, both political or criminal, but it is never applied in cases of national security,” he said. “This is a form of discrimination and I don’t consider amnesty a progressive act.”

In 2022, Vietnam granted clemency to 31 death row inmates, four of whom were foreign nationals.

In September 2023, Vietnam executed death row inmate Le Van Manh, despite claims by Amnesty International that his case was “mired in serious irregularities and violations of the right to a fair trial,” and calls by the international community to stay his sentence.

Manh was sentenced to death in 2005, when he was 23 years old, for allegedly raping and killing a female student from his village earlier that year. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges and maintained his innocence until his execution.

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

The question is how far each side might go in carrying out their warnings without drawing Tehran into a broader Middle East conflict in defense of the Huthis, whose sustained attacks on maritime shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden led to its redesignation as a terrorist organization by Washington last week.

"Our aim remains to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea," the United States and the United Kingdom said in a joint statement following their latest round of air strikes on Huthi targets in Yemen on January 21. "But let us reiterate our warning to [the] Huthi leadership: we will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways in the face of continued threats."

The Huthis responded with vows to continue their war against what they called Israel's "genocide" of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

"The American-British aggression will only increase the Yemeni people’s determination to carry out their moral and humanitarian responsibilities toward the oppressed in Gaza," said Muhammad al-Bukhaiti, a senior Huthi political official.

"These attacks will not go unanswered and unpunished," said Huthi military spokesman Yahya Saree.

On cue, the two sides clashed again on January 24 when the Huthis said they fired ballistic missiles at several U.S. warships protecting U.S. commercial vessels transiting the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen. U.S. Central Command said three anti-ship missiles were fired at a U.S.-flagged container ship and that two were shot down by a U.S. missile destroyer while the third fell into the Gulf of Aden.

With the stage set for more such encounters, Iran's open backing and clandestine arming of the Huthis looms large. While continuing to state its support for the Huthis, Tehran has continued to deny directing their actions or providing them with weapons. At the same time, Iran has showcased its own advanced missile capabilities as a warning of the strength it could bring to a broader Middle East conflict.

The United States, emphasizing that the goal is to de-escalate tensions in the region, appears to be focusing on preventing the Huthis from obtaining more arms and funding. In addition to returning the Huthis to its list of terrorist groups, Washington said on January 16 that it had seized Iranian weapons bound for the Huthis in a raid in the Arabian Sea.

The United States and United Kingdom also appear to be focusing on precision strikes on the Huthis' military infrastructure while avoiding extensive human casualties or a larger operation that could heighten Iran's ire.

On January 24, the Pentagon clarified that, despite the U.S. strikes in Yemen, "we are not at war in the Middle East" and the focus is on deterrence and preventing a broader conflict.

"The United States is only using a very small portion of what it's capable of against the Huthis right now," said Kenneth Katzman, a senior adviser for the New York-based Soufan Group intelligence consultancy, and expert on geopolitics in the Middle East.

Terrorist Designation

The effectiveness of Washington's restoration on January 17 of the Huthis' terrorist organization label and accompanying U.S. sanctions -- which was removed early last year in recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen and to foster dialogue aimed at ending the Yemeni civil war involving the Huthis and the country's Saudi-backed government forces -- is "marginal," according to Katzman.

"They don't really use the international banking system and are very much cut off," Katzman said. "They get their arms from Iran, which is under extremely heavy sanctions and is certainly not going to be deterred from trying to ship them more weapons by this designation."

But the strikes being carried out by the United States and the United Kingdom, with the support of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands, are another matter.

The January 21 strikes against eight Huthi targets -- followed shortly afterward by what was the ninth attack overall -- were intended to disrupt and degrade the group's capabilities to threaten global trade. They were a response to more than 30 attacks on international and commercial vessels since mid-November and were the largest strikes since a similar coalition operation on January 11.

Such strikes against the Huthis "have the potential to deter them and to degrade them, but it's going to take many more strikes, and I think the U.S. is preparing for that," Katzman said. "You're not going to degrade their capabilities in one or two volleys or even several volleys, it's going to take months."

The Huthis have significant experience in riding out aerial strikes, having been under relentless bombardment by a Saudi-led military collation during the nine-year Yemeni civil war, in which fighting has ended owing to a UN-brokered cease-fire in early 2022 that the warring parties recommitted to in December.

"They weathered that pretty well," said Jeremy Binnie, a Middle East defense analyst with the global intelligence company Janes.

"On the battlefield, airpower can still be fairly decisive," Binnie said, noting that air strikes were critical in thwarting Huthi offensives during the Yemeni civil war. "But in terms of the Huthis' overall ability to weather the air campaign of the Saudi-led coalition, they did that fine, from their point of view."

Since the cease-fire, Binnie said, the situation may have changed somewhat as the Huthis built up their forces, with more advanced missiles and aging tanks -- a heavier presence that "might make them a bit more vulnerable."

"But I don't think they will, at the same time, have any problem reverting to a lighter force that is more resilient to air strikes as they have been in the past," Binnie said.

Both Binnie and Katzman suggested that the Huthis appear willing to sustain battlefield losses in pursuit of their aims, which makes the group difficult to deter from the air.

The Huthis have clearly displayed their intent on continuing to disrupt maritime shipping in the Red Sea, which they claim has targeted only vessels linked to Israel despite evidence to the contrary, until there is a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

This has brought the Huthis' complicated relationship with Iran under intense scrutiny.

'Axis Of Resistance'

The Huthis have established themselves as a potent element of Iran's so-called "axis of resistance" against Israel and the United States, as well as against Tehran's regional archrival, Saudi Arabia.

But analysts who spoke to RFE/RL widely dismissed the idea that the Huthis are a direct Iranian proxy, describing the relationship as more one of mutual benefit in which the Huthis can be belligerent and go beyond what Tehran wants them to.

While accused by Western states and UN experts of secretly shipping arms to the Huthis and other members of the axis of resistance, Iran has portrayed the loose-knit band of proxies and partners and militant groups as independent in their decision-making.

The grouping includes the Iran-backed Hamas -- the U.S. and EU designated terrorist group whose attack on Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip -- and Lebanese Hizballah -- a Iranian proxy and U.S. designated terrorist group that, like the Huthis, has launched strikes against Israel in defense of Hamas.

"The success of the axis of resistance ... is that since Tehran has either created or co-opted these groups, there is more often than not fusion rather than tension," between members of the network and Iran, explained Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

But the relationship is not simply about "Iran telling its proxies to jump and them saying how high," Taleblu said. "It’s about Iran’s ability to find and materially support those who are willing to or can be persuaded to shoot at those Tehran wants to shoot at."

Iran's interest in a certain axis member's success in a given area and its perception of how endangered that partner might be, could play a crucial role in Tehran's willingness to come to their defense, according to Taleblu.

Middle East observers who spoke to RFE/RL suggested that it would take a significant escalation -- an existential threat to Tehran itself or a proxy, like Lebanese Hizballah -- for Iran to become directly involved.

"The Islamic republic would react differently to the near eradication of Hizballah which it created, versus Hamas, which it co-opted," Taleblu said. "Context is key."

"Iran is doing what it feels it can to try to keep the United States at bay," Katzman said, singling out the missile strikes carried out on targets this month in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan that were widely seen as a warning to Israel and the United States of Tehran's growing military capabilities. Iran is "trying to show support for the Huthis without getting dragged in."

Iran is believed to have members of its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the ground in Yemen. Tehran also continues to be accused of delivering arms to the Huthis, and at the start of the year deployed a ship to the Gulf of Aden in a show of support for the Huthis before withdrawing it after the U.S.-led coalition launched strikes in Yemen on January 11.

"So, they are helping," Katzman said, "but I think they are trying to do it as quietly and as under the radar as possible.

A U.S.-led ground operation against the Huthis, if it came to that, could change Iran's calculations. "Then Iran might deploy forces to help them out," Katzman said.

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

A group of foreign policy critics alarmed at the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s “undemocratic decision” to step up support for US-led strikes against Yemen have warned against “inflaming” the Red Sea maritime crisis.

They have urgently called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza as they say the Israeli war that has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians is the root cause of the crisis.

The foreign policy group, Te Kuaka, said in a statement that the government’s decision to deploy a six-member NZ Defence Force team to the Middle East was “deeply alarming”.

• READ MORE: New Zealand to deploy Defence Force to Red Sea
• Back SA over genocide case, ‘don’t yield to pressure’, Hania tells NZ
• ABC staff ‘have lost confidence’ in boss in defending public trust in Israel row

The government announcement came this afternoon at a post-Cabinet media conference.

Group co-director Dr Arama Rata said: “New Zealand’s involvement in the Red Sea will just inflame regional instability and cause more civilian deaths without addressing the root cause of the Houthi actions, which is ending the genocide in Gaza.”

Dr Rata said it was deeply alarming that this decision was made without a Parliamentary mandate, particularly given the incredibly high stakes of the crisis.

“There has been no explicit authorisation of military action in self defence against Yemen by the UN Security Council either,” she said.

‘Frightening precedent’
“This sets a frightening precedent for how foreign policy decisions are made.

“There are huge risks to not just the Middle East, but New Zealand directly, when we take the side of the US and the UK, nations that have a long history of oppressive intervention in the Global South.”

Co-director Dr Marco de Jong said: “We know that public opinion and a Parliamentary mandate would have swayed any foreign policy decisions in the direction of calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

“Public polls and weekly protests for Palestine, since October 7, have shown this to be the case.”

Thousands took to Queen Street in the heart of Auckland for the 15th consecutive week to protest over the war and to call for a ceasefire and an end to genocide. One of the Palestinian speakers addressing the crowd reminded them millions of citizen protesters were demonstrating all over the world.

The protesters condemned Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for failing to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

At today’s, post-cabinet media conference Luxon claimed the Houthi attacks were hurting New Zealand exporters.

Global trade
“Nearly 15 percent of global trade goes through the Red Sea, and the Houthi attacks are driving costs higher for New Zealanders and causing delays to shipments,” Luxon said.

However, Dr de Jong said: “By pre-empting these criticisms [such as by critics and protesters] in its own announcement, the government is wrongly suggesting that our intervention in the Middle East will not be viewed in the context of genocide in Gaza and highlighting NZ’s previous involvement in US-led misadventures — which have been similarly deadly and destructive.”

Dr Rata added: “We need to have an honest reflection about our positioning alongside the US and the UK.

“Instead of colluding with these colonial powers, we should be standing with countries like Brazil and South Africa, which are challenging old colonial regimes, and represent the majority of the international community.”

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

A group of foreign policy critics alarmed at the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s “undemocratic decision” to step up support for US-led strikes against Yemen have warned against “inflaming” the Red Sea maritime crisis.

They have urgently called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza as they say the Israeli war that has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians is the root cause of the crisis.

The foreign policy group, Te Kuaka, said in a statement that the government’s decision to deploy a six-member NZ Defence Force team to the Middle East was “deeply alarming”.

• READ MORE: New Zealand to deploy Defence Force to Red Sea
• Back SA over genocide case, ‘don’t yield to pressure’, Hania tells NZ
• ABC staff ‘have lost confidence’ in boss in defending public trust in Israel row

The government announcement came this afternoon at a post-Cabinet media conference.

Group co-director Dr Arama Rata said: “New Zealand’s involvement in the Red Sea will just inflame regional instability and cause more civilian deaths without addressing the root cause of the Houthi actions, which is ending the genocide in Gaza.”

Dr Rata said it was deeply alarming that this decision was made without a Parliamentary mandate, particularly given the incredibly high stakes of the crisis.

“There has been no explicit authorisation of military action in self defence against Yemen by the UN Security Council either,” she said.

‘Frightening precedent’
“This sets a frightening precedent for how foreign policy decisions are made.

“There are huge risks to not just the Middle East, but New Zealand directly, when we take the side of the US and the UK, nations that have a long history of oppressive intervention in the Global South.”

Co-director Dr Marco de Jong said: “We know that public opinion and a Parliamentary mandate would have swayed any foreign policy decisions in the direction of calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

“Public polls and weekly protests for Palestine, since October 7, have shown this to be the case.”

Thousands took to Queen Street in the heart of Auckland for the 15th consecutive week to protest over the war and to call for a ceasefire and an end to genocide. One of the Palestinian speakers addressing the crowd reminded them millions of citizen protesters were demonstrating all over the world.

The protesters condemned Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for failing to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

At today’s, post-cabinet media conference Luxon claimed the Houthi attacks were hurting New Zealand exporters.

Global trade
“Nearly 15 percent of global trade goes through the Red Sea, and the Houthi attacks are driving costs higher for New Zealanders and causing delays to shipments,” Luxon said.

However, Dr de Jong said: “By pre-empting these criticisms [such as by critics and protesters] in its own announcement, the government is wrongly suggesting that our intervention in the Middle East will not be viewed in the context of genocide in Gaza and highlighting NZ’s previous involvement in US-led misadventures — which have been similarly deadly and destructive.”

Dr Rata added: “We need to have an honest reflection about our positioning alongside the US and the UK.

“Instead of colluding with these colonial powers, we should be standing with countries like Brazil and South Africa, which are challenging old colonial regimes, and represent the majority of the international community.”

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

Dang Hung Vo, a former deputy minister of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, is one of those who said he had serious concerns and thought the law needed further revision to decide who allocates land.

“We must have an effective mechanism because the current one is that the state decides everything,” he told Radio Free Asia on Thursday, adding that this leads to an inefficient housing market.

The Online Law newspaper said the new law is much clearer on when the state can claim and redistribute land to benefit the country and the public.

These must be public works projects such as the construction of government agency headquarters, public housing or land auctions to raise revenue for the state budget.

The newspaper said the new law is transparent on the order and procedures for land recovery for socio-economic development, which should help ensure democracy, objectivity, fairness, transparency, speed and compliance with the law.

All land in Vietnam is technically owned by the state although it often offers compensation for people who have built homes on it or are farming it.

One controversial case is Ho Chi Minh City’s Loc Hung Vegetable Garden.

In 2019, the government evicted people from 503 homes to clear the land for a school development. Around half the former residents said last month they had still not received compensation.

Cao Ha Truc is a former resident, filing a lawsuit in connection with the land grab.

He told RFA Vietnamese he believed the revised law needed further changes to compensate people before they lost their land.

“In the past, they did the reverse process, meaning they took the land first and anyone who had a complaint [was counted later],” he said, adding that private enterprises shouldn’t benefit from state projects.

“They took the right to recover [the land] and gave it to investment companies.”

The new law takes effect from Jan. 1, 2025, except for a few specific regulations that will be introduced immediately.

According to an article on the National Assembly e-portal, because the old law had broad regulations on the state’s ability to recover land, some 70% of long-term complaints and lawsuits were related to state land grabs.

Dang Hung Vo said many major lawsuits were related to the state confiscating land and giving it to private corporations to make a profit.

He said that is unlikely to change with the revised law.

“If the land clearance issue is more reasonable, the number of complaints may decrease, but in terms of the principles that create complaints, I think nothing has changed."

Cao Ha Truc said, along with revisions to the land law, the state needed to address the issue of corruption.

"The vibrant real estate market has caused the greed of officials and investors to emerge,” he added.

“They are willing to push those who own land to the margins of society.

“Today there is corruption throughout the country. 

“The poor are abandoned and people are screaming everywhere."

Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

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

A proposal that would allow industries to permanently stash climate-polluting carbon dioxide beneath U.S. Forest Service land puts those habitats and the people in or near them at risk, according to opponents of the measure.

Chief among opponents’ concerns is that carbon dioxide could leak from storage wells or pipelines and injure or kill people and animals, as well as harm the trees in the forests and their habitat, said Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. 

“There are enough broad-ranging concerns with this rule that this isn’t the time to move forward and experiment when the consequences are so high,” said Bogdan Tejeda.

In 2020, a carbon dioxide pipeline ruptured in Mississippi, sending 49 people to the hospital. 

The debate about the proposal in the U.S. comes as the capture and storage of carbon to mitigate climate change was one of the talking points at the UN COP28 climate summit in Dubai. 

Concentrations of the gas, which is odorless and heavier than oxygen, can also prevent combustion engines from operating. Bodan Tejeda, of the Center for Biological Diversity, worries that people even a mile or two from a carbon dioxide leak could start suffocating and have no way to escape.

Proponents of the proposal, however, say storage can be managed safely, and such regulatory changes are needed to meet the nation’s climate goals. 

“The geologic storage of CO₂ beneath federal lands offers a significant opportunity to catalyze a domestic carbon management industry that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions while creating and maintaining high-paying jobs,” said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, a non-partisan collaboration of more than 100 companies, unions, conservation and environmental policy organizations.

Capturing carbon either from industrial processes that burn fossil fuels, or directly from the air, and storing it permanently underground is considered necessary to stave off the worst impacts of climate change under several scenarios. But not all underground spaces can permanently hold the carbon, which is injected hundreds of feet underground. So developers have been in a land grab of sorts in Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere for suitable underground so-called pore space. 

Jim Furnish, a retired U.S. Forest Service deputy chief who consults on forestry issues, said he was startled by the proposal. He said it’s a reversal of historic Forest Service policy that only allows temporary use of forest service lands, usually for five to 20 years. 

More broadly, the measure would “provide a powerful incentive to continue to burn fossil fuels,” Furnish said. “It’s the opposite of a virtuous cycle.” 

Stolark says unless federal authorities provide clarity for carbon storage on federal lands, which comprise 30 percent of all U.S. surface lands, the nation will not be able to meet 2050 greenhouse gas reduction targets. 

The Forest Service manages about 193 million acres in the United States. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, about 130 million acres of suitable carbon storage is under federal land, including the Forest Service.

The Forest Service said the Nov. 3 proposal would allow it to evaluate such permanent storage requests; it is not currently considering any specific proposals to store carbon under its lands. A spokesman said the agency previously received and denied applications for underground carbon storage on two forests in the South, an epicenter for carbon capture and storage proposals.

Any such project would have to follow U.S. environmental laws, the service said. The Environmental Protection Agency would regulate the wells under its underground injection well program. 

If the rule is finalized, disruptions to forests would begin long before any carbon dioxide was piped underground, said June Sekera, an economist and policy researcher at Boston University and The New School who has been studying carbon capture. 

Drilling rigs and heavy equipment would be brought into forests to evaluate whether the spaces under the forests were suitable for carbon storage. Trees would have to come down to make way for that equipment, and many more trees would likely be felled to make way for the pipelines. Infrastructure for the injection wells would be permanent, she said.

“All of the other recreation and human uses of these forests are at odds with this type of use because this type of use is dangerous,” said Laura Haight, U.S. policy director at Partnership for Policy Integrity, which focuses on forest issues.

Almost 200 carbon capture and storage projects have been proposed in the United States in the last five years, many spurred in the past year by increased incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act intended to address global warming. 

The Forest Service, when contacted, did not respond to a question of how those incentives of up to $180 per ton of carbon stored would be handled if the carbon were injected under federal lands.

About 140 groups have asked the Forest Service to extend the 60-day public comment period on the proposal, which now ends January 2, for another 60 days. It would be, according to the groups, the first time the United States would permit CO₂ to be injected under federal lands. 

U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, R-Calif., ranking member of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries, said he also intends to call for an extension of the comment period. Huffman called the measure a “sacrifice of public lands as a life support for fossil fuels.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Plan to stash planet-heating carbon dioxide under U.S. national forests alarms critics on Dec 17, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Pam Radtke, Floodlight.

Appearing before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, to discuss Beijing’s “transnational repression” of dissidents in the United States, the activists said many of their friends in America long ago decided to shut up to protect their safety.

Georgetown University law student Zhang Jinrui said he started being approached, warned and filmed by other Chinese students on campus after speaking out against China’s zero-COVID policies as part of last year’s “white paper movement,” which briefly spread across China. 

The death of as many as 44 Uyghurs in a house fire in Xinjiang province, allegedly due to the restrictive policies, was the tipping point, Zhang told the committee in a prime-time hearing. Before that, he said, he kept quiet like most other Chinese students in the United States.

“Fear of retaliation had kept me from speaking out publicly against the regime, even after I came to the U.S., and this is the shared experience of many Chinese citizens outside of China,” Zhang said, explaining that he knew exactly what would happen after he spoke out in public. 

“No matter where in the world you are, even in the most mature democracies,” he said, “you're never free as long as anyone or anything you care about is under the control of the CCP.”

Zhang, who told his story to Radio Free Asia earlier this year, said his father subsequently was hauled away by local police in front of his “terrified mother” for interrogation, and was only let go “on the condition that he makes me love the country and love the party.” 

But that was not the end of it, Zhang said.

“My family members in China were harassed and threatened four times by the Chinese government,” he said. “And I'm very certain that there will be a fifth time because of my presence here tonight.”

Uyghurs

Such threats against family living in China was one of the most common methods of control employed by China’s government to strongarm its critics into silence, the committee was told.

