A new report authored by Public Citizen Health Care Policy Advocate Eagan Kemp highlights the dangers posed by the men and women whom Trump has put in charge of our health care agencies and the threat they pose to patients, providers and the programs on which they rely.

The report includes details on:

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promotion of conspiracy theory and dangerous anti-science views before his confirmation and during his early months as head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
• Mehmet Oz’s dangerous views on privatization of Medicare and conflicts of interest, and his early efforts to undermine the programs he is supposed to protect as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
• Jim O’Neill’s fringe views and significant ties to for-profit biomedical companies and the dangers they could pose as he serves as Deputy Secretary of HHS.
• Casey Means’s lack of qualifications for Surgeon General and misinformed and conspiratorial thinking on public health issues.

“Trump has nominated unqualified and dangerous people to serve in the most important health positions in the country,” said Kemp “From massive cuts to Medicaid and the ACA, layoffs of key staff, and failures to adequately engage with real emergencies, like the ongoing measles outbreak, America is reaping the bitter fruit of Trump’s terrible cabal. It is clear the Trump Administration will continue to exacerbate existing gaps in our health care system and risk millions more lives. People across the country are already pushing back against their terrible actions, and this must continue if we are to correct course and take back our health care system.”

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

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.

They went to a Las Vegas conference this month that promised pathways to an “unlimited lifespan.” But at least two attendees left in ambulances and were hospitalized in critical condition, requiring ventilators to breathe.

The two women, who are recovering, fell ill after receiving peptide injections at a conference booth. The doctor who ran the booth was a Los Angeles physician specializing in “age reversal” therapies who did not have permission to practice medicine or dispense prescriptions in Nevada. Public health investigators are trying to determine if anyone else who attended the Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival experienced a similar illness.

The investigation comes as peptides grow in popularity, thanks in part to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s promotion of the amino acid chains as a way to fight aging and chronic disease. Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has vowed to end the Food and Drug Administration’s “war on peptides” and other alternative health therapies. Kent Holtorf, the doctor overseeing the booth where the women became ill, also has called for less regulation of alternative therapies and has criticized the FDA for blocking compounds he sees as lifesaving.

Holtorf told ProPublica he is cooperating with the investigation. “Of course, I want to get to the bottom of it. But almost assuredly it will come out that it was not the peptides.”

He said he became convinced the peptides weren’t the cause of the severe reactions after plugging everything he knows about the incident into an artificial intelligence app, which he said gave him a 57-page report that “basically says that it is impossible it was the peptides.” He refused to comment on what the report attributed the illnesses to.

“I don’t think it was the peptides, but I don’t want to try and push the blame and say it wasn’t us,” he said. “We are reassessing everything we are doing.”

Holtorf acknowledged he is not licensed in Nevada but said he hired a practitioner who is and did not personally write prescriptions or administer therapies at his booth. “I knew what was going on but was not hands on,” he said.

He described the situation as “horrific” and “unacceptable” and said he’s “terribly sorry.”

The FDA has approved dozens of peptide-based medications for treating serious health problems such as cancer, obesity and diabetes. But peptide therapies for anti-aging and regenerative health are largely made by compounding pharmacists who use peptide components to formulate drugs that aren’t commercially available or approved for that particular use. Compounded drugs are not reviewed for safety and efficacy by the FDA. The agency also has found “significant safety risks” with at least 18 of the most popular peptide compounding components.

“Anyone who undergoes any sort of medical treatment, no matter how benign, needs to be very wary that even the most benign intervention can have fatal side effects,” said Dr. Amy Gutman, a Florida emergency room doctor who speaks about metabolic research and ketogenic diets and appeared at RAADFest. “And if you are in a hotel and don’t have lifesaving equipment near you, then that is a risk you have to be aware of.”

The two women, a 38-year-old from California and a 51-year-old from Nevada, received injections on July 13 at RAADFest, which is organized by an Arizona-based nonprofit that has built a community hoping to cheat death. According to a police report, both were injected at a booth run by Holtorf, who is licensed in California but not Nevada. Holtorf’s advocacy for alternative therapies has invited controversy in the past, including his criticism of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine in a Fox News interview in 2009. More recently, his practice was advised by the Federal Trade Commission to cease making claims on its website that his peptide therapies could treat or prevent COVID-19. Holtorf said he removed the claims from his website even though he still believes certain peptides can be beneficial in treating COVID-19 and other viral infections.

Both the Southern Nevada Health District and the Nevada Board of Pharmacy confirmed they are investigating what led to the hospitalizations after being notified by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police that possibly as many as seven people at the conference were hospitalized. According to the police report, detectives were unable to confirm whether additional attendees got sick.

Investigators are examining whether the illnesses were caused by an infection, contamination related to the injections or an issue with the medication itself, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. The two women who were taken by ambulance to the hospital reported feeling as if their tongues were swelling and had trouble breathing and increased heart rates. By the time they reached the hospital, one was already intubated and the other had lost muscle control in her neck and couldn’t open her eyes or communicate with doctors, according to the police report.

Holtorf said he was “so freaked out” by what happened because none of the women’s symptoms “made any sense.” In 30 years of providing such treatments, he said he’s never seen such a reaction.

Event organizer James Strole, an Arizona businessman who has built a 50-year career selling the promise of eternal life to followers, said the two patients are recovering after several days in the hospital. He said “it’s not clear the people got sick as a result of treatment from Dr. Holtorf,” adding he’s “anxious” for the illnesses to be “deeply investigated.” He said nothing similar has happened in the 10 years he has been producing RAADFest.

This is the first year Holtorf offered therapies at the conference, Strole said. He added that Holtorf provided the therapies to 60 people at the event and has attempted to reach them to learn whether they experienced any problems. Holtorf said only six patients received peptides.

Strole said the coalition’s science board scrutinizes therapy providers before granting them permission to operate a booth in the conference’s exhibition hall, which organizers referred to as a clinic.

“The big concern is safety,” he said. “We look at who is doing the administering, whether it’s an injection or supplement. We look at the person and the company itself, what the efficacy is, how they operate, their safety measures. We look at all that.”

Strole said peptides are considered “generally safe” when taken under the direction of a doctor, adding that he takes them regularly. Holtorf also said he believes they are safe and that they saved his life when he was a young man suffering from a severe illness.

A review by ProPublica of both the pharmacy and medical board license databases showed no Nevada licenses for Holtorf or his medical practice. Out-of-state doctors who come to provide care at a conference such as RAADfest are required to obtain a special event license from the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners. (As of Friday, 103 doctors had obtained such a license.) To dispense or possess pharmaceuticals, practitioners must also be licensed by the Nevada Board of Pharmacy. RAADFest’s organizers, however, said they were unaware that Holtorf is not licensed to provide medical care or dispense medications in the state.

“In order to practice medicine in the state, you must be licensed,” said David Wuest, executive secretary of the Nevada Board of Pharmacy.

The Nevada Legislature has passed stricter laws as alternative therapies have become popular outside traditional medical settings. In 2017, for example, the state banned so-called Botox parties, requiring the anti-wrinkle injections only be administered in a medical office or spa equipped to deal with life-threatening emergencies. But beyond its standard medical licensing requirements, the state doesn’t have rules governing an event like RAADFest, where attendees receive an array of anti-aging therapies including gene therapies, peptide injections, dialysis-like blood detoxification, bone scans and light therapy.

Strole said he wasn’t aware that providers need a special in-state license to provide the type of therapies Holtorf offered, which he described as “neutraceuticals.”

“I’ve never heard they had to get from the state permission to do that under the auspices of giving a treatment of that nature, that’s not actually treating some disease or something,” Strole said.

According to the police report, Holtorf contracted with a Nevada-licensed nurse practitioner, who administered the injection to one of the women. He also contracted with another doctor, who mixed the vials and administered the injection to the second woman, the report said. That doctor does not appear to have the necessary Nevada licenses.

Holtorf declined to comment on the practitioners he hired for the event, other than to say he had worked with the doctor in the past.

Wuest said multiple providers might be investigated, but he wouldn’t confirm whether Holtorf is a subject of the probe. The board also is investigating whether the therapy provided to the patients required a medical or pharmaceutical license. The FDA is assisting in the investigation to determine what was in the injections, including whether it was a manufactured pharmaceutical or a compounded medication, Wuest said.

Holtorf’s medical practice and the peptide company he founded are affiliated with an organization, Forgotten Formula, that asserts a constitutional right to provide treatments as they see fit. On its website, the private membership association warns “all bodies in the public sector” that they “do not have any jurisdiction” over their doctors. “All doctors, healers, and members are protected under the shield of this organization,” the website says. “We operate member to member. Ignoring this disclaimer can lead to legal consequences against the party at fault.”

According to the police report, Holtorf told officers he obtained the peptides dispensed at the festival from Forgotten Formula. In the interview with ProPublica, however, he denied that, saying he’s not sure which of the many manufacturers he works with provided the peptides used at the booth.

The women received different peptide concoctions, according to the police report. Both included at least one component described by the FDA as posing significant risks when compounded. Holtorf said it is difficult to keep up with which peptides are banned and which are still acceptable for compounding.

“There is so much gray area,” he said. “People know they just get patients better.”

Despite the FDA warnings, peptides were popular among RAADFest attendees who were promised “beautiful life-saving therapies” at the event’s clinic. Event organizers touted that 70 longevity experts would be on hand during the four-day event at the Red Rock Casino Resort Spa but did not list the vendors providing treatments on the event website.

“We have a RAAD clinic, where people will be able to come in at discounted prices and try and do these therapies safely with doctors,” Strole told a Las Vegas TV news program while promoting the event.

Strole is executive director of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Coalition for Radical Life Extension, one of a cluster of for-profit and nonprofit entities devoted to helping people achieve immortality founded by Strole and two “immortalist” business partners. Of the three co-founders, only Strole, who is in his 70s, is still alive.

Charles Brown, the original founder, claimed to have had a spiritual experience in the 1950s that showed him the path to immortality and proclaimed he could share that path with others, according to an Arizona Republic story. Brown died of Parkinson’s disease in 2014. His wife, Bernadeane “Bernie” Brown, who operated the for-profit People Unlimited with Strole, died of breast cancer in 2024. Her body is said to have been cryogenically preserved.

The nonprofit organizes the annual anti-aging festival, which charges more than $400 for a ticket, while People Unlimited offers monthly memberships for as much as $255 a month, according to its website. Members get access to weekly meetings, where Strole delivers motivational sermons on immortality and age reversal, as well as talks by guest speakers on wellness, discounts on “longevity protocols” and access to a community of people who “want you to live as much as they want to live.”

Gutman, the Florida emergency room doctor, spoke at the event earlier this month, her first time attending RAADFest. She left before the last day, when the two women were hospitalized, and hadn’t heard about the incident before a reporter called. But she said their symptoms — swollen tongue, trouble breathing, increased heart rate — sounded like an allergic reaction, which she said isn’t terribly common in peptide injections. But she cautioned that before injection the drugs are mixed with an agent that can sometimes pose problems.

Although she was skeptical of some of the therapies provided at the festival’s clinic, she said everyone she met there seemed to have “their heart in the right place” and genuinely wanted to help others “live their best lives.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Anjeanette Damon.

Taking a break from the awful to celebrate - remember that? - indefatigable civil rights icon, all-round mensch and former chicken preacher John Lewis, who died five years ago today after a lifetime of good trouble. The peerless "moral compass of Congress," now sorely lacking, Lewis never gave up seeking his "beloved community" even as he acknowledged he might never live in it. "Our struggle is not (of) a day, month or year," he said: "It is the struggle of a lifetime."

Over 60 years, Lewis' lifetime of struggle extended from student lunch-counter sit-ins, beatings on Freedom Rides, founding and leading SNCC, speaking fire as the youngest organizer of the March in Washington and Bloody Sunday's seminal Selma march to, eventually, the halls of Congress, where he served 17 terms while persisting in making good trouble in ongoing fights for peace, immigrants, LGBTQ rights and voting rights that, he resolutely declared, “For generations we have marched, fought and even died for." Above all, "John believed in the power of ordinary people to do extraordinary things."

Born the son of sharecroppers outside Troy, Alabama in 1940, he attended segregated public schools. As a boy, he wanted to be a minister, and famously practiced his oratory on the family chickens. Denied a library card for the color of his skin, he became a voracious reader. He was a teenager when he heard, riveted, Martin Luther King Jr. preaching on the radio. They met when Lewis was trying to become the first Black student at Alabama’s segregated Troy State University; he ultimately attended the American Baptist Theological Seminary and Nashville's Fisk University.

Along with Diane Nash and other members of the Nashville Student Movement, he began organizing sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters after four Black college students in Greensboro, N.C. first did it; there, staff refused to serve them but the students wouldn't leave, and then went back with more recruits. Lewis' first arrest came in February 1960 at age 20, when he sat down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Nashville. Angry white patrons beat and tried to remove him and his fellow protesters; when police finally arrived, they arrested the protesters.

“I didn't necessarily want to go to jail," he recalled in a 1973 interview. “But we knew (it) would rally the student community." And it did: By the end of the day 98 students were in jail, hundreds followed, and that spring Nashville lunch counters began serving Blacks. "Nashville prepared me," he said. "We grew up sitting down or sitting in. And we grew up very fast." Soon, Lewis was also traveling through a belligerent, still-segregated South as a Freedom Rider, enduring more beatings and arrests. Between 1960 and 1966, he was arrested at least 40 times; as a Congressman, he was arrested five more times.

As the 23-year-old head of SNCC, he gave a fiery speech at 1963's MLK Jr.-led March on Washington. Older fellow-organizers - Philip Randolph, 74, and James Farmer, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins - urged him to tone it down; he scaled back critiques of JFK and dropped a "scorched earth" reference, but it was still potent. "To those who have said, 'Be patient'...We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen, (of) seeing our people locked up in jail... How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now...We shall splinter the segregated South into a thousand pieces and put them together in an image of God and democracy.”

Two years later, hands tucked in his genteel tan overcoat, he led over 600 voting rights protesters over Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Ku Klux Klan leader, in what became known as Bloody Sunday. State troopers and "deputized" white thugs beat him so badly - still-chilling video here - they fractured his skull. Images of the brutality shocked a complacent nation, and eventually helped led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. When he joined Pres. Obama at the site 55 years later, Lewis was still urging anyone who'd listen to "get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America."

In 1981, Lewis turned to politics, getting elected to the Atlanta City Council; in 1986, he won what became his longtime seat in Congress. He spent much of his career in the minority, but when Dems won the House in 2006, he became his party’s senior deputy whip. Humble, friendly, eloquent, he was revered as the "moral compass" of the House. Hs last arrest was in 2013, when he was one of 8 Dem lawmakers, including Keith Ellison and Al Green, arrested at a sit-in for immigration reform; police arrested almost 200 people for "disrupting" the street. Lewis blithely posted a photo: "Arrest number 45."

The last survivor of the civil rights icons, he worked for 15 years toward the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History. When Trump ran in 2016, he sensed the urgency, posting, "I’ve marched, protested, been beaten and arrested - all for the right to vote. Friends (gave) their lives. Honor their sacrifice. Vote." He refused to attend the inauguration because Trump wasn't a "legitimate president." He called him "a racist" after the "shithole countries" slur, and voted for impeachment: “When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something, to do something. Our children and their children will ask us, 'What did you do? What did you say?'"

He died of pancreatic cancer on July 17, 2020, at 80. Nancy Pelosi called him "one of the greatest heroes of American history...May his memory be an inspiration that moves us all to, in the face of injustice, make ‘good trouble, necessary trouble.'” This week, Congressional Black Caucus members honored his legacy by vowing to do the same and reading his works. "His words are more necessary today than ever," said Rep. Jennifer McClellan. "John Lewis understood just as Dr. King did he wasn’t going to reach the promised land of that more perfect union. But he fought for it."

Since his death, Dems have continued to reintroduce the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore key, GOP-trashed provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It has repeatedly stalled in Congress, and for now will likely continue to. But Lewis' colleagues vow to keep pushing for it, said Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath, "to honor his legacy with unshakeable determination to fight for what is right and what is just." "Freedom is not a state; it is an act," said Lewis. "It is not some enchanted garden perched high (where) we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take." While, he attested at a Stacey Abrams event the year before he died, finding joy. May he rest in peace and power.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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

The Trump administration’s mass deportation machine continues to shatter families and communities with violent, indiscriminate raids on schools, homes and workplaces. Farms are a particular target of its brutal, racist crackdown; around two-thirds of U.S. farmworkers are immigrants, largely from Mexico. Earlier this month, a raid on a farm in California turned fatal when 57-year-old Jaime Alanís died after falling from the roof of a greenhouse. Dozens of his fellow workers were rounded up and loaded onto buses destined for a detention center. Many of the targeted farmworkers are members of the United Farm Workers, the nation’s oldest farmworkers’ union. Its president, Teresa Romero, a longtime labor leader who is the first Latina and first immigrant to head the organization, says “farmworkers are terrified.” She says that “replacing people who are experienced, who are professional, who have been in agriculture, working sometimes for decades, [is] not how we should repay them for the sacrifice and hard work,” and adds that “sooner or later, the agriculture industry is going to suffer.”

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

We dive into how young people are rewriting the rules of intimacy in the face of political oppression. Carter’s reporting brings us inside the bedrooms and minds of Gen Zers who are coming of age in a country where Roe v. Wade was overturned exactly as we knew it would be. A generation told they’re free is now wrestling with the reality that their rights are under siege, and for many, that anxiety has become physical. As one woman told Carter, she couldn’t even have sex without being hounded by Kavanaugh’s voice in her head.

This isn’t just a story of fear; it’s one of resistance. Carter shares how young people are pushing back, from Kansas voters defending abortion rights to college students canvassing in swing states. But she also warns of the growing threat: the rise of the Manosphere, where boys are radicalized by algorithm and learn to hate women before they can legally drink. What can young women and young men agree on? That the Democratic Party brand is toxic, because it's Republican Lite. 

The Second Coming is a deeply reported, fiercely human portrait of a generation caught between tech, trauma, and tyranny. This week’s bonus show will look at the horror of Trump’s Big Evil Bill passing through Congress, and our discussion of Lillian Faderman’s landbook book The Gay Revolution–a resistance blueprint for us today. 

Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation–we could not make this show without you! 

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• NEW DATE! Thursday July 31 4pm ET – the Gaslit Nation Book Club discusses Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince written in the U.S. during America First. 

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This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

Coined by Congressman John Lewis, “Good Trouble” is the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change. Led by the Transformative Justice Coalition, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Black Voters Matter, and more, movement leaders are inviting folks across the country to “Make Good Trouble” on July 17 by hosting an event in their community.

Organizers hope to build on the momentum from the historic “No Kings” mass mobilization on June 14, the largest demonstration to take place in Trump’s second term with over 2,100 events spanning across all 50 states. We will take to the streets, courthouses and community spaces to carry forward his fight for justice, voting rights and dignity for all.

The Trump administration’s recent escalating authoritarian actions, attacks on DEI initiatives and voting rights and dismantling of government agencies have raised alarm bells for democracy advocates, and that’s why we’re mobilizing:

• President Trump escalated immigration raids in Los Angeles, where reports showed immigrants being detained and deported without access to family or lawyers. Trump then ordered the National Guard and Marines to the city, leading to mass arrests—including peaceful protestors like SEIU California President David Huerta.
• The Trump administration attempted to weaponize the Justice Department through an indictment of Representative LaMonica McIver (NJ-10), who was simply conducting an Congressional oversight visit of an ICE detention center.
  • When Senator Alex Padilla (CA) asked a question at a Department of Homeland Security press conference, FBI agents tackled, handcuffed and pushed him to the ground.
  • Trump’s ICE detained NYC Comptroller Brad Lander for asking to see a warrant at immigration court.
• From House Republicans’ so-called “SAVE Act,” which would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters, to Donald Trump’s attempted anti-voter Executive Order and attacks on the DOJ’s Voting Rights division, the Trump administration and his allies in Congress are determined to put up hurdles for millions of eligible Americans to cast their ballots.

This isn’t the government our founders envisioned, nor the democracy generations of Americans have fought to realize. As the Trump administration continues violating civil liberties and attacking fundamental freedoms, pro-democracy groups are staying vigilant. The power lies with the American people to unify and “Make Good Trouble.”

Good Trouble Lives On is led by Transformative Justice Coalition, Black Voters Matter, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Declaration for American Democracy Coalition, Mi Familia Acción and more.

For more information on Good Trouble Lives On, please visit https://goodtroubleliveson.org/.

MEDIA CONTACT: For media inquiries, please email media@goodtroubleliveson.org.

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

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered the termination of all remaining overseas employees of USAID to complete the dismantling of the six-decade-old agency. USAID was an early target of Elon Musk and DOGE. We look at the dismantling of USAID and what it means for people around the world to lose this lifeline, as detailed in a new Amnesty International report. “We talked to somebody who actually saw IVs being ripped out of arms when the stop-work order came down,” says Amnesty’s Amanda Klasing, who describes the consequences of the U.S.'s retraction of critical aid to countries in the Global South and refutes the Trump administration's claims that no deaths can be traced to the cuts. Now, lacking funding from the wealthiest country in the world, aid workers like Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council are turning to other countries’ governments to bridge the gap. Egeland says, “The U.S. is leaving international solidarity and compassion completely,” even though, as Klasing notes, “It’s been the leader of humanitarian aid, and it should remain so.”

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

Some actions recommended in this playbook include: giving working people a raise, empowering workers to unionize, creating good union jobs through government spending, extending pathways into high-quality jobs, and more. This report also highlights some actions governors have taken in states across the country that governors in other states can look to as models of how they also can fight to strengthen the working class and boost their local economies.

“Working-class Americans have been struggling for decades. Governors have an opportunity to advance economic reforms that meet workers’ needs and create a contrasting vision to the Trump administration’s economic agenda that continues to favor billionaires at working class Americans’ expense,” said Karla Walter, senior fellow for Inclusive Economy at CAP and author of the issue brief. “Consistent and outspoken action on policies to rebalance power in the U.S. economy will demonstrate who actually stands with workers.”

Read the issue brief: “Governors Should Fight for an Economic Agenda to Improve the Lives of Working-Class Residents” by Karla Walter

For more information or to speak with an expert, please contact Sarah Nadeau at snadeau@americanprogress.org.

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

DOGE isn’t going anywhere, according to the Trump administration’s own officials. Russell Vought seems to be the new boss in town, but he and Musk’s visions have been aligned from the start. Musk endorsed Vought’s view of the unconstitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act and said that DOGE would work “closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed all the way back in November.

In response to Musk’s departure from DOGE, Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser released the following statement: “There is no daylight between Elon Musk and Russ Vought on the aim of greenlighting corporate abuse, as anyone can see from their joint destruction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. DOGE’s Musk-tied staffers have already burrowed into the government, and having a new boss who has coordinated extensively with Musk isn’t likely to change their actual actions much at all. Musk’s departure obscures but does not actually change the continuity of DOGE’s staff and mission to destroy everything that protects the public from the depredations of the most rapacious oligarchs.”

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

A new ICL facility would further establish St. Louis as a hub of militarization and an exporter of global death and destruction. In St. Charles, Boeing has built more than 500,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits, known as JDAMS. An Amnesty International report tied these to attacks on Palestinian civilian homes, families, and children, making our region complicit in war crimes. In addition to hosting the explosives weapons manufacturer Boeing, Missouri is home to Monsanto (now Bayer), which produced Agent Orange. What’s lesser known is that Monsanto is responsible for white phosphorus production in a supply chain trifecta with ICL and Pine Bluffs Arsenal. White phosphorus is a horrific incendiary weapon that heats up to 1400 degrees F, and international law bans its use against civilians. From 2020 to 2023, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered and paid ICL for over 180,000 lbs of white phosphorus, shipped from their South City Carondelet location to Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. White phosphorus artillery shells with Pine Bluff Arsenal codes were identified in Lebanon and Gaza after the IDF unlawfully used them over residential homes and refugee camps, according to the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Another ICL facility, combined with the new National Geo Space Intelligence Agency that analyzes drone footage to direct US military attacks, would put North St. Louis squarely on the map for military retaliation from any country seeking to strike back against US global interventionism.

Within a mile of the Carondelet ICL site, the EPA has identified unsafe levels of cancer-risking air toxins, hazardous waste, and wastewater discharge. The new facility would be built within 5 miles of intake towers and open-air sedimentation ponds that provide drinking water to St. Louis. An explosion or leak could destroy the city’s water supply and harm eastern Missouri towns along the Mississippi.  ICL has committed multiple Environmental and Workplace Safety violations, including violating the Clean Air Act at its South City facility. In 2023, they were declared the worst environmental offenders by Israel’s own Environmental Protection Ministry after the 2017 Ashalim Creek disaster, and were fined $33 million.

ICL claims the new North City site is a safe and green facility for manufacturing lithium iron phosphate for electric vehicles; however, lithium manufacturing is hardly a green or safe process. Lithium and phosphorus mining require enormous amounts of freshwater – a protected resource – resulting in poisoned ecosystems and a limited water supply for residents and wildlife in the local communities where they are sourced.

In October 2024, a lithium battery plant in Fredericktown, Missouri, burst into flames, forcing residents to evacuate and killing thousands of fish in nearby rivers. The company had claimed to have one of the most sophisticated automated fire suppression systems in the world, yet it still caused a fire whose aftermath continues to affect residents today, with comparisons being drawn to East Palestine, Ohio. Meanwhile, in January, over 1,000 people in California had to evacuate due to a massive fire at a lithium facility, the fourth fire there since 2019. Despite ICL claiming that the new site will use a ‘safer’ form of lithium processing, it’s clear that lithium facilities are not as safe as profit-driven corporations claim them to be.

Missouri leaders repeatedly prioritize corporate profits over people via tax abatements. ICL is receiving 197 million dollars from the federal government. The city is forgiving a $500,000 loan to troubled investors Green Street to sell the land to ICL and is proposing a 90% tax abatement in personal property taxes for ICL, plus 15 years of real estate tax abatements. This is a troubling regional trend, considering that in 2023, St. Louis County approved $155 million in tax breaks to expand Boeing, also giving them a 50% cut in real estate and personal property taxes over 10 years. Corporate tax breaks in the city have cost minority students in St. Louis Public Schools 260 million dollars in a region where 30% of children are food insecure. Over 2000 people in St. Louis city are homeless.  Enough babies die each year in St Louis to fill 15 kindergarten classrooms. Black babies are 3 times more likely to die than white babies before their first birthday, and Black women are 2.4 times more likely to die during pregnancy. Spending public funds on corporate tax breaks instead of directing them toward food, housing, and life-saving medical care for black women and babies is inexcusable. Why does a foreign chemical company with almost 7 billion in earnings need so much funding from our local and federal government at the expense of our residents?

Officials cite ‘job creation’ as a major reason to expand ICL. Still, the new facility is only expected to create 150 jobs, and there is no evidence that these jobs will be given to people in the community where it is being built. Investing in black and minority businesses would lead to actual self-sustaining economic development.

Despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government, local tax breaks, the backing of former Governor Mike Parsons, and approval from city committees, the facility’s opening is not a done deal. The St. Louis City Board of Alders could still intervene. Stopping a facility with this much federal and international backing would require massive pushback from Missourians. Residents deserve more information and input in this process, especially considering the city’s resistance to hearing public comments. Notably, when locals submitted a Sunshine request for the ICL permit in March, it was so heavily redacted that it was unreadable.

This facility would turn local black neighborhoods into environmental and military sacrifice zones, and our response to city, state, and federal leaders should be a definitive and resounding No!

CODEPINK Missouri has a petition to stop the building of the ICL facility in St. Louis.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Lauren Filla and Seraph Kunkel.

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

Nearly four years ago in Texas, the state’s new abortion law started getting in the way of basic miscarriage care: As women waited in hospitals cramping, fluid running down their legs, doctors told them they couldn’t empty their uterus to guard against deadly complications.

The state banned most abortions, even in pregnancies that were no longer viable; then, it added criminal penalties, threatening to imprison doctors for life and punish hospitals. The law had one exception, for a life-threatening emergency.

Heeding the advice of hospital lawyers, many doctors withheld treatment until they could document patients were in peril. They sent tests to labs, praying for signs of infection, and watched as women lost so much blood that they needed transfusions.“You would see the pain in peoples’ eyes,” one doctor said of her patients.

Not every hospital tolerated this new normal, ProPublica found. A seismic split emerged in how medical institutions in the state’s two largest metro areas treated miscarrying patients — and in how these women fared.

Leaders of influential hospitals in Dallas empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, allowing them to induce deliveries or perform procedures to empty the uterus.

In Houston, most did not.

The result, according to a first-of-its-kind ProPublica analysis of state hospital discharge data, is that while the rates of dangerous infections spiked across Texas after it banned abortion in 2021, women in Houston were far more likely to get gravely ill than those in Dallas.

As ProPublica reported earlier this year, the statewide rate of sepsis — a life-threatening reaction to infection — shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost a second-trimester pregnancy.

A new analysis zooms in: In the region surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth, it rose 29%. In the Houston area, it surged 63%.

ProPublica has documented widespread differences in how hospitals across the country have translated abortion bans into policy. Some have supported doctors in treating active miscarriages and high-risk cases with procedures technically considered abortions; others have forbidden physicians from doing so, or left them on their own to decide, with no legal backing in case of arrest.

This marks the first analysis in the wake of abortion bans that connects disparities in hospital policies to patient outcomes. It shows that when a state law is unclear and punitive, how an institution interprets it can make all the difference for patients.

Yet the public has no way to know which hospitals or doctors will offer options during miscarriages. Hospitals in states where abortion is banned have been largely unwilling to disclose their protocols for handling common complications. When ProPublica asked, most in Texas declined to say.

ProPublica’s Texas reporting is based on interviews with 22 doctors in both the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth metro areas who had insight into policies at 10 institutions covering more than 75% of the births and pregnancy-loss hospitalizations in those areas.

The findings come as evidence of the fatal consequences of abortion bans continue to mount, with a new report just last month showing that the risk of maternal mortality is nearly twice as high for women living in states that ban abortion. Last year, ProPublica documented five preventable maternal deaths, including three in Texas.

One second-trimester pregnancy complication that threatens patients’ lives is previable premature rupture of membranes, called PPROM, when a woman’s water breaks before the fetus can live on its own. Without amniotic fluid, the likelihood of the fetus surviving is low. But with every passing hour that a patient waits for treatment or for labor to start, the risk of sepsis increases.

The Texas Supreme Court has said that doctors can legally provide abortions in PPROM cases, even when an emergency is not imminent.

Yet legal departments at many major Houston hospitals still advise physicians not to perform abortions in these cases, doctors there told ProPublica, until they can document serious infection.

Dr. John Thoppil, the immediate past president of the Texas Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said he was “blown away” by this finding. He said it’s time for hospitals to stop worrying about hypothetical legal consequences of the ban and start worrying more about the real threats to patients’ lives.

“I think you’re risking legal harm the opposite way for not intervening,” he said, “and putting somebody at risk.”

In the summer of 2021, Dr. Robyn Horsager-Boehrer, a Dallas specialist in high-risk pregnancy, listened as hospital lawyers explained to a group of UT Southwestern Medical Center doctors that they would no longer be able to act on their clinical judgment.

For decades, these UT Southwestern physicians had followed the guidance of major medical organizations: They offered patients with PPROM the option to end the pregnancy to protect against serious infection. But under the state’s new abortion ban, they would no longer be allowed to do so while practicing at the county’s safety net hospital, Parkland Memorial, which delivers more babies than almost any other in the country. Nor would they be permitted at UT Southwestern’s William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital.

Lawyers from the two hospitals explained in a meeting that the law’s only exception was for a “medical emergency” — but it wasn’t clear how the courts would define that. With no precedent or guidance from the state, they advised the doctors that they should offer to intervene only if they could document severe infection or bleeding — signs of a life-threatening condition, Horsager-Boehrer recalled. They would need to notify the state every time they terminated a pregnancy. ProPublica also spoke with six of Horsager-Boehrer’s colleagues who described similar meetings.

As the new policy kicked in, the doctors worried the lawyers didn’t understand how fast sepsis could develop and how difficult it could be to control. Many patients with PPROM can appear stable even while an infection is taking hold. During excruciating waits, Dr. Austin Dennard said she would tell patients at Clements, “We need something to be abnormal so that we can offer you all of the options that someone in New York would have.” Then she would return to the physicians’ lounge, lay down her head and cry.

Their only hope, the doctors felt, was to collect data and build a case that the hospital’s policy needed to change.

Within eight months, 28 women with severe pregnancy complications before fetal viability had come through the doors of Parkland and Clements. Twenty-six of them were cases in which the patients’ water broke early. Analyzing the medical charts, a group of researchers led by Dr. Anjali Nambiar, a UT Southwestern OB-GYN, found that a dozen women experienced complications including hemorrhage and infection. Only one baby survived.

The research team compared the results with another study in which patients were offered pregnancy terminations. They found that of patients who followed the “watch and wait” protocol, more than half experienced serious complications, compared with 33% who immediately terminated their pregnancies.

Armed with the research, the doctors, including Horsager-Boehrer, returned to the lawyers for the two hospitals. Everyone agreed the data demanded action. Alongside physicians, the lawyers helped develop language that doctors could include in medical charts to explain why they terminated a pregnancy due to a PPROM diagnosis, Dennard said.

At Parkland, the new protocol required doctors to get signoff from one additional physician, attach the study as proof of the risk of serious bodily harm — part of the “medical emergency” definition in the law — and notify hospital leaders. At Clements, doctors also needed to get CEO approval to end a pregnancy, which could create delays if patients came in on a weekend, doctors said. But it was vastly better than the alternative, Dennard said. The message from the lawyers, she said, was: “We have your back. We are going to take care of you.”

A spokesperson for UT Southwestern said “no internal protocols delay care or otherwise compromise patient safety.” A spokesperson for Parkland said that “physicians are empowered to document care as they deem appropriate” and that hospital attorneys had “helped review and translate the doctors’ proposed language to make sure it followed the law.”

