This form of reasoning, known otherwise as “Holocaust-ism” or “Shoah-tiyut”, is a moral conceit left bare in the war of annihilation being waged in Gaza against the Palestinian populace. Israeli human rights groups have taken note of this, despite the drained reserves of empathy evident in Israel proper. (A Pew Research Center poll conducted last month found that a mere 16% of Jewish Israelis thought peaceful coexistence with Palestinians was possible.)

In its latest report pointedly titled Our Genocide, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem offers a blunt assessment: “Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

The infliction of genocide, the organisation acknowledges, is a matter of “multiple and parallel practices” applied over a period of time, with killing being merely one component. Living conditions can be destroyed, concentration camps and zones created, populations expelled, and policies to systematically prevent reproduction enacted. “Accordingly, genocidal acts are various actions intended to bring about the destruction of a distinct group, as part of a deliberate, coordinated effort by a ruling authority.”

Our Genocide suggests that certain conditions often precede the sparking of a genocide. Israel’s relations with Palestinians had been characterised by “broader patterns of settler-colonialism”, with the intention of ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians – economically, politically, socially, and culturally.”

B’Tselem draws upon three crucial elements centred on ensuring “Jewish supremacy over Palestinians”: “life under an apartheid regime that imposes separation, demographic engineering, and ethnic cleansing; systemic and institutionalized use of violence against Palestinians, while the perpetrators enjoy impunity; and institutionalized mechanisms of dehumanization and framing Palestinians as an existential threat.” The attacks on Israel by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7, 2023 was a violent event that created a “sense of existential threat among the perpetrating group” enabling the “ruling system to carry out genocide.” As B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak notes, this sense of threat was promoted by an “extremist, far-right messianic government” to pursue “an agenda of destruction and expulsion.”

Israeli policy in the Strip since October 2023 could not be rationalised as a focused, targeted attempt to destroy the rule of Hamas or its military efficacy. “Statements by senior Israeli decision-makers about the nature and assault in Gaza have expressed genocidal intent throughout.” Ditto Israeli military officers of all ranks. Gaza’s residents had been dehumanized, with many Jewish-Israelis believing “that their lives are of negligible value compared to Israel’s national goals, if not worthless altogether.”

The report also notes the use of certain terminology that haunts the literature of genocidal euphemism: the creation of “humanitarian zones” that would still be bombed despite supposedly providing protection for displaced civilians; the use of “kill zones” by the Israeli military and the absence of any standardized rules of engagement through the Strip, often “determined at the discretion of commanders on the ground or based on arbitrary criteria.”

Wishing to be comprehensive, the authors of the report do not ignore Israel’s actions in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.  Airstrikes have regularly taken place against refugee camps in the northern part of the territory since October 2023. Even more lethal open-fire policies have been used in the West Bank, with the use of kill zones suggesting “the broader ‘Gazafication’ of Israel’s methods of warfare.”

Another group, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI), has also published a legal-medical appraisal on the intentional destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, finding that the Israeli campaign in Gaza “constitutes genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.” The evidence examined by the group “shows a deliberate and systematic dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system and other vital systems necessary for the population’s survival.” The evolving nature of the campaign suggested a “deliberate progression” from the initial bombing and the forced evacuation of hospitals in the northern part of the Strip to the calculated collapse of the healthcare system across the entire enclave. The dismantling of the health system involved rendering hospitals “non-functional”, the blocking of medical evaluations, and the elimination of such vital services as trauma care, surgery, dialysis, and maternal health.

Added to this has been the direct targeting of health care workers, involving the death and detention of over 1,800 members, “including many senior specialists”, and the deliberate restriction of humanitarian relief through militarized distribution points that pose lethal risks to aid recipients. “This coordinated assault has produced a cascading failure of health and humanitarian infrastructure, compounded by policies leading to starvation, disease, and the breakdown of sanitation, housing, and education systems.”

PHRI contends that, at the very least, three core elements of Article II of the Genocide Convention are met: the killing of members of a group (identified by nationality, ethnicity, race or religion); causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of that group and deliberately inflicting on the group those conditions of life to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.

In accepting that genocide is being perpetrated against the Palestinians, Our Genocide makes that most pertinent of points: the dry legal analysis of genocide tends to be distanced from a historical perspective. “The legal definition is narrow, having been shaped in large part by the political interests of the states whose representatives drafted it.” The high threshold of identifying genocide, and the international jurisprudence on the subject, had produced a disturbing paradox: genocide tends to be recognised “only after a significant portion of the targeted group has already been destroyed and the group as such has suffered irreparable harm.” The thrust of these clarion calls from B’Tselem and PHRI is urgently clear: end this state of affairs before the Palestinians become yet another historical victim of such harm.

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

The independent news outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call are reporting that Israel is increasingly using grenade-firing drones to enforce evacuation orders. Israeli soldiers have admitted that they deliberately target civilians and likened their use of the weapons to a “video game.” Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport explains how soldiers are instructed to initiate strikes on all residents, not just belligerent targets. “Once a commander defines an imaginary red line that no one is allowed to cross, anyone who does is marked for death,” says Rapoport.

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

The world has failed the Palestinian people. Utterly and entirely.

This is not a political crisis—it is a moral apocalypse.

Since October 2023, more than 64,000 Palestinians—the vast majority women and children—have been killed in Gaza. That figure, cited by the Watson Institute, only scratches the surface. A 2024 Lancet study estimated that up to 186,000 deaths may be attributable to the ongoing conflict—caused not only by direct violence but by famine, trauma, disease, and a shattered healthcare system. At that time, Ralph Nader placed the number closer to 200,000.

These are not numbers. These are obliterated lineages. Neighborhoods razed. Babies recovered from beneath rubble in what were meant to be shelters—not graves. Hospitals bombed. Schools incinerated. Families starved. Children turned to ash inside classrooms. Elders murdered in wards they once trusted as safe.

And how has the world responded? With silence. With vague “regrets.” With weapons shipments.

Where is the United Nations and its so-called peacekeeping mandate? Where is the Arab League? Where are the global faith leaders who quote “Thou shalt not kill” from the pulpit—but seem deaf to the cries from Gaza?

“Thou shalt not kill.” Inscribed in the Bible, Qur’an, Torah, Gita—yes. But also enshrined in international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the charters of the United Nations. It is sacred. It is legal. It is universal. And it has been violated. Repeatedly. Brazenly. Unforgivably.

Those who sponsor this genocide sleep beside holy texts while investing in weapons and war stocks. They pray with one hand and push missile buttons with the other.

Yet those sponsoring this genocide sleep beside these holy texts while investing in war stocks and boasting defense profits. They pray with one hand and press missile buttons with the other.

This is not just genocide—it is infanticide, ecocide, scholacide, culturecide, and medicide.

Let us name it fully:

• Infanticide: Babies buried under bombed maternity wards.
• Scholacide: Teachers and students turned to ash inside classrooms.
• Ecocide: Farmland poisoned, aquifers drained, trees reduced to cinders.
• Medicide: The annihilation of healthcare, as ambulances are shelled and doctors are slaughtered in their scrubs.

These are not metaphors. They are facts. And the so-called international community is not watching helplessly—it is watching profitably.

Let us not be deceived: silence is not neutrality. Silence is a moral alignment with power.

A carpenter does not build chairs to store under the bed. A tailor does not sew garments just to hide them away. And the arms industry does not make weapons for decoration. These machines of death must be sold. And sold they are—through wars.

The children of Gaza were not accidental casualties. They were sacrificed at the altar of empire, profit, and political cowardice.

So I ask:

To the architects of this violence: What crime did the Palestinian children commit? What sin warranted this obliteration?

To the silent majority: When does neutrality become complicity? What will you tell your children when they read of this— —or will even that history be erased?

This is not only about Gaza. It is about all of us. About what we become when we no longer act. About the future we construct through our indifference.

I offer this piece not just as protest, but as lament. Not just as lament, but as sacred indictment.

In the name of every holy book used to bless bombs, In memory of every mother whose child was stolen by missiles, In the name of all prophets who warned us against such evil: Let it be known— The world has failed the Palestinians.

We are called not only to pray but to protest. Not only to mourn but to move. Not only to witness, but to refuse— Refuse to accept that this is the world we inherit or pass down.

But we, the people of conscience, will not be silent.

And to my fellow activists, faith leaders, citizens of truth and resistance, I say this:

The silence of the world is not passive. It is participation. And it will be remembered that the entire world stood by while Palestinians were genocided—generation after generation.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sammy Attoh.

The final text—the product of a legislative process coordinated by Republicans that seemed designed to do the most harm possible to working families—would expand on- and off-shore drilling, end nearly all clean energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, gut fuel efficiency standards for cars, stifle industrial innovation, and give massive handouts to fossil fuel companies and polluters.

Several studies of the legislation found that termination of the clean energy tax credits repealed in this bill could raise the average American family’s energy bills by as much as $400 per year by 2035. Additional analyses released earlier this week by the non-partisan CBO estimates that the bill will add $3.4 trillion in debt and result in more than 12 million Americans losing their health care coverage.

In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:

“This is a sad and scary day for all who work to build up our communities, care for our friends and neighbors, and wish to leave this planet in a better place for future generations. Instead of working to make life better for American families and communities, what Donald Trump and his loyalists in Congress have delivered today will mean higher energy costs for working families and small businesses, the end of life-saving health care that millions rely on, and ceding the race to build the clean energy economy of tomorrow to China. Trump and Congressional Republicans have advanced the most anti-environment, anti-job, and anti-American bill in history. The Sierra Club will not forget it. America will not forget it.”

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

Dozens of peaceful protesters, including disabled people in wheelchairs, were arrested last Wednesday in Washington, DC, while protesting President Trump’s massive spending and tax bill, which will dramatically slash taxes, restructure the student loan and debt system, and make devastating cuts to vital, popular programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). With Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to advance Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which will now go back to the House of Representatives for final approval. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with Lorraine Chavez and Chrstine Rodriguez, who were among the dozens arrested for their peaceful act of civil disobedience on June 25, about what’s in this bill, what it will mean for working people, and how working people are fighting back

Guests:

• Lorraine Chavez is an educator, researcher, and community leader based in Chicago. She is also a student debtor and traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.
• Chrstine Rodriguez is a legal assistant and student debtor from Pasadena, California, who also traveled to the Washington DC protest with the Debt Collective.

Additional links/info:

• The Debt Collective website, X page, Facebook page, and Instagram
• Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, “Medicaid defenders in wheelchairs arrested ahead of Senate vote on ‘betrayal of a bill’”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “What’s in Trump’s big, beautiful bill? Tax cuts, deportations and more”
• Chris Stein, The Guardian, “Senate Republicans pass Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill, clearing major hurdle”

Featured Music:

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Credits:
Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Over two dozen disability rights activists were arrested on Capitol Hill last week when they protested the Trump-backed Republican budget bill and its cuts to Medicaid, affordable housing and more. “We’re putting our bodies on the line [because] our bodies are on the line,” says Julie Farrar, an activist with ADAPT, which organized the protest. “It is blood on the hands of the GOP and the president and the administration, that they want this big, beautiful bill for billionaires that will kill poor people [and] disabled people.”

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

“Republicans are stealing health care from 13.7 million Americans to give trillions in tax handouts to billionaires.

House Budget Committee Republicans only voted against this plan because they want to make it even crueler. Make no mistake, Republicans still plan to bring it to the House floor next week.

Their plan will kill people. It will close hospitals, especially those in rural areas and inner cities, across the country. It will also close nursing homes, since Medicaid pays for over 60 percent of nursing home care.

The ripple effect of these cuts will hit every single person in this country. The hospital closest to you may close. If not, it will become more overburdened as uninsured people are forced to use the emergency room for care.

Unless you are a billionaire, your standard of living and your health care will get worse if this despicable plan becomes law.”

Further reading: Republicans Plan to Rip Medicaid Away from Millions of Seniors — All to Give Tax Cuts to Billionaires

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

Israel’s military has admitted attacking the Nasser Medical Complex in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing Palestinian journalist Hassan Eslaih and another person while claiming it was a “targeted attack”.

Gaza’s Government Media Office confirmed the killing of Eslaih yesterday and described it as an “assassination”.

The Gaza Health Ministry condemned the “heinous” attack on Nasser hospital.

• READ MORE: Famine will impact on ‘entire generation’ of Palestinians in Gaza, says UN
• Otago academics plan declaration on Palestine to ‘face daily horrors’
• Israeli attacks on Gaza killed at least 46 in last 24 hours

Esaih who receiving treatment at the hospital’s burn unit for severe injuries sustained during an April 7 Israeli strike on a media tent located next to the hospital.

He had survived that attack, but suffered severe injuries, including burns, and lost two fingers.

Esaih was the director of the Alam24 News Agency and a freelancer who contributed to international news organisations, including photos of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, reports Al Jazeera.

Israel claims Eslaih was a Hamas fighter who participated in the October 7 attack, an allegation he vehemently denied.

‘False claims’ about journalists
At the time, he told Mondoweiss, a US-based news outlet, that Israel was “trying to obliterate the image of Palestinian journalists with these false claims that they belong to Hamas and other factions”.

He added that he did not belong to any party in Gaza.

Latest Israeli killing takes death toll among Gaza journalists to 215

The Government Media Office in Gaza said the killing of Eslaih took the death toll of Gaza journalists to 2015. It condemned “in the strongest terms the systematic targeting, killing and assassination of Palestinian journalists” by Israeli forces.

It said that Eslaih was “assassinated” while receiving treatment at the Nasser Medical Complex.

“We hold the Israeli occupation, the US administration, and the countries participating in the crime of genocide — such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and France — fully responsible for committing this heinous, brutal crime,” it added.

According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon since the war began. Media freedom watchdogs in Europe and the US have often under counted the journalist death toll.

Israel’s military claimed in a post on Telegram that the strike targeted a Hamas “command and control complex” at the hospital — the largest in southern Gaza — without providing further evidence.

Repeated targeting of hospitals
The Health Ministry said the Israeli attack targeted the surgical building at Nasser Medical complex, killing at least two people and wounding patients and medical staff.

“The repeated targeting of hospitals and the pursuit and killing of wounded patients inside treatment rooms confirms the occupation forces’ deliberate intent to inflict greater damage to the health care system and threaten the treatment of the wounded and sick, even on hospital beds,” it added.

According to officials in Gaza, Israel has bombed and burned at least 35 hospitals across the Strip.

This is despite the fact that attacks on health facilities, medical personnel and patients are considered a war crime under the 1949 Geneva Convention.

Here are some of the worst attacks:

• Al-Ahli Hospital: Hundreds of people sheltering in the car park of al-Ahli Hospital were killed in an explosion in October 2023. In the days leading up to the incident, the hospital director reportedly received warnings from Israel.
• Al-Awda Hospital: An Israeli air raid in November 2023 killed Dr Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Dr Ahmad al-Sahar of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and another doctor, Ziad al-Tatari. Israeli forces raided the hospital the following month and detained Dr Adnan Al Bursh, who died in Israeli custody later.
• Al-Shifa Medical Complex: Israeli forces raided the hospital in November 2023, killing at least 25 Palestinians, including three medical workers, and leaving it non-functional. They stormed the hospital a second time in March of last year, killing at least 22 people. After they withdrew, three mass graves were found and at least 80 corpses were retrieved.
• Kamal Adwan Hospital: The Israeli military arrested Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, in December of last year after he refused to follow orders to abandon one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza. His arrest came a day after the military killed approximately 20 Palestinians and detained about 240 in a raid inside the hospital, which was one of the “largest operations” conducted in the territory until that time.

Israeli claim rejected
Hamas has rejected the Israeli prime minister’s claim that military pressure helped secure the release of a captured US-Israeli soldier, 21-year-old Edan Alexander, from Gaza.

“The return of Edan Alexander is the result of serious communications with the US administration and the efforts of mediators, not a consequence of Israeli aggression or the illusion of military pressure,” Hamas said in a statement.

The group added that Netanyahu was “misleading his people”, Al Jazeera reports. Hamas said earlier it was a goodwill gesture to US President Donald Trump on the eve of his Middle East visit.

Officers call for war’s end
Meanwhile, a group of former Israeli military commanders have urged Trump to end Israel’s war on Gaza.

The group representing more than 550 former senior officers in the Israeli military and intelligence agencies has written to Trump, asking him to use his visit to the Middle East, which began today, to “bring all our hostages back” and “end the war” in Gaza.

The Commanders for Israel Security also urged the US leader to “end the death and suffering of innocents, launch a Hamas-free ‘morning after’ for the Strip, and pave the way for a regional security coalition that includes Israel”.

By all accounts, “our approach to you represents the view of the vast majority of Israelis”, the group wrote.

The letter also said the war in Gaza “no longer serves Israel’s national objectives”, and that to most Israelis, Israel’s “justified objectives” to “end Hamas brutality” after October 7 “have long been achieved”.

The letter added, “If continued, the war, as well as the aggressive annexation policy on the West Bank, challenges regional stability. Most important, as you have correctly noted, it risks the lives of our hostages.”

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

Mehfuza Khatun shared the Facebook post on April 24, two days after the Pahalgam attack in which 26 people were killed. She alleged that gynaecologist Dr C K Sarkar had “refused” to treat her pregnant sister-in-law on account of the latter’s faith. A call recording was also released by the patient’s family, where one voice is heard confronting the other about some remarks made earlier.

This was a time when reports of retributive hate crimes against minorities started pouring in from various parts of the country in response to the Pahalgam massacre. According to survivors’ accounts, the terrorists had tried to single out non-Muslims from the tourists.

Alt News spoke with the patient and her husband and examined the phone from which calls were made to the doctor and her messages were received. Our investigation independently established that the doctor had indeed made Islamophobic comments and asked the patient to never go back to her since “people from her religion killed others.”

What Exactly Happened at Dr C K Sarkar’s Clinic on April 24

According to the aggrieved patient’s testimony given in the presence of her husband, she called up Dr Sarkar around 1:30 in the afternoon on April 24 and asked whether Dr Sarkar would be available at her home clinic in Maheshtala which is in the same apartment complex where the patient lived. Dr Sarkar agreed to see her between 3 and 4 pm. This was the fifth time she was visiting Dr Sarkar.

When the patient visited the clinic with her three-year-old daughter, and stated her full name, the doctor appeared offended. She then said, “I have decided not to see Mohammedan patients henceforth.”

When asked why, the doctor responded, “You’re killing people in Kashmir.” The patient replied, “What do I have to do with that?” The doctor then said, “People from your religion are killing people from my religion… how do I treat Mohammedan patients after that?”

The patient told us that she could only respond by saying, “The ones who are doing it are ignorant and uneducated.” The doctor allegedly then went on a communal rant in front of the three-year-old child, which lasted about 15 minutes. The patient could not recall everything that was said to her, as she “went blank”. Some of the remarks she remembered included, “You go to mosques and madrassas, and that is where terrorists are made”; and, “If you were on your honeymoon and your husband had been killed by people from my religion, then you would realise how painful it is.”

After her communal rant, the doctor clinically examined the patient and wrote out a prescription. The consultation fee was paid via UPI. As the patient was leaving the clinic, the doctor told her not to return, stating that she would no longer be seeing Muslim patients. However, she wrote ‘Review after 3 weeks’ in the prescription. Alt News has seen the prescription.

Once the patient left the clinic, she called up her husband immediately and recounted her ordeal. Some time later, at 4:26 pm, she gathered courage to call up Dr Sarkar again and confront her about the incident. This call had been recorded on the patient’s phone.

The Phone Call: “I won’t see any Mohammedan patients anymore… Don’t ever come to me again. You kill others.”

Here is a transcript of the conversation that took place:

Patient: *address* theke bolchi
I’m speaking from *address*.

Doctor: Hain bolo bolo
Yes, go ahead, speak.

Patient: Apni amake jei kotha gulo shonalen na ma’am, amar khub kharap legeche.
Ma’am, the things you said to me really hurt me.

Doctor: Keno? Ki kharap legeche?
Why? What hurt you?

Patient: Apni amake je bollen Mohammedan aar dekhbona.
You told me you won’t treat Mohammedans anymore.

Doctor: Dekhbona toh, ami ekhon theke promise korchi.
I won’t, I’m promising from now on.

Patient: Amar uchit chhilo apnake oi muhurte oshomman kore beriye chole asha.
I should have humiliated you and walked out at that very moment.

Doctor: (Unclear) Amar ki boye geche, ami aar dekhbona ekhon theke.
(Unclear) What do I have to lose? I won’t treat (Muslims) anymore from now on.

Patient: Na na, ami jabo o na apnar kache dekhate. But apnara skhikkhito… (unclear)
No, no, I won’t come to you for treatment either. But you are educated…

Overlapping voices…

Doctor: Tomra khun korbe… manush ke… (unclear) j dhormo bole khushir Eid.. Pabitra Eid.. (unclear)… manush ke khun kora ta ki pabitra Eid?
You people will kill… people… (unclear) the religion which celebrates Happy Eid, auspicious Eid… Killing people is auspicious Eid?

Patient: Accha ma’am, onekshomoy toh ache jara Hindu ra Muslim ke maarche… Amra ki kichu jani je ke maaarche, ke korche?
Ma’am, there are also times when Hindus kill Muslims… Do we even know who is killing whom?

(Doctor’s words are unclear for some time)

Doctor: Tomra shob jeneo chup kore thaako…(unclear)
You all stay silent even after knowing everything…(unclear)

Patient: Apni amake bokchen. Ami ki jani je ami ki korchi? Apni ekta shikkhito manush hoye erom byabohaar koren…
You’re scolding me..  You’re an educated person behaving in this way with me…

(Doctor’s words are unclear for some time)

Doctor: Tomader (unclear) shekhano hoy.
You people are taught (unclear).

Patient: Apni ekta shikkhito daktar hoye amar shonge… apni patient dekhben. Apni patient er shaathe orokom byabohaar korun.. koren tahole…
You, being an educated doctor, should be treating patients. If you treat patients like this then…

Doctor: Na ami dekhbo na, keno dekhbo, je dhormer lokera amar dhormo ke ebhabe maare?
No, why should I treat them? Why would I treat people of a religion who attack my religion like this?

Patient: Keu kauke marchena… (unclear)
No one is killing anyone… (unclear)

Patient: Ami apnake patient dekhate gechi, ami toh maarte jaini ghore.
I came to you as a patient, not to kill anyone in your house.

Doctor: Hain oitoh bari giyei tomar mathar modhhye shob dhukiye diyeche oigulo, jani toh.
Of course, those things have been stuffed into your head at home, I know that.

Patient: Barite keu dhokayeni madam… apni amake bollen… khub kharap lagchilo.
No one has brainwashed me at home, madam… Whatever you said to me… I felt very bad.

Doctor: Kharap lagar kichu nei, tumi jeta kharap (unclear) jara terrorist taader ke mere dite hobe.
There’s nothing to feel bad about. What is wrong… (unclear)… the terrorists must be killed.

Patient: Apnake osomman korbona bole apnake dekhiye ami elam. Apni khub kharap byabohaar korechen amar shaathe.
I did not want to humiliate you, hence I sat through the consultation. You misbehaved with me.

Doctor: Na ekdom kharap korini. Ami aar ekdom e dekhbona, ami aar kono Mohammedan patient dekhbona.
No, I didn’t behave badly at all. I just won’t treat… I won’t treat any Mohammedan patients anymore.

Patient: Apni dekhben na, apni bhaar mein jaan apni dekhben ki dekhben na, apnar byapar.
Whether you treat or not, you go to hell.. whether you treat or not, that’s your business.

Doctor: Asho keno amar kache? Lojja korena ashte?
Then why do you come to me? Don’t you feel ashamed to come here?

Patient: Ami jaani apni ekta boro terrorist?
I know you’re a big terrorist, right?

Doctor: Aar konodin ashbena amar kache. Tumi khun koro manush.
Don’t ever come to me again. You kill others.

Patient: Apnio khun kora manush.
You also kill people.

It is clear from the above conversation that when Dr Sarkar was confronted about her remarks, she remained defiant and repeated that she would not be treating Muslim patients in future.

After the Facebook post describing the patient’s ordeal had gone viral, Dr Sarkar sent an apology text to the patient.  In her messages sent through WhatsApp, she said she was sorry if she had ‘disheartened’ the patient. She says that she was sick “due to loss of my close family members relatives.” (sic) “Don’t take it otherwise and don’t harrass me unnecessarily”. Dr Sarkar, in a third message, said that a few patients had been cruel towards her in the last few days. She was upset and thinking of closing her practice in the area, and so she said that. “U r my good patient I will always take care of u if u feel so ,” (sic) she wrote. Alt News is in possession of a screenshot and a screen recording of the WhatsApp chat, but we are not making it public.

“If she is trying to justify why she said something, she must have said something reprehensible”, the patient’s husband observed, while showing us the WhatsApp messages.

After the patient’s ordeal was reported by some media outlets, Dr Sarkar went on to issue a video statement saying, “I am Dr C K Sarkar. I have been a medical practitioner for the last 30 years in Behala, South 24 Parganas. I believe in medical ethics. All patients are equal to me, I prioritize all my patients equally. I see no value in caste, religion and race. I try to treat my patients properly and ethically. If some people had a problem with me… please do not listen to the rumours. I know there have been attempts to sabotage my career on social media and in news reports. These kinds of rumours are spread during a time of crisis. I hope you will not fall for it.” The statement was uploaded on Facebook by an anesthesiologist named Promod Ranjan Roy.

The ‘Domestic Help’ Theory

When The Quint contacted Dr. Sarkar, she denied the allegations and stated that she had many Muslim patients and thus had no reason to discriminate. “I was talking to my maid about what had happened in Pahalgam when she (the patient) visited me. I never made such communal remarks, why would I?” She also stated that she had sent an apology to the patient. When asked about the call recording, Dr Sarkar alleged that the call recording had been tampered with.

She made the same allegation in a chat with a journalist named Anindya Chowdhury. “I never said that I would not see Mohammedan (Muslim) patients. She wrongly interpreted my words,” she said in a telephonic interview. Throughout the interview, Dr Sarkar reiterated that the phone call recording had been tampered with.

The West Bengal Doctors’ Forum (WBDF) said in a statement, “It appears that some discussions unrelated to the patient, involving members of the doctor’s household, may have inadvertently been overheard. If any such conversation was not to the patient’s liking, it is beyond the professional purview of the doctor to address private matters of household conversations.”

Responding to these claims, the patient told Alt News that at no point did the doctor address her house-help while making those remarks. The house-help’s working hours coincided with the patient’s appointment, and she was present around the house. She had left a few minutes before the patient’s departure. The patient also categorically stated that when Dr. Sarkar asked her not to go back to her ever again, the domestic help had left by then.

WBDF also asked for “an independent investigation involving the doctor and the aggrieved person to unearth the truth in a neutral way.”

Propaganda Outlets Question Veracity of Call Recording

Taking a dig at The Quint for reporting on the incident, propaganda website OpIndia published a ‘fact-check’ of the incident. OpIndia called the patient’s ordeal a “fake story” and proceeded to provide what they called ‘evidences’ to invalidate it. While refuting the patient’s allegations, OpIndia has claimed that the phone call recording is ‘unverified’. The outlet emphasized the need for a forensic investigation of the purported audio clip.

OpIndia posted a thread of their ‘fact-check’. Here are the archive links of each tweet of the thread: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

#Exclusive

Do you remember the story of a Kolkata-based doctor who ‘denied’ treatment to a Muslim patient over the Pahalgam terror attack?

Turns out it was fake news.

It was peddled by The Quint, Maktoob Media & others to create the narrative of ‘Muslim victimhood’

(1/n) pic.twitter.com/tWIxxbo1su

— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) April 30, 2025

Only Fact, run by Vijay Patel who identifies himself as an investigative reporter, published a fact-check as well. Quoting Dr Sarkar, they also claimed that the recording was fake and edited. Here is an archive of the ‘fact-check’.

No, Dr. Champakali Sarkar Did Not Refuse Treatment to a Muslim Patient After Pahalgam Attackhttps://t.co/0ag5l5yBDJ

— Only Fact (@OnlyFactIndia) April 30, 2025

When this correspondent visited the patient’s house on May 1, Alt News received access to the phone from which the call to Dr Sarkar was made. We examined it by going to the Phone app (inbuilt app), from which the call was made, and played the recording. The call was made at 4:26 pm on April 24.

A screen-recording of the whole process can be seen below. The dialed number (that of the doctor) has been purposely hidden. Alt News tried to reach out to Dr Sarkar on the same number. The person who answered the call identified herself as Dr Sarkar, but refused to comment.

From the video of the call recording and the metadata of the video, we can conclusively say that the call recording released by the victim’s family has not been tampered with. Consequently, it can also be ascertained that Dr Sarkar admitted to making communal remarks while defending herself, where she generalized Muslims as people who kill others.

“I don’t have a problem with the doctor refusing to treat my wife in future. Though it is perhaps unethical, it is her call. What I strongly object to is the communal discrimination. What she told my wife is an expression of a mindset that has the potential to disrupt communal harmony in a society. That is what bothers me so much,” the husband of the patient, who is an optometrist by profession, said.

The post ‘People from your faith kill others. Don’t come to me again,’ Kolkata doctor told pregnant Muslim woman appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

A U.S. military strike on a migrant detention center in the north of Yemen has killed at least 68 people, largely migrants from African nations, bringing the death toll from U.S. attacks on the country to over 250 since mid-March. Middle East researcher Helen Lackner says the number of deaths is likely twice the officially recorded number, as the United States has now conducted more than 1,000 strikes on Yemen “on an absolutely nightly basis.” Lackner says the humanitarian crisis in Yemen has also been exacerbated by the end of U.S. aid and the U.S.'s designation of the country's Houthi movement as a “foreign terrorist organization.” “People who are living in the country are suffering on a daily basis from basically terror and fright or from being attacked and possibly being bombed and killed [at] any time.”

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

The country’s Sagaing region is the epicenter of both insurgent movements against the military that seized control over the country in a 2021 coup and the recent 7.7 magnitude earthquake that killed thousands. It is home to towns and villages frequently targeted by junta soldiers for raids, arson, mass arrests and bombings.

The military regime’s air force dropped 47 bombs on Kale township’s Nat Chaung, Nat Myaung, Ngapha, Than Po, Chaung Gwa and Aung Chan Thar villages on Saturday and Sunday, killing seven women and one man and injuring 28 others, residents said.

Most people from Nat Chaung village fled the area, said one man, who declined to be named for security reasons.

“The damage was minimal as people had prepared bomb shelters and air defenses. Depending on the number of bombs dropped, the casualties could have been much worse,” he said, adding that the number of casualties had not been fully assessed yet because villagers had fled the area.

Everyone killed was a civilian, he added.

Following a ceasefire agreement with the rebel Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army in northern Shan state where Lashio was handed back to junta forces on April 22, the military has focused attacks on other parts of the country, increasingly targeting Mandalay and Sagaing region.

Myanmar’s exiled civilian National Unity Government, or NUG, comprised of politicians ousted during the 2021 coup, criticized ceasefire agreements made with the junta, saying they often use the alliances to increase attacks on other groups.

“If we are unable to unite nationwide and, due to various pressures, side with the military or reach some kind of agreement with the military, this is a very dangerous situation for us and for the revolution,” said the spokesperson for the NUG Prime Minister’s Office Nay Bone Latt. “It is very important for everyone to understand this situation and for the revolutionary forces to build a strong unity.”

Junta forces have bombed the country 225 times from the March 28 earthquake to April 29, with half the attacks occurring in Sagaing and Mandalay regions, according to data compiled by the NUG. The attacks killed 242 people, including 29 children, and injured 391.

Myanmar’s military declared a ceasefire from April 2 to 30.

RFA called junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for more information, but he did not respond by the time of publication.

Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

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

Photograph Source: US Government – Public Domain

How ironic: The most inefficient bureaucracy in government turns out to be Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

That could be humorous, except that DOGE — a creature of the right-wing Project 2025 — has been devastating to millions of people. And it’s about to get worse. Elon Musk — the flighty überrich autocrat put in charge of “efficiency” by his buddy Trump — is now going after the Social Security deposits of 73 million senior citizens.

But wait, hasn’t Trump himself promised (loudly and often) that he would not ax this essential retirement program? Yes… but Elon is his “gotcha.”

Rather than an honest kill, Musk is strangling the program with bureaucratic red tape. Claiming to be cutting waste, he’s eliminating 7,000 people who administer the program, shouting, “Bureaucratic excess!”

Except, Social Security is actually a renowned model of government efficiency, spending less than 1 percent of its revenue on administration. So by whacking the people who do the work, Musk is actually whacking the people who are due to receive their earned benefits.

For example, he’s decreed that the public can no longer apply for benefits or resolve questions by phone. Instead, they must now travel in person to some distant Social Security office. But the staff there has also been decimated, so people who’ve come from afar are told to go back home and call for an appointment — a call that will often not be answered.

What’s at work here is a Musk-Trump ploy to wreck Social Security’s remarkable record of efficiency. Their intent is to make the service so bad that they can then let profiteering corporations privatize your retirement. Don’t let them.

The post The Plot to Kill Social Security appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jim Hightower.

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Donald Trump makes no secret of his loathing for regulations that limit water and energy use by home appliances. For years, he has regaled supporters at his campaign rallies with fanciful stories about their impact. He is so exercised by the issue that, even as global stock markets convulsed Wednesday in response to his tariff plans, Trump took time out to issue an executive order titled “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads.”

Contemporary shower fixtures are only one of the items that rankle the president, who complains that “there’s no water coming and you end up standing there five times longer,” making it difficult to coif his “perfect” hair. He has frequently denounced dishwashers that he claims take so long and clean so poorly that “the electric bill is ten times more than the water”; toilets that require flushing “ten or 15 times”; and LED lightbulbs, which he faults for making him look orange.

In his first term, Trump pursued an array of gimmicks to try to undermine the rules. His moves were opposed by industry and environmental groups alike. If it’s possible for regulations to be popular, these ones are. They have cut America’s water and energy consumption, reduced global-warming emissions and saved consumers money. Legal prohibitions stymied most of Trump’s maneuvers back then, and the Biden administration quickly reversed the steps Trump managed to take.

Trump’s executive order on showerheads generated headlines, but it’s likely to have little effect (more on that later). Far more consequential steps have been taken outside the Oval Office.

With the aid of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team, Trump appears to be attempting an end run that could succeed where his past attempts failed: by simply terminating the consulting contract that the Department of Energy relies on to develop and enforce the rules. In late March, DOGE’s “wall of receipts” stated that it had “deleted” a Department of Energy contract for Guidehouse LLP (a PricewaterhouseCoopers spinoff) for “Appliance Standards Analysis and Regulatory Support Service,” producing a listed savings of $247,603,000. That item has now disappeared from the DOGE website, and its current status remains unclear.

This has produced confusion for everyone from appliance manufacturers to government officials to the contractors paid to enforce the rules. If the contract is indeed canceled, experts told ProPublica, it would cripple the government’s efficiency standards program, which relies on the consulting firm’s technical expertise and testing labs to update standards, ensure compliance and punish violators.

“It would have a huge impact,” said George Washington University law professor Emily Hammond, who helped run the program as deputy general counsel at the Department of Energy and now serves on its appliance standards advisory committee. “DOE does not have the internal capacity to do that work. Taking that away pulls the rug out from under the agency’s ability to run that regulatory program.”

Appliance manufacturers seem almost as concerned. “This is not a positive development,” said Josh Greene, vice president for government affairs at A.O. Smith, the largest manufacturer of water heaters in the U.S. Terminating the Guidehouse contract, he said, would create “a wild Wild West” where “upstart manufacturers” are free to import poor-quality products because “they know there’s no one to enforce the rules. That’s not good for American manufacturing and it’s not good for consumers.”

The Department of Energy has made no public attempts to clarify the matter. An agency spokesperson did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment. Emails to DOGE and the White House brought no reply. And Guidehouse officials, reportedly eager to lay low, also offered no response to multiple requests for comment.

The government’s efficiency requirements originated with the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, signed into law in 1975, when the concern was an energy shortage, not global warming. Today, the Department of Energy is required to set rules for energy and water use by more than 70 appliances and commercial products sold in the U.S. The agency must consider imposing stricter standards for each product every eight years, based on what is “technologically feasible and economically justified.” Manufacturers then have three to five years to make their products measure up.

The Energy Department typically stiffens a requirement only after years of study, comment, negotiation and testing (and sometimes litigation) among industry, consumer and environmental groups. The law also includes an “anti-backsliding” provision that bars relaxation of standards that have been finalized. Guidehouse and its subcontractors have for years performed virtually all the necessary technical work; they also maintain a certification database that U.S. authorities use to keep illegal products from being imported.

Republican lawmakers, anti-regulation advocates and right-wing media have long decried the efficiency rules as an impingement on personal freedom, limiting product choice. The early rollout of water-throttling products produced some of the issues Trump complains about, lampooned in a 1996 “Seinfeld” episode titled “The Shower Head.”

But in the decades since, the standards have been widely embraced, dramatically cutting energy and water consumption, reducing emissions and providing plenty of attractive consumer choices. In 2023, Consumer Reports found that “even the simplest and least expensive showerheads can provide a satisfying shower.” Dishwashers and clothes washers clean better while using less than half as much water and energy as they once did. The transition to LED light bulbs, nearly complete, is estimated to have cut energy bills by $3 billion a year and eliminated the need for about 30 large power plants.

In January, days before Trump returned to office, a Department of Energy report estimated that the efficiency standards are now saving the average American household about $576 a year on their utility bills, while cutting the nation’s energy consumption by 6.5% and water consumption by 12%. A 2022 survey by the Consumer Federation of America found that 76% of Americans support the government setting efficiency standards for appliances.

None of that has slowed Trump’s attacks. During his first term, the Department of Energy ignored legal deadlines for considering efficiency updates on 28 products, blocked the long-planned rollout of new lightbulb rules and sought to bypass finalized appliance standards through byzantine legal maneuvers. Among other things, the Energy Department announced special new “product classes” for dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers that completed their “normal” cycle in an hour or less. This would exempt any such “short-cycle” devices that were introduced from the existing limits on water and energy use.

Manufacturers never brought those models to market. Most existing appliances already had a “short cycle” option that did their job well; those short on time simply had to push that button. And by mid-2022, Biden’s Energy Department had reversed Trump’s regulatory moves. The department went on to issue an array of tightened home appliance rules jointly recommended by industry and consumer groups; most were finalized early enough to be immune from congressional rollback.

This didn’t stop Trump from boasting on the 2024 campaign trail that he had changed everything during his first term. He vowed to fix it all again when he returned to the White House. “Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances” was on Project 2025’s list of “needed reforms.”

Sure enough, on his first day back in the White House, Trump issued two executive orders targeting the efficiency rules. On Feb. 11, he posted on Truth Social: “I am hereby instructing Secretary Lee Zeldin to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders, which were terminated by Crooked Joe Biden, on Water Standard and Flow pertaining to SINKS, SHOWERS, TOLIETS, WASHING MACHINES, DISHWASHERS, etc., and to likewise go back to the common sense standards on LIGHTBULBS, that were put in place by the Trump Administration, but terminated by Crooked Joe. I look forward to signing these orders.” (In fact, the rules Trump cited were issued and enforced by the Department of Energy, not the Environmental Protection Agency, where Administrator Zeldin presides.)

None of the standards Trump listed were subject to an executive order, or any other kind of rapid rollback. In simple terms, Trump did not have the legal authority to change these rules.

No matter. Energy Secretary Chris Wright — who had listed “affordability and consumer choice in home appliances” among his top nine priorities — took up the cause. Three days after Trump’s Truth Social post, Wright announced that the Department of Energy was postponing “seven of the Biden-Harris administration’s restrictive mandates on home appliances,” which “have driven up costs, reduced choice and diminished the quality of Americans’ home appliances.” Wright’s list of seven affected “home appliances” actually included three types of commercial equipment and three other regulations long past the point where they could be undone.

That left only one household-product regulation that could be challenged. It involved an item that seemed like an improbable symbol of “freedom” and “consumer choice”: the tankless, gas-fueled hot water heater.

The vast majority of U.S. homes have traditional water heaters with 40- to 50-gallon tanks. By contrast, tankless gas products represent 10% of sales. They are about the size of a carry-on suitcase and heat a stream of water on demand. They’re energy-efficient and roughly twice as expensive as standard heaters.

But the rules governing tankless gas water heaters were vulnerable because they were issued in the final weeks of Biden’s term. That meant lawmakers could reverse them under the Congressional Review Act, which allows lawmakers to block a recently enacted agency rule, if a resolution to do so passes both houses and is signed by the president.

Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 20, Wright drew cheers as he offered a Trumpian litany — “My dishwasher has to run for two hours now, and at the end I got to clean the dishes” — before turning to hot water heaters. “We have a factory in the southeastern part of the United States that employs hundreds of people to build a particularly popular product these days,” Wright said. “It is a tankless water heater powered by natural gas,” which he described as “selling like hotcakes.” So, what did the Biden administration do, he asked. “They passed a regulation that would make that product illegal, and that company would be dead.” But under Trump, declared Wright, waving his arms, “we are fixing that problem. That factory is staying open. … America is back, baby!”

Wright returned to “the hot-water thing” in a FoxBusiness interview a month later. Assailing “nanny-state, crazy, top-down mandates that makes it more expensive for American consumers and businesses to buy what they want,” he said the new rule was going to shut down a factory “just built in the southeast United States.” Wright acknowledged that U.S. law bars elimination of other efficiency updates that he and Trump have targeted because they’ve already been finalized. “We can’t officially get rid of them,” he commented. “So we just pushed back the enforcement date, hopefully, to never.”

Wright’s portrayal omitted significant details. The administration’s actions involve a single beneficiary: Rinnai, a Japanese appliance company with $3.3 billion in revenues last year. In 2022, Rinnai opened a $70 million factory south of Atlanta, where about 250 U.S. workers build “non-condensing” tankless gas water heaters, a major moneymaker for the company.

“Non-condensing” tankless heaters are less efficient and less expensive than “condensing” tankless heaters, which reuse heat from their exhaust gases. As a result, Rinnai wouldn’t be able to continue selling them when the new standards went into effect in December 2029.

That, however, wasn’t going to put the company out of business; it wasn’t likely to shut down its U.S. factory, either, though Rinnai raised that specter in government filings where its U.S. president warned the new standards would make the Georgia plant “largely obsolete … eliminating” all its jobs.

Rinnai sells a broad array of products across the world. It also already sold condensing tankless heaters in the U.S. that met the new standard and were imported from Japan. And Rinnai had plans to make them in Georgia, according to the company’s most recent annual report. (Rinnai agreed to make its U.S. chief, Frank Windsor, available for an interview with ProPublica, then canceled twice at the last minute. The company ultimately declined to respond to questions about its public representations.)

Nonetheless, the company, now backed by the Trump administration, has pursued a multitrack campaign to roll back the new standards. Its efforts appear to be on the point of success. A resolution has passed the House and won Senate approval on Thursday. Rinnai has spent $375,000 on Washington lobbyists since 2023, according to disclosure reports. The company also joined with Republican attorneys general in a court challenge to the energy rule.

Three major Rinnai competitors supported the Biden-era regulations. Wisconsin-based A.O. Smith has actively lobbied against Rinnai’s effort to win a congressional rollback. Greene said blocking the standard will “disadvantage” U.S. companies, which have already invested in more efficient condensing technology, by allowing continued sale of Rinnai’s less expensive competing products. “In this time of ‘America First,’ it just seems to us a shame that where we’re heading is rewarding foreign manufacturers,” Greene said. “There should be a level playing field.”

Meanwhile the administration’s campaign has expanded to multiple fronts. On Wednesday, the Department of Energy announced a review of its procedures for energy standards, which one expert described as a reprise of the first Trump administration’s attempts to create procedural hurdles to updating efficiency standards.

Then there was the executive order on showerheads that same day. It, too, seeks to revive a move by the first Trump administration: to circumvent the limits on waterflow by redefining “showerheads” to include multiple nozzles, each of which could emit as much water as the entire showerhead was previously allowed. The Biden-era Energy Department killed that regulation, and Trump is attempting to bring it back while proclaiming that “notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal.”

That order will have virtually no effect because manufacturers have little interest in making showerheads that exceed the current limits, according to Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a nonprofit coalition of groups that support the efficiency rules. “The president is asserting king-like authority,” he added, about Trump’s claim that he does not have to follow administrative procedures.

In the end, DOGE could have more of an impact than a would-be monarch, if it’s able to kill the Guidehouse contract. Then, deLaski said, “it would be next to impossible for DOE to enforce its efficiency standards.”

Doris Burke, Mark Olalde and Pratheek Rebala contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Peter Elkind.

On Tuesday, April 8, unions, unionized federal workers, and their supporters around the country mobilized for a national “Kill the Cuts” day of action to protest the Trump administration’s cuts to life-saving research, healthcare, and education programs. As organizers stated on the Kill The Cuts website:

“By cutting funds to lifesaving research and medical care, the Trump administration is abandoning families who are suffering and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. These cuts are dangerous to our health, and dangerous to our economy. On Tuesday, April 8th, 2025 workers across the country are standing up and demanding NO cuts to education and life-saving research.”

In this on-the-ground edition of Working People, we take you to the front lines of the Kill the Cuts rally that took place in Washington, DC, and we speak with workers and union representatives whose lives and work have already been affected by these cuts.

Speakers include: Margaret Cook, Vice President of the Public, Healthcare, and Education Workers sector of the Communications Workers of America (CWA); Matt Brown, Recording Secretary of NIH Fellows United (United Auto Workers Local 2750); Rakshita Balaji, a post-baccalaureate researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH); and Amanda Dykema, shop steward for American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1072 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Additional links/info:

• Kill the Cuts website
• NIH Fellows United website
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “What’s really behind Trump’s war on federal unions?”
• Jocelyn Kaiser, Science, “NIH under orders to cancel $2.6 billion in contracts”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Speaker 1:

I got work. Who protects us? We protects us. Who protects us, who protects us, who protects us? We protects us.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome everyone to another on the Ground edition of Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximilian Alvarez and I’m here in Washington DC right in front of the US Capitol Building where dozens of local union members and union leaders just held a rally as part of a national Kill The Cuts Day of Action. Similar protest rallies were held today from California to Illinois to New York. Organizers called for the National Day of Action to raise awareness and fight against the Trump Musk administration’s cuts and proposed cuts to federal research, health and education. As the homepage of the Kill the Cuts website states by cutting funds to lifesaving research and medical care.

The Trump administration is abandoning families who are suffering and costing taxpayers billions of dollars. These cuts are dangerous to our health and dangerous to our economy. On Tuesday, April 8th, 2025 workers across the country are standing up and demanding no cuts to education and lifesaving research. The National Day of Action is sponsored by a plethora of labor unions, including the United Auto Workers, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Association of University Professors, the Communications Workers of America, ame, SEIU, the Debt Collective and more. I came down to the DC action to talk to union members about this fight and what their message is to the Trump administration, to the labor movement and to the public.

Speaker 3:

Alright, we’re our last speaker. We have got Margaret Cook, who is the vice president of the Public Healthcare and Education Workers Sector of the Communication Workers of America. Let’s give it.

Margaret Cook:

I am a little short. Let me move this back a bit. Good afternoon everybody. Yes, I am your last speaker and I promise I won’t be like a Baptist preacher. I’m not going to keep you for another hour. My name is Margaret Cook and I am the public healthcare and education worker sector Vice President of Communication Workers of America representing over 130,000 state municipal and higher education workers across the country in Puerto Rico, including thousands of researchers, lab technicians, public healthcare clinicians and nurses, and thousands of additional support and wraparound staff, many of whom have seen their work shut down, cut off, and possibly killed by these cuts. You’ve heard from all of these people about today. Cuts that are illegal, cuts that are unethical, cuts that are immoral cuts that are unacceptable, cuts that are fatal. And I don’t mean just figuratively

Speaker 1:

Because

Margaret Cook:

As you’ve heard today, these cuts to research that will, these are cuts to research that will save lives. And so our message is pretty clear today. Kill these cuts before they kill us. I’m proud to stand here today with all these other members and leaders from labor who are going to work each day to deliver care and discover solutions for each and every one of us, which is a lot more than you can say for the people who are doing the cutting. You got the world’s richest man on one hand and the world’s most arrogant man on the other.

