trust – Radio Free

Memoirist Sarah Perry on building trust in your creative process

Hurley Winkler — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:00:00 +0000

I appreciate when memoirists talk about self care. Your first book, After the Eclipse, is a memoir about your mother’s murder, which happened when you were 12. Your new book, Sweet Nothings, is a collection of essays about candy: and in it, you write more about your mom, about the aftermath of your first book, and about your mental health. What did you do to take care of yourself when you were working on After the Eclipse, and what are some things you wish you had done differently while writing that first book?

I think even the story itself predisposed me to have this kind of masochistic relationship to putting the story together. I had been interviewed and interrogated by police a lot as a young person, and I had been a really willing participant in that. Because I felt like, well, if I submit to this process—if I just fully submit to all of these questions and all of these things they’re asking me to do—maybe they will figure out who committed this crime. And this person will be put away, and I will at least not be worrying anymore that they’re still on the street and could be harming other people.

It’s tricky because, it’s like, that was great training in being extremely thorough and trying to nail down what had happened, and how I felt about it and what exactly I remembered. And so I think I went into it with that mindset, submitting myself to that process of just endless self-interrogation and endless… like, just being extremely rigorous and thorough with myself. And not having a great sense, at least at first, of what boundaries I needed.

And then, of course, the way that I moved toward prioritizing those boundaries was actually very productivity-motivated. If I was reading police documents or the autopsy report in the middle of the night, and I had been working for hours and hours and hours, and I went beyond my capacity, I wouldn’t be able to write anything for a week or two weeks. And I felt like, if I’m going to actually get this done, if I’m going to keep going forward, I need to be more mindful of what my capacity is at various times.

There are a few things I implemented eventually, and even more things that I advise students to do, that maybe I thought about doing but never actually did. I think embodied practices can be really useful. Like, people often talk about yoga, etc. But back in the days of writing After the Eclipse, I was still a pretty active roller derby player. I would have this immediate sense of belonging and also get to do this physically aggressive thing that was empowering. It was something that would help me get out my anger and my frustration, but among friends.

And a lot it is also just staying mindful of the fact that writing memoir can be such a process of time travel. I found myself really traveling back to times in my life that were a lot more difficult and mental states that were really challenging.

A great example of that is that one month in 2012, I wrote a check and I wrote the date—but 1994.

Oh my god.

Sometimes you don’t realize how transported you are. So I would resolve to write two hours, and then, even if I had more writing time afterward, I would stop and entrust the part of myself that was less under the trance of memory and of investigating these things to have a good sense of what my capacity for that day was, and I’d put it aside.

How do you hold yourself to it, though? Do you set timers for yourself?

Yeah, definitely setting a timer. I’m a big fan of tracking and logging things. I have a lot of my own spreadsheets and systems. If I am actively working, I’m usually working more than I feel like I am. So watching hours add up over a week really helps me assure myself that I am showing up for my work.

I’ve heard a lot of writers who write memoir about their trauma say that they’re not sure they’ll ever write about anything else. Do you identify with that at all?

I do. And I have to say, my current orientation to that is frustration.

Then I was working on this memoir that’s a lot about sexuality and love in the wake of trauma. And a lot about thinking through all of that via my mother’s example and experiences, and trying to interrogate some of the sex-negativity that surrounded the trial. So you can imagine, that one was a good time, too, to write. [laughs]

I was working on that, and it was 2020, and I was just like, “I can’t do this work right now.” I have the world’s biggest sweet tooth, I like to say, and my partner had long been suggesting to me, “Why don’t you write about candy?” And I had said, “I’m sorry, I’m a serious writer. I’m not going to do that. What are you talking about? That’s not a book.”

But I finally broke down and gave it a shot. I said, “I’m going to get up every morning for 100 mornings and write about a different candy every day, just as writing exercises.” I just wanted to enjoy making sentences again and get into that sort of pleasure of language. And then I would go on and do my “serious” writing for the rest of the day.

Now, Sweet Nothings has become this book that I hope gives people some lightness and joy in a continually really difficult time. Of course, it still does have this frame of—I like how you put it earlier—not only Mom and the murder, but this telling of that story in Eclipse. So it’s very much still folding back in onto the same subjects. The funny version is, “Why won’t my mom leave me alone already?”

And I feel like—a lot of people, especially those who have one big traumatic event—they get to feeling like, “Am I a good enough writer to make meaning without using this thing? Is this the only thing I can make the gravitational center of something?” Because so often, I’ll be writing a piece, and I’ll be trying to do another thing. I wrote this piece about a fried cherry pie in Oklahoma, and that turned into a mom-mourning piece. And I thought, is this just the same shortcut that I keep taking here? And then the New England part of me, who is embarrassed about having feelings, comes in with, “Am I so wounded that I can’t stop talking about this? Can I put it aside for a second and make something else already?”

How do you respond when you notice other writers writing about their trauma from different angles, taking a prismatic approach to that one event in their life? Do you have a similar reaction to their work as the frustration you’re describing you feel with your own?

I totally don’t. It’s definitely one of those things where it’s like, I would never say that to my best friend. My friends and colleagues can write about the same thing forever. But it was like, didn’t I write Sweet Nothings to get away from this?

I want to backpedal a bit and ask about that 100-day writing challenge you mentioned, which kicked off Sweet Nothings. What did you learn about yourself from doing that, and do you ever think you’ll try that kind of challenge again?

I actually openly welcome any idea from anyone about something I could do 100 times again. It was really fun, and very fun to accidentally have a draft of a book after 100 days.

What I learned was that I surprised myself a lot. It’s a lot weirder and funnier than I realized I could be on the page. I think that’s not only because After the Eclipse is obviously so serious, but also because I had this conception of myself as this very sedate writer of lovely, conventional sentences. This almost old-fashioned, little New Englander thing. I read too much Thoreau as a kid or something.

Whereas the work I love? I’ve always been such a big Maggie Nelson fan. I love Heather Christle’s poetry. I love weird little things. But I just never thought I could make that myself. I am long-winded, but to make all these short little things that are sometimes quite snappy and unplanned was really thrilling to me. I don’t think I could’ve done them well without the process. They are what they are because of how I wrote them: first thing in the morning, usually before my “editor brain” was on, as I say. I would just instinctively go to these weird places, and there was absolutely no pressure. If I were to do this again, the trick would be pretending I wasn’t taking it seriously. I don’t know if you can do that twice.

You were nominated for a James Beard Award for an essay you wrote about gas station pie.

Crazy.

Now you have this new book about candy. It’s so clear that food is a creative doorway for you. How did you discover that about your writing process?

Honestly, totally by accident. I started writing about candy just because I love it, and other people had to point out to me that I had an unusual level of focus. And then honestly, I ate that fucking pie, man! And I was like, “The world has to know about this pie. Oh my god.”

I also felt like it was an opportunity to do some class work around food. Class consciousness. Class critique. Thinking about who gets to eat what and how we judge those choices.

It’s funny, too, because one of the gigs that got me through writing After the Eclipse was working as a fact-checker for WSJ Magazine. They cover a lot of high-class food. That job gave me major poor-kid class anxiety. There was a lot of French I couldn’t pronounce. I remember thinking, “God, I’ve lived in New York for six years, and I still feel like a bumpkin in this job.” So to be at the James Beard Awards was surreal.

I want to ask about the art of writing micro-essays, since there are 100 of them in your newest book. How does your approach to writing a micro-essay differ from your approach to writing a longer essay?

I really believe that every time you sit down to write, it’s like you’ve never written anything before. You have to totally relearn it. But now that I have experience in writing a pretty long memoir and in writing micro-essays, I just don’t feel like I know how to write a conventional-length essay yet. It’s the length I teach, but I haven’t really nailed it yet.

We always talk about how the essay is flexible, capacious: insert whatever quote about the essay here. And I think those especially apply to that 3,000 to 5,000 word range. Each one really feels like its own form. I just haven’t aligned form with content at that length yet. I haven’t found the thing I want to say that wants that length.

With micro-essays, sometimes, maybe half the time, I’d start with something like, “Today is about Reese’s Pieces.” I’d start typing, maybe pull in a quick bit of history from Google, and then I’d write this paragraph. I’d hit the last sentence and I’d almost hear it click in my head. I’d know: that’s the end. And I’d put it down. And I’d walk away.

Wow. Did that happen 100 times?

Not 100 times, but maybe 30 or so. Sometimes, I’d get this feeling, like, “Okay, this paragraph sounds like the first one. There’s a shape here.” That’s the challenge with micro-pieces, you’re trying to signal to the reader that you’ve come to the end much earlier than in a length we’re more used to reading. You don’t want to give it unearned gravity. You can’t ring the bell of completion too loudly.

But as for how I did it? I don’t know. I just felt around.

Sarah Perry recommends:

“Selfish Soul” by Sudan Archives

Flow

Green Belly hot sauce

Ripton jeans

A Silent Treatment by Jeannie Vanasco

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Hurley Winkler.

Microsoft Used China-Based Support for Multiple U.S. Agencies, Potentially Exposing Sensitive Data

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 16:05:00 +0000

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke

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

Last week, Microsoft announced that it would no longer use China-based engineering teams to support the Defense Department’s cloud computing systems, following ProPublica’s investigation of the practice, which cybersecurity experts said could expose the government to hacking and espionage.

But it turns out the Pentagon was not the only part of the government facing such a threat. For years, Microsoft has also used its global workforce, including China-based personnel, to maintain the cloud systems of other federal departments, including parts of Justice, Treasury and Commerce, ProPublica has found.

This work has taken place in what’s known as the Government Community Cloud, which is intended for information that is not classified but is nonetheless sensitive. The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, the U.S. government’s cloud accreditation organization, has approved GCC to handle “moderate” impact information “where the loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability would result in serious adverse effect on an agency’s operations, assets, or individuals.”

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has used GCC to support its criminal and civil investigation and litigation functions, according to a 2022 report. Parts of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education have also used GCC.

Microsoft says its foreign engineers working in GCC have been overseen by U.S.-based personnel known as “digital escorts,” similar to the system it had in place at the Defense Department.

Nevertheless, cybersecurity experts told ProPublica that foreign support for GCC presents an opportunity for spying and sabotage. “There’s a misconception that, if government data isn’t classified, no harm can come of its distribution,” said Rex Booth, a former federal cybersecurity official who now is chief information security officer of the tech company SailPoint.

“With so much data stored in cloud services — and the power of AI to analyze it quickly — even unclassified data can reveal insights that could harm U.S. interests,” he said.

Harry Coker, who was a senior executive at the CIA and the National Security Agency, said foreign intelligence agencies could leverage information gleaned from GCC systems to “swim upstream” to more sensitive or even classified ones. “It is an opportunity that I can’t imagine an intelligence service not pursuing,” he said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has deemed China the “most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.” Laws there grant the country’s officials broad authority to collect data, and experts say it is difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement.

Microsoft declined interview requests for this story. In response to questions, the tech giant issued a statement that suggested it would be discontinuing its use of China-based support for GCC, as it recently did for the Defense Department’s cloud systems.

“Microsoft took steps last week to enhance the security of our DoD Government cloud offerings. Going forward, we are taking similar steps for all our government customers who use Government Community Cloud to further ensure the security of their data,” the statement said. A spokesperson declined to elaborate on what those steps are.

The company also said that over the next month it “will conduct a review to assess whether additional measures are needed.”

The federal departments and agencies that ProPublica found to be using GCC did not respond to requests for comment.

The latest revelations about Microsoft’s use of its Chinese workforce to service the U.S. government — and the company’s swift response — are likely to fuel a rapidly developing firestorm in Washington, where federal lawmakers and the Trump administration are questioning the tech giant’s cybersecurity practices and trying to contain any potential national security fallout. “Foreign engineers — from any country, including of course China — should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a post on X last Friday.

Last week, ProPublica revealed that Microsoft has for a decade relied on foreign workers — including those based in China — to maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems, with oversight coming from U.S.-based digital escorts. But those escorts, we found, often don’t have the advanced technical expertise to police foreign counterparts with far more advanced skills, leaving highly sensitive information vulnerable. In response to the reporting, Hegseth launched a review of the practice.

ProPublica found that Microsoft developed the escort arrangement to satisfy Defense Department officials who were concerned about the company’s foreign employees, given the department’s citizenship requirements for people handling sensitive data. Microsoft went on to win federal cloud computing business and has said in earnings reports that it receives “substantial revenue from government contracts.”

While Microsoft has said it will stop using China-based tech support for the Defense Department, it declined to answer questions about what would replace it, including whether cloud support would come from engineers based outside the U.S. The company also declined to say whether it would continue to use digital escorts.

Microsoft confirmed to ProPublica this week that a similar escorting arrangement had been used in GCC — a dynamic that surprised some former government officials and cybersecurity experts. “In an increasingly complex digital world, consumers of cloud products deserve to know how their data is handled and by whom,” Booth said. “The cybersecurity industry depends on clarity.”

Microsoft said it disclosed details of the GCC escort arrangement in documentation submitted to the federal government as part of the FedRAMP cloud accreditation process. The company declined to provide the documents to ProPublica, citing the potential security risk of publicly disclosing them, and also declined to say whether the China-based location of its support personnel was specifically mentioned in them.

ProPublica contacted other major cloud services providers to the federal government to ask whether they use China-based support. A spokesperson for Amazon Web Services said in a statement that “AWS does not use personnel in China to support federal contracts.” A Google spokesperson said in a statement that “Google Public Sector does not have a Digital Escort program. Instead, its sensitive systems are supported by fully trained personnel who meet the U.S. government’s location, citizenship and security clearance requirements.” Oracle said it “does not use any Chinese support for U.S. federal customers.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke.

Microsoft Says It Has Stopped Using China-Based Engineers to Support Defense Department Computer Systems

by Renee Dudley — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 21:35:00 +0000

by Renee Dudley

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

Microsoft says it has stopped using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud computing systems after ProPublica revealed the practice in an investigation this week.

“In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services,” the company’s chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, announced on X Friday afternoon.

Microsoft’s announcement came hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said his agency would look into Microsoft’s use of foreign-based engineers to help maintain the highly sensitive cloud systems.

“Foreign engineers — from any country, including of course China — should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X Friday.

In its investigation, ProPublica detailed how Microsoft uses engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking or spying from its leading cyber adversary. The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.

But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police the work of foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found.

Earlier Friday, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, cited ProPublica in a letter to Hegseth asking for details about which DOD contractors use Chinese personnel to maintain the department’s information and computing systems.

China poses “one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by its infiltrations of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks and supply chains,” Cotton wrote in the letter, which he posted on X. “DOD must guard against all potential threats within its supply chain, including those from subcontractors.”

Since 2011, cloud computing companies like Microsoft that wanted to sell their services to the U.S. government had to establish how they would ensure that personnel working with federal data would have the requisite “access authorizations” and background screenings. Additionally, the Defense Department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

This presented an issue for Microsoft, which relies on a vast global workforce with significant operations in India, China and the European Union.

So the tech giant enlisted staffing companies to hire U.S.-based digital escorts, who had security clearances that authorized them to access sensitive information, to take direction from the overseas experts. An engineer might briefly describe the job to be completed — for instance, updating a firewall, installing an update to fix a bug or reviewing logs to troubleshoot a problem. Then, with little review, an escort would copy and paste the engineer’s commands into the federal cloud.

“We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” one escort told ProPublica.

In an earlier statement in response to ProPublica’s investigation, Microsoft said that its personnel and contractors operate in a manner “consistent with US Government requirements and processes.”

The company’s global workers “have no direct access to customer data or customer systems,” the statement said. Escorts “with the appropriate clearances and training provide direct support. These personnel are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data, preventing harm, and use of the specific commands/controls within the environment.”

In addition, Microsoft said it has an internal review process known as “Lockbox” to “make sure the request is deemed safe or has any cause for concern.”

Insight Global — a contractor that provides digital escorts to Microsoft — said it “evaluates the technical capabilities of each resource throughout the interview process to ensure they possess the technical skills required” for the job and provides training.

Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Renee Dudley.

“Trust your instincts.” – TEASER

Andrea Chalupa — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:11:00 +0000

We opened with the legendary James Baldwin, because this week, we’re passing the mic to someone walking boldly in Baldwin’s footsteps: Amber Wallin, Executive Director of the State Revenue Alliance and a fearless fighter for tax justice, equity, and economic power from the ground up.

Whether she’s calling out lawmakers, organizing communities, or reshaping policy, Amber is part of a new generation of leaders who refuse to back down. Here she shares the thinkers, art, and music that inspires her in the fight as she takes the Gaslit Nation Self-Care Q&A. Because self-care is an act of resistance.

Want more fierce, unfiltered conversations like this? Join the Gaslit Nation Salon, live every Monday at 4pm ET. It’s our weekly dose of truth, strategy, and righteous rage with listeners from around the world. Sign up now at Patreon.com/Gaslit. Annual memberships are discounted, and your support keeps us going.

Hitting the beach or binging podcasts from the couch this summer? Take along our graphic novel: Dictatorship: It’s Easier Than You Think! Follow our corrupt narrator, Judge Lackey, as he bungles his way through authoritarianism, dodging activists and desperately clinging to power.Grab it at your local library or at BookShop.org.

EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:

NEW DATE! Thursday July 31 4pm ET – the Gaslit Nation Book Club discusses Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince written in the U.S. during America First.
Minnesota Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other, available on Patreon.
Vermont Signal group for Gaslit Nation listeners in the state to find each other, available on Patreon.
Arizona-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to connect, available on Patreon.
Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join, available on Patreon.
Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group, available on Patreon.
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This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.

Microsoft’s “Digital Escort” Program Could Leave Sensitive Government Info Vulnerable to Espionage. Here’s What to Know.

by ProPublica — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 21:30:00 +0000

by ProPublica

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

For nearly a decade, Microsoft has used engineers in China to help maintain highly sensitive Defense Department computer systems. ProPublica’s investigation reveals how a model that relies on “digital escorts” to oversee foreign tech support could leave some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary.

Here are the key takeaways from that report:

Only U.S. citizens with security clearances are permitted to access the Defense Department’s most sensitive data.

Since 2011, cloud computing companies that wanted to sell their services to the U.S. government had to establish how they would ensure that personnel working with federal data would have the requisite “access authorizations” and background screenings. Additionally, the Defense Department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

This presented an issue for Microsoft, which relies on a vast global workforce with significant operations in India, China and the European Union.

Microsoft established its low-profile “digital escort” program to get around this prohibition.

Microsoft’s foreign workforce is not permitted to access sensitive cloud systems directly, so the tech giant hired U.S.-based “digital escorts,” who had security clearances that authorized them to access sensitive information, to take direction from the overseas experts. The engineers might briefly describe the job to be completed — for instance, updating a firewall, installing an update to fix a bug or reviewing logs to troubleshoot a problem. Then the escort copies and pastes the engineer’s commands into the federal cloud.

The problem, ProPublica found, is that digital escorts don’t necessarily have the advanced technical expertise needed to spot problems.

“We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” said one current escort.

The escorts handle data that, if leaked, would have “catastrophic” effects.

Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said.

Defense Department data in this category includes materials that directly support military operations.

The program could expose Pentagon data to cyberattacks.

Because the U.S.-based escorts are taking direction from foreign engineers, including those based in China, the nation’s greatest cyber adversary, it is possible that an escort could unwittingly insert malicious code into the Defense Department’s computer systems.

A former Microsoft engineer who worked on the system acknowledged this possibility. “If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious, then [escorts] would have no idea,” the engineer, Matthew Erickson, told ProPublica.

Pradeep Nair, a former Microsoft vice president who said he helped develop the concept from the start, said a variety of safeguards including audit logs, the digital trail of system activity, could alert Microsoft or the government to potential problems. “Because these controls are stringent, residual risk is minimal,” Nair said.

Digital escorts present a natural opportunity for spies, experts say.

“If I were an operative, I would look at that as an avenue for extremely valuable access. We need to be very concerned about that,” said Harry Coker, who was a senior executive at the CIA and the National Security Agency. Coker, who also was national cyber director during the Biden administration, added that he and his former intelligence colleagues “would love to have had access like that.”

Chinese laws allow government officials there to collect data “as long as they’re doing something that they’ve deemed legitimate,” said Jeremy Daum, senior research fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Microsoft’s China-based tech support for the U.S. government presents an opening for Chinese espionage, “whether it be putting someone who’s already an intelligence professional into one of those jobs, or going to the people who are in the jobs and pumping them for information,” Daum said. “It would be difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement.”

Microsoft says the program is government-approved.

In a statement, Microsoft said that its personnel and contractors operate in a manner “consistent with US Government requirements and processes.”

Microsoft says it disclosed details of the escort program to the government. Former Pentagon officials said they’d never heard of it.

Microsoft told ProPublica that it described the escort model in documents submitted to the government as part of cloud vendor authorization processes. Former defense and intelligence officials said in interviews that they had never heard of digital escorts. Even the Defense Department’s IT agency didn’t know about it until reached for comment by ProPublica.

“I probably should have known about this,” said John Sherman, who was chief information officer for the Defense Department during the Biden administration. He said the system is a major security risk for the department and called for a “thorough review by [the Defense Information Systems Agency], Cyber Command and other stakeholders that are involved in this.”

DISA said, “Experts under escort supervision have no direct, hands-on access to government systems; but rather offer guidance and recommendations to authorized administrators who perform tasks.”

There were warnings early on about the risks.

Multiple people raised concerns about the escort strategy over the years, including while it was still in development. A former Microsoft employee, who was involved in the company’s cybersecurity strategy, told an executive they opposed the concept, viewing it as too risky from a security perspective.

Around 2016, Microsoft engaged contacts from Lockheed Martin to hire escorts. The project manager says they told their counterpart at Microsoft they were concerned the escorts would not have the “right eyes” for the job given the relatively low pay.

Microsoft did not respond to questions about these points.

Other cloud providers wouldn’t say if they also use escorts.

It’s unclear whether other major cloud service providers to the federal government also use digital escorts in tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.

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

A Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Chinese Hackers

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0000

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke

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

Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.

The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.

But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.

“We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” said one current escort who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.

The system has been in place for nearly a decade, though its existence is being reported publicly here for the first time.

Microsoft told ProPublica that it has disclosed details about the escort model to the federal government. But former government officials said in interviews that they had never heard of digital escorts. The program appears to be so low-profile that even the Defense Department’s IT agency had difficulty finding someone familiar with it. “Literally no one seems to know anything about this, so I don’t know where to go from here,” said Deven King, spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency.

National security and cybersecurity experts contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has called China the “most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.” One of the most prominent examples of that threat came in 2023, when Chinese hackers infiltrated the cloud-based mailboxes of senior U.S. government officials, stealing data and emails from the commerce secretary, the U.S. ambassador to China and others working on national security matters. The intruders downloaded about 60,000 emails from the State Department alone.

With President Donald Trump and his allies concerned about spying, the State Department announced plans in May to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” — a pledge that the president seems to have walked back. The administration is also trying to arrange the sale of the popular social media platform TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company that some lawmakers believe could hand over sensitive U.S. user data to Beijing and fuel misinformation with its content recommendations. But experts told ProPublica that digital escorting poses a far greater threat to national security than either of those issues and is a natural opportunity for spies.

“If I were an operative, I would look at that as an avenue for extremely valuable access. We need to be very concerned about that,” said Harry Coker, who was a senior executive at the CIA and the National Security Agency. Coker, who also was national cyber director during the Biden administration, added that he and his former intelligence community colleagues “would love to have had access like that.”

It is difficult to know whether engineers overseen by digital escorts have ever carried out a cyberattack against the U.S. government. But Coker wondered whether it “could be part of an explanation for a lot of the challenges we have faced over the years.”

Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.

John Sherman, who was chief information officer for the Department of Defense during the Biden administration, said he was surprised and concerned to learn of ProPublica’s findings. “I probably should have known about this,” he said. He told the news organization that the situation warrants a “thorough review by DISA, Cyber Command and other stakeholders that are involved in this.”

In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.

It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.

Microsoft declined to make executives available for interviews for this article. In response to emailed questions, the company provided a statement saying its personnel and contractors operate in a manner “consistent with US Government requirements and processes.”

Global workers “have no direct access to customer data or customer systems,” the statement said. Escorts “with the appropriate clearances and training provide direct support. These personnel are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data, preventing harm, and use of the specific commands/controls within the environment.” In addition, Microsoft said it has an internal review process known as “Lockbox” to “make sure the request is deemed safe or has any cause for concern.” A company spokesperson declined to provide specifics about how it works but said it’s built into the system and involves review by a Microsoft employee in the U.S.

Over the years, various people involved in the work, including a Microsoft cybersecurity leader, warned the company that the arrangement is inherently risky, those people told ProPublica. Despite the presence of an escort, foreign engineers are privy to granular details about the federal cloud — the kind of information hackers could exploit. Moreover, the U.S. escorts overseeing these workers are ill equipped to spot suspicious activity, two of the people said.

Even those who helped develop the escort system acknowledge the people doing the work may not be able to detect problems.

“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” Matthew Erickson, a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.

The Defense Department requires anyone working with its most sensitive data to be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national or permanent resident. “No Foreign persons may have such access,” according to the department’s cloud security requirements. Microsoft, however, has a global workforce, so it created the digital escort system as a work-around. Here’s an example of how it works and the risk it poses:

Tech support is needed on a Microsoft cloud product.

A Microsoft engineer in China files an online “ticket” to take on the work.

A U.S.-based escort picks up the ticket.

The engineer and the escort meet on the Microsoft Teams conferencing platform.

The engineer sends computer commands to the U.S. escort, presenting an opportunity to insert malicious code.

The escort, who may not have advanced technical expertise, inputs the commands into the federal cloud system.

Illustrations for ProPublica

A Microsoft contractor called Insight Global posted an ad in January seeking an escort to bring engineers without security clearances “into the secured environment” of the federal government and to “protect confidential and secure information from spillage,” an industry term for a data leak. The pay started at $18 an hour.

While the ad said that specific technical skills were “highly preferred” and “nice to have,” the main prerequisite was possessing a valid “secret” level clearance issued by the Defense Department.

“People are getting these jobs because they are cleared, not because they’re software engineers,” said the escort who agreed to speak anonymously and who works for Insight Global.

Each month, the company’s roughly 50-person escort team fields hundreds of interactions with Microsoft’s China-based engineers and developers, inputting those workers’ commands into federal networks, the employee said.

In a statement to ProPublica, Insight Global said it “evaluates the technical capabilities of each resource throughout the interview process to ensure they possess the technical skills required” for the job, and provides training. The company noted that escorts also receive additional cyber and “insider threat awareness” training as part of the government security clearance process.

“While a security clearance may be required for the role, it is but one piece of the puzzle,” the company said.

Microsoft did not respond to questions about Insight Global.

“The Path of Least Resistance”

When modern cloud technology emerged in the 2000s, offering on-demand computing power and data storage via the internet, it ushered in fundamental changes to federal government operations.

For decades, federal departments used computer servers owned and operated by the government itself to house data and power networks. Shifting to the cloud meant moving that work to massive off-site data centers managed by tech companies.

Federal officials believed that the cloud would provide greater power, efficiency and cost savings. But the transition also meant that the government would cede some control over who maintained and accessed its information to companies like Microsoft, whose employees would take over tasks previously handled by federal IT workers.

To address the risks of this revolution, the government started the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, known as FedRAMP, in 2011. Under the program, companies that wanted to sell their cloud services to the government had to establish how they would ensure that personnel working with sensitive federal data would have the requisite “access authorizations” and background screenings. On top of that, the Defense Department had its own cloud guidelines, requiring that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

This presented an issue for Microsoft, given its reliance on a vast global workforce, with significant operations in India, China and the European Union. So the company tapped a senior program manager named Indy Crowley to put federal officials at ease. Known for his familiarity with the rules and his ability to converse in the government’s acronym-heavy lingo, colleagues dubbed him the “FedRAMP whisperer.”

In an interview, Crowley told ProPublica that he appealed directly to FedRAMP leadership, arguing that the relative risk from Microsoft’s global workforce was minimal. To make his point, he said he once grilled a FedRAMP official on the provenance of code in products supplied by other government vendors such as IBM. The official couldn’t say with certainty that only U.S. citizens had worked on the product in question, he said. The cloud, Crowley argued, should not be treated any differently.

Crowley said he also met with prospective customers across the government and told ProPublica that the Defense Department was the “one making the most demands.” Concerned about the company’s global workforce, officials there asked him who from Microsoft would be “behind the curtain” working on the cloud. Given the department’s citizenship requirements, the officials raised the possibility of Microsoft “hiring a bunch of U.S. citizens to maintain the federal cloud” directly, Crowley told ProPublica. For Microsoft, the suggestion was a nonstarter, Crowley said, because the increased labor costs of implementing it broadly would make a cloud transition prohibitively expensive for the government.

“It’s always a balance between cost and level of effort and expertise,” he told ProPublica. “So you find what’s good enough.” Hiring virtual escorts to supervise Microsoft’s foreign workforce emerged as “the path of least resistance,” Crowley said.

Microsoft did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Crowley’s account.

When he brought the concept back to Microsoft, colleagues had mixed reactions. Tom Keane, then the corporate vice president for Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, embraced the idea, according to a former employee involved in the discussions, as it would allow the company to scale up. But that former employee, who was involved in cybersecurity strategy, told ProPublica they opposed the concept, viewing it as too risky from a security perspective. Both Keane and Crowley dismissed the concerns, said the former employee, who left the company before the escort concept was deployed.

“People who got in the way of scaling up did not stay,” the former employee told ProPublica.

Crowley said he did not recall the discussion. Keane did not respond to requests for comment.

On its march to becoming one of the world’s most valuable companies, Microsoft has repeatedly prioritized corporate profit over customer security, ProPublica has found. Last year, the news organization reported that the tech giant ignored one of its own engineers when he repeatedly warned that a product flaw left the U.S. government exposed; state-sponsored Russian hackers later exploited that weakness in one of the largest cyberattacks in history. Microsoft has defended its decision not to address the flaw, saying that it received “multiple reviews” and that the company weighs a variety of factors when making security decisions.

A Skills Gap From the Start

The idea of an escort wasn’t novel. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which serves as the federal government’s standards-setting body, had established recommendations on how IT maintenance should be performed on-site, such as in a restricted government office. “Maintenance personnel that lack appropriate security clearances or are not U.S. citizens” must be escorted and supervised by “approved organizational personnel who are fully cleared, have appropriate access authorizations, and are technically qualified,” the guidelines state.

The government at the time specified the intent of the recommendation: to deny “individuals who lack appropriate security clearances ... or who are not U.S. citizens, visual and electronic access to” sensitive government information.

But escorts in the cloud wouldn’t necessarily be able to meet that goal, given the gap in technical expertise between them and the Microsoft counterparts they would be taking direction from.

That imbalance, though, was baked into the escorting model.

Erickson, the former Microsoft engineer who worked on the model, told ProPublica that escorts are “somewhat technically proficient,” but mainly are “just there to make sure the employees don’t accidentally or intentionally view” passwords, customer data or personally identifiable information. “If there are problems with the underlying” cloud services, “then only the people who work on those services at Microsoft would have the requisite knowledge to fix it,” he said.

Advanced threats from foreign adversaries weren’t on the radar for Erickson, who said he didn’t “have any reason to suspect someone more just based on their country of origin.”

“I don’t think there is any extra threat from Microsoft employees based in other countries,” he said.

(Illustration by Andrea Wise/ProPublica. Source images: Bevan Goldswain/Getty Images, kontekbrothers/Getty Images, amgun/Getty Images.)

Pradeep Nair, a former Microsoft vice president who said he helped develop the concept from the start, said that the digital escort strategy allowed the company to “go to market faster,” positioning it to win major federal cloud contracts. He said that escorts “complete role-specific training before touching any production system” and that a variety of safeguards including audit logs, the digital trail of system activity, could alert Microsoft or the government to potential problems.

“Because these controls are stringent, residual risk is minimal,” Nair said.

But legal and cybersecurity experts say such assumptions ignored the massive cyber threat from China in particular. Around the time that Microsoft was developing its escort strategy, an attack attributed to Chinese state-sponsored hackers resulted in the largest breach of U.S. government data up to that point. The theft initially targeted a government contractor and eventually compromised the personal information of more than 22 million people, most of them applicants for federal security clearances.

Chinese laws allow government officials there to collect data “as long as they’re doing something that they’ve deemed legitimate,” said Jeremy Daum, senior research fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Microsoft’s China-based tech support for the U.S. government presents an opening for espionage, “whether it be putting someone who’s already an intelligence professional into one of those jobs, or going to the people who are in the jobs and pumping them for information,” Daum said. “It would be difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement.”

Erickson acknowledged that having an escort doesn’t prevent foreign developers “from doing ‘bad’ things. It just allows for there to be a recording and a witness.” He said if an escort suspects malicious activity, they will end the session and file an incident report to investigate further.

How much of this information federal officials understood is unclear.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company described the digital escort model in the documents submitted to the government as part of cloud vendor authorization processes. However, it declined to provide those records or to tell ProPublica the exact language it used in them to describe the escort arrangement, citing the potential security risk of publicly disclosing it.

In addition to a third-party auditor, Microsoft’s documentation theoretically would have been reviewed by multiple parties in the government, including FedRAMP and DISA. DISA said the materials are “not releasable to the public.” The General Services Administration, which houses FedRAMP, did not respond to requests for comment.

The “Right Eyes” for the Job?

In June 2016, Microsoft announced that it had received FedRAMP authorization to work with some of the government’s most sensitive data. Matt Goodrich, then FedRAMP director, said at the time that the accreditation was “a testament to Microsoft’s ability to meet the government’s rigorous security requirements.”

Around the same time, Microsoft put the escort concept into practice, engaging contacts from defense giant Lockheed Martin to hire cloud escorts, two people involved in the contract told ProPublica.

A project manager, who asked for anonymity to describe confidential discussions, told ProPublica that they were skeptical of the escort arrangement from the start and voiced those feelings to their Microsoft counterpart. The manager was especially concerned that the new hires would not have the “right eyes” for the job given the relatively low pay set by Microsoft, but the system went ahead anyway.

Lockheed Martin referred questions to Leidos, a company that took over Lockheed’s IT business following a merger in 2016. Leidos declined to comment.

As Microsoft captured more of the government’s business, the company turned to additional subcontractors, typically staffing companies, to hire more digital escorts.

Analyzing profiles on LinkedIn, ProPublica identified at least two such firms: Insight Global and ASM Research, whose parent company is consulting giant Accenture. While the scope of each firm’s business with Microsoft is unclear, ProPublica found more workers identifying themselves as digital escorts at Insight Global, many of them former military personnel, than at ASM. ASM and Accenture did not respond to requests for comment

Concerns About China

Some Insight Global workers recognized the same problem as the former Lockheed manager: a mismatch in skills between the U.S.-based escorts and the Microsoft engineers they are supervising. The engineers might briefly describe the job to be completed — for instance, updating a firewall, installing an update to fix a bug or reviewing logs to troubleshoot a problem. Then, with limited inspection, the escort copies and pastes the engineer’s commands into the federal cloud.

“They’re telling nontechnical people very technical directions,” the current Insight Global escort said, adding that the arrangement presents untold opportunities for hacking. As an example, they said the engineer could install an update allowing an outsider to access the network.

“Will that get caught? Absolutely,” the escort told ProPublica. “Will that get caught before damage is done? No idea.”

The escort was particularly concerned about the dozens of tickets a week filed by workers based in China. The attack targeting federal officials in 2023 — in which Chinese hackers stole 60,000 emails — underscored that fear.

The federal Cyber Safety Review Board, which investigated the attack, blamed Microsoft for security lapses that gave hackers their opening. Its published report did not mention digital escorts, either as playing a role in the attack or as a risk to be mitigated. Sherman, the former chief information officer for the Defense Department, and Coker, the former intelligence official, who both also served as members of the CSRB, told ProPublica that they did not recall the board ever discussing digital escorting, which they said they now consider a major threat. The Trump administration has since disbanded the CSRB.

In its statement, Microsoft said it expects escorts “to perform a variety of technical tasks,” which are outlined in its contracts with vendors. Insight Global said it evaluates prospective hires to ensure they have those skills and trains new employees on “all applicable security and compliance policies provided by Microsoft.”

But the Insight Global employee told ProPublica the training regimen doesn’t come close to bridging the knowledge gap. In addition, it is challenging for escorts to gain expertise on the job because the type of work they oversee varies widely. “It’s not possible to get as trained up as you need to be on the wide array of things you need to look at,” they said.

The escort said they repeatedly raised concerns about the knowledge gap to Microsoft, over several years and as recently as April, and to Insight Global’s own attorneys. They said the digital escorts’ relative inexperience — combined with Chinese laws that grant the country’s officials broad authority to collect data — left U.S. government networks overly exposed. Microsoft repeatedly thanked the escort for raising the issues while Insight Global said it would take them under advisement, the escort said. It is unclear whether Microsoft or Insight Global took any steps to address them; neither company answered questions about the escort’s account.

In its statement, Microsoft said it meets regularly with its contractors “to discuss operations and surface questions or concerns.” The company also noted that it has additional layers of “security and monitoring controls” including “automated code reviews to quickly detect and prevent the introduction of vulnerabilities.”

“Microsoft assumes anyone that has access to production systems, regardless of location or role, can pose a risk to the system, whether intentionally or unintentionally,” the company said in its statement.

Another Warning, a Growing Risk

Last year, about three months after government investigators released their report on the 2023 hack into U.S. officials’ emails, a former Insight Global contractor named Tom Schiller contacted a Defense Department hotline and wrote to several federal lawmakers to warn them about digital escorting. He had become familiar with the system while briefly working for the company as a software developer. By last July, Schiller’s complaints wound their way to the Defense Information Systems Agency Office of the Inspector General. Schiller told ProPublica that the office conducted a sworn interview with him, and separately with three others connected to Insight Global. In August, the inspector general wrote to Schiller to say it had closed the case.

“We conducted a preliminary analysis into the complaint and determined this matter is not within the avenue of redress by DISA IG and is best addressed by the appropriate DISA management,” the assistant inspector general for investigations said in the letter. “We have referred the information you provided to management.”

A spokesperson for the inspector general — whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse — told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs.

“If the public information office contacts me and wants to collaborate to formulate a response through their office, I’ll be more than happy to do that,” the spokesperson said. “But I will not be responding to any kind of media request concerning OIG business without speaking with the public information office.”

DISA public affairs did not answer questions about the matter. After a spokesperson initially said that he couldn’t find anyone who had heard of the escort concept, the agency later acknowledged in a statement to ProPublica that escorts are used “in select unclassified environments” at the Defense Department for “advanced problem diagnosis and resolution from industry subject matter experts.” Echoing Microsoft’s statement, it continued, “Experts under escort supervision have no direct, hands-on access to government systems; but rather offer guidance and recommendations to authorized administrators who perform tasks.”

It is unclear what, if any, discussions have taken place among Microsoft, Insight Global and DISA, or any other government agency, regarding digital escorts.

But David Mihelcic, DISA’s former chief technology officer, said any visibility into the Defense Department’s network poses a “huge risk.”

“Here you have one person you really don’t trust because they’re probably in the Chinese intelligence service, and the other person is not really capable,” he said.

The risk may be getting more serious by the day, as U.S.-China relations worsen amid a simmering trade war — the type of conflict that experts say could result in Chinese cyber retaliation.

In testimony to a Senate committee in May, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company is continually “pushing Chinese out of agencies.” He did not elaborate on how they got in, and Microsoft did not respond to follow-up questions on the remark.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke.

South Korea shuts off loudspeaker broadcasts to North to ‘restore trust’ | Radio Free Asia (RFA)

Radio Free Asia — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 21:19:49 +0000

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

South Korea shuts off loudspeaker broadcasts to North in bid to ‘restore trust’

Mok Yong-jae for RFA Korean — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 19:06:14 +0000

SEOUL – South Korea’s military on Wednesday stopped its loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea that had blared K-pop and propaganda across the demilitarized zone for over a year.

The move fulfills a campaign promise of the new South Korean president who favors engagement with Pyongyang.

In his inaugural address last week, President Lee Jae-myung – who replaced ousted conservative predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol – promised to improve inter-Korean relations and restart dialogue with Pyongyang, in sharp contrast to Yoon who adopted a more confrontational stance toward the North.

Under Yoon, the South Korean military resumed its loudspeaker “Voice of Freedom” broadcasts to North Korea in June last year, ending a six-year hiatus, in retaliation for the North’s campaign to send balloons laden with trash and human waste to the South.

Video: South Korea's military is stopping loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea

Lee, meanwhile, had promised during his presidential campaign to stop these broadcasts to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

On Wednesday, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the suspension of the loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea was part of efforts to “restore trust in inter-Korean relations and promote peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

Earlier this week, South Korea’s Unification Ministry also called on activists to stop sending propaganda leaflets into North Korea, saying these activities “could heighten tensions on the Korean Peninsula and threaten the lives and safety of residents in border areas.”

The broadcasts have a long history. South Korea began using loudspeakers to pump propaganda messages into North Korea in 1963, and the North set up its own loudspeakers shortly after, with both sides broadcasting their messages every day across the border until 2004, when they agreed to stop after negotiations.

But the South started them up again in 2015 after South Korean soldiers were injured by a North Korean landmine inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.

In 2018, the two governments again agreed to halt the broadcasts after a rare summit between their leaders, until the South resumed them last June while the North blared ominous noises – howling wolves, clanging gongs and other irritating sounds – from speakers within their half of the DMZ.

A May 1, 2018, photo shows the dismantling of loudspeakers set up for propaganda broadcasts into North Korea near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, South Korea.

(Kim Hong-ji/AP)

In the past, North Korea’s loudspeakers had broadcast propaganda, insulting the government in Seoul as a “puppet” of the United States or encouraging South Korean soldiers to defect to the “paradise” in the North.

In a press briefing on Monday, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said the decision to completely stop the broadcasts would hinge on North Korea’s actions, and that a comprehensive review would be needed.

The military’s decision to halt the broadcasts was also driven partly by the fact that North Korea had also stopped sending its trash-laden balloons across the border since late last year.

North Korea has yet to comment on the South’s suspension of its loudspeaker broadcasts across the border. But regardless of the Lee government’s softer approach, analysts expect North Korea to show continued hostility toward the South.

In particular, Pyongyang’s move to eliminate ‘puppet’ – a derogatory term used in North Korean propaganda to describe South Korea – from its state publication Rodong Sinmun suggests a fundamental shift in its approach toward the South, say analysts.

“This can be interpreted as suggesting North Korea’s abandonment of its will to unify the Korean Peninsula,” Lim Su-jin, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy, argues in a June 10 report.

In addition, North Korea’s recent reports on South Korea are shifting from direct criticism to “strategic indifference,” focused primarily on its relations with the United States, with the word ‘America’ showing the largest increase in all South Korea-related coverage by Rodong Sinmun from January to March, Lim said.

Edited by Mat Pennington and Tenzin Pema.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Mok Yong-jae for RFA Korean.

Budget 2025: Pacific Ministry faces major cuts, yet new initiatives aim for development

APR editor — Thu, 22 May 2025 11:34:39 +0000

By ‘Alakihihifo Vailala of PMN News

Funding for New Zealand’s Ministry for Pacific Peoples (MPP) is set to be reduced by almost $36 million in Budget 2025.

This follows a cut of nearly $26 million in the 2024 budget.

As part of these budgetary savings, the Tauola Business Fund will be closed. But, $6.3 million a year will remain to support Pacific economic and business development through the Pacific Business Trust and Pacific Business Village.

The Budget cuts also affect the Tupu Aotearoa programme, which supports Pacific people in finding employment and training, alongside the Ministry of Social Development’s employment initiatives.

While $5.25 million a year will still fund the programme, a total of $22 million a year has been cut over the last four years.

The ministry will save almost $1 million by returning funding allocated for the Dawn Raids reconciliation programme from 2027/28 onwards.