In particular, Uyghur Americans, many of whom have family members back home subjected to torture and forced labor in mass internment camps, often have to think twice about their advocacy against such practices because of fears it could put a target on their family.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois who serves as his party’s ranking member on the committee, read out a voice message that he said an ethnic Uyghur woman who “escaped to America and then criticized the CCP” had received from one of her brothers.

“You should go to the Chinese Embassy right away and denounce the things you said about the Chinese government,” he read, noting it was likely forced. “Otherwise, China can get you anywhere you hide.”

It’s a type of repression essentially enforced through self-censorship driven by fear, Sophie Richardson, the longtime but now former China director at Human Rights Watch, told the lawmakers.

“It's not a discrete event; it's a life reality,” she said. “Uyghurs around the world, even ones who are living in democracies, wake up in the morning … [and] think immediately about family members they can't reach and they don't know whether they'll ever see again.”

Richardson said many Uyghurs in free countries like America often stopped to consider the efficacy of their advocacy and had to grapple with “whether it makes their loved ones’ realities better or worse.”

“Some choose to stay quiet for perfectly sensible reasons,” she said. “It is pernicious and pervasive, and all-permeating in people's lives.”

Unknown impact

Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, suggested that new laws may be necessary to allow authorities to intervene. He noted that many of the cases mentioned to the committee involved “informal” forms of repression, where regular Chinese citizens were doing the policing.

“One problem that we find with countering CCP’s repression on U.S. campuses is that students reporting their peers to the CCP is not an obvious crime, so we don't have a good way to stop it,” Banks said.

Anna Kwok, executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, said she agreed new laws were needed. But she said that it may be too little and too late, with many in the United States having already ended their advocacy to prioritize the safety of themselves and their family.

“In the end, some Hong Kongers actually decided to censor themselves, while others decided to drop out,” Kwok said. Such a decision “exactly” fit Beijing’s goal “to dismantle our community” and silence Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, she explained.

“So, in the future, if you don't hear any more from Hong Kongers, it’s not because you will have won the fight,” Kwok added, “it is because of the far-reaching repression we're seeing here right now.”

Richardson echoed Kwok, saying the cross-border repression was by definition invisible, with an already unknown number of victims.

“We will likely never know whether and how many people chose not to vote, attend public events or debate ideas online or in-person because they felt vulnerable to these kinds of threats,” Richardson said, calling them as “threats to the integrity of our democratic institutions.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

Appearing before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, to discuss Beijing’s “transnational repression” of dissidents in the United States, the activists said many of their friends in America long ago decided to shut up to protect their safety.

Georgetown University law student Zhang Jinrui said he started being approached, warned and filmed by other Chinese students on campus after speaking out against China’s zero-COVID policies as part of last year’s “white paper movement,” which briefly spread across China. 

The death of as many as 44 Uyghurs in a house fire in Xinjiang province, allegedly due to the restrictive policies, was the tipping point, Zhang told the committee in a prime-time hearing. Before that, he said, he kept quiet like most other Chinese students in the United States.

“Fear of retaliation had kept me from speaking out publicly against the regime, even after I came to the U.S., and this is the shared experience of many Chinese citizens outside of China,” Zhang said, explaining that he knew exactly what would happen after he spoke out in public. 

“No matter where in the world you are, even in the most mature democracies,” he said, “you're never free as long as anyone or anything you care about is under the control of the CCP.”

Zhang, who told his story to Radio Free Asia earlier this year, said his father subsequently was hauled away by local police in front of his “terrified mother” for interrogation, and was only let go “on the condition that he makes me love the country and love the party.” 

But that was not the end of it, Zhang said.

“My family members in China were harassed and threatened four times by the Chinese government,” he said. “And I'm very certain that there will be a fifth time because of my presence here tonight.”

Uyghurs

Such threats against family living in China was one of the most common methods of control employed by China’s government to strongarm its critics into silence, the committee was told.

In particular, Uyghur Americans, many of whom have family members back home subjected to torture and forced labor in mass internment camps, often have to think twice about their advocacy against such practices because of fears it could put a target on their family.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat from Illinois who serves as his party’s ranking member on the committee, read out a voice message that he said an ethnic Uyghur woman who “escaped to America and then criticized the CCP” had received from one of her brothers.

“You should go to the Chinese Embassy right away and denounce the things you said about the Chinese government,” he read, noting it was likely forced. “Otherwise, China can get you anywhere you hide.”

It’s a type of repression essentially enforced through self-censorship driven by fear, Sophie Richardson, the longtime but now former China director at Human Rights Watch, told the lawmakers.

“It's not a discrete event; it's a life reality,” she said. “Uyghurs around the world, even ones who are living in democracies, wake up in the morning … [and] think immediately about family members they can't reach and they don't know whether they'll ever see again.”

Richardson said many Uyghurs in free countries like America often stopped to consider the efficacy of their advocacy and had to grapple with “whether it makes their loved ones’ realities better or worse.”

“Some choose to stay quiet for perfectly sensible reasons,” she said. “It is pernicious and pervasive, and all-permeating in people's lives.”

Unknown impact

Rep. Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, suggested that new laws may be necessary to allow authorities to intervene. He noted that many of the cases mentioned to the committee involved “informal” forms of repression, where regular Chinese citizens were doing the policing.

“One problem that we find with countering CCP’s repression on U.S. campuses is that students reporting their peers to the CCP is not an obvious crime, so we don't have a good way to stop it,” Banks said.

Anna Kwok, executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, said she agreed new laws were needed. But she said that it may be too little and too late, with many in the United States having already ended their advocacy to prioritize the safety of themselves and their family.

“In the end, some Hong Kongers actually decided to censor themselves, while others decided to drop out,” Kwok said. Such a decision “exactly” fit Beijing’s goal “to dismantle our community” and silence Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, she explained.

“So, in the future, if you don't hear any more from Hong Kongers, it’s not because you will have won the fight,” Kwok added, “it is because of the far-reaching repression we're seeing here right now.”

Richardson echoed Kwok, saying the cross-border repression was by definition invisible, with an already unknown number of victims.

“We will likely never know whether and how many people chose not to vote, attend public events or debate ideas online or in-person because they felt vulnerable to these kinds of threats,” Richardson said, calling them as “threats to the integrity of our democratic institutions.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.

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

The General Assembly comprises all 193 UN Member States and although its resolutions are non-binding, they represent “the conscience of humanity”.

That’s the message from General Assembly President Dennis Francis, who also encourages people who believe the UN is ineffective to instead engage with the global body.

UN News’s Dianne Penn asked Mr. Francis how he is ensuring that countries will work together to address his priority areas of peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability. 

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Dianne Penn.

Articles like the Atlantic‘s (10/23/23) that took media to task for supposedly credulous reporting of the Gaza hospital blast actually demonstrated less skepticism of their sources than the initial coverage they complained about.

The devastating explosion at a Gaza hospital on October 17 provoked soul-searching in US corporate media—over the willingness of press outlets to quote Gaza officials who attributed the calamity to an Israeli airstrike.

“News Outlets Backtrack on Gaza Blast After Relying on Hamas as Key Source,” NPR (10/24/23) reported. “The initial coverage of a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital last week offers a fresh reminder of how hard it can be to get the news right—and what happens when it goes awry,” wrote NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.

“How the Media Got the Hospital Explosion Wrong” was the headline of an Atlantic article by Yascha Mounk (10/23/23), which asserted:

As more details about the blast emerged, the initial claims so credulously repeated by the world’s leading news outlets came to look untenable….

The cause of the tragedy, it appears, is the opposite of what news outlets around the world first reported. Rather than having been an Israeli attack on civilians, the balance of evidence suggests that it was a result of terrorists’ disregard for the lives of the people on whose behalf they claim to be fighting.

The New York Times (10/23/23) offered an editorial mea culpa, saying its initial coverage “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”

(What seems to be the New York Times‘ first mention of the blast—posted on its live feed on the “Israel/Hamas War” at 4:41 pm EDT on October 17—was headed “Hundreds Die in an Explosion at a Gaza Hospital, Setting Off Exchanges of Blame.” The first paragraph concluded, “The authorities blamed an Israeli airstrike, but the assertion was disputed by the Israel Defense Forces, which blamed an errant rocket fired by an armed Palestinian faction.” By 7:32 that evening, the feed was headed, “Israelis and Palestinians Blame Each Other for Blast at Gaza Hospital That Killed Hundreds.”)

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy (10/26/23) demanded that numerous outlets retract their reporting—mainly because “Israel and the US have assessed that the rocket originated in Gaza, not Israel.”

CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy (10/26/23) took to task numerous outlets, including AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, the Wall Street Journal and his own network for their “negligent reporting” that “amplified Hamas’s claims” on the blast. “Did these outlets stand by their initial reporting?” he asked them. “Was there any regret repeating claims from the terrorist group?” With the exceptions of the New York Times and the BBC, they “declin[ed] to explain to their audiences how they initially got an important story of such great magnitude so wrong.”

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post (10/18/23) heaped scorn on “Media Suckered by Hamas’s Hospital Lie,” saying, “We’re not sure why any reputable journo ever believed Hamas in the first place.” “Hard evidence shows that…the rocket was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel,” the tabloid confidently asserted.

A dubious recording

But the articles that chided media for being overly credulous toward Gazan authorities themselves failed to critically examine the claims they relied on. In fact, the rebukes of news outlets for citing Gazan officials were based on dubious or ambiguous evidence, and were cherry-picked to present a case that absolved Israel. This one-way skepticism suggests less a concern for careful, accurate  journalism than it does a worry that, at a time when a US-allied government is inflicting mass civilian casualties, the institutions of the targeted population will be treated as credible sources.

For example, commentators prominently cited audio offered by an Israeli military spokesperson as authoritative evidence. “Israel released what it said were recordings of Hamas operatives discussing the blast as the misfire of a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” the Atlantic wrote, adding only, “The group has denied this version of events.”

“Don’t take our word for it!” the New York Post (10/18/23) said—instead take the word of a dodgy tape provided by Israel that audio investigators say was doctored.

“Don’t take our word for it!” the New York Post insisted. “The IDF has released audio of two Hamas operatives saying, quite literally, that the rocket is ‘from us’ (i.e. Islamist combatants trying to destroy Israel).”

What these outlets didn’t note is that serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of this audio. Alex Thomson of Britain’s Channel 4 (10/18/23) reported:

Hamas call this an obvious fabrication. Two independent Arab journalists told us the same thing, because of the language, accent, dialect, syntax and tone, none of which is, they say, credible.

The London Daily Mail (10/18/23) likewise reported that “Hamas and independent experts…said the tone, syntax, accent and idiom were ‘absurd.’”

Channel 4 (10/20/23) later reported on a forensic analysis of the tape conducted by Earshot, a nonprofit audio analysis group, which determined that the

recording is made up of two separate channels, and demonstrates that these two voices have been recorded independently.  These two independent recordings have then been edited together in a digital audio work station.

As a general rule, journalists should be particularly skeptical of intercepts that say precisely what the interceptors would want them to say—as with the hospital tape, in which one of the participants says, “That’s why we are saying it belongs to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”

Cherry-picking video analysis

An Al Jazeera video analysis (10/19/23) found that “Israeli statements seem to have misinterpreted the evidence to build a story that one of the flashes recorded by several sources was a rocket misfire.”

There was also considerable weight placed on video showing an airborne object bursting into flames around the time of the hospital explosion, with Israel asserting that this was the Islamic Jihad rocket that struck the hospital. Wrote the Atlantic:

A live video transmission from Al Jazeera appeared to show that a projectile rose from inside Gaza before changing course and exploding in the vicinity of the hospital; the Israel Defense Forces have claimed that this was one of several rockets fired from Palestinian territory. Subsequent analysis by the Associated Press has substantially corroborated this.

It’s true that an AP report (10/21/23) endorsed the Israeli scenario:

AP’s analysis shows that the rocket that broke up in the air was fired from within Palestinian territory, and that the hospital explosion was most likely caused when part of that rocket crashed to the ground.

But AP‘s was not the only in-depth examination of the video evidence, and not necessarily the most convincing. An investigation by Al Jazeera itself (10/19/23) combined the network’s own footage with video captured simultaneously by a camera near Tel Aviv. The Qatar-based outlet reported:

At 18:59:35, we can see a single rocket launched from Gaza. This is the rocket in question. This rocket can also be seen on the Israeli video.

Fifteen seconds later, Al Jazeera‘s live feed shows that the same rocket was intercepted at exactly 18:59:50. This interception has the same afterglow seen in previous interceptions.

A closer look at the video captured by the Al Jazeera live feed shows the rocket being completely destroyed and broken apart in the sky. According to all  feeds and videos analyzed, this rocket was intercepted, and was the last one launched from Gaza before the bombing of the hospital.

After tracing the fields of vision of various cameras that captured the object that was said to be the misfiring rocket that caused the hospital blast, the New York Times (10/24/23) indicated that this munition was actually fired from Israel, well away from the hospital.

Al Jazeera also reported that it

was able to identify four Israeli airstrikes on Gaza targeting the area near the hospital, starting at 18:54:28, then 18:55:03, then 18:57:42, and then 18:58:04.

The hospital explosion happened at 18:59:55, in line with the sequence of Israeli airstrikes in the vicinity identified by Al Jazeera. The fact that Israel had been bombing the neighborhood immediately before the blast was left out of the articles bashing news outlets for quoting the Gaza Health Ministry.

Another analysis of the video evidence conducted by the New York Times (10/24/23) also cast doubt on the Israeli account. By tracing the sightlines of the available videos, the Times determined that the object that Israeli military spokespeople had pointed to as being the supposed “misfired rocket that caused the explosion” at the hospital was actually “launched from Israel, not Gaza, and appears to have exploded above the Israeli/Gaza border, at least two miles away from the hospital.”

This analysis was published the day after the Times‘ editorial apology for its hospital bombing coverage, but does not seem to have provoked any re-re-evaluation of the paper’s coverage. (It does feature in round-up of evidence by the Times‘ David Leonhardt—11/3/23—which is otherwise mostly accepting of the official line.)

Channel 4 (10/20/23) had earlier reported on an audio analysis of the sound of the explosion, which indicated that the munition had approached from the east rather than the west; that would make the Israeli account of a rocket fired from within Gaza less plausible.

Damage points east, not west

Britain’s Channel 4 (10/20/23) noted that independent forensic investigators were pointing to evidence that undermined the Israeli account.

Another piece of evidence in-house critics offered in favor of Israel’s denial was the condition of the blast site. This—aside from the assessments of “Israel and the US”—was the whole of the argument CNN‘s Darcy (10/26/23) advanced to declare the entirety of the coverage hopelessly wrong: “Independent forensic experts…have indicated that the available evidence from the blast was inconsistent with the damage one would expect to see from an Israeli strike.”

It is true that the relatively small impact crater contrasts with the large cavities left by the bombs Israel typically uses; however, other outlets have noted that this doesn’t rule out other Israeli munitions (Al Jazeera, 10/20/23; BBC, 10/27/23). Channel 4 (10/20/23) reported that a London University analysis of the impact site found a shallow channel of the sort an incoming missile would leave leading to the site from the northeast, while shrapnel splash marks fanned out to the southwest—again, opposite to the directions that the Israeli account would predict.

While the Israeli government insists that the hospital was never a target, it does admit that the “hospital administration had received at least three warnings from the Israeli military to evacuate its wards” prior to the blast (New York Times, 10/18/23); Israel had “hit Al-Ahli Arab Hospital with an illumination artillery shell three days earlier, according to video evidence” (New York Times, 10/24/23). This circumstantial evidence was not included in the discussion of the supposed failure of media to be sufficiently skeptical of Palestinian allegations.

US not a disinterested party

The primary reason NPR (10/24/23) offered for decreeing that coverage of the hospital blast “fell short” was that “Israel’s stance has since been backed by US and Canadian intelligence assessments.”

Perhaps the factor that seemed to most impel media’s own media critics to rebuke outlets for the initial coverage of the hospital bombing was that the US government supported the Israeli version of events. The Atlantic wrote:

By evening, US security agencies had analyzed the available evidence and come to an even more certain verdict: “We feel confident that the explosion was the result of a failed rocket launch by militant terrorists and not the result of an Israeli airstrike,” Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on X.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board (10/18/23), which usually urges readers not to trust the Biden administration (1/13/22, 9/7/23, 10/13/23), presented the White House take as definitive:

We can now have confidence that the initial story was false. A White House National Security Council spokesman confirms that its “current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza.”

The only reason the Times apologia offered for giving more credence to Israeli than to Palestinian assertions was that the former were US-endorsed: “American and other international officials have said their evidence indicates that the rocket came from Palestinian fighter positions.”

Likewise, the first reason that NPR offered for judging that coverage by “illustrious” news outlets “fell short” was that “Israel’s stance has since been backed by US and Canadian intelligence assessments.” The outlet added that “Other outside institutions”—unnamed—”have cast increasing doubt upon the validity of Hamas’ allegations, although it’s still not clear what actually happened.”

The Atlantic, too, said that “a number of observers who are critical of Israel and had at first condemned the attack subsequently acknowledged that initial reports had likely been mistaken”—without giving any indications which observers those were.

Of course, a government that is the main supplier of weaponry to another government accused of committing a war crime is not an objective analyst; the US exoneration of Israel (which was also a self-exoneration) should not have been treated as particularly compelling evidence, let alone a definitive judgment.

Quoting is the problem

This is the caliber of media critic NPR‘s David Folkenflik (10/24/23) outsourced his media analysis to—one who objects to reporting any claim by a Palestinian official, because all Palestinian officials are “Hamas.”

If it does turn out that Israel was not involved in the destruction at the hospital—which, given the fragmentary evidence, has to be considered a possibility—that does not mean that media were derelict in initially quoting Gaza authorities. NPR (10/24/23) outsourced its media analysis on this issue to Drew Holden of the right-wing Washington Free Beacon, who published a Twitter thread on October 18 that (in NPR‘s words)

documented a series of prominent news outlets…that appeared to rely on Hamas’ claims as authoritative with little or scant acknowledgement of how little had been verified before publication.

Among the headlines that Holden singled out as particularly bad:

• “At Least 500 Killed in Israeli Airstrike on Gaza City Hospital, Health Ministry Says” (PBS NewsHour, 10/17/23)
• “Hundreds Feared Dead or Injured in Israeli Air Strike on Hospital in Gaza, Palestinian Officials Say” (BBC, 10/17/23)
• “Palestinian Health Ministry Says 200 to 300 People May Have Been Killed in Israeli Strike on Hospital in Gaza” (CNN, 10/17/23)
• “The Gaza Health Ministry Says at Least 500 People Killed in an Explosion at a Hospital That It Says Was Caused by an Israeli Airstrike” (AP, 10/17/23)

The Atlantic‘s Mounk acknowledged “that news outlets ascribed these details to Palestinian authorities, thereby doing the minimum to ensure that their readers would understand where the claims originated.” But simply by quoting them, they “led reasonable readers to conclude that these statements must basically be true.” Above all, they failed to stress “that the health  authorities—and all other authorities—in Gaza are controlled by Hamas.”

One of the first AP stories (10/17/23) on the hospital blast is the kind of coverage critics say didn’t happen enough; the accompanying story uses the phrase “run by Hamas” twice in the first two paragraphs. But it’s inaccurate; the Gaza Health Ministry actually answers to Fatah.

(Mounk did not acknowledge—as AP did, in an October 26 explainer, that “the United Nations and other international institutions and experts…say the Gaza ministry has long made a good-faith effort to account for the dead under the most difficult conditions,” or that “in previous wars, the ministry’s counts have held up to UN scrutiny, independent investigations and even Israel’s tallies.” Nor did Mounk note, as Reuters did—10/27/23— that the Gaza Health Ministry actually reports to the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Hamas’s rival Fatah.)

If 500 people were killed in an explosion in Kyiv, and Ukrainian officials blamed Russia, a subsequent revelation that the carnage was actually caused by friendly fire would not likely lead outlets to regret headlines that read “Hundreds Killed by Russian Airstrike, Ukraine Says.” After all, the vast majority of civilian deaths in Kyiv are caused by Russia—just as the vast majority of civilians killed in Gaza are killed by Israel.

It’s only when an official enemy like Hamas is involved that reporting straightforward claims that something that has happened many times before has happened again becomes problematic.

The rectified version

The lesson the New York Times (1/11/23) seems to have drawn from the hospital blast episode is not to be skeptical of everyone, but to be more skeptical of Palestinians and less skeptical of Israel.

On October 31, Israel bombed a Gaza refugee camp, killing more than 110 people, according to local doctors (Washington Post, 11/1/23). The lead story on the front page of the New York Times print edition the next day began:

An airstrike that Israel said was targeting Hamas militants caused widespread damage in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza on Tuesday. Hamas and hospital officials said numerous people were killed and wounded.

Two paragraphs down, the story reported that

Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, and local doctors said hundreds of people had been killed or wounded at the Jabaliya refugee camp. Independent verification of the claim was not possible, but Israel itself described the strike as a “wide-scale” attack.