These men are living in a fantasy world, which may explain one of the reasons why they are so hostile to science. I’ve sat back and I’ve listened to them talk about how they need to cut back on the size of our federal government and to do so by going on a rampage against these workers who are doing some of the most critical and vital work that our government does. Well, what they aren’t telling you because they’re liars and cheats is that today the size of the federal workforce is the smallest it has been since the Great Depression at just over 1.5% of the jobs in this country, years of plundering public dollars for corporate greed, decades of austerity and slashing and burning the public good has left our government smaller than it has ever been, and these jackals aren’t done tearing away at it. And for what? Let’s cut the crap on the racist dog whistles about DEI, setting aside for the sake of argument, the fact that we do need to address inequality and injustice. Are you really telling me that the cuts to people working on cancer research is about DEI, that the cuts to people working to deliver vital aid and care is about DEII see right through it and I know you do too.

The reality is we need more public investment, not less because what is it that our investments really do? What these workers do is they discover, they educate, they provide care, and they prevent and act in emergencies, in labs and research settings across this country, these workers are discovering cures and treatments for diseases that threaten all of us. My grandfather died two days ago from stage four cancer, and my mother currently has stage two in campuses and schools. They’re educating and helping elevate the knowledge of future generations in clinics and hospitals and public service facilities. They’re delivering care to people who need it and in dire straits from outbreaks of viruses like measles. Measles, y’all.

These are people who put themselves at risk to protect the rest of us, and that’s who Trump and Musk and a bunch of kids without any real world knowledge and experience are trying to fire Trump and Musk whose genius lies and putting their name on work and breakthroughs of other people and then have the nerve to charge rent for it well enough. This money is the public’s and we demand that it be used for the public good. Not one penny less. No. I firmly believe for us to meet the incredible challenges and realize the potential of our country, we need so much more public investment. That’s why we’ve got to unite across our unions, across all kinds of work and across our communities to stand up, speak out, resist these attacks, and defend the services and work we do for the people we serve and work for. Lives are on the line. These cuts are wrong. So I say again, kill these cuts or they’ll end up killing us. Thank you.

Matt Brown:

My name is Matt Brown and I’m the recording secretary for NIH Fellows United. We’re a local of the UAW number 27 50.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, Matt, thank you so much for talking to me, man. The kill cuts rally just concluded here. The Senate building is right behind us, but for folks who aren’t here right now and are listening to this, can you just say a little bit about what we just witnessed? What brought you guys out here today?

Matt Brown:

Of course. Yeah, max, I really appreciate the opportunity to be on the pod and what brought us out here is saving the completely devastating cuts that are currently happening to publicly funded research here in the US at NIH Fellows United. We’re members of the intramural scientific team at the NIH that are working on things like carrying cancer and making treatments for diabetes, and we’re partnering up with all the folks that are being affected by the cuts to the extramural side of the NIH. So all of the universities and other institutions that receive grants to work on those same things outside of the NIH. And yeah, it’s been really great to see all of these people come together to save the life-saving work that we’re all doing.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Say more about the extent of these cuts and the impact on research intra and extramural. I guess give listeners a sense of how deep this goes and what the impacts are really going to be.

Matt Brown:

This is truly an existential crisis for biomedical research in America. Flat out the cuts to the intramural program have seen thousands of jobs cut from the people that support the science that we do. And on the extramural side, the cuts that we’re seeing to grants these so-called indirect costs, it’s a bit of a jargon term that can be hard to parse, but really that goes towards supporting the life-saving research that we do. The cuts that we’re seeing are going to decimate the amount of research that we can get done on these awful diseases that people face. And like I said, this is an existential question, do we want biomedical research to continue or not?

Maximillian Alvarez:

And what about, let’s talk about the flesh and blood workers who are making this research happen and the working people who benefit from that research. Who are these cuts actually hurting right now?

Matt Brown:

These cuts are going to affect every single person. Historically, scientists and researchers have been considered somewhat apolitical quote because, hey, who doesn’t know somebody that’s been affected by cancer? Right? It’s pretty easy to fund cancer research because it can be so devastating. And so yeah, everybody’s going to be affected by this. It’s not just the researchers here at NIH and Bethesda. It’s not just the researchers at universities, but it’s going to be every single person who has or has known someone with a really awful life altering disease.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And what’s the message? What was the rallying message that we heard here today for folks in attendance and folks who aren’t in attendance? What are these unions doing to fight back and what are you saying to other folks about how they can get involved?

Matt Brown:

Well, really what I think the rallying call is, is to look around us. It’s look at who are the people that are trying to save each other’s lives. Here it’s the organized workers that are involved in biomedical research around the country. We’re not hearing things from NIH leadership. We’re not hearing things from university leadership. We’re hearing things from the organized researchers who are getting their butts out here to try to save what we do. And that’s really what this is, is it’s about getting as many people out here as possible and all moving in the same direction to not just save our jobs and not just save science, but to save lives around the country.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And last question. I mean, there were a number of different unions present here and represented here. What does it mean that this is such a crisis, that it is bringing together different sides of the labor movement and uniting around a common fight?

Matt Brown:

Absolutely. And actually that’s a very special question to me because as NIH Fellows United we’re one of the unions that was part of organizing this as well as reaching out to other universities, one of them being my former bargaining unit with teachers and researchers United, which is local of UE 1 97. And so

Yeah, it’s been really special to see people come together and not just start organizing the workers in their own workplaces, but reaching out to everybody else in their own regions, in their own careers and making sure that we’re all pointed at the same thing, which is saving lives. This is obviously not some sort of move towards government efficiency, that everything that the Trump and Musk administration is doing right now is entirely done to antagonize workers and make us feel like we’re hopeless. But things like today show us that we’re not and we need to continue doing things like this along in the future to make sure that they can’t move on with their destructive agenda.

Rakshita Balaji:

So hi, my name is Rakshita Balaji Currently I’m a post-baccalaureate fellow, a researcher at the NIH. So what that means is I’ve been spending the last almost two years now post-graduation from getting my undergrad degree working at the NIH and getting training in order to prepare myself for success in my next step of my career stage, which is to go to graduate school and I’ll be a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania coming this fall. So what I’m interested in is neuroscience research, and that’s what my career trajectory has been so far.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah. Well, congratulations on your acceptance and good luck. We need you out there. For folks who are listening to this who only see an acronym when they hear NIH, I’m not asking you to sort of describe everything that goes on there, but could you just give folks a sense of who actually works in the NIH and what kind of work is being done there?

Rakshita Balaji:

Yeah, this is a great question and a question. I actually had myself when I was young and going into the NIH or the National Institute of Health, I was 22 when I joined, and I actually also had no idea what goes on behind those gates. And it turns out what I’ve learned so far is that the N NIH is full of awesome people who are passionate about their work, but they’re also not, maybe the scientists you think of in the media that work isolated in a lab in an ivory tower doing crazy experiments. These are people who have families, people who have loved ones who have been affected by diseases and people who really want to make a difference in healthcare in America. And so I just want to first make the point that the NIH is full of regular people who just happen to love what they do and love science, just like everyone in this country is passionate about what they work on.

And so National Institute of Health is comprised by a bunch of different sub institutes. So they’ll work on things like allergies and diseases, cancer, pain, neuroscience, looking at neurodegenerative diseases, looking at aging. There’s a bunch of different types of research that’s going on in order to serve every subset of someone’s health profile and all of the different types of diseases or different afflictions that people can have throughout the us. And what’s also really special about the NIH in particular is their ability to use their knowledge and their resources to target diseases and conditions that are not necessarily as prevalent. So for example, rare diseases where people oftentimes don’t always find care in their own physician settings or don’t always find the right answers, just going to the doctor that doesn’t have the research or the exploratory privileges that people do at NIH. So for example, we look at diseases where the population of people that suffer from them can be so small, yet they don’t go ignored because our clinical center has people who are specialized in learning about specific genetic mutations or specific, I think that’s, yeah, specific genetic mutations for example, or specific diseases that don’t always get studied.

And so the NIH not only tries to serve the general public in terms of looking at complete profiles of people’s health, but they also can target their resources to looking at things that oftentimes go under the radar and give care to people who oftentimes don’t find answers whenever they go to the doctor and they actually find those answers in possible treatments at the NIH.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Could you tell folks listening what these cuts, everything Doge and the Trump administration are doing, what does this all look like from your side of things and how are you and your colleagues been responding to it? What do you want folks on the outside to know about what it looks like on the inside?

Rakshita Balaji:

Yeah, so the first thing that really comes to mind when I was thinking about these cuts, especially what’s happened February 14th, April 1st, it’s almost like a trap door. You’re sort of walking into work, you’re getting prepared. Maybe you got your kids ready for the day, maybe you got up and made breakfast and lunch and you made sure that everyone was ready, you got into work and suddenly the four just falls apart beneath you because you no longer have access to your work email. You no longer have access to your data. You are no longer as appreciated as you thought you once were as a federal employee, and all of a sudden you are left stranded without a job, maybe on administrative leave, not knowing if you’d have the chance to come back. And it sort of is almost like a disappearing act is what it really felt like for no apparent reason.

And that’s the worst part to hear that the numbers are the most important thing. How many people can they get rid of? How many people can they actually eliminate? Rather than thinking about how many lives are actually just being torn from underneath people? That’s kind of all I can describe it as. It’s a really strange disappearing act. You don’t know, we had the manager of our building, someone who takes care of our building when we have leaks or have issues with our labs, be fired on this random day and then reinstated the next. It’s all very chaotic. And this chaos is preventing us from actually being able to move forward with our work, which might’ve been the goal, but actually ends up harming way more people than just us doing the work, but the people that we’re trying to serve. So that’s the best way I can describe it. It was immediate, it was forceful, and it was completely and utterly uncalled for. I mean, we had people who were dedicated employees for over 10 years, 20 years, just suddenly say, I’m no longer able to come in. People who couldn’t even email anyone telling anyone that they were fired and had to shoot texts to people that they knew because they were immediately locked out of their computer. I mean completely. It just felt like a huge slap in the face.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I think the response from so many people has been fear and shock, and it’s almost been immobilizing because there’s so many executive orders, so many cuts, so much bad news hitting us day after day, which we know is part of the quote, flood the zone strategy. But what we are seeing, especially in recent weeks is anger, mobilization, organizing and the coming together like today of different unions. So there are different kinds of actions that folks are taking, whether it be going to these town halls and screaming at their elected officials or writing emails or doing mass protests. What we’re seeing here today is more about what unions and what workers can do when they come together with their labor power to fight this. So I was wondering if you could just talk a bit about that. What is the message here about what workers and unions in these agencies and what the labor movement can do to fight back against the Trump agenda?

Rakshita Balaji:

Yeah, so I think the first word that comes to mind is solidarity. I mean, we’ve now seen that an ultimate betrayal take place from our own employers and from our own administration showing us that we’re not valued. And so the only solace and the primary solace that I think is the most powerful has been within one another. We come into work, the morale has been extremely low. It feels like you’re trudging through molasses just trying to get one day to the other. And really all you can do with all that pent up frustration in order to not let it implode you is to actually share it with others and to bring community about it. And I think the most important thing that our union has brought about is that sense of solidarity, that sense of information, connection, network, especially when the actual protocol for all of these things has been so unclear going from a fork in the road to a riff, more acronyms might I add. The only place that we can really get answers is by sharing information and having open lines of communication with one another. And so the community that we fostered, I think that’s our strength and that’s what we want to preserve through all of our labor movements and unions is to understand that knowledge is power and we’re not afraid to share it with one another. We’re not afraid to speak the truth time and time again and to talk about our experiences and we will not be shut behind a door and left out of this conversation anymore.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And what comes next? I guess for folks listening to this, what’s your message about why this is the time to get involved and what they can do?

Rakshita Balaji:

I think with regards to when is the time, my only answer would be when else is the time? This whole period of time since the inauguration has felt like an avalanche, like you mentioned, it’s a barrage of information that usually makes little to no sense and has harmed so many people. So what other time do we have? I think because the only question I’d have, when else do we come out and do this as we need to be active and keep pushing back in the moments that things are happening and that’s how change occurs, what people can do. I think if you’re hopefully angry just like we are, you can call your representatives, keep telling them the stories, especially if you have been a victim of these removals from your job or a victim of the lack of funding for your research or even how this administration has been shaking up your life.

Those are important stories. Your story is as important as everyone else’s, and to not undervalue the power of your voice, whether it’s calling your representative, showing up to these protests, being in unison and harmony with other people, because not only will you find solace in that, but you’ll create strength and to look and try to plug into your local communities as well because typically you’re not the only one who’s going through this. And you can definitely find people who are willing to help you, willing to give you information and speak up. Don’t be afraid to ask questions whether it’s about, regardless of, for example, if you’re worried about things related to your immigration status, if you’re worried about things related to how your funding’s going to work, how you’re going to receive, are you going to receive a pension? These questions that have gone unanswered, echo it as much as you can because through those echoes, you’ll find answers within other people and eventually those echoes will be heard by people who can do more to help make a change and actually protect us from these kinds of ridiculous actions.

And again, if you’re angry, I think anger only will boil up inside of you if you let it fester. So the best thing to do is to release it at places like this, find local movements, do some searching, and look for places you can actually get your voice heard. And I promise that you don’t, don’t feel like you need to be someone special with the name or an acronym that helps you move forward. Just let yourself be heard and give yourself grace during this time too. And I hope that together we’ll be able to make this change together. Don’t lose sight of the power we have within one another when it feels like we’re being towered over. We actually are on an even playing field if we have each other, and we can begin to even that out in numbers if not in position.

Amanda Dykema:

My name is Amanda Dykema and I am a shop steward with AFSCME Local 10 72 at the University of Maryland College Park.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, Amanda, thank you so much for talking to me today. I know you got a lot going on and the crowd is dispersing, but I wanted to ask if you could just tell us a bit about what we just witnessed here and what brought all these folks out here to DC today?

Amanda Dykema:

Yeah, well, I think you saw people from all kinds of different unions and different kinds of workplaces who are all impacted by the same thing, which is these cuts that are happening to research and medicine and scientific innovation and education, and they’re hitting all sectors. And what we’re seeing is at the University of Maryland, faculty’s grants that were approved and have been ongoing for years being abruptly terminated with no cause. We’re seeing faculty grants that went in last year not being reviewed on review panels and we’re seeing cancellation of programs that have had huge impacts for things like expanding the STEM pipeline to people who have been historically excluded from it.

Maximillian Alvarez:

What’s on the ground impact of this? What would you want folks to know who are maybe just hearing about that and they’re saying, oh, that’s good. That’s eliminating waste. It’s getting rid of woke programs. What do you want folks to know about what these cuts are actually doing to your members and the people who benefit from their work?

Amanda Dykema:

So my members at the University of Maryland, we support all university services. You can see my t-shirt says we run this university. And so what it does for our members is those of us who work for research centers are concerned about the futures of their jobs. And for our students, we’re seeing student workers who are being let go because the funding’s not there anymore. For students who were looking for careers in these sectors who came to the University of Maryland to learn how to do this kind of research, if a research lab gets shut down, they’re not able to learn how to do that. They’re not able to prepare for grad school, they’re not able to go on. But mainly what we’re seeing is a chilling effect that faculty, students, and staff really have to work together and get organized to fight against. They want people to stop this kind of research. They want people to be scared, and we are here to get organized and work together so that we can fight against that.

Maximillian Alvarez:

What are the long term effects? If that doesn’t happen, if these things go through unchallenged, what are the long-term effects going to be for the University of Maryland specifically and higher ed in the United States more broadly?

Amanda Dykema:

That’s a big question. I’ll give it my best shot. The University of Maryland is a preeminent public research university. It’s the flagship of the state, and we have hundreds of millions of dollars of research funding every single year, and it funds all kinds of work. We heard today from a climate scientist. I work really closely with a lot of people in the College of Education who do work on K 12, and we have researchers in the humanities, in history, in museums, in data science. All of those agencies that fund that type of work have been subject to significant cuts, and those people will not be able to do their jobs or there’ll be a greatly reduced scope and the trickle down effect or the very obvious effect of their research. And when it comes to broader impacts on society, we’re not going to see those things. We’re not going to learn what is the best way to teach kids what is the best way to create climate resilient communities? We’re not going to learn those things if we don’t have this research funding.

Maximillian Alvarez:

So what was the message today about how workers and unions can fight back? I mean, it was really powerful to see so many different unions represented

Amanda Dykema:

Here,

Maximillian Alvarez:

And so that in itself seems significant. But I guess where does it go from here? What can rank and file folks listening to this do to get involved?

Amanda Dykema:

Yeah. Well, the number one thing, I’m going to say it every time is get organized. If you have a union at your workplace, join it. We’re more powerful together. If you don’t have a union at your workplace, work on getting one because we’re not going to be relying on whether it’s the president or whether it’s university administrators. We can’t rely on them to protect us. We have to work together to protect ourselves. But otherwise, the thing I really heard today was a lot about medical advances and people’s health. We’re going to see, if someone is not familiar with a research university, they might not know what this means, but if they go to their doctor and there’s not a clinical trial available for their diagnosis, they’re going to see what it means. And so I think what we’re trying to do now is reach out to our legislators who, the thing I haven’t said so far is that research is a huge economic driver for every state in this country.

And so we’re reaching out to our legislators to say, not only on its merits should this research be funded, but this is going to gut communities. This is people work in these labs and then they go and they spend their paychecks in their hometowns. And so what we’re asking is for people to understand that this isn’t a kind of an ivory tower thing that only impacts universities. It’s a thing that impacts everyone in this country. Senator Markey talked about health doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, and so people need to realize how this will impact them and their loved ones.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean, I was a PhD student at the University of Michigan, which is like the largest or one of the largest employers of that entire state.

Amanda Dykema:

Exactly. I’m from Michigan.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah,

Amanda Dykema:

Now that you’re listeners will care, but yes.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and any final messages that you have because we are also at the same time that these cuts are being pushed through experiencing a violent, vicious state crackdown on the very right to dissent against such things to speak out against such things, and universities are becoming the flashpoint for that war on free speech.

Amanda Dykema:

Well, I think the other reason we’re all here today, the people who came to this rally, we work at agencies like NIH and institutions like the University of Maryland, and we have to pressure our administrators to stand strong in the face of this. Trump clearly wants to stifle free speech, but what is a university, if not a place where people learn and grow through free speech expression and exposure to ideas. And so if that’s really our value, we have to call upon not only our legislators, but our administrators at these institutions to stand strong.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. I want to thank the guests who spoke with me today. It’s cold out here in DC and I’m about to head back home to Baltimore. But I also want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you cannot wait that long, then please go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism like this that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez reporting from Washington DC. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.

Junta airstrikes in northwestern Myanmar killed more than 30 civilians, including an entire family, residents and officials told Radio Free Asia on Thursday.

Despite a junta-declared ceasefire on April 2 following a devastating earthquake in central Myanmar, clashes have continued between military troops and rebel militias that have claimed increasing amounts of territory following the country’s 2021 coup.

On Wednesday evening, airstrikes on northern Sagaing region’s Wuntho township resulted in heavy civilian casualties, said Nay Bone Latt, a spokesperson for exiled National Unity Government, or NUG.

“The latest we know is that, including women and children, 26 people are dead and 23 are injured,” he said of the attack on an intersection in Nan Khan village. The junta had targeted a police checkpoint occupied by soldiers under the NUG’s Ministry of Defense, he said.

Recent rebel victories in Chin state and Sagaing region, hotspots for ethnic armies and militias aligned with the country’s exiled civilian government, may have contributed to retaliation from junta forces. Nan Khan village is about 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of Indaw town, which the NUG’s militia captured on Monday.

The NUG has not released any information about soldier casualties from the attack.

The checkpoint is inside the village, resulting in heavy civilian losses, said a resident.

“The plane bombing the People’s Defense Force gate. It’s at an intersection in the village, so it affected the public entirely,” he said, declining to be named for security reasons. “Some are still dying after reaching the hospital. We don’t have any other details yet.”

The junta has not released any information on the attack. Spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun did not respond to calls.

Despite ceasefires declared by the junta and the National Unity Government following the March 28 earthquake, both have launched military attacks and accused the other of breaking temporary peace declarations.

However, only junta airstrikes have caused heavy civilian losses in the wake of the natural disaster, killing six children, 30 women and 34 men, according to information released on Thursday.

To Sagaing’s west, junta airstrikes launched in Chin state’s Tedim and Mindat townships killed 12 people, including a Christian pastor, residents told RFA.

“There was no fighting. Yesterday around 12 at night, they bombed houses in Saizang village with a 500-pound bomb,” said a Tedim resident, declining to be named for fear of reprisals. “The house it hit belonged to a family of six, who died when the house collapsed.”

The victims included a 43 and 40-year-old husband and wife, their 17, 14 and five-year-old sons and a 10-year-old daughter. Another son, aged 10, was hospitalized with severe injuries.

(Chin Revolution News)

To Tedim’s south, airstrikes on rebel-controlled Mindat township’s Phwi village at 9 p.m. killed another six people, residents said.

“Just one plane came shooting twice and then dropped two 500-pound bombs. Among those killed are a Christian pastor, children and the elderly,” said a Mindat resident. “Of the nine people injured, three are critical.”

The dead were identified as an eight-month-old boy, two seven-year-old children, a 68-year-old man, a 72-year-old woman, a 38-year-old disabled man, and a pastor, who was 36 years old.

RFA called Chin state’s junta spokesperson Aung Cho for more information on the attacks, but he did not respond by the time of publication.

Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.

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

SPECIAL REPORT: By Alex Foley

Israel announced that Hossam Shabat was a “terrorist” alongside six other Palestinian journalists. Hossam predicted they would assassinate him.

He survived several attempts on his life. He wrote a brief obituary for himself at the age of 23, carried on reporting, and then on March 24, 2025, Israel killed him.

For those of us outside of Gaza, helpless to stop the carnage but unable to look away, a begrudging numbness has set in, a psychic lidocaine to cope with the daily images of the shattered bodies of dead children.

• READ MORE: NZ protesters honour killed Gaza journalists – ‘targeted’ say press freedom groups
• Silencing the messenger: Israel kills jourmnalists, while the West merely censors them — David Robie
• Other Gaza journalist reports

The other pro-Palestinian advocates and activists I speak with all mention familiar brain fogs and free-floating agitations.

By this point, I am accustomed to opening my phone and steeling myself for the horrors. But learning of Hossam’s death cut through me like a warm knife.

Through whatever fluke of the internet, many of the friends I have made over the course of the genocide are from the city of Beit Hanoun, like Hossam Shabat.

One was his classmate. Another walked with him through the bombed-out ruins of the North. Looking upon his upturned face, splattered with three stripes of crimson blood, I could not help but imagine each of them lying there in his place.

To quote my dear friend Ibrahim Al-Masri:

“Hossam Shabat wasn’t alone. He carried the grief of Beit Hanoun, the cries of children trapped under rubble, the aching voices of mothers queuing for bread, and the gasps of the wounded in hospitals that no longer functioned as hospitals.”

Many will remember the video of 14-year-old aspiring journalist Maisam Al-Masri greeting Hossam Shabat in his car, elated that he had not been killed when the occupation first took the North.

Separated from family
Hossam remained in Northern Gaza throughout the genocide, separated from his family, in full knowledge that staying and working was a death sentence. His reports were an invaluable insight into the occupation’s crimes, and for that they killed him.

In death, his eyes remained open, bearing witness one last time.

The Israeli account is, of course, very different. The Israeli army has claimed that Hossam Shabat was a “Hamas sniper” with the Beit Hanoun Battalion.

It is the kind of paper-thin lie we have grown accustomed to, dutifully repeated by the Western press. I am no military tactician, but I find it hard to believe that a young man with a high profile who reported his location frequently, including in live broadcasts, would be an effective sniper.

In the weeks before he was assassinated, Hossam Shabat was tweeting up to a dozen times a day.

Hasbara killed Hossam Shabat because it’s losing the PR war
A qualitative shift has occurred over the course of the genocide; Israel no longer seems interested in or capable of convincing the rest of the world that its actions are just. Rather, they are preoccupied with producing increasingly flimsy justifications with the sole aim of quelling internal dissent.

The Hasbara machine is foundering.

How could it not? For 17 months we have experienced a daily split screen between the endless stream of atrocities committed against the Palestinians and the screeching histrionics of Zionist influencers. While the people of Gaza endure blockade and bombing, Noa Tishby and Michael Rapaport moan about campus demonstrations.

The campus encampments are also the subject of a new documentary, October 8, currently in theatres throughout the US. Originally titled October H8te, the film claims to be a “searing look at the eruption of antisemitism in America that started the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel”.

The trailer is a series of to-camera interviews of the usual suspects, all decrying the lack of support Zionists discovered in the wake of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. They cite social media censorship and foreign interference as reasons for Zionism’s wild unpopularity among college students.

It never seems to occur to them that it might be Israel’s actions doing the damage.

In a recently shared clip, former Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, leans into the victim role, fighting through tears that do not come while relaying a story of asking a close friend if she would hide her while the pair were on a walk. Sandberg attributes her friend’s confusion at the question to the woman not being Jewish and not to the fact that it is a frankly absurd thing for a woman worth over $2 billion to ask.

‘Disappearing’ student protesters
The reality is, while Sandberg talks about how unsafe she feels in the US because of the university encampments, the government itself has begun “disappearing” student protesters on her behalf.

Plainclothes ICE agents are continuing to abduct student activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk at the behest of Betar USA, a far-right militant movement founded by Jabotinsky that has been providing the Trump administration with deportation lists.

The violent fantasies that Sandberg argues warrant a global outpouring of sympathy for Zionists are being enacted on an almost daily basis against the very students she claims are a threat.

The hysteria around the encampments has reached a new ludicrous pitch with a lawsuit filed by a group including the families of hostages taken on October 7 against students at Columbia, among them Khalil, whom they allege have been coordinating with Hamas.

The “bombshell” filing includes such evidence as an Instagram post by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine published three minutes before Hamas’ attack that stated, “We are back!!” after the account was dormant for several months.

The reasonable person might note that the inactivity on the account coincided with the Summer holidays. They might point out that it seems unlikely Hamas was coordinating with student groups in the US about an operation that required the element of surprise.

They might even question what the American students could provide that would make such a risk worth it.

Securing flow of weapons
But Hasbara is no longer concerned with the reasonable person; its sole purpose is securing the flow of weapons. Despite the government announcing earlier this year that they are spending an additional $150 million on “international PR,” Israel seems increasingly uninterested in convincing anyone other than the Western governments that still back them.

While public opinion of Israel plummets, each day the genocide continues without significant repercussions only reinforces that they can ignore this opinion.

This is reflected in the degree to which the goalposts have shifted. First, we were told Israel would never bomb a hospital, then we were shown elaborate schematics of nonexistent subterranean command centres, and now they execute and bury first responders without so much as a shrug.

The perverse result of Hasbara falling apart is more brazen, ruthless killing.

While legacy media may still run interference for Israel and universities continue to roll over for the Trump administration, Israel is facing a real threat. It can kill and kill — the number of journalists they have slain far outstrips other major conflicts — but for every Hossam Shabat they kill, there is a Maisam waiting in the wings, ready to shed light on their crimes.

Alex Foley is a researcher and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a background in molecular biology of health and disease. They are the co-founder of the Accountability Archive, a web tool preserving fragile digital evidence of pro-genocidal rhetoric from power holders. Follow them on X:@foleywoley Republished from The New Arab under Creative Commons.

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

Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is a new documentary that exposes the real-life consequences of the algorithms of big tech companies and their impact on children and teens. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11 billion advertising to minors in the U.S., where 95% of teenagers use social media. One in three teens uses social media almost constantly. “These products, they’re not designed to hook us, adults,” says Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle who is featured in Can’t Look Away. “They are designed to hook children.”

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

After states ratified the Constitution and seated the first Congress, James Madison sponsored, and his colleagues passed, the country’s first major piece of legislation: the Tariff Act of 1789. President George Washington signed the bill into law, setting off centuries of spiraling consequences for American competition and innovation that experts say should serve as a cautionary tale for a litany of modern industries, including clean energy technology. 

The Tariff Act levied, among other fees, a duty of 50 cents per ton on goods imported by foreign ships. The goal was to raise money and bolster American shipbuilders. Some iteration of this effort has existed virtually ever since; most recently as the 1920 Jones Act, which restricts domestic shipping to vessels that are built and registered in the United States, owned by American firms, and staffed by U.S. citizens.

In an era of wooden ships and limited globalization, these protections had little effect. American timber and American ships were naturally the best route for most companies. Before the revolution, even the British built one-third of their ships here. But by the late 1800s, technology was changing. Steamships and metal hulls were rapidly becoming the norm, yet U.S. shipbuilders remained insulated from competition. In 1900, the U.S. produced about 20 percent of the world’s ships by tonnage. By 1914, U.S.-flagged merchant vessels carried just 10 percent of ocean trade. In the 1970s, U.S. shipyards were building about 5 percent of the world’s tonnage. Today it’s around two-tenths of a percent — less than 5 ships per year. 

“U.S. shipbuilders haven’t been competitive since just after the Civil War,” said Colin Grabow, associate director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Grabow is an expert on the Jones Act and says American companies are still feeling its impacts. 

The U.S. only recently, for example, gained access — via a manufacturing license — to a Finnish dredging ship that the rest of the world has been able to use for 30 years. Offshore wind developers have pointed to the Jones Act as a major impediment to transporting turbines. The price of a U.S.-built ship is now as much as five times higher than those built abroad — up from a difference of about 20 percent in 1920. Grabow says Trump’s tariff push is set to create the same sort of protectionist woes that the shipbuilding industry has faced, on a much larger scale. 

“We’re going to keep your foreign competitors out. What’s the incentive to innovate in that kind of environment?” he said. “If you look around the world, countries that are more closed and more protectionist don’t tend to be cradles of innovation.” 

Clean energy technologies could be especially hard hit because so many key components — from batteries to solar cells — come predominantly from overseas. The tariffs Trump announced Wednesday range from 10 percent on the United Kingdom to 20 percent on the European Union. China will face duties of 34 percent, while Cambodia’s stand at 49 percent. These are in addition to a 10 percent tariff on all other countries the president announced and the recent hikes targeting aluminum, steel, and auto manufacturers. 

“Taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump said in remarks at the White House. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”

Tariffs could raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue but those added costs are often passed on to consumers and could result in higher prices for cars, heat pumps, or utilities.

“People are focused on the immediate price impacts,” said Catherine Wolfram, an economist focused on energy at the MIT Sloan School of Management. But the longer the tariffs are in place, the greater the chance that America’s clean energy industry falls further behind the rest of the world, especially China. 

Electric vehicles are one area that this could play out. If foreign competitors are tariffed out of the U.S. market, domestic automakers may not feel the need to produce cars with longer ranges, more efficient technologies, or other cutting-edge features. 

“The same logic applies whether you’re talking about solar cells or any other input into the clean tech space,” said Wolfram. “One of our core strengths is that we’re innovative [and] you’re protecting American companies from pressure to innovate.”

The reverse logic is also true, says Steven Knell, president of Energy Intelligence, an industry analysis firm. Trump’s tariffs will not only ease the impetus for domestic inventiveness but also make it more expensive for American companies to adopt innovations developed abroad. “Some of what has allowed the clean tech industry to be successful over the course of the last 20 years has been globalized market opportunities,” he said. “That’s certainly a potential risk of the way in which the administration is suggesting it’s going to pursue things.”

Arguments for protectionism often fall into a few buckets, said Grabow, including national security and the need to boost fledgling industries, but those policies have tended to remain in place far beyond their stated need. “That’s one of the dangers with protectionism, is once you put that in place, it’s hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube,” he said. “Historically, you find very few examples of where the government gets rid of protectionism.”

Grabow points to decades of government support for the sugar industry as another example of a sticky situation. Using a mix of quotas, tariffs and price supports, the Government Accountability Office found, in 2023 that federal policies aimed at protecting sugar farmers are raising prices and, on the whole, costing Americans $1 billion each year. The tariffs that Trump instituted in his first term have similarly been shown to be a net drag on the American economy.

“They’ve done the studies, they’ve done the math on it and we know it’s been an economic loser. But [President Biden] didn’t get rid of them,” said Grabow, citing the historical power 

Interest groups and lobbyists have shown in keeping protections in place. With Trump’s latest moves, he says, “take that dynamic and apply it all across the board.”

For Wolfram, Trump’s tariffs are only part of the problem when it comes to clean energy. Their impacts, she said, will be exacerbated by the fact that his administration is also trying to dismantle climate policy — especially the Inflation Reduction Act — and is targeting federal scientific research, and scientists, as part of its sweeping government cuts.  

“It’s a triple whammy,” she said, adding that there could be even more to come. “Four years is a long time.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs could kill American innovation on Apr 2, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.

The journalists killed were Farouk al-Zahir, producer and director, Magdy Abdel Rahman, a camera operator, Ibrahim Mudawi, an editor and director, who succumbed to his injuries later that day, and the crew’s driver, Wajeh Jaafar. 

“We are deeply saddened by the killing of Sudanese state television journalists Farouk Al-Zahir, Magdy Abdel Rahman, Ibrahim Mudawi, and their driver Wajeh Jaafar, who were killed while courageously covering historical events on the ground in Khartoum,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “Journalists should never be targets in conflict. All parties to Sudan’s war must ensure the safety of the press and respect the essential role journalists play in documenting truth, even in times of war.”

The state television crew had arrived at the presidential palace early Friday to document the SAF’s advance when they were hit by what was described as a loitering munition. Two local journalists told CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, that the journalists were targeted by the RSF for their coverage.

Sudan remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists since the war between the SAF and the RSF broke out April 2023, with at least 8 journalists killed in connection with the war.

CPJ’s requests for comment about the killings sent to the RSF via Telegram were not returned.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The journalists killed were Farouk al-Zahir, producer and director, Magdy Abdel Rahman, a camera operator, Ibrahim Mudawi, an editor and director, who succumbed to his injuries later that day, and the crew’s driver, Wajeh Jaafar. 

“We are deeply saddened by the killing of Sudanese state television journalists Farouk Al-Zahir, Magdy Abdel Rahman, Ibrahim Mudawi, and their driver Wajeh Jaafar, who were killed while courageously covering historical events on the ground in Khartoum,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “Journalists should never be targets in conflict. All parties to Sudan’s war must ensure the safety of the press and respect the essential role journalists play in documenting truth, even in times of war.”

The state television crew had arrived at the presidential palace early Friday to document the SAF’s advance when they were hit by what was described as a loitering munition. Two local journalists told CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, that the journalists were targeted by the RSF for their coverage.

Sudan remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists since the war between the SAF and the RSF broke out April 2023, with at least 8 journalists killed in connection with the war.

CPJ’s requests for comment about the killings sent to the RSF via Telegram were not returned.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Photograph Source: Toshe Ognjanov – Public Domain

On 15 March 2025, at least fifty-nine lives were lost in a nightclub fire in Kičevo, a small town in eastern Macedonia. The victims, mostly young people aged fourteen and up, perished in the flames or from smoke inhalation. The number of critically injured is at least twice as high as those deceased.

A concert by the popular band DNK had gathered around 500 attendees from surrounding small towns. But in that desolate region, with so many young people emigrating for a better life, where could such an event even be held? The remains of the so-called nightclub hold the answer – it was nothing more than a crumbling house, a former carpet warehouse. A shed, a warehouse – call it what you will, but certainly not a venue for entertainment, let alone one equipped for pyrotechnics! The fire reportedly started due to fireworks meant to ‘ignite the atmosphere’.

Expressions of condolence are pouring in, but the full magnitude of the catastrophe is best captured in one image: the charred ruins have become an image of a country in which nothing works. Hospitals were quickly overwhelmed, while families were searching for their missing children. At last, a few foreign countries took over the care of critically wounded persons.

Macedonia has witnessed such horror before. The first event that comes to mind is the 2021 fire at the modular hospital in Tetovo. That night, as Skopje celebrated Independence Day with fireworks, the fire reduced the hospital to ashes. It took fourteen lives in minutes – twelve bedridden COVID-19 patients and two relatives.

In that case, the building had been hastily constructed in violation of fire safety standards, despite containing oxygen cylinders. Four years later, we know exactly who approved it, who failed to enforce regulations, and who posed for public relations photos when it was inaugurated. Yet, no one has been held accountable. The blame was placed on a faulty cable. Even the health minister’s resignation at the time was rejected – today, he is the opposition leader, and the ‘modular hospital’ has vanished from his record.

This is just one of many scandals that expose the state’s disregard for the poor and vulnerable. Consider the corruption scandal at the country’s main oncology department, where chemotherapy drugs were sold on the black market while cancer patients received saline instead of treatment. Any accountability? No – just a parliamentary inquiry committee – and then silence.

Now, the crucial questions about the nightclub must be asked. Who allowed a dilapidated house to be used as a gathering place for young people? How could such a large-scale event take place without authorities ensuring fire safety, emergency exits, and evacuation plans?

The answer is simple: people will sell their souls for money. Some rented out the ‘nightclub’, others played a concert there for profit, and officials turned a blind eye. Knowing the impoverished environment these children came from, this was likely their only option for a night out. Because they lacked the means or opportunity to go anywhere better, they went to the nearest makeshift venue – and lost their lives. Tragedies, too, have a class dimension. This is nothing new, but it bears repeating.

The phrase now capturing public anger is the same as the one from the modular hospital tragedy: ‘The cable is to blame’. The real tragedy is that no one, absolutely no one, believes in justice, accountability, or responsibility – least of all those in power.

In May 2014, during the catastrophic Balkan floods, Croatian activist Srećko Horvat summed up the crisis in one sentence: ‘Under the surface of the floods lies a social disaster’. Though he was describing a natural calamity, his words remain just as relevant today. A social catastrophe is unfolding in the entire Balkan region – an absence of the rule of law, eroded institutions, austerity, and an inability to self-organize.

The real issue is a system that masquerades as democracy but, in reality, enables kakistocracy – rule by the least competent and most corrupt. And not just in politics, but everywhere: from university professors to inspectors, doctors, judges, and engineers.

The public knows the diagnosis, but despair has set in. On social media, after the criminal negligence of the most recent tragedy, a wave of resignation spread. A fellow professor wrote:

‘I deeply believe that our country needs a complete reset – from the top down, in every aspect of life. And if that isn’t possible, then there is no other option but to “turn off the lights” and “lock the doors” (it’s no coincidence that our country is emptying at an unprecedented rate). There is hardly a single sector without corruption, nepotism, charlatanism, improvisation, or party control. For most people, corruption has become a normal “way of life”’.

The system kills – through greed, incompetence, and clientelism.

The only question is: will there be resistance? Will those responsible be named? Will any politician take moral or political responsibility?

The political leadership appears both determined to tackle the metastasising corruption (primarily by blaming their political opponents) and insistent that the public mourn in silence – alone, without expressing anger. However, the presence of political figures delivering speeches and reciting poetry at the spontaneous student protests on the plaza in front of the largest university in Skopje has had the opposite effect.

The fear of a potential ‘Serbian scenario’ – mass youth protests – is palpable in the air. The situation remains volatile, not only in Kočani but across the country. Regular daily gatherings were scheduled to begin as of Tuesday, 18 March.

This article was produced by Globetrotter. 

The post Corruption and Greed Kill in Macedonian Fire appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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

The nearly two-month ceasefire in Gaza has been shattered as Israel carries out a second day of intense airstrikes. At least 27 Palestinians were killed in overnight strikes Tuesday night. This comes a day after Israel killed over 400 Palestinians, including at least 174 children. The bombing is “the most savage attack that Gaza has witnessed in over a year,” says Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza. He says the renewed assault in Gaza is linked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal and political challenges at home. “When you’re in crisis, nothing would unite your government, nothing would suppress any sort of protest or opposition, more than killing Palestinians.”

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

Three days later, suspected militants from his own community abducted him under the cover of darkness and shot him dead for doing so, Southeast Asian NGO Fortify Rights said in a report released Tuesday.

“Rohingya rebel members in Bangladesh are killing, abducting, torturing, and threatening Rohingya refugees arriving from Myanmar, which may amount to war crimes,” Fortify Rights said in a press statement accompanying the report.

Its 78-page report, “I May Be Killed Any Moment,” noted that three key elements must be present to establish a war crime – an armed conflict, a prohibited act committed against a protected person and a nexus between the conflict and the act committed.

“[F]ortify Rights has reasonable grounds to believe that all such elements are satisfied.”

The new report documents killings, abductions, torture, and other violations against Rohingya refugees committed, Fortify Rights says, by mainly two rival militant groups, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, and Rohingya Solidarity Organization, or RSO.

The report draws on interviews with 116 people, including Rohingya survivors and eyewitnesses, Rohingya militants, U.N. officials, humanitarian aid workers, and others, about the ongoing violence in the camps.

It said that killings of Rohingya refugees by Rohingya militant groups in Bangladesh’s refugee camps had doubled year-on-year since 2021, with a total of at least 219 from then until last year.

However, the more than 90 people killed in 2023 included dozens of reported members of the two rival militant groups killed in clashes between them, Fortify Rights said.

(MOHAMMAD PONIR HOSSAIN/Reuters)

Why would Rohingya militants strike fear among their own community of refugees who fled decades of persecution and terror in their homeland in Myanmar?

“[The] militant groups intimidate, threaten, and harass Rohingya refugees to forcibly recruit new members, prevent them from reporting abuses to the authorities, and gain political control of the camps,” the report said.

“Militants have also abducted Rohingya refugees for refusing to join or collaborate with them and for opposing militant groups in the camps,” Fortify Rights said, noting that the militants use abductions and torture to extort money for their activities.

In 2022, refugees told Radio Free Asia affiliate BenarNews that ARSA was also against the repatriation of the Rohingya to Myanmar, but they did not elaborate on the reason.

ARSA and RSO both have said they are fighting to liberate the Rohingya people in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State from junta-aligned military forces and the Arakan Army, an armed separatist group.

Rakhine is where most of the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority community lives.

RELATED STORIES

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However, Fortify Rights said, RSO had been collaborating since last year with the Burmese junta against the Arakan Army rebels.

The junta comprises the same security forces whose brutal 2017 crackdown led to some 740,000 Rohingya fleeing across the border to Bangladesh and now staying in camps in Cox’s Bazar in the southeastern part of the country. The junta launched the offensive in response to coordinated attacks by ARSA rebels in Rakhine.

“While barely mentioning the Myanmar military junta,” ARSA’s leader, in a May 2024 video, focused on combatting the Arakan Army, which wants to “liberate” the state of Rakhine from the army, Fortify Rights said.

Comprising mainly Rakhine Buddhists, the Arakan Army claimed it respects the rights of Rohingya, but experts say they carried out mass arson attacks on Rohingya villages last year.

After the military toppled an elected government in Myanmar in 2021, the country descended into a civil war with junta security forces battling a variety of armed ethnic groups.

ARSA chief arrested

ARSA and RSO, though, continue to publicly deny responsibility for any wrongdoing, said the report.

Attaullah Abu Ammar Jununi, then commander-in-chief of ARSA, said in 2017 that “atrocity, violence, and injustice against any innocent civilians is not in [our] principles or policy,” the NGO said.

ARSA had also denied responsibility for specific incidents of violence in the Bangladesh refugee camps, including the killings of camp leaders and a prominent community leader, Muhib Ullah, whose assassination in September 2021 caused outrage outside Bangladesh as well.

But Bangladesh authorities, who after years of denying ARSA’s presence in the camps finally admitted in June 2022 that Muhib Ullah’s killing had been ordered by ARSA’s Ataullah.

And Bangladesh police on Tuesday said that he and other accomplices had been arrested the previous evening in a town near Dhaka. They had been conducting secret meetings to plan “sabotage and criminal activities,” police said.

The arrested were found in possession of around US$175,000 and some steel weapons.

Of 29 people accused of links to Muhib Ullah’s killing, 18 accused have been arrested so far, while 11 others are absconding, police told BenarNews on Tuesday.

(Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters)

Murder and a slew of other criminal activities were common occurrences in the camps where nearly 1 million refugees are sheltering, some Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar told BenarNews.

Muhammed Jubair, acting president of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, said several armed groups were involved in the crimes.

“Various crimes, including murder, are being committed in the camps,” he said.

“It is difficult to say whether the crimes that occur are war crimes or not.”

A former ARSA member told Fortify Rights in November 2023 that the group didn’t work “according to humanitarian principles” for the community.

One especially brutal incident is detailed in the report.

A 23-year-old Rohingya man was abducted, tortured, dismembered, and left to die in the refugee camps – but he survived. He spoke to Fortify Rights about what happened to him.

“[T]hey cut off my leg first. I was able to hear the sound that they were cutting off the bones of my leg with a big knife,” he told Fortify Rights.

[‘They] took half an hour to cut me. My arm was cut just above my elbows.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shailaja Neelakantan and Zia Chowdhury for BenarNews.

“Today is a desperately dark day for humanity. Israel brazenly resumed its devastating bombing campaign in Gaza killing at least 414 people in their sleep, including at least 100 children, and again wiping out entire families in a matter of hours. Palestinians in Gaza – who have barely had a chance to start piecing together their lives and continue to grapple with the trauma of Israel’s past attacks – have woken up once more to the hellish nightmare of intense bombardment.

Palestinians in Gaza – who have barely had a chance to start piecing together their lives and continue to grapple with the trauma of Israel’s past attacks – have woken up once more to the hellish nightmare of intense bombardment. — Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard

“Israel’s genocide and its unlawful air strikes have already caused unprecedented humanitarian suffering in Gaza. Today, we are back to square one. Since 2 March, Israel has re-imposed a total siege on Gaza blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid, medicine, and commercial supplies, including fuel and food, in flagrant violation of international law. Israel has also cut off electricity to Gaza’s main operational desalination plant. And today the Israeli military has once again started issuing mass ‘evacuation’ orders displacing Palestinians.

“Amnesty International’s researchers spoke to medical staff working at three hospitals in Gaza City and North Gaza governorate who described scenes of unspeakable horror beginning in the early hours of the morning. Al-Shifa, once the largest medical complex in Gaza, now largely destroyed by past Israeli military raids, had only three beds to receive the wounded.

“Al-Ahli Arab Baptist hospital in Gaza City – the only hospital with a functioning intensive care unit – was forced to treat some of the 80 wounded it received in the corridors and in the hospital’s yard. The Indonesian hospital is the only hospital in north Gaza Governorate that is barely functioning. It is still in the process of being rebuilt, following Israel’s previous military campaign.

“The near-total decimation of the healthcare system in Gaza, particularly in the north, and the desperate shortages in medical equipment and supplies, exacerbated by Israel’s unlawful siege, effectively means a death sentence for many of those with serious injuries and illnesses, including those that in normal conditions would be easily curable. All the while, Israeli authorities continue to impose extremely tight restrictions on medical evacuations outside Gaza.

“The resumption of Israel’s attacks also puts the lives of 24 remaining Israeli hostages believed to be alive at risk. This is also a cruel blow for hostages and Palestinian detainees as well as for their families. We remind all parties that civilian hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians must be released.

“The world cannot stand by and allow Israel to continue inflicting staggering levels of death and suffering on Palestinians in Gaza. We urge all states to uphold their obligations to prevent and punish genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, by pressing Israel to end its attacks and to facilitate the unconditional and unhindered entry of humanitarian aid. “States must come together and demand an immediate resumption of an enduring ceasefire, an end to Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and the dismantling of its system of apartheid and unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory.”

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

Israel has shattered the Gaza ceasefire agreement with Hamas, launching a massive wave of airstrikes overnight that killed hundreds of people across the Palestinian territory and wounded many others. The surprise attacks came amid stalled talks on how to extend the ceasefire signed in January, though Israel has signaled for weeks that it wanted to resume the war on Gaza. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon volunteering at Nasser Hospital, describes some of the horrific injuries he has treated, and says it’s “heartbreaking” for Palestinians to suffer more bloodshed. “It’s all because we provide the funding, the diplomatic, the economic and the military support. And we don’t have to,” he tells Democracy Now! “We didn’t have to under Biden. We certainly don’t have to under Trump.”

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

As the climate crisis escalates, a just and rapid transition to renewable energy might seem like the obvious solution. Yet somehow, fossil fuel expansion always remains on the agenda. Environmental activist and author Bill McKibben joins Inequality Watch to expose the network of carbon guzzling billionaires manipulating our media to keep our planet warming and their pockets flush with oil and gas profits.

Produced by: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley
Written by: Stephen Janis

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to our show, The Inequality Watch. You may know me and my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, for our police accountability reporting. Well, this show is similar except, in this case, our job is to hold billionaires and extremely wealthy individuals accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of a single billionaire. Instead, we examine the system that makes the extreme hoarding of wealth possible.

And today we’re going to unpack a topic that is extremely unpopular with most billionaires. It also might not seem like the most likely topic for a story about inequality, but I think when we explain it and talk to our guests, you might find there’s more to it than meets the eye.

