The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete. For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs. All in all, approximately 75 precision-guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.

Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered. “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm. “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.” The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment. “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.” Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”

Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement. “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant. “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.” The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats. In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

This was a parade begging to be rained on. CNN and The New York Times supplied it. Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months”. The strikes had sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but they were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings. Sceptical expertise murmured through the report: to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.”

Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over. The fate of over 400 kg of uranium, which had been enriched to 60% purity, is unclear, as is the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges. Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament.

After mulling over the attacks for a week, Grossi revisited the matter. The attacks on the facilities had caused severe, though “not total” damage. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.” Tehran could, “in a matter of months,” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.” Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

Efforts to question the thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish. “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”

Hegseth similarly raged against the importance placed on the DIA report. In a press conference on June 26, he bemoaned the tendency of the press corps to “cheer against Trump so hard, it’s like in your DNA and in your blood”. The scribblers had to “cheer against the efficacy of these strikes” with “half-truths, spun information, leaked information”. Trump, for his part, returned to familiar ground, attacking any questioning narrative as “Fake News”. CNN, he seethed, had some of the dumbest anchors in the business. With malicious glee, he claimed knowledge of rumours that reporters from both CNN and The New York Times were going to be sacked for making up those “FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong.”

A postmodern nonsense has descended on the damage assessments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, leaving the way clear for overremunerated soothsayers. But there was nothing postmodern in the incalculable damage done to the law of nations, a body of acknowledged rules rendered brittle and breakable before the rapacious legislators of the jungle.

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

Since then, several Pakistani X handles and media houses are claiming that Lieutenant General M V Suchindra Kumar has been detained because he publicly blamed the Indian government for the Pahalgam terror incident.

Pakistani journalist Maleeha Hashme posted a report from a Pakistani news channel claiming that Lieutenant General M V Suchindra Kumar had been sacked and summoned to Delhi. Sharing this news, Maleeha claimed that the Indian Army officer had accepted responsibility for the Pahalgam incident and was subsequently sacked. (Archive link)

An X user named ‘Pakistan Strategic Prism’ also tweeted that Lieutenant General M V Suchindra Kumar had been detained for violating military protocol because he blamed the Indian government for the Pahalgam attack. (Archive link)

A user named Taimur Malik tweeted that the Modi government sacked and detained India’s Northern Army Commander Lieutenant General M V Suchindra Kumar because he had refused to attack Pakistan after the Pahalgam incident. Lieutenant General Prateek Sharma will be appointed in his place on May 1, this user claimed. (Archive link)

Pakistani media outlets Times of Karachi, Dunya News, Geo News Urdu and other Pakistani social media users also made similar claims.

Fact Check

When we searched for keywords related to Lieutenant General M V Suchindra Kumar, we found a report from Indian news agency United News of India dated April 20, 2025. This report clearly states that Lieutenant General Suchindra Kumar is retiring on April 30 and Lieutenant General Prateek Sharma would take over as the new Commander of the Northern Command headquartered in Udhampur.

It is clear from this that the news that Lieutenant General Suchindra Kumar is retiring at his pre-determined time was published even before the terrorist incident in Pahalgam on 22 April. Therefore, his retirement has no connection with the Pahalgam terrorist attack.

The fact-check unit of the Union government, too, denied the news of the detention of Lieutenant General M V Suchindra Kumar amplified by Pakistani users and media, and said that Lieutenant General Kumar was to retire on April 30. Lieutenant General Prateek Sharma would succeed him.

Several pro-Pakistan social media accounts falsely claim that Northern Commander Lt Gen Suchindra Kumar has been removed from his post after the Pahalgam incident#PIBFactCheck

The claims being made in these posts are #fake

Lt. Gen MV Suchindra Kumar is attaining… pic.twitter.com/MogYJABl1Z

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) April 30, 2025

To sum up, several Pakistani media outlets and social media users falsely claimed that Lt. Gen M V Suchindra Kumar had publicly blamed the Indian government for the Pahalgam terror incident and was sacked and/or detained.

The post Pahalgam: Pak media falsely claims Indian Army Lt Gen M V Suchindra Kumar sacked, detained, following attack appeared first on Alt News.

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

The post #7. Military Personnel Target Gen Z Recruits with Lurid Social Media Tactics appeared first on Project Censored.

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

Before the military seized power in a February 2021 coup, there were about two dozen ethnic armed groups – the largest of them having tens of thousands of fighters in their ranks.

Since the coup, more than 250 People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, have emerged, with tens of thousands more people under arms. Among them are young adults who have swapped a civilian life in the Myanmar heartland to fight for freedom.

Some fight alongside the battle-hardened ethnic armies in border regions -- finding common cause against a military that toppled an elected government and stole their dreams of democracy.

The military brands these fighters as terrorists bent on splitting the nation. But it’s the coup itself that has splintered Myanmar.

More than three years of fighting has displaced more than 3 million people inside the country, and refugees continue to spill across borders to the west, south and east. While the military maintains control of the country’s largest cities, anti-junta forces have made unprecedented territorial gains.

Many of Myanmar’s Gen Z fighters dream of a federal system of government in which this multi-ethnic nation’s many constituencies agree to share power. Those hopes remain distant, so what will the future bring?

For the first time since the coup, an RFA team based outside of the country has returned to Myanmar to speak to people on the front lines in one eastern region to learn about their stories – and their hopes for the revival of their blood-stained country.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Aye Aye Mon and Chan Aung, RFA Burmese.

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante

It may be the most under-reported story of the entire 2024 presidential race;  the ever-widening gender divide among young voters identified as Gen-Z (18-29 year olds).  The Harris campaign is touting its appeal to young voters and pointing to high levels of enthusiasm and voter registration levels among youth as evidence of its mounting edge over Donald Trump this November.

But the campaign is also concealing a disturbing reality:  young male voters are increasingly tilting toward Trump, keeping the former president highly competitive and posing a growing threat to Harris in the swing states.

In Pennsylvania, for example, Trump is spending heavily on niche messaging to Gen-Z males, one of the reasons he’s narrowing the gap with Harris – and in some polls, now leading her.  How wide is the chasm between Gen Z men and women?  It’s enormous.  In fact there’s an astonishing 50-point spread between these two groups on key policy issues like cutting taxes and cracking down on illegal immigration – and unless the margin is reduced, a high Gen-Z turn out could end up handing the race to Trump.

This trend is recent – but not entirely new.  Since 2016, according to the survey firm APData, a growing percentage of young males have been registering as Republicans  In fact, about 47% of Gen Z men now identify as GOP, compared to just 33% eight years ago.  Many of these young men became drawn to Trump during his first term in office, but as more youth have come of voting age, the tilt towards the GOP – and to Trump – has become even more pronounced, APData research shows.

For Gen Z women, the trend is completely reversed. Especially since the Dobbs decision, and even more so with the replacement of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as the Democratic party standard-bearer, younger women have flocked to the Democrats in ever-increasing numbers.

Pollsters say the two groups’ vastly different life experiences – and gnawing anxieties over the future – are driving their ever widening partisan divide.  In polls, Gen Z men say they are especially concerned about their mounting student debt and their dwindling job, income and homeownership prospects – which they largely blame on the Biden-Harris regime.  They also cite illegal immigration as a top concern, again blaming the current administration.  Gen Z women, by contrast, say they’re far more afraid of threats to their reproductive rights – which they blame on Trump – and see Harris as a vital protector of those rights and as a positive role model and inspiration to women.

Don’t young women also fear for their economic future?  They do, but men and women aren’t necessarily facing the same challenges.  Women’s position in the labor market has actually become considerably stronger in recent years, while that of young men has weakened, according to labor force data.  This is especially true for young non-college educated males, whose position has fallen the greatest, creating a groundswell of resentment and anger that Trump has successfully exploited.