Parkland and UT Southwestern are not the only ones providing this care in Dallas. ProPublica spoke with doctors who have privileges at hospitals that oversee 60% of births and pregnancy loss hospitalizations in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, including Baylor Scott & White and Texas Health Resources. They said that their institutions support offering terminations to patients with high-risk second-trimester pregnancy complications like PPROM.

At Baylor Scott & White, doctors said, the leadership always stood by this interpretation of the law. (When asked, a spokesperson said miscarrying patients are counseled on surgical options, and that its hospitals follow state and federal laws. “Our policies are developed to comply with those laws, and we educate our teams on those policies.”)

Texas Health and other hospitals in the region did not respond to requests for comment.

While efforts to be proactive have meant more patients are able to receive the standard of care in Dallas, that is still not the case at every medical campus in the region. Doctors at Parkland said they have seen patients come to them after they were turned away from hospitals nearby.

In other parts of the state, however, it’s been impossible to know where to turn.

In Houston, one of America’s most prestigious medical hubs, Dr. Judy Levison mounted her own campaign.

The veteran OB-GYN at Baylor College of Medicine wanted hospital leaders to support intervening in high-risk complications in line with widely accepted medical standards. In 2022, she emailed her department chair, Dr. Michael Belfort, who is also the OB-GYN-in-chief at Texas Children’s. She told him colleagues had shared “feelings of helplessness, moral distress and increasing concerns about the safety of our patients.”

They needed training on how to protect patients within the bounds of the law, she said, and language they could include in charts to justify medically necessary abortions. But in a meeting, Belfort told her he couldn’t make these changes, Levison recalled.

He said that if he supported abortions in medically complicated cases like PPROM, the hospital could lose tens of millions of dollars from the state, she told ProPublica. “I came to realize that he was in a really difficult place because he risked losing funding for our residency program if Baylor and Texas Children’s didn't interpret the law the way they thought the governor did.” She wondered if he was deferring to hospital lawyers.

Belfort did not respond to requests for comment about his stance. Nor did Baylor or Texas Children’s.

Although Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has threatened hospitals with civil action if they allow a doctor to perform what he views as an “unlawful” abortion, he hasn’t filed any such actions. And in the years since the ban, there have been no reports of the state pulling funding from a hospital on account of its abortion policy.

A spokesperson at only one major Houston hospital chain, Houston Methodist, said that it considered PPROM a medical emergency and supported terminations for “the health and safety of the patient.”

Five other major hospital groups that, together, provide the vast majority of maternal care in the Houston region either continue to advise doctors not to offer pregnancy terminations for PPROM cases or leave it up to the physicians to decide, with no promise of legal support if they’re charged with a crime. This is according to interviews with a dozen doctors about the policies at HCA, Texas Children’s, Memorial Hermann, Harris Health and The University of Texas Medical Branch. Together, they account for about 8 in 10 hospitalizations in the region for births or pregnancy loss.

Most of the doctors spoke with ProPublica on the condition of anonymity, as they feared retaliation for violating what some described as a hospital “gag order” against discussing abortion. In a sign of how secretive this decision-making has become, most said their hospitals had not written down these new policies, only communicated them orally.

Several doctors told ProPublica that Dr. Sean Blackwell, chair of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Houston’s University of Texas Health Science Center, which staffs Harris Health Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital and Memorial Hermann hospitals, had conveyed a message similar to Belfort’s: He wasn’t sure he would be able to defend providers if they intervened in these cases. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and his institution, UTHealth Houston, declined to comment.

ProPublica reached out to officials at all five hospital groups, asking if they offer terminations at the point of a PPROM diagnosis. Only one responded. Bryan McLeod at Harris Health pointed to the hospital system’s written policy, which ProPublica reviewed, stating that an emergency doesn’t need to be imminent for a doctor to intervene. But McLeod did not respond to follow-up questions asking if patients with PPROM are offered pregnancy terminations if they show no signs of infection — and several doctors familiar with the chain’s practices said they are not.

The state Senate unanimously passed a bill last week to clarify that doctors can terminate pregnancies if a woman faces a risk of death that is not imminent. ProPublica asked the hospitals if they would change their policies on PPROM if this is signed into law. They did not respond.

Last fall, ProPublica reported that Josseli Barnica died in Houston after her doctors did not evacuate her uterus for 40 hours during an “inevitable” miscarriage, waiting until the fetal heartbeat stopped. Two days later, sepsis killed her.

Barnica was treated at HCA, the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain, which did not respond to a detailed list of questions about her care. With 70% of its campuses in states where abortion is restricted, the company leaves the decision of whether to take the legal risk up to the physicians, without the explicit legal support provided in Dallas, according to a written policy viewed by ProPublica and interviews with doctors. A spokesperson for the chain said doctors with privileges at its hospitals are expected to exercise their independent medical judgment “within applicable laws and regulations.” As a result, patients with potentially life-threatening conditions have no way of knowing which HCA doctors will treat them and which won’t.

Brooklyn Leonard, a 29-year-old esthetician eager for her first child, learned this in February. She was 14 weeks pregnant when her water broke. At HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood, her doctor Arielle Lofton wrote in her chart, “No interventions can be performed at this time legally because her fetus has a heartbeat.” The doctor added that she could only intervene when there was “concern for maternal mortality.” Leonard and her husband had trouble getting answers about whether she was miscarrying, she said. “I could feel that they were not going to do anything for me there.” Lofton and HCA did not respond to a request for comment.

It was only after visits to three Houston hospitals over five days that Leonard was able to get a dilation and evacuation to empty her uterus. A doctor at Texas Children’s referred her to Dr. Damla Karsan, who works in private practice and is known for her part in an unsuccessful lawsuit against the state seeking permission to allow an abortion for a woman whose fetus was diagnosed with a fatal anomaly. Karsan felt there was no question PPROM cases fell under the law’s exception. She performed the procedure at The Woman’s Hospital of Texas, another HCA hospital. “She’s lucky she didn’t get sick,” Karsan said of Leonard.

Many Houston doctors said they have continued to call on their leadership to change their stance to proactively support patients with PPROM, pointing to data analyses from Dallas hospitals and ProPublica and referring to the Texas Supreme Court ruling. It hasn’t worked.

Houston hospitals haven’t taken action even in light of alarming research in their own city. Earlier this year, UTHealth Houston medical staff, including department chair Blackwell, revealed early findings from a study very similar to the one out of Dallas.

It showed what happened after patients at three partner hospitals stopped being offered terminations for PPROM under the ban: The rate of sepsis tripled.

Still, nothing changed.

To examine second-trimester pregnancy loss outcomes in Houston and Dallas, we used a methodology we developed to determine sepsis rates in inpatient hospitalizations where a pregnancy ended between 13 weeks’ gestation and the end of the 21st week. To assess regional differences, we grouped hospitals by perinatal care region and focused on the two regions with the highest population: Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

We grouped hospitalizations in the nine quarters after the implementation of the state’s six-week abortion ban (October 2021 through December 2023) and compared them with hospitalizations in the nine quarters immediately before. Each region had about 2,700 second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations over the course of the time span we examined.

Sophie Chou contributed data reporting, and Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Andrea Suozzo.

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

On a frigid winter morning in 2022, a stranger knocked on the door of a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, during Shabbat service.

Soon after he was invited in for tea, the visitor pulled out a pistol and demanded the release of an al-Qaida-linked detainee from a nearby federal prison, seizing as hostages a rabbi and three worshipers. The standoff lasted 10 hours until the rabbi, drawing on extensive security training, hurled a chair at the assailant. The hostages escaped.

“We are alive today because of that education,” Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker said after the attack.

The averted tragedy at Congregation Beth Israel is cited as a success story for the largely unseen prevention work federal authorities have relied on for years in the fight to stop terrorist attacks and mass shootings. The government weaves together partnerships with academic researchers and community groups across the country as part of a strategy for addressing violent extremism as a public health concern.

A specialized intervention team at Boston Children’s Hospital treats young patients — some referred by the FBI — who show signs of disturbing, violent behavior. Eradicate Hate, a national prevention umbrella group, says one of its trainees helped thwart a school shooting in California last year by reporting a gun in a fellow student’s backpack. In other programs, counselors guide neo-Nazis out of the white-power movement or help families of Islamist extremists undo the effects of violent propaganda.

The throughline for this work is federal funding — a reliance on grants that are rapidly disappearing as the Trump administration guts billions in spending.

Tens of millions of dollars slated for violence prevention have been cut or are frozen pending review as President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency steamrolls the national security sector. Barring action from Congress or the courts, counterterrorism professionals say, the White House appears poised to end the government’s backing of prevention work on urgent threats.

“This is the government getting out of the terrorism business,” said one federal grant recipient who was ordered this week to cease work on projects including a database used by law enforcement agencies to assess threats.

This account is drawn from interviews with nearly two dozen current and former national security personnel, federally funded researchers and nonprofit grant recipients. Except in a few cases, they spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Trump administration.

Dozens of academic and nonprofit programs that rely on grants from the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and other agencies are in crisis mode, mirroring the uncertainty of other parts of the government amid Trump’s seismic reorganization.

“We’re on a precipice,” said the leader of a large nonprofit that has received multiple federal grants and worked with Democratic and Republican administrations on prevention campaigns.

Program leaders describe a chilling new operating environment. Scholars of white supremacist violence — which the FBI for years has described as a main driver of domestic terrorism — wonder how they’ll be able to continue tracking the threat without running afoul of the administration’s ban on terms related to race and racism.

The training the rabbi credits with saving his Texas synagogue in 2022 came from a broader community initiative whose federal funding is in limbo. One imperiled effort, FEMA’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, has helped Jewish institutions across the country install security cameras, train staff and add protective barriers, according to the nonprofit Secure Community Network, which gives security advice and monitors threats to Jewish communities nationwide.

In July 2023, access-control doors acquired through the grant program prevented a gunman from entering Margolin Hebrew Academy in Memphis. In 2021, when gunfire struck the Jewish Family Service offices in Denver, grant-funded protective window film stopped bullets from penetrating the building.

“These are not hypothetical scenarios, they are real examples of how NSGP funds prevent injuries and deaths,” Michael Masters, director of the Secure Community Network, wrote this month in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post calling for continued funding of the program.

Now the security grants program has been shelved as authorities and Jewish groups warn of rising antisemitism. The generous reading, one Jewish program leader said, is that the funds were inadvertently swept up in DOGE cuts. Trump has been a vocal supporter of Jewish groups and, as one of his first acts in office, signed an executive order promising to tackle antisemitism.

Still, the freeze on grants for synagogue protections has revived talk of finding new, more independent funding streams.

Throughout Jewish history, the program director said, “we’ve learned you need a Plan B.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

For more than two decades, the federal government has invested tens of millions of dollars in prevention work and academic research with the goal of intervening in the crucial window known as “left of boom” — before an attack occurs.

The projects are diffuse, spread across several agencies, but the government’s central clearinghouse is at Homeland Security in the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, often called CP3. The office houses a grant program that since 2020 has awarded nearly $90 million to community groups and law enforcement agencies working at the local level to prevent terrorism and targeted violence such as mass shootings.

These days, CP3 is imploding. Nearly 20% of its workforce was cut through the dismissal of probationary employees March 3. CP3 Director Bill Braniff, an Army veteran who had fiercely defended the office’s achievements in LinkedIn posts in recent weeks, resigned the same night.

“It is a small act of quiet protest, and an act of immense respect I have for them and for our team,” Braniff wrote in a departing message to staff that was obtained by ProPublica. In the note, he called the employees “wrongfully terminated.”

Some of this year’s CP3 grant recipients say they have no idea whether their funding will continue. One awardee said the team is looking at nightmare scenarios of laying off staff and paring operations to the bone.

“Everybody’s trying to survive,” the grantee said. “It feels like this is a tsunami and you don’t know how it’s going to hit you.”

Current and former DHS officials say they don’t expect the prevention mission to continue in any meaningful way, signaling the end to an effort that had endured through early missteps and criticism from the left and right.

The prevention mission evolved from the post-9/11 growth of a field known as countering violent extremism, or CVE. In early CVE efforts, serious scholars of militant movements jostled for funding alongside pseudo-scientists claiming to have discovered predictors of radicalization. CVE results typically weren’t measurable, allowing for inflated promises of success — “snake oil,” as one researcher put it.

Worse, some CVE programs billed as community partnerships to prevent extremism backfired and led to mistrust that persists today. Muslim advocacy groups were incensed by the government’s targeting of their communities for deradicalization programs, blaming CVE for stigmatizing law-abiding families and contributing to anti-Muslim hostility. Among the most influential Muslim advocacy groups, it is still taboo to accept funding from Homeland Security.

Defenders of CP3, which launched in 2021 from an earlier incarnation, insist that the old tactics based on profiling are gone. They also say there are now more stringent metrics to gauge effectiveness. CP3’s 2024 report to Congress listed more than 1,000 interventions since 2020, cases where prevention workers stepped in with services to dissuade individuals from violence.

The probationary employees who were dismissed this month represented the future of CP3’s public health approach to curbing violence, say current and former DHS officials. They were terminated by email in boilerplate language about poor performance, a detail that infuriated colleagues who viewed them as accomplished social workers and public health professionals.

There were no consultations with administration officials or DOGE — just the ax, said one DHS source with knowledge of the CP3 cuts. Promised exemptions for national security personnel apparently didn’t apply as Trump’s Homeland Security agenda shrinks to a single issue.

“The vibe is: How to use DHS to go after migrants, immigrants. That is the vibe, that is the only vibe, there is no other vibe,” the source said. “It’s wild — it’s as if the rest of the department doesn’t exist.”

This week, with scant warning, Homeland Security cut around $20 million for more than two dozen programs from another wing of DHS, including efforts aimed at stopping terrorist attacks and school shooters.

A Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed “sweeping cuts and reforms” aimed at eliminating waste but did not address questions about specific programs. DHS “remains focused on supporting law enforcement and public safety through funding, training, increased public awareness, and partnerships,” the statement said.

One grant recipient said they were told by a Homeland Security liaison that targeted programs were located in places named on a Fox News list of “sanctuary states” that have resisted or refused cooperation with the government’s deportation campaign. The grantee’s project was given less than an hour to submit outstanding expenses before the shutdown.

The orders were so sudden that even some officials within the government had trouble coming up with language to justify the termination notices. They said they were given no explanation for how the targeted programs were in violation of the president’s executive orders.

“I just don’t believe this is in any way legal,” said one official with knowledge of the cuts.

Cuts are reshaping government across the board, but perhaps nowhere more jarringly than in the counterterrorism apparatus. The administration started dismantling it when the president granted clemency to nearly 1,600 defendants charged in connection with the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The pardons overturned what the Justice Department had celebrated as a watershed victory in the fight against domestic terrorism.

Senior FBI officials with terrorism expertise have left or are being forced out in the purge of personnel involved in the Jan. 6 investigation. In other cases, agents working terrorism cases have been moved to Homeland Security to help with Trump’s mass deportation effort, a resource shift that runs counter to the government’s own threat assessments showing homegrown militants as the more urgent priority. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Without research backing up the enforcement arm of counterterrorism, analysts and officials say, the government lacks the capacity to evaluate rapidly evolving homegrown threats.

Researchers are getting whiplash as grant dollars are frozen and unfrozen. Even if they win temporary relief, the prospect of getting new federal funding in the next four years is minimal. They described pressure to self-censor or tailor research narrowly to MAGA interests in far-left extremism and Islamist militants.

“What happens when you’re self-silencing? What happens if people just stop thinking they should propose something because it’s ‘too risky?’” said one extremism scholar who has advised senior officials and received federal funding. “A lot of ideas that could be used to prevent all kinds of social harms, including terrorism, could get tossed.”

Among the projects at risk is a national compilation of threats to public officials, including assassination attempts against Trump; research on the violent misogyny that floods social media platforms; a long-term study of far-right extremists who are attempting to disengage from hate movements. The studies are underway at research centers and university labs that, in some cases, are funded almost entirely by Homeland Security. A stop-work order could disrupt sensitive projects midstream or remove findings from public view.

“There are both national security and public safety implications for not continuing to study these very complicated problems,” said Pete Simi, a criminologist at Chapman University in California who has federally funded projects that could be cut.

One project never got off the ground before work was suspended.

Six months ago, the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, announced the Domestic Radicalization and Violent Extremism Research Center of Excellence as a new hub for “understanding the phenomenon” of extremist violence.

Work was scheduled to start in January. The website has since disappeared and the future of the center is in limbo.

Other prevention initiatives in jeopardy at the Justice Department include grant programs related to hate crimes training, which has been in demand with recent unrest on college campuses. In the first weeks of the Trump administration, grant recipients heard a freeze was coming and rushed to withdraw remaining funds. Grant officers suggested work should cease, too, until directives come from the new leadership.

Anne Speckhard, a researcher who has interviewed dozens of militants and works closely with federal counterterrorism agencies, pushed back. She had around 200 people signed up for a training that was scheduled for days after the first funding freeze. Slides for the presentation had been approved, but Speckhard said she wasn’t getting clear answers from the grant office about how to proceed. She decided to go for it.

“I think the expected response was, ‘You’ll just stop working, and you’ll wait and see,’ and that’s not me,” said Speckhard, whose International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism receives U.S. funding along with backing from Qatar and private donations.

As the virtual training began, Speckhard and her team addressed the murkiness of the Justice Department’s support in a moment that drew laughter from the crowd of law enforcement officers and university administrators.

“We said, ‘We think this is a DOJ-sponsored training, and we want to thank them for their sponsorship,’” Speckhard said. “‘But we’re not sure.’”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Hannah Allam.

Photograph Source: rochelle hartman – CC BY 2.0

The paper sheet crinkled under me as I shifted on the vinyl examination table. The doctor paused. “Hmm,” she said quietly.

This was January 2021. I’d patched together a few gigs since completing a masters degree program the previous year, but was still struggling to find full-time work at the height of the pandemic.

A nagging feeling told me not to delay my annual well-woman exam again, having skipped it in 2020 due to COVID-19 and being uninsured. And I’m glad I went — the doctor found a concerning level of precancerous cervical cells.

Cervical cancer was once a common cause of cancer death in the U.S., but increased access to preventive care over the last several decades has cut death rates by more than half. Federal funding for Medicaid, which helps states expand health care services to low-income populations, has contributed to this success.

So it was for me, too. Although I was unemployed, I was able to access the initial screening and follow-up treatments through Medicaid. (State Medicaid programs can have different names. In my state, Wisconsin, it’s BadgerCare.)

Thanks to this coverage, my case was detected early. I made a full recovery and subsequently landed a job with health care benefits. However, if it had been up to Republican lawmakers, this story may have had a very different ending. With Trump’s support, nearly every single House Republican voted to pass a budget resolution that cuts an unimaginable $2 trillion from social services, especially Medicaid.

They’ve packaged this attack on Medicaid as an effort to cut “wasteful” spending and punish the “parasite class.” That’s how billionaire Elon Musk — who was raised with a silver spoon in an affluent, all-white suburb in apartheid South Africa — refers to Americans who use federal benefits.

We are not parasites. We are your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

The vast majority of Medicaid recipients are working or in school. Others have jobs that don’t provide health insurance or are temporarily unemployed, as I was. Medicaid is also a critical lifeline for 10 million people with disabilities, two-thirds of seniors in nursing homes, 14 million adults who have a mental health condition or substance use disorder, and tens of thousands of children who receive mental health services in public schools.

More than 72 million U.S. citizens — over 20 percent of the population — rely on Medicaid.

That includes over 33 million people nationwide living in congressional districts represented by Republican lawmakers who are pushing for these devastating cuts.

Medicaid is an example of government success — access to health care like the screening and treatments I received saves lives and money. What’s so great about going back to an era where people die from preventable diseases?

That’s not all. While slashing Medicaid, the GOP budget blueprint boosts spending for Pentagon contractors, a disastrous mass deportation policy that rips apart families and would forcibly displace millions of taxpayers, and$4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.

I now study that spending for my work. And talk about waste and fraud.

If Trump and the GOP were truly interested in saving taxpayer dollars, they wouldn’t be increasing the near-trillion dollar Pentagon budget, which has never passed an audit. Half or more of that spending goes to war profiteers — for-profit Pentagon contractors whose business models rely on government handouts and who routinely overcharge taxpayers.

Elon Musk’s businesses alone have received at least $38 billion in government funding from the Pentagon and other agencies. What was that again about a parasite class?

Cutting effective, life-saving services to further enrich billionaires and Pentagon contractors like  Musk is the worst possible option. These things don’t save lives — Medicaid does.

We still have time to fight back against this dangerous budget. And we must. Our health and futures depend on it.

The post Pentagon Contractors Don’t Save Lives or Money–Medicaid Does appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Hanna Homestead.

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After the Trump administration moved to freeze nearly $60 billion in foreign aid in January, officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly assured Americans that lifesaving operations would continue. “We don’t want to see anybody die,” he told reporters in early February.

Aid organizations the world over scrambled to prove their work saved lives, seeking permission from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to continue operating.

The administration conceded that many programs prevent immediate death and should remain online: field hospitals in Gaza, an HIV drug supplier for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syrian refugee food programs, health clinics that combat Ebola in Uganda and most of the landmark President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR.

In late January, Rubio and one of his top aides, Peter Marocco, said those programs and dozens of others could continue, granting them temporary waivers while the officials conducted what they have called a “targeted, case-by-case review” of all foreign aid programs managed by the State Department and USAID. That review, they said, would take three months.

Four weeks later, on Wednesday, Rubio and Marocco completely ended nearly 10,000 aid programs in one fell swoop — including those they had granted waivers just days earlier — saying the programs did not align with Trump’s agenda. The move consigns untold numbers of the world’s poorest children, refugees and other vulnerable people to death, according to several senior federal officials. Local authorities have already begun estimating a death toll in the hundreds of thousands.

Now, as the administration faces multiple lawsuits challenging its actions, the court fights largely hinge on whether government officials deliberated responsibly before cutting off funding. The U.S. has also refused to pay almost $2 billion that the government owes aid organizations for work they’ve already completed.

Rubio and Marocco appear to have taken their dramatic steps without the careful review they’ve described to the courts, according to internal documents and interviews with more than a dozen officials from the State Department and USAID, which raises fresh questions about the legality of President Donald Trump’s evisceration of the American foreign aid system.

Current and former officials say that Marocco and Rubio cut critical programs without consulting contract officers, who have oversight of individual programs and are aid groups’ primary contacts. “None of us believe that they’re conducting a careful, individualized review,” one official said.

In an episode that highlights how cursory and haphazard their efforts appear to have been, Marocco and Rubio ordered the cancellation of contracts, including for cellphone service, at an office they do not control. The move stranded people in war zones without phones, according to multiple officials and internal correspondence obtained by ProPublica. On Wednesday, AT&T received a termination notice for a $430,000 contract with USAID’s Office of Inspector General. That office is meant to be independent from USAID so that it can effectively audit the agency.

For more than 24 hours, OIG staff, including people in Ukraine and Haiti, did not have access to their government phones. No one at the OIG, including contract officers, knew it was coming, according to the officials. “This is an urgent issue for us, as we have OIG staff in warzones with no ability to receive security alerts,” a senior official in the agency wrote in an email to the company.

Eventually USAID reversed the termination.

Current and former officials throughout USAID and the State Department said the breakneck pace, lack of input from key officials, mistaken cancellations and boilerplate language in Wednesday’s termination notices undermine Marocco’s claims of a deliberative process.

“It’s a pretext,” one USAID official told ProPublica. “The review was supposed to take 90 days. An actual review based on substance requires laying out a process with guidelines, identifying info on each project, and selecting working groups to review. Any review they did was fake.”

If that turns out to be the case, legal experts and government officials say, the administration will have defied a federal judge’s order in a brazen gambit to continue dismantling USAID.

The morning after the mass termination notices went out, a senior USAID official sent an email saying Marocco and Rubio had canceled awards for essential services that the agency now wanted reinstated, telling staff, “We need your immediate input on any awards that may have been terminated that contain essential services related to the safety, security, and operations of USAID staff,” according to a court filing.

Since the initial decision to suspend foreign aid, humanitarian organizations and labor groups have taken the government to court, arguing that only Congress can dismantle USAID and that Trump’s blanket actions are unconstitutional. The government has told the courts that it has the right to cancel contracts, dismiss staff and reorganize USAID to align with Trump’s agenda.

Earlier this month, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting USAID and the State Department from following Trump’s executive orders to stop all foreign aid and to force the agency to pay its bills. When it didn’t comply, the judge issued another order, giving the government until midnight Wednesday to pay what it owes to aid groups.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily paused the last order over unpaid bills to conduct further legal review. That same day, aid organizations around the world began receiving termination notices.

More than 90% of USAID’s global aid operations and half of those managed by the State Department received termination notices. The move is already putting children and refugees in gravely dangerous situations. The administration canceled almost 50 United Nations Population Fund projects worth more than $370 million, including programs to address maternal deaths and gender-based violence in Egypt, Nigeria and several other member nations around the world.

In early February, the nonprofit Alight received waivers for its programs supporting refugees in war-torn Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan. On Wednesday, they were all terminated.

Alight runs six centers for extremely malnourished children in Sudan, where the organization treats babies and infants so sick that they will die within hours without ongoing care. The centers cost about $120,000 a month to operate. Alight is trying to fundraise to keep them open, knowing that the day they close their doors, children will die, CEO Jocelyn Wyatt told ProPublica.

In the meantime, they have been forced to close other lifesaving programs. In Somalia, around 700 malnourished children visited Alight clinics every day for weight check-ins and to pick up special food. Thirteen health clinics and a mobile unit served around 1,200 patients a day. On Thursday, all of those clinics closed, Wyatt said.

Alight also shuttered 33 primary health clinics in Sudan and stopped providing water to three refugee camps that house people displaced by decades of war. Alight had kept all those programs running these past five weeks, even though the organization hasn’t received any payments since Trump took office.

“We believed when Rubio said that there was no intention of cutting emergency lifesaving services that would basically cause immediate death,” said Wyatt. “We trusted that those would be protected.”

One of the State Department’s highest-ranking humanitarian aid officials, Jennifer Davis, stepped down this week, according to her resignation letter, which was obtained by ProPublica. During a meeting earlier this week, Davis, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the agency’s refugees bureau, told staff she believed she was bound by the judge’s order to restore programs and their funding, according to an attendee. “She was in tears about it,” the attendee said. (Davis did not respond to a request for comment.)

The State Department, USAID and the White House did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story. The State Department did not make Rubio available for an interview. Marocco also did not respond to questions.

By Thursday, hundreds of workers had returned to USAID’s former headquarters, where the name has been removed from the building facade, to collect their personal items. They left with boxes and suitcases. Some were crying. Dozens of people cheered and rang bells each time someone exited the building; many of them had recently lost humanitarian aid jobs as well.

“This is more than lost jobs. We’re losing the sector,” a former USAID employee said through tears as she waited for her allotted 15-minute time window to pick up her belongings. “The U.S. government is losing its influence. We’re now more unsafe as a country.”

In the early hours of Feb. 13 at a refugee camp in northern Syria, two armed men wearing masks and police uniforms broke into offices and a warehouse for the aid group Blumont, stealing more than $12,000 worth of laptops and other supplies the U.S. government had already paid for. Because the organization hadn’t received any funds since Trump took office, it no longer had personnel at the camp full time and had paused all its U.S.-funded work except a daily bread delivery.

The armed theft was the result of the U.S. not paying its bills, the group told USAID officials, according to an internal agency email obtained by ProPublica.

Shortly after the incident, the government started paying Blumont’s invoices and the aid group brought back staff and food services that had received a waiver. It is one of the few programs still online and receiving money.

Prior to Jan. 20, the U.S. spent about $60 billion on nonmilitary humanitarian and developmental aid each year — far more than any other country in total dollars, but less than 1% of the federal budget. The vast majority of that money is managed by USAID and the State Department. A network of aid organizations carry out the work, which is funded by Congress.

Since Trump took office, Marocco and Rubio have not only halted foreign aid, laid off thousands of workers and put many more on administrative leave, they have also stopped paying bills for work that has already been done. In one of several lawsuits related to the administration’s dismantling of USAID, aid groups are suing the federal government over the mass program closures and unpaid bills. It was that case that led federal district court Judge Amir Ali to order the administration to settle those bills, which by Feb. 13 totaled nearly $2 billion, according to figures Marocco gave the court. Almost none of it has been paid, the court filings show.

U.S. taxpayers will also be on the hook for interest and damages from the unpaid bills and broken contracts, legal experts told ProPublica.

Organizations have struggled to get through the opaque waiver process, and programs that succeeded were often so strapped for cash because the government hadn’t reimbursed them that they remained inoperative. Medicines that were already purchased by U.S. taxpayers are languishing in warehouses instead of being delivered to the people who need them, several contractors told ProPublica.

On Wednesday, as Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily paused the district court’s order to the federal government to pay its bills, the administration told the court it had terminated 5,800 of the 6,300 foreign aid programs that USAID administered. The government also shuttered 4,100 programs managed by the State Department, about 60% of the total.

In Marocco’s own testimony to the court on Feb. 18 about the process, he said that senior staff and political appointees choose “specific awards” to be evaluated for termination or suspension. He said he personally examines the program and any potential consequences of terminating it before making final recommendations to Rubio.

But USAID staff say that subject-area experts and key personnel who are responsible for the programs were not involved in many terminations, while most others had already lost their jobs.

In the case of the phone contract for the OIG office, for example, the contract officers had no idea the termination notices were coming, officials said. Those officers are specially trained in contract law and regulations to manage these agreements and make sure the government is in compliance. But they were cut out of the process and only learned about it from AT&T, according to the officials and internal emails obtained by ProPublica. (AT&T did not respond to a request for comment.)

The one-page notice to the telecom giant said that Rubio and Marocco had “determined your award is not aligned with Agency priorities and made a determination that continuing this program is not in the national interest.” The notice added: “Immediately cease all activities.”

The notice came as an emailed PDF and not through the normal file management and correspondence system, which led multiple OIG officials to question whether anyone even looked at the contract’s basic information, like its statement of work, much less conducted a careful review.

David Black, an attorney specializing in government contracts, said that the law requires contract officers to approve termination notices and that the episode with the OIG raises questions about Marocco’s claims in court about careful reviews. “It suggests the process was done very hastily,” he said.

On the ground, in the places where the aid kept starvation at bay and deadly viruses in check, program directors say there will now be little to stop those threats.

“What really bothers me is that we’re just looking at numbers, we’re not thinking about real people who are actually going to suffer the consequences of these terminations,” said Dr. Anja Giphart, the acting president of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, which had HIV programs terminated in Eswatini, Lesotho and Tanzania.

Pulling treatment away from pregnant women means children will be infected with HIV in the weeks ahead, Giphart said. And doing it so suddenly means other governments and donors don’t have the opportunity to step in. Half of children who are undiagnosed and untreated for HIV die before their first birthday. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting months and months to get this back on track again,” she said.

In Uganda, Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation, which is funded by USAID, treats tens of thousands of patients for HIV and tuberculosis. In addition, it has for years been one of the only organizations in the country that helps contain Ebola outbreaks — including the current one, which has so far killed two people and infected at least eight others. Earlier this month, the U.S. government issued the foundation a waiver and said it could continue its lifesaving work.

So those who run the foundation were shocked to receive a termination notice hours later. The foundation’s executive director, Dr. Dithan Kiragga, told ProPublica his staff had just begun contact tracing patients with Ebola. He said they will likely now have to halt all U.S.-funded operations and hope that the Uganda health ministry can step in.

“The patients will be told that we are closing,” Kiragga said. “They’ve relied on our systems and support for quite a few years. We saved lives.”

ProPublica plans to continue covering USAID, the State Department and the consequences of ending U.S. foreign aid. We want to hear from you. Reach out via Signal to reporters Brett Murphy at 508-523-5195 and Anna Maria Barry-Jester at 408-504-8131.

Maryam Jameel and Ashley Clarke contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy.

For years, some of America’s most iconic gun-makers turned over sensitive personal information on customers — without their knowledge or consent — to the gun industry’s main lobbying group. Political operatives then employed those details to rally firearms owners to elect pro-gun politicians running for Congress and the White House.

The strategy remained a secret for more than two decades.

In a series of stories in recent months, ProPublica revealed the inner workings of the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s project, using a trove of gun industry documents and insider interviews.

We also showed how the NSSF teamed up with the controversial political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to turbocharge its outreach to gun owners and others in the 2016 election.

Additional internal Cambridge reports obtained by ProPublica now detail the full scope and depth of the persuasion campaign’s sophistication and intrusiveness.

The political consultancy analyzed thousands of details about the lives of people in the NSSF’s enormous database. Were they shopaholics? Did they gamble? Did women buy plus-size or petite underwear?

This story contains interactive graphics that are not displayed here. Read the full story on our website.

The alchemy had three phases.

Some of the data, excerpted here, was basic information you might find on a census, like marital status or ethnic group.

But the data also contained much more specific information about a person’s aesthetic preferences, purchasing habits and hobbies.

Other data highlighted consumers’ personal opinions, histories and even vices.

How Cambridge converted those tiny bits of data into massive political wins has never before been made public. Its methods raise disturbing questions about how our personal data can be used to manipulate us.

“There is a natural desire to stay anonymous and keep your own information, and this is such a violation of that,” said Calli Schroeder, privacy specialist at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The NSSF has said its “activities are, and always have been, entirely legal and within the terms and conditions of any individual manufacturer, company, data broker, or other entity.” Larry Keane, senior vice president of the NSSF since 2000, said the trade group’s 2016 voter outreach campaign involved only commercially available data.

But Cambridge emails and a report on the NSSF campaign said the data included 20 years of information about gun buyers harvested from manufacturer warranty cards given to the NSSF. A contractor for the trade group also handed Cambridge a database of shoppers at Cabela’s, a popular sporting goods retailer. (The general counsel for Bass Pro, which bought Cabela’s in 2017, said the company had been unable to find evidence of Cabela’s “sharing customer information that was not compliant with their privacy policies at or prior to the time of acquisition.”)