I’m talking about the future of renewable energy and how it could impact your life. And now wait, before you say, Taya, you’re crazy, I mean, Elon Musk builds electric cars. How do you know billionaires don’t like green energy? Well, just give me a second. I think the way we approach this topic will not be what you expect. That’s because there’s a huge invisible media ecosystem that has been constructed around the idea that green energy is somehow too expensive or useless — Or, even worse yet, a conspiracy to fill liberal elite politico coffers.

But what if that’s not true? What if it’s not just fault, but patently, vehemently untrue? If you believe the right-wing media ecosystem, we’re apparently destined to spend tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and then tens of thousands to maintain gas-guzzling cars for the rest of our lives. We’ll inevitably be forced to pay higher and higher utility bills to pay for gas, oil, and coal that will enrich the wealthiest who continue to extract it.

But I just want you to consider an alternative. What if, in fact, the opposite is true? What if renewables could finally and for once, and I really mean for once, actually benefit the working people of this country? What if solar, for example, keeps getting cheaper and batteries more efficient so that using this energy could be as cheap and as simple as pointing a mirror at the sun? And what about the so-called carbon billionaires who are enriched by burning planet-heating gases while they jet set in private planes burning even more carbon while I’m busy using recycled grocery bags? What if they’ve constructed an elaborate plan to make you believe that electricity from the sun is somehow more costly and less healthy?

And what if that’s all wrong? What if someday your utility bill could be halved? What if you could buy an electric car for one-fifth the price of a gas powered and leave gas stations and high gas prices behind forever? And what if your life could actually be made easier by a new technology?

Well, there is a massive media ecosystem that wants you to think you are destined to be immersed in carbon. They want you to believe that progress is impossible, and ultimately, that innovation is simply something to be feared, not embraced.

But today we are here to discuss an alternative way of looking at renewable energy, and we’ll be talking to someone who knows more about its potential than anyone. His name is Bill McKibben, and he’s one of the foremost advocates for renewable energy and a leader in the fight against global climate change. Bill McKibben is the founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 for action on climate injustice. His 1989 book, The End of Nature, is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and it’s appeared in over 24 languages. He helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate campaign, which has organized protests on every continent — Including Antarctica — For climate change. And he even played a leading role in launching the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like the Keystone XL and the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest anticorporate campaign in history. He’s even won the Gandhi Peace Prize. I cannot wait to speak to this amazing champion.

But before we turn to him, I want to turn to my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, and discuss how issues like renewables fit into the idea of inequality and why it’s important to view it through that lens.

Stephen Janis:

Well, Taya, one of the reasons we wanted to do this show was because I feel like we are living in the reality of the extractive economy that we’ve talked about. And that reality is psychological. Because we have to be extracted from. They’re not going to give us good products or good ways or improve our lives, they’re going to find ways to extract wealth from us.

And this issue, to me, is a perfect example because we’ve been living in this big carbon ecosystem of information, and the dividend has been cynicism. The main priority of the people who fill our minds with the impossibility are the people who really live off the idea of cynicism: nothing works, everything’s broken, technology can’t fix anything, and everything is dystopian.

But I thought when I was thinking about our own lives and how much money we spend to gas up a car, this actually has a possibility to transform the lives of the working class. And that’s why we have to take it seriously and look at it from a different perspective than the way the carbon billionaires want us to. Because the carbon billionaires are spending tons of money to make us think this is impossible.

And I think what we need really, truly is a revolution of competency here. A revolution of idea, a revolution that there are ways to improve our lives despite what the carbon billionaires want us to believe, that nothing works and we all hate each other. And so this, I think, is a perfect topic and a perfect example of that.

Taya Graham:

Stephen, that’s an excellent point.

Stephen Janis:

Thank you.

Taya Graham:

It really is. I feel like the entire idea of renewable energy has been sold as a cost rather than a benefit, and that seems intentional to me. It seems like there is an arc to this technology that could literally wipe carbon billionaires off the face of the earth in the sense that the carbon economy is simply less efficient, more costly, and, ultimately, less plentiful.

But before we get to our guest, let me just give one example. And to do so, I’m going to turn to politics in the UK. There, the leader of a reform party, a right-wing populous group that has been gaining power called renewable energy a massive con and pledged to enact laws that would tax solar power and ban — Yes, you heard it right — Ban industrial-scale battery power. But there was an issue: a fellow member of the party in Parliament had just installed solar panels on his farm and had touted it on a website as, you guessed it, a great business decision. The MP Robert Lowe, as The Guardian UK reported, was ecstatic about his investment, touting it as the best way to get low-cost energy. I mean, I don’t know if the word hypocrisy is strong enough to describe this.

Stephen Janis:

Seems inadequate.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, it really does.

But I do think it’s a great place to introduce and bring in our guest, Bill McKibbon. Mr. McKibbon, thank you so much for joining us.

Bill McKibben:

What a pleasure to be with you.

Taya Graham:

So first, please just help me understand how a party could, on one hand, advocate against renewable energy and, on the other, use it profitably? What is motivating what I think could be called hypocrisy?

Bill McKibben:

Well, we’re in a very paradoxical moment here. For a long time, what we would call renewable energy, energy from the sun and the wind, was more expensive. That’s why we talked about it as alternative energy. And we have talked about carbon taxes to make it a more viable alternative and things. Within the last decade, the price of energy from the sun and the wind and the batteries to store that when the sun goes down or the wind drops, the price of that’s been cut about 90%. The engineers have really done their job.

Sometime three or four years ago, we passed some invisible line where it became the cheapest power on the planet. We live on an earth where the cheapest way to make energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. So that’s great news. That’s one of the few pieces of good news that’s happening in a world where there’s a lot of bad news happening.

Great news, unless you own a oil well or a coal mine or something else that we wouldn’t need anymore. Or if your political party has been tied up with that industry in the deepest ways. Those companies, those people are panicked. That’s why, for instance, in America, the fossil fuel industry spent $455 million on the last election cycle. They know that they have no choice but to try and slow down the transition to renewable energy.

Stephen Janis:

So I mean, how do they always seem to be able to set the debate, though? It always seems like carbon billionaires and carbon interests seem to be able to cast aside renewable energy ideas, and they always seem to be in control of the dialogue. Is that true? And how do they do that, do you think?

Bill McKibben:

Well, I mean, they’re in control of the dialogue the way they are in control of many dialogues in our political life by virtue of having a lot of money and owning TV networks and on and on and on. But in this case, they have to work very hard because renewable energy, especially solar energy, is so cheap and so many people have begun to use it and understand its appeal, that it’s getting harder and harder to stuff this genie back into the bottle.

Look at a place like Germany where last year, 2024, a million and a half Germans put solar panels on the balconies of their apartments. This balcony solar is suddenly a huge movement there. You can just go to IKEA and buy one and stick it up. You can’t do that in this country because our building codes and things make it hard, and the fossil fuel industry will do everything they can to make sure that continues to be the case.

Taya Graham:

Well, I have to ask, given what you’ve told us, what do you think are the biggest obstacles to taking advantage of these technological advances? What is getting in our way and what can we do about it?

Bill McKibben:

Well, look, there are two issues here. One is vested interest and the other is inertia. And these are always factors in human affairs, and they’re factors here. Vested interest now works by creating more inertia. So the fossil fuel industry won the election in 2024. They elected Donald Trump. And Donald Trump in his first day in office declared an energy emergency, saying that we needed to produce more energy, and then he defined energy to exclude wind and solar power; only fossil fuels and nuclear need apply. He’s banned new offshore wind and may, in fact, be trying to interfere with the construction of things that had already been approved and are underway.

So this is hard work to build out a new energy system, but by no means impossible. And for the last two years around the world, it’s been happening in remarkable fashion. Beginning in about the middle of 2023, human beings were putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels every day. A gigawatt’s the rough equivalent of a nuclear or a coal-fired power plant. So every day on their roofs, in solar farms, whatever, people were building another nuclear reactor, it’s just that they were doing it by pointing a sheet of black glass at the great nuclear reactor 93 million miles up in the sky.

Stephen Janis:

Speaking of around the world, I was just thinking, because I’ve been reading a lot, it seems like we’re conceding this renewable future to China a bit. Do you feel like there’s a threat that, if we don’t reverse course, that China could just completely overwhelm us with their advantages in this technology?

Bill McKibben:

I don’t think there’s a threat, I think there’s a guarantee. And in fact, I think in the course of doing this, we’re ceding global leadership overall to the Chinese. This is the most important economic transition that will happen this century. And China’s been in the lead, they’ve been much more proactive here, but the US was starting to catch up with the IRA that Biden passed, and we were beginning to build our own battery factories and so on. And that’s now all called into question by the Trump ascension. I think it will probably rank as one of the stupidest economic decisions in American history.

Taya Graham:

Well, I have to follow that up with this question: Do you think that the current administration can effectively shut down this kind of progress in solar and renewables? And how much do you think the recent freeze in spending can just derail the progress, basically?

Bill McKibben:

So they can’t shut it down, but they can slow it down, and they will. And in this case, time is everything. And that’s because one of, well, the biggest reason that we want to be making this shift is because the climate future of the planet is on the line. And, as you are aware, that climate future is playing out very quickly. Look, the world’s climate scientists have told us we need to cut emissions in half by 2030 to have some chance of staying on that Paris pathway. 2030, by my watch, is four years and 10 months away now. That doesn’t give us a huge amount of time. So the fact that Trump is slowing down this transition is really important.

Now, I think the deepest problem may be that he’s attempting to slow it down, not only in the US, but around the world. He’s been telling other countries that if they don’t buy a lot of us liquified natural gas, then he’ll hit them with tariffs and things like that. So he’s doing his best to impose his own weird views about climate and energy onto the entire planet.

Again, he can’t stop it. The economics of this are so powerful that eventually we’ll run the world on sun and wind — But eventually doesn’t help much with the climate, not when we’re watching the North and the South Poles melt in real time.

Taya Graham:

I just want to follow up with a clip from Russell Vought who was just confirmed the lead to the Office of Management and Budget. And he was giving a speech at the Center for Renewing America. And I just wanted Mr. McKibbon to hear this really quick first and then to have him respond. So let’s just play that clip for him.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Russell Vought:

We want the bureaucrats to be tramatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they’re increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.

[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]

Taya Graham:

So the reason why I played this for you is because I wanted to know what your concerns would be with the EPA being kneecapped, if not utterly defunded. And just so people understand what the actions are that the EPA takes and the areas that the EPA regulates that protect the public that people just might not be aware of.

Bill McKibben:

I’m old enough to have been in this country before the EPA, and before the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. They all came together in the early 1970s right on the heels of the first Earth Day and the huge outpouring of Americans into the street. And in those days, you could not breathe the air in many of the cities in this nation without doing yourself damage. And when I was a boy, you couldn’t swim in an awful lot of the rivers, streams, lakes of America. We’ve made extraordinary environmental progress on those things, and we’d begun, finally, to make some halting progress around this even deeper environmental issue of climate change.

But what Mr. Vought is talking about is that that comes at some cost to the people who are his backers: the people in the fossil fuel industry. He doesn’t want rules about clean air, clean water, or a working climate. He wants to… Well, he wants short-term profit for his friends at the long-term expense of everybody in this country and in this world.

Stephen Janis:

It’s interesting because you bring up a point that I think I hear a lot on right-wing ecosystem, media ecosystems that, somehow, clean energy is unfairly subsidized by the government. But isn’t it true that carbon interests are subsidized to a great extent, if not more than green energy?

Bill McKibben:

Yes. The fossil fuel subsidy is, of course, enormous and has been for a century or more. That’s why we have things like the oil depletion allowance and on and on and on. But of course, the biggest subsidy to the fossil fuel industry by far is that we just allow them to use our atmosphere as an open sewer for free. There’s no cost to them to pour carbon into the air and heat up the planet. And when we try to impose some cost — New York state just passed a law that’s going to send a bill to big oil for the climate damages — They’re immediately opposed by the industry, and in this case, with the Trump administration on their side, they’ll do everything they can to make it impossible to ever recover any of those costs. So the subsidy to fossil energy dwarfs that to renewable energy by a factor of orders of magnitude.

Stephen Janis:

That’s really interesting because sometimes people try to, like there was a change in the calculation of the cost of each ton of carbon. That’s really a really important kind of way to measure the true impact. You make a really good point, and that is quite expensive when you take a ton of carbon and figure out what the real cost is to society and to our lives. It’s very high.

Bill McKibben:

Well, that cost gets higher, too, all the time. And sometimes people, it’s paid in very concentrated ways — Your neighborhood in Los Angeles burns down and every house goes with it. And sometimes the cost is more spread out. At the moment, anybody who has an insurance policy, a homeowner’s insurance policy in this country, is watching it skyrocket in price far faster than inflation. And that’s because the insurance companies have this huge climate risk to deal with, and they really can’t. That’s why, in many places, governments are becoming insurers of last resort for millions and millions of Americans.

Taya Graham:

I was curious about, since I asked you to rate something within the current Trump administration, I thought it would be fair to ask you to rate the Inflation Reduction Act. I know the current administration is trying to dismantle it, but I wanted your thoughts on this. Do you think it’s been effective?

Bill McKibben:

Yeah, it’s by no means a perfect piece of legislation. It had to pass the Senate by a single vote, Joe Manchin’s vote, and he took more money from the fossil fuel industry than anybody else, so he made sure that it was larded with presence for that industry. So there’s a lot of stupid money in it, but that was the price for getting the wise money, the money that was backing sun and wind and battery development in this country, the money that was helping us begin to close that gap that you described with China. And it’s a grave mistake to derail it now, literally an attempt to send us backwards in our energy policy at a moment when the rest of the world is trying to go in the other direction.

Stephen Janis:

Speaking of that, I wanted to ask you a question from a personal… Our car was stolen and we were trying to get an electric car, but we couldn’t afford it. Why are there electric cars in China that supposedly run about 10,000 bucks, and you want to buy an electric car in this country and it’s like 50, 60, 70, whatever. I know it’s getting cheaper, but why are they cheaper elsewhere and not here?

Bill McKibben:

Well, I mean, first of all, they should not, unless you want a big luxury vehicle, shouldn’t be anything like that expensive even here. I drive a Kia Niro EV, and I’ve done it for years, and you can get it for less than the cost of the average new car in America. [Crosstalk] Chinese are developing beautiful, beautiful EVs, and we’ll never get them because of tariffs. We’re going to try and protect our auto industry — Which would be a reasonable thing to do if in the few years that we were protecting that auto industry, it was being transformed to compete with the Chinese. But Trump has decided he’s going to get rid of the EV mandate. I mean, in his view, in his world, I guess will be the last little island of the internal combustion engines, while everybody else around the world gets to use EVs.

And the thing about EVs is not just that they’re cleaner, it’s that they’re better in every way. They’re much cheaper to operate. They have no moving parts, hardly. I’ve had mine seven years and I haven’t been to the mechanic for anything on it yet. It’s the ultimate travesty of protectionism closing ourselves off from the future.

Taya Graham:

That’s such a shame. And because I feel like people are worried that in the auto industry, that bringing in renewables would somehow harm the autoworkers, it’s just asking them to build a different car. It’s not trying to take away jobs, which I think is really important for people to understand.

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

But I was curious, there’s a bunch of different types of renewables, I was wondering maybe you could help us understand what advantages solar might have versus what the advantages of wind [are]. Just maybe help us understand the different type of renewables we have.

Bill McKibben:

Solar and wind are beautifully complimentary, and in many ways. The higher in latitude you go, the less sun you get, but the more wind you tend to get. Sun is there during the midday and afternoon, and then when the sun begins to go down, it’s when the wind usually comes up. If you have a period without sun for a few days, it’s usually because a storm system of some kind that’s going through, and that makes wind all the more useful. So these two things work in complement powerfully with each other. And the third element that you need to really make it all work is a good system of batteries store that power.

And when you get these things going simultaneously, you get enormous change. California last year passed some kind of tipping point. They’d put up enough solar panels and things that, for most of the year, most days, California was able to supply a hundred percent of its electricity renewably for long stretches of the day. And at night when the sun went down, batteries were the biggest source of supply to the grid. That’s a pretty remarkable thing because those batteries didn’t even exist on that grid two or three years ago. This change is happening fast. It’s happening fastest, as we’ve said in China, which has really turned itself into an electro state, if you will, as opposed to a petro state, in very short order. But as I say, California is a pretty good example. And now Texas is putting up more clean energy faster than any other place in the country.

Stephen Janis:

That’s ironic.

Taya Graham:

Yeah. Well, I was wondering, there’s a technology that makes the news pretty often, but I don’t know if it’s feasible, I think it’s called carbon capture or carbon sequestration. I know that Biden administration had set aside money to bolster it, but does this technology make sense?

Bill McKibben:

These were the gifts to the fossil fuel industry that I was talking about in the IRA. It comes in several forms, but the one I think you’re referring to is that you put a filter on top, essentially, of a coal-fired power plant or a gas-fired power plant and catch the carbon as it comes out of the exhaust stream and then pump it underground someplace and lock it away. You can do it, you just can’t do it economically. Look, it’s already cheaper just to build a solar farm than to have a coal-fired power plant. And once you’ve doubled the price of that coal-fired power plant by putting an elaborate chemistry set on top of it, the only way to do this is with endless ongoing gifts from the taxpayer, which is what the fossil fuel industry would like, but doesn’t make any kind of economic sense.

Stephen Janis:

You just said something very profound there. You said that it’s cheaper to build a solar field than it is to build a coal plant, but why is this not getting through? I feel like the American public doesn’t really know this. Why is this being hidden from us, in many ways?

Bill McKibben:

In one way, it is getting through. Something like 80% of all the new electric generation that went up last year in this country was sun and wind. So utilities and things sort of understand it. But yes, you’re right. And I think the reason is that we still think of this stuff as alternative energy. I think in our minds, it lives like we think of it as the whole foods of energy; it’s nice, but it’s pricey. In fact, it’s the Costco of energy; It’s cheap, it’s available in bulk on the shelf, and it’s what we should be turning to. And the fact that utilities and things are increasingly trying to build solar power and whatever is precisely the reason that the fossil fuel industry is fighting so hard to elect people like Trump.

When I told you what California was doing last year, what change it had seen, as a result, California, in 2024, used 25% less natural gas to produce electricity than they had in 2023. That’s a huge change in the fifth largest economy on earth in one year. It shows you what can happen when you deploy this technology. And that’s the reason that the fossil fuel industry is completely freaked out.

Stephen Janis:

By the way, as a person who has tried to shop at Whole Foods, I immediately understood your comparison.

Taya Graham:

I thought that was great. It’s not the Whole Foods of energy, It’s actually the Costco, that’s so great.

Stephen Janis:

There is that perception though, it’s a bunch of latte-drinking liberals who think that this is what we’re trying to get across —

Taya Graham:

Chai latte, matcha latte.

Stephen Janis:

That’s why it’s so important. It’s cheaper! It’s cheaper. Sorry, go ahead —

Taya Graham:

That’s such a great point. We actually, we try to look for good policy everywhere we go. And we attended a discussion at the Cato Institute, and this is where their energy fellow described how Trump would use a so-called energy emergency to turn over more federal lands to drilling. So I’m just going to play a little bit of sound for you, and let’s take a listen.

[CLIP BEGINS]

Speaker 1:

What does work in your mix?

Speaker 2:

So I call it the Joe Dirt approach. Have you seen that scene in the movie where he’s talking to the guy selling fireworks, and the guy has preferences over very specific fireworks, it’s like snakes and sparklers. The quote from Joe Dirt is, “It’s not about you, it’s about the consumer.” So I think, fundamentally, I’m resource neutral. I will support whatever consumers want and are willing to pay for. I think where that comes out in policy is you would remove artificial constraints. So right now we have a lot of artificial constraints from the Environmental Protection Agency on certain power plants, phasing out coal-fire power, for example. So I would hope, and I would encourage a resource-neutral approach, just we will take energy from anybody that wants to supply it and anybody that wants to buy it.

[CLIP ENDS]

Stephen Janis:

Mr. McKibben, I still feel like he’s not really resource neutral. Do you trust the Cato Institute on this issue, or what do you think he’s trying to say there?

Bill McKibben:

Well, I mean, I think he’s… The problem, of course, is that we have one set of energy sources [which] causes this extraordinary crisis, the climate crisis. And so it really doesn’t make sense to be trying to increase the amount of oil or coal or whatever that we’re using. That’s why the world has been engaged for a couple of decades now in an effort, a theoretical effort, with some success in some places, to stop using these things. And the right wing in this country that has always been triggered by this and has always done what they can to try and bolster the fossil fuel industry. That was always stupid economically just because the costs of climate change were so hot. But now it’s stupid economically because the cost of renewable energy is so low.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean, the right always purports to be more cost effective, cost conscious or whatever. I just don’t understand it. I would think they’d be greedy or something, or they’d want to make more money. Is it just that renewables ultimately won’t be profitable for them? Or what’s the…

Bill McKibben:

If you think about it, you’re catching an important point there. For all of us who have to use them, renewable energy is cheap, but it’s very hard to make a fortune in renewable energy precisely because it’s cheap. So the CEO of Exxon last year said his company would never be investing in renewable energy because, as he put it, it can’t return above average profits for investors. What he means is you can’t hoard it. You can’t hold it in reserve. The sun delivers energy for free every morning when it rises above the horizon. And for people, that’s great news, and for big oil, that’s terrible news because they’ve made their fortune for a century by, well, by selling you a little bit at a time. You have to write ’em a check every month.

Taya Graham:

Stephen and I came up with this theory about billionaires, that there’s conflict billionaires, for example, the ones who make money from social media; there’s capture billionaires with private equity; and then there’s carbon billionaires. So I was just wondering, we have this massive misinformation ecosystem that seems very much aligned against renewables. Do you have any idea who is funding this antirenewable coalition? Is our theory about the carbon class correct, I guess?

Bill McKibben:

Yes. The biggest oil and gas barons in America are the Koch brothers, they control more refining and pipeline capacity than anybody else. And they’ve also, of course, been the biggest bankrollers of the Republican right for 30 years. They built that series of institutions that, in the end, were the thing that elected Donald Trump and brought the Supreme Court to where it is and so on and so forth. So the linkages like that could not be tighter.

Stephen Janis:

So last question, ending on a positive note. Do you foresee a future where we could run our entire economy on renewables? I’m just going to put it out there and see if you think it’s actually feasible or possible.

Taya Graham:

And if so, how much money could it save us?

Bill McKibben:

People have done this work, a big study at Oxford two years ago, looking at just this question. It concluded that yes, it’s entirely possible to run the whole world on sun, wind, and batteries, and hydropower, and that if you did it, you’d save the world tens of trillions of dollars. You save more the faster you do it simply because you don’t have to keep paying for more fuel. Yes, you have to pay the upfront cost of putting up the solar panel, but after that, there’s no fuel cost. And that changes the equation in huge ways.

We want to get this across. That’s why later this year in September on the fall equinox, we’ll be having this big day of action. We’re going to call it Sun Day, and we’re going to make the effort to really drive home to people what a remarkable place we’re in right now, what a remarkable chance we have to reorient human societies. And in a world where everything seems to be going wrong, this is the thing that’s going right.

Stephen Janis:

Well, just [so you] know, we did buy a used hybrid, which I really love, but I love electric cars. I do want to get an electric car —

Bill McKibben:

Well, make sure you get an e-bike. That’s an even cooler piece of [crosstalk] technology. Oh, really?

Stephen Janis:

Oh, really? OK. Got it. Got it. But thank you so much.

Bill McKibben:

All right, thank you, guys.

Taya Graham:

Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you, and we got you out in exactly 40 minutes, so —

Bill McKibben:

[Crosstalk].

Taya Graham:

OK. Thank you so much. It was such a wonderful opportunity to meet you. Thank you so much.

Bill McKibben:

Take care.

Stephen Janis:

Take care.

Taya Graham:

OK, bye.

Wow. I have to thank our incredible guest, Bill McKibben, for his insights and thoughtful analysis. I think this type of discussion is so important to providing you, our viewers, with the facts regarding critical issues that will affect not only your future, but also your loved ones, your children, and your grandchildren. And I know the internet is replete with conspiracy theories about climate change and the technologies that we just discussed, but let’s remember, the real conspiracy might be to convince you that all of this possible progress is somehow bad. That the possibility of cheap, clean energy is what? It’s a plot. It’s a myth.

Stephen, what are your thoughts before I try to grab the wheel?

Stephen Janis:

I want to say emphatically that you’re being fooled in the worst possible way, all of us. And we’re literally being pushed towards our own demise by this. You want to talk about a real conspiracy, not QAnon or something, let’s talk about the reason that we don’t think that we could embrace this renewable future. And it’s for the working class. It’s for people like us that can barely afford to pay our bills. We’ll suddenly be saving thousands of dollars a year. It’s just an amazing construct that they’ve done on the psychology of it to make it think that we’re antiprogress, in America of all things. We’re antiprogress. We’re anti-the future.

Taya Graham:

We’re supposed to be the innovators. We’re the ones who have had the best science. Didn’t we get to the moon first?

Stephen Janis:

[Crosstalk]

Taya Graham:

We have scientists, innovation. I mean, in some ways we’ve been the envy of the world and we’ve attracted some of the most powerful scientists and intellectuals from around the globe to our country because we’re known for our innovation. This is really —

Stephen Janis:

We embrace stuff like AI, which, God knows where that’s going to go, and other things. But this is pretty simple. This is pretty simple. Something that could actually affect people’s lives directly. We spend $2,500 a year on gas, $3,000 to $4,000 a year on utilities. And here’s one of the leading, most respected people in this field saying, you know what? You’re not going to pay almost anything by the time it’s all installed. And yet we believe it’s impossible. And it’s really strange for me. But I’m glad we had him on to actually clarify that and maybe push through the noise a little bit.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, me too. Me too. I just wanted to add just a few closing thoughts about our discussion and why it’s important. And I think this conversation literally could not be more important, if only because the implications of being wrong are literally an existential crisis, and the consequences of being right could be liberating.

So to start this rant off, I want to begin with something that seems perhaps unrelated, but is a big part of the consequences for our environment and the people like us that will have to live with it. And hopefully in doing so, I’ll be able to unpack some of the consequences of how these carbon billionaires don’t just hurt our wallets, but actually put our lives in harm’s way. I want to talk about firetrucks.

Stephen Janis:

Firetrucks?

Taya Graham:

Yes. OK. I know that sounds crazy, but these massive red engines, they scream towards a fire to save lives. Isn’t this image iconic? Who hasn’t watched in awe as a ladder truck careens down a city street to subdue the flames of a possibly deadly blaze? But now, thanks to our ever increasingly extractive economy, they’re also symbol of how extreme economic inequality affects our lives in unseen ways. And let me try to explain how.

Now, we all remember the horrific fires in Los Angeles several weeks ago. The historic blazes took out thousands of homes, leaving people’s lives in ruin and billions of dollars in damage. But the catastrophe was not immune from politics. President Trump accused California of holding back water from other parts of the state, which was untrue. And Los Angeles officials were also blasted for not being prepared, which is a more complicated conversation.

However, one aspect of fire that got less attention was the firetrucks. That is, until The New York Times wrote this article that is not only shocking, but actually shows how deep extractive capitalism has wreaked havoc on our lives.

So this story recounts how additional firefighters who were called in to help with the blaze were sidelined because of lack of firetrucks. So the story notes that the inability to mobilize was due to the sorry state of the fleet, which was aging, in disrepair, and new replacements had not been ordered, and the ones that had been ordered had yet to be delivered.

So this, of course, all begs the question why? Why is the mighty US economy not able to deliver lifesaving equipment in a timely manner? Well, the failure is, in part, thanks to private equity, the Wall Street firms who buy out healthy companies and then raid their coffers to enrich themselves. Well, during the aughts, a private equity firm named American Industrial Partners started buying up small firetruck manufacturers. They argued that the consolidation would lead to more efficiency — And, of course, higher profits. But those efficiencies never materialized. And as a result, deliveries of firetrucks slowed down significantly, from 18 months, to now to several years.

And this slow down left fire departments across the country without vital lifesaving equipment, a deficit that Edward Kelly, who’s the general president of the International Association of Firefighters, he said it was all due to extractive capitalism run amuck. Here’s how he capitalized it.

How can anyone place profits over first responders and their lifesaving equipment? To me, this is a failure of market capitalism, and it’s indicative of what we’re seeing with our renewable energy and our country’s failure to take advantage of it. They have literally captured the market and set the terms of the debate. Set the most widely beneficial and efficient solution is buried underneath an avalanche of self-serving narratives. Greedy, private equity firms, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street investment banks have not just warped how our economy works, but also how we even perceive the challenges we face. They have flooded the zone, to borrow a phrase, with nihilistic and antagonistic and divisive sentiments that the future is bleak, hope is naive, and the only worthy and just outcome is their rapid accumulation of wealth.

And so with an alternative system of clean, affordable energy that’s achievable, that promises to save us money and our environment, consider the firetruck — Or as author David Foster Wallace said, consider the lobster. Consider that we are being slowly boiled by the uber rich. They distract us with immersive social media and misinformation so they can profit from it. They distort the present to make serious problems appear unsolvable to ensure the future so their profits will grow exponentially. They persuade us not to trust each other or even ourselves. And they literally convinced us to lack empathy for our fellow workers and then profit from our communal doomerism.

And like with the example with the firetrucks, they value, above all else, profits, not people, not the world in which we all live, not the safety of firefighters or the safety of the communities and the future that we’re all responsible for. None of it matters to them and none of it ever will. It’s up to us, we the people, to determine our future. Let’s fight for it together because it really does belong to us.

Well, I have to thank my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, for joining me on this new venture of The Inequality Watch. I really appreciate it.

Stephen Janis:

I’m very happy to be here, Taya. Thank you for having me.

Taya Graham:

Well, it’s a pleasure. It. I’m hoping that in the future we’ll be able to bring on more guests and we are going to bring on people that might surprise you. So please keep watching, because we are looking for good policy and sane policy wherever we can find it. My name is Taya Graham, and thank you so much for watching The Inequality Watch.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.

This story contains references to homophobia, antisemitism and racism, as well as mass shootings and other violence.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

“The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram” is part of a collaborative investigation from FRONTLINE and ProPublica. The documentary premieres March 25 at 10 p.m. EDT/9 p.m. CDT on PBS stations (check local listings) and will be available to stream on YouTube, the PBS App and FRONTLINE’s website.

The teen entered the chat with a friendly greeting.

“Hello lads,” he typed.

“Sup,” came a reply, along with a graphic that read “KILL JEWS.” Another poster shared a GIF of Adolf Hitler shaking hands with Benito Mussolini. Someone else added a short video of a gay pride flag being set on fire. Eventually, the talk in the group turned to mass shootings and bombings.

And so in August 2019, Juraj Krajčík, then a soft-faced 16-year-old with a dense pile of brown hair, immersed himself in a loose collection of extremist chat groups and channels on the massive social media and messaging platform Telegram. This online community, which was dubbed Terrorgram, had a singular focus: inciting acts of white supremacist terrorism.

Over the next three years, Krajčík made hundreds — possibly thousands — of posts in Terrorgram chats and channels, where a handful of influential content creators steered the conversation toward violence. Day after day, post after post, these influencers cultivated Krajčík, who lived with his family in a comfortable apartment in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. They reinforced his hatreds, fine-tuned his beliefs and fed him tips, encouraging him to attack gay and Jewish people and political leaders and become, in their parlance, a “saint.”

On Oct. 12, 2022, Krajčík, armed with his father’s .45-caliber handgun, opened fire on three people sitting outside an LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava, killing two and wounding the third before fleeing the scene.

That night, as police hunted for him, Krajčík spoke on the phone with Marek Madro, a Bratislava psychologist who runs a suicide hotline and mental health crisis team. “He hoped that what he had done would shake up society,” recalled Madro in an interview, adding that the teen was “very scared.”

During the call, Krajčík kept repeating phrases from his manifesto, according to Madro. The 65-page document, written in crisp English and illustrated with graphics and photos, offered a detailed justification for his lethal actions. “Destroy the degenerates!” he wrote, before encouraging people to attack pride parades, gay and lesbian activists, and LGBTQ+ bars.

Eventually Krajčík, standing in a small grove of trees alongside a busy roadway, put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

The next day, Terrorgram influencers were praising the killer and circulating a PDF of his manifesto on Telegram.

This story is part of a collaboration between ProPublica and FRONTLINE that includes an upcoming documentary.

“We thank him from the bottom of our hearts and will never forget his sacrifice,” stated one post written by a Terrorgram leader in California. “FUCKING HAIL, BROTHER!!!”

The story of Krajčík’s march to violence shows the murderous reach of the online extremists, who operated outside the view of local law enforcement. To police at the time, the killings seemed like the act of a lone gunman rather than what they were: the culmination of a coordinated recruiting effort that spanned two continents.

ProPublica and the PBS series FRONTLINE, along with the Slovakian newsroom Investigative Center of Jan Kuciak, pieced together the story behind Krajčík’s evolution from a troubled teenager to mass shooter. We identified his user name on Telegram, which allowed us to sift through tens of thousands of now-deleted Telegram posts that had not previously been linked to him. Our team retraced his final hours, interviewing investigators, experts and victims in Slovakia, and mapped the links between Krajčík and the extremists in Europe and the U.S. who helped to shape him.

The Terrorgram network has been gutted in recent months by the arrests of its leaders in North America and Europe. Telegram declined repeated requests to make its executives available for interviews but in a statement said, “Calls for violence from any group are not tolerated on our platform.” The company also said that since 2023 it has stepped up moderation practices.

Still, at a time when other mainstream social media companies such as X and Meta are cutting back on policing their online content, experts say the violent neo-Nazis that populated Telegram’s chats and channels will likely find an online home elsewhere.

At first, Krajčík didn’t fit in with the Terrorgrammers. In one early post in 2019, he argued that the white nationalist movement would benefit from large public protests. The idea wasn’t well received.

“Rallies won’t do shit,” replied one poster.

Another told the teen that instead of organizing a rally, he should start murdering politicians, journalists and drag performers. “You need a mafia state of mind,” the person wrote.

Krajčík had found his way to the Terrorgram community after hanging out on 8chan, a massive and anonymous forum that had long been an online haven for extremists; he would later say that he was “redpilled” — or radicalized — on the site.

On 8chan, people posted racist memes and made plenty of vile comments. But the Terrorgram scene was different. In the Terrorgram chats people discussed, in detail, the best strategies for carrying out spectacular acts of violence aimed at toppling Western democracies and replacing them with all-white ethno-states.

The chats Krajčík joined that summer of 2019 were administered by Pavol Beňadik, then a 20-year-old Slovakian college student who had helped create the Terrorgram community and was one of its leading personalities.

A hybrid of a messaging service like WhatsApp and a social media platform like X or Facebook, Telegram offered features that appealed to extremists like Beňadik. They could engage in private encrypted discussions, start big chat groups or create public channels to broadcast their messages. Importantly, Telegram also allowed them to post huge PDF documents and lengthy video files.

In his Terrorgram chats, Beňadik, who used the handle Slovakbro, relentlessly pressed for violent actions — although he never took any himself. Over two days in August, he posted instructions for making Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs, encouraged people to build radioactive dirty bombs and set them off in major cities, and called for the execution of police officers and other law enforcement agents. “TOTAL PIG DEATH,” he wrote.

At the time, the chats were drawing hundreds of participants from around the world, including a large number of Americans.

Beňadik, who was from a small village in western Slovakia, took a special interest in Krajčík, chatting with him in the Slovak language, discussing life in their country, and making him feel appreciated and respected.

For Krajčík, this was a change. In his daily life outside of Terrorgram, he “felt completely unnoticed, unheard,” said Madro, who spoke with several of Krajčík’s classmates. “He often talked about his own feelings and thoughts publicly and felt like no one took him seriously.”

Krajčík started spending massive amounts of time in the chat. On a single day, he posted 117 times over the span of 10 hours. The teen’s ideas began to closely echo those of Beňadik.

In late September, two regulars had a friendly mixed martial arts bout and streamed it on YouTube. Krajčík shared the link with the rest of the chat group, who cheered and heckled as their online friends brawled. Beňadik encouraged Krajčík to participate in a similar bout in the future.

“Porozmýšlam,” replied Krajčík: “I’ll think about it.”

For Beňadik, the combatants were providing a good example. He wanted Terrorgrammers to transform themselves into Aryan warriors, hard men capable of doing serious physical harm to others.

In reality, Krajčík was anything but a tough guy. A “severely bullied student,” Krajčík had transferred to a high school for academically gifted students, a school official told the Slovak newspaper Pravda. Two therapists “worked intensively with him for two years until the pandemic broke out and schools closed,” the official said.

Beňadik created at least five neo-Nazi channels and two chat groups on Telegram, one of which eventually attracted nearly 5,000 subscribers. He crafted an online persona as a sage leader, offering tips and guidance for carrying out effective attacks. He often posted practical materials, such as files for 3D-printing rifle parts, including auto sears, which transform a semiautomatic gun into a fully automatic weapon. “Read useful literature, get useful skills,” he said in an interview with a podcast. “You are the revolutionary, so act like it.”

It was only a month after joining Beňadik’s Terrorgram chats that Krajčík first mentioned Tepláreň, the LGBTQ+ bar in Bratislava he eventually attacked. On Sept. 18, 2019, he shared a link to a website called Queer Slovakia that featured an article on the bar.

Beňadik responded immediately, writing that he was having a “copeland moment” — a reference to David Copeland, a British neo-Nazi who planted a nail bomb at an LGBTQ+ pub in London in 1999. The explosion killed three people and wounded nearly 80 others.

“I DON’T ACTUALLY WANT TO NAIL BOMB THAT JOINT,” Beňadik continued. He wanted to do something far worse. “Hell,” Beňadik wrote, would be less brutal than what he had in mind.

Another Terrorgrammer offered a suggestion: What about a bomb loaded with “Nails + ricin + chemicals?”

Krajčík sounded a note of caution. “Just saying it will instantly make a squad of federal agents appear behind you and arrest you,” he wrote. Beňadik responded by complaining that Slovakia wasn’t producing enough “saints,” implicitly encouraging his mentee to achieve sainthood by committing a lethal act of terror.

Two days later, Krajčík posted photos of people holding gay pride flags in downtown Bratislava. They were “degenerates,” he wrote, repeatedly using anti-gay slurs.

One chat member told Krajčík he should’ve rounded up a group of Nazi skinheads and assaulted the demonstrators.

Then Krajčík posted a photo of Tepláreň.

Beňadik responded that “airborne paving stones make great gifts for such businesses.”

In the chat, Beňadik repeatedly posted a PDF copy of the self-published memoirs of Eric Rudolph, the American terrorist who bombed the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and several other sites before going on the run. The autobiography contains a detailed description of Rudolph’s bombing of a lesbian bar, which wounded five people.

Urging Krajčík to read the book, Beňadik described it as “AMAZING” and a “great read.” Rudolph, he wrote, had created the “archetype” for the “lone wolf” terrorist.

Eventually, Krajčík joined at least 49 extremist Telegram chats, many of them nodes in the Terrorgram network, according to analysis by Pierre Vaux, a researcher who investigates threats to democracy and human rights abuses.

While Terrorgram started as a loose collection of accounts, by 2021 Beňadik and some of his fellow influencers had created a more formal organization, which they called the Terrorgram Collective, according to interviews with experts and court records from Slovakia, the U.S. and Canada.

The organization began producing more sophisticated content — books, videos and a roster of potential assassination targets — and distributing the material to thousands of followers.

Krajčík was a fan of the collective’s books, which are loaded with highly pixelated black-and-white graphics and offer a raft of specific advice for anyone planning a terror attack.

By the summer of 2022, Krajčík had become a regular poster in a Terrorgram chat run by another alleged leader of the collective, Dallas Humber of Elk Grove, California, a quiet suburb of Sacramento.

Humber went by a series of usernames but was eventually publicly exposed by a group of activists, and later arrested and charged with terrorism-related offenses. ProPublica and FRONTLINE reviewed chat logs — provided by the anti-facist Australian research organization The White Rose Society — and other online materials, as well as court records, to independently confirm her identity.

Beňadik was arrested in Slovakia and charged with more than 200 terrorism offenses. He pleaded guilty and would be sentenced to six years in prison.

In his absence, Humber quickly slipped in as mentor and coach to Krajčík.

She was explicit about her intentions, constantly encouraging followers in her chats and channels to go out and kill their perceived enemies — including Jewish and Muslim people, members of the queer community and anybody who wasn’t white. Her job, she wrote in one post, was to embrace disaffected young white men and guide them “through the end of the radicalization process.”

On Aug. 2, 2022, Humber and Krajčík discussed a grisly incident that had occurred several days earlier: A white man had beaten to death a Nigerian immigrant on a city street in northern Italy.

The killing, which was documented on video, was “fucking glorious,” wrote Humber, using a racial slur to describe the victim. “Please send any more pics, articles, info to the chat as more details come out,” she posted.

Krajčík wrote that he didn’t know much about the circumstances surrounding the crime but was still convinced the murderer had chosen “the right path.”

The killer, wrote Humber, would make an “ideal” boyfriend. “Every girl wants a man who would kill a [racial expletive] for her how romantic.”

Three days later, Humber’s chat was alive with tributes to and praise for another killer. Wade Page, a Nazi skinhead and former U.S. Army soldier, had murdered six Sikh worshippers at a temple outside of Milwaukee a decade earlier. (A seventh would later die of their injuries.)

When police confronted Page, he began shooting at them, hitting one officer 15 times before killing himself.

Humber was a big fan of the killer. Page, she wrote, planned the attack thoroughly and chose his targets carefully. “He even made a point to desocialize and cut ties with those close to him,” Humber noted. “No chance of them disrupting his plans.”

“Page did his duty,” Krajčík wrote.

During the same time period, Krajčík started doing reconnaissance on potential targets in his city, staking out the apartment of then-Prime Minister Eduard Heger, a Jewish community center and Tepláreň, the bar.

He posted photos of the locations on his private Twitter account. And in a series of cryptic tweets, Krajčík hinted at the violence to come:

“I don’t expect to make it. In all likelyhood I will die in the course of the operation.”

“Before an operation, you will have to mentally deal with several important questions. You will have to deal with them alone, to not jeopardize your mission by leaking it.”

“I want to damage the System to the best of my abilities.”

Then, on Oct. 11, 2022, he wrote:

“I have made my decision.”

The next evening, after spending a half-hour outside the prime minister’s apartment, Krajčík made his way to Tepláreň. The bar sat on a steep, winding street lined with cafes, clothing boutiques and other small businesses. For about 40 minutes he lurked in a shadowy doorway up the hill. Then, at about 7 p.m., he approached a small group of people sitting in front of the bar and began shooting.

He killed Matúš Horváth and Juraj Vankulič and wounded Radka Trokšiarová, shooting her twice in the leg.

Krajčík, then 19, fled the scene. He had just committed a terrorist attack that would shock the nation.

In court records, U.S. prosecutors have linked both Humber and another alleged Terrorgram leader, Matthew Allison of Boise, Idaho, to Krajčík’s crime. The pair were charged last fall with a raft of felonies related to their Terrorgram posts and propaganda, including conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and soliciting the murder of federal officials.

Krajčík “was active on Terrorgram and had frequent conversations with ALLISON, HUMBER, and other members of the Terrorgram Collective,” prosecutors allege in the indictment. In another brief, they say Krajčík shared his manifesto with Allison before the attack. Then, immediately after the murders, he allegedly sent Allison direct messages saying, “not sure how much time I have but it’s happening,” and “just delete all messages about this convo.”

The Terrorgram posts cited in court documents corroborate our team’s reporting.

Allison spoke with one of our reporters from jail against his lawyer’s advice. He said he did not incite anyone to violence and that prosecutors had misconstrued the communications with Krajčík. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and in a motion, his legal team indicated it would argue that all of his posts are protected by the First Amendment. Humber also pleaded not guilty. She declined to be interviewed and to comment through her lawyer.

While Krajčík was at large, Slovakian authorities tapped Madro, the psychologist, to try to communicate with the young man. “After 12 text messages, he finally picked up the phone,” Madro recalled.

The brief conversation ended with Krajčík killing himself. “The shot rang out and there was silence,” Madro said.

Within hours, Humber was making celebratory posts. Krajčík, she exclaimed, had achieved sainthood. “Saint Krajčík’s place in the Pantheon is undisputed, as is our enthusiastic support for his work,” she wrote on a Terrorgram channel where she posted a picture of the victims on the ground, blood streaking the pavement.

She and Allison also circulated his manifesto.

In it, Krajčík praised the Terrorgram Collective for its “incredible writing and art,” “political texts” and “practical guides.” And he thanked Beňadik: “Your work was some of the first that I encountered after making the switch to Telegram, and remains some of the greatest on the platform.”

While they were spreading Krajčík’s propaganda, the owner of Tepláreň, Roman Samotný, was mourning.

The bar “was kind of like a safe island for queer people here in Slovakia,” he recalled in an interview. “It was just the place where everybody felt welcomed and just accepted and relaxed.”

Before the attack, Samotný’s major concern was that some homophobe would smash the bar’s windows. After the murders, he said, “the biggest change is the realization that we are not anymore safe here. … I was never thinking that we can be killed because of our identity.”

Samotný has closed the bar.

The survivor, Trokšiarová, was left with lingering physical pain and emotional distress. “I was deeply confused,” she said. “Why would anyone do it?”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Donald Trump is back in the White House, and faux opposition is once again the order of the day for the Western media and the Democratic Party. Whether it comes to criminalizing migrants (FAIR.org, 1/25/25), maintaining US “soft power” via USAID, downplaying anti-democratic power grabs (FAIR.org, 2/4/25) or whitewashing Nazi salutes (FAIR.org, 1/23/25), the centrist establishment seems quite content to normalize Trump or even outflank him from the right.

There is, of course, no area of greater consensus than US imperial grand strategy, from waging genocidal war in Palestine (FAIR.org, 1/30/25) to recolonizing Washington’s “backyard” south of the Rio Grande. Accumulation by laying waste to the societies of the global South via carpet bombing and/or economic siege warfare is, according to anti-imperialist political economist Ali Kadri, the name of the game.

Venezuela is no exception to this multi-pronged onslaught. And the US empire’s “paper of record,” the New York Times, proudly leads the charge, most recently advocating the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “through coercive diplomacy if possible or force if necessary.”

High on his own (imperial) supply

Bret Stephens (New York Times, 1/14/25): “Ending Maduro’s long reign of terror is a good way to start [the Trump] administration—and send a signal to tyrants elsewhere that American patience with disorder and danger eventually runs out.”

In a column belligerently titled “Depose Maduro,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens (1/14/25) made an overt case for US military intervention to topple Venezuela’s government. He hailed this textbook crime of aggression as “overdue, morally right and in our national security interest.”

For the Times’ self-described “warmongering neocon,” that last point is characteristically paramount. Specifically, he asserted that US “national security” requires “putting an end to a criminal regime that is a source of drugs, mass migration and Iranian influence in the Americas.”

The irony that during the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency actually facilitated the trafficking of cocaine to working-class Black communities in the context of the Iran/Contra scandal (FAIR.org, 12/29/24) was evidently lost on the Times columnist.

Then as today, the principal drug routes to the United States cut across the Pacific rather than the Gulf of Mexico (FAIR.org, 9/24/19). A 2017 DEA report found that less than 10% of US-bound cocaine flowed through Venezuela’s eastern Caribbean corridor, with WOLA reaching a similar conclusion in a 2020 study.

Not only does the bulk of drug trafficking flow through US-allied countries, but the US government itself is broadly complicit in the perpetuation of the multi-billion dollar contraband, as evidenced in its support for narco puppet regimes in Afghanistan (New York Times, 7/27/08) and Honduras (FAIR.org, 3/20/24; Covert Action, 3/14/24).

In marked contrast, the US has levied “narco-terrorism” charges against top Caracas officials, going as far as to place a bounty on Maduro’s head, without providing a shred of evidence, since Western outlets are happy to take US officials’ word, no questions asked (BBC, 1/10/25; New York Times, 1/10/25; Washington Post, 1/10/25; AP, 1/10/25).

Stephens lamented that Washington’s murderous economic sanctions “didn’t work” and that its bounty “also won’t work.” The columnist conveniently ignored that the unilateral coercive measures, described aptly by US officials as “maximum pressure,” were quite effective in deliberately gutting Venezuela’s economy, in the process killing at least tens of thousands, and spurring the migrant exodus he pointed to as justification for his proposed military adventure.

Such omission regarding US responsibility for Venezuelan migration is by now a staple of corporate media coverage (New York Times, 1/31/25; PBS, 1/31/25; CBS, 2/2/25). Indeed, support for Washington’s economic terrorism against Venezuela has been fairly uniform across the US political spectrum for years (FAIR.org, 6/4/20, 6/4/21, 5/2/22, 6/13/22).

