The Bhumjaithai Party, holder of 71 seats in the 500-seat lower house of the Thai parliament, announced Wednesday it was withdrawing from Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s government, leaving her ruling coalition with only a slim majority.

The party said it was leaving due to the impact on the nation of a leak of a private phone call between Paetongtarn and former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen that was published first by a pro-Cambodian government news outlet earlier Wednesday.

In the June 15 call, the Thai leader said she was facing domestic pressure over the situation at the border, and urged Hun Sen not to listen to an outspoken Thai general who oversees the army in the border area.

“He just wants to look cool, saying things that are not useful to the nation, but in truth what we want is peace,” Paetongtarn told Hun Sen through an interpreter in the leaked audio clip, referring to the general.

She also urged Hun Sen to text her directly rather than post on social media, saying that makes it harder to manage the situation.

Paetongtarn held a news conference Wednesday where she confirmed the authenticity of the recording and defended her conduct. She said she was attempting to calm the tensions between Thailand and Cambodia that have spiked since Thai forces shot dead a Cambodian soldier on May 28 near where the borders of Thailand, Cambodia and Laos meet.

“It is clear now [Hun Sen] wants popularity in the country, regardless of bilateral relations,” she told reporters in Bangkok. “He told me his popularity was faltering.”

“I would not chat privately any more because of the distrust,” she said.

Nationalist sentiments

Both sides have stepped up their military presence since the May 28 clash. The Thai military ordered shorter opening hours at border crossing points, and Cambodia retaliated by blocking imports of Thai produce.

Cambodia has also requested the International Court of Justice in The Hague to rule on the demarcation of four areas on the disputed 800-kilometer (500-mile) border.

The dispute has stoked nationalist sentiments.

In Phnom Penh, thousands of Cambodians, holding portraits of Hun Sen and his son, Prime Minister Hun Manet, joined a state-organized march Wednesday marking the birthday of Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk.

“Cambodia’s land! We won’t take others’ land, we keep our land!” marchers chanted, Reuters reported.

(Reuters)

In Thailand, Paetongtarn was left with serious political fallout from the leaked call. Critics lambasted her family’s longstanding ties with Cambodia’s ruling Hun family from when her father, Thaksin Shinawatra, was prime minister. Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup, returned from exile in 2023, a year before his daughter took office.

In the leaked call, Paetongtarn, 38, addresses Hun Sen as “uncle” - a term that would be customary in Thai language when speaking to an elder person who is a family friend. But analysts said her appeal to Hun Sen to disregard a general in Thailand’s powerful military leaves her politically vulnerable.

Hard to survive

“It is very hard to see PM Paetongtarn surviving this,” Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asia expert and professor at the National War College in Washington, told Radio Free Asia.

“She threw a senior officer of the Royal Thai Army under the bus, at a time when the military and royalist elites have been chipping away at the grand bargain that saw her father, Thaksin Shinawatra, return from exile,” he said.

“I think the military and the royalist establishment are going to smell blood, now that she has been seen trying to cut a deal and sell out Thai national interests,” Abuza said, adding that regardless of what happens with Paetongtarn’s government, “it is very hard to see bilateral relations improving.”

Hun Sen said Wednesday he had shared audio of the call with about 80 individuals from his political party, parliament, the government and military to avoid any misunderstandings and for internal Cambodian purposes, The Phnom Penh Post reported.

The leak of a private conversation without consent of the other party violates Cambodian law, including the criminal code. It would also be widely regarded as a violation of diplomatic protocol.

Edited by Mat Pennington.

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

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:

“Americans should slam down the phone in response to the latest marketing ploy from the Trump family business. Everything about this plan should tell Americans to disconnect right away.

“First, while the details of the Trump phone plan remain murky, the plan appears to be far more expensive than options available from existing competitors — suggesting it will join a long line of Trump consumer scams and ripoffs. And good luck getting a federal agency to hold the company accountable if service fails or things go off the rails.

“Second, the Trump announcement claims the physical phone will be made in the USA, but there is reason to doubt that claim. There is only one existing phone that is made in the United States — costing $2000 — so the phone is, at minimum, likely to rely heavily on imported parts, raising questions about how Trump’s chaotic tariffs will apply to any imported parts for the Trump phone.

“Third, if the phone actually takes off, how are competitors supposed to respond? Should they advertise, truthfully, that they have a cheaper, comparable product? Or will they be too frightened? Will other businesses choose to rely on the Trump phone plan as a way to curry favor with the president? Does this portend a Trump corruption of the economy to parallel the Trump corruption of politics?

“We’ll need many more details to fully assess what’s going on — including the worrisome claim of offering a pharmacy and telehealth benefit — but it’s already clear this is a plan that should be cancelled, immediately.”

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

“The threats against Adela Navarro, amid a spike in violence against Mexican reporters since the beginning of the year,are deeply troubling,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “Mexican authorities cannot stand by idly and leave reporters like Navarro vulnerable against such threats.”

Navarro, whom CPJ honored with its International Press Freedom Award in 2007 for her work covering crime and corruption in Tijuana, told CPJ that the magazine had received a total of eight calls between April 29 and May 16. Each time, an unidentified male, who called the reception desk of the magazine, only said “tell Adela Navarro to be careful” and then hung up, she said.

Navarro said she believes the calls may be related to an April 28 article Zeta published online and in print asserting that state authorities hid information about a clandestine grave in Tijuana allegedly used by organized crime to dump victims’ bodies.

Navarro and Zeta, one of Mexico’s most widely respected investigate magazines, are a frequent target of attacks, threats, and harassment by both authorities and organized crime. In January, the magazine reported that it had been threatened in a so-called “narcomanta,” a banner hung in the La Libertad neighborhood of Tijuana. Police attributed the banner, which included a warning about Zeta’s reputation, to organized crime.

Several journalists from the magazine have been murdered, including co-founder Héctor Félix Miranda in 1988, editor Francisco Ortiz Franco in 2004, and photographer Margarito Martínez in 2022, while Zeta’s other co–founder, Jesús Blancornelas, survived an attempt on his life in 1997.

CPJ reached out to Laureano Carrillo Rodríguez, Baja California’s state secretary of citizen security, for comment via messaging app, but has not yet received a reply.

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

On Monday President Donald Trump telephoned President Vladimir Putin and they talked for two hours before Trump put lunch in his mouth and Putin his dinner.

On the White House schedule, there was no advance notice of the call and no record afterwards. The White House log is blank for Trump’s entire morning while the press were told he was at lunch between 11:30 and 12:30.

Putin went public first, making a statement to the press which the Kremlin posted at 19:55 Moscow time; it was then 12:55 in Washington. Click to read.

Trump and his staff read the transcript and then composed Trump’s statement in a tweet posted at 13:33 Washington time, 20:33 Moscow time. Click to read.

If Secretary of State Marco Rubio and General Keith Kellogg, the president’s negotiator with the Ukraine and FUGUP (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, Poland), were consulted during Trump’s prepping, sat in on the call with the President,  or were informed immediately after the call, they have remained silent.

The day before, May 18, Rubio announced that the Istanbul-II meeting had produced agreement “to exchange paper on ideas to get to a ceasefire. If those papers have ideas on them that are realistic and rational, then I think we know we’ve made progress. If those papers, on the other hand, have requirements in them that we know are unrealistic, then we’ll have a different assessment.” Rubio was hinting that the Russian formula in Istanbul, negotiations-then-ceasefire, has been accepted by the US. What the US would do after its “assessment”, Rubio didn’t say – neither walk-away nor threat of new sanctions.

Vice President JD Vance wasn’t present at the call because he was flying home from Rome where he attended Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass. “We’re more than open to walking away,” Vance told reporters in his aeroplane. “The United States is not going to spin its wheels here. We want to see outcomes.” Vance prompted Trump to mention the Pope as a mediator for a new round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, first to Putin and then in public.

Kellogg is refusing to go along. He tweeted on Sunday: “In Istanbul @SecRubio  made it clear that we have presented ‘a strong peace plan’. Coming out of the London meetings we (US) came up with a comprehensive 22 point plan that is a framework for peace. The first point is a comprehensive cease fire that stops the killing now.”

FUGUP issued their own statement after Trump’s call. “The US President and the European partners have agreed on the next steps. They agreed to closely coordinate the negotiation process and to seek another technical meeting. All sides reaffirmed their willingness to closely accompany Ukraine on the path to a ceasefire. The European participants announced that they would increase pressure on the Russian side through sanctions.”

This signalled acceptance with Trump of the Russian formula, negotiations-then-ceasefire, and time to continue negotiating at the “technical” level. The sanction threat was added. But this statement was no longer FUGUP. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was omitted; so too Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Italian, the Finn and the European Commission President were substituted. They make FUGIFEC.

Late in the Paris evening of Sunday French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to keep Starmer in Trump’s good books and preserve the ceasefire-first formula. “I spoke tonight,” Macron tweeted, “with @POTUS @Keir_Starmer @Bundeskanzler  and @GiorgiaMeloni  after our talks in Kyiv and Tirana. Tomorrow, President Putin must show he wants peace by accepting the 30-day unconditional ceasefire proposed by President Trump and backed by Ukraine and Europe.” By the time on Monday that Macron realized he had been trumped, the Elysée had nothing to say.

By contrast, Italian Prime Minister Meloni signalled she was happy to line up with Trump and accept Putin’s negotiations-then-ceasefire. “Efforts are being made,” Meloni’s office announced, “for an immediate start to negotiations between the parties that can lead as soon as possible to a ceasefire and create the conditions for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”  Meloni claimed she would assure that Pope Leo XIV would fall into line. “In this regard, the willingness of the Holy Father to host the talks in the Vatican was welcomed. Italy is ready to do its part to facilitate contacts and work for peace.”

For the time being, Putin’s and Trump’s statements have put Rubio, Kellogg and the Europeans offside. Decoding the two president’s statements shows how and why.

President Putin’s Statement

Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76953 

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good evening.

Our colleagues asked me to briefly comment on the outcome of my telephone conversation with the President of the United States.This conversation has effectively taken place and lasted more than two hours. I would like to emphasise that it was both substantive and quite candid. Overall, [1] I believe it was a very productive exchange.

First and foremost [2], I expressed my gratitude to the President of the United States for the support provided by the United States in facilitating the resumption of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine aimed at potentially reaching a peace agreement and resuming the talks which, as we know, were thwarted by the Ukrainian side in 2022 [3].

The President of the United States shared his position [4] on the cessation of hostilities and the prospects for a ceasefire. For my part, I noted that Russia also supports a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis as well. What we need now is to identify the most effective [5] ways towards achieving peace.

We agreed with the President of the United States that Russia would propose and is ready to engage with the Ukrainian side on drafting a memorandum [6] regarding a potential future peace agreement. This would include outlining a range of provisions, such as the principles for settlement, the timeframe for a possible peace deal, and other matters, including a potential temporary ceasefire, should the necessary agreements [7] be reached.

Contacts among participants of the Istanbul meeting and talks have resumed, which gives reason to believe that we are on the right track overall [8].

I would like to reiterate that the conversation was highly constructive, and I assess it positively. The key issue, of course, is now for the Russian side and the Ukrainian side to show their firm commitment to peace and to forge a compromise that would be acceptable to all parties.

Notably, Russia’s position is clear. Eliminating the root causes [9] of this crisis is what matters most to us.

Should any clarifications be necessary, Press Secretary [Dmitry] Peskov and my aide, Mr Ushakov [10], will provide further details on today’s telephone talks with President Trump.

Keys to Decode

1. This is a qualifier, meaning there are serious differences on the details — Putin asked Trump to pause, halt or cease all arms deliveries to the Ukraine, including US arms shipped through Israel, Germany, and Poland. This is a bullet Trump hasn’t bitten, yet.

2. Putin has made a firm decision to give Trump the “peace deal” he has asked for and wishes to announce at a summit meeting. In their call Putin was mollifying Trump’s disappointment at the failure of their plan to meet when Trump was in the Middle East. A Russian source comments: “Whatever concessions have to be made will be made only by Putin and only to Trump. The Europeans are trying to hog the headlines and turn their defeat into some sort of victory – Trump won’t let them have it and Putin won’t either.”

3. Putin does not publicly admit the mistakes he made with Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Medinsky in March 2022 at Istanbul-I. They have now been corrected at the  consensus decision-making session with the military and intelligence chiefs (May 14 Kremlin session) and then on May 16 in Istanbul with Admiral Igor Kostyukov of the GRU seated on Medinsky’s right with General Alexander Fomin, Deputy Minister of Defence. For more details, click to listen.

Source: https://ria.ru/20250516/peregovory-2017151081.html
At top left, 2nd from left, Fomin, then Kostyukov (obscured) and then Medinsky.

4. Soft qualifier. This means Putin did not agree with several of Trump’s points relating to intelligence sharing, arms deliveries, Ukrainian elections.

5. Future tense. Putin suggested to  Trump that he stop Kellogg and FUGUP encouraging Zelensky. Putin made an especially negative remark about the role played by Prime Minister Starmer.

6. This is a Russian lesson in escalation control. By putting the memorandum of understanding in Russian hands to initiate, Putin returns to the key parts of the December 17, 2021, draft treaty which President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken summarily dismissed. Placing agreement on these terms first, before a temporary ceasefire, and making that ceasefire conditional on ceaseforce (halt to battlefield intelligence sharing and arms re-supply), Putin has invited Trump to choose between the US and FUGUP; between Zelensky and an elected successor;  and between his personal negotiator advisors, Steven Witkoff and General Kellogg.

7. Reiteration of the formula, negotiations first, then ceasefire.

8. Qualifier repeated – see Key 1.

9. This phrase refers to the European security architecture and mutual security pact of December 2021, as well as to the two declared objectives of the Special Military Operation — demilitarization and denazification.

10. Following Putin’s statement, Ushakov added: “other details of the telephone conversation. Among other things, Putin and Trump touched upon the exchange of prisoners of citizens of the two countries: the format of ‘nine nine’ is being worked out. The leaders also discussed their possible meeting and agreed that it should be productive, so the teams of the presidents will work out the content of the summit between Russia and the United States.”

President Trump’s Statement

Tweet source: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114535693441367601

Trump followed in a stumbling speech in the Rose Garden in which, referring to the morning telephone call, he said “they [Putin] like Melania better.”

Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire [1] and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. [2] The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic “bloodbath” is over, and I agree [3]. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country.

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me,[4]  immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope [5] has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin! [6]

Keys to Decode

1. Trump accepts that negotiations should come before ceasefire.

2. This amounts to rejection of Kellogg’s 22-point term paper first decided with Zelensky and FUGUP in London on April 23 and repeated by Macron the night before Trump’s telephone call; as well as rejection of Witkoff’s term paper discussed at the Kremlin on April 25.

Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76797
From left to right: Witkoff’s interpreter, Witkoff, Putin, Ushakov, Russian interpreter, Kirill Dmitriev. For analysis of the term sheets, read this.

3. Agreement with the business deal-making which Witkoff has been discussing with Kirill Dmitriev. For the deal beneficiaries on both sides, read this.

4. This list includes two Germans, both Russia haters — Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Ursula von der Leyen, former German defense minister and supporter of the German rearmament plan to continue the war with Russia into the future. The British Prime Minister has been dropped by Trump, and also Polish Prime Minister Tusk. Included for the first time in this context are the Italian and Finnish representatives with whom Trump has demonstrated personal rapport. Research by Manos Tzafalias indicates that there is a substantial money interest in Finland for Trump’s associate, Elon Musk.