By contrast, women make up 60% of all new college graduates and their position in the labor market has reached record heights – 87% are now gainfully employed.  These women, mostly unmarried, are flocking to Harris in large numbers now, while married women with children tend to support Trump and the GOP.

The gender divide is also sharp on the issue that Biden and Harris have placed at the core of their youth campaign outreach:  student loan debt forgiveness.  Gen-Z women still account for two-thirds of all student loans and favor debt forgiveness by a whopping 45 points, according to polls conducted by the Wall Street Journal.  By contrast, Gen Z males are more evenly divided on this issue.  But the economic policy divide actually runs much deeper, the Journal found.  Young males favor extending Trump’s corporate and individual tax cuts by 23 points, while young females oppose them by 20 points – an astounding 43 point divide.

Researchers say that Gen-Z men aren’t necessarily as conservative as they might seem.  Instead, they view their GOP registration as a badge of defiance and a protest against what they perceive as growing “discrimination” against men in the society at large.  Many view the rise of the #MeToo movement – which has catalyzed a massive female leftward trend – as a broadside against masculinity and an attempt to stigmatize all men as toxic and dangerous – and they’re rebelling, by signaling support for Trump even though they don’t necessarily buy into the entire MAGA doctrine

To be sure, in the current Trump-Harris face-off, there’s a sharp gender divide among all voters, not just youth. Trump is now up by high double-digits among men while Harris leads among women with somewhat smaller double digit margins.  The country hasn’t witnessed a pronounced gender gap like this one for years.  And it may get even larger as the race continues to unfold.

But the gap among younger men and women is far wider, polls show, suggesting that the two genders may soon inhabit entirely different policy universes with ever-deepening divisions in party registration and political ideology.   The longer-term political consequences could be severe, pollsters say regardless of which candidate wins in November.

But Harris and Trump aren’t doing anything to reduce the gender gap – in fact, the two campaigns are accentuating it.  Harris, for example, is single mindedly targeting young unmarried – and sexually vulnerable – women on college campuses  with messaging that depicts Trump’s partnership with his youthful running mate J.D. Vance as a cross-generational “bromance” exclusive to toxic female-bashing men.  Vance’s own past statements referring to unmarried women as “cat ladies” less deserving of the voting rights and benefits accorded to married women have also damaged his standing.  Some of these attacks are fair game, but depictions of the happily married VP as a college-age sexual deviant and “weirdo” who can’t be trusted around women – based on smears and innuendo alone – have further torpedoed Vance’s favorability rating – but in the process, may also be alienating Gen Z men, setting the stage for backlash.

How has the Trump campaign responded?  By targeting their own outreach and messaging exclusively at young men – with the same determination and not-so-subtle gender bias.  Trump has made a number of highly-publicized appearances at sports fighting events frequented primarily by young men, including men of color.  He’s also invited prominent rap music singers Lil Uzi Vert known for their amped-up masculine lyrics to perform  at his rallies while publicly embracing popular macho celebrities like professional wrestler Logan Paul.  And Trump’s burgeoning alliance with RFK Jr., who extols his own ageless athleticism and bravado on YouTube and Tik Tok videos and whose anti-vaccine views tend to find favor with men, is deliberately calculated to attract larger numbers of Gen Z males to his campaign.

There are growing signs that the youth gender gap is not just wide but beginning to favor Trump – by a lot.  The very latest New York Times/Siena College poll, released last week, found that an overwhelming 67% of Gen Z women plan to vote for Kamala Harris, while just 29% say they’ll back Donald Trump. By contrast, among young men, a clear majority – 53% – plan to vote for Trump, while 40% say they’ll support Harris.  That’s an astonishing – and unprecedented –  51-percentage-point gender gap, pollsters report.

The Harris campaign isn’t completely oblivious to the gender gap but seems to be making some potentially costly assumptions while largely ignoring it.  One is that young women generally vote in higher numbers than younger men – and the same is likely to be true of Gen Z.   Therefore, the emphasis is on driving up female voter turnout, emphasizing reproductive rights and threats to women generally in the hopes of simply overshadowing young male support for Trump.  The campaign is also trying to tout Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff and her VP running mate Tim Walz as positive male role models.  A number of female columnists have been enlisted to write profiles extolling both men’s gender virtues – counterposing them to Trump’s well-documented boorish and sexist behavior.

But there’s little evidence that this approach is deflecting growing male support for Trump across all age groups, but especially youth.  In July, Harris led Trump among all Gen Z voters by 22 points; by August, her lead had fallen to 14; in the latest Times/ Siena poll, her margin had shrunk to just 8 points.  If current trends hold, Trump may well regain the parity with Gen Z voters that he enjoyed when Biden was still the Democratic standard-bearer – a potential disaster.

With so little time left in the race, it’s incumbent upon Harris to get out of denial and squarely address its gender gap with young male voters.  Openly acknowledge the perceptions and concerns of young men – and make the case for why Democratic policies offer a better solution than Trump’s.  Young men do have their own legitimate perceptions and aspirations in the world and these aren’t just shaped by gender power dynamics – much less women’s perception of them.  This is a longer term problem for Democrats and speaks to how they plan to address divisive culture war issues moving forward.  Some swing states, including Georgia and North Carolina, do have entrenched conservative White male cultures. Youth in these settings aren’t necessarily as socialized or even exposed to the more enlightened gender and race cultures one one finds in Blue states and their cosmopolitan cities. Likewise, young Hispanic men in states like Nevada and especially Arizona, which like Georgia, barely flipped Blue in 2020, are still steeped in traditional values. especially on abortion and LGBTQ issues.

But it doesn’t help Democrats or the Harris campaign when they simply attack vestiges of racism or sexism in American politics, and blame them for resistance to Harris’ candidacy.  One Harris campaign director said young men are becoming “drunk on misogyny,” an exaggerated broad-brush claim that glosses over real sources of legitimate disagreements in gender attitudes and leaves young men – and men generally – stigmatized and simply beyond reach, politically.  For a campaign that needs every vote it can still get, such dismissiveness can become a self-fulfilling – and self-defeating – prophecy.

Trump has already exploited the Gen Z gender gap to make massive inroads with disaffected young men – and these efforts will continue over the next two months.  The former president is in the process of expanding his digital ad campaigns on YouTube and Tik Tok, as well as Twitch and Kick, where a large number of highly conservative male influencers hold sway.  Trump credits his 18-year old son Barron with first introducing him to the power of online vehicles to reach disaffected young men, including young Black influencers like Solomon Brent who hosts a YouTube channel that broadcasts daily to millions.  Computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman, who also enjoys a large audience of mostly younger men, says he’s planning to host an episode with Trump in October.  Adin Ross, a controversial broadcaster known for his extreme right-wing views, has already hosted one show with Trump, and plans several more before election day.

There’s no room for error here.  Young voters are now the fastest growing voter group in America today – with 41 million eligible voters overall.  From a record-breaking 39% turnout in 2016, their numbers ballooned even higher – to roughly 50% in 2020 – a factor that helped deliver the presidency to Biden.  But there’s a danger that an even higher turn out in 2024 won’t actually favor the Democrats, not in the margins needed to defeat Trump.

“We’re all in this together,” Harris says  – and rightly so.  But where does that leave young men who feel, rightly or wrongly, that America is prepared to leave them behind?  Harris already has young women firmly behind her – and they’re not about to abandon her now.  Finding creative ways to pivot back to men, especially young men, with more explicit and balanced gender messaging is essential to prevent further hemorrhaging of her support among all Gen Z voters that could well prove catastrophic in November.

The post Widening Gender Divide Among Gen Z Voters Could Decide the 2024 Race appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Stewart Lawrence.