Common tactics include describing sanctions as merely affecting Maduro and allies (New York Times, 1/6/25; NPR, 1/10/25; Al Jazeera, 1/6/25; Financial Times, 1/31/25) or portraying their consequences as merely the demonized leader’s opinion (New York Times, 1/31/25; BBC, 1/10/25; Reuters, 1/27/25).

The Iranian bogeyman

Stephens cites a story (Infobae, 1/10/25) about an Iranian “drone development base” in Venezuela that offers as its only source for the claim that “there is information” about such a base.

It is no surprise, either, that in Stephens’ casus belli, Iran appears alongside the familiar conservative tropes of Latin American migrant hordes and narcotics threatening the US (white settler) body politic.

Stephens’ Orientalist fixation with the Iranian bogeyman is notable, if hardly novel. Western media have in recent years circulated baseless rumors of Iran covertly shipping military equipment to Venezuela (FAIR.org, 6/10/20), and the Times in particular has promoted equally evidence-free claims of drug trafficking by Iranian ally Hezbollah (FAIR.org, 5/24/19, 2/4/21).

In the latest whopper, Stephens cited Iran having “reportedly established a ‘drone development base’” at a Venezuelan air base. However, this story comes from rabidly anti-Venezuelan government outlet Infobae (1/10/25), which did not even bother describing its anonymous source. The report only vaguely stated that “there is information” about this purported base.

Regardless of whether there is any truth to the alleged defense cooperation between the two sovereign nations, the perceived threat is, following the late Edward Said, symptomatic of Western imperialism’s enduring obsession with the “loss of Iran” in the wake of the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. Like the Chinese Revolution before it, Iran’s Islamic Revolution is still decades later portrayed as a global civilizational menace.

But the effort to update the “axis of evil” with a revised cast of rogue states from Venezuela to Iran also crucially serves to manufacture consent for military aggression against Tehran, which has long been the ultimate dream of significant segments of the US political class and intelligentsia, including Stephens (FAIR.org, 10/25/24).

On elections and ‘tropical despotisms’ 

In Stephens’ tropical gunboat diplomacy redux, there was something for everyone, even bleeding-heart “liberals” horrified that Venezuelan President Maduro supposedly “stole the election, terrorizes his opponents and brutalizes his people.”

As always, US imperialist intervention ideologically hinges on denying the Bolivarian government’s democratic credentials, most recently regarding the outcome of the July 28, 2024, presidential vote (Venezuelanalysis, 8/22/24, 7/29/24). However, Washington’s blockade ensured that the elections would never be free and fair. As the main factor driving economic hardship and migration, US sanctions meant Venezuelans headed to the polls with a gun to their heads, not unlike Nicaraguans in 1990.

It is the height of hypocrisy for US officials and their corporate media stenographers to claim the right to arbitrate other sovereign nations’ democratic legitimacy, even as they advance fascism at home and genocidal war across the globe. That sectors of the Western “compatible left” echo Stephens and his ilk, caricaturing the Maduro government as a “corrupt” and “repressive” regime, is unfortunate but not surprising (Ebb, 10/3/24).

The core racial assumption, going back to the 19th century, is that Global South states that refuse to bow to Western imperialist diktat constitute “tropical despotisms” to be toppled in a never-ending “civilizing mission,” with its anti-Communist, “war on terror” and neo-Orientalist mutations.

Demolishing the Death Star

Extra! (1–2/90): “In covering the invasion of Panama, many TV journalists abandoned even the pretense of operating in a neutral, independent mode.”

It is noteworthy that the script for Stephens’ Rambo sequel is over 35 years old: Stephens argued for “US military intervention of the sort that in 1990 swiftly ended the regime of the Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.” Formerly US-backed narco dictator Noriega was, not incidentally, an ex-CIA agent involved in Iran/Contra (Extra!, 1–2/90; FAIR.org, 12/29/24).

The New York Times warmonger-in-chief’s rendering of the intervention is fantastically selective, forgetting that the Central American nation was already “pre-invaded” by US military bases, and that the savage bombing of the Afro-Panamanian neighborhood of El Chorrillo transformed it into “Little Hiroshima.”

But the sober reality is that Venezuela is not Panama. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Armed Forces, alongside other corps, like the Bolivarian Militia, have spent a quarter of a century preparing for a “prolonged people’s war of resistance” against the US empire at the level of doctrine, organization, equipment and training.

If the US and its Zionist colonial outpost failed to defeat the heroic Palestinian resistance in Gaza after nearly 500 days of genocidal war, an asymmetric conflict with a significantly larger and stronger force, across a territory more than 2,000 times as large, is not likely a serious proposition.

Nonetheless, it is the duty of all those residing in the imperialist core to grind Washington’s industrial-scale death machine to a definitive halt. This paramount strategic objective demands systematically deposing the New York Times’ Goebbelsian propaganda.

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

Donald Trump is back in the White House, and faux opposition is once again the order of the day for the Western media and the Democratic Party. Whether it comes to criminalizing migrants (FAIR.org, 1/25/25), maintaining US “soft power” via USAID, downplaying anti-democratic power grabs (FAIR.org, 2/4/25) or whitewashing Nazi salutes (FAIR.org, 1/23/25), the centrist establishment seems quite content to normalize Trump or even outflank him from the right.

There is, of course, no area of greater consensus than US imperial grand strategy, from waging genocidal war in Palestine (FAIR.org, 1/30/25) to recolonizing Washington’s “backyard” south of the Rio Grande. Accumulation by laying waste to the societies of the global South via carpet bombing and/or economic siege warfare is, according to anti-imperialist political economist Ali Kadri, the name of the game.

Venezuela is no exception to this multi-pronged onslaught. And the US empire’s “paper of record,” the New York Times, proudly leads the charge, most recently advocating the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “through coercive diplomacy if possible or force if necessary.”

High on his own (imperial) supply

Bret Stephens (New York Times, 1/14/25): “Ending Maduro’s long reign of terror is a good way to start [the Trump] administration—and send a signal to tyrants elsewhere that American patience with disorder and danger eventually runs out.”

In a column belligerently titled “Depose Maduro,” New York Times columnist Bret Stephens (1/14/25) made an overt case for US military intervention to topple Venezuela’s government. He hailed this textbook crime of aggression as “overdue, morally right and in our national security interest.”

For the Times’ self-described “warmongering neocon,” that last point is characteristically paramount. Specifically, he asserted that US “national security” requires “putting an end to a criminal regime that is a source of drugs, mass migration and Iranian influence in the Americas.”

The irony that during the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency actually facilitated the trafficking of cocaine to working-class Black communities in the context of the Iran/Contra scandal (FAIR.org, 12/29/24) was evidently lost on the Times columnist.

Then as today, the principal drug routes to the United States cut across the Pacific rather than the Gulf of Mexico (FAIR.org, 9/24/19). A 2017 DEA report found that less than 10% of US-bound cocaine flowed through Venezuela’s eastern Caribbean corridor, with WOLA reaching a similar conclusion in a 2020 study.

Not only does the bulk of drug trafficking flow through US-allied countries, but the US government itself is broadly complicit in the perpetuation of the multi-billion dollar contraband, as evidenced in its support for narco puppet regimes in Afghanistan (New York Times, 7/27/08) and Honduras (FAIR.org, 3/20/24; Covert Action, 3/14/24).

In marked contrast, the US has levied “narco-terrorism” charges against top Caracas officials, going as far as to place a bounty on Maduro’s head, without providing a shred of evidence, since Western outlets are happy to take US officials’ word, no questions asked (BBC, 1/10/25; New York Times, 1/10/25; Washington Post, 1/10/25; AP, 1/10/25).

Stephens lamented that Washington’s murderous economic sanctions “didn’t work” and that its bounty “also won’t work.” The columnist conveniently ignored that the unilateral coercive measures, described aptly by US officials as “maximum pressure,” were quite effective in deliberately gutting Venezuela’s economy, in the process killing at least tens of thousands, and spurring the migrant exodus he pointed to as justification for his proposed military adventure.

Such omission regarding US responsibility for Venezuelan migration is by now a staple of corporate media coverage (New York Times, 1/31/25; PBS, 1/31/25; CBS, 2/2/25). Indeed, support for Washington’s economic terrorism against Venezuela has been fairly uniform across the US political spectrum for years (FAIR.org, 6/4/20, 6/4/21, 5/2/22, 6/13/22).

Common tactics include describing sanctions as merely affecting Maduro and allies (New York Times, 1/6/25; NPR, 1/10/25; Al Jazeera, 1/6/25; Financial Times, 1/31/25) or portraying their consequences as merely the demonized leader’s opinion (New York Times, 1/31/25; BBC, 1/10/25; Reuters, 1/27/25).

The Iranian bogeyman

Stephens cites a story (Infobae, 1/10/25) about an Iranian “drone development base” in Venezuela that offers as its only source for the claim that “there is information” about such a base.

It is no surprise, either, that in Stephens’ casus belli, Iran appears alongside the familiar conservative tropes of Latin American migrant hordes and narcotics threatening the US (white settler) body politic.

Stephens’ Orientalist fixation with the Iranian bogeyman is notable, if hardly novel. Western media have in recent years circulated baseless rumors of Iran covertly shipping military equipment to Venezuela (FAIR.org, 6/10/20), and the Times in particular has promoted equally evidence-free claims of drug trafficking by Iranian ally Hezbollah (FAIR.org, 5/24/19, 2/4/21).

In the latest whopper, Stephens cited Iran having “reportedly established a ‘drone development base’” at a Venezuelan air base. However, this story comes from rabidly anti-Venezuelan government outlet Infobae (1/10/25), which did not even bother describing its anonymous source. The report only vaguely stated that “there is information” about this purported base.

Regardless of whether there is any truth to the alleged defense cooperation between the two sovereign nations, the perceived threat is, following the late Edward Said, symptomatic of Western imperialism’s enduring obsession with the “loss of Iran” in the wake of the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. Like the Chinese Revolution before it, Iran’s Islamic Revolution is still decades later portrayed as a global civilizational menace.

But the effort to update the “axis of evil” with a revised cast of rogue states from Venezuela to Iran also crucially serves to manufacture consent for military aggression against Tehran, which has long been the ultimate dream of significant segments of the US political class and intelligentsia, including Stephens (FAIR.org, 10/25/24).

On elections and ‘tropical despotisms’ 

In Stephens’ tropical gunboat diplomacy redux, there was something for everyone, even bleeding-heart “liberals” horrified that Venezuelan President Maduro supposedly “stole the election, terrorizes his opponents and brutalizes his people.”

As always, US imperialist intervention ideologically hinges on denying the Bolivarian government’s democratic credentials, most recently regarding the outcome of the July 28, 2024, presidential vote (Venezuelanalysis, 8/22/24, 7/29/24). However, Washington’s blockade ensured that the elections would never be free and fair. As the main factor driving economic hardship and migration, US sanctions meant Venezuelans headed to the polls with a gun to their heads, not unlike Nicaraguans in 1990.

It is the height of hypocrisy for US officials and their corporate media stenographers to claim the right to arbitrate other sovereign nations’ democratic legitimacy, even as they advance fascism at home and genocidal war across the globe. That sectors of the Western “compatible left” echo Stephens and his ilk, caricaturing the Maduro government as a “corrupt” and “repressive” regime, is unfortunate but not surprising (Ebb, 10/3/24).

The core racial assumption, going back to the 19th century, is that Global South states that refuse to bow to Western imperialist diktat constitute “tropical despotisms” to be toppled in a never-ending “civilizing mission,” with its anti-Communist, “war on terror” and neo-Orientalist mutations.

Demolishing the Death Star

Extra! (1–2/90): “In covering the invasion of Panama, many TV journalists abandoned even the pretense of operating in a neutral, independent mode.”

It is noteworthy that the script for Stephens’ Rambo sequel is over 35 years old: Stephens argued for “US military intervention of the sort that in 1990 swiftly ended the regime of the Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.” Formerly US-backed narco dictator Noriega was, not incidentally, an ex-CIA agent involved in Iran/Contra (Extra!, 1–2/90; FAIR.org, 12/29/24).

The New York Times warmonger-in-chief’s rendering of the intervention is fantastically selective, forgetting that the Central American nation was already “pre-invaded” by US military bases, and that the savage bombing of the Afro-Panamanian neighborhood of El Chorrillo transformed it into “Little Hiroshima.”

But the sober reality is that Venezuela is not Panama. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Armed Forces, alongside other corps, like the Bolivarian Militia, have spent a quarter of a century preparing for a “prolonged people’s war of resistance” against the US empire at the level of doctrine, organization, equipment and training.

If the US and its Zionist colonial outpost failed to defeat the heroic Palestinian resistance in Gaza after nearly 500 days of genocidal war, an asymmetric conflict with a significantly larger and stronger force, across a territory more than 2,000 times as large, is not likely a serious proposition.

Nonetheless, it is the duty of all those residing in the imperialist core to grind Washington’s industrial-scale death machine to a definitive halt. This paramount strategic objective demands systematically deposing the New York Times’ Goebbelsian propaganda.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Lucas Koerner.

Without the agency, known as NOAA, weather forecasts wouldn’t be as reliable, and the impacts of extreme weather on a less prepared public could be devastating. “Everyone would be shocked about the negative things that could happen,” said Alan Sealls, president-elect of the American Meteorological Society and former chief meteorologist at WKRG-TV in Mobile, Alabama. “Those compromises will be not just unpleasant, and not just uncomfortable, but truly dangerous.”

It remains unclear just what President Donald Trump has in mind for NOAA. His nominee for commerce secretary, financier Howard Lutnick, has vowed to keep it intact. But Project 2025, the conservative roadmap to a second Trump term, calls for it to be “broken up and downsized,” and Russell Vought, an architect of that blueprint, now leads the federal Office of Management and Budget. In late January, employees at NOAA’s Asheville, North Carolina, office were told to remove internal web pages and cancel events and meetings. Last week, Elon Musk sent a Department of Government Efficiency team to the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., in what has for other agencies been the start of radical downsizing.

“I’m in fear of losing my job every day,” said a National Weather Service employee who requested anonymity. So far, most cuts seem to have targeted diversity programs, including the organization’s head of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, who was put on leave after a right-wing social media account targeted them. As to what might happen next, this person said, “pretty much everybody is in the dark.”

President Richard Nixon established NOAA in 1970, but its roots stretch back to 1807 and the creation of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey to chart the nation’s coastline. The Weather Bureau followed in 1870 and the Commission of Fish and Fisheries one year later. NOAA still fulfills these roles through divisions like the National Weather Service, or NWS, and Marine Fisheries Service, which helps ensure sustainable harvesting of the oceans and a safe food supply. 

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Today, the agency employs about 12,000 people worldwide; over half are scientists and engineers. Its current budget is $6.5 billion. Of that, about $1.4 billion goes to the NWS, or about $4 for every citizen. In addition to providing free weather data, forecasts, and alerts, that allocation saves taxpayers money. The agency’s work predicting hurricanes saves billions in avoided damage alone, and allows crisis managers and first responders to better prepare for disasters. By one estimate, every dollar invested in the NWS reaps more than $9 in return. 

“It’s a great deal for the American public,” said Pat Spoden, who was a National Weather Service meteorologist from 1987 to 2022. “A lot of people don’t understand or know where the weather data comes from and how much the Weather Service, and NOAA, provides.”

The agency manages 18 satellites, nearly 100 weather balloon launch sites, and around 250 oceanic buoys that produce billions of observations each day. That information goes to 122 forecasting offices, where meteorologists generate weather projections that are disseminated across the country, including on a network of 1,000 NWS radio stations. Beyond providing the basis for weather watch and warning alerts, these reports are the foundation upon which private weather services like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel stand.

“AccuWeather does not have their own fleet of satellites and weather radar and ground stations. They do not operate their own weather predictive models,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “All these private weather enterprises are built upon the public backbone of data.” They’re either using NOAA data directly, Swain added, or adjusting it in some proprietary way.

The private sector also relies on NOAA’s vast research archive, housed at the four offices of the National Centers for Environmental Information. This trove includes historical records detailing changes in Earth’s oceans, land masses, ice sheets, atmosphere, and magnetic field. These repositories offer a wealth of local, national, and international climate findings and modeling, and have recorded nearly real-time analysis of temperature and precipitation changes since 2000. All of this info is invaluable to researchers, analysts, and myriad industries that predict future conditions.

“What most people don’t realize is insurance companies base your rates on that data record and how it is projected to go forward,” said Craig McLean, the agency’s former research division director. “Banking, finance, real estate, the transportation industry, agriculture, they all look in the futures market at data that is stored historically, but also collected daily around the world.”

Yet NOAA’s critics consider the agency, and its information, a threat. Thomas Gilman, who served in the Commerce Department, wrote in Project 2025 that it is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to the future of U.S. prosperity.” That document notes “the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded.”

Project 2025 seems to favor maintaining only those functions that serve corporate interests, noting that, “because private companies rely on this data, the NWS should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.” 

Critics of such a move argue that putting such an essential resource behind a paywall would harm the public. Megan Duzmal, a meteorologist at WYMT, a small TV station in eastern Kentucky, relies upon NOAA data to do her job. The station serves a largely rural area that those in larger markets like Louisville do not focus on. 

“They don’t look individually at these communities, but we are able to, as a smaller market, zoom into the small cities here,” Duzmal said, with enough precision to “point out road names.”

The station provided essential information to viewers during a spate of recent floods, most recently after Hurricane Helene. When a storm is brewing, Duzmal receives information about flash flooding risks from a hydrologist at the National Weather Service in Jackson, Kentucky. Assessing the danger requires analyzing complex factors like soil moisture, previous drought conditions, and topography. It demands a firm grasp of both science and local conditions. If the tools she and countless other local meteorologists rely upon are privatized, they could become too expensive for small stations in rural areas. That could prove deadly to residents of communities that already lack robust cellular service and reliable internet providers. 

Privatization could also create varying forecasts from competing companies, leading to confusion. “Without the one voice, you run into issues of what do you believe or who do you believe,” said Spoden, the former NWS meteorologist. “It’s just so important to have an official source.” 

That raises perhaps the most important question about privatization: What services would companies even be willing to take on? It’s unclear, for instance, that any private enterprise would want to be responsible, and thus liable, for issuing warnings or alerts. Spoden also wonders whether private sector meteorologists would deploy to disaster areas to brief emergency responders, like NWS employees did during the fires in Los Angeles. 

“They are the most dedicated group of civil servants you’re going to find,” said Spoden. “It would be very difficult for any private company to do what the National Weather Service does.”

It remains to be seen what the Trump administration will do. It’s an open question, for instance, whether the National Weather Service Employees Organization’s collective bargaining agreement, which runs through 2029, will hold up against any efforts to dismantle the organization. But the employee who fears for their job says the president’s attacks on NOAA feel unprecedented. 

“He’s going no holds barred,” they said. “It’s very aggressive.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s budget cuts could kill your local weather forecast — and put you in danger on Feb 12, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.

Israel’s security cabinet has approved a long-awaited ceasefire deal with Hamas. If finalized, the ceasefire is expected to go into effect on Sunday. “The main challenge will be the second phase, and here there are many, many problems on the horizon,” says Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who stresses the importance of also freeing the thousands of Palestinians held by Israel. “Again and again, Israelis always think that they are the only victims.” The announcement comes in the final week of U.S. President Joe Biden’s term as Israel prepares for the incoming Trump administration. “The only reason that Israel did not agree to this text until this week is because it didn’t have to worry about U.S. pressure,” says Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani, who explains why the limited agreement will not shift politics in Israel and Palestine. “I believe Netanyahu will do everything possible, with the collusion of certain Trump officials, to try to scuttle it after the first phase.”

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

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it could make hydroelectric dams on Oregon’s Willamette River safe for endangered salmon by building gigantic mechanical traps and hauling baby fish downstream in tanker trucks. The Corps started pressing forward over objections from fish advocates and power users who said the plan was costly and untested.

That was until this month, when President Joe Biden signed legislation ordering the Corps to put its plans on hold and consider a simpler solution: Stop using the dams for electricity.

The new law, finalized on Jan. 4, follows reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica in 2023 that underscored risks and costs associated with the Corps’ plan. The agency is projected to lose $700 million over 30 years generating hydropower, and a scientific review found that the type of fixes the Corps is proposing would not stop the extinction of threatened salmon.

The mandate says the Corps needs to shelve designs for its fish collectors — essentially massive floating vacuums expected to cost $170 million to $450 million each — until it finishes studying what the river system would look like without hydropower. The Corps must then include that scenario in its long-term designs for the river.

The new direction from Congress has the potential to transform the river that sustains Oregon’s famously lush Willamette Valley. It is a step toward draining the reservoirs behind the dams and bringing water levels closer to those of an undammed river.

“There’s a very real, very viable solution, and we need to proceed with that as soon as possible,” said Kathleen George, a council member for the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde, which have fished the Willamette for thousands of years. They’ve urged the Corps to return the river closer to its natural flow.

George credited OPB and ProPublica’s reporting, and said she believes that without additional public pressure, the Corps would have continued to stall on already overdue studies.

“Our salmon heritage is literally on the line,” she said.

Asked about how the Corps planned to respond to Congress, spokesperson Kerry Solan said in a statement that the agency was still reviewing the bill’s language.

The 13 dams on the Willamette and its tributaries were built for the main purpose of holding back floodwaters in Oregon’s most heavily populated valley, which includes the city of Portland. With high concrete walls, they have no dedicated pathways for migrating salmon.

Emptying the reservoirs to the river channel would let salmon pass much as they did before the dams. It would leave less water for recreational boating and irrigation during periods of normal rain and snow, but it would open up more capacity to hold back water when a large flood comes. And the power industry says that running hydropower turbines on the Willamette dams, unlike the moneymaking hydroelectric dams on the larger Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest, doesn’t make financial sense.

The dams generate less than 1% of the Northwest’s power, enough for about 100,000 homes. But lighting a home with electricity from Willamette dams costs about five times as much as dams on the Northwest’s larger rivers.

Congress asked the Corps in 2020 and 2022 to study the possibility of shutting down its hydroelectric turbines on the Willamette. The agency missed its deadlines for those studies while it proceeded with a 30-year plan for river operations that included hydropower.

Oregon Rep. Val Hoyle, a Democrat whose district includes much of the Willamette River Valley, said in an emailed statement it was “unacceptable” for the Corps to move ahead without first producing the thorough look at ending hydropower that lawmakers asked for.

“Congress must have the necessary information on-hand to decide the future of hydropower in the Willamette,” Hoyle said.

The bill also requires the Corps to study how it can lessen problems that draining reservoirs might cause downstream.

Because of a 2021 court order to protect endangered salmon, the Corps has tried making the river more free-flowing by draining reservoirs behind two dams each fall. The first time the reservoirs dropped, in 2023, they unleashed masses of mud that had been trapped behind the dams. Rivers turned brown and small cities’ drinking water plants worked around the clock to purify the supply.

Congress wants the Corps to study how to avoid causing those problems downstream. That could include engineering new drinking water systems for cities below the dams.

The Corps has the authority to engineer infrastructure for local communities and cover 75% of the cost for such improvements, but it has never used this provision in Oregon.

A week before Biden signed the new bill, biologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published their own 673-page report saying the Corps’ preferred solution for the Willamette — the one involving fish traps — would jeopardize threatened salmon and steelhead.

NOAA proposed more than two dozen changes for the Corps, ranging from better monitoring of the species to altering the river flow to better accommodate migrating salmon. Solan said the agency is still reviewing NOAA’s opinion and deciding what action to take.

George, who has served on the council of the Grand Ronde tribes since 2016, said she was encouraged that the latest developments on the Willamette pointed to a future where salmon and people could coexist.

“In those darkest days of our families living here on the Grand Ronde reservation, it was truly returning to the Willamette to get salmon that helped keep our people alive,” George said. “It is our time and our role to speak up for our relatives and to say that a future with people and Willamette salmon is essential.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Tony Schick, Oregon Public Broadcasting.

In northern Gaza, the director of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital says five medical workers were among 50 people killed in Israeli strikes near the hospital. Israeli forces then stormed the hospital and forced hundreds, including patients, into the streets. This all comes as The New York Times has confirmed past reporting by +972 Magazine that on October 7, 2023, Israel loosened military rules meant to protect noncombatants in Gaza. Award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy decries the moral decay of Israel, which has gone so far as to open a luxurious rest area for soldiers in northern Gaza: “It’s the same moral blindness to what’s going on around you.” Levy also discusses his latest piece, headlined “The IDF’s Own Sickening 'Zone of Interest' in the Heart of Gaza.”

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

Around 50 North Korean soldiers were killed in a battle against Ukrainian army drones in the Kursk region this week, video of the battle shared on social media revealed.

It’s the latest evidence that North Korean forces are participating in Russia’s war with Ukraine, a fact that Moscow and Pyongyang are trying to hide, including by allegedly burning the faces off of North Koreans who are killed in action.

The video, shared by Ukraine’s 8th Special Operations Regiment on Facebook, showed a drone attack in the battle fought on Monday.

In the video, what are believed to be North Korean soldiers are seen running away or hiding behind trees when they encounter Ukrainian first-person-view drones, also known as FPV drones.

Sgt. Mykhailo Makaruk, a member of the Ukrainian unit confirmed to RFA Korean that he had fought against North Koreans in the battle captured on video.

“I think nearly 200 (North Korean soldiers) came to our position,” Makaruk said, explaining that shortly after, the drones began an aerial attack.

He likened the North Koreans to zombies, a staple of horror films.

“They came and they came and the drones are bombing them,” he said. “I don’t understand how they can come to this war. They look like, you know, real zombies.”

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Makaruk did not disclose the exact location where the battle was fought because his unit is still deployed in a combat situation.

RFA has not verified the authenticity of the video.

Makaruk said that the North Korean soldiers involved in the battle moved alongside Russian troops, and that mid-level North Korean officers were among them.

He said the North Korean soldiers were equipped with Russian military supplies and used outdated tactics typical of the Soviet military in the 1950s.

They were totally unprepared to fight against drones, and they appear to think they can avoid detection while on the ground or under cover of night, Makaruk said.

(Reuters)

These FPV drones are said to be able to reach speeds of up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) per hour, meaning that if they encounter each other within 100 meters, it will take less than a second for them to collide.

Andrii Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, posted on on his Telegram account that North Korean soldiers were no match for the drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

“The dead DPRK soldiers did not have a visual understanding of the danger from UAVs before the drone strikes, which may indicate that the Russians poorly informed the Koreans about the use of drones at the front,” Kovalenko said.

He also said that the Russian soldiers were seen trying to quickly recover the bodies of North Korean soldiers who died on the front lines, which was different from the way they recovered Russian casualties.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday in an address that preliminary data suggests that the Russians were trying to hide the deaths of North Korean soldiers.

“Unfortunately, we are forced to defend against them as well, even though there is not a single reason for North Koreans to die in this war,” Zelensky said. “The only reason is Putin’s madness, which has consumed Russia and fuels this war.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Park Jaewoo for RFA Korean.

“At least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed worldwide in 2024,” CPJ’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in New York. “Israel is responsible for two thirds of those deaths and yet continues to act with total impunity when it comes to the killing of journalists and its attacks on the media. The international community has failed in its obligations to hold Israel accountable for its actions.”

• On December 15, Ahmed Al-Louh, a 39-year-old Palestinian journalist who freelanced with multiple outlets including Qatar-funded Al Jazeera, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat camp in Gaza city, on December 15, 2024, according to Al Jazeera and multiple news reports. Al Jazeera reported that Al-Louh was wearing a “Press” vest and helmet, considered the attack to be targeted. Al-Louh is the seventh Al Jazeera-affiliated journalist killed by Israel since the war began. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson for Arabic Media, Avichay Adraee, acknowledged the targeting of Al-Louh and accused him of being an Islamic Jihad militant in a post on X, but provided no proof for the allegation.
  
• On December 14, Mohammed Balousha, a 38-year-old Palestinian journalist and the reporter for the Emirati-owned, Dubai-based Al Mashhad Media was killed in a direct Israeli drone strike when he was returning from a medical checkup at the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood clinic in northern Gaza City, according to the outlet and multiple news reports. Al Mashhad TV said it considered the attack deliberate.
  
• On December 14, Mohammed Al Qrinawi, a Palestinian journalist and the editor at the local Snd news agency, was killed along with his wife and their three children, in an Israeli airstrike on Al Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, according to his outlet and multiple news reports.
  
• On December 11, Iman Al Shanti, a 36 year-old Palestinian journalist who was a host and producer for Al Aqsa Radio and a reporter for Al Jazeera’s AJ+ platform during the war, was killed with her family in an Israeli airstrike on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza, according to multiple news reports.

At least 141 journalists have been killed in the Israel-Gaza war since October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented; 133 of them were Palestinians in Gaza. Journalists in northern Gaza are facing catastrophic conditions, saying ethnic cleansing is happening in a news void in northern Gaza.

CPJ emailed the IDF North America Media Desk of the IDF asking whether the IDF knew there were civilians in the areas that it bombed, and if journalists were targeted for their work.  The IDF responded that it needed more time to investigate CPJ’s query but did not specify how much time would be required.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“We are deeply shocked and outraged by Rapid Support Forces’ brutal killing of journalist Hanan Adam and her brother in al-Gezira state, which further illustrates the extreme conditions journalists and their families currently face in Sudan,” said CPJ Interim MENA Program Coordinator Yeganeh Rezaian, from Washington, D.C. “Sudanese authorities must launch an immediate and thorough investigation into Adam’s death, and all parties involved in the conflict must uphold their obligation to protect journalists who risk their lives to report the truth.”

Adam also worked at the Ministry of Culture and Information in al-Gezira state. Two journalists who spoke with CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, said they believed the RSF targeted Adam for her work for al-Midan and the Ministry.

The Sudanese Journalists’ Union condemned the killings in its Tuesday Facebook statement and said it held the RSF fully responsible for their deaths. CPJ was unable to confirm other details about the killing. 

Since the war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF began in mid-April 2023, the RSF has killed at least five journalists.

CPJ’s Telegram messages to the RSF requesting comment on Adam’s death did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The following statement can be attributed to Fairplay Executive Director Josh Golin:

“In their rush to extract young people’s data and sow addiction, Character.ai has created a product so flawed and dangerous that its chatbots are literally inciting children to harm themselves and others. Platforms like Character.ai should not be allowed to perform uncontrolled experiments on our children or encourage kids to form parasocial relationships with bots their developers cannot control. We hope the court will enjoin Character.ai from targeting children and require the platform to disgorge its deadly algorithm.

“It is chilling that this suit was announced on the same day that families who have lost their children to social media harms are in DC to get the Kids Online Safety Act across the finish line before year’s end. This latest horrific Character.ai case is exhibit A why we must impose safeguards on platforms that target young people from day one, instead of allowing the unchecked and reckless deployment of dangerous platforms and algorithms on kids.”

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

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Lisa Warwick found her husband gasping for air at the foot of the basement stairs and knew the miracle was over. It was Aug. 2, 2020, more than 11 years since Scot Warwick had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. Most patients are dead in months, but her husband, who had just turned 51, had somehow destroyed the odds.

“Are we going in?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “We are going in.”

His body had endured six years of chemotherapy and an additional five of experimental therapies. According to his medical record, he had responded “singularly impressively.” Two months earlier he had been running 5 miles a day, but since the latest round of chemo he had rapidly declined.

Lisa Warwick guided her husband up the stairs, dragged him to the car and raced to St. Peter’s Hospital in downtown Helena, Montana.

The emergency room doctor cited shortness of breath, fever and chills. He flagged that Warwick’s respiratory crisis could be the result of the chemotherapy. It had been restarted weeks before on the order of the oncologist who diagnosed him, the only doctor he’d consistently seen for more than a decade.

The next morning, a doctor named Randy Sasich arrived for his shift at St. Peter’s. An independent nonprofit with just under 100 beds, the hospital is the only acute-care facility for about 100 miles in any direction and has touched the lives of virtually every area resident going back generations. Helena, the state capital, remains a small vestige of the Old West, with just 34,000 residents, so luring doctors has always been a challenge. This was especially true in April 2020, at the onset of COVID-19, when Sasich signed a short-term contract.

A 47-year-old lung specialist, with degrees from Georgetown and Santa Clara University and experience at hospitals in major cities, Sasich was a rare get. The de facto director of the hospital’s intensive care unit, Sasich met with the morning shift’s coordinating doctor. Standing in the ICU, the two ran through patients, their needs, the usual, until Warwick.

We have a 51-year-old patient with metastatic lung cancer, diagnosed 11 years ago, Sasich remembered the doctor saying.

“There’s no way,” Sasich interrupted.

Well, he’s been treated for 11 years, the doctor explained.

“You don’t live 11 years after a Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis,” Sasich said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Between patients, Sasich reviewed Warwick’s chart. Something must have been misread along a medical game of telephone, he reasoned, or he’d missed some great advancement in cancer treatment. He found the 2009 report that prompted the cancer diagnosis. A smoker at the time, Warwick had seen an ear, nose and throat doctor about a tiny lump on his neck. The ENT had sent a sample of cells from Warwick’s neck to the lab. A few days later he wrote in the file that they were “most likely consistent” with cancer.

That is not a cancer diagnosis, Sasich thought.

The records indicated that Warwick was referred to the hospital’s Cancer Treatment Center. Sasich’s curiosity graduated to shock: There was no biopsy. Yet Warwick was immediately placed on an aggressive chemotherapy regimen by the hospital’s sole oncologist, Dr. Thomas C. Weiner.

This is bad.

In his few months at St. Peter’s, Sasich had already questioned Weiner’s incomplete documentation and curious diagnoses and had taken his concerns to a veteran doctor for advice. To Sasich’s surprise, his colleague was fearful of challenging Weiner. According to Sasich, the doctor said: “I live here. My kids go to school here. I don’t want to move.”

Sasich scoured Warwick’s file, thinking someone must have ordered a lung tissue biopsy, which would capture more cells and target the suspected origin of the disease. Where was the lab report that confirmed cancer and ruled out everything else? From 2009 to 2019, he found none. Then, finally, there it was — in April 2020, just a few months earlier — a report on lung cells biopsied. Sasich read and reread the pathologist’s conclusion: no cancer.

“What the hell is going on here?” he whispered.

Despite the negative biopsy, Weiner had started Warwick on another round of chemotherapy, according to the medical records. Within two months, Warwick couldn’t walk upstairs, and now he was in the ICU while his wife and two children waited outside of the hospital because of COVID-19 protocols.

Sasich called the pathologist, who confirmed the finding. Sasich feared his own hypothesis. He worried what it would mean to Warwick and his family, but the “unbelievable conclusion” he had come to might save the patient’s life.

The next morning, Sasich entered the ICU where Warwick lay in the dark, oxygen pumping into his nose. Sasich pondered how to tell a man that everything he believed about himself for more than a decade was false.

Watch video ➜

Moments after Sasich left the room, Warwick called his wife. “He doesn’t know my history,” he told her. “He doesn’t know anything about me. He doesn’t know I’ve had this for 11 years. He doesn’t know anything. And this doctor’s telling me that I don’t have cancer? This guy’s an idiot.”

Sasich knew he had just challenged a powerful figure in Helena. He just had no idea how powerful.

While reporting on COVID-19’s toll in early 2022, I found myself in Helena, chatting over drinks with a handful of St. Peter’s medical staff. They wondered why I wasn’t asking about Tom Weiner. There was a deeper, haunting story, they told me, about the oncologist many inside the hospital suspected of hurting his patients. Despite those whispers, he was beloved by countless patients — “followers,” they called them. His nurses were wildly devoted to him — “a cult,” they said. The hospital administration feared him.

The rumors they shared, though vague, were disturbing and impossible to ignore. They portrayed a man whose ability to both inspire and intimidate had divided the town of Helena. It would take two years to unravel one doctor’s myth, a hospital’s complicity in creating it and the attempt to conceal a trail of suspicious deaths. One of them, I’d later learn, was of a 16-year-old girl.

Early in my reporting, I reached out to Weiner. Reluctant at first, he agreed to sit down with me. He was, he told me, the good guy in this story.

Weiner, 61, is guarded about his own life. He was raised Lutheran. His mother was a nurse, his father an FBI agent who urged him to be a lawyer. Weiner told me he was never much of “a research guy.” Rather, he wanted to bring a personal touch to medicine, to help people in their most vulnerable moments. He attended medical school at Hahnemann University, now Drexel, in Philadelphia. There, he met his wife, a devout Catholic, and he converted. An avid mountain climber and skier, Weiner felt that American westward pull and, after training in hospitals in Pennsylvania and Vermont, took the job at St. Peter’s in 1996.

He arrived as something of a savior. In an ad in the Great Falls Tribune, the hospital announced that it had hired a permanent oncologist to direct its new cancer treatment center, replacing a rotation of doctors who made often precarious commutes from Great Falls, Bozeman or Missoula. For most of the next 24 years, he was the only option for thousands of cancer patients. It’s not an overstatement to say anyone who had cancer or knew someone who had cancer in that time knew of Weiner.

He was instantly popular. Among his first patients was fashion designer Liz Claiborne, whose husband described Weiner as “a solid rock of a man, cheerfully youthful, robust, square-shouldered, handsome in a quiet way.” The Weiners became prominent members of the Cathedral of St. Helena and donated money to the Vatican.

In our talks, he was as Claiborne’s husband described, if weathered by a quarter century in the dry high country. He is fit, almost always wearing hiking shoes, a North Face T-shirt on warm days, a fleece in the cold. With sharp blue eyes, he smiles when he explains his medical judgment, projecting an absolute conviction in what he believes and has done.

Weiner’s stature rose with the cancer center’s. In late 2000, a news article reported that it was now treating about 250 patients a year. Three months later, the facility announced it would be adding six chemotherapy chairs, a library and a meditation center. An article in the Independent Record, the local paper, noted, “In the five years that Weiner has been with the cancer treatment center, he has seen an increase from 12 or 13 patients per day to 35 or 40 patients per day.”

Weiner told me, and records confirm, that he billed for as many as 70 patient contacts a day. That pace made him an obvious outlier in data tracked by federal insurance regulators, but no one inside or outside the hospital slowed him down. He spoke proudly of his workload. He was always on call, he told me, and many of his patients had his cellphone number. As business boomed, so did Weiner’s wealth.

Watch video ➜

Adding to a six-figure base salary, his pay was calculated by the number of relative value units, or RVUs, he billed on behalf of the hospital. The system compensates doctors using weighted values for certain types of visits or treatment. It works like this: A doctor might be paid $100 per RVU. A routine physical might be equal to 1 RVU, or $100; a more complicated and time-consuming procedure like radiation therapy might equal 8 RVUs, or $800. In other words, the more patient visits and treatments a doctor bills to insurance, the more that doctor and the hospital earn. Weiner described this system, which is common in American medicine, as “eat what you kill.”

In 2006, Weiner purchased a 3,400-square-foot home atop Mount Helena with a panoramic view of town. The next year, Weiner’s rising RVUs made him the hospital’s highest earner at $751,000, tax filings show. By 2010, Weiner was paid more than $1.3 million, more than three times the salary of hospital CEO John Solheim.

Around this time, according to court records, hospital administrators worried that Weiner’s pay could draw scrutiny from federal regulators for a violation of the Stark Law, which prohibits physicians who bill Medicare and Medicaid from referring patients in ways that enrich themselves. Those programs account for about 60% of St. Peter’s revenue. As questions about his pay intensified, Weiner responded by coordinating a staff rebellion, text messages show. A majority of St. Peter’s medical staff signed a letter of no confidence in Solheim, and Weiner was the lead signatory of a letter published in the Independent Record that charged the hospital with caring more about money than quality patient care. Not long after, Solheim resigned. He did not respond to my requests for comment. It’s unclear if the hospital at that time had its own concerns about the quality of Weiner’s care.

St. Peter’s had flourished since Weiner’s arrival, recording nearly 200,000 patient visits and bringing in more than $187 million in 2012. Weiner told me that most years his cancer care accounted for more than a quarter of the hospital’s revenue; St. Peter’s told me it was closer to 10%.

When negotiating his pay, emails show that Weiner leveraged his position as the region’s only oncologist, threatening to sue or quit, and he would prevail. With that power, he built a kingdom. In an unusual move, St. Peter’s allowed him to take over every facet of his patients’ care by naming himself their primary care physician. Because other options for cancer treatment were a long car ride or plane trip away, patients rarely sought a second opinion. Weiner protected his turf, resisting attempts to hire another oncologist or to transfer his patients to other doctors, court records show. As a result, few colleagues were looking over his shoulder. Inside the hospital, some referred to what he created as “his closed system.” As one doctor put it to me, if you were Weiner’s patient, “he grabbed on to you. He stayed with you for life. No one else would see you until you die.”

Concerns about Weiner’s billing and patient load persisted. Solheim’s successor, Nate Olson, also questioned his compensation. Weiner again helped organize a vote of no confidence, records show. Olson, who did not respond to requests for comment, stepped down in May 2016.

In 2019, St. Peter’s current CEO, Wade Johnson, hired an expert on the federal False Claims Act and fraudulent billing practices to study Weiner’s pay. The consultant described Weiner’s RVUs as “exceedingly high” and his compensation “a significant outlier.” Weiner logged nearly four times the visits and treatments of the median oncologist in the United States, despite working in a sparsely populated region. The consultant said the billings could be defended but warned they presented a potential legal and financial liability for both the hospital and Weiner.

From 2009 to 2020, the period Scot Warwick was under his care, the hospital paid Weiner more than $20.1 million. In all our conversations, he never shirked questions about his income. The bottom line, he told me, was that without him, St. Peter’s had no cancer center. “You want me to keep seeing everyone?” he said. “Then you’re going to pay me more, because I’m doing more work.”

Each morning Warwick lay in the ICU, Weiner visited, still dressed in his gym clothes. Over a decade Warwick had come to see his doctor as a friend. In their talks, Weiner dismissed Sasich’s hypothesis, though he agreed with the decision to stop administering the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine. As Sasich spent more time with Warwick, his confidence only grew. Throughout his treatment, Warwick had shown few symptoms of lung cancer and had continued to backpack, camp and kayak with his kids.

In Warwick’s records, a medically coded tit for tat ensued between the hometown celebrity and the outsider. Sasich ordered a new biopsy and tests to look for infection in Warwick’s lungs. “Dr. Sasich,” Weiner responded, “is still skeptical of the diagnosis.”

Lisa Warwick first heard from Sasich on Aug. 9, a week into her husband’s hospitalization. He wanted to explain the need for another lung biopsy. A habitual note taker, she scribbled words her mind could not accept: “This doesn’t present to me like cancer,” he told her.

“Well, how could that be?” she remembered thinking. “All our lives sucked for 11 years. I can’t imagine that we went through all that and it not be real.”

Sasich agonized about what to do. Doctors rarely challenge one another’s work. But after talking with the Warwicks, he filed an official complaint, accusing Weiner of an egregious mistake. He sent a letter to the hospital’s peer review committee, an internal group of doctors tasked with examining concerns about patient care. In it, he wrote that Warwick “would be the longest living case in the medical literature.”

One of the tests Sasich ordered indicated a possible fungal infection in Warwick’s lungs — not uncommon for patients whose immune systems have been wrecked. He was treated with steroids and an antibiotic cocktail. Warwick improved and, on Aug. 13, was sent home with an oxygen tank. Three days later, Lisa Warwick found him suffocating. He left home again for St. Peter’s, this time in an ambulance.

After a week of tests, Sasich called Lisa Warwick to tell her that her husband was experiencing a rare and excruciating reaction to the antibiotic Bactrim. Called Stevens-Johnson syndrome, it causes the skin to blister and peel. He was intubated and flown to a specialized burn unit at the University of Utah’s Huntsman hospital. The next day, Warwick’s left lung collapsed. A doctor told her to rush down to Salt Lake City.

For three weeks, Lisa Warwick lived at Huntsman, unable to leave and reenter because of COVID-19. Inside, doctors expressed to her confusion about Warwick’s diagnosis and sparse medical record.

When his right lung neared collapse, a doctor asked about his dying wishes — his code status. Do not resuscitate, Lisa Warwick said, a DNR. When they could do no more, the lead doctor pulled her aside. According to court records, he asked if she wanted an autopsy. As he asked, the doctor nodded his head up and down. She said yes.

Scot Warwick’s final communication with his wife was a faint squeeze of her hand. He died just after midnight on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2020.

About a month later, his widow heard from the medical examiner. This is how she recalled the conversation during court testimony:

“Mrs. Warwick, I’ve never had to make this call before,” he said. She began to take notes. “I’m sorry.”

“OK?”

“We did not find any cancer cells at all. We can’t find anywhere in his records that he had cancer and found no malignancy at all.” All signs indicated he died from lung failure caused by the drug gemcitabine. Chemotherapy killed him.

As the conversation closed, she asked: “What am I supposed to do with this? What do I do?”

“Get a lawyer,” he said.

After Warwick’s death, Sasich bumped into Dr. Robert LaClair, the hospital’s kidney specialist and chair of the peer review committee. “How the fuck did this go on for so long?” Sasich asked. He considered LaClair an excellent specialist and consulted him frequently. From LaClair’s face, Sasich worried he had offended him.

A former Air Force doctor, LaClair has a certain respect for bureaucratic channels, which Sasich admits is not his domain. LaClair had worked with Weiner for 11 years and over that time had choked down his concerns. As he would later tell me: “I was caught up in the culture. We all were.”

LaClair revealed to Sasich that for months he had been quietly building a case against Weiner. According to court testimony, he advised Sasich to lay low as any attempt to remove Weiner had to be done “by the book.” Weiner had the money to sue the hospital and had threatened to do so many times. It could become a circus. Sasich was relieved that something was happening but was outraged that no one had acted before his patient suffered an agonizing death.

What LaClair didn’t tell Sasich was that the problem was worse than he knew. The review had begun a year earlier, after LaClair and a colleague questioned Weiner about his practice of providing minimal, often indiscernible, notes in his patient files. This poor documentation complicated follow-up care and, according to LaClair, intentionally made it difficult for others to question Weiner’s treatment. Court records show LaClair and his colleague also told Weiner to stop admitting scores of patients to the hospital for stays unrelated to cancer — stays that financially benefited him.

By early 2020, doctors and nurses had submitted enough confidential complaints for peer review to make LaClair act. He sent a half dozen patient files to medical experts at the University of Utah, but the conclusions had been delayed by COVID-19.

After Warwick died, St. Peter’s added his file for review. The doctor examining it quickly responded, thinking there must have been a clerical error: The packet didn’t include a biopsy to support the 2009 diagnosis. On Oct. 9, St. Peter’s received his analysis: “If he had cancer, this course of many years would be truly remarkable.” It went on, “The long-term treatment with toxic medications in the absence of a confirmed diagnosis of cancer is not reasonable.”

External reviews typically lack forceful language, perhaps by design. Medicine is nuanced, messy and rife with decision points and diverging paths, so doctors grading other doctors can sound deferential, even perfunctory. The eight Utah reviews were different.

Looking at a 2018 incident involving a 62-year-old man whom Weiner had diagnosed with throat cancer, a reviewer described several decisions as potential “malpractice” that led to an unnecessary two-month hospitalization. As with Warwick, there was no biopsy in the file.

Another review criticized what Weiner didn’t do. A 67-year-old woman with breast cancer had received chemotherapy and undergone a mastectomy and breast reconstruction. In a June 2019 check-up, Weiner noted “no evidence of any recurrence.” But records show that he didn’t conduct a breast examination. (Records show that this was a common failing in his breast cancer treatment.) Months later, the patient found a lump. A biopsy ordered at another hospital confirmed the cancer had been back for some time, which led to a second breast tissue removal, radiation and chemo.

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“I’ve never seen so many cases of what we sent out that was not meeting standard of care. I’ve never seen that before, and I hope I never see it again,” LaClair would testify.

LaClair later told me, “When the Utah reports came back, it was like: ‘Holy fucking shit. This is going to suck.’”

On Oct. 15, 2020, St. Peter’s suspended Weiner and revoked his privileges. Banished from the kingdom he’d built over a quarter century, Weiner told me he felt only “blank.”

The hospital hired The Greeley Company, a health care consultancy, to scrutinize the records of dozens of additional patients, many of them dead. Weiner would be given an opportunity to defend himself and regain his job at an internal “fair hearing.”

Word of Weiner’s suspension devastated the nurses at his cancer center, the core group of women who called themselves “Tom’s wives” or his “girls.” They were the envy of nurses in other departments for the prestige of working for Weiner and for the perks. From 2005 to 2020, records show that he gave them at least $140,000 of his own money in bonuses and jewelry. Upon retirement, nurses could expect diamond solitaire earrings worth about $1,500. He invited them to his home for dinners and holiday parties. They messaged him regularly, wishing him well on his extended trips to Italy.