5. Prompt from the Catholic convert, Vice President Vance.

Vance and Rubio meeting with Pope Leo XIV on May 18. They invited the Pope to make an official visit to Washington. The last papal visit to the White House was in September 2015 on the invitation of President Obama and Vice President Biden.

6. Trump has covered his disappointment at failing to hold a summit meeting with Putin in Istanbul on the afternoon of May 16 by dismissing the negotiations which occurred without him. For details of Trump’s abortive summit plan, read this.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John Helmer.

Freelance journalist Hebh Jamal was flagged for additional security screening, questioned about her work and had her cellphone searched upon arriving at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport on March 24, 2025.

Jamal, a Palestinian American reporter and documentarian who holds a U.S. passport, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she also advocates for Palestinian rights in Germany, where she lives with her family. She said that while this was far from her first experience with additional screening, it was the first time it was at the hands of U.S. authorities.

“My husband and myself, we’re both advocates. We were put on a list by the border police here in Germany, so that whenever we travel at the airport, we get secondary screening automatically,” Jamal said. “But it was never Interpol, it was never communication with the Americans. So I would travel from Germany and then, in the U.S., I wouldn’t have any issues.”

She said she was flying from Frankfurt with her husband and two children to visit family in the United States, and wasn’t surprised when they were directed to additional screening. It was unusual, however, that the German border authorities questioned whether they planned to engage in any pro-Palestinian speech.

After they arrived at their gate, they were also approached by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents who checked her husband’s visa, took photos of each page of his German passport, and asked him about where he had lived in Gaza and about his family there.

Upon their arrival in Newark, Jamal said both she and her husband were flagged for secondary screening and were taken to separate rooms by border officials.

“At first they were very nice. They were like, ‘Yeah, you know, this is just routine,” she told the Tracker. “They asked me all sorts of questions about where I traveled, asking me a whole bunch of Middle Eastern countries that I’ve been to and if I’d been there.

“And then they saw the Rafah border stamp.”

Jamal said she had traveled to the southern Gaza city bordering Egypt in 2022 to visit family. The officers asked her about who she met and why, whether anyone she encountered was affiliated with Hamas, if she had felt unsafe and if anyone from her family was part of the government in Gaza.

Afterward, Jamal said they began questioning her about her journalism and the last article she had written, which she noted was about detained pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil.

“I know that they already knew I was a journalist because they told my husband, ‘We know your wife is a journalist and we know that you guys are, like, active,’” she said.

Officers also asked for her phone number, email and social media handles before letting her go, Jamal said. They quickly called her back, however, and demanded that she hand over her cellphone and write down her password.

“They said, ‘We need your phone.’ And I said, ‘What happens if I don’t give it to you?’ And they said, ‘No, you have to or we’ll take it by force,’” she told the Tracker.

Jamal said she ultimately complied, noting that she had been aware that U.S. agents might ask for her devices so she had not traveled with a laptop and had factory reset her phone.

The questioning lasted approximately 20 minutes, Jamal said, but the secondary screening as a whole took around an hour and a half.

Her husband was also questioned and his cellphone searched, but she said officers subtly threatened him, warning him not to engage in any sort of political activity.

Jamal said she waited until she left the United States to make the incident public, and has been in touch with Amnesty International to determine whether any spyware was installed on her phone. However, she told the Tracker she’s unsure whether she’ll take any further steps.

“I feel that if I really push about it — outside of just talking on social media — it’s just going to get sort of worse for me,” Jamal said.

In an op-ed for Al Jazeera about the experience, Jamal wrote that the screening was targeted and intended to intimidate them.

“Whether it is in Germany, in the US, or elsewhere, the goal of these tactics is the same: to make us feel small, isolated, criminalised, and afraid,” she wrote. “They want us to doubt the worth of every word we write, to question every protest we join, to swallow every truth before it reaches our lips.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

A lawyer who represents a pro-Palestinian student protester in Michigan was detained Sunday at the Detroit Metro Airport on his way back from a family vacation. Dearborn attorney Amir Makled was separated from his wife and children and asked to surrender his cellphone by Border Patrol agents. “This wasn’t something that was random,” says Makled. “They had a whole profile about me.” He was eventually released after 90 minutes of questioning and refusing to provide sensitive client information to the agents. Makled believes he was targeted due to his involvement in cases that challenge the current administration of President Donald Trump.

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

“Organizing and mobilizing works. From the moment DOGE announced its dangerous plan to eliminate SSA telephone services, our members sprang into action—making thousands of calls to elected officials, organizing rallies and demonstrations, and demanding the protection of the services they have earned and paid for.

“We are grateful that our voices were heard. As of today, most Americans will still be able to apply for their earned retirement, survivor, or disability benefits through the method that works best for them—whether by phone, in person, or online.

“Forcing millions of seniors and people with disabilities to rely solely on an understaffed network of closing field offices or an online-only system would have placed an unreasonable burden on vulnerable people and done little to curb fraudulent claims.

“We will continue to fight to ensure that SSA is fully staffed and that local field offices remain open and accessible to the public.”

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

We continue to discuss the new HBO Original film Surveilled and explore the film’s investigation of high-tech spyware firms with journalist Ronan Farrow and director Matthew O’Neill. We focus on the influence of the Israeli military in the development of some of the most widely used versions of these surveillance technologies, which in many cases are first tested on Palestinians and used to enforce Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and on the potential expansion of domestic U.S. surveillance under a second Trump administration. Ever-increasing surveillance is “dangerous for democracy,” says Farrow. “We’re making and selling a weapon that is largely unregulated.” As O’Neill emphasizes, “We could all be caught up.”

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

KPRC-TV reporter Gage Goulding was shoved and his camera smacked out of his hands while reporting at a Houston-area used-car dealership in Pasadena, Texas, on Dec. 5, 2024.

In a report for the outlet, Goulding recounted that he and photojournalist Oscar Chavez went to the business to investigate a young woman’s allegations that she was conned out of $1,500 when trying to buy a car.

Goulding reportedly went undercover as a potential customer to see whether he’d have a similar experience.

“Wearing a microphone, but without a camera, Goulding got the keys to a Jeep and with the salesman, started the engine and talked about test-driving the vehicle,” KPRC-TV reported. “At that point, he informed the salesman who he was and why he was there.”

In recordings of the exchange that followed, the salesman is heard inviting Goulding inside to speak with the manager, David Estrada. Goulding — with Chavez following behind with a camera — began asking Estrada about the woman’s experience.

“When we do these stories and confront businesses, we usually are met with one simple answer: Please leave. And we do, we abide by that,” Goulding reported. “But this story was different from the get-go.”

Estrada stood and without warning placed his hand on Chavez’s camera and began pushing the photojournalist outside. Outside the office, Estrada continued grabbing the camera while Goulding yelled for him not to touch their equipment and Chavez said that they were leaving.

“Meanwhile, the car salesman is grabbing (Chavez’s) camera, twisting his arm and throwing elbows,” Goulding said in his report.

Estrada also smacked Goulding’s phone “through the air” and pinned Chavez in the journalists’ vehicle.

Neither journalist responded to requests for additional comment.

KPRC-TV reported that Estrada was arrested that day on two counts of assault. Estrada is also facing unrelated charges for allegedly embezzling more than $140,000 from another dealership, according to the station.

The woman whose experience sparked the investigation was contacted by the dealership and told she would be overnighted a check for the full $1,500.

“The goal of this story wasn’t to create any drama,” Goulding reported. “It was to get answers for (the woman) and her family. And the good news is: We did get those answers.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

We discuss the new HBO Original film Surveilled and explore the film’s investigation of high-tech spyware firms with journalist Ronan Farrow and director Matthew O’Neill. We focus on the influence of the Israeli military in the development of some of the most widely used versions of these surveillance technologies, which in many cases are first tested on Palestinians and used to enforce Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and on the potential expansion of domestic U.S. surveillance under a second Trump administration. Ever-increasing surveillance is “dangerous for democracy,” says Farrow. “We’re making and selling a weapon that is largely unregulated.” As O’Neill emphasizes, “We could all be caught up.”

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

Rohit Sharma, a senior journalist for India Today, was physically prevented from leaving an interview he was conducting with an Indian politician in Irving, Texas, on Sept. 7, 2024, after men present intervened to stop the questioning, grabbed his cellphone and ultimately deleted the recording of the conversation.

Sharma told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he had arranged an interview with Sam Pitroda — the overseas head of the Indian National Congress, one of India’s main opposition parties — ahead of the arrival of fellow party member Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of India’s Parliament.

Approximately 30 people, a mixture of party members from India and the United States, were in the room with them, Sharma reported for the widely circulated newsweekly. The interview with Pitroda was straightforward, he said, setting the scene ahead of Gandhi’s three-day visit and addressing issues that concern members of the Indian diaspora.

“The last question that I asked him was about (nonresident Indians) who’ve protested against the killing of minorities in Bangladesh recently, after the change of government,” Sharma said, referring to the alleged targeting of the Hindu, Christian and Buddhist populations in the Muslim-majority nation. “He was answering that question when, I think to his surprise and my surprise, one person jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘It’s controversial! Stop recording it!’”

Pitroda tried to calm the men down, Sharma said, but another individual attempted to grab Sharma’s microphone while someone else grabbed his phone off the tripod it was set up on. Shortly after, Pitroda was told Gandhi had arrived at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and quickly left the room along with some of those present.

The approximately 15 men who remained continued shouting at one another and at Sharma, the journalist told the Tracker, debating what needed to be done.

“I was made to sit on a chair — there were two persons, one on my left side and one on the right — and I couldn’t get up. I tried getting up and they said, ‘No, sit down, sit down. You can’t move,’” Sharma told the Tracker. “My instant fear was: I need to get out of this room.”

Sharma said that the men locked his phone while passing it around, so one of them held it up to his face to unlock it using Face ID. They deleted the recording from Sharma’s Photos app, and once again used his Face ID to access his Recently Deleted folder to permanently delete the recording. He said his phone was in airplane mode, and so the recording was not uploaded to his iCloud.

The men went through the other apps on Sharma’s phone to ensure no copy remained. Once they were sure, Sharma was allowed to stand and everyone began to leave the suite, approximately 30 minutes after halting the interview with Pitroda.

“Somebody said, ‘We should keep his phone for the next four days, until Mr. Gandhi leaves the U.S., so that nothing gets out,’” Sharma said. He added that he was able to convince them to return the phone, and once he got to the parking lot he called Pitroda to alert him to what had happened.

The incident immediately chilled his reporting, Sharma said, as he felt unsafe attending any of Gandhi’s events in Washington, D.C., and he’s concerned about what it will mean for his coverage moving forward.

“Anything I write about him moving forward will be looked at through the lens of, ‘Oh, he’s a disgruntled person.’ Even if I report objectively, people will not think it objective,” he said. “It has left a scar.”

Pitroda called Sharma to apologize for the incident a few days after and told the journalist that he believes in press freedom and that he would investigate and hold the responsible parties accountable. Pitroda did not respond to an email from the Tracker requesting additional information on the status of that investigation.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Independent journalist Tina-Desiree Berg was shoved multiple times and her phone briefly stolen while documenting clashes between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters in Los Angeles, California, on June 23, 2024. At least nine journalists were assaulted while covering the violence that day.

The conflict began after the Southern California chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement called for demonstrators to meet at noon outside the Adas Torah synagogue in the heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood in west LA to protest the alleged sale of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Multiple journalists told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that scuffles, brawls and exchanges of pepper spray broke out in the streets nearby between the protesters and counterprotesters.

Individuals from both sides — including a rabbi and security volunteers from the Jewish community — attempted to intervene and prevent the violence from escalating. CNN reported that Los Angeles Police Department officers established a perimeter around the synagogue.

Berg was targeted with aggressions multiple times throughout the day, according to reports from other journalists covering the protests. Berg did not respond to requests for comment.

Investigative journalist Kate Burns, who was covering the protest for Left Coast Right Watch, captured footage shortly after 2 p.m. of multiple men watching Berg film the protests. At 0:11 in the clip, one man appears to lightly push a second toward Berg. The second man then crashes into her with his shoulder and raised arms, toppling her several feet over and sending her phone flying.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

We look at the unfolding ethics scandal at The Washington Post that has rocked one of the nation’s leading news outlets and raised questions about its future. The controversy centers on CEO and publisher Will Lewis, who has reportedly pressured journalists inside and outside the newsroom not to run unflattering stories about him. His efforts to reshape the newsroom in the face of steep financial losses have also alarmed staff, and British editor Robert Winnett, Lewis’s pick for a top editorial role, withdrew amid concern over his history of using fraudulently obtained information in newspaper articles. Lewis is also implicated in the long-running U.K. phone hacking scandal. Both Lewis and Winnett are veterans of conservative British papers owned by Rupert Murdoch, and The Guardian recently revealed that Lewis advised then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on how to cover his tracks amid public outrage over violations of COVID precautions at the height of the pandemic. “At the most basic level of how journalism should operate, executives in charge of news in the public interest should not be suppressing news. It’s a pretty simple bar, and Will Lewis has failed to clear it,” says Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation.

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

Sergio Olmos, an investigative reporter for the nonprofit news site CalMatters, reported that his phone was knocked to the ground and subsequently stolen while he was documenting clashes between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters in Los Angeles, California, on June 23, 2024. At least nine journalists were assaulted while covering the violence that day.

The conflict began after the Southern California chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement called for demonstrators to meet at noon outside the Adas Torah synagogue in the heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood in west LA to protest the alleged sale of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Multiple journalists told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that scuffles, brawls and exchanges of pepper spray broke out in the streets nearby between the protesters and counterprotesters.

Individuals from both sides — including a rabbi and security volunteers from the Jewish community — attempted to intervene and prevent the violence from escalating. CNN reported that Los Angeles Police Department officers established a perimeter around the synagogue.

Olmos wrote on the social media platform X that he was filming an attack on a pro-Palestinian protester when a man drove a truck toward the crowd, nearly ramming people. “At that moment a pro-israeli demonstrator knocked my phone out of my hands to stop me from filming it,” Olmos wrote.

Independent videographer Sean Beckner-Carmitchel told the Tracker that the phone was later returned. Olmos declined to comment further when reached by the Tracker.

In a second post, Olmos wrote that later that day a different demonstrator stole his phone and, when he held up his press credentials, the man told him, “You shouldn’t be there.” The robbery can be seen at 0:47 in footage captured by Beckner-Carmitchel. Of the phone, Olmos wrote: “its gone.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Section 40, which has never been brought into force, was drawn up following the Leveson Inquiry into British media ethics in 2012 after journalists were found to have hacked the phones of celebrities and a murdered schoolgirl.

CPJ and others called on the U.K. to repeal Section 40, as promised in 2023 via provisions in the Media Bill, as it risks forcing news publishers to sign up to state-backed regulation.

Read the full statement below:

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Independent videographer Sean Beckner-Carmitchel was repeatedly harassed and his phone knocked to the ground while reporting on a pro-Israeli counterprotest to the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 29, 2024.

UCLA’s student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, reported that protesters had erected the encampment on campus April 25 to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and demand that the UC system divest from companies that invest in weapons manufacturers for the Israeli military.

A large, pro-Israeli counterprotest was organized next to the encampment, with barricades erected to separate the groups, Reuters reported. Beckner-Carmitchel told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he was headbutted and shoved by a man while reporting on the clash between the two groups on April 28.

Throughout his coverage the following evening, Beckner-Carmitchel said, multiple individuals targeted him for harassment and assault.

“At one point, one of the pro-Israel protesters stood in front of me and blared an air horn directly in my ear for like five minutes straight,” he said. “They also threw what I’m guessing was a wadded up sign at my head at one point.”