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

It was a theme the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner hit repeatedly throughout his remarks at Drake Enterprises, a truck parts manufacturer that offered to host Trump's rally: The electric vehicle transition and the Biden administration's efforts to accelerate it are going to send jobs overseas and leave the U.S. automobile industry in ruins.

"It doesn't make a damn bit of difference what you get because in two years you're all going to be out of business, you're not getting anything," Trump said. "I mean, I watch you out there with the pickets, but I don't think you're picketing for the right thing."

The former president repeatedly and falsely accused the Biden administration of attempting to bring about a "transition to hell" and impose "electric vehicle mandates that will spell the death of the American auto industry," a narrative that was also prominent during the Republican primary debate that Trump skipped.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden's 2024 reelection campaign, said in response that Trump is "lying about President Biden's agenda to distract from his failed track record of trickle-down tax cuts, closed factories, and jobs outsourced to China." During Trump's four years in office, the offshoring of U.S. jobs increased.

"There is no 'EV mandate.' Simply put: Trump had the United States losing the EV race to China and if he had his way, the jobs of the future would be going to China," said Munoz. "President Biden is delivering where Donald Trump failed by bringing manufacturing back home, and with it, good-paying jobs for the American people."

As HuffPost's Jonathan Cohn reported late Wednesday, "Since Biden took office in January 2021, total auto industry employment in the U.S. has risen from about 948,000 to 1,073,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a monthly rate of about 4,000 new auto jobs a month."

Challenging the notion that the Biden administration's EV policies are imperiling the U.S. auto industry, Cohn noted that electric vehicle subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act "will close the cost gap so that companies manufacturing electric vehicles and their parts can compete."

"And there are lots of signs that the effort is working," Cohn wrote. "Auto companies have announced plans to build literally dozens of new factories in the U.S., many in what's coming to be known as the 'battery belt,' stretching from Georgia in the South to Michigan in the North. They are expected to generate hundreds of thousands of jobs directly, plus many more (along with economic growth) indirectly."

The UAW leadership has made clear that, unlike Trump, it doesn't oppose the transition to electric vehicles.

Rather, the union wants policymakers to ensure that EV manufacturing jobs are unionized. UAW president Shawn Fain has criticized Biden—who joined union members on the picket line earlier this week—for not doing enough to prevent a "race to the bottom" in the EV transition as automakers increasingly invest in the nonunion U.S. South.

Fain has also not been shy about his feelings toward the former president.

"I don't think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for," Fain said in a CNN appearance on Tuesday. "He serves the billionaire class, and that's what's wrong with this country."

"People are trying to push that this is organic, but it's not. Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off."

Trump—who has repeatedly called on the UAW to endorse his presidential run—didn't respond Wednesday when asked by a reporter whether he supports the union's push for a nearly 40% wage increase for autoworkers, who have seen their hourly pay decline sharply over the past two decades.

During his speech, Trump "didn't specifically address demands made by autoworkers, other than to say he would protect jobs in a way that would lead to higher wages," the Detroit Free Pressreported.

"But he left it unclear how he would do so," the newspaper added, "given that he didn't demand specific wage increases as president."

It's not clear how many union members were in the audience at Trump's speech, though some were waving "Auto Workers for Trump" and "Union Members for Trump" signs. One individual who held a "Union Members for Trump" sign during the rally admitted to a reporter for The Detroit News that she's not a union member.

"Another person with a sign that read 'Auto Workers for Trump' said he wasn't an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn't provide their names," the outlet reported.

Chris Marchione, political director of the International Union of Painters and Allied TradesDistrict Council 1M in Michigan, toldJacobin's Alex Press that at least one local "right-to-work" activist assisted the Trump campaign in organizing Wednesday's rally.

"People are trying to push that this is organic, but it's not," Marchione said. "Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off. If he wants to support union workers, pay the fucking glaziers who got screwed when they put the windows on Trump Tower."

Ahead of Trump's Michigan visit, the AFL-CIO said in a statement that Trump's presidency was "catastrophic for workers," pointing to his anti-union appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, defense of so-called "right-to-work" laws, repeal of Labor Department rules aimed at protecting worker pay, and failure to protect manufacturing jobs.

"The idea that Donald Trump has ever, or will ever, care about working people is demonstrably false," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. "For his entire time as president, he actively sought to roll back worker protections, wages, and the right to join a union at every level."

"UAW members are on the picket line fighting for fair wages and against the very corporate greed that Donald Trump represents," Shuler added. "Working people see through his transparent efforts to reinvent history. We are not buying the lies that Donald Trump is selling. We will continue to support and organize for the causes and candidates that represent our values."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

New Zealand’s Stuff media group has joined other leading news organisations around the world in restricting Open AI from using its content to power artificial intelligence tool Chat GPT.

A growing number of media companies globally have taken action to block access to Open AI bots from crawling and scraping content from their news sites.

Open AI is behind the most well-known and fastest-growing artificial intelligence chatbots, Chat GPT, released late 2022.

• READ MORE:  Is it ethical to have AI generate content?
• Other Gen AI reports

“The scraping of any content from Stuff or its news masthead sites for commercial gain has always been against our policy,” says Stuff CEO Laura Maxwell. “But it is important in this new era of Generative AI that we take further steps to protect our intellectual property.”

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) is the name given to technologies that use vast amounts of information scraped from the internet to train large language models (LLMs).

This enables them to generate seemingly original answers — in text, visuals or other media — to queries based on mathematically predicting the most likely right answer to a prompt or dialogue.

Some of the most well-known Gen AI tools include Open AI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E, and Google’s Bard.

Surge of unease
There has been a surge of unease from news organisations, artists, writers and other creators of original content that their work has already been harvested without permission, knowledge or compensation by Open AI or other tech companies seeking to build new commercial products through Gen AI technology.

“High quality, accurate and credible journalism is of great value to these businesses, yet the business model of journalism has been significantly weakened as a result of their growth off the back of that work,” said Maxwell.

“The news industry must learn from the mistakes of the past, namely what happened in the era of search engines and social media, where global tech giants were able to build businesses of previously unimaginable scale and influence off the back of the original work of others.

“We recognise the value of our work to Open AI and others, and also the huge risk that these new tools pose to our existence if we do not protect our IP now.”

There is also increasing concern these tools will exacerbate the spread of disinformation and misinformation globally.

“Content produced by journalists here and around the world is the cornerstone of what makes these Gen AI tools valuable to the user,” Maxwell said.

“Without it, the models would be left to train on a sea of dross, misinformation and unverified information on the internet — and increasingly that will become the information that has itself been already generated by AI.

Risk of ‘eating itself’
“There is a risk the whole thing will end up eating itself.”

Stuff and other news companies have been able to block Open AI’s access to their content because its web crawler, GPTBot, is identifiable.

But not all crawlers are clearly labelled.

Stuff has also updated its site terms and conditions to expressly bar the use of its content to train AI models owned by any other company, as well as any other unauthorised use of its content for commercial use.

Earlier this year The Washington Post published a tool that detailed all major New Zealand news websites were already being used by OpenAI.

OpenAI has entered into negotiations with some news organisations in the United States, notably Associated Press, to license their content to train ChatGPT.

So far these agreements have not been widespread although a number of news companies globally are seeking licensing arrangements.

Maxwell said Stuff was looking forward to holding conversations around licensing its content in due course.

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

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

Image by Yuan Rong Gong.

We’re over three months out from the official end of the COVID state of emergency, declared in the US on May 11, yet its tremendous social upheaval is only beginning to manifest. It will take us many years to reckon with COVID’s full toll, but its malign effects are already evident. My generation, adrift well before the pandemic, finds itself more unmoored than ever. Preexisting mental health, debt, and underemployment crises have all worsened. The brunt of long COVID, an inflation crisis, astronomical rents, and the turbulence of readjusting to office life after years of fear and social isolation all conspire to render life nearly unbearable for millions of members of my cohort, the millennials.