In the weeks following his suspension, they delivered food and sent supportive notes. They vowed to resist the administration. Weiner told them not to lose their jobs for him.

“I love you. I’m here. I’m so sorry. I’m praying,” nurse Emily Burton texted him.

“You can tell the girls I will be fighting,” Weiner responded. “But it will probably get bloody.”

To others, like nurse Meghan Giovenco, he expressed anger: “They are going for the jugular. Scum.”

When Weiner heard that Sasich questioned his work in front of his nurses, he texted a hospital administrator, “FYI put a muzzle on Sasich or else.”

News of Weiner’s suspension spread through social media and Helena’s shops and diners. Patients formed a Facebook group called “We stand with Dr. Tom Weiner.” He saved their lives, their spouses’ lives, they said. He remembered the names of their children and grandchildren. He was kind, brilliant. Dozens more joined, then hundreds and hundreds.

To those inside St. Peter’s, it resembled the campaigns that forced out the previous CEOs — only worse. Soon, the first of what would be more than a hundred small rallies was held outside the hospital. By ousting the region’s only oncologist, they contended, patients had been abandoned, consigned to long waits and a rotation of travel doctors. One sign proclaimed, “I WANT MY DR. WEINER, NOT THE SECOND STRING.” Their message spread to yard signs, bumper stickers and T-shirts. Supporters caravaned along Helena’s downtown, honking horns.

The hospital fired Weiner on Nov. 17, 2020. Johnson, the CEO, convened a meeting with the cancer staff, telling them Warwick’s death was “the tip of the iceberg.” He barred attendees from recording the meeting, court documents show, and the hospital’s chief nurse paced the room, instructing employees to put their phones away. All of Weiner’s patients should seek second opinions, Johnson said.

Johnson also told the staff, “Don’t be surprised if black suits show up.” Weiner’s nurses understood this to mean that federal law enforcement or the Department of Health and Human Services would be investigating. “He explained it to be suits — there were going to be suits coming into the office and asking for things,” according to the testimony of nurse Andrea Thies, who, despite Johnson’s orders, took notes during the meeting.

“You walked out of there feeling like, ‘Was I killing people?’” nurse Fallon Melby would later testify.

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Three weeks later, St. Peter’s posted an astonishing disclosure on its website: “The issues we have identified include the following: harm that was caused to patients by receiving treatments, including chemotherapy, that were not clinically indicated or necessary; failure to meet state and federal laws associated with the prescribing of narcotics; failure to refer patients to other specialists for appropriate treatments; and failure to meet requirements associated with clinical documentation.”

It’s unclear if the hospital referred any of these issues to the state’s medical board or to state and local law enforcement.

Days later, Weiner sued St. Peter’s and its executives for wrongful termination and defamation.

Early in 2021, Sasich was pulled aside by Shelly Harkins, the hospital’s chief medical officer. According to Sasich’s court testimony, she apologized for getting him caught up in this mess.

She next confided a story that rendered him “physically ill.” Hospital administrators had for years harbored suspicion about one case, a 16-year-old girl who died suddenly under Weiner’s care. Sasich remembered Harkins providing few details but saying Weiner was frustrated that another physician was treating his patient. Once he regained control of her treatment, the girl didn’t live long. “She told me that he gave her two doses of propofol,” Sasich testified, “and she died.”

Sasich hoped it was just a rumor, an exaggeration. But when he asked LaClair about it, the person who knew more than anyone about Weiner’s practice didn’t refute the story but for one correction. It wasn’t propofol.

“No,” LaClair told Sasich. “He uses phenobarbital.”

In the days after Weiner’s termination, dozens of his patients came into the hospital asking for refills of oxycodone, morphine and other opioids. The doctors taking over Weiner’s caseload couldn’t find the prescriptions in St. Peter’s electronic system, according to court records, and Weiner’s patient files were little help. So they turned to a state database that logs all pharmacy opioid sales and discovered he had been writing prescriptions by hand, which bypassed internal hospital controls. To their shock, they found that many of his patients had been on dangerous levels of narcotics for years. The state agency that oversees that drug registry did not respond to a request for comment.

Often the patients seeking painkillers didn’t have cancer and had no documented need for them. Weiner had ordered them as their primary care physician. Many were struggling with addiction. St. Peter’s created a document for doctors to track the crisis in real time. Their notes included: “nonsensical” and “one of the worst indications for opioids. I’m still piecing this together …” and “Many years on methadone. Not clear why.”

Weiner told me the hospital manufactured these allegations to justify firing him, and he denied writing prescriptions by hand.

St. Peter’s assembled a committee of pain management experts to review more than 2,000 patient files. Dr. Kyle Moore, an addiction specialist, led the effort to detoxify patients. He found that Weiner rarely accounted for what doctors call morphine equivalents; essentially, he didn’t do the math to ensure that when patients received drugs at different intervals and strengths they didn’t add up to a lethal dose. Weiner denied this. In the narcotics tracking memo, Moore is quoted as saying Weiner’s prescribing was “a greater danger to the community than coronavirus.”

The full scope of Weiner’s prescription practices may never be known. The hospital alerted the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which began an investigation, a spokesperson told me. But court records show no attempt by St. Peter’s to quantify the problem beyond its initial scramble to detoxify patients. St. Peter’s would not tell me if it searched for patients in the community who overdosed or died, nor would it say whether it reported what it found to the state medical board.

While the front-line doctors taking over patients were horrified, court records show hospital administrators and the peer review committee had been warned more than a dozen times, since at least 2018, that Weiner was overprescribing. I learned that staff who raised concerns expected to be yelled at or intimidated by Weiner. In 2019, two nurses and a pharmacist questioned a Weiner order to apply a fentanyl patch on a 93-year-old woman who was already on opioids and bobbing in and out of consciousness. A nurse texted Weiner to ask whether he was sure. Weiner responded, “Tell them put it on or I will rip their lips off.” Weiner told me this was “an inside joke.”

Federal regulators also failed to address alarming trends. An analysis of Medicare drug data shows that, from 2013 to 2020, Weiner’s volume of opioid prescriptions ranked ninth among all cancer doctors who bill the program. When it came to morphine, Weiner consistently ranked among the top five. In 2017, he prescribed more morphine than any other cancer doctor. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not respond to questions.

Before St. Peter’s fired Weiner, the hospital sent five pain management cases to The Greeley Company. All were deemed inappropriate. One case was Sharon Dibble, a 75-year-old with many health problems, including kidney failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

On March 6, 2018, for reasons that were unclear to the reviewers, Weiner doubled her extended-release morphine from 30 to 60 milligrams twice a day, on top of an oxycodone regimen. Four days later, Dibble’s daughter found her limp, blue in the face, not breathing. Paramedics rushed Dibble to St. Peter’s, where she was kept on life support for more than two weeks. She died on March 27.

St. Peter’s said the cause was acute respiratory failure — her body starved of oxygen and shut down. The family believed her mounting ailments overtook her. But that’s not what happened, according to the Greeley review. Weiner’s “excessively large increase” in morphine, it concluded, “led to respiratory arrest and the patient’s demise.”

When I raised the Greeley review with Weiner, he called it “ridiculous.” He told me that he swapped short-acting pain medicines for long-acting but that Dibble’s morphine equivalent was unchanged — a claim contradicted by medical records and the hospital’s review of her death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cautions against exceeding the equivalent of 90 milligrams of morphine daily and warns anything above 120 risks overdose. Records show Dibble’s daily regimen equaled 195 milligrams of morphine.

St. Peter’s never told Dibble’s family what it knew.

Five years after Dibble’s death, I shared the report with her son and two daughters. During his mother’s last days, Tom Dibble made the decision to stop life-sustaining measures. It was, he thought, her time to go. Now, he feels duped.

“Not only did this individual cause her death,” he said, referring to Weiner, “but it’s pretty apparent that this whole thing was being covered up. We were never given any knowledge that this took place, and we have to live with this decision.”

Six months after Weiner’s firing, the hospital conducted its fair hearing. As in a trial, witnesses testify, attorneys cross-examine, but a fair hearing isn’t public, and the judges are doctors — in this case, a panel of three from St. Peter’s. Held in a hospital conference room, the hearing took six days. On the first night, LaClair spelled out the allegations — Warwick’s death, the numerous misdiagnoses, the narcotics and more.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. The hospital also accused Weiner of overriding his patient’s dying wishes. If a patient wants CPR or a machine to keep them breathing, they elect to be a “full code.” Weiner, the hospital said, had a pattern of altering, without consent, a patient’s status from full code to a DNR/DNI, do not resuscitate and do not intubate. The hospital would not tell me if it pursued a complete accounting of what the fair hearing panel determined to be “a serious violation of the standard of care and medical ethics.”

At the hearing, nurse Addie Weidow described two events in which she witnessed a patient’s code status being changed without permission, including one where a patient nearly died before an intervening doctor sent her to the ICU. In another instance, Weidow testified, the chart of a patient who was full code suddenly read DNR/DNI. Following hospital protocol, nurses tried to attach a purple wristband, signifying her wish to die without intervention. When the patient refused the band, Weidow said Weiner told them to “hang the band on the doorknob and leave it be.” In other words, if her heart stops, don’t enter the room. Weiner’s nurses called it “a slow code,” Weidow testified.

When Weiner left town, Dr. Ashley Coggins managed his patient load, giving her a rare view into his closed system. She testified that “many nurses have come to me in the last several years, telling me that that was a standard practice of his — to just change people’s code statuses once they were doing poorly.” She added: “He was basically using his own judgment as the judgment for people to live or die. It’s horrifying.”

During the hearing, a hospital attorney asked Dr. Kerry Hale about the 16-year-old girl, the rumor that now haunted Sasich. Hale couldn’t recall the girl’s name but remembered she had a Wilms tumor, a kidney cancer that affects mostly children, and was being treated on the pediatric floor. Then, out of nowhere, Weiner transferred her to his oncology floor “and then orders for DNR, and then three doses of phenobarbital were given, and the patient died, I believe, that evening.” Phenobarbital is a barbiturate commonly used to treat seizures during alcohol withdrawal. In large doses, it is lethal.

When Weiner’s turn came, his lawyer asked for his account. His answer was clinical and unflinching. “Mom wanted her comfortable,” he said. “So, I transferred her to the oncology floor, and I gave her pain meds, phenobarbital, and she died later.” Neither the hospital nor Weiner’s attorneys pressed him for more details.

“Comfort” was a word Weiner used often in our conversations. If a patient dies as a result of his treatment, he told me, it’s not unethical if his intent was to provide comfort. In medicine, this is called the principle of double effect. First developed by the Catholic saint and theologian Thomas Aquinas, it’s a set of criteria by which a person can morally justify ending someone’s life. It stipulates that a harmful consequence of a medical treatment, such as death, is permissible if it’s a secondary effect of beneficial treatment, such as alleviating pain with drugs. “It’s for their comfort,” Weiner told me. “It’s not that I euthanize them.”

At the fair hearing, Weiner denied the hospital’s accusations. “Part of my problem is I have a good memory,” he said, “so I just remember things, and I probably should put more in the chart.” It wasn’t odd that he prescribed high-dose opioids, he said. He’s an oncologist, and his patients were suffering. Why was he giving painkillers to people who didn’t have cancer? For most of his tenure, he said, St. Peter’s didn’t employ a pain specialist.

As for his end-of-life care, Weiner said he always discussed the options with patients — “tens of thousands,” he estimated — before altering their status.

The panel unanimously rejected Weiner’s appeal.

Despite being fired, Weiner maintained his medical license. The law only required St. Peter’s to report his suspension — not what it knew — to the state medical board and the National Practitioner Data Bank. The medical board would not comment on whether it conducted an investigation into Weiner.

Rather than go into private practice or retire, Weiner decided to sue St. Peter’s, spending, by his own account, millions of dollars. He told me that he expected the hospital to settle for as much as $20 million because “they can’t let out what they did.”

By suing, Weiner exposed himself and St. Peter’s to pretrial discovery. Over the next three years, thousands of documents — text messages, patient files, financial statements, the fair hearing transcripts — were entered in court as evidence. Hours of depositions by doctors, nurses, administrators and Weiner were recorded.

Although at odds in every other way, Weiner and St. Peter’s had one common interest: concealing the evidence. Both parties successfully petitioned the court to seal nearly all the discovery. I was able to obtain it.

If the residents of Helena had seen those files, they would know how Weiner built a high-volume business that billed as much as possible to public and private insurance, all the while sending numerous patients through a carousel of unnecessary and life-threatening treatments. They would have learned that the hospital had financial incentives to look away.

Evidence of that high-volume business was hiding in plain sight, in data published by CMS. An analysis of Medicare Part B billing data shows that, from 2013 to 2020, Weiner billed for 40,000 15-minute visits, more than any other doctor — of any specialty — in the nation. The publicly available data offers just a glimpse of what St. Peter’s knew was a much bigger problem. “He’d see 15 patients in 30 minutes,” LaClair told me. This made Weiner rich and apparently missed the gaze of insurance regulators.

If Weiner was such an outlier, why did he never come to the attention of CMS? I reached out to John Hargraves, a data expert at the Health Care Cost Institute in Washington. CMS investigators, he told me, are looking for obvious fraud, such as doctors billing for more expensive work than they delivered. Instead, Weiner crammed in an extraordinarily high number of less expensive patient visits into each day.

When I asked St. Peter’s about what I had found, the hospital refuted none of it. It would not answer questions about Scot Warwick or Sharon Dibble or any other patients despite being given health privacy waivers signed by the families. CEO Johnson turned down requests for an interview. Andrea Groom, the hospital spokesperson, emailed a statement that broadly declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. “We believe this situation is isolated to a single, former physician, and we remain confident in the exceptional care provided by St. Peter’s medical staff,” it said.

In a follow-up email, Groom wrote: “Dr. Weiner was a highly productive physician, but this was not necessarily alarming, given that he was the only medical oncologist treating cancer patients for a large service area during much of his time with St. Peter’s Health.” Patient satisfaction ratings were high, she said, and complaints were rare. Groom added that “there was no reason at the time for St. Peter’s to believe that Dr. Weiner was providing substandard care.”

In a court filing, the hospital told a judge it expects to be sued by more Weiner patients.

What the hospital’s response ignores is that St. Peter’s enabled and protected Weiner. As LaClair said in his deposition, Weiner’s colleagues didn’t stop him earlier “because we were afraid of him.” In court filings, St. Peter’s admitted that for years it knew of “serious concerns of physician colleagues and staff members with several patient deaths.” When I asked Weiner why the hospital would publicly accuse him of various types of malpractice but withhold its concerns about his end-of-life care, he said it’s because administrators knew what he was doing and even encouraged it.

Fifteen months before he was fired, Weiner and his nurses took over the hospital’s end-of-life care. I found an August 2019 text message exchange between the hospital’s chief nurse, Kari Koehler, and Weiner that made it official: “Are you still okay if all end of life patients go to onc[ology] even if they aren’t yours? I just feel like those nurses do it best!”

Weiner responded: “I agree!!”

By the summer of 2021, the pro-Weiner Facebook group had about 4,000 members. The hospital CEO was “evil,” “a true devil” and “puke.” The group campaigned successfully to have Weiner named “Helena’s Best Physician” in the Independent Record and raised the money to rent billboards that read “WE STAND WITH DR. WEINER.” When I asked Weiner why the town was cleaved in two over him, he smiled and offered a correction. “I wouldn’t call it 50/50,” he said. “More like 80/20.”

For Lisa Warwick and her two children, each Weiner sign was a reminder to keep silent. “I was worried about violence against us,” she told me. That summer, the family sued St. Peter’s for Warwick’s wrongful death. In her deposition, the widow said: “My children lost their father. I lost my husband. It wasn’t quick. It was long. And it was torturous. And it was terrible. And I would never, ever wish that on anyone — ever.”

In his depositions, and later to me, Weiner maintained that Scot Warwick had Stage 4 lung cancer for 11 years. The April 2020 biopsy that didn’t show cancer? The pathologist missed the spot where the cancer was, he said. In our conversations, Weiner said that the cancer had passed back-and-forth between Warwick’s two lungs.

“He was pretty advanced, though?” I asked. “Don’t you think it would be hard to miss?”

“Well, you would think,” he said. “I agree with you. I was kind of pissed off.”

What about the doctor in Utah who performed the autopsy? He also missed the cancer, Weiner said.

The Warwicks and St. Peter’s eventually settled the case for an undisclosed amount. Weiner was not held liable because he was a hospital employee. Neither the family nor their attorney have solved the mystery of why three private health insurers paid for 11 years of Stage 4 lung cancer treatment. None of the companies responded when I asked.

When I shared Weiner’s claim that 80% of Helena residents stood behind him, Sasich didn’t disagree. He drove past the protesters on his way to work. In the hospital, Weiner’s nurses barely looked at him. The billboard gave him chills. He couldn’t understand why people weren’t demanding answers.

The mystery of the 16-year-old girl tore at him. He replayed the scenes in his head — Harkins, the chief medical officer, telling him that she may have been killed, LaClair confirming it. He asked a hospital attorney if they were investigating; “we’re aware of the case,” he was told. He took what he knew to Helena’s police chief. He had a brief meeting with a fraud investigator at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. No one seemed interested in pursuing it, Sasich told me.

Sasich’s inquiries came back to Weiner, who added him as a defendant in the lawsuit, accusing him of defamation. Sasich has denied the allegation.

Buried in the thousands of pages of medical records, correspondence and memos that build the hospital’s case against Weiner is a single sheet that summarizes the dying moments of seven people. In broken cursive, someone wrote in pen, “Phenobarbital cases.” Ranging in age from 53 to 77, they represent a small sample of those who died under Weiner’s care.

The memo tracks the final hours of a 62-year-old woman, admitted for stomach pain on Oct. 3, 2018. Four days later, at 6:01 p.m., she received 260 milligrams of phenobarbital for “terminal agitation.” Two hours passed. She received another 260 milligrams, then another at 10:58 p.m. — a total of 780 milligrams. She died just after midnight.

Unlike the narcotics and misdiagnosis cases, the hospital didn’t send these for outside review but rather enlisted its chief pharmacist, Starla Blank. During the fair hearing, Blank said the events were alarming because it wasn’t clear whether the patients were near death. “In most of the cases the patients were talking and visited with Dr. Weiner prior to their — prior to them getting the phenobarbital,” she said.

Still, St. Peter’s, which declined to comment on the phenobarbital cases, chose to ignore Blank’s assessment. In its final written account, the hospital concluded that the seven patients “were at end of life and that there were no remaining viable treatment options for them.”

One case is conspicuously missing from the phenobarbital memo.

There is no mention of the 16-year-old girl. In Harkins’ deposition, she recalled the case but not her name. LaClair’s testimony offered few details of an unnamed girl. Under oath, the hospital’s chief nursing officer referred to “a child” who had received so much phenobarbital as to arouse concern with nurses.

An online search of “Thomas Weiner” produces dozens of obituaries that express gratitude to the oncologist and his nurses for treating loved ones. One shows a photo of a thin girl with a big smile and blonde hair held back with barrettes. It speaks of hot air balloon rides in Arizona and beach trips in Oregon. She and her little brother built a play cabin in the woods and made pocket change selling lemonade. She loved camping and kayaking. At age 6, she was diagnosed with a Wilms tumor, but she didn’t let it rule her life. Her mother, who wrote the obituary, quotes her as saying, “Having cancer is no fun, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun just because you have cancer.”

Her name was Nadine Long.

Watch video ➜

While I was reasonably sure this was the girl whose memory haunted the halls of St. Peter’s, I decided to knock on the door of the man who finally acted to stop Weiner but, by his own admission, had waited far too long.

To my surprise, Dr. Robert LaClair welcomed me into his home. Earlier that week in September 2023, a Montana judge had sided with St. Peter’s and thrown out Weiner’s lawsuit. The hospital had a right to enforce quality care under federal law, the judge ruled. In an addendum, the judge explained the hospital had not defamed the oncologist. Weiner vowed to file an appeal with the state Supreme Court. The judge did say, however, that Weiner’s defamation suit against Sasich could go forward. In LaClair’s study, we discussed Scot Warwick, the narcotics, the code status changes — cases he’d no longer have to recount in a trial. A weight seemed to be lifting from him, until I mentioned the name few knew. Taken aback at “Nadine,” his eyes welled. LaClair had read her file but had not sent it for outside review. He exhaled and after a long moment said: “Trust me, it’s so bad. You have no idea. She wasn’t terminal.”

By June 2024, Weiner and I had talked for many months. Sometimes, he’d offer an anecdote about an anonymous patient, unaware that I could identify their names and compare the stories with medical and court records. Invariably, he portrayed himself as a gifted and dedicated doctor. One was about a moribund young girl who needed him to intervene when a less capable doctor wasn’t keeping her comfortable. It was time to ask what happened to Nadine Long.

We sat at a long table in a hotel conference room in downtown Helena. Dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved polo shirt, he agreed to be recorded, attached a microphone to his lapel and talked first about a recent trip to Rome. Well into the interview, I presented him with a privacy waiver signed by Nadine’s family, and he told me his version of her final days.

It was March 2015. He was in New York, on Broadway, waiting with his wife for a matinee showing of “Les Misérables,” when Nadine’s mother called. She said her daughter was “in horrible pain. They won’t take care of her pain. Please come home.” After the show, he flew to Helena, arriving near midnight, and drove straight to St. Peter’s. Nadine was screaming and crying.

Weiner had treated Nadine since she was a child, when she was first diagnosed with cancer and when it recurred the following year. The cancer had now come a third time. Nadine had a pleural effusion — fluid built up between the lung and the chest cavity — that restricted her breathing. Her mother had talked with the oncologist filling in for Weiner, who was trying to transfer Nadine for further testing at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Weiner reviewed Nadine’s scans. “She was going down like a stone,” he told me. “She had hours to a day or two to live. There were no more cards to play.”

Hearing this, Nadine’s mother no longer wanted her transferred. “She just wanted her comfortable,” Weiner said. He gave Nadine a choice: a torrent of undignified treatments and pain with no promise of survival or “leave it up to God, and we’re just going to keep her comfortable.”

At that point, he moved Nadine to his oncology floor, to his nurses, “and she got some pain meds — I don’t remember how much phenobarbital — and she died later.”

His response mirrored what I had read in the fair hearing transcript. I had by then reviewed Nadine’s medical record, some of which I presented to him.

Weiner had examined Nadine less than a week earlier. In her file, he wrote, “she looks good … everything looks stable right now.” I asked how he could have missed what he claimed was an advanced and terminal disease.

“That’s how fast — the nature of that tumor when it comes back, it comes back with a vengeance,” Weiner said. “That fast.”

With her family’s consent, I had shared Nadine’s records with Dr. Sarah Friebert of Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio. She specializes in pediatric oncology and founded and directs the hospital’s pediatric palliative care center. She wanted to be clear that she was not speaking for her employer.

I read aloud to Weiner some of her review.

“Here’s a girl who was skiing and then she’s dead a week later, and that’s — that’s concerning,” Friebert told me. “She ate 75% of her dinner on the night she died. Her vitals were not out of whack.” Nadine should have been sent to another hospital for testing, Friebert said, because nothing definitively showed she couldn’t have been treated. It’s not clear she was going to die, Friebert said.

Weiner determined she was dying based on a test of the fluid in her lungs, which was insufficient, she said. Neither Friebert nor I could find any evidence in Nadine’s file that Weiner ordered a biopsy that confirmed terminal cancer.

Friebert uses phenobarbital to calm children as they die of disease, but she told me Weiner “was escalating the phenobarbital in a way that is way out of proportion with what I would ever have done.” The intent, she said, could not have been comfort. “These doses were obscene,” she said. “He killed her with it.”

That a respected oncologist questioned his care didn’t seem to faze Weiner. She wasn’t there, he told me, and therefore can’t make such judgments. “I completely disagree,” he said. “This is a girl that’s got — her body is riddled with cancer, and she’s in horrible pain. Now did the phenobarbital hasten her death? Yeah, it did.”

In all our conversations, Weiner insisted his intent is always to provide comfort, never to hasten death, but here he equivocated.

“Could it have shortened her life?” Weiner asked. “Yes. Again, in most of these cases, could I not give phenobarbital, and would that patient live longer? The answer is yes.” Weiner paused. “But longer in, like, hours? I mean, is that worth being in misery for those hours?”

“My goal was not to kill Nadine,” he added. “My goal was to make her comfortable.”

I had shown him the “phenobarbital cases” memo, and we’d discussed the code status changes, Scot Warwick, the narcotics and now Nadine. Finally, I had to ask, “Are you killing your patients?”

“Well, uh, no. I’m not,” he responded.

“Why did you hesitate?” I asked.

“Well,” he said. “It depends on what you mean by killing them.”

Nadine’s parents live outside of Helena, at the end of a cattle road that curls around the peak where their daughter once played and her ashes now rest. Dan Beadle, her father, is an evidence technician for the county sheriff’s office. Her mother, Cheri Long, recently retired as an administrator at Carroll College in downtown Helena. They led me through the mudroom to the kitchen’s farmhouse table, where I asked them to recount the worst days of their lives.

While on a family vacation in New Hampshire in April 2005, Nadine was diagnosed with a Wilms tumor. She had her left kidney removed and received radiation. When the family returned to Montana, they met with Weiner, who directed her chemotherapy. During those treatments, Nadine bonded with his nurses, “the true loves of her life,” Long said. She appeared to be in remission. But a year later, the cancer reappeared in the spot where her kidney had been removed, Weiner told the family. Nadine received chemo and other treatments until about 2010, when Weiner said she was cancer free. She continued to see Weiner and his nurses for annual check-ups and more.

“Dr. Weiner always had a policy that once you’re his patient, he’s your primary physician,” Long said. “I don’t know if that’s normal.”

Nadine attended the same Catholic school as Weiner’s children. Her uniforms were hand-me-downs from his older daughter. The two families were friendly but not close. Nadine’s parents respected Weiner, although, as Long put it, he could be domineering.

Nadine also had bipolar disorder. When she was 14, a psychiatrist wrote that she struggled with information processing. He said her “insecurities, anxiety, and tendencies toward frustration when challenged dramatically interfered with her critical thinking skills.” But she was also “kind, compassionate, very empathic.”

In February 2015, Nadine’s parents noticed her hunching forward, struggling to breathe. She came to see Weiner on March 2. As with most of her visits, it lasted just a few minutes. “He listened to her lungs and said, ‘Everything’s good,’” her father recalled. “Then he tried to palpate a little bit, and she was extremely ticklish, so she started squirming around, and then at some point he goes, ‘I think we’re good to go.’”

Six days later, Nadine buckled and fell while skiing and was rushed to the St. Peter’s emergency room. Her parents were out of town when Nadine called to say: “Mommy, I’m in the hospital. My lung collapsed.” They raced to St. Peter’s, where they learned nurses had inserted a chest tube and drained her lungs of fluid, but no one would tell them more. Weiner was in New York City. For the next five days in the pediatric ward, Nadine vacillated between moments of calm and kicking and screaming, but her vitals were steady.

They felt they weren’t getting straight answers from Weiner’s backup oncologist. Long asked that Nadine be transferred to St. Jude. But as those arrangements were being made, Weiner appeared. “Finally,” Long remembered thinking, “We were like, ‘Someone who’s going to tell us the truth instead of tiptoeing around us.’”

She learned later that a St. Peter’s employee had phoned Weiner. His claim that he returned because Long called asking him to provide comfort to her daughter?

“That’s a flat-out lie,” she told me. “We did not ask for him to come home from his vacation.”

Weiner told her a large malignant mass was compressing Nadine’s lungs and would soon suffocate her. “How he described it was, ‘It’s doubling every day, and today it’s the size of a soccer ball,’” Long said.

Soon after, Weiner spoke with Nadine. “He spoke to our daughter, not to us,” Long said, “He told her, ‘You can choose the medical path or the God path.’” The conversation was “between the two of them. We were there, and he would check — he would look at us,” Long said. “Taking the God way was saying, ‘I fought my fight, and I’m ready to meet Jesus.’”

The teenager who struggled with processing information and critical thinking chose the God path. Her parents, terrified that she might needlessly suffer, didn’t object. On March 13, Nadine was changed from a full code to DNR/DNI, despite the day’s progress report that said, “She is alert and oriented, in no acute distress.” Weiner transferred her to the oncology floor.

Nadine had been heavily drugged since she’d arrived: Dilaudid, morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl. The next day, Nadine’s heart and respiratory rates elevated. She was panicking. “Saturday afternoon, she’s thrashing, she’s fighting, she can’t breathe,” Long said. Her father and a nurse couldn’t hold her down. They believed she was suffocating. The parents agreed to Weiner’s comfort measures.

Nadine’s medical file shows that he ordered a nurse to inject phenobarbital, which a computer tracked.

3:45 p.m. — 260 milligrams.

Nadine was still thrashing around. The nurse later said he was nervous about increasing the phenobarbital and called Weiner into the room. “He came in and stood there and oversaw,” Long said. “He just kept saying, ‘more, more.’”

5:26 p.m. — 390 milligrams.

It’s unclear when Nadine fell into sedation. After the initial doses, Weiner left the room.

7:47 p.m. — 390 milligrams.

Two of Weiner’s nurses who had doted on Nadine for years stayed late.

9:54 p.m. — 390 milligrams.

Relieved she was no longer in pain, her parents held on to her and each other.

1:45 a.m. — DISCHARGE.

Her heart stopped.

Nadine received 1,430 milligrams of a drug whose standard dosage for an adult is 260 milligrams. She weighed 100 pounds.

Nadine’s parents asked St. Peter’s to investigate the care she received. They wanted to know how Weiner could have missed a massive tumor a week before she died. Two months later, they met with the hospital’s director of risk management, who told them, Long said, “that he was reviewed and provided great care.”

For nine years, that answer had satisfied them. Believing Weiner had spared Nadine of pain in death, they put up a “We Stand With Doctor Weiner” sign in their yard. But now, having looked at Nadine’s medical file, they wanted to know if they had been manipulated, if she was actually terminal. Citing confidentiality laws, St. Peter’s has refused to provide the family the review, nor would it confirm to me that a review exists.

In August, Jesse Laslovich, the U.S. attorney for the District of Montana, and St. Peter’s announced a $10.8 million settlement for numerous violations of the False Claims Act: billing for unnecessary treatments, prescribing unneeded narcotics and more. The settlement, Laslovich said, “is not an indictment on the quality of care being provided by St. Peter’s Health as well as their doctors and their providers.”

The same day it announced the settlement, the U.S. attorney’s office sued Weiner. It accused him of getting rich by prescribing needless treatments, double billing, seeing patients more frequently than necessary and “upcoding” — billing for more expensive treatments than were delivered. The prosecutor pointed to Weiner’s enormous caseload as evidence that he had little regard for patient outcomes. Weiner’s attorney denied the allegations and has filed a motion to dismiss the case.

After the hospital reported Weiner’s narcotics practice to the DEA, the agency investigated, according to Steffan Tubbs with its Rocky Mountain field division. He told me investigators brought a potential criminal case to the U.S. attorney’s office but that prosecutors instead decided to pursue civil penalties against Weiner. A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney declined to comment.

In a press release, St. Peter’s commended itself for “acting with integrity” for alerting the DEA and laid blame on a rogue doctor. In settling, the hospital acknowledged that Weiner falsely billed multiple federal health care programs. But it did not acknowledge that his billing practices had been a constant problem and an obvious outlier for at least a decade. The prosecutor was silent on Weiner’s billing practices with private insurance.

The Montana State Supreme Court has yet to issue a ruling on Weiner’s appeal. His defamation suit against Sasich continues.

Weiner’s Montana medical license was renewed in 2023 and is set to expire in March. For now, he is free to practice medicine and prescribe drugs.

Neither the settlement nor the lawsuit against Weiner focus on the harm he exacted on countless patients. It’s unclear if any state or federal law enforcement agencies are looking into Weiner’s trail of suspicious deaths. Counting Scot Warwick, Sharon Dibble, Nadine Long and the seven documented phenobarbital cases, there are at least 10.

J. David McSwane obtained and reviewed thousands of pages of court documents and medical records. He also obtained text messages and work emails. He visited Helena, Montana, numerous times and interviewed dozens of former patients; current and former St. Peter’s Hospital staff members; Dr. Thomas Weiner and his supporters. He tracked Weiner’s years as director of the hospital’s Cancer Treatment Center and his practice by cross-referencing those records with witness accounts. He identified more than 100 hundred cases in which St. Peter’s staff had expressed some level of concern. He met with the families of patients who died under Weiner’s care and, in several instances, obtained HIPAA waivers so that Weiner and the hospital could speak about those cases. To get some sense of the scope of Weiner’s practice, he and data reporter Haru Coryne analyzed data published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; they looked at billing data in the Medicare Part B program and prescribing data in the Medicare Part D program from 2013 to 2020. They shared their analysis with a data expert and CMS, which did not respond to questions. Research reporter Mollie Simon helped McSwane identify Nadine Long and provided archival material.

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Mollie Simon and Haru Coryne contributed research and data analysis. Additional design and development by Allen Tan and Zisiga Mukulu.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by J. David McSwane.

Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 3,700 people in Lebanon, with most of the deaths occurring over the past 10 weeks. The attacks have forced more than 1 million people to flee their homes in Lebanon, where Israel has also repeatedly targeted journalists. In a new report, Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing an apparent war crime by killing three journalists and injuring four others last month, when it bombed the Hasbaya Village Resort in southern Lebanon, where more than a dozen journalists had been staying. The attack killed Ghassan Najjar and Mohammad Reda, both from Al Mayadeen TV, and Wissam Kassem, a cameraman from Al-Manar TV. Human Rights Watch has revealed Israel used an airdropped bomb equipped with a U.S.-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit. “Journalists are civilians, and deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime,” says Human Rights Watch researcher Ramzi Kaiss.

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

President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to kill offshore wind energy development “on day one” of his second term is already triggering project slowdowns on the East Coast, but the biggest wind farm proposed in the Gulf of Mexico will likely stay on track. 

That’s because the project is on such a long development timeline that Trump’s four-year term will be over before permitting and construction begin, according to RWE, the German energy giant that plans to build a 2,000-megawatt wind farm about 40 miles south of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The project, which could power more than 350,000 homes, isn’t expected to be operational for about a decade. 

“The project has a long-lead development timeline that is longer than any one federal administration, and with a planned operational date in the mid-2030s,” RWE spokesman Ryan Ferguson said. 

RWE, the world’s second-largest offshore wind developer, and other key players in the renewable energy industry announced shifts in funding priorities and warned of project delays and possible derailments after Trump was elected president this month. 

“The change of administration in the U.S entails risks for the timely implementation of offshore wind projects,” RWE Chief Financial Officer Michael Muller said at a press conference earlier this month. “The new Republican administration could delay specific projects. The realization of our Community Offshore Wind project near New York, for example, depends on outstanding permits from U.S. federal authorities.”

The “higher risks and delays” in the U.S. offshore wind market prompted RWE to initiate a $1.6 billion share buyback, RWE CEO Markus Krebber said during a call with investors. The buyback signaled a significant shift in the company’s short-term spending priorities but not waning confidence in the durability of U.S. demand for renewables, Muller said, noting that a growing number of states are setting goals for solar and wind energy. 

RWE’s recalibration makes sense, said Jenny Netherton, the Southeastern Wind Coalition’s Louisiana program manager.

“That was not unexpected,” she said. “Companies are always trying to find the best way forward in an uncertain environment.”

Trump’s opposition to offshore wind began in 2006, when he initiated a decade-long fight against the Scottish government over a proposed wind farm the future U.S. president said would spoil the view from a golf course he hoped to build. Trump lost the battle and was ordered to pay Scotland nearly $300,000 in legal fees. In recent speeches, Trump has said wind farms harm property values and wildlife. More outlandishly, he has claimed wind energy causes cancer, increases food prices and prevents people from watching TV when the wind isn’t blowing. 

During his first term, Trump was accused of “slow walking” the permits for some of the first offshore wind farms in federal waters. RWE and other companies say wind farms already under construction will likely move forward, but projects slated to break ground over the next couple years may face setbacks. 

Of the 30 states with offshore wind potential, nine have statewide wind energy mandates. Two states — Massachusetts and Rhode Island — have deadlines to reach wind energy targets in the 2020s and four states — New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia — have deadlines in the 2030s. 

These goals and the U.S.’s ever-rising electricity needs are signs that Trump may slow but not kill wind energy development, Muller said. 

“We still believe U.S. offshore wind [energy] is still needed,” he said, noting New York in particular. “If they are going to keep up with demand, they need offshore wind.”

Louisiana set a goal of developing the capacity for 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035, but the target wasn’t legally binding. Proposed in 2021 during the administration of Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, the goal appears to have been abandoned by Governor Jeff Landry, who took office in January. The Republican governor has said little publicly about offshore wind development and has not responded to requests seeking his position on the matter. 

Many other Louisiana Republicans strongly back offshore wind, seeing it as an economic boon for the state. Louisiana companies that long served the offshore oil and gas industry have seen business flag in recent years. Several of them, including shipbuilders, engineering firms and metal fabricators, have easily transitioned to helping plan and build offshore projects on the East Coast, including the U.S.’s first offshore wind farm.

Bipartisan legislation in Louisiana paved the way for a fast-tracked approval process for wind projects in state-managed waters, which extend 3 miles from the coast. Louisiana has approved agreements with two companies to build small-scale wind farms near Cameron Parish and Port Fourchon, the Gulf’s largest oil and gas port. The two projects will likely be built years before the RWE wind farm. 

The last federal lease auction in the Gulf was canceled in July due to weak interest from bidders, but two companies recently offered competing plans for a 142,000-acre area near Galveston, Texas. It’s unclear how Trump’s victory will affect those proposals. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is waiting to see if there’s more developer interest in the area and will likely initiate a competitive lease sale in the coming months. 

While Trump may cause uncertainty at the federal level, Louisiana isn’t likely to waver in its support for offshore wind energy, Netherton said. 

“It still enjoys broad support here,” she said. “Nationally, there’s very little control over what happens, but in Louisiana, offshore wind has a very clear path forward.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump has vowed to kill offshore wind energy — but it might not be easy on Nov 25, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Baurick.

Ōriwa Tahupōtiki Haddon (Ngāti Ruanui), Reconstruction of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, c. 1940.

For the past few weeks I have been on the road in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia at the invitation of groups such as Te Kuaka, Red Ant, and the Communist Party of Australia. Both countries were shaped by British colonialism, marked by the violent displacement of native communities and theft of their lands. Today, as they become part of the US-led militarisation of the Pacific, their native populations have fought to defend their lands and way of life.

On 6 February 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) was signed by representatives of the British Crown and the Māori groups of Aotearoa. The treaty (which has no point of comparison in Australia) claimed that it would ‘actively protect Māori in the use of their lands, fisheries, forests, and other treasured possessions’ and ‘ensure that both parties to [the treaty] would live together peacefully and develop New Zealand together in partnership’. While I was in Aotearoa, I learned that the new coalition government seeks to ‘reinterpret’ the Treaty of Waitangi in order to roll back protections for Māori families. This includes shrinking initiatives such as the Māori Health Authority (Te Aka Whai Ora) and programmes that promote the use of the Māori language (Te Reo Maori) in public institutions. The fight against these cutbacks has galvanised not only the Māori communities, but large sections of the population who do not want to live in a society that violates its treaties. When Aboriginal Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe disrupted the British monarch Charles’s visit to the country’s parliament last month, she echoed a sentiment that spreads across the Pacific, yelling, as she was dragged out by security: ‘You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. … We want a treaty in this country. … You are not my king. You are not our king’.

Walangkura Napanangka (Pintupi), Johnny Yungut’s Wife, Tjintjintjin, 2007.

With or without a treaty, both Aotearoa and Australia have seen a groundswell of sentiment for increased sovereignty across the islands of the Pacific, building on a centuries-long legacy. This wave of sovereignty has now begun to turn towards the shores of the massive US military build-up in the Pacific Ocean, which has its sights set on an illusionary threat from China. US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, speaking at a September 2024 Air & Space Forces Association convention on China and the Indo-Pacific, represented this position well when he said ‘China is not a future threat. China is a threat today’. The evidence for this, Kendall said, is that China is building up its operational capacities to prevent the United States from projecting its power into the western Pacific Ocean region. For Kendall, the problem is not that China was a threat to other countries in East Asia and the South Pacific, but that it is preventing the US from playing a leading role in the region and surrounding waters – including those just outside of China’s territorial limits, where the US has conducted joint ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises with its allies. ‘I am not saying war in the Pacific is imminent or inevitable’, Kendall continued. ‘It is not. But I am saying that the likelihood is increasing and will continue to do so’.

George Parata Kiwara (Ngāti Porou and Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki), Jacinda’s Plan, 2021.

In 1951, in the midst of the Chinese Revolution (1949) and the US war on Korea (1950–1953), senior US foreign policy advisor and later Secretary of State John Foster Dulles helped formulate several key treaties, such as the 1951 Australia, New Zealand, and United States Security (ANZUS) Treaty, which brought Australia and New Zealand firmly out of British influence and into the US’s war plans, and the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the formal US occupation of Japan. These deals – part of the US’s aggressive strategy in the region – came alongside the US occupation of several island nations in the Pacific where the US had already established military facilities, including ports and airfields: Hawaii (since 1898), Guam (since 1898), and Samoa (since 1900). Out of this reality, which swept from Japan to Aotearoa, Dulles developed the ‘island chain strategy’, a so-called containment strategy that would establish a military presence on three ‘island chains’ extending outward from China to act as an aggressive perimeter and prevent any power other than the US from commanding the Pacific Ocean.

Over time, these three island chains became hardened strongholds for the projection of US power, with about four hundred bases in the region established to maintain US military assets from Alaska to southern Australia. Despite signing various treaties to demilitarise the region (such as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1986), the US has moved lethal military assets, including nuclear weapons, through the region for threat projection against China, North Korea, Russia, and Vietnam (at different times and with different intensity). This ‘island chain strategy’ includes military installations in French colonial outposts such as Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. The US also has military arrangements with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.

Christine Napanangka Michaels (Nyirripi), Lappi Lappi Jukurrpa (Lappi Lappi Dreaming), 2019.

While some of these Pacific Island nations are used as bases for US and French power projection against China, others have been used as nuclear test sites. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted sixty-seven nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. One of them, conducted in Bikini Atoll, detonated a thermonuclear weapon a thousand times more powerful than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Darlene Keju Johnson, who was only three years old at the time of the Bikini Atoll detonation and was one of the first Marshallese women to speak publicly about the nuclear testing in the islands, encapsulated the sentiment of the islanders in one of her speeches: ‘We don’t want our islands to be used to kill people. The bottom line is we want to live in peace’.

Jef Cablog (Cordillera), Stern II, 2021.

Yet, despite the resistance of people like Keju Johnson (who went on to become a director in the Marshall Islands Ministry of Health), the US has been ramping up its military activity in the Pacific over the past fifteen years, such as by refusing to close bases, opening new ones, and expanding others to increase their military capacity. In Australia – without any real public debate – the government decided to supplement US funding to expand the runway on Tindal Air Base in Darwin so that it could house US B-52 and B-1 bombers with nuclear capacity. It also decided to expand submarine facilities from Garden Island to Rockingham and build a new high-tech radar facility for deep-space communications in Exmouth. These expansions came on the heels of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership in 2021, which has allowed the US and the UK to fully coordinate their strategies. The partnership also sidelined the French manufacturers that until then had supplied Australia with diesel-powered submarines and ensured that it would instead buy nuclear-powered submarines from the UK and US. Eventually, Australia will provide its own submarines for the missions the US and UK are conducting in the waters around China.

Over the past few years, the US has also sought to draw Canada, France, and Germany into the US Pacific project through the US Pacific Partnership Strategy for the Pacific Islands (2022) and the Partnership for the Blue Pacific (2022). In 2021, at the France-Oceania Summit, there was a commitment to reengage with the Pacific, with France bringing new military assets into New Caledonia and French Polynesia. The US and France have also opened a dialogue about coordinating their military activities against China in the Pacific.

Yvette Bouquet (Kanak), Profil art, 1996.

Yet these partnerships are only part of the US ambitions in the region. The US is also opening new bases in the northern islands of the Philippines – the first such expansion in the country since the early 1990s – while intensifying its arm sales with Taiwan, to whom it is providing lethal military technology (including missile defence and tank systems intended to deter a Chinese military assault). Meanwhile the US has improved its coordination with Japan’s military by deciding to establish joint force headquarters, which means that the command structure for US troops in Japan and South Korea will be autonomously controlled by the US command structure in these two Asian countries (not by orders from Washington).

However, the US-European war project is not going as smoothly as anticipated. Protest movements in the Solomon Islands (2021) and New Caledonia (2024), led by communities who are no longer willing to be subjected to neocolonialism, have come as a shock to the US and its allies. It will not be easy for them to build their island chain in the Pacific.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

Myanmar junta soldiers massacred and mutilated at least 25 villagers in revenge for an insurgent attack and impaled some of the victims on stakes as a warning, anti-junta forces in the strife-torn central region of Sagaing told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.

Various pro-democracy insurgent factions in Sagaing have been waging a sustained guerrilla campaign on the military this year, attacking junta positions and convoys in the arid, heartland region dominated by members of the majority Burman community.

The bloody military campaign in Budalin township, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) northwest of the city of Mandalay, followed a Sept. 30 insurgent attack on a military position near Si Par village in which 30 junta troops were killed and 40 were captured, insurgents said. 

A junta column of more than 100 soldiers started raiding villages in Budalin on Oct. 4, arresting scores of people as well as killing suspected rebels sympathizers over the next two weeks, Min Han Htet, a senior member of an insurgent faction called the Student Armed Forces, told RFA.

“We’ve determined that they’ve killed no less than 25 people. The nature of the killings was very cruel,” he said. 

“They decapitated them, they cut off their arms and legs. The corpses were planted on fences. Those are the types of scenes we’ve encountered.”

RFA tried to contact the junta’s main spokesperson, Zaw Min Tun, to ask about the situation in Sagaing but he did not answer the telephone. The Office of the Chief of Army Staff denied in a statement on Monday that soldiers had killed six people in Si Par village. 

Min Han Htet said seven people from Myauk Kyi village were killed, six from Si Par, six from Budalin town, two from Ta Yaw Taw village, one from Se Taw and several others who had yet to be accounted for.

Details from areas being occupied by the military, including Saing Pyin Lay village, were difficult to ascertain, an aid group said. The soldiers responsible for the killings were under the authority of the Northwest Military Command, based in the town of Monywa, and included members of the 33rd Battalion, insurgent sources said.

About 300 homes were burned in the security sweep by junta forces, who were backed up by numerous airstrikes, Min Han Htet said. Residents of the region estimated that more than 100,000 people had fled from their homes in the area.

‘March on’

Thet Oo, information officer for the Sagaing People's Support Network, which tries to help victims of the conflict, said nearly 15,000 displaced people were in urgent need of help.

“What they mainly need are things like rice, cooking oil and other provisions, as well as medicines to care for their health,” he said. “If they stay in their village during storms and rain, in the cool and wet seasons, they need shelters.”

The United Nations says more than 3 million people have been displaced by the fighting in Myanmar this year.

The shadow civilian National Unity Government, or NUG, set up by pro-democracy politicians after the military overthrew a civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in early 2021, denounced the killing and mutilation of villagers and reiterated a call for the outside world to stop supplying arms to a military that murders its people.

“What does the international community expect of a terrorist group that commits such cruel atrocities?” said the NUG’s Minister of Human Rights Aung Myo Min.

“People are dying. This isn’t a time to meet and talk about hopes for peace. Their actions aren't indicative of peace,” he said, referring to a recent call by the junta for talks, which the opposition dismissed as window-dressing for a foreign audience.

The NUG said at least 23 people were killed in Budalin township between Oct. 11 and Oct. 20, in 17 raids by the military, which included airstrikes on five villages. Junta forces had also used scores of villagers as human shields, the NUG’s Ministry of Human Rights said in a statement.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners rights group said 26 people, including six childrens, were killed in Sagaing, this month, up to Oct. 22. Eleven of them died after being detained, it said.

Min Han Htet said his group would step up its fight.

"Although the enemy tries to scare us, we urge everyone to march on, unafraid, with our students and other revolutionary forces in Sagaing,” he said.

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Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by RFA Staff.