In footage Beckner-Carmitchel posted on Instagram, an air horn can be heard resounding as he filmed counterprotesters attempting to break into the encampment. He added that at various points individuals called him slurs, knocked the phone from his hands and came up from behind him and blew a whistle in his ear.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Independent journalist Anthony Cabassa was pushed against a wall and his phone charger stolen while reporting on pro-Palestinian protests at the University of California, Los Angeles on April 30, 2024.

UCLA’s student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, reported that protesters had erected the encampment on campus April 25 to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war and demand that the UC system divest from companies that invest in weapons manufacturers for the Israeli military.

Shortly after 1 p.m. on the 30th, Cabassa reported on social media that an individual had stolen his phone charger because he refused to stop filming in a public space. He noted that by the time he was able to speak to university police, the thief was long gone.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Logan Schiciano, the news director for the student-run broadcaster Northwestern News Network, had his phone knocked from his hands while reporting on a student protest on the university’s campus in Evanston, Illinois, on April 25, 2024.

Students had erected tents on a central campus green that morning in support of Palestinians, calling on the university to divest and cut ties with companies and institutions connected to Israel, The Daily Northwestern reported.

Schiciano told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker he arrived at the encampment about an hour and a half after students set up their tents. A few minutes later, he began filming with his phone.

In a video Schiciano posted on social media, individuals can be seen erecting tents on a lawn when they notice Schiciano filming. Two individuals rush toward the student journalist, and one appears to lunge at Schiciano and knock the phone from his hand.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Among other issues, the pair discussed China’s “destabilizing actions” against U.S. ally the Philippines in the South China Sea, its support for Russia in the war in Ukraine, a new security law in Hong Kong and Taiwan’s upcoming presidential inauguration, a U.S. official said.

It was the first call between the two leaders in nearly two years.

It came ahead of visits to Beijing by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen “in the coming days” and by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “in the coming weeks,” according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the call.

It also took place amid the first cracks in a budding diplomatic truce declared late last year between the United States and China, with the Washington and Beijing feuding over trade policy and American authorities accusing China of a massive cyber-espionage program.

During the call, the two leaders discussed military ties, including China’s recent “destabilizing actions” against U.S. ally the Philippines near the Second Thomas Shoal and Beijing’s ongoing support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House official said.

Biden also used the call “to reiterate the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, especially given the upcoming major presidential inauguration in Taiwan,” the official said, and the pair did not shy away from other “tough issues” that strain relations.

They discussed “the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy” after the passage of Article 23, which increased punishment for offenders convicted of breaching state secrets and granted the government sweeping new powers to crack down on all forms of dissent. 

Biden brought up U.S. claims of a massive state-run Chinese hacking program, but the two leaders also hit on “areas of cooperation where our interests align,” including counternarcotics and climate change.

“This is what responsible management of the relationship looks like,” the official said. “I would take this phone call as a ‘check-in.’”

Communication is key

The White House official said there would be few “new outcomes” in ties between China and the United States following the call.

But, the official added, it was important for occasional leader-level “check-ins” between the pair given the singular power now wielded by Xi in China’s authoritarian political system. 

In the background, senior U.S. and Chinese officials have for months been meeting in efforts to stabilize ties between the world’s two major powers, which last year appeared to have veered far off course.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met in Bangkok in January, while Wang and Blinken met in Munich in February. Both of those meetings followed Biden and Xi’s high-profile Nov. 15 in-person talks just outside San Francisco.

During that meeting, which ended more than a year of tense U.S.-China ties, the leaders agreed to reinstate talks between their militaries, cooperate on regulation of artificial intelligence and to stem the flow of precursors for the opioid fentanyl out of China.

Since then, there has been a marked absence of near accidents between the militaries in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait that punctuated 2023, and American and Chinese officials have ramped up cooperation to stop fentanyl making its way into the United States.

U.S. diplomats last month also backed a Chinese push at the United Nations to create global norms governing artificial intelligence, showing progress on the three main deals made in San Francisco.

Still, Biden and Xi had not spoken on the phone since July 2022, when Xi warned Biden against “playing with fire” over Taiwan, a democratic island claimed as territory by Beijing, ahead of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip there that led to a breakdown in U.S.-China ties.

“Looking back between the last two [Biden-Xi] summits – November 2022 and November 2023 – we did not have a leader-level call,” the White House official said. “Both sides realized that it's important to do that to really manage relationships in a more responsible fashion.”

Phoning it in

Planning for the call had been taking place since Sullivan and Wang met in January, but it was hard to nail down a time that worked. 

Sullivan and Wang agreed on the need for a direct call during the first three months of the year during their Bangkok meeting, the senior official said, “but the 12 hour time difference” between Washington and Beijing “does not make for easy scheduling, I can tell you.”

Yet, in the end, the call at a fortuitous time, with the coming weeks to see a whirlwind of meetings that will impact U.S.-China relations.

Biden is set to host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House on April 11. It will be the first trilateral meeting between leaders of the three countries, and comes amid the growing tensions between Manila and Beijing over the Second Thomas Shoal.

Yellen, the U.S. Treasury secretary, also heads to China later this week, with meetings planned in Guangzhou and Beijing. The planned visit to Beijing “in the coming weeks” by Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, has not yet been announced by the State Department.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

Among other issues, the pair discussed China’s “destabilizing actions” against U.S. ally the Philippines in the South China Sea, its support for Russia in the war in Ukraine, a new security law in Hong Kong and Taiwan’s upcoming presidential inauguration, a U.S. official said.

It was the first call between the two leaders in nearly two years.

It came ahead of visits to Beijing by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen “in the coming days” and by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken “in the coming weeks,” according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the call.

It also took place amid the first cracks in a budding diplomatic truce declared late last year between the United States and China, with the Washington and Beijing feuding over trade policy and American authorities accusing China of a massive cyber-espionage program.

During the call, the two leaders discussed military ties, including China’s recent “destabilizing actions” against U.S. ally the Philippines near the Second Thomas Shoal and Beijing’s ongoing support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House official said.

Biden also used the call “to reiterate the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, especially given the upcoming major presidential inauguration in Taiwan,” the official said, and the pair did not shy away from other “tough issues” that strain relations.

They discussed “the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy” after the passage of Article 23, which increased punishment for offenders convicted of breaching state secrets and granted the government sweeping new powers to crack down on all forms of dissent. 

Biden brought up U.S. claims of a massive state-run Chinese hacking program, but the two leaders also hit on “areas of cooperation where our interests align,” including counternarcotics and climate change.

“This is what responsible management of the relationship looks like,” the official said. “I would take this phone call as a ‘check-in.’”

Communication is key

The White House official said there would be few “new outcomes” in ties between China and the United States following the call.

But, the official added, it was important for occasional leader-level “check-ins” between the pair given the singular power now wielded by Xi in China’s authoritarian political system. 

In the background, senior U.S. and Chinese officials have for months been meeting in efforts to stabilize ties between the world’s two major powers, which last year appeared to have veered far off course.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met in Bangkok in January, while Wang and Blinken met in Munich in February. Both of those meetings followed Biden and Xi’s high-profile Nov. 15 in-person talks just outside San Francisco.

During that meeting, which ended more than a year of tense U.S.-China ties, the leaders agreed to reinstate talks between their militaries, cooperate on regulation of artificial intelligence and to stem the flow of precursors for the opioid fentanyl out of China.

Since then, there has been a marked absence of near accidents between the militaries in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait that punctuated 2023, and American and Chinese officials have ramped up cooperation to stop fentanyl making its way into the United States.

U.S. diplomats last month also backed a Chinese push at the United Nations to create global norms governing artificial intelligence, showing progress on the three main deals made in San Francisco.

Still, Biden and Xi had not spoken on the phone since July 2022, when Xi warned Biden against “playing with fire” over Taiwan, a democratic island claimed as territory by Beijing, ahead of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip there that led to a breakdown in U.S.-China ties.

“Looking back between the last two [Biden-Xi] summits – November 2022 and November 2023 – we did not have a leader-level call,” the White House official said. “Both sides realized that it's important to do that to really manage relationships in a more responsible fashion.”

Phoning it in

Planning for the call had been taking place since Sullivan and Wang met in January, but it was hard to nail down a time that worked. 

Sullivan and Wang agreed on the need for a direct call during the first three months of the year during their Bangkok meeting, the senior official said, “but the 12 hour time difference” between Washington and Beijing “does not make for easy scheduling, I can tell you.”

Yet, in the end, the call at a fortuitous time, with the coming weeks to see a whirlwind of meetings that will impact U.S.-China relations.

Biden is set to host Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House on April 11. It will be the first trilateral meeting between leaders of the three countries, and comes amid the growing tensions between Manila and Beijing over the Second Thomas Shoal.

Yellen, the U.S. Treasury secretary, also heads to China later this week, with meetings planned in Guangzhou and Beijing. The planned visit to Beijing “in the coming weeks” by Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, has not yet been announced by the State Department.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Shawn Musgrave.

“Cutting off mobile communication services on an election day and preventing journalists from reporting from polling stations severely undermines citizens’ rights to stay informed,” said CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “These heavy-handed measures raise serious questions about Pakistan’s commitment to democracy and human rights. A free and fair election requires independent media reporting and unhampered access to information.”

Despite the regulatory Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) earlier promise to maintain access to internet services on election day, the interior ministry announced on Thursday that mobile services had been suspended on grounds of security threats.

Dozens of people were killed in twin bombings in southwestern Baluchistan province, the previous day. Islamic State claimed responsibility for one of the attacks.

The internet watchdog Netblocks said that internet blackouts were also widely reported in multiple regions in Pakistan, in addition to mobile services being cut. Journalists in the capital of Islamabad told CPJ they could not use their cell phones and experienced difficulties accessing the internet.

Meanwhile, a reporter with Al Jazeera told CPJ that a team of journalists from the news network was barred from entering a polling station in Pakistan’s second-largest city, Lahore. Police officials at the polling station cited orders from “top management” to prevent media teams entering the premises, the reporter said.

Media were also barred from reporting in several polling stations in Malir district, which is part of Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, according to The Express Tribune newspaper.

Ahead of the elections, CPJ called on Pakistani authorities to allow nationwide access to the internet, and unblock the investigative news website FactFocus.

Since former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted from power in April 2022, mainstream news channels have ceased coverage of the politician following a de facto ban and a number of press freedom violations were documented by CPJ.

The PTA and the Election Commission of Pakistan did not respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment.

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

Amid a communications blackout in Gaza, we are able to reach Palestinian journalist Akram al-Satarri in Rafah, where much of Gaza’s population is now displaced near the Egyptian border as Israel intensifies its assault on the besieged territory. The overall death toll in Gaza has now topped 21,000, including over 8,000 children, and Israeli leaders have suggested the war could continue for months. “The situation is dire,” says al-Satarri, who describes continuous airstrikes leveling buildings as Gaza residents live in terror, not knowing when, where or why Israeli bombs will fall. “It’s a continuous struggle to live. It’s a continuous struggle to survive.”

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

Mlozoa had been assigned to cover an anti-government demonstration by a group calling itself Malawi First in the Mangochi district, about 150 miles southeast of the capital, Lilongwe, Gabriel Kamlomo, ZBS’ director of news and current affairs, told CPJ.

Police officers stopped Mlozoa as he photographed them arresting a demonstrator, seized the journalist’s phone, and deleted his photographs of the incident before returning his device, according to a news report and a statement by the Malawi chapter of regional press freedom group, Media Institute of Southern Africa.

“Authorities should hold accountable the Malawi police officers who forcibly deleted the photos of police conduct from journalist Raphael Mlozoa’s phone and ensure that such blunt censorship never happens again,” said Muthoki Mumo, CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, in Nairobi. “Journalists in Malawi should be permitted to cover demonstrations and other events of public interest without fear of harassment or intimidation.”

Kamlomo told CPJ that ZBS filed a police complaint about the officer’s conduct toward Mlozoa.

CPJ’s calls and questions sent via messaging app to Malawi police spokesperson Peter Kalaya and Mangochi Police Station publicist Amina Tepani Daud received no response.

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

Photo by Kipras Štreimikis

I live in New York and mobile phones are everywhere.  I regularly take a bus or subway to get around and, most striking, I see few people who still read an old-fashioned paper newspaper or book.  Nearly everyone seems to be glued to their handheld phone.

This is very much the same while walking down the street, with the eyes of an ever-growing number of people glued to their tiny phone screens.  Once those who talked out loud in public seemed weird, but today people talking out loud walking down the street or on a bus or subway is just oh-so-21^st century.

Weirder still, sitting in a coffee shop or restaurant, all too often the couple across the way is not talking to each other but endlessly checking their smartphones.  It’s the new normal.

One can pick up a “phone” — be it wired or wireless — almost anywhere in the country or around the globe and call a friend, family member, business associate, police or whoever else almost anywhere and at (essentially) any time.  The wireless mobile phone is – at once – the anchor, the grounding technology, and the lubricant, the electronic facilitator, of 21st-century, postmodern life.

Today’s mobile phone era began inauspiciously on April 3, 1973, when Motorola’s Martin Cooper called Joel Engel of Bell Labs over the first cellphone. “Hi, Joel, I’m calling on a cellphone, but a real cellphone, a personal, handheld, portable cellphone.”

People, including an ever-growing number of youths, live through their hand-held and finger-navigated mobile devices – they speak, text, email, watch videos, socially connect and whatever more through their mobile phones.  And by “everyone,” I mean essentially everyone, no matter what age, gender, race or apparent economic status. The only ones who do not appear to have such devices are very young children, the very old and the ever-increasing number of lost souls who wander the city’s streets.

Postmodern, 21^st Century America is a telecom interdependent nation. There are more telecom subscribers than people in the country.  It is estimated that there are — 518 million telecom subscribers (i.e., wireless, wireline and cable) According to CTIA, the wireless industry trade association, in 2021 there were 469 million mobile wireless devices in use and, of these, 190 million were connected devices that included smartphones, laptops, tablets, watches and in cars. The 2020 U.S. Census reports the population at 331 million, that’s 1.4 wireless devices per person.

Worldwide, one estimate places the number of smartphone users in 2023 at 6.92 billion, 86 percent of the world’s population.

***

Nearly a century-and-a-half ago, on June 2, 1875, while experimenting with his “harmonic telegraph,” Alexander Graham Bell called out to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, “Mr. Watson – Come here – I want to see you.” They are considered the first words spoken between two telephones over an electrified wire. In 1876, Bell publicly displayed the telephone and, the following year, formed the Bell Telephone Company that became the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) Company – aka “Ma Bell.”

A century ago, AT&T introduced the first nationwide telephone system. This was during the nation’s “modern” era, one defined by such innovations as the light bulb, typewriter, sewing machine and phonograph following the adoption of the railroad and photography. This era saw the nation’s population more than double and become an industrial powerhouse.

Initially, the telephone was a luxury service, slowly appearing in businesses and more upscale homes.  However, a century later, telecom service has become a necessity, and — like water and electricity services — most Americans take their telecom connectivity for granted. If it works – however poorly and over-priced – we use it. We complain about slow download and upload speeds, static reception, high fees and bad customer service, but we pay our bill every month; sometimes, we shop around for a better deal only to end up with a similarly failing, overpriced service.

Today, the U.S. telecommunications system is a vast enterprise that operates, in effect, like the nation’s nervous system. It mediates, and electronically facilitates, nearly every aspect of postmodern communications, whether personal, business, health, education, commercial or government connections.  It allows users to check the latest news headline, see a presidential address, consult one’s doctor, take up a promotional offering, paying a bill, join a dating service hook-up or check out a porn flick.  It facilitates voice, video, internet, social media, movies and streaming services, whether over a wired or wireless network, be it fixed or mobile.