Cambridge documents show the firm compared names and addresses in the NSSF and Cabela’s data against the same names and addresses found in a vast array of consumer purchase and lifestyle information, supplied by data broker companies.

Next, analysts used an algorithm to profile and score each person’s behavioral traits based on the data and a psychological assessment tool called OCEAN that measures a human being’s openness to new and different experiences, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. From those scores, Cambridge organized people into five groups it called risk-takers, carers, go-getters, individualists and supporters. Members of each group received Facebook ads tailored to their group’s psychological profiles.

Below are political ads and descriptions of those personality groups pulled from Cambridge documents for the NSSF project. The ads include hypothetical messages along with the actual versions the firm sent for the NSSF’s election campaign, called GunVote.

Cambridge Analytica Description: Scoring high on the scale for neuroticism, risk-takers are “easily frustrated, disorganized, often late and more prone to addiction than others.” They are “attracted to risky situations,” known for “overreacting to various situations,” act “without thinking” and are “often perceived to be outsiders.” Keywords include “security,” “enemies” and “take action.”

Persuasion Tactics: Messaging “could be constructed by first introducing negative scenarios, before providing a reassuring and authoritative solution.”

Among examples Cambridge gave of ads targeting risk-takers is one that depicts a masked person breaking into a home with the message, “What would you do? Protect the Second Amendment.” The sample ad creates a negative scenario that spotlights the concept of enemies and taking action.

The ad Cambridge sent to risk-takers conjures the specter of the Supreme Court turning into “an enemy to your gun rights.”

Cambridge Analytica Description: Scoring low on the neuroticism scale, go-getters are “efficient, productive, and focused on their goals,” often perceived as “self-assured, direct, welcoming and friendly,” as well as being “upbeat about the future.” They are self-aware, in control of their emotions and “like to keep busy and enjoy shared adventures with friends and family.” Keywords include “future” and “hope.”

Persuasion Tactics: Go-getters are best persuaded with messaging that “clearly aligns with the goals to which they are already committed,” according to Cambridge documents. “Imagery should show people collectively taking actions to solve problems in a positive environment.”

Cambridge’s example of an ad targeting go-getters focuses on shared adventures and a positive future by depicting young men hunting together with the message, “Help the next generation enjoy the hunt.”

The ad Cambridge sent shows what appears to be a father and son on a hunt, wearing matching camouflage jackets with rifles slung over their left shoulders. The image urges the go-getters to “protect your future.”

Cambridge Analytica Description: Primarily conscientious on the OCEAN scale, supporters are “relaxed and down to earth” and care about their communities, but “prefer not to be the center of attention.” They act judiciously and “react calmly in a crisis.” They are “rule followers” who “uphold traditional values” and “like their own space, which they share with a select few.” Keywords include “community,” “responsibility,” “reality” and “facts.”

Persuasion Tactics: Because supporters value consistency and commitment, they will respond to messages that include “the concept of reciprocity.” Ads should focus on the idea that “helping is a question of responsibility” between the individual and the people they care about.

The sample ad presents the phrase, “Protect your right to safe firearms use,” over the image of what appears to be a father and son standing in front of a picturesque, well-preserved landscape dotted by mountains.

The image Cambridge sent features a couple who appear to be on a hunt, looking directly at the camera. Hoping to spur supporters’ leanings toward reciprocity, the message says, “Senator Burr is working hard to protect your gun rights.”

Cambridge Analytica Description: Found primarily in the late 50s to early 70s age range, carers are “often led by their emotions but are reluctant to express them, directing their anger inwards against themselves.” They gain control in life through caring for others and focusing on their jobs. They “enjoy voluntary and hands-on activities.” Keywords include “family,” “community,” “cooperation” and “values.”

Persuasion Tactics: Messaging should “appeal to their altruistic side” and should put forward concepts that “will enhance their family life or their lifestyle.” The carer is motivated by altruism, so messages should “appeal to their sensitivity and emotionality, directly leading to a ‘call to action.’”

The sample ad shows multiple generations of a family spending time together, with a message that appeals to the carer’s focus on family values and emotionality: “You take care of your family. Now take care of your country.”

The image Cambridge sent to carers depicts a happy family on a sunny day holding hands and surrounded by nature. The message refers to U.S. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina “protecting your family’s way of life.”

Cambridge Analytica Description: Scoring low in openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion and neuroticism, individualists are “stubborn,” “introverted homebodies” who “view others as potential enemies.” They “prefer the simple things in life and like to pursue activities alone.” Individualists tend to “lack empathy” and have “strong and unchanging beliefs about social norms and morality.” Individualists approach issues with “strict discipline and a ‘get-tough’ attitude.” Keywords include “traditions” and “concrete actions.”

Persuasion Tactics: Messaging to individualists should be “direct and straightforward.” They respond with appeals to “their traditional side and their independent approach to life.”

The sample ad shows a man holding a gun behind his back with the message, “If you can’t protect yourself, who will?” This approach focuses on the isolation and “get-tough attitude” that speaks to individualists.

The ad Cambridge sent to individualists depicts rows of U.S. flags in a field, an image widely associated with military sacrifice and remembrances of war. The message emphasizes the Supreme Court’s role as “the last line of defense for your rights.”

Cambridge found the targeted people on Facebook and delivered ads through the platform aimed at voters in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Each pop-up ad said it came from the NSSF’s GunVote page, but they were crafted by Cambridge. The ads sent to potential voters in key states from June 21, 2016, through July 1, 2016, promoted Republican Sens. Richard Burr, Pat Toomey, Roy Blunt, Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte and Ron Johnson.

Nearly 817,000 people saw the messages, according to Cambridge’s internal metric reports.

For the next three months, Cambridge included voters in Colorado, Florida, Nevada in the multistate blast of ads and videos on social media. Altogether, they garnered nearly 378 million views and drove 60,140,280 visitors to the NSSF’s website.

Cambridge also mapped out the locations of people in the five personality groups in the key states and gave NSSF contractors lists containing their names and addresses. The contractors examined the numbers and locations of each persona on a county-by-county basis. Then they mailed to the potential voters’ homes messages designed to persuade them to cast ballots for the gun industry’s preferred candidates.

Cambridge Analytica's maps show voters broken down by psychological groups.

Ohio

Wisconsin

Missouri

See a detailed view of voters grouped by persona in each of the states targeted by Cambridge.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Corey G. Johnson, design by Anna Donlan.

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The Afghan brothers worked closely with the American military for years, fighting the Taliban alongside U.S. troops, including the Special Forces, and facing gunfire and near misses from roadside bombs while watching their friends die.

They escaped Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban seized control of the country. One brother is now an elite U.S. Army paratrooper at Fort Liberty in North Carolina. The other serves in the Army Reserve in Houston. Their eldest sister and her husband, however, were stranded in Afghanistan, forced into hiding as they waited for the U.S. government to green-light their refugee applications. Finally, after three years, they received those approvals in December and, according to the family, were slated to reunite with their brothers this month.

But weeks before the couple was due to arrive, President Donald Trump issued an executive order indefinitely suspending the admission of refugees. The order was the first in a series of sweeping actions that blocked the arrival of more than 10,000 refugees who already had flights booked for the U.S. and that froze funding for national and international resettlement organizations.

A top former government official who worked on refugee issues told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune that another 100,000 refugees who had already been vetted by the Department of Homeland Security have also been blocked from entering the country. The official, who declined to be identified for fear of retribution, said the Trump administration is “moving so swiftly that there might not be much of a refugee program left to recover.”

Taken together, Trump’s actions are effectively dismantling the U.S. refugee system and eroding the country’s historic commitment to legal immigration, according to refugee resettlement and U.S. military experts, who say the most egregious examples include denying entrance to thousands of Afghans who worked with the U.S. military and their relatives.

The refugees “have been going through the process, which is very slow and very detailed and offers extreme scrutiny on each and every individual, and now, all of a sudden, that too is no longer acceptable,” said Erol Kekic, senior vice president with Church World Service, one of 10 national programs that work with the U.S. government to resettle refugees.

“We’re basically abandoning humanity at this moment in time, and America has been known for being that shining star and guiding countries in the world when it comes to doing the right thing for people in need,” Kekic said. “Now we’re not.”

The orders halting aid to international groups also indirectly affected a separate visa program for Afghan translators who worked with the U.S. military, closing off yet another avenue by which thousands hoped to enter the country. Together, the Trump administration’s actions have likely shuttered pathways to the U.S. for about 200,000 Afghans and their relatives whose refugee and military visa applications are currently being reviewed, including tens of thousands who have been vetted, the former U.S. government official said.

Abandoning Afghan allies whose work with the U.S. has them facing threats of retribution and death imperils the country’s standing abroad and makes the military’s job exceedingly difficult, said Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and onetime dean of Texas A&M University’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service.

If the Trump administration does not quickly exempt Afghans from the refugee-related orders, “good luck signing up the next bunch of recruits to help us in our endeavors in the future,” said Crocker, who is now a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan international think tank in Washington, D.C.

“The entire world sees what we do and don’t do to support those who supported us,” Crocker said.

Spokespeople for the White House, the U.S. State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not respond to requests for comment about the escalated actions by Trump, who slashed refugee admissions to a record low of 15,000 in the final year of his first term.

Refugees and a coalition of resettlement groups filed the first refugee-related lawsuit against the administration last week, seeking to reverse the executive orders. It argues that the recent actions violate Congress’ authority to make immigration laws and that the administration did not follow federal regulations in implementing them. Another resettlement group, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, also sued the Trump administration over its refugee actions this week, arguing that they were unlawful.

The executive orders promise a review in 90 days and say that the State Department and DHS could grant exemptions “on a case-by-case basis,” but refugee groups said that neither agency has explained who is eligible or how to request such a waiver.

The Afghan brothers, who asked to be identified by an abbreviation of their last name, Mojo, are hoping the answers come quickly. They are among at least 200 Afghan Americans currently serving in the U.S. military whose family members applied for refugee status, only to be suddenly denied entrance.

“We feel betrayed,” the brother in Houston said. “We serve this country because it protected us, but now it is abandoning my sister, who is in danger because of our work with America.”

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which Congress created in 1980 following the Vietnam War, allows legal immigration for people fleeing their countries if they meet the narrow definition of being persecuted.

To qualify, refugees must prove that they have been targeted for political, racial or religious reasons or because they are part of a threatened social or ethnic group.

The vetting, which requires multiple security screenings and medical examinations, takes an average of about two years, according to experts.

Those who had made it through the process and are now unable to come because of Trump’s recent actions include the children of a former U.S. military translator living in Massachusetts with his wife. The Afghan couple waited three years to reunite with their children, who were separated from their parents at the Kabul airport on the day of the Taliban takeover and have been living in Qatar during the yearslong vetting process.

The kids, ages six to 17, were about to board their flights in Doha last month when the executive orders suddenly blocked their travel, leaving them in Qatar, where they had been supported by international refugee agencies that were funded, in part, by the U.S. government.

It’s uncertain how much longer they can stay in Qatar, said their father, Gul, who asked that his last name not be published to protect his family.

“When my wife heard this news, she fell on the ground and lost consciousness,” Gul said. “We have waited years for them to come and in a few hours, everything changed.”

A former Texas National Guard member was beside himself when he talked about how his plans to be reunited with his wife later this month had been upended. She is a member of the Hazara minority group, which has historically been the target of widespread attacks and abuses including from the Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, according to a 2022 report by Human Rights Watch, an international advocacy group.

His work for the U.S. military, he said, put her in even more danger.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he sobbed into the phone.

The actions have also blocked the arrival of persecuted Christians, whom Trump had previously vowed to protect. That includes an Afghan family whose conversion led to violent attacks from conservative Muslims, according to refugee organizations.

Word of their persecution spurred a church in the conservative East Texas community of Tyler to sponsor the family’s refugee resettlement applications. Justin Reese, a 42-year-old software developer in Tyler who volunteers to help resettle refugees, said telling the family that it could no longer come was heartbreaking.

“You went from this level of commitment and certainty to none at all, literally in the space of a couple of minutes,” he said.

Aside from halting arrivals, Trump’s orders have blocked funding to U.S. nonprofit resettlement organizations, which caused them to lay off or furlough hundreds of employees and hindered their ability to help refugees already in the country.

In Houston, for example, the YMCA is currently restricted from offering about 400 new refugees basic services such as housing and health screening to help set them up for self-sufficiency, said Jeff Watkins, the organization’s chief international initiatives officer.

The nonprofit is temporarily relying on private funds and other programs to ensure that refugees’ housing and food needs are met and that they are not stranded, but Watkins said that is not sustainable for the long term.

“This becomes a community issue if those needs aren’t addressed,” Watkins said.

The Afghan brothers in Houston and North Carolina said that their sister and her husband were forced to flee their home three years ago after the Taliban published photos of the brothers working with American troops and interrogated neighbors about their whereabouts.

The couple, who are both physicians, could no longer work. They moved every few months, relying on wire transfers sent by the brothers as they waited for the U.S. government to approve their refugee applications.

Now they are forced to continue hiding, but this time the path toward safety feels more nebulous.

Each day with no action increases the danger for stranded Afghans like them, said Shawn VanDiver, a U.S. Navy veteran who leads AfghanEvac, an organization that he began to help those left behind after the withdrawal.

“The Taliban is routinely harassing and torturing folks associated with us,” he said.

For years, Republicans criticized Biden for his handling of the withdrawal. “Now is the time for them to stand with our Afghan allies and fix this,” VanDiver said.

A Taliban spokesperson disputed in a text that it targeted those who worked with the U.S. military. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, however, in 2023 documented more than 200 killings of former officials and members of the armed forces after the takeover, but international human rights officials have said the true number is likely far higher.

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, one of Biden’s critics on Afghanistan, said in a recent interview with CBS News that the U.S. needed to “live up to our word” to protect Afghan allies.

“Otherwise, down the road, in another conflict, no one’s going to trust us,” he said.

But McCaul avoided criticizing Trump in a statement to ProPublica and the Tribune, saying that he believed the president would listen to veterans who have called for an exemption for Afghan allies.

The Houston brother said that he hopes that Trump will ultimately do the right thing for the families of servicemen like him and his brother, who have sacrificed so much for America.

His brother in North Carolina has written to his congressman to request an exemption for Afghans who “have been doing everything legally, following the law.”

“We don’t want to be worried about our loved ones being left behind in Afghanistan, and that will help boost our morale and our confidence in serving the American people with integrity,” he said.

That service, according to the North Carolina brother, will soon include a deployment to the Texas border with Mexico, where his unit would be ordered to aid the curtailing of illegal immigration.

Anjeanette Damon and Jeremy Kohler contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

– from Maya Angelou poem, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

Thinking about what I would write in this column about the importance of group singing for a mass people’s movement I somehow remembered this Maya Angelou poem, this poem about singing at a time of adversity.

One of the first times I ever sang out loud outside of a church or school setting was when, at the age of 20, I was literally “caged,” in a cell in the Monroe County Jail in Rochester, NY. I had just been arrested with seven others for a nonviolent, “Catholic Left” action in 1970, spending five hours inside a Federal Building in the FBI, Selective Service and US Attorney’s offices. We cut up draft files and looked for incriminating FBI files [they were paper back then, not electronic] as a nonviolent protest against both the Vietnam War and the J. Edgar Hoover/FBI-led government repression of many of the organizations working for peace, racial justice and women’s rights.

I remember how I felt inside that Rochester jail cell: very scared, very aware that I could end up spending a long time in prison. My response to that deep fear was to sing. And as I did so it was strengthening to hear others arrested with me calling out words of support.

Singing can be a very special thing, especially within mass movements for positive, progressive change. Here’s something Bruce Hartford wrote in his excellent book, “Troublemaker,” about the role of singing in the 1960s Black Freedom movement:

The songs spread our message,
The songs bonded us together,
 The songs elevated our courage,
  The songs shielded us from hate,
     The songs protected us from danger,
      And it was the songs that kept us sane.

Hartford wrote this about one of those experiences:

“I so vividly remember those night marches during the school crisis when white mobs filled the outer perimeter of the square. As we marched around the green singing with every ounce of energy and passion we could muster we had to circle again, and again, and again, past that one spot where they were most intensely trying to break into our line. Most of the time they couldn’t do it. They simply couldn’t do it. In some way I can’t explain our singing and our sense of solidarity created a kind of psychological barrier between us and them, a wall of moral strength that they couldn’t physically push through to attack us with their clubs and chains, as they so obviously wanted to do.”  p. 347

27 years ago my wife, son and I moved from Brooklyn, NY to Bloomfield, NJ. I soon began seeing and hearing at various activist protests a group called the Solidarity Singers, an all-volunteer group which sang at demonstrations, meetings, conferences, anywhere they were asked to sing. They sang songs with melodies drawn from the civil rights and labor movements but with words appropriate to the particular issue at that time. About 10 years ago, after retiring from paid employment, I became an increasingly active member of this group to the point where today I consider it to be one of my main areas of activist work in New Jersey.

There is no question that the existence and persistence of this group has made a difference in building a stronger, multi-issue, activist progressive movement in New Jersey.

James Connolly, the famous Irish labor, socialist and independence leader, also a women’s rights supporter, understood the importance of singing. In the introduction to “Revolutionary Songs,” published in Dublin in 1907, he wrote this:

“No revolutionary movement is complete without its poetical expression. If such a movement has caught hold of the imagination of the masses they will seek a vent in song for the aspirations, the fears and the hopes, the loves and the hatreds engendered by the struggle. Until the movement is marked by the joyous, defiant, singing of revolutionary songs, it lacks one of the most distinctive marks of a popular revolutionary movement, it is the dogma of a few, and not the faith of the multitudes.”

To defeat Trump, Musk and MAGA and advance towards a very different future than what they and the billionaire/fossil fuel class want, it will take multitudes, multitudes lifting our voices together in defiance and in song.

As we saw yesterday with tens of thousands of people protesting in a coordinated way in all 50 states, and as we will continue to see in multiplying and growing acts of resistance going forward, we won’t go back! Let’s go forward singing!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ted Glick.

President Trump has ordered a freeze on all foreign aid to South Africa in an executive order he signed Friday, claiming that a new land reform law amounts to “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” The country’s white minority still owns the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid rule. Trump also criticized South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ and said the United States would accept white South Africans as refugees facing what he characterized as persecution. The cuts to aid are already causing widespread suffering in South Africa, where “after 30 years of democracy, not much has changed in terms of wealth ownership” and a white population with colonial roots is “using politics, ideology, misinformation and propaganda … to maintain the status quo,” says South African activist Trevor Ngwane.

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

Around Los Angeles, firefighting crews continue to battle the Palisades and Eaton fires and other smaller blazes. Nearly a thousand of the firefighters deployed to help contain the devastating fires are incarcerated. They have been working around the clock while earning as little as between $5.80 to $10.24 a day. For more on how California’s incarcerated firefighting program works, we speak to investigative journalist Keri Blakinger, who is herself formerly incarcerated, and who recently had to evacuate her home in Los Angeles.

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

At the fraught start of an apocalyptic new year, we find a slight, weird sliver of hope in the improbable survival of Sweden's Gävle Goat, a massive straw goat that sanguine residents have built each Christmas since 1966 but that malevolent humanity has, most years, implacably destroyed. Typically, they burn him down; he's also been beaten, run over, bird-pecked to collapse and shot with flaming arrows by perps dressed as Gingerbread Men. But this year, he boasts, "Still standing!"

Because we are a mystifying species with often-impenetrable rituals, the Yule Goat is erected each year on the first day of Advent at Slottstorget in the center of Gävle, about a hundred miles north of Stockholm. A 45-foot-high replica of a Northern European Christmas symbol, Gävlebocken seems to have sprung from German paganism fused with Norse tradition. He is based on ancient proto-Slavic beliefs that honor Devac (Dažbog), the god of the harvest and fertile sun, typically depicted as a white goat; he also celebrates Devac's bestie the Norse god Thor, who rode the sky in a chariot drawn by two goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. By tradition, the last sheaf of grain bundled in the harvest is imbued with magical properties that symbolize the sacred spirit of the harvest. In today's late-stage capitalism, the goat just brings presents.

While the Goat may have originated in Söder, a neighborhood in Stockholm, local historians in Gävle say he was conceived - and drawn on a pastry shop napkin - by their merchants, either ad man Stig Gavlén, trader Harry Ström, or Inga Ivarsson, whose family had already created the world's largest chair and skis so why not a goat. Local firemen grabbed the napkin drawing and ran with it, the highly flammable beginning of "a long, unfortunate relationship between the Gävle Goat and the local fire department." On Dec. 1 in 1966, the first Goat was laboriously put into place; it weighed three tons. On New Year’s Eve, at midnight, the goat went up in flames. The perpetrator was caught and charged with vandalism, but it was the first of many such grim fates for Gävlebocken: In 57 years and incarnations, he's survived intact till New Year's Day just 19 times.

The Goat's long litany of affronts is part Book of Job, part Laurel and Hardy. In 1970, he lasted just six hours before being set on fire by two drunk teenagers. In 1972, he imploded due to unknown sabotage. In I973, a local man stole him and put him up in his backyard; the thief got two years in prison. In 1976, a student rammed him with his sweet Volvo 122, causing the hind legs to collapse. In 1979, someone burned him down before he was put up. A reprieve: In 1985 he first entered the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest goat. In 1987, he was "heavily impregnated" with fire retardants but still burned down. In 1988, he survived, prompting bookies to start betting on survival odds. In 1990, volunteer guards began patrolling, leading to several peaceful years; the town also installed a live web-cam, further ensuring tranquility. Briefly.

In 1995, a Norwegian crossed the border and tried to burn him down, but failed. In 2001, after growing publicity, a tourist from Cleveland, Ohio was arrested for torching him; he said he thought it was a legal tradition. In 2005, "unknown vandals" dressed as Santa Clauses and Gingerbread Men shot flaming arrows at the Goat; a few days later they were featured on Sweden’s TV3 "Most Wanted" program. In 2008, after many chemical immersions, officials decided to skip drenching his straw in fire retardants because they made the goat look ugly, "like a brown terrier." Intrigued arsonists failed twice; a third succeeded. The next year, goat-burners were so determined they first hacked the webcam, launching a denial of service to knock it offline before they did the fiery deed. They were never caught. More fences and guards were added.

Gävlebocken survived intact in 2010, despite a reported plot by "two mysterious men" to kidnap him using a helicopter after first trying to bribe the security guard. In 2011, he prevailed only five days; in 2012, the fire "started it his left hind leg"; in 2014, the Goat went to China to visit their sister city Zhuhai; in 2016, he was burned to the ground a few hours after a grand 50th birthday party. Except for the hackers, the indignities were typically visited upon the Goat - beaten with clubs, hit by vintage cars, legs singed or collapsed, vicious online responses to the latest conflagration: "Cook him to nothing but ashes" - by less than stellar, often sooty miscreants. After one perp was detained by a guard, the local press reported he was "quickly identified" because he had "a singed face, smelled of gasoline, and was holding a lighter in his hand."

Arson as a Christmas Tradition: The Gävle Goat

Gävlebocken has also been beset by envious wannabees. For years he's been challenged by a Yule Goat built by the Natural Science Club of the School of Vasa; when their goat Little Brother failed to make it into Guinness, they began making it bigger and bigger, and in 1985 they made the world record. Of course Stig Gavlén, the reported creator of the original, was graceful in defeat. Just kidding: He argued the Science Club's goat shouldn't have won because he wasn't as attractive as Gävlebocken, and his neck was too long. In 2016, Little Brother got to take Gävlebocken's place after he was burned down, but then Little Brother got hit by a car. Several years, both goats have been torched. By now, given its grievous history, Yule Goats of any variety have come to be viewed as "perhaps the world's most endangered animal."

In 2022, Gävlebocken encountered a new nemesis. Due to Sweden's unusually wet summer, the straw had more grain stuck to it, and flocks of jackdaw birds descended to peck him into ragged squalor. After the assault, the city's Goat Committee - yes, there is one - held an emergency meeting, but decided to take no further action. Citing the good will of Christmas, they said they didn't want to hurt or frighten away birds just following their hungry instincts, so the Goat would "continue to spread that Christmas spirit." On his X account - yes, he has one - Gävlebocken gloated, "I did not go down without a fight." In fact, many of his posts have that snarky-bro ring: "I'm the one and only," "Halfway through and this goat is still looking good," "I know, I'm hard to resist," "I made it!", "Looks aren't everything but I have them just in case."

Still, the bluster is understandable: Sweden's "arson goat" reigns. The live goat-cam has over 14,000 subscribers; it even has a live chat. There are still people tracking and betting on his market value and survival odds; this year's started at a 6% chance to make it to New Year's. A website offers merch, from a Kidnapped Christmas sweater complete with helicopter to a burning goat tree ornament: "To die for you is my greatest honor." Online - "Get notified if the Gävle Goat is burning!" - people update, monitor, speculate: "It's goat-burning season! What's it gonna be? Fire? Automobile? Hungry birds?" "Security guard caught smoking," "Only 27 hours left - will the Gävle Goat survive?" Reddit (category: "Goats in the News") ranges from optimists - "Still holding on this year" - to sadists: "The destruction of this goat is my favorite holiday tradition."

What's the draw of an event that comes down to, If you build it, they will come to burn it down? To some, it symbolizes "the eternal battle between goat-erectors and goat-burners," between the forces of commercialization and "the primeval urge to set something huge on fire because the sun has disappeared and who knows when it’s coming back." Perps are innocents "possessed by the spirit of our pagan ancestors," who want to "bring warmth and light back into the universe, one goat at a time." And after a year "like the world’s worst mashup of the real housewives of New Jersey and the show Jackass," a war over a large straw goat has a certain wholesome, guileless allure. It could, and likely soon will be much worse. This year, thanks to a double fence, 24-hour guards and better straw, the Gävle Goat still stands. If he can survive, maybe we can too.

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

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In my early years living in New Jersey, I keenly remember The Star-Ledger in Newark reporting on how hundreds of police officers and firefighters got anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and other forms of testosterone at taxpayer expense for medically unnecessary reasons. It was a tour de force of local journalism; something that deepened my understanding of the state where I lived.

Sadly, this kind of journalism has been harder to find as the papers that cover Jersey have struggled financially. Because the state is sandwiched between two big TV media markets — New York City and Philly — the issues facing our towns and cities get far less attention.

Indeed, in February, The Star Ledger is ceasing its print publication entirely and moving to an online-only format. Over the years leading up to this decision, the paper imposed multiple rounds of job cuts and its offerings thinned, even as the staffers who remained continued to produce vital journalism. The company’s leaders say they will reinvest funds from ending the print publication into the core newsroom.

I hope so. Because with each passing year, the reminders of the local news industry’s decline become more pronounced. Layoffs. Newspapers closing. Fewer investigative stories.

That’s why I’m so proud to share how ProPublica is stepping in to help fill this void through a number of new initiatives that we’ve launched and will continue to roll out in the new year.

In early 2024, we announced our 50 State Initiative, through which we pledged to tell accountability stories with partners in all 50 states over the next five years. We’re currently working with our first 10 local newsrooms, including a project in North Dakota (the first time we’re collaborating with an outlet in the state), and we will be selecting another 10 in 2025.

As part of this effort, we pay for a reporter’s salary and benefits for one year so they can dive deep into a project that matters for their communities or regions. We also pair those reporters with editors here and members of ProPublica’s data, research, crowdsourcing and news applications teams so they apply new and innovative techniques to their reporting. One of the consequences of newsroom layoffs has been drastic reductions or the elimination of research and data teams. Giving partners access to those resources greatly expands a story’s possibilities.

The 50 State Initiative is an outgrowth of our Local Reporting Network, which began in 2018 and has generated about 100 projects to date. Those stories have changed laws and changed lives. They’ve led to a national emergency being declared in Alaska, debt being forgiven in Memphis, Tennessee, and vast sums of money being allocated to fix long-standing problems in Idaho and Hawaii. Almost weekly, we see the impact of journalism from reporters in the network. We have seen changes in both blue and red states; so many issues transcend partisanship. People want to fix problems where they live when they become aware of them.

This success is possible because we work with a huge range of publications: legacy newspapers, radio and TV stations, and a new cadre of nonprofit newsrooms that have sprung up seeking to increase the sources of news to local residents. We’ve learned over and over again that people in different communities get their news in different ways, but the appetite for fact-based reporting transcends location.

Next year, we will build on this track record of success. In January, we will launch what we are calling our Sustainability Desk, which will work with previous partners to produce stories even after a reporter’s one-year fellowship has ended. We are hiring an editor and several other members of our staff to keep these relationships going and to identify opportunities to match the local knowledge of our partners with ProPublica’s investigative expertise. Be on the lookout for stories from these partnerships early in the year.

We are also launching a new initiative with our partners at The Texas Tribune. In addition to continuing the work of our shared investigative unit, we will be identifying major issues facing the state and collaborating with five local newsrooms each year to cover one of those issues from different perspectives.

Texas is helping to set the national dialogue on issues from education to health care to immigration. Gov. Greg Abbott focused the national spotlight on the border by busing more than 100,000 newly arriving immigrants to New York, Chicago and other big cities. The state is poised to adopt private school vouchers in its upcoming legislative session. And it also has the highest share of residents without health insurance in the nation. We will provide financial, editorial and audience support to five newsrooms around the state, and we are hoping that our investment in journalism meets the moment. As Texas lawmakers consolidate power in Austin — and newsrooms pare back their presence in the capital — this new approach will help to ensure newsrooms from El Paso to Tyler, Lubbock to Laredo, can learn about how people in various parts of the state are dealing with similar issues.

Lastly, we will be hiring a reporter based in Florida. This will be our first dedicated reporting effort in the state, although we have done memorable work there, including Local Reporting Network partnerships with The Palm Beach Post on the harm caused by sugar cane burning and with the Miami Herald about a Florida program that was doing a poor job taking care of children born with brain damage.

The changes promised by Donald Trump as he prepares for his second administration are sure to create effects that will be felt locally. We are prepared to document the consequences for communities in an unprecedented way. When Trump took the oath of office for the first time, we had no regional offices and we hadn’t yet started our Local Reporting Network.

Now we have ProPublica journalists on the ground in 17 states: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. Florida will make 18.

And we have 21 active Local Reporting Network partnerships across the country. All told, ProPublica has nearly 50 reporters in different communities covering local news through an investigative lens.

We may never fully replace the hyperlocal coverage of high school sports, the police blotter and the town council. But we do believe that every American should have the benefits of accountability journalism, regardless of where they live.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Charles Ornstein.

By destroying universities, museums, libraries, and archives, Israel seeks to make our memory, whether it’s collective or institutional, inaccessible. It’s an assault on continuity. They want to force people out of Gaza but they also want to make sure if people return to Gaza they find nothing and dwell for eternity in this limbo of nothingness, in this void. Israel is trying to impose a rupture between the present and the past and the future.

— Jehad Abusalim, executive director of the Institute for Palestine Studies

For the past few months, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the talented data storytellers at Kontinentalist to create Gaza Lives: Resisting Cultural Genocide. In three chapters, this story presents the devastating impact of the ongoing Israeli genocide on Palestinian cultural life and heritage; features interviews with five Palestinian cultural practitioners; and introduces Israel’s decades-long, colonial campaign to erase Palestinian culture since 1948.

This chapter details how Israeli forces have deliberately targeted and obliterated key elements of Gaza’s cultural life, bombing ancient sites, religious monuments, personal archives, and community spaces.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Visualizing Palestine.

By destroying universities, museums, libraries, and archives, Israel seeks to make our memory, whether it’s collective or institutional, inaccessible. It’s an assault on continuity. They want to force people out of Gaza but they also want to make sure if people return to Gaza they find nothing and dwell for eternity in this limbo of nothingness, in this void. Israel is trying to impose a rupture between the present and the past and the future.

— Jehad Abusalim, executive director of the Institute for Palestine Studies

For the past few months, we had the opportunity to collaborate with the talented data storytellers at Kontinentalist to create Gaza Lives: Resisting Cultural Genocide. In three chapters, this story presents the devastating impact of the ongoing Israeli genocide on Palestinian cultural life and heritage; features interviews with five Palestinian cultural practitioners; and introduces Israel’s decades-long, colonial campaign to erase Palestinian culture since 1948.

This chapter details how Israeli forces have deliberately targeted and obliterated key elements of Gaza’s cultural life, bombing ancient sites, religious monuments, personal archives, and community spaces.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Visualizing Palestine.

Photograph Source: Jim Pennucci – CC BY 2.0

I’ve lived for many years in an old apartment building in New York and, for all the years I’ve spent in this elevator building, I’ve never had a problem with mice.  Well, never until now.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a half-dozen mice run along the baseboard under a radiator and by my refrigerator.  According to the building’s “super,” construction work in another apartment disrupted the normal life of the mice and they are scattering.  Using glue mice traps supplied by an exterminator, three mice were trapped and died.  Now my private “war” with these tiny little creatures is over as the mice have retuned to the building’s infrastructure and no longer appear to be coming out.

My mice problem led me to think about all the other “wild” creatures that call New York home.   The most common mouse is dubbed “house mice” and is about 5 inches long (not including its tail), has brown or gray fur and large ears. House mice can come into any home they can get into and make a nest wherever they can find a quiet spot. (“Deer mice” are mostly outdoor creature but do live in attics or basements.)

There are no estimates as to the number of mice in the city.  However, the City government finds that nearly 25 percent — 680,000 households — report seeing mice or rats, or signs of mice or rats, in their home or residential building.  However, as The New York Times reports, “There are an estimated three million rats in New York, but in the absence of a proper census, there is really no way to know how many.”

There are two types of rats in the city. “Norway rats” — also known as “brown rats” or “sewer rats” — are the most prevalent and are about 9 inches long with tails of at least 6 inches. They live primarily in basements and on ground floors, but can be found in home and food store garbage dumps. “Roof rats” are slightly smaller than Norway rats at around 7 inches long but with a tail that could be as long as 10 inches. They can scale tree are often dwell in roofs and attics.