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

• Officials say Israeli airstrikes have targeted areas across Lebanon, killing at least 27 people in the past 24 hours.
• UN Security Council held an emergency meeting after U.S. urged Israel to stop blocking Gaza aid.
• As the Biden administration warns Israel to increase Gaza aid or risk losing U.S. weapons funding, Palestinians in Gaza wait to see if they will receive the necessary assistance or not.
• New data shows 36 million Latinos are eligible to vote in 2024, could play decisive role in presidential election.
• The Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case between the city and count of San Francisco and the Environmental Protection Agency over clean water standards.
• Sam Liccardo accused opponent Evan Low of illegal ad spending in contentious South Bay congressional race.
• Mayor Breed announced the expansion of a successful pilot program which offers on-demand opioid-treating buprenorphine for fentanyl addiction.

The post Israeli strikes kill 27 in Lebanon – October 16, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. This story was co-published with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

Word tends to spread fast in rural Knox County, Ohio. But misinformation has spread faster.

The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.

Then a new “grassroots” organization materialized and invited locals to an elaborate event billed as a town hall, with a keynote speaker who denied that humans cause climate change.

Someone sent text messages to residents urging them to “stop the solar invasion” and elect two county commission candidates who opposed the solar farm. And one day this past March, residents received an unfamiliar newspaper that contained only articles attacking Frasier Solar, a large project that would replace hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans with the equivalent of 630 football fields of solar panels.

To many in the deep-red central Ohio community, it seemed that solar had become the focus of news and politics. They were right. Fossil fuel interests were secretly working to shape the conversation in Knox County.

Each cog in the anti-solar machine — the opposition group, the texts, the newspaper, the energy publication — was linked to the others through finances and overlapping agendas, an investigation by Floodlight, ProPublica and The Tow Center for Digital Journalism found.

The campaign against solar power benefited from a confluence of two powerful forces funded by oil and gas interests. A former executive at Ariel Corporation, the county’s largest employer and one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of methane gas compressors, was working behind the scenes. And helping in a more public way is the Mount Vernon News, a newspaper now in the hands of Metric Media, which operates websites that reportedly engage in pay-to-play coverage.

Ariel and the former executive did not respond to requests for comment. Metric Media’s leader did not answer questions for this story; he has previously denied that his news outlets are partisan.

Across the country, the oil and gas industry and power companies have exploited a struggling news industry and a fraught political process to fight the transition to clean energy and maximize profits, Floodlight and its partners have reported. In Florida, two power companies paid a consulting firm to hire newspapers to attack a pro-solar politician. In Alabama, the state’s largest monopoly electric company purchased a historic Black newspaper, then didn’t write about soaring power bills. In California, Chevron launched its own newsroom when other papers shuttered; it doesn’t cover itself critically.

In Mount Vernon, a city of 17,000 where the local university named its new sports complex CH4 after the chemical formula for methane, a variety of tactics have been deployed simultaneously, creating an anti-solar echo chamber.

Residents are bombarded with dubious claims: Solar panels are toxic. Their construction depletes the soil and floods fields and depresses home values. China is using them to invade. The campaign has stoked their skepticism and ignited their passions. It intensified the debate in a conservative county that prizes its roots in the gas industry.

Bright yellow “No Industrial Solar” yard signs have sprung up everywhere, competing with a smattering of green “Yes Solar” ones. Citizens packed local government meetings. More than 4,000 public comments, both for and against, were filed with the state regulator that will decide if the solar project can be built — triple the number for any previous solar project in Ohio. And all those opinions have drowned out the voices of the nine landowners, mostly farmers, who’ve signed leases with Frasier’s developer and for whom a total of about $60 million is at stake.

“People are so radicalized and they’re not thinking clearly,” said Rich Piar, a third-generation farmer who hopes to secure his financial future by leasing a portion of his 1,650 acres to Open Road Renewables, the Texas-based company developing the Frasier Solar project.

Politicians who didn’t forcefully denounce the solar project were attacked in Mount Vernon News stories. Thom Collier, a long-serving Republican on the county commission who thinks landowners should be able to choose whether to use their property for solar infrastructure, ultimately lost his reelection bid after a barrage of misleading coverage about his stance on solar.

“I pin this on one or two people from Ariel and some close friends that they have,” Collier said of the anti-solar offensive. “They determined it didn’t matter how much money it would take, they were going to fight this and make it ugly, and they have.”

Just 20 days after Knox Smart Development was registered as an LLC in Ohio, the anti-solar group hosted a town hall at a historic Georgian revival theater in Mount Vernon with 1,000 red velvet seats. Attendees were offered free food and alcohol.

The November 2023 event centered on a presentation from Steve Goreham, who argues global warming is natural and who is the author of several books, including “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.”

“When I think of a town hall meeting, I think of a meeting where everybody from the community can go, everybody has their say. That’s not how their meeting was,” said Kathy Gamble, who said organizers only reluctantly agreed to let her in. She’s pro-solar and not quiet about it.

The town hall established Knox Smart Development as a leading voice against the Frasier Solar project. The group calls itself a simple grassroots defender of Knox County.

It isn’t.

The man who registered the group as a business — and who is its sole member and spokesperson — was an Ariel Corporation employee two decades ago and remained an acquaintance of a top executive there, Tom Rastin. The group’s website was owned for a time by a woman working as an executive assistant at Ariel.

And one of Knox Smart Development’s larger funders is Rastin, a Republican megadonor and a retired executive vice president at Ariel, according to records and sworn testimony. Rastin’s father-in-law founded Ariel and, until recently, Rastin and his wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, led the company. Wright is still the chairman, and her son operates it now. Rastin and Wright did not respond to questions for this story.

The group’s founder, Jared Yost, said in an email that Rastin has not tried to steer its activism. “As a local resident, I believe he should be allowed to donate to whatever cause he aligns with, regardless of his former employment, and to state otherwise is to suggest Mr. Rastin should be censored,” Yost wrote in an email. He said the group relies on volunteers and “our intentions are genuine.”

He added: “The oil and gas industry is not involved in our fight.”

The town hall event headliner, Goreham, said he appeared as a favor to Rastin and Wright. In 2019, he had dinner with the couple when Goreham and his wife were passing through town from Illinois on a road trip to their second home in Virginia Beach. Goreham said that he and Rastin connected over their mutual feelings on the benefits of gas. He said he was glad to accept the invitation to speak at the anti-Frasier Solar event.

“First off, it’s in his county there. Mount Vernon is his city where he lives and where they are based,” said Goreham. “They’re pretty much opposed to renewables and they want everybody to buy gas. That’s their business.”

Goreham says he wasn’t paid to speak, but Wright bought 200 copies of his latest book, “Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure,” which warns about a net-zero-emissions agenda that will cause energy grids to fail. Local officials were given copies of the book that included a personal note from Wright: “Hello! Given the significant misinformation surrounding solar and wind arrays, I bought you this book that really lays out the facts.” She signed the note “Karen Wright, Chairman — Ariel Corporation.”

Shortly after the group was formed, Knox Smart Development’s “No Solar” ads became a fixture on the Mount Vernon News website and in the paper.

The Mount Vernon News had been owned by the same family since 1939, and for decades it chronicled local doings from city council meetings to the county fair.

At its height in the early 2000s, before newspapers started hemorrhaging advertising revenue and readers, the News employed about 15 full-time local reporters. An orange Maine coon cat named Scoop roamed the newsroom.

But by 2020, the News was barely hanging on. Its reporters were still using clunky 20-year-old computers. The back wall of the building was falling down and needed $250,000 in repairs. Kay Culbertson, who owned both the paper and the building, said that she knew it was time to sell. Paying for the repairs would be impossible; even making payroll was a stretch.

An acquaintance of Culberston’s connected her with Metric Media, part of an eight-company network operating more than 1,100 online local news sites. These sites have been described by media researchers and journalists as “pink slime,” named for a filler in processed meat. The final product looks natural, but it’s been tampered with.

A Syracuse University researcher concluded in a journal article published in February that sites like Metric’s “that seem like original news outlets and that appeal to local identity are filling the void” left by the decline of local news. And The Washington Post reported last year that Republican campaigns requested customized news stories that appeared on Metric-owned sites.

Both conservative and liberal pink slime sites exist. But Metric is run by Brian Timpone, an Illinois-based former broadcast reporter who has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to conservative campaigns and causes. Timpone’s ventures have been criticized for using foreign-based writers to produce material. Some also have been accused of plagiarism and fabricating quotes. Timpone has blamed the problems on foreign writers providing content, and he apologized to readers.

Metric Media’s nonprofit arm has received $1.4 million “for general operations” from DonorsTrust, a dark-money group that has received significant funding from Charles and David Koch, who made their billions in oil pipelines and refineries. The eight-company network that Metric is part of also has ties to conservative billionaires, including oil-and-gas-industry titan Tim Dunn, shipping magnate Richard Uihlein and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. (Political groups that organize as nonprofits do not have to disclose donors, which is why they’re called “dark money.”)

DonorsTrust CEO and President Lawson R. Bader said in an email that the organization makes about 4,000 grants a year and that it does not dictate how those donations are spent.

Timpone responded to a request for an interview by writing, “We at the Mount Vernon News are now also working on a story — about Pro Publica and Floodlight’s efforts to promote taxpayer-funded ‘solar energy’ businesses in Central Ohio.” He did not respond to detailed questions.

But in interviews, he has said his business keeps local news alive when many outlets are scaling back or shutting down. Timpone told the Deseret News in Utah that his sites have no political leaning and are “data-driven and fact-centric.”

Research and news investigations have found that Timpone’s publications tend to champion conservative causes and politicians; they often are linked to mysterious newspapers distributed during key elections.

Culbertson and assistant publisher Liz Lutwick said in an interview that they knew little about Metric Media before the sale. But the company’s promises sounded good and, Lutwick said, “You believe people.”

“They were going to keep everything the same for a while. Lo and behold, they didn’t,” Culbertson said.

Metric paid at least $1 million for the Mount Vernon News, the first time it had purchased an established news organization printing a local paper. When the new owners visited the paper after the sale, they told the staff they’d stop printing every day and would no longer provide benefits; instead, employees would become contractors. Half the staff quit on the spot.

“It was awful. You feel like you’ve betrayed people,” Culbertson said.

Today, the Mount Vernon News only publishes once a week and has no local reporters or photographers.

“It’s obvious when you read the stories, either they’re AI-generated or they’re written by somebody who’s sitting in an office in Chicago who has never been here,” said Bill Davis, a sports editor who said he worked at the paper from 2010 to 2019.

Since Metric took over, only 11% of stories credited the work to authors working for Metric or its sister companies. Most of what it publishes are press releases or content submitted by companies and community groups, according to an analysis by the Tow Center, ProPublica and Floodlight.

After the sale, residents said they could no longer get timely obituaries — people were buried by the time funeral announcements were published — but they could read a lot about endangered farmland and concerns that the sun’s reflection off solar panels could blind nearby pilots.

Even Mount Vernon’s mayor, who was once a sports reporter at the paper, said he stopped reading it. Tanner Salyers, a former Mount Vernon city council member who now oversees public safety for the city, said quality dropped after the sale. “Then Frasier kicked up and they were like, ‘No more news.’ We call it the Solar Times.”

Over the last 12 months, the paper has published at least 52 online news stories on solar energy — 42 of them about the Frasier proposal, the analysis found. Of the 40 print editions published this year, 17 have featured front-page stories about solar. And though the paper has occasionally run a pro-solar letter to the editor, nearly all of the stories slanted anti-solar, according to an analysis of coverage by Floodlight, ProPublica and the Tow Center.

The paper began publishing a weekly opinion column called “Afternoon TEA” — TEA being an acronym for The Empowerment Alliance, a dark-money gas advocacy group Rastin leads.

The columns extolled the superiority of gas as a fuel source.

It isn’t clear if The Empowerment Alliance paid the Mount Vernon News to run the “Afternoon TEA” columns. But tax filings show that since 2020 The Empowerment Alliance has spent at least $6.3 million on a “public education campaign,” which included publishing “Afternoon TEA.” The goal was to promote “the importance of natural gas to the economy and national energy independence.”

One of The Empowerment Alliance’s stated goals is “fighting the nonsense of turning corn fields into solar fields.” It has financed online advertisements attacking President Joe Biden’s energy policies and spearheaded an Ohio bill that defined gas as a “green” fuel source.

Half of the Frasier stories published in the Mount Vernon News over the past year have mentioned Knox Smart Development, the anti-solar group linked to Rastin. Articles often quoted people or cited work from a Koch-backed think tank, The Buckeye Institute, but did not interview Frasier or farmers willing to lease land to it.

The Buckeye Institute is part of the State Policy Network, a group of think tanks that has received millions in funding from organizations connected to the Koch family. Rastin’s wife has served as a director on the State Policy Network board, and in 2019 she gave it $700,000, according to a tax record that typically would’ve been redacted but was posted to a government site.

The Mount Vernon News and pro-gas political groups also were working to influence local elections. The text messages that boosted anti-solar candidates were from a conservative Ohio PAC tied to a group that ran a pro-gas campaign.

And, leading up to the primary, a newspaper called the Ohio Energy Reporter was mailed to Knox County homes. The 8-page paper reprinted several Mount Vernon News stories on solar and featured other articles with headlines including “Ohio’s coming ‘solar trash wave’” and “Could the Texas Power Crisis happen in Ohio?”

The publication did not disclose its owners. The Floodlight, ProPublica and Tow Center investigation used source code from the website, its IP address and business mailing addresses to confirm that it is a product of the wider Metric Media network.

The stories the Mount Vernon News published began undermining politicians who were seen as insufficiently anti-solar and boosting the profiles of solar power’s outspoken critics.

In one article, the News accused Mount Vernon Mayor Matthew Starr of bowing to “energy activists” and pledging to try to remove natural gas from the city. It was not true. Starr was furious and asked the editors to take down the article, but they would not.

And in nearly a dozen stories that mentioned Collier, the county commissioner who was later ousted, the paper consistently misused a comment he’d given about newly placed solar panels at the county jail to falsely insinuate he supported the Frasier project.

Collier was never interviewed for those stories. Yet the paper ran a story devoted entirely to anti-solar commissioner candidate Drenda Keesee, a megachurch pastor who’d never run for office before; the article said she had “emerged as a vocal opponent of solar projects encroaching on the community.” Keesee, whose property would border a portion of the solar site, was the only source in the story.

She won the primary against Collier and is unopposed in the November general election.

For the community, the debate over solar has been passionate and persistent. What it hasn’t always been is civil. Yard signs have been stolen. Insults hurled. Middle fingers extended. Friendships frayed.

“Other than solar, we don’t have any problems with each other,” said Kathy Gamble, who runs the pro-solar group Knox County For Responsible Solar.

Many people in the community say they don’t view the debate through the lens of climate science or fossil fuels; they care about land rights and preserving rural life. Members of Preserve Knox County, an anti-solar group with several members whose land borders the proposed solar arrays, said they worry the solar project will scare off the sandhill cranes and bald eagles that visit their backyards.

Many members are distrustful of Biden’s renewable energy initiatives; they are staunch supporters of former President Donald Trump, who questions the scientific consensus that the climate is undergoing dangerous changes. They also don’t trust the solar developer’s promises to plant enough trees to block the panels from view. And they don’t want to lose the farmland that gives the area its agricultural identity.

“You can’t eat solar panels,” said Jim Boeshart, whose home would be adjacent to solar arrays.

Keith Strait, a farmer who lives not far from Boeshart, agreed: “Let’s face it,” he said, pointing at the ground, “They’re not making any more of this. There will be a time when there won’t be any farm left. Where’re you going to get your food from?”

The farmers who want to lease their land feel their voices have been lost in the debate. For them, a 40-year land contract with Frasier Solar would be steady income. One farmer said he could make four times as much money per acre leasing to the solar project as he’d make renting to another farmer.

Rich Piar, the third-generation farmer, is looking to the solar panels as a retirement plan. He said he has no one to take over the operation when he retires, and he doesn’t think anyone should dictate what he does with his land or when he stops farming.

“Most farmers’ exit strategy is their health,” Piar said. “I don’t want to have that kind of predetermined exit strategy.” He went to one of the public meetings about Frasier but said it was so packed he didn’t get to speak until almost midnight.

In August, the Ohio Power Siting Board, which will rule on whether the project can be built, held a final hearing to accept evidence from both sides. One of the attorneys who spoke on behalf of a farmer who is leasing land for the project was from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. (The Tow Center also is based at Columbia, but its work is separate.)

Frasier lawyers cross-examined Knox Smart Development spokesperson Jared Yost at the hearing, where he testified that Rastin, the retired Ariel executive, was one of the group’s biggest donors. To Open Road Renewables’ vice president of development, Craig Adair, the confirmation pierced the veil.

Everything changed, Adair said in an interview, “when The Empowerment Alliance decided to use its vast financial resources” to shape the debate in Knox County and in the Mount Vernon News.

The News published two stories on the hearing but did not mention the public admission of Knox Smart Development’s ties to Rastin, the Ariel Corporation and The Empowerment Alliance.

The board’s decision is likely to take months.

In the meantime, construction has started at the old Mount Vernon News building, which is being turned into an academic hub for a local university. The building will be named after Rastin’s stepson, a former president of Ariel Corporation.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the past two days. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. “Lebanese civilians are paying the price,” says Aya Majzoub in Beirut, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, who calls Israel’s attacks “unprecedented” and “devastating.” “In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed. … It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars.”

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

Myanmar’s military has killed 20 people, including seven members of a family, in attacks in the central Mandalay region as forces fighting the junta press towards Myanmar’s second largest city, residents and opposition activists told Radio Free Asia.

Ethnic minority insurgents and pro-democracy allies have made unprecedented gains against well-armed junta forces in fighting in several parts of the country this year, raising questions about the long-term prospects for military rule.

To the northeast of Mandalay, Myanmar’s ancient capital and cultural  center, insurgents have seized towns and military bases in Shan state  while to the southwest, in the Sagaing region, pro-democracy forces have been pressing the military with incessant ambushes and attacks.

Now insurgent forces are making tentative advances towards Mandalay with offensives on junta camps in the Myingyan, Taungtha and Natogyi townships, insurgent sources said.

The junta is responding with force, which often means devastating airstrikes and shelling, often launched in what appears to be an indiscriminate manner, taking an increasing toll of civilians, insurgents and residents say.

On Saturday, fighting erupted just 16 km (10 miles) north of Mandalay in Madaya township as the military tried to clear out anti-junta forces, mostly made up of activists who took up arms after a 2021 coup to form People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, loyal to the shadow National Unity Government.

An information officer from Pyinoolwin district’s PDF said four people were killed in Su Lay Kone village and several wounded including a boy who had his hands blown of in shelling by junta forces.

“The identities of the dead are still being investigated,” said the information officer, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.

He said PDF fighters had retreated without any casualties while junta troops torched several houses in the village and took up positions there. Most villagers fled, residents said.

About 50 km southwest of Mandalay, the junta’s air forces killed 14 people including two insurgents in an airstrike in Ngan Myar village on Friday evening, residents said.

One woman told RFA seven members of her family including her parents were killed.

“Two bombs were dropped on our house so no one could escape. Everything is destroyed, there’s nothing to be done,” said the distraught woman.

“My three uncles can’t be found, torn to pieces. My parents are unrecognizable,” said the woman who declined to be identified in fear of reprisals. “We’re only two siblings left.”

RFA tried to call the Mandalay region’s junta spokesperson Thein Htay for comment on the attacks but he did not answer.

‘Always on edge’ 

Nway Oo, an official with an anti-junta group in Sagaing said civilians like the residents of Ngan Myar now faced just as much risk now as insurgents as the junta struck indiscriminately.

He said there was no battle in the village when the jets attacked it.

“People in villages along flight paths are afraid and hide whether there’s a battle or not. They can drop bombs without any reason so people are always on edge,” said Nway Oo of a group called the Civilian Defense and Security Organization of Myaung.

The United Nations says more than  3 million people have been displaced by the fighting in Myanmar this year.

To the southwest, in Myingyan township, an airstrike early on Sunday killed two women and injured three as they worked in a peanut field in Chay Say village, a resident said, adding there was no fighting in the area at the time.

“They bombed twice, once at 8 a.m. and again at 11 a.m.,” said the resident who declined to be identified for security reasons.

“One of the victims was pregnant. We still don’t know their names,” said the man, adding that about 30 cattle were also killed.

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Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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

At least 12 people were killed and over 2,800 people were injured Tuesday in Lebanon when electronic pagers used by many members of Hezbollah — who had switched to the older technology over concerns of mobile phones’ vulnerability to security breaches — exploded simultaneously across the country in a coordinated attack on the group. Individual explosions occurred in supermarkets, cafes, houses and in other public places. Many of the injuries were sustained by civilians who were not carrying the pagers themselves, including at least two children who died from their wounds. According to a Reuters report, Israel’s Mossad spy agency had managed to plant explosive material in a batch of pagers bought in recent months by Hezbollah, which has vowed to retaliate, deepening the risks of a broader regional war. We discuss the attack with three guests: Beirut-based journalist Mohamad Kleit, Human Rights Watch’s Ramzi Kaiss and Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri. Kaiss says the “indiscriminate attack” on the Lebanese population — which Kleit additionally describes as “terrorist” — is “unlawful under the rules of war.” “What the Israeli attack using the pagers did was completely throw out the rulebook,” says Khouri, as eyes are on the region in preparation for another possible Israeli escalation.

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

Rebel forces in central Myanmar ambushed a vehicle near a junta stronghold killing 12 women on their way to work in nearby fields, military-controlled media reported on Wednesday. 

No group claimed responsibility for the Tuesday attack in the Sagaing region but anti-junta activists there have set up groups, known as People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, that launch ambushes and raids on military posts in their campaign against the junta that seized power in 2021.

The women were on their way to work near Kywei Pon village when attackers opened fire with guns and a rocket launcher, the Myanmar Alin newspaper reported. Three wounded women were being treated in hospital.

Armed people in the women’s vehicle returned fire before soldiers arrived, said one Kywei Pon resident, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.

“Not long after the junta army arrived and took the injured away with emergency vehicles,” said the resident.

There was no information about any casualties among the attackers.

Many supporters of the junta, including members of militias that help the military, live in Kywei Pon so PDFs attack it often, the resident added.

One PDF member in Sagaing, who also declined to be identified for saety reasons, told Radio Free Asia that anti-junta forces were not involved in the attack although he acknowledged he did not know details of the incident.

The military was mounting security operations in response, the Myanmar Alin reported. Residents said the military fired artillery into Taung Kyar village nearby in the belief that PDF members were stationed there. There were no reports of casualties. 

Residents of other villages in the vicinity fled from their homes late on Tuesday in fear of more attacks by junta forces, residents said.

Sagaing has seen some of Myanmar’s worst violence since the military took power three years ago, with clashes and airstrikes killing hundreds. Thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting.

Seven of Sagaing’s PDFs, which are loosely organized under a civilian shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, are under investigation by the NUG for alleged human rights violations.

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Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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

Flooding and landslides across Myanmar triggered by the remnants of Typhoon Yagi have killed at least 160 people, according to data compiled by Radio Free Asia, bringing widespread suffering to a country already racked by war and a stalling economy.

Most victims were in Shan state, but central areas near the city of Mandalay, the capital Naypyidaw and Bago, as well as parts of Kayah state in the east and Mon state in the south were inundated by floods that in many places rose to roof tops, residents told Radio Free Asia.

The death toll of 160 was compiled from reports from residents and various social organizations but many people said the toll is likely to be much higher. Some social media users on accounts loyal to the ruling military said that 230 people were killed in the Mandalay region alone and that dozens were missing in southern Shan state. 

The junta that seized power in a 2021 coup has not released a death toll. 

The military is struggling to hold territory in the face of an onslaught by ethnic minority insurgents and their pro-democracy allies, who are now in charge of a growing area and population, raising questions about the disaster response and relief resources.

“We simply don’t have enough people to help victims,” said an emergency responder in the Bago area who said at least 30 villages in Taungoo township, which is under junta control, had been completely submerged after the swollen Sittaung River burst through flood barriers.

“Currents are flowing very quickly,” said the responder, from a group called the Save the Trees Rescue Team, who declined to be identified as speaking to the media.

In Taungoo, a monastery has been taking in displaced people and providing some food, said another resident, who also declined to be identified.

“More than 300 flood victims from six villages have been accepted at the monastery but there are still villages cut off,” he said. 

Finding the dead

A social worker in hard-hit Kalaw township in southern Shan state said about 100 people were killed there.

“We find the dead while searching for the missing,” the worker who asked not to be identified, told RFA. “No one has come to help, it’s only Kalaw residents.”

A resident of nearby Pekon township, said 21 people were killed there with some of the victims members of a rebel group fighting the military. 

“They were washed away by water flowing off of the mountain while they were doing military training,” he said.

Several townships across the Naypyidaw administrative region were also in urgent need of aid and rescue efforts, volunteers there said.

Radio Free Asia tried to telephone the chief junta spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, to ask about the situation but he did not respond by the time of publication. 

But an official from the junta’s Ministry of Relief and Resettlement said more than 20 townships in the Naypyidaw and Bago regions, and in Mon, Kayah and Shan states had been evacuated due to flooding. He declined to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Flooding began early in Myanmar this year after a dry season in which scores of people died in droughts. 

The natural disasters are compounding a humanitarian crisis caused by the war, with more than 3 million people displaced by fighting and an economy virtually in a state of collapse.

Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, killed scores of people in Vietnam after sweeping across southern China and the Philippines.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that the American aid organization USAID was ready to provide assistance to countries affected by Typhoon Yagi, including, including Vietnam, Myanmar, China, Thailand, Laos and the Philippines.

RELATED STORIES

Red Cross chief calls for greater aid access after visit to Myanmar 

Floods force 20,000 people from homes in Myanmar’s Bago

Myanmar’s civil war has displaced 3 million people:  UN

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan. 

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

Myanmar’s military has killed 70 people, including many of its troops in rebel captivity, in two airstrikes in Rakhine state where Arakan Army insurgents have been making major gains against junta forces, the group said.

The Arakan Army, or AA, has captured many members of the military and pro-junta militia in advances over recent months in which they have pushed junta forces back into just a few pockets of territory in Myanmar’s western-most state.

The military has responded with airstrikes, taking an increasingly deadly toll of civilians in areas under AA control, the rebels and rights groups say.

On Sunday, an airstrike in Pauktaw township, just east of the state capital of Sittwe, killed at least 17 people, including seven prisoners, and wounded 10, the AA said in a statement.

“People didn’t have time to run because the plane flew in so quickly,” said one resident of the area, who declined to be identified for safety reasons.

On Monday, junta jets launched an airstrike in Maungdaw township, in the north of Rakhine state near the border with Bangladesh, killing more than 50 people, the AA said in another statement.

The junta has not released any information about the attacks and telephone calls to spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun went unanswered. 

Bombs dropped in Maungdaw hit a former military position captured by the AA, about five kilometers (three miles) east of Maungdaw town, where the insurgents have detained prisoners, including members of the mostly Mulsim Rohingya community who joined a pro-junta militia.

The AA said a U.N. building in Wai Thar Li village was also bombed. Radio Free Asia RFA tried to contact the U.N. office in Myanmar Yangon but a staff member said the office could not respond outside working hours.

International humanitarian organizations have been helping civilians displaced by fighting in the region but most groups have withdrawn staff and suspended their work as the security situation has deteriorated.

The AA has warned against attacks in densely populated areas under its control. The junta denies targeting civilians. 

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn.

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

“It’s brave to admit your fears” – Ukrainian recruiting poster. Photo credit: Ministry of Defense, Ukraine.

The Associated Press reports that many of the recruits drafted under Ukraine’s new conscription law lack the motivation and military indoctrination required to actually aim their weapons and fire at Russian soldiers.

“Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. … That is why our men are dying,” said a frustrated battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade. “When they don’t use the weapon, they are ineffective.”

This is familiar territory to anyone who has studied the work of U.S. Brigadier General Samuel “Slam” Marshall, a First World War veteran and the chief combat historian of the U.S. Army in the Second World War. Marshall conducted hundreds of post-combat small group sessions with U.S. troops in the Pacific and Europe, and documented his findings in his book, Men Against Fire: the Problem of Battle Command.

One of Slam Marshall’s most startling and controversial findings was that only about 15% of U.S. troops in combat actually fired their weapons at the enemy. In no case did that ever rise above 25%, even when failing to fire placed the soldiers’ own lives in greater danger.

Marshall concluded that most human beings have a natural aversion to killing other human beings, often reinforced by our upbringing and religious beliefs, and that turning civilians into effective combat soldiers therefore requires training and indoctrination expressly designed to override our natural respect for fellow human life. This dichotomy between human nature and killing in war is now understood to lie at the root of much of the PTSD suffered by combat veterans.

Marshall’s conclusions were incorporated into U.S. military training, with the introduction of firing range targets that looked like enemy soldiers and deliberate indoctrination to dehumanize the enemy in soldiers’ minds. When he conducted similar research in the Korean War, Marshall found that changes in infantry training based on his work in World War II had already led to higher firing ratios.

That trend continued in Vietnam and more recent U.S. wars. Part of the shocking brutality of the U.S. hostile military occupation of Iraq stemmed directly from the dehumanizing indoctrination of the U.S. occupation forces, which included falsely linking Iraq to the September 11th terrorist crimes in the U.S. and labeling Iraqis who resisted the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country as “terrorists.

A Zogby poll of U.S. forces in Iraq in February 2006 found that 85% of U.S. troops believed their mission was to “retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9/11 attacks,” and 77% believed that the primary reason for the war was to “stop Saddam from protecting Al Qaeda in Iraq.” This was all pure fiction, cut from whole cloth by propagandists in Washington, and yet, three years into the U.S. occupation, the Pentagon was still misleading U.S. troops to falsely link Iraq with 9/11.

The impact of this dehumanization was also borne out by court martial testimony in the rare cases when U.S. troops were prosecuted for killing Iraqi civilians. In a court martial at Camp Pendleton in California in July 2007, a corporal testifying for the defense told the court he did not see the cold-blooded killing of an innocent civilian as a summary execution. “I see it as killing the enemy,” he told the court, adding, “Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency.”

U.S. combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (6,257 killed) were only a fraction of the U.S. combat death toll in Vietnam (47,434) or Korea (33,686), and an even smaller fraction of the nearly 300,000 Americans killed in the Second World War. In every case, other countries suffered much heavier death tolls.

And yet, U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan provoked waves of political blowback in the U.S., leading to military recruitment problems that persist today. The U.S. government responded by shifting away from wars involving large deployments of U.S. ground troops to a greater reliance on proxy wars and aerial bombardment.

After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military-industrial complex and political class thought they had “kicked the Vietnam syndrome,” and that, freed from the danger of provoking World War III with the Soviet Union, they could now use military force without restraint to consolidate and expand U.S. global power. These ambitions crossed party lines, from Republican “neoconservatives” to Democratic hawks like Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in October 2000, a month before winning a seat in the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton echoed her mentor Madeleine Albright’s infamous rejection of the “Powell Doctrine” of limited war.

“There is a refrain…,” Clinton declared, “that we should intervene with force only when we face splendid little wars that we surely can win, preferably by overwhelming force in a relatively short period of time. To those who believe we should become involved only if it is easy to do, I think we have to say that America has never and should not ever shy away from the hard task if it is the right one.

During the question-and-answer session, a banking executive in the audience challenged Clinton on that statement. “I wonder if you think that every foreign country– the majority of countries–would actually welcome this new assertiveness, including the one billion Muslims that are out there,” he asked, “and whether or not there isn’t some grave risk to the United States in this–what I would say, not new internationalism, but new imperialism?”

When the aggressive war policy promoted by the neocons and Democratic hawks crashed and burned in Iraq and Afghanistan, this should have prompted a serious rethink of their wrongheaded assumptions about the impact of aggressive and illegal uses of U.S. military force.

Instead, the response of the U.S. political class to the blowback from its catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was simply to avoid large deployments of U.S. ground forces or “boots on the ground.” They instead embraced the use of devastating bombing and artillery campaigns in Afghanistan, Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, and wars fought by proxies, with full, “ironclad” U.S. support, in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and now Ukraine and Palestine.

The absence of large numbers of U.S. casualties in these wars kept them off the front pages back home and avoided the kind of political blowback generated by the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The lack of media coverage and public debate meant that most Americans knew very little about these more recent wars, until the shocking atrocity of the genocide in Gaza finally started to crack the wall of silence and indifference.

The results of these U.S. proxy wars are, predictably, no less catastrophic than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. domestic political impacts have been mitigated, but the real-world impacts in the countries and regions involved are as deadly, destructive and destabilizing as ever, undermining U.S. “soft power” and pretensions to global leadership in the eyes of much of the world.

In fact, these policies have widened the yawning gulf between the worldview of ill-informed Americans who cling to the view of their country as a country at peace and a force for good in the world, and people in other countries, especially in the Global South, who are ever more outraged by the violence, chaos and poverty caused by the aggressive projection of U.S. military and economic power, whether by U.S. wars, proxy wars, bombing campaigns, coups or economic sanctions.

Now the U.S.-backed wars in Palestine and Ukraine are provoking growing public dissent among America’s partners in these wars. Israel’s recovery of six more dead hostages in Rafah led Israeli labor unions to call widespread strikes, insisting that the Netanyahu government must prioritize the lives of the Israeli hostages over its desire to keep killing Palestinians and destroying Gaza.

In Ukraine, an expanded military draft has failed to overcome the reality that most young Ukrainians do not want to kill and die in an endless, unwinnable war. Hardened veterans see new recruits much as Siegfried Sassoon described the British conscripts he was training in November 2016 in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer: “The raw material to be trained was growing steadily worse. Most of those who came in now had joined the Army unwillingly, and there was no reason why they should find military service tolerable.”

Several months later, with the help of Bertrand Russell, Sassoon wrote Finished With War: a Soldier’s Declaration, an open letter accusing the political leaders who had the power to end the war of deliberately prolonging it. The letter was published in newspapers and read aloud in Parliament. It ended, “On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realize.”

As Israeli and Ukrainian leaders see their political support crumbling, Netanyahu and Zelenskyy are taking increasingly desperate risks, all the while insisting that the U.S. must come to their rescue. By “leading from behind,” our leaders have surrendered the initiative to these foreign leaders, who will keep pushing the United States to make good on its promises of unconditional support, which will sooner or later include sending young American troops to kill and die alongside their own.

Proxy war has failed to resolve the problem it was intended to solve. Instead of acting as an alternative to ground wars involving U.S. forces, U.S. proxy wars have spawned ever-escalating crises that are now making U.S. wars with Iran and Russia increasingly likely.

Neither the changes to U.S. military training since the Second World War nor the current U.S. strategy of proxy war have resolved the age-old contradiction that Slam Marshall described in Men Against Fire, between killing in war and our natural respect for human life. We have come full circle, back to this same historic crossroads, where we must once again make the fateful, unambiguous choice between the path of war and the path of peace.

If we choose war, or allow our leaders and their foreign friends to choose it for us, we must be ready, as military experts tell us, to once more send tens of thousands of young Americans to their deaths, while also risking escalation to a nuclear war that would kill us all.

If we truly choose peace, we must actively resist our political leaders’ schemes to repeatedly manipulate us into war. We must refuse to volunteer our bodies and those of our children and grandchildren as their cannon fodder, or allow them to shift that fate onto our neighbors, friends and “allies” in other countries.

We must insist that our mis-leaders instead recommit to diplomacy, negotiation and other peaceful means of resolving disputes with other countries, as the UN Charter, the real “rules based order,” in fact requires.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nicolas J.S. Davies.

D’Vontaye Mitchell died last month in Milwaukee after he was violently pinned to the ground by four security guards outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel, just a few minutes from where the Republican National Convention would take place. Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who is representing the family, says that the killing is “just inexplicable,” with nobody charged for Mitchell’s death so far. “You have a video of a man being killed. You have witnesses who have given statements. But yet you’re saying you still have to investigate? Why is it different when it’s a Black victim laying dead on the ground?”

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

Activists and community members in Milwaukee gathered in the streets Tuesday to condemn the police killing of 43-year-old Milwaukee resident Samuel Sharpe. The officers who killed Sharpe, an unhoused Black veteran, are from Ohio, part of a group of 4,500 law enforcement officials in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention. But the shooting took place a mile from the RNC’s proceedings. Sharpe appeared to be in the middle of an altercation with another man when the police officers charged toward him before fatally shooting him. Journalist Bob Hennelly, who is in Milwaukee to cover the convention, says the shooting is what happens “when you militarize your politics.”

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

The post Closing in on the Kill appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Lance Olsen.

About 20,000 protesters marched through the heart of New Zealand’s largest city Auckland today demonstrating against the unpopular Fast Track Approvals Bill that critics fear will ruin the country’s environment, undermine the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi with indigenous Māori, and open the door to corruption.

Holding placards declaring the coalition government is “on the fast track to hell”, “Greedy lying racists”, “Preserve our reserves”, “Kill the bill”, “Climate justice now”, “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues”, and other slogans such as “Ministers’ corruption = Nature’s destruction”, the protesters stretched 2km from Aotea Square down Queen St to the harbourside Te Komititanga Square.

One of the biggest banners, on a stunning green background, said “Toitu Te Tiriti: Toitu Te Taiao” — “Honour the treaty: Save the planet”.

• READ MORE: Fast track bill – thousands of protesters gather in Auckland
• Other fast track bill reports

Speaker after speaker warned about the risks of the draft legislation placing unprecedented power in the hands of three cabinet ministers to fast track development proposals with limited review processes and political oversight.

The bill states that its purpose “is to provide a streamlined decision-making process to facilitate the delivery of infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or national benefits”.

A former Green Party co-leader, Russel Norman, who is currently Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director, said the the draft law would be damaging for the country’s environment. He called on the protesters to fight against it.

“We must stop those who would destroy nature for profit,” he said.

“The vast majority of New Zealanders — nine out of 10 people, when you survey them — say they do not want development that causes more destruction of nature.”

Other protesters on he march against the “War on Nature” included Forest and Bird chief executive Nicola Toki and actress Robyn Malcolm.

RNZ News reports that Norman said: “Expect resistance from the people of Aotearoa. There will be no seabed mining off the coast of Taranaki. There will be no new coal mines in pristine native forest.

“We will stop them — just like we stopped the oil exploration companies. We disrupted them until they gave up.”

The government would be on the wrong side of history if it ignored protesters, Norman said.

Public service job cuts ‘deeply distressing’
In Wellington, reports RNZ News, thousands of people congregated in the city to protest government cuts to public service jobs.

Protesters met at the Pukeahu National War Memorial for speeches before walking down to the waterfront.

Public Service Association spokesperson Fleur Fitzsimons told the crowd that everyone at the rally was sending a message of resistance, opposition and protest to the government.

She accused the coalition government of having an agenda against the public service, and said the union was seeing the destructive impact of government policies first hand.

“It is causing grief, anguish, stress, emotional collapse,” she said.

“It is deeply distressing to the workers who are losing their jobs. They are not only distressed for themselves, and their families, but they are deeply worried about what will happen to the important work they are doing on behalf of us all.”

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

Dindi, who works with the People Daily newspaper, told CPJ that on May 20, David Alilah, Chief Officer of Medical Services in Kenya’s western Kakamega County, threatened to kill him after the journalist sought comment on allegations that a lack of local ambulance services had contributed to the death of a mother and her newborn at a public health facility.

“The reports of threats against the life of a journalist simply for asking a government official for an interview send a ripple of fear across Kenya’s media community,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Muthoki Mumo, in Nairobi. “The only way to reassure journalists of their safety is by credibly and transparently investigating allegations that Kakamega County Chief Medical Services Officer David Alilah threatened to kill People Daily reporter Douglas Dindi.”

Dindi told CPJ that he visited Alilah’s office in the morning and the official asked him to come back in the afternoon. The journalist said that when he returned, Alilah shouted at him and questioned him about his May 8 report that the Kenya Red Cross had withdrawn ambulances services because of the county administration’s unpaid bills. Dindi told CPJ that Alilah verbally accused him of blackmail and threatened to kill him if he published further reports on ambulances.

Dindi said that Alilah also accused him of portraying Kakamega County Governor Fernandes Barasa in a negative light by reporting that he was planning to stand for election in 2027 under a different political party.

Dindi said he reported the threat at the Kakamega Central Police Station later that day and recorded a statement with the police on May 22.

Dindi told CPJ that he met with representatives of the regulatory Media Council of Kenya (MCK) over the threats on May 29 and it was pursuing the matter.

Alilah told CPJ that he also met with the MCK over the matter, as well as making a statement and sharing evidence with the police. He declined to provide further details.

“Since the case is under investigation for possible prosecution, it would be unfair for me to make comments or give views that might override current investigations being carried out,” Alilah said via messaging app on May 30.

Speaking to CPJ via messaging app, MCK chief executive David Omwoyo said that the Council had listened to Dindi’s complaint and to the county government’s reservations about the conduct of journalists in the region. Omwoyo declined to elaborate, citing ongoing investigations.

Omwoyo said that the Council was following up on the police investigation and had urged Dindi and Alilah to refer the issue to MCK’s Complaints Commission, which adjudicates complaints about media freedom violations and journalistic conduct.

He added that the Council “condemns in the strongest possible terms attempts by county government officials to intimidate journalists or deny them access to information.”

Benson Makori, Kakamega Deputy County Police Commander, told CPJ via messaging app on June 4 that the Criminal Investigation Department was investigating, without providing further details.

CPJ’s requests for comment via messaging app and text message to Kakamega County Governor Fernandes Barasa went unanswered.

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

As we enter the month of June, scorching temperatures are already making deadly heat waves around the world. Data confirmed last month was the hottest May on record, putting the Earth on a 12-month streak of record-breaking temperatures. On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization announced there is an 80% chance the average global temperature will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels for at least one of the next five years. “We’re going to see a more chaotic planet as the climate heats up,” says Jeff Goodell, a journalist covering the climate crisis. Goodell describes “the heat wave scenario that keeps climate scientists up at night”: a major power outage that could cut off air conditioning and cause thousands of deaths from extreme temperatures.

In Mexico, it’s already so hot that howler monkeys and parrots are falling dead from the trees. “What we’re experiencing right now goes beyond what is normal,” says Ruth Cerezo-Mota, climate researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “We have been saying this for many years now.”

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

On May 3, 2024, three armed soldiers with the DRC military arrived at Katoto’s home, in the Mambasa territory of the DRC’s northeast Ituri province, and told his family that they would kill the journalist for his criticism of insecurity in the territory’s Babila Babombi locality, according to a member of the journalist’s family—who was present at the time, and spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal—as well as a report on the Bunia Actualité news site. Unable to locate Katoto, the soldiers warned his family members that they would take revenge on the journalist for his comments. 

Katoto told CPJ that he had already gone into hiding for fear of reprisals on May 3, the first day the armed men visited his home.

The next day, on May 4, another armed soldier arrived at Katoto’s home and threatened the journalist’s family for not disclosing his whereabouts, according to the family member and a report by the Network of Investigative Journalists in the DRC (REJI-RDC). In the evening of May 12, the family member said another soldier arrived at Katoto’s home and warned that the journalist would be inevitably found and killed.

“The repeated death threats against journalist Parfait Katoto by members of the DRC military are alarming, and those responsible should be investigated and held to account,” said Angela Quintal, Head of CPJ’s Africa Program, from Accra, Ghana. “The DRC’s military should be focused on ensuring the safety of the press, not threatening to kill journalists who broadcast critical voices.”

The privately owned RCAB broadcasts a weekly program called “CDRH speaks to you,” during which local human rights activists discuss local security issues, according to Katoto. During an April 24 broadcast, activists denounced the army and police for allegedly contributing to insecurity in the Babila Babombi locality by harassing the local population. Rebel armed groups also operate in the area.

Katoto told CPJ that he informed the local commander of the Congolese national police, known only as “Bukasa,” and local military colonel Jules Muke of the soldiers’ appearances at his home and their threats, but neither have followed up or offered any assistance.

Katoto told CPJ that he was verbally threatened with death at least four times in March 2024 during run-ins with Muke, who told Katoto that he did not appreciate the comments made by human rights activists on RCAB.

On May 29, 2021, an armed man entered Katoto’s home through an open door and forced him to lie on the ground and empty his pockets. He also threatened to kill him, according to CPJ report.

CPJ’s calls to Muke went unanswered, and Bukasa’s phone was switched off. 

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

A column of junta troops entered Let Htoke Taw village in the central region of Sagaing at around 5 a.m. on Saturday. The soldiers, apparently searching for medical facilities for anti-junta insurgents, then cornered and massacred 32 civilians hiding in monasteries, they said.

Nway Oo, an official with the anti-junta Civilian Defense and Security Organization of Myaung, told RFA that civilians were taken out and shot.

“The people were fleeing as the junta forces were shooting, some people were hiding in monasteries,” he said. “All the men were asked to sit down and were shot dead.”

Thirty-one men and one woman were killed, six people were wounded, a resident said.

The military regime has not released any information about its operations in the area. Telephone calls to junta spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun and the Sagaing region spokesperson, Nyunt Win Aung, went unanswered. 

Leaders of the National Unity Government (NUG), formed by pro-democracy politicians and allies after the military plunged the country back into bloody turmoil with its 2021 overthrow of an elected government, called the massacre in Myinmu township a war crime.

The NUG said about 70 junta troops from three combined battalions, as well as members of the pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia were responsible for the massacre.

The death toll, if confirmed, would make it one of the bloodiest incidents in Myanmar’s latest round of war, which has brought unprecedented violence to central, heartland parts of the country occupied by the majority Burman community. 

Photographs showed bodies stacked in the back of a truck and lined up on the ground. The victims were aged 15 to 60, the NUG said.

Troops also burned down village houses and abducted more than 20 people, including children and women, the NUG said.

RFA could not confirm the identities of the dead. The village resident said among the victims were three masons from nearby Wan Pyayt village who were doing some work on the monks’ dormitories. 

“There was no battle, they were shot dead,” the resident, who declined to be identified fearing reprisals, told Radio Free Asia.

In a junta attack in nearby Tabayin township, seven people were killed in an airstrike in Ma Gyi Oke village on Saturday, residents and members of the anti-junta People’s Defense Force said.

Four of the dead were anti-junta fighters, they said.

Residents told RFA that junta troops were hunting clinics opened by civilian public administration groups where they believed insurgents were getting treatment. 

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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

Here is an excellent book that, if they would read it with open minds, would, as its subtitle says – inescapably prove that there was a conspiracy – and if Jack Ruby had not killed Oswald and he had been given a fair trial, Oswald would have been acquitted.  Written by James DiEugenio, Paul Bleau, Matt Crumpton, Andrew Iler, and Mark Adamczyk, The JFK Assassination Chokeholds lives up to its claim and then some.

For most readers of the general public, the amount of information it contains that proves the official version of the assassination is clearly false may be overwhelming, but for anyone with any scholarly pretensions or who has a particular interest in the JFK assassination, this book is essential.  It will last a long time as a key historical document.  For the general reader, one or two chapters should suffice to convince them that the authors have emphatically proven their points.  And to grasp these points and fully realize that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by elements of his own government led by the CIA and that the mass media were accessories after the fact to this terrible crime – to let this really sink in – well, nothing is more important in understanding what is going on today.

The five authors, two prominent JFK researchers (most notably Jim DiEugenio) and three attorneys, combine forces to create a volume backed by 700 references that provides ten different arguments, or chokeholds, that prove “1. There was a conspiracy in the murder of JFK, and 2. That the chokehold issues provide more than a reasonable doubt that would have made it impossible to convict Lee Harvey Oswald in a criminal trial.”

By chokeholds they mean a body of evidence that leads to an indisputable conclusion since their lists of evidence are so powerful.  Additionally, they further their arguments through the concept of consilience: “That even if one element cannot prove a fact on its own, the concordance of evidence from unrelated sources converges on a conclusion.”

From beginning to end, through each of the ten chapters in between, they build and build and build their case so powerfully, not through conjecture but with solid confirmed evidence, that by the time one is finished reading, it is impossible to not realize that the assassination of the president was a government hit job and that Oswald was exactly what he said – “a patsy.”  If like me, you need no convincing and believe that engaging in pseudo-debates about the assassination only plays into the hands of the killers – as if to say we don’t yet know the truth – you still should read this excellent book with admiration for the authors’ thoroughness and unique method of argumentation.

The evidence presented throughout has been accumulated for 60 years, not just by official government investigations but by independent researchers, accelerated greatly due to Oliver Stone’s brilliant 1991 film, JFK, that forced the U.S. government to pass the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and then in 1994 the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) that resulted in the declassification of tens of thousands of documents.

If a reader just read Chapter 7, “The Evidentiary Mess of the Twentieth Century,” by James DiEugenio, a chapter of just 16 pages but supported by 47 footnotes about the medical evidence and the official autopsy, one would immediately realize that only government officials were capable of patching up the back of Kennedy’s head wound to make it appear intact and forging photos to conceal the massive cavity caused by a bullet from the front.  That conspiracy about the larger conspiracy is all a reasonable person needs to know to prove the assassination was a government operation from beginning to end, and that Oswald did not kill John Kennedy.