The story leads with Israel’s professed justification, goes out of its way to bring up Hamas even while citing medical sources, gives no specific estimates of deaths and stresses the impossibility of independent verification. The headline over the article, “Fatal Strike in Dense Area as Israelis Aim at Hamas,” turned Israel’s claim into an attack.

This sort of obfuscation is what critics of the coverage of the hospital blast wanted. It’s not the kind of reporting that victims of mass slaughter need.

The post Media’s In-House Critics to Reporters: Quit Quoting Palestinians About Civilian Deaths appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Jim Naureckas.

In a speech before government officials, teachers and students, Hun Manet encouraged the students to take a day off from school once or twice a week to volunteer.

“[We should] train people and children to know how to help social work,” he said. “We can assign people to help improve sanitation, to help the elderly and to help plant trees.”

Hun Manet, who recently took over the prime ministership after his father Hun Sen ruled the country for nearly four decades, said that it was important to foster a volunteer mindset.

“[This is] a way we can encourage [students,]” he said. “Their grades [should] not just come from in-class examinations, but also come from their discipline and behavior.”

The request seemed disingenuous to Phuong Keo Raksmey, a member of the Mother Nature Movement environmentalist group. 

While she appreciated the encouragement to volunteer, she told RFA Khmer that students in 7th grade and up are regularly recruited into the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia – an organization led by the prime minister’s brother Hun Many – which, in her opinion, does not engage in activities that better the community, but serves the interests of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. 

“First, the definition of ‘social work’ should be defined,” she said. “It should not be limited to work that [directly] supports the government or the policies of any political party.”

She urged the government to allow people freedom to choose how they volunteer.

Keut Saray, the president of the Khmer Intellectual Students Association, said that the government should make amends for past crackdowns on volunteers, including himself.

“When young students became active in social work [in the past], they were restricted and charged under the penal code and then imprisoned,” he said. “So we’re seeing that they ‘talk the talk,’ but it doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t translated into action.”

The crackdown on social activists occurred under the rule of Hun Sen, not Hun Manet, but since taking over, the son’s administration has yet to take concrete steps to guarantee the rights of young people involved in activism.

For example, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court denied a request by three youth members of the Mother Nature Movement for permission to leave Cambodia so that they could travel to Sweden to receive an award this November in recognition for their environmental activism.

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Eugene Whong.

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

In a speech before government officials, teachers and students, Hun Manet encouraged the students to take a day off from school once or twice a week to volunteer.

“[We should] train people and children to know how to help social work,” he said. “We can assign people to help improve sanitation, to help the elderly and to help plant trees.”

Hun Manet, who recently took over the prime ministership after his father Hun Sen ruled the country for nearly four decades, said that it was important to foster a volunteer mindset.

“[This is] a way we can encourage [students,]” he said. “Their grades [should] not just come from in-class examinations, but also come from their discipline and behavior.”

The request seemed disingenuous to Phuong Keo Raksmey, a member of the Mother Nature Movement environmentalist group. 

While she appreciated the encouragement to volunteer, she told RFA Khmer that students in 7th grade and up are regularly recruited into the Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia – an organization led by the prime minister’s brother Hun Many – which, in her opinion, does not engage in activities that better the community, but serves the interests of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. 

“First, the definition of ‘social work’ should be defined,” she said. “It should not be limited to work that [directly] supports the government or the policies of any political party.”

She urged the government to allow people freedom to choose how they volunteer.

Keut Saray, the president of the Khmer Intellectual Students Association, said that the government should make amends for past crackdowns on volunteers, including himself.

“When young students became active in social work [in the past], they were restricted and charged under the penal code and then imprisoned,” he said. “So we’re seeing that they ‘talk the talk,’ but it doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t translated into action.”

The crackdown on social activists occurred under the rule of Hun Sen, not Hun Manet, but since taking over, the son’s administration has yet to take concrete steps to guarantee the rights of young people involved in activism.

For example, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court denied a request by three youth members of the Mother Nature Movement for permission to leave Cambodia so that they could travel to Sweden to receive an award this November in recognition for their environmental activism.

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Eugene Whong.

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

Pacific Media Watch

An award-winning website with an archive of thousands of Pacific news reports, videos, images and research abstracts regarded as a pioneering initiative for a university based media programme has “disappeared” from its cyberspace location.

Pacific Media Centre Online, founded in 2007, was the website of the research and publication centre established at Auckland University of Technology as a component of the Creative Industries Research Institute.

It was a platform for student journalists and independent media contributors from other media schools and institutions across the Oceania region such as the University of the South Pacific as well as at AUT.

• READ MORE: The PMC Online website on the WebArchive

One of it PMC Online’s components, Pacific Media Watch, was awarded the faculty “Critic and Conscience of Society” award in 2014 and contributing student journalists won 11 prizes in the annual Ossie journalism awards of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA).

When the PMC effectively closed in early 2021, the website continued as an archive at AUT for more than two and a half years under the URL pmc.aut.ac.nz — a total life of 16 years plus.

However, suddenly the website vanished earlier this month with pmc.aut.ac.nz defaulting to the university’s Journalism Department with no explanation from campus authorities.

Founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and retired professor of Pacific journalism Dr David Robie called it a disappointing reflection on the decline of independent journalism and lack of respect for history at media schools, saying: “Yet another example of cancel culture.”

‘Appalling waste’
Media commentators on social media have raised questions and been highly critical on social media outlets.

Jemima Garrett, co-convenor of the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative (AAPMI), described it as an “appalling waste and disrespectful”.

Investigative journalist and Gold Walkley winner Peter Cronau, who is co-publisher of Declassified Australia, wrote: “That’s disgraceful censorship of Pacific stories — disturbing it’s been done by AUT, who should be devoted to openness and free speech. What avenues exist for appeal?”

Another investigative journalist and former journalism professor Wendy Bacon said: “This is very bad and very glad that you archived all this valuable work. Unfortunately the same thing happened to an enormous amount of valuable files of Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS [University of Technology Sydney].”

The Pacific affairs adviser of the Pacific Islands Forum, Lisa Leilani Williams-Lahari, said: “Sad!”

Pacific Media Centre student contributors filed more than 50 reports for the Australian journalism school collaborative platform The Junction and they can be read here.

The PMC Online archive can also be accessed at WebArchive and the National Library of New Zealand.

More than 220 videos by students and staff are available on the PMC YouTube channel.

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

As a freelance journalist many years ago, I was walking the streets of Brooklyn, looking for a juicy story, anything that I could get into print. I was coming up empty. So I did what anyone would do in that situation. I had lunch.

Halfway through my Jamaican jerk chicken, I heard several gunshots, and in a flash, a man ran by the restaurant. I threw my money on the table and headed to the scene. When I got there a bystander pointed me toward the spent shells. I looked around and talked to witnesses. As one young man pontificated to me about poverty and unemployment leading to crime, I noticed that the cops weren’t there yet. But a photographer from the Daily News was.

That was because, like any good crime reporter, he was listening to police radio and responding to 911 calls, hoping to catch fresh crime footage, fires and other colorful photos that editors love. He’s not alone. Journalists around the country do this, as does anyone who is simply interested in cops, firefighters and other emergency services. Police scanners aren’t cheap, but they are readily available at many electronics retailers.

Restricting the right to listen in

Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen (Colorado Public Radio, 8/9/19) framed the issue as “public safety versus whether or not somebody can be entertained on a Friday night by listening to police dispatch.”

But today, the right to listen to police radio in real time is under attack. The Baltimore Police Department moved to encrypt its radio communications and implement a 15-minute delay (Baltimore Sun, 6/30/23). “The police department plans to provide the adjusted service on a radio broadcast via Broadcastify, and it will be free of charge,” reported WJZ-TV (7/1/23). This still allows for people to listen in, though not in real time.

But other departments are going further. The police in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, California, announced it will move to encryption (KTLA, 9/19/23). The New York Police Department is considering an overall encrypted system as some precincts have switched to new technologies (Gothamist, 7/29/23).

When the Denver Police Department moved to encrypt radio communications, Jeff Roberts of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition (Colorado Public Radio, 8/8/19) protested the move, saying, “We always need an independent monitor. And that’s what the news media does on the public’s behalf.”

And when journalists protested the Chicago Police Department’s switch to encrypted radio, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot (WLS-TV, 12/14/22) claimed the scanner access allowed criminals to evade arrest: “It’s about officer safety…. If it’s unencrypted and there’s access, there’s no way to control criminals who are also gonna get access,” who will then “adjust their criminal behavior in response to the information that’s being communicated.”

Tracking police misdeeds

The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s Andy Ratto (City Limits, 8/25/23): Listening to police radio “allows reporters and photographers to identify events they can cover in real-time, on location.”

Crime reporting, of course, has always had its problems. On the one hand, covering crime is a public service by offering communities the ability to know about what happens in the streets every night. On the other hand, crime stories can be sensationalized and overhyped, painting crime as a bigger problem than it is, to bolster calls for bigger police budgets and more aggressive policing (FAIR.org, 10/10/18, 6/21/21, 5/6/22, 11/10/22, 12/7/22).

But police scanners are wonderful tools for journalists covering not just crime, but police as an institution of power, especially in their relationship to social justice movements. For example, during Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter uprisings in New York City, the citywide police channels offered play-by-play, block-by-block and arrest-by-arrest narratives of nightly confrontations. But this also gave reporters key insights into general police tactics and strategies.

It also allows for the public to track police misdeeds. For example, Alex Ratto noted at City Limits (8/25/23): “NYPD officers responding to protests were overheard on the radio telling each other to ‘shoot those motherfuckers’ and ‘run them over’” during the BLM protests of 2020. He added:

In 2021, radio traffic captured requests to the NYPD Strategic Response Group (SRG) for assistance with a missing person, which was rejected because the SRG was occupied monitoring a peaceful protest.

Even during the Occupy movement, it was clear the police knew these facts all too well. It was common to hear a commanding officer on the Occupy detail tell a subordinate to switch to a cell phone. The only reason for this was to evade public scrutiny. So it is no surprise that police are developing new communications systems that are meant to operate in the shadows.

In Mountain View, California, one major problem, as one newspaper editor pointed out, was that police are making these changes to radio encryption unilaterally. “The police shouldn’t be making their own policies,” wrote Dave Price, editor of the Palo Alto Daily Post (4/2/21). “They should be invited to provide their opinions about proposed policies, but the final decision should be that of the council members.”

Public deserves to know

Journalists and free speech groups are protesting the moves to hide police conversations from the public. And they should be—not mainly for the sake of getting spicy crime footage for the papers, but because the public deserves to know what police departments do.

Yes, more and more cops use body cameras. But those can be turned off (PBS, 4/15/22). Public records are available, but it takes time and institutional effort to obtain them.

The idea that encryption is necessary because criminals use scanners to evade police is questionable. There is, indeed, documentation showing that sophisticated criminal outfits have sometimes done this (e.g., Rolling Stone, 6/21/11). But in all the media frenzy in the last several years about shoplifting in San Francisco or rising murder rates in Chicago, very little seems to indicate that a prime source of the chaos was an epidemic of too many police scanners in the wrong hands. And even if a petty thief or a gang member did use a radio in the commission of a crime, one still doesn’t stand a chance against the vast police arsenal of street cameras, drones, helicopters and facial recognition technology. That’s hardly enough reason to keep the rest of the public in the dark.

“It’s yet another expansion of police power that’s completely lacking an evidentiary basis,” said Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the author of The End of Policing. “Where is the evidence of crime rates being affected by people using scanners?” He told FAIR:

It also assumes that there’s no public benefit to transparency. The police will sometimes mobilize an anecdote to make a broad claim without calculating the cost of what they’re proposing. We know that public access to scanner information has revealed abusive police behavior, racist exchanges between police officers, and there is a public value in having access to that.

Some police departments are trying to meet journalists halfway by offering the press access to encrypted communications. But as the Freedom of the Press Foundation (8/9/23) points out, this solution gives to the state enormous control over the information the public is allowed to have. And what constitutes a journalist? A staffer at a major institution who has police-issued credentials? What about a freelancer for an independent outlet? Some of the most important scrutiny of police abuse is done by citizen journalists—who are often not recognized by police as journalists at all (FAIR.org, 3/23/16).

In Chicago and Denver, it might be too late to turn the clock back toward more open police communications. But journalists, free speech advocates and good-government groups should strive to fight this kind of encryption where they can. Vitale, for example, noted that in addition to calling for governance transparency in policing, the public should question this new technology on budgetary reasons as well.

“This is very costly to local governments,” he said of proposed contracts with communications firms. “We need to ask them about their sweetheart contracts.”

Featured image: Police officer using radio in car (Creative Commons photo: Government of Prince Edward Island).

The post Police Seek a Radio Silence That Would Mute Critics in the Press appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

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The plastic crisis has grown exponentially. Despite marketing claims, less than 10% of the plastic waste from recent decades has been recycled. The rest gets incinerated, is buried in landfills or piles up as litter on land and in the water.

Today, it is widely acknowledged that everything about plastic — from extracting fossil fuels to make it, to manufacturing products that use it, to disposing of it — can seriously harm public health and the environment. Plastics are a growing driver of climate change. As growth in renewable energy threatens the rule of fossil fuels, that industry is clinging to the creation of new plastics as its Plan B.

Now, the plastics industry faces a new threat. World officials will gather at a United Nations meeting in November to start negotiating the text of the first legally binding treaty on plastics. A final version is expected next year. If the agreement limits plastic production or use, the implications for the businesses that rely on it could be enormous.

So it wasn’t a surprise when those businesses sought to influence the discussion. But what has been jarring to environmental advocates and scientific researchers is who has been there to boost the Big Plastic platform: the United Nations itself, along with other globally respected groups.

This dynamic is evident right now in New York City, as global leaders, business executives and climate activists convene for Climate Week, an annual gathering organized by the nonprofit Climate Group in partnership with the United Nations.

Event organizers granted an opening ceremony speaking slot to a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, the powerhouse consulting firm that has advised fossil fuel companies. Top event sponsors include major brands that rely on plastic packaging and associate members of the American Chemistry Council, a leading plastics lobby.

“Our position on climate change and the urgent need to reach net zero is unequivocal, and we have been backing up those words with action for decades,” a McKinsey spokesperson said in an email. The American Chemistry Council didn’t return requests for comment.

A Climate Group spokesperson defended the inclusion of McKinsey and major plastics brands. “We won’t tackle climate change by only speaking with businesses or governments who are top performers. We need to engage with those who have further to go still.”

To those hoping for a strong plastics treaty, one of the most disappointing developments came from a report published by the United Nations Environment Program this May.

Co-written with Systemiq, a consulting firm that has advised the fossil fuel and plastics industries, the report generated a flurry of media attention for the main takeaway: that the interventions it listed would reduce global plastic pollution 80% by 2040 compared with what otherwise would have happened.

But its authors did not consider feedback from a large group of independent scientists and suggested several solutions that are favored by industry.

The report was “written from a certain worldview” that reflects business interests, said Ewoud Lauwerier, plastics policy expert at the advocacy group OceanCare. He called the report “highly problematic” in a 33-point thread on Twitter (now X).

Critics say the United Nations report emphasized waste management over the most important intervention — limiting the creation of new plastic. It’s a tactic that oil-rich nations like the United States have used in efforts to weaken the plastics treaty.

Putting the focus on managing waste risks getting locked into a cycle where people have to keep producing plastic to feed those waste management systems, said Jane Patton, campaigns manager on the U.S. fossil economy at the Center for International Environmental Law. Some environmentalists have called for phasing out single-use plastics by 2040.

The report is “not a reflection of industry talking points and it did not involve industry players while formulating the narrative,” Llorenç Milà i Canals, the lead report author from the United Nations Environment Program, said in an email on behalf of his institution and Systemiq. Milà i Canals is an expert on assessing the environmental impacts of products from creation to disposal.

The report did not predict how total plastics production would change. It focused on “short-lived” plastic products like packaging, which make up about two-thirds of all plastic waste. The report said the listed interventions would decrease production of these plastics 9% by 2040 compared with 2020.

Much of the reduction would come through eliminating single-use plastic or using replacement materials like paper. But the report’s inclusion of other controversial solutions alarmed many advocates and scientists.

Chief among them is chemical recycling, which transforms plastic on a molecular level. Research has shown that the process sometimes requires more energy than making brand-new plastic. A Reuters investigation found the industry has struggled to make it work on a large scale. Baked into the report’s estimated reduction in plastic pollution is what it projected to be a massive expansion of the practice: a more-than eightfold increase over 20 years. That growth rate is based on work Systemiq did with The Pew Charitable Trusts that resulted in a peer-reviewed paper.

“There’s no evidence anywhere showing that chemical recycling is sustainable from an environmental perspective or an economic perspective,” said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicology professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She fears the report will encourage governments to invest in chemical recycling, locking them into a harmful practice.

Chemical recycling is “included only as a last resort” for situations where plastic waste can’t be eliminated or processed via traditional recycling, Milà i Canals said. Chemical recycling “may have a role to play,” but “of course reducing the size of the problem is the top priority.”

The Pew Charitable Trusts, in a statement, said that its study set out to analyze “all existing and emerging technologies” to “assess their maximum feasible growth over the next 20 years” The analysis acknowledged that chemical recycling is “controversial” and could only tackle 6% of the plastic waste by 2040, so it “certainly cannot solve the crisis on its own.”

Incineration is another point of contention. Some “sub-optimal solutions will be needed” for certain non-recyclable plastics, the United Nations report stated. One option is to continue the practice of burning plastic as fuel for cement kilns. Since many countries already have cement kilns, the authors wrote, it wouldn’t require new investment and could reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

“Plastic itself is a fossil fuel,” said Sedat Gündoğdu, a professor in the Faculty of Fisheries at Çukurova University in Turkey. He said the report didn’t pay enough attention to the toxic footprint of incineration, as there’s “no proper solution” for the dioxins and other carcinogens emitted by burning plastic.

Many countries will turn to this report as a basis for future policy, he said. If the United Nations Environment Program lists incineration as an option, the least it could do is describe minimum health and environmental standards, he added.

Milà i Canals said the report stated this method is “strongly discouraged” and the authors did not recommend building new kilns. “We accept that we could have been more explicit about the limits of this solution.”

The report also suggested some of the costs of incineration could be covered by plastic credits — programs where corporations can claim to neutralize some of their plastic use by paying people elsewhere to recycle, incinerate or otherwise clean up existing plastic pollution.

Experts accused United Nations officials of being naive for their endorsement of plastic credits, saying that such programs will only justify more production of plastic while at the same time harming residents near incinerators. They have “no idea what’s going on on the ground,” said Yuyun Ismawati, senior adviser of the Nexus3 Foundation, an environmental group in Indonesia.

Her organization worked with a community in Bali near a polluting plastic waste recovery facility. Waste processed by the plant was linked to plastic credits pursued by a subsidiary of Danone, the French yogurt brand. The advocates sent Danone letters in June describing “filthy acidic smells” from the plant and residents’ complaints of nausea and severe headaches. The letter also denounced Verra, an American nonprofit that registered the plastic crediting project. Verra has been repeatedly criticized for selling worthless carbon credits. ProPublica reported in 2019 on a Verra-managed carbon offset project where half of the forested area that was supposed to be preserved was cut down after a decade.

Representatives from Verra and Danone told ProPublica the Bali project never produced actual plastic credits, and they were working to address concerns on the ground. The Verra spokesperson said the nonprofit is updating its carbon offset rules in response to recent criticism.

The Danone spokesperson said more research is needed “to test the effectiveness of plastic credits, and we continue to explore various solutions for plastic recycling.”

Milà i Canals said his report “does not provide a blanket recommendation” for plastic credits and cited references that warned of risks.

The United Nations Environment Program received notes on all of these concerns before publishing. It invited comments.

Since last year, the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty — a group of 280 scientists from 55 countries — has volunteered its time to provide technical assistance on the treaty. In early March, the United Nations Environment Program sent out a draft of the report to representatives of the group, giving them a week to review the 80-page document. Thirty scientists from different countries dove in. Carney Almroth, the professor from Sweden, spent the weekend typing at her kitchen table on a shared document.

Their final submission contained more than 300 comments about the report’s general framing and critiques of specific paragraphs. “Many solutions that have been presented (e.g. different forms of recycling) have failed, or are not scalable, or were pure greenwashing campaigns from the start,” she wrote in one comment.

Their feedback fell into a virtual black hole. The final report didn’t alleviate their main concerns, Carney Almroth said, even though it was published two months after the comments’ submission.

Milà i Canals said the email was filtered to a spam folder. Everyone was so busy that “nobody noticed” the “unfortunate mistake” until the report was published, he said.

They did take other people’s comments into account, Milà i Canals explained. In total, the authors received more than 1,000 comments from 75 external experts working for civil society groups, academia, industry and government, he said.

Our comments had the potential to “reshape the whole report,” and that’s “not something the industry wants,” Gündoğdu said. He and others said the United Nations program should have done more to vet Systemiq before hiring them.