More

The post Lost Generations? Millennials and Gen Z in a Post-Pandemic World appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Scott Remer.

The post Military Personnel Using Lurid Social Media Tactics to Target Gen Z Recruits appeared first on Project Censored.

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

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

In response to U.S. President Joe Biden's Tuesday announcement that he is seeking reelection in 2024, four youth-led advocacy groups urged the incumbent to push for progressive priorities during the remainder of his first term and campaign on policies that motivate young voters to cast ballots for him.

In a letter addressed to Biden, March for Our Lives, Gen Z for Change, Sunrise Movement, and United We Dream Action wrote: "If we're going to excite one of the leading voting blocs for Democrats, we need you to deliver the bold ideas that our generation cannot live without—stop the climate crisis, fight for the rights and dignity of immigrants, impose real gun control—and run on a bold platform that will get our generation out to vote."

"As the organizers of millions of young people across the country, we know that in order to secure wins against fascism in the 2024 presidential election, Millennials and Gen Z will have to turn out to vote in full force," the groups argued, sounding the alarm about the dire consequences likely to ensue if the increasingly authoritarian Republican Party takes control of the White House.

"Young people are not just a necessary part of a winning Democratic coalition, but the keystone precondition for Democratic victory... When Democrats energize and mobilize our generations, they win elections. When they don't, they lose."

"Following the results of 2018, 2020, 2022, and most recently the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in 2023, it is clear that young people are not just a necessary part of a winning Democratic coalition, but the keystone precondition for Democratic victory," says the letter. "The equation is simple. When Democrats energize and mobilize our generations, they win elections. When they don't, they lose."

"Going into 2024, our youth coalition is deeply committed to defeating fascist, right-wing extremism and the eventual Republican presidential nominee," the letter continues. "Young people are clear that the runaway extremism of abortion bans, threats to trans students, criminalization of immigrants, and the all-out assault on our climate are existential threats to our generation and generations to come."

However, when the Biden administration makes "bad decisions"—such as approving the Willow oil drilling venture and other fossil fuel projects, entertaining the revival of migrant family detentions, or otherwise "settling for the status quo"—it becomes "harder for us to get young people to the polls," the groups lamented. "That's why we need you to listen and co-govern with us if we're going to be able to mobilize the young voters we need to win."

The organizations implored Biden "to lead with our generation's values and policies at the forefront of your campaign and your next year in office," contending that his 2020 platform was essential to defeating former President Donald Trump—who is seeking the Republican nomination for 2024 despite facing various legal issues—and that progressive policymaking, particularly last summer, inspired the young voters who ultimately minimized the Democratic Party's losses in the 2022 midterms.

In the spring of 2022, "young voters were largely disillusioned with politics and were not excited to vote," states the letter. "That changed once you passed a historic climate bill, passed overdue gun safety legislation, and sought to cancel student loan debt—resulting in the second-highest youth midterm turnout in the past 30 years. Now, more than ever, we cannot abandon this two-part strategy—run on bold ideas young people can rally behind and have significant legislative victories to back them up."

"We urge you to not leave our generation behind as you build your new campaign. Do not take our generation for granted."

"Going into the 2024 presidential election, it is clear that our opponents are getting even more ruthless and extreme," the groups warned. "Across the country we've seen abortion bans, transgender bathroom bans, [and] book bans in schools imposed by Republican extremists. We've seen Republican electeds say they will do nothing to stop gun violence, expel those who disagree with them from office, and attempt to ban educational opportunities and threaten the livelihood of immigrants in our communities. They must be stopped."

"We urge you to not leave our generation behind as you build your new campaign," says the letter. "Do not take our generation for granted."

"We are a generation that grew up through crisis—from watching storms decimate our communities to practicing school shooter drills to living through a global pandemic," the letter adds. "Throughout all of these crises, young people have shown up to demand the transformational change the country needs. We are fighters for a better world. That will not change in 2024."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

From climate campaigners on TikTok to former Vice President Al Gore, people who care about the planet across the United States are pressuring the Biden administration to block ConocoPhillips' multibillion-dollar Willow oil project in Alaska.

The U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published a notice of availability regarding its final supplemental environmental impact statement for the proposed Willow Master Development Plan in the Federal Register on February 6. It said that a final decision for the project would come no earlier than 30 days from then.

Leading up to the BLM's decision—which ConocoPhillips chairman and CEO Ryan Lance expects this week—opponents have stressed scientists' warnings about the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground if humanity has any chance of preventing catastrophic global heating and meeting the Paris climate agreement's 1.5°C target for this century.

Announced by the Houston-based company in 2017, the 30-year development in the National Petroleum Reserve would produce up to 180,0000 barrels of oil a day at its peak and release over 9.2 metric tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide annually.

"We don't need to prop up the fossil fuel industry with new, multiyear projects that are a recipe for climate chaos."

"Some Native Alaskan Iñupiaq have also raised serious concerns about the project's local environmental impacts, including disturbance to local wildlife, disruption to traditional hunting practices, and a decline in air quality," BBC Newsnoted Friday.

Gore, a longtime environmentalist, acknowledged both local and global concerns on Friday in comments to The Guardian.

"The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska is recklessly irresponsible," he said. "The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska Native and other local communities at risk, it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net-zero future."

"We don't need to prop up the fossil fuel industry with new, multiyear projects that are a recipe for climate chaos," Gore continued. "Instead, we must end the expansion of oil, gas, and coal and embrace the abundant climate solutions at our fingertips."

Climate advocacy groups have been sending President Joe Biden and U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that same message.

After the White House released its budget blueprint on Thursday, Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said that the "proposed budget—especially its investments in clean energy, jobs, and an end to oil and gas subsidies—is the kind of thing young people in this country want to see ahead of 2024."

"But President Biden has the power to act on climate and issues important to our generation without having to go through a Republican House," Prakash added. "He can reject the Willow Project, which goes against his own agenda to stop the climate crisis, and can do everything in his executive authority, like declaring a climate emergency and invoking the Defense Production Act, to jump-start our transition to clean energy."

Though Willow is backed by Alaska's three-member congressional delegation, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and the state Legislature, opponents of the project have taken social media by storm with the hashtag #StopWillow.

"I have never seen so many videos, so many comments, mentions about a climate topic on social media," 26-year-old Alaina Wood, a scientist and climate activist with more than 353,500 followers on the video platform TikTok, toldThe Washington Post Tuesday.

Elise Joshi, a 20-year-old University of California, Berkeley student and acting executive director of the nonprofit Gen-Z for Change, posted one of the earliest TikTok videos about the project, which now has over 300,000 views. She emphasized that "this is not environmentalist groups."

"This is young people as a whole, as a voter base, taking action," Joshi explained to the Post. "With Willow, this is one of the biggest actions we've ever seen on TikTok go forward. It has shown that we are willing to fight."

A Change.org petition urging Biden to stop Willow—now signed by more than 3 million people and promoted by groups including the Indigenous-led NDN Collective—declares that "there must come a point where human health, food security, environmental justice, and a functioning ecosystem come before corporate profit."

Pointing to the growing support for the petition, Alex Haraus, a 25-year-old TikTok creator whose Willow videos have millions of views, toldCNN, "If that doesn't emphasize the fact that it's everyday Americans pushing back, I don't know what does."

"This is not an environmental movement, it's much larger than that," Haraus added. "It's the American public that can vote."

Hazel Thayer, another climate activist who has posted TikTok videos with #StopWillow, toldThe Associated Press Wednesday that the proposed Big Oil project is "just so blatantly bad for the planet."

"With all of the progress that the U.S. government has made on climate change, it now feels like they're turning their backs by allowing Willow to go through," Thayer said. "I think a lot of young people are feeling a little bit betrayed by that."

