His arrest follows a warrant issued by a specialized criminal court that also targets two other journalists — Sabri bin Mukhshen and Muzahim Bajaber. All three journalists have been critical of the local government in recent reporting and social media posts. The warrant violated Article 13 of Yemen’s Press and Publications Law, which protects journalists from prosecution for expressing their opinions.

“Bajabeer’s arrest is yet another example of the systematic campaign to silence journalists in Hadramout and the areas controlled by Yemen’s Internationally Recognized Government (IRG),” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “We call on the IRG to immediately release Bajabeer and end all forms of intimidation against the three Hadramout-based journalists.”

The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate condemned the ongoing harassment, threats, and surveillance against Bajabeer, his family, and colleagues by local authorities in a July 4 statement.

Bajabeer’s arrest comes a week after the July 21 release of journalist Muzahim Bajaber, who had been detained for more than a month and still faces three open cases related to his journalism. He spent 12 days in the Criminal Investigation prison without being presented to a prosecutor, in violation of Article 76 of Yemen’s criminal procedure law.

Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since Houthi rebels seized the capital in 2014. The Saudi-backed IRG intervened in 2015 in an effort to restore the government to power.

CPJ contacted the IRG’s Ministry of Human Rights for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

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

In Gaza, at least 41 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since midnight, including more Palestinians targeted by Israeli forces while seeking food and humanitarian aid. This comes as UNICEF is warning Gaza is facing what amounts to a “man-made drought” with children at risk of dying from thirst due to Israel’s blockade. We go to Dr. Mark Brauner, an emergency medicine physician who is currently volunteering at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza. He describes “execution-style” killings of Palestinians at food distribution sites and the desperate lack of baby formula leading to the deaths of children suffering from malnutrition and starvation.

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

The Chengdu-based human rights activist and Chinese performance artist was released on March 24 after serving a four-year prison sentence in the southwestern province of Sichuan. But his friends say his freedom has been largely illusory, as police have repeatedly summoned him for interrogations and severely restricted his movements and ability to resume work.

Chen has faced repeated persecution for his criticism of the Chinese Communist Party and commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, including demands that the government investigate the crackdown and compensate victims. In 2021, he was sentenced to four years in jail on of child molestation which he denied and said were intended to smear his reputation.

Most recently, on the eve of the 36th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square protests crackdown, the National Security Bureau and local police subjected Chen to a five-hour interrogation, where he was forced to sit on the ‘tiger bench,’ Chen’s friend and colleague Guan told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday.

‘Tiger bench’ is a form of torture used to restrain and immobilize detainees during questioning. Chen, like many others RFA interviewed for this story, asked to be identified only by a single name for fear of reprisals.

“The police accused him of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble,’” said Guan, referring to a criminal charge frequently used by Chinese authorities to carry out arbitrary detentions against rights activists and dissidents.

The charges were based on Chen’s social media activity, including reposts of tweets by Ming Chu-cheng, an honorary professor of politics at National Taiwan University, and prominent dissidents Pastor Wang Yi, the pastor of a banned Protestant church in Chengdu, and citizen journalist Cai Chu, said Guan.

Despite the lack of a subpoena, the police summoned Chen for questioning, confiscating his mobile phone and Wi-Fi equipment for three days, before returning them on June 3 night after repeated protests, Guan said.

Chen’s livelihood has also been impacted, his friends said. Upon release from prison, Chen found that his nursery business, which he had operated for many years, was emptied of all assets, causing him to lose his source of income, said Yang, another friend of the activist.

The courts have also listed him as a “dishonest debtor,” preventing him from accessing his bank accounts or resuming work, Yang said.

“He now has difficulty even renting a house and can only survive on donations from friends and through loans,” said Fang Liang, another friend of Chen’s.

(Chen Yunfei)

‘Secondary punishment’

During Chen’s most recent imprisonment, his 91-year-old mother was also forcibly and violently removed from her Chengdu rental home by community workers, during which she suffered a head injury that required over a month of hospitalization, Guan said.

During the forced eviction, many of the family’s assets of value disappeared, including $30,000 of pension money that his mother had set aside for her granddaughter’s education abroad, $5,800 in cash, and about 40,000 yuan (or US$5,560) in Chinese currency, Guan said.

When Chen attempted to file a police report after discovering his empty home upon release, authorities refused to issue a receipt or open an investigation, said Yang.

“They don’t allow you to have any evidence to sue them,” said Yang. “The government said it’s not their responsibility, and the police said to contact the community — they just pushed the matter back and forth.”

Despite the ongoing harassment, Chen’s friends say he is preparing to file a civil lawsuit to recover his mother’s lost property and challenge the police’s abuse of power.

Shandong-based legal scholar Lu described Chen’s ongoing troubles as a consequence of a typical “secondary punishment” model that is designed to maintain control over dissidents through non-judicial means.

“Administrative review is inactive, the police deliberately do not issue receipts, and elderly mothers are forced to become homeless,” Lue said “This is not law enforcement, but political coercion.”

Written by Tenzin Pema. Edited by Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.

In the latest episode of Working People, we go back to the picket line to get a critical update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October 2022, over 100 workers represented by five labor unions—including production, distribution, advertising, and accounts receivable staff—walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PPG). The strike began after the newspaper’s management, Block Communications, which is owned by the Block family, cut off health insurance for employees on Oct. 1 of that year. After more than 2.5 years on strike, with other unions reaching contracts or taking buyouts and dissolving their units, workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh are the last remaining strikers holding the line. We speak with a panel of union officers for the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh about how they’ve managed to stay on strike so long and about recent legal updates that have given them hope that an acceptable end to the strike may be on the horizon.

Panelists include: Ed Blazina, striking transportation writer at the PPG and one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh; Erin Hebert, also one of the Vice Presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh and a striking copy-editor and page designer at PPG; Emily Matthews, photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post-Gazette Unit of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

Additional links/info:

• Pittsburgh Union Progress website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
• Donate to Support Striking Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Workers
• Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh website
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “TRNN wins 2025 Izzy Award for coverage of East Palestine, OH, trainwreck & chemical disaster”
• Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Union Progress, “The strike is over for 3 Pittsburgh news production unions, but the journalists’ strike continues”
• Ian Karbal, Pennsylvania Capital Star, “The strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is now the longest in the nation. And it’s not over”
• Mel Buer, Working People / The Real News Network, “Two years into a strike, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers aren’t ready to give up”
• Bob Batz Jr. & Steve Mellon, Pittsburgh Union Progress, “A start to the end of the strike? Feds file for temporary injunction to return Pittsburgh news unions to work”
• Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams / The Real News Network, “‘AI will not scab us’: Post-Gazette newsroom decries use of artificial intelligence”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) After months of striking, media workers aren’t backing down”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “(Livestream) Strikes at Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, University of Michigan, and more”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s half-year strike”

Permanent links below…

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

Featured Music…
Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

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

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are going back to the picket line to get an update on the longest ongoing strike in the United States. In October of 2022, over a hundred workers represented by five labor unions including production, distribution, advertising and accounts receivable staff walked off the job on an unfair labor practice strike at the storied publication the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The strike began after the newspaper’s management block Communications, which is owned by the block family cut off health insurance for employees on October 1st of that year.

As Ian Karbal wrote in December for the Pennsylvania Capital Star. Since 2017 Post Gazette journalists have worked without a union contract. The papers owners appeared to show little interest in negotiating a new one, but in 2020 they imposed new terms on employees. Workers learned during the pandemic that the cost of their healthcare plan would increase for many and some would lose banked sick days. Among other unfavorable changes, some newsroom staff were also fed up with the blocks who had drawn increased scrutiny to the paper through a series of widely criticized editorial and personnel decisions. For years, the Post Gazette had refused to cover annual premium increases for the production workers healthcare plan. According to Joe Pass, the lawyer for the three production unions and the Newsroom Guild, when the company imposed a $19 per week increase to employees in 2022 while pushing them into a high deductible plan pass said that that was a breaking point.

The ultimate tally was 38 to 36 in favor of the strike. The day after the vote, less than 60% of the newsroom walked out. According to Zach Tanner, president of the newspaper Guild. Though over a short time, the number of strikers grew with 60 on the picket line and 35 remaining at work. This is Max speaking. We call those scabs. Augh continues, but the paper was able to continue publishing online strike leaders say that documents shared with them by the paper a standard practice show. The company has given new hires and workers who remained at the paper unprecedented bonuses and ahead of schedule raises since the strike began. Their documents show that in total over 260 $900,000 has been awarded this way since October of 2022. An administrative law judge has ruled that the Post Gazette failed to bargain in good faith and the National Labor Relations Board took the rare step of issuing an injunction request to resume bargaining that could effectively end the strike.

The post gazettes owners have appealed that move now for two and a half years, strikers have held the line while putting their professional skills to work and producing without pay. Mind you, the Pittsburgh Union progress, an award-winning newspaper that we at the Real News have proudly taken out ads in and collaborated with striking journalist Steve Mellon and I actually just won a prestigious Izzy Award together for our collaborative reporting on the Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. It’s absolutely remarkable what Steve and his colleagues have done with this strike paper and in my personal opinion, it is one of the single most impressive and inspiring feats of journalism and solidarity in the 21st century. And in a March update on the strike posted in the Pittsburgh Union progress editor Bob Batz Jr. Writes workers in three news production and advertising unions that have been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for two years and five months over a dispute about their healthcare coverage have voted to accept settlements that end their strike, their jobs and their union locals or unit, but it’s over for the production and advertising workers.

They are members of the typographical or advertising union and the Mailers Union, both locals of the communication workers of America as well as the Pressman’s Union unit. There are 31 workers who are losing their jobs as well as their unions or unit as their buyout stipulate that their locals or unit drop all pending unfair labor practice charges and then dissolve. Now, we’ve been covering this strike and talking to striking workers over the past two years here on this show and at the Real News Network and today we’re going to dive back in to get an update on how folks are doing, where things stand now with the strike and what folks like you out there can do to help. And I’m honored to be joined on the show today. First by Ed Blaina, a striking transportation writer at the Post Gazette and one of the vice presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh.

We are also joined by Aaron Abert, also one of the vice presidents of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, and a striking copy editor and page designer at the Post Gazette. And we are joined as well by Emily Matthews, a photographer on strike and treasurer for the Post Gazette unit of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. Ed Aaron. Emily, thank you all so much for joining us today and I wish we were convening under better circumstances, but I just wanted to say up top to reaffirm that we here at The Real News, all of us here and our listeners at Working people continue to stand in solidarity with y’all as colleagues and fellow workers. And I know that our listeners are deeply invested in this struggle even though so many folks around the country have forgotten it, have not given it and y’all the support that you need over these past two and a half years. And we’ll get to that in a minute. But since this will be the first time in this strike that our listeners are hearing some of your voices, I wanted to just start by asking if we could go around and you could introduce yourself and just tell us a little more about who you are, the work that you did at the Post Gazette and the work that you’ve been doing for the strike and while on strike over the past two and a half years.

Ed Blazina:

Thanks, max. I’ll start. My name’s Ed Blazina. I am striking transportation writer. I’ve been a journalist for, I forget how old I am, sometimes 45 years, been at the Pittsburgh papers. We had the Pittsburgh press and then when it went out of business, the Post Gazette was there as well. I’ve worked for both of those papers since 1983. For the last 10 years I’ve been the transportation writer at the Post Gazette. I’ve been a union officer for 25 years and now we’ve been on strike for two and a half years. I’m eligible to retire. I’m old enough to retire and retire with full benefits. I refuse to let the blocks in my career this way. I’m not going to go down while we’re on strike. We’re going to fight this thing through to the end. What we’re doing now is raising as much money as we can to keep this going. As you mentioned, it’s gone on so long. Among the almost distressing things we hear is that people don’t remember that we’re still on strike. That’s particularly painful to me because the Pittsburgh press went out of business because of a strike back in 1991, and at that time it was a public tragedy that the newspaper was on strike. TV stations read the comics on television, they read obits. It was a calamity.

The Pittsburgh Press tried to print a edition, not scab. We were not unionized in the newsroom at the Pittsburgh Press, but they tried to print and distribute a paper while the other unions were on strike and there were 5,000 people in front of the building. I’m not sure. In two and a half years we’ve had 5,000 people show up total at the rallies we’ve had. It’s a different time now, so it makes striking much more difficult. Right now I’m doing two jobs. I’m covering transportation as well as I can for the union progress. Not everything I did before, but the major things keeps me sane, if you want to call it two and a half years on strike being sane. And the other aspect is we’re running a strike. I’m a vice president for the union. We’ve raised well over a million dollars to help people be able to stay on strike. We run speakers bureaus, we do all kinds of things to try to keep our name out there and let people know we’re on strike.

But it’s two and a half years now, so it’s difficult. You mentioned the numbers, it was sad hearing you recount what’s happened since the strike began. We probably have half the people that we had before because lots of people aren’t like me. I’ve had a career, I’m at the end of my career. We have folks here today with us who are younger who are still trying to build a career. It’s hard to tell somebody who’s 25, oh, stay on strike for two years, your career will come back. Don’t worry about it. That has to be extremely tough to do. I’m glad I don’t have to do that. I’m at the end of my career. I can afford to fight to strike through to the end, so it’s tough, but we’re still at it and we’re still going to be here. We’re not going anywhere.

Erin Hebert:

Yeah. My name is Erin Hebert. I actually graduated from journalism school 10 years ago this month. I got the reminders of that on my Facebook and I’ve been at the Post is that since 2016, vast majority of my professional career as a journalist. I started there as a copy editor as what was called a two year associate position, which does not exist anymore. But essentially when I was hired, I was making less than half of what top salary union hires make now at the post edge. So I was making about $25,000 working a full-time schedule, working a copy desk schedule. I had benefits. I was happy to have the opportunity, but the first couple of years for me, there were a struggle. And my experience at that point in my career as a really young person are a big part of why I think I’ve stayed out for so long and why I feel so committed to seeing this through.

Because I haven’t had a contract since March, 2017, which was it five months after I started. So I haven’t had a contract that entire time and the contract is the only reason that I was able to be hired as a 23-year-old. And then by the time I hit 25, after my two years of service were up as an associate, my salary jumped to $60,000, which is our top line salary. So it was a dream of mine to, especially when I was coming out of journalism school, hearing that newspapers were dying when I was so dedicated to this craft that I had studied, I was like, oh, cool, I can come here. I can tough it out for two years on a lower salary, be in a cool city as a young person, be in a newsroom and eventually make a good living in an affordable city.

And I really fell in love with Pittsburgh too. And that’s, I think a big part of why a lot of us are out here is because we care about the city and we care about making the journalism field here accessible and welcoming for new talent. I don’t know, I’m from Louisiana and I didn’t know anything about unions before I came here. So I show up on my first day and an officer comes up to me and tells me the spiel, Hey, there’s a union meeting. I didn’t know what I knew nothing. I didn’t know anything about it. And the education that I’ve gotten, the life education that I’ve gotten, being in Pittsburgh and being with this local and at this newspaper are really just completely, I can’t even begin to describe how much my life has changed over the past 10 years. And a couple of years into my time at the post gisette I started, it was when issues with the publisher started to prop up more and more.

He was interfering more. And I was seeing the frontline of that as a copy editor because I was on the night desk. I was getting the calls from John Block saying, we need to change this different things that have been well addressed in the media before Everyone knows that these have been issues at the paper. So I kind of started looking for a way out and thinking that maybe journalism in the age of Trump was not for me, that if this was the direction that it was headed in, that was not going to be that not going to work for me. So I started exploring social work as a career and ended up going down to part-time as a copy editor while I was in grad school for social work at the Post Gazette. And while I was studying all of the strike talk has started happening and I said, okay, well part of I want to do organizing work.

I was more involved with the union by then, and I just felt really passionate about the social welfare portion of striking and how people take care of each other in crisis because that’s what I was studying. So they wanted the strike. I did a call from Steve Mellon, or sorry, the night before, and he says, Hey, you want to be head of the health and welfare committee with me? And I said, yeah, of course I would do anything with Steve. He’s the best. And it’s been a real rollercoaster since then. But I’m really proud of the work that we put in at the beginning of the strike to keep this going because I don’t think we would’ve made it this long had we not actually spent time making the systems that have allowed us to take care of each other and to raise money. And that have allowed us to get closer to each other personally.

It is very much like a family at this point, and that’s not something that is ever going to go away even when we go back to work. So it’s really just completely changed my perspective on a lot of things, but especially the value of my labor and also the importance of rest because I think the strike was the first time that a lot of us were forced to stop our work that we had been doing for so long and kind of think about what our lives were looking like without work. And that’s kind of the stuff that I’m focused on right now is how do we continue to take care of each other and finish this out and raise money because you’re right, we haven’t had the amount of attention on this strike that we should have.

Emily Matthews:

Hi, I’m Emily Matthews. I’m a photographer on strike, and I’m also the treasurer for the Post Gazette unit of the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh. I started at the Post Gazette in February of 2020, so I’ve almost been on strike for as long as I had worked at the Post Gazette, which is kind of crazy to think about and kind of crazy to think about how much can change in two and a half years. I got engaged, got married, adopted a cat, and yet we were still on strike. Some things don’t change at the Post Gazette. When I was working at the Post Gazette, Aaron and I started off as a two year associate and it was described to me as in between an internship and full-time. But really I was just treated as a regular employee just making minimum wage. When my two years were almost up, the union actually had to get involved to see if I was staying or not because they just wouldn’t tell me.

I think about two weeks before my two years were up, they finally let me know that I was staying and my manager was like, well, at least we got you on a few months before your two years were up. I was like, no, it’s not a few months. It was a couple weeks. So just that experience and knowing that the company didn’t really seem to care got us as individuals and how much the union did help kind of made me realize that, oh, I should get involved with the union. I care about the people that I work with. I want to make sure that they can have a job that lasts for as long as they would like. And at the Post Gazette, I was taking photos of anything that came up depending on the day from events to sports to whatever portraits and on the union progress.

I mostly focus on high school sports. I take photos of, right now it’s baseball and softball. We’re getting into the championship season, so we’re in the quarterfinals and semifinals right now. I think working on the Pittsburgh Union progress has really helped me because when we first started out, like Aaron said, it was kind of a shock not to have that amount of work every day that I was used to not going to multiple assignments every day. And I think as journalists, we do kind of have our identity tied up in what we do for better or for worse. So I remember just sitting in my apartment thinking, what am I doing? Who am I without taking photos? And the union progress did really help with that too. It gives me a reprieve from doing all the strike related activity, even though it is strike related, it feels more like a day-to-day at a regular job almost while also doing our strike work, which includes raising money.

We have a Stewards network where we call each other and check in to make sure everyone’s feeling okay, see what people need, let people know what’s going on, what fundraising events or other things that we have going on that we want people to show up to and attend. And I think doing all this has just really shown me how much everyone cares about each other. Before the strike, I didn’t really go into the newsroom as much because I’m a photographer, so I would just go out on assignments and usually edit in my car or edit there. So I didn’t spend a lot of time in the newsroom talking to my coworkers. It wasn’t until we walked out on strike that I really started to get to talk to people and get to know people. And now I’ve come to realize that I really care about everyone that I’m on strike with and hope that strike comes to an end soon and you can get back to work. I’m from Pittsburgh, I grew up here. I grew up with the Post Gazette, so I always wanted to work at the Post Gazette and I would like to work there for as long as possible, but I don’t feel confident that I can do that without a contract. That’s where I’m at right now.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Ed, Erin, Emily, I wanted to ask before we sort of dig into the nitty gritty of strike updates, because I tried to jam in as many as I could in the intro, but I know there’s a lot more stuff that’s been going on from people crossing the picket line to people taking buyouts and union units essentially becoming non-existent to injunctions being issued against the Post Gazette. So I want to ask if you can kind of walk us and our listeners through that in a minute, but hearing you guys kind of talk in the first round, it was really making me think that our listeners and folks out there who maybe haven’t been following this strike the whole way through, really need to sit and think about what it actually takes to go out on strike in the middle of a pandemic and stay on strike for two and a half years along with everything else that’s going on in the goddamn world today. Can we just go back around and could you guys say a little more about what that was like personally for you? What it’s been like personally for you to hold the line this long

Ed Blazina:

Again, for me, it’s been a little bit different because I’m older. By dumb luck, I put in for full social security a month before the strike happened. We didn’t know we were going on strike. So financially the strike hasn’t been as big a deficit as it has been for other people. And my plan was because newspapers have been in bad shape for a long time. We’ve had our pension frozen for 15 years and I have a pension, but it hasn’t been growing. So my plan was to work two years after I went on Social security and bank that money put away some more for retirement. Well, right now, fortunately I’m living off of that money, so my experience isn’t quite the same as everybody else, but it’s been enlightening to see other people, how dedicated they have been. It’s humbling to see how people react when you tell ’em you’re on strike. For started out with nine months and then a year and a half now, two and a half years, I went to the CWA convention as part of our delegation.

My job there was to raise money. I wasn’t there as a delegate to the convention. And after three days I felt like a drug dealer. I hit $11,000 on the spread of my bed in the hotel room from people giving us money to support the strike that is humbling beyond belief. A couple of quick stories I to a democratic meeting up in Butler County, a small county north of Pittsburgh to speak at one of their candidate events, and they allowed us to put out a candidate to collect some money. At the end of the event, this woman who’s older than I am, came waddling up to me and handed me a $10 bill and said, my husband died six weeks ago, but I know he’d want me to give this to you. We had miners come up from Southern West Virginia out to the production plant out in Clinton by the Greater Pittsburgh airport, and big group of cuff guys and a few women.

And again, after they were done ka biting with us on the picket line, woman came up and handed us $20 and said, this is all I have, but you should have it. I think it’s important that you have it. That kind of stuff is amazing and it gives me hope every day that we know we’re on the right side and we know we can make it through this, through things like that. The help of other people, gifts, big and small, that’s how we get through this kind of thing, supporting each other, the support we get from other people. Even a show like this where you welcome us in to come in and tell our story, that’s amazing support.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and it just makes me think of another working person that I interviewed on this show the month after y’all went on strike. If I recall correctly, Marcus Darby, he was on strike at CNH industrial in November of 2022. And I remember talking to Marcus and he said something that really stuck with me when he was communicating to our listeners that he said, look, when you guys turn this episode off, you go back to your life. I’m still on strike. I can’t turn this off. So please just don’t forget that, right? And I think just having that appreciation for the time that this takes, the strength that it takes to endure for such a long period of time, I hope everyone listening out there understands how much your solidarity, your support, your refusal to forget struggles like these can keep them going in the darkest of times. Erin, Emily, I wanted to bring y’all back in here if you had anything else you wanted to add on, just what it’s been like for you personally to go out on strike and what it’s taken to stay on strike.

Erin Hebert:

I think one of the interesting things about, I guess strikes in general, but this strike from my perspective is that we obviously have this one common experience, but we also have vastly different experiences among individual people in this union. Age-wise, it’s a big variety, marital status, single childless children, whatever. And for me, I’m really good at the beginning of things. When something’s first going, I’m very gung ho. And then I found during the middle it got really, really hard for me, and part of it was just personal burnout from grad school and the pandemic and everything that comes with being a person in the world these days. So I did have to take a pretty significant chunk of time off from the strike. However, I also had to earn money outside of the strike because I don’t have retirement. I’ll be 32 in a couple of months.