There are two years of limited funding left to complete the ministry Dawn Raids programmes, which support the Crown’s reconciliation efforts.

Funding for Pasifika Wardens
Despite these reductions, a new initiative providing funding for Pasifika Wardens will introduce $1 million of new spending over the next four years.

The initiative will improve services to Pacific communities through capacity building, volunteer training, transportation, and enhanced administrative support.

Funding for the National Fale Malae has ceased, as only $2.7 million of the allocated $10 million has been spent since funding was granted in Budget 2020.

The remaining $6.6 million will be reprioritised over the next two years to address other priorities within the Arts, Culture and Heritage portfolio, including the National Music Centre.

Foreign Affairs funding for the International Development Cooperation (IDC) projects, particularly focussed on the Pacific, is also affected. The IDC received an $800 million commitment in 2021 from the Labour government.

The funding was time-limited, leading to a $200 million annual fiscal cliff starting in January 2026.

Budget 2025 aims to mitigate this impact by providing ongoing, baselined funding of $100 million a year to cover half of the shortfall. An additional $5 million will address a $10 million annual shortfall in departmental funding.

Support for IDC projects
The new funding will support IDC projects, emphasising the Pacific region without being exclusively aimed at climate finance objectives. Overall, $367.5 million will be allocated to the IDC over four years.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis said the Budget addressed a prominent fiscal cliff, especially concerning climate finance.

“The Budget addresses this, at least in part, through ongoing, baselined funding of $100 million a year, focused on the Pacific,” she said in her Budget speech.

“Members will not be surprised to know that the Minister of Foreign Affairs has made a case for more funding, and this will be looked at in future Budgets.”

More funding has been allocated for new homework and tutoring services for learners in Years nine and 10 at schools with at least 50 percent Pacific students to meet the requirements for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).

About 50 schools across New Zealand are expected to benefit from the initiative, which will receive nearly $7 million over the next four years, having been reprioritised from funding for the Pacific Education Programme.

As a result, funding will be stopped for three programmes aimed at supporting Tu’u Mālohi, Pacific Reading Together and Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities.

Republished from Pacific Media Network News with permission.

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

Genocide in Gaza: The BBC’s Self-Inflicted “Trust Crisis”

Media Lens — Thu, 22 May 2025 08:03:30 +0000

BBC News regularly proclaims its supposed editorial principles of fearless, independent, impartial, fair and accurate journalism. In a January 2023 speech to the Whitehall & Industry Group in London, then BBC Chairman Richard Sharp boasted that BBC journalism is the ‘global gold standard’ of credible news reporting.

Two years previously, in 2021, the public broadcaster had proudly published a focused, 10-point plan to ensure the protection of the highest ‘impartiality, whistleblowing and editorial standards’. BBC director general Tim Davie asserted:

‘The BBC’s editorial values of impartiality, accuracy and trust are the foundation of our relationship with audiences in the UK and around the world. Our audiences deserve and expect programmes and content which earn their trust every day and we must meet the highest standards and hold ourselves accountable in everything we do.’

When it comes to the broadcaster’s coverage of Gaza since October 2023, and long before, BBC audiences have seen for themselves the hollowness of such BBC rhetoric.

For example, the BBC’s withdrawal of its own commissioned powerful documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, earlier this year epitomised how much the UK’s national broadcaster bends to the will of the Israel lobby. The BBC dropped the documentary from iPlayer, soon after it was broadcast on BBC Two on 17 February, when it emerged that the film’s narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah al-Yazuri, is the son of Ayman al-Yazuri, a deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government which is administered by Hamas. The film was withdrawn after a campaign by pro-Israel voices, including David Collier, a self-described ‘100 per cent Zionist’ activist, Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, and Danny Cohen, a former director of BBC television, who said that the broadcaster ‘is at risk of becoming a Hamas propaganda mouthpiece.’

Another documentary, Gaza: Medics Under Fire, made by Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmakers, including Ben de Pear, Karim Shah and Ramita Navai, has been held back by the BBC, even though it had been signed off by BBC lawyers. The film includes the testimony of Palestinian doctors working in Gaza under Israeli bombardment. It has been ready for broadcast since February after months of editorial reviews and fact-checking.

Over 600 prominent figures from the arts and media, including British film director Mike Leigh, Oscar-winning actor Susan Sarandon and Lindsey Hilsum, the international editor of Channel 4 News, have signed an open letter criticising the BBC for withholding the documentary:

‘We stand with the medics of Gaza whose voices are being silenced. Their urgent stories are being buried by bureaucracy and political censorship. This is not editorial caution. It’s political suppression. The BBC has provided no timeline, no transparency. Such decisions reinforce the systemic devaluation of Palestinian lives in our media.’

This, of course, is all part of an endemic pattern of BBC bias towards Israel under the guise of ‘impartiality’; a façade that has now been obliterated. The corporation’s longstanding, blatant protection of Israel, considered an ‘apartheid regime’ by major human rights organisations, has been particularly glaring since Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government ordered genocidal attacks on Gaza in October 2023.

The public has been subject to repetition and amplification of the Israeli narrative above the Palestinian perspective. Moreover, the broadcaster regularly omits ‘Israel’ from headlines about its latest war crimes committed in Gaza and the West Bank. Another remarkable feature of the BBC’s performance has been the dismissive treatment by senior BBC management of serious concerns about bias raised by their own journalists. A very brief summary of the BBC’s biased reporting on Gaza, and criticism by some of their own journalists, can be found in this thread on X. The essential conclusion concerning BBC News coverage of Gaza, wrote one dissident BBC journalist, is that of:

‘a collapse in the application of basic standards and norms of journalism that seems aligned with Israel’s propaganda strategy.’ [Our emphasis]

BBC management have ignored or dismissed ‘a mass of evidence-based critique of coverage’ from members of staff. So much for the BBC’s claimed commitment to taking whistleblowers seriously.

Karishma Patel, a former BBC researcher, newsreader and journalist, wrote earlier this year about her reasons for leaving the BBC. She observed ‘a shocking level of editorial inconsistency’ in how the BBC covers Gaza. Journalists were ‘actively choosing not to follow evidence’ of Israeli war crimes ‘out of fear’.

In a follow-up article last month, she observed that:

‘many [BBC] journalists are afraid to speak their minds – to challenge editorial decisions or speak freely to powerful presenters and executives. This isn’t a newsroom environment conducive to robust journalism – a profession all about the pursuit of truth and accountability.’

She added:

‘It’s important the public understands how far editorial policy can be silently shaped by even the possibility of anger from certain groups, foreign governments, our own government, mega-corporations – any powerful actor – and how crucial it is that more junior journalists who see it can speak up.’

‘A Precious National Asset’

Last week, the BBC’s director general warned of a disinformation ‘trust crisis’ that was putting ‘the social fabric’ of the UK ‘at risk’. Tim Davie pointed the finger at social media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube where, as a Guardian report on Davie’s speech put it, ‘disinformation can go unchecked’. We have previously written (for example, here and here) about how ‘mainstream’ editors and journalists love to point at social media as prime purveyors of disinformation, diverting attention from their own culpability in much larger crimes of state-approved propaganda that fuels wars, the erosion of democracy and climate catastrophe.

Davie said:

‘The future of our cohesive, democratic society feels for the first time in my life at risk.’

He called for ‘strong government backing’ for the BBC as a ‘precious national asset’ to be ‘properly funded and supported’. The fact that the BBC has itself massively contributed to a ‘trust crisis’ in disinformation and propaganda, encapsulated by its complicity in Israel’s genocide, went unmentioned, of course.

The late, great journalist John Pilger put it succinctly in an interview with Afshin Rattansi:

‘The BBC has the most brilliant production values, it produces the most extraordinary natural history and drama series. But the BBC is, and has long been, the most refined propaganda service in the world.’

Daily examples abound of why the public should regard BBC News with deep scepticism. On 12 May, BBC News at Ten reported the release of US-Israeli dual citizen Edan Alexander by Hamas. Senior BBC reporter Lucy Williamson said that Alexander had originally been ‘kidnapped as a soldier’. The terminology is deceptive: civilians are kidnapped; soldiers are captured. Why did BBC editors approve this loaded use of the wrong word, ‘kidnapped’?

Consider another example. Richard Sanders, an experienced journalist and documentary filmmaker, noted via X on 15 May that the BBC had included this line in one of its news bulletins:

‘Israel says a hospital [in Gaza] along with a university and schools … have become terrorist strongholds for Hamas’.

Sanders commented:

‘The BBC knows such statements are untrue. Yet that sentence took up more than a third of its 22 sec 7.30 am news bulletin on Gaza – with no rebuttal.’

He added:

‘8am they go to [BBC] correspondent Yolande Knell for a lengthier report. She repeats exactly the same sentence – again, with no rebuttal.

‘The listener is left with the entirely false impression it’s perfectly possible it’s true.

‘Bad, bad journalism.’

And yet this is standard BBC ‘journalism’: the ‘global gold standard’, remember.

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, is supposedly an exemplar of this gold standard. But his capitulation to the Israel lobby is repeatedly apparent in his interviews and articles. Media activist Saul Staniforth captured this clip where a BBC presenter said to Bowen:

‘[Netanyahu is] looking for other countries to take in Gazans’.

Bowen responded: ‘Well, that’s called…’

He then paused momentarily and continued: ‘… that will be called, by Palestinians and by a lot of people around the world, ethnic cleansing.’

Bowen presumably stopped himself simply stating the truth: ‘that’s called ethnic cleansing.’ This is what he would have said in any context involving an Official Enemy, such as Russia, rather than the Official Friend, Israel.

Jonathan Cook dissected an even more egregious example of Bowen’s favouring the Israeli perspective when the BBC journalist interviewed Philippe Lazzarini, head of United Nations refugee agency UNRWA. Before airing the interview, Bowen introduced the Lazzarini interview with a contorted cautionary statement:

‘Israel says he is a liar, and that his organisation has been infiltrated by Hamas. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.

‘First off, the British government deals with him, and funds his organisation. Which is the largest dealing with Palestinian refugees. They know a lot of what is going on, so therefore I think it is important to speak to people like him.’

As Cook observed, Bowen would never preface an interview with Netanyahu in a similar way:

‘The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, accusing him of crimes against humanity. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.’

During the interview, Lazzarini told Bowen that he was running out of words ‘to describe the misery and the tragedy affecting the people in Gaza. They have been now more than two months without any aid’. The UNRWA chief added:

‘Starvation is spreading, people are exhausted, people are hungry… we can expect that in the coming weeks if no aid is coming in, that people will not die because of the bombardment, but they will die because of the lack of food. This is the weaponisation of humanitarian aid.’

Cook noted:

‘Lazzarini’s remarks on the catastrophe in Gaza should be seen as self-evident. But Bowen and the BBC undermined his message by framing him and his organisation as suspect – and all because Israel, a criminal state starving the people of Gaza, has made an entirely unfounded allegation against the organisation trying to stop its crimes against humanity.’

He continued:

‘This is the same pattern of smears from Israel that has claimed all 36 hospitals in Gaza are Hamas “command and control centres” – again without a shred of evidence – to justify it bombing them all, leaving Gaza’s population without any meaningful health care system as malnutrition and starvation take hold.’ [Our emphasis]

As Cook pointed out, it is quite possible that it was not Bowen’s choice ‘to attach such a disgraceful disclaimer to his interview. We all understand that he is under enormous pressure, both from within the BBC and outside.’ But just imagine the huge moral standing and public impact it would have if Bowen resigned from the BBC, citing the intolerable pressure not to speak the full truth about Israel’s genocide and war crimes.

For those with long memories, recall the exceptional courage and honesty when two senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned in 1998 and 2000, respectively, rather than continue to administer the ‘genocidal’ (their term) UN sanctions against Iraq that had led to the deaths of up to 1.5 million people, including around half a million children under the age of five.

One of the most insidious forms of ‘bad’ BBC ‘journalism’ is propaganda by omission, as we have noted in media alerts over the years (for example, see here and here). On 13 May, the investigative news organisation, DropSite, reported that Israeli troops had shot and killed Mohammed Bardawil, a 12-year-old boy. He was one of only four surviving eyewitnesses of the Israeli military’s execution of 15 paramedics, rescue workers and UN staff in Rafah, Gaza, in March 2025.

DropSite noted:

‘Mohammed had testified that some of the paramedics were shot at point-blank range – “from one meter away.” He was also interviewed by The New York Times for their investigation into the massacre, though his most damning claims were omitted from their final report.’

DropSite added:

‘Mohammed had been scheduled for a second round of testimony with investigators, this time with pediatric psychologists present. Instead, the 12-year-old war crime witness was killed by Israeli forces.’

At the time of writing, it is unclear whether he was specifically targeted in an attack, or caught up in an Israeli raid.

This shocking news has been blanked by the BBC, as far as we can see from searching its website. Indeed, our search of the Nexis newspaper database reveals not a single mention in any UK newspaper.

Imagine if Russia had executed fifteen Red Cross medics, first responders and a UN staff member in Ukraine, burying them in a mass grave along with their vehicles, including an ambulance.

Imagine if Russia had lied about this appalling war crime, as proved by footage recovered from the telephone of one of the executed victims.

Imagine if a 12-year-old Ukrainian witness to this Russian war crime was later shot dead by Russian soldiers. His killing would have been major headline news around the world and serious questions would have been asked.

The Fiction of BBC ‘Transparency’

As mentioned, BBC editors love to proclaim their accountability to the public and transparency of their editorial processes. How, then, would they explain their secrecy in holding private meetings with one of Israel’s former top military officers during Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza?

Declassified UK is a small publicly-funded independent news organisation that runs rings around BBC News, and the rest of the ‘mainstream’ media, on UK foreign policy and the impact of British military and intelligence agencies on human rights and the environment. Declassified UK reported earlier this year that BBC, Guardian and Financial Times editors had secret meetings with Israeli General Aviv Kohavi one month after the Gaza bombardment began.

In attendance were Katherine Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Richard Burgess, director of news content at the BBC, and Roula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times. According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Kohavi’s itinerary also included meetings with Sky News chairman David Rhodes at the Israeli embassy, and then shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, between 7 and 9 November 2023.

Kohavi had only stepped down from running Israel’s military months earlier. According to Declassified UK’s investigation, Kohavi had subsequently been ‘tasked with cultivating support for Israel as it escalated its brutal military offensive in Gaza.’

A journalist who was working for the BBC at the time of the visit told Declassified UK:

‘I don’t recall any internal correspondence about the meeting, which the BBC would ordinarily send out if there was a high-profile visit of this kind. I also find it very difficult to believe that the organisation would hold an equivalent meeting with the Hamas government.’

The journalist, who requested anonymity, added:

‘Not only is Kohavi’s visit unprecedented but it’s also outrageous that one of the most senior editors at the BBC should court company with a foreign military figure in this way, especially one whose country stands accused of serious human rights violations.

‘It further undermines the independence and impartiality that the BBC claims to uphold, and I think it has done irreparable damage to any trust audiences had in the corporation.’

Des Freedman, a professor of media at Goldsmiths, University of London, told Declassified UK he could find no mention of General Kohavi in any BBC, Guardian or FT coverage since 2023, when searching on the Nexis database.

He added:

‘Obviously off the record briefings have a place in journalism. However, meeting secretly with a senior IDF representative in the middle of a genocidal campaign as part of an organised propaganda offensive raises serious questions about integrity and transparency.

‘You would hope that news titles would go out of their way to avoid accusations of bias by rejecting the offer to meet privately and instead to put such meetings on the record. In reality, editors at the Guardian, BBC and FT appear willing to open their doors to Israeli spokespeople – no matter how controversial and offensive – in a way which is denied to Palestinian representatives.’

Conclusion: ‘Palestine Is The Rock’

The function of the major news media, very much including BBC News, is not to fully inform or educate the public about what our governments or other elite forces in society are doing. Their primary role is to maintain structures of state and corporate control that keep the public away from the levers of power.

Jason Hickel, a professor of anthropology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, made these cogent observations recently via X:

‘Palestine is the rock on which the West will break itself.

‘Put yourself in the shoes of people in the global South. For nearly two years they have watched how Western leaders, who love to talk about human rights and the rule of law, are happy to shred all these values in the most spectacular displays of hypocrisy in order to prop up their military proxy-state as it openly conducts genocide and ethnic cleansing against an occupied people, even in the face of *overwhelming* international condemnation.’

He continued:

‘What do you think people in the South are supposed to conclude from this? What would *you* conclude from this in their position? Decades of Western propaganda have been shattered, this time in full technicolour. Western governments have made it clear that they do not care about human rights and the rule of law when it comes to people of colour, the global majority.’

In fact, Western governments do not even care about human rights and the rule of law in their own countries, where these conflict with the requirements of power and control by elites. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out over many decades, ‘there is a very elaborate propaganda system’ in capitalist societies:

‘involving everything, from the public relations industry and advertising to the corporate media, which simply marginalizes a large part of the population. They technically are allowed to participate by pushing buttons every few years, but they have essentially no role in formulating policy. They can ratify decisions made by others.’

(Noam Chomsky and James Kelman, Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter, PM Press, 2021, p. 159)

BBC News is a crucial component of this elaborate propaganda system. No amount of self-serving managerial rhetoric about ‘trust’, ‘transparency’ and ‘impartiality’ can refute that fundamental reality.

The post Genocide in Gaza: The BBC’s Self-Inflicted “Trust Crisis” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Immigrants and Reality Television

Binoy Kampmark — Tue, 20 May 2025 08:49:35 +0000

Shocking it might be, yet still part of an old pattern. The US Department of Homeland Security is floating the idea of using a reality television program to select immigrants vying for US citizenship. Whether this involves gladiatorial combat or inane pillow battles remains to be seen, though it is bound to involve airhead celebrity hosts and a set of fabricated challenges. What matters is the premise: the reduction of a government agency’s functions to a debauched spectacle of deceit, desperation and televisual pornography. Much, in some ways, like the Trump administration itself.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, television producer Rob Worsoff, the man behind the Duck Dynasty reality show, comes clean in his monstrous intentions behind this proposed series he hopes to call The American: he has been pursuing this seedy project since the days of the Obama administration, hoping for some amoral stakeholder to bite. Worsoff, in true fashion, denies that such a project is intended as malicious (“this isn’t the ‘The Hunger Games’ for immigrants”), let alone denigrating the dignity of human worth. In the grand idea of full bloom, optimistic America, it is intended as hopeful, but most of all, competitive. Forget equal protection and a fair evaluation of merits; here is a chance for Social Darwinism to excel.

Worsoff insists he is free of political ideology. “As an immigrant myself, I am merely trying to make a show that celebrates the immigration process, celebrate what it means to be American and have a national conversation about what it means to be American, through the eyes of people who want it most”. He proposes to do this by, for instance, sending immigrants to San Francisco where they find themselves in a mine to retrieve gold. Another would see the contestants journey to Detroit, where they will be placed on an auto assembly to reassemble a Model-T Ford chassis.

The winners would end up on the Capitol steps, presumably to receive their citizenship in some staged ceremony for television. The losing contestants would go home with such generous prizes as a Starbucks gift card or airline points.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin has apparently spoken to Worsoff on this steaming drivel, with the producer describing the response as “positive”. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, it is said, has not officially “‘backed’ or even reviewed the pitch of any scripted or reality show. The Department of Homeland Security receives hundreds of television show pitches a year.” The mind can only dissipate in despair at such an observation, unsurprising in a land where the television, or televisual platforms, remain brain numbing instructors.

That the DHS is considering this is unremarkable. The department has already participated in television projects and networks, To Catch a Smuggler being a case in point. Noem has also made much of the camera when it comes to dealing with immigrants. An ad campaign costing US$200 million promises to feature her admonishing illegal immigrants to return to their countries. No doubt the hairdressing and makeup department will be busy when tarting her up for the noble task.

Broadcasters in a number of countries have also found the unsuspecting migrant or foreign guest captured by television irresistible viewing. It’s not just good, couch potato fun, but also a chance to fan prejudice and feed sketchy stereotypes. The reality TV show Border Security, which first aired on Australia’s free-to-air Channel 7 in 2004, proved to be a pioneering model in this regard. Not only did it provide a chance to mock the eating habits of new arrivals as food stuffs were confiscated by customs officers with names like “Barbs”, the program could also impute an intention to attack the Australian agricultural sector with introduced pests and diseases. These depictions went hand in hand with the demonising strategy of the Australian government towards unwanted asylum seekers and refugees (“Stop the Boats!” was the cry), characterised by lengthy spells of detention in an offshore tropical gulag.

The plight of the vulnerable immigrant has also become a matter of pantomime substitution, an idea supposedly educative in function. Why not act out the entire migrant experience with reality television individuals with particularly xenophobic views?

In February, this is exactly what took place in a reality television show vulgarly titled Go Back to Where You Come From aired on the UK’s Channel 4, running four episodes where selected, largely anti-immigration participants, according to Channel 4, “experience some of the most perilous parts of the refugee journeys”. It comes as little surprise that the series is modelled on an Australian precursor made in the early 2010s.

Even pro-immigrant groups were reduced to a state of admiring stupor, with the Refugee Council, a British charity, praising the worth of such shows to “have huge potential to highlight the stories behind the headlines”. Gareth Benest, advocacy director at the International Broadcasting Trust charity, also thought it instructive that the participants “face the reality of irregular migration and to challenge their preconceptions.”

French politician Xavier Bertrand failed to identify similar points, calling the program “nauseating”. In his attack on the experiment, he saw the deaths across the English Channel as “a humanitarian tragedy, not the subject of a game”. But a game it has become, at least when placed before the camera.

The post Immigrants and Reality Television first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Absurd attack on free speech by Israel Institute over social media comment

Pacific Media Watch — Sat, 10 May 2025 08:29:08 +0000

By Gordon Campbell

The calls by the Israel Institute of New Zealand for Peter Davis to resign from the Helen Clark Foundation because of comments he made with regard to an ugly, hateful piece of graffiti are absurd.

The graffiti in question said “I hated Jews before it was cool!” On social media, Davis made this comment :

“Netanyahu govt actions have isolated Israel from global south and the west, and have stoked anti-Semitism. Yitzak Rabin was the last leader to effectively foster a political-diplomatic solution to the Israel-Palestine impasse. He was assassinated by a settler. You reap what you sow.”

IMO, this sounds like an expression of sorrow and regret about the conflict, and about the evils it is feeding and fostering. Regardless, the institute has described that comment by Davis as antisemitic.

“‘You cannot claim to champion social cohesion while minimising or rationalising antisemitic hate,’ the institute said. ‘Social trust depends on moral consistency, especially from those in leadership. Peter Davis’s actions erode that trust.'”

For the record, Davis wasn’t rationalising or minimising antisemitic hate. His comments look far more like a legitimate observation that the longer the need for a political-diplomatic solution is violently resisted, the worse things will be for everyone — including Jewish citizens, via the stoking of antisemitism.

The basic point at issue here is that criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government do not equate to a racist hostility to the Jewish people. (Similarly, the criticisms of Donald Trump’s actions cannot be minimised or rationalised as due to anti-Americanism.)

Appalled by Netanyahu actions
Many Jewish people in fact, also feel appalled by the actions of the Netanyahu government, which repeatedly violate international law.

In the light of the extreme acts of violence being inflicted daily by the IDF on the people of Gaza, the upsurge in hateful graffiti by neo-Nazi opportunists while still being vile, is hardly surprising.

Around the world, the security of innocent Israeli citizens is being recklessly endangered by the ultra-violent actions of their own government.

If you want to protect your citizens from an existing fire, it’s best not to toss gasoline on the flames.

To repeat: the vast majority of the current criticisms of the Israeli state have nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism. At a time when Israel is killing scores of innocent Palestinians on a nightly basis with systematic air strikes and the shelling of civilian neighbourhoods, when it is weaponising access to humanitarian aid as an apparent tool of ethnic cleansing, when it is executing medical staff and assassinating journalists, when it is killing thousands of children and starving the survivors . . . antisemitism is not the reason why most people oppose these evils. Common humanity demands it.

Ironically, the press release by the NZ Israel Institute concludes with these words: “There must be zero tolerance for hate in any form.” Too bad the institute seems to have such a limited capacity for self-reflection.

Footnote One: For the best part of 80 years, the world has felt sympathy to Jews in recognition of the Holocaust. The genocide now being committed in Gaza by the Netanyahu government cannot help but reduce public support for Israel.

It also cannot help but erode the status of the Holocaust as a unique expression of human evil.

One would have hoped the NZ Israel Institute might acknowledge the self-defeating nature of the Netanyahu government policies — if only because, on a daily basis, the state of Israel is abetting its enemies, and alienating its friends.

Footnote Two: As yet, the so-called Free Speech Union has not come out to support the free speech rights of Peter Davis, and to rebuke the NZ Israel Institute for trying to muzzle them.

Colour me not surprised.

Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a lawsuit brought by South Africa and 35 other countries and organisations while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on arrest warrants for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is a section of Gordon Campbell’s Scoop column published yesterday under the subheading “Pot Calls Out Kettle”; the main portion of the column about the new Pope is here. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Gordon Campbell: On The New Pope, And The Israeli Attack On Peter Davis https://t.co/UWiLiI6J7d pic.twitter.com/xkWXusJEio

— Scoop Independent News (@ScoopNZ) May 9, 2025

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

Will Extreme Spending and Partisanship Undermine Trust in State Supreme Courts?

by Megan O’Matz — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 09:00:00 +0000

by Megan O’Matz

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When Susan Crawford, Wisconsin’s newly elected Supreme Court justice, took the stage in Madison on Tuesday night to claim victory, four women flanked her, beaming, hands on one another’s shoulders. One had her fist raised in triumph.

The supporters were four justices now serving on the state’s Supreme Court, representing the court’s liberal faction. Pictures and video of the moment captured the overt display of partisanship in a contest for the state’s highest court.

Missing from the scene: the court’s three conservative leaning justices. About 60 miles east, one of them, Rebecca Bradley, joined the election event of the opposing candidate, former Republican Attorney Gen. Brad Schimel, where she expressed disappointment that he lost and blamed liberals for politicizing the court.

“I also think the way Judge Crawford ran her race was disgusting,” Bradley said, according to the news site The Bulwark. Bradley accused the Democratic Party of “buying another justice.”

Bradley added: “It needs to stop. Otherwise, there is no point in having a court. This is what the Legislature is supposed to do, to make political decisions based on policy. That’s not what a court’s supposed to do, and unfortunately, we’re going to see this happening for at least the next several years.”

Officially the Supreme Court race was nonpartisan. Crawford and Schimel did not run with an R or D beside their name. Wisconsin judges take an oath to be faithful to the state constitution, to administer justice without favoritism and to act impartially.

But the spectacularly high-profile Wisconsin contest was undeniably political. The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice estimated the spending topped $100 million — making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history. Large sums came from political action committees and shadowy third-party groups that funneled money into TV ads, mailers, canvassing and other assistance.

President Donald Trump, taking a keen interest in the race, endorsed Schimel and held a “tele-rally” for him. His close adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, funneled roughly $25 million into the race, via his super PAC, an associated dark-money entity and direct party donations. The outlays included offers to pay Schimel volunteers $50 for every photo of a voter outside a polling station, as well as million-dollar checks as prizes to three supporters. At one point in the race, Schimel posed for photos in front of a giant inflatable likeness of Trump.

On the other side, the Democratic Party endorsed Crawford and steered over $11 million to her campaign from contributions made to the party by donors that included billionaires such as George Soros and Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. On social media in the waning days of the campaign, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton urged support for Crawford. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler attended Crawford’s victory party in Madison.

Wisconsin’s raw partisan display reflects a growing focus on the importance of these courts in shaping policy — especially on hot-button issues like abortion, redistricting and voting rights. At the same time, it feeds a growing concern nationally about the independence of state high courts. Some government watchdogs worry that the blatant partisanship around who serves on these courts is increasing distrust by the public in judicial decisions, jeopardizing the system of checks and balances needed in a functioning democracy.

The targeting of state supreme courts by special interests and ultrawealthy individuals, some court observers say, can leave the public with the impression that justices are no different than any senator or representative or governor: devoted to serving their political allies. At that point, will court orders no longer carry the moral weight and respect needed to carry them out?

At the national level, a federal judge is considering whether the Trump administration defied a court order to halt planes deporting immigrants to a prison in El Salvador, prompting Trump to call for the judge’s impeachment. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, Musk exhorted voters to sign a petition against “activist judges.”

“Especially at this moment, when courts are being tested and are serving as a crucial bulwark in our democracy, it is very important that the public be able to trust them and keep demanding that other elected officials follow court decisions,” said Douglas Keith, senior counsel for the Brennan Center, a policy institute that studies judicial elections and advocates for a fair and independent judiciary.

Similar to how U.S. Supreme Court nominations have been subject to political maneuvering, state courts in recent years have seen battles over ideological control.

Billionaire Elon Musk, right, spent roughly $25 million in an attempt to get former Republican Attorney Gen. Brad Schimel elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, including handing out million-dollar checks to supporters. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

In North Carolina, where justices run under partisan labels, the Republican-led Supreme Court blocked the certification of a Democrat elected to the bench in November, while the GOP candidate challenges the validity of more than 60,000 ballots cast in the race. On Friday, the state’s lower court of appeals, in a 2-1 decision led by Republicans, ordered those voters to provide their driver’s license or Social Security number within 15 days to demonstrate their eligibility to vote. Democrats vowed to challenge the ruling in front of the state Supreme Court.

And in Iowa, after the Supreme Court in 2018 ruled that the state constitution protected the right to an abortion, the Legislature changed who can serve on the state’s judicial nominating commission. New justices, appointed by the state’s Republican governor, in 2022 reconsidered the abortion issue and reversed course, also citing the constitution.

The debate over money in Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court races goes back more than 15 years, when the state enacted public financing for such contests to limit spending. But that did not last long. Republicans threw out spending reforms in 2015, and the money devoted to these races has grown exponentially.

In Wisconsin eight years ago, a group of 54 retired judges were so worried about the influence of money on the work of the judiciary that they petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They sought to amend the Code of Judicial Conduct to require parties in lawsuits to disclose campaign contributions over $250 and impose recusal standards in cases involving sizable donations.

“As money in elections becomes more predominant, citizens rightfully ask whether justice is for sale,” the petition stated.

The state Supreme Court voted 5-2 to deny the petition, with conservatives, including current Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley, lined up against it on constitutional grounds.

Michael Kang, a professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, has studied the effect of campaign donations on state supreme court decisions and found that judges elected in competitive races were more likely to rule in favor of business litigants as the amount of campaign donations they received from corporate interests increased. His research, over many years, also found that contributions from political parties correlated with subsequent judicial voting in election disputes over issues such as ballot counting or candidate eligibility.

But Kang’s work went further by examining judges barred from running again because of mandatory retirement ages. He found that the effect of money drops off for lame duck judges who are spared from having to raise money to run again.

“You can go a long way toward addressing the role of money, even with judicial elections, by giving judges one long term, but they're not eligible for reelection at the end,” he said at a recent panel discussion. “And that, to an important degree, ought to reduce the influence of money.”

In Wisconsin, Crawford’s victory cements liberal control of the court for the next three years.

Beside her on stage in Madison were liberal justices: Jill Karofsky, Rebecca Dallet, Ann Walsh Bradley, who is retiring, and Janet Protasiewicz, who was elected in 2023 with the help of $10 million from the Democratic Party. That contest broke spending records, at roughly $56 million, and shifted the balance of the court to the left after 15 years of conservative dominance.

The court’s current session ends in June, and Crawford’s swearing in will be in August. In the future, the seven-member court is likely to confront issues with huge implications for both parties or their supporters.

Crawford’s victory signals that Wisconsin likely will continue to permit access to abortion, which now is legal up to 20 weeks in the pregnancy. Anti-abortion advocates backed Schimel, and had he won, it was assumed that Wisconsin could revert to an 1849 law that outlawed most abortions. Over a decade ago, as a county district attorney, he signed on to a legal white paper advocating support for the 1849 provision, which does not allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest or protecting the mother’s health. Crawford, as a private attorney, fought for abortion rights.

Democrats at some point are widely expected to bring another lawsuit challenging the state’s gerrymandered congressional maps. Wisconsin voters are evenly divided politically, but representation in the U.S. House is skewed to favor the GOP. Six seats are held by Republicans and two by Democrats. Last year, the liberal-controlled court didn’t fall in lockstep with some expectations about its political leanings, handing Republicans a small victory in declining to consider a Democratic lawsuit challenging those maps.

In other states, justices — who once could largely toil above the political fray — have paid a political price for their decisions.

In Ohio in 2022, Republican lawmakers briefly toyed with impeaching Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a fellow Republican, after she sided with three Democrats in repeatedly overturning the state’s legislative maps, which had been drawn by Republicans. She later retired.

In Oklahoma last November, voters tossed out Yvonne Kauger, who had served over 30 years on the bench. A campaign to remove her and two colleagues, fueled by $2 million in dark money, painted them as too liberal, noting they were appointed by Democratic governors.

“Is it any surprise all three are activist liberal judges, killing common sense lawsuit reform, adding millions to the cost of doing business, padding the pockets of trial lawyers?” one video ad blared.

Justices traditionally don’t campaign in Oklahoma retention elections, which Kauger told a news outlet left the judges “helpless” to defend themselves. “I am saddened and alarmed that the system is being used to attack the independent judiciary based on dissatisfaction with a few specially selected opinions,” she said.

In Wisconsin, ads from both sides painted unflattering portraits of the candidates. Crawford was labeled a “radical liberal judge” who gave a light sentence to a child molester. Schimel was accused of giving plea deals to despicable criminals. Both were attacked for their views on abortion.

Musk and Trump, meanwhile, depicted Schimel’s installment on the court as a vital step in carrying out Trump’s agenda and keeping GOP control of Congress.

In Green Bay, two days before the election, Musk told supporters the state Supreme Court race “is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.” Republicans now control the chamber by only 7 votes. Redrawing congressional lines in Wisconsin could make some seats more competitive for Democrats.

“That is why it is so significant. And whichever party controls the House, you know, it, to a significant degree, controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization,” Musk told the crowd.

In the end, Crawford won with 55% of the vote.

“Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections, and our Supreme Court, and Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price,” Crawford told her supporters. “Our courts are not for sale.”

Retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer said he does not like big money in politics at any level, from county commissioner to state Supreme Court. But after decades of wrestling with the issue he’s concluded that spending controls are unworkable, as loopholes invariably open.

“I view it much like a water bed,” he said. “You push down here and it pops up over there.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Megan O’Matz.

Utah Ex-Therapist Scott Owen Sentenced to Prison for Sexually Abusing Patients

by Jessica Schreifels, The Salt Lake Tribune — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Schreifels, The Salt Lake Tribune

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

The last time Sam met with his therapist, Scott Owen, the session was nothing more than an hour of Owen sexually abusing him, he told a Provo, Utah, courtroom this week. Sam remembers sitting in his car afterward, screaming as loud as he could.

“I could feel him all over my skin,” he said. “I could not believe this was happening.”

It was October 2017, and Sam had been seeing Owen for therapy for more than a year. A faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was struggling with what he called “unwanted same-sex attraction.” Owen was a high-ranking leader in the LDS Church at that time, and Sam said Owen assured him that he had helped more than 200 men who felt similarly.

Instead, he said, Owen “meticulously leveraged” his two roles as a therapist and a church leader to assure him that the sexual touching during their sessions was key to helping him heal, learn how to accept intimacy and grow closer to God.

“He exploited my trust, he weaponized my faith and dismantled my confidence,” Sam told the courtroom. “What he did was not just unethical. It was calculated, predatory and destructive.”

Police began investigating Owen in 2023 only after The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica reported on a range of sex abuse allegations against Owen, who had built a reputation over his 20-year therapy career as a specialist who could help gay men who were members of the LDS Church. Some of the men who spoke to The Tribune said their bishop in the faith referred them to Owen and used church funds to pay for sessions where Owen allegedly also touched them inappropriately.

Austin Millet at his home in Oregon. Millet is one of several men who told The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica that Owen abused them during sessions paid for with funds from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Amanda Lucier for ProPublica)

In February, Owen pleaded guilty to three charges, admitting he sexually abused Sam and a second patient who also said he sought Owen’s help because he was struggling with his sexuality and Latter-day Saints faith. Owen also pleaded no contest in another case, saying prosecutors likely had enough evidence to convict him at a trial on an allegation that he had groped a young girl during a therapy session.

But the number of people who say that Owen harmed them is much larger — and they filled a Provo courtroom on Monday as Owen was sentenced to spend at least 15 years in prison.

One by one, they stood at a podium in court and told Owen how he had hurt them. Most were his patients, like Sam, a pseudonym to protect his identity from his community.

One man told the court Owen had abused him when Owen was a leader of a young men’s group organized by the LDS Church.

“He had sleepovers at his house,” Mike Bahr said. “I was there once, and I have lived in a nightmare since.”

Also speaking were family members of a man who had died by suicide, including his brother who said his sibling disclosed to him that Owen had abused him just days before he took his life.

And there was one of Owen’s own family members, his cousin, who alleges that Owen molested him on a family trip when he was a kid. After becoming more public with his own abuse allegations several years ago, James Cooper has worked to gather others who say his cousin victimized them.

James Cooper speaks during Owen’s sentencing hearing. Cooper is Owen’s cousin and alleges the man abused him when he was a child. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)

He spoke about the dynamics that allowed Owen to hurt others for so long without repercussions.

“Certainly, we know how charismatic he is, and what it’s like to be a victim of sexual assault. The shame you carry. The guilt you carry,” he said. “The fear of Scott. The fear of not being accepted by your family, your society, your church. All those things are enormous factors.”

One woman spoke about Owen touching her inappropriately during therapy when she was 13 years old, in 2007. During the hearing, the only woman to have publicly accused him said Owen had made her feel like something was wrong with her. Now, she added, “He no longer holds power over me.”

When Owen, 66, was given a chance to speak, he said there was no excuse or rationale for what he had done.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “All I have to offer is what’s left of my life. And I hope that in offering those years, justice will have been met in some small fashion, and those who I have hurt can disconnect from me and move forward with their healing.”

Defense attorney Earl Xaiz said Owen did not want leniency from the judge but mentioned in court that his client had been sexually abused himself as a child and had struggled with his sexuality.

Fourth District Judge Kraig Powell sentenced Owen on Monday to 15 years to life in prison. Given Owen’s age and the nature of his crimes, both prosecutors and the defense agreed it is likely he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Powell became emotional as he handed down the sentence, telling Owen that he harmed not only those who spoke publicly on Monday, but all of those therapists and church leaders who are ethical and working to help people.

“Thousands and thousands of these people, I fear, will be affected by this terrible, abhorrent case,” the judge said.

Owen was sentenced to prison after he admitted he sexually abused patients during sessions. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Under a negotiated settlement with Utah’s licensing division, Owen was able to surrender his license without admitting to any inappropriate conduct, and the sexual nature of his patients’ allegations is not referenced in the documents he signed when he gave up his license. He continued to have an active role in his therapy business, Canyon Counseling, until The Tribune and ProPublica published their investigation.

Police interviewed more than a dozen former patients of Owen’s, all of whom reported that he touched them in ways they felt were inappropriate during therapy sessions. But Owen faced charges in connection with only three patients, because the type of touching that the other men alleged fell under parts of the criminal code that had a shorter window of time for prosecutors to file a case, called the statute of limitations. The crimes that Owen was charged with are all felonies that have no statute of limitations.

Both state licensors and local leaders in the LDS Church knew of inappropriate touching allegations against Owen as early as 2016, reporting by The Tribune and ProPublica showed, but neither would say whether they ever reported Owen to the police.

The church said in response to that reporting that it takes all matters of sexual misconduct seriously, and that in 2019 it confidentially annotated internal records to alert bishops that Owen’s conduct had threatened the well-being of other people or the church.

The church also said it has no process in place to vet the therapists its church leaders recommend and pay for using member donations. It is up to individual members, a church spokesperson has said, to “make their own decisions” about whether to see a specific therapist that their bishop recommends.

Michael, a former patient of Owen’s who agreed to be photographed but asked to be identified by only his first name, looks at his wife while speaking in court about the inappropriate touching he said happened in therapy sessions. (Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)

For some who accused Owen of abuse, Monday’s sentencing was the only chance they had to address Owen because charges could not be brought in their cases. That includes Michael, who asked to be identified by only his first name. He said he saw Owen for therapy on and off for about a decade, starting when he was 14. He read a letter to his younger self in court on Monday.

“I just learned on Thursday that we are beyond our legal opportunity to fix this problem,” he said. “And it broke my heart to learn that I can’t pursue a court case for you. … You’ll have to be strong. It’s going to be so hard, but you’re going to make it through.”

Editor’s note: Sam is identified only by a pseudonym because he requested anonymity. We have granted this request because of the risk to his standing in his community. The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica typically use sources’ full names in stories. But sometimes that isn’t possible, and we consider other approaches. That often takes the form of initials or middle names. In this case, we felt that we couldn’t fully protect our source by those means. We know his full name and have corroborated his accounts in documents and through interviews with others.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Schreifels, The Salt Lake Tribune.

Marshall Islands: How the Rongelap evacuation changed the course of history

APR editor — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 11:18:55 +0000

SPECIAL REPORT: By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and RNZ Pacific correspondent in Majuro

The late Member of Parliament Jeton Anjain and the people of the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll changed the course of the history of the Marshall Islands by using Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship to evacuate their radioactive home islands 40 years ago.

They did this by taking control of their own destiny after decades of being at the mercy of the United States nuclear testing programme and its aftermath.

In 1954, the US tested the Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, spewing high-level radioactive fallout on unsuspecting Rongelap Islanders nearby.

For years after the Bravo test, decisions by US government doctors and scientists caused Rongelap Islanders to be continuously exposed to additional radiation.

Marshall Islands traditional and government leaders joined Greenpeace representatives in showing off tapa banners with the words “Justice for Marshall Islands” during the dockside welcome ceremony earlier this week in Majuro. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific

The 40th anniversary of the dramatic evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior — a few weeks before French secret agents bombed the ship in Auckland harbour — was spotlighted this week in Majuro with the arrival of Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior III to a warm welcome combining top national government leaders, the Rongelap Atoll Local Government and the Rongelap community.

“We were displaced, our lives were disrupted, and our voices ignored,” said MP Hilton Kendall, who represents Rongelap in the Marshall Islands Parliament, at the welcome ceremony in Majuro earlier in the week.

“In our darkest time, Greenpeace stood with us.”

‘Evacuated people to safety’
He said the Rainbow Warrior “evacuated the people to safety” in 1985.

Greenpeace would “forever be remembered by the people of Rongelap,” he added.

In 1984, Jeton Anjain — like most Rongelap people who were living on the nuclear test-affected atoll — knew that Rongelap was unsafe for continued habitation.

The Able US nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on 1 July 1946. Image: US National Archives

There was not a single scientist or medical doctor among their community although Jeton was a trained dentist, and they mainly depended on US Department of Energy-provided doctors and scientists for health care and environmental advice.

They were always told not to worry and that everything was fine.

But it wasn’t, as the countless thyroid tumors, cancers, miscarriages and surgeries confirmed.

Crew of the Rainbow Warrior and other Greenpeace officials — including two crew members from the original Rainbow Warrior, Bunny McDiarmid and Henk Hazen, from Aotearoa New Zealand – were welcomed to the Marshall Islands during a dockside ceremony in Majuro to mark the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific

As the desire of Rongelap people to evacuate their homeland intensified in 1984, unbeknown to them Greenpeace was hatching a plan to dispatch the Rainbow Warrior on a Pacific voyage the following year to turn a spotlight on the nuclear test legacy in the Marshall Islands and the ongoing French nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.

A Rainbow Warrior question
As I had friends in the Greenpeace organisation, I was contacted early on in its planning process with the question: How could a visit by the Rainbow Warrior be of use to the Marshall Islands?