Quannah Chasinghorse—a Han Gwich'in and Sicangu/Oglala Lakota land protector, climate justice activist, and fashion model from Eagle Village, Alaska and the tribes of South Dakota—wrote Friday in a CNN opinion piece opposing the project that "I've been inspired by the chorus of voices who have joined me."

"To date, #StopWillow (and related) videos from a diverse array of young creators have around 300 million direct views on TikTok alone," Chasinghorse noted. "In a matter of just a few days, #StopWillow catapulted to the top of social media conversations."

"As I watch millions of people join the #StopWillow movement, these staggering numbers send a clear message that today's youth expect President Biden and Secretary Haaland to step up," she added. "It reflects a game-changing trend that astute leaders should not ignore: They must deliver the climate leadership they promised by taking bold action to stop the Willow climate disaster before it's too late."

Even if the Biden administration gives Willow the green light, that approval is expected to be met with legal challenges.

"I think that litigation is very likely," Earthjustice senior attorney Jeremy Lieb told The Guardian. “We and our clients don't see any acceptable version of this project."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden's State of the Union address scheduled for Tuesday evening, four national youth-led advocacy groups on Monday warned the president that a continued failure to deliver on his promises to young voters could jeopardize his chances of a second term in the White House.

The Sunrise Movement, March for Our Lives, United We Dream Action, and Gen Z for Change reminded Biden in a statement that they helped convince young Americans "to defend our democracy in record numbers in 2020 and in 2022"—and those voters are expecting the president to work in their best interest and enact policies they have long championed.

"We are a vital voting bloc, and in the next two years, President Biden must listen to us and deliver," tweeted the Sunrise Movement, which has been credited with pushing more than 100 Democratic lawmakers to co-sponsor the Green New Deal.

“We need to see more from President Biden," said the organizations. "Without a Democratic majority in Congress, President Biden must step up and use the full extent of his power to invest in the top issues facing our generation. Young people demand bold action on climate change and gun violence, and we need solutions for our country's immigration system that respect people's rights and keep families together."

"In the last two years, young people, especially young people of color, organized to push the Biden administration to cancel student loan debt, make record investments to combat the climate crisis, and to undo some of the most heinous Trump-era policies."

Polls showed after the midterm elections in November that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 supported Democrats by a 28-point margin, and that turnout among young voters was the second-highest for a midterm election in three decades. Young voters of color particularly helped Biden's party to avoid the "red wave" that political observers predicted, with 87% of Black youth and 67% of Latino young voting for Democratic House candidates, compared to 57% of young white voters.

Young voters nationwide also helped "lead Biden to victory" in 2020, reported the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Just over half of white young voters supported Biden, while 73% and 87% of Latino and Black young voters, respectively, backed him.

Groups including the Sunrise Movement and Gen Z for Change have been instrumental not just in get-out-the-vote efforts, but also pushing the president to secure broadly popular reforms, including student loan debt cancellation.

"In the last two years, young people, especially young people of color, organized to push the Biden administration to cancel student loan debt, make record investments to combat the climate crisis, and to undo some of the most heinous Trump-era policies," said the groups.

They demanded that he end the anti-immigration policy Title 42, which he expanded last month, and declare a climate emergency and "invoke the Defense Production Act to expedite the U.S. transition to renewable energy."

Although Biden approved major renewable energy investments last year when he signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, the package also allowed for the expansion of fossil fuel use. Last week, his Bureau of Land Management gave partial approval for a major drilling project, a day after his Environmental Protection Agency blocked the Pebble Mine project.

In addition to pushing the president to deliver climate action and justice for asylum-seekers, the groups called on him to:

• Acknowledge the work of youth groups and activists when speaking to the achievements of the administration during the State of the Union;
• Declare a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented people;
• Defend the DACA policy in the courts and ensure the protection of immigrant youth from deportation;
• Declare the gun violence epidemic a national emergency;
• Establish an office of gun violence prevention to coordinate the federal response to the gun violence crisis; and
• Leverage the presidential bully pulpit and real power of the presidency to address gun violence through executive action.

The joint statement came as the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released poll results showing just 37% of Democrats want Biden to run for a second term, down from 52% just before the midterms. The president has not officially stated whether he will seek reelection.

"Young people are the largest voting bloc in this country," said the groups. "We made the difference in electing President Biden in 2020, saved Democrats again in 2022, and if President Biden wants to hold Democratic power long-term, he must listen to us and deliver."

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

Saddled with student debt and, in many cases, spending the early years of their professional lives working during the Covid-19 pandemic, members of Generation Z are proving to be the most pro-worker generation in the United States today, according to recent research.

As Marketplacereported Tuesday, although union membership in the U.S. as of 2021 had fallen to about half the rate seen in the early 1980s, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began tracking unionized workplaces, approval of labor unions among Americans has gone up steadily in the last several years.

Gallup reported last year that 71% of Americans now approve of labor unions, up from 64% before the pandemic. According to a poll released in October by the Center for American Progress (CAP), 64.3% of Generation Zers—born between 1997 and 2012—approve of unions, while 60% of Millennials support them and the mean approval rating among Baby Boomers and Generation X hovers around 58%.

Aurelia Glass, author of CAP's report on the poll, noted that Gen Zers not only back unions more than older generations today, but are "more supportive than Gen Xers and baby boomers were at our age."

"Gen Z is the most pro-union generation alive in America today," Glass told Marketplace.

The reporting comes more than a year into a nationwide unionization push at Starbucks, led by workers including Jaz Brisack, who is in her mid-20s and who the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found last week had been illegally forced out of her job by the coffee chain, and Michelle Eisen, who is in her late 30s. Other young labor leaders who have emerged during the pandemic include Christian Smalls, who was fired from his job at an Amazon warehouse in 2020 and went on to form the Amazon Labor Union, leading his former coworkers to vote in favor of forming the retail giant's first union last year.

The unionization push—which includes workers from across generational divides—comes as corporate profits and executive compensation have skyrocketed, with the wage gap between CEOs and workers jumping to 670-to-1 in 2021 from 604-to-1 the previous year.

Meanwhile, noted Marketplace on Tuesday, many members of Generation Z "don't earn enough to afford basic expenses—rent, health insurance, student loan payments—all at the same time," making them more likely to support forming collective bargaining units that would allow workers to negotiate higher wages and better benefits.

"Some analyses show that in the U.S., Gen Z have about 86% less buying power than Baby Boomers did at the same age," reported the BBC in October.

The student loan crisis has contributed to that, with Generation Z members holding $20,900 in student debt of as June 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis—13% more than Millennials.

"Living with record levels of student debt, they're also a generation that's more educated, in some cases having earned multiple credentials," Jennifer Sherer, senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Policy Institute, told Marketplace, "and [are] then finding themselves making lower wages than prior generations or not seeing opportunities to advance in their careers."

Gen Zers have also observed a decline in economic wellbeing among older generations, Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told the outlet.

Since the early 1980s, when union membership stood at 20.1%, workers' wages have grown by 17.5% while productivity skyrocketed by more than 61%. Home ownership has also declined, with the rate among millennials about 8% lower in 2020 than it was for Generation X and Baby Boomers when they were in the same age group. Student debt and high living costs have been identified as a factor in the decline.

"Young people see that their parents are worse off than their grandparents. They're worse off than their parents," Bronfenbrenner told Marketplace. "They recognize that their lives have been impacted by the decline in unions, that the world was better off when there were more unions and they would have had more opportunities if there were more unions."

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

The midterm elections took some time to sort out. But one thing was made clear quickly: Gen Z voters are a force to be reckoned with—for both parties. That's a lesson elected officials need to start taking now—from this year's lame duck session to next year's divided government.

These voters are a force to be reckoned with, and they will only be getting stronger and more influential as more of them reach voting age.