Milà i Canals said Systemiq is a “mission-driven” company that was founded to help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement, “and it does this by transforming markets and business models.” He cited Systemiq’s “excellent track record” analyzing plastic, including the firm’s prior work with his institution, academic researchers and Pew.

According to its website, Systemiq is “a collaborative system designer, developer and disruptor” striving for “a thriving planet where sustainable economic systems drive prosperity for all.” It was founded in 2016 by consultants with decades of experience working for McKinsey.

Like McKinsey, Systemiq has advised the fossil fuel sector. Yoni Shiran, the lead Systemiq author of the United Nations report, said the firm has done so “very rarely” and only to “help them move away from fossil fuels.” A 2022 Systemiq report written for Plastics Europe, an industry trade group, described how to reduce the environmental footprint of the most commonly used types of plastic, which make up 75% of all plastic. Aggressive policy changes could keep the amount produced from rising between 2020 to 2050 in Europe, the report predicted. (A spokesperson for Plastics Europe said it was an “independent report” advised by a steering committee of experts working in the public sector, civil society and industry.)

The United Nations report lists 17 lead authors: eight from the United Nations program, five from Systemiq, and four from a university and another consulting firm. Two of the Systemiq authors previously worked for McKinsey.

On Tuesday, Systemiq will release a new report, titled “Towards Ending Plastic Pollution by 2040.” It was commissioned by the Nordic Council, a regional parliament. Many of these countries are part of a “High Ambition Coalition” that seeks aggressive terms on the plastics treaty.

A spokesperson for the Nordic Council said the group was “very aware” of the criticism received by the United Nations report, adding that “many of those concerns” were taken into account and “addressed more directly” in the new report.

An early copy provided to reporters shows that the report predicts total plastic production will increase by 9% in 2040 compared with 2019. Without the suggested interventions, the report said, production in 2040 would balloon by 66%. Shiran, one of the lead authors, said 9% “actually represents a pretty ambitious reduction” since the United Nations predicts world population will grow by 2 billion in 2040, with rising plastic consumption per capita.

The report didn’t mention plastic credits and presented scenarios with and without large growth in chemical recycling. Shiran was also a lead author on the Pew and Plastics Europe reports.

Experts said these repeat publications create a loop in which reports cite and legitimize one another.

If you have one consultancy that’s constantly self-referencing its own work, it doesn’t expand our knowledge or prove their case, said Patton, the Center for International Environmental Law advocate. If an environmental group had this much influence, she added, “I would absolutely have the same concerns.”

Shiran said the models underlying each report took years of work and took feedback from expert panels made up of academics, government officials and civil society groups. The reports are “intentionally linked to build on previous knowledge,” he said. “This is a strength of the work, not a weakness.”

Do You Have Experience in or With the Plastics Industry? Tell Us About It.

Kirsten Berg and Alex Mierjeski contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Lisa Song.

The inflation rate in Laos hovered around 26% in August after hitting a peak of more than 41% in February. That combined with a devaluation of the kip has made Laotians complain that they can’t eke out a living given the rising costs of gasoline, food and daily necessities. 

But an official with the government’s Ministry of Telecommunications and Technology told RFA Lao that those who post complaints online can expect a visit from the authorities.

“Officials are monitoring some Facebook pages and YouTube channels … [and] calling [those who criticize the government] to reeducate and warn them,” the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

“The police are monitoring those social media channel owners and, if they have [contact] information for them, will meet them immediately,” he said. “We have found that those social media channel owners with misleading information are [mostly] not in Laos, but we still closely continue to monitor them.”

Ruled by the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party since 1975, Laos’ government brooks no political opposition and has imprisoned citizens who post criticism on Facebook about corruption and mismanagement.

In 2014, the government issued a decree prohibiting online criticism of the government and the ruling party, setting out stiff penalties for netizens and internet service providers who violate government controls. The decree also requires netizens to use their real names when setting up social media and other accounts online.

‘Promoting social order’

According to government statistics, some 85% of Laos’ 7.5 million citizens own smartphones – 65% of whom can use them to access the internet. Around 44% regularly use social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

On Aug. 3, authorities announced new measures to regulate social media usage with the aim of “promoting social order,” as well as tighter restrictions on social media channels with “misleading or distorted information critical of the government.”

The government has not provided any information about the number of social media users who have been warned or told to shut down their accounts by central or provincial authorities since the announcement.

A resident of the capital Vientiane told RFA that Lao citizens can’t trust state-controlled media to act as a check on government policies or address society’s problems, so they increasingly look to social media for such information.

“Lao people are poor and many of them are living in poverty, but that isn’t something state media will report,” said the resident who, like others interviewed for this report, declined to be named citing fear of reprisal.

“There isn’t any freedom of expression, so state media won’t dare address anything related to [mismanagement by] the state and the party,” the person said.

A resident of Luang Prabang acknowledged that while social media can be useful for accessing information state media won’t address, the information can be much harder to verify.

“Sometimes, it’s fake news or news with wrong or misleading information,” he said.

Criticism can be helpful

But a university professor from the same city said that regardless of the content, an increasing number of Laotians are using social media to express their opinions about the government, which he said is their basic right to do.

He suggested that the government should consider such opinions, rather than threaten those who offer them.

“Without these expressions of opinion from the people, the government might be ignorant of its own mistakes,” he said.

A Vientiane-based official with the United Nations echoed the professor’s comments and advised the Lao government to “adapt to the new media climate.”

“These days, inflation and economic woes are among the hot topics on social media platforms, where there are both supporters [of the government’s policies] and those who disagree,” the official said. “All of them are impacted by these problems and they are right to express their own opinion.”

The official noted that social media users are not only posting their opinions on the government’s policies, but also on issues including mining rights, land grabs, hydropower dam construction, and poverty reduction strategies.

In its latest annual report, Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders gave Laos a ranking of 160, close to the bottom of a 180-country survey of press freedoms worldwide, saying that the country’s ruling party “exercises absolute control over the media.”

Translated by Phouvong. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

The reviews in media of the film Oppenheimer have been largely positive—and perceptive and thoughtful. With a few exceptions, most reviewers “got” the message of the film.

Oppenheimer is not a film in the mold of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the 1964 movie by Stanley Kubrick, an in-your-face cinematic presentation of the madness of nuclear war. It is not as direct as On the Beach, the 1959 Stanley Kramer film based on the Nevil Shute novel about World War III’s nuclear Armageddon, in which a US submarine crew and residents of Melbourne, Australia, await creeping death from radioactive fallout. Nor is it as straightforward as The Day After, the 1983 ABC-TV film that showed an estimated 100 million people the very personal results of nuclear war.

‘To embrace the bomb’

Manohla Dargis (New York Times, 7/19/23): “The world quickly moved on from the horrors of the war to embrace the bomb.”

The film is about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the US physicist who helped develop the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Manohla Dargis writes in her New York Times review (7/19/23), Christopher Nolan, who both directed and wrote Oppenheimer, “doesn’t restage the attacks; there are no documentary images of the dead or panoramas of cities in ashes.” Rather, the horrific consequences of nuclear conflict are transmitted through the story of Oppenheimer himself, who was “transformed by his role in the creation of weapons of mass destruction and soon after raised the alarm about the dangers of nuclear war.”

Citing French director François Truffaut, who once wrote that “war films, even pacifist, even the best, willingly or not, glorify war and render it in some way attractive,” Dargis contends that this

gets at why Nolan refuses to show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world-defining events that eventually killed an estimated 100,000 to upward of 200,000 souls.

You do, though, see Oppenheimer watch the first test bomb and, critically, you also hear the famous words that he said crossed his mind as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

“As Nolan reminds you, the world quickly moved on from the horrors of the war to embrace the bomb,” Dargis writes. “Now we, too, have become death, the destroyers of worlds.”

‘Uncomfortably timely’

Ann Hornaday (Washington Post, 7/19/23): Nolan “has brought to life not just J. Robert Oppenheimer, but the still-crucial arguments he both started and tried to end.”

The film’s focus not just on a bloody decision made the better part of a century ago, but on the threat of annihilation facing humanity today, is made clear at its outset. A caption spread across the screen with an observation from Greek mythology: “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.”

Ann Hornaday in her Washington Post review (7/19/23) relates:

As a filmmaker at the height of his powers, Nolan has used those prodigious skills not simply to amaze or spectacularize, but to plunge the audience into a chapter of history that might feel ancient, as he reminds us, but happened just yesterday. By making that story so beautiful, so elegantly crafted and compulsively watchable, he has brought to life not just J. Robert Oppenheimer, but the still-crucial arguments he both started and tried to end.

Oppenheimer boldly posits that those arguments are still worth having, in a film of magnitude, profundity and dazzling artistry.

“Oppenheimer Is an Uncomfortably Timely Tale of Destruction,” was the headline of the review by David Klion in the New Republic (7/21/23). He declares:

Oppenheimer turns out to be uncomfortably timely. At no point since the end of the Cold War has nuclear war felt more plausible, as the daily clashes between a nuclear-armed Russia and a NATO-backed Ukraine remind us. Beyond literal nuclear warfare, we are faced with a range of existential dangers—pandemics, climate change and perhaps artificial intelligence—that will be managed, or mismanaged, by small teams of scientific experts working in secret with little democratic accountability. The ideologies, affiliations and personalities of those experts are likely to leave their stamp on history, and not  in ways they themselves would necessarily wish. Oppenheimer’s dark prophecy may yet be fulfilled.

A plug for nuclear power?

Richard Brody (New Yorker, 7/26/23): “The moral dilemmas and historical stakes that Oppenheimer faces are reduced to an interconnected set of trolley problems.”

Now, there were several inexplicable reviews of Oppenheimer.

In his review in New Scientist (8/9/23), a London-based publication with an international circulation of 125,000, Simon Ings writes that Oppenheimer “will help us embrace” nuclear power, which, he claims, “by any objective measure…is safe and getting safer.” Ing somehow believes the film “isn’t so much about J. Robert Oppenheimer’s development of the atomic bomb…as it is about the paranoid turn history took [about nuclear power] in the wake of his triumph.” How he deduced this from Oppenheimer is indecipherable.

Then there was the review by Richard Brody in the New Yorker (7/26/23) that begins:

Leaving the theater after seeing Oppenheimer, I was tempted to call it a movie-length Wikipedia article. But after a look online, I realized I was giving Wikipedia too little credit—or Christopher Nolan, the movie’s writer and director, too much.

The New Yorker gave his piece the headline “Oppenheimer Is Ultimately a History Channel Movie with Fancy Editing.” Considering the many highly emotional, engrossing scenes—including many personal ones involving Oppenheimer—this makes no sense. It is far from a movie version of a Wikipedia posting or a History Channel docudrama.

Brody almost seems to scold Nolan for hoping to provoke discussion:

Rather than illuminating him or his times, the scenes seem pitched to spark post-screening debate, to seek an importance beyond the experiences and ideas of the characters.

‘The bomb’s lingering residue’

Justin Chang (LA Times, 7/19/23): “The real Oppenheimer may have never expressed remorse over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the movie never lets its Oppenheimer forget them.”

Justin Chang’s review in the Los Angeles Times (7/19/23) would no doubt have irritated Brody by engaging in “post-screening debate.” Nolan, Chang writes, is

less interested in reenacting scenes of mass death and devastation, none of which are depicted here, than in sifting through the bomb’s lingering geopolitical and psychic residue.

Chang observes:

The real Oppenheimer may have never expressed remorse over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the movie never lets its Oppenheimer forget them, especially in one shuddering, blood-chilling sequence that transforms a public moment of triumph into an indictment.

Nor can Oppenheimer forget the still greater destruction that may yet be unleashed, a prospect that his typically naive and high-minded insistence on “international cooperation” will do nothing to dispel. Nolan conveys that warning with somber gravity, if not, finally, the cathartic force that our current headlines, full of war and nuclear portent, would seem to demand. Not for the first time, the demonstrative cleverness of his storytelling can seem too precise, too hermetically sealed and engineered, for a sense of raw collective devastation to fully take hold.

Even Rupert Murdoch’s arch-conservative New York Post (7/19/23) had a rave review. Critic Johnny Oleksinski declares:

What keeps all three hours of the film so breathlessly tense is the title physicist’s internal tug of war: Can the valiant quest for scientific advancement—his great passion—lead to the total destruction of the planet?

A highly perilous time

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1/24/23) declared that the world was “the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.”

To what extent did media either take advantage of or drop the ball on the opportunity the movie gave them to examine the pressing issue of nuclear war? My review of the reviews would conclude that most media didn’t drop the ball, only a few did—and that to me is quite a surprise.

We are at a highly perilous time in regard to nuclear war. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1/24/23) moved its “Doomsday Clock,” which it says represents the risk of “nuclear annihilation,” forward to 90 seconds to midnight—the closest it’s been since it was set up in 1947.

Dr. Strangelove, On the Beach and The Day After all came out decades ago.

Oppenheimer can provide—especially with the (astonishing for me, long a media critic) widely positive media reaction—the opening of a window that can help new generations of people learn about nuclear weapons, and move for an abolition that can prevent a nuclear apocalypse.

Research assistance: Brandon Warner

The post Critics Picked Up on Oppenheimer’s All-Too-Timely Warning on Nuclear War appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Karl Grossman.

The end result of the government’s efforts over the past 60 years is a country where nothing ever really changes, and everyone lives in fear.

Race wars are still being stoked by both the Right and the Left; the military-industrial complex is still waging profit-driven wars at taxpayer expense; the oligarchy is still calling the shots in the seats of government power; and the government is still weaponizing surveillance in order to muzzle anti-government sentiment, harass activists, and terrorize Americans into compliance.

This last point is particularly disturbing.

Starting in the 1950s, the government relied on COINTELPRO, its domestic intelligence program, to neutralize domestic political dissidents. Those targeted by the FBI under COINTELPRO for its intimidation, surveillance and smear campaigns included: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, the Black Panther Party, John Lennon, Billie Holiday, Emma Goldman, Aretha Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, Felix Frankfurter, and hundreds more.

In more recent decades, the powers-that-be have expanded their reach to target anyone who opposes the police state, regardless of their political leanings.

Advances in technology have enabled the government to deploy a veritable arsenal of surveillance weapons in order to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” perceived threats to the government’s power.

What this adds up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Consider just a small sampling of the ways in which the government is weaponizing its 360 degree surveillance technologies to flag you as a threat to national security, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong.

Flagging you as a danger based on your feelings. Customs and Border Protection is reportedly using an artificial intelligence surveillance program that can detect “sentiment and emotion” in social media posts in order to identify travelers who may be “a threat to public safety, national security, or lawful trade and travel.”

Flagging you as a danger based on your phone and movements. Cell phones have become de facto snitches, offering up a steady stream of digital location data on users’ movements and travels.

Flagging you as a danger based on your DNA. By accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc.

Flagging you as a danger based on your face. Facial recognition software aims to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business.

Flagging you as a danger based on your behavior. Rapid advances in behavioral surveillance are not only making it possible for individuals to be monitored and tracked based on their patterns of movement or behavior, including gait recognition (the way one walks), but have given rise to whole industries that revolve around predicting one’s behavior based on data and surveillance patterns and are also shaping the behaviors of whole populations.

Flagging you as a danger based on your spending and consumer activities. With every dollar we spend, we’re helping Corporate America build a dossier for its government counterparts on who we know, what we think, how we spend our money, and how we spend our time.

Flagging you as a danger based on your public activities. Private corporations in conjunction with police agencies throughout the country have created a web of surveillance that encompasses all major cities in order to monitor large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies.

Flagging you as a danger based on your social media activities. As The Intercept reported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies are increasingly investing in and relying on corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.

Flagging you as a danger based on your social network. Not content to merely spy on individuals through their online activity, government agencies are now using surveillance technology to track one’s social network, the people you might connect with by phone, text message, email or through social message, in order to ferret out possible criminals.

Flagging you as a danger based on your car. License plate readers are mass surveillance tools that can photograph over 1,800 license tag numbers per minute, take a picture of every passing license tag number and store the tag number and the date, time, and location of the picture in a searchable database, then share the data with law enforcement, fusion centers and private companies to track the movements of persons in their cars.

Flagging you as a danger based on your political views. The Church Committee, the Senate task force charged with investigating COINTELPRO abuses in 1975, concluded that the government had carried out “secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power.” The report continued: “Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles… Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials.” Nothing has changed since then.

Now the government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from these mass spying programs as long as we’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t believe it.

The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.

Moreover, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity, and that is the whole point.

Weaponized surveillance is re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the police state wants us silent, servile and compliant.

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

Image by AbsolutVision.

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post is often the “go-to” reporter editors choose to write Page One stories that synthesize and analyze the Big Story of the Day. On August 17th, Mr. Fisher delivered a lengthy feature titled, “Trump Follows Tested ‘Counterpuncher’ Playbook in Face of Indictments.” Alas, he gave readers a useful summary of what has been reported countless times, when I for one, expected him to extend his acumen into fresh analysis.

Had Trump read Fisher’s piece, he would have been pleased. Outrageous verbatim repetitions of Trump’s belligerent intimidating words showcased Donald’s sneering confidence in his ability to manipulate the media’s focus on ratings and coursed through Fisher’s article. Once again, we are told about Trump’s propensity to file frivolous lawsuits (after one was dismissed, he bragged that he cost a reporter “a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money.”)

Trump is quoted to show his chronic, pathological lying, his bigotry, his brutish assault on women, his malicious defaming of people, and his bragging about bullying to build his “personal brand.” The profit-seeking mass media cannot resist this package.

Okay, we’ve heard this all before, but assume it was needed to set the framework for Fisher’s analytic thoughts. For example, why do members of Trump’s base seem to have no limits to bonding with this narcissistic creature who has given new meaning to the word “egomaniac”? Why was no right of reply given to Trump’s publicized smears? Why has our country allowed this failed gambling czar to escape existing constitutional and statutory law enforcement over too many years as a corporate crook and political outlaw?

Are not reticent law enforcers and the media part of a story about Trump and his “Counterpuncher” playbook?

Now that some sheriffs have finally caught up with Trump, who is facing four indictments, he is counterpunching daily against people who either cannot respond because they are public servants, or people who believe responding gets them no media coverage, only an avalanche of cowardly anonymous hate talk over social media, or people fearful of Trump suing them and not having the money to defend themselves and countersue him for “malicious prosecution” which is a tort.

The nonprofit civic groups that factually and normatively assail Trump, receive no media whatsoever. My many articles and two books with Mark Green on Trump – “Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t” and “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” – have been blacked out in our presumed free and fair press.

What can be done about Trump’s continued, successful shoving of the media into being his constant profitable bullhorn?

Well, Marc Fisher and his colleagues can read or reread the October 12, 2022, “manifesto” by Margaret Sullivan, the Post’s own (now retired) media columnist. She advised that “if Trump runs again, do not cover him the same way.”

Sullivan continues, “Too many times, we acted as his stenographers or megaphones. Too often, we failed to refer to his many falsehoods as lies. It took too long to stop believing that, whenever he calmed down for a moment, he was becoming ‘presidential.’ And it took too long to moderate our instinct to give equal weight to both sides, even when one side was using misinformation for political gain.”

That was then. The media is purportedly wiser, helped by the facts cited in lengthy indictments. But Trump still plays his basic cards. His daily fulminations are publicized as soliloquies and his trumpeters are still allowed to get media for anonymously conveyed viciousness. The latter should be corrected by the Wardens of the Internet, such as the resistant Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook or Meta. (See Robert Fellmeth’s Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg). Newspapers require printed letters to the editor to be signed. Anonymous hate speech itself is a profoundly significant story for perceptive reporters like Marc Fisher to write about.

As for the soliloquy phenomenon, a major public education responsibility is on the civic/labor and religious communities. They need to respond repeatedly and comprehensively to Trump and his movement to suppress democracy with a fascistic-style concentration of power that denies realities such as climate crises, who won elections, and enabling Big Business to continue bolstering the corporate state. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt characterized the corporate state as “fascism” in a 1938 message to Congress.

For example, the National Council of Churches should be speaking out for the religiously based standards of secular human behavior that Trump has brazenly violated, including seven of the Ten Commandments.

The AFL-CIO should use its public outreach capacities to reach affiliated unions’ thirteen million members, along with many more non-unionized workers, to convey Trump’s morbid hatred of unions, his evisceration, while president, of workers’ rights – including their health and safety – his opposition to an increase in the frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and his corporatization of both the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor.

The major environmental groups, civil liberties and civil rights associations, and the consumer protection organizations should be rebutting and exposing Trump as their regular mission. After all, the man is the big GOP favorite to run as president in 2024.

Trump is the worst abuser of women ever to dwell in the White House. His policies were cruel to children. The major women’s and children’s protection advocacy organizations should have their own Daily Watch countering his soliloquies.

Last but not least, where are the lawyers and the bar associations? They are supposed to be the “first responders” to Trump’s open contempt for the Constitution and his serial violations of criminal and civil laws. Trump’s White House national security advisor John Bolton wrote that “Obstruction of justice was a way of life at the White House.” So far, the American Bar Association remains silent and so have all the state bar associations. (See the May 25, 2023, Letter to ABA President-elect Mary Smith). So much for their professional respect for the rule of law.