Jeton and I were good friends by 1984, and had worked together on advocacy for Rongelap since the late 1970s. I informed him that Greenpeace was planning a visit and without hesitation he asked me if the ship could facilitate the evacuation of Rongelap.

At this time, Jeton had already initiated discussions with Kwajalein traditional leaders to locate an island that they could settle in that atoll.

I conveyed Jeton’s interest in the visit to Greenpeace, and a Greenpeace International board member, the late Steve Sawyer, who coordinated the Pacific voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, arranged a meeting for the three of us in Seattle to discuss ideas.

Jeton and I flew to Seattle and met Steve. After the usual preliminaries, Jeton asked Steve if the Rainbow Warrior could assist Rongelap to evacuate their community to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, a distance of about 250 km.

Steve responded in classic Greenpeace campaign thinking, which is what Greenpeace has proved effective in doing over many decades. He said words to the effect that the Rainbow Warrior could aid a “symbolic evacuation” by taking a small group of islanders from Rongelap to Majuro or Ebeye and holding a media conference publicising their plight with ongoing radiation exposure.

“No,” said Jeton firmly. He wasn’t talking about a “symbolic” evacuation. He told Steve: “We want to evacuate Rongelap, the entire community and the housing, too.”

Steve Sawyer taken aback
Steve was taken aback by what Jeton wanted. Steve simply hadn’t considered the idea of evacuating the entire community.

But we could see him mulling over this new idea and within minutes, as his mind clicked through the significant logistics hurdles for evacuation of the community — including that it would take three-to-four trips by the Rainbow Warrior between Rongelap and Mejatto to accomplish it — Steve said it was possible.

And from that meeting, planning for the 1985 Marshall Islands visit began in earnest.

I offer this background because when the evacuation began in early May 1985, various officials from the United States government sharply criticised Rongelap people for evacuating their atoll, saying there was no radiological hazard to justify the move and that they were being manipulated by Greenpeace for its own anti-nuclear agenda.

Women from the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll greeted the Rainbow Warrior and its crew with songs and dances this week as part of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Rainbow Warrior. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific

This condescending American government response suggested Rongelap people did not have the brain power to make important decisions for themselves.

But it also showed the US government’s lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation in which Rongelap Islanders lived day in and day out in a highly radioactive environment.

The Bravo hydrogen bomb test blasted Rongelap and nearby islands with snow-like radioactive fallout on 1 March 1954. The 82 Rongelap people were first evacuated to the US Navy base at Kwajalein for emergency medical treatment and the start of long-term studies by US government doctors.

No radiological cleanup
A few months later, they were resettled on Ejit Island in Majuro, the capital atoll, until 1957 when, with no radiological cleanup conducted, the US government said it was safe to return to Rongelap and moved the people back.

“Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world,” said a Brookhaven National Laboratory report commenting on the return of Rongelap Islanders to their contaminated islands in 1957.

It then stated plainly why the people were moved back: “The habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.”

And for 28 years, Rongelap people lived in one of the world’s most radioactive environments, consuming radioactivity through the food chain and by living an island life.

Proving the US narrative of safety to be false, the 1985 evacuation forced the US Congress to respond by funding new radiological studies of Rongelap.

Thanks to the determination of the soft-spoken but persistent leadership of Jeton, he ensured that a scientist chosen by Rongelap would be included in the study. And the new study did indeed identify health hazards, particularly for children, of living on Rongelap.

The US Congress responded by appropriating US$45 million to a Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.

Subsistence atoll life
All of this was important — it both showed that islanders with a PhD in subsistence atoll life understood more about their situation than the US government’s university educated PhDs and medical doctors who showed up from time-to-time to study them, provide medical treatment, and tell them everything was fine on their atoll, and it produced a $45 million fund from the US government.

However, this is only a fraction of the story about why the Rongelap evacuation in 1985 forever changed the US narrative and control of its nuclear test legacy in this country.

The crew of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior III vessel were serenaded by the Rongelap community to mark the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Islanders from their nuclear test-affected islands this week in Majuro. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ Pacific

Rongelap is the most affected population from the US hydrogen bomb testing programme in the 1950s.

By living on Rongelap, the community confirmed the US government’s narrative that all was good and the nuclear test legacy was largely a relic of the past.

The 1985 evacuation was a demonstration of the Rongelap community exerting control over their life after 31 years of dictates by US government doctors, scientists and officials.

It was difficult building a new community on Mejatto Island, which was uninhabited and barren in 1985. Make no mistake, Rongelap people living on Mejatto suffered hardship and privation, especially in the first years after the 1985 resettlement.

Nuclear legacy history
Their perseverance, however, defined the larger ramification of the move to Mejatto: It changed the course of nuclear legacy history by people taking control of their future that forced a response from the US government to the benefit of the Rongelap community.

Forty years later, the displacement of Rongelap Islanders on Mejatto and in other locations, unable to return to nuclear test contaminated Rongelap Atoll demonstrates clearly that the US nuclear testing legacy remains unresolved — unfinished business that is in need of a long-term, fair and just response from the US government.

The Rainbow Warrior will be in Majuro until next week when it will depart for Mejatto Island to mark the 40th anniversary of the resettlement, and then voyage to other nuclear test-affected atolls around the Marshall Islands.

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

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

Utah Man Pleads Guilty to Sexually Abusing Patients “Using His Position as a Therapist”

by Jessica Schreifels, The Salt Lake Tribune — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 15:30:00 +0000

by Jessica Schreifels, The Salt Lake Tribune

This story describes explicit details of a sexual assault.

This article was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune, a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Former Utah therapist Scott Owen admitted in a Provo courtroom on Monday that he sexually abused several of his patients during sessions.

Provo police began investigating Owen in 2023 after The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica reported on a range of sex abuse allegations against Owen, who had built a reputation over his 20-year therapy career as a specialist who could help gay men who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of the men who spoke to The Tribune and ProPublica said their bishop used church funds to pay for sessions in which Owen allegedly also touched them inappropriately.

While Owen gave up his therapy license in 2018 after several patients complained to state licensors that he had touched them inappropriately, the allegations were never investigated by the police and were not widely known. He continued to have an active role in his therapy business, Canyon Counseling, until the newsrooms published their investigation.

In pleading guilty on Monday to three charges of first-degree felony forcible sodomy, Owen for the first time publicly acknowledged that he sexually abused his patients.

Owen, 66, admitted that he sexually abused two male patients “using his position as a therapist” and led them to believe that sexual contact was part of their therapy.

He also pleaded no contest on Monday to another first-degree felony, attempted aggravated sexual abuse of a child, in connection with a third patient — a woman who alleged Owen touched her inappropriately during therapy sessions in 2007, when she was 13 years old. A no-contest plea means that Owen did not admit he committed the crime but conceded that prosecutors would present evidence at trial that would likely lead a jury to convict him.

Owen faces a maximum sentence of up to life in prison during a sentencing hearing scheduled for March 31.

Prosecutors agreed in a plea deal to dismiss seven other felony charges that Owen faced in connection with the two male victims. Both told police that Owen engaged in sexual contact with them during therapy sessions — including kissing, cuddling and Owen using his hand to touch their anuses.

Owen admitted in plea documents to having sexual contact with the two patients, including putting one patient’s testicles in his mouth.

Owen admitted in plea agreement documents that, as a therapist, he was in a special position of trust when he had sexual contact with his patients, which he told them was “part of their treatment process.” Utah law says patients can’t consent to sexual acts with a health care professional if they believe the touching is part of a “medically or professionally appropriate diagnosis, counseling or treatment.”

Provo police interviewed at least a dozen of Owen’s former patients, according to court records, all of whom say he touched them in ways they felt were inappropriate during therapy sessions. Many of those patients are men who told police they were seeking therapy with Owen for “same-sex attraction.” Provo police Capt. Brian Taylor has said that some of the former patients’ reports involved allegations that were outside the window of time that prosecutors had to file a case, called the statute of limitations.

Under a negotiated settlement with Utah’s licensing division in 2018, Owen was able to surrender his license without admitting to any inappropriate conduct, and the sexual nature of his patients’ allegations is not referenced in the documents he signed when he gave up his license.

Both state licensors and local leaders in the LDS church knew of inappropriate touching allegations against Owen as early as 2016, reporting by The Tribune and ProPublica showed, but neither would say whether they ever reported Owen to the police. In Utah, with few exceptions, the state licensing division is not legally required to forward information to law enforcement.

The church said in response that it takes all matters of sexual misconduct seriously and that in 2019 it confidentially annotated internal records to alert bishops that Owen’s conduct had threatened the well-being of other people or the church.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Schreifels, The Salt Lake Tribune.

Following a Series of Government Hacks, Biden Closes Out His Administration With New Cybersecurity Order

by Renee Dudley — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 21:25:00 +0000

by Renee Dudley

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

On Thursday, in his final week in office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order intended to strengthen the nation’s cyber defenses, in part by requiring software providers like Microsoft to provide proof that they meet certain security standards before they can sell their products to the federal government.

The action follows an onslaught of cyberattacks in recent years in which hackers linked to Russia, China and other adversaries have exploited software vulnerabilities to steal sensitive documents from federal agencies.

In demanding more accountability from software makers, Biden pointed to instances in which contractors “commit to following cybersecurity practices, yet do not fix well-known exploitable vulnerabilities in their software, which puts the Government at risk of compromise.”

In June, ProPublica reported on such a case involving Microsoft, the largest IT vendor to the federal government. In the so-called SolarWinds attack, which was discovered shortly before Biden took office, Russian state-sponsored hackers exploited a weakness in a Microsoft product to steal sensitive data from the National Nuclear Security Administration and other agencies. ProPublica found that, for years, Microsoft leaders ignored warnings about the flaw from one of their own engineers because they feared that publicly acknowledging it would alienate the federal government and cause the company to lose ground to competitors.

That profit-over-security culture was driven in large part by the rush to gain ground in the multibillion-dollar cloud computing market, the news organization reported. One former Microsoft supervisor described the attitude as, “Do whatever it frickin’ takes to win because you have to win.”

Microsoft has defended its decision not to address the flaw, telling ProPublica in June that the company’s assessment at the time involved “multiple reviews” and that it considers several factors when making security decisions, including “potential customer disruption, exploitability, and available mitigations.” But in the months and years following the SolarWinds hack, Microsoft’s security lapses contributed to other attacks on the government, including one in 2023 in which hackers connected to the Chinese government gained access to top U.S. officials’ emails. The federal Cyber Safety Review Board later found that the company had deprioritized security investments and risk management, resulting in a “cascade of … avoidable errors.”

Microsoft has pledged to put security “above all else.”

To be sure, Microsoft is not the only company whose products have provided hackers entree to government networks. Russian hackers in the SolarWinds attack gained access to victim networks through tainted software updates provided by the Texas-based SolarWinds company before exploiting the flawed Microsoft product.

To help prevent future hacks, the government wants IT companies to provide proof that they use “secure software development practices to reduce the number and severity of vulnerabilities” in their products, according to the order. In addition, the government “needs to adopt more rigorous third-party risk management practices” to verify the use of such practices, Biden said. He asked for changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the rules for government contracting, to implement his recommendations. If fully enacted, violators of the new requirements could be referred to the attorney general for legal action.

Biden also said that strengthening the security of federal “identity management systems” was “especially critical” to improving the nation’s cybersecurity. Indeed, the Microsoft product that was the focus of ProPublica’s June article was a so-called “identity” product that allowed users to access nearly every program used at work with a single logon. By exploiting the weakness in the identity product during the SolarWinds attack, the Russian hackers were able to swiftly vacuum up emails from victim networks.

In November, ProPublica reported that Microsoft capitalized on SolarWinds in the wake of the attack, offering federal agencies free trials of its cybersecurity products. The move effectively locked those agencies in to more expensive software licenses and vastly expanded Microsoft’s footprint across the federal government. The company told ProPublica that its offer was a direct response to “an urgent request by the Administration to enhance the security posture of federal agencies.” In his executive order, Biden addressed the fallout of that 2021 request, directing the federal government to mitigate the risks presented by the “concentration of IT vendors and services,” a veiled reference to Washington’s increased dependence on Microsoft, which some lawmakers have referred to as a “cybersecurity monoculture.”

Though the order marks a firmer stance with the technology companies supplying the government, enforcement will fall to the Trump administration. It’s unclear whether the incoming president will see the changes in the executive order through. President-elect Donald Trump has emphasized deregulation even as he has indicated that his administration will take a tough stance on China, one of the nation’s top cyber adversaries.

Neither Microsoft nor the Trump transition team responded to requests for comment on the order.

Thursday’s executive order was the latest in a series of regulatory efforts impacting Microsoft in the waning days of the Biden administration. Last month, ProPublica reported that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating the company in a probe that will examine whether the company’s business practices have run afoul of antitrust laws. FTC attorneys have been conducting interviews and setting up meetings with Microsoft competitors, and one key area of interest is how the company packages popular Office products together with cybersecurity and cloud computing services.

This so-called bundling was the subject of ProPublica’s November investigation, which detailed how, beginning in 2021, Microsoft used the practice to box competitors out of lucrative federal contracts. The FTC views the fact that Microsoft has won more federal business even as it left the government vulnerable to hacks as an example of the company’s problematic power over the market, a person familiar with the probe told ProPublica.

Microsoft has declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation but told the news organization last month that the FTC’s recent demand for information is “broad, wide ranging, and requests things that are out of the realm of possibility to even be logical.”

The commission’s new leadership, chosen by Trump, will decide the future of that investigation.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Renee Dudley.

Chinese media launch campaign to foster US ‘friendship and trust’

Alan Lu — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 04:57:05 +0000

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Chinese state media has launched a campaign to highlight friendly cooperation with the United States in an attempt to improve turbulent ties as a new administration under Donald Trump prepares to take office, an analyst said.

The state-run People’s Daily and Global Times, which often carry searing criticism of the U.S., called on Dec. 25 for written work, photos and videos from people and organizations around the world with the aim of “bridging cultural differences and fostering friendship and trust” with the U.S.

“What they are doing now is part of the latest efforts by the Chinese government to foster a more collaborative relationship with the Trump administration,” Li Wei-Ping, a researcher with Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, told Radio Free Asia.

President-elect Donald Trump has made no secret of his plans to hit China with massive tariffs and experts say his second presidency looks set to become dominated by a grand rebalancing of trade ties.

Li said that China has been working to steer its relations with the U.S. in a more positive direction since Trump’s election win, with remarks by top officials such as Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the tone of state media editorials.

Wang, in a Dec. 27 commentary in the state-run Study Times, urged the new U.S. administration to “make the right choices” by working with China and “striving for stable, healthy, and sustainable development in Sino-U.S. relations.”

Xinhua News Agency, in a Dec. 28 editorial, also extolled people-to-people exchanges such as tourism in fostering relations.

“The talk, the articles, and the campaign … could be deemed as a whole as an indication that the Chinese government is preparing for the Trump administration 2.0.,” said Li.

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Trump had also made friendly gestures to China such as his invitation to Chinese leader Xi Jinping to his inauguration in January, said Li, while noting that many factors could impact what had been a “turbulent” relationship in recent years.

Trump has, for instance, nominated outspoken China critics to top jobs: Marco Rubio for secretary of state; Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida for national security adviser, and Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York as ambassador to the United Nations.

Trump then announced on Dec. 9 he had picked three China trade hawks for top roles at the State Department, including Michael Anton, who has previously argued it is not in U.S. interests to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China.

In early December, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called on the U.S. not to do anything to undermine Beijing’s territorial claim on Taiwan, enshrined in its “one-China” principle.

“I am hesitant to say the narrative has totally shifted and believe we need more time to see if this current amicability will last,” Li said.

Editing by Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alan Lu.

Microsoft Bundling Practices Focus of Federal Antitrust Probe

by Renee Dudley — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 10:00:00 +0000

by Renee Dudley

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

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Microsoft in a wide-ranging probe that will examine whether the company’s business practices have run afoul of antitrust laws, according to people familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, FTC attorneys have been conducting interviews and setting up meetings with Microsoft competitors.

One key area of interest is how the world’s largest software provider packages popular Office products together with cybersecurity and cloud computing services, said one of the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.

This so-called bundling was the subject of a recent ProPublica investigation, which detailed how, beginning in 2021, Microsoft used the practice to vastly expand its business with the U.S. government while boxing competitors out of lucrative federal contracts.

At the time, many federal employees used a software license that included the Windows operating system and products like Word, Outlook and Excel. In the wake of several devastating cyberattacks, Microsoft offered to upgrade those license bundles for free for a limited time, giving the government access to its more advanced cybersecurity products. The company also provided consultants to install the upgrades.

Vast swaths of the federal bureaucracy accepted, including all of the military services in the Defense Department — and then began paying for those enhanced services when the free trial ended. Former sales leaders involved in the effort likened it to a drug dealer hooking a user with free samples, as they knew federal customers would be effectively locked into the upgrades once they were installed. Microsoft’s offer not only displaced some existing cybersecurity vendors but also took market share from cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, as the government began using products that ran on Azure, Microsoft’s own cloud platform.

Some experts told ProPublica that the company’s tactics might have violated laws regulating contracting and competition, and the news organization reported that even some of Microsoft’s own attorneys had antitrust worries about the deals.

Microsoft has said its offer was “structured to avoid antitrust concerns.” The company’s “sole goal during this period was to support an urgent request by the Administration to enhance the security posture of federal agencies who were continuously being targeted by sophisticated nation-state threat actors,” Steve Faehl, the security leader for Microsoft’s federal business, told ProPublica.

Some of those incursions were the result of Microsoft’s own security lapses. As ProPublica reported in June, Russian state-sponsored hackers in the so-called SolarWinds attack exploited a weakness in a Microsoft product to steal sensitive data from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health, among other victims. Years before the attack was discovered, a Microsoft engineer warned product leaders about the flaw, but they refused to address it for fear of alienating the federal government and losing ground to competitors, ProPublica reported.

While the engineer’s proposed fix would have kept customers safe, it also would have created a “speed bump” for users logging on to their devices. Adding such “friction” was unacceptable to the managers of the product group, which at the time was in a fierce rivalry with competitors in the market for so-called identity tools, the news organization reported. These tools, which ensure that users have permission to log on to cloud-based programs, are important to Microsoft’s business strategy because they often lead to demand for the company’s other cloud services.

According to a person familiar with the FTC’s probe, one such identity product, Entra ID, formerly known as Azure Active Directory, is another focus of the agency’s investigation.

Microsoft has defended its decision against addressing the SolarWinds-related flaw, telling ProPublica in June that the company’s assessment included “multiple reviews” at the time and that its response to security issues is based on “potential customer disruption, exploitability, and available mitigations.” It has pledged to put security “above all else.”

The FTC views the fact that Microsoft has won more federal business even as it left the government vulnerable to hacks as an example of the company’s problematic power over the market, a person familiar with the probe told the news organization.

The commission is not alone in that view. “These guys are sort of a version of ‘too big to fail,’” said Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee and a longtime critic of Microsoft. “I think it’s time to amp up the antitrust side of the house, dealing with antitrust abuses.”

The FTC’s investigation of Microsoft, which was first reported by the Financial Times and Bloomberg, is far from the company’s first brush with federal regulators over antitrust issues. More than two decades ago, the Department of Justice sued the company in a landmark antitrust case that nearly resulted in its breakup. Federal prosecutors alleged that Microsoft maintained an illegal monopoly in the operating system market through anticompetitive behaviors that prevented rivals from getting a foothold. Ultimately, the Justice Department settled with Microsoft, and a federal judge approved a consent decree that imposed restrictions on how the company could develop and license software.

John Lopatka, a former consultant to the FTC who now teaches antitrust law at Penn State, told ProPublica that the Microsoft actions detailed in the news organization’s recent reporting followed “a very familiar pattern” of behavior.

“It does echo the Microsoft case” from decades ago, said Lopatka, who co-authored a book on that case.

In the new investigation, the FTC has sent Microsoft a civil investigative demand, the agency’s version of a subpoena, compelling the company to turn over information, people familiar with the probe said. Microsoft confirmed that it received the document.

Company spokesperson David Cuddy did not comment on the specifics of the investigation but said the FTC’s demand is “broad, wide ranging, and requests things that are out of the realm of possibility to even be logical.” He declined to provide on-the-record examples. The FTC declined to comment.

The agency’s investigation follows a public comment period in 2023 during which it sought information on the business practices of cloud computing providers. When that concluded, the FTC said it had ongoing interest in whether “certain business practices are inhibiting competition.”

The recent demand to Microsoft represents one of FTC Commissioner Lina Khan’s final moves as chair, and the probe appears to be picking up steam as the Biden administration winds down. The commission’s new leadership, however, will decide the future of the investigation.

President-elect Donald Trump said this month that he will elevate Commissioner Andrew Ferguson, a Republican attorney, to lead the agency. Following the announcement, Ferguson said in a post on X, “At the FTC, we will end Big Tech’s vendetta against competition and free speech. We will make sure that America is the world’s technological leader and the best place for innovators to bring new ideas to life.”

Trump also said he would nominate Republican lawyer Mark Meador as a commissioner, describing him as an “antitrust enforcer” who previously worked at the FTC and the Justice Department. Meador is also a former aide to Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who introduced legislation to break up Google.

Doris Burke contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Renee Dudley.

‘Unprecedented’ Russia-China ties based on ‘full trust’: Putin

RFA Staff — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 09:33:58 +0000

Russia and China have developed relations to an unprecedented level based on “full trust” and they almost always coordinate international action, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his annual press conference.

Relations between Russia and China had reached “a point that has never existed throughout our entire history” in both level and quality, Putin told Russian and foreign journalists, as well as members of the public who called in during the four-and-a-half televised session on Thursday.

“Everything that Russia and China do for each other is based on full trust,” he said during the “Result of the Year” press conference on Thursday.

Putin added bilateral trade between Russia and China was worth between US$220 billion and US$240 billion, with almost 600 joint investment projects of a combined value of US$200 million.

“It means the future is assured,” he said.

The president, who has held the post, with a four-year gap to serve as prime minister, for 20 years, has visited China 20 times, most recently in May.

Before that, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a “no limits partnership” with no forbidden areas of cooperation in February 2022, days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We frequently, almost always, coordinate our actions on the international stage, which is a very important element of international affairs,” Putin said.

In 2009, Russia and China, together with India and Brazil, founded a grouping called BRICS that has now become a geopolitical grouping with nine members.

The Russian president denied, however, that the bloc was established to counter the West and that it had a confrontational agenda.

“Our work is not aimed against anyone. We focus on our own interests and the interests of the group’s member countries,” he said.

Ties between Moscow and Beijing serve as “a stabilizing tool” in global affairs, said Putin, whose invasion of neighboring Ukraine has become the largest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.

‘Special military operation’

Putin’s answers were clearly aimed at the domestic audience, who sent more than 2.2 million questions to the televised press conference.

A large part of the press conference was focused on the war in Ukraine, which the president referred to as a “special military operation.”

“I started telling fewer jokes and almost stopped laughing,” Putin said about how the war had changed him.

“Due to various circumstances, we are now increasing the strength of the army, security and law enforcement agencies to 1.5 million people.”

Asked whether he would change his decision to launch the full-scale invasion in 2022 if he could, Putin said: “we should have done it earlier” instead of waiting for the situation to deteriorate.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his annual news conference at Gostinny Dvor in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024, as men hold a replica of the banner of the 155th Marine Brigade of the Pacific Fleet, participating in a special military operation in Ukraine in the background.

(Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

He insisted that the Russian army was making progress and advancing “by square kilometers” every day but he declined to give a timeline for the war.

Russia has always been ready to talk with Ukraine, Putin said, “but we need that country to be ready for both negotiations and compromise.”

Putin also said that he was open to talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

“I don’t know when we will meet because he has not said anything about it … I have not talked to him for more than four years,” he said.

“Should there be an opportunity for a meeting with the newly elected president, Donald Trump, I am confident there will be plenty to discuss.”

Does a video show Putin sending off his son to Ukraine?

G7 urges China to oppose North Korea-Russia military cooperation

Putin, responding to a question from an American journalist, rejected the suggestion that he would find himself in some kind of weakened state when meeting Trump.

“You and the people who pay your salary in the United States really want to see Russia in a weakened state,” he told the journalist. “I believe that Russia has become significantly stronger in the past two or three years.”

Russia’s sovereignty

“We are strengthening our defense capability. The combat readiness of the Russian armed forces is the highest in the world today,” he added.

According to Putin, Russia was now “capable of firmly standing on our feet when it comes to the economy,” with an expected growth rate of about 4% for 2024.

He acknowledged a rocketing year-on-year inflation rate of more than 9% but said that people’s salaries had increased, too.

“We are becoming a truly sovereign country, and we barely depend on anybody,” he added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his annual news conference and call-in show at Gostinny Dvor in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024

(Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

The president spoke at length about Russia’s sovereignty, which appeared to be at the core of his political calculations.

“Economic growth is also an effect of bolstered sovereignty,” Putin said.

He also spoke of the changes in Russia’s nuclear doctrine, adopted in November, in which it demands increased “responsibility of non-nuclear states that may participate in an aggression against the Russian Federation alongside the countries that have nuclear weapons.”

“If, like their allies, these countries also pose a threat to our sovereignty and Russia’s existence, then we imply that we have the right to use our nuclear weapons against them,” Putin said.

That means Russia could respond with nuclear weapons should it deems an attack by Ukraine as “a threat to Russia’s sovereignty.”

Edited by Taejun Kang.

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

How media could help social cohesion and unite people – a Fiji journalism educator’s view

Pacific Media Watch — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 22:05:54 +0000

By Alifereti Sakiasi in Suva

Social cohesion is a national responsibility, and everyone, including the media, should support government’s efforts, according to Dr Shailendra Singh, associate professor in Pacific Journalism at the University of the South Pacific.

While the news media are often accused of exacerbating conflict by amplifying ethnic tensions through biased narratives, media could also assist social cohesion and unite people by promoting dialogue and mutual understanding, said Dr Singh.

He was the lead trainer at a two-day conflict-sensitive reporting workshop for journalists, student journalists, and civil society on reporting in ethically tense environments.

The training, organised by Dialogue Fiji at the Suva Holiday Inn on November 12–13, included reporting techniques, understanding Fiji’s political and media landscape, and building trust with audiences.

Head of USP Journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh . . . media plays an important public interest role as “society’s watchdog”. Image: The Fiji Times/Wansolwara

Watchdog journalism
Dr Singh said media played an important public interest role as ‘society’s watchdog’. The two main strengths of Watchdog Journalism are that it seeks to promote greater accountability and transparency from those in power.

However, he cautioned reporters not to get too caught up in covering negative issues all the time. He said ideally, media should strive for a healthy mix of positive and what might be termed “negative” news.

Dr Singh’s doctoral thesis, from the University of Queensland, was on “Rethinking journalism for supporting social cohesion and democracy: case study of media performance in Fiji”.

He discussed the concepts of “media hyper-adversarialism” and “attack dog journalism”, which denote an increasingly aggressive form of political journalism, usually underpinned by commercial motives.

This trend was a concern even in developed Western countries, including Australia, where former Labour Minister Lindsay Tanner wrote a book about it: Sideshow, Dumbing Down Democracy.

Dr Singh said it had been pointed out that media hyper-adversarialism was even more dangerous in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings, as it harms fledgling democracies by nurturing intolerance and diminishing faith in democratically-elected leaders.

“Excessive criticism and emphasis on failure and wrongdoings will foster an attitude of distrust towards institutions and leaders,” he said.

Conflict-sensitive reporting
According to Dr Singh, examples around the world show that unrestrained reporting in conflict-prone zones could further escalate tensions and eventually result in violence.

The number one aim of conflict-sensitive reporting is to ensure that journalists, are aware of their national context, and shape their reporting accordingly, rather than apply the “watchdog” framework indiscriminately in all situations, because a “one-size-fits-all” approach could be risky and counterproductive.

Journalists who adopt the conflict-sensitive reporting approach in their coverage of national issues could become facilitators for peaceful solutions rather than a catalyst for conflict.

“The goal of a journalist within a conflict-prone environment should be to build an informed and engaged community by promoting understanding and reconciliation through contextualised coverage of complex issues,” he said.

A rethink was all the more necessary because of social media proliferation, and the spread of misinformation and hate speech on these platforms.

Participants of the workshop included Ashlyn Vilash (from left) and USP student journalists Nilufa Buksh and Riya Bhagwan. Image: The Fiji Times/Wansolwara

Challenges in maintaining transparency and accountability in journalism
According to Dr Singh, in many Pacific newsrooms today journalists who are at the forefront of reporting breaking news and complex issues are mostly young and relatively inexperienced.

He said the Pacific media sector suffered from a high turnover rate, with many journalists moving to the private sector, regional and international organisations, and government ministries after a brief stint in the mainstream.

“There is a lot of focus on alleged media bias,” said Dr Singh.

“However, young, inexperienced, and under-trained journalists can unknowingly inflame grievances and promote stereotypes by how they report contentious issues, even though their intentions are not malicious,” he said.

Dr Singh emphasised that in such cases, journalists often become a danger unto themselves because they provide governments with the justification or excuse for the need for stronger legislation to maintain communal harmony.

“As was the case in 2010 when the Media Industry Development Act was imposed in the name of professionalising standards,” said Dr Singh.

“However, it only led to a decline in standards because of the practice of self-censorship, as well as the victimisation of journalists.”

Legislation alone not the answer
Dr Singh added that legislation alone was not the answer since it did not address training and development, or the high rate of newsroom staff turnover.

He said the media were often attacked, but what was also needed was assistance, rather than criticism alone. This included training in specific areas, rather than assume that journalists are experts in every field.

Because Fiji is still a transitional democracy and given our ethnic diversity, Dr Singh believes that it makes for a strong case for conflict-sensitive reporting practices to mitigate against the risks of societal divisions.

“Because the media act as a bridge between people and institutions, it is essential that they work on building a relationship of trust by promoting peace and stability, while reporting critically when required.”

This article was first published by The Fiji Times on 24 November, 2024 and is being republished from USP Journalism’s Wansolwara and The Fiji Times under a collaborative agreement.

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

How Jeton Anjain planned the Rongelap evacuation – new Rainbow Warrior podcast series

APR editor — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 09:53:40 +0000

REVIEW: By Giff Johnson in Majuro

As a prelude to the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Islanders to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein in 1985, Radio New Zealand and ABC Radio Australia have produced a five-part podcast that details the Rongelap story — in the context of The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, the name of the podcast.

It is narrated by journalist James Nokise, and includes story telling from Rongelap Islanders as well as those who know about what became the last voyage of Greenpeace’s flagship.

It features a good deal of narrative around the late Rongelap Nitijela Member Jeton Anjain, the architect of the evacuation in 1985. For those who know the story of the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini, some of the narrative will be repetitive.

READ MORE: New podcast: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior – ABC/RNZ
Podcast details Rongelap evacuation – Marshall Islands Journal
Crimes NZ: David Robie on the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior – RNZ

The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior podcast series logo. Image: ABC/RNZ

But the podcast offers some insight that may well be unknown to many. For example, the podcast lays to rest the unfounded US government criticism at the time that Greenpeace engineered the evacuation, manipulating unsuspecting islanders to leave Rongelap.

Through commentary of those in the room when the idea was hatched, this was Jeton’s vision and plan — the Rainbow Warrior was a vehicle that could assist in making it happen.

The narrator describes Jeton’s ongoing disbelief over repeated US government assurances of Rongelap’s safety. Indeed, though not a focus of the RNZ/ABC podcast, it was Rongelap’s self-evacuation that forced the US Congress to fund independent radiological studies of Rongelap Atoll that showed — surprise, surprise — that living on the atoll posed health risks and led to the US Congress establishing a $45 million Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.

Questions about the safety of the entirety of Rongelap Atoll linger today, bolstered by non-US government studies that have, over the past several years, pointed out a range of ongoing radiation contamination concerns.

The RNZ/ABC podcast dives into the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test fallout exposure on Rongelap, their subsequent evacuation to Kwajalein, and later to Ejit Island for three years. It details their US-sponsored return in 1957 to Rongelap, one of the most radioactive locations in the world — by US government scientists’ own admission.

The narrative, that includes multiple interviews with people in the Marshall Islands, takes the listener through the experience Rongelap people have had since Bravo, including health problems and life in exile. It narrates possibly the first detailed piece of history about Jeton Anjain, the Rongelap leader who died of cancer in 1993, eight years after Rongelap people left their home atoll.

The podcast takes the listener into a room in Seattle, Washington, in 1984, where Greenpeace International leader Steve Sawyer met for the first time with Jeton and heard his plea for help to relocate Rongelap people using the Rainbow Warrior. The actual move from Rongelap to Mejatto in May 1985 — described in David Robie’s 1986 book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior — is narrated through interviews and historical research.

The final episode of the podcast is heavily focused on the final leg of the Rainbow Warrior’s Pacific tour — a voyage cut short by French secret agents who bombed the Warrior while it was tied to the wharf in Auckland harbor, killing one crew member, Fernando Pereira.

It was Fernando’s photographs of the Rongelap evacuation that brought that chapter in the history of the Marshall Islands to life.

The Warrior was stopping to refuel and re-provision in Auckland prior to heading to the French nuclear testing zone in Moruroa Atoll. But that plan was quite literally bombed by the French government in one of the darkest moments of Pacific colonial history.

The five-part series is on YouTube and can be found by searching The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.

Scientists conduct radiological surveys of nuclear test fallout
A related story in this week’s edition of the Marshall Islands Journal.

Columbia University scientists have conducted a series of radiological surveys of nuclear test fallout in the northern Marshall Islands over the past nearly 10 years.

“Considerable contamination remains,” wrote scientists Hart Rapaport and Ivana Nikolić Hughes in the Scientific American in 2022. “On islands such as Bikini, the average background gamma radiation is double the maximum value stipulated by an agreement between the governments of the Marshall Islands and the US, even without taking into account other exposure pathways.

“Our findings, based on gathered data, run contrary to the Department of Energy’s. One conclusion is clear: absent a renewed effort to clean radiation from Bikini, families forced from their homes may not be able to safely return until the radiation naturally diminishes over decades and centuries.”

They also raised concern about the level of strontium-90 present in various islands from which they have taken soil and other samples. They point out that US government studies do not address strontium-90.

This radionuclide “can cause leukemia and bone and bone marrow cancer and has long been a source of health concerns at nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima,” Rapaport and Hughes said.

“Despite this, the US government’s published data don’t speak to the presence of this dangerous nuclear isotope.”

Their studies have found “consistently high values” of strontium-90 in northern atolls.

“Although detecting this radioisotope in sediment does not neatly translate into contamination in soil or food, the finding suggests the possibility of danger to ecosystems and people,” they state. “More than that, cleaning up strontium 90 and other contaminants in the Marshall Islands is possible.”

The Columbia scientists’ recommendations for action are straightforward: “Congress should appropriate funds, and a research agency, such as the National Science Foundation, should initiate a call for proposals to fund independent research with three aims.

“We must first further understand the current radiological conditions across the Marshall Islands; second, explore new technologies and methods already in use for future cleanup activity; and, third, train Marshallese scientists, such as those working with the nation’s National Nuclear Commission, to rebuild trust on this issue.”

Giff Johnson is editor of the Marshall Islands Journal. His review of the Rainbow Warrior podcast series was first published by the Journal and is republished here with permission.

The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, ABC/RNZ podcast series (2024), presented by James Nokise
Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, by David Robie (1986, 2005 and 2015)
Eyes of Fire: Thirty Years On, curated by David Robie, Little Island Press and Greenpeace (microsite educational resource, 2015)

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

Biden Asked Microsoft to “Raise the Bar on Cybersecurity.” He May Have Helped Create an Illegal Monopoly.

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke

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

In the summer of 2021, President Joe Biden summoned the CEOs of the nation’s biggest tech companies to the White House.

A series of cyberattacks linked to Russia, China and Iran had left the government reeling, and the administration had asked the heads of Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google and others to offer concrete commitments to help the U.S. bolster its defenses.

“You have the power, the capacity and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity,” Biden told the executives gathered in the East Room.

Microsoft had more to prove than most. Its own security lapses had contributed to some of the incursions that had prompted the summit in the first place, such as the so-called SolarWinds attack, in which Russian state-sponsored hackers stole sensitive data from federal agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration. Following the discovery of that breach, some members of Congress said the company should provide better cybersecurity for its customers. Others went further. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who chairs the Senate’s finance committee, called on the government to “reevaluate its dependence on Microsoft” before awarding it any more contracts.

In response to the president’s call for help, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pledged to give the government $150 million in technical services to help upgrade its digital security.

On the surface, it seemed a political win for the Biden administration and an instance of routine damage control from the world’s largest software company.

But Microsoft’s seemingly straightforward commitment belied a more complex, profit-driven agenda, a ProPublica investigation has found. The proposal was, in fact, a calculated business maneuver designed to bring in billions of dollars in new revenue, box competitors out of lucrative government contracts and tighten the company’s grip on federal business.

The White House Offer, as it was known inside Microsoft, would dispatch Microsoft consultants across the federal government to install the company’s cybersecurity products — which, as a part of the offer, were provided free of charge for a limited time.

But once the consultants installed the upgrades, federal customers would be effectively locked in, because shifting to a competitor after the free trial would be cumbersome and costly, according to former Microsoft employees involved in the effort, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared professional repercussions. At that point, the customer would have little choice but to pay for the higher subscription fees.

Two former sales leaders involved in the effort likened it to a drug dealer hooking a user with free samples. “If we give you the crack, and you take the crack, you’ll enjoy the crack,” one said. “And then when it comes time for us to take the crack away, your end users will say, ‘Don’t take it away from me.’ And you’ll be forced to pay me.”

If we give you the crack, and you take the crack, you’ll enjoy the crack. And then when it comes time for us to take the crack away, your end users will say, ‘Don’t take it away from me.’

—former Microsoft sales leader

The company, however, wanted more than those subscription fees, former salespeople said. The White House Offer would lead customers to buy other Microsoft products that ran on Azure, the company’s cloud platform, which carried additional charges based on how much storage space and computing power the customer used. The expectation was that the upgrades would ultimately “spin the meter” for Azure, helping Microsoft take market share from its main cloud rival, Amazon Web Services, the salespeople said.

In the years after Nadella made his commitment to Biden, Microsoft’s goals became reality. The Department of Defense, which had resisted the upgrades for years due to the steep cost, began paying for them once the free trial ended, laying the groundwork for future Azure consumption. So did many civilian agencies. The White House Offer got the government “hooked on Azure,” said Karan Sondhi, a former Microsoft salesperson with knowledge of the deals. “And it was successful beyond what any of us could have imagined.”

But while Microsoft’s gambit paid off handsomely for the company, legal experts told ProPublica the White House Offer deals never should have come to pass, as they sidestep or even possibly violate federal laws that regulate government procurement. Such laws generally bar gifts from contractors and require open competition for federal business.

Accepting free product upgrades and consulting services collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars is “not like a free sample at Costco, where I can take a sample, say, ‘Thanks for the snack,’ and go on my merry way,” said Eve Lyon, an attorney who worked for four decades as a procurement specialist in the federal government. “Here, you have changed the IT culture, and it would cost a lot of money to go to another system.”

Microsoft defended its conduct. The company’s “sole goal during this period was to support an urgent request by the Administration to enhance the security posture of federal agencies who were continuously being targeted by sophisticated nation-state threat actors,” Steve Faehl, the security leader for Microsoft’s federal business, said in a statement. “There was no guarantee that agencies would purchase these licenses,” and they “were free to engage with other vendors to support their security needs,” Faehl said.

Pricing for Microsoft’s security suite was transparent, he said, and the company worked “closely with the Administration to ensure any service and support agreements were pursued ethically and in full compliance with federal laws and regulations.” Faehl said in the statement that Microsoft asked the White House to “review the deal for antitrust concerns and ensure everything was proper and they did so.”

The White House disputed that characterization, as did Tim Wu, a former presidential adviser who told ProPublica he discussed the offer with the company in a short, informal chat prior to the summit but provided no signoff. “If that’s what they’re saying, they’re misrepresenting what happened on that phone call,” he said.

A current White House official, in a statement to ProPublica, sought to distance the administration from Microsoft’s offer, which it had previously heralded as an “ambitious” cybersecurity initiative.

“This was a voluntary commitment made by Microsoft … and Microsoft alone was responsible for it,” the White House official said in the statement. Furthermore, they said the decisions to accept it were “handled solely by the respective agencies.”

“The White House is not involved in Agency decisions regarding cybersecurity and procurement,” the official said.

The official declined to comment on the legal and contracting concerns raised by experts but noted in the statement that the White House “is broadly concerned” about the risks of relying too much on any single technology vendor and “has been exploring potential policy steps to encourage Departments and Agencies to diversify where there is concentration.” Cybersecurity experts say that such concentration can leave users vulnerable to attack, outages or other disruption.

Yet the White House summit ushered in that very type of concentrated reliance, as well as the kind of anticompetitive behavior that the Biden administration has pledged to stamp out. Former Microsoft salespeople told ProPublica that during their White House Offer push, they advised federal departments to save money by dropping cybersecurity products they had purchased from competitors. Those products, they told them, were now “redundant.” Salespeople also fended off new competitors by explaining to federal customers that most of the cybersecurity tools they needed were included in the upgraded bundle.

Today, as a result of the deals, vast swaths of the federal government, including all of the military services in the Defense Department, are more reliant than ever on a single company to meet their IT needs. ProPublica’s investigation, supported by interviews with eight former Microsoft employees who were involved in the White House Offer, reveals for the first time how this sweeping transformation came to be — a change that critics say leaves Washington vulnerable, the very opposite of what Biden had set out to achieve with his summit.

“How did Microsoft become so pervasive of a player in the government?” said a former company sales leader. “Well, the government let themselves get coerced into Microsoft when Microsoft rolled the stuff out for free.”

President Joe Biden and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at a June 2023 event (Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images) “Everything That We Do Is Designed to Generate a Return”

The federal government is one of Microsoft’s largest customers and “the one that we’re most devoted to,” the company’s president, Brad Smith, has said. Each day, millions of federal employees use the Windows operating system and products like Word, Outlook, Excel and others to write reports, send emails, analyze data and log on to their devices. But in the months before Biden’s summit, the SolarWinds hack put that relationship to the test.

Discovered in late 2020, SolarWinds was one of the most damaging breaches in U.S. history and underscored the federal government’s vulnerability to a state-sponsored cyberattack.

Authorities established that Russian hackers exploited a flaw in a Microsoft product to steal sensitive government documents from the National Nuclear Security Administration and the National Institutes of Health, among other agencies. What they didn’t know, as ProPublica reported in June, was that one of the company’s own engineers had warned about the weakness for years, only to be dismissed by product leaders who were fearful that acknowledging it would undermine the company’s chances of winning a massive federal cloud computing contract.

But Microsoft’s known involvement was enough for Congress to summon Smith to testify in February 2021. Lawmakers focused on how Microsoft packaged its products into tiers of service — with advanced security tools attached to only the most expensive license, known to government customers as the G5.

At the time, many federal employees used a less expensive license known as the G3. As a result, they didn’t have access to the security features that might have alerted them to an intrusion and aided subsequent investigations.

Some lawmakers, like then-Rep. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, accused the company of unfairly up-charging customers for what they considered to be basic security. “Is this a profit center for Microsoft?” he asked Smith during the hearing.

Smith replied: “We are a for-profit company. Everything that we do is designed to generate a return, other than our philanthropic work.”

Amid the criticism, Microsoft soon announced that it would provide federal customers with a “one-year free trial of Advanced Audit,” a tool that could help the government detect and investigate future attacks. Over the months that followed, Microsoft was “surprised there was not as aggressive of an uptake of Advanced Audit” as the company had wanted, Faehl, Microsoft’s federal security leader, told ProPublica. It would be a “lesson learned” going forward, he said.