One of the most significant reasons that the predicted Red Wave didn't occur is higher turnout among Gen Z and the youngest Millennial voters. According to exit polls, voters under 30 turned out at close to 30 percent for the midterm election—a historically high rate second only to their turnout in 2018.

Black youth broke nearly 90 percent for Democrats, as did almost 70 percent of Latinx youth. These are the highest percentages for Democrats of any demographics. Nearly 60 percent of white youth also broke Democratic.

Overall, voters aged 18-29 went 63 percent Democratic and just 35 percent Republican.

Compare this to Baby Boomers, who went nearly 55 percent Republican. Some 58 percent of white people overall backed Republicans. Those identifying female and college educated broke for Democrats, but not at margins approaching the youth vote. Wealthier Americans voted for Republicans. Older Millennials, aged 30 to 44, were split between parties.

By far, the largest margins for Democratic candidates came from voters under aged 18-29.

The future of the voting public should be clear to leaders of both parties.

But the deeper message is that younger voters aren't necessarily loyal to the Democratic party. They are voting on the issues that matter to them—and against the threats to democracy and their civil and human rights posed by the right wing. The youth voter organization YVote identifies gun control, bodily autonomy, LGBTQ rights, immigration, student debt relief, anti-racism, and criminal justice reform among the top issues for young people.

Insofar as the Democratic Party aligns with these interests, they will enjoy an edge with young voters.

This is the generation that grew up with the Sandy Hook school massacre and became politicized around gun control with the shocking 2018 Parkland, Florida school shooting, and more recently the massacre of elementary school children in Uvalde, Texas.

This is the generation of the Sunrise Movement and Greta Thunberg—Gen Zers fighting to stop the climate crisis. These are the nation's Dreamers who came to this country as children without documentation and are fighting for a path to citizenship in the only country they know as home.

This generation, the most racially and ethnically diverse in history, experienced the deaths of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and George Floyd at the hands of police. More than one in five of this generation identify as LGBTQ, and that number is expected to rise.

These young voters aren't just voting. They're also starting to run for office themselves—and winning.

Maxell Alejandro Frost, an Afro-Cuban American, age 25, made history as the youngest person to be sent to Congress, winning in the red state of Florida on a gun safety agenda.

Joe Vogel made history as a 25-year-old gay, Latino, Jewish immigrant elected to the Maryland state legislature. Vogel refused corporate campaign funding, reflecting Gen Z's critiques of a capitalist system that values profit over people and the planet.

Nabeela Syed, also 25, made history as a hijabi South Asian woman elected to the Illinois state legislature running against racism and hate in schools and for gender equity and common sense gun control.

Young voters also provided a crucial margin of victory for Democrats in such critical swing states as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin.

These voters are a force to be reckoned with, and they will only be getting stronger and more influential as more of them reach voting age.

However, elected officials will eventually need to deliver substantive change. With the power of these emerging Gen Z voters and candidates, whichever party can deliver on the issues that Gen Z turns out to run and to vote on is the party that will determine the future of America.

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

One of the issues that drove America's youth to vote in unusual numbers in the midterm elections, and to tilt heavily Democratic, is the climate emergency. It was up there with reproductive rights and gun safety as a key issue. A recent Harvard youth poll found that among these young people, "Democrats are moved by abortion (20%), protecting democracy (20%), inflation (19%), and climate change (16%). More than 7-in-10 young Americans (72%) believe that the rights of others are under attack, and 59% believe that their own rights are under attack."

According to a recent Blue Shield poll, some 75% of youth in America report that they have had panic attacks, depression, anxiety, stress and/or feelings of being overwhelmed when considering the issue of climate change.

Their feelings on the issues proved crucial, since many observers credit Gen Z with halting any red wave and with helping Biden emerge as the most successful president in the midterms in over 20 years.

Further, 63% of youth voted for Democrats, whereas only 35% voted Republican. Further, in one poll, 75% of youth said they are more likely to support a candidate for Congress who is "addressing climate change."

Where the climate implications of Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which promotes green energy and green transportation, were explained to them 69% of younger voters said they would be more likely to vote for a congressman who voted for the IRA. They know of Biden's green energy commitments, but they apparently do not think they go far enough. The youth seem to like Biden's policies and those of the Democratic Party even though they don't particularly care for Biden himself (or only 44% do).

The catastrophe of the human-caused climate emergency is going to fall more heavily on Gen Z or the "Zoomers"– people born between 1997 and 2012. Even if we can get to zero carbon emissions by 2050, some changes are already in train that likely cannot be ameliorated for a very long time. These young people's lives will be harder and more challenging than those of their predecessors.

And they know it. According to a recent Blue Shield poll, some 75% of youth in America report that they have had panic attacks, depression, anxiety, stress and/or feelings of being overwhelmed when considering the issue of climate change. Globally, many of these young people are even afraid to bring children into the world that is being produced by our high-carbon styles of life.

A small Green 2.0 poll found that 89% of youth say that climate change has already had an impact on their lives and 44% said that it has had a major impact on their lives.

It will be hot in 2050, and some very large glaciers may melt under those conditions, causing the sea level to rise even more than the projected 4-5 feet. We are already seeing mega-droughts, heat waves, wildfires and massive flooding, so imagine how chaotic the climate will be in 30 years if we go on putting billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually for the next two decades.

The good news is that temperatures would immediately stop rising if we went to zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, according to climate models, and then over time the oceans would absorb most of the extra CO2 we have spewed into the atmosphere in the past century and a half. If we do this right, the earth will be on the road to less severe climate impacts a century from now. But as John Maynard Keynes pointed out, "in the long run" we are all dead. A century from now is too far off to do the Zoomers much good.

Still, this is an area of life where early action will produce better outcomes sooner than later action. So, Gen Z is impatient to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions.

The Blue Shield poll found that 45% of US youth say that they have tried to reduce electricity use. Most electricity in the US is still produced by burning coal or fossil gas, with only 25% of our electricity being generated by sustainable sources. Hence, the less electricity used, the fewer greenhouse gases are generated.

They know, however, that such individual actions are not enough and that government must act. 81% of youth in the Blue Shield poll said that global leaders are not doing enough to combat climate change.

Imagine how furious they are when they hear Republican politicians deny that humans burning fossil fuels is radically altering our climate! Moreover, they know exactly how to express their displeasure. They helped turn a lot of the rascals out of office.

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

We go to Florida to speak with 25-year-old gun control activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who made history last week when he won the Democratic primary for an open U.S. House seat in Orlando. Frost is set to become the first Afro-Cuban and first member of Generation Z elected to Congress if he goes on to win November’s general election for Florida’s heavily Democratic 10th Congressional District. Frost discusses his decade as a movement organizer in Florida and breaks down his stance on Palestine, Cuba and how to reach Trump supporters in Florida.

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

Hours before activist Teesta Setalvad and former IPS officer RB Sreekumar were arrested, Home Minister Amit Shah gave an interview to ANI where he accused Setalvad of using her NGO to give baseless information to the police against the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Amidst all the chaos of the arrest and celebrations from one side of the political spectrum, various users on social media have claimed that Setalvad is the great-granddaughter of Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad, who was part of the Hunter Commission that gave a ‘clean chit’ to General Dyer on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. It is being insinuated that Setalvad’s family has a history of “betraying the nation”.

Kanchan Gupta, Senior Adviser at the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, was one of the many who tweeted the claim.

Fraud activist and ‘riot relief fund’ scamster Teesta Setalvad is great granddaughter of Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad who was member of the infamous ‘Hunter Commission’ on Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
Commission gave clean chit to General Dyer who ordered the firing on civilians.
n1 pic.twitter.com/6qGvAs3gDp

— Kanchan Gupta (@KanchanGupta) June 26, 2022

The same claim was made by RSS mouthpiece Organiser Weekly, journalist Nishant Azad, Anupam K Singh, senior sub-editor of the pro-BJP portal OpIndia Hindi, and various others.