Yet, few Americans are aware that the U.S. is a second-tier telecom country.  The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ranks the U.S. 32^nd in terms of fiber deployment of the 38 OECD countries.  The U.S. is ranked 15^th-fastest for mobile speeds (at 110.07 Mbps) and 13^th-fastest for broadband speeds (at 203.81 Mbps).  As of April 2022, only 43 percent of American homes had access to fiber broadband services compared to Norway and South Korea with over 80 percent access, and Spain, Portugal and Japan were above 90 percent

Making matters worse, Americans pay more for their inferior telecom services. In the U.S., the monthly fee for internet service (at 60 Mbps) is estimated at $70.06 compared to Canada ($64.29), the U.K. ($38.72), France ($32.23) and Japan ($33.45).  And Americans are systematically overcharged not only by rigged service fees (e.g., “Ramming,” Cramming,” “Slamming” and other scams) but a host of hidden fees like “Subscriber Line Charges” and “Inside Wire Charges” and miscellaneous charges (e.g., “Call Waiting,” “Caller ID” and “Call Forwarding”).

And then there is the “digital divide,” telecom inequality. In our postmodern nation, millions of Americans lack even basic connections to broadband and the internet.  The FCC finds that approximately 15 million Americans still lack access to fixed broadband service at minimum threshold speeds (i.e., 25 Mbps/download and 3 Mbps/upload).  In rural areas, nearly one-fourth of the population (14.5 million people) lack access to this service.  However, John Kahan, Microsoft’s chief data analytics officer, warned that the FCC was vastly undercounting the actual number.  He noted that Microsoft data indicate that almost 162.8 million people “are not using the internet at broadband speeds.”

The failure to build out the telecom infrastructure fashions what is known as “digital redlining.”  It has resulted in pockets throughout the country, in cities and rural areas, with little or poor-quality telecom services.  Millions of school children lack adequate internet access or broadband-enabled learning devices, while their parents are deprived of advanced employment opportunities, digital medical services and entertainment experiences.

Equally troubling, few Americans are aware that telecom companies track every call, email, web search, Zoom session, social networking connection, streaming session or download, thus turning the postmodern user into a digital commodity whose personal data is being sold to marketers or third parties whose interests and purposes are unknown to them.

***

Over the last half-century, wireless media technology has gone through five phases or “generations” mirroring how media tech has evolved.  Today’s Fifth Generation or “5G” was developed in South Korea in 2008. Samsung announced that it had created a 5G network in 2013 and, in 2019, Verizon introduced 5G in the U.S. Today, 5G is slowly superseding 4G LTE in many metropolitan areas – and 6G development is underway.

The telecom industry is promoting “5G” wireless technology because it utilizes higher-frequency radio bands — 3.5 GHz [Gigahertz] to 26 GHz and beyond – than 4G, thus offering greater signal capacity.  However, to be deployed, 5G requires the installation of a greater number of cell transmitters and receivers that are located closer to the ground and to a customer’s home.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), part of the Koch brothers’ network of corporate front organizations that lobby for their “Libertarian” free-market agenda, plays a pivotal role in influencing telecom policy.  ALEC’s 5G campaign was aggressively taken up by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.  Speaking before Indiana’s Statehouse in 2018, Carr promised that “5G will create jobs, improve education and promote safety. But to upgrade our networks, we must upgrade our regulations.” He added:

Policymakers can’t claim success if 5G is only deployed in big cities like New York and San Francisco. Those ‘must serve’ cities will get next-gen mobile broadband almost regardless of what we do. Success means every community getting a fair shot at 5G.

Going further, he argued, “To achieve that success, we need to update our rules to match this revolutionary new technology.”

For nearly a decade, health and social activists have raised concerns about 5G technology.  Devra Davis, PhD, MPH and president of Environmental Health Trust (EHT), has been one of the strongest critics of 5G technology.  “The EHT Trust has worked for over a decade to protect the public from radiofrequency [RF] radiation, testified to Congress and published critical research on why children are more vulnerable,” she said.

Sadly, 5G has very little to do with the actual public benefits of wireless technology, especially as a “mobile” service that facilitates today’s hectic, postmodern lifestyle.  Rather, 5G is more a marketing term used to

signal the wonderful future promised by a new technology and to ensure legislative deregulation, specifically the blocking any interference with the placement of the numerous small cell 5G antennae.

The telecom industry’s ceaseless promotion of 5G has served to block or reduce the rate of fiber deployments by the leading “phone” and “cable” companies. AT&T finished its fiber buildout reaching 14 million homes in 2019; Verizon is focused primarily on wireless (“5G”) and its fiber deployment is determined by where it helps facilitate wireless traffic.  And Comcast and Charter/Spectrum, the leading “cable” companies, most often employ hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) networks.  As a result, as one estimate suggests, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) as a share of total homes passed has been “stalled at 23% over the past year.”

***

The telephone, especially the mobile phone, has a long and remarkable history.  Over the last century-plus of evolution, it changed social life throughout the world. Equally significant, from Bell to Jobs and beyond, it has forged a powerful industry.  It facilitates the electronic connectivity that enables what we know as “big tech” — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.  As Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) warns:

As these companies have grown larger and more powerful, they’ve used their resources and control over how we use the Internet to squash small business and innovation, and substitute their own financial interests for the broader interests of the American people.

When you pick up that small — and relatively weightless — smartphone, take a moment and reflect that you are holding a remarkable example of technological evolution.  It anchors postmodern life; it is an electronic key that opens many, many doors.  Ever-increasing dimensions of people’s lives – be they personal or social — are mediated through the digital connectivity that the mobile phone facilitates.  It makes you are a postmodern, 21st-century person.

The post The Mobile Phone: Anchor of Postmodern Life appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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

On October 19, six soldiers attacked and beat Morkah, a morning show host with the privately owned Akyemansa FM broadcaster, after Morkah began filming the soldiers attacking a man in the Birim Central Municipal District of Ghana’s Eastern Region, according to a report by the privately owned Modern Ghana news website and Morkah, who spoke by phone with CPJ.

After noticing Morkah was filming, a soldier approached the journalist, grabbed his shirt by the neck and began to hit him, demanding to know why Morkah was filming. Morkah said five other soldiers then joined in hitting and kicking him all over his body, even as he told them he was a journalist.

“Authorities in Ghana must ensure that those responsible for beating journalist Nicholas Morkah are held accountable,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in New York. “Ghana’s leadership have so far failed to take the necessary actions to ensure security forces do not perpetrate violence against journalists.”

The soldiers seized Morkah’s cell phone, forced him into their van, and then hit Morkah with his motorcycle helmet at least five times before driving the journalist to their local barracks, where they erased everything on his phone by resetting it. They also accused the journalist of offending them.  

While at the barracks, a senior officer requested that Morkah provide a contact for Yaw Yeboah, Akyemansa FM’s manager, then called Yeboah, informed him of Morkah’s arrest, and said the outlet would be prevented from covering future military events, Morkah told CPJ. Officers at the barracks also found Morkah’s second phone and searched it, Morkah said.

Officers then took Morkah to the local police command, where officers interrogated him, handed him a document alleging he had committed “offensive conduct,” and made him write a statement about the incident on that document.  

Morkah said the officers released him the same day without charge on administrative bail for which he had to provide a surety and verbal assurances that he would be available for further questioning. He returned the next day and retrieved both of his phones.

After his release, Morkah said he went to a hospital where he was given medication for severe pain in his knee, back, and head, as well as cuts on his lips and head from the attack. Morkah said the cuts have healed, but added he was still in pain more than a week later.

Morkah filed a police complaint on October 23 and Akyemansa FM wrote to the National Media Commission, which is a national media regulator, the Ghana Journalists Association, a local trade group, as well as officials with Ghana Armed Forces and the Information Ministry, according to Morkah and the privately owned Joy Online news website.

According to a statement by the Ghana Journalists Association provided to CPJ, the Ghana Armed Forces expressed “readiness” to investigate the incident and hold those responsible to account. CPJ contacted Ghana Armed Forces’ director of public relations, Micheal Addo Larbi, at a phone number and email address he provided, but he did not respond.

Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, who owns the broadcaster where the journalist works, told CPJ that the armed forces were indeed investigating and promised a report would be out “soon.” The journalist said he had been questioned in the investigation.

CPJ reporting has identified a “broad pattern of impunity” in attacks on the press in Ghana, including by security forces.

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

Independent photojournalist Kelly Stuart’s phone was allegedly stolen by a protest organizer while she was using it to record a demonstration at a library in San Fernando, California, on Oct. 25, 2023.

Approximately 50 people had gathered outside the San Fernando Library to protest a “Drag Queen Story Hour” with performer Pickle, The San Fernando Valley Sun reported. The protesters blocked the entrances to the library and the event was ultimately canceled.

Stuart, who publishes her photos on her website and social media, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she has been reporting on the protest group Leave Our Kids Alone for the past year. She saw the group post a social media call to protest at the library and came to document the gathering.

As police attempted to escort Pickle into the library, Stuart said the protesters crowded together shoulder to shoulder to prevent the performer’s entry. Stuart continued to document the scene, holding her cellphone aloft, when a man she identified as one of the organizers behind the protest group suddenly turned and grabbed the phone from her hands.

“I tried to get it. I kind of jumped across his body and put one arm over his shoulder and I reached but he took the phone and put it down on his right side,” Stuart said.” I don’t know whether he threw it or passed it off to someone, but it was gone.”

Stuart told the Tracker that police witnessed the altercation and briefly detained both of them, took down their information and released them. She attempted to file a police report about the theft of her phone that day and ultimately was able to do so the following day.

The San Fernando Police Department acknowledged via email the Tracker’s request for a copy of the report, but did not provide one as of press time.

Stuart told the Tracker that the day her phone was taken, she “bricked” it, or rendered it unusable, because it contained reporting notes and source communications.

“I’m lucky that I was given a phone [after the theft], because if I was not I wouldn’t be able to report right now,” Stuart said. “Even if I’m not uploading those videos, for my safety I usually mount my phone to my camera. I wouldn’t go out and shoot without a phone.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez attempted to “snatch” the phone from Miami Herald investigative reporter Sarah Blaskey’s hands at City Hall on Sept. 9, 2023, after she asked him about a complaint being investigated by the state ethics commission.

The Herald reported that Blaskey approached Suarez in a hallway outside a city budget hearing and asked him about his multiday appearance at the Formula One Miami Grand Prix using tickets provided by a hedge fund executive. Suarez initially told Blaskey that once she made an appointment with his assistant he’d be happy to speak with her.

In footage of the interaction, Blaskey then appeared to tilt her phone up in order to capture Suarez’s face, at which point the mayor noticed that he was being filmed and attempted to grab the device from her hands. A sergeant-at-arms who serves as his bodyguard intervened and acknowledged Blaskey’s right to record, according to the Herald.

Blaskey seemed visibly shaken by the interaction in her footage, but persisted in asking Suarez about whether he had been approached by federal investigators and how much he paid back for the tickets.

Following the incident, the mayor’s office released this statement: "Mayor Francis Suarez has repeatedly answered questions from the local newspaper about the Formula One (F1) event. Last Saturday, after having answered several questions on the subject, without prior notice and unnecessarily, the reporter placed her cell phone inches from the mayor's personal space, who was surprised and, as any human being would react, moved the device away from his face.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to an emailed request for further comment.

In a column for the newspaper, Herald Executive Editor Alex Mena condemned Suarez’s attempt to grab the phone from Blaskey, stating that, “Any kind of physical interaction with our reporters is not acceptable.”

Mena also criticized the mayor’s response to the incident, noting that more than half of the outlet’s 55 requests for comment from the mayor have gone unanswered.

“The mayor has since misrepresented to other news outlets his willingness to speak with our reporters, with his office issuing a statement saying the mayor has ‘repeatedly responded’ to the Miami Herald’s questions and that Saturday’s confrontation occurred after he answered ‘several questions on the topic,’” Mena wrote. “In fact, Suarez answered none of our questions that day — until our reporters confronted him with a camera rolling.”

Senior Managing Editor Dana Banker told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that Suarez has not apologized to Blaskey, but agreed to meet with leadership from the Herald on Sept. 21.

“[Blaskey] was shaken up and understandably so,” Banker said. “We want to get with the mayor and talk this through tomorrow. ... It was 100% unacceptable and we’re going to make that clear.”

Banker added: “At the end of the day we’re just going to keep digging and we’re going to let our reporting speak for itself. But it definitely is not going to chill anything we’re doing here at the Herald.”

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to clarify that two ethics complaints were filed against Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. One of the complaints, before the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics & Public Trust, was dismissed after it was found to be legally insufficient. A second complaint is under investigation by the Florida Commission on Ethics.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Shenzhen-based Huawei this month released a new flagship smartphone, the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, which it said uses a new chip produced using 7-nanometer lithography by Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, or SMIC.

The process, which uses microscopic rays of light to etch circuits onto silicone chips, was meant to be out-of-reach for Chinese chipmakers for years due to the Biden administration’s export controls banning the sale to Chinese companies of machinery needed to achieve it.

The announcement of the phone reportedly shocked industry insiders, who did not understand how SMIC was able to produce the chip.

‘Perplexed’

A public letter released on Thursday by chairs of the House committees on foreign affairs, energy and commerce, armed services and China says they are “extremely troubled and perplexed” about the Commerce Department’s “inability to effectively write and enforce export control rules against violators, especially China.” 

The letter singles out Alan Estevez, under secretary of commerce for the Bureau of Industry and Security, and says the committees “for more than two years” warned of “loopholes in BIS rules attempting, unsuccessfully, to restrict technology to Huawei and SMIC.”

“BIS has continued to grant licenses to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controlled companies, such as SMIC, worth hundreds of billions of dollars,” it says. “These companies support the CCP’s military and have been responsible for manufacturing semiconductors that power Huawei’s 5G devices, in violation of BIS’ export controls.”

It also calls for the enforcement of export controls to ensure SMIC can no longer gain access to restricted U.S.-made technologies.

The letter is signed by Rep. Michael McCaul, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Mike Rogers, chair of the Armed Services Committee, and Mike Gallagher, chair of the Select Committee on China, as well as Reps. Ann Wagner, Robert Latta, Young Kim, Gus Bilirakis, Brian Mast and Morgan Griffith. All are Republicans.

Investigations

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also told reporters on Sept. 5 that the U.S. government was still evaluating the SMIC-built chip.

“In terms of characterizing the chip in question, that's something that we need to gain more information from before we make any definitive comments,” Sullivan said, adding that the United States would continue to enforce “a ‘small yard, high fence’ set of technology restrictions focused narrowly on national security concerns.”

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Industry and Security told Radio Free Asia on Friday that the bureau would respond to the letter “via appropriate channels” and seemed to question the chip’s make-up.

They said U.S. “restrictions in place since 2019 have knocked Huawei down and forced it to reinvent itself” at a “substantial” cost.

“We are working to obtain more information on the character and composition of the purported 7nm chip. Let’s be clear: export controls are just one tool in the U.S. government’s toolbox to address the national security threats presented by the PRC,” the spokesperson said, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

“We are continually working to assess and, when appropriate, update our controls based on the dynamic threat environment and we will not hesitate to take appropriate action to protect U.S. national security.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

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

Fiji’s prime minister has canceled an official visit to China after he tripped while looking at his mobile phone and injured his head. 