I’m at a point in my career. I’m not married, I don’t have family who can help me, so I had to look for other work. And I was doing housing casework for a HUD funded program for unhoused people with disabilities in Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. So I was doing that for 10 months last year. And during that time I was, I wasn’t as active in the strike because I had to earn money and that job was so stressful and I ended up experiencing burnout from that as well. Had to take the winter off to rest and recover. I was having a lot of chronic health issues pop up. And since I would say March, I’ve been back at it and back working. And now that we got the 10 E, the 10 E decision that we got has been a big momentum push for me for sure, because it kind of showed, oh, there’s a light, we can see the end.

There’s this actionable thing that has come down that we hopefully will be able to rely on. At least it’s the biggest piece of leverage that we’ve ever had. So now that we have this, and like Emily said, she’s not ready to go back without a contract, I’m not ready either because I, over my almost nine years working or being aware of blocked communications existence, I’ll leave it that way. As a company, I have seen, and Ed has seen it too, just from different perspective, everything that a manager could do would do on any level. The ways that even a manager not sticking up for you can completely, even if your manager or a manager in general isn’t actively harmful to you, if you know that they’re not going to have your back because they’re afraid of what upper management will do, that’s not a good working environment.

So I’ve seen an experienced that side of the post A and the union that was 91, it’ll be 91 this year, newspaper deal A, yeah, 91 years old. That’s the only reason that the paper has persisted for so long because without it, who knows what would’ve happened. So I think reminding myself of that has been really important. Resting, listening to my body when it tells me to rest, to take time off, which is the case in any organizing space, is rest and recovery. And also making sure to save time for happy moments. And a lot of those happy moments come from interacting with the community and being out there and just having conversations with people who you never would’ve necessarily connected with otherwise, who tell you, oh, this family member of mine was in a union. I know the struggle my dad was on strike, whatever.

Hearing people’s personal stories when you know that they get it and they get what it’s like to, I mean, not have a steady income and not have enough to pay your bills. And I’m really proud of, like I said earlier, the work that we did to build up our strike fund and to get all the systems in place because that’s a lot of people we’ve had. We have such a variety of experiences on this strike, and it’s the only way that we’ve been keeping it going is through talking to people in our community and each other and raising money.

Emily Matthews:

I think being on strike, it’s easy to get in my own head, thinking journalism all across the country. Is it a bad place? Why am I doing this? Is it even worth it? Are we even going to have jobs in a couple years? Why am I losing all this money if it’s just going to go away anyways? And like Erin said, I think going out in the community and talking to people really helps with that because just the other day I was taking photos at a high school track meet and this one coach came up to me and he said, oh, you’re with the Pittsburgh Union Progress. Brad Everett, who’s one of our sports reporters, he’s amazing. He puts his whole heart into every story that he does. And I was like, oh yeah, I know Brad, I work with him. He’s great. And he was like, oh yeah, he’s the best. He deserves everything. He’s the best source reporter that I know. And so just hearing how much praise that my coworkers get and fellow strikers get just lights a fire in me to keep going and like, yeah, Brad does deserve everything and he works hard and he’s good at what he does and he deserves to have a job that he can go to.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now. Ed, Erin, Emily, I wanted to ask if y’all could sort of give our listeners an update since we last had post Gazette strikers on the show. We’ve had folks like Steve Mellon, Bob Bats, like so many incredible folks from the Pittsburgh Union, progress from your union, kind of helping to educate our listeners over the years on what this strike is about, why it’s important and what critical updates are coming. And I know there’s a lot there to unpack. So I wanted to ask if we could just spend the next 10 minutes here, really sort of given folks the key updates in the strike over the past year or so, particularly the past six months, because I think listeners know that the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Post Gazette was bargaining in bad faith. Again, it feels like all these rulings have come down explicitly saying that the Post Gazette is being shitty, breaking the law, not fulfilling their legal obligations to bargain in good faith, yada, yada, yada, and then nothing happened or that’s what it feels like over here. So can you help walk us through what the back and forth has been like, what the key updates have been in the strike, especially over the past 6, 8, 10 months here? So Ed, let’s go back to you and please, all of y’all give us whatever updates you can.

Ed Blazina:

You think it sounds that way to you, try living through it. It was almost two. It was more than two years ago that we won the administrative law judge ruling from the NLRB, but the system is slow. It’s rigged per management. It’s not set up to help workers as much as it should. The company appealed that original decision from January of, I’m getting my years wrong. In 2023, they appealed. It took over a year for the full board of the NLRB to throw out their appeal, and the only thing we could find out along the way is it’s in process. In conjunction with that and running parallel to that was our attempt to get a court order to put us back to work. It’s an unfair labor strike. There’s ridiculous amounts of damage that’s been done to people’s lives because the company has repeatedly violated federal labor law.

So we went to court to get a 10 J injunction, sorry, this is going to be a little bit of alphabet soup here. A 10 J injunction is while something is going on, once the appeal was decided, then it moved over to what’s called a 10 E for enforcement. So there are no more appeals for the company at the NLRB level. So now the Labor Board goes to court to enforce its own order because the Labor Board has no power to do anything on its own. It has to go get a judge to order that what they have determined is in fact the case and decide what should happen from there. So back in February, we had a hearing before the third Circuit Court of appeals to argue whether there should be an injunction or not. It took another month for them to decide that yes, there should be an injunction.

It’s extremely rare for a union for the NLRB to get a 10 E injunction. There were, I think three or four filed in the previous year, and not all of them were approved by the courts. Ours was approved by the courts. What’s the first thing the company did? They appealed. They asked the same judges to go back and reconsider what they had ruled previously. No more evidence, nothing to change their opinion, just we think you were wrong. You should look at that again. Oh, and also your order was to restore the healthcare. Should that be just for the people who are on strike or should that be for everybody who should be in the unit that’s still working? As you said before, the scs, anything to delay they have done now, two weeks ago we court threw out that appeal. So there are no more appeals.

They are done appealing. There’s nowhere else they can go. So there’s an order that they restore the healthcare. They’ve missed now two deadlines for even taking any step towards doing that. There’s paperwork that has to be filled out by those still in the office. The union members, the strikers have filled out their paperwork and sent it in. The company hasn’t even, we know from people on the inside hasn’t even asked for the information from the employees. So the NLRB is preparing to file for fines against the company for refusing to follow a court order. And we don’t know what those fines will be, but we know that in previous cases, those fines are hefty and they usually double every day. They’re putting themselves at more financial risk to keep fighting for. We don’t know what that’s what’s most perplexing about this whole thing is what is their end game.

We have no idea what their end game is. They’ve now lost at every level of court that they’ve gone to. The other unions have been put out of business because they reached a point where I mentioned the 10 J injunction. They filed for a 10 J injunction and the US District court judge in Pittsburgh turned down their request. Basically her attitude was industries change and if that’s the conditions that you have to work under and you don’t want to, oh, well that’s too bad. So they were left without any recourse. So they took not very good buyouts, frankly. I’m sure they would say the same thing. They did the best they could, but they had nowhere else to turn. So they took buyouts and dissolved their units. So now the newspaper Guild is the only unit left on strike, and we’re waiting now for that enforcement procedure.

Emily Matthews:

I feel like one of the most frustrating things about all of this is just the long timelines and not having many answers to anything. And one of, well, the publisher for the post is that John Robinson block, he lives in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood, and he seems like one of the people in the company who is actually willing to talk to us. He actually, when we knock on his door, he seems excited to talk to us. So we’ll go to his house every so often, especially when something comes up, something in the courts or just something that we hear through our sister unions in Toledo or whatever, and we’ll knock on his door and talk to him and he likes to talk. He’s a talker. It’s sometimes difficult to piece out some useful information from what he’s giving us, but it’s better than nothing. And his willingness to talk to us is beneficial too. It seems like from him, from his perspective, the other board members and his brother Alan, who also is the head of the BCI company, no one really talks to John. It seems like from what he tells us, even though he should have this power in the company to have an impact and make a difference, he claims that he doesn’t. It’s all his brother. He doesn’t have a say in anything. He doesn’t talk to their lawyer, he can’t do anything. I think that also makes them kind of angry and I think that also fuels his willingness to talk to us like, well, no one else is talking to me, so I might as well talk to my workers because they’ll actually provide an ear and listen to me.

Ed Blazina:

He is such a different individual. This is a dysfunctional family, unfortunately, that runs the paper. And if I had to guess, the reason they still have a paper in Pittsburgh is so that John has something to do and leaves Alan and the rest of them alone, and they just want to give enough money to keep the doors open, but not enough to treat people in a civil and humane fashion by giving them a raise. Oh, maybe once every 10 years. I don’t think it’s as important to the rest of the group as it is to John, and he’ll leave their other profitable businesses alone if they let him run the newspaper. So it’s a tough situation to deal with.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Ed, Erin, Emily, I want to ask in the last kind of 10 minutes that we’ve got here, what a realistic and good resolution to this strike looks like at this point. Like you guys said, you were the last ones standing. The newspaper guild strikers are the ones holding the line now after other unions that you walked out on strike with back in October of 2022, some signed deals, some got buyouts and their unions effectively dissolved, and you guys are still holding the line, fighting it out in the courts and waiting these agonizingly long periods for more updates on the decisions that have already been made that the block family is challenging, so on and so forth. So I think we gave listeners a good update there on where things stand now. But I guess in the final 10 minutes that we’ve got here, what should folks listening to this be looking for?

What can we expect? What kind of resolution are y’all hoping for right now? And frankly, what messages do you have for folks listening to this about what they can do to help what people out there have done to help that you want to lift up? What can folks listening to this who genuinely want to support their fellow workers, maybe they didn’t know that their fellow workers have been on strike for two and a half years over in Pittsburgh, but they know now and they want to know what they can do to help and they want to know why this is important. Any final messages that you have in that vein that you want to share with our listeners? I just wanted to kind of turn things over to you guys in the final minutes here to offer any closing thoughts you’ve got there.

Ed Blazina:

I think the important thing here is, and not to make it sound like we’re way more important than we are, but the fight we’re fighting could have happened anywhere. It happened to happen here, but it’s extremely important that companies can’t do what the post Gazette they’re trying to do. Employers are very much monkey see, monkey do. If they see an employer getting away with eliminating healthcare, bullying their employees, stretching out a strike for as long as possible, hoping people will just walk away and then they win. That’s what happens. Other companies will try to do the same thing. We can’t let that happen. It’s too important for all of us to be able to feed our families to have good jobs, good union paying jobs where we have rights in the workplace and a say in how things are run. So sticking it out for two and a half years, yes, that’s been tough, but we’re there because of everybody else and the people that have supported us, the people who will come up behind us and need a job and need the protections that we’re fighting for. It’s extremely important that the nlrbs power be upheld. There have been cases in Texas where they’ve tried to rule that the NLRB is unconstitutional. That’s just ridiculous, but it got through a court there. We can’t let that happen. And if we have to be the last people in line to draw that line in the sand and enforce that, so be it. We’ve been here this long, there’s no reason to go away now.

Erin Hebert:

For me, this strike has always been existential. It’s been about the contract and we’ve known that the blocks and Allen block especially has always wanted to get rid of the union in the newsroom. And for me, experiencing the difference between a union job as I have had at the post gisette and my first job out of college and also all the jobs that my family has had in right to work states where I’ve lived. I was in Louisiana then I moved to Florida immediately after, before I came to Pennsylvania. So I know the difference between a union job and a non-union job, especially in journalism. And I cannot fathom giving in to a company who is so flagrantly violating labor law and just for years has treated its employees with such disdain, I mean literal disdain that, I mean, I went to journalism school and was told that you comfort the afflicted and you afflict the comfortable.

So this is kind of the ultimate iteration of that. And I think moving forward, we just want people to know that we are fighting for good journalism in Pittsburgh and for a strong newspaper in the city that we really, really love and care about and that it’s Mr. Rogers neighborhood. I love the city and I want us to have a strong daily newspaper. I don’t want it to go under because of bosses who can’t treat their employees fairly or well at all. And being treated well is more about more than about, more than just pay. I want to make it clearer. So moving forward, I think we’re trying to make ourselves more seen in the community This summer, it was really hard starting the strike in October of 2022 and then going right into winter where in Pittsburgh, everyone hibernates and goes inside. So every time the spring rolling around, it’s a good chance for us to get out and about.

And I guess I would just say that if you’re a person who’s in Pittsburgh or you see any of us out, if we’re ever in DC doing an action with the News Guild, people come and talk to us and ask us what we’ve been through. We always have our QR codes when we’re out for you to donate for people to donate. We’re working on new merch and new projects for things to put out into the community like artwork and music and just different community-based projects that’ll help us raise money but also shine a light on our supporters in Pittsburgh and around the country.

Emily Matthews:

Also, if you’re not in Pittsburgh, but would also like to help, we have a link. I know it’s on the Union Progress website through the Action Network where you can donate, you can also buy t-shirts. We have two really cool designs designed by our own striker, Jen Kundra. So check out the Pittsburgh Union progress. We have updates all the time on strike related things as well as Pittsburgh things. And we do have a bargaining date coming up on June 5th, so hopefully, fingers crossed, something will come of that. Even if it doesn’t, we always update on the union progress. So make sure to check it out after that to see what’s going on. And in the meantime, we always appreciate just messages of support too. If you can’t donate money, send us a message. It’s always uplifting to hear from the community.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just with the last one to two minutes that we got here, I wanted to ask if any of y’all have direct messages to our fellow colleagues in the journalism industry. I’m doing my best here to still, I mean, on episodes like this, I try to be somewhat objective. I don’t have, objectivity is a myth, but I’m trying to be at least fair, transparent, get people the truthful factual information, firsthand information from y’all that they need. But all the while I’m sitting over here just boiling because I want to scream at every one of our fellow workers in the journalism industry, what the fuck are you guys doing? How have you not been, pardon my French, but how have you not been raising hell over this from the day this strike started? Like Ed said, if the blocks get away with this, what makes you think that you’re going to be safe when you’re employer looks over and says, Hey, why don’t we do what the Post Gazette did?

And think of all that we lose in the industry when we lose journalism as a good paying career, a career that people want to invest in and stay in and make their career lives out of. I’ve talked to Steve Mellon and Bob Batson and other colleagues of yours at Pittsburgh Union progress about the meaning of this strike for all of us who depend on journalism, local and national, and it makes my blood boil that so many in our industry have forsaken y’all and forgotten y’all and in my opinion, have frankly slit their own throats in our collective throat because this is going to impact all of us. So anyway, I’m getting hot here. So in the last minute, do any of you have any direct messages to folks out there in journalism that you want to share before we close?

Ed Blazina:

Just exactly what you said. It absolutely can happen to you. Don’t let it happen. Get involved in journalists have this thing, and it’s something I’ve had to learn. Even though I’ve been a union officer for 25 years, we always wanted to be neutral. We can’t take a stand on things. Well, I’m sorry. My job, I can take a stand over and absolutely I’m going to, but it’s something you have to learn. We are reticent to go to politicians to give us help. Well, heck, we have a bunch of politicians in the Pittsburgh area who have refused to talk to the Post Gazette because we’ve told them, don’t cross our picket line. It was hard for us to do, but you have to do it. There’s lots of things you don’t like to do, but you have to, and this is one where you have to

Emily Matthews:

Working in journalism too, it’s easy just to appreciate that you have a job in journalism and just to accept your working conditions for what they are. But you never know when your conditions can change for the worst and when you’re in a really bad spot and at that point it’s too late. So you need to unionize early, unionize ahead of the company’s, whatever they’re planning on doing, get one step ahead of them, unionize, organize, talk to your coworkers, make sure everyone’s doing okay. There could be things going on with different people that you just don’t know about because people are afraid to speak up and talk about it. I think that’s another important thing to do is to, even if you’re not in a union, start talking to your coworkers. See what issues arise, see what problems they’re having, try to organize and figure out how to unionize. There’s lots of resources out there to do that.

Erin Hebert:

I would say to also remember that not everyone in journalism, even at Legacy outlets, so to speak, come from a background where they have financial support. A lot of people working at big national outlets, I mean, there’s that whole, the scandal over the New York Times preferring to higher Ivy League graduates. There’s definitely a very stark class disparity in journalism that I’ve found and that I’ve discussed with other people on strike who also come from lower middle class backgrounds, I guess you would say socioeconomically, and just remember, not everybody has the freedom. Some of us need union protections to be able to earn a living in our field. Not all of us grew up with family connections to the industry. Not all of us can make the switch to pr. Like everyone says, oh, you can’t make it work in journalism, go to pr. We shouldn’t have to do that.

We should be guaranteed good jobs that allow us to do the work of covering our communities, and which over two and a half years of this strike, the city has been, I mean, the social circles that I’m in, it’s just everybody’s talking about this stuff and everybody has a different opinion on it, but nobody seems to really care to ask us directly. It’s kind of just talking, and I just think it’s important to remember that, as Emily said, this can happen to you at any time. You cannot trust the boss to have your back or anybody who is okay cowering to the boss and not standing up to the boss, and that you can only get past that by talking to your fellow workers and talking about your experiences. Honestly, even when it’s hard or it’s embarrassing or you think you’re not going to be believed based on what you’ve experienced,

Ed Blazina:

And even if you’re in a union, you have to pay it forward too. One good example of that is the New York Times tech workers had a short strike back at the beginning of the year. Actually it was before that. It was just before the election. They struck during election week, brilliant move because a lot of what the New York Times does on election night is based on what those folks do technically in their computer systems. They had a strike. Their strike fortunately lasted I think less than two weeks, but in that time, they raised so much money that after their strike, they had $114,000 left over that they donated to us. We end our strike. I’m sure there’s somebody we’ll pay it forward too, because that’s what you have to do. We’re all in this together whether we like it or not.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, ed Blaina, Aaron Abert and Emily Matthews, three union officers for the newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh who have all been on strike at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for over two and a half years. And I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

Speaker 6:

When my fish you no longer see, I live on, yes, I live on wherever we go. We are going to roll the union on the Some I live on. Yes, I live on wherever Hungry, hungry. Are we just as hungry as hungry can be? The some I live on, yes. I live on where mean things are happening in this land. It’s red or sung. I live on, yes, I live on wherever the book mean things are happening. In this land is read. I live on, yes, I live on wherever the video tape of me showing I live on. Yes, I live on. If I have help to make this a better world to live in, I’ll live on. Yes, I live on when my body is silent and in some lonesome grave I’ll live on. Yes I on when my songs are on, I.

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

A fortnight after a terrorist attack in Pahalgam had killed 26 people, Indian Armed Forces hit nine sites containing terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and PoK from where attacks against India had been planned and directed. The Union ministry of defence described the action as “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, with no Pakistani military facilities having been targeted.

A Facebook page named Pakistan News shared the above-mentioned viral video on Facebook as a reel on May 7. The caption said, “Breaking: Fierce Cross-Fire in Kashmir – Pakistan Downs 2 Indian Jets”.

X user Irfan Hashmi (@IrfanHashmiUK), who identifies himself as a journalist, shared the same clip on May 7, saying, “Pakistan Zindabad”. The tweet has received more than 4.5 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 100 times. (Archive)

A Lebanese news outlet, Cedar News, published a report on May 7, with a screengrab of the viral clip claiming it showed Pakistani forces shooting down a Rafale and an Indian helicopter. The same was tweeted by their official X handle. (Archive 1, 2)

VIDEO: Pakistani forces shot down the Rafale and the Indian helicopter https://t.co/ZDqRJ4Q3ff pic.twitter.com/HzUh3pOOrg

— Cedar News (@cedar_news) May 6, 2025

Another X user, Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman), shared the same clip on May 7, claiming that it showed Pakistan blowing up Indian brigade headquarters. So far, the tweet has received over 5.6 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 1,900 times. (Archive)

Breaking: Pakistan army blew up the Indian Brigade headquarters pic.twitter.com/PEzBAEPnLN

— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) May 6, 2025

Several users also shared the viral video, claiming it shows visuals of Pakistan’s retaliation against India. Below are a few instances.

Fact Check

To verify this claim, we broke down the viral clip into multiple key frames and ran a reverse image search on a few of them. This led us to multiple tweets shared on April 27 carrying the same video. While some users claimed it showed the Indian Army’s retaliation in the Leepa Valley in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, others alleged it depicted the Pakistani Army opening fire along the Line of Control (LoC) and destroying Indian Army bases.

These suggest that the video is unrelated to Pakistan’s retaliation against ‘Operation Sindoor’. It has been being shared since at least April 27.

We also noticed that under @VIKRAMPRATAPSIN’s post several users had commented that the video is not recent.

On further probing, we found a YouTube video posted on April 2 by a channel named ‘Cool Swag’ where at the 25-second mark, the initial part of the viral clip appears. This confirms that the clip predates the Pahalgam terrorist attack and is therefore entirely unrelated to the current situation.

While it is possible that the video could be even older, Alt News was unable to trace its original source.

At the time of this fact check being published, there were no reports about any Indian Army establishment being attacked following Operation Sindoor. On the other hand, there were some reports about some Indian jets having crashed in Kashmir.

However, our findings clearly establish that the viral clip, which is at least a month old if not more, is being shared with false claims. The video is entirely unrelated to the ongoing conflict following the Pahalgam terror attack.

The post Viral clip claiming to show Pakistani retaliation to Indian strikes at least a month old, unrelated to ongoing confict appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

“The Cuban government continues to engage in a campaign of harassment and intimidation against the country’s non-state media in an apparent effort to force them into silence or exile,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator, from Washington, D.C.

Hernández, 33, was arrested January 24 while reporting on drug trafficking in a school in the city of Matanzas, according to 14yMedio. He is currently being held at the Combinado del Sur prison, accused of “propaganda against the constitutional order”.

Barrenechea, 53, has been detained for five months awaiting trial on a “public disorder” charge after he participated in a protest on November 8, 2025, in Encrucijada, Villa Clara, after power blackouts caused by Hurricane Rafael. He faces a potential sentence of three to eight years in prison. His family is concerned about his deteriorating health.

Cuba has intensified repression against journalists under a new Law of Social Communication, which came into force on October 4, 2024. virtually outlawing the practice of journalism outside the official state media. The new law was promulgated after anti-government demonstrations swept the island in July 2021, resulting in the prosecution of people who reported or shared videos of the events online.

In recent months, Cuban state security agents have questioned at least eight journalists and media workers from non-state media outlets, many in connection with alleged crimes against the state, leading several to flee the country. El Toque reported that between 2022 and 2024, at least 150 Cuban journalists went into exile due to harassment by state security agents.

Several journalists told CPJ that officers warned them to stop working as journalists outside of official state media, and told them it was a crime to participate in foreign-funded training and support programs, or to receive grants from foreign governments.

Cuban authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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

“The Cuban government continues to engage in a campaign of harassment and intimidation against the country’s non-state media in an apparent effort to force them into silence or exile,” said Katherine Jacobsen, CPJ’s U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator, from Washington, D.C.

Hernández, 33, was arrested January 24 while reporting on drug trafficking in a school in the city of Matanzas, according to 14yMedio. He is currently being held at the Combinado del Sur prison, accused of “propaganda against the constitutional order”.