But the book contains chapter after chapter like that one.

Chapter 1  – “ The Official Record Impeaches the Warren Commission” – by JFK researcher Paul Bleau opens the book with a thorough review of all the official investigations that demolishes any remaining pretense that even government officials believe the Warren Commission’s fictions.  He writes after reviewing them:

The overwhelming consensus that there were serious flaws with the Warren Commission conclusions and that there was a likely conspiracy does not come from independent authors who are trying to sell books. It comes from written reports of subsequent investigations and the statements of a very significant cross-section of over 90 insiders that participated in the investigations including the Warren Commission: Senators (some Republican, some Democrats), legal counsel, staff members, attorneys, researchers, medical personnel, autopsy physicians, historians, archivists, investigators, jury members, FBI, DPD and Louisiana State law enforcement agents. These include some of the highest-ranking members of the Warren Commission, Church and HSCA committees and the ARRB.

Bleau follows this up in Chapter 2, “Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: He Was No Lone Nut,” with a wealth of details showing that Oswald, a Marine trained in the Russian language and U2 spy plane technology, was a false defector to the Soviet Union as part of a CIA program; that his last attempted call from the Dallas jail was to a former Special Agent in U.S. Army Counterintelligence; that he had contacts with 64 plausible or definite intelligence assets such as David Ferrie, Guy Bannister, George de Mohrenschildt, David Atlee Philips, et al.  The evidence presented completely debunks the lone nut propaganda proffered by the Warren Commission and all its media accomplices such as The New York Times, CBS, Life magazine, etc.

In addition to the work of JFK researchers DiEugenio and Bleau, the attorney authors – Crumpton, Ller, and Adamczyk – contribute in ways that focus on legal arguments that would clearly lead to an acquittal for Oswald if he ever had been given a real trial.  They make clear that Oswald had to be killed by Jack Ruby who was “on a mission” for the government conspirators to prevent that from happening.  It is, as far as I know, the only book that offers that ingenious legal angle on the assassination.

Matt Crumpton writes about all the times Oswald was impersonated when he was elsewhere, for which there is vast evidence, and which would never have happened if he were a lone crazy assassin.  Crumpton’s tale about Ralph Yates and his testimony about the impersonator of Oswald with the “curtain rods” and his treatment by the FBI which led to his abuse with 40 shock treatments will make your blood boil.  Crumpton writes:

Ralph Yates is where the analysis of the case really starts to diverge between the conspiracy researchers and lone gunman researchers. For people who are suspicious of Oswald acting alone, the Yates story is a showstopper. The Feds committed this man to a mental institution without due process all because he told what was an inconvenient truth.

It is elementary, My Dear Watson, that if Oswald was being impersonated many times and there were double Oswalds, even “seven separate claims” when the real Oswald was in the Soviet Union, then there was a sophisticated conspiracy run by others using Oswald.  Crumpton writes:

There is no plausible reason why a lone gunman would be impersonated so many times. The frequency of these instances clearly increased in the days, weeks and months before the assassination, and also on the day of the assassination, which clearly shows a designed plot to lay the blame on Oswald within hours of the assassination.

The JFK Assassination Chokeholds covers other key matters: why Oswald could not have been on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository when the shots were fired, how the single bullet claim is absurd, the official lies about Jack Ruby and why he killed Oswald, the prior plots to kill JFK, the overwhelming evidence for a frontal shot, Presidents Trump and Biden’s continuing refusal to abide by the JFK Records Act and release all the files, and the media’s ongoing complicity in the coverup, etc.

It is so comprehensive and thoroughly convincing in its evidence and logic that anyone reading it – unless they were dishonest and in bad faith – would have to admit that these chokeholds should silence once and for all anyone claiming that Oswald was a lone nut who assassinated President Kennedy.

Ironically, the evidence and argument of this excellent volume actually refute its concluding sentence:

This is why this case cries out for a new investigation.

While the book is terrific, I must say I do not agree that we need a new investigation.  The facts have long been clear: President Kennedy was assassinated by the U.S. National Security State led by the CIA.  What we need to do is draw the implications from that fact.  They are profound.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

A new report from Amnesty International finds the sale of U.S.weapons to Israel for use in its indiscriminate assault in Gaza is in violation of U.S. and international law. We speak to Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and contributing researcher to the report, who says the U.S. is “complicit in the commission of war crimes” and must “halt all arms transfer to Israel as long as Israel continues to fail to comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.” We also discuss Israel’s detention of thousands of Palestinians without charge, the inadequacy of U.S. human rights investigations into the Israeli military, and Israel’s threatened ground invasion of Rafah.

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

Following the junta’s amnesty of over 3,000 prisoners on Wednesday for Burmese New Year, some inmates who did not get chosen for early release started a riot in Kachin state’s capital at Myitkyina Prison the following day. 

A Myitkyina resident who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons told RFA inmates started protesting on Thursday afternoon, calling the amnesty unfair. 

“The protest has been going on since around noon. The crackdown started at 4 p.m. Four inmates were killed and eight were injured. I don’t know who died,” he said. “But I have seen that the [dead] were taken out by ambulance along with the Red Cross. It calmed down again at 8 p.m. last night.”

The dead and injured were taken to Myitkyina Hospital, guarded by junta forces he added.

The junta has not released any information regarding the protest or casualties. 

RFA reached out to Kachin state’s junta spokesperson Moe Min Thein, but he did not answer the call.

The Myanmar Political Prisoners’ Network said in a statement that police, soldiers and prison authorities opened fire several times on the prisoners, adding that it is still investigating the circumstances that led to the injuries and deaths. 

On Wednesday, junta officials released 42 inmates from Myitkyina Prison for a Burmese New Year’s day amnesty,

Among them, only three political prisoners were released, including Kachin Baptist Convention advisor and reverend Hkalam Samson, former Kachin State Social Affairs Minister Nay Win and former immigration minister Zaw Win. 

Hkalam Samson was re-arrested on Wednesday night. He was originally taken into custody in December 2022 and sentenced for three charges, including incitement to terrorism and unlawful association after praying with other Christian members of the shadow National Unity Government, which formed after the 2021 military coup to oppose the junta. 

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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

Timber wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

There are many ways to kill a wolf in America. But most of them are mundane and prosaic. They’re not likely to bring you acclaim and notoriety. Few will hear about your feat if you simply gun down a wolf from a helicopter, kill a wolf with an M-80 cyanide bomb, pour gas into a wolf den filled with pups and strike a match, put out a contract on a wolf with a hired killer from the government, track down a wolf with a drone and shoot it with a long-range rifle and telescopic scope, inject rat poison in an elk carcass and wait for wolves (and whoever else) to feed on it and die an agonizing death, run one over with your cybertruck or, like the current Governor of Montana, catch a wolf in a trap and then after it has struggled to free itself for a few painful days heroically shoot it.

But if you want to get your name in the papers and your drunken face on cable TV, you’ve got to be more creative. You can’t just be a routine sadist anymore, you’ve got to go the extra mile. You’ve got to bring your wolf torture to the people. Consider this: since wolves lost their protection under the Endangered Species Act more than 1,000 wolves are killed in the US each year, either by hunters, poachers or government wolf killers. They’re killed quietly, remorselessly, anonymously. Hardly anyone notices.

A Wyoming hombre named Cody Roberts set out to change all that. Roberts runs a trucking company in Daniel, Wyoming, a small town in the Green River valley southeast of Jackson. He’s a grown man who likes to post photos of himself on Facebook with animals that he’s killed: pheasants, elk, deer and a mountain lion. But merely posing with slaughtered wildlife didn’t get him that much acclaim. Then one day in late February, Roberts was out on his snowmobile, when he spotted a wolf, hit the throttle and began to chase it. All in good fun, you know. Ultimately, Roberts caught up with the terrified, exhausted animal and ran over it–twice, for good measure. He could have run over it a third time and no one would have given a damn. Like 85 percent of Wyoming, this section of the Green River Valley, cleaving between the Gros Ventre and Wind River Mountains, is a predator kill zone, which means you can kill pretty much any wolf you see, however you want to kill it and nobody will pay much attention, certainly not the government or CNN. Chasing down a wolf with your snowmobile and running over it repeatedly is a perfectly legal thing to do in Wyoming. Some even call it sport.

Then Roberts got the idea that would make him famous. Rather than put the injured wolf out of its misery (or, god forbid, find a vet to treat its wounds), why not take it back to town and show off his captive in society? So Roberts duct-taped the wolf’s mouth shut and hauled it all the way home to Daniel, population 158, where he took selfies of himself and his prize. In one photo, the grinning Roberts is holding a beer, as he squats next to the distressed animal, which biologists later estimated was little more than a pup, probably only nine months old. But in Wyoming, even pups are fair game. You can shoot them, trap them, cudgel them, poison them, burn them, and use them as jumps for your snowmobile. Nothing wrong with any of that, legally speaking.

Here’s where Roberts crossed the line that made his name. That evening, Cody took his prize to the oldest building in town, the Green River Bar. Ever a prankster, he walked into the saloon announcing that he’d found a “lost cattle dog.” The bartender, who knew something was up, said, “Cody, you better not bring in a fucking lion!”

It wasn’t a lion (this time, anyway). It was an angular, trembling, gravely injured wolf pup with a light gray coat–a wolf that could barely move. The wolf was now muzzled and had two collars strapped around its neck, a tracking collar and a shock collar. Roberts pulled the wolf around on a leash, showing off his mangled catch to the 30 or so patrons in the Green River Bar, many of them apparently his relatives.  After a couple of hours of drinking and boasting, Roberts dragged the wolf out of this venerable establishment and shot it. Shot it dead.

Word of this inspiring spectacle soon spread, ultimately reaching the offices of Wyoming’s Game and Fish Department. An investigation was launched. Not into the wolf’s torture and death, which from the state of Wyoming’s point of view was a thing to be desired, but into how the wolf went social, how it got into town, into a bar, spending hours with humans without killing or even biting anyone, some of the patrons even petting and sympathizing with this wild canid of legendary ferocity.  This was the line that must not be crossed. This was the act that must be punished. So Roberts was given a citation for the offense of illegally possessing warm-blooded wildlife. He was fined all of $250, a penalty Roberts gladly paid. One local told WyoFile that Roberts has “been going around town telling people it was worth it. $250? That’s a round for the bar.” It’s the price of fame…or infamy. The two are pretty much inseparable in American society these days.

+++

Speaking of wolves: For the first time in 16 years, Oregon’s wolf population did not grow last year, but held steady at 178 wolves. The number of wolf packs declined from 24 in 2022 to 22 in 2023, while the number of successful breeding pairs fell from 17 to 15. Meanwhile, there were 36 recorded wolf deaths, 33 of the wolves killed by humans. At least 44 wolves illegally killed in Oregon since 2012. Meanwhile, 16 wolves were killed in response to “kill orders” issued by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for 10 different packs, the most ever. The total number of wolves killed based on government orders is twice as many as the previous high of 8. Four other wolves died in vehicle strikes, two died natural deaths and one was shot, allegedly in self-defense. Oregon lost another 10 wolves, which were captured in the state and shipped for release in Colorado. Oregon’s wolf population had been expected to grow by 30% per year since reintroduction began in 2008. Instead, the growth rate for the past 8 years has been an anemic 6.3%.

+++

Using Andres Malm’s “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” as the pretext, three House Republicans, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer of Kentucky Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin and Mike Waltz of Florida, are launching a probe into “potential threats against critical domestic energy infrastructure after a spike in calls for violence by radical eco-terrorists.”

“With radical environmentalists around the world commonly engaged in the destruction or attempted destruction of art and other property, blocking transit, disrupting private gatherings, and delaying energy infrastructure projects,” the three wrote in a letter announcing the probe. “The Committee seeks to understand the threat that environmental violent extremists also pose to the physical energy infrastructure of the United States and implications for national security.” 

When FBI director Christopher Wray appeared before the Committee last month, Rep. Waltz grilled Wray on the dangers of the book (published Verso) being taught on college campuses:  “We have 16 universities teaching [Malm’s book]  as part of their curriculum. Sixteen universities! I would consider that facilitating domestic terrorism.” the book by Andreas Malm. As a point of reference, there are around 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. A film of Malm’s book made many top 10 lists last year, including my own.

If Comer and Company were really worried about exploding pipelines, they’d be investigating the pipeline companies, themselves. Since 1986, there have been more than 8,000 pipeline explosions, causing more than 500 deaths, 2,300 injuries and $7 billion in damages, according to data from the federal Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. None of the incidents are attributed to sabotage. They blow up on their own.

+++

+ Nine of the 10 hottest years have been recorded in the past 10 years and all 10 since 2005.

+ Under Biden, the Climate prez, US LNG exports are at record highs (almost 16 billion cubic feet per day) and are projected to keep on growing. In 2016, LNG exports from the US were nearly zero.

+ UN climate chief, Simon Stiell: ’It’s blazingly obvious that finance is the make-or-break factor in the world’s climate fight.’”

+ A new “rapid analysis” study shows that the “dangerous humid heat” that oppressed western Africa in mid-February was made 10 times more likely by human-caused climate change.

+ Summer temperatures across much of Western Europe have risen three times faster than the global mean warming since 1980.

+ Around 77% of Texas’ electricity is now powered by solar, wind and nuclear.

+ A recent study by Australia National University predicts that Australia is facing 20-year-long megadroughts.

+ Marine protection areas in the Caribbean haven’t helped to revive failing fish populations.

+ Most nuclear plants in the US are unprepared for climate-driven disasters, such as wildfires and floods, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nearly 60% of the country’s nuclear power capacity is directly threatened.

+ Last month a scientific expedition to Antarctica found at least 532 dead Adelie penguins. Thousands more are believed to have died. Was bird flu the culprit?

+ While we’re on the subject of Antarctica, a 2022 report by the National Science Foundation found that 59% of the women at McMurdo and other field stations run by the US Antarctic program, said they’d been sexually assaulted or harassed. A story in Wired, quotes a former fuel foreman at McMurdo, Britt Barquist, as saying that she’d been compelled to work next to a supervisor who’d sexually harassed her. “What was really traumatic was telling people, ‘I’m afraid of this person,’” Barquist said. “And nobody cared.” Another woman told Wired that a supervisor slammed head into a cabinet and then raped her.

+ Countries that have lost the most forest since 2001:

Brazil 517,464 Km2 (9%)
DRC 181,721 Km2 (13%)
Angola 111,012 Km2 (14%)
Sudan 106,213 Km2 (37%)
Indonesia 95,903 Km2 (9%)
Mozambique 44,688 Km2 (11%)
Argentina 45,979 Km2 (14%)
Myanmar 62,712 Km2 (18%)
Paraguay 68,266 Km2 (30%)
Tanzania 80,220 Km2 (15%)
Bolivia 42,791 Km2 (8%)
Colombia 36,001 Km2 (6%)
Nigeria 32,661 Km2 (13%)
Peru 30144 m2 (4%)

+ China’s holdings of US financial assets, as a share of China’s GDP, have dropped back down to where they were when China joined the WTO …

+ On April 6th, the low temperature in Biarritz was +72.5°F, which was the highest minimum temperature ever recorded in France for the month of April. In fact, +72.5°F was one of the highest minimum temperatures ever measured in Biarritz (for any month).

+ The European Court of Human Rights last week ruled that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of 2,000 women over the age of 64, known as KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, their government’s failure to combat climate change put them at a higher risk of dying in heatwaves. The women argued they could not leave their homes and suffered ill-health during frequent record hot spells. The landmark ruling forces Switzerland to take aggressive steps to reduce carbon emissions, in line with targets to keep warming to below a global 1.5 C rise.

+ The Economist: “About a tenth of the world’s residential property by value is under threat from global warming—including many houses that are nowhere near the coast.”

+ Around 54% of ocean waters containing coral reefs have experienced heat stress high enough to cause bleaching, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch. The bleaching is increasing at a rate of 1 percent a week.

+ A study of mice that had ingested microplastics found that after four weeks the microplastics had penetrated far beyond the mice’s intestines, infiltrating tissues in their livers, kidneys and brains.

The diminishing snowpack on the southern slopes of  Mount St. Helens, mid-April, 2024. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

+ With another dry summer forecast for the Pacific Northwest and the snowpack in the Cascade Range at the lowest level in at least a decade, Washington officials have declared a statewide drought emergency.

+ Airborne toxins are linked to cognitive decline and other brain disorders: “Higher levels of PM2.5 are linked to differences in the shape, neural architecture, and functional organization of the developing brain, including altered patterns of cortical thickness and differences in the microstructure of gray and white matter.”

+ Since the introduction of video monitoring on 123 New Zealand fishing vessels, dolphin bycatch reporting up 680%

– Albatross interactions up 350%

– Number of fish species up 34%

– Fish discards up 46%

Only 30% of the videos have been reviewed. Someone hasn’t been being honest.

+++

Columbia students were right in 1968. History proved it. Columbia students are right today. The university has no good answers to their demands that the school stop investing in genocide. Calling in the NYPD proves it.

The enormity of this image: pic.twitter.com/SfuaLlP4dV

— Prem Thakker (@prem_thakker) April 18, 2024

+ Abbie Hoffman: “The only reason you should be in college is to destroy it.” In Columbia’s case, the administration is doing the job for the students.

+ Columbia Professor Rebecca Jordan-Young: “The faculty who are supporting the students do not all agree on the issue of Israel and Palestine, [but] we are astonished and disgusted with the way the university has cracked down on the students.”

+ From Wednesday’s House interrogation of Columbia University’s President, Minouche Shafik…

+ God also wanted Abraham to slit his son Isaac’s throat, which is pretty much what Shafik did when she called the NYPD goon squad on the kids in her care. Giordano Bruno she’s not…In fact, Shafik is a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, and also enjoys a life peerage in the House of Lords.

+ Since Eric Adams became mayor of NYC, at least 31 people have died while awaiting trial at Rikers.

+ Before the eclipse, prisons in New York State handed out eclipse glasses to the inmates, then just before the solar event took place the prisons were placed on lockdown. “Then after it was over, they collected the glasses, and the prison literally opened up the doors an hour after it happened, and it was regular movement,” inmate Joseph Perez told HellGate. “Once in a lifetime event, missed.”

+ Police reform advocate Dana Rachlin has filed a federal lawsuit against the NYPD. Rachlin charges that officials in the department leaked information about rape allegations she had made, as retaliation for her criticism of violent policing.

+ NYC agreed to a $17.5 million payout for women forced by NYPD to remove hijabs.

+ Newly released documents show that at least 12 Minneapolis police officers were disciplined after the George Floyd protests of 2020. One sergeant was fired for pepper-spraying a Vice reporter. Another was let go for brutally beating Jaleel Stallings, a 29-year-old Army veteran who was out after curfew. Eight were suspended for using excessive force on protesters, failing to de-escalate encounters or turning on their body-worn cameras. The city has paid out $50 million in police brutality cases since the murder of Floyd.

+ The US is the only country in the world that sentences children to life without parole, meaning many of them will die in prison.

+ The Appeal has published the first national database of prison commissary prices, revealing an exploitative system that forces incarcerated people to pay up to 5 times the market price for some items. For example, Indiana prisons charge $33 for an 8-inch fan. A similar one sells online for $23 at Lowe’s. In Georgia, where prison labor is unpaid, a 10-inch electric fan is marked up more than 25% to $32. In 2023, the commissary vendor for the Texas state prisons raised the price of water inside by 50%.

+ Kwaneta Harris on how Texas prisons control what women read: “People in solitary aren’t allowed to go to the prison library… we qualify for one book a week… the librarian always sends a Christian-themed book. In 2018, I asked her, “Why don’t you give me what I request?” She said, “I’m called to save your heathen soul.”

+ It sounds like something out of Kafka or Stalinist Russia. Someone stole the identity of William Woods. Woods was later arrested by the LAPD, who believed the man who swiped his identity over him.  A judge later sent Woods to a mental hospital because he continued to insist that he was the real William Woods. He spent two years locked up before he was finally released.

+ A cop in Indian River, Florida was arrested on child porn charges, after he was recognized during a call at a high school by one of his victims, who said the officer had been contacting her police that the officer had been contacting her on Snapchat, asking for naked and topless photos. The deputy, Kai Cromer, was arrested on his first day on the job. Cromer is 19 years old and had told friends, ‘I’m going to be law enforcement, I’m very powerful.’ 

+ A St. Louis judge awarded almost $23.5 million to Luther Hall, a former police officer who was beaten by colleagues when he was working undercover during a protest. Hall suffered several herniated discs and a jaw injury that left him unable to eat.

+ The Albuquerque Police Department has been under federal oversight for the last 10 years. In that time,  Albuquerque police have continued to shoot people at a higher rate than any other large city in the US. In 2014, when the Department came under a federal consent decree, Albuquerque cops killed 9 people. Last year, they killed 13.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

+ Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says that if the government locks up 15% of the population, there will be no crime: “Only about 15% of all Americans commit 100% of the crime … If you lock up the 15%, we don’t have any crime.” In other words, he wants to lock up nearly 50 million people. Patrick calls himself a “libertarian.”

+ Louisiana’s House of Representatives passed a bill giving the police the power to arrest anyone who can’t produce identification to the arresting officer and take them in for fingerprinting.

+ A federal judge ruled this week that Los Angeles city officials altered and fabricated evidence to support the city’s defense against allegations that it illegally seized and destroyed the property of homeless people in the city.

+ For decades Idaho has locked psychiatric patients in maximum-security prison cells. The patients haven’t been convicted or, in many cases, even charged with a crime.

+ Brent Hall, a police officer in Bullitt County, Kentucky, died of a heart attack while chasing some teens when he was off duty. Hall had previously been fired from the Bullitt County Sheriff’s Office after being accused of rape and sodomy but quickly landed a job in the Pioneer Village Police Department in the very same town.

+ Jonathan Stone, county chair of the Trump campaign, in New Hampshire is a former cop who threatened to kill his colleagues in a shooting spree, murder the chief of police and rape the chief’s wife because he was suspended by the department 5 days after it was revealed he had been having a relationship with a 15-year-old high school girl. The incident occurred in 2006 but was just made public last week, after a court case brought by a local paper. After Stone was fired from the department, he opened a gun store and later gave Trump an inscribed AK-47. He now serves as a New Hampshire State representative.

+ The story the Chicago cops told was that they pulled Dexter Reed over in Humbolt Park on March 21 for not wearing his seat belt, then in the next 41 seconds shot at him 96 times. But a video released this week shows that the police officers couldn’t have seen into Reed’s car, given their location and the GMC Terrain’s darkly tinted windows. Three of the four officers emptied their guns and reloaded and continued firing at Reed as he staggered out of the car, unarmed. One officer fired “at least 50 times.” Reed was shot three times while he was on the ground.

+++

+ Arizona State Sen. Eva Burch (D): “A couple of weeks ago, I had an abortion — a safe, legal abortion here in Arizona for a pregnancy that I very much wanted. Somebody took care of me. And now we’re talking about whether or not we should put that doctor in jail.”

+ Alabama just introduced a ban on interstate abortion travel for minors. HB378 would make transporting or helping a minor get an abortion a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail. 

Minnesota State Sen. Glenn Gruenhagen (R) railed against sex education in schools, claiming it produces dopamine in small children and leads to addiction. “You’re producing addiction to pornography, and some of those young boys will turn into human sexual predators.”

+ Wisconsin State Rep. Chuck Wichgers took to the floor of the statehouse to inveigh against contraception, claiming it leads to infidelity, men devaluing women, women thinking they’re better than nature and the “proliferation of STDs.”

+ Life expectancy in Bangladesh is now higher than Black residents of Mississippi. Too bad George Harrison isn’t alive to perform a benefit concert for the people of the Delta–no one in power seems to give a damn.

+ Eric Hovde, a Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin, thinks that people in nursing homes should be disenfranchised because they’re too close to death to be allowed to vote.

Number of doctors in Congress: 19
Number of doctors in Congress who support single-payer: 0

+++

+ The Pentagon budget is transferring billions of dollars of wealth into the coffers of big tech. The top five contracts to major tech firms between 2019 and 2022 had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined.

+ A new GAO report finds that the F-35 fighter jet continues to cost more and fly less. In the past five years, costs have risen by 44 percent, now topping $1.5 trillion. Air Force and Navy are trying to save money by flying the plane less.

+ Mike Johnson has taken to calling himself, rather ostentatiously, a “wartime speaker.” He was referring, I think, to his efforts to pass a $$95 billion defense spending bill that includes funding for Ukraine and Israel. But it might better apply to the war within his own party, where the Gaetz/Greene faction wants to dethrone him.

+ Ukraine’s eastern front seems to be collapsing, low on ammo and even lower on morale. Zelensky: “Today, our artillery shell ratio is 1-10. Can we hold our ground? No. In any case, with these statistics, they will be pushing us back every day.”

+ In the last few weeks, the US Navy has spent nearly $1 billion on missiles fired in the Middle East, either against Iranian drones and missiles, Houthi positions, or against insurgents in Syria and Iraq. “We’ve been firing SM-2s, we’ve been firing SM-6s, and—just over the weekend—SM-3s to actually counter the ballistic missile threat that’s coming from Iran, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro testified during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this week.

+ Mike Davis: “Anybody who knows American history knows at least 30% of America has been protofascist forever. and it’s a huge mistake not to understand how deeply reactionary so much of the petty bourgeoisie and middle strata in so many parts of the country is.”

+++

+ Scranton Joe Biden, the blue-collar Prez, just handed anti-union Samsung $6.4 billion in federal subsidies to build a chip plant in anti-union Texas. Here’s a piece from South Korea, when Samsung barricaded its corporate offices against striking workers.

+ Janet Yellin made some unhinged comments about China last week, accusing the country’s EV industry of becoming too efficient and bemoaning the fact that China’s clean energy sector is supported by government subsidies.

+ On Thursday, a Louisiana House committee voted to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks.

+ Two years ago, AIPAC targeted Squad member Summer Lee and nearly took her down. This year even though Lee is supporting a ceasefire, AIPAC chose not to get involved in the race, largely because Lee has become much more popular in her Pittsburg district.

+ Kevin McCarthy unloaded on Matt Gaetz last week: “I’ll give you the truth why I’m not speaker. It’s because one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old.”

+ $93,000: cost for one year of undergraduate college education at NYU.

+ Brazil’s environmental protection agency IBAMA found Elon Musk’s Starlink equipment in 32 illegal gold mining operations on indigenous reserves in 2023. Miners poison rivers with mercury, causing illness, starvation and death of indigenous people.

+ According to Forbes’ annual richest scumbag rankings, “the U.S. is now home to a record 813 billionaires worth a combined $5.7 trillion. China remains second, with 473  billionaires worth $1.7 trillion. India, which has 200 billionaires, ranks third.

+ An investigation by NBC News found that at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X since Musk took over Twitter, often in apparent violation of X’s rules. Seems low to me.

+ Yanis Varoufakis talking about his new book, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism: “We’re all the serfs of Jeff Bezos. He doesn’t produce anything. He simply has encased us in a digital fiefdom.”

+ A new Commonwealth Beacon/GBHNews poll shows that 50% of Massachusetts residents favor legalizing teachers’ strikes, while 34% say they should remain illegal. The largest share of support comes from the youngest age group (those 18-29), 64% of whom favor legalizing teacher walkouts. 

+ Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson testified before the Senate that Boeing illegally stopped conducting thousands of quality control inspections and hundreds of airplanes rolled out of Boeing factories without those inspections: “I’m not going to sugar coat this: This is a criminal cover-up.” Meanwhile, according to Senator Richard Blumenthal, the latest Boeing 787 whistleblower Sam Salehpour had his tires slashed.

+ Hot Wheels has better quality control than Tesla, which had to stop all Cybertruck deliveries for seven days because of an issue with the accelerator pedal…

+ Still, Tesla plans to ask its shareholders to reinstate CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation package, which a Delaware judge voided earlier this year.

+ The IMF projects that Brazil will have the 8th largest economy in the World by the end of the year, topping Italy.

+ Nestlé “adds sugar and honey to infant milk and cereal products sold in many poorer countries, contrary to international guidelines aimed at preventing obesity and chronic diseases.” It doesn’t do that in Europe, its primary market.

+ A recent 5-year study out of Belgium shows the huge impact of increasing vehicle weight on road deaths & injuries. When a person on a bike or walking is hit by a pick-up, the risk of serious injury increases by 90% compared to a car. The risk of death goes up by 200%.

+ The U.S. post-9/11 wars have displaced at least 38 million people, exceeding the number of those displaced by every war since 1900, except for World War II.

+ The EU has ended the winter with a record volume of stored gas, while prices have declined to the level they were in 2021, when they began rising. While two consecutive mild winters helped, most of Europe has gone without pipelined Russian gas and reduced demand by 20 percent without, as the Financial Times notes, “anything like the social and political upheaval once feared in European capitals.”

+ Production workers at DreamWorks Animation voted 94 to 41 in favor of unionizing.

+ The Supreme Court of Brazil has ordered an investigation of Elon Musk over the dissemination of fake news and obstruction, running a criminal organization and incitement.

+ Twice this week, Biden suggested at campaign events that his uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, may have been eaten by “cannibals” in New Guinea during World War II. “He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time,” Biden said at a campaign event in Scranton. Military records show that Finnegan’s plane was shot down over the Pacific Ocean.

The news out of the NY courtroom isn’t all bad for Trump. One of the dismissed jurors said he “looked less orange” than she expected.

+++

+ To try washing Gaza out of my head for 20 minutes a day, I’ve been slowly making my way through James Kaplan’s new book on the three titanic forces, so often at odds with each other, who merged harmoniously for a few days to create Kind of Blue: Miles, Coltrane and Bill Evans. There’s not a lot new here, but Kaplan’s a very fluid writer and a vivid storyteller. The scenes of heroin use and withdrawal, which all three struggled with, are especially gripping. Still, there are a few nuggets that were new to me. First was Evans’ devotion to the poet William Blake, whose spare, suggestive verses he tried to imitate in his own playing, even to the point of setting many of Blake’s works to music.  The other is that Miles’ song “Mademoiselle Mabry“, from the great 1968 LP Filles de Kilimanjaro, is a reworking of Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary, largely arranged by Gil Evans, with the idea of the three of them one-day joining forces with Hendrix. That never came to pass, obviously, though Gil Evans did record a magnificent record of Hendrix’s music with a large ensemble. The LP includes an incredible version of “1983…A Merman I Should Be.”

+ Charles Bukowski: “It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved.”

+ In 1996, Neil Young told an audience how he came to write Cortez the Killer in high school after having eaten too many hamburgers: “One night I stayed up too late when I was goin’ to high school. I ate like six hamburgers or something. I felt terrible, very bad. This is before McDonald’s. They were just real bad. I was studying history and in the morning I woke up and I’d written this song.”

+ People who watch NBA or NHL games are hit with as many as three gambling ads per minute.

+ Whitey Herzog, the great manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, who died this week: “I was good friends with Pete Rose. On the day the Vincent Report on Pete’s gambling was revealed to the press, we were in Cincinnati. When Pete came out with the lineup card before the game, he said, ‘Whitey, we’re going to kick your ass tonight.’ And I said, ‘You wanna bet?'”

+ In 8 years of high school and college basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s teams went 212-8. In the six years he played varsity at both of those levels, his teams went 162-3 and won the championship every year he was eligible to win. Kareem the Great, a History major at UCLA, turned 77 this week: “Every Black celebrity knows that, whether they like it or not, they represent the entire Black community.  Sadly, despite admirable accomplishments as an athlete, OJ Simpson was not able to live up to that responsibility.  His life is a reminder of how quickly one’s legacy can crash and burn.”

+ From the House hearing to excoriate college presidents for their alleged wokeness…

Jim Banks: “Can you explain why the word “folks” is spelled ‘f-o-l-x’ throughout this guidebook?”

Columbia President Shafik: “They don’t know how to spell?”

+ Brian Cox on Joaquin Phoenix’s “truly terrible” portrayal of Napoleon: “It really is appalling. I don’t know what he was thinking. I think it’s totally his fault and I don’t think Ridley Scott helps him. I would have played it a lot better than Joaquin Phoenix, I tell you that. You can say it’s good drama. No, it’s lies.”

+ Luis Buñuel on the politics of surrealism: “All of us were supporters of a certain concept of revolution, and although the surrealists didn’t consider themselves terrorists, they were constantly fighting a society they despised. Their principal weapon wasn’t guns, of course; it was a scandal. Scandal was a potent agent of revelation, capable of exposing such social crimes as the exploitation of one many by another, colonialist imperialism, and religious tyranny–in sum, all the secret and odious underpinnings of a system that had to be destroyed. The real purpose of surrealism was not to create a new literary, artistic, or even philosophical movement but to explode the social order, to transform life itself. Soon after the founding of the movement, however, several members rejected this strategy and went into ‘legitimate’ politics, especially the Communist Party, which seemed to be the only organization worthy of the epithet ‘revolutionary.'” Then there’s Salvador Dali, who became a fervent supporter of Franco’s brand of fascism.

+ Dickey Betts surviving into his 80s was an even more miraculous achievement than Keith Richards becoming an octogenarian. Dylan feted the great guitarist and songwriter in his song Murder Most Foul: “Play Oscar Peterson, play Stan Getz / Play, ‘Blue Sky,’ play Dickey Betts.” Let’s…

Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…

Everyone Who is Gone is Here: the United States, Central America and the Making of a Crisis
Jonathan Blitzer
(Penguin)

Outside the Outside: the New Politics of the Suburbs
Matt Hern
(Verso)

Paranoia: a Journey Into Extreme Mistrust and Anxiety
Daniel Freeman
(William Collins)

Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…

Red Hot & Ra: The Magic City
Meshell Ndegeocello
(Red Hot Org)

All Gist
James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg
(Paradise of Bachelors)

Love in Constant Spectacle
Jane Weaver
(Fire Records)

The Normalization of Denial

“The most sophisticated form of denial is ‘normalization’. the intolerable becomes ‘no longer news’ and people invest in ‘not having an inquiring mind about these matters’.” – Alex de Waal

The post Roaming Charges: How to Kill a Wolf in Society appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

The Israeli online magazine +972 has published a detailed report on Israel’s use of an artificial intelligence (AI) system called “Lavender” to target thousands of Palestinian men in its bombing campaign in Gaza. When Israel attacked Gaza after October 7, the Lavender system had a database of 37,000 Palestinian men with suspected links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). 

Lavender assigns a numerical score, from one to a hundred, to every man in Gaza, based mainly on cellphone and social media data, and automatically adds those with high scores to its kill list of suspected militants. Israel uses another automated system, known as “Where’s Daddy?”, to call in airstrikes to kill these men and their families in their homes.

The report is based on interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers who have worked with these systems. As one of the officers explained to +972, by adding a name from a Lavender-generated list to the Where’s Daddy home tracking system, he can place the man’s home under constant drone surveillance, and an airstrike will be launched once he comes home.

The officers said the “collateral” killing of the men’s extended families was of little consequence to Israel. “Let’s say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],” the officer said. “Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.”

The officers explained that the decision to target thousands of these men in their homes is just a question of expediency. It is simply easier to wait for them to come home to the address on file in the system, and then bomb that house or apartment building, than to search for them in the chaos of the war-torn Gaza Strip. 

The officers who spoke to 972+ explained that in previous Israeli massacres in Gaza, they could not generate targets quickly enough to satisfy their political and military bosses, and so these AI systems were designed to solve that problem for them. The speed with which Lavender can generate new targets only gives its human minders an average of 20 seconds to review and rbber-stamp each name, even though they know from tests of the Lavender system that at least 10% of the men chosen for assassination and familicide have only an insignificant or a mistaken connection with Hamas or PIJ.  

The Lavender AI system is a new weapon, developed by Israel. But the kind of kill lists that it generates have a long pedigree in U.S. wars, occupations and CIA regime change operations. Since the birth of the CIA after the Second World War, the technology used to create kill lists has evolved from the CIA’s earliest coups in Iran and Guatemala, to Indonesia and the Phoenix program in Vietnam in the 1960s, to Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s and to the U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Just as U.S. weapons development aims to be at the cutting edge, or the killing edge, of new technology, the CIA and U.S. military intelligence have always tried to use the latest data processing technology to identify and kill their enemies.

The CIA learned some of these methods from German intelligence officers captured at the end of the Second World War. Many of the names on Nazi kill lists were generated by an intelligence unit called Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East), under the command of Major General Reinhard Gehlen, Germany’s spy chief on the eastern front (see David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 268).

Gehlen and the FHO had no computers, but they did have access to four million Soviet POWs from all over the USSR, and no compunction about torturing them to learn the names of Jews and communist officials in their hometowns to compile kill lists for the Gestapo and Einsatzgruppen.

After the war, like the 1,600 German scientists spirited out of Germany in Operation Paperclip, the United States flew Gehlen and his senior staff to Fort Hunt in Virginia. They were welcomed by Allen Dulles, soon to be the first and still the longest-serving director of the CIA. Dulles sent them back to Pullach in occupied Germany to resume their anti-Soviet operations as CIA agents. The Gehlen Organization formed the nucleus of what became the BND, the new West German intelligence service, with Reinhard Gehlen as its director until he retired in 1968.

After a CIA coup removed Iran’s popular, democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, a CIA team led by U.S. Major General Norman Schwarzkopf trained a new intelligence service, known as SAVAK, in the use of kill lists and torture. SAVAK used these skills to purge Iran’s government and military of suspected communists and later to hunt down anyone who dared to oppose the Shah. 

By 1975, Amnesty International estimated that Iran was holding between 25,000 and 100,000 political prisoners, and had “the highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture that is beyond belief.”

In Guatemala, a CIA coup in 1954 replaced the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman with a brutal dictatorship. As resistance grew in the 1960s, U.S. special forces joined the Guatemalan army in a scorched earth campaign in Zacapa, which killed 15,000 people to defeat a few hundred armed rebels. Meanwhile, CIA-trained urban death squads abducted, tortured and killed PGT (Guatemalan Labor Party) members in Guatemala City, notably 28 prominent labor leaders who were abducted and disappeared in March 1966.

Once this first wave of resistance was suppressed, the CIA set up a new telecommunications center and intelligence agency, based in the presidential palace. It compiled a database of “subversives” across the country that included leaders of farming co-ops and labor, student and indigenous activists, to provide ever-growing lists for the death squads. The resulting civil war became a genocide against indigenous people in Ixil and the western highlands that killed or disappeared at least 200,000 people.

This pattern was repeated across the world, wherever popular, progressive leaders offered hope to their people in ways that challenged U.S. interests. As historian Gabriel Kolko wrote in 1988, “The irony of U.S. policy in the Third World is that, while it has always justified its larger objectives and efforts in the name of anticommunism, its own goals have made it unable to tolerate change from any quarter that impinged significantly on its own interests.”

When General Suharto seized power in Indonesia in 1965, the U.S. Embassy compiled a list of 5,000 communists for his death squads to hunt down and kill. The CIA estimated that they eventually killed 250,000 people, while other estimates run as high as a million.

Twenty-five years later, journalist Kathy Kadane investigated the U.S. role in the massacre in Indonesia, and spoke to Robert Martens, the political officer who led the State-CIA team that compiled the kill list. “It really was a big help to the army,” Martens told Kadane. “They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands. But that’s not all bad – there’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.”

Kathy Kadane also spoke to former CIA director William Colby, who was the head of the CIA’s Far East division in the 1960s. Colby compared the U.S. role in Indonesia to the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, which was launched two years later, claiming that they were both successful programs to identify and eliminate the organizational structure of America’s communist enemies.  

The Phoenix program was designed to uncover and dismantle the National Liberation Front’s (NLF) shadow government across South Vietnam. Phoenix’s Combined Intelligence Center in Saigon fed thousands of names into an IBM 1401 computer, along with their locations and their alleged roles in the NLF. The CIA credited the Phoenix program with killing 26,369 NLF officials, while another 55,000 were imprisoned or persuaded to defect. Seymour Hersh reviewed South Vietnamese government documents that put the death toll at 41,000. 

How many of the dead were correctly identified as NLF officials may be impossible to know, but Americans who took part in Phoenix operations reported killing the wrong people in many cases. Navy SEAL Elton Manzione told author Douglas Valentine (The Phoenix Program) how he killed two young girls in a night raid on a village, and then sat down on a stack of ammunition crates with a hand grenade and an M-16, threatening to blow himself up, until he got a ticket home.  

“The whole aura of the Vietnam War was influenced by what went on in the “hunter-killer” teams of Phoenix, Delta, etc,” Manzione told Valentine. “That was the point at which many of us realized we were no longer the good guys in the white hats defending freedom – that we were assassins, pure and simple. That disillusionment carried over to all other aspects of the war and was eventually responsible for it becoming America’s most unpopular war.”

Even as the U.S. defeat in Vietnam and the “war fatigue” in the United States led to a more peaceful next decade, the CIA continued to engineer and support coups around the world, and to provide post-coup governments with increasingly computerized kill lists to consolidate their rule.

After supporting General Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the CIA played a central role in Operation Condor, an alliance between right-wing military governments in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, to hunt down tens of thousands of their and each other’s political opponents and dissidents, killing and disappearing at least 60,000 people. 

The CIA’s role in Operation Condor is still shrouded in secrecy, but Patrice McSherry, a political scientist at Long Island University, has investigated the U.S. role and concluded, “Operation Condor also had the covert support of the US government. Washington provided Condor with military intelligence and training, financial assistance, advanced computers, sophisticated tracking technology, and access to the continental telecommunications system housed in the Panama Canal Zone.”

McSherry’s research revealed how the CIA supported the intelligence services of the Condor states with computerized links, a telex system, and purpose-built encoding and decoding machines made by the CIA Logistics Department. As she wrote in her book, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America:     

“The Condor system’s secure communications system, Condortel,… allowed Condor operations centers in member countries to communicate with one another and with the parent station in a U.S. facility in the Panama Canal Zone. This link to the U.S. military-intelligence complex in Panama is a key piece of evidence regarding secret U.S. sponsorship of Condor…”

Operation Condor ultimately failed, but the U.S. provided similar support and training to right-wing governments in Colombia and Central America throughout the 1980s in what senior military officers have called a “quiet, disguised, media-free approach” to repression and kill lists. 

The U.S. School of the Americas (SOA) trained thousands of Latin American officers in the use of torture and death squads, as Major Joseph Blair, the SOA’s former chief of instruction described to John Pilger for his film, The War You Don’t See:

“The doctrine that was taught was that, if you want information, you use physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, and killing. If you can’t get the information you want, if you can’t get the person to shut up or stop what they’re doing, you assassinate them – and you assassinate them with one of your death squads.”

When the same methods were transferred to the U.S. hostile military occupation of Iraq after 2003, Newsweek headlined it “The Salvador Option.” A U.S. officer explained to Newsweek that U.S. and Iraqi death squads were targeting Iraqi civilians as well as resistance fighters. “The Sunni population is paying no price for the support it is giving to the terrorists,” he said. “From their point of view, it is cost-free. We have to change that equation.”

The United States sent two veterans of its dirty wars in Latin America to Iraq to play key roles in that campaign. Colonel James Steele led the U.S. Military Advisor Group in El Salvador from 1984 to 1986, training and supervising Salvadoran forces who killed tens of thousands of civilians. He was also deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, narrowly escaping a prison sentence for his role supervising shipments from Ilopango air base in El Salvador to the U.S.-backed Contras in Honduras and Nicaragua. 

In Iraq, Steele oversaw the training of the Interior Ministry’s Special Police Commandos – rebranded as “National” and later “Federal” Police after the discovery of their al-Jadiriyah torture center and other atrocities.

Bayan al-Jabr, a commander in the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade militia, was appointed Interior Minister in 2005, and Badr militiamen were integrated into the Wolf Brigade death squad and other Special Police units. Jabr’s chief adviser was Steven Casteel, the former intelligence chief for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in Latin America. 

The Interior Ministry death squads waged a dirty war in Baghdad and other cities, filling the Baghdad morgue with up to 1,800 corpses per month, while Casteel fed the western media absurd cover stories, such as that the death squads were all “insurgents” in stolen police uniforms.  

Meanwhile U.S. special operations forces conducted “kill-or-capture” night raids in search of Resistance leaders. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Joint Special Operations Command from 2003-2008, oversaw the development of a database system, used in Iraq and Afghanistan, that compiled cellphone numbers mined from captured cellphones to generate an ever-expanding target list for night raids and air strikes. 

The targeting of cellphones instead of actual people enabled the automation of the targeting system, and explicitly excluded using human intelligence to confirm identities. Two senior U.S. commanders told the Washington Post that only half the night raids attacked the right house or person.

In Afghanistan, President Obama put McChrystal in charge of U.S. and NATO forces in 2009, and his cellphone-based “social network analysis” enabled an exponential increase in night raids, from 20 raids per month in May 2009 to up to 40 per night by April 2011. 

As with the Lavender system in Gaza, this huge increase in targets was achieved by taking a system originally designed to identify and track a small number of senior enemy commanders and applying it to anyone suspected of having links with the Taliban, based on their cellphone data. 

This led to the capture of an endless flood of innocent civilians, so that most civilian detainees had to be quickly released to make room for new ones. The increased killing of innocent civilians in night raids and airstrikes fueled already fierce resistance to the U.S. and NATO occupation and ultimately led to its defeat.

President Obama’s drone campaign to kill suspected enemies in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia was just as indiscriminate, with reports suggesting that 90% of the people it killed in Pakistan were innocent civilians. 

And yet Obama and his national security team kept meeting in the White House every “Terror Tuesday” to select who the drones would target that week, using an Orwellian, computerized “disposition matrix” to provide technological cover for their life and death decisions.    

Looking at this evolution of ever-more automated systems for killing and capturing enemies, we can see how, as the information technology used has advanced from telexes to cellphones and from early IBM computers to artificial intelligence, the human intelligence and sensibility that could spot mistakes, prioritize human life and prevent the killing of innocent civilians has been progressively marginalized and excluded, making these operations more brutal and horrifying than ever.

Nicolas has at least two good friends who survived the dirty wars in Latin America because someone who worked in the police or military got word to them that their names were on a death list, one in Argentina, the other in Guatemala. If their fates had been decided by an AI machine like Lavender, they would both be long dead. 

As with supposed advances in other types of weapons technology, like drones and “precision” bombs and missiles, innovations that claim to make targeting more precise and eliminate human error have instead led to the automated mass murder of innocent people, especially women and children, bringing us full circle from one holocaust to the next.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

Fighting between the ethnic Rakhine Arakan Army, or AA, and the Arakan Resistance Solidarity Army, or ARSA, of junta-supported Rohingya fighters began April 12 in Rakhine’s Buthidaung township, residents told RFA Burmese on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

The ARSA is an insurgent group that has claimed to support the Muslim Rohingya cause against Myanmar’s military and ethnic Buddhist Rakhines – the main minority group in Rakhine state. The military has reportedly provided training to the ARSA in recent weeks and enlisted it to help repel the ethnic Rakhine army, which now controls eight of 16 townships in the state.

The 25 Rohingya civilians killed were among nearly 3,000 who fled from Buthidaung’s U Hla Hpay, Ywet Nyo Taung and Kun Taing villages after the clashes began.

A Rohingya resident of Buthidaung said that ARSA units based in the three villages had been coordinating with junta troops to fight back against the advancing AA, which ended a ceasefire agreement with the military regime in November and has driven the military out of most of the northern part of the state. 

“Two members of the AA were injured, while six ARSA troops were reportedly killed,” said the resident. “The military carried out an artillery attack on a boat of fleeing Rohingya, killing 25 as the vessel sank."

There have been a number of reports that the military is reaching out to the ARSA, whose raids on border posts and police stations in 2017 were the casus belli for a military ethnic cleansing campaign that drove 1 million Rohingya into Bangladesh, and kept many others in concentration camps.

Since being driven into Bangladesh, ARSA’s primary activities have been to secure control over the refugee camps and eliminate rivals within the Rohingya community. They had not participated in the conflict involving the military, which seized power in Myanmar in a February 2021 coup.

The ARSA has been designated as a terrorist group by Myanmar and Malaysia.

RFA was not immediately able to confirm the number of victims, whose identities remained unknown amid ongoing clashes and severed communications lines in Buthidaung on Monday.

‘Attacked while fleeing’

But a Rohingya resident of nearby Maungdaw township told RFA that Rohingya civilians “were attacked [by the military] while they were fleeing” the fighting.

“It is difficult to get and verify news due to communication problems,” he added.

Another resident of Buthidaung confirmed that the military carried out airstrikes in the area.