This claim is also widely circulating on Facebook.

Fact-check

The aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre left many people divided. General Dyer’s actions were widely criticised but at the same time, multiple people came in support of Dyer including Michael O’Dwyer, then Governor Punjab, who lauded Dyer’s efforts. This is thoroughly recorded in the book ‘British Reaction To The Amritsar Massacre 1919 – 1920‘ by Derek Sayer published in 1991. The pressure mounting up on Edwin Montagu, then secretary of state for India, led to the creation of the Hunter Commission.

Edwin Montagu, established an inquiry committee to look into the disturbing events in Bombay, Delhi, and Punjab and “the measures taken to cope with them”. On October 14, 1919, the Government of India announced the formation of the Disorders Inquiry Committee which later came to be known as the Hunter Commission after its chairman, Lord William Hunter.

The following people were the members of the Hunter Commission:

Sir Chimanlala Harilal Setalvad, the great-grandfather of Teesta Setalvad was indeed part of the Hunter Commission. He is the sixth person on the list mentioned above. The book ‘British Reaction To The Amritsar Massacre 1919 – 1920‘ also mentions that the Hunter Commission report was split into two based on racial lines. A “Majority Report” was submitted by the five white members of the committee and a “Minority Report” was submitted by the three Indian members. Sir Chimanlala Harilal Setalvad was one of the Indian members of the committee.

Alt News reached out to a professor who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The professor confirmed to us the same as noted in the book. They said, “The Hunter Committee had five white members and three Indian members. There were two reports submitted by the members – the Majority Report and the Minority Report. The Majority Report was lenient on General Dyer, while the Minority Report gave dissenting notes against acquitting General Dyer and Michael O’Dwyer, then Governor Punjab.”

The two reports can be read here and here. Below we have added a gallery highlighting the names of the authors of the reports.

We recommend our readers read Chapter IV of the Minority Report titled – “The Firing at the Jallianwala Bagh”. In this chapter, the minority members condemn the firing and call it as an act of “frightfulness” comparable to German atrocities in France and Belgium, something “inhuman and un-British”. The committee also asked General Dyer if the passage to Jallianwala Bagh was sufficient to allow armoured cars to go in would he have opened fire with the machine guns? To which Dyer replied, “I think, probably, yes.” In fact, Dyer constantly referred to the people present at the scene as “targets”.

Below we have added some of the excerpts from this report.

The Minority Report also criticises the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Michael O’Dwyer, concluding that his “point of view was and still is the same as that of General Dyer”.

Moreover, even in the book ‘Jallianwala Bagh: A Groundbreaking History of the 1919 Massacre’ by V.N. Datta, it is clearly mentioned that the Minority Report had criticized Dyer’s action more strongly than its counterpart. It is important to note that V.N. Datta has extensively worked on the Jallianwala Bagh, exploring the primary sources and oral testimonies of the survivors and victims of the massacre.

In the book, ‘The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge and the Raj’, author Anita Anand explains that the Hunter Commission agreed that General Dyer had overstepped the bounds of his authority. But the Indians on the panel refused to pen their name in the final report and denounced it. The Indian panel issued a separate Minority Report. This part of the book was also pointed out by columnist Nilanjana Roy on Twitter.

The book also explains what happened to Dyer after the Hunter Commission report. British society continued to remain divided on the issue, Dyer was forced to resign from the Army and his recommendation for the CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) was withdrawn.

To sum it up, General Dyer may not have received a punishment that can bring justice to those who perished, however, to say that the Indian panel of the Hunter Commission was in agreement to give Dyer ‘clean chit’ is unjustified. From the questions asked to Dyer by the Indian panel to the historical accounts noted, all of them point out that the Indian panel was strict on Dyer as well as on Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab.

The post Did Teesta Setalvad’s great-grandfather give ‘clean chit’ to Gen Dyer for Jallianwala massacre? appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Kalim Ahmed.

A recent Politico article (5/20/22) had the headline, “How Gen X Became the Trumpiest Generation.” Yet the article’s focus seems to be mostly on Iowa state Rep. Cherielynn (“Cherie”) Westrich, a former rock singer who got into politics at age 50 as a solid supporter of Donald Trump.

The strawman mystery that informs the story is: How in the world did a former rock singer become a “solidly conservative representative from blue-collar southeast Iowa who is pro-gun and anti–vaccine mandate”?

Apparently, answering that question by just focusing on her “unusual trajectory” in life was not deemed sufficiently interesting for Politico. Suggesting that she is also representative of the “politics of people in her generation” apparently enhances, or perhaps justifies, her elevation into the national conversation.

And yet…

Coming of age…in 2016

If Cherielynn Westrich is your case study, Generation X supposedly became the “Trumpiest generation” Politico (5/20/22) by not paying much attention at all to politics until 2016.

The irony in the story is that while Westrich, born in 1966, qualifies as Gen X (see chart below), she doesn’t really fit the profile of a Gen Xer.

The assumption of Generational (or Cohort) Theory as it applies to politics is that most people become of age politically about the time when  they first vote. Politico cites an article that holds that events when people are aged 14–24 have the most lasting impact, and suggests that 18–19 are the most impressionable ages.

The Politico story relies on that theory when it describes Westrich’s coming of age:

The first presidential election she would have been eligible to vote in was Reagan’s 1984 landslide, and she would have come of age at time in which there were few strong personalities defining the Democratic Party.

But Westrich, by her own account, was oblivious to anything political for the first five decades of her life. She joined a rock band in her early 20s, and later became a  “quasi-celebrity as a mechanic in Overhaulin’, a reality television show.” Her first introduction to politics, the article informs us, didn’t come until 2016, when “she was coaxed into volunteering for Trump’s general election campaign by a friend.”

Thus, unlike most Gen Xers, her entry into political awareness was quite late and not at all in the glow of Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” landslide. In fact, as reported, “she couldn’t even recall any candidate who had ever really inspired her before Trump.”

Given her idiosyncratic, late-blooming political background, it’s a mystery why Politico tried to showcase Westrich as the poster child of her generation.

But if that part of the article is dubious, its characterization of Gen X as the “Trumpiest generation” is even more questionable.

Different ‘generation’ definitions 

According to the standard definition, Generation X is people born from 1965–80—whereas the study Politico relies on to deem them the “Trumpiest” looks at the voting records of people born from 1956–80.

First, it’s important to note that Politico never defines “Trumpiest,” although it’s clear from the context that the author merely means “the most Republican.” Using Trump’s name may draw more readers, but it misleads about the actual political measure being used, which is essentially party identification.

To substantiate its so-called “Trumpiest” claim, Politico refers to a 2019 article by Columbia University scholars that examines the changing party identification of voters among different generations. But the definition of “generation” in that article varies substantially from the standard definition noted earlier, and the names it uses for each generation are also different.

The article classifies people born from 1956–1980 as Reagan Conservatives. That 25-year period overlaps 16 years with the standard definition of Gen X (people born in 1965–1980), plus nine additional years (1956–1964) of  the 19 years commonly referred to as the Boomer generation.

The scholars made a deliberate choice to expand their definition of “generation” so it could reflect the long period of Republican presidential dominance. Thus, it would not be surprising if the Reagan Conservatives had the highest percentage of Republican Party identifiers. It was designed to be just that.

Yet, even then, the chart on page 17 of the article shows that Reagan Conservatives were only a little more Republican than Eisenhower Republicans—for about ten years (1990 to 2000). And by 2010 until the end of the study, it was the latter group that was a tad “Trumpier” than the Reagan Conservatives.