Barrenechea, 53, has been detained for five months awaiting trial on a “public disorder” charge after he participated in a protest on November 8, 2025, in Encrucijada, Villa Clara, after power blackouts caused by Hurricane Rafael. He faces a potential sentence of three to eight years in prison. His family is concerned about his deteriorating health.

Cuba has intensified repression against journalists under a new Law of Social Communication, which came into force on October 4, 2024. virtually outlawing the practice of journalism outside the official state media. The new law was promulgated after anti-government demonstrations swept the island in July 2021, resulting in the prosecution of people who reported or shared videos of the events online.

In recent months, Cuban state security agents have questioned at least eight journalists and media workers from non-state media outlets, many in connection with alleged crimes against the state, leading several to flee the country. El Toque reported that between 2022 and 2024, at least 150 Cuban journalists went into exile due to harassment by state security agents.

Several journalists told CPJ that officers warned them to stop working as journalists outside of official state media, and told them it was a crime to participate in foreign-funded training and support programs, or to receive grants from foreign governments.

Cuban authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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

SIPRI is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, established in 1966. Read about it here and see how it has twisted its aims to not include the words ‘peace research.’ Because here is what it should do according to § 2 of its statutes: “…to conduct scientific research on questions of conflict and cooperation of importance for international peace and security, with the aim of contributing to an understanding of the conditions for peaceful solutions of interstate conflicts and for stable peace. (My italics).

The low intellectual level is indicated by the statement that “SIPRI’s vision is a world in which sources of insecurity are identified and understood, conflicts are prevented or resolved, and peace is sustained.” Sources of insecurity shall not be removed, they shall just be identified and understood. Conflicts shall be prevented – what an absurd idea since any dynamic organisation will always have conflicts; what we shall prevent or reduce is, of course, not conflicts but violence in all its forms and shapes. And peace is ‘sustained’ – such nonsense sounds like a marketing firm formulation. Excuse us all: How shall that peace come about before it is sustained?

I’ve written about SIPRI as a totally lost institution for peace and disarmament, conflict-resolution, mediation and the outlining of peaceful proposals since 2016. It’s a parody of peace for more than a decade. Read here, here and here.

Editorial offices and journalists in Sweden and elsewhere never took up this criticism. It’s so natural in these militarist times that the world’s perhaps most well-known “peace” research institute – originally a pride of the Swedish government and ‘ranked among the most respected think tanks worldwide’ – simply drops its mandate and becomes yet one more former peace research institute devoted to military-based security issues in total contrast to what it was supposed to do.

The reason is simple: for years, it has had no creative or moral leadership with any understanding of peace, and it is mainly financed by NATO member governments. Its kind of “peace” is NATO “peace.” In addition, the concept/word – and discourse – of ‘peace’ has been deliberately cancelled in Western societies.

I’ve therefore suggested a change of name to SIMSI, Stockholm International Military Security Institute. A bit of honesty instead of continued faking would be appropriate.

You may ask what peace research is, and there are many definitions and approaches. But one overarching element can be formulated this way: an intellectual effort to understand all kinds of violence with the aim of devising strategies to reduce every kind and outline strategies for intelligent conflict-resolution with the least possible use of violence – on the road to more peaceful, nonviolent futures for the whole human being and all human beings.

Now, keep that in mind and then click here to see today’s front page of SIPRI – “the independent source on international security” accompanied with images, headlines, titles and texts filled with arms…

And it’s extremely deceptive that this institute calls itself independent. Just look at its funding here.

To continue the decay and get even further away from anything called peace, SIPRI has just appointed a new director. His name is Karim Haggag, and you can read about this Egyptian career diplomat and his role at the The American University in Cairo here – a servant, one can safely assume, of US military interests with close relations to hawkish people like Madeleine Albright and Sandy Berger of the Albright Stonebridge Group – that, by the way, goes unmentioned in SIPRI’s official announcement about him here.

In case you want to know more about Madeleine Albright, she served as Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, masterminded the fake negotiation at Rambouillet about Kosovo with the NATO bombings that followed and thought, as she stated it, it was acceptable to kill half a million Iraqi women and children by the US economic sanctions.

Haggag holds only a master’s degree in War Studies from King’s College, London, and has served as a career diplomat most of his life, in Washington. Here is his official CV at the American University Cairo – which indicates two selected publications ten years ago and his academic interests in “security.” Nothing indicates any knowledge, experience or interest in the academic discipline of peace and conflict research.

In short, surely the right mainstream man for the former peace research institute SIPRI, in the year 2025.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jan Oberg.

The Panama Canal has become a focal point of geopolitical tension, as China’s involvement in its ports raises U.S. concerns over control and influence in a key global trade route.

U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly said that the United States is being overcharged to use the Panama Canal and that China has influence over its operations.

Speaking at a ribbon cutting for a new U.S.-funded dock at the Vasco Nuñez de Balboa Naval Base after a meeting with Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino, Hegseth said the U.S. will not allow China or any other country to threaten the canal’s operations.

“To this end, the United States and Panama have done more in recent weeks to strengthen our defence and security cooperation than we have in decades,” he said.

China-based companies, Hegseth said, continue to control critical infrastructure in the canal area.

“That gives China the potential to conduct surveillance activities across Panama. This makes Panama and the United States less secure, less prosperous and less sovereign. And as President Donald Trump has pointed out, that situation is not acceptable.”

In response to Hegseth’s remarks, the Chinese embassy in Panama slammed the U.S. government in a statement on X.

It said the U.S. has used “blackmail” to further its own interests and that who Panama carries out business with is a “sovereign decision of Panama … and something the U.S. doesn’t have the right to interfere in.”

“The US has carried out a sensationalistic campaign about the ‘theoretical Chinese threat’ in an attempt to sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation, which is all just rooted in the United States’ own geopolitical interests,” the embassy said.

(Matias Delacroix/AP)

There have been growing calls in Washington for action to loosen Beijing’s influence stemming from Chinese and Hong Kong companies’ control over ports in Panama and elsewhere in the Western hemisphere.

China and the U.S. are also waging a tit-for-tat trade battle, which threatens to stunt the global economy. The U.S. now imposes a 104% tariff on Chinese imports after a series of tariff hikes this year.

On Feb. 3, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened the Panamanian leader with potential American retaliation if his country didn’t immediately reduce Chinese influence over the canal.

The Panamanian government said that it was auditing the lease held by the Hong Kong consortium, which operates ports at both ends of the canal, and late on Monday concluded that there were irregularities.

The Hong Kong consortium, however, had already announced that CK Hutchison Holdings would be selling its controlling stake in the ports to a consortium including BlackRock Inc., effectively putting the ports under American control once the sale is complete.

​CK Hutchison Holdings, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, has operated the Balboa and Cristóbal ports at the Pacific and Atlantic ends of the Panama Canal through its subsidiary, Panama Ports Company, since the late 1990s.

In March 2025, CK Hutchison agreed to sell a 90% stake in Panama Ports Company to a consortium led by U.S. investment firm BlackRock Inc., as part of a US$22.8 billion deal that includes control over 43 ports in 23 countries.

At that time, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said concerns about the deal “deserve serious attention,” possibly hinting at some form of legal action.

“We oppose the abusive use of coercion or bullying tactics in international, economic and trade relations,” Lee told journalists in Hong Kong. The Chinese territory would handle any commercial transaction “according to the law,” he said.

“The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government urges foreign governments to provide a fair and just environment for enterprises, including enterprises from Hong Kong,” Lee said.

Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.

“It is a mistake for those who think that putting people in the prison can stop workers from protesting,” Chhim Sithar told Radio Free Asia. 

“Most people fear being in prison. I fear it too,” she said. “But for me and my union team, we are more afraid of losing our rights.”

The dispute at the NagaWorld Hotel and Entertainment Complex, one of the world’s most profitable gambling centers, began in 2021 when the company laid off more than 1,300 employees, about half of them union members.

The strike has drawn violent clashes with police and continues to this day. Cambodian authorities have claimed that the strike is illegal and the product of alleged foreign donations.

Workers demanding better wages and working conditions have the legal right in Cambodia to organize and strike, Chhim Sithar said on Monday

Chhim Sithar received a two-year sentence in May 2023 after she was convicted of “inciting social chaos” for her role in the dispute. She received credit for time served before her trial.

Police initially detained her in December 2021. She was arrested again in November 2022 after returning to Cambodia from a labor conference in Australia for violating bail conditions that authorities said restricted her from leaving the country.

Her arrest was condemned by NagaWorld strikers, civil society officials and the U.S. State Department. Her defense lawyer argued at her trial that she was never properly informed of any travel restrictions. 

‘They fear the public’s attention’

Prison authorities transported Chhim Sithar to her Phnom Penh home before dawn on Monday from Prey Sar Prison, which is located on the outskirts of the city. Over the weekend, NagaWorld strikers had announced plans to gather at the prison to greet her after her release.

Officials apparently wanted to prevent a demonstration at the prison, said Ou Tep Phallin, president of the Federation of Food and Service Workers of Cambodia, one of the unions involved in the strike.

“They fear the public’s attention,” she said. “I see this as a fear of union workers’ assembly.”

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Chhim Sithar is the leader of the Labor Rights Supported Union of Khmer Employees. At her sentencing, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court also sentenced eight other union members to shorter prison sentences, which were then suspended.

At the time, Amnesty International said that the union members “were prosecuted solely for exercising their basic rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.”

NagaWorld is owned by a Hong Kong-based company believed to have connections to family members of Senate President Hun Sen.

Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Matt Reed.

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

We’re joined by award-winning Cherokee writer and journalist Rebecca Nagle, whose new book, By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land, has just been released. By taking a look at the more than a century-long fight for tribal sovereignty in eastern Oklahoma, Nagle investigates the development and future of tribal law since the beginning of colonial relations between Indigenous peoples and European settlers, from the Trail of Tears to the “war on terror.” “A lot of times we treat Native American history like this distant chapter and the legal terrain it created as some sort of siloed backwater of American law, but actually it’s foundational,” she says.

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

Amid the ongoing rescue operations, several social media users have shared images of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers participating in the efforts.

Sheetal Chopra, who describes herself as an RSS volunteer and a Modi-bhakt, tweeted four images of RSS workers purportedly in Wayanad. She remarked that Rahul Gandhi is not seen anywhere and yet RSS believes in Seva irrespective of religion, caste and ideology. (Archive)

Waynad Muslim population is 41% & its the safest seat for Rahul Gandhi

But when calamity hits the elected MP is not to be seen anywhere

It’s RSS ( Rashtriya swayam sevak sangh ) which believes in Seva irrespective of RELIGION, CASTE and IDEOLOGY helps people pic.twitter.com/6oYw96wC7U

— Sheetal Chopra (@SheetalPronamo) July 31, 2024

Journalist Ashok Shrivastav also shared the images with the same claim. (Archive)

वायनाड के सांसद राहुल गांधी, और वायनाड की भविष्य की सांसद प्रियंका वाड्रा दिल्ली में हैं पर वायनाड के आपदा पीड़ितों के बीच सेना और RSS के लोग काम कर रहे हैं।
वही सेना जिसे वायनाड के सांसद कहते हैं कि चीन वाले पीट रहे हैं।
वही RSS जिसे वायनाड के सांसद आतंकवादी संगठन कहते हैं। pic.twitter.com/P8qH5mUIod

— Ashok Shrivastav (@AshokShrivasta6) August 1, 2024

Several other users used the same images while making the same claims. (Archives- 1, 2, 3, 4)

Fact Check

The viral tweets consist of 4 different images. We discovered upon reverse image searched that all of them are old. The first and the second pictures were uploaded on the Facebook page of RSS Rengali, Sambalpur on August 18, 2018. According to the caption, the image showed the rescue operations carried out RSS workers after floods hit the state on August 16, 2018.

Twitter user @JyotiBatu also tweeted the second image in August 2018 stating that the picture shows RSS workers serving flood victims.

RSS workers in Kerala serving the flood victims pic.twitter.com/3N8jRh75n2

— Jyoti Batu (Modi ka Parivaar) (@JyotiBatu) August 19, 2018

The second and the fourth images can also be found on ABVP Bhaskarcharya college’s Facebook page. In a post, they lauded the volunteers of RSS’s Seva Bharathi Kerala & ABVP and appealed for donations. The post is dated August 19, 2018.

The third image can be traced back to the same period on VSK Tamil Nadu’s official website. According to the information provided there, the image depicts Seva Bharathi, an NGO associated with the RSS, involved in relief efforts for flood-stricken victims. The website reports that 350 Seva Bharathi units and 5,000 volunteers were actively engaged in relief work across the flood-affected districts in the state.

Thus, a compilation of four images from the RSS’s service activities during the 2018 Kerala floods are being circulated as the organization’s current rescue efforts following the landslides in Wayanad. According to the RSS-run Panchajanya, however, workers of the organization have joined the rescue operations in the southern state.

The post Wayanad landslide: Old photos of RSS workers falsely viral as ongoing rescue ops in Kerala appeared first on Alt News.

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

Amid the ongoing rescue operations, several social media users have shared images of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh workers participating in the efforts.

Sheetal Chopra, who describes herself as an RSS volunteer and a Modi-bhakt, tweeted four images of RSS workers purportedly in Wayanad. She remarked that Rahul Gandhi is not seen anywhere and yet RSS believes in Seva irrespective of religion, caste and ideology. (Archive)

Waynad Muslim population is 41% & its the safest seat for Rahul Gandhi

But when calamity hits the elected MP is not to be seen anywhere

It’s RSS ( Rashtriya swayam sevak sangh ) which believes in Seva irrespective of RELIGION, CASTE and IDEOLOGY helps people pic.twitter.com/6oYw96wC7U

— Sheetal Chopra (@SheetalPronamo) July 31, 2024

Journalist Ashok Shrivastav also shared the images with the same claim. (Archive)

वायनाड के सांसद राहुल गांधी, और वायनाड की भविष्य की सांसद प्रियंका वाड्रा दिल्ली में हैं पर वायनाड के आपदा पीड़ितों के बीच सेना और RSS के लोग काम कर रहे हैं।
वही सेना जिसे वायनाड के सांसद कहते हैं कि चीन वाले पीट रहे हैं।
वही RSS जिसे वायनाड के सांसद आतंकवादी संगठन कहते हैं। pic.twitter.com/P8qH5mUIod

— Ashok Shrivastav (@AshokShrivasta6) August 1, 2024

Several other users used the same images while making the same claims. (Archives- 1, 2, 3, 4)

Fact Check

The viral tweets consist of 4 different images. We discovered upon reverse image searched that all of them are old. The first and the second pictures were uploaded on the Facebook page of RSS Rengali, Sambalpur on August 18, 2018. According to the caption, the image showed the rescue operations carried out RSS workers after floods hit the state on August 16, 2018.

Twitter user @JyotiBatu also tweeted the second image in August 2018 stating that the picture shows RSS workers serving flood victims.

RSS workers in Kerala serving the flood victims pic.twitter.com/3N8jRh75n2

— Jyoti Batu (Modi ka Parivaar) (@JyotiBatu) August 19, 2018

The second and the fourth images can also be found on ABVP Bhaskarcharya college’s Facebook page. In a post, they lauded the volunteers of RSS’s Seva Bharathi Kerala & ABVP and appealed for donations. The post is dated August 19, 2018.

The third image can be traced back to the same period on VSK Tamil Nadu’s official website. According to the information provided there, the image depicts Seva Bharathi, an NGO associated with the RSS, involved in relief efforts for flood-stricken victims. The website reports that 350 Seva Bharathi units and 5,000 volunteers were actively engaged in relief work across the flood-affected districts in the state.

Thus, a compilation of four images from the RSS’s service activities during the 2018 Kerala floods are being circulated as the organization’s current rescue efforts following the landslides in Wayanad. According to the RSS-run Panchajanya, however, workers of the organization have joined the rescue operations in the southern state.

The post Wayanad landslide: Old photos of RSS workers falsely viral as ongoing rescue ops in Kerala appeared first on Alt News.

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

Thousands of Kenyans have taken to the streets several times since June 18 to protest a proposed law that would significantly increase taxes and express broader concerns about governance in the country. Local and regional press rights organizations said that amid the protests, security personnel acted violently against journalists and briefly detained several members of the press. The broadcaster KTN, which is part of the publicly-listed Standard Media Group, reported on Tuesday, June 25, that authorities threatened to shut it down.

Beginning on Tuesday afternoon, the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) and Cloudflare, two organizations that detect internet outages, reported disruption to the internet in the country as protestors breached parliament buildings in the capital, Nairobi.

CPJ continues to research reports of press freedom violations connected to the protests; however, due to the ongoing crisis, CPJ was unable to immediately confirm details of the incidents.

“Journalists covering the protests in Kenya are carrying out a crucial public service. Any attempts to hinder or silence them through physical attacks, threats, or detention are unacceptable in a democratic society,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should credibly investigate attacks on journalists, desist from intimidation or censorship of the press, and urgently ensure that the Kenyan public has reliable access to the internet.”

On June 18, police assaulted or briefly detained at least five journalists covering protests, according to separate statements by the Media Council of Kenya, a statutory industry regulator, and the Kenya Media Sector Working Group, an umbrella organization for local and regional media rights bodies. In one of these incidents, police briefly detained Standard Media Group video editor Justus Macharia before pushing him out of a moving vehicle, according to a report by the privately owned media outlet, which added that Macharia sustained “non-life-threatening injuries,” without specifying.

On June 25, freelance journalist Collins Olunga was hit with a teargas canister on his right hand while covering the protests, according to a statement by the International Press Association of East Africa and a report by the state-owned Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), which interviewed Olunga at the hospital. In that report, Olunga appeared with a bandage on his right hand. CPJ could not immediately confirm the nature of the injuries he sustained.

On Tuesday, IODA and Cloudflare did not indicate the cause of the internet disruption in Kenya, which they documented as also affecting Uganda and Burundi.

In Tuesday statements, telecommunication companies Safaricom and Airtel said undersea cables that deliver internet traffic in and out of the country were experiencing outages. On Monday, the Communications Authority, Kenya’s telecommunication regulator, said it did not plan to disrupt the internet.

Further protests are expected later this week, part of what demonstrators are calling “7 Days of Rage,” according to media reports.

CPJ’s queries sent via emails and text messages to the Ministry of Interior, Kenya National Police Service, and the Communications Authority on Tuesday night did not receive an immediate response.

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

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

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

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

In late March, the courts dismissed both lawsuits, but the newspapers still face defamation cases in connection with their corruption coverage.

Mergence Investment Managers filed an urgent application at the High Court in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, on February 9, for the Lesotho Tribune to delete published articles and block the publication of additional articles in a planned eight-part investigative series, according to court documents reviewed by CPJ and the publication’s owner, Phafane Nkotsi. The articles were about alleged corruption by Mergence in connection to Lesotho’s civil servants’ pension fund.

Mergence also asked the court to order the closure of Lesotho Tribune, arguing that the paper did not have the appropriate registration to operate. According to CPJ’s review of the certificate from Lesotho’s Office of the Registrar General, the newspaper’s registration is current and has been since August 10, 2021.

The court dismissed Mergence’s applications on March 22, Nkotsi said, adding that the outlet still faces a defamation lawsuit from the investment firm, filed on February 7, in which it is seeking 10 million loti (US$538,000) in relation to the investigative series, according to Nkotsi and a statement by the Lesotho chapter of the press freedom group the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA).

The suit is still pending, and a hearing has yet to be scheduled, he said.

Matshona Libalele Mlungwana, a communication officer with the Public Officers’ Defined Contribution Pension Fund, declined to comment, saying that the fund had no interest in the case against Lesotho Tribune.

CPJ could not identify contact information for Mergence’s Lesotho offices. CPJ’s phone calls to Mergence’s South African numbers to request comment went unanswered.

In a separate case, Lesotho’s former police commissioner, Holomo Molibeli, filed an urgent application on March 18 asking the High Court to shut down Lesotho Times on the grounds that the newspaper was operating without the appropriate registration license and to order the outlet to pay unstated damages for defamation, according to a report by the newspaper and court documents, reviewed by CPJ. 

Molibeli accused the newspaper of defaming him in a March 7 report about allegations that he covered up fraud at a local energy company while serving as a police commissioner. The allegations were part of filings in a separate criminal case in which two local businessmen are accused of defrauding the energy company, according to a report by Lesotho Times, which said Molibeli denied the accusations.

On March 27, the High Court dismissed the application, according to Lesotho Times owner Basildon Peta and a report by the state-owned Lesotho News Agency. The court said the defamation suit was not urgent and could be heard at an undetermined date in the future, according to Peta. 

Reached by phone, Molibeli declined to comment.

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

U.S. officials have said they believe air strikes on dozens of Iranian-linked sites in Syria and Iraq late on February 2 in retaliation for the killing of three U.S. troops in northwest Jordan were successful and warned more strikes will follow, as Baghdad expressed anger and concerns persisted of widening conflict in the region.

U.S. President Biden had warned of imminent action after a drone attack at a U.S. base in Jordan killed three U.S. service members on January 28.

Washington blamed Iran and its supply of weapons to militia groups in the region.

Reports said the U.S. strikes had hit seven locations, four in Syria and three in Iraq.

“Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement released shortly after the attacks that "our response began today," adding, "It will continue at times and places of our choosing."

“The United States does not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world. But let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: If you harm an American, we will respond,” he added.

General Yehia Rasool, a spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani accused the United States of a "violation" of Iraqi sovereignty with potentially "disastrous consequences for the security and stability of Iraq and the region."

After a previous U.S. air strike in Baghdad, Sudani asked for the 2,000 or so U.S. troops in Iraq to be withdrawn -- a sensitive bilateral topic.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the United States "did inform the Iraqi government prior to the strikes" but did not provide details. He said the attacks lasted about 30 minutes and included B-1 bombers that had flown from the United States.

Kirby said defense officials would be able to further assess the strikes' impact on February 3.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, which has extensive contacts inside Syria, said at least 18 pro-Iran fighters had been killed in a strike near Al-Mayadeen in Syria.

U.S. Central Command earlier confirmed the strikes, saying its forces "conducted air strikes in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups."

"U.S. military forces struck more than 85 targets, with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from United States," it said, adding that it had struck "command and control operations, centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces."

Syrian state media said there had been a number of casualties in several sites in Syria's desert areas along the border with Iraq.

U.S. officials have said that the deadly January 28 attack in Jordan carried the "footprints" of Tehran-sponsored Kataib Hizballah militia in Iraq and vowed to hold those responsible to account at a time and place of Washington’s choosing, most likely in Syria or Iraq.

On January 31, Kataib Hizballah extremists in Iraq announced a "suspension" of operations against U.S. forces. The group said the pause was meant to prevent "embarrassing" the Iraqi government and hinted that the drone attack had been linked to the U.S. support of Israel in the war in Gaza.

Biden has been under pressure from opposition Republicans to take a harder line against Iran following the Jordan attack, but said earlier this week that "I don't think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That's not what I'm looking for."

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said Tehran "will not start any war, but if anyone wants to bully us, they will receive a strong response."

Biden on February 2 witnessed the return to the United States of the remains of the three American soldiers killed in Jordan at a service at the Dover Air Force Base, Delaware.