Addressing Fijians from his official residence while still wearing a blood-stained shirt, Sitiveni Rabuka said in a video posted online that he fell on the steps of a government building on Wednesday and hit his head against a door.

“I’ve just come back from the hospital where I had a dressing put on my head for a small accident I had this morning,” he said. “I do not know whether my head hurts more than the door or the door hurts more than my head.”

Rabuka was due to leave on an official visit to China on Thursday that coincides with a period of heightened rivalry between Washington and Beijing in the Pacific.

Fiji’s relations with China have burgeoned over several decades, but have been less cordial since Rabuka was elected prime minister in December, ending 16 years of rule under Frank Bainimarama. 

The Pacific island country’s ties with China had particularly blossomed after Australia, New Zealand and other countries sought to punish it for Bainimarama’s 2006 coup that ousted an elected government. It was Fiji’s fourth coup in three decades. Rabuka orchestrated two coups in the late 1980s.

Rabuka has said a police cooperation agreement with China, signed in 2011 by Bainimarama’s government, may not be consistent with Fiji’s democracy, and has put it under review. 

His government also elevated the status of Taiwan’s representation in Fiji, but reversed that step after strong protests from China, which views the democratic island as a renegade province. 

An update on the deferment of my trip to China due to an injury that I sustained earlier today due to a misstep at the entrance to the New Wing of Government Buildings. pic.twitter.com/SYKrRUQPHF

— Sitiveni Rabuka (@slrabuka) July 25, 2023

“I have had to inform China that I will not be able to undertake that trip that was coming up tomorrow night,” Rabuka said in the video. “I’m sure there will be other invitations later on.”

Rabuka said there would likely be speculation about the canceled trip but emphasized nothing was wrong. 

China, over several decades, has become a substantial source of trade, infrastructure and aid for developing Pacific island countries as it seeks to isolate Taiwan diplomatically and build its own set of global institutions. 

Last year, China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, alarming the United States and its allies such as Australia. The Solomons and Kiribati switched their diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taiwan in 2019.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare visited China earlier this month and was feted by its leaders. Sogavare, in turn, heaped praise on his hosts including the “visionary” leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping in a public relations win for Beijing.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting Tonga, Australia and New Zealand this week as Washington continues efforts to strengthen its relationships in the region.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stephen Wright for BenarNews.

The 19th century origins of Mother’s Day differ vastly in spirit and purpose from celebrations of it in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Mother’s Day was first inspired by two women with diverse but compatible social and political purposes. Prior to the Civil War, Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia organized “Mothers’ Day Work Clubs” to teach women the basics of sanitation in food preparation and drinking water in a time of high infant and child mortality.

After the war, she organized “Mothers Friendship Day,” bringing mothers of sons who fought on both sides of the Civil War “to promote reconciliation.” Her daughter Anna Jarvis carried her mother’s legacy forward and convinced President Woodrow Wilson to establish the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. Jarvis became so disillusioned eventually with what she saw as the commercial sentimentalizing of and profiteering from Mother’s Day by the card, food, and floral industries that she disowned it.

Jarvis became so disillusioned eventually with what she saw as the commercial sentimentalizing of and profiteering from Mother’s Day by the card, food, and floral industries that she disowned it.

The first public “Mother’s Day for Peace” rally was held in New York City on June 2, 1872 at the inspiration of Julia Ward Howe, an ardent anti-war activist and promoter of world peace. Her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation passionately lamented the futile deaths in war and heralded action to stop future wars:

Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts…

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy, and patience…

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm!”…

Her Proclamation concluded calling for a congress of women all of nationalities to promote the “amicable settlement of international questions and the great and general interests of peace.”

This theme of engaging women across the world for peace has only grown more urgent. Try Googling “photos of negotiating to end war in Ukraine,” recommends Margot Wallström, Sweden’s former minister of foreign affairs: Women are largely absent. Despite a more than 20-year-old U.N. Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security that promotes including women “in all efforts for the promotion of peace and security, less that 10% of peace agreements have female signatories,” she states. Yet, research shows that with “more women involved in peace processes, more proposals are put on the table and agreements reached last longer.”

In my 2018 interview with Nigerian lawyer, mediator, peace activist, and member of WILPFAyo Ayoola-Amale, she underscored the critical impact of women in peace negotiations. “The Liberian 2011 Nobel Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, together with Christian and Muslim women, pressured warring parties into the 2003 negotiations that eventually ended years of horrific war in Liberia. Research has shown,” she added, “that where women’s inclusion is prioritized, peace is more probable, especially when women are in a position to influence decision making… Women take an inclusive approach whether it is stopping conflict, contributing to peace processes, or rebuilding their societies after conflict or war.”

Restoring Political Roots to Mother’s Day

For the eighth consecutive year, the Black Mama’s Bail Out initiative is posting bond on and near Mother’s Day for Black mothers in jail, women languishing in “cages” without a trial because they are too poor to post bail. Their action has highlighted the profiteering of the bail bonds industry and inspired nationwide community action. The U.S. puts more women in jails and prisons than any other country in the world. And while comprising roughly 6% of the U.S. population, Black women make up 22% of women’s imprisoned population. Most are arrested for low-level drug use, some on false charges; and most are mothers. Support Black Mama’s Bail Out fund this Mother’s Day.

Postscript

I learned recently that “More phone calls are made on Mother’s Day than on any other day of the year.” And I understand why. As a child, I loved giving my mother a card and a present on Mother’s Day as an expression of my love and respect for her, and, after leaving home, I always called her on Mother’s Day. Now I look forward to honoring my sisters, cousins, and nieces as the wonderful mothers they are. But even more urgent is restoring the spirit of our original Mother’s Day—calling for World Peace, a call that is loud, persistent, insistent, public, and passionate.

Let us also remember that mothers wake up the morning after Mother’s Day to their social, economic, and political realities: poverty and food insecurity for almost 25% of single mothers, doing most of the unpaid domestic and caregiving work at home, pay discrimination, sexual violence for one in four women, and widespread sexual harassment. Rampant injustice that our society and the world must undo if we are ever to achieve peace.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by H. Patricia Hynes.

Among the findings by the New York-based group was that Uyghurs could trigger a police interrogation just by storing the Quran on their phone.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the use of the list is another example of China’s “abusive use of surveillance technology in Xinjiang.”

The list is used by police to compare against data received from two apps that authorities have required residents of Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, to install on their phones, according to Maya Wang, the acting Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

“Essentially, these apps on people’s phones are checking against this list – the master list – as well as searching for other information,” she told Radio Free Asia in an interview. 

The data collected by the apps – known as Jing Wang Wei Shi and Feng Cai – and the master list examined by Human Rights Watch fits in with other Xinjiang surveillance systems, which Wang described as “multidimensional and multi-layered” and includes checkpoints and the Chinese government’s collection of biometrics. 

“Human Rights Watch has repeatedly raised concerns about China’s approach to countering acts it calls ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism,’” the group said in a statement on Wednesday. 

“China’s counterterrorism law defines ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’ in an overly broad and vague manner that facilitates prosecutions, deprivation of liberty, and other restrictions for acts that do not intend to cause death or serious physical harm for political, religious, or ideological aims,” Human Rights Watch said.

Religious materials flagged in police database

The master list of multimedia files is part of a large database of more than 1,600 data tables from Xinjiang that was leaked to The Intercept in 2019. The news organization reported that Urumqi police conducted surveillance and arrests between 2015 and 2019 based on texts of police reports found on the database.

The list examined by Human Rights Watch was located in a different part of the same database and has not been previously reported on or analyzed, the group said. 

Human Rights Watch also found that during nine months from 2017 to 2018, police conducted nearly 11 million searches of 1.2 million mobile phones in Urumqi. The police search found a total of 11,000 matches with the master list of more than 1,000 different files on 1,400 phones.

Human Rights Watch’s analysis found photo, audio and video files that contain violent content, “but also other material that has no evident connection to violence,” including common religious materials, the group said.

The UN Human Rights Council should create an investigation and concerned governments should identify technology companies involved in the phone surveillance and act to end their involvement, Human Rights Watch said in its statement.

“I think what happens in Xinjiang is a very important one for the future of China, but also how governments will use these systems,” Wang told RFA. “How do they relate to technology and human freedoms in general in the world? And so that’s why we have been trying to piece these puzzles together.”

Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

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

“Location based tracking is not legitimate. It’s largely based on the collecting of people’s location data that they’re not aware of and haven’t given meaningful permission for.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sam Biddle.

FreshNews cited a Facebook page called “khmer leak” in its report about several phone calls between Candlelight Party Secretary General Lee Sothearayuth and his alleged mistress.

Publishing a private telephone conversation without consent in an attempt to destroy an opponent’s reputation and dignity is a breach of privacy, political commentator Seng Sary said. If the release of private telephone conversation was politically motivated, the people who ordered the release are conducting dirty politics, he said.

“This is unethical and shouldn’t happen in a civilized society,” he said.

FreshNews also published a telephone conversation between opposition leader Kem Sokha and his alleged mistress in 2016. The outlet previously released a telephone conversation between Ho Vann, a senior official in the now-banned Cambodia National Rescue Party, and his alleged mistress as well.

More arrests of opposition activists

The report comes as the ruling Cambodian People’s Party and Prime Minister Hun Sen have been working to silence and intimidate opposition figures ahead of the July general elections. 

Earlier this month, Kem Sokha was sentenced to 27 years in prison for treason. And earlier this week, two opposition activists were arrested in Phnom Penh after they posted comments on Facebook that seemed to compare Hun Sen with King Norodom Sihamoni.

Activists from the Candlelight Party — now the main challenger to the ruling party — recently said that police have been monitoring their meetings and local authorities have been defacing and stealing party signs and billboards. Candlelight Party activists in almost all provinces have reported cases of intimidation and harassment, party spokesman Kim Sour Phirith said in early March. 

On Friday, three Candlelight Party activists were arrested and charged with falsifying documents. The arrests were made four hours before the conviction of 13 people in Phnom Penh Municipal Court on similar charges from last year related to the formation of the National Heart Party.

The Ministry of Interior said last year that the small political party collected several hundred forged thumbprints on documents it filed when it registered ahead of the 2022 commune elections. 

Seam Pluk, president of the National Heart Party, was convicted on Friday and sentenced to two years and six months in prison. The other 12 defendants were given two-year sentences, but they remain at-large.

The three Candlelight Party activists who were arrested Friday were also charged in the National Heart Party case. The three defendants only recently joined the Candlelight Party.

The wife of one of Friday’s arrestees said her husband – Touch Teng, Candlelight Party’s committee chairman for Kampong Cham province – wasn’t involved with the collection of signatures and thumbprints when he worked for the National Heart Party. 

“This is a politically motivated arrest because my husband is one of the party’s leaders,” the wife said. 

The National Heart Party’s case is an old one that has only been revived now that the election is drawing near and the Candlelight Party has been gathering supporters, Kim Sour Phirith said.

Cambodia’s law on phone tapping

Radio Free Asia couldn’t reach National Police spokesman Chhay Kim Khoeun about Friday’s arrests or about FreshNews’ report on Lee Sothearayuth’s phone calls. 

Re-broadcasting a private conversation is a crime, Khmer Student Intelligent League Association President Koeu Saray said, pointing to Article 368 of Cambodia’s penal code, which states that anyone convicted of tapping a phone conversation without consent can be imprisoned from two months to one year. 

“It was embarrassing for FreshNews to post it,” Koeu Saray said. “It is a concern. Cambodia has a law but it is not being enforced.”

The leaked telephone conversation has nothing to do with the CPP, party spokesman Sok Ey San said. Media outlets have the legal right to air such content, and individuals who are affected can request a correction, he added.

RFA was unable to reach Lee Sothearayuth for comment. 

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

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

But what’s love got to do with it? Love and romance are out of date. Sex is a just a quick fill-in when there’s a break in the technological action. Creative and erotic energy is pissed away on trivia. Being lost and confused and having no time is in. But only the latter can be admitted.

Busy busy busy! Beep beep beep as the eyes go down to the screens. Thumbs athumbing or voices talking to the gadgets, while the busy beavers forget who is under whose thumbs.

Eros is replaced by Chaos while Aphrodite weeps in the woods, but no one hears.

Pass the remote. The silence stings.

We are children of Greece but we forget its truths in our time of digital dementia, if we ever knew them. Beauty is banished for ugliness and technology is worshipped as a god. Art has become meaningless unless it’s falsely connected to celebrities and entertainment culture. There are no limits; everything is permitted. Hubris reigns.  Even the thought that Digital IDs, Central Bank Digital Currencies, and vaccination passports are on the agenda does not dissuade the lovers. It’s a game of control abetted by radical stupidity, and it is not a mistake, as Dylan, contrary to his public posturing and corporate imaging, lets his artist’s soul sing:

There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way
But people don’t live or die, people just float

Floating in a void of gibberish and double-talk, heads barely above the water, alienated from reality while fixated on the Spectacle, while sometimes when panicky looking for a life preserver but never to the right source, this is where technology and capitalism  have taken us.  On any issue – the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the facts about the U. S. proxy-war against Russia in Ukraine, Covid-19, the economy, etc. –  the mainstream media daily pumps out contradictory stories to confuse the public whose attention span has been reduced to a scrolling few seconds.  Sustained attention and the ability to dissect the endless propaganda is a thing of the past and receding faster than the computer jargon of milliseconds and nanoseconds.  Planned chaos is the proper name for the daily news reports.

Fetishism, in all its forms, rules.

What else is the cell phone but a pair of red high heels?

What else are all those phone photos millions are constantly taking as they antique reality to store in their mausoleums of loss?

What about the constant messaging, the being in touch that never touches?

Despite the fact that everything digital is extremely ephemeral, the smart phone itself seems god-like, a way to transcend reality while entering it. “My phone is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.”

A toehold on “reality.”  A machine in hand that saves nine – million abstractions.  And prevents boredom from overwhelming minds intent on floating, because, as Walter Benjamin wrote in “The Storyteller”: “Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.  A rustling in the leaves drives him away.” Vibrating and dinging phones will suffice to disturb that dream bird of creative silence that is the only antidote to floating in the void of noise.

But fetishes come in many forms because the need for false gods is so attractive.  To think you have a way to control reality is addictive.

I recently saw an article about an auction sale at Sotheby’s in New York of the movie stars Paul Newman’s and Joanne Woodward’s personal effects. These include Woodward’s (who is still alive and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease) wedding ring and dress, the shackles Newman wore in the film Cool Hand Luke, a suit from his racing car days, etc. – over three hundred items in all.  According to a Sotheby spokesperson, the Newman-Woodward family, who will receive the proceeds, are doing this to “continue telling the stories of their parents.” Don’t laugh. The article mentions that one of Paul’s watches sold at auction a few years ago for $17.8 million dollars and another for $5.4 million.

So I ask: what are the wealthy purchasers of these objects really buying?  And the answer is quite obvious. They are buying fetishes or transference objects that they think will grant them a piece of the immortal stars’ magic. They are buying idols, Oscars, illusions to worship and to touch in place of reality. Ways to enter the cultural hero system.

Ernest Becker put it this way in The Denial of Death: “The fetish object represents the magical means for transforming animality into something transcendent and thereby assuring a liberation of the personality from the standard bland and earthbound flesh.”  If one can possess a piece of the demi-god’s power – an autograph, a watch, a ring – one will somehow live forever. It’s not about “trusting the science” but about believing in the magic.