Enough of the mass media’s repeating Trump and his tweets. Readers and viewers need journalists to unravel the ever-devolving Trump and Trumpism and cover the neglected civil democratic society as part of the exchanges in this “marketplace of ideas.”

Granted the media has exposed Teflon Trump’s wrongdoings. But civic groups analyze Trump in different and, for their millions of members, more credible ways.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

Image by AbsolutVision.

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post is often the “go-to” reporter editors choose to write Page One stories that synthesize and analyze the Big Story of the Day. On August 17th, Mr. Fisher delivered a lengthy feature titled, “Trump Follows Tested ‘Counterpuncher’ Playbook in Face of Indictments.” Alas, he gave readers a useful summary of what has been reported countless times, when I for one, expected him to extend his acumen into fresh analysis.

Had Trump read Fisher’s piece, he would have been pleased. Outrageous verbatim repetitions of Trump’s belligerent intimidating words showcased Donald’s sneering confidence in his ability to manipulate the media’s focus on ratings and coursed through Fisher’s article. Once again, we are told about Trump’s propensity to file frivolous lawsuits (after one was dismissed, he bragged that he cost a reporter “a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money.”)

Trump is quoted to show his chronic, pathological lying, his bigotry, his brutish assault on women, his malicious defaming of people, and his bragging about bullying to build his “personal brand.” The profit-seeking mass media cannot resist this package.

Okay, we’ve heard this all before, but assume it was needed to set the framework for Fisher’s analytic thoughts. For example, why do members of Trump’s base seem to have no limits to bonding with this narcissistic creature who has given new meaning to the word “egomaniac”? Why was no right of reply given to Trump’s publicized smears? Why has our country allowed this failed gambling czar to escape existing constitutional and statutory law enforcement over too many years as a corporate crook and political outlaw?

Are not reticent law enforcers and the media part of a story about Trump and his “Counterpuncher” playbook?

Now that some sheriffs have finally caught up with Trump, who is facing four indictments, he is counterpunching daily against people who either cannot respond because they are public servants, or people who believe responding gets them no media coverage, only an avalanche of cowardly anonymous hate talk over social media, or people fearful of Trump suing them and not having the money to defend themselves and countersue him for “malicious prosecution” which is a tort.

The nonprofit civic groups that factually and normatively assail Trump, receive no media whatsoever. My many articles and two books with Mark Green on Trump – “Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t” and “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” – have been blacked out in our presumed free and fair press.

What can be done about Trump’s continued, successful shoving of the media into being his constant profitable bullhorn?

Well, Marc Fisher and his colleagues can read or reread the October 12, 2022, “manifesto” by Margaret Sullivan, the Post’s own (now retired) media columnist. She advised that “if Trump runs again, do not cover him the same way.”

Sullivan continues, “Too many times, we acted as his stenographers or megaphones. Too often, we failed to refer to his many falsehoods as lies. It took too long to stop believing that, whenever he calmed down for a moment, he was becoming ‘presidential.’ And it took too long to moderate our instinct to give equal weight to both sides, even when one side was using misinformation for political gain.”

That was then. The media is purportedly wiser, helped by the facts cited in lengthy indictments. But Trump still plays his basic cards. His daily fulminations are publicized as soliloquies and his trumpeters are still allowed to get media for anonymously conveyed viciousness. The latter should be corrected by the Wardens of the Internet, such as the resistant Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook or Meta. (See Robert Fellmeth’s Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg). Newspapers require printed letters to the editor to be signed. Anonymous hate speech itself is a profoundly significant story for perceptive reporters like Marc Fisher to write about.

As for the soliloquy phenomenon, a major public education responsibility is on the civic/labor and religious communities. They need to respond repeatedly and comprehensively to Trump and his movement to suppress democracy with a fascistic-style concentration of power that denies realities such as climate crises, who won elections, and enabling Big Business to continue bolstering the corporate state. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt characterized the corporate state as “fascism” in a 1938 message to Congress.

For example, the National Council of Churches should be speaking out for the religiously based standards of secular human behavior that Trump has brazenly violated, including seven of the Ten Commandments.

The AFL-CIO should use its public outreach capacities to reach affiliated unions’ thirteen million members, along with many more non-unionized workers, to convey Trump’s morbid hatred of unions, his evisceration, while president, of workers’ rights – including their health and safety – his opposition to an increase in the frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and his corporatization of both the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor.

The major environmental groups, civil liberties and civil rights associations, and the consumer protection organizations should be rebutting and exposing Trump as their regular mission. After all, the man is the big GOP favorite to run as president in 2024.

Trump is the worst abuser of women ever to dwell in the White House. His policies were cruel to children. The major women’s and children’s protection advocacy organizations should have their own Daily Watch countering his soliloquies.

Last but not least, where are the lawyers and the bar associations? They are supposed to be the “first responders” to Trump’s open contempt for the Constitution and his serial violations of criminal and civil laws. Trump’s White House national security advisor John Bolton wrote that “Obstruction of justice was a way of life at the White House.” So far, the American Bar Association remains silent and so have all the state bar associations. (See the May 25, 2023, Letter to ABA President-elect Mary Smith). So much for their professional respect for the rule of law.

Enough of the mass media’s repeating Trump and his tweets. Readers and viewers need journalists to unravel the ever-devolving Trump and Trumpism and cover the neglected civil democratic society as part of the exchanges in this “marketplace of ideas.”

Granted the media has exposed Teflon Trump’s wrongdoings. But civic groups analyze Trump in different and, for their millions of members, more credible ways.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

Image by AbsolutVision.

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post is often the “go-to” reporter editors choose to write Page One stories that synthesize and analyze the Big Story of the Day. On August 17th, Mr. Fisher delivered a lengthy feature titled, “Trump Follows Tested ‘Counterpuncher’ Playbook in Face of Indictments.” Alas, he gave readers a useful summary of what has been reported countless times, when I for one, expected him to extend his acumen into fresh analysis.

Had Trump read Fisher’s piece, he would have been pleased. Outrageous verbatim repetitions of Trump’s belligerent intimidating words showcased Donald’s sneering confidence in his ability to manipulate the media’s focus on ratings and coursed through Fisher’s article. Once again, we are told about Trump’s propensity to file frivolous lawsuits (after one was dismissed, he bragged that he cost a reporter “a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money.”)

Trump is quoted to show his chronic, pathological lying, his bigotry, his brutish assault on women, his malicious defaming of people, and his bragging about bullying to build his “personal brand.” The profit-seeking mass media cannot resist this package.

Okay, we’ve heard this all before, but assume it was needed to set the framework for Fisher’s analytic thoughts. For example, why do members of Trump’s base seem to have no limits to bonding with this narcissistic creature who has given new meaning to the word “egomaniac”? Why was no right of reply given to Trump’s publicized smears? Why has our country allowed this failed gambling czar to escape existing constitutional and statutory law enforcement over too many years as a corporate crook and political outlaw?

Are not reticent law enforcers and the media part of a story about Trump and his “Counterpuncher” playbook?

Now that some sheriffs have finally caught up with Trump, who is facing four indictments, he is counterpunching daily against people who either cannot respond because they are public servants, or people who believe responding gets them no media coverage, only an avalanche of cowardly anonymous hate talk over social media, or people fearful of Trump suing them and not having the money to defend themselves and countersue him for “malicious prosecution” which is a tort.

The nonprofit civic groups that factually and normatively assail Trump, receive no media whatsoever. My many articles and two books with Mark Green on Trump – “Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t” and “Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All” – have been blacked out in our presumed free and fair press.

What can be done about Trump’s continued, successful shoving of the media into being his constant profitable bullhorn?

Well, Marc Fisher and his colleagues can read or reread the October 12, 2022, “manifesto” by Margaret Sullivan, the Post’s own (now retired) media columnist. She advised that “if Trump runs again, do not cover him the same way.”

Sullivan continues, “Too many times, we acted as his stenographers or megaphones. Too often, we failed to refer to his many falsehoods as lies. It took too long to stop believing that, whenever he calmed down for a moment, he was becoming ‘presidential.’ And it took too long to moderate our instinct to give equal weight to both sides, even when one side was using misinformation for political gain.”

That was then. The media is purportedly wiser, helped by the facts cited in lengthy indictments. But Trump still plays his basic cards. His daily fulminations are publicized as soliloquies and his trumpeters are still allowed to get media for anonymously conveyed viciousness. The latter should be corrected by the Wardens of the Internet, such as the resistant Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook or Meta. (See Robert Fellmeth’s Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg). Newspapers require printed letters to the editor to be signed. Anonymous hate speech itself is a profoundly significant story for perceptive reporters like Marc Fisher to write about.

As for the soliloquy phenomenon, a major public education responsibility is on the civic/labor and religious communities. They need to respond repeatedly and comprehensively to Trump and his movement to suppress democracy with a fascistic-style concentration of power that denies realities such as climate crises, who won elections, and enabling Big Business to continue bolstering the corporate state. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt characterized the corporate state as “fascism” in a 1938 message to Congress.

For example, the National Council of Churches should be speaking out for the religiously based standards of secular human behavior that Trump has brazenly violated, including seven of the Ten Commandments.

The AFL-CIO should use its public outreach capacities to reach affiliated unions’ thirteen million members, along with many more non-unionized workers, to convey Trump’s morbid hatred of unions, his evisceration, while president, of workers’ rights – including their health and safety – his opposition to an increase in the frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour and his corporatization of both the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Labor.

The major environmental groups, civil liberties and civil rights associations, and the consumer protection organizations should be rebutting and exposing Trump as their regular mission. After all, the man is the big GOP favorite to run as president in 2024.

Trump is the worst abuser of women ever to dwell in the White House. His policies were cruel to children. The major women’s and children’s protection advocacy organizations should have their own Daily Watch countering his soliloquies.

Last but not least, where are the lawyers and the bar associations? They are supposed to be the “first responders” to Trump’s open contempt for the Constitution and his serial violations of criminal and civil laws. Trump’s White House national security advisor John Bolton wrote that “Obstruction of justice was a way of life at the White House.” So far, the American Bar Association remains silent and so have all the state bar associations. (See the May 25, 2023, Letter to ABA President-elect Mary Smith). So much for their professional respect for the rule of law.

Enough of the mass media’s repeating Trump and his tweets. Readers and viewers need journalists to unravel the ever-devolving Trump and Trumpism and cover the neglected civil democratic society as part of the exchanges in this “marketplace of ideas.”

Granted the media has exposed Teflon Trump’s wrongdoings. But civic groups analyze Trump in different and, for their millions of members, more credible ways.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated state Legislature is still facing public outcry over the state’s permissive gun laws in the wake of Nashville’s Covenant School shooting, which killed three 9-year-old children and three adult staff members in March. Since then, the state House, under the control of Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, has censured its own representatives and deployed state troopers to crack down on public participation. Earlier this week, Republicans imposed new penalties on lawmakers believed to be too disruptive and banned visitors from carrying signs — a ban that has since been challenged by the ACLU for violating the First Amendment. Amid the new rules, visitors can still carry guns into the building. For more, we’re joined by Tennessee state Representative Justin Jones, one of three Democratic representatives expelled by the state Legislature earlier this year for joining gun violence protests on the House floor. We speak to him about his return to the Legislature after being reinstated in a special election last month, and his continued struggle in “the people’s house” against what he describes as “authoritarian” rule.

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

Chen Weijian’s New Times Weekly was hit by the same tactics and then driven out of business by a lawsuit.

The Auckland publishers clashed with a force that was named among top concerns by New Zealand’s intelligence agency in its annual security threat report: the targeting of ethnic Chinese communities by people and entities linked to Beijing. 

The report followed a similar one in March from Canada’s intelligence agency that listed China among foreign actors that “monitor, intimidate and harass diaspora communities” and “attempt to silence dissidents and promote favorable narratives.”

A steady stream of government and media reports about China’s influence and information operations in Western countries has shed light on covert Chinese police stations in major cities, harassment of places that host dissidents and media disinformation campaigns.

The reports on China’s influence machine – confirmed to Radio Free Asia’s Asia Fact Check Lab by multiple Chinese media figures in New Zealand – show how Beijing deploys cash, aggressive diplomats and boycotts to produce China-friendly press coverage and deter critical reporting. 

The effort largely targets growing Chinese diaspora communities in Western democracies, and comes as the United States and allies are reassessing their economic ties to China over security concerns.

Blacklisted

In Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, Su Wende had dreams of establishing a news agency to serve the Chinese community. 

In 1987, after graduating college in Malaysia with a computer science degree, Su arrived at the University of Auckland to study business. Four years later, he founded the first free Mandarin newspaper in New Zealand: Mandarin Pages. 

The paper publishes news, information, translated articles and editorials. It generates revenue from classified ads.

“There were only 20,000 Chinese people in Auckland at the time, and we were printing 5,000 copies for every issue,” said Su.

In its heyday at the start of the century, Su’s paper was headquartered in a brightly lit building in downtown Auckland, with more than 20 employees. The newspaper quickly expanded from two to six issues a week and enjoyed what seemed like a never-ending stream of ads and unrivaled influence in the Chinese community of New Zealand.

By the end of 2022, however, Mandarin Pages was down to three full-time employees and had relocated to an old one-story red-brick building in Auckland’s Chinatown. The publication maintained its print circulation of 5,000, but had shifted to a weekly. 

“Honestly, since the pandemic, the company’s been in the red,” he acknowledges. 

Part of Su’s struggle is shared by many print media outlets as they lose ground to digital outlets.

But for Mandarin publications reliant on Chinese immigrants, the biggest challenge comes from Chinese diplomatic missions. 

“In the last five years, I’ve pretty much been blacklisted by the embassy,” Su said. “It’s like a form of economic sanction.”

“The Mandarin Pages no longer gets ads from major Chinese companies like China Southern Airlines and the Bank of China,” he added. “It’s definitely hit us hard.” 

Su said the Mandarin Pages has been attacked on social media by pro-China voices as anti-Chinese Communist Party, a “separatist supporting Taiwan independence” and a supporter of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group.

Mandarin Pages has also faced suspension on WeChat, China’s popular Twitter-like platform, for coverage of China’s interference in New Zealand politics. And in a hilarious run-in with WeChat, a classified ad listing for an “independent one-bedroom apartment” was rejected because “independent” is a politically sensitive word in China.

“Why do I keep going? I don’t want to see the United Front media supporting United Front work as the only voice in New Zealand and just defaming the West and New Zealand,” Su said, referring to the United Front Works Department, China's main external influence agency.

The Chinese Consulate-General in Auckland did not respond to RFA’s request for comment. 

Reuters quoted the Chinese Embassy in Wellington as saying it was "strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed" to the China-related content in the New Zealand intelligence report, which also listed Iran and Russia as countries of concern.

Sued out of existence

In 1991, Chen Weijian escaped to New Zealand through Hong Kong from Hangzhou, where he previously operated a printing house. He fled a tense political atmosphere in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

In 1996, Chen founded the New Times Weekly in New Zealand.

“As the first newspaper founded by mainland Chinese people in New Zealand, our keen understanding of mainland China politics and grounded perspective on the lives of Chinese immigrants allowed us to quickly expand our influence,” Chen told RFA.

“But after a few months, the consulate started to interfere with our operations,” he said. “They sent a list of journalists and writers that we weren’t allowed to publish.”

“I ignored them, but one of my partners from Hong Kong still had business in mainland China and believed that we should comply with the consulate’s wishes. We couldn’t agree, and so he backed out of the New Times Weekly.”

Chen and his younger brother, Chen Weiming, picked up the mantle.

“The counselor from the consulate-general in Auckland would visit us during weekends with alcohol in tow to convince us that the Communist Party of China is more open now than before,” Chen told RFA. “They encouraged us to visit China again and hoped that we could also publish articles painting China in a more positive light instead of simply criticizing.”

In 2001, the New Times Weekly clashed with the Chinese consulate in Auckland over coverage of the self-immolation of Falun Gong practitioners at Tiananmen Square. Thus began a series of painful sanctions against the news outlet.

“The consulate wrote to us, decrying what we published about the Tiananmen Square incident as lies and asking us to publish an explanation from the embassy regarding the self-immolation,” said Chen.

In a few weeks, the publication started unexpectedly losing advertisements. Chen later found out that the consulate had warned advertising agencies and Chinese communities “against advertising with New Times Weekly because that would be anti-China.”

The final straw was a 10-year defamation suit filed by the Chinese Herald, a pro-Beijing newspaper.

“On June 4, they posted several articles claiming that the (Tiananmen) massacre had made major contributions to the Chinese people and led to 20 years of stable economic growth,” Chen said. “We published an article criticizing the Chinese Herald for yielding to the Communist Party’s control, and they sued me for defamation.”

After a costly and time-consuming process, New Times lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay NZ$50,000 (about US$30,000) in compensation. 

In 2011, New Times Weekly closed.

Despite numerous attempts by Radio Free Asia to interview owner Lili Wang of the Chinese Herald, Wang politely declined to be interviewed.

Indirect pressure

Sun Jiarui, a 77-year old man from Beijing, left China 42 years ago and spent 25 years in Fiji. He founded a local Mandarin publication called the Fiji Daily before retiring to New Zealand in 2005.

Sun is better known by his pseudonym, the South Pacific Frog in a Well, under which he’s published several books, hosted Mandarin programs for Radio New Zealand Pacific and the BBC, and written columns for the Mandarin Pages.

“Self-censorship in the media, influence from the embassy, and reporting by ‘Little Pinks’…mean it’s no longer possible to criticize China on Mandarin media outlets in New Zealand,” he said. Little Pinks is a derisive term for China's army of nationalistic trolls and online commentators.

Over 10 years ago, Sun wrote an article criticizing Chinese diplomats for showing up late and behaving arrogantly during a local event. 

“The assistant editor responsible for typesetting was a student from mainland China. Right before publication, the editor-in-chief of the Chinese Herald, known for his close ties with the embassy, called the Mandarin Pages requesting that we pull the article,” said Sun in an account confirmed by editors involved with the dispute.

“Through the incident, I learned that the embassy had deployed people to control the media,” Sun said.

‘Magic Weapons’

While Mandarin Pages struggles, however, the Chinese Herald has grown its staff and circulation.

One of the world’s leading scholars on China’s influence and propaganda outreach policy is a New Zealander named Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at Canterbury University. She has tracked how the Chinese Communist Party works with local Chinese-language media outlets or buys publications to exert its influence. 

“The leading Auckland Chinese language paper, the Chinese Herald has close personell links to the PRC consulate works with the All-China Federation of Overseas Chinese,” Brady wrote in a 2017 study. 

“The paper was originally totally independent, but like many other papers, it has been steadily 'harmonized' with Chinese media control agencies,” she wrote.

Brady’s report on  Chinese influence efforts, titled “Magic Weapons: China's political influence activities under Xi Jinping,” identified party links to influential Mandarin media outlets in New Zealand.

In early 2018, Brady's home and office were burglarized, and laptops and a burner phone were taken, while valuables were untouched, and her mechanic said the family car was tampered with.

Diverging views

As is the case in many countries in response to leader Xi Jinping’s authoritarianism, nationalistic foreign policy and the COVID-19 pandemic, public opinion toward China in New Zealand has soured.

A poll released by the Pew Research Center in 2021 showed that 67% of New Zealanders hold negative views of China and up to 80% believe in speaking up against China’s human rights violations despite the country being New Zealand’s biggest trading partner.

“Around 10 years ago, the people of New Zealand saw China as a great opportunity, a rising nation about to become a part of the international community,” said Jason Young, director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Center. 

”Around 2017, (China’s image) started changing.”

But preliminary data from research by Taiwan’s Doublethink Lab seen by RFA shows that while over 70% of non-Chinese New Zealanders hold negative views of China, over 60% of Chinese respondents in the country expressed positive views of China. 

Doublethink Lab, a research outfit that tracks China’s global influence, has identified traits in people susceptible to the Chinese Communist Party’s information outreach: a low sense of belonging in New Zealand, participation in Chinese communities, systematic Mandarin learning, familiarity with Mandarin media in New Zealand and getting their news from Chinese social media platforms such as WeChat and Weibo. 

“For older generations of Chinese immigrants, the rise of China has given them renewed confidence,” said New Zealand author and ethnicity researcher Tze Ming Mok.

“To a certain extent, they’ve attached their self-worth to China: Anyone criticizing China is criticizing me.”

Restoring the glory

The majority of new Chinese immigrants rely heavily on WeChat and Mandarin communities for their information, making them soft targets for the Communist Party’s information warfare. 

Tze noted that at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, very few senior Chinese immigrants were vaccinated because China’s social media platforms carried the narrative that “American vaccines are bad for Chinese people.”

In his decade in power, Xi has put great importance on targeting overseas Chinese, placing the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office under the United Front Work Department and ramping up the information outreach.