In the face the COVID pandemic, New York’s mayor Bill de Blasio launched an “open restaurants” program in June 2020, offering a lifeline to the hospitality industry. At its height, there were some 12,000 establishments offering outdoor services.  However, these outdoor “sheds” led to what one report claims that “complaints hotline mentioning rodents have jumped this year, 15% up on pre-pandemic levels.”

Ironically, in May 2024, Mayor Eric Adams was issued a ticket by a city health inspector who found fresh rat droppings and a rat burrow “at the front left base of the staircase of the property” he owns the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

Numerous bugs call the city home.  The city finds that some 880,000 households – about 30 percent of households — report having cockroaches in their home. A 2021 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau found that nearly 1 in 6 New Yorkers reported seeing cockroaches in their homes, compared to 1 in 9 households nationally. Cockroaches are far more common in low-income households than higher-income ones, and this disparity is greatest among Hispanic households.

There are numerous kinds of roaches in city homes.  The most common are the “American Cockroach,” typically found in moist basements and lower floors, and the “German Cockroaches,” which is smaller and can be found anywhere inside the home.  Cockroaches range in size between 1/2 to 3 inches in length and are a reddish-brown or dark-brown color. “Waterbugs” — alsoknown as oriental cockroach as well as toe biter, electric-light bug or alligator tick — are bigger than cockroaches and are tan to black and are approximately 1-inch long.

Other bugs that dwell in the Big Apple include: (i) “bed bugs,” nocturnal creature that like warm mattresses and often feed on someone sleeping on the bed; (ii) flees, wingless creatures that bite through skin and suck blood of both mammals and birds; (iii) termites, that mostly feed on dead plant material and cellulose, in the form of wood and soil; (iv) flies, a half-dozen varieties that can carry disease-causing contaminants which can causetyphoid, cholera, Salmonella, dysentery, tuberculosis, anthrax and worms; (v) fruit flies, a half-dozen types of flies often found in kitchens and garbage areas; (vi) long-tailed aphid eater flies (aka syrphid or flower flies), they pollinate NYC plants; (vii) golden digger wasps, they pollinate plants; (viii) ants, ten variants that live in underground communities headed by a queen or queens; (ix) moths, including the large, motted-green Pandorus Sphinx Moth (aka Hawk Moth) and (x) caterpillars and butterflies, up to 110 species and include the Black Swallowtail Butterfly.

Adding to the bug problem are mosquitoes that flourish in a warm, moist climate, especially in the summer.  Infected mosquitos are spreading a new West Nile virus to humans as well as birds, horses and other mammals.  The city government has a map that traces mosquitoes by area.

Then there are spiders.  There is many different types of both male and females spiders and are recognized by their cobwebs — thin silken thread structures found in one’s home. The webs are designed to catch prey.  In addition, there are a dozen or so beetles as well as a handful of different types of mites and weevils.

Finally, there are the bees. The Parks Department reports that the city “is home to more than 200 species of bees” and they pollinate approximately 68 percent of flowers in parks and residential neighborhoods.  Among them are Brown Belted Bumblebees, Ligated Furrow Bees (aka Mining or Sweet Bees), Leaf Cutter Bees.

Many New Yorks have domesticated pets, be they any and all kinds of cats or dogs, birds or fish, gerbils or hamsters and even turtles and some reptiles, among others. But these are domesticated animals, not feral or wild creatures that call the city home.

Adrian Benepe, president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, told the Times, “I grew up in the parks.”  He added, “[t]here were never red-tailed hawks or Peregrine falcons or bald eagles. You didn’t even see raccoons; there were pigeons and rats and squirrels, that was it. Now there are bald eagles all over the city. This winter [2021] they were in place you haven’t seen them in generations, and they were hunting in Prospect Park.”

There has been a growth in the number and kind of feral animals in the city.

The Daily News reported in 2023 that — like the rat population — the feral-cat population has exploded.  It estimated that there are between 500,000 to 1 million cats now living on the city streets. “These feral cats running amok everywhere,” a cat rescuer told the paper.

Among other feral animals calling the city home are chipmunks, squirrels, raccoons, red foxes and skunks.  In addition, in Central Park there are raptors, bats and a coyote; in Statin Island are beavers, salamanders and leopard frogs; in the Bronx are a bobcat, mink and foxes.  In the waters passing through and around the city one can now find endangered alewife herrings and American eels in the Bronx River as well as osprey and egrets lurk nearby; in Queens are baby damselflies, sea turtles and baby seals; and in Brooklyn are exotic insects.  In the Hudson River, oysters and seahorses can be found at piers.

New York is alive with humans and living creatures of every kind.  Humans live in a postmodern city, with nearly everyone clutching their mobile phone as they walk down a street, shop in a store, eat in a coffee shop or restaurant, ride on a bus or subway or simple live at home.  Nature can be found all around New Yorkers, whether trees on streets, public parks, gardens in home yards or simply flower pots on windowsills or living rooms.

Sadly, the full scope of the other living creatures that call New York home – both domesticated and feral – is often not fully appreciated.  It took a visit by mice in my apartment to open my eyes to some of all the other creatures that the call the city home.

The post Other Lives in the Big Apple appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Rosen.

To help us understand the Uncommitted movement and its significance in this election, this week’s guest is Palestinian-American and Georgia state representative Ruwa Romman. She was on a short list of Palestinian-Americans who submitted a two-minute speech for the DNC, which was ultimately rejected, despite the invitation to Democratic leadership to collaborate on the text. Though not an Uncommitted delegate herself, Rep. Romman will explain how to bridge our differences and move forward with a unified front. Holding our elected officials accountable isn’t just a civic duty—it’s essential for enacting real change and enforcing laws effectively, especially those to hold war criminals like Netanyahu and Hamas accountable. Despite the challenges ahead, there’s a glimmer of hope.

This week’s bonus show, exclusive to our Patreon supporters at the Truth-teller ($5/month) level and higher, delves into how Trump broke the law (yet again!) to come to power in the 2016 election by accepting an illegal campaign donation from Egypt’s dictatorship. To access this and all bonus episodes, be sure to subscribe to the show! Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation—we couldn’t make this show without you!

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Join us at a Gaslit Nation event! Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters at the Truth-teller level and higher, join the conversation at our live-tapings! Meet these incredible authors! You can also drop your questions in the chat or send them ahead of time through Patreon! Subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit to join the fun!

• September 16 at 7:00 PM ET: In-person live taping with Andrea and Terrel Starr at the Ukrainian Institute of America in NYC. Celebrate the release of In the Shadow of Stalin, the graphic novel adaptation of Andrea’s film Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland. Gaslit Nation Patreon supporters get in free – so message us on Patreon to be added to the guest list. Everyone else can RSVP here: https://ukrainianinstitute.org/event/books-at-the-institute-chalupa/

• September 17 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with investigative journalist Stephanie Baker, author of Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia. Her book has been highly praised by Bill Browder, the advocate behind the Magnitsky Act to combat Russian corruption. 

• September 18 at 4:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with the one and only Politics Girl, Leigh McGowan, author of A Return to Common Sense: How to Fix America Before We Really Blow It.

• September 24 at 12:00 PM ET: Virtual live taping with David Pepper, author of Saving Democracy. Join us as David discusses his new art project based on Project 2025.

Show Notes:

WATCH: Kamala Harris addresses war in Gaza 2024 at Democratic National Convention | 2024 DNC Night 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oogNVOqnChc

Watch: Palestinian American Lawmaker Gives Speech the DNC Wouldn't Allow on Stage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8K5FIp-GN8

How to Stop Trump from Stealing the Election https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/7/30/how-to-stop-trump-from-stealing-the-electionnbsp

Fani Willis vs. Trump: The Nazis Strike Back https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/episodes-transcripts-20/2024/01/24/fani-willis-trump-nazis

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

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

NOAA now predicts a 65 percent chance of La Niña, which is favorable for cyclones, developing between July and September, when such events are most common. (La Niña is a band of cool water forming in contrast to El Niño’s warm band.) At the same time, sea surface temperatures remain extraordinarily high in the Atlantic — the kind of conditions that power monster storms.

The Atlantic is primed for a brutal hurricane season. But these cyclones aren’t just made of devastating winds and rains — they’re full of invaluable data that scientists will use to improve forecasting, giving everyone from local meteorologists to federal emergency planners better information to save lives.

Such insights would be particularly critical if, for instance, a hurricane rapidly intensifies — defined as an increase in sustained wind speeds of at least 35 mph in 24 hours — just before it reaches shore and mutates from a manageable crisis into a deadly one. “Those cases right before landfall, where people are most vulnerable, is the nightmare scenario,” said Christopher Rozoff, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who models hurricanes. “That’s why it’s of such great interest to improve this, and yet it’s been a huge forecasting challenge until somewhat recently.” (Which is not to say weaker storms can’t also be catastrophic — for instance, they might stall over a city and dump torrential rain.)

For such calamitous phenomena, hurricanes feed on a certain level of atmospheric boringness. El Niño suppresses the development of these storms by encouraging vertical wind shear, or winds moving at different speeds and directions at different elevations. That messiness tilts the vortex, interfering with a hurricane’s ability to spin up uniformly. The La Niña that could form this summer, on the other hand, decreases that wind shear in the Atlantic, providing ideal conditions for cyclones. 

On the ocean’s surface, extremely high temperatures have already turned the Atlantic into a vast pool of fuel for hurricanes to start forming. When this water evaporates, the vapor is ingested by the storm, forming buoyant clouds that release heat and lower the atmospheric pressure. This draws in air to create wind, which spins up into a vortex.

If the sea is warm enough, and vertical wind shear is low enough, a hurricane has the potential for rapid intensification. “The atmosphere usually drives the bus when it comes to rapid intensification — it is definitely something that is on my mind this hurricane season,” said Eric Blake, a senior hurricane specialist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center. “When you have extremely warm waters, it just increases the chances that it can occur in areas that maybe it wouldn’t normally occur in.”

Last year, several hurricanes quickly strengthened, including Hurricane Idalia, which tore into communities along the Florida coast. Over in the Pacific, Hurricane Otis evolved into a monster with stunning speed before devastating Acapulco, Mexico. “That storm intensified from a tropical storm to a Category 5 in just over a 24-hour period,” said Rozoff. (For context, a Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph, while Category 5 is at least 157 mph.) “We’ve seen improvements in forecasting and our ability to capture these events, but that particular forecast still fails, unfortunately, by the numerical models. None of them were foreseeing this intensification to such an extreme storm that would be so damaging.”

Because blistering strengthening involves highly complicated interactions between the sea and the sky, it’s notoriously hard to predict. As the planet warms, hotter oceans provide more energy for hurricanes, and complex ripple effects across the atmosphere might also reduce wind shear along the Atlantic coast going forward. Indeed, a paper published last year found an explosion in the number of rapid intensification events close to shore in recent decades. 

Not only are scientists trying to parse why a particular hurricane would quickly intensify in 2024, they have to figure out what to expect as the oceans get hotter and hotter, providing more and more cyclone fuel. It’s a moving target, one made of torrential rain and 160 mph winds. “We have a great database of weather that happens now, and we don’t necessarily have a great database of weather that will happen in the future,” said Sarah Gille, a physical oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “So extreme storms are one window into that, that can help us get a better picture of what we might see.”

As hurricanes spin across the Atlantic this summer, scientists will be ready. They can fly “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft into the cyclones while collecting oodles of data like wind speed, pressure, and humidity. (That’s another factor in major hurricanes: They love humidity but hate dry air.) They’ll then feed this data into models that try to predict rapid intensification. Increasingly, scientists are using artificial intelligence to supercharge these algorithms, for instance training an AI to recognize patterns in satellite images of a hurricane, or precipitation in the core of the storm, to predict whether it will rapidly intensify or not. 

Whether from an aircraft or satellite, every new observation of these cyclones feeds into models that are getting better at understanding why hurricanes behave the way they do. That means better information for coastal cities to decide who to evacuate and when. “We’ve gotten a lot of good data at a time when the technology is improving, so I think that’s why we’ve made so much progress,” said Rozoff. “Every case of rapid intensification before landfall—whether forecasted well or not—is a tragedy or at least a serious challenge for humanity. But it has provided us some good data as well.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How this summer’s brutal hurricanes might one day save lives on Jun 20, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Matt Simon.

Jackie Gillan is past President of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a coalition working together to reduce motor vehicle crashes, save lives and prevent injuries through the adoption of federal and state laws, policies and programs. Ms. Gillan has held senior policy positions for three state transportation agencies, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Senate.

Biden talks about peace and humanitarian aid and a two-state solution, but his deeds are to send endless supplies of weapons of mass destruction—including weapons that are used in sheer, total violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law…He appears weak to more and more Americans, and he may well pay that price on November 5th to the horror of a Trump presidency. This is how far he goes in his obeisance to the right wing, violent, genocidal political coalition that has hijacked the Israeli society.

Ralph Nader

Nearly every single safety standard on your car has our fingerprints on it and battle scars for the staff fighting in Congress and in the agencies to try to get those [auto safety] rulemakings finished.

Jackie Gillan

At the time in 1988, there were 47,000 highway deaths and I think everyone was quickly realizing that slick slogans and public education programs were not going to bring down deaths and injuries—so they brought advocates together.

Jackie Gillan

In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis

News 6/12/24

1. The New York Times reports that since last year, Israel has been running an “influence campaign” targeting Black lawmakers in the United States. This project, overseen by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, consists of a crude network of fake social media accounts that post “pro-Israel comments…urging [Black Democrats like Senator Raphael Warnock, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Representative Ritchie Torres] to continue funding Israel’s military.” This project was active on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram, and utilized OpenAI’s ChatGPT, until both companies disrupted the operation earlier this year. The operation is still active on X, formerly Twitter.

2. Mondoweiss reports that Israel has been torturing Palestinian prisoners, aided by the complicity of Israeli physicians. According to the report, “prisoners are being viciously beaten and abused multiple times a day, caged in cells ‘not fit for human life,’ kept blindfolded with their hands bound with plastic ties, isolated from the outside world, stripped of their clothing, collectively punished through starvation, attacked by dogs, sexually assaulted, and psychologically tortured.” As for the doctors, “Israeli physicians collaborate with Shin Bet interrogators [Israel’s equivalent of the FBI] to ‘certify’… that [prisoners]… are ‘fit’ to undergo torture. Throughout the duration of interrogation, a physician provides a ‘green light’ that torture can continue…look for physical and psychological weaknesses to exploit…[and] falsify or refrain from documenting the physical and psychological effects of torture on a detainee’s body and mind.” Meanwhile, for all the talk of Hamas brutality, Israeli news anchor Lama Tatour was fired for commenting that recently released hostage Noa Argamani looked remarkably healthy, saying “Look at her eyebrows, they look better than mine??” per Business Insider.

3. The United Nations Security Council has, for the first time, overwhelmingly passed a Gaza ceasefire resolution, backed by the United States. Reuters reports “senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri…said [Hamas has] accepted the ceasefire resolution and [is] ready to negotiate over the specifics.” Yet, according to CNN, “Israel has vowed to persist with its military operation in Gaza, saying it won’t engage in ‘meaningless’ negotiations with Hamas.” As the CNN piece notes, “The resolution says Israel has accepted the plan, and US officials have repeatedly emphasized Israel had agreed to the proposal – despite other public comments from Netanyahu that suggest otherwise.” If the Israelis ultimately do not accept this ceasefire proposal, this would become yet another major embarrassment for the Biden administration.

4. POLITICO reports “AIPAC [is] the biggest source of Republican money flowing into competitive Democratic primaries this year…spending millions to boost moderates over progressives who have been critical of Israel.” This piece quotes Eric Levine, a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who has donated to Rep. Ritchie Torres as saying “Under the William F. Buckley rule of politics, I want to support the most conservative person who can win.” On the other hand, Beth Miller – political director at Jewish Voice for Peace Action – sees this as the lobby showing its true colors, telling the paper “AIPAC can’t actually claim that they represent Democrats and Republicans in the same way. That veneer of bipartisanship is gone.”

5. The NAACP, among the leading African-American Civil Rights group in the country, has called on the Biden administration to “Stop Shipments of Weapons Targeting Civilians to Israel [and] Push for Ceasefire.” In a statement, NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote “The current state of Gaza and the latest bombing of Rafah complicates an already dire humanitarian crisis.  Relief workers have also been killed while attempting to administer aid and support to the people of Gaza. The NAACP strongly condemns these actions and calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.” Data from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shows 68% of Black Americans favor an “immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza” and 59% believe “U.S. military aid to Israel should be conditioned to ensure that Israel uses American weapons for legitimate self-defense and in a way that is consistent with human rights standards.”

6. Yet the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza has not stopped censorship of pro-Palestine speech in the U.S. Democracy Now! reports outspoken progressive commentator and former Bernie Sanders presidential campaign press secretary Briahna Joy Gray has been fired from the Hill’s morning show, Rising, for supposedly rolling her eyes during an interview with an Israeli guest. As Democracy Now! notes, “Last year, The Hill also fired the political commentator Katie Halper after she called Israel an apartheid state.”

7. Even more outrageous, the University of Minnesota is “pausing its search for director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies — days after it offered the job to Israeli historian Raz Segal,” per the Star Tribune. As this article lays out, “Segal is…[a] professor of Holocaust and genocide studies …at Stockton University in New Jersey,” and a Jewish Israeli. Yet the offer was rescinded for “Among other things…[publishing] an article called ‘A Textbook Case of Genocide,’ which he published in [the Left-wing Jewish publication] Jewish Currents.” That’s right, apparently even being a Jewish Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies is not enough to protect you from charges of antisemitism.

8. A new article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, authored by Doctors Adam Gaffney, Steffie Woolhandler, and David Himmelstein analyzes “The Medicare Advantage Paradox.” This piece argues Medicare Advantage delivers less care to patients at a higher cost. As the authors put it, “[as] enrollment in…private [Medicare Advantage] plans surpassed 30 million…the health insurance industry’s trade group proclaimed [Medicare Advantage] ‘a good deal for members and taxpayers.’…The first part of that claim is debatable, while the second part is false. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission…the nonpartisan agency reporting to Congress, recently estimated that [Medicare Advantage] overpayments added $82 billion to taxpayers’ costs for Medicare in 2023 and $612 billion between 2007 and 2024.”

9. In Britain, the Labour Party has been conducting a purge of its Left flank under the leadership of its cowardly centrist leader Keir Starmer. Included in that purge is former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn has represented the working class district of Islington North for over 40 years. Yet, as the Guardian explains, “[Corbyn] was blocked from standing again for Labour...[and] has been expelled from the Labour party.” The Guardian report continues “Last year, 98% of attenders at a local party monthly general meeting backed a motion thanking Corbyn for his ‘commitment and service to the people’, adding it was members’ ‘democratic right to select our MP’.” Ousted from the Labour Party, Corbyn now intends to stand for the seat as an independent MP. Writing in the district’s local paper, Corbyn stated, “When I was first elected, I made a promise to stand by my constituents no matter what … In Islington North, we keep our promises.”

10. Finally, CNN reports Chiquita Brands International  – formerly the United Fruit Company – has been found “liable for financing the Colombian paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia,” by a Florida jury. The AUC was a “far-right paramilitary group that was designated a terrorist organization by the US.” Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3 million to the families of eight victims. CNN adds, “In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to making over 100 payments to the AUC totaling over $1.7 million despite the group being designated a terrorist organization…The company agreed to pay the US government a $25 million fine.”

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

• The United Nations humanitarian aid agency says hundreds of thousands of people would be “at imminent risk of death” if Israel carries out a military assault in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
• Turkey has announced that it is suspending all imports and exports to Israel over its ongoing military action in Gaza.
• Garbage buildup at Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp creates unsanitary conditions and serious health concerns.
• It’s World Press Freedom Day, even as the war in Gaza stands out as one of the deadliest conflicts for journalists.
• President Joe Biden finalized a rule change in Obamacare today that will open the healthcare market to tens of thousands of immigrants who came to the United States as children but who don’t qualify for government health insurance because they lack legal status.
• Former longtime Donald Trump adviser Hope Hicks took the stand today in the eleventh day of the former president’s hush money trial, recounting how his 2016 presidential campaign became embroiled in a political firestorm over a tape in which he boasted about grabbing women without their permission.
• Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas and his wife have been indicted and taken into custody on conspiracy and bribery charges in connection with a federal probe into their ties with the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.
• Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ signing of the repeal of a Civil War-era ban on nearly all abortions was a stirring occasion for the women working to ensure the 19th-century law remains in the past.
• An Asian American advocacy group released a new study this week on America’s perceptions of Asian Americans in the country, revealing new data on how Americans see Asian Americans and how Asian Americans see themselves.

Palestinian children displaced by Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk through a temporary tent camp near Kerem Shalom crossing in Rafah, Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

The post UN aid agency says a Rafah incursion would put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk – May 3, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Last September, Nicaraguan state security forces arrived at Indigenous Miskitu leader Brooklyn Rivera’s home in Bilwi, on the North Caribbean coast. Pretending to be health workers, officers allegedly handcuffed Rivera and beat him with batons before putting him in the back of an ambulance and driving away. More than six months later, Rivera’s family still doesn’t know where he is, or if he is alive. 

Although Rivera had spent decades fighting for Miskitu autonomy and land rights, Carlos Hendy Thomas, another Miskitu leader, said that the recent targeting began with Rivera’s April 2023 trip to New York for the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, the world’s largest gathering of Indigenous leaders and activists, and a place for Indigenous peoples to bring attention to issues their communities face. Hendy Thomas said that before Rivera left for New York, government officials warned him not to speak out against the government. He did so anyway, and when Rivera tried to board a plane to return home, he was told that the Nicaraguan authorities had not approved his reentry. Instead, Rivera flew to Honduras and crossed the border back into Nicaragua to return to Bilwi.

A few days before his arrest, Hendy Thomas told Rivera he should leave the country for his own safety, but Rivera insisted his people needed him. That was the last time the two spoke. This year, Hendy Thomas came to the Permanent Forum to ask the United Nations to pressure Nicaragua for information. “We are hoping that by coming here, at least this would come to light, and the U.N. would intervene to get him out from jail, if he’s still in jail, or if he’s even alive,” Hendy Thomas said. 

Rivera’s situation is reflected in a growing trend of Indigenous leaders facing retaliation for speaking out at UNPFII and other international spaces. With few options for Indigenous peoples to advocate in their own countries, especially where regimes refuse to even recognize their existence, many leaders turn to the international community for help. But even that option is becoming less feasible for many Indigenous peoples.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the number and severity of reprisals against people for engaging with the United Nations system has increased. Just in the past two years, Indigenous leaders attending U.N. meetings have faced attempted kidnapping, harassment, arrest, intimidation, online censorship, travel bans, smearing, and other forms of reprisal. 

Hernan Vales, the chief of the Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that his office has seen an increase in reported cases of reprisals, but declined to give specific numbers. Vales and other U.N. experts also believe that there may be many more cases that go unreported. A 2023 U.N. report on the issue also says that more people are simply choosing not to engage with the U.N. because they are afraid of repercussions. According to the report, for example, 38 Indigenous Yukpa people decided not to meet with U.N. officials in Venezuela after being stopped by military forces while on their way to the gathering. 

“We cannot tolerate those who bring critical perspective to the United Nations being silenced,” Vales said in a statement. “We need to do more.”

But even with the increased attention and resources available, UNPFII forum members, U.N. experts, and Indigenous leaders say that the problem is still getting worse. Roberto Borrero, who is president of the United Confederation of Taíno Peoples, has attended every session of the Permanent Forum since it began in 2002 and said that the frequency and severity of reprisals has increased, and that the U.N. needs to do more. 

“It really speaks to the credibility of the U.N. to highlight and follow up on this issue,” he said. “If they don’t, the U.N. is going to be even more increasingly seen as ineffective.”

Last year, Edward Porokwa, an Indigenous Maasai leader from Tanzania, attended UNPFII to call attention to human rights violations carried out against Maasai communities, including forced evictions, land-grabbing, and resource deprivation. At the forum, said Porokwa, Tanzanian officials followed him, took videos and pictures without his permission, and said that he was not a legitimate representative. Porokwa said that throughout the forum, he also received anonymous phone calls saying that what he was doing was not right and the government was watching him. 

In Tanzania, Maasai activists have faced arrest and persecution, and Porokwa, spooked by the warnings, decided not to return home for nearly six months. “It was very terrible,” he said. “I could not meet my family. I could not communicate with everybody, because they made me really feel like my life was in danger.” Despite the incident, Porokwa returned to UNPFII this year with an even larger delegation of Maasai leaders. 

Indigenous leaders believe that governments are targeting their U.N. participation because it embarrasses them on the world stage. Exposing human rights abuses to the international community can also have financial impacts. Just this week, the World Bank announced that it is suspending $50 million in funding for a tourism project in Tanzania that has faced allegations of killings, forced evictions, and rape. 

In a statement delivered at UNPFII, Hamisi Malebo, the executive secretary of the United Republic of Tanzania’s National Commission for UNESCO, denied what he called the “baseless and factually inaccurate” allegations made by Maasai leaders. “Tanzania is guided by the rule of law and respect for human rights,” Malebo said. “The government does not condone acts of threat, intimidation, and harassment of its citizens, human rights defenders, and other nonstate actors pursuing this common objective.”

Brian Keane, director of Land Is Life, a nonprofit that advocates for Indigenous rights, says that although threats at the U.N. tend to be less overt than cases like Rivera’s, intimidation and harassment should be taken just as seriously, especially knowing that they can lead to more serious repercussions back home. “It’s a big issue,” he said. “There’s this kind of constant bullying that goes on trying to silence people that are here to speak up for their rights,” he said. 

On the second day of the two-week UNPFII session, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Indigenous Mbororo from Chad and the chair of the forum, delivered a statement condemning any reprisals. 

Last year, a young Indigenous woman from Asia whose name Grist is withholding to protect her identity, was on her way to her local airport to attend UNPFII, when her car was surrounded by a convoy of government vehicles. Officials attempted to drag her out of her car, and it was only after bystanders rushed to her defense that she was eventually permitted to leave. She said she is more careful now. But even after the experience, she returned to UNPFII this year. “I have to continue my work,” she said. “I see my meaning of life that way.”

In July 2022, Yana Tannagasheva, an Indigenous Shor activist from Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, attended a U.N. meeting in Geneva to speak about the harms of coal mining in her community. After she spoke, Tannagasheva and other witnesses say a Russian representative aggressively approached her and demanded to know her name and personal contact information. Tannagasheva, who has lived in exile in Sweden for six years, says the experience shattered her sense of security. “It was so awful. I wanted to cry,” she said. “I was surprised it can happen during a U.N. session.”

Representatives from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Republic of Nicaragua, the Russian Federation, and the United Republic of Tanzania did not respond to requests for comment.

Binota Moy Dhamai, Tripura from the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh and the chair of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, said that reprisals threaten the entire international system and its goals. “If it continues like this then what is the meaning of talking about the sustainable development goals? What is the meaning of talking about peace-building?” he said.

Despite the risks, Carlos Hendy Thomas, from Nicaragua, has no plans to give up his fight. In 2020, Hendy Thomas’ son, who would have inherited his title of hereditary chief, was murdered. The murder, which Hendy Thomas believes was orchestrated by the state because of his son’s defense of Miskitu land rights, was never investigated. Hendy Thomas, who lives in the United States, says he is not that worried about his own safety, even though he is concerned about his family back home. 

“I don’t really care about me,” he said. “They already killed my son. I’m afraid, but I’m speaking. If I don’t, who will?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Indigenous leaders are risking their lives to speak at the UN on Apr 26, 2024.

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

My wife is currently cancer free, but her chemotherapy caused her to gain a lot of weight, which she wants to lose. She says that she doesn’t have the will and self-discipline to change her diet or start an exercise routine. Instead, she seeks cures and promises from advertisers on social media for expensive fake remedies in a bottle. Of course, these never work as advertised. I warn her that, “If it sounds too good to be true, it is.”

Such is the two-state solution. It has been a fake and a fantasy built on a contradiction from the day that Theodore Herzl proposed a Jewish state in Der Judenstaat in 1895. The contradiction is based on the fact that in order to create a Jewish state, enough Jews needed to be gathered in one place in order to create it.

How many is enough? According to Herzl, enough would be when Jews become the dominant ethnicity in the territory designated for the state. He recognized that this would mean not only gathering Jews, but also removing or otherwise reducing the non-Jewish population. Later Zionist leadership defined it as an 80% or more proportion of the desired ethnicity and a 20% or less proportion of the undesired ethnicity in the population. This is never workable in the long run without perpetual ethnic cleansing, because whenever the Jewish state is in danger of including too many non-Jews, it must find a way to reduce the number. In practice, this means that even the smaller remaining non-Jewish minority must also be repressed, so as to limit both their numbers and their power within the Jewish state.

How does this fit into the two-state solution? The answer is that it does not, no more than a “separate but equal” apartheid policy was a solution for preserving a white state in South Africa. Or, as articulated by US president Abraham Lincoln in 1858, such a state “…cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” A supremacist state cannot endure anywhere; not in South Africa, not in the US, not in Nazi Germany and not in Palestine. It will always regard the non-members of the preferred population as a threat.

Israeli proponents of the two-state solution have always required the Palestinian state to have less sovereignty than the Jewish state. To the extent that such a state was acceptable at all, it needed to be disarmed and controlled, and its territory severely compromised. But in fact, Israel never accepted a Palestinian state. The most it accepted was a “road map” to a state, which allowed Israel to pay lip service to the idea while gobbling up Palestinian land, moving Zionist settlers onto it, strangling Palestinian movement and development, and stealing the natural resources. The negotiations were merely a ruse to displace Palestinians while gradually taking more of everything they had.

Of course, even that wasn’t enough. Although the land held by Palestinians was being confiscated, their population kept increasing, eventually motivating the current Israeli genocide. Israel was simply unable to control Palestinian numbers any other way. As Arnon Sofer expressed it in 2004, ” …if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill.  All day, every day.”

This will not change with a two-state solution. If one of the two is a supremacist state — which is central to the ideology of political Zionism — then there will never be equality between the two, because the Zionist state will not permit it, and the non-Zionist Palestinian state and its citizens will always be considered a threat. But Israel has become more honest. It now openly rejects a Palestinian state of any kind, while the UN and most of its member states continue to insist upon the two-state fantasy, the only function of which is to prevent any solution at all, and to continue to enable Israel to implement its conquest of the rest of Palestine, as well as all or parts of Lebanon, Syria, the Sinai (Egypt), the East Bank (Jordan), and even parts of Saudi Arabia.

The two state “solution” to which every western politician pledges allegiance is a worse than useless quest for a fantasy that cannot be maintained because none of the concerned population really wants it. There are no Palestinians who would not prefer a one-state solution without Zionism, only a minority willing to accept half a loaf for fear of losing the other half. The Zionist two-staters, on the other hand, are either among the dwindling number of peaceniks, or cynical negotiators, making sure that Palestinians never quite concede enough to satisfy them, thus keeping the solution just out of reach while Israel completes its ethnic cleansing. Most Zionists would prefer no state except theirs, and no Palestinians at all.

If this is reminiscent of South Africa, it is because Israel also is also an exclusivist state based on racial or ethnic identity. The solution is the same: to abolish the offending racist ideology – whether apartheid or Zionism – and create one state with equal rights for all, and restoration or compensation to Palestinians for their losses. The nonviolent 2018-19 Great March of Return attempt to move toward such a solution was thwarted by Israel’s murderous reaction to it and the world’s indifference. The October 7, 2023 armed initiative by Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian resistance is therefore the predictable (but unpredicted) Clausewitzian reaction, and it appears to be succeeding, despite the enormous sacrifices of the Palestinian people. In fact, it is hard to imagine how this is not the beginning of the end for the Zionist dream. The genocidal horrors that Israel is committing will isolate it from most of the world for the foreseeable future, and even much of the world Jewish community will also abandon it, if they have not done so already. A racist supremacist Jewish colonial state is an anachronism that belongs in the past. Only the restoration of a Palestinian state for all who consider it their home and are willing to respect its laws and standards can be the future.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Larudee.

The Iranian government "bears responsibility" for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.

The report, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission “has established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police."

It said the mission found the "physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death.... On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.”

Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran's so-called "morality police" for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16.

Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.

The fact-finding report said the action “emphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law."

"Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,” it said.

The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed the findings and said they represented clear signs of "crimes against humanity."

“The Islamic republic’s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.

“The government’s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,” he added.

The report also said the Iranian government failed to “comply with its duty” to investigate the woman’s death promptly.

“Most notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini’s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,” it added.

Amini's death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran's clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government’s crackdown on demonstrators.

The UN report said "violations and crimes" under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include "extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.

“The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity," the report said.

The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.

The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council's mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini's death.

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

The vision

“Our community, we want to envision an alternative economy that doesn’t exploit the region, that doesn’t use our people as cheap labor, that doesn’t pollute the environment, that doesn’t accelerate climate change.”

Bekah Hinojosa, an organizer in Brownsville, Texas

The spotlight

The U.S. energy mix is heavily reliant on natural gas. It makes up the greatest share of electricity generation and home heating fuel use in the country. Over the past decade, the U.S. has also become the world’s leading exporter of natural gas, building out extensive infrastructure to convert the fuel into a form that’s easier to store and transport — liquefied natural gas, or LNG — and ship it to markets in Europe. More projects are in the pipeline, which could nearly double the country’s export capacity by the end of this decade, if approved by the Department of Energy.

But in January, the Biden administration announced a pause on approvals for new LNG terminals — a move that has been largely applauded by climate advocates and local leaders in the Gulf Coast, where the majority of current and proposed terminals are located. During the pause, the DOE will review the impacts of exporting natural gas on both domestic energy prices and the climate.