That May, Biden signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to bolster their cyber defenses, declaring that “protecting our Nation from malicious cyber actors requires the Federal Government to partner with the private sector.” He added, “In the end, the trust we place in our digital infrastructure should be proportional to how trustworthy and transparent that infrastructure is, and to the consequences we will incur if that trust is misplaced.”

“Parting of the Red Sea”

Around that time, Anne Neuberger, a White House deputy national security adviser, called Smith and requested that Microsoft develop an initiative to announce at Biden’s White House cybersecurity summit that August. Like Langevin, the administration believed that the company’s advanced suite of cybersecurity tools, including ones intended to counter threats on user devices, should be included in the government’s existing licenses and that products should be delivered to customers with the most secure settings enabled by default. (Neither Neuberger nor Smith granted interview requests.)

Giving away a bundle of advanced security features permanently was a nonstarter inside Microsoft, an executive told ProPublica. But Smith spearheaded a team to develop an offer that appeared to be a compromise.

Federal customers could have free, limited-time access to the upgraded G5 security capabilities and to consultants who would install them. “It was at the behest of the Administration that Microsoft provided enhanced security tools, at no cost, to agencies as soon as possible to level up their security baseline,” Faehl told ProPublica.

While the deal achieved the administration’s goal of better protection for the federal government, it also served Microsoft’s interests. Microsoft salespeople had been trying, unsuccessfully, for years to convince federal customers to upgrade to the G5. Department and agency officials balked at the higher price tag when they already had other vendors providing some of the same security capabilities. The G5’s retail price is nearly 60% more than the G3’s.

“We knew that this was a golden window that nobody could have foreseen opening up because we had been pushing” for the G5 upgrade “for years, and things were going very slow,” said a former Microsoft sales leader involved in the strategy. With the White House Offer, it was “like Moses leading us through the parting of the Red Sea, and we just rushed through it.”

We knew that this was a golden window that nobody could have foreseen opening up.

—former Microsoft sales leader

Faehl told ProPublica that sales of the G5 had been slow prior to SolarWinds because federal customers wrongly believed “that they had sufficient security capabilities already in place.” He said the attack was “a wakeup call showing the status quo perspective to be insufficient.”

Microsoft was well aware of the possible legal implications of its offer. More than two decades ago, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the company in a landmark antitrust case that nearly resulted in its breakup. Federal prosecutors alleged that Microsoft maintained an illegal monopoly in the operating system market through anticompetitive behaviors that prevented rivals from getting a foothold. Ultimately, the Justice Department settled with Microsoft, and a federal judge approved a consent decree that imposed restrictions on how the company could develop and license software. Although the decree had long since expired, it nonetheless continued to loom large in the corporate culture.

When it came to the White House Offer, company insiders were “mindful of the concerns about Microsoft making products free that smaller companies sell,” an executive told ProPublica. A spokesperson explained, “That was the impetus for asking the administration to review it.”

The “review” consisted of a phone call between Microsoft’s Smith and Wu, who was Biden’s special assistant for technology and competition policy.

“Brad was like, ‘We think security is important, and we want to give the federal government better security,’” Wu recalled.

But, according to Wu, Smith said Microsoft’s lawyers were “overly paranoid” about antitrust concerns, and he was looking to “calm his own lawyers down.”

“I made it clear there was no ability in the White House to sign off on antitrust,” which is in the purview of the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission, Wu said. “I’m smart enough not to say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s fine with me.’ I’m not crazy.”

I made it clear there was no ability in the White House to sign off on antitrust. I’m smart enough not to say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s fine with me.’ I’m not crazy.

—Tim Wu, former presidential adviser

After the news organization asked Microsoft about Wu’s account, a spokesperson walked back the company’s original written statement, saying that Faehl was misinformed. “The White House arranged a call and we described details of our security offer and how it was structured to avoid antitrust concerns,” the spokesperson said. “It was an informal conversation and at no time did we ask for formal antitrust approval.”

Wu also told ProPublica that he felt pressure from the National Security Council’s Neuberger, who “wanted to get this deal done” in the wake of SolarWinds and other cyberattacks. “She pushed me to get on the phone with Brad,” he said. “I feel in some ways in retrospect I should not have even spoken with him. But I felt that I should help the NSC for what they presented as a formalistic exercise to help the national security.”

“The End Game”

After the White House summit, Microsoft’s sales teams quickly mobilized to sell the “WHO,” as it became known to insiders. The free consulting services were a crucial part of the strategy, former salespeople said. As Sondhi put it, “Just because you give the product away for free doesn’t mean they’re going to use it because it’s a pain in the ass to install new software and retrain staff.” The company wanted to avoid a repeat of the disappointing participation in the earlier Advanced Audit offer.

The consultants would work inside the agencies, where they would have government-provided desks, phones and internet, as well as access to federal computer networks, according to one proposal reviewed by ProPublica. From their perches in the bureaucracy, they would get the products up and running and train federal employees on how to use them. This would make the upgrades “sticky,” as they became ingrained in employees’ daily lives, former salespeople said.

Microsoft covered the free product upgrades for up to a year, the company told ProPublica. Faehl called the free upgrades “a short term option for protection while agencies put long term procurement plans in motion.” Or, as sales teams told customers, they “should not have to wait to be secure until they can procure.” The company also noted the offer came at a significant cost to Microsoft, “with no guarantee of renewal once the deal expired.”

But sales teams said they knew customers who accepted the White House Offer were unlikely to undo the intensive work of installing the upgrades when renewal time rolled around, locking them into the G5 for the long haul. Wes Anderson, a Microsoft vice president who oversaw teams working with the Defense Department, asked his staff to prepare forecasts showing which customers were expected to become paying G5 users at the end of the White House Offer, three people who worked in sales told ProPublica.

“It was explicit that this was the end game,” one former Microsoft sales leader who worked inside the Defense Department told ProPublica. “You will do whatever you need to do to get that software installed, operational and connected so the customer has their runway to renew.”

It was explicit that this was the end game. You will do whatever you need to do to get that software installed, operational and connected.

—former Microsoft sales leader

(On Oct. 30, two weeks after the news organization sent Microsoft questions for this story, the company announced in an email to employees that Anderson would be leaving Microsoft. Neither Anderson nor Microsoft commented on the departure. On the topic of Anderson’s request of his staff, the company said, “Forecasting is part of the rhythm of business for organizations in nearly every industry.”)

Salespeople pitched the White House Offer as “the easy button,” people familiar with the strategy told ProPublica. “Our argument was, ‘We have this whole suite of goodness,’” said a former Microsoft employee who worked with the Department of Defense. “‘You should upgrade because it will take care of everything rather than having a bunch of vendors that each do one of the 20 things that the G5 can do.’” Faehl told ProPublica the license bundles help federal customers “avoid the hassles of managing multiple contracts and licenses” and close security gaps by replacing a “patchwork of solutions” with “simplified, comprehensive protection.”

For the most part, as they predicted, the Microsoft sales teams found receptive audiences across the government. To help ingratiate themselves, they invoked their association with the White House in their pitches. In one example, from June 2022, a Microsoft representative wrote to Veterans Affairs officials to explain that, “working in conjunction with the White House,” it would provide “a no cost offer of professional services to provide hands-on assistance” to deploy the upgrades.

Money for Nothing?

As consultants fanned out across the federal government to turn on the new features, there was a sense of unease among some employees about the nature of the deals. Typically, the government obtains products and services through a competitive bidding process, selecting from a variety of proposals from different vendors. The White House Offer was different.

“No matter how you wanted to polish the turd, there was the appearance of no-bid contracts,” said a former Microsoft consultant involved in the WHO.

The federal government may receive so-called gratuitous — or free — services from donors as long as both parties have a written agreement stating that the donor will not be paid for the goods or services provided. Such agreements were in place for the consulting services in the White House Offer, the company said.

No matter how you wanted to polish the turd, there was the appearance of no-bid contracts.

—former Microsoft consultant

Those agreements may have helped Microsoft pass the “laugh test,” said Lyon, the former federal procurement attorney. “But just because something is technically legal does not make it right,” she said.

Other contracting experts said federal departments and agencies should have been more skeptical about accepting free products and consulting services from Microsoft, given the implications for competition and national security.

The cost and difficulty of switching from the Microsoft products presents a classic example of “vendor lock-in,” said Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School. “The free services are allowing the government to bypass a competitive procurement process and locking them in for future procurements,” she said.

Tillipman said that, in the future, the government should consider restrictions on gratuitous services in IT in order “to ensure you’re not locked in with a vendor who gets their foot in the door with a frighteningly expensive” giveaway.

“This is all designed to undermine future competitions,” she said.

This is all designed to undermine future competitions.

—Jessica Tillipman, associate dean, George Washington University Law School

James Nagle, a former Army contracting official and practicing attorney who specializes in the federal contracting process, went even further, saying that the White House Offer potentially violated existing law.

The Federal Acquisition Regulation, which governs government procurement, says that employees may not accept “gratuities,” or anything of value “from anyone who has or is seeking to obtain Government business.” And, as employees involved with the White House Offer told ProPublica, Microsoft was seeking future contract upgrades and new Azure revenue.

While “gratuities” are typically considered to be perks such as free meals, sports tickets or other gifts for personal use, Nagle argued that the rule could apply to the White House Offer, though he said he was not aware of any prior case using his interpretation. He compared it to a car manufacturer providing a government agency with a fleet of cars for a year for free because it wants the agency to procure that fleet for its staff. “Any contracting officer would say, ‘No, you can’t do that,’” Nagle said. Once employees get used to the cars, they’re reluctant to switch, he said, and the “impermissible gift” would create a built-in bias toward that manufacturer.

“That’s the problem here,” Nagle said. “This is not truly gratuitous. There’s another agenda in the works.”

Microsoft did not use the so-called gratuitous services agreements to give away the G5 upgrades, as it did for the consulting services. Instead, Faehl told ProPublica, the company considered them “a 100% discount” added to existing customer contracts. He said making this type of “strategic investment is … common practice among companies” and that contract teams on both sides reviewed the deals. Nagle viewed it differently, characterizing the free products as a “loss leader designed to lead to future sweetheart deals.”

Federal vendors may be banned from government contracting for violating the Federal Acquisition Regulation, though such an outcome would be highly unlikely for a vendor as large as Microsoft, Nagle said. Nonetheless, individual employees on both sides of improper deals in the past have been held accountable, he said.

Skirting fiscal law, however, may have set the stage for an even more serious legal concern, said Christopher Sagers, a professor of antitrust law at Cleveland State University in Ohio. Microsoft’s actions, Sagers said, might constitute what is known in antitrust law as “exclusionary conduct,” opening the door for illegal monopoly. “Microsoft, rather than competing on the merits, took steps to exclude competitors by making its product sticky in advance of opportunities for competition,” he said. The company used “an already dominant position to further cement their position.”

Microsoft disputed that point.

“We don’t believe our offer raised antitrust concerns, and we constructed it specifically to avoid any such issues,” a company spokesperson said. “We talked informally with a White House staffer about this.”

Wu, however, said the company did not make clear to him the financial and competitive implications of the offer.

“There is no way that was discussed,” Wu told ProPublica. “The only thing that Brad mentioned was upgrading federal agencies, offering them better stuff.” Upon hearing the news organization’s findings, he said: “That is a lot darker than it sounded. Once you’re in somewhere, it’s very hard to leave.

“Now I’m starting to feel guilty in some weird way about playing a role in a big deal that cost taxpayers money,” Wu said.

Taking Out the Competition

Former Microsoft salespeople said that all of the customers within the Defense Department who signed on to the White House Offer — including all the military branches — ultimately upgraded to the G5 and began paying for it when the time came to renew their agreements in 2022 and 2023.

A Defense Department spokesperson said in a written statement that the department followed federal acquisition law and “conducted internal tests and evaluations of multiple vendor capabilities.” The upgrade, the spokesperson said, was “crucial” to meeting the department’s cybersecurity objectives. The department declined to answer follow-up questions, including to specify which vendors it evaluated before deciding on the G5.

John Sherman, the department’s chief information officer at the time of the White House Offer dealmaking, defended both the government’s decision and Microsoft’s strategy. “I am sure Microsoft, like any company, would be trying to increase their business with any customer,” he told ProPublica.

He added, “We didn’t have any particular preference for Microsoft in terms of favoritism or anything like that, but we knew it worked, which is why we wanted to proceed with that.”

Many civilian agencies also upgraded to the G5 during this timeframe, said Sondhi, who now works at Microsoft competitor Trellix as chief technology officer for the company’s public-sector business.

For Microsoft, winning more government business was only half the picture. It also saw the White House Offer as an opportunity to knock out its competitors.

During and after their sales push, Microsoft salespeople advised government departments and agencies to remove competing products from their IT lineups to cut costs, saying the Microsoft bundle would render those other products redundant. Internally, employees called it the “take-out” strategy. “The play is: ‘You’re paying for it in the G5. It’s a waste of government money to have both,’” a former sales leader who worked with the Defense Department told ProPublica.

Sondhi said that in a typical scenario, an upgrade to the 5-level can displace the existing work of a half dozen vendors or more. Executives from cybersecurity companies Trellix and Proofpoint, for example, told ProPublica they lost federal business in the wake of the White House Offer deals.

The White House Offer also enhanced Microsoft’s competitive position by reducing the likelihood that the government would open bidding for cybersecurity products in the future, given the cornucopia of offerings in the G5. Within the company, this was known as “taking opportunities off the street,” former sales leaders said.

The fallout impacted companies that were in the midst of completing the authorization process the government requires of vendors providing cloud-based services. Several told ProPublica that cybersecurity contract opportunities are now scarce.

“We are chipping away, but it’s largely, by far, a Microsoft-owned landscape,” an executive at one competing vendor told ProPublica.

Faehl dismissed those complaints, saying that customers kept the upgrades because they performed well and that competitors “should look inward to see why their products do not meet or exceed Microsoft results.”

Reckoning With the “Monoculture”

Microsoft has something few other companies possess: a panoply of products that span the IT ecosystem. Rivals say the company leveraged its existing dominance in certain products — like the Windows operating system and classic workplace applications — to gain dominance in others, namely cybersecurity and cloud computing.

“No one has the kind of capital that Microsoft does,” Sondhi said. “They can just absorb the cost of the giveaway until the customer’s first bill.”

A coalition backed by some of Microsoft’s major competitors, including Google and Amazon, has raised similar issues with the Federal Trade Commission, which in 2023 gathered public comments on the business practices of cloud computing providers. Among the FTC’s areas of ongoing interest: “Are there signs that cloud markets are functioning less than fully competitively, and that certain business practices are inhibiting competition?”

Competition is not the only issue at stake. As Washington has deepened its relationship with Microsoft, congressional leaders have raised concerns about what they call a cybersecurity “monoculture” in the federal government. Some, like Wyden and Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, have blasted the Defense Department in particular for “doubling down on a failed strategy of increasing its dependence on Microsoft.”

“Although we welcome the Department’s decision to invest in greater cybersecurity, we are deeply concerned that DoD is choosing not to pursue a multi-vendor approach that would result in greater competition, lower long-term costs, and better outcomes related to cybersecurity,” the two lawmakers wrote in a letter to Sherman, then the department’s chief information officer, in May.

Microsoft’s Faehl pushed back. “The suggestion that our customers are any more at risk because they use Windows, or Azure, or Office is wrong,” he said. “We partner closely with our security competitors because we see them as partners against threat actors we face in common.”

Still, just last year, Chinese hackers exploited Microsoft security lapses to breach the email accounts of senior U.S. officials. Investigating the attack, the federal Cyber Safety Review Board faulted the company for a “cascade of … avoidable errors” and pressed it to overhaul its security culture. Microsoft has since pledged to place security “above all else.” In June, Smith told Congress that Microsoft would strive to establish a “culture that encourages every employee to look for problems, find problems, report problems, help fix problems and then learn from the problems.”

It’s learning from the successes, too. The same week that Smith testified before Congress, and nearly three years after Nadella made his commitment at Biden’s summit, Microsoft made a new offer, this time to “support hospitals serving more than 60 million people living in rural America.”

The playbook was familiar. In its announcement, the company said that eligible hospitals could have the private-sector equivalent of the G5 “at no cost for one year.” As before, Faehl said Microsoft made the commitment “at the behest of the White House.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke.

Trust the Science

Allen Forrest — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:24:32 +0000

As recorded in Hansard, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau, as he did on so many occasions without ever citing the scientific evidence, stated, “We will continue to trust the science.“

The post Trust the Science first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Filmmaker Zia Anger on learning to trust your intuition

Arielle Gordon — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How has your formal film education impacted your creative approach?

I went to undergrad for film and theater. I didn’t walk into undergrad saying, “I want to do film.” I didn’t know anything about film, but I took a film course second semester with a great teacher named Cathy Crane, and I would say that the film department at that time was on the more experimental side of things. We were exposed to a lot of great experimental films. We were taught about cameras, and sound, and all this great technical stuff, but in terms of what a film is supposed to be, that was a more open-ended question. That idea has stuck with me: not what a film is, but what a film could be.

Then I went to grad school and got my MFA, and I was in a film department that was interested in expanded cinema and video art. I didn’t think that it was all that helpful. It wasn’t an actual film school, it was more like an art program. I had gotten a full scholarship, so I didn’t leave with a lot of debt, but I left with this big feeling that it’s just a bad practice to take that much money from people and then tell them to go out into the world and make it as a filmmaker or make it as an artist.

I don’t think there’s a lot of programs that exist like the one that I was at in undergrad. We’re so dominated now by Hollywood and what you are supposed to do with your career, so I’m grateful that I got to do that in undergrad. That’s how I started making films.

From what I know from My First Film, a lot of people who worked on your first movie Always All Ways, Anne Marie were friends from film school. How did having your friends also be your main collaborators impact the filmmaking process?

I want to make films for a lot of people, and because of that I don’t want to make them in a vacuum. I want to make them in dialogue with other people so that someone can say, “Hey, that’s not a good idea.” Or, “Hey, this would be a better idea.” Or, “Hey, oh, this is a great idea.”

Working with good friends is challenging, but it’s also the greatest, because I don’t think a complete stranger would tell me if I was out of line, or if my ideas were bad. I mean, maybe if they had a huge amount of money invested in me and some sort of seniority. But for the most part, I think young artists need feedback, and need to be open to feedback. Having real, true friends around you to give you that feedback, to be that first line, is important to making things that resonate with people that you want it to resonate with.

When you were making My First Film, how much effort was there to replicate as closely as possible the conditions and the costuming of the Always All Ways period?

When it came to casting, we weren’t looking necessarily for people who were one-to-one with their real-life counterparts, but who embodied the essence of whoever that character was. But when it came to the actual art, the mise en scene, everything that you’re seeing in the frame, I worked with a great costume designer and great production designer, both of whom are my age.

The costume designer, Rachel Dainer-Best, and the production designer, Stephen Phelps, had been working in films back then, too. We gathered up all of the photos we had from back then, and went over them to find touch points from that time, whether it be the camera equipment or the exact lighting kit that we were using. I remember looking at these pictures with Rachel and saying, “Man, we all had that one $7 pashmina from Chinatown that somehow we’d all wrap around our necks a million times.”

We got really into the details of the time period. It was this moment right before smartphones just took over everything. There were still a lot of markers that defined that as this actual place in time rather than where we are now, where time exists all at once because the phone is in our hands. We got incredibly specific. What’s so amazing about working with production designers or costume designers is the good ones are going to be that specific. They’re going to say, “Okay, we’re in 2012. Which characters would have a smartphone, which characters would have a flip phone?” I was just honestly totally blown away that we could be that specific and make it feel exactly like that time.

I think 2010 is such an interesting time to represent because it was this time of, as you say in the film, micro-budget filmmaking. It made me think about the material conditions of filmmaking: how crowdfunding, being able to rent a RED camera, and the other particulars of making a movie changes the final product.

I wanted to shoot on a RED camera, but I wanted to shoot with these anamorphic vintage lenses; I think they were Russian and from the 50s. That combination of tools was burdensome. We knew somebody who owned a RED, and Ashley [Connor, the film’s cinematographer] knew that they had kids and said, “Hey, I’ll babysit for you in exchange for this camera package.” The lenses were one of a kind, and we thought it was so special that we were getting them, and they were very expensive, so we had to buy a lot of insurance for them. They were, in fact, one of a kind, but the reason why they were available is that they were incredibly cumbersome. They were enormous. They were hard to use.

With the RED, how far you have to stand away from the camera was much further than I wanted the camera to be from the action. You probably needed a good four-person camera team, minimum, to make something really special on these because it was just so burdensome. But we didn’t have four people, we had two people. In a lot of ways, this equipment that I wanted and needed became the burden of the film, and it became the reason why making the film was so tense, and why I didn’t have enough footage to use when I cut.

In the same way that I thought that crowdfunding and making a certain amount of money to make this film was my key to making this film work, it actually was just a sign of how difficult it is to make films in this day and age. Of course, it was never going to be that easy. Making films is hard. I don’t know any time before my time, so I don’t know what it was like to make films in the 80s or 90s, but I can assume that it’s always been difficult to make films, and there’s always been either equipment or financing schemes that make it seem like it’s an easier thing to do than it is. If you go and you type in “my first film” on either Reddit or on Twitter, what comes up is a bunch of people in the YouTube era posting the first film that they just made and posted to YouTube.

We live in a very individualistic time, and moving images are this perfect place for us to say, “Me, me, me, I, I, I.” I made a film about myself, and it’s called My First Film. I totally get the irony there, and I don’t think anybody should stop making films at all. I think that everybody should be making films all the time, and there’s amazing stuff on TikTok, there’s amazing stuff on YouTube.

I was talking to a college class the other day and I said to them, “I know you’re going to watch my film and you’re going to say, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to go out and I’m going to make my film. And I’m graduating, and this is going to be amazing. She got to do it.’” I tried to emphasize that actually, it took me nearly 15 years to do, and I had many lucky opportunities to be able to do that. There was a huge amount of development behind this and a huge amount of money behind this. If you do anything when you graduate, it should be trying something else besides moving images. Because unless you really want to do this, it’s not worth it.

Do you see My First Film as a cautionary tale about filmmaking?

No. I definitely think that people could see it in a lot of different ways, and in one way it’s a cautionary tale. In another way, it’s a story of, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again. Neither of those things were how I intended the film to be read, but I can’t control that. I see My First Film as a story about moving from seeing yourself as the center of the universe to understanding that every single person around you holds the same amount of importance, and it is only through a communal effort that anything can get made.

Did you keep a diary or a journal when you were making Always All Ways? How did you recall the specific emotional tenor of that time?

We were lucky that we had an email back then. A huge amount of this was in emails to people. My enthusiasm, my total naïveté was just in every single email I put out there into the world. There would be these emails that I would send to the entire eight-person crew. “Hey guys, I’ve just had a radical idea. What if we all get together one weekend and edit the film together?” Which is not possible to do. The greatest part was that nobody would respond to me, except for maybe Ashley, who was the cinematographer back then and is the cinematographer now, and was the character Alexis was based on. She would just write back, “I love that idea. Can you tell by the look on my face?” And then she’d send a photo booth selfie where she’s making a totally ridiculous face in a totally ridiculous felted hat. That alone is the energy of what this film is supposed to be. It’s just people just being incredibly naïve, but also incredibly sincere.

I was wondering about the casting. Obviously it’s not supposed to be exact, as you said, but casting somebody to play yourself must be a very intimate thing. What were you looking for? Were you aiming for somebody who could remind you of yourself at that age?

Odessa Young, who plays the character of Vita, is a fantastic actor. She’s in her 20s, she is Australian, but in every single role that she plays, she does not remind you that she is an Australian in her 20s whose name is Odessa Young. She is just that character. When I cast her, I knew that she was able to shapeshift into characters. Then the challenge was for her not to do “me,” but find whoever this character was. That was not for me to decide, nor did I ever say, “Hey, you should do a version of me.” I just gave her access to whatever she needed access to, whether it was my old emails, old photos, a lot of old journal entries.

We spent a ton of time together. I think from the very beginning, I knew that it was going to work because not only is she just incredibly talented, but the story of My First Film resonated with her. I think what I understood was that she had had a number of disappointing experiences making films, and she was constantly questioning whether or not making films was something that she actually wanted to do, in the same way that I was questioning it. Her experiences were super different than mine, but we found this mirror about what we wanted filmmaking to be.

How did you process the failures that you expressed in the film—Always All Ways was rejected from every film festival you submitted it to. You continued making films after that. How did you move on from those disappointments?

I often process things through energy. For a long time I was angry, and I just started to make a lot of really angry work. Angry music videos, angry short films. That was something that I did for a long time. When I started to do the performance [that would become My First Film], it was really biting. At a certain point, that energy of anger turned into realizing that when I am speaking, I am speaking to a lot of people, and it might be more interesting if I was to find a more interesting emotion than anger.

Not the opposite of anger, I’m not talking about being hopeful. But something that’s just more nuanced, that encapsulates how complicated and how difficult the human experience in general is.

Then, my work started to move into this direction that was more interested in having a dialogue with people, more interested in putting something out into the world and it resonating with people in different ways. I don’t do well when I’m not making something. I have to be putting stuff out into the world. And that stuff that I’m putting out in the world is ultimately to have a dialogue with people, and not just to barf my emotions all over.

How do you think about balancing humor and darkness in your work?

One thing that I’ve learned to be aware of is that I am funny. Not all the time, but I have a sense of humor, and one of the reasons that people like my films is because they’re funny. But I’ve also learned that I can’t think that I’m funny. I can’t sit there and say, “I’m going to tell a joke.”

I have to be sincere in what I do, and sometimes that’s funny and sometimes it’s tragic, but if I’m trying to do any of those things it’s not going to work. With [My First Film] co-writer, Billy Feldman, who I think is hilarious, we would write these scenes and we would read them back to each other. And if he would laugh, or I would laugh, or he would cry, or I would cry, I would say, “Let’s go with that.”

Understanding those steps to my process was important to it being very hilarious, and also very tragic. But those never were the goals. It was just to embrace that we should be making sure people are having those feelings when they’re reading or performing it, or when they’re ultimately watching it.

In the film’s description of Always All Ways, there’s not a lot of dialogue written, and the actors are guided by a broader treatment. It sounds like there was more dialogue for My First Film. How do you balance using conventional scripts with more general guidelines? What works for the creative process?

I hate scripts, and I also think that they are incredibly valuable for your collaborators. I don’t feel like I’m doing anybody a service when I give them a small amount of information. I’d rather give somebody too much information and have them say, “Stop right there. I don’t need that.” Versus the opposite, where people are sitting there and saying, “I don’t really know what to make of this.” Writing a script out fully is probably one of the more painful parts of the process. But in terms of my process, it has become a very, very useful tool to get my collaborators to understand what I’m trying to do.

You’ve made music videos for artists like Beach House, Jenny Hval, and Mitski. How does your creative process differ when you’re working on a music video for another artist, versus a film for yourself?

I feel like music videos are really there as commercials for the artists, and I was not interested in doing that anymore, because you can make a huge music video and it’s never going to help you get to make a film. People just don’t jump from one to the other very easily.

The music videos that I did made me aware of and made me interested in developing the intuition I have about whether something is working or not. The first time I ever felt glee making a video was the first Mitski video I ever did, with these Coachella-people kissing, and then the camera pans over to Mitski and she’s there playing her guitar. I just remember being filled with glee laughing, thinking, okay, this is a really interesting image. If you go and look at YouTube comments—and it’s very hard to look at YouTube comments—people are saying that the image is what works. The thing that I felt when I was watching it does work.

That little intuition I got to build up doing these music videos was important to my sense of knowing if something works or not when I’m making it. I think that’s probably the most generous I could be about my thoughts about music videos.

They made me immune to the idea of knowing that a zillion people will see something, and a huge amount of people will not like what they see. I have read all the YouTube comments. I have looked at all the shit-talking, and I have come to the conclusion both about music videos and about films that opinions are amazing. I am totally fine that a lot of people hate stuff that I’ve put out into the world. Usually if I’m making something that people love or hate, it’s doing something I really wanted it to do. It’s creating an intense enough emotion that somebody is going to post about it, whether they love it or they hate it.

Zia Anger Recommends:

Spending time with people much older and much younger than you

Sex Goblin - Lauren Cook

Tending a garden and making bouquets for your friends

The Birth Partner - Penny Simkin with Katie Rohs, 5th Edition (This is a book about supporting people who are giving literal birth, but I found there to be some great ideas about communication and care)

Motherhood - Sheila Heti

Transcendental Style in Film [(new edition) - Paul Schrader

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Arielle Gordon.

Who to Trust?

Allen Forrest — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 14:53:34 +0000

The post Who to Trust? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Don’t Trust the Government. Not with Your Freedoms

John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 14:10:58 +0000

In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

—Thomas Jefferson

Public trust in the government to “do what is right” understandably remains at an all-time low.

After all, how do you trust a government that continuously sidesteps the Constitution and undermines our rights? You can’t.

When you consider all the ways “we the people” are being bullied, beaten, bamboozled, targeted, tracked, repressed, robbed, impoverished, imprisoned and killed by the government, one can only conclude that you shouldn’t trust the government with your privacy, your property, your life, or your freedoms.

Consider for yourself.

Don’t trust the government with your privacy, digital or otherwise. In the more than two decades since 9/11, the military-security industrial complex has operated under a permanent state of emergency that, in turn, has given rise to a digital prison that grows more confining and inescapable by the day. Wall-to wall surveillance, monitored by AI software and fed to a growing network of fusion centers, render the twin concepts of privacy and anonymity almost void. By conspiring with corporations, the Department of Homeland Security “fueled a massive influx of money into surveillance and policing in our cities, under a banner of emergency response and counterterrorism.”

Don’t trust the government with your property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Hard-working Americans are having their bank accounts, homes, cars electronics and cash seized by police under the assumption that they have allegedly been associated with some criminal scheme.

Don’t trust the government with your finances. The U.S. government—and that includes the current administration—is spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford, and “we the taxpayers” are being forced to foot the bill for the government’s fiscal insanity. The national debt is $35 trillion and growing, yet there seems to be no end in sight when it comes to the government’s fiscal insanity. According to Forbes, Congress has raised, extended or revised the definition of the debt limit 78 times since 1960 in order to allow the government to essentially fund its existence with a credit card.

Don’t trust the government with your health. For all intents and purposes, “we the people” have become lab rats in the government’s secret experiments, which include MKULTRA and the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men. Indeed, you don’t have to dig very deep or go very back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins. Unfortunately, the public has become so easily distracted by the political spectacle out of Washington, DC, that they are altogether oblivious to the grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions that have become synonymous with the U.S. government, which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike.

Don’t trust the government with your life: At a time when growing numbers of unarmed people have been shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety, even the most benign encounters with police can have fatal consequences. The number of Americans killed by police continues to grow, with the majority of those killed as a result of police encounters having been suspected of a non-violent offense or no crime at all, or during a traffic violation. According a report by Mapping Police Violence, police killed more people in 2022 than any other year within the past decade. In 98% of those killings, police were not charged with a crime.

Don’t trust the government with your freedoms. For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people. Freedom no longer means what it once did. This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” On paper, we may be technically free, but in reality, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.

Remember the purpose of a good government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people.

Unfortunately, what we have been saddled with is, in almost every regard, the exact opposite of an institution dedicated to protecting the lives and liberties of its people.

“We the people” should have learned early on that a government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn can’t be trusted.

So what’s the answer?

For starters, get back to basics. Get to know your neighbors, your community, and your local officials. This is the first line of defense when it comes to securing your base: fortifying your immediate lines.

Second, understand your rights. Know how your local government is structured. Who serves on your city council and school boards? Who runs your local jail: has it been coopted by private contractors? What recourse does the community have to voice concerns about local problems or disagree with decisions by government officials?

Third, know the people you’re entrusting with your local government. Are your police chiefs being promoted from within your community? Are your locally elected officials accessible and, equally important, are they open to what you have to say? Who runs your local media? Does your newspaper report on local events? Who are your judges? Are their judgments fair and impartial? How are prisoners being treated in your local jails?

Finally, don’t get so trusting and comfortable that you stop doing the hard work of holding your government accountable. We’ve drifted a long way from the local government structures that provided the basis for freedom described by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, but we are not so far gone that we can’t reclaim some of its vital components.

As an article in The Federalist points out:

Local government is fundamental not so much because it’s a “laboratory” of democracy but because it’s a school of democracy. Through such accountable and democratic government, Americans learn to be democratic citizens. They learn to be involved in the common good. They learn to take charge of their own affairs, as a community. Tocqueville writes that it’s because of local democracy that Americans can make state and Federal democracy work—by learning, in their bones, to expect and demand accountability from public officials and to be involved in public issues.

To put it another way, think nationally but act locally.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, there is still a lot Americans can do to topple the police state tyrants, but any revolution that has any hope of succeeding needs to be prepared to reform the system from the bottom up. And that will mean re-learning step by painful step what it actually means to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The post Don’t Trust the Government. Not with Your Freedoms first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Top 5 takeaways of our investigation into state trust lands on reservations

Tristan Ahtone — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 08:40:00 +0000

Despite tribes’ status as autonomous, sovereign nations, lands on federal Indian reservations provide revenue to state governments to pay for public schools, jails, universities, hospitals, and other institutions. A new investigation from Grist and High Country News reveals that more than 2 million surface and subsurface acres within the boundaries of reservations are used to support public institutions and reduce the financial burden of taxpayers through the leasing of land for oil and gas operations, grazing, timber harvesting, and more.

Powered by publicly available data, this new investigation identifies the state institutions benefiting from these lands, and provides information on many of the individuals and companies that lease them. In the second, major story in our series on state trust lands, we continue to detangle the ways in which Indigenous lands and resources bankroll public institutions, often at the expense of tribal citizens, Indigenous land management practices, and tribal sovereignty and self-determination.

Here are five takeaways from our investigation, which you can read in full here:

1 79 reservations in 15 states are pockmarked by more than 2 million acres of state trust lands.

State trust lands, on and off Indian reservations, make up millions of acres across the Western United States and generate revenue for public schools, universities, jails, hospitals, and other public institutions. Montana, for example, manages 5.2 million surface acres and 6.2 million subsurface acres, a term pertaining to oil, gas, minerals, and other underground resources, and distributed $62 million for public institutions in 2023 with the majority going to K-12 schools — institutions serving primarily non-Indigenous people. Approximately 161,000 acres are contained on six reservations.

2 In at least four states, five tribal nations are themselves paying to lease land inside their own reservations — almost 58,000 collective acres.

Of all the Indigenous nations in the U.S. we identified that pay states to utilize their own lands, the Ute Tribe leases back the highest number of acres. And while not all states have publicly accessible lessee information with land-use records, of the ones that did, Grist and High Country News found that at least four other tribes also lease nearly 11,000 acres, combined, on their own reservations: the Southern Ute Tribe, Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Laguna, and Zuni Tribe. According to state records, the vast majority of these tribally leased lands — 99.5 percent — are used for agriculture and grazing.

3 Fossil fuel infrastructure or activity is present on roughly a sixth of on-reservation trust lands nationwide.

Beneficiaries, including public schools, receive revenue generated from a variety of activities, including leases for roads and infrastructure, solar panel installations and commercial projects. On reservations where states manage subsurface rights, land ownership can be split — if a tribe, for instance, owns the surface rights while an oil company owns the subsurface rights — the subsurface owner can access its resources regardless of what the surface owner wants.

4 Of the 79 reservations that have state trust lands within their boundaries, tribes living on 49 of them have received federal Tribal Climate Resilience awards since 2011.

Tribal Climate Resilience awards are designed to fund and assist tribes in creating adaptation plans and conducting vulnerability and risk assessments as climate change increasingly threatens their homes. But with the existence of state trust lands inside reservation boundaries, coupled with state-driven resource extraction, many tribal governments face hard limits when trying to enact climate mitigation policies — regardless of how much money the federal government puts toward the problem.

5 Some states are attempting to create systems for returning trust lands to Indigenous control and in other states, land exchanges have already occurred or are in-progress.

State agencies can exchange trust lands on reservations for federal lands off-reservation, but the process is complicated by the state’s obligation to produce as much money as possible from trust lands for its beneficiaries. At the forefront are Washington, which is currently implementing legislation to return lands, and North Dakota, which is moving new legislation through Congress for the same purpose. But because of the lands’ value and the states’ financial obligations, it’s difficult to transfer complete jurisdiction back to Indigenous nations. Trust lands must be swapped for land of equal or greater value, which tends to mean that a transfer is only possible if the land in question doesn’t produce much revenue.

Read the full story here.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Top 5 takeaways of our investigation into state trust lands on reservations on Sep 16, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Ahtone.

EXCLUSIVE: Arrest of Chinese dissident on spy charges leaves trail of broken trust

By Jane Tang for RFA Investigative — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 15:12:05 +0000

The FBI came to Jen Salen’s door on Wednesday afternoon. Shocked would not even come close to describing her astonishment.

“I cried a lot on Wednesday, and I’ve been crying a lot [since],” she told RFA.

Earlier that day, Yuanjun Tang, a well-known Chinese dissident in New York who had been married to Salen until June of this year, had been arrested on charges of secretly spying for Beijing.

Salen, 55, is not named in the filings against him and is not accused of any wrongdoing.

But there was a complication: throughout their marriage, she has worked for the Congressional Executive Committee on China, or CECC.

The commission organizes hearings and publishes annual reports advising Congress and the White House on human rights and rule of law issues in China.

The FBI had questions.

The U.S. Capitol is seen Jan. 06, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Salen said that she had spoken to the FBI for the first time on Wednesday, and that she had been placed on a paid leave by the CECC two days after Tang’s arrest. By Monday, the laptop she used to do her work sat inert on her desk, switched off and awaiting to be sent back to the U.S. government.

Despite the dizzying turn of events, Salen told RFA: “You can certainly say that I still care very deeply about him,” adding that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.

Indeed, in speaking to over a dozen sources close to the case, what emerges is a deeply paradoxical and tragic story of murky allegiances and personal betrayals.

But the revelation of Tang’s family ties to the U.S. government, as well as allegations that he was directed by Chinese agents to keep close tabs on specific U.S. political goings-on, raises uncomfortable questions about how deeply Chinese intelligence can penetrate American democracy.

When first contacted by RFA last week and asked if she was concerned that her work for the government could have been compromised by Tang, Salen gave a long pause before declining to answer.

A shock arrest

On Aug. 21, Tang was arrested at his office in Flushing, New York, after being charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiracy and making false statements.

According to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Tang – who had been an active participant in the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests – had been passing sensitive information on U.S.-based dissidents as well as a U.S. congressional candidate to a handler at the Chinese Ministry of State Security, or MSS, from 2018 until 2023. He was questioned by the FBI last July.

Tang and Salen were married from March 2012 to June 2024, though they only lived together during parts of that time, according to Salen and public records of their registered addresses.

Student protesters gather in Tiananmen Square in Beijing on May 13, 1989. (Vitaly Armand/AFP)

Repeated calls to Tang’s lawyer were not answered. Tang declined to be interviewed but clarified to RFA through an intermediary that he never informed his then-wife of his alleged contacts with the MSS.

Although work done by the CECC does not involve classified information, and Salen would not have had access to government papers deemed classified or confidential, access to contacts and knowledge of its working would still be of value to Beijing.

Staffers often interact with members of the Chinese diaspora, and the commission organizes hearings and meetings that put government officials, Chinese dissidents and civil society members together, sometimes behind closed doors.

RFA gave CECC a detailed list of questions, including when it became aware of the situation regarding Tang, how this could affect the work Salen was doing for the commission, what security protocols were in place, and what was being done to fairly protect staff and sources for the CECC, as well as Salen.

A spokesperson for the commission said in an email: “While this is a confidential personnel matter, and law enforcement has given us no indication that our staffer was involved in, or had knowledge of, Mr. Tang's alleged activity, the extraordinary circumstances, and nature of the allegations regarding Mr. Tang lead us, out of an abundance of caution, to take appropriate measures to ensure the safety of the Commission’s data and the privacy of its staff. We continue to work with the appropriate entities in their investigations and for the protection of the CECC's mission.”

They said the commission only became aware of the situation after Tang’s arrest.

The Congressional Executive Committee on China holds a hearing in 2024. (CECC via YouTube)

That “abundance of caution” appears to be warranted.

In an earlier interview discussing the verdict of another recent Chinese spy case, Peter Mattis, who was staff director at the CECC from 2019 to 2021, told RFA: “We need to think about intelligence not as being the collection of classified information. Intelligence is information to inform decision making, and not all decisions are about national defense and national security, right?”

“Some of them are, at least in the CCP. They're about political control. They're about controlling thought. They're about controlling overseas diaspora communities or being able to mobilize them effectively in support of national objectives.” (The case he was referring to also involved a dissident secretly spying for Beijing)

Mattis, who is now head of the non-profit Jamestown Foundation and no longer works in U.S. government, said he also only learned of Tang’s alleged activities after his arrest.

Political interests

Among the other allegations made by U.S. prosecutors is that Tang had transmitted photographs of a congressional candidate, information about a campaign strategy meeting for the candidate, and photos of members of Congress to the MSS through one of six phones seized by the FBI.

One of these phones appeared to have surveillance software installed onto it, the complaint said.

Although he is not named in the complaint against Tang, the congressional candidate he allegedly surveilled is Yan Xiong, a dissident who ran in the Democratic primary for New York’s 10th congressional district in 2022.

Xiong told RFA: “That’s me in the complaint — the 'congressional candidate' Tang allegedly passed information [about] to the MSS.” He said that although the FBI never contacted him, he recognized himself from the details and descriptions in the complaint.

Xiong faced significant harassment during his 2022 campaign, including fake claims of child pornography and tax evasion. He noted that he faced harassment during the campaign and that it placed a significant strain on his family. “I am still suffering from the consequences,” he said. He has no plans to return to politics.

He said he had no suspicions about Tang at the time. “Campaigns require a lot of help, so I asked him to assist. I was never suspicious of him.”

Yan Xiong, a dissident who ran for office in New York in 2022, was apparently surveilled by Yuanjun Tang. (Xiong Yan for Congress via Facebook)

Xiong learned of Tang’s arrest from the news and was surprised by the details. “I trust the U.S. Department of Justice, but I also believe Tang’s story is a tragedy. He broke the law, but he is also a victim of the CCP,” he said, adding: “I'll still pray for him.”

Betrayals and understandings

The arrest has sent shockwaves through the U.S.-based Chinese pro-democracy community – a tight-knit group of dissidents, many of whom were participants or leaders in the 1989 protest that triggered a global outcry and an exodus of young intellectuals and liberals from China.

The protest likewise shaped the views of a generation of young people in the West. “You know, in some ways, I'm also of the 1989 generation,” Salen (who is not of Asian descent herself) told RFA.

“I was a sophomore in college. I had just started taking Chinese history classes, and what happened in China in 1989 was part of my motivation to eventually study Chinese language and clearly feel that people have the right to freedom of expression, to publish with what they think … have their own right to religious belief, all those things that we take for granted here.”

Sources who spoke to RFA universally said they admired Salen’s commitment to promoting Chinese democracy and the dissident community, through which she met Tang at a dumpling-making party in the mid-2000s.

Tang, now 67, was a young factory worker at the time of the Tiananmen protests. He later defected by swimming to Taiwan from a Chinese fishing boat. He eventually came to the U.S. and was granted asylum.

Another dissident, who asked for anonymity to speak openly about a sensitive issue, recalled meeting him some 20 years ago when he first arrived. “He was a spirited young man, full of ideals. You know, he had been imprisoned in China, then fled to Taiwan, and later came to the U.S.,” they said.

Despite meeting his wife and settling in the U.S., Tang had a difficult time and exile had been “a very, very painful experience” for him, the person said.

“He was very filial, and he cared deeply about his mother. We all knew he wanted to return to China in 2018 (when she fell ill). His brother is disabled. Later, his mother and brother both passed away.

“I later saw him a few times in Flushing, sometimes on the street. He looked very down and out,” the person told RFA.