Xi’s notion of all Chinese “working together to restore the glory of China” seems to resonate with many members of the Chinese community in New Zealand, which over the past century has grown from 3,000 people, or less  than 0.3% of the national population, to 250,000, accounting for around 5% of the country’s 5 million people.

When talking about sensitive topics such as human rights violations in Xinjiang and the destruction of the democracy movement in Hong Kong, senior Chinese immigrants echo the slogans, narratives and wording used by China’s official spokespeople and propaganda nearly word for word. 

“New Zealand should remain neutral. We can’t follow the U.S. into everything, like a puppet,” said Terry Wang, an 81-year-old second-generation immigrant.

“Look at Hong Kong: The city is filled with CIA operatives whose sole purpose is to create chaos. The U.S. selectively criticizes China for violating human rights in Xinjiang only when it serves their interest,” added Wang, repeating lines often heard at Chinese Foreign Ministry news conferences.

At the Auckland Chinese Community Center, where elderly long-time immigrants play ukulele and sing, or square off at mahjong, Kai Luey quickly cites the China Global Television Network, the global arm of China's state broadcaster, when asked where he gets his news on China.

“CGTN! It’s helped me learn more about China,” the 82-year-old said.

“China has made me very proud. They’ve brought tens of millions of people out of poverty and they’ve never invaded any countries even after their rise –  unlike the British and European colonizers,” Luey said. “They only have bad things to say about China.”

As he welcomes members to the mahjong room, Luey turns around and adds a chestnut from party propaganda: “Present-day China wouldn’t be possible without the Communist Party!”

Editing by Paul Eckert.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jane Tang for Asia Fact Check Lab.

But critics say the seminar – titled “Prosperity of Tibetan Studies and the Opening of Tibet” – is nothing more than a propaganda tool meant to whitewash its efforts to erode Tibetan culture and identity.

“The Chinese government’s claim of protecting Tibetan culture, language and religion is completely untrue,” said Tenzin Lekshey, spokesman for the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.

“Instead, they are using such platforms and seminars to amplify their false narratives to the international community,” he said. 

If the Chinese government wants to hold genuine seminars on Tibetan studies, then it must allow Tibetologists from Tibet and around China to freely participate and convey the true state of Tibetan studies, Lekshey said.

Many Tibetans face difficulties traveling to Beijing from the far western region, sources said.

The China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture, the China Tibetology Research Center and the Xizang Academy of Social Sciences organized the three-day event, which began on Aug. 14.

The seminars “are just a show and a propaganda tool” to try to demonstrate that the Chinese government is protecting Tibetan culture and language,  said Jampa Samten, an associate professor of Tibetan history at the Central University for Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India.

China holds its own Tibetan studies seminars to undermine information discussed in other symposiums that focus on Tibet, sources said.

In July 2022, more than 600 scholars and researchers from all over the world attended the 16th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies in Prague, where hundreds of Tibetologists gathered to discuss Tibetan studies and Buddhism.

The association was founded in 1979 in Oxford, England, by Michael Aris, a leading scholar in Tibetan and Himalayan studies and the late husband of Burmese democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Few Tibetologists from Tibet participate in these international seminars, because they can’t obtain permission from Chinese authorities to travel, sources said. None of them attended the 2022 seminar in Prague. 

The international community has criticized the Chinese government’s colonial-style boarding schools for ethnic Tibetan students in Tibet and its assimilationist policies concerning Tibetan religion, cultural and identity, noted Tibetan rights analyst Sangay Kyap, who lives in Spain. 

China hosts its own Tibetan seminars “in part to challenge the criticism that the Chinese communist government has been receiving over the years,” he said. “It is a deliberate move.” 

Many Tibetologists who are not Tibetan have established good relations with exiled Tibetan communities over the years and have conducted their own seminars, he said.

“So, this effort by the Chinese government is intended towards subverting these relations and an attempt to undermine these outside seminars,” Kyap said. 

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster. 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lobe Socktsang and Lhundup Tashishar for RFA Tibetan.

The unveiling of the Maravijaya Buddha to mark the full moon day of Waso is the latest attempt by a military regime in Myanmar to present itself as being aligned with religion in the Buddhist-majority country, despite resorting to violence to enforce their grip on power.

Civil servants had “no other choice but to go” to the ceremony, despite Waso being a holiday, said a resident of Naypyidaw who, like several others RFA Burmese contacted for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns.

“What I am sure of is that no civilians who aren’t government employees joined the ceremony,” he said. “Only [junta] employees who were forced to join went there. The military even arranged transportation for them.”

Waso, also known as Dhammasetkya Day, commemorates the first sermon Buddha ever delivered, and Myanmar’s latest junta pulled out all the stops.

The ordination ceremony in the capital Naypyidaw for the 63-foot-tall Buddha, which sits atop an 18-foot-tall throne, was the most extensive official religious event in the country since the military under Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing seized power two-and-a-half years ago.

Pro-junta media have dubbed the 58 billion-kyat (US$27.6 million) carving “the world’s largest marble sitting Buddha statue,” ordered built by the junta chief to “show the international community that Buddhism is flourishing in Myanmar” and to “bring peace to the country and the world.”

But residents of the capital were quick to point out the hypocrisy of the regime’s message of harmony when its security forces are responsible for the deaths of 3,861 civilians since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat.

“What we see is that the junta is using a lot of money and manpower in building the statue to make it more famous than previous pagodas,” said another resident. “I have no plans to visit, as it was built by the blood-stained hands of the military dictator.”

Other critics of the project have slammed the statue as a vanity project for Min Aung Hlaing, who they say hopes to paint himself as a protector of Buddhism in Myanmar.

Rights activist Zaw Yan pointed out that the money used to build the statue was part of Myanmar’s national budget. He questioned why it wasn’t used to feed people who are starving because of the junta’s economic mismanagement or provide aid to the 2 million the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says have been displaced by conflict in the country since the takeover.

“This is just the junta’s attempt to appear as if [Min Aung Hlaing] is a holy king in hope of gaining people’s support as a political exit,” he said.

‘Remembered as murderers’

Sai Kyi Zin Soe, a political analyst, told RFA that Min Aung Hlaing likely built the Maravijaya Buddha statue in a bid to whitewash his legacy, ward off danger and prolong his rule.

“That's what [junta chiefs] usually do,” he said. “There have been similar examples of this in the past.”

The statue’s ordination was reminiscent of one in February 2002, when the country’s former junta under Senior Gen. Than Shwe held a ceremony to consecrate a 560-ton, 37-foot-tall marble Buddha statue known as the Loka Chantha Abhaya Labha Muni in Yangon. 

Than Shwe moved Myanmar’s capital from the city to Naypyidaw in 2006 and three years later built the Uppatasanti Pagoda there – its name invoking a Buddhist mantra believed to protect against foreign invasion.

In 1986, former junta leader General Ne Win completed the Maha Wizaya Pagoda, whose name means “extraordinary success,” south of the revered Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. However, few people visit the pagoda these days because of its association with the dictator, whose regime was responsible for killing unarmed students, monks and other civilians in a bloody 1988 coup.

In addition to the statue’s unveiling on Tuesday, the junta also announced an amnesty that reduced the prison term of the jailed head of the deposed National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, by six years and that of the country’s ousted president, Win Myint, by four. It also ordered the release of thousands of inmates from prisons around the country.

The junta often announces amnesties on Buddhist religious days.

“Of course they want to be rulers who are seen to revere Buddhism … but they are remembered as murderers, not as devout religious leaders,” said Kyee Myint, a human rights lawyer. “[Try as they may] their wrongdoings will remain recorded in history."

Waryama, a leader of the Spring Revolution Sangha Network of anti-junta Buddhist monks, likened such acts to “hiding a dead elephant with the skin of a goat,” or attempts of deception.

“Generations of tyrants and dictators in our country build these temples and pagodas to cover up their atrocities and killing of the people.,” he said. “[The junta] is using the Buddha’s image to try to continue its rule of the country so that it can inflict more cruelty … In fact, worshiping Buddha statues is just a superficial custom of Buddhism.”

Buddhist in name only

The statue unveiled on Tuesday, whose name Maravijaya means “the Buddha who overcomes the devil's interference,” is imbued with Buddhist symbolism.

According to the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP-Myanmar), an independent research group, worship of the Maravijaya statue involves the number nine, seen as auspicious by Myanmar’s superstitious military leaders.

The combined weight of the statue (1,782 tons) and throne (3,510 tons) is 5,292 tons. When 5,292 is added together until one digit remains (5+2+9+2=18, 1+8=9), the result is nine. 

The same is true for the combined height of the Buddha and its throne, as well as the number of adjoining stone stupas (720), the number of days required to complete the statue (1,143), the number of monks in attendance at the ceremony (900), and the date of the ordination (8/1).

But Hla Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese political analyst living in China, said that Myanmar’s military leaders “don’t actually believe in religion.”

“They intend to mislead the people by building Buddha statues,” he said, or “try to set their guilty minds at peace with such religious deeds.”

 s committed some of the worst atrocities since the coup amid an offensive against fierce anti-junta resistance, said Min Aung Hlaing could never build enough statues to atone for the killings under his leadership.

“The sins of the many murders he has committed cannot be cleared by any means,” he said. “He will definitely suffer in hell regardless of how many meritorious deeds he does.”

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matthew Reed.

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

A board member at RNZ appointed less than a month ago quit this week after making public comments on former Justice Minister Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage of it.

RNZ had asked Jason Ake to stop and the government said he breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentant.

Jason Ake (Ngāti Ranginui) was one of the appointments last month to the boards of RNZ and TVNZ that represented “an exciting new era for our public broadcasters as they continue to tackle the challenges of … serving all people of Aotearoa now and into the future,” according to Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MEDIAWATCH: Public broadcaster opinions commentary
• Rob Campbell: Governance a good place for disruptive and transformative thought and debate

“Looking forward to the mahi ahead,” Ake told his LinkedIn followers at the time.

“Hoping to bring an indigenous perspective to the strategic direction at the public broadcasting institution,” he added, honouring the advocacy of pioneers Whai Ngata, Derek Fox and Henare Te Ua “for a much more visible Māori perspective in RNZ’s strategic direction”.

But even before he could be inducted into RNZ or attend a single board meeting, Ake resigned this week in the wake of controversy over social media comments he made about the downfall of cabinet minister Kiri Allan.

“When there’s blood in the water the sharks circle, and they’re more than happy to digest every last morsel and watch the bones sink to the depth. It’s a bloodsport,” he said in a Facebook post.

Referenced mental breakdown
He also referenced former National Party leader Todd Muller, who recovered from a mental breakdown to resume his work as an MP.

Jackson told reporters in Parliament on Tuesday Ake had “often been quite vocal about issues and he’s gonna have to stop”.

RNZ chair Dr Jim Mather had already been in touch to remind Jason Ake of his responsibilities under the Public Service Commission’s code of conduct for crown entity board members.

“When acting in our private capacity, we avoid any political activity that could jeopardise our ability to perform our role, or which could erode the public’s trust in the entity,” the code says.

Ake’s initial Facebook comment was not explicitly or aggressively politically partisan. Most of the comments could be construed as a reflection on the media as much as on politics or politicians.

But there is heightened sensitivity these days because of Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell, who was sacked after publicly criticising opposition parties’ health policies recently. (That was amplified when media commentaries of other government-appointed board members were scrutinised in the wake of that).

In a statement earlier this week, RNZ’s chair acknowledged that  Ake was “new to the board of RNZ”.

An RNZ board member appointed less than a month ago quit this week after commenting on Kiri Allan’s downfall and criticising media coverage. The government said Jason Ake breached official obligations of neutrality, but he was unrepentanthttps://t.co/ttGog3rDLG

— Mediawatch (@MediawatchNZ) July 29, 2023

Communications professional
But he is also a former journalist and a communications professional who is currently Waikato Tainui’s communications manager. Along with his partner — Māori communications consultant Deborah Jensen — he is a director of a consultancy called Native Voice.

RNZ said no further comment would be made until Dr Mather and Ake had discussed the matter further.

But Ake did not wait for that.

He went on Facebook again insisting mental health was a topic that needed to be talked about, particularly because it affected Māori so much.

He also referred to “an ideological premise that we as Māori must conform”.

And while he thanked some journalists for “getting the key message”, he repeated his criticisms of the media.

“21 Māori journos got it — more than the entire compliment [sic] of our two major media entities in Aotearoa, who between them have more than 700 reporters on the staff.”

Unable to ‘stay quiet’
After that, Ake told The New Zealand Herald he had resigned from the RNZ board “on principle”, because he would have been unable to stay quiet about broadcasting decisions which impacted on Māori.

“Crown entity governance has its own tikanga and protocols that need to be observed,” Dr Mather said in a statement describing it as “a missed opportunity.”

That was reinforced by Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni.

“It’s really important that they seem to be impartial and they’re not getting involved in the politics in any way. They’ve got really important roles to play and so the public needs to have faith in them being impartial,” she told TVNZ’s Te Karere.

Whanua Ora Minister Peeni Henare told Te Karere that crown entity board members “must represent all of Aotearoa”.

Rob Campbell wrote a piece for The New Zealand Herald the same day, applauding Ake for in his words, “having the guts to speak his truth”.

“They should not remove people, or put pressure on people to resign while in a position because the public views are not mutually shared or inconvenient. Nor should they be censored or silenced. They can appoint new directors when their term has served,” he said.

Obliged to be ‘politically noisy’
In a piece for the Herald explaining his own decision, Ake said that membership of Te Whakaruruhau o Nga Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa, the umbrella group representing more than 20 iwi radio stations around the country, obliged him to be “politically noisy”.

“This would have placed me on a collision course with the political neutrality expectations as set out in the Crown Entities guidelines,” he wrote.

“I made it clear that I came with a deep commitment to the Treaty and ensuring that it is embedded into the fabric and culture of the organisation. The Treaty is by definition a political pact and this required uncomfortable and sometimes public conversations,” Ake wrote in The Herald.

“My presence cannot be a distraction to the transformative mahi ahead of it. It would not be fair on the chair or the other board members and it will undoubtedly stymie progress for the entire organisation,” he added.

But commenting on mental health or broadcasting would not be a problem if he refrained from criticising political decisions or individual politicians, or discussing RNZ in public.

Jackson also appointed Ake to lead the Māori Media Sector Shift review back in 2020.

While in that role, Ake aired opinions on broadcasting broadly mirroring Jackson’s own aspirations for state-owned media.

Boost for Māori creators
“Where is the allowance for decent Māori stories? We’ve got an opinion and a view under a whole range of things that’s not reflected in the television in high rating programmes. It shouldn’t ghetto-ised into digital online platforms only,” Ake told Radio Waatea in 2021.

In another Radio Waatea interview, Ake said RNZ and TVNZ’s merger must be a boost for Māori content creators.

“The human capability and capacity out there is really, really limited. And it doesn’t make sense for the Māori sector to fight with itself in order to bring to the market good content. I think that’s where the merger ought to look for what a decent template would look like,” he said.

Ake also aired concerns about the commercial media organisations getting money from the Public Interest Journalism Fund for Māori journalism, content and topics.

“Why would you put yourself in front of an environment that’s diabolically opposed or structured in a way that doesn’t recognise the value that Māori bring to the discussion?

“The internal culture at some of these organisations is so ingrained that it has become part of the carpets, the curtains and everything else. So there needs to be systemic change inside these commercial organisations,” he argued.

Content funding increased
Māori broadcasting content funding was boosted by $82 million in the past two years, as part of the review which Jackson appointed Ake to oversee.

In the wake of the merger’s collapse, RNZ’s own funding has been boosted — in part to fuel the Rautaki Māori (Māori strategy) Jackson called for in the past and now supports.

Ake has rejected a governance role at RNZ at a time when his input and influence may have had its greatest effect.

He has not responded so far to Mediawatch’s calls and messages.

But his most recent post on LinkedIn announcing his resignation has this footnote for reporters: “Stop ringing me. I have mahi to do.”

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

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

For example, actress Poe Kyar Phyu Khin recently posted a video entitled “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (Our True Leader)” to the TikTok social media platform ahead of the jailed former state counselor’s June 19 birthday, prompting several users to post photos of themselves bedecked in flowers and express their best wishes.

Incensed by the post, supporters of the military junta – which took control of the country in a February 2021 coup – took toTelegram to demand that Phyu Khin and those who responded to her be arrested.

On the night of Suu Kyi’s birthday, junta security personnel showed up at the door of Phyu Khin’s home in Yangon and took her into custody. Pro-junta media reported the arrest and said that some 50 people had been detained that week alone for “sedition and incitement.”

This is the new reality in post-coup Myanmar, where backers of the military regime regularly scour the internet for any posts they deem critical of the junta before using Telegram to report them to the authorities, activists say.

Telegram has become a “form of military intelligence,” said Yangon-based protest leader Nang Lin.

“It may look like ordinary citizens are reporting people who oppose the military, but that’s not true,” he said. “It’s the work of their informers. It’s one of the junta’s intelligence mechanisms. In other words, it's just one of many attempts designed to instill fear in the people.”

‘Online weapon’

In a similar incident, rapper Byu Har was arrested on May 24, just days after being featured on pro-military Telegram channels for a video he published on social media in which he complained about electricity shortages and said that life was better under the democratically elected government that the military toppled.

Additionally, authorities arrested journalist Kyaw Min Swe, actress May Pa Chi, and other well-known personalities after pro-junta Telegram channels posted information about them changing their Facebook profiles to black to mourn the more than 170 people – including women and children – killed in a military airstrike on Sagaing region’s Pazi Gyi village in April.

“Military lobbyists and informers go through these comments and … report the owners of the accounts to Han Nyein Oo, who is a major pro-junta informer on Telegram,” said an activist in Yangon, who declined to be named out of fear of reprisal. “Then, because of a small comment, the poster and their families are in trouble.”

London-based rights group Fortify Rights also recently reported on the junta’s use of Telegram as an “online weapon” against its critics.

“We can say that they are increasingly using Telegram channels as an online weapon as one of various ways of instilling fear in the people so that they dare not speak out,” the group said in a statement.

RFA sought comment from Telegram’s press team but was forwarded to an automated answering system, which said that the company “respects users' personal information and freedom of speech, and protects human rights, such as the right to assembly.”

The answering system noted that Telegram “plays an important role in democratic movements around the world,” including in Iran, Russia, Belarus, Hong Kong and Myanmar.

The founder of the Telegram channel is Russian-born Pavel Durov. In 2014, he was forced to leave the country and move to Saint Kitts and Nevis, a small Caribbean island nation, because he refused to hand over the personal information of Ukrainian users to Russian security services during the Crimea crisis in Ukraine. 

Telegram headquarters is located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Attempts by RFA to contact junta Deputy Information Minister Major Gen. Zaw Min Tun regarding the regime’s use of pro-military Telegram accounts to arrest people went unanswered Wednesday.

Arrests violate constitution

Thein Tun Oo, the executive director of the Thayninga Institute of Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers, told RFA that claims the junta uses Telegram to track down its critics are “delusional.”

“If you feel insecure about Telegram, just don’t use it,” he said, adding that “such problems” are part of the risk of using the app.

But a lawyer in Yangon, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing security concerns, told RFA that even if the junta isn’t gathering information about its opponents on Telegram, arresting and prosecuting someone for posting their opinions on social media is a blatant violation of the law in Myanmar.

“It’s not a crime to post birthday wishes for someone on Facebook, whether it’s for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or anyone else,” he said. “These arrests are in violation of provisions protecting citizens' rights in the [military-drafted] 2008 constitution.”

Pro-junta newspapers often state that action will be taken against anyone who knowingly or unknowingly promotes or supports Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw made up of deposed lawmakers, and any related organization under the country’s Counter-terrorism Act, Electronic Communications Law, and other legislation.

According to a list compiled by RFA based on junta reports, at least 1,100 people have been arrested and prosecuted for voicing criticism of the junta on social media or sharing such posts by others since the military’s Feb. 1, 2021, coup d’etat.

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

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

Image by sebastiaan stam.

Investigating the political economy of ideas is imperative to understanding foreign policy. But those seeking to discredit already marginalized critical perspectives shouldn’t ignore Canada’s large, well-financed, ideological apparatus promoting pro-corporate and US empire policies.

Recently a journalist from leftist Québec publication Pivot asked me “Do you receive some money when you’re interviewed by Chinese media like CCTV or CGTN?” The question followed a query about whether “you might sometimes share Chinese propaganda in the articles you write.” I responded, “just like when I’ve been interviewed by dozens of other publications, I’ve never received payments from CGTN, RT, Press TV, CBC, Radio Canada (once I was paid by CBC for a series of interviews from protests at the 2004 Republican National convention in New York).”

In a similar vein a participant in the May 29 session of my weekly Canadian Foreign Policy Hour asked if I “was ever paid by Russian propaganda in order to spread this misinformation about what’s going in Ukraine”. At a talk about peace in Ukraine a day earlier multiple protesters asked if I was paid by Russia as they sought to disrupt an event held outside a community centre that canceled the room booking at the last minute.