Natural gas is 70 to 90 percent methane, a greenhouse gas that’s about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. It’s also prone to leaking along its supply chain, which contributes to global heating and creates pollution and explosion risks for communities living near this infrastructure. But even in the course of typical operations, these terminals cause hazardous pollution from flares that burn off excess gas, from the massive amounts of fuel required to liquefy the gas, and from increased ship traffic.

Louisiana activist (and Grist 50 honoree) Roishetta Ozane told Grist reporters that the administration’s decision “shows that the government recognizes the need to protect the rights and well-being of [Gulf] communities.”

Communities like Ozane’s already face some of the worst pollution in the nation from the petrochemical industry, and LNG terminals threaten to worsen an already disproportionate burden. For some other communities, the battle against the LNG industry represents a last-ditch effort to prevent that same fate.

A construction site for a pipeline to bring gas to the Cheniere liquefied natural gas facility, which opened in 2018 near Portland, Texas. Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

“We’re a Gulf Coast community, but our community doesn’t look like the rest of the Gulf Coast,” said Bekah Hinojosa, an organizer in the city of Brownsville in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley (who was featured on our 2022 Grist 50 list). “We don’t have existing fossil fuel refineries here. Our port doesn’t look like the Houston ship channel. This is the first big industry trying to move into our low-income community.”

She and other local advocates have been fighting two major projects: Texas LNG and Rio Grande LNG, with the accompanying Rio Bravo pipeline that would bring fracked gas to the latter. These projects already have authorization from the Department of Energy, meaning that they won’t be halted by the Biden administration’s pause. But Hinojosa and her fellow advocates are continuing to wage their own defense. Their efforts have already yielded one victory in 2021 when a third project in the area, Annova LNG, was canceled, and they’ve successfully pressured customers and investors to back away from the others.

We spoke with Hinojosa to learn about the tools local communities like hers are using to push back against LNG expansion, as well as the fossil fuel-free future she hopes to create for her area. Her responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q. What are some of the primary concerns with LNG in the Rio Grande Valley?

A. Our coastal communities in this region are 100 percent against LNG. (Editor’s note: These 2015 articles from the Port Isabel Press offer a sense of the scale of local opposition to LNG projects.) They’ve passed city resolutions against LNG [in] communities that are down the street from Brownsville: Port Isabel, South Padre Island, Laguna Vista, Long Island Village. And they oppose LNG because it would completely destroy their way of life. Their local economies depend on shrimping and fishing and nature and ecotourism. People come here from all over the world to see sea turtles, to hike and fish and shrimp and enjoy our unique wetlands. That’s what the economy of our coastal communities thrives on. And LNG would destroy that. They would dump pollution into the ship channel where shrimp lay their eggs, [and they would] dump pollution into our low-income communities.

We don’t have good health care here. People can’t afford expensive medical bills. That’s why the communities oppose the LNG projects.

Then we have the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe, which are the original Indigenous people of this region. They oppose LNG because these projects would build on sacred sites — specifically, the Texas LNG project would destroy a known sacred Indigenous site called Garcia Pasture that’s on the National Park Service’s list of historic sites. It has ancestral burial grounds, village sites, artifacts, and Texas LNG wants to build right on top of that. And they have never consulted with the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe.

Q. In your Grist 50 profile, you described your opposition strategy as “death by a thousand cuts.” Is that still the approach — fighting on every possible front?

A. Yeah, absolutely. We are actively pressuring insurance companies to withdraw from these LNG projects, [as well as] banks, private equity. We’re trying to stop tax subsidies for these projects, trying to prevent customers, different corporations from signing contracts to import the gas. We’ve been working with communities all over the world that don’t want to see their countries involved with these projects. I mean, essentially, we’re yelling at any and every company involved with Rio Grande LNG and Texas LNG to immediately drop these projects, and doing that in solidarity with other impacted communities. We [held two protests last week outside of corporate offices], one in Houston and one in New York, to stop Rio Grande.

Q. Is there action you would like to see at the federal level, beyond the pause on new LNG exports that the Biden administration announced in January?

A. Yeah, I mean, the pause doesn’t apply to the projects that we’re fighting in Brownsville. Unfortunately, they already have their DOE authorization. So we’re still urging the Biden administration to include these projects in the pause. I went to D.C. a few days after the pause was announced, and I met with DOE officials and a White House official. I and the Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe representatives urged the DOE to include these projects in the pause and to include meaningful community engagement as the DOE is figuring out what to do after the pause — and reminded them that our communities oppose these projects.

So we’re not backing down. We’re escalating the amount of protests that we’re doing to stop these projects. We’d like to see a plan and a pathway for LNG to be phased out and not continue to be approved.

Q. You have also been active in opposing the SpaceX launch site near Brownsville. Can you tell me about some of the compounding concerns there?

A. SpaceX is another type of industry here that is harming and polluting our community — and the launchpad is just a stone’s throw away from where the LNG terminals plan to build. We’ve already seen debris from the rocket explosions fall on the proposed LNG sites. We’ve been sending comments, letters, demanding meetings about the safety hazards of SpaceX next to LNG, and we’ve been left in the dark.

We are already dealing with explosion hazards from the rocket testing every year. My entire house started to shake — I felt an earthquake because of the last SpaceX explosion in November. We saw dust fall over the community last April from another explosion. Rocket pieces have already been raining down on our neighborhoods. And then LNG has its own explosion hazards. We’ve seen the Freeport LNG explosion that sent a blast that caused someone to fall off some jetties and split their head open. So we’re dealing with compounding explosion risks. And all of these issues are related — SpaceX actually uses LNG for rocket fuel, and they are proposing to build an LNG plant in another community down here.

Q. As you’re combating these industries, what is your vision for the Gulf Coast where you live in the next five to 10 years?

A. The Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe has been buying land near the port. They have a vision of an alternative economy for our community, and that looks like supporting their culture. They want to create jobs for local people to protect their sacred sites, for people to come and learn from their tribal community. Our community, we want to envision an alternative economy that doesn’t exploit the region, that doesn’t use our people as cheap labor, that doesn’t pollute the environment, that doesn’t accelerate climate change.

So we’re going to continue advocating for that. We want the Port of Brownsville to be clean. The public officials here just don’t have much of a vision — they’ve been failing our community. So we continue to keep having forums and making our voices louder about the future that we want and need for our Gulf Coast community.

— Claire Elise Thompson

More exposure

• Read: more about the LNG industry and its impacts along the Gulf Coast (Grist)
• Read: more about the Biden administration’s pause, and the coalition that advocated for it (Grist)
• Read: more about liquefied natural gas, and the scientific debate about its climate merits as a replacement for coal (Scientific American)
• Read: more about Hinojosa’s work and the fight to stop LNG terminals in South Texas — and check out a corresponding photo essay (Canary Media)
  • You can also subscribe to Canary’s free daily newsletter here, to get more stories like this exploring the energy transition and how the world is decarbonizing

See for yourself

There’s still time to nominate climate leaders for this year’s Grist 50 list! Do you know an organizer standing up to the fossil fuel industry on behalf of their community (like Bekah Hinojosa)? Or an entrepreneur working on an innovative new solution, or an artist, a chef, a policymaker, a farmer, a scientist, or another type of leader whose climate work deserves to be recognized? Use this form to tell us about them.

A parting shot

Local communities on the receiving end of natural gas exports are also resisting the construction of terminals where they live. In the town of Binz on the German island of Rügen, protestors formed a human chain on the beach last April to show their opposition to a proposed LNG terminal on the island.

IMAGE CREDITS

Vision: Grist

Spotlight: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

Parting shot: picture alliance / Getty Images

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How this organizer is fighting the liquefied natural gas industry where she lives on Mar 6, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

A man housing people who fled a massacre in Papua New Guinea’s Enga province yesterday says pregnant mothers and children are displaced.

More than 50 bodies have been retrieved, with police still searching as intertribal tension continues.

Prime Minister James Marape said he was “deeply moved” and “very, very angry” and will give arrest powers to the military to contain the violence.

• READ MORE: Wapenamanda massacre – 50 killed in PNG’s worst tribal fighting
• Other PNG tribal warfare reports

Aquila Kunza, who lives in Wapenamanda, told RNZ Pacific the situation was “disheartening.

“They are below 10-years-old [the people staying with him],” Kunza said.

“Some of them are pregnant mothers, they fled for their lives. [Those who are] 10-years above, they fight.”

Kunza said boys as young as 10 have been left traumatised from fighting on the battlefield.

Veteran PNG journalist and RNZ Pacific correspondent, Scott Waide, said it “is one of the worst instances of killings” that he has seen in the past decade.

In 2022, there was a massacre on Kiriwina Island, northeast of capital Port Moresby with a death toll of more than 20 — violence that was triggered by a feud after a death at a football match a few weeks earlier.

The incident in Enga province highlands this week has been fuelled by a long standing feud between different clans — Sikin and Kaikin tribes and the Ambulin tribe, according to national public broadcaster NBC.

The clans were aided by guns from the black market, Waide explained.

According to his sources on the ground, the weapons used were not homemade, but rather military grade, including “Israeli-made Galil, US-made M16s”.

“There’s a huge black market attached to this tribal fighting that’s happening,” he said.

“One assault rifle costs upwards of K30,000 [about NZ$13,000]. So it’s a very complex web of people who benefit from this tribal fighting as well.”

‘Businessmen and educated elites supplying guns’
Acting Enga provincial police commander Inspector Patrick Peka has condemned the actions of leaders and “educated elites” from both warring factions for supplying guns and ammunition, and hiring “tribal warlords” and “gunmen” from other districts to come and fight as their incentives are lucrative.

An MP in an electoral district within Enga province, Wapenamanda Open, has called for a state of emergency (in Enga) in an effort to curb lawlessness.

In a statement, Miki Kaeok, who is a Pangu Pati member of Marape’s government, appealed to Enga governor Sir Peter Ipatas and all MPs from the province to rally behind his call.

Kaeok said the tribal fighting had turned into a “guerilla type of warfare” with parties from all parts of the province directly involved.

“Businessmen leaders and educated elites are supplying guns, bullets and financing the engagement of gunmen,” he said.

“They must be identified and their business accounts thoroughly checked to substantiate their direct involvement.”

‘People have given up’
There are 18 or so tribes scattered around mountains and rivers fighting in the highlands.

In a nearby town, Wapenamanda it is almost business as usual, Kunza said.

He said elders had stopped at nothing to try and ease tensions.

“We have tried every means [to stop this]. Churches have taken a collective stand to try stop them. Elders sat the men with guns down and told them to stop and listen. They were told they will be supported and relocated,” he said.

However, their attempts to convince the men did not work, who defied all advice “to our surprise and disappointment”, Kunza said, before violence escalated again.

“People have given up, people are exhausted” from the ongoing tribal fighting.

“Please all men and put down your guns” for the sake of the women and children, he is pleading with the fighters.

Tribal politics
Peka said a lot of the people killed in this violent incident were hired from other parts of the province to kill.

“Most dead bodies identified are men believed to be from Laiagam, Kandep and Wabag plus other parts of the province,” Peka said.

Waide said it was not a secret that people have offered their services as “mercenaries” in tribal fighting.

“It’s a sad situation and unfortunate turn of events and it’s escalating by the year,” Waide said.

He said it was always difficult to understand the reasons behind the ongoing violence without understanding the cultural context and tribal politics.

Meanwhile, the Pacific Islands Forum said it stood ready to support PNG after some of the worst tribal fighting the country has ever seen.

In a statement, Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna expressed his sincerest sympathies to the government and people of the country.

Puna urged all parties involved to seek peaceful resolutions to this conflict.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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

Today, the EPA released updated National Ambient Air Quality Standards for particulate matter (PM2.5), taking a positive and long-awaited step toward addressing a dangerous and deadly air pollutant responsible for over 100,000 deaths in the United States every year.

EPA’s final air quality standards for PM2.5, also known as soot, lower the annual standards from 12 mcg/m3 to 9 mcg/m3, and will prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 290,000 lost workdays per year while bringing as much as $46 billion in net health benefits in 2032, when the standards are in full effect.

The final standards do not strengthen the 24-hour standard, which is critical for protecting against dangerous short-term spikes in air pollution and provides the basis for the air quality index that millions use to determine the quality of the air they breathe on any given day.

EPA will now determine areas of the country that do not meet the new standard, and will release determinations within two years. States that do not meet the new standards will then have 18 months to develop and submit plans to comply.

Evidence shows exposure to soot pollution increases the risk of asthma, heart attacks, stroke, cancer, and premature death. 63 million people in the United States experience unhealthy spikes in daily soot pollution, and communities of color are disproportionately exposed to higher-than-average levels of this dangerous pollutant.

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

“We’re glad to see the Biden Administration answered the call to reduce harmful soot pollution. The decision to strengthen the annual particulate matter standards is more than just policy; it's about securing clean and safe air for our families and communities. It's about keeping kids in school, and protecting ourselves and our neighbors from the very real risks of asthma, heart attacks, and premature death.

“It’s shameful that, in the face of such clear and compelling evidence of the public health and economic benefits of stronger soot standards, big polluters and their allies in Washington do everything in their power to undermine these commonsense air pollution standards. Their resistance is a stark reminder that the fight for clean air and a healthier future is far from over, and we will continue working to ensure the benefits of these stronger air pollution standards reach the communities that need them most.”

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

President Biden faced protests in Michigan this week over his ongoing support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. Michigan is a crucial swing state that could prove decisive in this year’s presidential election and is also home to the largest percentage of Arab Americans in the United States. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who refused to meet with Biden’s campaign manager last week, says it’s inappropriate to consider electoral politics as U.S. policy supports an ongoing genocide. “For us, the lives of Palestinians should not be measured simply in poll numbers,” Hammoud tells Democracy Now! We also speak with veteran pollster James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, who says the Biden team is “cut off from reality” if they believe people will forget their outrage over Gaza by the time of the November election. “The White House is taking for granted that they’ve got support — and they don’t,” says Zogby.

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

The shelling also caused damage to an archaeological museum that is renowned for its ancient Buddhist pagodas and temples, they added.

Locals said that the junta army has been continuously firing heavy weapons all over the Mrauk-U city after the battle between the junta army and the anti-junta force Arakan Army (AA) on Sunday. 

The roof and antiques inside of the Cultural Museum which displayed the ancient cultural heritages in the city’s Nyaung Pin Zay neighborhood were damaged by a junta heavy weapon at around 5 a.m. on Sunday, according to locals. 

Three monasteries, Setdamma Sukarama, Gandamar, Mingalar Man Aung, and some houses in the city were also damaged during the attack, a monk in the city who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals told RFA Burmese on Monday.

“They [junta troops] are shooting with heavy artillery continuously. We could not enter the city and there was no one in the city. The fighting broke out on Sunday [Dec. 24] morning. They are shooting with heavy weapons all day and night,” said the monk. 

The AA launched attacks on the police station and junta camp on the hill near Ngwe Taung Pauk bridge on the way out of Mrauk-U city early Sunday morning, and the junta responded with heavy weapons, killing three residents and injuring at least five others in the city, the locals explained.

Another anti-junta force Three Northern Alliances also confirmed in a Sunday statement that the junta army had targeted the city’s residential areas of civilians and villages with heavy weapons.

After the battle, about 70 soldiers from Mrauk-U-based junta Infantry Battalion (377) entered the city’s Aung Mingalar and Bandula neighborhoods and arrested nine civilians, said local residents.  

The arrested include a 25-year-old man, Wai Lin Che, a 35-year-old man, Maung Hla Bu and a 50-year-old, Aung Tin Shwe. The names of the rest are still unknown.

A Mrauk-U resident, who declined to be named for security reasons, told RFA Burmese that the junta troops arrested the civilians to use them as a human shield. 

“They were arrested on Sunday afternoon. The junta troop assumed that the AA troops were also in the city. The [junta] troops were afraid of being attacked when they patrol into the city, so they took the civilians as human shields. All the residents are fleeing and some of the names [of those arrested] still unknown,” he told RFA Burmese. 

Anti-juta forces the Three Brotherhood Alliances also confirmed the arrest on Sunday night and said the nine civilians were arrested by the military council.

Locals said that almost the entire city residents had to flee amid arrests, battles and casualties. As of 2014, the population of Mrauk-U stood at around 40,000.

Junta’s military council has not released any statement about the incidents.

Both Hla Thein, the council’s spokesman for Rakhine state and Attorney General, and Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, a military council spokesman, did not answer RFA’s inquiries. 

Meanwhile, the AA released a statement on Monday that it will “respond effectively” to the military council army that deliberately attacked and destroyed the ancient cultural heritage of the Rakhine people.

Separately, the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) blamed the junta in a Monday statement calling its attack on the museum “inhumane” and “act of war crime,” adding that it is bringing these cases to domestic and international courts.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Taejun Kang and Elaine Chan.

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

Image by Alice Donovan Rouse.

This modest proposal is not a satire after Swift’s 18^th century satirical Modest Proposal in which he suggested that the British solve the Irish overpopulation problem by eating Irish children. My proposal is about feasible and immediate ways to stop Israel from massacring its colonized people, killing on average a Palestinian child every 15 minutes and an adult every 10 minutes. The most recent estimate by the Euro-Med Monitor is that Israel has killed 25,000 Palestinians in 2 months (plus unknown numbers buried under rubble, plus uncounted numbers who die due to horrendous health conditions). Many will ridicule my proposals as utterly, politically naïve. My background is not political science but as a mother and grandmother, a social worker during the brief war-on-poverty era, a psychoanalyst, a student of social and intellectual history. Here’s my impression of current politics: it’s possible that intransigent decision-makers will be persuaded by threats of being charged by the ICC or ICJ with genocide, or by arrest under the principle of universal jurisdiction, or with violations of the UN Charter and international humanitarian law, or that the threat of lawsuits against the profiteers of this genocide could persuade some to recommend the most meagre measures (e.g. humanitarian pause, temporary ceasefire). Recent history shows that innumerable perpetrators characteristically get away with appalling crimes.

Cutting to the chase, here are steps that can be taken immediately. Certainly these ways of providing essential supplies to the besieged Strip can be elaborated, supplemented, corrected by experts in public health, funding, in the use of various technologies that can breach borders and checkpoints (e.g. swarms of drones [1], air balloons, kites, small boats), by legal experts for bypassing the morass of Jesuitical, talmudic, and originary (used by reactionary US Supreme Court judges) interpretations of law/lawfare and sovereignty. [2] For providing water, some water purification methods that could be dropped from drones are 21 day filters, life straws with gravity bag (up to 1000 liters cab serve 500 people/day and includes a 10 liter sack with a prefilter for sediment ( $174). Water is necessary for hydration, sanitation. Emergency medical supplies includes soap, wipes, preferably alcohol, painkillers and anesthesia, basic antibiotics, bandages and tourniquets, surgery scalpels, debridement to cut away tissue from wounds, bone saws for amputations; food such as high protein seeds, nuts, soy/sunflower/peanut butter; lightweight space blankets to stave off hypothermia; plastic bags for collecting feces. [3]

How is it that people who are not individually psychotic or psychopathic are so out of touch with reality and allow, promote, facilitate these most sadistic desecrations of real people? On December 13 153 countries approved an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire”, 23 abstentions, 10 against. How is it then that 153 countries can’t get food, water, medical supplies into Gaza? Guterres cries and bemoans but doesn’t talk practical, realizable steps or demand immediate action or proposals? Stories about starving Gazans breaking into UNRWA building for their own food use these words: ”Plunder” “break into”, “loot” the UNRWA agency for food. In the past, Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, directors of the UN Oil for Food Program responsible for ½ million Iraqi child deaths, resigned in disgust with the UN.

All UN members must sign on to the principles of the 1948 UN Charter to end the “scourge of war”. International law expert, the late Michael Mandel, summarizes these principles [4]: 1) self-defense justifies the taking of life only where demonstrably necessary to save life, so if there is a non-violent alternative, it must be taken unless there is not time to seek a collective peaceful solution. Otherwise, authorization by the UNSC is required. Wars of aggression are prohibited, including invasion by another state. No political, economic, or military consideration is an excuse. Only self-defense is legitimate and is not a war of aggression. Only the security Council can provide legitimacy but even the UNSC has limits on its power. Chapter VI provides for the ‘pacific settlement of disputes’: the parties to any dispute ‘shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiations, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice (article 33). If they fail to settle the dispute on their own, Article 37 lays down the absolute requirement that ‘they shall refer it to the Security Council’ Chapter VII – ‘Action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression’ is the part that provides the Security Council with authority to use coercieve measures including armed force, but only as ‘may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.’ It also has the power to ‘make recommendations’ (Article 39), or to employ ‘measures not involving the use of armed force,’ which ‘may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication and the severance of diplomatic relations.’ Article 42 provides, finally, for the use of armed force: should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Aritcle 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces. The Security Council of the United Nations has been made the supreme international authority over war and peace by a solemn treaty, drafted, signed and still voluntarily adhered to bey the United States and all the member states…” It is binding on all members as a condition of their membership…”

Clearly this is unworkable, violated from the very beginning in the 1948 Israeli aggression against Palestinians (the Nakba) followed by the partition and recognition of the Jewish state, and by 1952 the UN perpetrated the genocidal war on Korea. Peacekeeping forces require unanimous approval by the five permanent, nuclear weapons nations of the Security Council.

Add these actions to petitions, protests, appeals to the ICC and ICJ. Add blockades to BDS tactics: there is precedent in Block the Boat by dockworkers and labour refusal to unload weapons destined for Israel. Add other civil disobedience possibilities like didactic sabotage: experiencing the siege by cutting off water, food, sanitation, electricity, and blocking exits in key North American and EU offices.

Can you imagine what it’s like to exist in the Gaza holocaust, every moment? Here’s a poem about being a mother every moment, the state of “primary maternal preoccupation” (so eloquently evoked decades ago by pediatrician/psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott):

The baby has a fever

And you need to leave to get Tylenol.

He wants to be held

Tight

With both arms but

You need to put on your jacket.

Do you:

Juggle baby

One arm at a time

Balanced in the crook

As you unsuccessfully snag your arms in

(might take a while)

Or put baby down

And throw the jacket on in seconds

As he howls?

Single Mama Moment #41, Christy NaMee Eriksen [5]

Do you ask how a president who lost three of his own children brings misery to immigrant children locked in ICE and separated from their parents, how this president provides arms to kill Palestinian children? Or how a democratic socialist leader can’t bring himself to say “ceasefire”? or how the UK Labour Party has it in for compassionate, thoroughly unprejudiced former leader in the name of antisemitism? Or how people in positions of decision-making know nothing about Israeli or Arab history? [6] Or how 153 nations are blocked by one tiny country from even providing water as it collectively kills thousands?

Hilary Clinton wrote a book as if she cares about children, It Takes A Village. Nomi Prins’ It Takes a Pillage, exposes neoliberal criminality.

J’Accuse by Zola is about the antisemitic Dreyfuss Affair in France. Haim Brehseeth-Zabner’s J’Accuse is about this Israeli genocide. J’Accuse by Aharon Shabtai is about how Israel’s bloodbath involves a whole orchestra of perpetrating criminals. Shabtai’s poem is about a Palestinian father trying to shield his terrified son, captured in a heart-wrenching photograph (the Goldstone Report found that Israel used human shields, not Hamas).

J’ACCUSE by Aharon Shabtai 2003

The sniper who shot at Muhammad the child
Beneath his father’s arm
Wasn’t acting alone –
Someone else in uniform,
A junior cog in the wheel who was briefed
At a higher level,
Positioned him there on the roof,
A public servant,
A cantor
For the Days of Awe;
And someone else
Manufactured the ammunition,
And another had it distributed
Like bars of chocolate.
The tree doesn’t go green
When a single leaf unfurls,
Many wrinkled brows
Leaned over the plans.
History has known
Foreheads like these –
Technicians of slaughter,
Bastards in whose eyes
Morality is a pain in the ass.
But even cucumbers
Need dirt and a little dung.
The worm isn’t born of air;
A million words are required
To reconstruct the manner
In which public discourse itself
Is corrupted and turned into refuse –
That which within the body politic
Was created to preserve
The heart of justice.

But now
There isn’t time for any of that,
When right in front of the cameras,
Without any shame,
Grown men in uniforms
Are shooting into a helpless crowd.
From the back with their necks and behinds
They look like guys at the airgun range
By the screen at an amusement park,
Trying to win their girlfriends
A doll or a box of candy.
Atop a hill,
At the distance dictated
By the administrators’ handbook,
The prime minister looks on
With his company of advisers.
They gaze down
Into the Vale of Tears,
Toward the horde which is scrambling
Like jackals and rabbits,
Grandchildren
And great-grandchildren of refugees
Who were stripped of their homes and fields,
Wells and towns,
And with an iron hand were driven
Into enclaves and ghettos,
Each one of these authorities
Sees to his part in the plan:
One’s in charge of liquidation,
Another of the daily harassment’
This one’s field is public relations,
That one’s collaboration;
This one deals with expulsion and fencing,
That one with the destruction of homes.
Because, when it comes down to it, we’re only speaking
Of a population of a certain size,
Which needs to be pounded and ground
Then shipped off as human powder.
The outrage itself has to be packaged
Like any piece of merchandise,
With all the clichés
Of corporate politics:
They’ll give it a name,
Then a format can be arranged
For staged negotiations,
With “breakthroughs” and “concessions,”
And moments of press-covered heightened tension,
Complete with a pr blitz full of talk:
For this purpose we have the spokesman,
The journalist and author as well,
The TV announcer and the professor,
A long lineup of Men of Letters,
All blowing into the Process’ trumpets -.
For the sniper who fired at the child
Is only a single stinking instrument
Within an enormous orchestra,
Which is conducted by the man who knows
More than anyone else
That long-term solutions can be found
For any and every problem,
When it’s no longer breathing.
The moment that man smiles,
The skin over skulls becomes transparent;
When hoarsely, he pronounces
The word “Peace” –
Mothers wake up trembling;
He knows that words
Are only the skins of potatoes
With which the stupid are to be stuffed –
And now, at long last,
He’ll roll up his sleeves
And get down to the work at which he excels,
And bring about a blood bath.

NOTES

[1] On drones, see Ann Rogers and John Hill Unmanned: Drone Warfare and Global Security, Pluto Press and BTL, Toronto, 2014. See for example p. 51 use of “swarms” to “swamp enemy detection” or “force an enemy to expend large numbers of missiles.”

[2]For example, see Norman Finkelstein Beyond Chutzpah: on the misuse of anti-semitism and the abuse of history, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2005, and Eyal Weizman The Least of All Possible Evils: humanitarian violence from Arendt to Gaza. Verso, London, 2011.

[3] Exemplifying capability and affordability of drones is American company Zipline International Inc.  As of November 2023, its drones have made more than 800,000 commercial deliveries^[8] and flown more than 40 million autonomous miles.^[9]The company’s drones deliver whole blood, platelets, frozen plasma, and cryoprecipitate along with medical products, including vaccines, infusions, and common medical commodities. It’s likely that this particular company would not be allowed by the U.S. to provide services to Palestine.

[4]Michael Mandel, How America Gets Away with Murder: illegal wars, collateral damage and crimes against humanity, Pluto Press, London, 2004. P. 12.

[5] Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, Mai’a Williams, Revolutionary Mothering: love on the front lines, PM and ETL, Toronto, 2016, p. 86.

[6] On Hamas and recent history of the Middle East, also see Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine: one land, two peoples, Cambridge U Press, Cambridge UK, 2004. Sara Roy Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza: engaging the Islamist social sector, Princeton U, Princeton, 2011, Henry Siegman Israel’s Lies.

The post A Modest Proposal to Immediately Save Palestinian Lives appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Judith Deutsch.

Photograph Source: U.S. Department of Labor – CC BY 2.0

Kyle Downour, unit chair for United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1-346, threw himself into consoling fellow union members after a fire and explosion killed two co-workers at the BP-Husky refinery in Oregon, Ohio in 2022.

But Downour, overwhelmed and stretched thin, realized that he was the one who needed support when federal investigators carried out a painstaking inspection of the damaged facility and held follow-up meetings.

Fortunately, a representative of the USW’s Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) Department arrived to help. He also took part in the walk-through and raised crucial issues, helping to launch the thorough investigation that ultimately held BP accountable for the tragedy.

Workers in numerous industries across the country need the same kind of trusted, reliable assistance in a crisis, and a proposed rule under consideration by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would help ensure that they get it.

The so-called “walkaround rule” would underscore workers’ right to have representatives of their choice—officials from their international union, for example—take part in OSHA inspections in the wake of safety complaints or incidents like the one at the Ohio refinery.

“It was all priceless,” Downour said of the help he and the membership received from the union’s HSE Department during the inspection and months-long investigation. “They were on top of something before I could even get to the point of thinking about it.”

Right now, some employers try to stop local unions from bringing in outside representatives for inspections.

These companies fear the added scrutiny. Even in the aftermath of severe injuries or fatalities, they care more about exercising control than leveraging all of the resources available to find out what failed and avert future calamities.

The walkaround rule would stop employers from trying to stack the deck. And it would give workers a stronger voice and greater confidence in inspections.

“You’re going to be able to hold employers accountable,” Downour said, summing up how workers feel when they’re adequately represented. “You’re going to be heard. You’re going to have your rights.”

The USW is among many unions and pro-worker groups supporting the walkaround rule. The proposal also has the support of leading members of Congress and of Jordan Barab, a former deputy assistant secretary at OSHA, who wrote that the rule would “help workers come home alive at the end of the day.”

A separate agency, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), already affords miners the right to decide who will represent them during inspections. OSHA’s walkaround rule would extend similar—and long overdue—protections to tens of millions more workers throughout the private sector. Both MSHA and OSHA are part of the Department of Labor.

In some cases, local unions need outside support because they have limited experience with OSHA or lack expertise with inspections or incident investigations.

Downour handled numerous safety issues at the refinery, now owned by Cenovus, during his many years as a Local 1-346 officer. He attended various HSE workshops and conferences. He interacted with OSHA and other safety agencies on multiple occasions since becoming active in the union.

But he still felt out of his depth given the enormity of the refinery incident and readily turned to the deep knowledge of the union’s HSE representatives. These experts not only assisted with similar inspections and investigations at other facilities over the years but also helped to develop many of the nation’s workplace safety protocols.

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” Downour said, stressing that the HSE Department members were better positioned than he was to advance the investigation and safeguard workers’ rights.

OSHA ultimately cited BP for multiple safety violations and for failing to provide sufficient training to workers, who were attempting to address rising levels of liquid in a “fuel gas mix drum” when a vapor cloud ignited.

The agency also sent BP a hazard alert letter in which it assailed the practice of rotating union members among various positions and suggested the company instead leave workers in a given job for longer periods, enabling them to build expertise. Downour credited the USW’s HSE Department with emphasizing the risks of job rotation.

That’s the kind of major contribution union representatives make all the time.

They serve as a “different set of eyes” and provide support for OSHA inspectors, who cannot possibly have exhaustive knowledge of every industry and workplace they investigate, explained Kerry Halter, president of USW Local 752L, which represents workers at Goodyear’s Cooper Tire plant in Texarkana, Arkansas.

One of Halter’s co-workers was killed on the job in July. In the aftermath of that tragedy, Halter said, he was grateful to have the assistance of an Ohio-based HSE representative from the USW who specializes in tire plants and provided the OSHA inspector with insights into industry-specific equipment and practices.

Halter said it makes no sense for corporations to oppose the walkaround rule when unions bring such knowledge and skill to investigations.

“Who doesn’t want their workers to be safe?” said Halter, noting employers even have self-serving reasons for building safer workplaces. “You have fewer injuries, you have less lost time. I think everybody wins.”

Downour recalls the relief he felt when the union HSE representatives arrived in Ohio to help him and other local union officers. Even more important, he recalled the strength that Local 1-346 members drew from the union’s commitment to them.

“They feel comforted, and they feel confident,” Downour said. “They know they’re supported. They know that the local is working with representatives who have their backs.”

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The post How OSHA’s Walkaround Rule Would Save Lives appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David McCall.

Somali-born Abdullahi Mire, who sought refuge with his mother at the vast Dadaab refugee complex in northern Kenya in the 1990s, told UN News the prize money was “a milestone for us” that would benefit kids in the camp by expanding bookshelves and boosting internet connectivity.

The education advocate who founded the Refugee Youth Education Hub at Dadaab, told Thelma Mwadzaya he was dedicating the award to all the displaced children and volunteers who are determined to help turn lives around, one book at a time.

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

Young Vishal Khule, the son of a famer in Akola’s Dadham village, took his own life in 2015. Seen here are Vishal’s father, Vishwanath Khule and his mother Sheela (on the right); elder brother Vaibhav and their neighbour Jankiram Khule with Vishal’s paternal uncle (to the left). Dadham, with a population of 1,500, is among the poorest villages in western Vidarbha, Maharashtra’s cotton and soybean belt, which has been in the news since the mid-1990s for a continuing spell of farmers’ suicides. The region is reeling under successive years of drought and an agrarian crisis that has worsened. Photo: Jaideep Hardikar.

If there are a few words of English that almost every Indian farmer would know, those would be ‘Swaminathan Report’ or ‘Swaminathan Commission Report.’ They also know what for them is its main recommendation: Minimum Support Price (MSP) = Comprehensive Cost of Production + 50 percent (also known as C2+50 percent).

Professor M.S. Swaminathan will be remembered not merely in the halls of government and bureaucracy, or even the institutions of science – but mainly in the hearts of millions of peasants demanding the implementation of the Report of the National Commission for Farmers (NCF).

Indian farmers, though, simply call it the ‘Swaminathan Report’ – because of the huge input, impact and indelible imprint he made on the reports of the NCF, of which he was chairman.

The story of the reports is one of betrayal and suppression by both the UPA and NDA governments. The first of the reports was submitted in December 2004, the fifth and final one around October 2006. Let alone a special session of Parliament on the agrarian crisis – which is what we desperately need – not even an hour’s dedicated discussion has ever been held. And it is now 19 years since the first report was submitted.