Prosecutors allege that Tang began working for the MSS in 2018 in exchange for being allowed to go back to China to visit his family. His orders included taking pictures and videos of people of interest to the intelligence service and passing information about their whereabouts to a handler. The MSS paid Tang’s family in mainland China, prosecutors said.

He is also alleged to have invited an MSS agent to a chat group he set up for dissidents – including some seeking asylum in the U.S. – and to have passed information about asylum-seeking to a handler.

Yuanjun Tang sings karaoke at a 2017 Spring Festival tea party. (Yuanjun Tang via Youtube)

Younger dissidents close to Tang – some of whom were recently arrived from China – told RFA they had looked up to him as almost a mentor figure who regaled them with tales of being jailed by the Chinese government and promised to help them navigate the U.S. asylum process.

His arrest has left them worried, said Chao Xu, 32, who came to the United States in the summer of 2023.

"I'm really worried now because every time we went to protests or demonstrations against the CCP, Tang would take photos and videos of us up close. China could use facial recognition to quickly identify us and our families back home. Of course, I'm scared," he said.

Another dissident, Kuijun Wu, 30, who also arrived in the U.S. last year, told RFA that there is widespread panic among a group of over 50 newcomers. They had provided Tang with their personal information, including their addresses in China, when they joined the party he led.

"We risked our lives to come to the U.S., and now our leader is a spy. What are we supposed to do?" he said.

Tang has been under house arrest since being released on an unsecured $100,000 bond. Since then, he has privately expressed remorse to friends, telling close associates that he was sorry for letting America down and particularly regretted affecting his former partner, several sources told RFA.

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Salen referred most of RFA’s questions about Tang to his lawyer, but did offer a thought on one matter.

“I noticed that a lot of reports on him are saying he was ‘a former democracy activist.’ I think ‘former’ is incorrect. He still is a democracy activist,” she said. “I think the [Chinese] exile community is very complex. Everyone knows the exile community is very complex, and also there's a lot of debate and dissension.”

Nick Eftimiades, a former CIA analyst who has worked extensively on Chinese intelligence cases, told RFA that while it remains to be seen whether there is wider cause for concern given Tang’s family tie to U.S. government work, the extent of China’s reach could be likened to the Stasi in East Germany, where a third of the population was pressed into this kind of service.

“It destroyed families and relationships as people were recruited to spy on each other and other targets of the regime. I think we’re seeing the same thing here,” he said. “The question now is, can the United States and so many European countries keep their populations safe from the CCP, which strikes at the very heart of their sovereignty?”

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.

Edited by Boer Deng

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jane Tang for RFA Investigative.

In Nigeria, at least 56 journalists attacked and harassed as protests roil region

Evelyn Okakwu — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 17:53:38 +0000

“He hit me with a gun butt,” Premium Times newspaper reporter Yakubu Mohammed told the Committee to Protect Journalists, recalling how he was struck by a police officer while reporting on cost-of-living protests in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja on August 1. Two other officers beat him, seized his phone, and threw him in a police van despite his wearing a ”Press” vest and showing them his press identification card.

Yakubu Mohammed shows a head wound which he said was caused by police officers who hit him with gun butts and batons. (Photo: Courtesy of Yakubu Mohammed)

Mohammed is one of at least 56 journalists who were assaulted or harassed by security forces or unidentified citizens while covering the #EndBadGovernance demonstrations in Nigeria, one of several countries across sub-Saharan Africa that have experienced anti-government protests in recent months.

In Kenya, at least a dozen journalists have been targeted by security personnel during weeks of youth-led protests since June, with at least one reporter shot with rubber bullets and several others hit with teargas canisters. Meanwhile, Ugandan police and soldiers used force to quash similar demonstrations over corruption and high living costs, while a Ghanaian court banned planned protests.

Globally, attacks on the press often spike during moments of political tension. In Senegal, at least 25 journalists were attacked, detained, or tear gassed while reporting on February’s protests over delayed elections. Last year, CPJ found that more than 40 Nigerian journalists were detained, attacked, or harassed while reporting on presidential and state elections. In 2020, at least a dozen journalists were attacked during the #EndSARS campaign to abolish Nigeria’s brutal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) police unit.

CPJ’s documentation of the incidents below, based on interviews with those affected, local media reports, and verified videos and photos, are emblematic of the dangers faced by reporters in many African countries during protests – and the failure of authorities to prioritize journalists’ safety and ending impunity for crimes against journalists.

All but one of the journalists – a reporter for government-owned Radio Nigeria – worked for privately owned media outlets.

July 31

News Central TV journalists were stopped and questioned by police officers while live reporting. (Screenshot: News Central TV/YouTube)

In western Lagos State, police officers harassed Bernard Akede, a reporter with News Central TV, and his colleagues, digital reporter Eric Thomas and camera operators Karina Adobaba-Harry and Samuel Chukwu, forcing them to pause reporting on the planned protests at the Lekki toll gate.

August 1

In Abuja, police officers arrested Jide Oyekunle, a photojournalist with the Daily Independent newspaper, and Kayode Jaiyeola, a photojournalist with Punch newspaper, as they covered protests.

In northern Borno State, at least 10 armed police officers forcefully entered the office of the regional broadcaster Radio Ndarason Internationale (RNI) and detained nine members of staff for five hours. Those held said that police accused them of publishing “fake news” in the arrest documentation and RNI’s project director David Smith told CPJ that the raid was in response to the outlet’s reporting via WhatsApp on the protests.

The detained staff were: head of office Lami Manjimwa Zakka; editor-in-chief Mamman Mahmood; producer Ummi Fatima Baba Kyari; reporters Hadiza Dawud, Zainab Alhaji Ali, and Amina Falmata Mohammed; head of programs Bunu Tijjani; deputy head of programs Ali Musa; and information and communications technology head Abubakar Gajibo.

In Abuja, police officers threw tear gas canisters at Mary Adeboye, a camera operator with News Central TV; Samuel Akpan, a senior reporter with TheCable news site; and Adefemola Akintade, a reporter with the Peoples Gazette news site. The canisters struck Adeboye and Akpan’s legs, causing swelling.

In northern Kano city, unidentified attackers wielding machetes and sticks smashed the windows of a Channels Television-branded bus carrying 11 journalists and a car carrying two journalists.

The windows of a Channels Television bus were smashed by unidentified assailants as it was transporting 11 journalists to cover protests in the Nigerian city of Kano on August 1. (Photo: Ibrahim Ayyuba Isah)

The journalists were: reporters Ibrahim Ayyuba Isah of TVC News broadcaster, whose hand was cut by glass; Ayo Adenaiye of Arise News broadcaster, whose laptop was damaged; Murtala Adewale of The Guardian newspaper, Bashir Bello of Vanguard newspaper, Abdulmumin Murtala of Leadership newspaper, Sadiq Iliyasu Dambatta of Channels Television, and Caleb Jacob and Victor Christopher of Cool FM, Wazobia FM, and Arewa Radio broadcasters; camera operators John Umar of Channels Television, Ibrahim Babarami of Arise News, Iliyasu Yusuf of AIT broadcaster, Usman Adam of TVC News; and multimedia journalist Salim Umar Ibrahim of Daily Trust newspaper.

In southern Delta State, at least 10 unidentified assailants opposed to the protest attacked four journalists: reporters Monday Osayande of The Guardian newspaper, Matthew Ochei of Punch newspaper, Lucy Ezeliora of The Pointer newspaper, and investigative journalist Prince Amour Udemude, whose phone was snatched. Osayande told CPJ by phone that they did not make a formal complaint to police about the attack because several police officers saw it happen, but added that the state commissioner for information, Efeanyi Micheal Osuoza, had promised to investigate. Osuoza told CPJ by phone that he was investigating the matter and would ensure the replacement of Udemude’s phone.

Police oversee protesters in Lagos on August 2, 2024. (Photo: AP/Sunday Alamba)

August 3

In Abuja’s national stadium, masked security forces fired bullets and tear gas in the direction of 18 journalists covering the protests, several of whom were wearing “Press” vests.

The journalists were: Premium Times reporters Abdulkareem Mojeed, Emmanuel Agbo, Abdulqudus Ogundapo, and Popoola Ademola; TheCable videographer Mbasirike Joshua and reporters Dyepkazah Shibayan, Bolanle Olabimtan, and Claire Mom; AIT reporter Oscar Ihimhekpen and camera operators Femi Kuku and Olugbenga Ogunlade; News Central TV camera operator Eno-Obong Koffi and reporter Emmanuel Bagudu; the nonprofit International Centre for Investigative Reporting’s video journalist Johnson Fatumbi and reporters Mustapha Usman and Nurudeen Akewushola; and Peoples Gazette reporters Akintade and Ebube Ibeh.

Kuku dislocated his leg and Ademola cut his knees and broke his phone while fleeing.

In Abuja’s Wuse neighborhood, unidentified men robbed Victorson Agbenson, political editor of the government-owned Radio Nigeria broadcaster, and his driver Chris Ikwu at knifepoint as they covered a protest.

August 6

In Lagos State, unidentified armed men hit four journalists from News Central TV and their vehicle with sticks. The journalists were News Central TV’s Akede, camera operator Adobaba-Harry, reporter Consin-Mosheshe Ogheneruru, and camera operator Albert David.

Abuja police spokesperson Josephine Adeh told CPJ by phone on August 16 that police did not carry out any attacks on the media and asked for evidence of such attacks before ending the call. She also accused CPJ of harassing her.

Police spokespersons Bright Edafe of Delta State and Haruna Abdullahi of Kano State told CPJ that their officers had not received any complaints about attacks on the press.

Lagos State police spokesperson Benjamin Hundeyin referred CPJ to the state’s police Complaint Response Unit, where the person who answered CPJ’s initial phone call declined to identify themselves and said they had no information about attacks on journalists. CPJ’s subsequent calls and messages went unanswered.

CPJ’s repeated calls and messages to Borno State Commissioner for Information Usman Tar requesting comment were unanswered.

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

Musician Georgia Harmer on learning to trust your instincts

Hannah Harlacher — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 07:00:00 +0000

What’s one thing you look forward to, both on tour and when you’re returning home from tour?

I’m working on finishing my second album right now, so it’s nice to be home and to get time to work on it. It’s been a slow process because it’s been amidst touring. That said, being a self-employed creative person, whose job is my art, when I’m at home, I can definitely struggle with self-direction, self-scheduling, and motivation—especially when I’m working on an album, which is just up to me. It only happens if I make it happen.

I find sometimes that toggling between states of being on the road, being very outward and outputting, and coming home and doing a totally different kind of output, can require some transition time.

When I’m on tour, I have a whole set of to-do lists every day that I have to get through. I have such a structure I make for myself as well as one that’s handed to me [by a tour manager], so it’s definitely a different kind of work. It feels almost less like I have to call the shots and more like I’m just doing a job. It’s really relaxing in a way, a bit of a vacation.

You’re thinking about the album while you’re on tour, at least for this latest tour?

I try to put it away because there’s nothing I can do when I’m on tour. Since I’m finishing the recording phase, I can’t really even listen to the songs. I try to put it out of sight out of mind. I know there are people who can finish an album in a few weeks, but I need a lot of time with the songs and then away from the songs, and then with the songs again, to build a timeless relationship with them. I need to make sure that I’m going to like them for a long time.

What is an ideal no plans day for you to recharge?

I was reading some of the other Creative Independent interviews, the one with Anna Fusco who I’m such a huge fan of. She talks a lot about having time where there’s no output and how art should be slow. I find that so validating, especially right now, because it has taken me so long to finish this album, and I feel such a pressure that I put on myself, too, as soon as I get home from tour, to be productive, whatever that means. If I’m recording, then I’m not writing, so I have to make sure I have time to write as well. But also just remembering that all of that is output.

A recharge day for me probably means just hanging out with some friends. I’m a very social person, so I make a lot of plans and sometimes that can also be draining, but probably just spending time in nature with my friends.

What was it like growing up with and being surrounded by musicians?

I feel lucky because I know a lot of people who want to do music for their life career don’t have an example. For me, having so many examples, and being born into a musical community, the path was already something I could see. It wasn’t something I had to carve out for myself or someone had to point out as an option.

Still, I think, societally we’re not necessarily all encouraged to be artists because people don’t make it seem like a viable option. But I had a lot helping me to see it as a viable option when I did decide that’s what I wanted to do. Having a creative family just means it’s something they support, and also know what to warn you about. They’re familiar with the challenges.

Do you feel you had much choice in the journey that you’ve taken? Was there anything else that was pulling you, or music was always what you wanted to do?

It was what I always wanted to do, but I had a roundabout way of getting to it. I almost ignored the instinct for a while because it felt too obvious, and too difficult honestly. I was definitely warned about the challenges and I feel like we’re all kind of told that it doesn’t usually work.

I went to university for a semester because I wanted to prove that I was smart enough to get in. I hated it so much. I just wanted to be writing songs. I dropped out after one semester. Then I got a job as a backup singer for a year… I think my background in singing and music just led me in these other directions, and showed me what other options there were. And I honestly hated that, too.

I think that at that point, after trying things that felt so wrong, it was like nothing was pulling me more than songwriting and making my own music.

Can you remember if there was a defining moment where you were like, okay, I’m going to do this seriously?

Well, it was my community. I was playing shows around Toronto, around my city, just little songwriting circles or organizing shows with my friends and doing things casually. I met a good friend of mine through this who ended up engineering and co-producing my first record. He was in the music community and was like, “Do you want to make an album? You want to record some songs?” And I thought, “Oh yeah, right.” I honestly don’t think I’d even considered it at that level.

Then, I’d started serendipitously playing music with two other friends and pulled together a small band, so that all aligned at the same time. It took other people’s seeing like, “What’s she doing? Just playing these songs, all the same songs at every show. Why don’t we try to make something out of this?”

Is there something you wish you knew when you were first starting to make art?

Something that I’m still working on, that was handy when I first heard it and is handy now, is just to trust myself. Trust and intuition and desire are all things I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. I went to a few art schools growing up, and I feel like it was an interesting way to learn art. I’m really glad I did. But also combining art with academia starts you off in this productive, explaining-your-art phase a little bit early. I feel like something that I had as a kid, and something that I try to foster now, is trusting my instincts and not always having a reason for everything I make or want to make.

I think just listening to the world that wants to be built. I hear a lot of people talk about channeling songs or having songs sent to you from the ether and not being responsible for them, and I definitely feel that in a way. I feel like that’s part of trusting what comes. You don’t always know why you want your album to sound a certain way or why you want to have someone playing on it, but trusting those gut instincts has gotten me everywhere I’ve gone since starting music.

Are there specific things you need in place to record the best way that’s true to you, or what is your process for recording?

I am used to recording with other people around, so I have a lot of brains to bounce things off of… I can definitely sometimes lean on that a little too hard and can be like, “Do we want that there?” “What do you think?” “What do you think?” Ultimately I’m producing the record and ultimately I know I’m going to make the final call, so I’m trying now with these stages of editing and making decisions to just make them and to trust what I hear. But yeah, I need a good balance of working with other people and working alone to not lose sight of my own judgment, but also to have other people there for different opinions.

Is there always a magical moment where you know that the project is finished or how do you typically know when you’re done with an album?

I don’t know. A good friend of mine is sending her album to mastering now and she’s been reaching out to me being like, “Let me know if you need to talk about this because this is the really hard part.” I’ve been very grateful for my community right now, but still, I don’t know. I do think it will get to the point where I just start enjoying listening to the sessions and listening to the songs, and I’m not thinking about what it needs or what it doesn’t. I do think I’m close with a lot of them.

Are there methods that you use to get into a creative flow when you’re writing or where do you draw inspiration from typically?

I’ve been wondering that myself because it does feel totally random. It feels like if I stumble across a rare moment alone, sometimes something will strike me and I’ll be feeling something and it will come out and I’ll be able to write a song in half an hour. Then sometimes I’ll sit with the guitar part for weeks and weeks and not have any lyrics that feel inspiring, and I feel like I’m never going to write a good song again. But every time I write a song, I feel like it’s the last good song I’ll ever write. I would love to have more of a math. I would love to have more of a way to get into the zone of writing. I also do feel like it’s similar for most people, and it’s always sort of like getting struck by lightning.

Can you talk a bit about transitioning from being more of an independent artist to working with a label? What’s that been like for you?

Well, it’s honestly been great because it means that I now have sort of the beginnings of a small career, and I definitely wouldn’t have that without working with a label. So as much as I know there are ups and downs to everything in the music industry, I do think I got lucky in having a group of people that believe in my music and want to put in time and energy to get it out there. Because again, I don’t have really the organizational skills to get that kind of thing together. It took my friends telling me to make an album, and just people who were like, “Let’s do this. Let’s take this really seriously, because you’re good enough to be taken seriously.” I don’t think I knew that or would’ve been able to believe in myself.

What is one surprising thing that you’ve realized along your creative path?

When this all started happening, when I released my first record and got that all together, I realized that it takes a village for sure, but at the same time it’s up to me. If I don’t execute ideas that I have, they won’t happen. It’s not necessarily hard work, but it’s a lot of work.

I know that artists work hard, I’m not saying that being an artist isn’t hard work. But for me, it’s so natural to have this task of make a music video, build a visual world for your album, assemble a group of friends to make a record with. Those are things I’ve been wanting to do and I’ve been doing since I was eight years old. This is fun and games for me, but it’s the actual making it happen and actual organizing, reaching out to that director, sending your music to this person, reaching out to them if you want to go on tour with them… That stuff doesn’t just happen to you, you have to make it happen.

What has your art, your music, and your career taught you about yourself?

It’s put me more in touch with myself in a lot of ways. Something I always said before I started doing this, taking this seriously, was that I just want to be able to keep doing it. People were always sort of being like, “What do you want? What do you see for yourself?” And I was like, “I just want to keep doing it. I love making music so much. It’s like the center of my soul. I couldn’t not do it.”

If I can do it and make a living and have time to do it and do it with my friends and my community, then that means I can do it for the rest of my life, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted. And, I think that is something that has just sort of remained very true.

What is a small piece of advice you’d give maybe an emerging artist who’s kind of unsure about persevering because they can’t really get the momentum, or they’re wanting to change paths? What would you say to them to keep them going?

If they’re struggling with getting going, I would just say, again, listen to yourself and make things that bring you joy and make you excited and feel good to you. And don’t even think about sharing them. I worked in restaurants for years and I still will probably go back to working in a restaurant this summer. It’s super useful to not have to think about how many streams something will get, or if a label wants to sign you before you even make the record. Do it for your inner child or for the joy of it or however you want to put that, and make something that feels very true and that you can really get behind because it makes you excited, it makes you happy, not because you think it’s objectively good, and make something that’s original. Try not to emulate anyone else’s path or anyone else’s sound because you think it will give you a better shot because it probably will give you a worse shot. And then, if you truly think that it’s good, it’s because it makes you feel good.

Georgia Harmer recommends:

Jess Williamson’s album Time Ain’t Accidental: I’ve never heard anything like this. Her voice is so unique, this production is so unique. I listened to it, I honestly didn’t really know what to make of it, and then I became completely addicted. I’ve been listening to it for months on repeat. I just love it. It’s very free and I love the lyrics and the writing so much, too.

Daughter by Claudia Dey: It had such an insane grasp on me as soon as I opened it and I didn’t put it down. And Claudia is actually a close family friend of mine and I am just such a huge fan of her and her work and just the way she lives. So everything she makes I am inspired by.

Having a pump organ in your home: My best friend’s grandparents’ farm had a pump organ in it and I would go there once a year with her and I would just spend the whole time playing the pump organ. It’s such a visceral vocal wind sound. And my aunt and uncle were getting rid of a miniature one recently, I took it and it’s now sitting directly beside me in my bedroom.

XO Skeleton by La Force: I think La Force is one of the most original, exciting songwriters happening right now.

Desire, I Want To Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek: I remember listening to an interview with Caroline and she was talking about how this album is “YOLO” and how she looked to her gut instincts and didn’t explain anything… I really tried to do that when making my album, in a totally different style, but I found it really inspiring.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Hannah Harlacher.

Utah Supreme Court Rules That Alleged Sexual Assault by a Doctor Is Not “Health Care”

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 18:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune

This article was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune, which was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2023. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Sexual assault is not health care, and it isn’t covered by Utah’s medical malpractice law, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The decision revives a lawsuit filed by 94 women who allege their OB-GYN sexually abused them during exams or while he delivered their babies.

In 2022, the group of women sued Dr. David Broadbent and two hospitals where he had worked, wanting to seek civil damages. But a judge dismissed their case because he decided they had filed it incorrectly as a civil sexual assault claim rather than a medical malpractice case. The women had all been seeking health care, Judge Robert Lunnen wrote, and Broadbent was providing that when the alleged assaults happened.

The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica covered the decision, speaking with women about the lower court ruling that made it harder for them to sue the doctor for his alleged actions. After that story ran, the state Legislature voted to reform medical malpractice law to exclude sexual assault. But the new law didn’t apply retroactively; the women still had no way to sue.

So they took their case to the Utah Supreme Court, where their attorneys argued that the lower court judge had made an error in his decision. The high court agreed. Broadbent’s alleged conduct, it found, was not a part of the women’s health care — and therefore, not covered by Utah’s medical malpractice laws.

“Here, the [women] do not allege they were injured by any health care that Broadbent may have provided them,” Justice Paige Petersen wrote in the unanimous ruling. “Rather, they allege that he abused his position as their doctor to sexually assault them under the pretense of providing health care.”

“The point of their claims is that his actions were not really health care at all,” Petersen added.

Stephanie Mateer was the first woman who spoke out publicly about Broadbent, detailing her experience on the “Mormon Stories” podcast in 2021. In the episode, she described what she said was the painful way the doctor examined her, how it left her feeling traumatized and how she discovered online reviews that echoed her experience.

She said on Thursday that she cried “tears of relief” when she read the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling, and that she hopes it gives other alleged victims the courage to speak up and to seek their own justice.

Adam Sorenson, an attorney for the women who sued, noted on Thursday that it’s been almost two years since Lunnen threw out their case — which he said was a “sad and disappointing day.”

“But the Utah Supreme Court’s decision today affirms everything these women have said from the beginning, and tells every person in Utah that sexual abuse by a health care provider never has been, and never will be, ‘health care,’” he said.

“It is difficult to describe how good it is to hear that from our highest court,” he continued, “but any joy I feel is nothing compared to the women who suffered sexual abuse, [who] were told it was just health care, have fought for three years, and can now say that the law in Utah is on their side on this important issue.”

For the women who sued, having their case characterized as malpractice reduced the time they had to sue to two years and limited the amount of money they could receive for pain and suffering.

With the Utah Supreme Court’s decision, the case now returns to Lunnen’s courtroom. Their suit alleges that Broadbent inappropriately touched their breasts, vaginas and rectums, without warning or explanation, and hurt them. Some said he used his bare hand — instead of using a speculum or wearing gloves — during exams. One alleged that he had an erection while he was touching her.

An attorney for Broadbent has denied these women’s allegations, saying they are “without merit.” The OB-GYN agreed last year to stop practicing medicine while police and prosecutors investigate.

He was charged in June in 4th District Court with one count of forcible sexual abuse, and prosecutors say their investigation is continuing. Broadbent is expected to make his first court appearance Monday.

Broadbent’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Neither Utah Valley Hospital nor Mountainstar Health, which owns Timpanogos Hospital, reacted to the ruling in statements released Thursday. Both hospitals are named as defendants in the lawsuit, and both emphasized that Broadbent had privileges to practice at their facilities but was not an employee.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

The President Ordered a Board to Probe a Massive Russian Cyberattack. It Never Did.

by Craig Silverman — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

by Craig Silverman

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After Russian intelligence launched one of the most devastating cyber espionage attacks in history against U.S. government agencies, the Biden administration set up a new board and tasked it to figure out what happened — and tell the public.

State hackers had infiltrated SolarWinds, an American software company that serves the U.S. government and thousands of American companies. The intruders used malicious code and a flaw in a Microsoft product to steal intelligence from the National Nuclear Security Administration, National Institutes of Health and the Treasury Department in what Microsoft President Brad Smith called “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.”

The president issued an executive order establishing the Cyber Safety Review Board in May 2021 and ordered it to start work by reviewing the SolarWinds attack.

But for reasons that experts say remain unclear, that never happened.

Nor did the board probe SolarWinds for its second report.

For its third, the board investigated a separate 2023 attack, in which Chinese state hackers exploited an array of Microsoft security shortcomings to access the email inboxes of top federal officials.

A full, public accounting of what happened in the Solar Winds case would have been devastating to Microsoft. ProPublica recently revealed that Microsoft had long known about — but refused to address — a flaw used in the hack. The tech company’s failure to act reflected a corporate culture that prioritized profit over security and left the U.S. government vulnerable, a whistleblower said.

The board was created to help address the serious threat posed to the U.S. economy and national security by sophisticated hackers who consistently penetrate government and corporate systems, making off with reams of sensitive intelligence, corporate secrets or personal data.

For decades, the cybersecurity community has called for a cyber equivalent of the National Transportation Safety Board, the independent agency required by law to investigate and issue public reports on the causes and lessons learned from every major aviation accident, among other incidents. The NTSB is funded by Congress and staffed by experts who work outside of the industry and other government agencies. Its public hearings and reports spur industry change and action by regulators like the Federal Aviation Administration.

So far, the Cyber Safety Review Board has charted a different path.

The board is not independent — it’s housed in the Department of Homeland Security. Rob Silvers, the board chair, is a Homeland Security undersecretary. Its vice chair is a top security executive at Google. The board does not have full-time staff, subpoena power or dedicated funding.

Silvers told ProPublica that DHS decided the board didn’t need to do its own review of SolarWinds as directed by the White House because the attack had already been “closely studied” by the public and private sectors.

“We want to focus the board on reviews where there is a lot of insight left to be gleaned, a lot of lessons learned that can be drawn out through investigation,” he said.

As a result, there has been no public examination by the government of the unaddressed security issue at Microsoft that was exploited by the Russian hackers. None of the SolarWinds reports identified or interviewed the whistleblower who exposed problems inside Microsoft.

By declining to review SolarWinds, the board failed to discover the central role that Microsoft’s weak security culture played in the attack and to spur changes that could have mitigated or prevented the 2023 Chinese hack, cybersecurity experts and elected officials told ProPublica.

“It’s possible the most recent hack could have been prevented by real oversight,” Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democratic member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement. Wyden has called for the board to review SolarWinds and for the government to improve its cybersecurity defenses.

In a statement, a spokesperson for DHS rejected the idea that a SolarWinds review could have exposed Microsoft’s failings in time to stop or mitigate the Chinese state-based attack last summer. “The two incidents were quite different in that regard, and we do not believe a review of SolarWinds would have necessarily uncovered the gaps identified in the Board’s latest report,” they said.

The board’s other members declined to comment, referred inquiries to DHS or did not respond to ProPublica.

In past statements, Microsoft did not dispute the whistleblower’s account but emphasized its commitment to security. “Protecting customers is always our highest priority,” a spokesperson previously told ProPublica. “Our security response team takes all security issues seriously and gives every case due diligence with a thorough manual assessment, as well as cross-confirming with engineering and security partners.”

The board’s failure to probe SolarWinds also underscores a question critics including Wyden have raised about the board since its inception: whether a board with federal officials making up its majority can hold government agencies responsible for their role in failing to prevent cyberattacks.

“I remain deeply concerned that a key reason why the Board never looked at SolarWinds — as the President directed it to do so — was because it would have required the board to examine and document serious negligence by the U.S. government,” Wyden said. Among his concerns is a government cyberdefense system that failed to detect the SolarWinds attack.

Silvers said while the board did not investigate SolarWinds, it has been given a pass by the independent Government Accountability Office, which said in an April study examining the implementation of the executive order that the board had fulfilled its mandate to conduct the review.

The GAO’s determination puzzled cybersecurity experts. “Rob Silvers has been declaring by fiat for a long time that the CSRB did its job regarding SolarWinds, but simply declaring something to be so doesn’t make it true,” said Tarah Wheeler, the CEO of Red Queen Dynamics, a cybersecurity firm, who co-authored a Harvard Kennedy School report outlining how a “cyber NTSB” should operate.

Silvers said the board’s first and second reports, while not probing SolarWinds, resulted in important government changes, such as new Federal Communications Commission rules related to cellphones.

“The tangible impacts of the board’s work to date speak for itself and in bearing out the wisdom of the choices of what the board has reviewed,” he said.

“We Have Fully Complied With the Executive Order”

The SolarWinds attack was a wakeup call for the federal government and the private sector. The White House’s executive order was designed to allow officials to move quickly to implement new cybersecurity practices.

But the executive order limited what the new cybersecurity board could do: The president cannot allocate funding from Congress or grant subpoena power.

When the board launched in early 2022, it bore little resemblance to the cyber board that Wheeler and her co-authors outlined in their Harvard report.

“Not a single one of our recommendations was adopted,” she said.

Housed in DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the board consists of 15 unpaid volunteers — eight from government agencies and seven from the private sector. Silvers said this ensures the board has cutting-edge knowledge and the ability to follow through on its recommendations.

Although the board’s first mandate was to investigate SolarWinds, Silvers said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tasked the board instead to review a recently discovered vulnerability in Log4j, software used by millions of computers, which could allow attackers to breach systems worldwide, including some used by the U.S. government.

Silvers said it “was a perfect use case” for the board’s first review and that the White House agreed.

The board’s Log4j report, published in July 2022, found there had been no significant attacks on critical infrastructure systems due to this vulnerability. It offered 19 recommendations for companies, government bodies and open-source software developers.

Silvers continued to face questions about the decision not to probe SolarWinds but maintained that Log4j had been the more pressing topic for review.

“We have fully complied with the executive order,” Silvers told media on a call that month.

At first, a government watchdog agency disagreed.

When the GAO conducted its review of the executive order’s implementation, it found that the board had failed to fulfill its mandate. In its draft report, it recommended that Homeland Security direct the board to review SolarWinds as the president had instructed.

That didn’t sit well with DHS, which was given a chance to review and comment on the draft as part of the GAO’s standard process. DHS argued in a letter that the “intent” of a board review of SolarWinds had been met by references to the hack in the board’s Log4j report and previous research on SolarWinds by the DHS agency that administers the board.

Homeland Security also noted that the executive order had set a 90-day deadline for the board to complete the SolarWinds review, which it said was “unachievable.” Directing the board to do such a review now, it argued, would be “duplicative of prior work and an imprudent use of resources.”

“We request that GAO consider this recommendation resolved and closed, as implemented,” the letter said.

GAO agreed. Its final study said the mandate for a board review of SolarWinds had been “fully implemented.” The GAO accepted two government reports in place of one from the board: the Log4j review and a 2021 review of SolarWinds by the National Security Council, which is not public.

An aide to Wyden said the senator had not seen the NSC review. Neither has the GAO. Instead, the GAO told ProPublica that it “interviewed key contributors” to the security council’s review. The office also summarized three recommendations that the NSC deemed acceptable for public release, including a call for better information sharing among federal agencies. A spokesperson from the security council declined to comment.

The GAO said it accepted the board’s Log4j review because it included “information from the SolarWinds incident.” But aside from footnotes, the report mentions SolarWinds only once.

A board report would have been more beneficial to the cybersecurity community because it would have offered a detailed, public accounting of a major attack, said Steven Bellovin, a professor of computer science at Columbia University who has written articles and given presentations about the need for an independent cybersecurity board. “A secret report does not accomplish that,” he said.

Trey Herr, an assistant professor of foreign policy and global security at American University who co-authored reports on the CSRB and SolarWinds, also criticized the GAO’s decision. “I don’t know why GAO would suggest a private NSC review and a different CSRB work product are equivalent, given their vastly different authorities, scope, operation and expectations of transparency,” he said.

Asked to explain why it credited Homeland Security for completing a review that never occurred, Marisol Cruz-Cain, a director with GAO’s information technology and cybersecurity team, said in a statement that the office “stands by the statements and assessments.”

“GAO believes the government had taken sufficient steps to review the SolarWinds incident,” she said, including through collaboration with multiple federal agencies and the private sector and “by disseminating relevant guidance about SolarWinds.”

GAO also conducted its own study of SolarWinds, which was published in 2022. Like the other government reviews, it did not probe Microsoft’s role in the attack. A spokesperson said the GAO was focused on the impact the hack had on the federal government, so “we did not engage with Microsoft.”

“This Intrusion Should Never Have Happened”

After the 2023 Chinese-led hack used Microsoft vulnerabilities to infiltrate U.S. systems, the board scrutinized the tech giant’s role in the attack.

The report was scathing. “The Board concludes that this intrusion should never have happened,” the report found, citing a “cascade of security failures at Microsoft.” The board called for an overhaul of Microsoft’s “inadequate” security culture and listed seven areas where the company failed to apply proper security practices or to detect or address flaws or risks.

Microsoft announced a series of changes and said it would implement all of the board's recommendations.

The report triggered a House Homeland Security Committee hearing with Microsoft president Smith last month. Smith said the company was making security its top priority.

He also raised concerns about the board’s conflicts of interest. While Wyden and other experts have criticized the role of federal officials, Smith complained about the board’s private-sector members, including executives from Google and other Microsoft competitors. “I think it’s a mistake to put on the board the competitors of a company that is the subject of a review,” he said. Smith warned that other companies might not be as cooperative with the board as he said Microsoft had been.

Three of the board’s private-sector members — including board Vice Chair Heather Adkins, a Google executive — recused themselves from the Microsoft report, as did two members from the Office of the National Cyber Director and one from the FBI, who were replaced by one colleague from each agency.

A DHS spokesperson declined to say why the public-sector members recused themselves but said board members are required to step aside if a review includes “examinations of their employers’ products or those of competitors” or if a board member has “financial interests relating to matters under consideration.”

Silvers said every board member, including public-sector members, goes through a “rigorous” review of conflicts of interest. He said the current model has proven effective and is less costly than standing up an independent agency.

“Creating an entirely new agency with a professional workforce would be exceedingly expensive, would take many years to do and could cannibalize the scarce cyber talent that we have in the U.S. government as it is,” he said. “In an era of scarce budgets, belt tightening, competition for talent, it’s really a terrific model.”

Still, DHS acknowledges that the board needs more resources and investigative muscle. Last year, the department released proposed legislation to make the board permanent, with dedicated funding, limited subpoena power and a full-time staff.

Silvers said the bill has the support of the Biden administration, but it has not been introduced and does not have a sponsor.

Wheeler, the cybersecurity executive, said she recognizes how challenging any reforms would be but that she and others will keep advocating for the board to become an independent government agency.

“I am frankly surprised that they got [the board] done at all,” she said. “Now I want them to make it better.”

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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Craig Silverman.

Utah OB-GYN David Broadbent Charged With Forcible Sexual Abuse

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune

This article was produced by The Salt Lake Tribune, which was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2022 and 2023. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Utah OB-GYN David Broadbent was charged Thursday with forcible sexual abuse, as prosecutors allege he sexually touched a patient during a 2020 exam.

Broadbent has been accused in civil lawsuits of inappropriately touching more than 100 patients during exams — but this is the first time Utah County prosecutors have filed a criminal charge against him. He faces a second-degree felony, which carries a potential penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

Over the past year, The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica have reported multiple stories about the difficulties women faced as they raised complaints of sexual misconduct against Broadbent, including obstacles in the courts and in reporting to police.

In charging records, prosecutors say one of Broadbent’s patients came to see him in 2020 regarding a bump in her vaginal area. Broadbent allegedly instructed the patient to undress from the waist down — but when he returned to the exam room after she changed, prosecutors say he lifted up her shirt and bra and touched her breasts. He then grabbed her leg “in what felt like a sexual manner,” prosecutors say, and began a vaginal examination.

An attorney representing Broadbent in his civil litigation did not respond to a request for comment. No attorney is yet listed in his criminal case.

Deputy Utah County Attorney Tim Taylor, who is a spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office, said Thursday that police and prosecutors are continuing to investigate and are still considering whether to file additional charges against the OB-GYN.

At least 49 women have reported to the Provo police that Broadbent sexually abused them during exams, and prosecutors have been weighing whether to file charges for 18 months. This month, the county attorney’s office agreed to pay for a nurse practitioner who specializes in sexual assault exams to review the evidence that prosecutors have and to do research and advise them on what the standard of care is for an OB-GYN appointment.

Many of the women who made reports to the police allege Broadbent inappropriately touched their breasts, vaginas and rectums during exams — often without warning or explanation and in ways that hurt them and made them feel violated. Other former patients, along with many of the women who went to the police, have also sued Broadbent or the hospitals where he worked, with a total of nearly 120 women making sexual assault allegations in two civil lawsuits.

In September 2022, a judge dismissed one of the civil cases, which was filed by 94 women, when he ruled that it fell under medical malpractice law instead of a civil sexual assault claim. That meant it had faced — and missed — tighter filing deadlines. The women have appealed the ruling to the Utah Supreme Court, and they have been waiting for seven months for its decision.

In a different civil suit, 20 other women sued two hospitals where Broadbent worked and had privileges at, alleging they knew of alleged misconduct and failed to act. That case is still pending; the hospitals have argued in court records that Broadbent’s alleged actions against these women didn’t take place on their premises and therefore they are not liable.

Broadbent has agreed to stop practicing medicine while this criminal investigation is ongoing. In response to the civil case filed by the group of 94 women, Broadbent’s attorneys have said sexual assault allegations against him are “without merit.”

The woman whose report led to the criminal charge saw Broadbent in July 2020. A year and a half later, in December 2021, another former patient of Broadbent’s spoke out publicly on the podcast “Mormon Stories,” describing the painful way she said he had examined her years before and how it left her feeling traumatized.

After the podcast aired, women started coming forward publicly in civil lawsuits accusing Broadbent of inappropriate touching. Former patients also started making reports with the police, though it’s not clear from court records when the woman whose report led to the criminal charge went to law enforcement.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Mille Lacs Band will see the return of 18 acres of state trust land

Anita Hofschneider — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 08:30:00 +0000

After decades of advocacy, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe will see 18 acres of land returned to them by the state of Minnesota. The move comes after lawmakers passed legislation last month to formally return state trust lands inside the boundaries of the Mille Lacs Band’s reservation.

Minnesota’s returning of Indigenous land is part of a much broader global landback movement that has been gaining momentum in part due to studies that show Indigenous guardianship leads to more effective ecological outcomes. As conserving biodiversity grows more critical amid rising global temperatures, Indigenous self-determination and traditions of relating to land and waters are increasingly recognized as vital climate solutions.

“This is a great opportunity for us as the Mille Lacs Band to preserve that land in a way that is respectful of nature,” said Kelly Applegate, commissioner of natural resources at the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He said the land transfer is expected to be complete over the next month. “Whatever we do, it’ll be in a lens of environmental protection.”

The Mille Lacs’ lands in question are known as state trust lands. These trust lands, established at statehood, are grants of land from the federal government primarily created to support education and are found across the western United States. On the Mille Lacs reservation, those 18 acres represent only a fraction of the 2.5 million acres of state trust lands across Minnesota, including nearly 344,000 acres inside the borders of eight reservations. Trust lands in Minnesota typically generate revenue for education through mining, timber, and land sales, and for the 2023-24 school year, trust lands generated almost $49 million for public and charter schools. The trust lands on Mille Lacs, however, have only generated about $45 annually.

Minnesota is one of 15 states that owns land within federal Indian reservations that generate revenue for non-Indigenous institutions.

When Therapists Lose Their Licenses, Some Turn to the Unregulated Life Coaching Industry Instead

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune

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

A frustrated woman recently called the Utah official in charge of professional licensing, upset that his office couldn’t take action against a life coach she had seen. Mark Steinagel recalls the woman telling him: “I really think that we should be regulating life coaching. Because this person did a lot of damage to me.”

Reports about life coaches — who sell the promise of helping people achieve their personal or professional goals — come into Utah’s Division of Professional Licensing about once a month. But much of the time, Steinagel or his staff have to explain that there’s nothing they can do.

If the woman had been complaining about any of the therapist professions overseen by DOPL, Steinagel’s office might have been able to investigate and potentially order discipline, including fines.

But life coaches aren’t therapists and are mostly unregulated across the United States. They aren’t required to be trained in ethical boundaries the way therapists are, and there’s no universally accepted certification for those who work in the industry.

Simply put, anyone can call themselves a life coach — an industry that is rapidly growing. The International Coaching Federation has estimated that, in 2022, active life coaches generated more than $4.5 billion in revenue worldwide.

But with that growth have come complaints by clients about mistreatment by their life coaches and growing calls for some type of oversight.

In California, a woman sued her life coach in 2020, claiming the coach convinced her to sign over her home to the coach's nonprofit organization. She settled her lawsuit and got the title to her home back. A Connecticut life coach was given probation after he was charged last year with stealing money from a client with a traumatic brain injury. And this year, a Nevada life coach was sentenced to a year in jail after he admitted to taking money from clients that he was supposed to use for investments on their behalf — but that he spent at casinos instead.

In Utah, there’s a heightened sense of urgency after a therapist-turned-life-coach named Jodi Hildebrandt was sentenced to prison for abusing two of her business partner’s children.

One former client, who was not a part of Hildebrandt’s criminal case, also flagged concerns about how she conducted life coaching with him. Ethan Prete told The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica that Hildebrandt had ordered him to cut off contact with friends and family, and at one point asked him to live in a tent in order to “humble” himself. He also said Hildebrandt told him she didn’t want to be limited by the regulations therapists have to follow in Utah.

“She was like, ‘Without all these rules and regulations, now I have free rein to actually change peoples’ lives because the system is corrupt,’” Prete said.

Right now, the only Utah rules that apply kick in when life coaches diagnose clients or develop plans to manage mental health conditions. When that happens, Utah licensers can cite them with what’s known as unauthorized practice. But a records analysis by The Tribune and ProPublica shows citations and fines are seldom used and aren’t always effective — some life coaches have been cited for this multiple times.

Prosecutors can also file criminal charges, but a review of court records shows that no such cases have been brought against a life coach in at least a decade.

For more than a year, The Tribune and ProPublica have investigated obstacles that Utahns face when seeking justice against medical providers who they say hurt them — including what happens when they go to state licensers to file complaints. An August investigation by the news organizations showed how patients of a Utah County therapist had reported alleged inappropriate touching to both state licensers and local leaders within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; neither group reported the therapist to law enforcement. Both said they take allegations of sexual assault seriously and indicated that they had addressed the complaints through their own processes. The Tribune and ProPublica’s reporting led to a police investigation, and that therapist was charged last summer with nearly a dozen felonies. He’s expected to enter a plea in August.

In light of the growth of the life coaching industry, Steinagel said he feels there’s a legitimate question that he plans to work with state legislators to address: “Has life coaching become one of those fields where the potential to harm people who are vulnerable is great enough,” he asks, “that the government should step in and regulate it? I think both the Legislature and we — from what we have seen, especially in the last few years — we think the answer is probably yes.”

Mark Steinagel, who heads Utah’s licensing division, thinks it may be time to regulate life coaches. (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune) Promises to “Rewire Your Brain,” “Untangle” Your Chaos

The scope of what life coaches can offer is undefined and broad: They can promise to help someone lose weight, run their business, change their parenting style, have better sex or improve other aspects of their lives.

Onstage at a recent natural health and wellness conference in Utah, near tables advertising essential oils, drink supplements and chiropractic adjustments, one life coach told assembled audiences she could help women reach their weight loss goals; her yearlong course cost $800.

Next on the program were a couple who, based on their experiences of both twice being divorced, said they could help people “untangle” their emotional “chaos”; another life coach advertised that he could “rewire your brain” to rid yourself of anxiety.

When licensers hear complaints about life coaches, they are most often from the customers themselves, or from a concerned family member or therapist whose patient disclosed past care from a life coach that seemed questionable, said Steinagel, DOPL’s director.

Investigators in his office usually ask dissatisfied clients the same questions: Did they diagnose you? Did they create a treatment plan? Did they treat you for anxiety, depression or another mental health disorder? If the person lodging the complaint answers “no” to these questions, Steinagel said, DOPL can’t do anything.