Newman’s daughters who have pushed this sale, as well as a new documentary, The Last Movie Stars, and the memoir Paul Newman: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man – compiled from their father’s transcripts of conversations with his friend, Stewart Stern, over thirty years ago – have done something supremely ironic.  On one hand, they are selling their father’s and mother’s memorabilia, allegedly to tell their stories, through things that are fetishes for those desperate for holy secular relics, while at the same time publishing a book in which Paul honestly knocks himself off the pedestal and says he was always an insecure guy, numbed by his childhood and the false face Hollywood created for him.  In other words, an ordinary man with talent who was very successful in Hollywood’s dream factory, where illusions are the norm.

“I was my mother’s Pinocchio, the one that went wrong,” he tells us right away, leading us to the revelations of his human, all-too-human reality.  His was a life of facades and dead emotions, false faces, and his struggles to become who he really was.  He tells us he wasn’t his film roles, not Hud or Brick or Fast Eddie or Cool Hand Luke, but he wasn’t really the guy playing them either. He was a double enigma, an actor playing an actor. He says:

I’ve always had a sense of being an observer of my own life…. I have a sense of watching something, but not of living something.  It’s like looking at a photograph that’s out of focus …. It’s spacey; I guess I always feel spaced out.

His courageous honesty reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s final work, Ecce Home (Behold the Man), not because Paul waxes philosophical but because he’s brutally honest.  If a movie star’s truths strike you as not comparable to those of a great philosopher, I would suggest considering that Nietzsche’s key concern was the theater and how we are all actors, a few genuine and most false.  In The Twilight of the Idols he asked, “Are you genuine?  Or merely an actor?  A representative?  Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor.”

Paul Newman lived for 17 years after speaking to his friend Stewart Stern. I like to think those conversations helped him break through to becoming who he really was.  From what I know of the man, he was generous to a fault and did much to ease others’ pains, especially to bring joy to children with cancer. I think he changed. While his things that are on the auction block now serve as illusionary fetishes for those looking for crutches, I believe he finally threw away the mental crutches he used when playing Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Perhaps the wooden ones will be in the auction and some desperado will bid on them.

We know that with the planned chaos being used to shock people into submission through fear, there has been a drastic rise in depression and mental distress of all kinds, especially since the Covid-19 propaganda rollout with its lockdowns and deadly jabs.  The magic anti-depression pellets dispensed for decades by the criminal pharmaceutical cartels can not begin to contain this sense of helplessness that continues to spread.  They too are fetishes and ways to divert people’s attention from the social and spiritual sources of their anguish.

There is something very chilling in the way the reality of flesh and blood humans living in a natural world has been replaced by all types of fetishes – drugs, objects, celebrities, machines, etc.  While all are connected, the cell phone is key because of its growing centrality to the elites’ push for a digitized world. No matter how many articles and news reports about Artificial Intelligence (AI) that appear, it is all just a gloss on a long-developing problem that goes back many years – machine worship.

“Smart” cell phones are the current apotheotic control mechanism promoted as liberation. They are a form of slavery promoted by the World Economic Forum, their bosses, and their minions. As Alastair Crooke puts it, “It is that a majority of the people are so numbed and passive – and so in lockstep – as the state inches them through a series of repeating emergencies towards a new kind of authoritarianism, that they don’t fuss greatly, or even notice much.” Freedom is slavery.

Here is Ernest Becker again:

Boss [Medard Boss, Swiss psychanalyst and psychiatrist] says that the terrible guilt feelings of the depressed person are existential, that is, they represent failure to live one’s own life, to fulfill one’s own potential because of the twisting and turning to be ‘good’ in the eyes of the other.  The other calls the tune to one’s eligibility for immortality, and so the other takes up one’s unlived life. . . . In short, even if one is a very guilty hero he is at least a hero in the same hero-system [personal and cultural]. The depressed person uses guilt to hold onto his objects and to keep his situation unchanged. Otherwise he would have to analyze it or be able to move out of it and transcend it…. Better guilt and self-punishment when you cannot punish the other – when you cannot even dare to accuse him [the social system], as he represents the immortality ideology with which you have identified.  If your god is discredited, you yourself die; the evil must be in yourself and not in your god, so that you may live.

I wonder if I should bid on the shackles Paul Newman wore as the prisoner in Cool Hand Luke. They are probably the cheapest item on the auction menu.  I think they will remind me that the Captain was wrong when he said to Luke, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

“Where are you calling from,” she asked. “My cell,” he said.

“Of course,” she answered.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

New York state took a historic step toward curbing the power of Big Tech when lawmakers passed the Digital Fair Repair Act, giving citizens the right to fix their phones, tablets, and computers. For years, advocates for the “right to repair” have pushed for such legislation in statehouses nationwide. They argue that making it easier to repair gadgets not only saves consumers money, but also reduces the environmental impact of manufacturing and electronic waste. Most of those bills have failed amid intense opposition from tech companies that want to dictate how and where their products are serviced.

The passage of the Digital Fair Repair Act last June reportedly caught the tech industry off guard, but it had time to act before Governor Kathy Hochul would sign it into law. Corporate lobbyists went to work, pressing Albany for exemptions and changes that would water the bill down. They were largely successful: While the bill Hochul signed in late December remains a victory for the right-to-repair movement, the more corporate-friendly text gives consumers and independent repair shops less access to parts and tools than the original proposal called for. (The state Senate still has to vote to adopt the revised bill, but it’s widely expected to do so.)

The new version of the law applies only to devices built after mid-2023, so it won’t help people to fix stuff they currently own. It also exempts electronics used exclusively by businesses or the government. All those devices are likely to become electronic waste faster than they would have had Hochul, a Democrat, signed a tougher bill. And more greenhouse gases will be emitted manufacturing new devices to replace broken electronics. 

Draft versions of the bill, letters, and email correspondences shared with Grist by the repair advocacy organization Repair.org reveal that many of the changes Hochul made to the Digital Fair Repair Act are identical to those proposed by TechNet, a trade association that includes Apple, Google, Samsung, and HP among its members. Jake Egloff, the legislative director for Democratic New York state assembly member and bill sponsor Patricia Fahy, confirmed the authenticity of the emails and bill drafts shared with Grist. 

“We had every environmental group walking supporting this bill,”  Fahy told Grist. “What hurt this bill is Big Tech was opposed to it.”

That New York passed any electronics right-to-repair bill is “huge,” Repair.org executive director Gay Gordon-Byrne told Grist. But “it could have been huger” if not for tech industry interference. 

Reached for comment, the governor’s office sent Grist a copy of a statement that Hochul released when she signed the bill, outlining changes made to the text. Her staff declined to address questions about the potential negative impacts of those changes, or about the process behind them. 

For years, consumer technology companies like Apple have effectively monopolized the repair of their devices by limiting access to parts, tools, and manuals to “authorized repair partners,” which often only perform a small number of manufacturer-sanctioned fixes. Those limited services often force consumers to choose between continuing to use a broken device or obtaining a brand-new one. The version of the Digital Fair Repair Act that passed New York’s Senate and Assembly last spring sought to level the playing field for independent shops by requiring that companies make parts, tools, and documents available to everyone on fair and reasonable terms.

A broad coalition of manufacturers opposed the bill in the spring, and its sponsors had to make significant compromises in order to pass it. “We made a lot of changes to get it over the finish line in the first day or two of June,” Fahy said. 

Those changes included explicit exclusions for everything from home appliances to police radios to farm equipment. Fahy says she was willing to omit those devices because she thought focusing on small electronics would give consumers “the biggest bang for their buck.” Data from the repair guide site iFixit shows that eight of the top 10 devices New Yorkers attempted to repair in 2020 were small consumer electronics, with cell phones and laptops topping the list.

The Digital Fair Repair Act passed the Assembly by a vote of 145 to 1, after clearing the Senate 59 to 4. Despite that overwhelming support, the tech industry was surprised by its passage, said Democratic state Senator Neil Breslin, who sponsored the bill. “There’s a number of people who were advocating on the parts of the [manufacturers] who really, in private chats, were not expecting it would be passed,” Breslin told Grist. 

At that point, the bill’s opponents approached Hochul seeking concessions. In particular, state lobbying records show TechNet held frequent meetings with the governor between June and December, when she signed the bill. Lobbyists representing Apple, Google, and Microsoft also met with the governor, state records show. 

All of these organizations have lobbied against right-to-repair bills in other states, often citing intellectual property and cybersecurity concerns. But some, most notably Microsoft, have softened their stance in recent years. Fahy said Microsoft “constantly tried to reach out” to her office to cooperate on the bill. In a letter sent to the governor in November, the company requested several edits but did not ask for a veto. (Microsoft, Google, and Apple declined to comment.)

In letters sent to Hochul in July and August, Apple, IBM and TechNet all asked the governor to veto the bill. (IBM also declined to comment.) When a veto didn’t immediately happen, TechNet sent Hochul a trimmed-down version with edits attributed to David Edmonson, the trade organization’s vice president of state policy and government relations. Among other things, TechNet requested that the law apply only to future products sold in the state, that it exclude products sold only through business-to-business or government contracts, and that it exclude printed circuit boards on the grounds that they could be used to counterfeit devices. It also sought a stipulation allowing manufacturers to offer consumers and independent fixers assemblies, such as a battery pre-assembled with other components, if selling individual parts could create a “safety risk.” Additionally, TechNet wanted a requirement that independent repair shops provide customers with a written notice of U.S. warranty laws before conducting repairs. 

Hochul’s office sent TechNet’s revised draft to repair advocates to get their reaction. Those advocates shared the TechNet-edited version of the bill with Fahy’s staff, which gave it to the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, the agency charged with protecting American consumers. Documents that Repair.org shared with Grist show that FTC staff were highly critical of many of the changes. The parts assembly provision, one commission staffer wrote in response to TechNet’s edits, “could be easily abused by a manufacturer” to create a two-tiered system in which individual components like batteries are available only to authorized repair partners. Another of TechNet’s proposed changes — deleting a requirement that manufacturers give owners and independent shops the ability to reset security locks in order to conduct repairs — could result in a “hollow right to repair” in which security systems thwart people from fixing their stuff, the staffer wrote.

“These particular TechNet edits all have a common theme — ensuring that manufacturers retain control over the market for the repair of their products,” Dan Salsburg, a chief counsel for the FTC’s Office of Technology, Research and Investigation, wrote in an email to Fahy’s office.

Despite the agency’s stern warning, all of the changes described above, and numerous other edits TechNet proposed, appeared in the bill Hochul signed — many of them verbatim. 

Chris Gilrein, TechNet’s executive director for the Northeast, told Grist in an emailed statement that the bill the Legislature passed “presented unacceptable risks to consumer data privacy and safety,” and that his organization’s recommended changes “addressed the most egregious security issues.” Manufacturers often cite cybersecurity as a reason to restrict access to repair, an argument the FTC found “scant evidence” to support in a report to Congress published in 2021.

Gilrein disputed the notion that the final version of the bill favored the tech industry. “At its core, the law remains a state-mandated transfer of intellectual property that is unwarranted at a time when consumers have access to more repair options than ever before,” he said.

Todd Bone, the president of XS International, a company that maintains and repairs network and data center IT equipment for corporations and the federal government, says the law offers “nothing” to his business because of the governor’s carveout for devices sold under business-to-business or government contracts.

“It was very disheartening,” Bone told Grist, “to see the governor working with TechNet and not paying attention to the votes from the Congress and the Senate in the state of New York, [and] what the consumers of the state of New York wanted.”

Jessa Jones, who founded iPad Rehab, an independent repair shop in Honeoye Falls, about 20 miles south of Rochester, New York, says the original bill included provisions that would have made it far easier for independent shops like hers to get the tools, parts, and know-how needed to make repairs. She pointed to changes that allow manufacturers to release repair tools that only work with spare parts they make, while at the same time controlling how those spare parts are used, both of which were requested by TechNet.

“If you keep going down this road, allowing manufacturers to force us to use their branded parts and service, where they’re allowed to tie the function of the device to their branded parts and service, that’s not repair,” Jones said. “That’s authoritarian control.”

After repair advocates shared TechNet’s draft with Fahy’s office, they collaborated on a counterproposal that pushed back against many of the proposed changes. The last-minute negotiations with the governor’s office were “frustrating,” Fahy said, although she still ultimately wants to see the bill become law. 

Fahy hopes the New York Department of State will clarify aspects of the bill that got muddied by industry influence. The agency, which plays a role in consumer protection, will craft regulations dictating how the law will be implemented. Ultimately, Fahy says the bill will still help consumers save money and keep old devices out of landfills. And every little bit counts: In New York state alone, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group estimates that Americans discard roughly 23,600 cell phones per day.

Fahy also believes the law — imperfect though it may be — will have a ripple effect beyond the state’s borders. It could give momentum to the efforts to pass similar laws in dozens of other states. Eventually, the passage of state bills could lead to a national agreement between electronics manufacturers and the independent repair community, similar to what happened in the car industry after Massachusetts passed an auto right-to-repair law in 2012.

Other lawmakers agree that New York has provided a welcome starting point. 

“When you’re the first state, sometimes you have to pass something very small to get across the finish line,” Washington state representative Mia Gregerson, a Democrat who is sponsoring a digital right-to-repair bill in her state’s house, told Grist. New York’s Digital Fair Repair Act, Gregerson said, “gives us something to work from.”

“We’re going to take that now and try to do a better piece of legislation,” Gregerson said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Big Tech rewrote the nation’s first cell phone repair law on Feb 8, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Maddie Stone.

It’s not surprising for authorities to take phones and computers into custody when they are investigating a journalist – in fact, it’s become routine. CPJ’s prison census, a snapshot of journalists in prison on December 1, 2022, lists examples from Iran, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Vietnam, and India, as well as Russia. 

Little is generally reported about what happens next. We don’t know what Russian authorities did with Afanasyev’s devices, for example. But we do know that widely available forensic tools have been used to examine journalists’ phones in order to convict them in Myanmar and search for their sources in Nigeria.

A law enforcement agent scrolling through a journalist’s unlocked phone is already a problematic scenario for press freedom. But this risk is supercharged by technology that can copy and search the entire content of phones and computers, sometimes even if they are locked. Like spyware, forensic tools can access everything on a phone or computer, but unlike spyware, such tools are in widespread, open usage in democracies as well as more repressive regimes. Their use has accelerated threats to the press while protections and public awareness lag behind.

“Mobile device forensics tools can recover deleted data, as well as lots of data that isn’t visible to the naked eye when scrolling,” Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at Stanford Internet Observatory, which studies abuse in information technologies, said in an email. 

These tools are becoming ubiquitous in government agencies in countries like the United States and Australia – and they have been documented in many countries where those in power view independent journalism as a threat. In 2020, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee said that law enforcement agencies had probed cellphones 26,000 times the previous year using data extraction tools produced by the Israel-based company Cellebrite. Citing human rights concerns, Cellebrite said in 2021 that it had stopped selling to Russia and Belarus, but Russian investigative agencies continued to reference the country’s products in official reports and training materials in 2022, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 

Cellebrite, which says on its website that its offerings — designed to help catch criminals — are “trusted by over 6,700 federal, state and local public safety agencies and enterprises in over 140 countries,” is only the best known player in a large market; it purchased computer forensic firm Blackbag Technologies in 2020. In 2019, researcher Valentin Weber wrote for the U.S. nonprofit Open Technology Fund that Chinese officials had instructed local firm Meiya Pico to provide digital forensics training to countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion dollar project to promote trade by building ports and other infrastructure across Asia, Africa, and Europe.   

Forensic products differ from zero-click spyware like Pegasus, which CPJ recently called an existential threat to press freedom for providing states with the power to track journalists and their sources secretly and continuously by hacking into their phones. Spyware can penetrate remotely and invisibly, is deniable, and much more expensive. 