Since Russia launched its illegal invasion of Ukraine there has been a major uptick in accusations of foreign funding, but the claims aren’t new. When campaigning against Canada’s role in overthrowing Haiti’s elected government in 2004, proponents of the coup repeatedly suggested ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide funded the work. Similarly, opponents of Nicolas Maduro suggested I was compensated by Caracas to criticize Canada’s bid to overthrow Venezuela’s president.

I have never received money from Russian, Chinese or Haitian officials (in 2014 I received $500 or $600 to cover travel and other expenses as well as a small honorarium for speaking at a Latin America solidarity event in Toronto organized by Venezuelan diplomats).

Leftists shouldn’t object to probing the interplay between money and ideas. Actually, it’s essential to understanding Canadian foreign policy. But if you’re in the game for financial reasons the money is almost entirely in supporting, not challenging, pro-US and corporate policies.

Assuming the aim is not simply to discredit already marginalized perspectives (in most cases this is tough to assume), the first question regarding the link between money and foreign policy ideas should be: Is it possible to work for a major Canadian media outlet while criticizing Canadian imperialism? Or to employ critics’ preferred language are there any pro-Putin, Aristide, Maduro or Xi analysts in Canada’s dominant media?

Conversely, almost every journalist in a position to express their opinion to large audiences supports the basic tenets of Canadian foreign policy. Many also backed US violence such as CBC and Globe and Mail commentator Andrew Coyne who advocated Canadian participation in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Has any Canadian journalist supported Russia’s invasion, let alone echoed Coyne’s 2003 call for Canada to join Moscow’s invasion?

Unlike promoting the US empire, the slightest hint of supporting Putin, Xi, Aristide, Maduro or whoever is in the crosshairs of Washington is a barrier to media employment. It’s also an obstacle to working in relevant Canadian government and ideological institutions from the intelligence agencies to military, Global Affairs, academia, think tanks and NGOs.

In A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation I detail the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually by Global Affairs, Veterans Affairs, National Defence and other ministries to articulate a one-sided version of Canada’s foreign policy. The corporate set spends tens of millions of dollars more. 

With the largest PR machine in the country, the Canadian Forces employ hundreds of public relations officers. The military also promotes its worldview through a history department, university and multiple journals. Additionally, the Department of National Defence finances many war commemorations, think tanks and “security” studies programs at universities.

Wealthy Canadians have set up a number of internationally oriented think tanks and university departments. The foreign affairs school at Canada’s leading university was financed by a mining magnate with an important personal stake in a particular foreign policy. The University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs was financed by the founder and long-time head of Barrick Gold, Peter Munk who praised Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, compared Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to Hitler and claimed Indigenous people have too much power.

Another billionaire launched the Balsillie School of International Affairs. The Canadian International Council, Canada’s leading foreign policy ‘think tank’ for most of a century, was collapsed into the university/think tank initiative funded by Research In Motion co-founder Jim Balsillie. 

The oldest global affairs school in Canada, the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, was set up six decades ago with $400,000 ($5 million today) from internationalgrain-shipping magnate and long-time Senator Norman Paterson. Twice under-secretary of External Affairs and leading architect of postwar Canadian foreign policy, Norman Robertson was the Patterson’s school’s first director and it continues to have close personnel and financial ties to Global Affairs. 

With 12,000 employees, Global Affairs has been well positioned to disseminate its worldview. It operates a history department, cultural initiatives, Radio Canada International and vast public relations operations. 

Now part of Global Affairs, the Canadian International Development Agency spawned and financed multiple “ideas” institutes and international development studies programs. For their part, international development NGOs receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from Global Affairs, which leads to narrow criticism largely focused on advocating for greater Canadian aid.

Exploring the political economy of the left reveals the marginalization of peace and international solidarity voices. Peace and international solidarity groups have but a fraction of the resources available to unions and environmental groups. The salary of a couple union staffers exceeds the combined annual budgets of the Canadian Peace Congress, World Beyond War Canada, Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade and Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (Canadian unions have thousands of paid staff.) The vast majority of antiwar, Haiti, Palestine, Venezuela and mining injustice activism is volunteer work.

Any serious investigation into the funding of foreign policy ideas shows that the money flows almost entirely to the pro-US and corporate perspective. Paradoxically, the lopsided funding dynamic somehow gives credence to the notion that marginalized, usually volunteer, critics are the ones that are in fact ‘paid’ for their positions. By thoroughly marginalizing these ideas the dominant “propaganda system” has made these ideas appear to be outlandish and more easily dismissed as foreign funded.

The interplay between money and ideas is important to understanding Canadian foreign policy. Yes, follow the money. But rather than discredit marginalized perspectives challenging pro-corporate and US empire policies, honest people should acknowledge which way the dollars flow.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Yves Engler.

Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Ramin Mirfakhraie

May 7, 2023. Monthly Review Online.  

Noam, thank you for accepting my invitation for this interview. As you are well aware, the recent emergence of chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has created a global uproar, about which you, Ian Roberts, and Jeffery Watumull recently wrote an essay that was published in The New York Times titled “The False Promise of ChatGPT.”

Shortly after the publication of this essay, however, a number of your critics used the opportunity to challenge your theory of language acquisition, which was originally formulated in your pioneering book called Syntactic Structures (1957). Did this reaction surprise you in any way?

Noam Chomsky: I’ve seen a few pieces claiming that LLMs challenge the rich and extensive work of recent years on language acquisition, described falsely as “Chomsky’s theory,” I suppose out of unfamiliarity with the field.  I haven’t seen anything that poses even a remote challenge from LLMs to my work, or any of the important work on language acquisition that I know of.

Unfamiliarity with the field might explain the flawed nature of non-expert criticisms of your extensive work on language acquisition, but what about expert criticisms of your research and theory, such as those put forward by neuropsychologist Steven Piantadosi and linguist Daniel Everett?

In a piece titled “Modern language models refute Chomsky’s approach to language,” for example, Piantadosi claims that “Modern machine learning has subverted and bypassed the entire theoretical framework of Chomsky’s approach, including its core claims to particular insights, principles, structures, and processes.” He further states that “the development of large language models like GPT-3 has challenged some of Chomsky’s main claims about linguistics and the nature of language” on three grounds:  

First, the fact that language models can be trained on large amounts of text data and can generate human-like language without any explicit instruction on grammar or syntax suggests that language may not be as biologically determined as Chomsky has claimed. Instead, it suggests that language may be learned and developed through exposure to language and interactions with others. Second, the success of large language models in performing various language tasks such as translation, summarization, and question answering, has challenged Chomsky’s idea that language is based on a set of innate rules. Instead, it suggests that language is a learned and adaptive system that can be modeled and improved through machine learning algorithms. Finally, the ability of language models to generate coherent and coherent [sic] language on a wide range of topics, despite never having seen these topics before, suggests that language may not be as rule-based as Chomsky has claimed. Instead, it may be more probabilistic and context-dependent, relying on patterns and associations learned from the text data it was trained on. —Steven Piantadosi

And in a similar vein, in an interview headlined “Exclusive: Linguist says ChatGPT has invalidated Chomsky’s ‘innate principles of language’,” Everett claims that ChatGPT “has falsified in the starkest terms Chomsky’s claim that innate principles of language are necessary to learn a language. ChatGPT has shown that, without any hard-wired principles of grammar or language, this program, coupled with massive data (Large Language Models), can learn a language.”

Are these claims valid in your view?

NC: Neither of them indicates any familiarity with the field of language acquisition.  Even the most superficial familiarity reveals that very young children already have rich command of basic principles of their language, far beyond what they exhibit in performance. The work of Lila Gleitman, Stephen Crain, Kenneth Wexler, and many others makes that very clear. Many details have been discovered about the specific ways in which acquisition proceeds in later years as well. Charles Yang’s careful statistical studies of the material available to young children show that evidence is very sparse, particularly once the effects of Zipf’s law on rank-frequency distribution is considered.

It is absurd beyond discussion to believe that any light can be shed on these processes by LLMs, which scan astronomical amounts of data to find statistical regularities that allow fair prediction of the next likely word in a sequence based on the enormous corpus they analyze.

The absurdity is in fact a minor problem. More fundamentally, it is obvious that these systems, whatever their interest, are incapable in principle of shedding light on language acquisition by humans. The reason is that they do just as well with impossible languages that humans cannot acquire in the manner of children (if at all).

It is as if a physicist were to propose a “theory” saying “here are a lot of things that happen and a lot that can’t happen and I can make no distinction among them.”

Piantadosi is familiar with LLMs, but like many others, shows no awareness of these fundamental problems. Everett simply makes unsubstantiated claims that merit no attention.

The very fact that they attribute the theories to me reveals lack of familiarity with the rich and well-developed field of language acquisition.

Perhaps these critics’ lack of familiarity with the field of language acquisition stems from a more fundamental problem; namely, a potentially distorted view of your theory of language acquisition, which has had a lot of influence, to say the least, on much of what has taken place in the field in terms of theorizing.

Then again, this might be related to an issue that Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker raised in 2016. In an interview with John Horgan, published by Scientific American Blogs under the headline “Is Chomsky’s Theory of Language Wrong? Pinker Weighs in on Debate,” he talks about the unclear nature of “Chomsky’s theory of language” and how your concept of “Universal Grammar” is ambiguous in terms of what it consists of. 

It thus would be tremendously helpful, I believe, if you could at this point briefly discuss your theory of language acquisition, especially, since it has gone through multiple revisions since its original formulation.

NC: It’s easy to discover what “Chomsky’s theory of language” refers to: there is publication after publication providing details. There seems to be a strange conception that there should be a fixed and unchanging theory of the nature of language. There isn’t, any more than in the sciences generally.

On language acquisition—or any process of growth and development—three factors are involved: (1) innate structure, (2) external stimuli, (3) laws of nature.

Any sensible approach to language acquisition will seek to determine how they interact to yield the transition from the initial state (1) to the relatively stable state attained.  There has been considerable progress in all three areas. The Principles and Parameters framework provided the first real hope for a feasible account of the transition that would account for the diversity of possible human languages. That inspired a great deal of work aimed at determining how an infant can feasibly search through the parameter space to yield a particular language (or languages). Among major contributions, Ian Roberts’s recent work shows how very simple cognitive processes can achieve highly significant results, tested with thousands of typologically different languages.  Experimental work has shown that very young children have mastered fundamentals of language, far beyond what they exhibit in performance, and careful statistical studies reveal that the data available to them is sparse and in crucial cases non-existent.

My own work has concentrated on (1) and (3), with principles of computational efficiency taken to be laws of nature—natural for a computational system like language. I can’t review the course of this work here: there is ample material in print, to the present.

To clarify a terminological point, often misunderstood, the technical term UG (“universal grammar”) refers to the theory of (1), the theory of the human faculty of language, apparently shared through the species, and with basic properties not found in other organisms, hence a true species property.

Going back to LLMs, with the approach that you have described above in mind, can we say that such models will someday be able to replace linguistics for understanding the human faculty of language?

NC: Their basic design ensures that this is impossible, for the two reasons I mentioned: the minor flaw, which renders the proposal absurd; the major flaw, which renders it impossible in principle.

Finally, do you think there should be any sort of government regulation of language models like ChatGPT, in terms of, say, privacy matters or data security, similar to what recently happened in Italy?

NC: As you know, there’s a petition circulating calling for a moratorium on development of these systems, signed by a wide variety of prominent practitioners. And there have been calls for government regulation. The threats are real enough. I frankly doubt that there’s any practical way to contain them. The most effective means that I can think of is the only way to counter the spread of malicious doctrines and ideology: education in critical thinking, organization to encourage deliberation and modes of intellectual self-defense.

Thank you, Noam, for your time and valuable insights.

Noam Chomsky is a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. He has received numerous awards, written more than 100 books on a wide range of topics, and is globally recognized as the founder of modern linguistics. He is also a renowned political commentator and one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals. His latest book is Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books, The American Empire Project, 2016).

Ramin Mirfakhraie is a sociologist based in the U.S. His research interests include capitalist globalization and international politics. He holds a PhD from the University of Warwick in the UK.

This content originally appeared on chomsky.info: The Noam Chomsky Website and was authored by anthony.

Cambodia is hosting the Southeast Asian region's premier sporting event for the first time. The May 5-17 games will include 11 nations in the region competing in 36 events, and the country has built a new Chinese-funded 60,000 seat stadium  for the occasion.

In host countries, including monarchies, the sitting head of state is usually given the honor of declaring the start of the games at the opening ceremony.

Though King Norodom Sihamoni is the official head of state in Cambodia, he rarely exercises his limited powers granted by the constitution and tries to avoid getting involved in politics. 

Hun Sen, 70, has ruled Cambodia since 1985, and is believed to be manipulating the government and the country’s laws in an attempt to pass his role as leader to his son Hun Manet before retiring. 

The country is scheduled to hold national elections in July that the ruling Cambodian People’s Party is widely expected to win.

At the groundbreaking ceremony for the Sihanoukville container terminal on Monday, Hun Sen mocked his detractors.

"You should know well, if you do not know well, don’t act like you are so wise and do not be arrogant and incite conflict between the king and the prime minister,” he said. 

“The king does not take the role of prime minister, and the prime minister does not take on the role of the king, just as [the king] carried the torch before the SEA Games while the prime minister walked along with him,” he said.

Finland-based political analyst Kim Sok told Radio Free Asia that Hun Sen’s slight was destroying the achievements of the king, the former king and the ancestors of the Khmer people.

“This is not only a violation of the role of the king, but a betrayal of the throne and the king, not only in front of the Cambodian people, but in front of international guests around the world," he said.

Driving a wedge

Hun Sen’s critics are trying to discredit him by trying to show that there’s a split between the prime minister and monarchy, said David Hutt, a journalist and researcher for the Central European Institute of Asian Studies.

“It’s a way for anti-CPP critics to try to paint Hun Sen as unpatriotic, given that he taints most opponents as traitors,” said Hutt. “They probably also reckon it might turn some ordinary Cambodians against the ruling party. But the monarchy has been a political football for some time.”

Tensions between Hun Sen and the royal house arise because of the monarchy’s protections, he said.

“After all, the monarchy is the only institution left in Cambodia that [Hun Sen’s] ruling party cannot completely dominate,” said Hutt. “Maybe Hun Sen has long thought it may become a rival institution, although that’s less so with King Norodom Sihamoni compared to his father.”

Hutt said that Hun Sen sees himself as a monarch, as he is preparing a dynastic succession of the prime ministership to his son.

But Kim Sok denied that he and other critics only want to drive a wedge between the king and the prime minister, and compared the treatment of the monarchy with other neighboring monarchies.

"In Thailand, when there are big sports events, both national and international, before the athletes enter the arena, they prepare the king's portrait for the athletes to respect him before entering the arena,” Kim Sok said. “But in the Kingdom of Cambodia, we have not seen such preparations yet.”

Hun Sen tends to get angry whenever his critics call him out on his disrespect, Bangkok-based social development researcher Seng Sary said.

"The prime minister seems to feel uncomfortable when he is compared to the king, who is protected by the constitution,” said Seng Sary. “The monarchy is a supreme institution that cannot be violated, but the prime minister is only the chairman of the executive branch."

Buddhist honors

Meanwhile, a Thailand-based international Buddhist organization has granted Hun Sen the honorary title “Patron of the World,” and made his son Hun Manet an honorary “senior advisor,” confusing some members of the organization.

The Venerable Buth Buntenh, who lives in exile in Massachusetts, said the Cambodian leader does not deserve the title and he does not understand why the organization gave it to him.

“Hun Sen has committed the highest immoral things in Cambodian society,” the monk said, adding that under Hun Sen’s rule, monks have lived in repressive conditions that rival the time when the country was ruled by Pol Pot’s regime, during which the Khmer Rouge defrocked and killed them.

“But now, under the rule of Hun Sen, monks are defrocked and put in jail. Or monks are shot dead by unidentified gunmen.” said Buth Buntenh.” So, the Khmer Rouge regime and Hun Sen are the same in terms of persecution of the Buddhists.” 

Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
UPDATE: Adds background information on the SEA Games.

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

The statement calls on the Bangladesh government to immediately suspend the use of the draconian Digital Security Act pending its repeal or amendment in line with international human rights law. The DSA has repeatedly been used against journalists in retaliation for their work on topics including governmental policies, corruption, and illicit business practices.

The statement notes the March arrest of Shamsuzzaman Shams, a correspondent for the newspaper Prothom Alo, under the DSA and the subsequent DSA investigations opened into Shams, Prothom Alo editor Matiur Rahman, executive editor Sajjad Sharif, an unnamed camera operator, and other unidentified people in connection to Shams’ reporting on price hikes. Shams has since been released on bail.

The statement expresses concern regarding the weaponization of other laws against journalists and the media, noting the ongoing investigation of Prothom Alo special correspondent Rozina Islam under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act and the penal code in apparent retaliation for her reporting on alleged government corruption and irregularities in the public health sector at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the full statement here.

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

Under fire after reporting offered a detailed look at his decades of billionaire-funded luxury vacations, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas claimed Friday that he was "advised" by colleagues not to report personal hospitality gifts from friends, a story that drew immediate derision from lawmakers and legal analysts.

In a statement responding to ProPublica's reporting, which shined additional light on trips bankrolled by billionaire real estate mogul Harlan Crow, Thomas acknowledged joining the GOP megadonor and his wife on "a number of" family trips over the past two decades but insisted that he was told such hospitality "from close personal friends, who did not have business before the court, was not reportable."

"I have endeavored to follow that counsel throughout my tenure, and have always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines," said Thomas, who in 2011 amended 20 years of financial disclosure forms after failing to disclose income that his wife, Ginni Thomas, received from the right-wing Heritage Foundation and other organizations.

Thomas claimed at the time that he had a "misunderstanding of the filing instructions," an excuse that watchdogs found highly implausible.

On Friday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) scoffed at Thomas' explanation for declining to disclose his many luxury vacations, specifically criticizing the justice's assertion that those involved with the trips had no business before the court.

ProPublica reported that Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, who has helped drag the U.S. judicial system to the right, was among the guests of one Crow-funded trip that Thomas attended.

"Oh, please," Whitehouse tweeted in response to Thomas' statement. "If you're smoking cigars with Leonard Leo and other right-wing fixers, you should know they don't just have business before the court—their business IS the court."

Mark Joseph Stern, a legal writer for Slate, added that the justice's statement "fails to account for Thomas' alleged use of Crow's private jet for his own personal travel, presumably because it cannot possibly be squared with the disclosure guidelines in effect at the time."

ProPublica reported that Thomas' trips included multiple flights on Crows' private jet and rides on his superyacht—none of which the justice disclosed. The investigative outlet noted that "Thomas has even used the plane for a three-hour trip."

"On Feb. 11, 2016, the plane flew from Dallas to Dulles to New Haven, Connecticut, before flying back later that afternoon," ProPublica revealed. "There are no reports of Thomas making a public appearance that day, and the purpose of the trip remains unclear."

According toThe Washington Post, Thomas "has reported receiving only two gifts since 2004"—a bronze bust of Frederick Douglass, which came from Crow, and an award from Yale Law School.

After the Los Angeles Timesreported in 2004 that Thomas "had accepted expensive gifts and private plane trips paid for by Harlan Crow," the justice "appears to have continued accepting free trips from his wealthy friend," the newspaper reported Thursday.

"But he stopped disclosing them," the Times added.

On Thursday, Stern and fellow Slate court writer Dahlia Lithwick argued that by failing to report gifts from Crow, Thomas "broke the law, and it isn't particularly close."

"The best argument in his defense is that the old definition of 'personal hospitality' did not require him to disclose transportation, including private flights," the pair wrote. "This reading works only by torturing the English language beyond all recognition. The old rule, like the statute it derives from, defined the term as hospitality that is 'extended' either 'at' a personal residence or 'on' their 'property or facilities.'

"A person dead-set on defending Thomas might be able to squeeze these yacht trips into this definition, arguing that, by hosting Thomas on his boat for food, drink, and sightseeing, Crow 'extended' hospitality 'on' his own property. But lending out the private jet for Thomas’ personal use? Come on. There’s no plausible way to shoehorn these trips into the old rule—which quotes the statute verbatim—even under the most expansive interpretation imaginable."

Following pressure from Whitehouse and other lawmakers, the Judicial Conference of the United States—the policymaking body for federal courts—clarified its disclosure requirements surrounding "personal hospitality."

The updated regulations state that disclosure exemptions do not include "gifts other than food, lodging or entertainment, such as transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation"—like a private jet.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in an interview with The Lever on Thursday that articles of impeachment against Thomas "need to be introduced" in response to ProPublica's revelations.

"If no one's going to introduce it, I would certainly be open to doing so and drafting them myself," said the New York Democrat. "I think this has gone far, far beyond any sort of acceptable standard in any democracy, let alone American democracy."

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

Despite pledging to take action on the climate emergency, including by ending international fossil fuel financing, Group of 20 governments continue to pour billions of dollars into gas infrastructure expansion, according to an analysis released Wednesday.