The public also can’t see any of the specific grievances that have been made against Utah life coaches because of this catch-22: DOPL doesn’t release complaints unless they result in disciplinary action — and DOPL can’t discipline life coaches.

A review of records shows that DOPL has cited 25 people for unauthorized practice in the mental health field in the last decade, a number that included four life coaches and at least one online “influencer” offering “therapy” services.

It appears citations have been successful a handful of times — including with the online influencer, who stopped offering those services on her Patreon account.

But at least two men have been cited for unauthorized practice multiple times and still continue working as life coaches.

One was cited twice by licensers — in 2012, and then again a year later — and now runs a program that trains life coaches. He had previously worked as a therapist, according to public records, but his license had expired. In his second citation, licensers fined him $1,000 after they said he advertised himself as a “psychotherapist” in a marketing brochure for a seven-day retreat.

Another man, Denim Slade, was cited and fined $250 just three months after he surrendered his therapy license after DOPL received two reports that he engaged in inappropriate conduct with female clients. DOPL cited him, according to public records, for advertising that he did “Lifespan Integration Therapy” and could treat trauma in his life coaching business. A year later, he was cited again for unauthorized practice after DOPL received reports that he continued to advertise that he treated mental health issues like depression, anxiety, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. The life coach told a DOPL investigator he didn’t realize those posts were still active after he gave up his license and agreed to remove them.

Slade told The Tribune and ProPublica that he has never conducted therapy or mental health treatment as a life coach. He admitted that, in his therapy practice, he had allowed “some mild boundaries to be crossed” with one client. But he also said the DOPL records did not contain “the full picture” and that he felt pressured to admit to doing something wrong after licensers received a second report years later; he denied that allegation, but rather than fighting it, he decided to relinquish his license and turned to life coaching.

“I was excited at the prospect of working with an appropriate coaching population and transitioning to helping people who were already doing fairly well in their lives and wanting, but not necessarily knowing, how to excel,” Slade said. And he said while he feels there can be “some overlap” between life coaching and therapy, he believes “these are two definably different populations with different needs. I do not think life coaches should be conducting therapy.”

He also said he believes there are already safeguards in place for people doing mental health work that requires a license, and it’s already against the law to practice therapy without a license.

“I think people ought to be able to hire someone to help them with things in their lives that they want extra help with,” he said. "Do you regulate someone wanting to get help organizing their house, teaching art to kids, teaching piano, coaching Little League sports? I don’t know where that line should be.”

Therapist organizations in Utah have been a driving force in advocating for some measure of state oversight of life coaches. “Regulation really keeps them in their lane, us in our lane, and just increases consumer safety all around,” said Sarah Stroup, a licensed therapist who is on the legislative committee for the Utah Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Jessica Black, a licensed therapist who works with the Legislature in her role with the Utah Mental Health Counselors Association, said she sees particular vulnerabilities when life coaches try to help someone struggling with their mental health.

“There’s a difference between a business coach coaching you on how to build a business,” Black said. “But when you’re dealing with somebody’s mental health, or when you’re dealing with their life — that’s how people get taken advantage of.”

When Therapists Become Life Coaches

There have been Utah therapists who have lost their licenses for misconduct who, despite being deemed unsafe to work with patients, have still been able to continue their careers working in the mental health field — often in the unregulated realm of life coaching.

At least 43 Utah mental health professionals have surrendered their licenses or had them revoked, denied or expired on suspension since 2010, according to a review of publicly available DOPL disciplinary records. Of those, it appears that a third have continued working in mental health, according to searches of LinkedIn profiles and business websites — as mental health “associates,” motivational speakers and life coaches.

Some of those who have continued to work with clients on their mental health or well-being had lost their therapy licenses for serious reasons, DOPL records show. Several struggled with drug or alcohol use. Others lost their licenses after being accused of having inappropriate contact with patients, including Slade, who admitted in 2013 he had an inappropriate relationship with a married client. He gave up his license in 2019 after another patient reported to DOPL that he had engaged in “inappropriate physical and verbal conduct” with her; he denied this accusation in licensing records. A second therapist was charged with sexual exploitation by a medical care professional in Idaho, and a third touched a teenage girl’s leg and torso during a therapy session in an effort to “sexually stimulate” her as part of a therapeutic technique. (This man subsequently got his license back and was again accused of unprofessional conduct; he has now agreed to stop practicing entirely — including as a life coach — while DOPL and the police investigate.)

Steinagel said it’s “very frustrating” when therapists who lose their licenses continue doing mental health work as life coaches. He also said that while licensers can’t prohibit them from working in the unregulated field of life coaching, investigators often keep a close eye on such coaches to ensure they don’t cross into therapy.

Therapist-turned-life-coach Jodi Hildebrandt appears in court earlier this year for a sentencing hearing after she was convicted of abusing two children. (Sheldon Demke/Pool/St. George News)

In Hildebrandt’s case, it appears she deliberately decided to leave the regulated field of therapy. Over a decade ago, in 2012, promotional materials for her self-help company leaned into her credentials as a licensed therapist and experience as an addiction counselor.

But after more than a decade of running ConneXions Classroom, Hildebrandt had changed her website: References to her credentials as a therapist were gone, and she instead began calling herself a life coach. (At the time, she was still licensed as a clinical mental health worker and could have used that designation.)

“I began practicing in the psychotherapy world, and my patients were not healing,” she wrote on her website in 2022. “When I began empowering people by educating them with principles of Truth (learning to be honest, responsible, and humble), I saw my patients radically change right in front of me!”

Prete, the former client, met Hildebrandt as he was struggling in his marriage during the pandemic and after the birth of their first child. His now-ex-wife wanted to try the ConneXions program, he said.

Ethan Prete said his life coach told him to cut off contact with family and friends. (Rick Egan/The Salt Lake Tribune)

The help he was seeking came with a cost: To start, he had to pay a monthly charge to participate in a group video call every Saturday morning. He paid another weekly fee to be part of a men’s small group. On top of that, he paid weekly to meet one-on-one with Hildebrandt. In total, he was spending more than $1,000 a month.

“I would meet with her every week for almost a year,” he said of Hildebrandt. “And it was always like, your wife is going to leave you. If you ever want to see her again, you’ll do what I say.”

After Hildebrandt told him to cut off contact with friends and relatives, he said, he was living separately from his family and Hildebrandt told him and his wife not to speak to each other. Hildebrandt, he said, “had complete control.”

Hildebrandt is currently in prison, and DOPL revoked her license as a clinical mental health worker in May in response to her child abuse convictions. Her attorney did not respond to a list of questions sent to him for this article.

A Moment for Utah

In the final days of Utah’s 2024 legislative session, Kevin Franke, the father of the children abused by Hildebrandt, made a plea to lawmakers in a letter, asking them to pass a bill that would require life coach registration.

He wrote about the impact of being a client of Hildebrandt’s with his now-ex-wife, how his marriage ended and how his children were deeply harmed. All of it, he wrote, had been at the directive “of a dangerous mental health professional who believes that she could act outside the ethical balance of her profession by labeling herself as a life coach.“

Franke also asserted that Utah’s culture makes its citizens particularly vulnerable. The state’s attorney general has acknowledged that Utah has held a decades-long reputation for being the “fraud capital of the United States.” That’s in large part because of a local culture of trust in institutions among members of the dominant religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Investment fraud targeting LDS church members, Ponzi schemes and scams carried out in a style that mimics Utah’s significant multi-level marketing industry are prevalent in the state.

Black, the therapist with the Utah Mental Health Counselors Association, said that’s why Utah legislators should lead in regulating life coaches.

“I think it is a national problem. I think Utah’s unique in the sense that they’re very easily bought into MLMs,” she said about multi-level marketing. ”That’s kind of the structure of a lot of these life coaches. The more you pay, the more access you get. The more perks you get.”

Legislators in a handful of other states have tried to enact some oversight, but so far no proposals have become law.

New Hampshire legislators debated a bill in 2019 that would have studied whether life coaches should be regulated. The bill didn’t pass.

Two years later, in Oregon, legislators considered establishing a voluntary registry for those who provide “alternative therapy,” like life coaches. It also would have allowed the state to impose discipline for certain violations. But the measure failed after several life coaches pushed back.

“Coaching is not, nor claims to be, a form of therapy,” one Oregon coach wrote. ”Coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

Life coaches are not required to be certified by the International Coaching Federation or any other organization. There’s no Utah ICF chapter, and the ICF did not respond to interview requests.

The ICF did release a statement to The New York Times, which recently reported the experiences of several people who felt they had been tricked into paying for courses to become life coaches as part of a “pyramid scheme.”

Carrie Abner, the vice president of credentials and standards at the ICF, told the newspaper that coaching is a “self-regulated industry,” and clients should make sure they are working with coaches that are trained, are experienced and have credentials. Credentialed ICF members, she added, agree to abide by an ethics code.

In Utah, state Sen. David Hinkins’ bill to require life coaches to register with DOPL never got past a first hearing. State lawmakers, however, are expected to continue the discussion this month during legislative committee meetings.

Franke said in his letter that he was able to get a measure of accountability because Hildebrandt and his ex-wife — who also participated in abusing the children — broke the law and went to prison. But not every ethical violation is a crime. And people who have been taken advantage of emotionally or financially, he said, have little recourse.

“These individuals are literally ghosts,” he wrote, “and are free to sell their supposed life expertise to anyone willing to purchase it.”

Mollie Simon contributed research, and Jeff Kao contributed data reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

New Koi Tū future report calls for overhaul of outdated NZ mediascape to restore trust

Pacific Media Watch — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 12:47:25 +0000

Koi Tū

New Zealand cannot sit back and see the collapse of its Fourth Estate, the director of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, Sir Peter Gluckman, says in the foreword of a paper published today.

The paper, “If not journalists, then who?” paints a picture of an industry facing existential threats and held back by institutional underpinnings that are beyond the point where they are merely outdated.

It suggests sweeping changes to deal with the wide impacts of digital transformation and alarmingly low levels of trust in news.

READ MORE: The full Koi Tū media report – Dr Gavin Ellis

The Koi Tū media report cover . . . sweeping changes urged. Image: Koi Tū

The paper’s principal author is Koi Tū honorary research fellow Dr Gavin Ellis, who has written two books on the state of journalism: Trust Ownership and the Future of News and Complacent Nation.

He is a former newspaper editor and media studies lecturer, and also a member of Asia Pacific Media Network. The paper was developed following consultation with media leaders.

“We hope this paper helps open and expand the conversation from a narrow focus on the viability of particular players,” Sir Peter said, “to the needs of a small liberal democracy which must face many challenges in which citizens must have access to trustworthy information so they can form views and contribute appropriately to societal decision making.

“Koi Tū’s core argument, along with that of many scholars of democracy, is that democracy relies on honest information being available to all citizens. It needs to be provided by trustworthy sources and any interests associated with it must be transparently declared.

Decline in trust
“The media itself has contributed much to the decline in trust. This does not mean that there is not a critical role for opinion and advocacy — indeed democracy needs that too. It is essential that ideas are debated.

“But when reliable information is conflated with entertainment and extreme opinion, then citizens suffer and manipulated polarised outcomes are more likely.”

Dr Ellis said both news media and government were held to account in the paper for the state in which journalism in New Zealand now found itself. The mixing of fact and opinion in news stories was identified as a cause of the public’s low level of trust, and online analytics were found to have aberrated news judgement previously driven by journalistic values.

For their part, successive governments have failed to keep pace with changing needs across a very broad spectrum that has been brought about by digital transformation.

Changes suggested in the paper include voluntary merger of the two news regulators (the statutory Broadcasting Standards Authority and the industry-supported Media Council) into an independent body along lines recommended a decade ago by the Law Commission.

The new body would sit within a completely reorganised — and renamed — Broadcasting Commission, which would also be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Classifications Office, NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho.

An administrative umbrella
The reconstituted commission would become the administrative umbrella for the following autonomous units:

Media accountability (standards and complaints procedures)
Funding allocation (direct and contestable, including creative production)
Promotion and funding of Māori culture and language.
Content classification (ratings and classification of film, books, video gaming)
Review of media-related legislation and regulation, and monitoring of common law development, and
Research and advocacy (related civic, cultural, creative issues).

The paper also favours dropping the Digital News Fair Bargaining Bill (under which media organisations would negotiate with transnational platforms) and, instead, amending the Digital Services Tax Bill, now before the House, under which the proposed levy on digital platforms would be increased to provide a ring-fenced fund to compensate media for direct and indirect use of their content.

It also suggests changes to tax structures to help sustain marginally profitable and non-profit media outlets committed to public interest journalism.

Seventeen separate Acts of Parliament affecting media are identified in the paper as outdated — “and the list is nor exhaustive”. The paper recommends a comprehensive and closely coordinated review.

The Broadcasting Act is currently under review, but the paper suggests it should not be re-evaluated in isolation from other necessary legislative reforms.

The paper advises individual media organisations to review their editorial practices in light of current trust surveys and rising news avoidance. It says these reviews should include news values, story selection and presentation.

They should also improve their journalistic transparency and relevance to audiences.

Collectively, media should adopt a common code of ethics and practice and develop campaigns to explain the role and significance of democratic/social professional journalism to the public.

Statement of principles
A statement of journalistic principles is included in the paper:

“Support for democracy sits within the DNA of New Zealand media, which have shared goals of reporting news, current affairs, and information across the broad spectrum of interests in which the people of this country collectively have a stake.

“Trained news media professionals, working within recognised standards and ethics, are the only group capable of carrying out the functions and responsibilities that have been carved out for them by a heritage stretching back 300 years.

“They must be capable of holding the powerful to account, articulating many different voices in the community, providing meeting grounds for debate, and reflecting New Zealanders to themselves in ways that contribute to social cohesion.

“They have a duty to freedom of expression, independence from influence, fairness and balance, and the pursuit of truth.”

Republished from Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures.

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

The fate of LGBTIQ+ Ghanaians is in the hands of a court they don’t trust

Delali Adogla-Bessa — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 12:02:50 +0000

Lives of queer communities in Ghana hang in the balance as they await Supreme Court’s ruling on draconian new bill

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Delali Adogla-Bessa.

Myles Thomas: Newshub, TVNZ job cuts: We now have the worst TV in the Western world

Pacific Media Watch — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 19:18:59 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Myles Thomas

The announced closure of Television New Zealand’s last primetime current affairs programme seems to be the final nail in the coffin for New Zealand’s television credibility. Coming a day after the announcement of the closure of Newshub, it shows that Kiwis have the worst television and video media in the Western world.

Let’s compare ourselves with our mates across the ditch. Australia’s ABC TV features a nightly current affairs show called 7.30. The blurb for it reads:

“Sarah Ferguson presents Australia’s premier daily current affairs program, delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism and interviews that hold the powerful to account. Plus political analysis from Laura Tingle.”

Clearly 7.30 is far more serious than our Seven Sharp with its fluffy stories and advertorials. The ABC also screens six weekly current affairs shows and documentaries this week. Shows like Australian Story, Four Corners and Media Watch.

But Australia has five times as many people as we do so that’s why they can afford it, right?

Ireland has five million people, like NZ, but they still have primetime current affairs. In fact, the Irish enjoy quite a lot of it. The Irish version of TVNZ is RTÉ and features a nightly current affairs show called Nationwide and three weekly current affairs programmes on serious topics.

There are several other human interest factual programmes too, on subjects like history, gardening, dance and more. It’s the same in other countries with similar populations such as Norway, Denmark, Finland and so on.

It’s true that in New Zealand, there’s still the off-peak studio politics programmes like Q+A, and current affairs in te ao Māori are well examined on Whakaata Māori. But what about the rest of NZ?

Some people might say television is dead, and everything is online now. But nearly all online current affairs videos start out as television programmes. The only exceptions are Newsroom’s video investigations with Melanie Reid, and Stuff Circuit which is now disbanded. And for younger audiences there is Re: which TVNZ is also making cuts to.

Death of current affairs TV
The death of New Zealand’s prime-time current affairs television has been a long time coming. At first it was documentaries that dwindled and then disappeared off our screens.

Other genres that are expensive to produce have also become extinct or rarer than a fairy tern — drama, science programmes, kidult, arts programmes, wildlife documentaries, chat shows. Now we can add consumer affairs and prime-time current affairs to the list.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If other countries can do it, why not NZ?

On Wednesday, the Minister for Media and Communications, Melissa Lee, said “I don’t think I can actually save anything. I’m trying to be who I am, the Minister for Media and Communications.”

This suggests either a lack of understanding of her role or a lack of ambition. She also let slip that there was no way she could save Newshub.

The only substantive solution to come from the minister is her promise to review the Broadcasting Act. But that review process was initiated by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage years ago and started under the Labour government.

Moreover, the Broadcasting Act does little more than lay out the rules for broadcasting complaints, election broadcasting, and establish NZ On Air, the BSA and Te Māngai Pāho.

Minister just tweaking
The minister says she is reviewing the Broadcasting Act to create a “more level playing field” and allow media businesses to “innovate”. That doesn’t sound like it will do much for television and video current affairs, which will take much more than just tweaking how NZ On Air and the BSA work.

Perhaps she intends something much more comprehensive, such as a new funding stream for public media, perhaps through a levy, a compulsory subscription, or even a licence fee.

Despite her protestations, there are several options available to the minister. To save TVNZ’s Fair Go and Sunday, she could provide TVNZ with an interim cash injection (which is actually what governments often do in disasters) until the comprehensive long-term funding is sorted out.

To save Newshub she could promise to remove advertising from TVNZ, or partially on weekends only. This would throw Warner Bros Discovery a lifeline in the form of advertisers looking for a television station to advertise on. She does not have to stand by and watch while our media burns.

Sunday is only with us for a few more weeks. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Myles Thomas is a trustee for Better Public Media Trust. This article was first published by The New Zealand Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.

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

New research report shows major drop in media trust in New Zealand

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:03:58 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Just a third of New Zealanders now say they trust the news. That is the major finding of Auckland University of Technology’s research centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD)’s fifth annual Trust in News in Aotearoa New Zealand report, reports RNZ News.

Trust in news in general fell from 42 percent last year to 33 percent in this year’s report — but it is a whopping 20 percentage points down from the first report in 2020 when it was at 53 percent.

All 16 news brands that were part of this survey suffered declines in trust.

The independent Dunedin daily newspaper Otago Daily Times (ODT) had the highest trust score, with public broadcaster RNZ and the National Business Review (NBR) tied in second place, with TVNZ, Newsroom, BusinessDesk and “other commercial radio” tied for third.

Other findings from this year’s survey: Fewer people believed the news media was independent of political influence and more said they actively avoid the news to some degree.

The survey was conducted in February just before the shock announcement that Newshub was set to close, and that TVNZ would be cutting jobs and news programmes.

Final decisions are expected from both organisations this week.

RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme Kathryn Ryan was joined by Dr Merja Myllylahti and Dr Greg Treadwell, co-authors of the report, to discuss this report.

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

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

Can We Trust the CDC Anymore?

Mike Ervin — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 02:00:44 +0000

The Centers for Disease Control's updated COVID-19 isolation guidelines seem influenced by politics rather than grounded in medical truths.

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

Public trust dives as Hong Kong accelerates security law legislation

By Ray Chung for RFA Cantonese — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:07:27 +0000

Public trust of Hong Kong citizens towards the government has dived further on the back of the city’s aggressive campaign to legislate its own security laws.

The Hong Kong people’s trust of their government fell by more than 10% from the previous month, according to findings by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI), a sign that the negative impact of the Article 23 legislation will hang over the future of the city amid China’s intensified encroachment.

The public’s trust dropped from January’s 46% to 39% this month, while distrust of the government rose from 38% to 42%. The combined net decline of the two gauges is 11 percentage points, the online survey of 722 respondents released on Wednesday showed.

Furthermore, the public’s confidence of Hong Kong’s future recorded a decrease of 16 percentage points.

Political scholar Chris Li pointed out that such sentiments arose as the public is inundated with news in the past month of Article 23’s consultation, an issue which is also most related to their government and their future. A one-month public consultation for Article 23 legislation ended on Wednesday.

Under Article 23 of the Basic Law – Hong Kong’s mini constitution – the city has to enact its own laws to prohibit acts of treason, secession, sedition and subversion against Beijing. But such a move has been controversial. A previous attempt in 2003 failed following mass protests and was shelved until Beijing’s imposition of the National Security Law (NSL) in 2020.

Last month, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee vowed to complete legislation of Article 23 this year, reiterating its priority on public discontent as well as economic and social issues.

Li said while the index on the rule of law recorded 5.24 points, a pass level, indicating that citizens felt that the judicial system and judges’ handling of cases were fair, their responses towards the legislative process were contrary.

“Looking at their responses, their concerns about legislating Article 23 are not about how the judiciary will implement it, but whether the legal provisions in the government’s draft legislation will affect Hong Kong’s more important values. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and association, the freedom to cooperate with many different foreign institutions and the freedom to cooperate with the international community, these are all relevant.”

Cutting off Hong Kong’s edge

PORI Chief Executive Robert Chung warned that when such concerns become an issue that stand in the way of international cooperation, it will be tantamount to cutting off international relations, which will be detrimental to Hong Kong.

“If we do this, it will be very difficult to achieve ‘governance and prosperity,’ even close to impossible. Hong Kong’s advantage has always been to converge the East and the West in a civilized manner; Hong Kong must have this space.”

PORI’s Robert Chung says Hong Kong will suffer if the legislated Article 23 impedes future collaboration with the international community. (Screengrab from PORI live stream)

He pointed out that the authorities will establish more internal standards and management systems to avoid breaching the red line going forward, and clarity with the new regulations will take time for the judicial system and the courts to adjust.

“Only then can the citizens understand. In other words, the gray time or zone will exist for a certain period of time,” he added.

The NSL’s implementation has triggered outflows of foreign and domestic capital and talent in the last three years. Hundreds of protestors, activists and former opposition lawmakers have been arrested since it came into force. And moving forward with legislation of Article 23 has inevitably met with international criticism and more backlash, albeit to no avail.

The Legislative Council’s “Basic Law Subcommittee” held its first meeting on Tuesday where Secretary for Justice Paul Lam stated that there is a societal consensus to complete the legislation as soon as possible.

Lawmaker Tik Chi-yuen raised the question as to whether Taiwan will be considered an “external force” under the Article 23 legislation.

Translated by RFA Staff. Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

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

“We Cannot Trust Biden” on Gaza: Michigan House Dem Majority Leader Meets White House Officials

Democracy Now! — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 13:12:20 +0000

Senior Biden administration officials traveled to Michigan on Thursday to meet with Arab American and Muslim leaders amid growing opposition to Biden’s candidacy over his support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Michigan is an important election battleground state and home to the largest percentage of Arab Americans in the United States. Michigan House Majority Floor Leader Abraham Aiyash, the state’s highest-ranking Arab and Muslim leader, joined the meeting to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, restrictions on military aid to Israel, and recommitting humanitarian aid to Palestinians. “Now the question is: Are they going to heed the call of their constituents and do something that a majority of Americans and Democrats support in demanding for a ceasefire and an end to the violence?” demands Aiyash, who has signed on to the “Listen to Michigan” campaign and pledged to vote “uncommitted” in the state’s primary on February 27. “We’re focused on ending a war and stopping the military funding that supports genocide,” says Layla Elabed, Palestinian American community organizer who is spearheading the “Listen to Michigan” campaign. “Until that happens, we cannot trust Biden and we cannot commit our votes to him.”

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

Top 5 takeaways of our investigation into state trust lands

Tristan Ahtone — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 09:43:00 +0000

As America grew westward in the 19th and 20th centuries, the federal government took land from Indigenous peoples and gave it to states for the creation of public colleges known as land-grant universities. A new Grist investigation reveals how many of these institutions continue to profit from this stolen land, largely through extractive industries including oil and gas production, mining, and logging.

Using publicly available data, our investigation locates millions of acres taken from more than a hundred Indigenous nations to provide ongoing sources of revenue for educational institutions. Our reporting reveals how Indigenous lands and resources bankroll land-grant universities, historically and today, and provides insight into the relationship between colonialism, higher education, and climate change.

Here are five takeaways from our investigation:

1 Fourteen land-grant universities generate revenue from 8.2 million surface and subsurface acres of Indigenous land.

State trust lands just might be one of the best kept public secrets in America: They exist in 21 Western and Midwestern states, totaling more than 500 million surface and subsurface acres. They are held and managed by state agencies and primarily exist to subsidize education. Using data from these state agencies, Grist located trust lands associated with specific land-grant institutions to determine where they are located and how they are used to benefit those colleges. “A perpetual, multigenerational land trust for the support of the beneficiaries and future generations” is how the Arizona State Land Department describes them.

2 Those 8.2 million acres were taken from at least 123 Indigenous nations through more than 150 land cessions, a legal term for the surrendering of territory.

Grist was able to compare state trust land data with federal data known as the Schedule of Indian Land Cessions, which documents Indigenous land cessions in the continental United States using extensive information on treaties and other land seizures. By joining these different datasets, we were able to get a glimpse of just how many Indigenous nations were impacted by the creation of these institutions.

3 Indigenous nations were paid approximately $4.3 million in 2023 dollars for these lands. In many cases, however, nothing was paid at all.

Based on accounting of historical payments to Indigenous nations by the Indian Claims Commission and the Court of Claims, Grist was able to identify the price paid per acre for each land cession and calculate the total amount paid to tribes for trust lands that benefit universities today. It’s important to note that in many cases, Indigenous nations were never compensated for the taking of their territory, and as our reporting reveals, those lands have continued to provide steady revenue streams to land-grant institutions. “Universities continue to benefit from colonization,” said Sharon Stein, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of British Columbia. “It’s not just a historical fact; the actual income of the institution is subsidized by this ongoing dispossession.”

4 Nearly 25 percent of land-grant university trust lands are designated for either fossil fuel production or the mining of minerals like coal and iron-rich taconite.

Utilizing datasets from state land agencies, we were able to determine what activities generated revenue for land-grant universities. While much of our focus is on the energy industry due to its massive climate impact, we found that grazing is permitted on about a third of the land, or approximately 2.8 million surface acres. Timber, agriculture, and infrastructure leases — for roads or pipelines, for instance — make up much of the remaining acreage. However, despite the somewhat smaller footprint that timberlands represent in our dataset, they are still significant sources of revenue: From statehood in 1889 to 2022, timber sales on trust lands in Washington provided Washington State University with at least $1.1 billion in revenue when adjusted for inflation.

5 In 2022, state trust lands generated more than $2.2 billion in revenue. Between 2018 and 2022: approximately $6.6 billion.

Trust land activities provide significant streams of income to land-grant schools, but most importantly, they subsidize higher education so citizens don’t have to. “Every dollar earned by the land office,” Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard of New Mexico said when revenues broke the billion-dollar barrier, “is a dollar taxpayers do not have to pay to support public institutions.”

Read our story, Misplaced Trust, or download the data.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Top 5 takeaways of our investigation into state trust lands on Feb 7, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tristan Ahtone.

How to conduct your own reporting and research on state trust lands

Maria Parazo Rose — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 09:39:00 +0000

Contents

Overview

This user guide is designed for both general users and experienced researchers and coders. No coding skills are necessary to work with this dataset, but a basic working knowledge of tabular data files in Excel is required, and for more experienced users, knowledge of GIS.

Over the past year, Grist has located all state trust lands distributed through state enabling acts that currently send revenue to higher education institutions that benefited from the Morrill Act. We’ve also identified their original Indigenous inhabitants and caretakers, and researched how much the United States would have paid for each parcel, based on an assessment of the cession history (according to the U.S. Forest Service’s record of the land associated with each parcel). We reconstructed more than 8.2 million acres of state trust parcels taken from 123 tribes, bands, and communities through 121 different land cessions — a legal term for the giving up of territory.

It is important to note that land cession histories are incomplete and accurate only from the viewpoint of U.S. law and historical negotiations, not to Indigenous histories, epistemologies, or historic territories not captured by federal data. The U.S. Forest Service dataset, which is based on the Schedule of Indian Land Cessions compiled by Charles Royce for the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1896-1897), covers the period from 1787 to 1894.

This information represents a snapshot of trust land parcels and activity as of November 2023. We encourage exploration of the database and caution that this snapshot is likely very different from state inventories 20, 50, or even 100 years ago. Since, to our knowledge, no other database of this kind — with this specific state trust land data benefitting land-grant universities — exists, we are committed to making it publicly available and as robust as possible.

For additional information, users can read our methodology or go to GitHub to view and download the code used to generate this dataset. The various functions used within the program can also be adapted and repurposed for analyzing other kinds of state trust lands — for example, those that send revenue to penitentiaries and detention centers, which is present in a number of states.

Note: If you use this data for your reporting, please be sure to credit Grist in the story and please send us a link.

The database administrator can be contacted at landgrabu@grist.org.

What’s in the database

This database contains a GeoJSON and CSVs, as well as a multi-tab spreadsheet that aggregates and summarizes key data points.

GeoJSON

National_STLs.geojson

CSVs

National_STLs.csv
Tribal_Summary.csv
University_Summary.csv

Excel

GRIST-LGU2_National-STL-Dataset.xlsx, with protected tabs that include:

– Main Spreadsheet
– Tribal Summary
– University Summary

The data can be spatially analyzed with the JSON file using GIS software (e.g. ArcGIS or QGIS), or analyzed with the CSVs or Excel main spreadsheet. To conduct analysis without using the spatial file, we recommend using the National_STLs_ALL_Protected.xlsx sheet, which includes tabs for the summary statistics sheets. The CSVs will mostly be useful for importing the files into GIS software or other types of software for analysis.

Tips for using the database

Summary statistics

To understand the landscape of state trust land parcels at a quick glance, users can reference the summary statistics sheets. The Tribal_Summary.csv and the University_Summary.csv show the total acreage of trust lands associated with each tribe or university, as well as context on what cessions and tribes are affiliated with a particular university or, conversely, what universities and states are associated with individual tribal nations.

For example, using the University_Summary.csv a user can easily generate the following text:

“New Mexico State University financially benefits from almost 186,000 surface acres and 253,500 subsurface acres, taken from the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, Comanche Nation, Fort Sill Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, Jicarilla Apache Nation, Kiowa Tribe, Mescalero Apache Tribe, Navajo Nation, San Carlos Apache Tribe, Tonto Apache Tribe, and White Mountain Apache Tribe. Our data shows that this acreage came into the United States’ possession through 8 Indigenous land cession events for which the U.S. paid approximately $59,000, though in many cases, nothing was paid. New Mexico engages primarily in oil and gas production, renewables, and agriculture and commercial leases.”

Grist

To do so, simply fill in the sections you need from the tabular data of the university summary tab: [column B] benefits from almost [column D] surface acres and [column C] subsurface acres, taken from [column H] tribe (or [column G] total number of tribes). Our data shows that this acreage came into the United States’ possession through [column K] cessions (column K shows total number of cessions) for which the U.S. paid approximately [column F] though in many cases, nothing was paid. New Mexico engages primarily in [National_STLs.csv, column K].

Using Tribal_Summary.csv users can also center stories through Indigenous nations. For example: “The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma ceded almost 66,000 surface acres and 82,500 subsurface acres, through 2 land cession events, for the benefit of Colorado State University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Wyoming. For title to those acres, the United States paid the Cheyene and Arapaho Tribes approximately $6.00.”

Grist

Similarly to the university tab, one can plug in relevant information: [column B] ceded almost [column F] surface acres and [column E] subsurface acres, through [column C] land cession events, for the benefit of [column H].

To get information on how much the United States paid tribes, if anything, filter for the parcels of interest in the ‘Main Spreadsheet’ of the National_STLs.xlsx file and add the price paid per parcel column [column X].

Navigating the data

For users who want to conduct analysis on and understand the landscape of state trust lands without using the spatial file, they can use the protected Excel sheet. (The sheet is protected so that cell values are not accidentally rewritten while users search the information.)

As an example, if users wanted to do research on a specific institution, they can adjust multiple columns at once in the Excel main spreadsheet to quickly isolate the parcels they are specifically interested in.

Say a user wanted to figure out how many acres of state trust lands specifically affiliated with the Navajo Nation are used for grazing in Arizona.

Start by opening the protected National_STLs.xlsx sheet.

In column B, click the drop-down arrow and select so that only Arizona parcels are showing.

Grist

Then, go to column K and use the drop-down menu to select parcels where “grazing” is listed as one of the activities. It’s important to note that many parcels have multiple activities attached to them.

Grist

Then, go through all of the present_day_tribe columns (AA, AE, AI, AM, AQ, AU, AY, BC) and filter for rows that list the Navajo Nation as one of the tribes. It is not always the case that tribes are present in all eight of the columns, and most parcels do not intersect with multiple cession areas.

When filtering through a column for specific entries, like selecting all parcels with any grazing present (even if other activities are there), we recommend users open up the filtering drop-down menu, unselect all entries, and then type the query you’re interested in in the search bar, and select the results that show up.

We find a total of 20,278 acres in Arizona that have grazing activity on Navajo land.

Grist

This kind of approach can be used to filter for any combination of parcels, and we encourage you to explore the data this way.

Visualizing parcels

To visualize this data, users can use the GeoJSON file in a GIS program of their choice. If users are unfamiliar with how to filter for specific parcels through those programs, they can identify the exact parcels they want in Excel and then use that to select parcels in a GIS program.

First, identify the specific parcels of interest using filters (like in the situation described above), and then copy the list of relevant object IDs (in column A) into its own CSV file.

Grist

Then, in the GIS software, import the CSV file and join it to the original National_STLs.geojson file.

Grist

After the file is joined, there will be an additional column to the National_STLs layer, and users can filter out the blank rows (which would be blank because they did not match with parcels of interest in the CSV file) and select the polygons that represent the parcels the user is interested in.

Grist

In QGIS, you can use the “Zoom to Layer’” button to visualize the resulting query.

Grist

As an alternative to performing the filtering in Excel and executing the self-join as described above, users may also filter the dataset directly in the GIS program of their choice using structured queries. For example, to replicate the query illustrated above, use the following filter expression in QGIS on the main GeoJSON file:

Grist

Calculating acreage

The acreage of trust lands within a state has been determined as consisting of acres with surface rights or subsurface rights. For further background on this process, please see our methodology documentation.

We also included a column for net acreage, since in some places — like North Dakota and Idaho — the state only has partial ownership over some of the parcels. If the field is blank, the state has 100 percent ownership of the parcel. To calculate this, we multiplied the acreage of a parcel by percentage of ownership.

Missing cession payment

We do not yet have financial information for cession ID 717 in Washington. The cession in question is 1,963.92 acres, and its absence means that the figures for price paid per acre or price paid per parcel are not complete for Washington.

It is also important to note that when documenting Indigenous land cessions in the continental United States, the Royce cession areas are extensive but incomplete. Although they are a standard source and are often treated as authoritative, they do not contain any cessions made after 1894 and likely miss or in other ways misrepresent included cessions prior to that time. We have made efforts to correct errors (primarily misdated cessions) when found, but have, in general, relied on the U.S. Forest Service digital files of the Royce dataset. A full review, revision, and expansion of the Royce land cession dataset is beyond the scope of this project.

Missing Oklahoma lands

It’s important to note that we could not find information for 871 surface acres and 5,982 subsubsurface acres in Oklahoma, because they have yet to be mapped, digitally, or because of how they are sectioned on the land grid. We understand that this acreage does exist based on lists of activities kept by the state. However, those lists do not provide mappable data to fill these gaps. In order to complete reporting on Oklahoma, researchers will need to read and digitize physical maps and plats held by the state — labor this team has been unable to provide.

Additional WGS84 files in data generation

In addition to the GeoJSON files output at each step, our workflow produces a version of each GeoJSON file using the World Geodetic System 84 (WGS84) datum and a spherical geographic coordinate system (EPSG:4326). This is the standard coordinate reference system (CRS) for all GeoJSON files according to the specification; prior versions of the specification supported alternate CRSs, but have since been deprecated. In the source code, we rely on GeoPandas’ .to_crs method to perform the transformation to EPSG:4326.

WGS84 versions of GeoJSON files are necessary when mapping datasets using popular web-mapping libraries like Leaflet, Mapbox, MapLibre, and D3. These libraries all expect data to be encoded using EPSG:4326; they expose various projection APIs to reproject data on-the-fly in a browser. You should use the _wgs84 versions of the pipeline’s GeoJSON files if you’re trying to visualize the datasets using one of these libraries. For QGIS users, ensure your project CRS is set to EPSG:4326 before uploading these GeoJSON files.

Using the code

Users will be able to explore the codebase on the GitHub repository, which will be made public upon the lifting of Grist’s embargo. Further details on how to run each step and an explanation of all required files are available in the README.md document.

Creative Commons license

This data is shared under a Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license (“Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International”). The CC BY-NC license means you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format; and remix, transform, and build upon the material. Grist cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. These terms include giving appropriate credit, providing a link to the license, and indicating if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner. Furthermore, you may not use the material for commercial purposes, and you may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

More information is available at the CC BY-NC 4.0 deed.

Citation

If you republish this data or draw on it as a source for publication, cite as: Parazo Rose, Maria, et al. “Enabling Act Indigenous Land Parcels Database,” Grist.org, February 2024.

File Descriptions

National_STLs.geojson

The schema for this document is the same as the National_STLs.csv and National_STLs_Protected.xlsx files.

This spreadsheet contains 41,792 parcels of state trust lands that benefit 14 universities. Each row describes the location of a unique parcel, along with information about the entities currently managing the land, what rights type and extractive activities are associated with the parcel, which university benefits from the revenues, and its historic acquisition by the United States, as well as the original Indigenous caretakers and the current tribal nations in the area.

An important note about rights type: Washington categorizes timber rights as distinct from surface rights, and we present the data here accordingly. Note that other states do not adhere to this distinction, and thus timber parcels in other states are considered surface parcels. If you would like to generate national summaries of surface rights in a more colloquial sense, consider adding Washington’s timber parcels to your surface calculations.

The file contains the following columns:

object_id

A unique, Grist-assigned identifier for the specific state trust land parcel

state

State where parcel is located

state_enabling_act

Name of the enabling act that granted new territories statehood, along with stipulations of bestowing Indigenous land as a part of the state trust land policy

trust_name

Beneficiaries of state trust land revenue can be identified within state government structure by the trust name; we used the trust name to identify the funds that were specifically assigned to the universities we focused on

managing_agency

Name of the state agency that manages the state trust land parcels

university

Land-grant university that receives the revenue from the associated state trust land parcel

acres

Reported acreage of the state trust land parcel from the original data source by the state

gis_acres

Acreage calculated by analyzing the parcels in QGIS

net_acres

The net acreage of a parcel, determined by the percentage of state ownership related to that parcel specifically.

rights_type

Indicates whether the state/beneficiary manages the surface or subsurface rights of the land within the parcel, or both

reported_county

County where parcel is located, as reported by the original data source

census_bureau_county_name

County where parcel is located, based on a comparative analysis against Census Bureau data

meridian

A line, similar to latitude and longitude lines, that runs through an initial point, which together with the baseline form the highest level framework for all rectangular surveys in a given area. It is also the reference or beginning point for measuring east or west ranges.

township

36 sections arranged in a 6-by-6 square, measuring 6 miles by 6 miles. Sections are numbered beginning with the northeasternmost section (#1), proceeding west to 6, then south along the west edge of the township and to the east (#36 is in the SE corner)

range

A measure of the distance east or west from a referenced principal meridian, in units of 6 miles, that is assigned to a township by measuring east or west of a principal meridian

section

The basic unit of the system, a square piece of land 1 mile by 1 mile containing 640 acres

aliquot

Indicates the aliquot part, e.g. NW for northwest corner or E½SW for east half of southwest corner, or the lot number.

block

A parcel of land within a platted subdivision bounded on all sides by streets or avenues, other physical boundaries such as a body of water, or the exterior boundary of a platted subdivision.

data_source

Data on state parcels was acquired either from a records request to state agencies or from requests to a state server; if a state server was used, the website is recorded here

parcel_count

In our merge process, we combined some parcels, particularly in Minnesota, and this column captures how many parcels were aggregated together, to maintain accurate parcel count and acreage

agg_acres_agg

The sum of acres across all parcels contained in a given row. For most states, this field will equal that of the acres field. For Minnesota, some small parcels were combined during the spatial deduplication process, and this field reflects the sum of the corresponding acres field for each parcel. (See methodology for more information.)

all_cession_numbers

Refers to all the land cessions (areas where the federal government took the Indigenous land that later supplied state land) that overlap with this given parcel

price_paid_for_parcel

The total price paid by the U.S. government to tribal nations

cession_num_01-08

A single cession that overlaps a given parcel

price_paid_per_acre

The price the U.S. paid (or didn’t pay) per acre, according to the specific cession history

C1[-C8]_present_day_tribe

As listed by the U.S. Forest Service, the present day tribe(s) associated with the parcel

C1[-C8]_tribe_named_in_land_cessions_1784-1894

As listed by the U.S. Forest Service, the tribal nation(s) named in the land cession associated with the parcel

Tribal_Summary.csv

This spreadsheet shows summary statistics for all state trust land data we gathered, organized by the present-day tribes listed by the U.S. Forest Service.

present_day_tribe

As listed by the U.S. Forest Service, the present day tribe(s)

cession_count

Total number of cessions associated with a present-day tribe

cession_number

List of cessions associated with a present-day tribe

subsurface_acres

Total number of subsurface acres associated with a present-day tribe

surface_acres

Total number of surface acres associated with a present-day tribe

timber_acres

Total number of timber acres associated with a present-day tribe (only relevant in Washington state)

unknown_acres

Total number of acres with an unknown rights type (only relevant for two parcels in South Dakota)

university

Universities that receive revenue from the parcels associated with a present-day tribe

state

States where the parcels associated with a present-day tribe are located

Total number of acres with an unknown rights type (only relevant for two parcels in South Dakota)

university

Universities that receive revenue from the parcels associated with a present-day tribe

state

States where the parcels associated with a present-day tribe are located

University_Summary.csv

This spreadsheet shows summary statistics for all state trust land data we gathered, organized by land-grant university.

university

Land-grant institution that receives revenue from specific state trust land parcels

subsurface_acres

Total number of subsurface acres associated with a present-day tribe

surface_acres

Total number of surface acres associated with a present day tribe

timber_acres

Total number of timber acres associated with a present day tribe (only relevant in Washington state)

unknown_acres

Total number of acres with an unknown rights type (only relevant for two parcels in South Dakota state)

price_paid

Sum of the price that the U.S. federal government paid to tribes for all the parcels associated with a particular university (the sum of the price paid per parcel column)

present_day_tribe_count

Total number of present-day tribes associated with a land-grant university

present_day_tribe

List of present-day tribes associated with a land-grant university

tribes_named_in_cession_count

Total number of present-day tribes associated with a land-grant university

tribes_named_in_cession

List of present-day tribes associated with a university

cession_count

Total number of cessions associated with a land-grant university

all_cessions

List of cessions associated with a land-grant university

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How to conduct your own reporting and research on state trust lands on Feb 7, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Maria Parazo Rose.

ABC staff ‘have lost confidence’ in boss in defending public trust in Israel row

Pacific Media Watch — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 01:27:04 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

Union members at the Australian public broadcaster ABC have today passed a vote of no confidence in managing director David Anderson for failing to defend the integrity of the ABC and its staff from outside attacks, reports the national media union.

The vote was passed overwhelmingly at a national online meeting attended by more than 200 members of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union said in a statement.

Union members have called on Anderson to take immediate action to win back the confidence of staff following a series of incidents which have damaged the reputation of the ABC as a trusted and independent source of news.

The vote of ABC union staff rebuked Anderson, with one of the broadcaster’s most senior journalists, global affairs editor John Lyons, reported in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age as saying he was “embarrassed” by his employer, which he said had “shown pro-Israel bias” and was failing to protect staff against complaints.