“A jet fighter dropped two bombs on U Hla Hpay village yesterday [Sunday], where fighting occurred between the AA and the ARSA,” the resident said. “There has been little time to enter the villages [to get personal belongings]. The military bombarded the area for about two-and-a-half hours.”

Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun and Khaing Thu Kha, the AA’s information officer, went unanswered Monday.  

However, the junta reported Sunday that religious buildings, houses and shops in U Hla Hpay and Ywet Nyo Taung villages were destroyed by Arakan Army heavy weapon attacks and gunfire on April 12.

The AA’s Khaing Thu Kha also said in a message posted to his Telegram social network channel that Rohingya armed groups and the military carried out coordinated attacks on the AA in Buthidaung.

About 2,000 Rohingya residents of Buthidaung took to the streets on Sunday accusing the AA of unprovoked raids and killings in Rohingya villages.

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

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

During coup leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s Thingyn – or water festival – visit to Mandalay division’s Pyinoolwin city on Sunday, an unknown group fired more than 15 missiles at two military universities. The blasts, which hit the Defense Services Academy and Defense Services Technology Academy, also damaged a department of a nearby hospital and Aung Myay Zaya monastery. 

The missiles injured five civilians when they landed on Pyinoolwin Hospital’s orthopedics department, said one Pyinoolwin resident, declining to be named for security reasons. 

"The two monks who died were people who wore robes during the Thingyn period. They died when the explosion happened near them,” he said, describing civilians who temporarily become monks to observe Myanmar’s new year water festival. “The last man who died on the spot was in Ward No. 8. Another three people were injured in this neighborhood alone.”

Following the attack, tourists who came for the holiday and some permanent residents fled the city, he added. 

From 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Sunday evening, about 40 shots and explosions could be heard, said one Pyinoolwin resident who was near the site of the attack. 

“After the sound of the missiles, Defense Services Academy and Defense Services Technology Academy troops cut the power. The military and social aid vehicles were busy,” he said, declining to be named for fear of reprisals. “I knew they fell in the area of the Defense Services Academy.”

Staff at Pyinoolwin Hospital are preparing to move patients to Mandalay Hospital, while junta soldiers are conducting security checks around the city, residents said. 

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet, but residents told RFA that they were likely carried out from a hill behind the university campuses. 

The junta has not issued any statements about the attacks. RFA called Mandalay division’s junta spokesperson Thein Htay for more information on the attacks, but he did not respond.  

Residents told RFA they believe the attack was carried out because of Min Aung Hlaing’s visit. On Sunday, a bomb exploded near a pavilion in Mandalay city, injuring 12 people. 

Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Mike Firn.

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

We go to Part 2 of our conversation with Israeli scholar Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London and chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom for British Society of Middle East Studies. Gordon talks about the “massive surveillance apparatus” Israel has imposed on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the use of artificial intelligence tools to bomb targets despite the high error rate in those systems, and the shock of the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 Israelis. “The state seemed not to be functioning, so most Israelis were in great pain, were in great fear,” he says. “My fear is that most Israelis are still trapped, still stuck in that October 7th moment and unwilling to lift their eyes to see basically the genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip.”

Watch Part 1 of this interview: Road to Famine: Israeli Law Prof. Neve Gordon on Israel’s History of Weaponizing Food Access in Gaza

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

The Israeli publications +972 and Local Call have exposed how the Israeli military used an artificial intelligence program known as Lavender to develop a “kill list” in Gaza that includes as many as 37,000 Palestinians who were targeted for assassination with little human oversight. A second AI system known as “Where’s Daddy?” tracked Palestinians on the kill list and was purposely designed to help Israel target individuals when they were at home at night with their families. The targeting systems, combined with an “extremely permissive” bombing policy in the Israeli military, led to “entire Palestinian families being wiped out inside their houses,” says Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who broke the story after speaking with members of the Israeli military who were “shocked by committing atrocities.” Abraham previously exposed Israel for using an AI system called “The Gospel” to intentionally destroy civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including apartment complexes, universities and banks, in an effort to exert “civil pressure” on Hamas. These artificial intelligence military systems are “a danger to humanity,” says Abraham. “AI-based warfare allows people to escape accountability.”

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

Troops took 25-year-old Min Thu and 35-year-old Ko Win Thiha from Tanintharyi division’s Dawei Prison on the night of March 17. Both were arrested under the country’s anti-terrorism act, a set of broad laws that cover many actions related to opposing the military junta.

Since the country’s 2021 coup, civilians and activists have been subject to mass arrests for actions ranging from social media posts to suspicion of participating in or funding one of the many rebel groups opposing the military dictatorship. 

A Dawei Political Prisoners Network official, declining to be named for security reasons, told RFA that Min Thu and Ko Win Thiha’s families were informed of their relative’s deaths only after they submitted visitation requests to the prison. 

"Min Thu and Win Thiha, with black hoods on their heads, were taken out of prison by junta soldiers,” he said. “Before they were taken, extensive searches were conducted in the prison. They were taken out of jail and killed after being accused of having things that were prohibited in jail.”

In late March, relatives who went to the prison to request visitation were informed by prison officials of the two men’s deaths, a source close to Dawei Prison said.

Min Thu was am Islamic studies teacher serving a ten-year sentence. RFA could not confirm when he was arrested. Win Thiha was arrested in February 2022 and sentenced to seven years in prison under Section 51(c) of the Counter-Terrorism Law for production or intention to distribute a weapon and Section 505(a) of the penal code for incitement against the military.

RFA contacted the junta’s Prisons Department deputy director Naing Win for comment on the deaths at Dawei Prison, but he didn’t answer the phone.

As of Wednesday, 217 political prisoners are serving prison terms in Dawei Prison, according to a report from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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

Some 1 million Rohingya refugees have been living across the border in Bangladesh since 2017, when they were driven out of Myanmar by a military clearance operation. 

Another 630,000 living within Myanmar are designated stateless by the United Nations, including those who languish in camps and are restricted from moving freely in Rakhine state.

The killings since the Nov. 13 start of the conflict in Rakhine state have further traumatized the Rohingya community and left them fearing for their lives when airplanes appear overhead, they told RFA.

An investigation by RFA found that at least 79 Rohingyas were killed and 127 injured by junta bombardment in Rakhine state as of Monday. They include 27 dead and 43 injured in Minbya township, 24 and 45 in Buthidaung, 17 and 17 in Kyauktaw, four and 17 in Mrauk-U, and seven and five in Sittwe.

At least two mass casualty incidents occurred over the same period.

On March 18, an airstrike on Minbya’s Thar Dar village killed 22 Rohingya and injured 29, according to residents. In January, junta artillery strikes on Buthidaung’s Hpon Nyo Leik village killed 12 and injured 32, sources in the region told RFA.

‘We’re just victims’

A Rohingya resident of Thar Dar village called the mass killing in March “heartbreaking” and questioned why members of his ethnic group are being caught up in the conflict.

“We [Rohingyas] don’t want to take over the country and we aren’t attacking [the military],” he said, adding that the Rohingya simply want to live their lives in peace. “We’re just victims of conflict [between two other groups].”

Restrictions on the Rohingya’s movement make it difficult for members of the community to earn an adequate income. Few have the means to relocate amid the fighting in Rakhine.

A Rohingya from Kyauktaw’s Let Saung Kauk village, where junta bombardment killed six people in February, called the military’s fighter jets “messengers of death” for his community.

“We live in fear that the junta will drop bombs and cry when we hear fighter jets,” he said. “We don’t know whether to flee or stay here and die.”

Attacks on civilians and forced recruitment

Nay San Lwin, a Rohingya activist, said that the junta targets civilians in response to attacks by the Arakan Army, or AA.

"The armed conflict in Rakhine state is between the AA and the army, but the junta responds not only by attacking the AA, but also civilians,” he said. “The military always commits massacres. They burn down villages. Civilians, including Rohingyas, are suffering great losses in the conflicts.”

Myanmar’s military is desperate for new recruits after suffering devastating losses on the battlefield to the AA in Rakhine state. Since November, the military has surrendered Pauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk-U, Kyauktaw, Myay Pon, Ponnagyun, Ramree and Rathedaung townships in the state, as well as Paletwa township in neighboring Chin state.

Residents say the military has forcibly recruited more than 1,000 Rohingyas in Buthidaung, Sittwe, Maungtaw and Kyauktaw townships for military service, and has forced Rohingyas to hold public protests against the AA.

Attempts to contact junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun for comment on RFA’s findings went unanswered Monday.

RFA’s investigation also found that junta artillery fire, airstrikes, landmines and small weapons fire killed some 187 civilians and injured 531 others in the four months since the start of the conflict in Rakhine state.

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

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

The killings follow the junta’s Feb. 10 enactment of the law, with a plan to begin conscription in April to shore up troop shortages resulting from months of mounting losses and surrenders to insurgents in Myanmar’s three-year civil war.

In the weeks since the announcement, youths in many cities have fled abroad or to rebel-controlled territories to avoid the draft, refusing to fight for the military that seized control of the country in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup d’etat.

In recent weeks, RFA has received reports of forced recruitment and officials compiling lists of residents of fighting age, as well as draft lotteries to select who will serve.

But rebel forces are fighting back against those doing the junta’s bidding, according to sources who spoke to RFA Burmese on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

On Thursday, the anti-junta People’s Defense Force, or PDF, from Bago region’s Pyay township attacked Myint Swe and Ko Phyo – the administrator and office clerk of Thegon township’s Zigon village – as they rode a motorcycle home after compiling a list of draft-eligible residents in nearby Thar Paung village, residents said.

Myint Swe was shot dead and Ko Phyo was gravely wounded in the 11:30 am attack, an official from the Thegon Township Social Assistance Association told RFA. Ko Phyo was taken to a hospital for treatment in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon, 250 kilometers (155 miles) to the south, he said.

“We had to go because the police informed us,” he said. “One died and one was sent to Yangon Hospital from Thegon.”

The PDF has not claimed responsibility for the attack.

Thandwe township killings

Also on Thursday, in Rakhine state’s Thandwe township, unidentified attackers killed Win Shwe, the head of 100 households in Dar Wa village’s Shwe Hlaw village tract, as he returned home from the township seat, where he was documenting residents eligible for military service.

Win Shwe’s body was discovered on Thursday evening under a pile of leaves in a creek bed near Dar Wa, according to a village resident, who said he was likely targeted because of his role in military recruitment.

“According to the people who took the body, he died of stab wounds to the neck,” he said. “Now, in Thandwe Township, the administrators and the 100 household leaders of the villages are collecting lists for military service. But none of the villagers want to join the army.”

The PDF in Magway region’s Yenangyaung township claimed responsibility for the Wednesday shooting deaths of Tin Win Khaing and San Naing, the administrator and clerk of Oke Shit Kone village tract, as they returned home from compiling draft lists in the township seat.

A PDF official told RFA on Friday that his group warned the men not to take part in the conscription process on five separate occasions before carrying out the attack.

“We repeatedly warned them with calls and letters,” he said. “Nobody [publicly] spoke out against them because they were armed and protected by the junta, so we were compelled to act after receiving numerous complaints.”

The PDF official claimed that the men had been “collecting money” and “choosing people at random” to serve, instead of using a lottery system. RFA was unable to independently verify the official’s claims.

Families threatened

Also in Magway, members of the Salin Township PDF shot and killed Myint Htoo, the administrator of Pu Khat Taing village, as he called on residents to enlist for military service with a loudspeaker on Monday, according to sources in the township.

The following day, unidentified attackers killed Maung Pu, the administrator of Mandalay region’s Wundwin township, while he worked to recruit soldiers for the junta, township residents said. Details of the attack were not immediately available.

The junta has yet to issue an official statement on any of the killings.

Attempts by RFA to contact junta spokesmen in the regions and states where the attacks occurred went unanswered Friday, with the exception of Tin Oo in Bago region, who refused to comment, citing an ongoing investigation and the sensitive nature of the incident.

Residents said junta troops are threatening families with arrest and violence if their sons and daughters refuse to serve in the military after being selected by lottery.

Meanwhile, the country’s PDFs are issuing warnings to anyone helping to enforce the junta’s conscription campaign.

Refusing orders

Facing the wrath of residents and the PDF on one side and pressure from the junta to fill recruitment quotas, some administrators have simply refused orders to compile lists of those eligible for military service.

Village and ward administrators in Rakhine’s Munaung township told RFA on Friday that at a March 15 meeting at the township’s General Administration Department Hall, junta authorities ordered them to recruit up to five people between the ages of 24 and 30 per village tract.

“[Junta troops] asked if there had been a census conducted and told us we had to sign a document [agreeing to their recruitment terms],” said one administrator, who declined to be named. “However, we informed them of our inability to proceed.”

The administrator said that no one had resigned, and that there was “no immediate military pressure” to comply.

“However, the local youth are reluctant to participate, feeling fearful and evasive,” he said.

Administrators of all of Munaung township’s 41 villages and wards refused to carry out the recruitment order, he said.

Another administrator confirmed the refusal, saying that he, like the others, “always orient myself towards the people.”

RFA was unable to reach Hla Thein, the junta’s attorney general and spokesperson for Rakhine state, for comment on the administrators’ refusal to follow recruitment orders.

In Rakhine’s Thandwe township, 21 village tract administrators submitted their resignations on Monday, citing the junta’s orders to compile military service lists and form militias.

Translated by Kalyar Lwin. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

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

Five days before Georgia planned to kill Willie Pye by lethal injection, Assistant Federal Public Defender Nathan Potek stood before a U.S. district judge and made a final pitch to save his client. Everyone, even a man condemned to die, was entitled to equal protection under the law, Potek said. Yet his client was a member of a “disfavored class” thanks to discriminatory actions by the state. And it was about to cost him his life.

Pye was sentenced to die in 1996 for murdering his former girlfriend, Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. His conviction raised red flags, from Pye’s low IQ score to his trial attorney’s alleged racism toward his own clients. Yet Potek wasn’t arguing that Pye faced racial discrimination or that his sentence violated the Eighth Amendment ban on executing people with intellectual disabilities. As far as the law was concerned, those claims were null and void.

Instead, Potek proposed a novel argument. Of the 41 people on Georgia’s death row, Pye was one of several who had exhausted their appeals. Yet Pye alone faced imminent execution while the others were shielded by a legal agreement with the state that had placed executions on hold. “There is no meaningful difference” between Pye and these other men, Potek said.

In many ways, Pye’s predicament came down to bad timing. Georgia’s moratorium dated back to March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic led the Georgia Supreme Court to declare a judicial emergency, halting executions. As months passed, death penalty lawyers became concerned over the growing number of clients whose cases were reaching their final appeals — and who would be hamstrung by restrictions on prison visitation that prevented their attorneys from preparing for clemency applications and late-stage litigation once executions restarted.

The eventual result was a written agreement in April 2021 between the Federal Defender Program in Atlanta and the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, which promised not to seek any new execution dates until the judicial emergency had been lifted, normal visitation had resumed, and the Covid vaccine had been made available to “all members of the public.”

Still, there was a catch: The agreement only applied to people whose appeals were exhausted during the judicial emergency, which was officially lifted in June 2021.

Today, the same visitation restrictions remain in place. The Georgia Department of Corrections does not allow as many visits as it did before the pandemic, which has “impaired counsel’s ability to … prepare for clemency proceedings and adequately represent their clients,” as the Georgia Supreme Court found. Yet Pye is not protected by the Covid-era contract. Because his appeals were exhausted in 2023, his execution will almost certainly move forward.

It was not long ago that Pye stood a good chance of getting off death row. As the federal defenders were negotiating the April 2021 agreement, a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was considering a legal challenge alleging that Pye’s trial attorney had provided ineffective representation. It was a long shot; although Pye’s attorney had failed him in profound ways, the barriers standing in the way of relief are hard to overcome. But that same month, the panel vacated Pye’s death sentence, sending the case back for resentencing. It was rare for a federal court to intervene when it came to such a Sixth Amendment claim, the panel acknowledged. “This is one of those rare cases.”

Pye’s victory was short-lived. At the urging of the attorney general’s office, the full circuit court reversed the panel’s order the following year on procedural grounds. Whatever the failures of Pye’s trial lawyer, it ruled, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, Pye was not entitled to relief after all.

If the reinstatement of Pye’s death sentence was devastating, there was an additional irony that proved especially cruel. Had the 11th Circuit simply rejected his appeal, Pye would have been protected by the agreement between the federal defenders and the state. Instead, the temporary relief led his case to fall through the cracks, placing him in line for execution. His trial lawyer’s failures had doomed him a second time.

With few good options, Pye’s lawyers challenged the looming execution using a civil rights claim ordinarily associated with class-action lawsuits. Under the 14th Amendment, Pye was entitled to equal protection under the law. By excluding Pye from the agreement, the state had created “a distinct, disfavored class of death row prisoners, one without the baseline guarantee of adequate representation,” Potek wrote in a federal court filing. This further violated Pye’s Fifth Amendment right to due process and deprived him of the fundamental right to life.

An oral argument on the matter was set for March 15 at the federal courthouse in Newnan, Georgia. Presiding over the hearing was Timothy Batten, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. A former trial attorney nominated by George W. Bush, Batten had presided over Pye’s federal appeals since 2013. He did not hide his skepticism of Potek’s argument.

“He’s already lost his right to life, right?” Batten asked. Potek conceded that while it was a lawful execution order, Pye was entitled to constitutional rights as long as he was still alive — and his disparate treatment ahead of his clemency hearing violated those rights. “I’m sure you would have cited it if there was any case in the country that was like this,” Batten said.

“Every card was stacked against him.”

Potek tried to impress upon the judge how hastily and opportunistically the state had moved to execute his client. As recently as late February, Pye’s lawyers were negotiating a potential settlement with the attorney general’s office to apply the Covid-era agreement to his case. But on February 27, lawyers for the attorney general abruptly ended the negotiations. Two days later, “with no notice,” the state obtained an execution order. Pye’s date was set for March 20 at 7 p.m. “They didn’t have to provide any notice, did they?” Batten said. “Not statutorily,” Potek said, but it was nonetheless “alarming” behavior. “That wasn’t alarming to me,” Batten replied bluntly. “So go on.”

The hearing lasted less than an hour. Pye’s argument was nothing more than a delay tactic, a lawyer for the attorney general’s office told the judge. “All of it is about more time to get ready for an execution he has known about for over 25 years.”

Outside the courtroom, anti-death penalty activist Cathy Harmon-Christian expressed dismay. The executive director of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, she was working to get word out about Pye’s case while organizing vigils for the night of the execution.

“There’s just so many problems with the case,” she said, none of which had been discussed at the hearing. And for all the ways in which the case was cast as unique, it was actually emblematic of problems that have plagued Georgia’s death penalty for generations. Pye’s trial attorney was not only ineffective. “He was a known racist,” Harmon-Christian said. “He spent very little time defending Willie.”

“Every card was stacked against him.”

The federal courthouse where the hearing took place is some 40 miles southwest of Atlanta, just off the historic town square in Newnan. The city has long boasted its claim as “the city of homes,” a nod to the antebellum architecture of its treasured old houses, a number of which survived the Civil War. A marble statue of a Confederate soldier still stands at the center of the original courthouse lawn. The memorial was vandalized in 2021, damaging the soldier’s musket. “It’s just there to piss off Black folks,” a county commissioner who proposed removing the statue told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “People are still fighting that war in their minds and in their hearts.”

The town of Griffin in neighboring Spalding County, where Pye was tried and convicted, moved its own Confederate monument to a cemetery in the 1960s, but local leaders have been loath to break with the past. In 2018, a video went viral of a former city commissioner repeatedly using the N-word while endorsing the designation of April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. The official, who was directing his comments at a Black commissioner, followed up by clarifying, “I don’t use that word anymore.”

Racism and the American death penalty have always been inextricable, particularly in the South, where historians have traced a line connecting slavery, lynchings, and executions. Georgia, whose earliest death penalty statutes applied to crimes committed by slaves or free people of color, has done more to shape the “modern” death penalty than perhaps any other state. It was a Georgia case that led to McCleskey v. Kemp, a Supreme Court ruling that insulated the death penalty from race-based legal challenges by forcing defendants to prove that racial bias had been intentional.

McCleskey was decided less than a decade before a jury dominated by white men sent Pye to death row. He was one of several Black men sentenced to death in Spalding County after being represented by Johnny Mostiler, a lawyer alleged to be openly racist toward his clients. In 2008, Georgia executed a man named Curtis Osborne despite allegations that Mostiler had repeatedly referred to him as a “little n–” who deserved to die. A lawyer who was briefly appointed to represent Osborne alongside Mostiler recalled a conversation in which Mostiler “said he thought young black men were lazy and asked me why I thought that was so.” In 2016, Kenneth Fults was executed despite accounts that Mostiler had slept through much of his trial — and despite statements from a juror who later said he was committed to voting for death “because that’s what that n– deserved.”

Mostiler, who died in 2000, was questioned by a trial judge about his use of racial slurs after one of his clients raised concerns. According to the transcript, Mostiler said that he did not “use those terms out in public.”

Colleagues and contemporaries of Mostiler’s have denied that he was racist against his clients. In a phone call, William McBroom, the former district attorney who tried both Pye and Fults, adamantly rejected the idea that racism infected the cases. “Johnny Mostiler did more for minorities in Spalding County than any other lawyer that I know of,” he said. Mostiler was always willing to give free legal advice, McBroom added. “I don’t see how he made a living until he got the public defender job.”

Whether Mostiler was motivated by prejudice or not, the record in Pye’s case reveals staggering failures. Pye was convicted after a three-day trial in which Mostiler called no witnesses apart from Pye himself. While he called several of Pye’s family members to testify at the sentencing stage, Mostiler failed to investigate and present crucial mitigating evidence that could have led the jury to spare his client’s life.

There is also reason to question the theory the state presented at trial. Pye’s previous appellate attorneys uncovered evidence showing that the star witness in the case — a teenager named Anthony Freeman, who agreed to testify against Pye as part of a plea deal — gave shifting accounts of the crime in the years leading up to Pye’s trial. Years after Pye was sentenced to die, Freeman told Pye’s attorneys that his testimony was coerced by the district attorney and law enforcement, who “made it clear that Willie Pye was the person they were after.”

In the early morning hours of November 16, 1993, a local farmer in Griffin went out to check on his livestock when he spotted a body lying on the dirt road. A sheriff’s deputy identified the body as Alicia Lynn Yarbrough, who was just short of her 21st birthday. She had been shot three times, the fatal shot tearing through her abdomen.

The mother of three young children, Yarbrough had struggled with addiction and abusive relationships. Police quickly zeroed in on her ex-boyfriend, 28-year-old Willie Pye, who was known to sell drugs around town. After hearing that police were looking for him, he went to the station to be interviewed the same day, telling investigators that he had not seen Yarbrough for about two weeks.

But this was a lie. As Pye would later admit, he’d seen Yarbrough the night before, at a local motel where he sometimes stayed under an alias. Pye had been hanging out that night with a man named Chester Adams and a teenager named Anthony Freeman. According to Pye, the pair dropped him off at the motel and later returned accompanied by Yarbrough. Although Pye and Yarbrough were no longer together, they still hooked up from time to time. Yarbrough had sex with all three of them that night in exchange for crack cocaine, Pye said. After that, she left with Adams and Freeman. Pye swore he never saw her again.

Adams was questioned on the same day as Pye. He denied his involvement but later pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life. But Freeman, who was being held in jail on a separate charge, implicated both men and himself. Although he was 15, he was only in 8th grade and small for his age. “When I saw him, I thought he was about 12 years old,” one sheriff’s investigator later testified. Freeman said that Pye had gone to the house Yarbrough shared with another man, robbed it, and then forced Yarbrough to the motel, where all three of them raped her. Afterward, he said, Pye drove her to a field and shot her. On the basis of Freeman’s account, Pye was indicted for malice murder. Prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty.

Representing Pye was 49-year-old Mostiler, Spalding County’s lone public defender. The chain-smoking, handlebar mustache-wearing son of a Georgia lawmaker, Mostiler “never conformed to the stereotype of the public defender,” as The American Prospect recounted in a lengthy profile published after his death. “Decked out in flashy jewelry and a black cowboy hat, he arrived at the Spalding Courthouse in a mustard green 1972 Cadillac El Dorado convertible.”

“We’ll enter pleas all week, at a rate of about 10 to 12 every 45 minutes.”

Mostiler had made a lucrative deal with the county to take over the entire indigent defense docket for a flat fee. The goal, he said, was to save money for the county. But for many of Mostiler’s clients, the result was life-ruining. His caseload was preposterous even without the addition of private clients. Spalding County had higher crime rates than many neighboring jurisdictions, and Mostiler was handling up to 900 cases a year. He solved this problem through a steady stream of guilty pleas.

“We’ll enter pleas all week, at a rate of about 10 to 12 every 45 minutes,” Mostiler told the Prospect. Many of the pleas came at the last minute, he added, since “defendants don’t get the fear of God in them ’til a trial is coming up.”

Pye refused to make a deal with the state. “I’m guilty of … not turning in what I know that night about Adams and Freeman bringing Alicia Yarbrough to my motel room,” he insisted on the stand. “But I never considered making no kind of deal because I did not commit no murder.”

Prosecuting the case was McBroom, Griffin’s judicial circuit district attorney, who had a reputation for aggressively seeking death sentences. In his first five years in office, McBroom sent five people to death row, including three of Mostiler’s clients. In his opening statement, McBroom laid out the evidence, along with Pye’s motive: He harbored a grudge against Yarbrough and her live-in boyfriend, Charles Puckett, because Yarbrough had recently given birth to a baby and Puckett signed the birth certificate. “Pye thinks it’s his child, and he’s mad about it,” McBroom said. Pye decided to rob the two, then raped and killed Yarbrough in a brutal act of vengeance.

The evidence against Pye was considerable. There was DNA from sperm matching Pye, along with witnesses who saw him with a distinctive .22 caliber gun that allegedly matched the bullets used to kill Yarbrough. But the case turned on the testimony of Freeman, the only one who claimed to have witnessed the murder. In convoluted testimony, he said that he, Pye, and Chester abducted Yarbrough from her home, gang raped her at the motel, drove around, and then returned to rape her again. Later, they drove Yarbrough to a cow pasture. “All of us got out. He told her to lay flat on the ground, face down, and he shot her.”

Pye was swiftly convicted and sentenced to die.

Pye arrived on death row as executions were peaking across the country. During his first decade at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, the state killed 19 of his neighbors. Although executions have declined ever since, in the nearly 30 years Pye has spent on death row, 56 people have been put to death.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision that might have allowed Pye to get off death row. In Atkins v. Virginia, the court ruled that executing people with intellectual disabilities was a violation of the Eighth Amendment. In a series of mental health evaluations, Pye’s post-conviction attorneys found that he had an IQ score of 68. But efforts to challenge his conviction on that basis were denied.

Post-conviction attorneys found that Pye had an IQ score of 68.

The question of Pye’s intellectual abilities was one of many things that Mostiler should have investigated before trial. But there was no record of a mental health evaluation or efforts to obtain Pye’s educational records.

The more Pye’s post-conviction attorneys learned about Mostiler’s work, the more disturbing it became. Despite his client’s insistence that he did not shoot Yarbrough, Mostiler did not appear to have investigated an alternate theory of the crime. The lawyers uncovered additional statements given by Freeman between his initial arrest in 1993 and Pye’s 1996 trial, which were never turned over to the defense. In one, given during a mental health evaluation, Freeman told a psychiatrist that he and Adams had picked up Yarbrough on the night in question, and she had gone with them willingly, later doing cocaine and having sex with them and Pye. The account echoed what Pye said at trial.

The lawyers also spoke to a friend and neighbor of Yarbrough’s, who said that on the night she was killed, Yarbrough came over to use the phone. “Lynn made some calls to a hotel and asked for Willie’s room,” the friend said. She assumed Yarbrough was asking to be picked up so that she could go get drugs.

Pye’s lawyers also collected dozens of affidavits from Pye’s relatives, neighbors, social workers, and others who filled in the harrowing details of his family history, which was marked by generational trauma, extreme poverty, and violence. Pye’s mother, Lolla Mae, was raised by her grandparents, who lived on a white man’s farm where her grandfather worked the land “in exchange for some of the food and a place for the family to stay.” By the time she was 8 years old, she picked peanuts and cotton alongside her siblings.

Pye’s father, who spent years working on a chain gang, was incarcerated when Pye was born. According to affidavits given to Pye’s attorneys, he drank heavily and beat his wife and kids. In one affidavit, a neighbor recalled seeing family fights spill outside. “You would see the boys attacking their father on the porch to get him away from their mother. … As the older boys grew up, they too began to drink heavily and that made the situation in the house more explosive.”

Uncovering evidence of family trauma is a critical component of any modern death penalty trial. Capital defense teams often include a mitigation specialist, who is tasked with investigating a client’s family history, particularly any evidence of abuse or neglect. But in the mid-1990s, most death penalty jurisdictions had not meaningfully incorporated such work into capital defense. In Spalding County, Mostiler handled death penalty cases without so much as a second attorney, let alone a mitigation specialist.

Billing records reviewed by Pye’s post-conviction attorneys showed a shocking lack of attention to the case. With the trial just weeks away, Mostiler had not yet pursued “a single lead provided by Mr. Pye,” the attorneys wrote in a petition challenging Pye’s conviction. “And it was not until five days before the scheduled start of jury selection that [Mostiler] began to identify mitigation witnesses.”

Pye’s case was described as “a shocking relic of the past.”

This work mostly fell to Mostiler’s investigator, a former cop named Dewey Yarbrough (no relation to Alicia). According to one of Pye’s sisters, Yarbrough asked her to think of good character witnesses for him. “It was short notice, but I tried,” she told Pye’s attorneys. In a deposition, Yarbrough estimated that he met with “maybe four” of Pye’s family members and “even tried to make arrangements” for them to attend the trial. But he did not find them particularly helpful. “I can remember thinking, and I want to say this was during, right before the sentencing phase, you know, I don’t care about going back over there and trying to get them here.”

Justice Judith Pryor, part of the original three-judge panel that vacated Pye’s death sentence, rejected Yarbrough’s characterization in a lengthy dissent to the 11th Circuit’s reversal. “The record unmistakably demonstrates that any failure to marshal family support … was due not to the family’s unwillingness to cooperate but rather to Mr. Yarbrough’s lack of care,” she wrote.

Yarbrough did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

McBroom vociferously denied withholding evidence from Pye’s defense, including the shifting statements from Freeman. “That’s a bunch of baloney,” he said. Besides, he added, the issue had been litigated and the courts upheld Pye’s conviction anyway. He rejected the notion that Freeman’s testimony had been coerced and defended his selection of a nearly all-white jury, pointing out that the victim was Black. “Race is not an issue in this case.”

As for Pye’s upbringing and concerns over insufficient mitigation, McBroom was unmoved. “The family was just a crime family,” he said. He knew plenty of people who grew up impoverished and abused and did not go on to commit murder. Finally, he dismissed the notion that Pye’s IQ should have precluded him from getting the death penalty. “The only intellectual disability he has is a condition called MAH — Mean as Hell.”

Barring any last-minute intervention, Pye, now 59, will die at 7 p.m. tonight.

Judge Timothy Batten denied Pye’s appeal a few hours after the hearing in Newnan. “While one might characterize Pye’s plight as unfair in relation to the few death row inmates covered by the agreement, it does not shock the conscience,” he wrote. Potek appealed to the 11th Circuit, which declined to grant a stay of execution.

On Tuesday, the Georgia Board of Pardon and Paroles held a clemency hearing for Pye. The board members have the sole authority to grant clemency — the governor cannot act alone. In a press release, the board rejected Pye’s appeal for mercy.

Clemency proceedings are closed to the public, but the Department of Corrections released the clemency application prepared by Pye’s attorneys. It called Pye’s case “a shocking relic of the past” and included letters from three jurors who sent him to death row but now oppose his execution. “Many of the jurors felt his attorney Johnny Mostiler did an inadequate job of defending him at trial,” one woman wrote. “It was a serious case but Mostiler could not have cared less.”

Another woman, who was the only Black member of the jury, said she wished jurors had heard about Pye’s background and cognitive impairments. “Mental health is so critical to why people behave the way they do,” she wrote. “How someone is raised matters.”

Through Cathy Harmon-Christian, the anti-death penalty activist, Pye’s relatives declined to be interviewed. According to the clemency petition, “Mr. Pye and his family were relieved and overjoyed” when the 11th Circuit briefly vacated his death sentence. Those who remain in touch with Pye described his positive impact on their lives and those of his neighbors on death row.

“I’ve spent 30 years or so in the prison visitation room with Uncle Will,” one niece wrote. “I’ve seen the way other inmates greet him with a smile, constantly introduce their visitors to him, and share with me how Uncle Will keeps them laughing and has been a source of hope and inspiration.”

“A child gets to a certain age where they need to know the story about what happened.”

Family members on the other side of the case feel differently about Pye. In a phone call, Alicia Yarbrough’s oldest daughter, Tawanna Bell, described how her mother’s murder impacted her and her siblings: “She got took away before she got a chance to even be a mom. Before she even got a chance to make memories with me.” Bell was just 5 years old and living with her grandmother when Yarbrough was killed. But it was her mom who did her hair and got her ready for her first day of school that fall. “She had me looking like a doll,” she said.

The murder devastated Yarbrough’s mother. Gernetta Starks, Bell’s cousin, said the crime “ate away” at her for the rest of her life. “When the police came to inform her that her daughter was murdered — the way she was murdered — the whole family had to console her,” she said. Now Pye’s looming execution was opening old wounds. For Bell, seeing the case back in the news has revealed horrific details of her mother’s murder that she’d never heard before. “I feel like they didn’t explain a lot of stuff to the kids because they wanted to protect them,” Starks said. “But a child gets to a certain age where they need to know the story about what happened.”

Although they support Pye’s execution, both women said his death sentence has done little to ease the trauma the family has lived with for 30 years. A few years ago, Starks launched an advocacy organization inspired by Yarbrough called When She Survives, which seeks to help victims of domestic violence and provide the kind of support they never received. Bell plans to witness the execution alongside her siblings. But she does not expect it to heal her pain.

“We are a forgiving family. But how do you forgive somebody that simply didn’t have any regard for your family member?”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Liliana Segura.

Three men carrying guns stormed 47-year-old Nammye Hkun Jaw Li’s computer shop in Kachin state’s Mogaung township on Monday. 

“Three men came and said they wanted to print on vinyl and shot him dead. They shot him in his stomach twice, and when he did not die, they also shot him in the head,” said a source close to the family in Nam Ma Tee village, asking to remain anonymous for security reasons. 

Nammye Hkun Jaw Li was active in anti-military protests in Kachin state and a well-known community leader. He was also a former township executive of the Kachin Baptist Convention and a member of a community-based anti-drug organization called Pat Jasan.

Nam Ma Tee villagers are still investigating the identity of the men who killed Nammye Hkun Jaw Li, who is survived by his wife and three children.

Political fighting in Kachin state has taken a religious turn before.

Nearly two years after the country’s 2021 military coup, the junta ordered the arrest of prominent Christian leader Hkalam Samson on Dec. 4, 2022 for his close ties to the Kachin Independence Army. He was sentenced to six years in prison on April 7, 2023.

The area has also seen a resurgence in fighting as rebels take territory from the junta military. The Kachin Independence Army has seized a major road and 14 junta camps in addition to shutting down a regional airport with missile attacks in Kachin state. Junta troops have retaliated with indiscriminate attacks on civilians, torching homes and dropping bombs on villages in February. 

Most recently, junta shelling in Kachin state’s Kan Ni village killed two mothers and their three children, villagers told RFA on Wednesday.

More than 10,000 residents have fled their homes in fear of battles across six townships, including Bhamo and Hpakant, according to a joint statement by civil societies in Kachin state.

A March 16 statement by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported 11 civilians were killed in Kachin state from March 1 to 15 by heavy junta artillery and airstrikes.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 

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

Residents living in the central northern province, which borders China, will have to wear masks and children will be confined to their homes, as schools and daycare centers have been temporarily shuttered. Sources said they were not sure if the lockdown applied outside of Ryanggang province.

“In early March, children showing symptoms of coronavirus died one after another in Paegam county,” a resident of the province, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told RFA Korean. “The provincial party committee took emergency quarantine measures through the quarantine center.” 

According to the resident, quarantine workers that went house-to-house informed residents that three children in Paegam county died along with two more in nearby Kapsan county after exhibiting coronavirus-like symptoms. Another Ryanggang resident confirmed how the news was spread. 

‘Fever cases’

Residents, however, say they believe the situation could be much worse than reported, the first resident said.

For the first two-and-a-half years of the pandemic, North Korea claimed outwardly to be completely “virus free,” but in April 2022, Pyongyang admitted the virus had spread to all areas of the country and declared a state of “maximum emergency” the following month. 

During the entirety of the emergency, the government kept an official tally of “fever cases,” but its official total on global COVID-19 case tracking websites remained at or near zero. Experts said it was likely that cases could not be confirmed due to a lack of reliable testing capacity. 

Prior to the emergency, when patients in North Korean hospitals with COVID symptoms died, the hospital would quickly cremate the bodies so that they could not be tested for the disease, then attributed the deaths to other causes.

Though authorities acknowledge that five children have died, residents think that the response points to many more casualties, as daycare centers, kindergartens and schools will be closed for a 10-day period, and everyone will be required to wear masks or face punishment, the resident said.

He said that the quarantine center in the city of Hyesan ordered all children to be kept at home as much as possible because they are at greater risk than adults.

“Some are complaining about how children are supposed to be kept indoors when the adults have to do whatever it takes to make a living and find food,” the resident said. “On the other hand, some others agree that the temporary school closure is the best option in the absence of medicine.”

The quarantine center also promoted personal hygiene practices when it went house-to-house, the second Ryanggang resident told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely. 

“The quarantine workers warned of the seriousness of the situation and they also shared the news that several children infected with the coronavirus had died in Paegam and Kapsan counties,” she said. “There are many patients around me who are coughing and suffering from high fevers, similar to coronavirus symptoms.”

The second resident said things were just as bad now as they were during the pandemic. 

At that time, the border with China was closed and trade had been suspended, so there were shortages of everything. Additionally, lockdowns at home meant that people could not go out to earn money to support themselves.

“There is no money now, just like during the big outbreak,” she said. “And even if you have money it is difficult to get medicine.”

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

Oleksandr Pavlyuk, named Ukraine's ground commander on February 11, said in televised remarks on March 6 that the military is now focusing on stabilizing front-line positions and regrouping troops with a goal to “conduct counteroffensive operations this year."

After a successful counteroffensive against Russian forces occupying regions in the east and south of the country, Ukraine’s progress has slowed over recent months, with leaders in Kyiv pleading with Western allies for deliveries of badly needed ammunition and air defense systems.

Also on March 6, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he and visiting Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis witnessed a deadly Russian missile attack while visiting the Black Sea port city of Odesa.

Ukrainian authorities said at least five people were killed in the attack.

Mitsotakis confirmed that Russian missiles attacked the city while he and Zelenskiy were present, saying "we had explosions very close to us."

Mitsotakis added that he and the Ukrainian leader, as well as their teams, did not have time to take shelter, calling the incident "an astonishing experience."

The Russian military said its forces had struck a storage facility that was housing unmanned Ukrainian boats, although the claim could not immediately be verified.

"The goal has been achieved. The target has been hit," the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi amid tensions over Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant, which is under Russian occupation with IAEA observers stationed at the site

Russian state media said the meeting took place at Putin’s residence in Sochi and that Aleksei Likhachev, the head of the Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom, also participated. Grossi on February 23 called for "maximum military restraint" after a string of powerful explosions occurred near the nuclear plant that week.

“The situation continues to be very fragile,” Grossi told reporters on March 4 as he announced his trip to meet Putin

Overnight, Ukrainian and Russian forces traded drone attacks that left thousands of people in western Ukraine without electricity and a gas storage depot at a Russian metal plant on fire.

Ukraine's air defenses shot down most of the drones launched by Russia in its latest wave of strikes at its territory on March 6, but the attack still left thousands of people without electricity hundreds of kilometers from the front line in the east, the military and regional officials said.

Air defenses downed 38 out of the 42 drones launched by Russia at eight regions early on March 6, the General Staff of Ukraine's military reported.

"As a result of combat actions, 38 Shaheds were shot down in the Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kherson, Khmelnytskiy, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Vinnytsya, and Sumy regions," the military said in a statement, adding that information about potential casualties and damages would be updated during the day.

Russian troops in the occupied part of the eastern Donetsk region also launched five S-300 surface-to-air missiles at Ukrainian targets, the military said, without elaborating.

However, debris from six Russian drones downed in the western Khmelnitskiy region, some 800 kilometers away from the eastern battlefields, fell on a power substation, triggering a fire that interrupted the power supply to more than 14,000 people in the region, Ukraine's Energy Ministry reported.

Although the fire had been largely extinguished later in the day, more than 2,500 people were still without power, the ministry said.

Farther east, Russian forces continued the indiscriminate shelling of civilian settlements near the front line in Donetsk, regional authorities said, killing at least one person on March 6.

In the village of Netaylovye, a 63-year-old man was wounded by Russian shelling and died on his way to the hospital, regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said.

In Russia, a gasoline storage depot in Kursk region near the Ukrainian border caught fire after being hit by two Ukrainian drones, regional Governor Roman Starovoit said on Telegram, adding that there were no casualties.

The reservoir was located on the territory of the Mikhailov mining and processing integrated plant in the city of Zheleznogorsk, which is one of Russia's largest industrial facilities producing and enriching iron ore.

Kyiv has not officially commented on the strike, but an anonymous source from Ukraine's Main Directorate of Military Intelligence (HUR) was quoted by Reuters as saying it was responsible for the attack.

The strike would be the HUR's second success in as many days after Russian patrol vessel Sergei Kotov was reportedly sunk early on March 5 off the coast of Moscow-occupied Crimea by what the HUR said were high-tech Ukrainian sea drones.

Feodosia is located near the Kerch Strait, which links the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

With reporting by Reuters

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

This jarring picture, discordant and hopelessly at odds, is increasingly running down the low stocks of credibility US diplomats have in either the Israel-Hamas conflict, or much else in Middle Eastern politics.  Comments such as these from US Vice President Kamala Harris from March 3, made at Selma in Alabama, illustrate the problem: “As I have said many times, too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.  And just a few days ago, we saw hungry, desperate people approach aid trucks, simply trying to secure food for their families after weeks of nearly no aid reaching Northern Gaza. And they were met with gunfire and chaos.”

Harris goes on to speak of broken hearts for the victims, for the innocents, for those “suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe”.  A forced, hammed up moral register is struck.  “People in Gaza are starving.  The conditions are inhumane.  And our common humanity compels us to act.”

It was an occasion for the Vice President to mention that the US Department of Defense had “carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian assistance, and the United States will continue with these airdrops.”  Further work would also be expended on getting “a new route by sea to deliver aid.”

It is only at this point that Harris introduces the lumbering elephant in the room: “And the Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid.  No excuses.”  They had to “open new border crossings”, “not impose any unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid” and “ensure humanitarian personnel, sites, and convoys are not targeted.”  Basic services had to be restored, and order promoted in the strip “so more food, water, and fuel can reach those in need.”

In remarks made at Hagerstown Regional Airport in Maryland, President Joe Biden told reporters that he was “working with them [the Israelis] very hard.  We’re going to get more – we must get more aid into Gaza.  There’s no excuses.  None.”

In a New Yorker interview, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby keeps to the same script, claiming that discussions with the Israelis “in private are frank and very forthright.  I think they understand our concerns.”  Kirby proceeds to fantasise, fudging the almost sneering attitude adopted by Israel towards US demands.  “Even though there needs to be more aid, and even though there needs to be fewer civilian casualties, the Israelis have, in many ways, been receptive to our messages.”

The other side of this rusted coin of US policy advocates something less than human.  The common humanity there is tethered to aiding the very power that is proving instrumental in creating conditions of catastrophe.  The right to self-defence is reiterated as a chant, including the war goals of Israel which have artificially drawn a distinction between Hamas military and political operatives from that of the Palestinian population being eradicated.

Harris is always careful to couple any reproachful remarks about Israel with an acceptance of their stated policy: that Hamas must be eliminated.  Hamas, rather than being a protean force running on the fumes of history, resentment and belief, was merely “a brutal terrorist organization that has vowed to repeat October 7^th again and again until Israel is annihilated.”  It had inflicted suffering on the people of Gaza and continued to hold Israeli hostages.

Whatever note of rebuke directed against the Netanyahu government, it is clear that Israel knows how far it can go.  It can continue to rely on the US veto in the UN Security Council.  It can dictate the extent of aid and the conditions of its delivery into Gaza, which is merely seen as succour for an enemy it is trying to crush.  While alarm about shooting desperate individuals crowding aid convoys will be noted, little will come of the consternation.  The very fact that the US Airforce has been brought into the program of aid delivery suggests an ignominious capitulation, a very public impotence.

Jeremy Konyndyk, former chief of the USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Obama administration gives his unflattering judgment on this point.  “When the US government has to use tactics that it otherwise used to circumvent the Soviets and Berlin and circumvent ISIS in Syria and Iraq, that should prompt some really hard questions about the state of US policy.”

In his remarks to The Independent, Konyndyk finds the airdrop method “the most expensive and least effective way to get aid to a population.  We almost never did it because it is such an in-extremis tool.”  Even more disturbing for him was the fact that this woefully imperfect approach was being taken to alleviate the suffering caused by an ally of the United States, one that had made “a policy choice” in not permitting “consistent humanitarian access” and the opening of border crossings.

Even as this in extremis tool is being used, US made military hardware continues to be used at will by the Israel Defence Forces.  The point was not missed on Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch: “We have a situation where the US is airdropping aid on day one, and Israel is dropping bombs on day two.  And the American taxpayer is paying for the aid and the bombs.”

The chroniclers of history can surely only jot down with grim irony instances where desperate, hunger-crazed Palestinians scrounging for US aid are shot by made-in-USA ammunition.

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

Russia is increasing its cooperation with China in 5G and satellite technology and this could facilitate Moscow's military aggression against Ukraine, a report by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) security think tank warns.

The report, published on March 1, says that although battlefield integration of 5G networks may face domestic hurdles in Russia, infrastructure for Chinese aid to Russian satellite systems already exists and can "facilitate Russian military action in Ukraine."

China, which maintains close ties with Moscow, has refused to condemn Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and offered economic support to Russia that has helped the Kremlin survive waves of sweeping Western sanctions.

Beijing has said that it does not sell lethal weapons to Russia for its war against Ukraine, but Western governments have repeatedly accused China of aiding in the flow of technology to Russia's war effort despite Western sanctions.

The RUSI report details how the cooperation between Russia and China in 5G and satellite technology can also help Russia on the battlefield in Ukraine.

"Extensive deployment of drones and advanced telecommunications equipment have been crucial on all fronts in Ukraine, from intelligence collection to air-strike campaigns," the report says.

"These technologies, though critical, require steady connectivity and geospatial support, making cooperation with China a potential solution to Moscow's desire for a military breakthrough."

According to the report, 5G network development has gained particular significance in Russo-Chinese strategic relations in recent years, resulting in a sequence of agreements between Chinese technology giant Huawei and Russian companies MTS and Beeline, both under sanctions by Canada for being linked to Russia's military-industrial complex.

5G is a technology standard for cellular networks, which allows a higher speed of data transfer than its predecessor, 4G. According to the RUSI’s report, 5G "has the potential to reshape the battlefield" through enhanced tracking of military objects, faster transferring and real-time processing of large sensor datasets and enhanced communications.

These are "precisely the features that could render Russo-Chinese 5G cooperation extremely useful in a wartime context -- and therefore create a heightened risk for Ukraine," the report adds.

Although the report says that there are currently "operational and institutional constraints" to Russia's battlefield integration of 5G technology, it has advantages which make it an "appealing priority" for Moscow, Jack Crawford, a research analyst at RUSI and one of the authors of the report, said.

"As Russia continues to seek battlefield advantages over Ukraine, recent improvements in 5G against jamming technologies make 5G communications -- both on the ground and with aerial weapons and vehicles -- an even more appealing priority," Crawford told RFE/RL in an e-mailed response.

Satellite technology, however, is already the focus of the collaboration between China and Russia, the report says, pointing to recent major developments in the collaboration between the Russian satellite navigation system GLONASS and its Chinese equivalent, Beidou.

In 2018, Russia and China agreed on the joint application of GLONASS/Beidou and in 2022 decided to build three Russian monitoring stations in China and three Chinese stations in Russia -- in the city of Obninsk, about 100 kilometers southwest of Moscow, the Siberian city of Irkutsk, and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia's Far East.