The clashes between U.S. forces and Iran-backed militia have come against the background of an intense four-month military campaign in Gaza Strip against the U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist group Hamas after a Hamas attack killed at least 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians.

Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen have also waged attacks on international shipping in the region in what they call an effort to target Israeli vessels and demonstrate support for Palestinians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to his fifth round of crisis talks in the region from February 3-8, with visits reportedly planned to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and the West Bank in an effort to promote a release of hostages taken by Hamas in its brutal October 7 raids.

With reporting by AFP, CNN, BBC, and AP

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

Levy argues that the US should abandon this zombie peace diplomacy and adopt a more modest approach that limits its role to advocating the protection of Palestinian human rights for all those living beneath the current Israeli existential one-state version of ‘the river to the sea.’ Levy is persuasive in taking account of Israel’s “categorical rejection of Palestinian statehood” referencing Netanyahu pre-October 7^th defiant assertion that ‘the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.’” This aggressive approach to the endgame of the conflict falls outside the comfort zone of many liberal Zionists and is obviously distasteful to Levy.

The Levy piece was a reasonable expression of opinion largely at odds with the Biden approach but as juxtaposed to adjoining pieces by Bret Stephens and Thomas Friedman it contributed to an impression of extreme bias. The Stephens piece was so extreme, in my view, as should have made it unpublishable in any responsible media platform, and yet the NY Times gave it prominent billing on its Opinion Page. I suspect, even though ardently pro-Israeli, it would have been summarily rejected if submitted by someone unconnected with the newspaper rather than by one of its regular opinion writers. Its title accurately foretells its tone and essential message: “The Genocide Charge Against Israel is a Moral Obscenity.” Stephen’s vitriolic prose is directed at the South African initiative at the International Court of Justice, which was based on a scrupulous legal argument setting forth in a 95 page carefully crafted document supporting its application for Provisional Measures to stop the ongoing ‘genocide’ until the tribunal decides the substantive allegation on its merits. Stephens’ piece even had the audacity to normalize the dehumanizing language used by the Israeli leadership in describing the ferocity of their violence in Gaza. Stephens seems willing to endorse the position that the alleged and presumed barbarism of the Hamas attack of October 7 allowed Israel to engage in whatever violence would serve their security without being subject to legal scrutiny or UN authority. At this point Israel has killed at least 23,000 Palestinians, without counting the 7,000 missing persons thought to be buried in the rubble. This total of 30,ood fatalities of mostly innocent, long-abused civilians, is the equivalent of over 5,oo,ooo if a similar proportion of deaths were to occur in a country with a population of a size similar to that of the US, and the worst may yet to come for the Palestinians. Beyond the death toll are other severe crimes of humanity that are also features of the overall genocide: forced evacuation; induced starvation and disease; destruction of homes, hospitals, holy places, schools, and UN buildings.

In Stephens’ view this decimation of the people of Gaza is not indicative of genocide but should be viewed as the normal side-effects of a war that is a legal instance of self-defense. Given the weaponry used against sheltering civilians in sites protected under international law, what I find obscene is the heartlessness of Stephens’ gushing carte blanche vindication of Israel’s behavior coupled with the contempt he bestows on those who stand up for the protection of Palestinian rights and the repudiation of what has all the appearance of genocide as specified in the Convention.

Indeed, Stephens argues that China’s abuse of the Uyghurs or the ‘killing fields’ of Cambodia or Soviet Gulag conditions is the real stuff of genocide, and yet went unpunished, while Israel is being maliciously singled out for these delegitimating charges of genocide solely because in his warped judgment the perpetrators are Jewish. It is a shameful line of argument put forward in a slick tone of tribal superiority and legal indifference. There is much room for debate surrounding these events in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7, but to characterize South African recourse to the preeminent judicial body in the world, known for its respectful attitude toward state sovereignty as a ‘a moral obscenity’ is a further illustration of Stephen’s inciteful extremism that feeds the repressive impulses of such Israeli powerhouse lobbies as AIPAC.  It ventures beyond the pale of responsible editorial filters, sure to be present if a Palestinian author wrote, with greater justification, that Israel’s defense of its behavior before this very court amounted to ‘a moral obscenity.’ Not only would such a hypothetical article be rejected, but any future submission by such an intemperate author would probably be rejected without being read.

The third opinion piece was written by the newspaper’s chief pontificator, Thomas Friedman. It recounts part of an interview Friedman. conducted with Antony Blinken a day earlier at a public session of  the Davos World Economic Forum. Friedman was far more civil than Stephens (not a high bar), but more subtly as provocatively aligned with the Israeli narrative, and as always, self-important and pretending to write from above the fray. Friedman started his piece by contextualizing Israeli behavior sympathetically as reflective of the extreme trauma experienced by Israelis as a result of the Hamas attack, without a word of sympathetic empathy for the Palestinian outburst of resistance after 50 years of abusive occupation and 15 years of a punitive total blockade. Against this background, Blinken was portrayed as a tireless representative of the US Government doing his diplomatic best to limit the magnitude of devastation in Gaza and support the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid. In the interview Blinken declared that he was heartbroken by the tragic ordeal being experienced by the Palestinians, and yet Friedman not bring himself to question this high US official and unconditional supporter of Israel even gently as to why given these grim realities he continues to endorse the support for Israel’s military operation at the UN and through military assistance knowingly contributing to a continuation of this onslaught.

Friedman offers no reference to Blinken’s earlier extravagant official assurances of direct US combat participation if Israel so requests. Friedman failed to pose even a softball question about Blinken’s attitude toward Israel’s dehumanizing statements, tactics, or evident ethnic cleansing goals. Blinken had seemed for most of the 100+ days of Israeli violence entirely comfortable to be carrying out his role as enabler-in-chief of the Israeli ongoing genocide. Such a role entails legal accountability for serious, ongoing complicity crimes, and not the celebration of a man doing a professional duty that brought him personal grief. It is illuminating to appreciate that to slow the velocity of genocide, even if such a mitigating intention is conceded, is still genocide.

What makes this show of media bias particularly disturbing is the refusal to consider that most non-Westerners have little doubt about the true nature of Israel’s guilt in relation to the commission of this ‘crime of crimes.’ This perception has nothing to do with the fact that Israel is a Jewish state, and everything to do with the stark clarity of Israel’s formal intentions and the manifest nature of its militarist extremism that is entering its fourth month. A further damning fact is that this is the most transparent genocide in all of human history as nightly TV brings its daily occurrence before the eyes of virtually the whole world.  The horror of previous genocides, including the Holocaust, has been largely disclosed after the fact, and even then these human tragedies  were largely interpreted by way of abstraction and statistics, as well as through the grim tales told by survivors or in the form of reconstructions done long after the bloody realities by documentary films, investigative journalism, and scholarly inquiry.

My emphasis on this single day’s selection of opinion pieces is not merely to allege NY Times bias, but to raise the tricky questions of self-censorship and media independence of deference to government policy especially in the context of war/peace issues. As shocking as I found the Stephens’ rant, more shocking was the failure of the NY Times and most national media to report on the extraordinary protest activity around the country in recent weeks, including a demonstration in Washington on Martin Luther King Day of 400,000 pro-ceasefire protesters. Surely, this such an outpouring of citizen didn’t deserve to be dismissed as not newsworthy. Especially in this era where social media reinforces the post-truth ethos of right-wing politics, the future of democracy under threat, would benefit from more responsible managerial standards on the part of the most trustworthy media, and especially with regard to controversial foreign policy, more debate, and less deference to Pentagon, State Department, and White House viewpoints.

I have no intention to make the NY Times a scapegoat. Its response to the Gaza genocide is indicative of a systemic problem with media reportage. For instance, watchers of CNN deserve more independent critical voices, and less official rationalization from government spokespersons, or retired military officers and intelligence bureaucrats. It is dangerous enough to endure deep state manipulations from within the bureaucracies but to have such views infuse media integrity is to resign the country to an autocratic future.

The post Western Media Bias, Israeli Apologetics, and Ongoing Genocide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Richard Falk.

The post State of the Free Press 2024: A Discussion of Ongoing Censorship appeared first on Project Censored.

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

The latest version of the document includes four options for a paragraph that would address the future of fossil fuel use in the remaining years of this decade.

The options that remain in the draft are:

• A phaseout of fossil fuels in line with best available science;
• A phasing out of fossil fuels in line with best available science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 1.5°C pathways and the principles and provisions of the Paris agreement;
• A phaseout of unabated fossil fuels recognizing the need for a peak in their consumption in this decade and underlining the importance for the energy sector to be predominantly free of fossil fuels well ahead of 2050; and
• No text regarding changes to fossil fuel use.

Negotiators crossed out an option that would call for "an orderly and just phaseout of fossil fuels."

"There is some good stuff in there, but still too many dangerous distractions," said 350.org on social media. "We must agree [to] a fair and fast phaseout of fossil fuels and to triple renewable energies by 2030!"

The draft suggested that many policymakers remain committed to calling for a phaseout of "unabated" fossil fuel emissions—those that are not "captured" and stored underground or under the seabed before they hit they atmosphere.

As Common Dreamsreported Friday, more than 470 lobbyists representing carbon capture and storage interests and companies are in attendance at COP28—along with more than 2,400 lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry, which has openly supported CCS as a solution that would allow oil, gas, and coal giants to continue operating.

Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy Program, said world leaders must take their "historic opportunity to secure a global agreement to phase out fossil fuels in line with what the science shows is necessary to meet critical climate goals."

"It's crunch time at COP28," Cleetus told Common Dreams. "The latest draft of the Global Stocktake text includes several potential options, with varying degrees of ambition. Now, it's time to reach consensus on a final outcome that is true to the science, includes near- and long-term benchmarks, has no loopholes, and has an equitable provision of finance to drive a clean energy transition. Countries must take bold action and rise above narrow self-interest and zero-sum political games, as well as the influence of fossil fuel companies, to deliver what people around the world urgently need as climate impacts rapidly worsen."

"The time is now, and the place is Dubai, to finally address the root cause of this global crisis: fossil fuels," said Cleetus.

Oil Change International global policy manager Romain Ioualalen said the latest draft left him hopeful that the world has "never been closer to an agreement on a fossil fuel phaseout."

"What that transition will look like will be a fierce battle over the next few days," said Ioualalen. "We are alarmed about some of the options in this text that seem to carve out large loopholes for the fossil fuel industry. These will need to be opposed. The draft is also missing a clear recognition that developed countries will need to phase out faster and provide their fair share of finance, as well as a recognition that the decline of fossil fuel production must start immediately, not in the distant future."

Ghiwa Nakat, executive director of Greenpeace MENA, said the latest draft and "everything so far" at COP28 "has been just a prelude to what we really want to hear—commitment to a just and equitable phaseout of all fossil fuels by mid-century, coupled with key milestones for this critical decade."

While "alternative formulations on fossil fuel phaseout" have never "made it this far into a draft text," said Greenpeace International, "there are still no guarantees on a decision on fossil fuels, so all is in play."

Shortly after the draft was made public, letters from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) were leaked to multiple news outlets and made it even more clear that campaigners' fight for a strong final Global Stocktake is not over—but that major fossil fuel producers are growing concerned that COP28 could be a turning point for the industry.

The letters, dated December 6 and signed by OPEC secretary-general and Kuwaiti oil executive Haitham al-Ghais, were sent to members countries including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Nigeria.

Al-Ghais urged the countries to "proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy, i.e. fossil fuels, rather than emissions."

"These letters show that fossil fuel interests are starting to realize that the writing is on the wall for dirty energy," Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, toldThe Guardian. "Climate change is killing poor people around the globe and these petrostates don't want COP28 to phase out fossil fuels because it will hurt their short-term profits. It's shameful."

While the draft text "offers hope with several options for a phaseout of fossil fuels," said Cansın Leylim, associate director of global campaigns for 350.org, fossil fuel lobbyists are still "trying to block progress" at COP28.

"OPEC needs to get with the program or move out of the way of our just transition to a 100% renewable energy powered future," said Leylim. "The spotlight is now on the COP28's presidency and if they will broker a deal for a just transition or instead align themselves with the oil industry."

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

Locals were caught off guard when a junta plane began an aerial attack on Myo Thit village in Namhsan township around 10 pm. It was unexpected because there had not been any fighting beforehand, said one local, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. 

“There is no fighting in Namhsan, but the aerial bombardment was carried out while people were sleeping,” he told RFA, adding that six women and two men were injured in addition to the two killed. “People died and houses were also burned.”

The explosions damaged 23 houses in total. The bomb weighed roughly 500 pounds and killed Tar San Naw, as well as a child, when it landed on a house, according to a statement released by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army on Monday.

The junta has not released any information about this attack and calls by RFA to Shan state’s junta spokesperson Khun Thein Maung went unanswered.

Conflict in northeastern Shan state has intensified in the last two months, as an allied group of resistance armies took three major cities in Operation 1027 in late October.

Earlier that month, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army attacked several junta convoys, causing their troops to retaliate. Since Oct. 10, nearly 30,000 internally displaced people have been sheltering in makeshift tents near the China-Myanmar border in Laukkaing township. 

Since Thursday, heavy rain has made life more difficult for those forced from their homes.

After several days of rain, resources are becoming harder to find and people’s health is deteriorating, said a Laukkaing resident, who did not want to be named for security reasons. 

“They have been living in tents since before [the rain]. It is raining and they are not comfortable anymore. Most are workers from other areas, not residents,”  he told RFA. “There are many people who came to work in Laukkaing from other areas. Water also became scarce in that camp.”

Elderly people and children are also more prone to illness in the colder weather without blankets, he added. On Saturday, the camp’s water and electricity were cut off.

The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army warned Chinese citizens in Laukkaing to return to China to avoid conflict in the region. They also told civilians to stay away from military camps and not to move around the area.

All of Laukkaing’s roads and gates out of the city are blocked and locals are facing food shortages, residents also reported. Junta troops are not letting food or supplies into the city. 

After Operation 1027, battles between the military junta and the three northern allies have been continuing in eight townships, including Namhkan, Chinshwehaw, Nawnghkio, Lashio and Manton.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.

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

1. The Fight for National Independence
   

Korea was unified as a nation by the 10th century.  During the last half of the 19th century, multiple invasions by foreign powers (US, France, Britain, and Japan) forced the country to allow foreign capital to enter and operate in Korea. ^[1]

In 1905, imperial Japan subjugated Korea as its Protectorate.  In 1910, Japan proceeded to annex Korea, which it then ruled until 1945.  While Japanese capital exploited the labor and natural resources of the country, the Japanese state banned use of the Korean language and customs in an attempt at forced assimilation. ^[1]

In 1919, the Korean independence movement organized mass rallies involving some 2 million protestors demanding independence from Japan.  Japanese police and military forces crushed these protests with repressive violence causing some 7,000 fatalities. Independence leaders in exile then established the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea [PGRK] which then obtained some limited international recognition and served until 1945 as an advocacy center for the independence movement. ^[1,2]

Between 1935 and 1940, the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army [NAJUA], led by the Communist Party of China [CPC], conducted guerrilla operations against Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea.  Kim Il Sung, then a member of the CPC, obtained some distinction as an effective and popular division commander in the NAJUA.  Japanese countermeasures forced Kim’s division, by the end of 1940, to escape into Soviet territory where they were retrained by the Soviet army.  Kim then became an officer in the Soviet Red Army and was serving therein when the USSR joined the War against Japan (1945 August).  During the interim, he was not present in Korea or China.  Kim returned to Korea with Soviet forces in 1945 August. ^[3]

2. Forced Prostitution
   

During the Asia-Pacific War (1941-45), Japan forced up to 200,000 Korean women (along with many more from other occupied countries) into sexual slavery to serve Japanese soldiers. During the Korean War (1950-53), the South Korean government re-established this system of forced sexual prostitution to serve South Korean and allied soldiers, the victims being conscripted almost exclusively from the ranks of the disempowered (worker and poor peasant) classes. This system persisted into the 21st century as a for-profit industry with sexual prostitution in “camp towns” (organized and regulated by the US and South Korean military authorities) around military bases. ^[4]

3. How Korea Came to be Divided

As the Soviet Army was about to liberate Korea from 40 years of oppressive Japanese colonial rule, the US, wanting to prevent that country from falling under predominant Soviet influence, asked (1945 August 10) that Soviet forces stop at the 38th parallel so that the US would be able to occupy the southern half of the country. Hoping for a good postwar relationship, the USSR promptly agreed, with the expectation that this would be a temporary arrangement until the removal of Japanese forces and the establishment of an independent government for the whole country.  Actual liberation began on August 14 with Soviet Red Army amphibious landings in the northeast of the country.  US forces did not enter southern Korea until September 08, by which time Soviet forces would otherwise likely have occupied the entire country and disarmed all occupying Japanese forces. ^[5]

In August, popular People’s Committees affiliated with the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence [CPKI] arose throughout Korea.  This organization was led by activists in country including: Lyuh Woon-hyung, and veteran Christian nationalist Cho Man-sik.  On September 12, activists from the People’s Committees, meeting in Seoul (in US occupation zone), established the People’s Republic of Korea [PRK] to govern the country. The PRK program included:

• confiscation of lands held by Japanese and their Korean collaborators;
• distribution of that land to peasants;
• rent limits on all leased land;
• nationalization of major industries;
• guarantees for basic human rights and freedoms (speech, press, assembly, faith);
• universal adult suffrage;
• equality for women;
• labor law reforms (eight-hour day, minimum wage, prohibition of child labor, et cetera);
• good relations with US, USSR, China, and Britain; and
• opposition to foreign interference in affairs of state. ^[6]

Soviet authorities recognized the People’s Committees and PRK which then instituted progressive social reforms in the North ^[7].  Meanwhile, the US Army Military Government [USAMGIK] in the South: regarded said PRK and People’s Committees as unacceptably leftist, and suppressed them by military decree and armed force.  USAMGIK also: put rightwing former Japanese collaborators in key power positions ^[6], and persisted in repressing reform advocates ^{[7, 8]}.  Popular protests and localized rebellions followed ^[9].  By 1948 state repression in the South under USAMGIK had subjected dissidents to arbitrary detention, torture, and murder with thousands of victims ^{[7, 9]}.  The US also chose rightwing anti-Communist, Syngman Rhee, as their man to govern the country ^{[7, 10]}.

With the US and USSR deadlocked in disagreement over the content of a government for a united Korea, the US orchestrated the establishment (1948 August 15) of the Republic of Korea [ROK] with Syngman Rhee as President.  Authorities in the North responded by establishing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK] on September 09 with Kim Il-sung as Premier.  ^{[5, 11, 12]}

4. What Happened to Democracy?

In the South, Rhee’s autocratic regime brutally persecuted Communists and other dissidents with detention, torture, assassination, and mass murder.  Victims numbered in the tens of thousands.  Repressive autocratic rule persisted in the South (with one brief reprieve) until 1987 when replaced by a liberal “democratic” regime with some semblance of civil liberties.  However, government under this regime remains dominated by political parties which represent factions of a ruling capitalist class.  Consequently, its “democracy” is illusory.  ^{[13, 14]}

In the North, the People’s Committees constituted popular democratic institutions, which were already active when Soviet forces arrived.  With Soviet backing, said Committees, with widespread popular support, constituted the governing authority.  By 1946, the Soviet-backed (Communist) Workers’ Party had begun to dominate the Committees and the governing administration.  Following the Korean War, Workers’ Party leader Kim Il Sung: purged other leading Communists (1952-62), replaced proletarian internationalism with Korean nationalism in Party doctrine, promoted a personality cult around himself, and created a hereditary dynastic autocracy, practices incompatible with Marxism and socialist participatory democracy. Thusly, the DPRK devolved into a dynastic bureaucratic welfare state, not capitalist, but also not actually socialist. ^{[5, 11, 15]}

5. The War on Korea

Both Korean governments claimed the right to govern the entire country and had made preparations to enforce said claim thru military force.  From 1949, there were border skirmishes, nearly all which began as incursions and/or artillery bombardments from the South into the North.  In 1950 June, following a 2-day ROK cross-border bombardment and seizure of northern territory (including the city of Haeju) in the Ongjin area, the DPRK responded with a full-scale invasion of the South.  The unpopular ROK regime collapsed, and DPRK forces quickly gained control of most of the South. ^{[16, 10]}

During its brief control in the South, the DPRK instituted progressive reforms (nationalization of industry, land reform, and restoration of the People’s Committees). According to US General William F Dean, “the civilian attitude seemed to vary between enthusiasm and passive acceptance”. ^[17]

The US, its allies, and their major news media, falsely characterized: the event as an unprovoked Communist aggression, the repressive ROK as a popular democracy, and the conflict as an international crisis (belying its reality as a civil war). The US, taking advantage of USSR boycott of United Nations [UN] meetings, induced said UN to authorize a US-led military intervention to save the ROK.  Thusly, the US transformed the hitherto relatively-bloodless Korean civil conflict into the horrendous Korean War. Moreover, the US, by threatening to invade China and by bombing China’s territory and threatening hydropower stations serving its proximate industries, provoked China to enter the conflict on the side of the DPRK. ^[10]

Toll. The War took the lives of an estimated 3 million people, including some 1.6 million civilians, many of them as a consequence of indiscriminate US aerial bombing and war crimes perpetrated by US and allied forces.  Said crimes included:

• massive US use of chemical weapons (especially napalm) in violation of the 1925 Geneva Convention;
• massive US use of bombing attacks upon civilian targets (cities and villages);
• deliberate destruction of crops and of food production infrastructure;
• massacres of many thousands of unarmed civilians by US armed forces under orders from high-ranking commanders at No Gun Ri and at many other locations (where US Army soldiers gunned down large crowds of civilians, or US airpower strafed and/or bombed them); and
• massacres of at least 100,000 Koreans by ROK police and army (as at Sancheong and Hamyang where ROK forces slaughtered 705 mostly women and children), at Koch’ang (where 719 persons of both sexes and all ages were mowed down by machine gun), and thru mass executions of rounded-up prisoners on mere suspicion that they might be unsympathetic to the repressive ROK regime.

Nearly all of the North and much of the South were reduced to rubble.  ^{[18, 10, 19]}

Armistice signed in 1953 July left a hostile and uneasy truce with little net change in the control of territory, but no peace agreement.  This condition persists to the present time.  Moreover, foreign troops have not been stationed in the North since 1958, but US armed forces (in the tens of thousands) have never yet left the South.  ^[20]

6. Who First Introduced Nuclear Weapons?

The US deployed nuclear weapons in south Korea (in violation of the Armistice Agreement) from 1958 until 1991 (when it apparently decided that its interests would be better served with a prohibition of nuclear weapons in Korea).  Moreover, US warships carrying nuclear weapons operate routinely in waters around Korea.  ^[21]

With the (1991) collapse of its protective USSR ally and with continued hostility from the US and ROK, the DPRK (in 1993) announced its intent to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and stepped up its efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability as a deterrent.  The DPRK suspended that withdrawal under the 1994 Agreed Framework whereby it agreed to remain in the NPT and to be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] in return for:

• light water nuclear power reactors to replace existing graphite nuclear power reactors (which were capable of easily producing weapons-grade plutonium),
• fuel oil deliveries to replace the power from shut down of the graphite reactors (until the light water reactors came on line),
• relief from sanctions,
• an end to threatening US-ROK military exercises, and
• movement toward normal diplomatic and economic relations.