In 2014, the Modi government came to power, to some degree aided by a promise they made of speedily implementing the Swaminathan Report, especially its MSP formula recommendation. Instead, the incoming government speedily filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that would not be feasible as it would distort market prices.

Perhaps the reasoning of the UPA and NDA was that the reports were too ‘pro-farmer’, while both governments were trying to hand over Indian farming to the corporate sector. The report was the first thing approaching a positive blueprint for agriculture since Independence. Helmed by a man who sought an entirely different framework: that we measure growth in agriculture in terms of growth of farmers’ income, not merely in increased output.

The post M.S. Swaminathan Lives on in the Hearts of India’s Farmers appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by P. Sainath.

As Israeli tanks and other ground forces enter Gaza, we speak with a doctor in the besieged territory. Dr. Hammam Alloh is working at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the area, and says tens of thousands of people have sought shelter to escape Israel’s heavy bombardment. He describes making harrowing decisions with rapidly dwindling supplies, such as not resuscitating a patient who went into cardiac arrest because of a lack of ventilators. He also remains steadfast in staying at the hospital, despite Israeli demands to evacuate south. “You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” he says. “This is not the reason why I became a doctor.”

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

We speak with philosopher Judith Butler, one of dozens of Jewish American writers and artists who signed an open letter to President Biden calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. “We should all be standing up and objecting and calling for an end to genocide,” says Butler of the Israeli assault. “Until Palestine is free … we will continue to see violence. We will continue to see this structural violence producing this kind of resistance.” Butler is the author of numerous books, including The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind and Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism. They are on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

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

Rachel ¡Presente! Image: JSC and AI Art Generator.

Perhaps I’ve become terminally jaded, but the blood-curdling bi-partisan calls from American politicians and pundits to obliterate Gaza–children be damned–don’t surprise me much. Some young lives matter more than others. Others don’t seem to matter at all.

My mind flashes back to Rachel Corrie, who I got to know slightly through email correspondence while she was a student at Evergreen and an environmental activist, leading protests against industrial clearcuts on near verticle slopes that threatened to bury small towns in the Washington Cascades under landslides.

What does it say about the American mentality that this courageous young woman was blamed by many here for her own murder? After being crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer, while trying to keep a Palestinian family’s house from being demolished so their land could be confiscated and auctioned off to Israeli settlers, Rachel was roundly vilified instead of mourned. Political outrage was directed at her, not the regime that killed her. She had it coming, they said. She could have just gotten out of the way. She shouldn’t have been allied with “them.” She had no business being there.

What is it in the twisted American psyche that would make her own country turn on a 23-year-old woman–smart, humane, fearless, and beautiful–who was doing nothing more than protecting what we’ve been led to believe is the most sacrosanct American “right”, the right of property, the right to be secure in your home? 

It is, of course, the same mentality that pointed an accusatory finger at the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh for her own death, after being shot in the head by IDF snipers in Jenin, while wearing a helmet and vest emblazoned with “Press.” Some American lives matter more than others. Some don’t seem to matter at all. 

The government of these two brave and accomplished American women never pressed for answers about their killings, never demanded that anyone be held to account. If they had, perhaps, the real story about what’s been going on in Israel and the Occupied Territories might have gotten a brief airing in the American media. Instead, the money and the weapons continued to flow into the hands of a regime that had demonstrated over and over again its willingness to use them against anyone who stood in its way, even women from the country that provided them.

Now here we are again, having to ask ourselves how many children Biden’s shipment of weapons to Israel will kill? How many tiny limbs will be lost? How many small heads will be crushed in the rubble? Will we see the bodies our bombs have mutilated? Get a body count of the deaths our tax dollars have underwritten? What doctrine of just war decrees that the deaths of children justify the killing of more children? 

Where are the Rachel Corries and Shireen Abu Aklehs now, at this fraught moment? Voices who could break through the cacophony of vengeance, stand up against senseless slaughter and make the case for peace? And not just peace as a ceasefire, but a peace that rectifies the injustices of an apartheid system that has led to 75 years of dispossession, impoverishment, torture and killing. 

The post Some Young Lives Matter More Than Others, Some Don’t Seem to Matter at All appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

Man is born free but everywhere is in chains.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

Authoritarian control freaks out to micromanage our lives have become the new normal or, to be more accurate, the new abnormal when it comes to how the government relates to the citizenry.

This overbearing despotism, which pre-dates the COVID-19 hysteria, is the very definition of a Nanny State, where government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

Indeed, it’s a dangerous time for anyone who still clings to the idea that freedom means the right to think for yourself and act responsibly according to your best judgment.

This tug-of-war for control and sovereignty over our selves impacts almost every aspect of our lives, whether you’re talking about decisions relating to our health, our homes, how we raise our children, what we consume, what we drive, what we wear, how we spend our money, how we protect ourselves and our loved ones, and even who we associate with and what we think.

As Liz Wolfe writes for Reason, “Little things that make people’s lives better, tastier, and less tedious are being cracked down on by big government types in federal and state governments.”

You can’t even buy a stove, a dishwasher, a shower head, a leaf blower, or a light bulb anymore without running afoul of the Nanny State.

In this way, under the guise of pseudo-benevolence, the government has meted out this bureaucratic tyranny in such a way as to nullify the inalienable rights of the individual and limit our choices to those few that the government deems safe enough.

Yet limited choice is no choice at all. Likewise, regulated freedom is no freedom at all.

Indeed, as a study by the Cato Institute concludes, for the average American, freedom has declined generally over the past 20 years. As researchers William Ruger and Jason Sorens explain, “We ground our conception of freedom on an individual rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and property as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others.”

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.

When the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the individual rights of the citizenry, we’re in trouble, folks.

Federal and state governments have used the law as a bludgeon to litigate, legislate and micromanage our lives through overregulation and overcriminalization.

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal, and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

You don’t have to look far to find abundant examples of Nanny State laws that infantilize individuals and strip them of their ability to decide things for themselves. Back in 2012, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg infamously proposed a ban on the sale of sodas and large sugary drinks in order to guard against obesity. Other localities enacted bans on texting while jaywalking, wearing saggy pants, having too much mud on your car, smoking outdoors, storing trash in your car, improperly sorting your trash, cursing within earshot of others, or screeching your tires.

Yet while there are endless ways for the Nanny State to micromanage our lives, things become truly ominous when the government adopts mechanisms enabling it to monitor us for violations in order to enforce its many laws.

Nanny State, meet the all-seeing, all-knowing Surveillance State and its sidekick, the muscle-flexing Police State.

You see, in an age of overcriminalization—when the law is wielded like a hammer to force compliance to the government’s dictates whatever they might be—you don’t have to do anything “wrong” to be fined, arrested or subjected to raids and seizures and surveillance.

You just have to refuse to march in lockstep with the government.

As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.

“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek. “Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”

This is the police state’s superpower: empowered by the Nanny State, it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.

Indeed, if you were unnerved by the rapid deterioration of privacy under the Surveillance State, prepare to be terrified by the surveillance matrix that will be ushered in by the Nanny State working in tandem with the Police State.

The government’s response to COVID-19 saddled us with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves.

The groundwork laid with COVID-19 is a prologue to what will become the police state’s conquest of a new, relatively uncharted, frontier: inner space, specifically, the inner workings (genetic, biological, biometric, mental, emotional) of the human race.

Consider how many more ways the government could “protect us” from ourselves under the guise of public health and safety.

For instance, under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.

When combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, precrime initiatives, red flag gun laws, and mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, these preemptive mental health programs could well signal a tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called “thought crimes.”

This is how it begins.

On a daily basis, Americans are already relinquishing (in many cases, voluntarily) the most intimate details of who we are—their biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to navigate an increasingly technologically-enabled world.

Having conditioned the population to the idea that being part of society is a privilege and not a right, such access could easily be predicated on social credit scores, the worthiness of one’s political views, or the extent to which one is willing to comply with the government’s dictates, no matter what they might be.

COVID-19 with its talk of mass testing, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports, and snitch tip lines for reporting “rule breakers” to the authorities was a preview of what’s to come.

We should all be leery and afraid.

At a time when the government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state, it won’t take much for any of us to be considered outlaws or terrorists.

After all, the government likes to use the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably. The Department of Homeland Security broadly defines extremists as individuals “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”

At some point, being an individualist will be considered as dangerous as being a terrorist.

When anything goes when it’s done in the name of national security, crime fighting and terrorism, “we the people” have little to no protection against SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed citizens, indefinite detentions, and the like, whether or not you’ve done anything wrong.

In an age of overcriminalization, you’re already a criminal.

All the government needs is proof of your law-breaking. They’ll get it, too.

Whether it’s through the use of surveillance software such as ShadowDragon that allows police to watch people’s social media activity, or technology that uses a home’s WiFi router and smart appliances to allow those on the outside to “see” throughout your home, it’s just a matter of time.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s no longer a question of whether the government will lock up Americans for defying one of its numerous mandates but when.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The rollback will reportedly include delaying a ban on the sale of petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles from 2030 to 2035, pushing back the phaseout of gas boilers, scrapping energy efficiency targets for some homes, dropping recycling plans, and canceling a planned air travel tax.

"This is a U-turn that will leave the Tories facing in the opposite direction of almost everyone, and finally end their hopes of reelection."

"No one can deny climate change is happening," Sunak said, adding that the county needs "sensible green leadership" instead of false choices that "never go beyond a slogan."

However, Conservative peer Lord Zac Goldsmith—who resigned his ministerial post earlier this summer due to what he called Sunak's climate "apathy"—called the prime minister's reversal "a moment of shame."

"His short stint as PM will be remembered as the moment the U.K. turned its back on the world and on future generations," he added.

Shadow Climate Secretary Ed Miliband led Labour condemnation of the reversal, which he called "a complete farce from a Tory government that literally does not know what they are doing day to day."

Brighton Pavilion Green MP Caroline Lucas slammed what she called Sunak's "coordinated, calculated, and catastrophic rollback."

"What this all reveals is that Sunak really doesn't seem to care about the climate in the slightest—it's little more than an afterthought," Lucas wrote in a Guardian opinion piece published Wednesday.

Sunak must call a general election by January 2025, and his Tories are trailing the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls amid persistently high inflation, slow economic growth, and rising inequality.

"If Sunak mistakenly thinks the climate is merely a political device to draw dividing lines between his party and Labour, he will fail on his own terms," wrote Lucas. "All it will do is draw an ever-greater divide between him and the people he seeks to govern."

Climate campaigners roundly condemned Sunak's decision.

"The government needs to double down now, not U-turn," Kennedy Walker, a U.K. organizer with the climate action group 350.org, said in a statement. "We have the opportunity to show what a transition to a greener economy that works for people and the planet can look like; we need to hold leadership to account to make sure it happens and they follow through on their own promises."

Riffing on the government's "long-term decisions for a brighter future" slogan, Extinction Rebellion U.K. wrote on the social media site X: "Short-term decisions for a shitter future. Remember, this government took £3.5 million in donations from Big Oil and other industries before licensing new gas and oil."

Many companies including automaker Ford and energy giant E.ON joined in criticism of the rollback.

"Our business needs three things from the U.K. government: ambition, commitment, and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three," Ford U.K. chair Lisa Brankin said Wednesday. "We need the policy focus trained on bolstering the EV market in the short term and supporting consumers while headwinds are strong: infrastructure remains immature, tariffs loom, and cost-of-living is high."

Some critics noted that Sunak's announcement came on the same day the leaders of many nations—but not Britain or the world's two top carbon polluters, China and the United States—gathered in New York for the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit.

"We're in a climate emergency. The deadly impacts of climate change are here now and we have to act urgently," Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan—the only U.K. speaker at the summit—toldThe Guardian Wednesday. "We have seen record high temperatures in London earlier this month and the hottest ever July. Over the last two years, we have experienced unprecedented wildfires and flash floods, destroying homes and livelihoods."

"This government's response flies in the face of common sense and shows they are climate delayers," Khan added. "It beggars belief that not only are they watering down vital commitments, but they are also passing up the opportunity to create green jobs, wealth, and lower energy bills—as well as failing to give investors the certainty they need to boost the green economy."

Sunak's reversal also infuriated many people in Scotland.

"Rishi Sunak has blood on his hands," National Union of Students Scotland president and Scottish Young Greens co-convener Ellie Gomersall toldThe National. "His excuse? It's too costly. Well then all the more kudos to the Scottish government who are still moving forward with net-zero policies like low-emission zones, phasing out gas boilers, cheaper public transport, all the while on a budget severely restrained by the confines of devolution."

"And of course when the Scottish government does try to implement simple yet effective measures like a deposit return scheme, Westminster comes along and blocks it," she added. "Sunak's U-turn today will be devastating for the people of the U.K. and for the planet we call home. It's nothing short of evil."

Alistair Heather, a Scottish writer and TV presenter, told The National that he was "almost pleased" by Sunak's announcement.

"This is a U-turn that will leave the Tories facing in the opposite direction of almost everyone, and finally end their hopes of reelection," he explained. "For mainstream voters, who understand that a clear, urgent movement of travel towards a green future is the best chance we have of mitigating the worst effects of the climate collapse, the Tories have made themselves completely unelectable. Good... Fuck the Tories. Mon the independence."

"With the Left AWOL, our species is being quick-marched to extinction."

The outrage was felt far beyond U.K. shores.

"At a time when the U.K. should be providing global leadership in transitioning off fossil fuels, especially in recognition of the impact its historical emissions have had in bringing about the climate crisis, the U.K. government is considering backtracking on already insufficient commitments," 350.org Europe regional director Nicolò Wojewoda said in a statement.

Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek finance minister who heads the left-wing MeRA25 party, wrote on X that "Sunak's U-turn is a reflection of the total Europe-wide collapse of the market-based, neoliberal consensus on how to tackle the climate crisis. It marks the center‐right's new path."

"And with the Left AWOL," he added, "our species is being quick-marched to extinction."

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

Humanitarians are having to work under extreme conditions to support refugees and Sudanese civilians, providing often life-saving support. 

Just ahead of World Humanitarian Day, UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki spoke to Mathilde Vu - who’s waiting for a visa to return to Sudan - Advocacy Manager with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has lost two of its own workers to the violence.

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

One 25-year-old who arrived in Turkey in 2016 turned to the center for counseling after struggling with a drug habit.

“When I heard about this center and the support they were providing to Uyghur youth for free, I couldn’t believe my ears,” he said. “Before joining the center, I was involved in negative activities and used drugs like heroin.”

Abdusami Hoten, 30, co-founded the center in 2021 in Istanbul’s Safakoy district – one of the most heavily Uyghur-populated areas of the city – to offer guidance and housing for Uyghur youths.

The 25-year-old, who requested anonymity so as not to harm his future prospects, moved to Turkey to further his education. But he wasn’t able to enroll in classes – he was out of work and his parents’ plans to move from Xinjiang to Turkey fell through.

He became isolated and depressed and lost hope in his future. That’s when he turned to illegal drugs.

Eventually, a friend suggested that he seek help at the center shortly after it opened.

“The center’s primary objective is to educate and assist Uyghur youth who are on the wrong path, such as addiction to gambling, drugs and other substances, and guide them toward reintegrating into society,” said Hoten, a Uyghur who has lived in Turkey since 2016. 

Roughly 50,000 Uyghurs live in Turkey, the largest Uyghur diaspora outside Central Asia. The Turkish government has offered Uyghurs a safe place to live outside Xinjiang, where they face persecution.  

But once in Turkey, some Uyghur youths have encountered unemployment, economic hardship and drug addiction.

“Our wish for the youth is that they can, whether in the society or in a foreign country, avoid becoming a burden to others and instead actively contribute to both society and the Uyghur community, while embracing and preserving their ethnic identity,” Hoten said.

Since its inception, the center has served over 220 people, helping nearly three dozen young people recover from drug addiction, he said.

The 25-year-old has received treatment for his drug use and is learning about herbal medicine to become an herbal doctor.

Hoten has organized classes on psychology and Uyghur history, and other events that have offered new perspectives, the 25-year-old said.

“We received valuable advice from elders, and every week, we had food gatherings, strengthening our bonds like brothers,” he said. “Gradually, our interest in living increased, and we are incredibly grateful for the positive changes.”

Boxing, painting and host talks

A similar community facility for Uyghurs – the Palwan Uyghur Youth Center – was founded in 2019 by Samarjan Saidi, a 34-year-old Uyghur, as a place in Safakoy district for young people to play sports and learn new skills.

The center consists of a boxing club and a separate youth facility that offers courses in painting, arts and crafts, English and the natural sciences. Organizers also host talks and field trips. 

Initially, Saidi wanted to create a family-like environment for Uyghur youths, so he and some friends set up a boxing club in a rented basement. Later, with funding from the U.S.-based Uyghur NextGen Project, they were able to move the boxing club to another facility and set up a youth center. 

The main purpose of the center is to help young people prepare for college by providing guidance that aligns with their interests and talents, Saidi said.

Saidi was born in Qumul and raised in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi. He moved to Denmark in the early 2000s to go to school. After he graduated, he intended to return home and start a business with friends. 

“However, in 2016, some of my friends who had returned home from Europe had their passports confiscated,” Saidi told RFA. “I decided not to return home for the time being.”

That year, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang began collecting passports. Uyghurs had to hand them in to authorities who said they would hold them for safekeeping and would return them for any necessary travel abroad. But that was not the case in most instances.

The situation worsened in 2017, when authorities began arbitrarily arresting both prominent and ordinary Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, sending them to “re-education” camps or prison for participating in “illegal” religious practices or activities deemed “extremist” or a threat to national security.

It was during this time that Saidi and his friends in Europe decided to open the boxing club and pooled their finances.  

“As we made progress, we invited English teachers, which attracted more people to join,” he said. “Even girls requested having a training environment, and one of the girls who was already training in a Turkish club took responsibility for training them.”

‘Warm and friendly environment’

As more youths joined, the center began offering English courses and organized social events, Saidi said.

With a computer and US$25,000 from the Uyghur NextGen Project, Saidi and his colleagues purchased new space for the boxing club and renovated it themselves. They also bought a nearby hair salon and turned it into the Palawan Youth Center. 

“While we may not fully recreate the family environment that we left behind, our main goal is to create a warm and friendly environment as close to it as possible,” Saidi said.

When two youths wanted to learn how to play traditional Uyghur instruments like the dutar, a long-necked two-stringed lute, and promote Uyghur culture through music, organizers found a Uyghur musician to provide instruction. They did the same for a young woman who wanted to learn how to draw.

The center also hosts art displays to showcase the works of its members, summer picnics and talks given by Uyghur professionals. 

“During Ramadan, we organize iftar [fast-breaking evening meal] events, preceded by speeches from religious figures and successful individuals,” he said. “We come together to eat, pray and strengthen our bonds during such events.”

Idris Ayas, a staffer who has lived in Turkey for 11 years and has a master’s degree in international law, has worked with young Uyghurs since 2019. 

“In essence, the Palawan Youth Center has not only become a place of learning and growth but also evolved into a welcoming home and family for our Uyghur students,” he said.

Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Matt Reed.

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

J. Robert Oppenheimer — the great nuclear physicist, “father of the atomic bomb”, and now subject of a blockbuster biopic — always despaired about the nuclear arms race triggered by his creation.

So the approaching 78th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing invites us to ask how far we’ve come — or haven’t come — since his death in 1967.

The Cold War represented all that Oppenheimer had feared. But at its end, then-US President George H.W. Bush spoke of a “peace dividend” that would see money saved from reduced defence budgets transferred into more socially productive enterprises.

• READ MORE: The Black Sea drone incident highlights the loose rules around avoiding ‘accidental’ war
• UN fails to agree on ‘killer robot’ ban as nations pour billions into autonomous weapons research
• War in Ukraine accelerates global drive toward killer robots
• Reporting all biosafety errors could improve labs worldwide — and increase public trust in biological research

Long-term benefits and rises in gross domestic product could have been substantial, according to modelling by the International Monetary Fund, especially for developing nations.

Given the cost of global sustainable development — currently estimated at US$5 trillion to $7 trillion annually — this made perfect sense.

Unfortunately, that peace dividend is disappearing. The world is now spending at least $2.2 trillion annually on weapons and defence. Estimates are far from perfectly accurate, but it appears overall defence spending increased by 3.7 percent in real terms in 2022.

The US alone spent $877 billion on defence in 2022 — 39 percent of the world total. With Russia ($86.4 billion) and China ($292 billion), the top three spenders account for 56 percent of global defence spending.

Military expenditure in Europe saw its steepest annual increase in at least 30 years. NATO countries and partners are all accelerating towards, or are already past, the 2 percent of GDP military spending target. The global arms bazaar is busier than ever.

Aside from the opportunity cost represented by these alarming figures, weak international law in crucial areas means current military spending is largely immune to effective regulation.

World military spending reaches all-time high of $2.24 trillion https://t.co/yaRqGly6um

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 24, 2023

The new nuclear arms race
Although the world’s nuclear powers agree “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”, there are still about 12,500 nuclear warheads on the planet. This number is growing, and the power of those bombs is infinitely greater than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

According to the United Nations’ disarmament chief, the risk of nuclear war is greater than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The nine nuclear-armed states (Britain, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — as well as the big three) all appear to be modernising their arsenals.

Several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapons systems in 2022.

The US is upgrading its “triad” of ground, air and submarine launched nukes, while Russia is reportedly working on submarine delivery of “doomsday” nuclear torpedoes capable of causing destructive tidal waves.

While Russia and the US possess about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, other countries are expanding quickly. China’s arsenal is projected to grow from 410 warheads in 2023 to maybe 1000 by the end of this decade.

Only Russia and the US were subject to bilateral controls over the buildup of such weapons, but Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended the arrangement. Beyond the promise of non-proliferation, the other nuclear-armed countries are not subject to any other international controls, including relatively simple measures to prevent accidental nuclear war.

Other nations — those with hostile, belligerent and nuclear-armed neighbours showing no signs of disarming — must increasingly wonder why they should continue to show restraint and not develop their own nuclear deterrent capacities.

As AI weaponry enters the arms race, America is feeling very, very afraid | John Naughton https://t.co/lbJLCcucia

— Observer New Review (@ObsNewReview) April 8, 2023

The threat of autonomous weaponry
Meanwhile, other potential military threats are also emerging — arguably with even less scrutiny or regulation than the world’s nuclear arsenals. In particular, artificial intelligence (AI) is sounding alarm bells.

AI is not without its benefits, but it also presents many risks when applied to weapons systems. There have been numerous warnings from developers about the unforeseeable consequences and potential existential threat posed by true digital intelligence. As the Centre for AI Safety put it:

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

More than 90 countries have called for a legally binding instrument to regulate AI technology, a position supported by the UN Secretary-General, the International Committee of the Red Cross and many non-governmental organisations.

But despite at least a decade of negotiation and expert input, a treaty governing the development of “lethal autonomous weapons systems” remains elusive.

Plagues and pathogens
Similarly, there is a fundamental lack of regulation governing the growing number of laboratories capable of holding or making (accidentally or intentionally) harmful or fatal biological materials.

There are 51 known biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs in 27 countries — double the number that existed a decade ago. Another 18 BSL-4 labs are due to open in the next few years.

While these labs, and those at the next level down, generally maintain high safety standards, there is no mandatory obligation that they meet international standards or allow routine compliance inspections.

Finally, there are fears the World Health Organisation’s new pandemic preparedness treaty, based on lessons from the COVID-19 disaster, is being watered down.

As with every potential future threat, it seems, international law and regulation are left scrambling to catch up with the march of technology — to govern what Oppenheimer called “the relations between science and common sense”.

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law, University of Waikato. . This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

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

It was December 4, 2014.

Black Lives Matter had sprung up almost four months earlier after the events in Ferguson, Missouri. The remnants of Occupy Wall Street immediately latched onto this Movement as if it were life support.

Our plan that night was to stage a “die-in” inside Saks Fifth Avenue during the holiday shopping crush. Dozens of “activists” (of all ethnicities) entered the posh department store and pretended to be shoppers.

When we got the signal, we were supposed to plop down onto the floor and pretend to be dead (see my photo below).

This was (somehow) supposed to represent all the people of color being killed by law enforcement. I opted to not lie down because I wanted to get photos to document the action and well… I’d already had my fill of almost being arrested in this particular venue.

We perform such futile, dishonest exhibitionism because the hive mind keeps telling us: American police are hunting down black men in an epidemic of “lynchings.”

I’m not being hyperbolic.

In 2020, for example, pundits of the woke kind declared that cops are hunting black people (particularly black men).

LeBron James himself tweeted: “For Black people right now, we think you’re hunting us.” Some folks unselfconsciously call it an “epidemic.”

In the Black Lives Matter mission statement, it is stated that black people are being “systematically targeted for demise.”

The media picks up these quotes and runs with them as clickbait stories — without any pretense of fact-checking. Opinions are manufactured and thus, narratives are created and sides are drawn.

BLM was founded on this deception.

Do you know how many unarmed black people were actually killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2020, the Year of George Floyd?

I would not blame anyone if, based on public rhetoric, they guessed hundreds if not thousands. But here’s the breakdown:

There are roughly 60 million interactions between police and civilians (age 16 and older) each year.

In 2020, during those 60 million interactions, 1,021 people were killed by police.

Of that number, 55 were unarmed.

Of that number, 24 were white while 18 were black.

Yes, proportional to population demographics, unarmed blacks are indeed being killed at a higher rate than unarmed whites. But please allow me to repeat:

In 2020, 18 unarmed black people were killed by law enforcement agents.

Is that 18 too many? Yes.

Is it equivalent to “hunting,” an “epidemic,” or being “systematically targeted for demise”? Of course not.

However, an organization called Black Lives Matter opted to make this its focus. In the process, they ignore (for example) that the top cause of death for black men under 44 is homicide. Those murders are obviously not being committed by cops.

Could you instead imagine concerned citizens holding a “die-in” in the name of finding ways to prevent even more victims of gang activity, drug dealing, and other crimes?

Can you imagine pro athletes and members of Congress kneeling to honor those victims?

Sure, it would still be virtue signaling, but at the very least, they’d be trying to live up to a name like “Black Lives Matter.”

If anyone is smugly enjoying this takedown of the woke crowd, I suggest you take a good look around. The “truth” movement and “medical freedom” movement can be just as deluded and deceptive in their own way.

The longstanding “activist” blueprint is a delusion.

Let’s learn to be more discerning and embrace independent thought before we embark on journeys to free others. And remember:

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

In a landmark $13 million settlement, New York City has agreed to pay 1,300 people attacked by police while protesting the Minnesota police murder of George Floyd in 2020. Sow v. City of New York yielded the largest total payout to protesters in a class-action suit in U.S. history, totaling about $10,000 per person. The suit focused on how police violated protesters’ civil and constitutional rights by making mass arrests and using excessive force that included improper use of pepper spray and using a tactic called kettling to trap and arrest protesters before a curfew went into effect. The case used a video analysis tool developed by SITU Research that can quickly analyze massive amounts of police body-camera video, aerial footage and social media videos. “The settlement is historic and incredibly important,” says civil rights attorney and co-counsel for the plaintiffs Gideon Oliver. “It’s also in some ways only as important as what we make it mean.” We also speak with Dara Pluchino, a social worker and plaintiff in the case, who describes her experience being kettled. “Once the curfew hit, then that is when chaos occurred and violence occurred.”

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

The post How Book-Banning Campaigns Have Changed the Lives and Education of Librarians appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nicole A. Cooke.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration has proposed halving the permissible level of silica exposure to 50 micrograms per cubic meter. That’s in line with what the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has held other industries to since 2016. Silica dust is toxic, and long-term exposure can cause a slow but fatal hardening of lung tissue called progressive massive fibrosis, or, as it’s known within coal-mining areas, black lung disease. The toxin increasingly abounds in mines as companies plumb thinner coal seams with greater impurities. Advocates of the tighter guideline, which will apply to all miners, regardless of what they dig from the earth, say it could go a long way toward protecting workers. But even as they celebrate, they’re strategizing on how to make the rule even stronger.

“There’s a lot more work to be done,” said Vonda Robinson, vice president of the Black Lung Association.

Robinson knows the incalculable costs of lax mine safety regulations. Her husband, who worked 30 years underground in southwestern Virginia, was diagnosed with black lung at the age of 47 and has spent years entangled in byzantine federal benefits systems. She’s been fighting for a stricter standard as long as almost anyone, but she worries that there are still loopholes that the industry will readily exploit. 

“They just use the miner to get their pockets full of money,” Robinson said. “The company’s all about production, production, production, let’s get the coal out, let’s get the coal out. They will not do correct sampling.”

Federal mining regulators, along with the Kentucky and West Virginia coal associations, did not respond to requests for comment.

Much has been made of the companies’ responsibility for dust sampling to determine how much silica and other contaminants miners are exposed to; that task is left to the industry because the Mining Safety and Health Administration does not have the funding or personnel to do it. Robinson says regulators must deploy more inspectors if the higher standard, which awaits public comments and clearance from multiple agencies, is to be enforced. The Black Lung Association and other advocacy groups are preparing to lobby for more funding to the agency and stricter sampling oversight. 

Robinson feels buoyed by the movement’s victories, though. Last year, campaigns succeeded in securing a permanently higher rate for the black lung excise tax, which the Internal Revenue Service levies on coal companies to support the fund from which afflicted miners draw federal benefits. (Robinson’s next goal is raising that benefit, which stands at just $737 per month or about $1,100 for miners with a dependent.)  

Alongside other labor groups, miners and their advocates have long sought tighter silica standards. Although OSHA made silica a priority in 1995, when the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found a need for stricter exposure standards, it didn’t update its standard until 2016. The Mine Safety and Health Administration hasn’t updated its guideline since 1985. Black lung patients and their advocates petitioned the agency for a revision in 2011, but it didn’t send to send one to the Office of Management and Budget for review until last year. Public pressure increased in the months preceding Friday’s announcement on June 30. Last week, U.S. senators Joe Manchin, Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, John Fettermain, and Tim Kane, all of whom represent coal-producing states, signed an open letter urging prompt action. They voiced support for the rule after its announcement.

“We applaud the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s new proposed silica rule to enhance health protections for miners across the country,” they said in a statement. “We urge swift implementation of this rule because protecting our hard-working miners from dangerous levels of silica cannot wait.”

If adopted, the rule will require routine medical testing of all mineworkers, and require companies to find ways of limiting silica exposure through measures like respirators. Once the rule is posted in the Federal Register, MSHA will initiate a 45-day comment period, which will be punctuated by public hearings in Denver and Arlington, Virginia. Both will be streamed online.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A rule that could help save coal miners’ lives finally moves forward on Jul 6, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

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

Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa’s tribute to Papua New Guinea’s  businessman Sir Kostas Constantinou was very touching as she recapped how his businesses touched the lives of the people of Samoa.

Her message, read out by Samoa’s High Commissioner to Australia, Hinari Petana during Sir Kostas’ wake in Brisbane where he died from heart complications last month, was a reminder to his children to continue the legacy he had left in Samoa.

High Commissioner Petana and her entourage, including Sir Kostas’ Samoan family, were all present throughout his funeral service, the burial and the wake.

• READ MORE: PNG mourns passing of business giant, Sir Kostas Constantinou

There was also a fitting ceremony where George Jr, son of the late Sir Kostas, was handed Samoa’s chiefly red ‘ulafala (pandanus key necklace) most often worn by Samoan tulafale (orator chiefs).

His father was adorned with a chiefly title Tulaniu in Samoa — George Jr will take over the reign as the next in line. He was also presented a Samoan ie toga, a fine mat.

“He touched the lives of so many spirits in the Pacific region, in particular in our country, Samoa, and its people through rewarding and inspirational investments,” Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa said in her message.

“The contribution of Sir Kostas to our country has been hugely significant, especially in our economic growth.

‘Passion and influence’
“His passion and influence in our communities will be remembered by everyone that enters the doors of Taumeasina Island Resort, the Bank of South Pacific, as much as he shaped everything, our cultural values, during one of his few visits to Samoa, including his acceptance of his chiefly title.

“To George Jr and the children, may you continue your father’s legacy in Samoa and join us as a family in the coming years.”

Sir Kostas, 66, was regarded as a visionary businessman who employed thousands of people and developed businesses across the Asia-Pacific region.

He was the founder of Constantinou Group of Companies.

His leadership and commitment to excellence and innovation was a key factor in driving the Constantinou Group, including Airways Hotels and Apartments, Hebou Construction, Lamana Hotel and Lamana Development Ltd, Monier Ltd and Rouna Quarries Ltd in PNG to success.

Sir Kostas served as chair of the Bank South Pacific Financial Group Ltd and Air Niugini for many years.

He was also a director of Oil Search Ltd.

He was the father of Constantia, George, Andrea and Theophilus and grandfather to Imogen, Syliva, Harry, Zoe and George.

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

Miners have always been at risk of black lung, but pulmonologists and medical researchers have seen a marked increase in recent years. The disease, while not genetic or contagious, often wends its way through families who work the mines. Hairston’s brother and father have it, too. Now, between frequent trips to the hospital, he fights for the rights and needs of others like them as president of the National Black Lung Association. He worked for decades before his diagnosis, but these days sees younger workers who don’t make it nearly that long.

“These younger coal miners had been in the mine five years and some barely could breathe, they had to take breath, even at talks,”  Hairston said.  

Experts point to the increasing prevalence of crystalline silica in the mines as a cause of this change. Silica is often found in quartz, which is embedded deeply within the sandstone that surrounds coal. It is ground to fine dust and kicked into the air by the machines that cut coal from ground, then settles deeply in the lungs, scarring the tissue and making it increasingly difficult to breathe. As mining companies have exhausted high-quality seams of coal, they’ve increasingly turned to inferior veins with larger volumes of other minerals, making silica exposure more likely. Pulmonologists have called the increasing prevalence of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis an epidemic, which they’ve blamed in part on lax regulations, too little protective gear, and lack of safety training for miners. Researchers have found that as many as 1 in 5 miners in Central Appalachia may have black lung, and 1 in 20 have progressive massive fibrosis, the most advanced form of the disease, which is linked directly to silica exposure.