To operate a forensic tool, on the other hand, one needs physical access to a device. Journalists who surrender their phones and passcodes at a police station or checkpoint at least know they have been compromised, even if they have relinquished their devices under duress. 

But data extracted from a phone in a lab or police station can also be used against its owner.  

“The kinds of tools used by police are designed to extract and preserve content in a forensically sound way that will stand up in court,” said Pfefferkorn.

Legal safeguards have not caught up. In the U.S., Customs and Border Protection agents can access a database compiled from some travelers’ devices without a warrant, according to The Washington Post. Journalists have told CPJ that CBP officials have stopped them for electronic searches as they enter the country.  

Some U.S. jurisdictions protect unreported source material from seizure, but police still overreach. After San Francisco police took devices from freelancer Bryan Carmody and his fiancée in 2019, his tablet was returned to him with the passcode on a note stuck to the screen, he told CPJ at the time. Police agreed to delete information obtained from searching the devices following a challenge from his lawyers. 

As CPJ’s prison census shows, journalists elsewhere are often without any such recourse. The research is littered with examples of police seizing electronics from journalists’ family members, freelancers whose livelihood may depend on their phones, or people in war zones, where devices are a communication lifeline. Once released, journalists may fear spyware has been implanted on their devices and be reluctant to use them, if they have even been returned. If the journalist remains behind bars, they run the risk that the material extracted from the device could be used during interrogations and in building specious criminal cases.  

Since digital forensics gives local law enforcement the ability to siphon off large volumes of data from individual targets’ phones, Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies digital repression, sees significant overlap between spyware and forensics, and an equally pressing need for reform when it comes to monitoring and regulating the use of both. 

“It seems to me that law enforcement has made a distinction between the two, but I have questions as to whether that’s more artificial than real,” he said. “Given the impossibility of narrowly distinguishing what would be relevant to a particular law enforcement search…there’s a strong presumption against ever using these tools.”  

Until this viewpoint gains traction, authorities can use forensic tools to produce journalists’ own phones as witnesses against them. And journalists like Russia’s Afanasyev – along with the many others whose devices have been seized – are even more vulnerable to laws that make reporting the news a crime. 

See CPJ’s Digital Safety Kit

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Madeline Earp/CPJ Consultant Technology Editor.

The operation shines a light on the murky enclave in Bokeo province – home to the Kings Roman Casino resort – where many foreigners who were promised lucrative jobs end up held against their will by trafficking rings that exploit them under threat of violence.

The Golden Triangle economic zone is a gambling and tourism hub catering to Chinese citizens situated along the Mekong River where Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet. In 2018, the U.S. government sanctioned the Chinese tycoon who is said to run the SEZ as head of a trafficking network.

Last week, Lao authorities acted on a tip from the Indian Embassy to rescue 11 Indians who had been held for more than a month by traffickers in the zone. 

They were recruited by unscrupulous middlemen to work as IT specialists in Dubai, Singapore and Thailand with offers of well-paying jobs and pre-arranged flights, visas and passports, according to Indian Embassy sources who discussed the situation off the record because they were unauthorized to speak to the press.

Instead, they wound up in northern Laos, where they were forced to work in call centers largely unmonitored by authorities, calling people to solicit money for fraudulent investment schemes or engage in cryptocurrency scams.

Rights groups estimate that at least 1,000 people from South and East Asia have been lured to work as scammers at the Golden Triangle zone, many of whom continue to be held against their will there.

Extricated by Lao officials last week, the 11 workers were brought to the Lao border with Thailand and handed over to a team from the Indian Consulate in Chiang Mai, before being repatriated to India over the weekend via Bangkok, the Indian Embassy in Laos said in an announcement posted to its Facebook page.

RFA Lao was unable to reach Lao authorities operating in the Golden Triangle economic zone or officials in the Indian Embassy in the Lao capital Vientiane for comment on the rescue operation.

Conditions at scam centers

A Lao national who previously worked as a scammer in the zone told RFA on condition of anonymity that trafficking is rife there and said several foreign nationals were being held against their will at the call center where he was located.

“There were three or four Indians and as many as 20 Thais working as scammers [when I was there],” he said, adding that most foreign nationals being held at the zone at the time were Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese, although he also met Indonesians and Malaysians.

The former scam center worker from Laos told RFA that if they follow orders, trafficked workers could earn U.S. $450-725 per month, depending on the number of people they scammed, while those who could speak Thai, Chinese, or Vietnamese could earn even more.

But rules were strict and anyone who left the call center without informing members of the trafficking ring or escaped and was caught “would face a serious punishment,” he said.

Despite the restrictions and the threat of punishment, the Lao national said that he planned to return to the zone again because “I know how to do the work and they will hire me right away.” 

In addition to luring unsuspecting foreign nationals through middlemen, scam centers also “recruit” workers through other means, the Lao national told RFA.

During an outbreak of COVID-19 in August and September 2021, authorities in Bokeo province temporarily closed the Golden Triangle economic zone to force employers based there to allow their workers to return home and renegotiate hiring contracts, due to the slowdown of the economy. 

Instead of allowing them to return, he said, many of the centers simply “sold” their workers to trafficking rings who forced them to do the same work stipulated in their existing contracts, threatening them with beatings and imprisonment if they refused.

Meanwhile, the worker said, Lao authorities cannot easily enter the Chinese-run zone, which operates largely beyond the reach of the Lao government, and are often unable to arrest ring leaders because the victims of the scams rarely report their losses to police.

“Nobody takes them to court because there’s no proof,” he said. “Those who lose money dare not tell the police or take legal action.”

Foreigners targeted

Chinese-run enclaves in Southeast Asia have come under heavy scrutiny in recent months after hundreds of Taiwanese nationals were rescued after being lured into human trafficking and abusive jobs scams in Cambodia, with many victims taken to work in Chinese-owned casinos in the coastal city of Sihanoukville.

The government has so far registered 1,267 workers in the Golden Triangle zone, only a fraction of the total, although the exact number employed there is unknown, according to Lao officials. Efforts to register workers to protect them from human trafficking and other abuses have met with limited success because workers balk at paying the fees and fear that signing up will get them sent home, sources have told RFA.

In addition to the 11 Indian workers rescued last week, authorities freed 44 Pakistanis from the zone on Oct. 20 and seven Malaysians on Oct. 6. Malaysian authorities have said there are 50-100 Malaysians still being held by traffickers in the zone.

Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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

Floods can result in the loss of life and in damages to property and the environment. Each year, flooding causes more deaths than any other storm-related hazard, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To help minimize the risks, editors and journalists should consider the following safety information and plan accordingly.

Pre-Assignment

• Prepare to be self-sufficient in case you cannot rely on support from aid agencies. Consider bringing non-perishable foods, a head torch, multi-tool, can opener, tent, and an appropriate sleeping bag. Also bring a decent amount of cash to pay for things on the ground, especially if credit card payment systems don’t work.
• Keep in mind that while being fully equipped is essential, there is a balance between the weight of equipment you have to carry and being fully prepared.
• Access to clean drinking water is likely to be an issue, so consider taking water purification tablets, a reusable filter bottle, or a portable water purification system. You may need to take a supply of drinkable water with you in extreme circumstances.
• Complete a thorough risk assessment, detailing contingency plans and medical evacuation procedures. Develop a check-in procedure for the duration of your trip, and plan to communicate regularly with your news desk or team about your plans and whereabouts. Identify key authorities or other individuals who can be called upon in an emergency. Note that you may have to update your risk assessment during the trip, depending on changing events on the ground.
• Take a well-stocked individual first aid kit.
• While en route and during the assignment, keep up-to-date on weather forecasts. A rapidly deteriorating scenario may require a change of plans.
• Dress appropriately for the conditions, with suitable footwear that has sufficient ankle support. Cuts to feet can easily become infected, so ensure your feet are completely protected.
• Make sure your passport, visas, immunization records, and other documentation are handy and stored in a waterproof container.

On Location

• On arrival, identify a safe accommodation or place to shelter with food and water (if possible), which may be unavailable or in short supply in areas with high levels of destruction. If necessary, stay outside the epicenter of the flood damage and make trips into the affected area. Avoid large glass windows and corrugated sheet roofs if reporting in stormy conditions. Be mindful of where you are staying: Keep away from areas that are prone to flooding, such as low spots, canyons, and washes.
• Work out an exit strategy and safe place to fall back to, if necessary. Identify medical facilities and locations where you can seek assistance in case of an emergency. If you need to evacuate, turn off the utilities using the main power switch and close the main gas line (if applicable) before leaving your accommodation.
• Always have access to safe and reliable transportation in case you need to leave quickly. Never rely on public transport or taxis.
• Before you leave for your assignment, prepare by fully reviewing guidance about how to exit your car if it becomes submerged in water. If your vehicle is suddenly stuck in rising water, get out immediately and find higher ground. If your car becomes submerged, don’t panic. Some fire departments advise waiting for the vehicle to fill with water and opening the car door once the vehicle is full, before swimming to the surface. Once you are outside of the car, it’s advisable to point your feet downstream if you’re swept into fast-moving floodwater. Remember to always go above obstacles, not underneath them.
• Do not walk across flooded roads or streams. The water might be faster than it looks, and it takes as little as six inches of water to knock someone off their feet. Be especially careful at night, when flood conditions are harder to see.
• Be aware of drains or down holes and uncovered manholes when walking around flooded areas.
• Be aware that standing water can pose a significant health risk. It can contain sewage and chemical hazards and spread infectious diseases.
• Sanitize your hands regularly, and do not expose open wounds to water, due to the risk of infection.
• Local telecommunication networks might be disrupted or down, so consider taking satellite phones and a BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) terminal, if legal and safe to use in the country. Be sure to communicate regularly with your news desk or team about your plans and whereabouts as part of your agreed upon check-in procedure.
• Be alert for any escaped wildlife.

Sources:

• NOAA
• CDC
• San Antonio Fire Department
• American Safety Council

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

Residents of Gangaw and Tilin townships said they believed their telecoms were cut off because of strong resistance by local People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) against junta troops.

The People's Administration Organization of nearby Saw township said that the cutting of internet and phone lines meant junta troops would soon raid local villages.

"There is a news blackout in Tilin and Gangaw. We heard there were some attacks in the area but we don't know exactly where they are happening because we don't have phone connections. Normally, if the phone and internet lines are cut, it means they’ll be attacking the villages. Villages will be destroyed and burned so we have to be alert when the lines are cut. The movements of the revolutionary forces [PDFs] will also be seriously affected."

Locals said the military launched airstrikes on Tuesday and Wednesday near Zibya village and Shounshi village in Gangaw township.

A resident of Myin Thar Village in Gangaw, who did not want to be named for security reasons, said he was very worried for his family.

"I've been calling [my] village for four days now and I can't get through. The internet and phone lines have been cut, and I've heard that they've been bombed by military aircraft. I don't have all the information yet. I just heard that villages west of Gangaw and Hakha Road have been bombed but I can't get any specific information because the phone lines have been cut."

A resident of Gangaw’s Sanmyo village, who is now in Chin state and also declined to be named, said he had heard reports the junta’s aircraft had attacked some villages but he did not know the exact facts.

"Both the phone and lines have been completely cut off on our side. We have heard reports of bombings by fighter jets,” said the resident who added that the city has been hit as hard as the villages. “The entire Gangaw area has been completely shut down and we can't reach anywhere."

A woman from Tilin, who also wanted to remain anonymous, said while lines were down some people managed to get a signal.

“We could make some calls for the western side of our village so we had to go there to contact our relatives. But we can’t reach people in Gangaw,” she said, adding that villagers are concerned they won’t be warned in advance about attacks by aircraft and ground troops because lines have been cut.

The woman eventually travelled two miles to the Magway-Chin border, where she was able to use her phone and the internet to gather information.

Covering up junta war crimes

The Human Rights Minister of the shadow National Unity Government, Aung Myo Min, said the military cut the internet and phone lines so as not to leave any evidence of the war crimes.
"These cuts by the military council are to block the flow of information especially about their brutality, and war crimes committed by them on the ground and to cut off humanitarian aid,” he said. “Because when the news of their actions comes to light, it will definitely be used as evidence to international tribunals. Cutting off information has become a military strategy. It is obvious they do not want to leave any evidence that can be used when legal action is taken."

RFA called military spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, director-general Myo Swe of the Department of Communications at the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and the spokesman at the Magway Regional Government Office, but there was no response from any of them.

Junta’s history of telecoms blackouts

According to the General Administration Department, there are more than 200 villages in Gangaw and Tilin townships in Magway. More than 180,000 residents living in these townships are now losing their right to information due to the interruption of internet and phone lines.

The military cut off all phone lines and the internet for the entire day of the coup on Feb. 1, last year. The internet was completely cut off on Feb. 6 and 7, 2021, only to be restored on Feb. 8.

The military also cut off the internet in some townships and slowed it in others when the military launched attacks on armed PDFs in Magway, Sagaing and Mandalay regions and Chin and Kachin states.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane for RFA Burmese.

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

Politico (6/25/22) lamented that Roberts’ “middle of the road” effort to allow states to ban abortions after 15 weeks failed to sway his ultra-conservative colleagues.

Janine Jackson: “The Lonely Chief: How John Roberts Lost Control of the Court.” That was the plaintive headline of Politico’s June 25 report explaining that Roberts, along with his “middle of the road” approach on abortion, would likely be a casualty of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling.

In July of 2005, on the occasion of Roberts’ nomination to the court, CounterSpin host Steve Rendall and I spoke with journalist Adele Stan and with People for the American Way’s Elliot Mincberg about what was known then about Roberts’ record and what he might mean for the court. We’re going to start with my introduction.

***

JJ: Many in the news media seemed to breathe a sigh of relief at the news that George Bush was nominating conservative Washington insider John Roberts to the Supreme Court. And not just the folks you’d expect, like Brit Hume at Fox News, who shared a chuckle with congressional correspondent Brian Wilson and White House reporter Carl Cameron when he noted that Bush had named a white male “just like all of us.”

Well, even while admitting that Roberts’ record is sketchy on some issues, many mainstream reporters seem to emphasize the reassurance that he is not a right wing trench dweller like some others who were thought to be on Bush’s short list of prospective nominees.

The Times‘ Linda Greenhouse emphasized “no flame-throwing articles or speeches, no judicial opinions that threaten established precedent, no visible hard edges.”

New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse assured readers that Roberts was “someone deeply anchored in the trajectory of modern constitutional law.” That’s as opposed to “someone who felt himself on the sidelines throwing brickbats, or who felt called to a mission to change the status quo.”

Our guests think there’s more to the story, and point to some troubling signs in Roberts’ record that warrant serious scrutiny.

We’re joined now by telephone by Elliot Mincberg, the legal director of People for the American Way, and by journalist Adele Stan, author of the article “Meet John Roberts” for The American Prospect Online (7/20/05). Welcome to CounterSpin, both of you. 

Elliot Mincberg: Pleasure to be here. 

Adele Stan: Good to be here. 

JJ: Well, Elliot Mincberg, let me start with you. In that July 20 New York Times piece, Linda Greenhouse emphasized “no flame-throwing articles or speeches, no judicial opinions that threaten established precedent, no visible hard edges.”

There have been some exceptions, and of course the story is still growing, but I wonder what your general reaction is to this first wave of response, which seems to be kind of, “Phew. What a relief. He’s not so bad.”