It is now widely suspected that the US embraced the Agreed Framework on the assumption that the DPRK regime was on the verge of collapse which would mean no need for the US to fulfill its commitments.  ^{[22, 23]}

The US did default on the agreement thru long delays in construction of the light water reactors which was years behind the targeted 2003 completion date.  Then in 2002 the US further defaulted by ending delivery of promised fuel oil shipments.  Further, the US falsely accused the DPRK of having confessed violation of the Agreed Framework by misinterpreting the DPRK’s assertion of having an inherent right to possess nuclear weapons as an admission of actual possession of such weapons.  Finally, US President Bush: branded North Korea together with Iran and Iraq as an “axis of evil”; and then invaded Iraq where the US imposed regime change (followed by show trials and executions of deposed Iraqi leaders).  The DPRK responded (in 2003) to the US default and intensified hostility by reactivating its nuclear reactors and by quitting the NPT.  However, it offered to end its nuclear weapons program in return for security guarantees, but the US was unwilling to provide.  ^{[22, 23]}

Repeated talks (2003-07) between the two sides failed to produce any lasting agreement.  The Obama administration ratcheted up the threatening military exercises and ignored DPRK calls for talks to make peace.  The DPRK has made six nuclear bomb tests (in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016 January, 2016 September, 2017); and it has also developed an intercontinental ballistic missile [ICBM] capability.  ^{[20, 24]}

The US, in 2017, deployed its THAAD anti-missile system in south Korea thereby further destabilizing the confrontation and also provoking alarm in China ^[25].

7. The Current Danger
   

In 2011, the US and its allies used military force to oust the Gaddafi regime in Libya (after having used military force to effect regime change in Iraq in 2003).  Both Iraq and Libya had given up their nuclear-weapons and other WMD programs.  The DPRK drew the inevitable conclusion that it needed a nuclear weapons deterrent to protect itself against a similar event.

The US (with its imperial interventionist bi-partisan foreign policy consensus, arrogating to the US the “right” to use subversion, economic siege, military force, and any other available instrument in order to enforce its dictates against any country which insists upon following an insubordinate course) continues its hostility toward the DPRK.  Under Biden, it persists in its aggressions against said DPRK: vilification, economic siege, annually conducting threatening US-ROK joint military exercises in the South (to which the DPRK responds by test-firing its missiles).  The US refuses to discuss making a peace treaty or normalization of relations; it persists in its unwavering goal of regime change.  In fact, the US has used its economic power to intensify international sanctions (economic siege) against the DPRK.  Meanwhile, the obsequious (and/or negligently ignorant) mainstream news media misleads the public as to the realities of the confrontation; while the liberal left, if it responds at all, ignores US provocations and, tacitly or explicitly, accepts the mischaracterization of the DPRK as an aggressive “rogue” state.

Astute experts, including former US President Carter, have recognized that the current US policy, of attempting to coerce the DPRK to give up its nuclear deterrent while refusing to provide security guarantees, cannot succeed ^[4].  As long as the threat remains, the DPRK, regardless of who leads its government, will certainly not agree to give up the nuclear weapons deterrent which is its best insurance against military attack by an imperial US superpower bent upon regime-change.  The way to ensure peace in the Korean peninsula is to remove the sanctions and other hostile measures against the DPRK including the provocative joint military exercises with the ROK.

The DPRK does not want war.  It wants a peace treaty to finally end the Korean War.  Its officials have asserted that it also wants Korea reunified under a federal system wherein the central government’s functions would be limited to national defense and foreign relations.  Finally, the DPRK wants normal relations with the US and its neighbors; and, with that, it would, as it has repeatedly asserted, envision and welcome an end to hostile actions on both sides.  ^{[20, 22]}

US government policy has never prioritized the welfare of the Korean people, North or South.  Imperial hostility and pressure for regime change from outside forces, namely the US and its allies, has driven the DPRK regime to react with intensified repression of dissent.  That then has operated to reinforce the bureaucratic rule and dynastic autocracy, which (along with economic siege and need to heavily invest limited resources in military deterrent) are contrary to the best interests of the people of the DPRK.  Moreover, this US policy seriously threatens a catastrophic war which would devastate Korea and cause massive loss of life, South as well as North.  The principal beneficiaries of this policy are: the munitions vendors; their supportive imperial-minded US politicians of both major parties (whose election campaigns are significantly funded by said munitions vendors); government officials (who will subsequently become corporate executives or lobbyists for the merchants of death) ^[26]; and the “experts” in policy institutes and academia (who make their careers as apologists for Western imperialism).

ENDNOTES

[1] Wikipedia: History of Korea (2023 Oct 17) ~ §§ Later Three Kingdoms, Foreign relationships, Korean Empire (1898-1910), Japanese rule (1910-1945).

[2] Wikipedia: Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (2023 Oct 26) ~ §§ introduction, Foreign relations.

[3] Wikipedia: Kim Il Sung (2023 Nov 02) ~ §§ Communist and guerrilla activities, Return to Korea.

[4] Hynesᵒ H Patricia: The Korean War: Forgotten, Unknown and Unfinished (Truthout, 2013 Jul 12) @ https://truthout.org/articles/the-korean-war-forgotten-unknown-and-unfinished/ .

[5] Wikipedia: History of North Korea (2023 Sep 05) ~ § Division of Korea (1945—1950).

[6] Wikipedia: People’s Republic of Korea (2023 Oct 30).

[7] Cummingsᵒ Bruce: Korea’s Place in the Sun (© 2005, W. W. Norton & Company, New York & London) ~ pp 185—209 ISBN 0-393-31681-5.

[8] Wikipedia: United States Army Military Government in Korea (2023 Oct 20).

[9] Wikipedia: Autumn Uprising of 1946 (2023 Oct 18).

[10] Blum⸰ William: Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (© 2004, Common Courage Press) ~ chapter 5 ISBN 1-56751-252-6.  Note: 1st half, thru chapter 34, of 2003 edition is online @ http://aaargh.vho.org/fran/livres8/BLUMkillinghope.pdf .

[11] Wikipedia: History of North Korea (2023 Sep 05) ~ § Establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

[12] Cummingsᵒ: ~ pp 209—17.

[13] Cummingsᵒ: ~ pp 217—24.

[14] Wikipedia: History of South Korea (2023 Nov 02) ~ §§ First Republic (1948—1960) thru Fifth Republic (1979—1987).

[15] Wikipedia: Workers’ Party of Korea (2023 Oct 27) ~ § History.

[16] Cummingsᵒ: ~ pp 247—264.

[17] Wikipedia: History of North Korea (2023 Sep 05) ~ § Korean War (1950—1953).

[18] Wikipedia: Korean War (2023 Nov 09) ~ § Casualties.

[19] Wikipedia: Geochang massacre (2023 Sep 07); Sancheong-Hamyang massacre (2023 Jun 04); No Gun Ri massacre (2023 Sep 22).

[20] Wikipedia: Korean Armistice Agreement (2023 Jul 27).

[21] Wikipedia: South Korea and weapons of mass destruction (2023 Oct 25) ~ § American nuclear weapons in South Korea.

[22] Sigalᵒ Leon V: Bad History (38North, 2017 Aug 22) @ http://www.38north.org/2017/08/lsigal082217/ .

[23] Wikipedia: “Agreed Framework,” 21 May 2023.

[24] BBC: North Korea: What missiles does it have? (2023 Sep 03) @ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41174689 .

[25] Borowiecᵒ Steven: THAAD missile system agitates South Korea-China ties (Nikkei Asia, 2023 Jun 22) @ https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/THAAD-missile-system-agitates-South-Korea-China-ties .

[26] Kuzmarov, Jeremy, “Senate Report: Nearly 700 Former High-Ranking Pentagon and Other Government Officials Now Work at the Top 20 Defense Contractors,” Covert Action Magazine, 2023 May 12 .

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Charles Pierce.

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

For three weeks, President Biden has played a key role in backing Israel’s war crimes while touting himself as a compassionate advocate of restraint. That pretense is lethal nonsense as Israel persists with mass killing of civilians in Gaza.

The same crucial standards that fully condemned Hamas’s murders of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7 should apply to Israel’s ongoing murders that have already taken the lives of at least several times as many Palestinian civilians. And Israel is just getting started.

“We need an immediate ceasefire,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote in an email Saturday evening, “but the White House and Congress continue to unconditionally support the Israeli government’s genocidal actions.”

That unconditional support makes Biden and the vast majority of Congress directly complicit with mass murder and genocide, defined as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” The definition clearly fits the words and deeds of Israel’s leaders.

“Israel has dropped approximately 12,000 tons of explosives on Gaza so far and has reportedly killed multiple senior Hamas commanders, but the majority of the casualties have been women and children,” Time magazine summed up at the end of last week. Israel’s military has been shamelessly slaughtering civilians in homes, stores, markets, mosques, refugee camps and healthcare facilities. Imagine what can be expected now that communications between Gaza and the outside world are even less possible.

For reporters, being on the ground in Gaza is very dangerous; Israel’s assault has already killed at least 29 journalists. For the Israeli government, the fewer journalists alive in Gaza the better; media reliance on Israeli handouts, news conferences and interviews is ideal.

Pro-Israel frames of reference and word choices are routine in U.S. mainstream media. Yet some exceptional reporting has shed light on the merciless cruelty of Israel’s actions in Gaza, where 2.2 million people live.

For example, on Oct. 28, PBS News Weekend provided a human reality check as Israel began a ground assault while stepping up its bombing of Gaza. “As Israeli ground operations intensified there, suddenly the phone and internet signal went out,” correspondent Leila Molana-Allen reported. “So, people in Gaza, voiceless through the night as they were under these intense bombardments. People were unable to call ambulances, and we’ve heard this morning that ambulance drivers were standing at high points throughout, trying to see where the explosions were, so they could just drive directly there. People unable to communicate with their families to see if they’re alright. People this morning saying ‘we’ve been digging children out of the rubble with our bare hands because we can’t call for help.’”

While people in Gaza “are under some of the most intense bombardment we’ve ever seen,” Molana-Allen added, they have no safe place to go: “Even though they’re still being told to move to the south, in fact most people can’t get to the south because they have no fuel for their cars, they can’t travel, and even in the south bombardment continues.”

Meanwhile, Biden has continued to publicly express his unequivocal support for what Israel is doing. After he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, the White House issued a statement without the slightest mention of concern about what Israel’s bombing was inflicting on civilians. Instead, the statement said, “the President reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism and to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law.”

Biden’s support for continuing the carnage in Gaza is matched by Congress. As Israel began its fourth week of terrorizing and killing, only 18 members of the House were on the list of lawmakers cosponsoring H.Res. 786, “Calling for an immediate de-escalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.” All of those 18 cosponsors are people of color.

While Israel kills large numbers of Palestinian civilians each day — and clearly intends to kill many thousands more — we can see “progressive” masks falling away from numerous members of Congress who remain cravenly frozen in political conformity.

“In a dark time,” poet Theodore Roethke wrote, “the eye begins to see.”

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Norman Solomon.

Martin Griffiths’ strong appeal comes as more than a million people have been uprooted from northern to southern Gaza since the Israeli military warned of an imminent offensive, prompted by Palestinian military group Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, the veteran humanitarian expresses hope for his upcoming diplomatic mission to the Middle East, beginning with Cairo on Tuesday. 

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

Martin Griffiths’ strong appeal comes as more than a million people have been uprooted from northern to southern Gaza since the Israeli military warned of an imminent offensive, prompted by Palestinian military group Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.

In an interview with UN News’s Daniel Johnson, the veteran humanitarian expresses hope for his upcoming diplomatic mission to the Middle East, beginning with Cairo on Tuesday. 

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

The post Israel’s Policy of Ongoing Torture appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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

The post The Untold History of the Start of the Nuclear Arms Race with Dave Lindorff; & Ongoing Attacks on Freedom of the Press Must Stop appeared first on Project Censored.

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

Episodes of several shows that were canceled but their archive retained on Radio Television Hong Kong's Podcast One website have now disappeared entirely, a survey of the site on Wednesday revealed.

The move has been likened to – and is possibly coordinated with – the removal of "politically sensitive" books and other content from Hong Kong's public libraries for fear of running afoul of the law, which bans public criticism of the authorities, according to an industry insider.

The deleted content includes the whole of the 30-year-old satirical news show "Headliner," axed in May 2020 after being criticized by top police officers for poking fun at their denials of violence against pro-democracy protesters during the 2019 protest movement.

A keyword search for the show, which prompted the government's Communications Authority to warn RTHK for "denigrating and insulting" the police, on the Podcast One website turned up the response "No results."

Similar results appeared after a search for "City Forum," a former live show that featured voices from across the political spectrum debating current affairs and ran for more than four decades until 2021.

Selected episodes of other shows dealing with topics viewed as "sensitive" by the ruling Chinese Communist Party -- including the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, police violence, the political cartoonist Zunzi and the national security law itself -- had also been removed from the platform.

'Political pressure'

Last month, the Chinese-language Ming Pao newspaper axed Zunzi's satirical cartoon after what he described as "political pressure'."

According to an in-depth investigation of the Podcast One site by independent Cantonese news site The Collective, several other shows have been removed from the site entirely in recent months, including "Left, Right, Red, Blue, Green," "Police Report" and "This Week."

Talk-show host Tsang Chi Ho, who anchored the last-ever episode of "Headline News," said all trace of the show now appears to have been removed from the public domain, and said it was similar to the recent purge of pro-democracy content from Hong Kong's public libraries.

"Now, future generations will think that there wasn't any satire in the media, if they don't know everything that happened in the past 10 or 20 years," Tsang said. "It's a similar effect to removing books from public libraries in Hong Kong."

"Even if the general public can hold onto their copies of these banned books, and are able to read them, they are denied as a part of official history," he said. "I think this will lead to historical errors."

"Only people on the inside know who is giving these orders, and which content is being selected [for deletion]," she said. "But these orders don't need to come down [the chain] -- everyone in middle-management knows what the criteria are, and they are interpreting them in the safest way possible."

"It seems that everyone knows they can't [interview] anyone from the 'yellow camp' -- pro-democracy supporters -- or anyone whose speech is fairly outspoken, free and straightforward," she said.

Government control

The government took steps in March 2021 to strengthen editorial control over its official broadcaster, bringing in career bureaucrat Patrick Li and reforming its editorial structure to "ensure it complies" with government directives.

The move, which came after repeated criticism of RTHK from senior figures including police commissioner Chris Tang, was lambasted by journalists as a further attack on press freedom in the city. The government then ordered the station to rebroadcast more "patriotic" content produced by the ruling Chinese Communist Party-backed China Media Group, to build "a sense of Chinese identity" among listeners.

Mary described Patrick Li's appointment as a turning point for the broadcaster.

"It's pretty clear what's allowed now ... He's been in office for [two years] and everyone knows where the lines are drawn," she said. "It's not just a question of who the director is -- it's the overall atmosphere and various external events like what happened to Zunzi, which means everyone would understand that he is a target for deletion."

She described the deletion of content as an "erasure" that would leave the public with a blank slate when it came to understanding their city’s recent history.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Paul Eckert.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gigi Lee for RFA Cantonese.

The post Ecuador’s “Democratic Backsliding” Has Been Ongoing Since 2017, With US support appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Joe Emersberger.

Palestinians across the globe are marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), when some 700,000 Palestinians fled from or were violently expelled from their homes upon Israel’s founding in 1948. The occasion comes as five days of fighting, that killed 33 Palestinians in Gaza and two people in Israel, was brought to a stop this weekend after the Israeli army and the militant group Islamic Jihad agreed to a Egyptian-brokered ceasefire. Today the United Nations is holding its first-ever high-level special meeting to commemorate the Nakba. We host a roundtable discussion with Munir Nuseibah, a human rights lawyer and director of Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic in Jerusalem; Saleh Hijazi, a member of the Palestinian Boycott National Committee; and Peter Beinart, editor-at-large for Jewish Currents.

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

A day after Israeli bombs ripped through residential buildings in the Gaza Strip, Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution calling on Congress to recognize “the ongoing Nakba and Palestinian refugees rights.” Tlaib’s resolution comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is widely used to describe the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes through violent raids in 1948.

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

Temperature records were shattered across Southeast Asia this past weekend as tens of millions of people throughout the region continue to endure a weekslong heatwave intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.

All-time highs were recorded Saturday in Vietnam and Laos. The mercury hit 44.2°C (111.6°F) in Vietnam's northern district of Tuong Duong, marking the country's hottest temperature on record, according to climatologist and weather historian Maximiliano Herrera.

"This is a worrying record in the context of climate change and global warming," environmental scientist Nguyen Ngoc Huy said from the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. "I believe this record will be repeated many times. It confirms that extreme climate models are being proven to be true."

In neighboring Laos, the temperature reached 43.5°C (110.3°F) in the city of Luang Prabang, surpassing the national record of 42.7°C (108.9°F) set less than a month ago, Herrera noted. The Laotian capital of Vientiane broke its all-time high as well with a temperature of 42.5°C (108.5°F).

Thailand's capital of Bangkok, where Herrera is based, also saw its hottest temperature on record this weekend, hitting 41°C (105.8°F) on Sunday, one day after establishing a short-lived high of 40.5°C (104.9°F). Heat in the city has been exacerbated by smog from forest fires and crop burning.

"Seven weeks with records smashed... make this the most extreme... and longest tropical record heat event the world has experienced."

Much of Thailand has "suffered under temperatures in the upper 30s to low 40s Celsius since late March," CNN reported Monday. "In mid-April, the northwest city of Tak became the first place in the country to top 45°C (113°F)."

Thailand is not unique in this regard, as dangerously high temperatures have been witnessed throughout Asia this spring.

"April and May are typically the hottest months of the year for South and Southeast Asia as temperatures rise before annual monsoon rains bring some relief," CNN noted. "Temperatures across the region are expected to return closer to average in the coming days, but unprecedented heat events are becoming more common as the climate crisis intensifies."

Alluding to Asia's ongoing heatwave, Herrera tweeted Sunday that "seven weeks with records smashed nearly [on a] daily basis in hundreds of stations in an area of millions of square kilometers (initially from Eastern India to Japan, now in a smaller area) make this the most extreme... and longest tropical record heat event the world has experienced."

The duration and severity of the current heatwave lend further credence to climate scientists' warnings about how life-threatening extreme weather will worsen in the absence of sharp reductions in greenhouse gas pollution.

According to the World Meteorological Organization, mean global temperature has increased by roughly 1.2°C above preindustrial levels to date. The return of El Niño conditions in 2023 is expected to amplify global warming this year.

Last month, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told officials from wealthy countries that existing policies "would make our world 2.8°C hotter by the end of the century."

"This is a death sentence," said Guterres.

"Heatwaves in the past few decades have already been extremely deadly and there is serious cause for concern in the future."

Echoing what he said in March when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its latest comprehensive assessment, Guterres stressed that "it is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. But only if the world takes a quantum leap in climate action. And that depends on you."

"The science is clear: New fossil fuel projects are entirely incompatible with 1.5°C," the U.N. chief added. "Yet many countries are expanding capacity."

The IPCC has warned that heatwaves and other extreme weather disasters will become more common and severe with each additional fraction of a degree of global warming.

One 2022 study determined that "dangerous heatwaves, at temperatures of 39.4°C (103°F) and above, will occur between three and 10 times more often by the turn of the century," CNN reported Monday. "In the tropics, which encompasses much of Asia, the study found that days of 'extremely dangerous heat'—defined as 51°C (124°F)—could double, putting the population of impacted countries at risk."

“By definition, we don't know what could happen if large populations are exposed to unprecedented heat and humidity stress," the study's lead author, Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, told the outlet last month. "But heatwaves in the past few decades have already been extremely deadly and there is serious cause for concern in the future."

The U.N. warned last year that without transformative change, extreme heat is projected to kill as many people by the end of the century as all cancers and infectious diseases combined, with disproportionate impacts on people in impoverished nations. By midcentury, more than 2 billion children could be endangered by frequent heatwaves.

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

Photograph Source: US Central Intelligence Agency – Public Domain

Currently, much of the world is focused on the Russian war with Ukraine, and occasionally notices the unprecedented civil unrest roiling the apartheid state of Israel. Talk of suffering in Ukraine and the threat to the only ‘democracy’ (which Israel is not and never has been) in the Middle East seems to emanate from the airwaves of most of the major, corporate-owned and operated media outlets that determine what is and isn’t ‘news’.

Overlooked is the unfolding, ongoing horror being experienced by the people of Kashmir.

In August of 2019, India changed its constitution, revoked the limited autonomy it had granted Kashmir, declared the country an ‘integral’ part of India, and began a savage repression that continues to this day. This is not to imply that India treated Kashmir and Kashmiris with any sense of justice prior to that date; no, the repression that intensified then was just an extension of the suffering under which the Kashmiris had long lived.

As the government of India continues its violations of human rights and international law on a daily basis, among its efforts is the complete suppression of the work of journalists and human rights activists.

A few examples will suffice.

Ifran Mehraj, a Srinagar-based journalist who has worked in a research capacity for the Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), was summoned for questioning and then arrested by India’s so-called counter-terrorism task force, The National Investigation Agency (NIA). His was a voice that India could not allow to be heard: he as written for such publications as Al Jazeera, The Indian Express, TRT World, Himal Southasian, among others. Criticism of India’s brutal oppression of the Kashmiri people must not be allowed to see the light of day.

One of his ‘crimes’, apparently, at least according to an NIA press release following his arrest, is that he is an associate of Khurram Parvez, the JKCCS Program Coordinator who has been incarcerated by India since November, 2021. It is unimportant to the Indian government that Khurram Parvez is an internationally-known human rights defenders, who has been honored several times with international awards for his work. It seems, sadly, that this is also unimportant to most of the Western press.

JKCCS itself is a target of the NIA, which has stated the following: “JKCCS was funding terror activities in the valley and had also been in the propagation of a secessionist agenda in the Valley under the garb of protection of human rights”.

The ‘terror activities’ mentioned seem to fall under this broad umbrella, also written by the NIA: “…these NGOs, Trusts and Societies and their members, by words and written means, publish anti-national and incriminating material to bring into hatred, contempt and disaffection towards the Government of India.”

These statements are worth looking at in some depth.

The JKCSS is accused of ‘the propagation of a secessionist agenda in the Valley’. International law, most specifically United Nations Resolution 47, states “…that the question of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan should be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite….” Demanding adherence to international law cannot be seen as forwarding a ‘successionist agenda’. Kashmir is not part of India, so it cannot ‘secede’ from it.

The NIA also mentioned that the JKCCS was doing its ‘nefarious’ deeds under the ‘garb of protection of human rights’.  Let us look at a statement from the Kashmir Scholars Consultative Action Network:

“The already dire humanitarian and human rights situation in IAK (Indian-Administered Kashmir) has substantially deteriorated since August 5, 2019 when Indian authorities illegally dismantled guarantees protecting the territorial and cultural integrity of IAK and its people’s rights to their land, educational access and local employment.  Indian authorities have imposed a barrage of new, violative laws and policies on IAK predicated on earlier illegalitiescondemned by the UN Security Council. By delivering on the decades-old declared policy goals of militant, ethnonationalist Hindu supremacists, the Indian government has achieved the disintegration of IAK; the economic and social disempowerment of its Muslim population; and the near-total domination of Muslims of IAK via expropriation of land, destruction of common and private property, various forms of illegal and invasive surveillance, extraction of resources, ecological destruction, and the rapid expansion of forced and illegal demographic change in favor of non-local Hindus. (Indian authorities’ repression has targeted the majority Kashmiri Muslim population which has most vocally stood for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of IAK.”