The Politico article seems not to have noticed the difference between the standard definition of generation and the one used by the scholars, even referring to the latter as Gen X, when neither the name nor the time frame were what the scholars specified.

Excluding people of color

To make Gen X look “Trumpiest,” it helps to leave out 39% of the generation (Pew, 3/16/18).

The Politico article also ignores the limits of the scholars’ article, which very explicitly stated that the analysis was based on white voters only. Among people of color, the article stated, the model did not work so well.

Politico acknowledges the results were based on white voters, but then seems to forget that caveat in the subsequent analysis, where the author continues to refer to the study’s findings as though they apply to all of Gen X.  Yet, as of 2017, Pew reported that white people constituted just 61% of Gen X and 72% of Boomers. Among whites of this period, perhaps, can be found the most Republicans. But ignoring more than one third of adults who are non-white certainly undermines the more general conclusion.

The article did note:

In a poll released in late April by Marist/NPR that separated voters by generation, Generation X had the highest level of disapproval for Biden and were the generation most likely to say they would vote for a Republican candidate in the midterms if they were held that day.

These two examples would seem to substantiate the author’s theme (as the poll included all people in each generational grouping), but most of the other measures in the same poll suggest that Gen X is neither the most Republican nor the most Democratic in their views. On Biden’s handling of the economy, his favorable rating, Trump’s favorable rating, and on which party can best handle various issues, Gen Xers find themselves mostly in the middle among generations.

Despite their alleged “Trumpiest” orientation, large pluralities of Gen Xers think Democrats would be better at handling several flash point issues that separate Republicans from Democrats: LGBTQ rights (44% to 18%—a net positive for Democrats of 26 points), climate change (+23 points), abortion (+6 points) and voting rights (+4 points). On the issues where Gen Xers prefer Republicans to Democrats, they are not the strongest GOP supporters.

Generational ambiguity

It also helps to ignore any data that contradicts your thesis (Pew, 3/1/18).

The NPR poll previously cited by Politico showed Gen Xers favoring Republican candidates for Congress over Democrats by a nine-point margin, the highest among the four generational groups. It’s not clear if that difference would be found in other polls, given the wide variation in poll results on the generic ballot.

But even if Gen X is the most Republican for this year’s midterms, Pew Research—using the standard definition of generation—reports significant variation within generations from one midterm to another. Gen X favored Democrats in 2018 by 10 points, and in 2014 by nine points. Only Millennials were more Democratic in 2018, while tying Gen Xers for first in 2014. Going back to 2010, the Silent Generation has been the “Trumpiest” on this measure. Now, in 2022, the NPR poll shows the Silent Generation as the most Democratic.

Generational (cohort) theory as applied to politics posits that birth year has a consistent and lasting effect on people’s party orientation. If that is the case, then the variations in party orientation found by Pew over the past several midterm elections should not have happened.

It’s not that generational theory is wrong. It’s rather that many additional factors contribute to how people think and vote. The Politico article shoehorned data to make it appear that birth year has the dominant influence on party identification. But a wider examination of generational views shows how misleading that conclusion is.

The post Politico Paints Gen X as ‘Trumpiest Generation’—on Flimsiest Evidence  appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by David W. Moore.

Just thirteen days before World Press Freedom Day 2022 the very existence of world press freedom inched closer to its possible demise. On April 20, a U.K. court formally approved extradition of WikiLeaks founder and Australian journalist, Julian Assange, to the United States to be tried under the Espionage Act. He is facing a sentence of up to 175 years. 

I became convinced that it was foolish for me and my classmates to be preparing for future careers in journalism while the very basic principles of ethical journalism might soon be criminalized.

Extradition is still not guaranteed. The ultimate decision is pending approval from the U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel, and Assange's legal team is requesting an appeal. However the reality of extradition and all the implications for a free press that come with it are increasingly likely. 

Unlike most Assange supporters I've met, I'm from a generation born too late to fully appreciate the importance of WikiLeaks and its most significant publications like the Collateral Murder Video, the Iraq War Logs, and CableGate. In fact, I first encountered Chelsea Manning through my friends in the LGBTQ+ community who admired her trans rights activism. At the time I was focused much more on LGBTQ+ issues than on whistleblower issues. Following this introduction, I learned about her importance as the source who provided proof of U.S. war crimes for WikiLeaks to publish. 

The first time I remember really understanding WikiLeaks's importance was when Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2019. Because I had been only vaguely aware of WikiLeaks and Assange up until that point, it was easy for me to look past many of the smears that had circulated about him and instead quickly wrap my head around the dangers for press freedom that his case presented. As I educated myself about the Assange case, I also began to educate my peers. 

At the time I was in college for journalism. The journalism program at my school focused on teaching students about flashy news production and marketing, but placed little emphasis on the public service aspect of journalism, such as challenging the powerful, platforming the voiceless, and informing one's community. I became convinced that it was foolish for me and my classmates to be preparing for future careers in journalism while the very basic principles of ethical journalism might soon be criminalized. I found that many of my classmates were receptive to this message, even as the administration of my school refused to take the case seriously. As one of my first initiatives to grow support for Assange, I sent several emails to the director of the communications school I was attending, inquiring about the school's stance on the case and asking for the school to voice support. I also got some of my classmates to send emails. Not one of those emails received a reply. 

Following the silence from my own school's administration, I compiled a list of hundreds of communications schools and journalism programs throughout the United States and emailed their directors. I received less than five replies and no commitments to take action in support of Assange.

Much has been written about why Julian Assange's extradition to the United States is so dangerous, but two points are worth repeating. 

First is that the United States aims to prosecute and sentence Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq. This would criminalize the action of publishing truthful information about the world's most expansive military, resulting in a legal precedent that would enable the U.S. government to sentence any publication, from indie media to legacy papers like The New York Times. Such a precedent will likely extend beyond the realm of foreign policy reporting. Any form of adversarial reporting could be punished in a world where U.S. courts decide that publishing true information constitutes espionage. 

It is essential that anyone who hopes to hold onto world press freedom support Julian Assange, firmly and vocally.

The second point that makes Assange's case so dangerous is that he is not a citizen of the country seeking his extradition (The United States) or of the country overseeing his extradition (The United Kingdom). Assange is Australian. The absurdity and international implications of one country extraditing the citizen of another country to a third country is likely to silence any journalist from any part of the world who might otherwise report on U.S. crimes and corruption. Essentially, the world's most powerful government will be able to suppress scrutiny and accountability from journalists anywhere in the world if Assange is successfully extradited, tried, and sentenced. 

As both World Press Freedom Day and Assange's possible extradition approach, it is essential that anyone who hopes to hold onto world press freedom support Julian Assange, firmly and vocally. Nothing short of mass pressure from the public will allow for Assange's freedom and the guarantee of press freedom that hangs in the balance. 

It is easier than ever to support the campaign than at any point in this last decade. Most leading human rights and press freedom organizations have spoken out against extradition including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, PEN International, and the Committee to Protect Journalists as well as editorial boards of The New York Times, The Guardian and many other outlets. News outlets that previously remained quiet are also starting to sound the alarm. MSNBC, an outlet that generally aligns with the framing of U.S. foreign policy, allowed an interview with Julian's wife, Stella Assange, to be aired on their streaming service. Then MSNBC promoted the interview on Twitter to its 4.6 million followers. This action alone is likely exposing the case to countless people who may not otherwise question the threat it poses and shows that momentum is building for new activism around freeing Assange. 

The new generation of journalists can bring an essential energy to the campaign for Assange's freedom. My hope is that as momentum starts to build in the United States for Assange's freedom, established journalists and journalism schools will support us by taking Assange's case seriously. I encourage young journalists like myself and student journalists to take initiative, call for Assange's freedom, and demand that our mentors join us. Our future remains in jeopardy as long as Assange is not free.

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Rashmee Roshan Lall.