EM: I think it does underemphasize the very serious concerns that have been raised. Roberts is known well to reporters who cover the Supreme Court as an excellent advocate, someone who makes his legal points well, but if you look carefully at his record, there are a number of very troubling concerns. 

Probably the two that top the list are his participation as the top ranking political deputy in the Solicitor General’s office in a case during the Bush One administration that didn’t really even concern Roe v. Wade, where he wrote in the brief that Roe v. Wade is wrong and should be overturned. I think that’s a serious, serious subject of concern. 

Second, as a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, there was a case before the court that had to do with the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act as applied to a development in California. The three judges who heard the case originally agreed that it should apply. All nine judges on the circuit were asked to reconsider. Seven of the nine of them agreed not to reconsider it, including some very conservative Republican appointees.

Roberts was one of the only two who said, “Let’s take another look at that,” and strongly suggested he had serious doubts about the ability of Congress to pass that kind of law. And that kind of legal philosophy could seriously endanger not just the environment, but the ability of Congress to pass all sorts of laws protecting the environment, health, safety and civil rights.

So those two aspects of his record alone raised very serious concern. 

Steve Rendall: Adele Stan, Elliot Mincberg just mentioned John Roberts’ record on Roe v. Wade. In your American Prospect Online piece “Meet John Roberts” you wrote about that, and you further elaborated with some information that might give us an even greater insight into John Roberts’ views on privacy and reproductive rights.

George W. Bush and nominee John Roberts (Public domain)

AS: Well, I mean, of course I mentioned that in the piece and not with the sage wisdom of Elliot because I am not a lawyer or a legal expert, but of course his writings that pulled in Roe v. Wade in his assertion that it should be overturned in a case that had nothing to do directly with Roe v. Wade did, you know, set up a red flag for me. 

But at least as troubling to me is the amicus brief he filed on behalf of the government in support of the group Operation Rescue, which those of us in the trench wars of the 80’s and 90’s to, you know, preserve a woman’s right to choose know as a very kind of frightening foe. 

And this was not a case in which the government truly had a dog in the fight, which is not to say that the government doesn’t often file amicus briefs, but given the controversial nature of this group, it just seems to me that it had to have been an act of someone’s conscience, you know, to prompt them to file this.

JJ: Well, that involvement in the Operation Rescue case certainly has not been appearing in the context of every article in which Roberts’ view on Roe v. Wade has been mentioned, as that would sort of complicate that story a little bit, don’t you think?

AS: I would certainly think it should, but what you do hear from Roberts’ proponents is that, well, he’s a good lawyer and he knows how to represent his clients. And he has represented clients of different, you know, views. And so he was just doing his job on behalf of the Bush One administration when he, you know, filed these briefs on behalf of his client, you know, the Bush administration, the US government. 

I would assert that, you know, we’re hearing a lot of things about his character being quite sterling, and I don’t have any reason to doubt that, you know, but people just talk about what a great guy he is and he’s a man of integrity, and I find it very difficult that someone of that level of integrity would embrace something that fundamental to one’s personal philosophy if he disagreed with it. 

SR: Well, something that keeps coming up in this coverage is the idea of “borking,” the possibility that Roberts or any other nominee might be borked. Elliot Mincberg, what do you make of the way the history of Bork’s rejection is being presented here?

EM: Well, I think it’s clearly a revisionist history because what happened with Robert Bork is just what should have happened. His views, his philosophy, his record was examined extremely carefully, and then his hearings, in a lot of ways, became almost a nationwide seminar on the constitution: What it does mean, what it should mean and what, unfortunately, Robert Bork wanted it to mean, which would’ve taken away constitutional rights of every American.

In that sense it’s become an undeserved pejorative, but we think that that kind of work is critical on every nominee, even more so on someone like Roberts who has such a very short record on the Court of Appeals.

AS: Which is said to be pretty partial, that short record, to the executive branch, and we’re in a situation now where so much power is being consolidated into the executive branch, and power is being drawn or [there are] attempts to draw powers away from the judicial branch. And the House of Representatives has passed legislation that’s clearly unconstitutional that would prohibit the federal courts from striking the words “Under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

They’re basically prescribing what courts can and cannot act on. When you combine a mind like Roberts with that trend that is already afoot, that’s what I find rather frightening. 

JJ: Well, we’re talking about media’s kind of short memory or distorted memory and how that’s affecting the coverage of this Roberts story. Some other media phenomena, media wisdom has been pretty revealing on this. 

There’s an ABC online site called The Note. It’s a kind of a place where media elites talk to themselves. And we found this comment from there pretty revealing: 

“The factor we think most likely,” they say on The Note, “to ensure John Roberts’ confirmation: that the Washington establishment, and the media establishment, know him and like him. Do not underestimate how hard it will be for Democrats to tar a potential nominee who has given working Washington journalists his cell phone number, and who is generally seen as a mensch.”

Not quite sure what you can do with that, but let’s get your response, Elliot Mincberg, to this notion of…

ABC‘s The Note (7/20/05) adored “smart, nice, smooth, experienced, genial” Roberts and his nomination process, making little mention of Roberts’ politics: “If someone wants to argue that this was not THE best handled and well-researched process ever for a SCOTUS nominee, please tell us what you would suggest tops it.”

EM: I have seen the same thing and I find it very disturbing to tell you the truth, because whether you’re on the Supreme Court shouldn’t depend on how many people you give your phone number to, but what your philosophy as a judge will be and what your effect will be on the rights of the American people. 

And I’m frankly very hopeful as time goes on and as we do the search and examination we need to do that people will rise above that and look at his record and whether he’s willing to answer critical questions before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

JJ: Your reaction then, Adele Stan, to this media wisdom on Roberts. 

AS: Well, I mean, you know, I think that it is conventional wisdom and I think that it is—I mean, what they’re talking about is powerful in the Washington establishment. It is a clubby place, but you know, power is often just the perception of power. And if Democrats accede to that, “Oh my gosh, we can’t go against this guy because everybody likes him, especially the press, and then the press will jump all over us.”

Well, I mean then that just makes it happen. But if they put up some resistance, that becomes an interesting story. And I think it’s a story that can be, you know, that can be won and that can be fought well. I mean, a new poll just released today, I believe an AP poll, said most Americans want to know what this guy’s opinions on abortion are and they think that that should be discussed. 

So, I think it’s one of these things where if you can just break out of the box, it could be a whole different ball game. 

SR: Well, besides the arrogance and the sort of elitism of The Note’s message here, I’d like to zero in on one part of the passage where The Note seems to suggest that any sort of criticism by the Democrats would be a “tarring” of the nominee.

AS: Well, yeah, that is really troubling and see, and this is something—well, because that is what the right will do, is accuse the Dems of doing—and it’s especially insulating, and I’ve gotten already a lot of hate mail on asserting this, and I assert this as a Roman Catholic, it is  insulating that he is a Roman Catholic, because the charge of anti-Catholicism is one that is often trotted out when you challenge someone on the right who is a Catholic and you challenge them on legitimate ideological grounds, it somehow becomes a challenge of their religion.

And there are people on the right who will do that. And I really think it’s important that the Catholic senators take the lead on this for just that reason.

JJ: So you, you seem to be saying that, although the Washington Post is saying Democrats should resign themselves to the fact that they can’t stop it, you think there’s still room for intervention here and something could change. 

AS: I think that’s true. I think that, you know, every time you accept the focus groups and just the conventional wisdom, you just resign yourself to the predictable and the predictable becomes more predictable.

Things are very uncertain and unstable right now. And that can be played to an advantage. And I think that the American people are really beginning to get sick of all of this. And they just would like some reasonable choices, and I think that it would behoove Democrats, you know, to err on the side of reason and not defeatism.

JJ: We’ve been speaking with Adele Stan. You can read her article “Meet John Roberts” at The American Prospect’s online site, prospect.org. She also authors the blog addiestan.com: A breakaway republic of the mind. 

We also spoke with Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way. You can find them on the web at pfaw.org.

***

JJ: That was Adele Stan and Elliot Mincberg speaking with me and Steve Rendall back in July of 2005, 17 years ago, yet it all feels so fresh.

The post ‘Whether You’re on the Supreme Court Shouldn’t Depend on How Many People You Give Your Phone Number to’ appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

On June 21, police in the southern town of Foggia summoned Pesante, managing director of the news website L’Immediato, to appear for questioning the following day, according to reports by L’Immediato and the media watchdog website Ossigeno, as well as Pesante, who communicated with CPJ via email.

During questioning on June 22, police told Pesante that he was a suspect in a leak investigation over a May 18 L’Immediato article based on security footage from cameras at a Foggia prison, the journalist said. Officers questioned Pesante about his sources and how L’Immediato acquired that footage, and Pesante told CPJ he refused to answer, citing journalistic privacy.

Officers released Pesante without charge, but confiscated his cellphone at the request of the local prosecutor’s office, the journalist said. His lawyer, Michele Vaira, was quoted in news reports saying that authorities searched messages stored on the phone related to that security footage.

Authorities returned Pesante’s phone on June 23, he said. If charged and convicted of disclosing state secrets, Pesante could face up to five years in prison, according to the Italian penal code.

“Italian authorities should drop any criminal investigation into journalist Francesco Pesante at once, and cease harassing members of the press for their work,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “The seizure of Pesante’s phone violated basic principles of press freedom, and threatened his ability to protect his sources. Such measures have no place in an EU country, and authorities should instead encourage and support journalists reporting on organized crime.”

In that May 18 article, L’Immediato reported on a man who was shot and killed while returning to a prison in Foggia after participating in a work-release program. Several other Italian outlets covered the killing and also relied on the prison’s security footage, Pesante said.

Authorities are also investigating two unnamed police officers over the leaked footage, according to Pesante and news reports.

Pesante told CPJ via email that the prosecutor’s action “deeply disturbed” him, as “no reporter should be pressured to reveal their sources.” L’Immediato regularly covers organized crime, according to CPJ’s review of the outlet’s website.

CPJ emailed the Foggia prosecutor’s office for comment, but did not receive any reply.

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

Phone lines were cut for six hours from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., with affected areas including Monywa, Pale, Khin Oo, Ye-U, Kanbalu, Kyun Hla and Kani. local sources said.

“Yes, the phone lines were cut off around 7,” a resident of Khin Oo told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “I found a missed-call notification on my phone earlier and now I’m calling you back, but even still the signal is dropping off now and then.

“The spot I’m speaking from now has a pretty strong signal, and there is also a place where you can get 2G internet service. But we have to find these kinds of places to make our calls go through,” he said.

“Service has been available on and off, but right now it seems to be working again,” said a villager in Sagaing’s Ye-U, where more than 150,000 residents have had trouble making and receiving calls since 6 a.m. “Earlier in the morning, both of my phones didn’t work.”

Local providers MPT and Telenor were both down, the source said, also declining to be named. “Service is okay one minute, and then the next it’s not,” he added.

Nearly 20 calls made by RFA to affected townships at around 10 a.m. failed to connect, while a call made in the afternoon to a resident of Monywa was blocked. Phone service was largely restored in the township by around 1 p.m., residents said.

Myo Swe, director general of the ruling Military Council’s Directorate of Communications, told RFA he was unaware of the reports of a cut-off in services. “I don’t know anything about this issue. We’ll take a look into that,” he said.

But a spokesman for the Myanmar Defense Force, an armed group set up to oppose junta rule, said that junta troops had cut phone service in Sagaing to prevent reporting of their activities and movements in the area.

“They don’t want news of their soldiers committing arson reaching the media and the international community,” the spokesman, Bo Taw Win, said. “We have video files of some of them burning houses, but we can’t upload them because of the weak signals. We can only upload photos.

“But they also want to cover up our victories. They don’t want people to know about the intensity of the fighting here, and they don’t want any aid from donors to reach us,” Bo Taw Win said.

Military activity had been reported in Kani and Ye-U townships after phone service was cut Tuesday morning, he added.

Northwest Myanmar’s Sagaing region has been the center of some of the strongest armed resistance to junta rule since the military seized power from the country’s democratically elected government in a Feb. 1, 2021, coup.

Myanmar’s military has for months conducted an arson campaign in Sagaing targeting rural villages, killing civilians and burning hundreds of homes, leaving thousands displaced.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Written in English by Richard Finney.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA’s Myanmar Service.

A Reuters reporter had his phone confiscated and was prohibited from using any electronic devices during a flight to Oslo, Norway, on May 22, 2022, while traveling with the Department of Defense.

Idrees Ali, who has been a foreign correspondent covering the Pentagon since 2015 and is not a U.S. citizen, was told of a new policy on May 19 that would impact his ability to use his cellphone during the eight-hour flight to Oslo with Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. As of publication, the Pentagon has not responded to a request for comment or for a copy of the policy to review.

According to Politico, the policy states that non-U.S. citizens traveling with government officials who have “top-secret” security clearance are prohibited from using any devices during the flight. As a foreign correspondent, Ali has traveled to secure locations in the past with top government officials, including trips to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Officials for the Pentagon had been “working on a resolution” with Ali before the departure date, but after arriving at Joint Base Andrews airport on the 22nd, Ali was told that no resolution to the issue was found and he would not be allowed to use his cell phone or laptop computer for the flight duration.

Shortly after taking off, a DoD official instructed Ali to hand over his phone. Ali documented the incident on Twitter and shared a photo of the pouch he placed his phone in before it was confiscated.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two regions by force.

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

Vodafone has made its entry back into the Papua New Guinea market as Digitec-Vodafone to operate as the third mobile operator company.

In the next two weeks the PNG market will see the new look Vodafone operate in 25 different locations of the country, selling mobile phones and SIM cards to customers by April 21, 2022.

Minister for Information and Communication Technology Timothy Masiu announced this last night at the launching of the new look Digitec office in Port Moresby.

• READ MORE: Digicel in battle with PNG government over $100m tax demand

With around 3 million current users in the existing networks, Masiu said there was room for another operator to create competition and bring prices down and this had now happened with Digitec-Vodafone’s entry.

He said Digitec’s investment showed trust and confidence in PNG’s economy.

“On behalf of the Marape government, I welcome your entry into the PNG market,” Masiu said.

“It is the government’s policy objective to promote sustainable competition in the information and communications technology sector and to ensure affordability, accessibility, connectivity and we believe your entry into the market as the third mobile telecommunication operator will rejuvenate competition in the market.”

Headquarters in PNG
He said having the headquarters in PNG showed the government their commitment towards investing in the country’s telecommunications sector.

The move comes against the backdrop of a “super tax” saga, where market dominance levy in the sector has created a stir with the enforcement of an additional K350 million demanded by the state following reports of Digicel refusing to pay.

This is amid fears that the deal between Telstra Australia and the dominant Digicel PNG would fall through, impacting on any new entrants into the lucrative mobile communications market.

Deputy Prime Minister Sam Basil said Digitec had a history in the Pacific for more than two decades and was known as an ICT technology sector innovator.

He said a strong ICT was vital for a strong economy and essential for healthy communities.

“Having access to modern technology was no longer for the rich or the big cities as it had been 20 years ago,” Basil said.

“Now, right down to village level, our people need access to technology.

“This is to conduct small businesses, stay in touch with loved ones and to access medical care.”

Tough business arena
Basil said ICT was a tough business to engage in, especially now that there were major changes in the sector with greater investment and competition.

“As a businessman, and now as a political leader, I believe that competition is healthy,” he said.

“It makes company operations more efficient and delivers savings to our people.

“I encourage the workers and management at Digitec to continue to provide outstanding service to our people and the business community.”

Digitec CEO Nirmal Singh said the country would in the next few weeks see some great products that he company would bring to the market.

Melisha Yafoi is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

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