It would seem that the ‘garb of protection of human rights’ is, in fact, a dedicated effort to support the human rights of the Kashmiri people that are being violated in the most unspeakable ways by the Indian government.

The NIA’s statement that various NGOs are attempting to disgrace the government of India is simply a lie; the government itself, by its brutal violations of human rights and international law, is bringing ‘hatred, contempt and disaffection towards the government of India’. Its effort to prevent NGOs and journalists from exposing these crimes does not remove the responsibility for them from the Indian government.

Ifran Mehraj, mentioned above, is just the latest in a long line of journalists who have been jailed or killed for exposing India’s crimes. Fahad Shah, the editor of The Kashmir Walla, recently completed one year of his jail sentence, for the ‘crime’ of reporting on a deadly Indian police raid in Jammu and Kashmir.

Another Kashmiri journalist, Aasif Sultan, has now been incarcerated for over four years. He has been charged with a variety of crimes, ranging from harbouring militants, to murder, all of which he denies and for which there is scant evidence. However, in July of 2018, he wrote an article for the Kashmir Narrator, of which he is the editor, discussing the assassination of Burhan Wani, a Kashmiri rebel commander who was killed in 2016 by Indian forces, when he was only 22. This story, highly critical of Indian actions, is the actual reason Aasif Sultan is in prison.

Journalism student Sajad Gul, a trainee reporter for The Kashmir Walla, has now been incarcerated for over two years. His ‘crime’ was posting a video of a woman protesting the killing of a Kashmiri activist.

These and many other activists and journalist have been detained under the infamous Public Safey Act. This act initially allowed for detention for up to two years without any charges being made, let alone a trial. This was eventually changed, with the length of detention without charge or trial being reduced to one year, but in most cases, when a prisoner is released after one year, he or she is immediately arrested on a different spurious charge as soon as leaving the police station.

India is trying to suppress the voices of those fighting the oppression of the people of Kashmir. The efforts of the journalists, human-rights activists and others who stand for peace, justice and international law must not be in vain. These brave individuals must have international support as they oppose crimes against humanity which are being perpetrated by India on a daily basis. As their voices are silenced, we must raise ours on their behalf.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Fantina.

The post Media Matters: Polarization and Propaganda; and Medicare and Ongoing Privatization of Healthcare in the US appeared first on Project Censored.

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

We look at U.S. policy toward Cuba as U.S. and Cuban officials met Wednesday to discuss migration from the island. This January, the U.S. Embassy in Havana began processing immigrant visas for the first time in more than five years in an attempt to control the extent of undocumented migration from the island. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to face pressure to lift the embargo that has severely limited trade and more with Cuba for decades. We speak with Liz Oliva Fernández, award-winning Cuban journalist with the independent Cuba-based media organization Belly of the Beast who is in the U.S. to report on the economic and political interests driving Cuba policy under President Biden.

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

Tomorrow—March 11, 2023—twelve years will have passed since the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor complex, a meltdown due to a massive, but not surprising, tsunami. Not surprising due to Japan's location in what is known to geologists as "the ring of fire," a powerful designation of the area around the Pacific Ocean where seismic activity is endemic. The Pacific shoreline of Japan is a very poor spot to build numerous nuclear reactors for that very reason.

And yet, after closing all reactors in response to Fukushima, the government has reopened some shuttered nukes, and plans to open still more. In spite of all the seismic risks, the huge radiation exposure from the initial Fukushima meltdown, and in spite of the terrible nuclear toll the country paid due to the US bombing at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The government says they want to stop using gas and oil from Russia. If the Japanese government wants to do this, renewables are getting more affordable, better at their jobs, and more vital to the health of the flora and fauna on earth every day- and in fact, Japan has a huge, untouched capacity for offshore wind.

In the initial meltdown caused by lack of coolant and electricity during the tsunami in 2011, reactor cores—the part of the plant that actually houses the power production—released large plumes of radioactivity into the air. The area was evacuated, and some citizens have never returned home. The only way to prevent a release of toxic elements from the destroyed reactor cores is a constant coolant bath. Water is dumped onto the cores, becomes highly radioactive, and then must be isolated from the world. This has resulted in the huge water problem that exists today.

Radioactive water is the main waste issue right now. There is so much of it in tanks covering every square inch of the reactor site. The water is partially filtered by a system with the acronym ALPS. It is designed to remove the most toxic elements from the water: strontium, cesium, plutonium, and more. These most toxic products of nuclear reaction are currently accumulating in the form of truly horrific sludge. And still, nobody is suggesting a permanent solution.

In addition, the system was not designed to remove heavy water, known as tritium, and also leaves small amounts of radionucleides in the water. TEPCO, the company that owns the reactors, and the Japanese government are trying to convince the world that tritium-laced water is just fine and that millions and millions of gallons of tritiated water being dumped into the Pacific Ocean would be no problem.

Tritium is a form of water with an extra hydrogen atom—the dangers are very much in dispute. The nuclear industry and the Japanese government want to project a completely safe image of this radioactive element that is almost never found in nature. However, there are scientists who have linked high exposure to tritium to cancer risks.

The victims of the United States open-air nuclear testing—the islands in the Pacific such as the Marshall Islands from 1946-1958—are not pleased about the tritium-laced water that will be contaminating their fishing grounds if this huge, multi-year release is allowed to happen. The radioactive load from the testing is still so great that some of these islands have never been reinhabited. South Korea, North Korea, and China have expressed concern. Japanese fishers from the area around Fukushima have pleaded with the government to store this stuff, and not dump it into the Pacific, but Japan seems determined to dispose of this contaminated water. They are exclusively using the word "treated," not radioactive, for the water.

At a time when the United States is again throwing huge sums of money at the nuclear industry—to the tune of $6 billion to rehabilitate old reactors, many of which are the same model as those that failed so badly in Japan—we need to remember that the timeline for decommissioning Fukushima—stopping the nuclear chain reaction in the damaged reactor cores—remains 30-40 years, as it was the year after the meltdowns. This sounds an awful lot like: we don't know what the hell we can do to stop this.

The nuclear industry has posited itself as an answer to climate change. And it is true that nuclear power is not coal. Those who prefer corporate control of our energy system, instead of the small-scale wind, solar, and other alternatives that we can install and use to generate our home power, will continue to promote nukes.

When we are in a time of political instability, when threats to reactors like we have witnessed in Ukraine are very real, it is time to decommission and isolate the reactors and the poisons that have already been created. If there is a system collapse, who will maintain the nuclear reactors around the world?

Please, anyone who believes that nuclear is the answer to climate destruction, think of Fukushima.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Nancy Braus.

Notes:
Steve Macek is Professor of Communications and Media Studies at North Central College in Illinois,
and is co-coordinator of Project Censored’s Campus Affiliates Program. Shealeigh Voitl is Project Censored’s Editorial Assistant, a co-author of the “Déjà vu News” chapter in Project Censored’s annual media-review volume, and a journalism graduate of North Central College in Illinois. Andy Lee Roth is Associate Director of Project Censored, co-editor of the Project’s annual media-review volume, and co-coordinator of the Project’s Campus Affiliates Program. He has published widely on media issues. The Roth/Macek article about the Texas lawsuit can be found here.

Music-break information:
1)”Water Song” by Hot Tuna
2) “Ride Across the River” by Dire Straits
3) “Money” by Pink Floyd

the Project Censored Show:
Hosts: Mickey Huff & Eleanor Goldfield
Producers: Anthony Fest & Eleanor Goldfield

The post Censored Déjà Vu: Corporate Media’s Ongoing Failure to Cover Key Issues around Food Safety, Birthing, and Breastfeeding & Dark Money’s Pernicious Influence on Political Culture appeared first on Project Censored.

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

As Iranians both inside Iran and in the diaspora organize against the Islamic Republic, a bipartisan collection of over 160 members of the U.S. Congress this week put forward a resolution endorsing an exiled opposition group with a past of hard-line militancy that has been credibly accused of cult-like behavior.

On Thursday, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., held a congressional briefing to introduce House Resolution 100, with the expressed aim of lending support to Iranians protesting for “a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran.” The introductory speaker at the session was Maryam Rajavi, the head of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian exile group previously listed as a terrorist organization that has been accused of brainwashing and sexual abuse of its members.

“It is no exaggeration to say that perhaps nothing unites Iranians of today than opposition to the MEK and their agenda.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

"At nine o'clock at night on January 9, 2023, we recorded 17 deaths in Juliaca, and one further death due to events related to the road blockade in Chucuito, Puno. The total number dead since the coup is now at 46," Defensoría del Pueblo, the national ombudsman's office, said on Twitter. In addition to the deaths, at least 500 protesters have been injured, according to officials.

Local media report one Peruvian National Police officer, identified as Sonco Quispe José Luis, was burned to death in his patrol vehicle during a protest, and two pistols and a rifle were stolen from his car.

Puno Gov. Richard Hancco Soncco on Tuesday declared three days of official mourning in honor of those killed in Juliaca, while rejecting "any act of violence and the exaggerated use of public force by the Peruvian National Police and the Peruvian Armed Forces."

The killings happened on the seventh day of a national strike. Protesters—who Anahí Durand, Castillo's minister for women and vulnerable populations, said are "the excluded, marginalized, informal, rural, and Indigenous"—are demanding Boluarte's resignation, the closure of Congress, immediate elections, and a new constitution.

Peru's National Coordinator for Human Rights (CNDDHH) condemned the killings and asserted that "Boluarte and her ministers" are "responsible for the massacre in Juliaca."

Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Tuesday called on "security forces to comply with human rights standards and ensure that force is only used when strictly necessary, and, if so, in full compliance with the principles of legality, precaution, and proportionality."

Hurtado, who also asked protesters to "show restraint," urged Peruvian authorities to "carry out prompt, impartial, and effective investigations into the deaths and injuries, holding those responsible to account and ensuring victims receive access to justice and redress."

Speaking Monday evening in a televised address, Peruvian Prime Minister Alberto Otárola defended the actions of state security forces. Otárola declared that "we will not cease in our defense of the rule of the law," while blaming the violence on groups backed by "foreign interests and the dark money of drug trafficking" who want to "destroy the country."

While condemning the "seizure of airports, aggression against other people—including law enforcement—preventing the movement of ambulances, and all forms of attack on public or private property" perpetrated by some protesters, the national ombudsman reminded police and military forces of their "duty to comply with current regulations and international standards on the use of force."

The current protests began following the December 7 overthrow and arrest of Castillo—a democratically elected former rural teacher and union organizer—by the country's right-wing-controlled Congress after he moved to dissolve the legislature in a bid to preempt a move to dismiss him for "permanent moral incapacity."

Incensed by Castillo's promise of sweeping social reforms and a new constitution, Peru's oligarchs and the National Society of Industries, the country's leading business group, had long sought his removal.

On December 16, a judicial panel of Peru's Supreme Court of Justice ordered Castillo imprisoned for 18 months while prosecutors investigate charges of rebellion and conspiracy against the former Peruvian president.

Boluarte has proposed holding elections in April 2024.

Countries recognizing Boluarte's government include the United States, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Uruguay. The leftist leaders of Latin American and Caribbean nations including Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have condemned Castillo's removal.

While there is no evidence of direct U.S. involvement in Castillo's ouster, the ex-president sounded the alarm over a meeting held the day before his removal at the Government Palace in Lima between Boluarte and U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kenna, a former longtime CIA agent appointed by then-President Donald Trump.

The United States has a long history of supporting right-wing dictatorships in the region. During the 1970s and '80s, successive U.S. administrations backed "Operation Condor," a coordinated effort by right-wing military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and, later, Peru and Ecuador in which around 60,000 leftists were killed and tens of thousands others arrested and tortured.

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

The ministers emphasized the need to ensure the time-bound implementation of a five-point consensus agreed to with the Burmese junta in April 2021, ASEAN chair Cambodia said after a special meeting in Jakarta of top diplomats from the regional bloc’s member-states.

The ministers “reaffirmed the importance and relevance” of the consensus, “and underscored the need to further strengthen its implementation through concrete, practical and time-bound actions,” Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn said in a statement after the meeting.

The consensus calls for an immediate end to violence; a dialogue among all concerned parties; mediation of the dialogue process by an ASEAN special envoy; provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels; and a visit to Myanmar by the bloc’s special envoy to meet all concerned parties.

Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s top diplomat, acknowledged that the foreign ministers from member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were disappointed with the lack of significant progress in implementing the five-point consensus, with some expressing their frustration.

“Instead of progressing, the situation was even described as worsening,” Retno said.

“The approach of sweeping problems under the rug should no longer be an option.”

But, as chair Cambodia’s statement said, the foreign ministers, “agreed that ASEAN should not be discouraged, but even more determined to help Myanmar to bring about a peaceful solution the soonest possible.”

Myanmar’s expulsion from ASEAN was never on the table, according to Sidharto Suryodipuro, director general of ASEAN cooperation at the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“Discussions on the situation in Myanmar have always been based on the assumption that Myanmar remains part of ASEAN,” Sidharto told reporters.

The special meeting in Jakarta was held to prepare recommendations to be submitted to ASEAN leaders at the summit of the 10-nation bloc in Cambodia next month.

Discontent has been growing among some ASEAN members about the junta reneging on the consensus it had agreed to, and amid the relentless violence, especially the execution of four political prisoners in July.

The violence has only increased since.

At least 63 people were killed after Myanmar military jets Sunday dropped munitions on a crowd attending a concert celebrating the 62nd anniversary of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)’s founding. It was believed to be the deadliest single airstrike since the military seized power in a February 2021 coup.

Saifuddin Abdullah, Malaysia’s outspoken top diplomat, in July had raised the prospect of junking the five-point consensus. Last month in New York, he had questioned its validity, because the junta had been blithely ignoring it.

But Saifuddin, who has consistently taken the lead on post-coup Myanmar issues at ASEAN, was absent from the special meeting in Jakarta, because his government is now a caretaker administration after the announcement of a general election next month in Malaysia.  

Seven ASEAN foreign ministers attended the talks in Jakarta in person.

As in several previous meetings, Myanmar was not represented, Prak said.

Vietnam’s foreign minister was busy preparing for a visit by the head of the Vietnamese communist party to China next week, according to an ASEAN diplomatic source.

‘Junta has shown its contempt for ASEAN’

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, minced no words in expressing his dismay about the outcome of Thursday’s meeting in Jakarta.

“ASEAN has reached a make or break point on Myanmar, but the Special Foreign Ministers meeting statement reflected just more business as usual, and that’s a huge disappointment. It’s hard to see how the Five Point Consensus can be saved when the SAC military junta has failed to implement one word of what Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing promised in Jakarta last year,” he said in a statement, referring to the Burmese military chief.

“Instead of the kind of wishy-washy language contained in the [ASEAN] chairperson’s statement today, ASEAN needs to get tough by establishing clear, time bound human rights benchmarks on Myanmar that include the release of political prisoners, a cessation of attacks on civilians, and steps towards dissolving the junta to allow for the establishment of civilian democratic rule,” Robertson added.

“Those benchmarks should be accompanied by clear penalties should Myanmar fail to meet them,” he added.

ASEAN will have to do more than repeat calls for an end to violence and the need for dialogue and negotiation, said Hunter S. Marston, a researcher on Asia at the Australian National University.

“Those conditions are unrealistic at this point, and the junta has shown its contempt for ASEAN and its diplomatic efforts,” he told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

ASEAN will never expel Myanmar, but it should include representatives from the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) to promote dialogue, he said.

For its part, the NUG said the benefit of ASEAN holding on to the five-point consensus was questionable.

“ASEAN leaders know all too well what Myanmar people want and need. We have just heard Ms. Noeleen Heyzer, the United Nations envoy to Myanmar, say the other day that Myanmar’s people can never accept the military junta,” Kyaw Zaw, spokesman for the NUG’s president office told the Burmese Service of Radio Free Asia (RFA), an online news service affiliated with BenarNews.

“If ASEAN believes the same, I think they should have direct dialogue with the NUG, the real government that represents the wish of Myanmar people and the national ethnic groups to put an end to all these crises,” Kyaw Zaw added.

Based on the outcome of Thursday’s meeting and because ASEAN makes its decisions consensually, one Burmese analyst, Sai Kyi Zin Soe, did not foresee much progress being made at the ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh next month.

“ASEAN member countries seem to be split into two: the west leaning and the pro-China, and they are not sure of their stand between the two either. Some member countries favor the idea that the NUG should be invited as the west suggested whereas the others still hold the belief that the Myanmar military junta can be further reasoned with for the progress,” Sai Kyi Zin Soe told RFA.

“Because of these different views among ASEAN countries, the summit, in my opinion, might not be able to make a common decision that Myanmar people desire, or a common decision that leads to effective changes for Myanmar people.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated News Service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Ismira Lutfia Tisnadibrata for BenarNews.

The Philippines Court of Appeals has denied the motion for reconsideration filed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and former Rappler researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. over their cyber libel case.

In a 16-page decision dated October 10, the court’s fourth division denied the appeal.

Associate Justices Roberto Quiroz, Ramon Bato Jr., and Germano Francisco Legaspi signed the ruling. They were the same justices who signed the court decision, which earlier affirmed the conviction of Ressa and Santos.

• READ MORE: Cybercrime, criminal libel and the media: From ‘e-martial law’ to the Magna Carta in the Philippines — David Robie and Del Abcede
• Philippine Nobel laureate Maria Ressa appeals to Supreme Court
• Other Maria Ressa and Rappler reports

According to the court, the arguments raised by Ressa and Santos were already resolved.

“A careful and meticulous review of the motion for reconsideration reveals that the matters raised by the accused-appellants had already been exhaustively resolved and discussed in the assailed Decision,” the court said.

The court also claimed Ressa’s and Santos’ conviction is not meant to curtail freedom of speech.

“In conclusion, it [is] worthy and relevant to point out that the conviction of the accused-appellants for the crime of cyberlibel punishable under the Cybercrime Law is not geared towards the curtailment of the freedom of speech, or to produce an unseemingly chilling effect on the users of cyberspace that would possibly hinder free speech.”

‘Safeguard’ for free speech
On the contrary, the court said, the purpose of the law is to “safeguard the right of free speech, and to curb, if not totally prevent, the reckless and unlawful use of the computer systems as a means of committing the traditional criminal offences…”

In a statement, Nobel Peace laureate Ressa said she was “disappointed” but not surprised by the ruling.

Rappler’s video report on YouTube.

“The ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against me and Rappler continues, and the Philippines legal system is not doing enough to stop it. I am disappointed by today’s ruling but sadly not surprised,” Ressa said.

“This is a reminder of the importance of independent journalism holding power to account. Despite these sustained attacks from all sides, we continue to focus on what we do best — journalism.”

Santos, in a separate statement, said he still believed that the rule of law would prevail.

“The [Appeal Court’s] decision to deny our motion is not surprising, but it’s disheartening nevertheless. As we elevate our case to the SC, our fight against intimidation and suppression of freedom continues. We still believe that the rule of law will prevail.”

Theodore “Ted” Te, Rappler’s lawyer and former Supreme Court spokesperson, said they would now ask the Supreme Court to review and reverse Ressa’s conviction.

“The CA decision denying the MFR [motion for reconsideration] is disappointing. It ignored basic principles of constitutional and criminal law as well as the evidence presented. Maria and Rey will elevate these issues to the SC and we will ask the SC to review the decision and to reverse the decision,” Te said in a statement.

The decision
The Appeal Court also explained its findings on the arguments based on:

• Applications of the provisions of cyber libel under the cybercrime law
• Subject article should have been classified as qualifiedly privileged” in relation to Wilfredo Keng as a public figure

On the validity of the cybercrime law, the court cited a ruling which, according to them, decided the constitutionality of the law.

“We find it unnecessary to dwell on the issue raised by accused-appellants since the Supreme Court, in Jose Jesus M. Disini, Jr., et al., v. The Secretary of Justice, et al. (Disini Case), 5 had already ruled on its validity and constitutionality, with finality.”

The court also reiterated that the story in question was republished. The court said the argument that ex-post facto was applied on the theory that the correction of one letter is too unsubstantial and cannot be considered a republication is “unavailing.”

“As settled, the determination of republication is not hinged on whether the corrections made therein were substantial or not, as what matters is that the very exact libelous article was again published on a later date,” the appeals court said.

On the increase of penalty, the CA said the argument that Wilberto Tolentino v. People has no doctrinal value and cannot be used as a binding precedent as it was “an unsigned resolution, is misplaced.”

That case said the “prescriptive period for the crime of cyber libel is 15 years.”

Traditional, online publications
The appeals court also highlighted the difference between traditional and online publications: “As it is, in the instance of libel through traditional publication, the libelous article is only released and circulated once – which is on the day when it was published.”

Such was not the case for an online publication, the court said, where “the commission of such offence is continuous since such article remains therein in perpetuity unless taken down from all online platforms where it was published…”

On the argument about Keng, the CA said it was insufficient to consider him a public figure: “As previously settled, the claim that Wilfredo Keng is a renowned businessman, who was connected to several companies, is insufficient to classify him as a public figure.”

The term “public figure” in relation to libel refers more to a celebrity, it said, citing the Ciriaco “Boy” Guingguing v. Honorable Court of Appeals decision. The decision said a public figure is “anyone who has arrived at a position where public attention is focused upon him as a person.”

It also cited the Supreme Court decision on Alfonso Yuchengco v. The Manila Chronicle Publishing Corporation, et al., which resolved the argument whether a businessman can be considered a public figure. The court said that being a known businessman did not make Keng a public figure who had attained a position that gave the public “legitimate interest in his affairs and character.”

There was no proof, too, that “he voluntarily thrusted himself to the forefront of the particular public controversies that were raised in the defamatory article,” the CA added.

In 2020, Manila Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 46 convicted Ressa and Santos over cyber libel charges filed by Keng. The case tested the 8-year-old Philippine cybercrime law.

The Manila court interpreted the cyber libel law as having a 12-year proscription period, as opposed to only a year. The lower court also decided that republication was a separate offence.

Aside from affirming the Manila court’s ruling, the CA also imposed a longer prison sentence on Ressa and Santos, originally set for six months and one day as minimum to six years as maximum.

The appeals court added eight months and 20 days to the maximum imprisonment penalty.

Jairo Bolledo is a Rappler journalist. Republished with permission.

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

Petroglyph panel on federal lands in northern California. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Who should manage public land that is sacred to Native Americans?

That is the question that the United States government and some states hope recent policy changes will address by giving Indigenous people greater input into managing such land. Co-management, as the policy is called, might alleviate the frictionthat emerges when sacred landscapes are managed without Native American input.

Mauna Kea, a 13,802-foot dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii, is one example. The mountain is managed as public land by the state of Hawaii. Native Hawaiians have protested the state’s management of Mauna Kea for decades, saying Hawaii has allowed too many research buildings on their sacred mountain, which disrupts their ability to practice their religion.