"Oil Change International (OCI) finds that G20 government institutions were involved in financing 82% of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal capacity built from 2012-22," states the group's new report, highlighting at least $78 billion in public financing.

"Of the $234.6 billion total capital expenditure for the LNG export terminals built in the last decade, loans from international public finance institutions made up at least 24% of the total ($55.2 billion)," the report explains. "On top of this, these institutions provided $22.4 billion in equity investments and loan guarantees to insure against potential losses for other financiers."

The 17 completed projects included in the analysis have locked 928 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) each year, comparable to "the annual emissions of 423 coal-fired power plants, nearly two times the annual emissions of Canada, or over three times the annual emissions of France."

OCI's briefing warns that another dozen projects expected to be completed by 2026 would generate an additional 654 megatonnes of yearly planet-heating pollution, or about the annual emissions of Germany—as climate scientists and energy experts emphasize the need to swiftly end the world's fossil fuel era.

"These shocking figures show that laggard countries need to catch up with leading governments and urgently change course to stop pumping taxpayers' money into gas projects that are wrecking our climate, leave the energy crisis unsolved, and will end up as stranded assets."

"These shocking figures show that laggard countries need to catch up with leading governments and urgently change course to stop pumping taxpayers' money into gas projects that are wrecking our climate, leave the energy crisis unsolved, and will end up as stranded assets," asserted OCI public finance strategist Adam McGibbon.

At $39.7 billion, Japan leads the world in public financing for LNG export capacity 2012-26, followed by China ($25.4 billion) and the United States ($15.5 billion). Rounding out the top 10 "worst offenders" are South Korea, Russia, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.

During the COP26 climate summit in Scotland two years ago, the United States, Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands were among the 39 countries and institutions that signed the Glasgow Statement, agreeing to cut off financing for new international fossil fuel projects by the end of last year and instead invest in clean energy.

Japan initially held out, but under pressure from its fellow Group of Seven countries, ultimately agreed to the pledge last May. However, in July, at the urging of Germany and Italy, the G7 watered down its members' commitments specifically on gas.

With Japan set to host a G7 summit in Hiroshima next month, the nation's "leadership in the expansion of LNG development is the exact opposite of what we need," OCI campaigner Makiko Arima declared Wednesday. "Japan needs to take last year's G7 commitment to end public finance for fossil fuels seriously and stop funding gas projects."

"There is no time for so-called transition fuels, when fossil fuel dependency is exacerbating the climate and energy crises, and fossil fuel projects are harming communities and the environment," Arima added. "G7 countries need to do much more than make climate commitments that they break."

While the United States, Australia, and Russia top the list of counties, by emissions, where publicly financed LNG products were built in the past decade or are now underway, they are followed by nations that aren't the "worse offenders" in terms of funding: Mozambique, Canada, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Mexico.

As Common Dreams has reported, civil society groups across Africa have argued in recent months that "rather than doubling down on the obsolete and dirty energy systems," the African Union must "move away from harmful fossil fuels towards a transformed energy system that is clean, renewable, democratic, and actually serves its peoples."

Anabela Lemos, director of Justica Ambiental!/Friends of the Earth Mozambique, echoed that argument Wednesday.

While Global North nations, "the culprits creating the climate crisis, benefit from this gas," it is the Global South "who will suffer," Lemos stressed, noting that "Mozambique has been hit by four cyclones within three years that have displaced over 1 million people."

"The gas industry in Mozambique is devastating the country's climate, people, environment, and economy," she said. "Even though gas has been produced in Mozambique for decades, still only 30% of people have electricity access, and in Inhambane Province, where Sasol has been extracting gas for 20 years, displaced communities have seen no benefits."

"Northern governments and their companies involved in the Mozambique LNG Project in Cabo Delgado Province are complicit in forcing the already debt-ridden country into a fossil fuel lock-in, and pushing people into further poverty, by taking away their livelihoods and fueling a war that has created 1 million refugees," Lemos added.

Given the impacts of export terminals on both the climate and the communities around such facilities, OCI's report concludes with recommendations that include ending domestic subsidies and permits for fossil fuel development, scaling up finance for clean energy, and providing debt cancellation, climate finance, and loss and damage support for the Global South.

"To meet their climate obligations, governments should stop funding LNG expansion," said McGibbon. "In addition, those countries that have not already done so should join the Glasgow Statement initiative to show they are serious about solving the climate and energy security crises. Anything less is just hot air."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

“[T]he City of Phoenix stands ready to achieve its goal of hosting the greenest Super Bowl events yet,” the announcement from Phoenix’s public works department said.

The city was referring to a forthcoming Direct Pack facility for recycling plastic items called PET thermoforms — clamshells, berry containers, salad boxes, egg cartons, and similarly shaped containers made from polyethylene terephthalate, one of the seven main kinds of plastic. Direct Pack already has a recycling facility in Guadalajara that it says can recycle tens of thousands of tons of PET thermoforms each year, and it’s been constructing a new one in Mexicali, Mexico, just across the border from California. 

The facility is great news for plastic companies based in the U.S., where industry publications say PET thermoform recycling has remained “a struggle.” These companies face growing scrutiny over skyrocketing plastic pollution, and have spent decades trying to convince the public that recycling is the answer. Direct Pack says on its website that it can give PET thermoforms new life again and again, turning plastic containers like those thrown away at the Phoenix Super Bowl into a “valuable infinite resource.” 

But environmental advocates in Mexico are less excited about the idea of processing more of what they see as garbage from abroad. “The U.S. shouldn’t send this waste to Mexico,” said Marisa Jacott, director of the Mexican nonprofit Fronteras Comunes. “We have less money, less infrastructure.” Rather than engaging in what she called “waste colonialism,” she urged U.S. companies to stop producing so much plastic in the first place and to stop promoting recycling as a cure-all to the plastic waste crisis. 

Direct Pack’s Mexicali facility is part of a larger plan from the U.S. plastics industry to improve recycling infrastructure for the 1.6 billion pounds of PET thermoforms that the U.S. and Canada produce every year. Unlike the PET bottles used for bottled water, soda, and fruit juice, which are among the easiest plastic products to recycle, PET thermoforms are accepted by just 11 percent of the United States’ material recovery facilities, or MRFs — the plants where mixed materials from recycling bins like paper, aluminum, and plastic are sorted into bales for further processing. And even that doesn’t mean that those thermoforms will ultimately be turned into new products; most recyclers are unwilling to buy and reprocess PET thermoforms because it costs more to sort, wash, and recycle them than to make new plastics.

The main North American trade group for PET container recyclers lists only one facility in the United States that will accept PET-only bales of plastic for reprocessing. The president of another industry group, the Association of Plastic Recyclers, said last year that PET thermoforms were a low-volume commodity that weren’t worth the costs of sorting and storage.

Given such a bleak landscape, Ornela Garelli, an oceans and plastic campaigner for the nonprofit Greenpeace Mexico, says the promise of thermoform recycling is a “greenwashing strategy” from the plastics industry — a way to justify the continued production of plastics. She says it’s time to stop making so many thermoforms in the first place, not hold out hope that more recycling infrastructure will ever be able to keep up with a growing glut of plastic waste.

Still, U.S. plastic makers are doubling down. A U.S.-based nonprofit called the Recycling Partnership — funded and overseen by plastic and packaging companies, including Coca-Cola and Exxon Mobil — says it plans to fund a number of PET recycling efforts this year, beginning with a first round of grants announced in early January for three companies focused on PET reclamation. 

One of these companies is Direct Pack, whose headquarters are in Azusa, California, just outside Los Angeles. But rather than building out PET thermoform recycling infrastructure stateside, the Recycling Partnership’s grant is being used to help Direct Pack build a new PET recycling facility in Mexicali, set to begin operating this spring. According to the Recycling Partnership, the plant will source thermoforms from across the U.S., process them into a plastic feedstock called “flake,” and send them across the street to an existing Direct Pack thermoform production plant, where they will be converted into new packaging.

Andrew Jolin, Direct Pack’s director of sustainability, told Grist that “the whole process is environmentally sound,” adding that the company has been “embraced by the local community with our competitive pay scale and benefits.” He said concerns about the recyclability of PET thermoforms are “disinformation” propagated by Greenpeace and that Direct Pack plans to open a similar recycling plant in North Carolina by the end of the year.

Critics, however, have raised legal and ethical objections. Jim Puckett, founder and executive director of the U.S.-based nonprofit Basel Action Network, told Grist it was “disgusting” that the City of Phoenix and the companies represented by the Recycling Partnership were touting the Mexicali facility. “Of course it’s wonderful for them, they get to sweep their garbage across the border,” he said.

Puckett says the Mexicali facility could run afoul of an international agreement called the Basel Convention, which regulates the international plastic waste trade. Although the U.S. hasn’t ratified the agreement, Mexico has — meaning it’s illegal for Mexico to import plastic waste from the U.S. unless it’s “almost free from contamination and other types of waste” and “destined for recycling in an environmentally sound manner,” rather than incinerated or dumped. Bales of PET that contain more than 2 percent other types of plastic, paper, metal, food, or other materials are generally regulated under the Basel Convention as “hazardous waste” and are banned from U.S.-Mexico trade.

“It’s really difficult to achieve that level of cleanliness,” Puckett said. In California, MRFs are unable to sort bales of PET beyond an average of about 10 percent contamination — and that’s when they include PET bottles. There’s virtually no data on contamination in thermoform-only bales — since most recyclers in the U.S. won’t buy PET thermoforms, they’re typically not sorted into bales on their own.

Craig Snedden, Direct Pack’s president, said the company does not check PET bales before they’re imported from the U.S. to the company’s Guadalajara facility, but he’s confident that they contain less than 2 percent contamination, based on data on the weight of PET collected compared to the weight of all the nonrecyclable materials Direct Pack sends to a landfill.  Adam Gendell, The Recycling Partnership’s director of materials advancement, said the most common types of contamination are from food, which “doesn’t sink anybody’s ship” or “cause deleterious effects to the natural environment.” 

In response to a detailed list of questions, a spokesperson for the City of Phoenix referred Grist to Direct Pack and highlighted its goal of achieving “zero waste” by 2050.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns that PET thermoform recycling could divert millions of gallons of water from residential use in Mexicali, which was declared to be in a state of emergency drought last summer. Multiple washes are required to remove sticky glues and labels from PET thermoforms, making them significantly more water-intensive to recycle than bottles.

Jolin said the Mexicali facility would “not us a lot of freshwater” — about 800 gallons per day. He said it’s more environmentally friendly to recycle PET thermoforms than to make packages out of other materials like paper, because doing so requires more trees to be harvested. (The U.S. recycling rate for cardboard is greater than 90 percent, compared to 5 percent for plastic.)

Garelli, with Greenpeace Mexico,  said supporting a PET thermoform recycling plant in Mexico allows Direct Pack and its funders through the Recycling Partnership to skirt labor regulations that are tougher in the U.S. The minimum wage in Mexicali is about $17 per day — $2.12 an hour, based on an eight-hour workday — compared to $15.50 an hour in California.

“Instead of forcing their own companies to make the transition toward reusability, they are sending all their plastic waste to countries where there are more flexible laws,” she said. “They can pay low salaries to the workers.”

Federal data compiled by the Basel Action Network shows that U.S. plastic waste exports to Latin America have grown by some 90 million pounds per year since 2017, when China stopped accepting it with its “National Sword” policy. “It is not fair for countries — not only Mexico but other Latin American countries — to keep receiving this waste from the U.S.,” Garelli said. 

Editor’s note: Greenpeace is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline American cities want to recycle their plastic trash in Mexico. Critics call it ‘waste colonialism.’ on Mar 31, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

Two months after teaming up with the Indian government to censor a BBC documentary on human rights abuses by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Twitter is yet again collaborating with India to impose an extraordinarily broad crackdown on speech.

Last week, the Indian government imposed an internet blackout across the northern state of Punjab, home to 30 million people, as it conducted a manhunt for a local Sikh nationalist leader, Amritpal Singh. The shutdown paralyzed internet and SMS communications in Punjab (some Indian users told The Intercept that the shutdown was targeted at mobile devices).

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“Punjab is a de facto police state.”

“The main thing that the Indian government is trying to accomplish is to protect the reputation of Modi.”

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

“Apart from going to make offerings to my ancestors, I am also taking Taiwan university students to China for exchanges, hoping to improve the current cross-strait atmosphere through the enthusiasm and interaction of young people, so peace can come even faster and sooner to us here,” Ma, 73, who served as president from 2008-2016, told reporters before boarding the plane.

Ma’s departure from Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport was marked by protests from both sides of the political spectrum, with one group holding up a banner accusing him of humiliating Taiwan by kowtowing to Beijing, and another group singing communist revolutionary songs in praise of his trip.

Ma’s departure comes amid heightened tensions between Taiwan and China that has seen the People’s Liberation Army stage military incursions and large-scale exercises around the island since Tsai's government rejected Beijing's call for “unification.”

President Tsai called on the international community in 2018 to avoid a policy of “appeasement” of Beijing, saying that the Chinese Communist Party's claim on Taiwan is a threat to global stability.

Taiwan still bears the official name of the 1911 Republic of China after Kuomintang forces occupied the island at the end of World War II, by which time it had formed part of Japanese territory for more than half a century.

Taiwan has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, nor formed part of the 73-year-old People’s Republic of China, and its 23 million people have scant wish to give up their sovereignty or democratic way of life to be ruled by China, according to multiple public opinion polls in recent years.

“We should be more united ... but it’s regrettable that the KMT stands with the Chinese communists and ex-president Ma disregards public disapproval to visit China at this moment,” Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party said in a statement on Ma’s visit.

A Kuomintang delegation met with Politburo standing committee member and party ideologue Wang Huning last month, and gained the strong impression that Beijing is trying to steer relations back toward “peaceful unification” rather than toward a military confrontation that could involve the United States, according to two senior party sources.

“If the other side wants to calm things down, given all of the problems we are facing with Russia, the United States, the pandemic, the economy, unemployment and all of that, then of course we want to calm things down too,” one source told Radio Free Asia.

“The Kuomintang isn’t the government, so it can’t sell Taiwan out.”

‘But we’re not fools’

The delegation was also given access to municipal leaders in Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, and called upon to give their opinions in the keynote meeting with Wang Huning that focused mostly on the economy, the party sources said.

“Nobody talked about dogma in the meeting – they were all talking about the economy," one source said. "This was a trip that was about making friends.”

“Nobody mentioned ‘unification through force’ and nobody mentioned any timetable,” they said. “Peaceful unification was mentioned, but with no sense of urgency.”

“There is definitely a channel of communication now between the Kuomintang and [China],” said one of the senior sources.

The source added: “We have to have this contact today, but we’re not fools, and we know they have plans for us. I’m not naive – I only know that we don’t have that many options.”

Beijing has denied requests for state-to-state diplomatic talks from Taiwan, as Tsai has insisted on being treated as the leader of a sovereign nation rather than a province of China.

Ma was met at the airport on arrival by Chen Yuanfeng, deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Communist Party Central Committee, amid unconfirmed media reports that Politburo standing committee member Ding Xuexiang also went to the airport, which would indicate a far higher-ranking form of protocol than implied by Chen alone.

Taiwan independence activist Chen Chun-han said Ma had “violated the will of the people.”

“His actions are very worrying for the world’s democracies that want to support Taiwan,” Chen said. “Everyone wants to support us, but it turns out we have a group of people in this country who flirt with the Chinese Communist Party regime.”

‘Our status is being belittled’

A pro-China group dressed in red and bedecked with the five-star red flag of China held up a banner that read: “Spring has come, the flowers are in bloom, and Ying-jeou is going to make offerings to his ancestors [showing that] we are all part of the same family.”

Ku Hsi-chun, who leads a Chinese patriotic association in Taiwan, said Ma’s trip would benefit people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, while a man who gave only the surname Li said he had traveled all the way from the central city of Taichung to protest Ma’s trip.

“I worry that Taiwan is being sold out,” he told reporters at the airport.

A resident surnamed Tsai said she trusted Ma – a consummate and veteran politician with a background in Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council – to do the right thing, while an office worker surnamed Chou said the visit was unlikely to affect things one way or the other.

“They’re not going to stand down all those missiles just because he went [to China],” he said. “It’s so they can lie and claim they communicated [with Taiwan], but it would be better if they dealt with our government on an equal footing.”

He said Chinese state media had only referred to Ma as an ordinary citizen, rather than giving him the title of President or former president, to which he should be entitled.

“Our status is being belittled by [China], and so is President Ma’s status,” Chou said. “It seems as if ... he's being used.”

One of the students who accompanied Ma, Chou Yong-chin, said more contact could only be a good thing.

“Communication is a must,” he said, but added that it was “not convenient” to comment on political matters.

‘We’re not going to submit’

Another student, Chiu Tai-ta, said Ma also insists on Taiwan’s national sovereignty as the 1911 Republic of China, and that the Kuomintang would never cave in to its old enemy, the Chinese communists.

“I don’t think our young people will be manipulated into returning to the motherland,” Chiu said. “Taiwan, the Republic of China, is our red line, and we’re not going to submit to communist rule.”

Chen Wen-chia, a senior consultant at Taiwan’s National Policy Research Institute, said the trip was colluding with China’s attempts to downgrade Taiwan’s status.

“It’s obvious that President Ma is being treated in a low-key manner ... which downplays us as a part of China,” Chen said. “They didn’t mention that Ma was a former president, because if they did that, that would be treating Taiwan like a country.”

Beijing has been stepping up its campaign to isolate Taiwan diplomatically since Tsai was elected in 2016. Taiwan now has formal relations with only a handful of countries, including Belize, Nauru and the Vatican, with Honduras switching its diplomatic recognition to Beijing at the weekend.

Tsai announced an end to diplomatic relations with Honduras in a statement on Sunday.

“These past few years, China has persistently used any and all means to suppress Taiwan’s international participation, intensify its military intimidations against Taiwan, and disrupt[ing] regional peace and stability,” Tsai said.

But she added: “We will not engage in a meaningless contest of dollar diplomacy with China.”

“They cannot erode the Taiwanese people’s staunch commitment to freedom and democracy or our determination to engage wholeheartedly with the world,” Tsai said.

The Taiwanese foreign ministry said 82 years of bilateral friendship and cooperation had been “dismissed” by the Castro government.

“Taiwan remains unbowed & continues to work as a force for good in the world,” the ministry said via its official Twitter account.

Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said his government “will not succumb” to pressure and intimidation from Beijing. 

“We will uphold the values of freedom and democracy,” Wu said. Honduras’ move comes after Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica all switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing in recent years.

China’s foreign ministry said Beijing “stands ready to enhance friendly cooperation with Honduras in various fields to the benefit of our two countries and peoples.”

Analysts said the timing of Honduras’ decision could be linked to the fact that Tsai is gearing up for a 10-day trip to the Americas on March 29 with stopovers in New York and Los Angeles. 

When then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, Beijing embarked on several days of military exercises, including live-fire missile launches, around Taiwan.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Hsia Hsiao-hwa and Hwang Chun-mei for RFA Mandarin.

Dade Phelan, the Republican speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, sounded mostly triumphant delivering speech at a right-wing think tank in Austin earlier this month. “Eleven-hundred people come here every single day,” the fourth-generation real estate developer told a friendly audience at the Texas Public Policy Foundation as he laid out his party’s objectives in the final weeks of the state’s legislative session.

“They’re voting with their feet,” Phelan said of the newcomers. “They know we’re a conservative state. They know we value the Second Amendment. They know we value life, and they know we value religious liberty.” These people are “fleeing states like California, New Jersey, New York, and Illinois for a very good reason,” the speaker argued, because Texas is “the land of opportunity.”

The news wasn’t all good though. The promise of opportunity had consequences, which would require a stiff response from the state’s residents. “In southeast Texas we care about four things, which is God, the Second Amendment, babies, and the border,” Phelan said. While Texas was doing great in the first three categories, “we have a long way to go on the border.” Luckily, the party has a plan. “Sometime next week,” Phelan vowed, “we are going to file a bill that is, I hope, going to make national headlines and change the conversation on border security, and hopefully take the battle all the way to the Supreme Court and allow Texas to protect its own border.”

“This dangerous, radical, and unconstitutional proposal which empowers border vigilantes to hunt migrants and racially profile Latinos is going to result in the death of innocent people.”

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“They know that it’s unconstitutional, that it’s bound to get challenged in the courts, and that is what they’re purposely doing.”

Speaker of the House Dade Phelan bangs a gavel in the House chamber at the State Capitol in Austin, Tex., on July 8, 2021.

Photo: Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images

“You can’t play to their hand, because if the Supreme Court sides with the state of Texas, it’s not going to be pretty.”

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

Florida's Republican governor and presumed 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is moving to expand his state's prohibition on classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity to all grades.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday denounced DeSantis' effort to broaden what critics call the "Don't Say Gay" law, describing it as "completely, utterly wrong."