This followed revelations of a series of emails by the so-called Lawyers for Israel lobby group alleged to be influential in the sacking of Lebanese Australian journalist Antoinette Lattouf for her criticism on social media of the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza that has killed 25,000 people so far, mostly women and children.

Another pro-Israel WhatsApp lobbying the ABC.
It makes me sick in the stomach to see people celebrate my sacking.
It makes me sick in the stomach to see an alleged Ita Buttrose response saying I’m now gone.
It makes me worry about the ABC’s integrity https://t.co/6qTeU7f8Wz pic.twitter.com/L9Te8A1Ynx

— Antoinette Lattouf (@antoinette_news) January 22, 2024

Staff have put management on notice that if it does not begin to address the current crisis by next Monday, January 29, staff will consider further action.

The acting chief executive of MEAA, Adam Portelli, said staff had felt unsupported by the ABC’s senior management when they have been criticised or attacked from outside.

Message ‘clear and simple’
“The message from staff today is clear and simple: David Anderson must demonstrate that he will take the necessary steps to win back the confidence of staff and the trust of the Australian public,” he said.

“This is the result of a consistent pattern of behaviour by management when the ABC is under attack of buckling to outside pressure and leaving staff high and dry.

“Public trust in the ABC is being undermined. The organisation’s reputation for frank and fearless journalism is being damaged by management’s repeated lack of support for its staff when they are under attack from outside.

BREAKING NEWS:
Censorship Crisis at the ABC.

Senior ABC journalist accuses ABC of bowing to “a group of lawyers lobbying for a foreign power.”

“The clue is in the name: ‘Lawyers for Israel’ thought that they could run a campaign to bully an ABC journalist out of her job —… pic.twitter.com/VbyFfGqpnB

— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) January 22, 2024

“Journalists at the ABC — particularly First Nations people, and people from culturally diverse backgrounds — increasingly don’t feel safe at work; and the progress that has been made in diversifying the ABC has gone backwards.

“Management needs to act quickly to win that confidence back by putting the integrity of the ABC’s journalism above the impact of pressure from politicians, unaccountable lobby groups and big business.”

The full motion passed by MEAA members at today’s meeting reads as follows:

MEAA members at the ABC have lost confidence in our managing director David Anderson. Our leaders have consistently failed to protect our ABC’s independence or protect staff when they are attacked. They have consistently refused to work collaboratively with staff to uphold the standards that the Australian public need and expect of their ABC.

Winning staff and public confidence back will require senior management:

Backing journalism without fear or favour;
Working collaboratively with unions to build a culturally informed process for supporting staff who face criticism and attack;
Take urgent action on the lack of security and inequality that journalists of colour face;
Working with unions to develop a clearer and fairer social media policy; and
Upholding a transparent complaints process, in which journalists who are subject to complaints are informed and supported.

A further resolution passed unanimously by the meeting read:

MEAA members at the ABC will not continue to accept the failure of management to protect our colleagues and the public. If management does not work with us to urgently fix the ongoing crisis, ABC staff will take further action to take a stand for a safe, independent ABC.

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

ABC staff ‘have lost confidence’ in boss in defending public trust in Israel row

Pacific Media Watch — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 01:27:04 +0000

Pacific Media Watch

The vote was passed overwhelmingly at a national online meeting attended by more than 200 members of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union said in a statement.

Another pro-Israel WhatsApp lobbying the ABC.
It makes me sick in the stomach to see people celebrate my sacking.
It makes me sick in the stomach to see an alleged Ita Buttrose response saying I’m now gone.
It makes me worry about the ABC’s integrity https://t.co/6qTeU7f8Wz pic.twitter.com/L9Te8A1Ynx

— Antoinette Lattouf (@antoinette_news) January 22, 2024

Staff have put management on notice that if it does not begin to address the current crisis by next Monday, January 29, staff will consider further action.

The acting chief executive of MEAA, Adam Portelli, said staff had felt unsupported by the ABC’s senior management when they have been criticised or attacked from outside.

“This is the result of a consistent pattern of behaviour by management when the ABC is under attack of buckling to outside pressure and leaving staff high and dry.

BREAKING NEWS:
Censorship Crisis at the ABC.

Senior ABC journalist accuses ABC of bowing to “a group of lawyers lobbying for a foreign power.”

“The clue is in the name: ‘Lawyers for Israel’ thought that they could run a campaign to bully an ABC journalist out of her job —… pic.twitter.com/VbyFfGqpnB

— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) January 22, 2024

The full motion passed by MEAA members at today’s meeting reads as follows:

Winning staff and public confidence back will require senior management:

Backing journalism without fear or favour;
Working collaboratively with unions to build a culturally informed process for supporting staff who face criticism and attack;
Take urgent action on the lack of security and inequality that journalists of colour face;
Working with unions to develop a clearer and fairer social media policy; and
Upholding a transparent complaints process, in which journalists who are subject to complaints are informed and supported.

A further resolution passed unanimously by the meeting read:

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

China has ‘whittled down’ key Pacific support with Nauru move, says scholar

APR editor — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 06:40:40 +0000

RNZ Pacific

A security studies professor says China has been applying pressure to countries to switch diplomatic ties over from Taiwan, but Beijing says its “ready to work” with the Pacific island nation “to open new chapters” in the relations between the two countries.

The Nauru government said that “in the best interests” of the country and its people, it was seeking full resumption of diplomatic relations with China.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory with no right to state-to-state ties, a position Taiwan strongly disputes.

Dr Anna Powles, an associate professor at the Massey University Centre for Defence and Security Studies, told RNZ this was not Nauru’s “first rodeo” — this was the third time they had “jumped ship”.

“China, certainly, has been on the offensive to effectively dismantle Taiwan’s diplomatic allies across the Pacific,” Dr Powles said.

“There has been increased Chinese pressure — that was certainly one of the reasons why Australia pursued their Falepili union agreement with Tuvalu last year with great speed,” she said.

Taiwan now has three Pacific allies left — Palau, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands.

Significant drop
Dr Powles said that was a significant drop from 2019 when Solomon Islands and Kiribati had switched allegiance.

But she said the switch should not come as a major surprise. Most countries, including New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, recognised China and adhere to the one-China policy.

“Nauru is like most other Pacific Island countries, recognising China over Taiwan,” Dr Powles said.

“The challenge here though for Taiwan is for a very long period of time, the Pacific was the bulkhead of its allies, and as I mentioned, China has effectively and very successfully managed to whittle that down and dismantle that network.

“For many of those countries in the Pacific which have switched back and forth between the two, this actually hasn’t contributed in positive ways to sustainable, consistent growth and development.”

Dr Anna Powles of the Massey University Centre for Defence and Security Studies . . . “The challenge here . . . for Taiwan is for a very long period of time the Pacific was the bulkhead of its allies.” Image: RNZ Pacific

Unanswered questions
Dr Powles said there were still questions to be answered.

Nauru set up its intergenerational fund in 2015 with Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan as contributors.

“So the question here is, will China now be a contributor to the trust fund?”

Lai Ching-te from Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, won the presidential election on Saturday as expected and will take office on May 20.

“With deep regret we announce the termination of diplomatic relations with Nauru,” Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“This timing is not only China’s retaliation against our democratic elections but also a direct challenge to the international order. Taiwan stands unbowed and will continue as a force for good,” it added.

China ‘ready to work’
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said that Beijing “China appreciates and welcomes the decision of the government of the Nauru”.

“There is but one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory, and the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.”

She said this was affirmed in the UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 “and is the prevailing consensus among the international community”.

“China has established diplomatic relations with 182 countries on the basis of the one-China principle.

“The Nauru government’s decision of re-establishing diplomatic ties with China once again shows that the One-China principle is where global opinion trends and where the arc of history bends.

“China stands ready to work with Nauru to open new chapters of our bilateral relations on the basis of the one-China principle.”

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

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

The Public’s Trust

Allen Forrest — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 16:32:35 +0000

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

These Men Say Their Utah Therapist Touched Them Inappropriately During Sessions Paid for by the LDS Church

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 12:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune

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

This story discusses sexual assault.

Three additional men have come forward to say a therapist recommended and paid for by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints touched them inappropriately during counseling sessions related to struggles with their sexuality. The men's statements follow allegations by three others, previously reported by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica, that clinical mental health counselor Scott Owen touched them sexually during therapy.

The three who most recently came forward said their counseling sessions were paid for with money donated by church members to help those in need. The church said it has no process in place to vet the therapists its church leaders recommend.

The disclosures follow an investigation by the news organizations this summer detailing allegations against Owen, who gave up his license as a mental health worker in 2018.

Austin Millet, one of the men who have spoken out in recent weeks, said he saw Owen in 2010 while attending Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. At that time, he was questioning if he was gay and struggling with how that fit in with the theology of his Latter-day Saint faith.

His bishop suggested he try therapy, Millet recalled, and said he wouldn’t need to worry about the cost — the church would pay the bill. He said the lay leader referred him to a local practice, Canyon Counseling. One of its co-owners, his bishop told him, was a specialist in helping gay LDS men be in romantic relationships with women. Owen was also a bishop during that time, according to the three men The Tribune/ProPublica spoke with for this story.

Millet said that when an employee at Canyon Counseling later called Millet, then 23, to set up an appointment, he was told payment was taken care of.

“It was kind of like, ‘Oh, don’t worry, we're taking care of it behind the scenes,’” Millet remembered. “‘And your job is to just show up.’”

But Millet said his therapy sessions in Owen’s Provo office quickly turned physical and then sexual — with the therapist cuddling with him, kissing him and groping him.

Owen has not responded to allegations that he touched a number of clients inappropriately and did not answer detailed questions sent to him last week.

Owen (Obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune)

The Tribune/ProPublica report in August showed that Utah’s Division of Professional Licensing and LDS church officials had known about allegations of inappropriate touching involving Owen and were slow to act. Utah licensing officials say that, given the evidence they had, they believe they responded appropriately. The church said in response that it takes all matters of sexual misconduct seriously and “this case was no exception.” The church said it annotated Owen’s membership record in 2019 with a confidential marking intended to alert bishops that he was someone whose conduct has threatened the well-being of other people or the church.

In response to the more recent allegations, the church has said that it allows its church leaders to pay for therapy for its members, but added it could not say how much money, if any, bishops have paid to Owen specifically.

Sam Penrod, a spokesperson for the church, said it does not screen therapists that its leaders are paying. He said that Family Services, a nonprofit arm of the church, maintains a list of licensed professionals that bishops can refer to when recommending therapy. It does not individually vet those mental health workers, he added. That, he said, falls to individual church members.

“It is up to Church members who are referred to a therapist by a bishop or other referral to make their own decisions when it comes to using a licensed therapist,” Penrod wrote in an email.

Millet, now 36, said going to therapy with Owen was his bishop’s “firm counsel.” It was that same bishop who had given him the required ecclesiastical recommendation to attend BYU, and he feared that not following what his bishop said could impact his academic career. Losing his bishop’s endorsement meant he would not have been able to attend the church-owned university.

“Since he referred me to Scott, who was another bishop at the time, it seemed that this was required of me academically and religiously,” Millet said. “Trying to say no to either of them would have been overwhelming at that time in my life.”

Sexual touching in a therapy session is considered unethical by all major mental health professional organizations, and Utah licensers consider it “unprofessional conduct” that can lead to discipline. It’s also illegal in Utah.

State licensers stopped Owen from practicing in 2018 after investigating at least three complaints of inappropriate touching in a two-year period. Penrod has said that the LDS legal department also learned of alleged inappropriate conduct that same year. The August article from the Tribune/ProPublica revealed that one former patient had reported the alleged abuse to both his bishop and state licensers in 2016.

Since that article was published, other entities have responded: Police in Provo are investigating. Brigham Young University has reevaluated its relationship with Owen’s business. And Canyon Counseling cut ties with him before announcing in September that it was closing altogether.

But the church has not publicly reevaluated its own role in referring these men to a therapist they now say abused them.

Canyon Counseling in Provo, Utah (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune) “Bishop Pay”

According to the church handbook, bishops can pay for clothes, food or medical services for members who are in need. The money for this comes from member donations after monthly Fast Sundays, a prayer-filled day when members are encouraged to donate what money they would have spent on food and drink to help the poor and needy.

Church guidance tells bishops that this money, called “fast offerings,” should be used to pay for only essential items, like food, clothes or housing. It may also “be used to pay for personal services such as counseling, medical care, or vocational training.”

The handbook gives little guidance as to how a bishop should recommend a therapist or other medical professional or how to ensure a church member is receiving quality care. It says that when a church member is seeking counseling about “intimacy,” a bishop should refer them to “professionals who specialize in such counseling and whose beliefs and practices are consistent with Church doctrine.”

The term “bishop pay” is listed as an option for form of payment on several websites of Utah-based therapists, usually on the same page as insurance forms and other pay rate information. Several Utah-based therapy businesses require that anyone using this payment method also sign a confidentiality waiver allowing therapists to share patient information with the patient’s bishop.

When asked what privacy expectations a church member can expect when a bishop pays for their therapy, Penrod said church leaders may follow up with a therapist to ensure the member is keeping their appointments and “pursuing goals set by the therapist.”

“Otherwise,” he said, “it is Family Services policy that HIPAA principles are closely followed and the content of sessions including diagnostics, progress notes and observations are not shared with anyone, including bishops, without a release signed by the client.”

HIPAA is a federal law to protect people’s medical records from being shared by health care providers without a patient’s knowledge.

Owen is one of several Utah therapists who have received church funds for sessions who in recent weeks have been accused of abusive behavior.

One therapist was charged last month with aggravated child abuse after the children of her business partner in an online self-improvement program were found malnourished at the therapist’s home. Her niece said during a Mormon Stories podcast interview that she handled the billing for the practice and that many clients' bills were paid by their local church leaders.

Another therapist is facing felony charges for allegedly physically abusing a client during counseling sessions. His life coaching and therapy website offers an option for billing to be sent to bishops. It also includes a form that requires patients whose treatment is paid for by the church to agree to waive their privacy rights and allow a therapist to share any health information with their bishop “without limitation.”

Neither of these mental health professionals have entered a plea to the charges against them.

Mark, who is being identified by his middle name to protect his privacy because not all of the experiences detailed here are known to people in his life, is another of the three former patients who came forward after publication of the earlier article. He told The Tribune and ProPublica about therapy sessions the church paid for where, he said, Owen held him.

Mark began to see Owen in 2008, he said, after his church leader suggested therapy. Mark had been in the middle of a disciplinary process with the church at that time after being unfaithful to his wife with a man.

At that time, many Latter-day Saint authorities taught that being gay was a choice, and the church opposed measures to allow same-sex couples to marry. The church has since said that sexuality is not a choice, but still does not allow its members to be married to someone of their same sex.

Mark, who is being identified by his middle name to protect his privacy, was referred to Owen at a time when he was being disciplined by the church. He said he didn’t feel like he had any other choice but to go. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Mark, who is bisexual, had been disfellowshipped — now called “membership restricted” — which means that while he was encouraged to attend church, he was not allowed to take the sacrament, or Communion, enter a Latter-day Saint temple or give sermons. It is considered a step below the most severe action the church can take against its members, which is excommunication, now termed “membership withdrawal.”

Though he’s no longer a believing member, Mark said it was important to him at the time to follow the guidance of his faith leader and attend counseling with Owen in order to get back into good standing with the church.

“There’s definitely a bit of pressure there,” he said. “Like what if I say no? Is that going to make my bishop think that I’m not repentant?”

Mark remembers paying a portion of the therapy cost for the handful of sessions he had with Owen. His bishop, he said, picked up the rest of the bill.

Like other former patients who spoke to The Tribune, Mark recalled how Owen had told him that he had a “fear of intimacy” and suggested that they embrace as they sat on a couch in Owen’s office. Mark did not see Owen for long, relocating shortly after their therapy sessions started.

Millet, the then-BYU student, saw Owen a year later. He said his therapy sessions began similarly, and that Owen also said he was teaching Millet to be “intimate” without being sexual. He trusted Owen because he was a therapist and a church leader, and he remembers that at first the embraces felt powerful — and positive.

“I’m this vulnerable gay kid from BYU,” Millet recalled. “I was just craving this physical touch. And it was wonderful.”

But the touching, Millet said, gradually became more sexual, and he found the sessions confusing. Owen directed Millet to take his clothes off during many sessions, Millet remembers, while the therapist remained clothed. They would often kiss, he said, with Owen touching Millet’s thighs or his bottom.

Millet kept seeing Owen for a year and a half, he said, until the therapist ended their sessions when Millet became engaged to a woman.

“We Opened an Investigation”

Even after Owen surrendered his license in 2018 in response to several patient complaints to licensers of inappropriate touching, there was no criminal investigation, and he appears to have continued to play an active role in his business. A woman who worked at Canyon Counseling for about six months last year — and who asked that her name not be used because she works as a therapist and doesn’t want to be associated with the business — said that Owen led monthly training sessions with the young therapists who worked there and recalled that he taught them about “how to incorporate theology and religion into therapy.”

The woman, whose past employment with Canyon Counseling was verified by The Tribune, said Owen had told her that he no longer saw patients because Canyon Counseling’s “business was booming” and one of the owners needed to focus their work on handling that growth. Owen did not respond to questions asking about his role in the business after he surrendered his license.

Melanie Hall, a spokesperson for Utah’s licensing division, said a therapist who teaches isn’t required to be licensed if they are not also treating patients.

It was only after the publication of the Salt Lake Tribune/ProPublica investigation, however, that Owen’s role in the business changed dramatically. First, on Aug. 15, less than two weeks after the article appeared, Owen was removed from state business records as Canyon’s Counseling registered agent. Soon after, the practice noted on its website that Owen has “no ownership nor any other affiliation in any manner” with the business.

The business itself also faced repercussions. This summer, BYU’s Student Center — where four Canyon Counseling therapists worked — began reevaluating its relationship with the business “as it learned of concerns about one of the owners,” according to university spokesperson Carri Jenkins. She said that because Owen had never practiced there, the Student Health Center was previously unaware that he had surrendered his license.

Then, in late September, Canyon Counseling announced it was closing altogether. A therapist who worked there at that time, Shawn Edgington, has since reopened the business as Palisades Counseling.

Edgington said his business has “no ties” to Owen, adding that “any alleged abuse by Mr. Owen is completely unacceptable and not condoned in any manner by Palisades Counseling.”

“Palisades Counseling and its therapists, do NOT tolerate abuse of any kind,” he wrote in an email. “Any kind of abuse of women, children, or anyone is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated in any form by Palisades Counseling and its therapists.”

Neither the church nor Utah licensers would comment on whether they reported Owen to police. But Provo police officials said the first time they learned that a former therapist in their city had been accused of sexual abuse was after the news organizations published their investigation in August.

“We opened an investigation after we saw your initial report,” Provo’s Capt. Brian Taylor told a Tribune reporter, “and we have offered interviews to anyone who has something to say about their experience at Canyon Counseling, with Dr. Scott Owen. And we continue to do that.”

Taylor said the investigation is still open, and the Provo police are seeking to speak with other people with allegations of abuse involving Owen. He said they have been in contact with “more than one” alleged victim so far.

It’s the first time local police have looked into whether Owen’s purported therapy practices are illegal.

In Utah, with few exceptions, the state licensing division is not legally required to forward information to law enforcement. At least one state — Ohio — mandates that medical boards report felonies to the police. The Federation of State Medical Boards encouraged boards in a 2020 report to err on the side of reporting physicians to the police in cases of allegations of sexual misconduct.

“Best practices dictate that boards have a duty to report to law enforcement anytime they become aware of sexual misconduct or instances of criminal behavior,” the report recommended.

Hall, the spokesperson for Utah’s licensing division, said licensers do collaborate and report crimes to police agencies “often,” though she would not not explain under what circumstances they would do so.

Mollie Simon contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

NZ election 2023: How a better funding model can help media strengthen social cohesion

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 13:01:16 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Myles Thomas

Kia ora koutou. Ko Ngāpuhi tōku iwi. Ko Ngāti Manu toku hapu. Ko Karetu tōku marae. Ko Myles Thomas toku ingoa.

I grew up with David Beatson, on the telly. Back in the 1970s, he read the late news which I watched in bed with my parents. Later, David and I worked together to save TVNZ 7 and also regional TV stations.

The Better Public Media (BPM) trust honours David each year with our memorial address, because his fight for non-commercial TV was an honourable one. He wasn’t doing it for himself.

He wasn’t doing it so he could get a job or because it would benefit him. He fought for public media because he knew it was good for Aotearoa NZ.

Like us at Better Public Media, he recognised the benefits to our country from locally produced public media.

David knew, from a long career in media, including as editor of The Listener and as Jim Bolger’s press secretary, that NZ’s media plays an important role in our nation’s culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

NZ culture is very important. NZ culture is so unique and special, yet it has always been at risk of being swamped by content from overseas. The US especially with its crackpot conspiracies, extreme racial tensions, and extreme tensions about everything to be honest.

Local content the antidote
Local content is the antidote to this. It reflects us, it portrays us, it defines New Zealand, and whether we like it or not, it defines us. But it’s important to remember that what we see reflected back to us comes through a filter.

This speech is coming to you through a filter, called Myles Thomas.

Better Public Media trustee Myles Thomas speaking beside the panel moderator and BPM chair Dr Peter Thompson (seated from left); Jenny Marcroft, NZ First candidate for Kaipara ki Mahurangi; Ricardo Menéndez March, Green Party candidate for Mt Albert; and Willie Jackson, Labour Party list candidate and Minister for Broadcasting and Media. Image: David Robie/APR

Commercial news reflects our world through a filter of sensation and danger to hold our attention. That makes NZ seem more shallow, greedy, fearful and dangerous.

The social media filter makes the world seem more angry, reactive and complaining.
RNZ’s filter is, I don’t know, thoughtful, a bit smug, middle class.

The New Zealand Herald filter makes us think every dairy is being ram-raided every night.

And The Spinoff filter suggests NZ is hip, urban and mildly infatuated with Winston Peters.

These cultural reflections are very important actually because they influence us, how we see NZ and its people.

It is not a commodity
That makes content, cultural content, special. It is not a commodity. It’s not milk powder.

We don’t drink milk and think about flooding in Queenstown, drinking milk doesn’t make us laugh about the Koiwoi accent, we don’t drink milk and identify with a young family living in poverty.

Local content is rich and powerful, and important to our society.

When the government supports the local media production industry it is actually supporting the audiences and our culture. Whether it is Te Mangai Paho, or NZ On Air or the NZ Film Commission, and the screen production rebate, these organisations fund New Zealand’s identity and culture, and success.

Don’t ask Treasury how to fund culture. Accountants don’t understand it, they can’t count it and put it in a spreadsheet, like they can milk solids. Of course they’ll say such subsidies or rebates distort the “market”, that’s the whole point. The market doesn’t work for culture.

Moreover, public funding of films and other content fosters a more stable long-term industry, rather than trashy short-termism that is completely vulnerable to outside pressures, like the US writer’s strike.

We have a celebrated content production industry. Our films, video, audio, games etc. More local content brings stability to this industry, which by the way also brings money into the country and fosters tourism.

BPM trust chair Dr Peter Thompson, senior lecturer in media studies at Victoria University, welcomes the panel and audience for the 2023 media policy debate at Grey Lynn Library Hall in Auckland last night. Image: Del Abcede/Asia Pacific Report

We cannot use quota
New Zealand needs more local content.

And what’s more, it needs to be accessible to audiences, on the platforms that they use.

But in NZ we do have one problem. Unlike Australia, we can’t use a quota because our GATT agreement does not include a carve out for local music or media quotas.

In the 1990s when GATT was being negotiated, the Aussies added an exception to their GATT agreement allowing a quota for Aussie cultural content. So they can require radio stations to play a certain amount of local music. Now they’re able to introduce a Netflix quota for up to 20 percent of all revenue generated in Aussie.

We can’t do that. Why? Because back in the 1990s the Bolger government and MFAT decided against putting the same exception into NZ’s GATT agreement.

But there is another way of doing it, if we take a lead from Denmark and many European states. Which I’ll get to in a minute.

The second important benefit of locally produced public media is social cohesion, how society works, the peace and harmony and respect that we show each other in public, depends heavily on the “public sphere”, of which, media is a big part.

Power of media to polarise
Extensive research in Europe and North America shows the power of media to polarise society, which can lead to misunderstanding, mistrust and hatred.

But media can also strengthen social cohesion, particularly for minority communities, and that same research showed that public media, otherwise known as public service media, is widely regarded to be an important contributor to tolerance in society, promoting social cohesion and integrating all communities and generations.

The third benefit is democracy. Very topical at the moment. I’ve already touched on how newsmedia affect our culture. More directly, our newsmedia influences the public dialogue over issues of the day.

It defines that dialogue. It is that dialogue.

So if our newsmedia is shallow and vacuous ignoring policies and focussing on the polls and the horse-race, then politicians who want to be elected, tailor their messages accordingly.

There’s plenty of examples of this such as National’s bootcamp policy, or Labour’s removing GST on food. As policies, neither is effective. But in the simplified 30 seconds of commercial news and headlines, these policies resonate.

Is that a good thing, that policies that are known to fail are nonetheless followed because our newsmedia cater to our base instincts and short attention spans?

Disaster for democracy
In my view, commercial media is actually disaster for democracy. All over the world.

But of course, we can’t control commercial media. No-one’s suggesting that.

The only rational reaction is to provide stronger locally produced public media.

And unfortunately, NZ lacks public media.

Obviously Australia, the UK, Canada have more public media than us, they have more people, they can afford it. But what about countries our size, Ireland? Smaller population, much more public media.

Denmark, Norway, Finland, all with roughly 5 million people, and all have significantly better public media than us. Even after the recent increases from Willie Jackson, NZ still spends just $44 per person on public media. $44 each year.

When we had a licence fee it was $110. Jim Bolger’s government got rid of that and replaced it with funding from general taxation — which means every year the Minister of Finance, working closely with Treasury, decides how much to spend on public media for that year.

This is what I call the curse of annual funding, because it makes funding public media a very political decision.

National, let us be honest, the National Party hates public media, maybe because they get nicer treatment on commercial news. We see this around the world — the Daily Mail, Sky News Australia, Newstalk ZB . . . most commercial media quite openly favours the right.

Systemic bias
This is a systemic bias. Because right-wing newsmedia gets more clicks.

Right-wing politicians are quite happy about that. Why fund public to get in the way? Even if it it benefits our culture, social cohesion, and democracy.

New Zealand is the same, the last National government froze RNZ funding for nine years.

National Party spokesperson on broadcasting Melissa Lee fought against the ANZPM merger, and now she’s fighting the News Bargaining Bill. As minister she could cut RNZ and NZ On Air’s budget.

But it wouldn’t just be cost-cutting. It would actually be political interference in our newsmedia, an attempt to skew the national conversation in favour of the National Party, by favouring commercial media.

So Aotearoa NZ needs two things. More money to be spent on public media, and less control by the politicians. Sustainable funding basically.

The best way to achieve it is a media levy.

Highly targeted tax
For those who don’t know, a levy is a tax that is highly targeted, and we have a lot of them, like the Telecommunications Development Levy (or TDL) which currently gathers $10 million a year from internet service providers like Spark and 2 Degrees to pay for rural broadband.

We’re all paying for better internet for farmers basically. When first introduced by the previous National government it collected $50 million but it’s dropped down a bit lately.

This is one of many levies that we live with and barely notice. Like the levy we pay on our insurance to cover the Earthquake Commission and the Fire and Emergency Levy. There are maritime levies, energy levies to fund EECA and Waka Kotahi, levies on building consents for MBIE, a levy on advertising pays for the ASA, the BSA is funded by a levy.

Lots of levies and they’re very effective.

So who could the media levy, levy?

ISPs like the TDL? Sure, raise the TDL back up to $50 million or perhaps higher, and it only adds a dollar onto everyone’s internet bill. There’s $50 million.

But the real target should be Big Tech, social media and large streaming services. I’m talking about Facebook, Google, Netflix, YouTube and so on. These are the companies that have really profited from the advent of online media, and at the expense of locally produced public media.

Funding content creation
We need a way to get these companies to make, or at least fund, content creation here in Aotearoa. Denmark recently proposed a solution to this problem with an innovative levy of 2 percent on the revenue of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney.

But that 2 percent rises to 5 percent if the streaming company doesn’t spend at least 5 percent of their revenue on making local Danish content. Denmark joins many other European countries already doing this — Germany, Poland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France and even Romania are all about to levy the streamers to fund local production.

Australia is planning to do so as well.

But that’s just online streaming companies. There’s also social media and search engines which contribute nothing and take almost all the commercial revenue. The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill will address that to a degree but it’s not open and we won’t know if the amounts are fair.

Another problem is that it’s only for news publishers — not drama or comedy producers, not on-demand video, not documentary makers or podcasters. Social media and search engines frequently feature and put advertising around these forms of content, and hoover up the digital advertising that would otherwise help fund them, so they should also contribute to them.

A Media Levy can best be seen as a levy on those companies that benefit from media on the internet, but don’t contribute to the public benefits of media — culture, social cohesion and democracy. And that’s why the Media Levy can include internet service providers, and large companies that sell digital advertising and subscriptions.

Note, this would target large companies over a certain size and revenue, and exclude smaller platforms, like most levies do.

Separate from annual budget
The huge benefit of a levy is that it is separate from the annual budget, so it’s fiscally neutral, and politicians can’t get their mits on it. It removes the curse of annual funding.

It creates a funding stream derived from the actual commercial media activities which produce the distribution gaps in the first place, for which public media compensates. That’s why the proceeds would go to the non-commercial platform and the funding agencies — Te Mangai Paho, NZ On Air and the Film Commission.

One final point. This wouldn’t conflict with the new Digital Services Tax proposed by the government because that’s a replacement for Income Tax. A Media Levy, like all levies, sits over and above income tax.

So there we go. I’ve mentioned Jim Bolger three times! I’ve also outlined some quite straight-forward methods to fund public media sustainably, and to fund a significant increase in local content production, video, film, audio and journalism.

None of it needs to be within the grasp of Melissa Lee or Willie Jackson, or David Seymour.

All of it can be used to create local content that improves democracy, social cohesion and Kiwi culture.

Myles Thomas is a trustee of the Better Public Media Trust (BPM). He is a former television producer and director who in 2012 established the Save TVNZ 7 campaign. Thomas is now studying law. This commentary was this year’s David Beatson Memorial Address at a public meeting in Grey Lynn last night on broadcast policy for the NZ election 2023.

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

“We trust the Japanese government,” Taiwan tourist in Tokyo, after Japan released nuclear wastewater

Radio Free Asia — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 22:02:52 +0000

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

Out of the shadows: why making NZ’s security threat assessment public is timely

APR editor — Sun, 13 Aug 2023 00:35:43 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato

The release of the threat assessment by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS) this week is the final piece in a defence and security puzzle that marks a genuine shift towards more open and public discussion of these crucial policy areas.

Together with July’s strategic foreign policy assessment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the national security strategy released last week, it rounds out the picture of New Zealand’s place in a fast-evolving geopolitical landscape.

From increased strategic competition between countries, to declining social trust within them, as well as rapid technological change, the overall message is clear: business as usual is no longer an option.

By releasing the strategy documents in this way, the government and its various agencies clearly hope to win public consent and support — ultimately, the greatest asset any country possesses to defend itself.

NZSIS’s first unclassified threat assessment targets competition, public trust, technology https://t.co/5wetaOL1oA

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 10, 2023

Low threat of violent extremism
If there is good news in the SIS assessment, it is that the threat of violent extremism is still considered “low”. That means no change since the threat level was reassessed last year, with a terror attack considered “possible” rather than “probable”.

It is a welcome development since the threat level was lifted to “high” in the
immediate aftermath of the Christchurch terror attack in 2019.

This was lowered to “medium” about a month later — where it sat in September 2021, when another extremist attacked people with a knife in an Auckland mall, seriously
wounding five.

The threat level stayed there during the escalating social tension resulting from the government’s covid response. This saw New Zealand’s first conviction for sabotage and increasing threats to politicians, with the SIS and police intervening in at least one case to mitigate the risk.

After protesters were cleared from the grounds of Parliament in early 2022, it was
still feared an act of extremism by a small minority was likely.

These risks now seem to be receding. And while the threat assessment notes that the online world can provide havens for extremism, the vast majority of those expressing vitriolic rhetoric are deemed unlikely to carry through with violence in the real world.

Changing patterns of extremism
Assessments like this are not a crystal ball; threats can emerge quickly and be near-invisible before they do. But right now, at least publicly, the SIS is not aware of any specific or credible attack planning.

New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment 2023 report. Image: APR screenshot

Many extremists still fit well-defined categories. There are the politically motivated, potentially violent, anti-authority conspiracy theorists, of which there is a “small number”.

And there are those motivated by identity (with white supremacist extremism the dominant strand) or faith (such as support for Islamic State, a decreasing and “very small number”).

However, the SIS describes a noticeable increase in individuals who don’t fit within those traditional boundaries, but who hold mixed, unstable or unclear ideologies they may tailor to fit some other violent or extremist impulse.

Espionage and cyber-security risks

There also seems to be a revival of the espionage and spying cultures last seen during the Cold War. There is already the first military case of espionage before the courts, and the SIS is aware of individuals on the margins of government being cultivated and offered financial and other incentives to provide sensitive information.

The SIS says espionage operations by foreign intelligence agencies against New Zealand, both at home and abroad, are persistent, opportunistic and increasingly wide ranging.

While the government remains the main target, corporations, research institutions and state contractors are now all potential sources of sensitive information. Because non-governmental agencies are often not prepared for such threats, they pose a significant security risk.

Cybersecurity remains a particular concern, although the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) recorded 350 incidents in 2021-22, which was a decline from 404 incidents recorded in the previous 12-month period.

On the other hand, a growing proportion of cyber incidents affecting major New Zealand institutions can be linked to state-sponsored actors. Of the 350 reported major incidents, 118 were connected to foreign states (34 percent of the total, up from 28 percent the previous year).

NZSIS’s first unclassified threat assessment targets competition, public trust, technology https://t.co/5wetaOL1oA

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 10, 2023

Russia, Iran and China
Although the SIS recorded that only a “small number” of foreign states engaged in deceptive, corruptive or coercive attempts to exert political or social influence, the potential for harm is “significant”.

Some of the most insidious examples concern harassment of ethnic communities within New Zealand who speak out against the actions of a foreign government.

The SIS identifies Russia, Iran and China as the three offenders. Iran was recorded as reporting on Iranian communities and dissident groups in New Zealand. In addition, the assessment says:

Most notable is the continued targeting of New Zealand’s diverse ethnic Chinese communities. We see these activities carried out by groups and individuals linked to the intelligence arm of the People’s Republic of China.

Overall, the threat assessment makes for welcome – if at times unsettling – reading. Having such conversations in the open, rather than in whispers behind closed doors, demystifies aspects of national security.

Most importantly, it gives greater credibility to those state agencies that must increase their transparency in order to build public trust and support for their unique roles within a working democracy.

Dr Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MPs confront Iran’s Ambassador to New Zealand over protest crackdowns https://t.co/Mtqr5OLetS

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) August 3, 2023

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

A Utah Therapist Built a Reputation for Helping Gay Latter-day Saints. These Men Say He Sexually Abused Them.

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 12:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune

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

This story discusses sexual assault.

Andrew was feeling crushed by the cultural expectation to get married.

Twenty-two years old, he had just returned from a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was attending a singles’ ward in Provo, Utah — a local congregation of unmarried college students.

But Andrew is gay. And marriage between a man and a woman is a central tenet of the Latter-day Saint faith, which teaches that the highest level of heaven is reserved only for married, heterosexual couples. Same-sex marriage is not an option in the church.

So in the fall of 2015, he did as many Latter-day Saints do when they are having a crisis: He went to his bishop.

The lay leader suggested trying therapy, Andrew remembered. In fact, the bishop said he had just gotten a referral that same day for a local therapist named Scott Owen who worked well with gay men who were members of their faith. Owen co-owned a Provo therapy business called Canyon Counseling and, at that time, was also a regional leader in a Provo-area stake, a cluster of congregations that is similar to a Catholic diocese.

The coincidental timing — that his bishop learned of Owen on the same day Andrew disclosed his internal struggles — felt miraculous.

“It was like, God has a plan,” Andrew said. “This is going to work out. Everything seems dark and depressing. But this therapist is going to fix everything.”

But that’s not what happened. For five months beginning in October 2015, Andrew said, the clinical mental health counselor groped him, encouraged him to undress and kissed him during sessions. Andrew said Owen told him that the touching was a therapeutic way to learn how to accept love and intimacy.

Andrew, now 30, is being identified by a pseudonym to protect his privacy.

Sexual touching in a therapy session is considered unethical by all major mental health professional organizations, and it is defined in Utah rules as “unprofessional conduct” that could lead to a mental health worker losing their license or other discipline. It’s also illegal in Utah.

By March 2016, Andrew had reported Owen to both his bishop and to state licensing officials. A new investigation from The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica shows how Utah licensers allowed Owen to continue practicing and church leaders repeatedly heard concerns but took several years to take official action. For nearly two years after Andrew’s report, Owen provided therapy to clients, some of whom were men referred for “same-sex attraction” counseling. During that time, at least three more patients allege they were sexually abused by Owen, including two who reported him to the state licensing body in 2018. Those reports ultimately led Owen to agree to surrender his license.

Owen’s case is indicative of a flawed and misleading system: Officials within Utah’s Division of Professional Licensing encourage the public to look to the agency’s disciplinary records to vet a professional, yet those records rarely offer a full picture of misconduct. Despite Owen’s pattern of alleged inappropriate behavior, his publicly available disciplinary records reference touching but never disclose that the accusations against him were sexual in nature. This is one of a number of shortcomings identified by The Tribune and ProPublica while reporting on how Utah officials fail to supervise medical professionals and to adequately address patient reports of sexual assault.

Scott Owen (Obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune)

Owen, a large-framed bald man with dark blue eyes who speaks with a drawl, built a reputation over his 20-year career as a therapist with Christian values who could help Latter-day Saint men with same-gender attraction. He gave public lectures so often about pornography and masturbation, Owen told a crowd of LGBTQ+ church members in 2016, that he had earned the nickname “The Porn King.”

Although Owen, now 64, responded to an initial email from a reporter, he did not answer detailed questions sent to him via certified mail.

Officials with DOPL say that, given the evidence they had from Andrew’s complaint, they believe they responded appropriately. But, communications between Andrew and an investigator suggest that the agency’s actions rested largely on Owen’s denial that anything improper had happened and a failed polygraph test officials asked Andrew to take — a tool that experts say is known to be specifically unreliable with victims of sexual abuse, and that some states ban for that reason.

Church spokesperson Sam Penrod said the faith made an annotation on Owen’s personal church record in spring of 2019 — three years after Andrew’s initial report to his bishop. An annotation is a confidential marking intended to alert a bishop to someone whose conduct has threatened the well-being of other people or the church. It can affect what roles members are asked to fill within their congregation.

Penrod said in an email: “The Church takes all matters of sexual misconduct very seriously. This case was no exception.”

Both the church and the licensing division declined to comment on whether they reported the therapist to the police. Provo police officials said they had no record of ever receiving any report of sexual abuse against Owen.

Owen co-founded Canyon Counseling in Provo, Utah, in 1998. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune) Touching in Therapy

Owen pushed physical boundaries from the very start, Andrew said. After their first session, Owen ended their meeting with a quick hug. At his second appointment, Andrew said, Owen held him in a longer embrace.

“I’m doing this because I know you’re uncomfortable with love,” Andrew remembered Owen telling him as they hugged. “I want you to get used to it.” Such touching, he recalled Owen saying, would be “a key step in my therapy.”

Andrew did feel uncomfortable. But he remembered Owen seemed genuine and truthful in their therapy sessions — even “Christ-like” in his caring.

Growing up in the Latter-day Saint faith, Andrew was taught to trust men in positions of authority. There was also the expectation to talk with his bishop about deeply personal sexual details during one-on-one interviews. These annual closed-door discussions generally start when members become teenagers and typically explore whether they are following the faith’s rules; they have been criticized by some parents and therapists as being “inappropriate” and “intrusive.”

These interviews, Andrew said, left him with a skewed view of what was appropriate in a mentoring relationship.

“I felt like a lot of the times I didn’t understand what normal boundaries to have around sexuality,” he said, in part because of how he was instructed to relate to religious leaders. “You have to air it all to these particular people in your life — and then you hide it desperately from everyone else.”

In the late 1960s, church leaders took a hard stance against even identifying as gay, including “homosexuality” in a list of behaviors that could result in excommunication. Bishops and church leaders in subsequent years were taught that being gay was a reversible condition, and church leaders would send gay men to conversion therapy or advise they could be fixed by marrying a woman.

By the time Andrew began seeing Owen in 2015, the church had publicly acknowledged that its members do not have a choice in being attracted to the same sex; today, church policy says a gay member can remain in good standing if they remain celibate and never marry someone of their same gender.

“At the time, I knew it might not be possible for me to get married, and that would still be OK in the church framework,” Andrew recalled. But, he added, “so much of the LDS dream is based on marriage that that was crushing and really depressing to me.”

So Andrew kept going to therapy, even as he said Owen began touching him more, at times rubbing his back or his bottom during hugs. Owen encouraged him to undress during some therapy sessions, Andrew said, which evolved into what he describes as “makeout sessions.” Looking back now, it’s clear to Andrew that this was inappropriate — but in the moment, he felt desperate and confused.

Andrew reasoned with himself that he was not physically attracted to Owen when they touched, which would be similar if he married a woman. Maybe it was a way for him to learn how to express romantic feelings he didn’t have or to fake it until those feelings came.

“I couldn’t accept that I was being taken advantage of,” Andrew said. “That’s a hard thing to be like, ‘Oh, I’ve been sexually abused this whole time.’”

“This was supposed to be my miracle,” he added.

Decorations in Andrew’s room (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune) A Reprimand

Andrew decided to stop therapy in February 2016, as he wrestled with whether what had happened had been abusive. He confided in a friend during late-night study sessions on Brigham Young University’s campus a few days later. In an interview corroborating Andrew’s account, she recalled urging him to tell someone.

Within a week of stopping therapy, Andrew again found himself confiding in his bishop.

Andrew recalled feeling like his church leader, who works as a livestock and pasture insurance agent, seemed confused about how to help a gay member of the church — and whether this type of touching in therapy was supposed to be helpful. He referred Andrew to another therapist who, Andrew said, told him Owen’s alleged conduct was a “gross violation” of patient boundaries.

Andrew went back to his bishop with this information, but the lay leader never reported that information to church authorities. The church’s general handbook for members makes it clear that if a bishop or stake president “learns of abuse of a spouse or another adult,” they are supposed to call a confidential hotline for guidance from lawyers and clinical professionals.

The bishop, whom The Tribune and ProPublica are not identifying to protect Andrew’s identity, said that he struggled to process what Andrew told him, and that he felt it was sufficient that he had encouraged Andrew to report Owen to state licensing officials at DOPL. The division is responsible for licensing Utah professionals, from medical doctors to armed security guards to massage therapists. It is also charged with investigating misconduct and can revoke a license or put someone on administrative probation.

By then, Andrew had stopped seeing Owen. Andrew’s bishop questions now whether he should have said something to a higher church leader, but he said he felt the faith’s guidance for when bishops should report alleged abuse to church authorities pertained more to “something happening that needs to be stopped, like when there’s abuse in the home.” The bishop added that he didn’t feel he knew how he should help members who were struggling with their sexual identity and their faith.

“A bishop is supposed to be a spiritual guide. Not a psychologist, not a family therapist. So I felt equipped to listen and love them, absolutely,” he said. “But as far as to help them process what it means and how to be a part of this religion and be gay — I never figured that out.”

Andrew followed his bishop’s guidance and went to licensers in early March 2016. In a statement Andrew wrote for investigators — which he shared with The Tribune and ProPublica — Andrew described the escalating touching and accused Owen of touching parts of his genital area at their last appointment.