The Mining Safety and Health Administration oversees mine safety and operates under different rules than the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Under its guidelines, miners can be exposed to twice as much silica dust as workers in any other industry. After decades of protest by coal miners and their families demanding a stricter exposure standard, MSHA has introduced some preventative measures, including increased inspections, miner education, and greater dust sampling. But many workers and their allies find the agency’s response wanting, and they want the acceptable level of silica exposure cut from 100 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 50, bringing it in line with OSHA’s regulation.

“We really try to fight for the silica standard,” Hairston said. “So some of these younger miners won’t go through what we went through.”

Federal mining regulators, along with the Kentucky and West Virginia coal associations, did not respond to requests for comment.

Rumblings of an epidemic, and rising concern about silica exposure, have been underlined by data. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released earlier this year found that not only are cases increasing, but mortality rates from black lung and other lung disease have steadily climbed among miners born after 1939, with mortality highest among the youngest miners. An American Thoracic Society study published last year, which involved many of the same researchers as the CDC study, linked increased silica exposure directly to the increase in black lung cases. A joint investigation by NPR and Frontline five years ago found thousands of instances in which miners were exposed to dangerous levels of silica. Calls for a stricter silica exposure standard followed, but still, nothing.

Black lung patients and their advocates petitioned the Mine Safety and Health Administration for an updated silica rule in 2011, but it took until last year for the agency to propose an updated rule and send it to the Office of Management and Budget for review. By April, mine regulators had promised to deliver a draft of the proposal, which would then go through a lengthy public comment period and possible revisions before approval. But the rule is still with the OMB, and no one’s sure why it’s taking so long. 

Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official and occupational health researcher at George Washington University and Texas State University, worries that further delays could once again punt a decision to a new administration. “The clock is ticking,” she said. “The whole purpose of a proposed rule is to propose something and get that comment, not trying to make some perfect document.”

Monforton says that more rigorous coal dust sampling — including continuous air monitoring and having inspectors spend more than a day at a given location —  and preventative measures like increased ventilation could help prevent black lung. “The things that actually control the dust are the most effective way to protect mineworkers,” she said. But, she adds, history has made it difficult to trust mine operators with miners’ welfare, making strict regulations and enforcement necessary. As Lynn Morley Martin, who was secretary of labor under President George H.W. Bush, said in 1991, the coal industry is addicted to cheating.

In yet another example of that, on June 8, a judge sentenced the Black Diamond Coal Company and Walter Perkins, a certified dust examiner, for falsifying coal dust samples at a mine in Floyd County, Kentucky. In an unprecedented move, MSHA fined the company $200,000 and ordered it to pay $400 apiece to former miners to cover black lung screenings that are available at no cost to those still working. Perkins, who lied to investigators about a coal monitor being faulty, is headed to jail for six months.

Chris Williamson, whom President Biden appointed to lead the MSHA in 2022, has stated his intent to pursue stricter standards on silica dust exposure. In addition to holding Black Diamond and other companies accountable for safety violations, the agency announced last year that it would more rigorously enforce inspections, an initiative it called Miner Health Matters. But many miners’ advocates say the agency needs more funding to protect coal miners. 

“Once we get the standard passed … we have to see how we can make sure they get funded to hire more inspectors,” Hairston said.

That’s difficult when the agency’s $400 million budget has been in trouble for years. The organization, which oversees workplace safety in the nation’s mining and mineral processing industries, lost 30 percent of its staff between 2013 and 2022, with inspection capabilities taking a big hit and funding for the agency more or less remaining flat. While current safety standards focus on personal protective equipment for miners, advocacy organizations like the Black Lung Associations want to see a safer threshold for dust levels throughout the workplace.

The coal industry has long fought stricter regulations on silica, but when miners seek benefits for their resulting illness, it is loath to pay. It often fights sick coal miners in court for years over their eligibility for healthcare and other benefits. Past investigations have found that filing for bankruptcy allows many companies to get out of the business without paying their debts to employees and others. Willie Dodson, an organizer with advocacy organization Appalachian Voices, says, once again, that’s cheating.

“It just seems like they don’t want to spend money on the true impacts of their operations,” Dodson said. “It just seems like the coal lobby is just more concerned with the profit of the top dogs than they are for the health and well being of the people actually doing the work.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A rule that could help save coal miners’ lives is mired in red tape on Jun 26, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Katie Myers.

“In the 2022 election cycle, the oil and gas industry funneled more than $50 million to support their back-pocket candidates in the closest races. These same candidates continually present a false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy planet. Today we saw that with fossil fuels – we get neither.

“Between 2010 and 2019, the United States experienced 119 climate disasters that each caused damages of $1 billion or more. That’s more than double the previous decade. The consequences of the climate crisis are wreaking havoc on our health and our economy. We have many options to tackle it by transitioning to a clean energy economy that will create up to 25 million good-paying jobs across every zip code in America, jump-starting the economic recovery and positioning America to compete in a world that runs on clean technologies, not fossil fuels.”

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

The technical achievement of advanced industrial society, and the effective manipulation of mental and material productivity have brought about a shift in the locus of mystification. . . . the rational rather than the irrational becomes the most effective vehicle of mystification.

– Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man

General, man is very uselful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.

–  Bertolt Brecht, “From a German War Primer”

Langdon Winner opens his prescient book, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (1986), with an anecdote about John Glenn and his experience orbiting the earth in 1962 aboard Friendship 7.  After long, rigorous training in simulators, Glenn found that when he looked at earth from orbit – only the third man after Soviet pilots Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov to do so – he felt as if he had seen it all before.  Rather than a sense of awe, he felt that his training exercises had deprived him of true experience.  Winner writes, “Synthetic conditions generated in the training center had begun to seem more ‘real’ than the actual experience.”

Glenn’s example might seem unusual for the early 1960s, but it is now commonplace, the rule rather than the exception.  I think many people today sense, but can’t admit, that technology has usurped direct human experience while presumably enhancing it with so-called awe-inspiring, tech-enhanced products.  Just as people walk around embalming time with their camera phones, there is something funereal about activities that have been rehearsed, reviewed, and planned on digital screens before they are undertaken.  It’s as if the hearse doesn’t come rolling in soon enough.

I just checked the local weather forecast and “they” say there is a 37.235 % chance of showers on Saturday, six days away.  Should I start worrying today since I have planned a picnic for that day?  Would I be wrong to wonder when on that future day, if it ever arrives and I am around to greet it, that the 37.235 % chance of showers applies? Day or night, morning or afternoon?  The picnic is scheduled for 1-3 PM, so should I play it by the odds and assume those 8.33 % of the 24 hours have a decent chance of avoiding the 37.235 %?  Should I live by numbers and computer simulations?

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis, a man not opposed to science, tells us:

There is something that unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique. . .

Why was Glenn circling the earth anyway?

If the novelty of experience and the real objective value of the outside world have been crippled by the repetitive and predictive nature of technology, it is worth reminding ourselves of the simple truth that technology does not just happen; it is rooted in a philosophical premise of control, the inability to let the earth breathe and to stop trying to control life.  This is a human choice.

It is possible to show reverence for nature and our part in it and to use technology for humane goals, not because we are adept at techniques, but because we understand that human beings are emphatically not machines but spiritual and moral beings. This has seldom been the case in modern times. To do so demands asking what are our first principles and what are the ends we are seeking.  This requires subordinating science and technology to higher values.  All technical decisions are political and all political decisions are moral.

Most new technologies of the past two hundred years have been touted as “revolutionary,” machines that will radically transform life for the better – i.e. leading to less labor, more equality, and the enrichment of human experience.  Nowhere has this been truer than with the promotion of the computer and the digital “revolution” with its information superhighway – the  Internet – that has been sold as leading to more benefits than the mind can imagine.  The result, however, has been the loss of our minds as the nonsense that “information is power” has become a mantra of those controlling the digital information flow, as they promote information as an elixir for democracy.  Such a strange sort of democracy it is where more and more power has accrued to the power elites and diversions of data and digital dementia to regular people who have a hard time remembering and forgetting, seemingly an odd couple if ever there were one.

Currently you hear a lot of complaining about artificial intelligence (AI), as if its development is some great surprise.  Much of this caviling has been coming from the very people who created AI and continue to develop it.  Now these experts are warning that it could get out of control, so we must be careful and take action since we risk “extinction” from AI.   Only an idiot wouldn’t laugh at such rhetoric.  Who are the “we” who need to take action?  The fear campaign never stops, while the controls tighten.

Thirty-seven years ago Winner wrote:

Some observers forecast that ‘the computer revolution’ will eventually be guided by new wonders in artificial intelligence.  Its present course is influenced by something more familiar: the absent mind.

And malevolent hubris.

For AI has been the stuff of popular screen and book entertainment for a long time, dress rehearsed in the popular consciousness far in advance of opening night.  Now that the hearse has appeared and the identity of its occupants has become cause for wonderment, much chatter has erupted on the Internet.  Could we be dead?  Where are our controls?

The process of creating dread has been rather smooth, so surprise is an odd reaction.  We have been in the simulators far longer that John Glenn was in his, and we too have seen it all before.  First they created millions of artificial people drip-by-drip by drugging them with the “magic” of technological devices that were “irresistible,” then, when most of “reality” had become unreal and people had downloaded their natural lives into the devices, they roll out the latest fraud about how the machines are taking over from humans, as if people don’t have hands and eyes and walk upon the earth; that they can’t see the birds in the trees or feel the breeze upon their heads.  That they are not free to determine their own lives.

Be afraid, for “you have no freedom” has been the message for decades.  This is the repetitious, implicit message of fear used to paralyze people.  The AI experts who create the instruments of “control,” even as they continue to develop them, then warn of their dangers.  Here is their recent one sentence warning:

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other society-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

Is that so?  Our Dr. Frankensteins  are so kind to create these monsters only to warn us about them.

Have you heard it all before?

Have you seen it all before?

Is the same-old, same-old getting you down?

Does the news seem like déjà vu all over again?

Does your life seem rehearsed and official history produced in advance?

Has the Weirdness arrived?

I think it’s fair to say that wherever people travel these days, it’s as if they were already there before they even left.  Or at least the pictures they have seen have taken the newness out of the places they are going to in today’s simulated life.  Nearly a century ago in The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway had his protagonist Jake Barnes say to Robert Cohen, when Cohen asks Barnes to go to South America with him and Barnes won’t:

‘Cheer up,’ I said. ‘All countries look just like the moving pictures.’

Moving pictures – how quaint that sounds today when the moving pictures now move in the dinguses in people’s pockets wherever people move, on the go to nowhere new.  John Glenn would probably understand.

In his concluding chapter, Winner write::

More and more, the whole language used to talk about technology and social policy – the language of ‘risks,’ ‘impacts,’ and ‘trade-offs’ – smacks of betrayal. The excruciating subtleties of measurement and modeling mask embarrassing shortcomings in human judgment.  We have become careful with numbers, callous with everything else. Our methodological rigor is becoming spiritual rigor mortis. [my emphasis]

This leads me back to the Internet and all the verbal and pictorial information published there. This is where most people now get their “news” and analyses about the “outside” world, where they get much of their official history before it happens. Even when people have learned how to choose sites judiciously, it is still information overload that destroys their ability to think, to remember what is important and forget the inessential.

Paul Virilio, the French scholar of technology and speed (dromology), calls it the “information bomb” (added to the nuclear and genetic bombs), the glut of repetitive information that deranges regular people but is a boon to the elites who think they are in full control of people’s minds and the technology they promote.  Virilio writes:

A black hole of Progress into which has now fallen this whole philanoia, this love of madness on the part of the sciences and technologies, which is now seeking to organize the self-extinction of a species that is too slow. . . . Not liberation, but global takeover of humanity by totalitarian multimedia powers, applying intensely to populations that age-old strategy which consists in sowing division everywhere – between peoples, regions, towns, countries, races, religions, sexes, generations, and even within families.

Like John Glenn’s loss of awe while in orbit because of his simulator experience, and like the rehearsal for travel and so much else people do through screens – “pre-planning,” as the redundant word usage reveals the truth – the Internet has become a place to lose your mind as fast as you can and to make sure your life is devoid of surprises.

And because Internet content is posted so rapidly and in such large quantities, the providers and their readers can’t move on from the past because they are repeating it in ways that let them hold onto it without understanding it. There is no “space” for new thoughts.  It is analogous to those individuals who have suffered some childhood trauma but because it was so overwhelming, keep unconsciously repeating it in disguised form, rather than facing its truth and creating a new future.

Some of the Internet repetition is unconscious and innocent blather, and much of it is the basic method of propaganda.  Repeat and repeat the lies so that those hearing them can’t imagine there could be another truth.  And then those hearing them can’t forget what they have heard so often because, as Thoreau once said, “It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember.” And of course they can’t remember what they never heard since it has been omitted.  Propaganda is two-faced.

There is a stuckness to so much on the Internet because the space is unlimited and sites keep posting at rapid-fire speed to keep up with each other. The Internet is like a clogged highway on a Friday evening with hoards fleeing to the same “isolated” getaway.  By the time they get there, they wonder why they ever left, or if they did.

If you stop reading or viewing the Internet for a week or more, and then return, you won’t miss much.

Take, for example, Russia-gate and the recently released Durham Report.  Patrick Lawrence has written an intriguing article about it: “John Durham and the Burying of American History.”

Special Counsel Durham’s four year investigation, “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns,” is, as Lawrence says, more a confirmation than a revelation.  It verifies in a tricky way what some have known for seven years and others continue to deny because the implications are so explosive: that in 2016, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the FBI conspired to create the Russia-gate hoax to smear Donald Trump as a Russian proxy to help Clinton get elected president.  The CIA and FBI knew from the start that the claims of a Trump-Russia conspiracy were completely fraudulent.

Once Trump was surprisingly elected, however, the Russia-gate lies were repeated endlessly for years by the conspirators, the mainstream press, and some alternative media.  Such propaganda had the effect of fueling hatred for Russia and President Putin, NATO’s continuing expansion to Russia’s borders, Ukraine’s neo-Nazi ongoing attacks on the Donbass, the persecution of Julian Assange as Clinton regularly accused him and Trump of being in cahoots with the Russian government, and eventually, after enough U.S. provocations, led to the present U.S./NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the growing danger of nuclear war.

The Durham Report lays out some of the conspiracy that led to them, but not these consequences.  It doesn’t call for criminal prosecutions and is very lacking in many ways; it excludes the central role of CIA Director John Brennan and the false and discredited Clinton claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election by hacking Democratic party servers to help elect Trump by releasing the material through Wikileaks, etc.  No one hacked those emails, as Ray McGovern and Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have shown time and again.

It is a limited-hangout, a report so late and lacking that most people will have forgotten what engendered it, and, if that isn’t enough, the mainstream media is burying it anyway.

I mention Lawrence’s article, not because I agree with all his points – i.e. his historical examples exclude the Covid hoax and he claims that “Watergate was at bottom one man’s scandal,” which it surely was not – nor to analyze the report, but to pick up on points he makes about the burying of history and our faculties of remembering and forgetting.  He writes:

To value history, Nietzsche told us in very different circumstances, is ‘to understand the meaning of the phrase ‘it was.’ But the health of an individual, a people, or of a culture he also said, depended on forgetting, too: It is only when we can forget that we escape the bonds of the past and dare to begin again, to imagine and create, ‘to perceive as we have never perceived before.’ Having the certainty of a written history is what makes possible this desirable kind of forgetting.

I think understanding these ideas is necessary for understanding what has become of us in the era of digital simulacra, how we have lost our way while learning to imitate rather than live. Our reactions have become copies of copies.  History has become a series of pseudo-debates with fewer and fewer matters factually settled so one can forget and move on.  While the Internet provides us with massive amounts of information, some of it very important, its very nature or the method of its delivery of its content controverts its claim to seriousness.  It is hard to remember or forget when one subjects oneself to a steady stream of electronic images that speed through one’s mind like flashing lights.

Forgetting is usually considered a bad attribute that happens to you, not something good that one can do.  It has come to be associated with ailments such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.  Rarely is it seen as a necessary art – Nietzsche’s “music of forgetting” – that one might practice in order to make “room” for the onrushing future.  For we know that the significance of the past depends on its importance for the future and only once one takes a stance toward the past can one create a new future. This is true for individuals and society.  Learning to remember the past so as to forget it for the future is central.

Lawrence uses the JFK assassination, which occurred 60 years ago, as an example.  The Internet is full of articles that still debate the assassination, as if the facts were not clear long ago.  These pseudo-debates encourage readers to forget the facts – that the CIA killed Kennedy – and that the evidence is readily available if one reads a few scholarly books with impeccable sources, such as James W. Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable; Why He Died and Why It Matters.  (Books obviously differ significantly from the Internet.)  How long such nonsense will continue is a guessing game, but because the truth is so unsettling, as is Russia-gate, I suspect it will continue for a long time.  One is encouraged to remember incidentals, while the core is elided to keep the debate going.

It is true, as Lawrence says, that certain lies are too big to fail, for if they did and entered the official histories as truths, they would be preserved, not to be forgotten. Then society could deal with their implications. But as long as matters such as the facts in the Durham Report (and the report’s omissions), the JFK assassination, etc., are buried or endlessly debated, as they are being now, their continuing ramifications in Ukraine, U.S. politics, etc. will be more deadly history planned in advance and nothing will seem new or hopeful.  Like John Glenn, we will have seen it all before in our simulated lives.

Only to repeat it as we fly in circles in a country of endless lies.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

The United States could save 89,000 lives and nearly $1 trillion in health costs by mid-century if drivers stop buying conventional combustion-engine cars and if the country cleans up its power grid by 2035, the organization found. 

“There’s a real significant health benefit to be achieved and significant suffering to be avoided — premature deaths to be avoided, children having asthma attacks avoided — by making this transition to technology that exists today,” said William Barrett, who works on clean air and climate policy at the American Lung Association and authored the report. 

The gasses and particles spewed from tailpipes are linked to a range of illnesses, including asthma, lung cancer, and heart disease. The potential health benefits of electric vehicles stem from the fact that they don’t produce the same toxic byproducts, like smog-forming oxides of nitrogen, as combustion engines. Although there have been relatively few real-world studies on EVs and air pollution, the American Lung Association’s report aligns with research showing that cars without combustion engines pollute less and lead to fewer respiratory illnesses than their gas-powered counterparts. 

The association’s findings come as states adopt policies to phase out gas-powered cars. Seven states, such as California and Oregon, have set targets to make all passenger vehicle sales by 2035 “zero-emissions” – meaning EVs, hydrogen fuel-cell cars, or plug-in hybrids. And the Environmental Protection Agency this spring proposed tailpipe emissions standards that could make electric vehicles two-thirds of all new cars sold by 2032. 

While the report’s authors note these developments and credit two pieces of legislation passed in recent years – the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — with spurring production of EVs and helping decarbonize the power grid, they said stronger state and federal standards are still needed to achieve the health gains outlined in the report. The report calls on more states to adopt regulations pioneered by California that promote zero-emissions vehicles while strengthening rules to slash pollution from gas-powered cars.   

To be sure, EV sales have grown rapidly in recent years but still only make up about 6 percent of the U.S. market. With an average cost of about $60,000, new electric cars are still a luxury purchase. In California, for instance, they’re concentrated mainly in wealthy, majority white and Asian neighborhoods. 

Key to saving the 89,000 lives projected in the report is an assumption that the whole country will be running on clean energy. 

“The assumption of having a clean grid is really important for these calculations,” said Sara Adar, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who studies environmental health, including traffic pollution, and was not involved with the Lung Association’s report. “If we fail in our attempt to clean the grid and we are still generating electricity based on coal, I think those estimates will no longer be accurate,” Adar added.

Adar also offered a solution that didn’t come up in the report: “Not driving is absolutely the way to go.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A rapid shift to electric cars would save 89,000 lives — if it’s powered by renewables on Jun 7, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Max Graham.

The post A Reality Check on Our Polarized Lives (From My Radiology Exam) appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by B. Nimri Aziz.

With the latest from the country and neighbouring Bangladesh, here’s the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Anthea Webb, Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.

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

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HomeVestors of America, the company behind the “We Buy Ugly Houses” ads, says it’s in the business of helping people.

Sometimes, the quick cash its franchises provide in exchange for a property at vastly below market value does help the owner.

But a ProPublica investigation found the types of houses targeted by HomeVestors franchises often belong to people in vulnerable situations who sign away what for most Americans is their largest asset. To make matters worse, aggressive legal tactics employed by HomeVestors franchises can trap homeowners in a deal or cost them thousands of dollars to settle.

In a statement, a HomeVestors spokesperson said the purchases covered by ProPublica’s reporting represent a small fraction of the more than 71,400 homes bought by its franchises since 2016. "We do not discriminate or target our advertising to any specific demographic groups based on age, race, or socio-economic status,” the company said. It has removed several franchises from its system and, in light of our reporting, is investigating the cases to “determine appropriate action.”

Over the last year, ProPublica interviewed dozens of people who have sold to a HomeVestors franchise. Some appeared satisfied with the experience, opting for convenience or speed over getting full market value for their house. Others, though, came to regret calling the number on a HomeVestors ad.

Here are five of their stories.

Pennee Nichols tried to hang on to the Arizona mountain home she inherited from her mother. The place had been in her family for decades, and she planned to move there after her partner retired. But when he died, the maintenance and taxes became too much. So in late 2017, she called the number she saw on a HomeVestors television commercial.

The house — a converted 1960s trailer — was in disrepair. But the town of Heber-Overgaard is a popular spot for vacation cabins, and the property was dotted with piñon and juniper. Nichols believed it could fetch around $50,000.

When Jayson Ellingson, who owned the HomeVestors franchise Jaycorp, showed up, he told Nichols the house was in such bad shape it would have to be torn down and rebuilt. His offer was $10,000. She could take it or leave it, but he doubted anyone else would buy it as-is.

“He basically convinced me it was a piece of shit,” Nichols said. “In my heart, I knew I was getting totally screwed, but I took the deal.”

Ellingson didn’t bulldoze the house. He sold it six months later for $55,000 without any repairs.

In an interview, Ellingson told ProPublica he was upfront about his intention to buy the property below market value. He said he gave Nichols time to think it over. And after he bought the home, he said, he got lucky finding a buyer who had cash and wanted to fix it up.

"This lady just might be bitter about the fact I bought it for $10,000 and sold it for $55,000,” Ellingson said. “I made $45,000. I wouldn’t have ever forecasted that would happen on that deal."

Ellingson left HomeVestors in 2021. He said the franchise model wasn’t for him.

In 2019, Maria Jimenez felt under siege. Seventy-two and in poor health, Jimenez had a problem with hoarding that attracted the attention of Camarillo, California, code enforcement officers. She had bought her house in 1981 with her late husband and worked two jobs to afford the mortgage. She raised her children there, teaching them to work hard and follow the rules. Now, city inspectors had begun issuing her citations.

When she called the phone number on a HomeVestors ad, she reached Patriot Holdings, the successful franchise run by brothers Cody, Chris, Casey and Cory Evans with their partner Scott Mansfield.

“I need help,” she told the person on the phone.

Cory Evans arrived the next morning. According to court documents, he told her: If you sell to me, I’ll clean the house up and code enforcement will go away. If you don’t, the city will come with its trucks, pack up your belongings and take your house. While that wasn’t true, it scared Jimenez into signing a sales contract on the spot.

The next day, a social worker arrived to help with the code violations. She assured Jimenez the city wouldn’t take her home and taught her about programs to help older adults clean up their properties.

But after Jimenez tried to cancel the sale, Evans sued her for breach of contract. In arbitration, Patriot Holdings demanded $150,000 to release its claim on the house, Maria’s daughter Patsy Jimenez said. The stress took its toll on Maria Jimenez, who suffered a mild stroke, Patsy said.

Meanwhile, criminal investigators in Ventura County took an interest in the case. After they found a second elderly victim who was pressured by Evans into selling his house, the district attorney filed felony charges against Evans of attempted grand theft of real property and attempted theft from an elder. He pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted grand theft, dropped his lawsuit against Jimenez and served his sentence on probation. His conviction was later expunged in accordance with California law.

Jimenez saved her home, but the trauma from the experience continues, her daughter said. “She feels guilty. And, I go, ‘Mom, you were a victim.’”

Neither Evans nor the franchise responded to requests for comment. A spokesperson for HomeVestors’ corporate office said Cory Evans is no longer associated with the franchise.

“We are not aware of any complaints since the removal of Cory Evans from the franchise,” the company said.

The year after Evans pleaded guilty, he and his brothers received an award from HomeVestors recognizing their “top sales volume.”

How the sales representative from the HomeVestors franchise Revolution Holdings wound up at Deanna Merriman’s St. Petersburg condo in July 2020 is in dispute. Merriman, a prolific journaler, wrote at the time that he had knocked on her door to see if anyone was interested in selling a condo. She sent him on his way, but he continued to return over the next month, she wrote.

Britton Briscoe, who owns the franchise through a separate LLC, said his records indicate Merriman had called HomeVestors.

Merriman had moved from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Florida to be closer to family. But after a couple of angry fallouts with her grown children, Merriman decided she wanted to return to Erie and talked to the Revolution Holdings representative about selling her condo.

“I told him, the only way I would sell mine was if the salesman would buy me a house in Erie, PA,” she wrote.

After showing her photos of houses in Erie and getting an estimate for moving her things, the sales representative brought Merriman paperwork to sign.

At the time, Merriman, who was 83, was suffering blackouts and anxiety attacks and took a variety of medications, including one that caused brain fog.

In her journal, Merriman wrote that she believed she was initialing papers the sales representative would use to write up a contract. It turned out to be an actual contract to sell her condo for $61,000 — half of what similar units in the building sold for.

Briscoe said in a statement that Revolution Holdings tried to help Merriman close on a home in Erie and provided her with several walkthrough videos. He said one of her adult sons was involved in the discussions. No one mentioned Merriman’s health conditions, Briscoe said. He attributed the low sales price to the fact her walls were “coated with nicotine.”

Unaware she had signed a contract with a HomeVestors franchise, Merriman decided she no longer wanted to sell her Florida condo and stopped communicating with Revolution Holdings.

After she went silent, Revolution Holdings threatened to take her to court and recorded notice of an ownership dispute on her title to prevent her from selling to anyone else. Briscoe told ProPublica he needed to get his deposit back. According to the contract, the deposit was $100.

Distraught, Merriman fought to cancel the sale but didn’t live long enough to see it resolved. “She definitely died thinking they were going to take her house and she would be put out on the street somewhere,” her daughter-in-law Amy Bonnell said.

When the estate went to probate, Briscoe demanded money to release his claim on the property. Bonnell and her husband paid him $9,512 after selling the condo for $160,000 last year.

In response to ProPublica’s questions about company practices, HomeVestors said it will no longer allow franchises to record documents on homeowners’ titles the way Briscoe did to Merriman, because of the impact it has on sellers.

Ira Reiner spent the final days of his life fighting a lawsuit from Florida franchise Hi-Land Properties, a frequent HomeVestors “Franchise of the Year” winner.

In late 2020, Reiner’s health was in decline, his income had dried up because of the pandemic, and he and his adult son Douglas needed to find a less expensive place to live. Reiner’s Delray Beach condo was in need of significant repairs and cleaning, so Reiner had his son call the number on a HomeVestors ad.

Reiner signed a contract to sell the condo to Hi-Land for $80,000, a price he knew was low but not unwarranted given the condition of his home. Problems arose when he couldn’t quickly find a new place to live.

After Reiner missed the first closing date, Hi-Land told him he could rent back the condo for a few months while he searched for new housing and gave him a $4,000 cash advance on the sale. But the homeowners association didn’t allow rentals, and after a misunderstanding over who would pay his mortgage, taxes and fees prior to closing, Reiner decided he wanted out of the deal.

In a court document, Reiner said he called Hi-Land to cancel the sale. Don Cameron, owner of Hi-Land, said Reiner stopped communicating with him entirely in August 2021. That’s when Cameron decided to sue.

“Given the circumstances, and especially considering the fact that we already had paid $4,000 towards the purchase of the condo, we were left with no choice but to file litigation with the hopes of being able to reopen the lines of communication and resolve this matter,” Cameron said.

By this time, Reiner could no longer walk and was confined to his bed, he told ProPublica. The only way he could leave the condo was in an ambulance. From the hospital, he tried to fight Hi-Land’s lawsuit by sending a handwritten document to the judge, but it was rejected because he didn’t comply with filing rules.

When he spoke with ProPublica in September, Reiner said he was waiting for an eviction notice.

“I’m going to become homeless,” Reiner said. “I’m waiting for the call. Even if I win the case, I’m so far behind I don’t know if I can catch up.”

Reiner died in February at the age of 80.

His son, Douglas Reiner, remained in the condo until a judge entered a default judgment in Hi-Land’s favor. Douglas said Hi-Land paid him $500, and he was expecting another $2,000. He said he plans to live in his van.

At 83, Martha Swanson struggled to maintain the sprawling yard around her brick bungalow in Marietta, Georgia. For months, she’d been receiving constant solicitations to sell her home in the historic city 20 miles north of Atlanta. So one day near the beginning of 2018, she called the number on a HomeVestors ad.

Keith Gereghty, the franchisee who paid her a visit, made an offer of $82,211 — a number Swanson’s daughter Sherry Nixon believed to be extremely low based on the market.

As soon as Nixon, who lives in Montana, learned that her mother wanted to sell, she began searching for a real estate agent. But it was too late: Her mother had signed Gereghty’s contract. When Nixon called Gereghty to complain about the low price, she said, Gereghty told her, “That’s all I can do. Your Mom has agreed to it.”

“My mother has had a series of mini strokes,” Nixon said she responded. “And she's really not able to make these kinds of decisions well.”

“Well, if she's so bad,” Nixon recalls Gereghty responding, “why isn't she living with you?”

Gereghty denied making that comment and said he never saw Swanson display signs of impairment. He said he gave Swanson more than a week to review the contract with her children and would have released her from the deal had she asked. However, he also recorded a notice of the pending sale on her title shortly after she signed the contract, tying her to the deal.

“I never intended to cause Ms. Swanson or her family distress,” Gereghty said, also noting he has never sued anyone for backing out of a sale as other franchises have.

Gereghty never took ownership of the property. Instead, he sold the contract to another investor for a profit — a practice called wholesaling. That investor flipped the property for $171,000. Nixon recalled seeing the home listed with a broken bookshelf the sellers didn’t bother removing.

“I thought, ‘Well, they'll fix the house up — who knows how much that would cost?” she said. “They did nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Until her death three years later, Swanson agonized over money and how to pay the $3,000 a month it cost for her assisted living center, her daughter said.

“That’s just not ethical,” Nixon said. “My mother was this sweet, elderly little lady. A southern lady — very religious, really saw the good in people, and felt like Keith was her friend.”

According to HomeVestors’ training materials and webinars, franchisees should seek out a homeowner’s family members for consultation if they have doubts about a deal. Before closing, they’re instructed to look a homeowner in the eye and ask them, “You’re not going to wake up in the middle of the night and wish you could tear up my offer, are you?”

Nixon posed a parallel question. “I mean, how do they sleep at night doing that to old people?”

Help ProPublica Investigate “We Buy Houses” Practices

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Anjeanette Damon, Byard Duncan and Mollie Simon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such scenes will become the norm as extreme heat, driven by climate change, kills crops, starts fires, and endangers people’s health across the globe. New research suggests India is especially at risk — and the government may be underestimating the threat.

There are roughly 1.4 billion people in India, and last year extreme heat left 90 percent of the country vulnerable to public health risks like heatstroke, food shortages, and even death, according to a study Cambridge researchers published last week. Soaring temperatures also could slow the country’s economy and hinder its development goals, the researchers found.

Heat waves are causing “unprecedented burdens on public health, agriculture, and other socio-economic and cultural systems,” they wrote. “India is currently facing a collision of multiple cumulative climate hazards.”

But government authorities have underestimated the danger, the study found. Officials rely on a climate vulnerability assessment, designed by India’s Department of Science and Technology, that indicates a smaller percentage of the country faces high risk from climate change than the new findings suggest. Such a miscalculation could hinder India’s efforts to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, like reducing hunger and poverty and achieving gender equality. 

The study appeared in PLOS Climate just days after at least 13 people died from heatstroke and several dozen were hospitalized following an outdoor event in the western state of Maharashtra. A heat wave last week in other regions of the country forced school closures as daytime temperatures topped 104 degrees Fahrenheit several days in a row. 

At least 24,000 people have died from heat in India in the last 30 years. Climate change has made heat waves there and in neighboring Pakistan up to 100 times more likely, and temperatures are expected to break records every three years — something that would happen just once every 312 years if the climate weren’t undergoing such radical changes.

“Long-term projections indicate that Indian heat waves could cross the survivability limit for a healthy human resting in the shade by 2050,” the authors of the Cambridge study wrote.

With over 1.4 billion people, India is on pace to surpass China as the world’s most populous country this year. As the nation’s heat-caused death count rises, its economy will slow, the researchers project. By 2030, intense heat will cut the capacity for outdoor work by 15 percent — in a country where, by one estimate, “heat-exposed work” employs 75 percent of the labor force. Heat waves could cost India 8.7 percent of its GDP by the end of the century, the Cambridge researchers wrote.

Yet the government’s climate-vulnerability assessment doesn’t account for more intense and longer-lasting heat waves, according to the study. The Cambridge researchers found that all of Delhi — home to 32 million people — is endangered by severe heat waves, but the government says just two of the city’s 11 districts face high climate risk. Overcrowding, lack of access to electricity, water, sanitation, and health care, along with poor housing conditions, could leave Delhi’s residents — particularly those who are low-income — even more vulnerable to heat, the study’s authors wrote, noting a need for “structural interventions.”

The government “hasn’t understood the importance of heat and how heat can kill,” Dileep Mavalankar, director of the Gujarat-based Indian Institute of Public Health, told BBC. 