This kind of conflict is not unique to Hawaii. Indigenous peoples have lived in what is now the United States for thousands of yearsand developed intimate relationships with the lands they call home. For years, Native people across the country have demanded more input into how the government manages areas they consider sacred.

Now, the government may finally be listening.

‘We worship there’

As a Native American scholar of religion and the environment, I am interested in Indigenous peoples’ relationship to the natural world and their struggle to protect their sacred landscapes.

Native Hawaiians believe that Mauna Kea is the first creation of the Earth Mother, Papahānaumoku, and the Sky Father, Wākea. The mountain is an important part of their origin narrative.

For astronomers, the mountain has another significance. They believe the summit of Mauna Kea has the clearest skies for conducting research. For the past 50 years, the state of Hawaii has leased the summit of the mountain to dozens of research institutions. Together, they have built 13 telescopes and numerous buildings on Mauna Kea.

For years Native Hawaiian leaders have argued that the state ignored their concerns over such construction. When Mauna Kea was selected in 2009 as the preferred site for the Thirty Meter Telescope, a new class of extremely large telescope, Native Hawaiians protested to stop the project.

Native Hawaiians, like those from other Indigenous religious traditions, believe that sacred areas should be left alone without roads or buildings because they are the homes of the divine.

“We worship there, the iwis of our kupuna [bones of our elders] are buried there,” Mililani Trask, the Hawaii island’s trustee for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, said at a public meeting regarding an environmental impact statement of Mauna Kea with the National Science Foundation on Aug. 9, 2022. “No,” she continued, “you will not build here.”

The state of Hawaii is hoping to address this ongoing conflict with the creation of a new eight-person commission that includes three Native Hawaiian leaders to manage Mauna Kea.

“I believe we can find a way for science and culture to coexist on Mauna Kea in a mutually beneficial way,” Hawaiian Gov. David Ige said on Sept. 12, 2022, when he announced the new commission.

What makes land sacred?

Native American religions, similar to other religions, view areas as sacred because they are the homes of gods or places that are sanctified by a god. Sacred places may be physically small or large areas, they may be built or natural areas, such as churches and shrines, or mountains and rivers.

Religious studies scholars such as Tisa Wenger have argued that religious freedom for Native Americans has been difficult because “the U.S. government has often acted as if Indian traditions were somehow not truly religious and therefore not eligible for the constitutional protections of the First Amendment.”

In one dispute in the 1980s, the U.S. Forest Service wanted to construct a road across a sacred mountain in Northern California. A consortium of tribes fought back, and the case ended in the Supreme Court; the tribes lost.

Following that decision, in 1996, President Bill Clinton created a definition of Native American sacred land as a “specific, discrete, narrowly delineated location on Federal land.”

This language intentionally excludes large areas such as mountains or open landscapes in favor of smaller sites. That does not fully represent the variety of places that Native peoples consider sacred, say religious studies scholars, leading to inevitable clashes over the meaning and uses of such lands.

Co-management is one small step

On Sept. 13, 2022, Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland released new federal guidelines to help address these long-standing conflicts.

This new policy, which focuses on publicly managed areas that Native Americans view as sacred or culturally important, will allow some tribes to share management responsibilities with federal agencies.

“By acknowledging and empowering Tribes as partners in co-stewardship of our country’s lands and waters, every American will benefit from strengthened management of our federal land and resources,” Haaland said.

In a related effort, Congress on Sept. 14 held hearings on two new bills to address this same issue. If they pass, their backers hope they will facilitate the inclusion of “tribal management of public lands” and strengthen the “protection of sacred and cultural sites.”

Such changes are “a small step, but an important one, in giving Tribal nations the respect and authority they deserve,” said Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona.

But, he added of the federal government’s new desire to share land management with tribes, “There is no deed that can undo or fully compensate for this country’s historical neglect and desecration of Indigenous Peoples’ culture and places that are sacred to them.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rosalyn R. LaPier.

A government watchdog group on Monday published a new briefing analyzing fossil fuel corporations' continued price gouging—even as crude oil prices fall to their lowest levels since January.

"Why are gas prices still failing to match lower oil prices? Corporate greed."

Accountable.US noted in its analysis that although crude oil prices have fallen below $80 per barrel, "prices for consumers are still 13% higher than they were last time oil was this cheap."

"Why are gas prices still failing to match lower oil prices? Corporate greed," the group asserted. "Big Oil is boasting record profits and dragging their feet to pass any lower costs onto consumers in order to keep padding investors' pockets."

Jordan Schreiber, director of energy and environment at Accountable.US, said in a statement that "as crude oil prices plummet, Big Oil's thinly veiled excuses for price gouging break down."

"Instead of passing the savings down to consumers trying to financially recover from the industry's unprecedentedly high prices at the pump this summer, Big Oil decided to further line the pockets of its wealthy shareholders and executives with more of everyday consumers' hard-earned money," Schreiber added. "Given this is all after Big Oil raked in a record-shattering $138 billion profits last quarter, it's clear their greed knows no bounds."

Common Dreams reported in July that eight fossil fuel giants raked in $52 billion in record second-quarter profits, a 235% increase over the previous year.

Earlier this year, the advocacy group Public Citizen accused Big Oil of intentionally inflicting "pain at the pump" in order to boost profits at consumers' literal expense.

Activists, progressive U.S. lawmakers, and Democratic leaders at the state and local levels have been pushing for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil as a means of combatting both corporate greed and the worsening climate crisis.

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

'End the lockdown!'

Upcoming congress

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting and Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

Domestic flights have been cancelled again in New Caledonia as a conflict between Air Calédonie and the workers’ union USTKE continues.

The carrier decided to cancel all flights today after last week’s disruptions and strikes over the status of a co-pilot. Some flights on Tuesday are also affected.

A meeting took place between the government, the province of the Loyalty islands, the USTKE (Union of Kanak and Exploited Workers) and Air Calédonie to reach a solution.

• READ MORE: Grève à Aircal : les syndicats campent sur leur position
• Other Air Calédonie aviation reports

The territorial government said that “the two institutions are given until August 20 at the latest to find a solution. While waiting, the USTKE has decided to suspend immediately the strike”.

The co-pilot Chrystelle Cejo is reported to have had “training gaps” because of problems caused by the pandemic, which resulted in the company Air Calédonie suspending her contract without renewal, according to the union.

A media release from the union said the company had communicated negative comments to other training instructors on Cejo’s flying capabilities.

Test flight cancelled
On the last stage of her flight training, the instructor gave Cejo one more month until the last test flight which he then cancelled at the last minute and fired her.

UTSKE officials said she should be allowed to resume work and have her contract renewed immediately.

A former pilot of Air Calédonie, Ronald Urene told La Premiere television he did not understand why the company had been “so harsh” on the Kanak pilot.

“There are some pilots that have done only four to five months of training, and to take the pilot that has done 12 months and regard that as only six months of training — that is what is annoying us and I consider that discrimination.”

However, Air Calédonie’s CEO Samuel Hnepeune told La Premiere the decision to ground the pilot was fair because she did not have enough training.

“For me, it’s sufficient information and everybody is convinced,” he said.

“An instructor evaluates the level, and the person comes back after the test and fills the gaps of their training. That’s easily done, but instead the union is demanding an immediate reintegration of the co-pilot.”

‘Exit solution’
Aircal said in its media release that even though “the pilot with a lot of flying experience [she] has not attained the the level of expertise required to fly.”

In a tweet, La Premiere said: “According to the government of New Caledonia an ‘exit solution’ is being considered and the USTKE has suspended its strike.”

Conflit Aircal : selon le gouvernement de la #NouvelleCaledonie, une “solution de sortie” est envisagée et l’USTKE suspend son mouvement https://t.co/OUeKF4M7fg pic.twitter.com/gMAQggpkGE

— NC La 1ère (@ncla1ere) August 15, 2022

An unnamed union member told La Premiere that “the pilot did not get the same treatment as other pilots”.

“The company invented a standard of training as she was getting tuition which is very unfair on her,” he said.

Since August 4, Air Calédonie has been affected by the industrial action leaving more than 1400 people unable to travel to the Loyalty Islands.

A national football league match in Magenta between Tiga and Kunié has been cancelled due to the strikes.

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

The Biden administration says it is officially ending the controversial Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy that forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases wind through court, often in grueling conditions for months or years. We speak to attorney and activist Efrén Olivares with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Immigrant Justice Project about the impact of this policy, as well as ongoing efforts to reunite families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy in 2018. Olivares represented some of the children and their parents, and wrote about them in his new book, “My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration from the Front Lines.”

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

A group of whistleblowers has provided evidence that the Environmental Protection Agency has not adequately assessed the health risks posed by several new chemicals on the grounds that they are corrosive. Managers in the New Chemicals Division have repeatedly and incorrectly used the idea that a chemical may cause irritation to the eyes, skin, and respiratory tract as an excuse to avoid assessing the risk of other harms it may cause. Those harms include cancer, miscarriage, and neurotoxicity, according to the whistleblowers, who work as health assessors in the division. In some cases described in a complaint that the whistleblowers shared with The Intercept and will soon submit to the EPA inspector general, the risks were calculated, found to be significant, and later deleted from official documents.

The theory behind the EPA’s decision not to calculate the risk of repeated exposure to certain corrosive chemicals — or to remove information about those risks — is that after the unpleasantness of the first exposure, people will avoid contact with the chemical in the future. But according to the group of health assessors who have been providing The Intercept with insider accounts of corruption in the EPA’s chemical assessment process over the past year, this logic is flawed for many reasons. Perhaps the most significant problem is that people may not actually experience or notice any effect from an initial exposure — either because the chemical has been incorrectly deemed corrosive or because it is corrosive only at concentrations higher than the levels to which people are exposed. Neither circumstance has any bearing on whether the chemical presents other risks. Workers may also be forced to have repeated contact with chemicals to stay employed.

Related

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“It’s not just that we did the calculations. We did the calculations and found risks, and then they got rid of them.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sharon Lerner.

The post The Ongoing Infowar Against Cuba: From the Moncada Assault to the Embargo appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Nino Pagliccia.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qiao Long for RFA Mandarin.

On Monday, the House Select Commit­tee to Invest­ig­ate the Janu­ary 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol holds the second of several public hear­ings to reveal a detailed account of the insur­rec­tion and the indi­vidu­als behind it. These hear­ings mark a pivotal first step in repu­di­at­ing the attack and hold­ing its perpet­rat­ors account­able for one of the most alarm­ing assaults on Amer­ican demo­cracy in history. Today's hear­ing also serves an addi­tional crit­ical purpose: examin­ing the elec­tion sabot­age scheme that fueled the insur­rec­tion and its ongo­ing damage to our demo­cracy.

Passing legis­la­tion will require rally­ing sustained polit­ical pres­sure, and the commit­tee's hear­ings provide a crit­ical oppor­tun­ity to do exactly that.

The damage, detailed in Bren­nan Center testi­mony submit­ted to the commit­tee in April, is strik­ing. By track­ing the Big Lie that Donald Trump actu­ally won reelec­tion, our research demon­strates that a direct through line exists between 2020 elec­tion denial, the elec­tion sabot­age scheme behind the insur­rec­tion, and ongo­ing efforts to thwart the demo­cratic process. In other words, the same Big Lie that fueled the insur­rec­tion contin­ues to rever­ber­ate across the coun­try, driv­ing bids to under­mine voting rights, inter­fere with elect­oral processes, and attack impar­tial elec­tion admin­is­trat­ors.

Of course, it bears repeat­ing that the Big Lie is, in fact, a lie. Its theory of a "stolen" elec­tion relies on racially charged alleg­a­tions of voter fraud, ballot irreg­u­lar­it­ies, and conspir­acies to other­wise "rig" the 2020 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion. Each of these claims has been thor­oughly disproven. None of the more than 60 lawsuits chal­len­ging the results of the 2020 elec­tion succeeded in prov­ing fraud, and Pres­id­ent Trump's own offi­cials deemed the 2020 elec­tion "the most secure in Amer­ican history." Nonethe­less, these false claims drove the brazen scheme to over­turn the elec­tion results through vote suppres­sion, base­less litig­a­tion, and even outright attempts to over­ride legit­im­ate votes. Together, these efforts spiraled into the Janu­ary 6 attack. But while this plot may have failed, the Big Lie is far from over.

Take, for example, aggress­ive devel­op­ments in state legis­latures. Efforts to pass restrict­ive voting laws hit unpre­ced­en­ted heights follow­ing the 2020 elec­tion and continue at a rapid pace this year. States also face a new, burgeon­ing trend in the form of legis­la­tion that enables partisan actors to meddle in elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion and vote-count­ing processes—other­wise known as elec­tion inter­fer­ence legis­la­tion.

These attacks are not coin­cid­ental. Bren­nan Center research found that in 2021, the vast major­ity of these bills were sponsored by the same state legis­lat­ors who publicly ques­tioned the valid­ity of the 2020 elec­tion. And in many cases, these spon­sors justi­fied their legis­la­tion using the same discred­ited claims of wide­spread voter fraud and a stolen elec­tion that fueled the insur­rec­tion.

Our research also compared the text of new restrict­ive voting and elec­tion inter­fer­ence legis­la­tion with false alleg­a­tions made in lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion. Like clock­work, the same disproven theor­ies of wide­spread voter fraud, ballot irreg­u­lar­it­ies, and conspir­acies made in those lawsuits resur­faced with remark­able specificity in legis­la­tion intro­duced in 2021. Indeed, of the 17 states in which courts reviewed lawsuits chal­len­ging the 2020 elec­tion, 15 saw legis­la­tion that directly incor­por­ated false claims from those suits.

Make no mistake—these legis­lat­ive attacks work as inten­ded. Mount­ing evid­ence shows that new voting restric­tions already are disen­fran­chising voters, partic­u­larly voters of color, in post-2020 elec­tions.

Beyond legis­la­tion, the Big Lie's damage also extends to attacks on impar­tial elec­tion admin­is­trat­ors. Across the coun­try, vigil­antes (and in some cases, other state offi­cials) are invok­ing false claims of voter fraud and a stolen elec­tion to threaten offi­cials from both parties for simply doing their job. These attacks—which range from racist and gendered harass­ment and death threats to threats of crim­inal prosec­u­tion — risk creat­ing a reten­tion crisis among exper­i­enced elec­tion admin­is­trat­ors. Dozens of offi­cials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wiscon­sin, and Nevada already left their posi­tions. Nation­wide, one in five local elec­tion offi­cials surveyed by the Bren­nan Center plan to leave their posi­tion before 2024.

As many elec­tion offi­cials prepare to resign, elec­tion denial also threatens to upend the races by which many of them are chosen. This year, for example, 27 states will hold elec­tions for secret­ary of state—the offi­cial who typic­ally serves as a state's chief elec­tion officer. At least 21 current candid­ates in these races espouse the Big Lie's theory of a stolen elec­tion. And as this disin­form­a­tion prolif­er­ates, campaigns are rais­ing more money, from more donors, with greater reli­ance than ever before on out-of-state dona­tions. In other words, as Big Lie–driven onslaughts push exper­i­enced elec­tion offi­cials out of their posi­tions, their replace­ments will in many instances emerge from polit­ic­ally charged, nation­al­ized races featur­ing elec­tion deniers. Look no further than last month's primary elec­tions to see this phenomenon in action.

The insur­rec­tion made one thing clear: our exist­ing guard­rails cannot protect us from anti­demo­cratic attacks. As the Big Lie contin­ues to wreak havoc on our demo­cracy, and with the 2024 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion around the corner, inac­tion is not an option.

In the short term, Amer­ic­ans and our insti­tu­tions must mobil­ize to stave off the current wave of attacks. Many sectors of soci­ety and govern­ment have a role to play in thwart­ing Big Lie–driven efforts to sabot­age future elec­tions. And we know that this mobil­iz­a­tion works. Even when confron­ted with a global pandemic and disin­form­a­tion-fueled assaults on voters and the elect­oral process, 2020 saw a wide range of forces—includ­ing elec­tion offi­cials, other state govern­ment entit­ies, courts, community groups, busi­nesses, and journ­al­ists—mobil­ize to safe­guard the elec­tion with great success.

Ulti­mately, Congress also must act to strengthen our demo­cratic guard­rails. The push to outrun or out-organ­ize vote suppres­sion and elec­tion inter­fer­ence, while essen­tial, can only go so far and last for so long. The narrowly defeated Free­dom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act would address many of these prob­lems by, for example, estab­lish­ing national stand­ards for cast­ing and count­ing ballots in federal elec­tions and revital­iz­ing the Voting Rights Act's protec­tions against racial discrim­in­a­tion in voting. It also would limit oppor­tun­it­ies for partisan inter­fer­ence in elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, increase protec­tions for elec­tion offi­cials, and curb disin­form­a­tion in elec­tions.

Passing legis­la­tion will require rally­ing sustained polit­ical pres­sure, and the commit­tee's hear­ings provide a crit­ical oppor­tun­ity to do exactly that. The multi­pronged plot to over­turn the elec­tion and the viol­ent events of Janu­ary 6 must never happen again, and legis­la­tion remains the best and only way to ensure that history never repeats itself. We must demand it.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Lauren Miller, Wendy Weiser.

On Monday, the House Select Commit­tee to Invest­ig­ate the Janu­ary 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol holds the second of several public hear­ings to reveal a detailed account of the insur­rec­tion and the indi­vidu­als behind it. These hear­ings mark a pivotal first step in repu­di­at­ing the attack and hold­ing its perpet­rat­ors account­able for one of the most alarm­ing assaults on Amer­ican demo­cracy in history. Today's hear­ing also serves an addi­tional crit­ical purpose: examin­ing the elec­tion sabot­age scheme that fueled the insur­rec­tion and its ongo­ing damage to our demo­cracy.

Passing legis­la­tion will require rally­ing sustained polit­ical pres­sure, and the commit­tee's hear­ings provide a crit­ical oppor­tun­ity to do exactly that.

The damage, detailed in Bren­nan Center testi­mony submit­ted to the commit­tee in April, is strik­ing. By track­ing the Big Lie that Donald Trump actu­ally won reelec­tion, our research demon­strates that a direct through line exists between 2020 elec­tion denial, the elec­tion sabot­age scheme behind the insur­rec­tion, and ongo­ing efforts to thwart the demo­cratic process. In other words, the same Big Lie that fueled the insur­rec­tion contin­ues to rever­ber­ate across the coun­try, driv­ing bids to under­mine voting rights, inter­fere with elect­oral processes, and attack impar­tial elec­tion admin­is­trat­ors.

Of course, it bears repeat­ing that the Big Lie is, in fact, a lie. Its theory of a "stolen" elec­tion relies on racially charged alleg­a­tions of voter fraud, ballot irreg­u­lar­it­ies, and conspir­acies to other­wise "rig" the 2020 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion. Each of these claims has been thor­oughly disproven. None of the more than 60 lawsuits chal­len­ging the results of the 2020 elec­tion succeeded in prov­ing fraud, and Pres­id­ent Trump's own offi­cials deemed the 2020 elec­tion "the most secure in Amer­ican history." Nonethe­less, these false claims drove the brazen scheme to over­turn the elec­tion results through vote suppres­sion, base­less litig­a­tion, and even outright attempts to over­ride legit­im­ate votes. Together, these efforts spiraled into the Janu­ary 6 attack. But while this plot may have failed, the Big Lie is far from over.

Take, for example, aggress­ive devel­op­ments in state legis­latures. Efforts to pass restrict­ive voting laws hit unpre­ced­en­ted heights follow­ing the 2020 elec­tion and continue at a rapid pace this year. States also face a new, burgeon­ing trend in the form of legis­la­tion that enables partisan actors to meddle in elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion and vote-count­ing processes—other­wise known as elec­tion inter­fer­ence legis­la­tion.

These attacks are not coin­cid­ental. Bren­nan Center research found that in 2021, the vast major­ity of these bills were sponsored by the same state legis­lat­ors who publicly ques­tioned the valid­ity of the 2020 elec­tion. And in many cases, these spon­sors justi­fied their legis­la­tion using the same discred­ited claims of wide­spread voter fraud and a stolen elec­tion that fueled the insur­rec­tion.

Our research also compared the text of new restrict­ive voting and elec­tion inter­fer­ence legis­la­tion with false alleg­a­tions made in lawsuits brought by Trump and his allies to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion. Like clock­work, the same disproven theor­ies of wide­spread voter fraud, ballot irreg­u­lar­it­ies, and conspir­acies made in those lawsuits resur­faced with remark­able specificity in legis­la­tion intro­duced in 2021. Indeed, of the 17 states in which courts reviewed lawsuits chal­len­ging the 2020 elec­tion, 15 saw legis­la­tion that directly incor­por­ated false claims from those suits.

Make no mistake—these legis­lat­ive attacks work as inten­ded. Mount­ing evid­ence shows that new voting restric­tions already are disen­fran­chising voters, partic­u­larly voters of color, in post-2020 elec­tions.

Beyond legis­la­tion, the Big Lie's damage also extends to attacks on impar­tial elec­tion admin­is­trat­ors. Across the coun­try, vigil­antes (and in some cases, other state offi­cials) are invok­ing false claims of voter fraud and a stolen elec­tion to threaten offi­cials from both parties for simply doing their job. These attacks—which range from racist and gendered harass­ment and death threats to threats of crim­inal prosec­u­tion — risk creat­ing a reten­tion crisis among exper­i­enced elec­tion admin­is­trat­ors. Dozens of offi­cials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wiscon­sin, and Nevada already left their posi­tions. Nation­wide, one in five local elec­tion offi­cials surveyed by the Bren­nan Center plan to leave their posi­tion before 2024.

As many elec­tion offi­cials prepare to resign, elec­tion denial also threatens to upend the races by which many of them are chosen. This year, for example, 27 states will hold elec­tions for secret­ary of state—the offi­cial who typic­ally serves as a state's chief elec­tion officer. At least 21 current candid­ates in these races espouse the Big Lie's theory of a stolen elec­tion. And as this disin­form­a­tion prolif­er­ates, campaigns are rais­ing more money, from more donors, with greater reli­ance than ever before on out-of-state dona­tions. In other words, as Big Lie–driven onslaughts push exper­i­enced elec­tion offi­cials out of their posi­tions, their replace­ments will in many instances emerge from polit­ic­ally charged, nation­al­ized races featur­ing elec­tion deniers. Look no further than last month's primary elec­tions to see this phenomenon in action.

The insur­rec­tion made one thing clear: our exist­ing guard­rails cannot protect us from anti­demo­cratic attacks. As the Big Lie contin­ues to wreak havoc on our demo­cracy, and with the 2024 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion around the corner, inac­tion is not an option.

In the short term, Amer­ic­ans and our insti­tu­tions must mobil­ize to stave off the current wave of attacks. Many sectors of soci­ety and govern­ment have a role to play in thwart­ing Big Lie–driven efforts to sabot­age future elec­tions. And we know that this mobil­iz­a­tion works. Even when confron­ted with a global pandemic and disin­form­a­tion-fueled assaults on voters and the elect­oral process, 2020 saw a wide range of forces—includ­ing elec­tion offi­cials, other state govern­ment entit­ies, courts, community groups, busi­nesses, and journ­al­ists—mobil­ize to safe­guard the elec­tion with great success.