Meanwhile, India’s power ministry has asked coal-fired power plants to ramp up production to meet electricity demand, which hit a record high last week as temperatures eclipsed 110 degrees Fahrenheit. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Deadly heat threatens the lives and livelihoods of 1 billion people in India on Apr 24, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Max Graham.

The post Baseball’s Owners Have Ball Games Shorter…and Maybe Fan Lives, Too appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sam Pizzigati.

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott says he is “working as swiftly” as possible to pardon a U.S. Army sergeant who was just convicted Friday of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020 just blocks from the Texas state Capitol. Daniel Perry was also convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for fatally shooting 28-year-old Air Force veteran Garrett Foster. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles said Monday it is now launching an investigation into Governor Abbott’s request for an expedited pardon. We’re joined by Hiram Gilberto Garcia, an independent journalist who live-streamed that night and was the first witness on the stand to testify at Daniel Perry’s murder trial, and Rick Cofer, a former Travis County assistant district attorney.

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

This is a developing story… Please check back for possible updates...

Amid national demands for stricter gun laws, at least four people were killed and eight more were injured and transported to the hospital Monday morning in a mass shooting at Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky.

Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey told reporters that two officers were shot and the suspect was dead. Interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel later confirmed that the shooter was fatally shot by police.

Authorities ultimately identified the shooter as 23-year-old Connor Sturgeon. Citing an unnamed law enforcement source, CNNreported that Sturgeon was notified that he was going to be fired from his job at the bank, and that he wrote a note for his parents and a friend.

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and Gov. Andy Beshear, both Democrats, joined Humphrey at a morning press conference. Choking back tears, the governor said he uses this bank personally and had friends who were killed and injured.

The latest mass shooting in Kentucky comes as the nation also watches neighboring Tennessee, where Republicans in the state Legislature last week expelled a pair of young, Black Democratic lawmakers for supporting protests for gun control on the House floor after the deadly Covenant School shooting in Nashville.

The carnage in Louisville sparked yet another wave of demands for stricter gun laws.

"This is America," tweeted March for Our Lives, which was formed by students after the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

"We're horrified and sickened. Power and peace to those that lost their lives. We'll fight like hell in their memory. This makes 146 mass shootings this year," the group continued, citing figures from the Gun Violence Archive.

Everytown for Gun Safety declared: "More lives stolen by senseless, preventable gun violence. We shouldn't have to accept this. No other country does."

"Our hearts are with the victims, survivors, their loved ones, and the entire Louisville community," the group added. "Tonight there will be more empty seats at dinner tables and more families grieving loved ones who should still be here."

A federal law enforcement source confirmed to CNN that an AR-15-style rifle was used in the Louisville shooting.

"This horrific shooting is exactly why AR-15-style weapons and assault weapons have no place in our communities," said Kris Brown, president of Brady, the oldest national gun violence prevention group. "These weapons of war were designed for the battlefield and to kill as many people as quickly as possible, which is why they are the weapon of choice for mass shooters. Preventable tragedies like this are why other developed countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, have banned these weapons for civilian use."

"Whether it's a bank, a school, a supermarket, or a church, Americans no longer feel safe in their communities. And Americans are increasingly tired of living in fear of being a victim of a mass shooting," Brown stressed. "It does not have to be this way. But until the gun industry no longer has a vice grip on our elected officials, this will continue to be our daily reality."

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

Lawmakers from 35 states on Thursday signed a letter condemning the Tennessee Republican Party as it prepared to expel three Democratic representatives who joined a protest demanding gun control legislation in the State Capitol, with the letter accusing the state GOP of racist and "anti-democratic" conduct.

Tennessee Reps. Gloria Johnson (D-13), Justin Jones (D-52), and Justin Pearson (D-86) joined Nashville students and their supporters on Monday as they poured into the Capitol building, demanding that lawmakers ban weapons like the ones used in a mass shooting at a Christian school in the city last week, which killed three children and three adults, and pass other broadly popular gun control legislation.

Republicans have accused the three Democrats of bringing "disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives" by speaking without recognition during a protest on the chamber's floor last week, a technical violation of the House rules, and of taking part in an "insurrection."

"There is nothing 'disorderly' about courageously standing in solidarity with the people we are elected to serve, in opposition to the gun lobby that continues to profiteer off of an epidemic they have fueled," reads the letter. "The Tennessee State Capitol is the people's house, and Representatives Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson exemplified leadership on the House floor this week by standing up for what's right. Any attempts to silence these elected leaders for exercising their constitutional right to protest are anti-democratic."

The Republicans passed three resolutions to hold votes on expelling the lawmakers on Monday, with each passing 72-23 on a party line vote. The vote on expulsion is expected to take place Thursday.

The letter, organized by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), accused the GOP of exemplifying the "robust and racist connection between fighting against gun safety and dismantling our democracy." Pearson and Jones are Black, and the lawmakers pointed out that people of color are disproportionately impacted by gun violence in the United States.

"Let's be clear, the vote to expel Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson is just another anti-democratic effort to silence the American people for speaking out against the devastating consequences of gun violence," said Neha Patel, co-executive director of SiX. "Calling for gun safety within the people's house is an example of our democracy in action, expelling lawmakers for standing for what they believe in is not."

"Gun violence impacts all of us, especially the Black and brown communities many legislators in Tennessee represent," she added. "Ultimately, these kinds of actions present clear and present danger to our country and our democracy, and we must not allow it."

March for Our Lives, the national group that was formed in 2018 by survivors of the Parkland, Florida school shooting, announced it would hold a rally outside the State Capitol on Thursday in support of the Johnson, Jones, and Pearson.

"We will not be silenced or intimidated," said advocacy group Gen Z for Change, addressing state Republicans. "As elected officials, your power is derived from the people and we will make it painfully obvious when you decide to work against us."

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

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Eileen Sosin.

Jacinda Ardern will largely be remembered in Aotearoa New Zealand as the prime minister whose pandemic-era policies saved thousands of Kiwi lives, according to former prime minister Helen Clark.

And she will also be considered an example of how to govern in the age of social media and endless crises, political experts say, while also achieving more than her critics might give her credit for.

Ardern was set to deliver her valedictory speech later today, having stepped down as prime minister earlier this year after just over five years in the job.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘You can’t help feeling sad about her going’ — Former prime minister Helen Clark
• View of political scientists Dr Bronwyn Hayward and Dr Lara Greaves
• Ex-PM Ardern named Christchurch Call envoy against online violence

“I think that while I’m happy for Jacinda that she’s going to get a life and design what she wants to do and when she wants to do it, you can’t help feeling sad about her going,” Clark, herself a former Labour prime minister, told RNZ Morning Report ahead of Ardern’s speech.

“Leaders like Jacinda don’t come along too often and we’ve lost one.”

Ardern has played down suggestions online vitriol played a part in her decision to stand aside — but acknowledged on Tuesday she hoped her departure would “take a bit of heat out” of the conversation.

Clark said she “fundamentally” believed the hatred got to Ardern, powered by “populism and division” generated by former US President Donald Trump and his supporters.

‘Conspiracies took hold’
“Conspiracies took hold and suddenly you know, as the pandemic wore on here, I think the sort of relentless barrage from America — not, not just through Trump himself and the reporting of him, but through the social media networks — we have the anti-science people, the people who completely distrusted public authority, the QAnon conspiracies and hey, it played out on our Parliament’s front lawn and it still plays out and it’s very, very vitriolic and divisive.

“So I think that that spillover impact was really quite, well, not just unpleasant — it was horrible.”

Researchers have found Ardern was a lightning rod for online hate.

The perpetrator of the 2019 mosque shootings used the internet to connect with and learn from other extremists, which led to Ardern setting up the Christchurch Call movement to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.

Her post-parliamentary career will include continuing that work, as New Zealand’s Special Envoy for the Christchurch Call, reporting to her replacement, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins.

“The mosque murders was just the most horrible thing to have happen on anyone’s watch, and she rose to the occasion, and I think the international reputation was very much associated with initially the empathy that she showed at that time,” said Clark.

But “one of New Zealand’s darkest days”, as Ardern put it at the time, was not the only near-unparalleled crisis she had to deal with in her time as prime minister.

“The White Island tragedy was another that needed, you know, very empathetic and careful handling. But then comes covid, and there’s no doubt that thousands of people are alive today because of the steps taken, particularly in 2020.

‘Would we have survived?’
“You know, I mean, I’m obviously in the older age group now which is more vulnerable. My father is 101 now and has survived the pandemic. But would we have survived it if it had been allowed to rip through our community, like it was allowed to rip through others?

“I think that there’d be so many New Zealanders not alive today had those steps not been taken.”

Data shows New Zealand has actually experienced negative excess mortality over the past few years — the elimination strategy so successful, fewer Kiwis have died than would have if there was no pandemic.

Former Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said that was “unique, virtually unique around the world”.

Despite that, it was New Zealand’s aggressive approach towards covid-19 in 2020 and 2021 that arguably drove much of the polarisation and online vitriol.

“There’s no doubt that those measures did save lives. They also drove people into frenzied levels of opposition and fear and isolation,” said Clark. “They felt polarised, they felt locked out.”

But she said Ardern bore “very little” responsibility for that.

Political scientist Dr Bronwyn Hayward of the University of Canterbury said Ardern’s Christchurch Call to eliminate extremist content will have a long-lasting impact on not just New Zealand, but the world.

“There’s been a lot made about the fact that she resigned under pressure from the trolls, which is completely missing the point that what she’s saying is that in this era where we’ve got particularly Russian, but also other countries’ bots that are attacking liberal leaders,” Dr Hayward told Morning Report, saying Ardern was the first global leader to “really understand” how what happens online can spill over into the real world.

“She understands that democracies are now under attack, and the front line is your social media, where we’ve got a propaganda war coming internationally.

“So she’s taken a very systemic approach to thinking about how to tackle that, so that in local communities it feels like you’re reeling from Islamophobia, to racism to transphobia, but actually, when we look internationally at what’s happening, naive and quite disaffected groups have been constantly fed this material and she’s taken a systemic approach to it.”

Clark said one of the biggest differences in the world between Ardern’s time as prime minister and her own, was that she did not have to deal with social media.

“I didn’t have a Twitter account, didn’t know what it was really. We had texts, that was about it. We used to have pagers, for heaven’s sake.”

Ardern’s domestic legacy
One of the first things Hipkins did when he took over as prime minister was the “policy bonfire” — but critics have long said the Ardern-led government has had trouble delivering on its promises.

Interviewer Guyon Espiner reminded Clark that her government had brought in long-lasting changes like Working for Families, the NZ Super Fund and Kiwibank — asking her what Ardern could point to.

Clark defended Ardern, saying the coalition arrangement with NZ First in Ardern’s first term slowed any reform agenda she might have had, and then there was covid-19.

“Looking back, there needs to be more recognition that the pandemic blindsided governments, communities, publics around the world. It wasn’t easy.”

Dr Hayward pointed to the ban on new oil and gas exploration and child poverty monitoring, “which before that was ruled as impossible or too difficult”.

Dr Lara Greaves, a political scientist at the University of Auckland, said it was “incredibly hard to really evaluate” Ardern’s legacy outside of covid-19.

“Ultimately … she is the covid-19 prime minister.”

The future
Clark said Ardern would be emotional during her valedictory speech.

“You have very close relationships with colleagues, you have relationships with others of a different kind — with the opposition, with the media, with the public — and you’re walking away, you’re closing the door on it.

“But you know that a new chapter will open, and that life post-politics can be very rewarding. I’ve certainly found it so. I have no doubt that Jacinda will get back into her stride with doing things that she feels are worthwhile for the the general public and worthwhile for her.”

After losing the 2008 election, Clark rose the ranks at the United Nations. She said while that was an option for Ardern, there is plenty of time for the 42-year-old to do other things first.

“I was, you know, 58 when I left being prime minister. And Jacinda’s leaving in her early 40s and she has a young child, so who knows? She may want Neve to grow up with a good old Kiwi upbringing.

“And she may want her, you know, involvement internationally to be more, you know, forays out from New Zealand. That’s for her to decide. I mean, the world’s her oyster, if she chooses to follow that.”

Dr Greaves also pointed to Ardern’s relative youth.

“It seems like she’s going for a period of sort of recovery and reflection and figuring out what to do next. But of course, she’s got another 20 years in her career, at least — the world’s her oyster.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

As Jacinda Ardern gets ready to deliver her valedictory speech in the Parliament today, former prime minister Helen Clark says she will largely be remembered as the prime minister whose pandemic-era policies saved thousands of Kiwis’ lives. https://t.co/LhKPSZulpW

— RNZ (@radionz) April 5, 2023

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by David Robie.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday called for far-reaching global action to rid the world of landmines and other lethal remnants of war that endanger civilians for generations on end and impede socioeconomic development.

"For the millions living amidst the chaos of armed conflicts—especially women and children—every step can put them in danger's path," Guterres said in an address marking this year's International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.

"Even after the fighting stops, conflicts often leave behind a terrifying legacy: landmines and explosive ordnance that litter communities," he continued. "Peace brings no assurance of safety when roads and fields are mined, when unexploded ordnance threatens the return of displaced populations, and when children find and play with shiny objects that explode."

"Let's take action to end the threat of these devices of death, support communities as they heal, and help people return and rebuild their lives in safety and security."

Since it was established in 1997, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) has collaborated with partners "to remove these deadly weapons, support national authorities, and ensure safe access to homes, schools, hospitals, and farmers' fields," said Guterres. "Yet, broader global efforts are essential to safeguard people from mines."

The U.N. chief urged member states "to ratify and fully implement the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons."

"Let's take action to end the threat of these devices of death, support communities as they heal, and help people return and rebuild their lives in safety and security," Guterres concluded.

Since 2006, April 4 has been observed as the International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action. This year, UNMAS is acknowledging the day with a campaign titled "Mine Action Cannot Wait."

On Tuesday afternoon and evening, UNMAS is holding a symposium and launching a multimedia exhibition at the U.N. headquarters in New York City to draw attention to decades of landmine terror and cleanup work in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Iraq, and to shed light on the devastating effects of more recent explosive ordnance contamination in Colombia, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Yemen.

UNMAS and its partners have also organized events in more than a dozen countries and territories around the globe, including the Central African Republic, Somalia, and Syria. Those began last month and continue through the end of this week.

A previous campaign and digital exhibit launched by Guterres in 2019—"Safe Ground. Safe Steps. Safe Home"—focused on "turning minefields into playing fields," highlighting how human flourishing depends in part on removing what U.N. Newsdescribes as "one of the most insidious and indiscriminate weapons of war" from the Earth's surface.

"The threats posed by explosive hazards perpetuate humanitarian crisis and hinder responses and effective peace operations."

As a result of the genocidal wars that French and U.S. imperialists waged on Indochina in the 20th century, more than 64,000 civilians have been killed or injured by landmines and similar devices in Cambodia since 1979, and over 40% of the land in Vietnam's Binh Dinh province was still contaminated by unexploded ordnance as of 2019, according toU.N. News.

More people have been killed or injured by landmines in Afghanistan—an impoverished nation shattered by Soviet and U.S. military invasions and occupations—than anywhere else. Since 1989, 18 million unexploded ordinances have been cleared from Afghan land.

Worldwide, more than 55 million landmines have been destroyed since the late 1990s. During that time, "over 30 countries have become mine-free, casualties have been dramatically reduced, and mechanisms, including the U.N. Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Action, have been established to support victims and communities in need," U.N. Newspoints out.

Nevertheless, the lives of roughly 60 million people in nearly 70 countries and territories are still put in jeopardy on a daily basis by at least 110 million landmines, which "kill and maim between 1,000 and 2,000 people every month," U.N. News notes. "It'll take 1,100 years to clear all the world's active landmines if no new mines are laid."

U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said Tuesday that "mine action is needed more than ever in the face of global challenges."

"The threats posed by explosive hazards," he added, "perpetuate humanitarian crisis and hinder responses and effective peace operations."

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

A week after six people including three 9-year-old children were shot dead in a Nashville elementary school and two days before planned nationwide protests, thousands of students walked out of classrooms across the Tennesee capital on Monday to demand gun control laws.

The advocacy group March for Our Lives (MFOL)—founded after the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida—organized Monday's protest to urge state lawmakers pass gun control legislation including better background checks and a ban assault weapons.

"The purpose of the rally is to show that the community has had enough and we are demanding change from the Tennessee Legislature," MFOL national organizer Ezri Tyler explained to WKRN.

"It's not drag queens. It's not books. Children are dying because of guns."

"The message overall is we know that right now, Tennessee is engaging in this culture war, where they're harming our communities by banning drag, by banning books, banning gender-affirming care," Tyler added. "But if they actually cared about protecting kids, as they claimed they would address what kills every single day, which is guns."

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for U.S. children.

MFOL organizer Brynn Jones toldWKRN that "it hits closer and closer, the longer and longer that you're, you know, hearing these stories just being like that it's the same story over and over again.

"But then hearing it on Monday that it was in Tennessee, it was in Nashville, 20 minutes from where I grew up, 20 minutes from where I go to school, hit incredibly close to home and felt personal in a way that it usually doesn't," Jones added.

Thousands of students marched to Legislative Plaza near the Tennessee State Capitol chanting "stop gun violence, we will not be silenced" and other slogans. Video recorded inside the Capitol showed demonstrators confronting state Rep. William Lamberth (R-44) and asking him why lawmakers won't "ban assault rifles."

The LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD tweeted: "It's not drag queens. It's not books. Children are dying because of guns. GLAAD stands with all of the students during today's walkout at the Tennessee State Capitol. Ban assault weapons—not drag performers, books, or lifesaving care for trans people."

However, Tennessee's Republican-controlled Legislature and GOP Gov. Bill Lee have gone in the opposite direction.

As The Associated Pressreports:

Already this year, Republican lawmakers have introduced bills that would make it easier to arm teachers and allow college students to carry weapons on campus. Democratic-led efforts to strengthen gun safety measures have faltered. On Tuesday, lawmakers delayed taking up any of the contentious gun-related bills, saying they wanted to offer respect to the community.

The most significant movement involves the state’s permitless carry law. In 2021, Lee led the charge to allow most adults 21 and older to carry handguns without first obtaining a permit that requires clearing a state background check and training. Thereafter, gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson announced plans to relocate its headquarters to Tennessee due to the state's "support for the 2nd Amendment."

Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) said that three Democratic lawmakers were kicked off their committees and threatened with expulsion for standing with their constituents and demanding gun control legislation.

Monday's protest in Nashville came before another youth-led gun control group, Students Demand Action, is set to lead nationwide student walkouts on Wednesday.

"Being a student shouldn't be a death sentence but once again, gun violence has forced its way into our schools, leaving nothing but pain, trauma, and tragedy in its wake," the group said in a preview of Wednesday's action. "We need more than thoughts and prayers. We demand action from our lawmakers now."

Students Demand Action continued:

School shootings like this are not acts of nature—no other peer nation allows students to be shot and killed in schools like this. And it's not just gun violence in our schools. In America and in Tennessee, guns are the number one killer of American youth, and Tennessee lawmakers have done nothing but gut gun safety laws, putting gun industry profits ahead of the safety of our children.

"We won't accept a country where gunfire can ring out at any moment, whether it's while grocery shopping at a supermarket, hanging out at a park in your community, attending a party, or going to a restaurant for dinner," Students Demand Action added. "We deserve more."

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

In the wake of the Nashville shooting, even as mourners gathered at the first funeral - of a 9-year-old "shining light" - and thousands of Tennesseans demanded their lawmakers "Do Something!", GOP goons still staunchly, blindly refuse to act on or even acknowledge our national gun carnage. It's "premature" to talk of gun control, they say; we need more doors, cops, cameras, Jesus. "You guys are banning books," says the rest of America. "Dead kids can't read."

The shooting at Nashville's Covenant School, which killed three kids and three adults, was one of 103 mass shootings already recorded this year; of those, 90 were school shootings, which last year hit a 50-year record of 303. Still, astoundingly, right-wing lawmakers and the NRA continue to push for more guns in the unholy name of their "Constitutional rights." On Friday, a judge struck down Minnesota's 21-year minimum age law allowing someone to carry a handgun in public - they're looking to expand it to rifles - because you're never too young to carry a deadly weapon on the streets of our fair nation. Just ask Kyle Rittenhouse. We'd like these clueless gun freaks to read the Washington Post's recent, ghastly, in-depth account of how AR-15s "blow the body apart." If there are too many big words in it, maybe they could listen to the harrowing, newly released 911 calls last Monday to the police dispatcher in Nashville, Tenn., where "kids are fighting for their lives." They'd hear kids barricaded in their rooms speaking in frantic whispers, a woman huddling with children in an art room closet amidst booms of gunfire, a woman hushing kids to stay safe, a child crying dangerously loudly that, "I want to go home!" as emergency alarms wail eerily around them.

Friday's first funeral was for Evelyn Dieckhaus, "a constant beacon of joy" who loved drawing, playing with her dogs, singing to Taylor Swift and being with her big sister; her family asked mourners to wear pink and green “in tribute to Evelyn’s light and love of color.” Services were held Saturday for substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, 9, whose father is pastor of a related Presbyterian church; after getting calls from those in the school he raced there, not knowing his daughter was a victim. Services for William Kinney, 9, are Sunday, custodian Mike Hill, 61, Tuesday, and school head Katherine Koonce, 60, Wednesday. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers in Congress got back to the business of being assholes. Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde, a gun store owner who's handed out AR-15 pins to GOP colleagues, proudly wore his pin the day after. Rep. Andy Ogles, who represents Nashville, declined to apologize for posting a Christmas card of his smiling spawn cradling assault rifles: “Why would I regret a photograph with my family exercising my rights to bear arms?” Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett, who's adamant about banning drag shows, called the shooting "horrible," then blithely declared, "We're not gonna fix it"; as to his own daughter, "We home-school her." Kevin McCarthy posed for pictures with tourists, refused to discuss gun control and rushed into his office.

In a hearing about crime and gun violence, shrill Lauren Boebert grilled DC City Councilman Charles Allen in a who's-on-first-debacle about his alleged efforts to decriminalize pissing in public. Boebert, bellicose: "You led the charge to reform D.C.'s crime laws, is that correct?" Allen, mild: "I chaired the committee." She: "So you led that charge. And these changes are now law here in D.C., correct?" He: "No, those are not the law." She: "Did you or did you not decriminalize public urination?" He: "I did not. The revised code left that a criminal offense." She, feverishly studying her notes: "But weren't you in favor of it?" He: "No." Etc. Online responses: "Boy, we're really governing now" and "I feel more dumber watching this." Ditto an exchange in which Marjorie we-need-more-guns Greene repeats a story about when she was in 11th grade "and Joe Biden made our schools a gun-free zone" - except George H.W. Bush was president and his Gun-Free Zones Act became law months later - only to get a brutal reality check from Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, deeply involved in gun control since Parkman. Charging six people are dead "because you guys got rid of the assault weapon ban," he noted what an AR-15 bullet does, that "there’s nothing left of these kids when people go into school and murder them while they’re trying to read," and that, amidst/ despite absurd GOP book-banning efforts, "Dead kids can't read."

As craven as D.C.'s GOP is, Tennessee's GOP lawmakers, astonishingly, are worse. In a state that already has some of the most lax gun laws, legislators keep pushing to further loosen them - though last week, in the bloody wake of Covenant, they politely delayed hearings "to be respectful." Still, their rhetoric was fantastical. The community is "getting to work to make sure this doesn't happen again." "No law could have prevented the shooting," and asking if their policies play a part is "an unfair question." They want to train, hire, arm more school cops, though they change nothing. They want better windows, locks, doors, cameras, though ditto. Their stunning indifference is clear in an infuriating video by the Tennessee Holler's Justin Kanew, who walked the capital halls Tuesday to ask two dozen GOP lawmakers, all of whom he knows by name, "3 kids died yesterday. What are you doing to keep kids safe?" He even helps them with suggestions: background checks, red flag laws, limit magazines. The result: Deafening, surreal silence. They hurry away, stare at watches, rush into elevators, close office doors, smile uncomfortably. They bicker about semantics: "Gun violence is a non-specific term." They claim "you can't buy assault rifles." They say schools should be locked to keep them safe from "exterior violence," he's "just a hippie with a cell phone," "what we need to work on is man's sinful heart" - which may be true, but the kids are dying of guns, not sin.

The same spectacle of willful blindness played out Thursday when thousands of protesters, mostly kids and parents, flooded the statehouse to demand stiffer gun laws to end the slaughter. Packed into the rotunda, they held angry signs - "No More Silence," "Do Your Job," "If I Die In School Put My Body on the Steps of Congress" - while chanting, "Vote them out," "Shame on you," "They're killing us - our blood, your hands," and, as troopers roughly cleared a path for lawmakers, "Do you even care?" “They're supposed to represent us," said one student. “This is our home too.” Inside the House chamber, three progressive Reps - Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson - took the well to stand with protesters and declare, "Gun control now"; GOP Speaker Cameron Sexton called a recess and threatened them with expulsion. That night, he and other GOP lawmakers began a campaign to "turn a lawful, peaceful protest into something ugly, because ugly is how they roll." They claimed kids asking they not be murdered were "an insurrection, worse than Jan. 6," "an invasion," "an incitement to violence," "Tranuary 6th." "LEFTIST PROTESTERS STORM TENN CAPITAL!! INSURRECTION !!" lawmakers charged. "Wannabe communists conducted a probing attack upon the state...The communist failed." Earlier, kids watched as lawmakers exited stone-faced in their suits, again steadfastly ignoring all pleas to end the carnage. "Did anything move you guys today?" they were asked. "Kids are here begging, begging, begging, for their lives...And you're silent." And, somehow, they still are.

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

This is a developing story... Please check back for updates...

Three children and three adults were killed Monday by a shooter at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville which serves students from preschool through sixth grade.

The suspected killer—identified by police as Aubrey Hale, a 28-year-old transgender woman—was "engaged by police" who arrived at the scene Monday morning, and was reported dead, according toThe Tennessean.

Speaking to reporters, Nashville Police Chief John Drake said a clear motive has yet to be confirmed, but he did reference a map and manifesto by the alleged shooter and confirmed the shooting was a "targeted attack."

In an earlier news briefing, Metropolitan Nashville Police Department spokesperson Don Aaron said the shooter was armed with at least two assault rifles and a handgun.

Geoff Bennett of PBS Newshour reported the suspect entered the school through a side entrance.

Police responded to a call at 10:13 am regarding an "active shooter."

The Nashville Fire Department reported on Twitter that officials had set up a family reunification center at a nearby church at 2100 Woodmont Boulevard.

As Fox News covered the police department's press conference, a woman stepped up to a microphone on camera and asked the assembled news team, "Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings?"

"How is this still happening?" said the woman, who said she was from Highland Park, Illinois and survived the mass shooting there last summer. "How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?"

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), the nation's oldest interfaith peace organization, said the shooting is only the latest which must force Americans to "face the irrefutable fact that uncontrolled access to firearms endangers us all."

"FOR calls on lawmakers and communities to take immediate action to finally prioritize life over the profits of firearm companies," said the organization. "As we bear witness to psalms being inscribed on assault weapons, we call out the perversion of our faith. Mary, the resolute mother of humanity, stood at the foot of the cross witnessing brutality, inhumanity, and death being inflicted on her child. Today we are all parents looking on as the brutality and death from another mass shooting, a crucifixion, is inflicted on our children."

"Like the Israelites stood praying at the shores of the Red Sea, as the Passover story tells," the group continued, "we must act to manifest our prayers and create a new covenant committed to honoring and saving lives rather than filling the coffers of firearms manufacturers."

Shannon Watts, founder of gun control group Moms Demand Action, took aim at Republican lawmakers in the state including Rep. Andy Ogles, who posed with his family holding assault rifles in front of their Christmas tree last year. Ogles represents the district where the Covenant School is located.

Watts also condemned Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who said he was "praying for the school, congregation, and Nashville community."

Lee signed legislation in 2021 to allow most adults in Tennessee carry a handgun without a permit.

Earlier this month, Lee also made Tennessee the first U.S. state to criminalize public drag shows, on the same day that he signed legislation banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. Both laws, Republicans said, were aimed at protecting children.

"Just a reminder that the people talking about library books, history classes, and drag queens don't really give a shit about the well-being of children in this country," said Robert Maguire, research director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

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

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

Palestinian rights activists on Thursday remembered the life and legacy of Rachel Corrie, the American human rights defender who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer on March 16, 2003 while trying to shield a Palestinian home from demolition in occupied Gaza.

"Rachel was 23 when she was killed. She could have satisfied her conscience by protesting against global injustice in a demonstration in America or by calling for a boycott of the aggressors," Palestinian journalist and activist Ahmed Abu Artema—who is from Rafah, where Corrie was killed—wrote for Mondoweiss.

"But her high sense of morality was not satisfied with these symbolic gestures," he added. "Her conscience would not rest without complete involvement, without standing side-by-side with us. That's why she came to Palestine."

Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian politician, scholar, and activist, called Corrie "an icon of resistance, freedom, and self-sacrifice."

"Palestine is forever grateful," she added. "Always in our hearts. Rest in love and peace."

Corrie, who hailed from Olympia, Washington, was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led group resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine through nonviolent direct action.

"No amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing, and word-of-mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here," Corrie wrote to family and friends on February 7, 2003, adding that she had "very few words to describe" what she saw in Gaza.

"An 8-year-old child was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here," she said.

"I feel like I'm witnessing the systematic destruction of a people's ability to survive," Corrie told a reporter two days before she was killed.

On the afternoon of March 16, Corrie received an urgent call from ISM activists telling her to rush to the home of Samir Nasrallah, a pharmacist who lived with his wife and three children near the Egyptian border in Rafah. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops were in the process of destroying homes in the area and ISM activists feared the Nasrallah's residence was next, as it was one of the few houses left standing in the area.

Corrie hurried to the home, clad in a fluorescent orange jacket and carrying a megaphone. As the IDF's American-made Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer approached Nasrallah's home, Corrie stood in its path and was fatally injured. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she died.

Corrie was not the last ISM activist to be killed or seriously wounded by Israeli forces. A month after her death, 21-year-old British student Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by an IDF sniper as he attempted to rescue Palestinian children from an Israeli tank that was firing in their direction. The shooting left Hurndall in a coma; he died nine months later in a London hospital.

IDF officials denied intentionally killing Corrie, despite court testimony from army officers that Corrie and other activists were legitimate military targets who were "doomed to death" for resisting Israeli occupation forces.

An IDF investigation concluded that Corrie had not been crushed to death by the bulldozer, despite an Israeli autopsy that concluded her death was caused by "pressure on the chest with fractures of the ribs and vertebrae of the dorsal spinal column and scapulas, and tear wounds in the right lung."

The IDF called Corrie's death a "regrettable accident" while blaming the ISM activists for their own harm because by "placing themselves in a combat zone."

Efforts in the United States by Corrie's family, activist groups, and U.S. Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) to achieve accountability and justice for Corrie bore no fruit.

While Corrie once wrote that she felt protected by "the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed U.S. citizen," there were no such difficulties, just as there were no repercussions after Israeli warplanes killed 34 American sailors and wounded 173 others during a 1967 attack on the USS Liberty—an attack numerous top U.S. officials believe was deliberate.

In 2012, an Israeli court ruled against Corrie's parents, who had sued the IDF, with the judge claiming the activist's death was the "result of an accident she brought upon herself."

Former U.S. President Jimmy Cartercondemned the ruling as a confirmation of the "climate of impunity which facilitates Israeli human rights violations."

"Rachel's case was cast aside by Israel's colonial courts. But Rachel won," Abu Artema wrote Thursday. "She became a worldwide symbol of freedom and a source of inspiration for everyone who dreams of a world of justice and peace."

"Israel may have killed her," he added, "but Rachel Corrie lives on in all of us."

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

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Image courtesy of Center for Reproductive Rights

The post First of its kind lawsuit against Texas by women whose lives were endangered by abortion ban; Another Israeli raid in Jenin kills six Palestinians; U.N. approves treaty to protect the high seas: The Pacifica Evening News March 7 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday accused Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell of unnecessarily risking large-scale layoffs and an economic recession by continuing to raise interest rates, a policy decision that the Massachusetts Democrat slammed as badly misguided and destructive.

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Warren asked Powell to address the roughly two million people in the U.S. who would be out of a job if the Fed's projected unemployment rate of 4.6% by the end of the year turned out to be accurate.

"What would you say to them?" Warren asked. "How would you explain your view that they need to lose their jobs?"

Insisting that a surge in job losses is "not an intended consequence" of the Fed's rate increases, Powell said he would "explain to people more broadly that inflation is extremely high, and it's hurting the working people of this country badly—all of them, not just 2 million of them."

Powell, who signaled during his opening statement at Tuesday's hearing that the Fed is prepared to return to larger rate hikes if they're deemed necessary, also told Warren that an unemployment rate of 4.5%—up from the current rate of 3.4%—"is well better than most of the time for the last 75 years."

The Fed chair's answers did not satisfy Warren, who said Powell appears to view throwing two million people out of work as "just part of the cost" of bringing inflation down.

Watch the exchange:

Echoing expert critics of the Fed's aggressive rate hikes, Warren expressed concern that the central bank won't be able to stop unemployment from rising beyond the projected 4.6% rate once it starts increasing.

"History suggests that the Fed has a terrible track record of containing modest increases in the unemployment rate," Warren said. "In 11 out of the 12 times that the unemployment rate increased by a full percentage point within one year, unemployment went on to rise another full percentage point on top of that."

"If that happens this time, we'd be looking at at least three and a half million people who would lose their jobs," the senator continued. "Chair Powell, you are gambling with people's lives. And there's a pile of data showing that price gouging, and supply chain kinks, and the war in Ukraine are driving up prices. You cling to the idea that there's only one solution: lay off millions of workers."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

The conflict engulfing Myanmar in the wake of the 2021 military coup has led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians and ordinary people who took up arms to fight junta troops, who have raided and razed villages, bombed them from the air and rounded up hundreds for detention, torture or immediate execution.