Ulti­mately, Congress also must act to strengthen our demo­cratic guard­rails. The push to outrun or out-organ­ize vote suppres­sion and elec­tion inter­fer­ence, while essen­tial, can only go so far and last for so long. The narrowly defeated Free­dom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act would address many of these prob­lems by, for example, estab­lish­ing national stand­ards for cast­ing and count­ing ballots in federal elec­tions and revital­iz­ing the Voting Rights Act's protec­tions against racial discrim­in­a­tion in voting. It also would limit oppor­tun­it­ies for partisan inter­fer­ence in elec­tion admin­is­tra­tion, increase protec­tions for elec­tion offi­cials, and curb disin­form­a­tion in elec­tions.

Passing legis­la­tion will require rally­ing sustained polit­ical pres­sure, and the commit­tee's hear­ings provide a crit­ical oppor­tun­ity to do exactly that. The multi­pronged plot to over­turn the elec­tion and the viol­ent events of Janu­ary 6 must never happen again, and legis­la­tion remains the best and only way to ensure that history never repeats itself. We must demand it.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Lauren Miller, Wendy Weiser.

At around 4 p.m. on Friday, May 27, security officers detained Bekalu, the founder and chief editor of YouTube-based news channel Alpha TV, from his office in the capital of Addis Ababa, according to news reports, his wife Helen Abate, who spoke to CPJ via phone, and a person familiar with his case who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns. The following day, around 9:00 a.m. on May 28, police officers arrested Meaza, founder and chief editor of YouTube-based news channel Roha TV, from a colleague’s house, according to news reports, her husband Robel Gebeyehu, and Roha TV reporter Misrak Tefera, both of whom spoke to CPJ by phone. 

Police brought Bekalu before the Federal First Instance Court, Arada Branch, on May 28 and accused him of incitement to violence through media appearances, according to Helen. She said the court granted police 12 more days to keep Bekalu in custody pending an investigation into the allegations. The person familiar with the case said police did not specify which media appearances and that authorities have not yet filed formal charges against Bekalu.

According to Henok Aklilu, one of Meaza’s lawyers who spoke to CPJ by phone, Meaza was brought before the same court on May 30 and accused of public incitement to violence via Roha TV and other unspecified media platforms. She has not been formally charged. The court granted police seven additional days to further investigate the allegations. Robel told CPJ that police searched Meaza’s house and confiscated financial and legal documents unrelated to the arrest. 

Meaza and Bekalu are the latest journalists to be detained in Ethiopia. According to CPJ documentation, at least 13 others have been arrested since May 19 amid what the Amhara state government calls a “law enforcement operation.” 

“These arrests will undoubtedly have a ripple effect on the broader media community, spreading fear and engendering self-censorship among journalists who’ve seen far too many of their colleagues thrown behind bars in recent weeks,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “The government’s allegations in court, lacking in specificity and without evidence, ring hollow. Meaza Mohamed, Bekalu Alamrew, and other journalists detained in Ethiopia for their work should be released without further delay, and allowed to continue their work without interference.”

Both Meaza and Bekalu made critical comments on their respective news channels about the Ethiopian government’s “law enforcement operation” in Amhara state, in which at least 4,500 people have been arrested over the last two weeks. Both are detained at Addis Ababa police commission commonly known as Sostegna, according to Henok and Helen. Bekalu is due back in court on June 9 while Meaza is due back on June 6, according to these same sources. 

Both journalists have been detained before. Meaza was arrested in December 2021 and held for 39 days without formal charges, according to CPJ documentation and news reports. Bekalu was arrested in November 2020. when he was accused of disseminating false information, and in June 2021, when he was held for weeks without access to family or lawyers, according to CPJ’s documentation and news reports. 

Separately, on Wednesday, June 1, the Ethiopian Federal police announced in a Facebook post that it had identified 111 online media outlets that are “in operation without getting a license” from the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority, an industry regulator, in breach of the country’s media law. The federal police said that the sites had “engaged in the instigation of religious and ethnic violence.” The statement said 10 people from the 111 outlets who are “extreme and divisive” are in police custody without naming the 10. 

In comments sent to CPJ via messaging application on May 28, Ethiopia’s federal police spokesperson said that no journalists were detained due to their profession, but because they had committed criminal acts. The ministry of justice did not immediately respond to a June 3 email from CPJ requesting comment on the cases of Bekalu, Meaza, and other detained journalists. CPJ’s calls to Government Communication Service Minister Legesse Tulu and his deputy Kebede Desisa were unanswered and there was no immediate response to requests for comment sent via messaged application and text message. 

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

"We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase," Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical advisor, told the PBS Newshour this week. Not all experts agree. "With all due respect to Dr. Fauci. I think we are still very much in a pandemic in this country," Dr. Jonathan Reiner of the George Washington School of Medicine told CNN. "Cases have risen in the United States over 60%. Currently there are 15,000 people hospitalized in the United States with COVID-19 and and that number has risen by almost 2000 people over the last couple of weeks…And because hospitalizations are rising, we will soon see deaths rising."

The WHO's target of vaccinating 70% of the population in poor and developing nations by the end of June, 2022 is not going to be met, in part due to the U.S. government's elimination of funding for the effort.

Dr. Fauci did announce he would not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday. "I'm 81 years old, and if I get infected, I have a much higher risk," he told CNN. It is predicted that by Memorial Day, one million Americans will have died of COVID-19, almost certainly an undercount. Fauci also acknowledged, "if you look at the global situation, there's no doubt this pandemic is still ongoing."

The Biden administration is at an impasse with Congress over emergency funds to confront the pandemic. Biden's $22.5 billion request for COVID funding was stripped out of the $1.5 trillion appropriation bill that passed in mid-March. A partial funding agreement is back on the table, but it eliminates the $5 billion Biden requested for global vaccination efforts.

"So far, Congress has not stepped up to provide the funds that are needed for our most urgent needs," Dr. Ashish Jha, the new White House COVID Response Coordinator, said at a news briefing this week. Among those needs are the purchase of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines to provide initial shots and boosters, in preparation for a potential surge this coming fall, and development of a new generation of vaccines that could potentially protect against multiple new variants. Expanding availability of Prizer's antiviral pill, Paxlovid, is another major, unfunded priority, as is the provision of AstraZeneca's Evusheld, an antibody treatment that can be taken in advance by immunocompromised people to shield them from infection.

Another White House funding priority is the distribution of vaccines globally. "We've got to get the resources we need to get shots in arms so we can actually vaccinate the world and help bring this pandemic to a close," Jha said at the news briefing on Tuesday.

At the moment, the U.S. government has no money allocated for this. To date, the U.S. has delivered half a billion vaccine doses to 114 countries. Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, credits the U.S. effort, but says much more needs to be done.

"2022 must be the year that we completely tip the balance in favor of increased vaccinations in the developing world, especially in Africa," Dr. Nkengasong said on the Democracy Now! news hour. "This is the year we must vaccinate at scale and at speed, if we have to defeat the emergence of new variants…Omicron taught us a lesson that any threat anywhere in the world is a threat everywhere in the world."

A recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation highlights COVID's ongoing threat here in the U.S., especially for the unvaccinated. "Approximately 234,000 deaths since June 2021 could have been prevented with primary series vaccination," the report states. "These vaccine-preventable deaths represent…a quarter of the nearly 1 million COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began." Kaiser also reports that, in January 2022, COVID-19 was the single greatest cause of death in the U.S. for those aged 45-84, and the fourth greatest cause of death overall.

Someone in the United States dies of this largely preventable disease about every four minutes – equivalent to a deadly disaster on the scale of the 9/11attacks every eight or nine days.

The WHO's target of vaccinating 70% of the population in poor and developing nations by the end of June, 2022 is not going to be met, in part due to the U.S. government's elimination of funding for the effort. This could very well lead to the emergence of new, potentially more transmissible and deadlier coronavirus variants. In our globalized world, these threats need to be met with a global response. As drug manufacturers make record profits, ensuring vaccine access around the world is not only a moral imperative, but a practical, achievable goal that protects us all.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan.

Against this backdrop, a video of a group of people reciting Azan (Muslim prayers) on the road is viral on social media platforms. It has been claimed that Muslims have resorted to reciting Azan by shouting on the road as an alternative to loudspeakers being removed.

Sudarshan News tweeted the video and wrote, “Could this also be an alternative to the Azan played on loudspeakers?” (Archive link). In another tweet carrying the video, the outlet wrote, “If loudspeakers are removed, is this what they will do? Does it mean they won’t follow the law?” (Archive link)

तुम लाउडस्पीकर बंद कराओगे तो ये रास्ता निकालेंगे?

अर्थात कानून नहीं मानेंगे ?pic.twitter.com/vzMlYSHQ50

— Sudarshan News (@SudarshanNewsTV) April 26, 2022

Far-right commentator Madhu Kishwar also tweeted the clip writing, “Despite loudspeakers being removed, these people have found a way to produce noise in the name of Azan.” (Archive link)

Awesome!

इन्होंने लाउडस्पीकर बंद पर होने ke बावजूद अजान के bahane shor machane ka विकल्प ढूँढ लिया हैं…
Wish we Dhimmified Hindus would take lessons from them! pic.twitter.com/BlXd0J6J3M

— Madhu Purnima Kishwar (@madhukishwar) April 25, 2022

Sudarshan News’s Abhay Pratap Singh amplified the video while warning against the dangers of “such mentality”. (Archive link)

Fact-check

We performed a reverse image search using a frame from the video on Yandex, which led us to a video on ‘One India Kannada’ YouTube channel. It was uploaded on April 8, 2020. Thus, the viral video is t least two years old and has nothing to do with the ongoing loudspeaker controversy. The description of this video reads, “With the lockdown in effect in India, all temples and mosques have been closed, because of which Muslims did not get an opportunity to offer prayers in the mosque. They then stood on the road and prayed to Allah.” (Archive link)

Taking a closer look at the video, we noticed a shop named ‘Shimla Biryani’ and a board that reads ‘Dr N. Rai’. We reached out to Dr Rai and he said his shop is located in Pilkhana, Howrah.

We performed another keyword search on Google based on this information and came across photos of a shop named ‘New Shimla Biryani’ on Zomato located on GT Road in Pilkhana, Howrah.

We spoke to a staff member at ‘Shimla Biryani’. He said that the viral video was filmed during the lockdown. It must be noted that the people seen in the video have maintained social distancing.

Alt News reached out to another local resident regarding the matter. He confirmed that the video was shot during the lockdown but he was unable to provide an exact date.

To sum it up, the video in question is at least two years old and has no links to the ongoing loudspeaker controversy. The clip was falsely shared by Sudarshan News and several BJP supporters with the claim that Muslims are loudly chanting Azan on the road after loudspeakers were removed.

The post Old video from West Bengal falsely linked to ongoing mosque loudspeakers controversy appeared first on Alt News.

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

Against this backdrop, a video of a group of people reciting Azan (Muslim prayers) on the road is viral on social media platforms. It has been claimed that Muslims have resorted to reciting Azan by shouting on the road as an alternative to loudspeakers being removed.

Sudarshan News tweeted the video and wrote, “Could this also be an alternative to the Azan played on loudspeakers?” (Archive link). In another tweet carrying the video, the outlet wrote, “If loudspeakers are removed, is this what they will do? Does it mean they won’t follow the law?” (Archive link)

तुम लाउडस्पीकर बंद कराओगे तो ये रास्ता निकालेंगे?

अर्थात कानून नहीं मानेंगे ?pic.twitter.com/vzMlYSHQ50

— Sudarshan News (@SudarshanNewsTV) April 26, 2022

Far-right commentator Madhu Kishwar also tweeted the clip writing, “Despite loudspeakers being removed, these people have found a way to produce noise in the name of Azan.” (Archive link)

Awesome!

इन्होंने लाउडस्पीकर बंद पर होने ke बावजूद अजान के bahane shor machane ka विकल्प ढूँढ लिया हैं…
Wish we Dhimmified Hindus would take lessons from them! pic.twitter.com/BlXd0J6J3M

— Madhu Purnima Kishwar (@madhukishwar) April 25, 2022

Sudarshan News’s Abhay Pratap Singh amplified the video while warning against the dangers of “such mentality”. (Archive link)

Fact-check

We performed a reverse image search using a frame from the video on Yandex, which led us to a video on ‘One India Kannada’ YouTube channel. It was uploaded on April 8, 2020. Thus, the viral video is t least two years old and has nothing to do with the ongoing loudspeaker controversy. The description of this video reads, “With the lockdown in effect in India, all temples and mosques have been closed, because of which Muslims did not get an opportunity to offer prayers in the mosque. They then stood on the road and prayed to Allah.” (Archive link)

Taking a closer look at the video, we noticed a shop named ‘Shimla Biryani’ and a board that reads ‘Dr N. Rai’. We reached out to Dr Rai and he said his shop is located in Pilkhana, Howrah.

We performed another keyword search on Google based on this information and came across photos of a shop named ‘New Shimla Biryani’ on Zomato located on GT Road in Pilkhana, Howrah.

We spoke to a staff member at ‘Shimla Biryani’. He said that the viral video was filmed during the lockdown. It must be noted that the people seen in the video have maintained social distancing.

Alt News reached out to another local resident regarding the matter. He confirmed that the video was shot during the lockdown but he was unable to provide an exact date.

To sum it up, the video in question is at least two years old and has no links to the ongoing loudspeaker controversy. The clip was falsely shared by Sudarshan News and several BJP supporters with the claim that Muslims are loudly chanting Azan on the road after loudspeakers were removed.

The post Old video from West Bengal falsely linked to ongoing mosque loudspeakers controversy appeared first on Alt News.

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

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qiao Long and Chingman.

On Friday, Amazon—America's wealthiest, most powerful, and fiercest anti-union corporation, with the second-largest workforce in the nation (union-busting Walmart being the largest), lost out to a group of warehouse workers in New York who voted to form a union.

The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that corporate profits are at a 70-year high.

If anyone had any doubts about Amazon's determination to prevent this from ever happening, its scorched-earth anti-union campaign last fall in its Bessemer, Alabama warehouse should have put those doubts to rest.

In New York, Amazon used every tool it had used in Alabama. Many of them are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act but Amazon couldn't care less. It's rich enough to pay any fine or bear any public relations hit.

The company has repeatedly fired workers who speak out about unsafe working conditions or who even suggest that workers need a voice.

As its corporate coffers bulge with profits—and its founder and executive chairman practices conspicuous consumption on the scale not seen since the robber barons of the late 19th century—Amazon has become the poster child for 21st-century corporate capitalism run amok.

Much of the credit for Friday's victory over Amazon goes to Christian Smalls, whom Amazon fired in the spring of 2020 for speaking out about the firm's failure to protect its warehouse workers from COVID. Smalls refused to back down. He went back and organized a union, with extraordinary skill and tenacity.

Smalls had something else working in his favor, which brings me to Friday's superb jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report showed that the economy continues to roar back to life from the COVID recession.

With consumer demand soaring, employers are desperate to hire. This has given American workers more bargaining clout than they've had in decades. Wages have climbed 5.6 percent over the past year.

The acute demand for workers has bolstered the courage of workers to demand better pay and working conditions from even the most virulently anti-union corporations in America, such as Amazon and Starbucks.

Is this something to worry about? Not at all. American workers haven't had much of a raise in over four decades. Most of the economy's gains have gone to the top.

Besides, inflation is running so high that even the 5.6 percent wage gain over the past year is minimal in terms of real purchasing power.

But corporate America believes these wage gains are contributing to inflation. As the New York Times solemnly reported, the wage gains “could heat up price increases.“

This is pure rubbish. But unfortunately, the chair of the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome Powell, believes it. He worries that “the labor market is extremely tight,"and to “an unhealthy level.”

As a result, the Fed is on the way to raising interest rates repeatedly in order to slow the economy and reduce the bargaining leverage of American workers.

Pause here to consider this: The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that corporate profits are at a 70-year high. You read that right. Not since 1952 have corporations done as well as they are now doing.

Across the board, American corporations are flush with cash. Although they are paying higher costs (including higher wages), they've still managed to increase their profits. How? They have enough pricing power to pass on those higher costs to consumers, and even add some more for themselves.

When American corporations are overflowing with money like this, why should anyone think that wage gains will heat up price increases, as the Times reports? In a healthy economy, corporations would not be passing on higher costs—including higher wages—to their consumers. They'd be paying the higher wages out of their profits.

But that's not happening. Corporations are using their record profits to buy back enormous amounts of their own stock to keep their share prices high, instead.

The labor market isn't “unhealthily" tight, as Jerome Powell asserts; corporations are unhealthily fat. Workers don't have too much power; corporations do.

The extraordinary win of the workers of Amazon's Staten Island warehouse is cause for celebration. Let's hope it marks the beginning of a renewal of worker power in America.

Yet the reality is that corporate America doesn't want to give up any of its record profits to its workers. If it can't fight off unions directly, it will do so indirectly by blaming inflation on wage increases, and then cheer on the Fed as it slows the economy just enough to eliminate American workers' new bargaining clout.

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

This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Kassidy Tarala.

The clip is widespread on Facebook.

Old video from Haryana

Alt News had already debunked this video back in November 2020, when it was being falsely circulated as scenes from polling during the Bihar elections in Dhandli. This video was actually taken during the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. We used the video verification tool InVid to break the video into multiple keyframes and reverse search them on Google. This led us to a tweet thread from May 12, 2019 carrying the video.

What the is this? Is this what we call democracy? pic.twitter.com/XFuvq5dD1m

— Ravi Nair (@t_d_h_nair) May 12, 2019

The user added a tweet by the Faridabad District Election Office in the thread that said the man who was entering the polling booth has been arrested. It also stated that polling was never vitiated.

Prompt action taken. FIR lodged. Person behind bars. Observer enquired the matter personally and is satisfied that polling was never vitiated.

— DISTRICT ELECTION OFFICE FARIDABAD (@OfficeFaridabad) May 12, 2019

On May 13, 2019, NDTV reported that the incident occurred in Haryana during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Faridabad election office confirmed that senior election officers visited the booth and saw the polling agent trying to influence ‘at least three lady voters’. He was arrested shortly afterwards.

In sum, a video of booth capturing from the 2019 Lok Sabha elections was falsely shared by Akhilesh Yadav in connection with the ongoing UP assembly polls. Officials had arrested the individual seen in the video.

The post Akhilesh Yadav tweets video from 2019 as booth capturing in ongoing UP polls appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Aqib Pathan.

Christine Caine, founder of Propel Women, tweeted that the image was posted by her friend @SheilaWalsh. The photo shows Ukrainian Christians praying for their nation on their knees in the snow, she claimed. Christine also appealed to her followers to join them in prayer. (Archive link)

My friend ⁦@SheilaWalsh⁩ posted this picture of Ukrainian Christians praying for their nation, in the snow, on their knees. I know & love so many people in this nation. I’ve been going for over 20 years. We have an office there. Would you join us in prayer? I’m heartbroken. pic.twitter.com/2FXgjK6bVL

— Christine Caine (@ChristineCaine) February 19, 2022

Croatian member of parliament Mariana Peter also tweeted the image as recent. (Archive link)

Ukrainian Christians pray outdoors, in the snow, for their country in this phase of war danger. Let’s pray for people in #Ukraine in these particularly critical times; may God grant wisdom, discernment, strength, courage, protection to the authorities and to the whole population! pic.twitter.com/SPPrEatTZK

— Marijana Petir (@marijana_petir) February 21, 2022

It is also being circulated with a Hindi caption.

The photo is widespread on Twitter and Facebook.

Fact-check

By performing a simple reverse image search, Alt News found the image in an article by the International Mission Board dated September 25, 2019. The Christian news platform mentioned that the image was taken in Kharkiv, a city in Ukraine.

As per the article, Russian separatists had attacked Ukraine’s eastern region in March 2014, prompting pastors and evangelical leaders to put out a call for prayer. Within a week, over 100 people gathered there to pray. Police and army personnel issued threats to the prayer group created in 2014. It also states that separatists had attacked the neighboring cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. Journalist Nicole Leigh herself participated in these prayer meetings held in Kharkiv’s Freedom Square and wrote this article sharing her experience.

In 2014, Russia had seized control of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

To sum it up, an old image of Ukrainians kneeling in prayer in the snow was falsely shared as a visual of the ongoing conflict in the country.

The post Photo of Ukrainians praying in snow is not related to ongoing crisis appeared first on Alt News.

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

Russia warplane nicely avoiding being dropped down by fire missiles after dropping BOMBS… This more than a war… Putin is teaching @NATO a lifetime lesson… #worldwar3 #RussiaUkraineConflict #Ukraine #Russia #RussiaUkraine pic.twitter.com/zCOvS9ob58

— PHOLELO (EFF) (@PHOLELO4US) February 24, 2022

This video has gained lakhs of views @SHEKHAR66355869 [close to 2 lakh views]; @jabaligainz [over 1 lakh views]; @BowiSammy [close to 2 lakh views]; and @schoolboyefr.

Kerala-based news channel Mathrubhumi also aired this clip during a broadcast.

Video game clip

Upon reverse searching the video’s keyframes, Alt News found YouTube channel Compared Comparison had uploaded the video earlier this year in January. Thus, the clip doesn’t show footage from the ongoing crisis.

This clip is 14 seconds longer than the viral clip. The viral section begins 10 seconds into the video. The description and the title establish that the video is a playthrough of the 2013 video game ARMA 3.

ARMA 3 is an open-world, realism-based, military tactical shooter video game.

This video game’s clips are often circulated amid military conflicts. Alt News has debunked the video several times in the past.

The post Mathrubhumi airs ARMA 3 video game clip as airstrike in ongoing Ukraine crisis appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Archit Mehta.

Russia warplane nicely avoiding being dropped down by fire missiles after dropping BOMBS… This more than a war… Putin is teaching @NATO a lifetime lesson… #worldwar3 #RussiaUkraineConflict #Ukraine #Russia #RussiaUkraine pic.twitter.com/zCOvS9ob58

— PHOLELO (EFF) (@PHOLELO4US) February 24, 2022

This video has gained lakhs of views @SHEKHAR66355869 [close to 2 lakh views]; @jabaligainz [over 1 lakh views]; @BowiSammy [close to 2 lakh views]; and @schoolboyefr.

Kerala-based news channel Mathrubhumi also aired this clip during a broadcast.

Video game clip

Upon reverse searching the video’s keyframes, Alt News found YouTube channel Compared Comparison had uploaded the video earlier this year in January. Thus, the clip doesn’t show footage from the ongoing crisis.

This clip is 14 seconds longer than the viral clip. The viral section begins 10 seconds into the video. The description and the title establish that the video is a playthrough of the 2013 video game ARMA 3.

ARMA 3 is an open-world, realism-based, military tactical shooter video game.

This video game’s clips are often circulated amid military conflicts. Alt News has debunked the video several times in the past.

The post Mathrubhumi airs ARMA 3 video game clip as airstrike in ongoing Ukraine crisis appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Archit Mehta.

The post Nuclear Fallout and Baby Teeth: the Ongoing Relevance of a 1960s Study appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Joseph J. Mangano.