“I left feeling disgusted in what had happened,” Andrew wrote about their last appointment, “and vowed to never return.”

To conduct their investigation, licensing officials offered the therapist a polygraph test. He refused, according to DOPL. They also asked Andrew if he would wear a recording device, he said, and go to Owen’s office to ask him about the touching. Andrew said he didn’t feel like he could go through with that.

That’s when the investigator asked Andrew if he would take a lie detector test.

Andrew said the investigator reasoned to him that if he could pass one, it could bolster what essentially was a case of one person’s word against the other.

The polygraph did not go well, Andrew said — the results suggested he was being deceptive.

“I had so much trauma,” Andrew said. “And so, certainly, when they asked me questions about the particular things that happened in therapy, it’s going to elicit a very strong emotional response.”

Researchers say this is a common response for trauma victims, and many recommend that sexual abuse victims not undergo polygraph exams. Half of states have laws explicitly prohibiting law enforcement from conducting a polygraph test with someone reporting a sexual assault, with some barring any government employee from requiring an alleged sexual assault victim to take one. There is no law in Utah that puts limits on the use of polygraph tests on victims.

Melanie Hall, the spokesperson for DOPL, acknowledged that an investigator did “offer the option” of a polygraph test to both Owen and Andrew. She said that it is “extremely rare” for a polygraph to be used as part of an investigation, but that the agency doesn’t track how often.

Andrew’s failed polygraph sent his own mental health spiraling. He wrote in an email in October 2016 that he no longer wanted to participate in the investigation unless someone else came forward.

A month later, Owen was given a public reprimand from licensers for the one inappropriate action he admitted to: that he gave Andrew hugs. Owen admitted in licensing documents that he “inappropriately touched a client in a non-sexual manner.”

Hall said the “overwhelming majority” of DOPL’s disciplinary actions are negotiated settlements — where a licensed professional admits to lesser conduct than what is alleged by those who say they’ve been harmed.

Owen later told the Clinical Mental Health Counselor Licensing Board, in a hearing in Salt Lake City at which he received an official reprimand, that his client had been struggling with a family issue, and that it was “not uncommon” for him to hug his patients.

But he denied Andrew’s allegations to the board, calling it “quite a story he concocted.”

“I readily agreed and admitted to giving him hugs at the end of the session and that sort of stuff,” Owen said during the meeting, adding that someone at DOPL told him that he should “know better” than to hug someone who was seeking therapy for same-sex attraction.

Owen said that he had changed his practices.

“I don’t do that anymore,” he said. “I have just been a little bit stunned and burned by this. I’ll shake hands, and I don’t even like to shake hands until my office door’s open and completely out in the reception area with my receptionist there.”

Owen left the meeting that day with a reprimand but no other limitations on his license — and no need to tell his other patients.

“I Felt Betrayed”

At precisely the time DOPL was investigating Owen, and then publicly reprimanded him, another man living in Provo and attending the same religious university as Andrew was questioning whether the way the therapist touched him during sessions had crossed the line.

Jonathan Scott had been seeing Owen for three years — and he would continue to see him for nine months more after the reprimand. His allegations bear a striking resemblance to Andrew’s, but he was not aware of the licensing reprimand — and it would be years before he realized that his experience was not unique.

Jonathan Scott began therapy sessions with Scott Owen in 2013 as an effort to heal from childhood sexual abuse. Scott said that the therapist touched him inappropriately but that he did not initially recognize Owen’s alleged actions as abuse. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Jonathan Scott, a reserved 32-year-old with curly ash brown hair, first started seeing Owen in 2013 as a lanky BYU student struggling to deal with childhood trauma from being sexually abused by his Boy Scout leader in Illinois. His parents found Owen online and met with him first; Jonathan Scott’s father recalls Owen saying that he could help their son have safe relationships with adult men.

Jonathan Scott said his new therapist reminded him of the man who sexually abused him when he was a kid. They had similar nervous tics, and the way each man had looked at him felt the same. They were both middle aged and had the large frame and roundness of a teddy bear.

“That was kind of the point,” Jonathan Scott remembers. Unlike his abuser, Owen was supposed to be “a safe, good man who is supposed to help me reestablish trust with men.”

But Jonathan Scott said Owen frequently touched him under his clothing while hugging him during sessions.

Like Andrew, he said this touching gradually escalated. Eventually, he said, his sessions felt like nothing more than 40 minutes of cuddling. Also like Andrew, he told himself that to heal he needed to learn to accept touch. And because he was raised in the church, he added, he wasn’t going to question a religious leader.

“You justify things. You let things slide. But did it feel comfortable? No, it didn’t feel comfortable. It didn’t feel safe,” he said. “But I was told I needed to work through that.”

Jonathan Scott ended therapy in 2017 when he moved. He never contacted DOPL, or the police, himself. It was only two years later that his partner — upset with the thought that Owen had never faced consequences — was searching online and found the reprimand. She corroborated details of his account in an interview with The Tribune.

It felt like a betrayal, Jonathan Scott said, to learn that Owen had denied touching Andrew around the same time he says the therapist had been groping him.

“When I found out that there were others, I felt not alone,” he said. “I felt justified in my anger of what I thought had happened to me. I felt even less trust in authority.”

Hall said that DOPL may, in some cases, require a disciplined licensee to inform their patients of unprofessional conduct, though that didn’t happen in Owen’s case. Utah has no law requiring this type of disclosure, and there are only three states that do require medical professionals disciplined for sexual misconduct to disclose that to their patients.

“DOPL and/or the licensing board may decide to implement this requirement,” Hall said, “if there is strong concern about an individual treating others without first informing them and receiving consent from the patient.”

But a search of more than 3,200 filings obtained from DOPL’s website, some from as early as 2010, shows the state has rarely required disclosure of unprofessional conduct to individual patients.

A Surrendered License

Owen continued to practice for nearly two years after the reprimand. It would take two more people coming forward before the licensing process was able to take meaningful action.

One of those was Sam, a 43-year-old man who now lives in Arizona. As a Latter-day Saint who was attracted to other men, Sam struggled to feel accepted, his brother Jason recalled. One fall day in 2017, Sam called Jason sobbing to tell him about a therapist he had been going to: how Owen had made him feel loved; how the therapist told him that he could help him learn to accept intimacy; how the sessions had become sexual.

Sam later detailed his experiences in a written timeline, an account that a friend later also shared in a letter to the church: It started in January 2017 with a hug and by August had escalated to mutual masturbation.

He declined an interview request relayed through his brother. Sam and his brother are identified by pseudonyms for this article, and information about Sam’s experience was gleaned from interviews and records provided by his brother and Troy Flake, a friend Sam confided in at the time.

In February 2018, DOPL received another report alleging Owen engaged in sexual misconduct. Details of the complaint were redacted in response to a public records request. And in April, Sam himself spoke to a DOPL investigator.

“Just got off the phone with the investigator,” Sam wrote in a text message to his brother. “It was pretty rough to explain to him all of what happened, but I’m glad I got through it and started this process.”

He wrote that the investigator had “accumulated accounts from several of Scott’s clients.”

Within weeks of Sam speaking to the investigator, Owen surrendered his license as part of an agreement with Utah’s licensing division. According to the DOPL order, investigators believed that Owen inappropriately touched “a number” of clients in a five-year period beginning in 2013. There was no reference to the sexual nature of those contacts. And when Owen surrendered his license, he was able to give it up while neither agreeing with nor denying licensers’ findings.

Reports to Church Leaders

Utah’s licensing division wasn’t the only entity that had knowledge of Owen’s activities for years before he was censured. There was also the church.

Andrew had gone to his bishop back in 2016, but church officials say their legal department did not learn of any alleged inappropriate conduct involving Owen until two years later, after DOPL had already begun to investigate.

As with Andrew, Sam first relayed his concerns to a trusted church leader. In the timeline Sam created, which he had shared with Flake, he wrote that Owen at times had told him that he “didn’t need to run off and talk to my bishop about” their counseling sessions.

If he wanted help processing what was happening, Sam wrote in that document, Owen suggested he talk with Alan Hansen, a psychologist who was also Owen’s business partner at Canyon Counseling. Hansen’s role as Sam’s stake president at that time meant he was also in charge of overseeing thousands of church members who make up local congregations in their area.

A patient of Owen’s twice raised concerns with Alan Hansen, co-owner of Canyon Counseling, about inappropriate touching during therapy. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

In August 2017, Sam went to Hansen’s church office on BYU’s campus, where he disclosed that Owen had been “physical” with him during sessions.

He wrote in his timeline that Hansen encouraged him to keep attending therapy and gave him a priesthood blessing — a prayer of healing and encouragement given by adult men in their church. The blessing made Sam feel better, he wrote, and he continued seeing Owen for therapy for two months. But then, he added, he became too uncomfortable with the sexual touching he said happened inside the Canyon Counseling office.

In December, according to the timeline, he told Hansen again about Owen’s touching. This time, though, he was more explicit — telling the church leader that Owen had kissed him and had engaged in heavy petting and other types of sexual touching.

“Alan acknowledged that some of Scott’s actions clearly crossed some boundaries and that was likely due to Scott’s own weaknesses,” Sam wrote. “He also stated that Scott had done something like this before — and that there were others. I don’t remember his exact language, but that was the effect of what he said.”

Hansen did not respond to a list of questions sent to him, and he referred a reporter to the church’s legal department. A church spokesperson did not address questions about Hansen.

Sam continued to tell other church leaders about Owen’s behavior — and Hansen’s dismissal of it. He also went to his previous bishop in Provo. Sam wrote in text messages to his brother that this church leader confronted Hansen about “essentially doing nothing about my situation with my previous therapist.”

“He thinks it’s possible that it’s a releasable offense for the stake president,” Sam wrote to his brother about the chance that church authorities would strip Hansen of his official role in their faith. But that didn’t happen.

Penrod, the church spokesperson, did not respond to a question asking whether Hansen ever received disciplinary action for not reporting his business partner to church authorities.

He added that “local leaders who are themselves professional therapists should not refer members to affiliated therapists or practices in which they have a financial interest.”

But concerns over Owen’s behavior didn’t end when he surrendered his license. Flake, Sam’s friend, was worried that Owen could still be teaching in a church setting and was frustrated that he believed Hansen had known what was going on and took no action. More than a year later, in December 2019, he sent an email to church lawyers urging them to investigate.

A church attorney responded to his email later that same day, according to correspondence shared with The Tribune and ProPublica, telling Flake the firm would provide the information “to Owen’s current leaders and let you know if we need additional information.” The attorney made no mention of Hansen. Flake says he never heard from the church lawyers again.

The Tribune asked church officials in an email whether Hansen had ever been disciplined in connection to his business partner’s actions, but the church did not respond to that question. Hansen’s psychologist license is in good standing with the state, and no disciplinary action has been taken against him.

“There’s Been Zero Justice”

Years after they say they were sexually assaulted, several of Owen’s former patients are connected now through one more person who says the ex-therapist sexually abused him nearly 40 years ago: Owen’s own cousin, a Boise, Idaho, man named James Cooper.

Cooper wrote to his family in June 2020, telling them that Owen molested him in a shared bed during a trip to Colorado in the 1980s. The email describes how Cooper had learned that past winter that Owen had surrendered his license.

He also sent a separate email to Owen, who denied the allegation and replied: “I don’t see this the same, but I am so sorry for your pain and hurt.”

Cooper wrote in the email to his family that up until then “my strategy has been to forget and avoid Scott [Owen] as much as possible, and admittedly that means I was content to keep my head in the sand in this regard.”

But after he read about Owen surrendering his license, Cooper wrote, it forced him to think about those who allege his cousin later hurt them. The 48-year-old man scoured the internet, searching for any potential victims and posting anonymously on Google reviews asking others to reach out to him.

Owen’s cousin, James Cooper, alleged Owen molested him in the 1980s. More recently, Cooper sought out and connected former patients of Owen’s who allege they were abused in therapy. (Sarah A. Miller for ProPublica)

That’s how he connected with Andrew, Jonathan Scott and Sam’s friend Flake; together, the men grappled with what to do next. All of them described long-term effects of Owen’s alleged conduct and also a sense that there had been no meaningful consequences for him.

Both Andrew and Jonathan Scott have left the church, in part because of the alleged abuse. Sam has been devastated after realizing he had been taken advantage of, according to Flake, which has destroyed his ability to trust his own perception. And Jonathan Scott has thought about reporting Owen to the police, but he continues to struggle to trust authority figures.

“There’s been zero justice, as far as I can see,” Jonathan Scott said.

Owen today is listed as the registered agent for Canyon Counseling in public business records. It’s not clear what his role in the business is, but in 2019, Flake called the police to report seeing Owen’s truck in the Canyon Counseling parking lot, though he did not have a license to practice therapy.

An officer contacted Owen, who said he owns the business — but is not a therapist any more.

The Mental Health Profession Violations

Scott Owen is one of at least 197 mental health professionals who have been disciplined by Utah licensers since 2012, according to a data analysis by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica of available disciplinary documents on the state Division of Professional Licensing’s website as of April 20, 2023. This database is not exhaustive, as older filings may no longer appear on the website.

Of those, 73 — or 37% — had been disciplined for sexual misconduct. Searches of DOPL’s disciplinary records suggest that mental health professionals are more often disciplined for sexual-related misconduct than doctors or nurses. The Tribune and ProPublica also identified 28 other misconduct cases where a therapist had an inappropriate “dual relationship” with a client — such as a client sleeping over at a therapist’s home or cleaning horse stalls together — that did not appear on paper to be explicitly sexual in nature.

Owen is one of five Utah mental health professionals identified by The Tribune and ProPublica who have been disciplined more than once for sexual conduct. Several of them continue to work in the therapy business in some capacity. Two others among the five were put on probation and allowed to continue working as therapists, according to disciplinary filings, while a third opened a life coaching business marketing himself as a “one of the few Ph.D.-level coaches” in southern Utah.

Utah licensers consider any sexual contact with a current patient to be misconduct, and sexual relationships with a former patient are not allowed within two years after they stop seeing a therapist.

When asked if the licensing division knew whether therapists were at higher risk for sexual misconduct, spokesperson Melanie Hall said DOPL is aware that certain license types “have a tendency towards certain types of violations.” She didn’t specifically address mental health professionals, but she gave certified public accountants as an example of professionals who have increased access to bank accounts and are more likely to commit financial fraud than other professionals who do not have that access.

The agency, she said, “takes these factors into account when investigating complaints, and takes appropriate disciplinary action when necessary.”

The news organizations also asked Hall about whether DOPL reports cases to law enforcement. Under Utah law, it is illegal for a health professional to engage in sexual contact with their patient under the guise of providing treatment.

The licensing division, Hall said, is not legally required to forward information to law enforcement — just as the police are also not mandated to share information about a licensed professional they are investigating. The only exception to this, she said, is a requirement that drug thefts be reported to police.

Hall said that licensers do collaborate and report crimes to police agencies “often,” though she did not explain under what circumstances they would do so. She said that licensers may encourage a patient to reach out to the police or decide that the case does not require a criminal investigation. She would not say whether anyone at DOPL ever reported Owen to the police.

Editor’s Note: Three sources for this story — Andrew, Sam and Jason — are identified only by pseudonyms because they requested anonymity. Two are alleged victims of sexual assault, and the third is the brother of one of those men. We have granted this request because of the risk to their standing in their communities if they were publicly identified. The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica typically use sources’ full names in stories. But sometimes that isn’t possible, and we consider other approaches. That often takes the form of initials or middle names. In this case, we felt that we couldn’t fully protect our sources by those means. Their full names are known to a reporter and editors, and their accounts have been corroborated by documents and interviews with others.

This story was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Jeff Kao and Haru Coryne, ProPublica, and Will Craft, special to The Salt Lake Tribune, contributed data reporting. Mollie Simon, ProPublica, contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

Congressmen angry that Bikini islanders’ nuclear trust fund may have been ‘squandered’

APR editor — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 02:26:15 +0000

By Giff Johnson, Editor, Marshall Islands Journal and RNZ Pacific correspondent

Following widespread media coverage of the collapse of what was a more than US$70 million trust fund for Bikini islanders displaced by American nuclear weapons testing, the United States Congress has demanded answers from the Interior Department about the status of the trust fund.

Four leading members of the US Congress put the Interior Department on notice last Friday that Congress is focused on accountability of Interior’s decision to discontinue oversight of the Bikini Resettlement Trust Fund.

In their three-page letter, the chairmen and the ranking members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the House Committee on Natural Resources — which both have oversight on US funding to the Marshall Islands — wrote to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland with questions about what has happened to the Bikinians’ trust fund.

READ MORE: Other Bikini Islander reports

It was initially capitalised by the US Congress in 1982 and again in 1988 for a total investment of just under US$110m.

Protests in Majuro
The Congressional letter is the first official US action on the Bikini Resettlement Trust Fund and follows several demonstrations in Majuro over the past six weeks by members of the Bikini community angered by the current lack of money to support their community.

The letter notes that on November 16, 2017, Interior accepted Kili/Bikini/Ejit Mayor Anderson Jibas and the local council’s request for a “rescript” or change in the system of oversight of the Resettlement Trust Fund.

As of September 30, 2016, the fund had $71 million in it, the last audit available of the fund.

“Since then (2017), local officials have purportedly depleted the fund,” the four Senate and House leaders wrote to Haaland.

“Indeed, media reports suggest that the fund may have been squandered in ways that not only lack transparency and accountability, but also lack fidelity to the fund’s original intent.

“If true, that is a major breach of public trust not only for the people of Bikini Atoll, for whom the fund was established, but also for the American taxpayers whose dollars established and endowed the fund.”

They refer to multiple media reports about the demise of the Resettlement Trust Fund, including in the Marshall Islands Journal, The New York Times, Marianas Variety and Honolulu Civil Beat.

No audits since 2016
The Resettlement Trust Fund was audited annually since inception in the 1980s. But there have been no audits released since 2016 during the tenure of current Mayor Jibas.

The lack of funds in the Resettlement Trust Fund only became evident in January when the local government was unable to pay workers and provide other benefits routinely provided for the displaced islanders.

Since January, no salaries or quarterly nuclear compensation payments have been made, leaving Bikinians largely destitute and now facing dozens of collection lawsuits from local banks due to delinquent loan payments.

Bikini women load their belongings onto a waiting US Navy vessel in March 1946 as they prepare to depart to Rongerik, an uninhabited atoll where they spent two years. Image: US Navy Archives

‘Fund is in jeopardy’
The letter from Energy Chairman Senator Joe Manchin and ranking member Senator John Barrasso, and Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman and ranking member Raul Grijalva says American lawmakers “have a duty to oversee the management of taxpayer dollars appropriated for the resettlement and rehabilitation of Bikini Atoll”.

The letter also repeatedly makes the point that the money in the trust fund was only to rehabilitate and resettle Bikini Atoll, with projects on Kili or Ejit islands limited to only $2 million per year, subject to the Interior Secretary’s prior approval.

“Regrettably, the continued viability of the fund to serve its express purpose now appears to be in jeopardy,” the US elected leaders said.

The US leaders are demanding that Haaland explain why the Interior Department walked away from its long-standing oversight role with the trust fund in late 2017.

Specifically they want to know if the Office of the Solicitor approved the decision by then-Assistant Secretary Doug Domenech to accept the KBE Local Government’s rescript “as a valid amendment to the 1988 amended resettlement trust fund agreement.’

They also suggest Interior’s 2017 decision has ramifications for US legal liability.

Key questions
“Does the department believe that the 2017 rescript supersedes the 1988 amended resettlement trust fund agreement in its entirety?” they ask.

“If so, does the department disclaim that Congress’s 1988 appropriation to the fund fully satisfied the obligation of the United States to provide funds to assist in the resettlement and rehabilitation of Bikini Atoll by the people of Bikini Atoll?

“And does that waive any rights or reopen any potential legal liabilities for nuclear claims that were previously settled?”

They also want to know if KBE Local Government provided a copy of its annual budget, as promised, since 2017.

The letter winds up wanting to know what Interior is “doing to ensure that trust funds related to the Marshall Islands are managed transparently and accountably moving forward?”

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

The Baker underwater nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Dozens of World War II vessels were used as targets for this weapons test, and now lie on the atoll’s lagoon floor. Image: US Navy Archives

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

Shirdi Sai Trust did not donate Rs 35 Lakh for Hajj; false claim viral

Kinjal — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:32:52 +0000

A screenshot of a Google search page is being widely shared on social media, which shows that the Shirdi Sai Trust has donated Rs 35 crore for Hajj. The search result in the picture features a tweet by the handle ‘@kavita_tewari’ making the same claim on April 20, 2023. Twitter user ‘@Mahende83499386’ also promoted the screenshot and wrote, “Especially those Hindus who visit Shirdi should watch this”. (Archived link)

शिरडी साईं ट्रस्ट ने हज के लिए 35 करोड़ डोनेशन दी है।
जो हिंदू शिरडी जाते हैं उन्हें विशेष रूप से ये देखना चाहिए। pic.twitter.com/ANXRMnuPXk

— Mahender singh Mahawar (@Mahende83499386) June 18, 2023

Twitter user Vinay Shukla also tweeted the picture with a similar claim. (Archived link)

शिरडी साईं ट्रस्ट ने हज के लिए 35 करोड़ डोनेशन दी है।
जो हिंदू शिरडी जाते हैं उन्हें विशेष रूप से ये देखना चाहिए। pic.twitter.com/TL0mFfOzcD

— νιиαу ѕнυкℓα (@vinay19r) June 19, 2023

Several other Twitter users and Facebook users posted the picture with a similar claim. Facebook user Abhinav Goswami also amplified the same claim in a Facebook group titled ‘Republic Bharat’, urging others not to donate to Saibaba temples.

Click to view slideshow.

Fact Check

Firstly, we performed a Google search to find out whether the claim was true. However, we could not find any media report to corroborate the claim. It is highly unlikely that the media did not cover the news of a donation of this size.

Next, we examined the website of the Shirdi Sai Trust. Yet, we could not find any information about the organization donating for Hajj either.

In addition, we reached out to the Shirdi Sai Trust. An official from its public relations department speaking on the condition of anonymity said that the social media claim pertaining to the Shirdi Sai Trust donating Rs. 35 crore for Haj was completely false. “The Trust has not issued any such donation.” The official further added, “The CEO of the Trust has taken cognizance of the matter and lodged a complaint with the Shirdi Police.”

This official also shared a copy of the FIR with Alt News. As per the document, Tushar Shelke, PRO of the Shirdi Sai Trust, filed a complaint under Sections 295, 153 (A) and 500 of the Indian Penal Code against those spreading false information against the Trust on social media.

Click to view slideshow.

Furthermore, upon finding out about the tweet circulating this viral claim, we came to know that Twitter user ‘@kavita_tewari’ had deleted her post. It is worth noting that the alleged claim about the donation in this tweet was made without any concrete evidence. While examining the profile of this Twitter handle, we discovered that Prime Minister Narendra Modi also followed this user.

To sum it up, the viral social media claim about the Shirdi Sai Trust donating Rs. 35 crore for Hajj is false. An official from the Trust completely denied this claim. Recently, a video went viral in which some people wearing caps related to Muslim religion were withdrawing money from the donation box. It was claimed that the money donated to the Shirdi Sai Temple was reaching Muslims. In reality, the video was from Bangladesh. Readers can access the detailed fact-check report about this viral video here.

The post Shirdi Sai Trust did not donate Rs 35 Lakh for Hajj; false claim viral appeared first on Alt News.

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

Proudly Standing in Solidarity With Youth in Historic Climate Court Case

Michelle Uberuaga — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 16:04:22 +0000

Today I am in Helena to stand in solidarity with the youth plaintiffs of Held v. Montana as they work with their legal team to make the case that the state has violated their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. I’m an environmental attorney, but this time, I’m headed to court in a different capacity — as a mom.

None of the plaintiffs in Held v. Montana are my biological children, but they feel like my kids. I’ve known one of the plaintiffs since she was 5 years old, and now she’s borrowing my clothes for depositions. I’ve watched these kids grow up and shared their fear and heartbreak as they’ve seen floods and wildfires wreak havoc on their communities and the beautiful state we call home. But I’ve also been deeply inspired by the way these youth plaintiffs and their peers are turning their lived experience into meaningful action.

Back in January, I traveled to Helena with two students from the Park High Green Initiative for the climate advocacy day at the Capitol. They jumped at a last-minute opportunity to speak, despite the fact that they had tests to study for, and that one of them was celebrating their 16th birthday. They wrote their speeches in the car and delivered them a couple of hours later, pleading with Montana’s leaders to take action on climate. The newly 16-year-old asked: “How many more birthdays will I have where the air is breathable?”

While many of their peers are preparing for school dances and soccer games, they’re preparing to go to court.

I don’t remember what I was doing on my birthday at age 16, but it wasn’t that. Then again, I didn’t turn 16 in a world when 500-year weather events seemed to make headlines a couple times per year. Today’s youth are taking on a lot, but that’s because there’s a lot to take on.

For decades, youth have stepped up to lead in areas where adults have failed to lead. Leaders like Xiuhtezcatl Martinez of Earth Guardians and Greta Thunburg have been outspoken activists from an early age. The Held v. Montana plaintiffs aren’t the first youth to sue their state–they are represented by Our Children’s Trust, a non-profit law firm that has sued state governments on behalf of youth in all 50 states–but this suit does stand apart as the first of their cases to go to trial.

Watching these youth march boldly up the ivory tower of our judicial system, it’s easy to forget that they started this process as kids, tweens, and teens. While many of their peers are preparing for school dances and soccer games, they’re preparing to go to court. They’re sitting in conference rooms, surrounded by attorneys, aware that this process is likely to last years, if not decades. They aren’t doing it for fun, or for media attention, or to fill in a college resume. They’re doing this because they see this as the fight of (and for) their lifetime and they don’t want to be haunted by the question: “How many more birthdays will I have until the air is unbreathable?”

It isn’t fair that they should have to shoulder this burden that they inherited by no fault of their own.

As a mother, I feel an uncomfortable mix of pride, anger, and fear as I support these youth through the legal process. It isn’t fair that they should have to shoulder this burden that they inherited by no fault of their own. My maternal instinct tells me to protect these kids and shelter them from the grueling legal process. But, every time I talk with them, I’m reminded how unfair it would be to stand in their way of speaking truth to power. These kids don’t want to idly wait for the adults in their lives to take action. It’s our job as parents to put opportunities in front of our kids and give them the balance of space and support they need to make their own decisions.

As I prepare to lend my full support to these youth, I’m calling on parents across the nation to summon their support for the courageous youth in their community confronting the climate crisis. The Held v Montana trial is a not-to-miss historic first. It’s why I’ll be there along with a large cheering section of family, friends, students from our Park High Green Initiative and other supporters. When you hear about the crowds gathered on the courthouse steps to cheer on the plaintiffs, you’ll know why.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Billings Gazette.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Michelle Uberuaga.

FISA is the “Trust Me, Chumps!” Surveillance Act

James Bovard — Fri, 26 May 2023 05:53:37 +0000

A Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion released last week revealed that the FBI violated the constitutional rights of 278,000 Americans in 2020 and 2021 with warrantless searches of their email and other electronic data. For each American that the FISA court permitted the FBI to target, the FBI illicitly surveiled almost a thousand additional Americans. More

The post FISA is the “Trust Me, Chumps!” Surveillance Act appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by James Bovard.

Fiji’s Great Council of Chiefs reinstates native land lease policy

APR editor — Thu, 25 May 2023 10:59:12 +0000

By Iliesa Tora, RNZ Pacific senior journalist, and Kelvin Anthony, lead digital and social media journalist

Fiji’s Great Council of Chiefs has endorsed the reinstatement of a lease distribution policy with the iTaukei Land Trust Board.

The decision was reached by interim council members who met on Bau Island yesterday shortly after the historic re-establishment of the council, which was abolished in 2007 by then prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama.

The lease distribution policy outlines the payment scheme for revenue generated through Fiji’s complicated system of native land leases which can be tens of millions of dollars a year or even more than that for the wealthier tribes.

The former FijiFirst government removed the policy and introduced Equal Rent Distribution in 2011.

This meant every member of the mataqali, or landowning unit, received the same amount from lease payments, regardless of their status.

The Minister for iTaukei Affairs, Ifereimi Vasu, said the chiefs endorsed the reinstatement of the original policy at a reduced percentage.

This means after the iTaukei Land Trust Board (TLTB), which oversees all native leases takes its 10 percent poundage fee, the remaining funds are to be distributed as follows:

5 percent for the Turaga iTaukei (Village Chiefs)
10 percent for the Turaga Qali (Village Elders)
15 percent for the Turaga ni Mataqali (Clan Leader)
70 percent to be shared equally among remaining members

Vasu said concerns had been raised with them that some mataqali members around Fiji take their lease money and do not contribute to the vanua or the village’s development.

“Most of our visits to the province, most stated that the equal distribution is not helping, it really is not helping those that are leading the vanua, they are really struggling.

“In a sense, now that we are having equal distribution, people don’t bother about what is happening on the vanua, they have taken their share, they have gone, and all the responsibilities are handled by the chiefs.”

Ifereimi Vasu said it was also decided that a development fund be set up to cater for future iTaukei development needs.

“As an outcome of the discussion, the meeting endorsed the setting up of a special fund for the future, iTaukei Development Funding, which will be sourced from the percentage of the TLTB poundage and the percent of the lease money,” he said.

Chiefs to hear from review committee
Apart from the lease distribution policy, the chiefs also agreed to hear back from a committee conducting a review of the Great Council of Chiefs which will guide the form and function of the new council.

The review team, led by Ratu Jone Baledrokadroka, has until the end of July to complete their work.

A final report will be presented to the council upon its completion.

Ratu Baledrokadroka said the council — which was accused of being a racist organisation in the past — has indicated a willingness to open up as a body for all Fijians, which is a positive endorsement of the work his team is carrying out.

He said, in reinventing itself, it is important for the council to keep out of politics.

“The GCC is willing to open up the institution making it more apolitical. We are trying to make sure that, into the future, it doesn’t commit the mistakes of the past,” Ratu Baledrokadroka said.

“That has been the biggest mistake for the GCC that it had delved into politics which had seen it disestablished by the previous government.”

Speaking after the presentation to the meeting yesterday, Ratu Baledrokadroka said their brief presentation on what they had been able to gather so far was well received.

“We have done nine provinces. What they are wanting is inclusiveness, that the GCC represents all ethnicities and all sections of society, the youth, the women.

“We give our recommendations on what people say. What we will produce is what the people have said.

“What has come out very strongly today is that the GCC and the chiefs are for all, not just for iTaukeis; they are willing to take on that responsibility for all.”

Ratu Baledrokadroka said the traditional ceremonies of apologies and forgiveness that took place at the opening ceremony augured well for the way Fiji was moving.

Future membership
Minister of iTaukei Affairs Vasu confirmed yesterday that the current membership of the GCC was temporary.

He said the re-establishment of the GCC was scheduled for May.

“Its actual make up will come from what the Review Team finalises. The people and the chiefs will decide how the GCC will move forward,” Vasu added.

Vasu said calls made for the inclusion of other races and groupings in the GCC membership would have to be decided when the review team “come back and give us their final analysis of what the people and the chiefs are saying”.

The meeting of the interim council members continued today on Bau Island and was expected to conclude this afternoon.

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

The Fiji Great Council of Chiefs . . . interim members at the re-establishment of the body on Bau Island yesterday after 16 years. Image: Fiji govt/RNZ Pacific

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

Nigerian police officer attacks journalist Benedict Uwalaka over protest coverage

Erik Crouch — Tue, 18 Apr 2023 19:55:14 +0000

New York, April 18, 2023—Nigerian authorities should investigate the recent harassment of journalist Benedict Uwalaka by a police officer and ensure members of the press can work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

On the morning of Monday, April 17, an unidentified police officer attacked Uwalaka, a freelance photojournalist working with the privately owned Daily Trust newspaper, while he covered a protest at an airport in Lagos, according to a report by the Daily Trust and Uwalaka, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

Uwalaka said that the officer injured his hand, which was still painful the following day, and damaged his camera, breaking its screen and preventing its lens from reattaching.

“Nigerian authorities should swiftly and transparently investigate the recent assault of journalist Benedict Uwalaka by a police officer,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Police in Nigeria too often arrest and harass journalists for their work. Authorities should ensure recourse and restitution for those who face such abuses.”

Uwalaka told CPJ that he was covering a protest by aviation workers at the airport when an officer sitting in a police vehicle with two other officers summoned him and criticized the journalist for taking a woman’s photo without her permission.

“He asked me to delete the picture. I said no,” Uwalaka told CPJ, saying the officer then grabbed his camera and punched him in the hand about 10 times.

The officer took Uwalaka to the airport’s police station and left, saying he would return. When he did not come back after about 40 minutes, officers at the station told Uwalaka that he was free to leave.

Uwalaka said he then waited at the station for more than two hours hoping to speak to a supervisor, but left when they did not arrive. Officers at the airport station told Uwalaka that they did not know the officer who had brought him in.

“The police said that unless the person who brought me is available, there is nothing they can do about it,” Uwalaka said. “They do not know him and there is no way they can trace him.”

Lagos police spokesperson Benjamin Hundeyin told CPJ via messaging app that questions should be directed to the airport’s police command.

When CPJ called that office’s spokesperson, Olayinka Ojelade, he said he was not available to comment and would provide contact details for another spokesperson; he had not done so by the time of publication.

Previously, in 2012, hospital workers in Lagos beat Uwalaka with their fists and hit him with bottles and sticks while he covered the aftermath of a plane crash, as CPJ documented at the time. Uwalaka took his attackers to court, but the case was dismissed in September 2019, he told CPJ.

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

Utah’s Secretive Medical Malpractice Panels Make It Even Harder to Sue Providers

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 11:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune

This story discusses sexual assault.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Salt Lake Tribune. Sign up for Dispatches_ to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Jessica Lancaster didn’t want to tell the panel of three strangers in front of her about the moment her chiropractor insisted she lift up her shirt.

How Kelby Martin’s breathing became heavier as he groped her breasts, which had been healing from surgery; how after he touched her chest, he didn’t follow through with any type of chiropractic treatment; how she left his office in August 2021 in a haze.

But Lancaster wanted to sue Martin to hold him accountable, and before she could do that, Utah law required her to make her case to the panel.

The panel concluded last August that Martin had departed from the normal standard of care, Lancaster’s lawyers later disclosed in a court filing. In response to a request for comment, Martin’s lawyer pointed to court papers in which the chiropractor denied Lancaster’s allegations against him. The case is pending; his license remains in good standing with the state.

There was a time when a majority of states had adopted malpractice screening panels in some form. A 1984 analysis by the American Medical Association found 30 states had implemented panels at some point. The goal was to cut down on frivolous lawsuits and encourage settlements of legitimate claims.

Over the years, many of those states found these panels ineffective or in violation of their constitutions, and some did away with them entirely. But Utah remains one of 16 states where patients still must spend time, money for legal services and emotional energy recounting to a panel how a medical professional they trusted hurt them, according to a tally from the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Utah system has processed, on average, about 300 cases per year for much of the last decade, according to state data.

“It’s just one more time we have to tell our story,” Lancaster said. “We relive it. I think it’s so unnecessary.”

That extra step is mandated but can feel pointless to plaintiffs. Even if the Utah panel says a claim is meritless, they remain free to sue, and several attorneys told The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica they routinely go on to win jury verdicts or settlements in such cases.

Medical providers contend the process has a purpose. Michelle McOmber, CEO of the Utah Medical Association, said it’s common for potential plaintiffs to accuse a broad range of providers. The information sharing that happens during a panel hearing, she said, can help both sides focus on those who may have harmed the patient.

The state agency that administers the panels also asserts that they are “highly effective in ferreting out frivolous claims, as it is rare for a case deemed without merit to move forward,” said Melanie Hall, spokesperson for the Utah Department of Commerce’s Division of Occupational Licensing. The division’s data shows that over the last decade, only 4% of the cases considered by the panels were considered meritorious.

But there is no way to independently assess DOPL’s claim that nonmeritorious claims rarely move forward — because Utah is one of six states where panel rulings are kept secret from the public. And state lawmakers have not asked the division to track how cases are resolved after a panel’s judgment.

Utah law does require DOPL to compile whether claims heard by the panels are later filed as lawsuits. But it is not compiling this data, division director Mark Steinegal said in an email responding to The Tribune’s request for that data.

No one in Utah — including legislative auditors — has been able to prove that the prelitigation panels are effective at reducing litigation.

Prelitigation panel hearings are held in a conference room at the Heber Wells Building in Salt Lake City. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Soon, sexual assault victims who say they have been harmed by medical workers will become exempt from this process. Last month, the Utah Legislature passed and Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill clarifying that sexual assault is not considered health care, and such claims are not governed by the state’s medical malpractice act. So those who say they have been harmed after the law goes into effect — May 3 — will be able to file civil lawsuits against alleged abusers without appearing before a panel.

The new law followed a recent investigation by The Tribune and ProPublica that detailed how patients who say they were sexually assaulted by providers faced more hurdles and were treated more harshly in Utah’s civil courts than those abused in other settings.

Now some are calling for the state to abandon the panels altogether. Those critics, mostly personal injury lawyers, say it’s time for Utah to overhaul its system.

“It’s often being used as a tool to make access to justice for individuals harder, more expensive and more time-consuming,” said Jeff Gooch, a Utah personal injury attorney who has also worked as the chair of a prelitigation panel.

An “Arbitrary Delay” or Helpful Process?

Beginning in the 1970s, most states adopted some type of screening step for those who want to sue a health care provider — one of several reforms made in response to fears that the cost of health care was rising because of an increase in civil lawsuits and “runaway juries” doling out multimillion-dollar payouts.

But it became clear the system wasn’t always working the way it was intended. In 1979, Missouri’s Supreme Court ended its panel process after finding it caused a “useless and arbitrary delay.” And in 2019, Kentucky’s high court struck down its law after it had been in effect for just a year, finding it caused an unconstitutional delay in people’s ability to access the courts.

Since the panels were added to Utah’s medical malpractice law in 1985, no one, including state auditors, has been able to show whether they have had a meaningful impact on weeding out frivolous cases or reducing the number of medical malpractice cases filed.

Prelitigation panel hearings are held in this Utah Department of Commerce conference room in the Heber Wells Building. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune)

One Brigham Young University law school study from 1989 surveyed Utah attorneys who had participated in panels in their first two years of existence. The researchers concluded that the program was ineffective: They found that an overwhelming majority of the attorneys surveyed “stated that their opinion of the case did not change as a result of the hearing.”

“The procedure does not foster settlement,” one attorney wrote in a survey response. “It only gives the medical provider more protection by the mandated steps required before litigation can be pursued. It is another way for medical providers to avoid liability. I believe it should be done away with.”

Five years after that study was published, Utah legislative auditors took a look at the panel process. Their 1994 audit found that only 8% of the cases that were reviewed by Utah’s panel during a five-year period beginning in 1985 were settled before a lawsuit was filed. Some 60% went to court. The remaining cases were dropped without being filed in court.

“We could not find an objective way to determine whether the prelitigation process has been a success,” the auditors concluded.

Utah legislators in 2010 put an extra hurdle into the prelitigation panel process: Patients who wanted to file a lawsuit after receiving a “nonmeritorious” opinion had to find an expert who would disagree with the panel and explain why their case had merit — a process that could cost thousands of dollars. That added obstacle remained in place for nearly a decade until the Utah Supreme Court in 2019 found it unconstitutionally blocked access to the courts.

Despite no concrete evidence of the panels’ effectiveness, Steinegal said the feedback he has gotten from attorneys suggests that the prelitigation process is valuable.

“I have heard from both plaintiffs and counsel for defendants that the process is effective in achieving early discovery of the issues, long before the formal procedures that take place in court,” he said. He added that the process is worthwhile “if for no other reason than it accelerates information-sharing.”

Brian Craig, the current prelitigation panel chair, echoed Steinegal’s assertion that the panels ferret out frivolous cases. In a recent Utah Bar Journal article he authored, Craig gave the example of a woman who claimed that the physician who removed her appendix also removed one of her ovaries. A later ultrasound, he said, showed that she still had two ovaries.

“The Cards Are Stacked Against You”

Several attorneys who spoke to The Tribune and ProPublica said the extra cost and delay caused by the panels provides little benefit.

Gooch thinks the bigger problem is the long wait before a suit can be filed: “Memories fade. Excitement fades. Often people’s lives fade — especially if they’re ill.”

Ed Havas, a personal injury attorney who has practiced in Utah for more than 40 years, said it's common for attorneys to get a nonmeritorious finding from the prelitigation panel and to go on to win that case, either in a settlement or a jury verdict.

He said attorneys typically move forward because they have reviewed medical records and consulted an expert — and believe they can win. He also pointed out that panel members weigh in before plaintiff attorneys have all the evidence they will seek to support their case, since the disclosure of documents happens after a case gets into court.

The panel is less formal than a court hearing, and potential plaintiffs are not required to join their attorneys in meeting with the panel, like Lancaster did. Still, Craig wrote in his Bar Journal article, “attendance by parties” is viewed favorably by the panel and signals that both sides are taking the process seriously.

Critics also include a state legislator who works as a personal injury attorney and has been a panel member. Utah State Sen. Mike McKell — who introduced the recent law exempting sexual assault in medical settings from malpractice requirements — said there is some benefit for the person suing to get to see how a doctor plans to defend him or herself. But overall, the Republican lawmaker said, “it’s nothing more than an obstruction to a victim who has been hurt due to no fault of their own.”

Utah state Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, during a session of the Utah Senate on Feb. 24. McKell introduced legislation that will change state law to ensure that sexual assault lawsuits do not fall under the state’s Health Care Malpractice Act. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

“It’s an impediment put into place to create one more barrier for that access to the court,” he added.

McKell said he tries to help his clients understand that while panelists will likely find their claims don’t have merit, that doesn’t mean they have lost their case.

“This is not a fair hearing,” he said he tells his clients. “The cards are stacked against you. You will likely lose your case with the prelitigation panel. That doesn’t mean we don’t believe in your case.”

All panels include an attorney with no connection to the case, a member of the public who has applied to serve and a health care worker in the same specialty as the accused provider. But several attorneys said its members often defer to the opinion of the health care worker in the group who works in the same field as the accused.

In Utah’s small medical community, it’s likely that these people know each other or went to school together.

“You’re asking the profession to judge themselves,” said Ashton Hyde, the legislative chair of a lobbying organization for Utah trial lawyers. “I think the panel itself is a waste.”

Hall, the DOPL spokesperson, pushed back on concerns that the panels could be biased. She said that DOPL has observed that the medical professional on the panel generally holds the accused to a higher level of scrutiny than the other panelists.

“We believe this may reduce bias from the panel members,” she said.

Hyde said he fears if his organization pushes to get rid of the panels, there will be backlash from doctors and hospitals, who could counter by seeking legislative measures that would make the prelitigation process more difficult.

McKell said he contemplated introducing a bill to get rid of the prelitigation panels three years ago, after the Utah Supreme Court ruling limited their use. But he said he opted not to do so after receiving feedback from lawyers who thought the process still had value.

He has no plans to bring future legislation to eliminate the prelitigation panels, he said in a recent interview.

“This Is on My Soul”

Lancaster said she left her prelitigation panel meeting hurt after one member asked her questions that she perceived as blaming her for being assaulted. She had trusted Martin for care for more than three years, she said, and when he allegedly assaulted her, it caused “a wound I can’t even explain.” (The finding from Lancaster’s panel hearing only became public because it was disclosed in a court filing that was later amended to remove it.)

Lancaster said she believes the panel should receive additional training to be more sensitive toward those who say they have been hurt.

“It was just a lack of education,” she said. “You don’t blame the victim for someone assaulting” them.

Hall, the spokesperson for DOPL, said that panel members do not currently receive sensitivity training, emphasizing that the division’s role in administering the panels is “clerical.” She said officials expect panel members to be professional and sensitive in their questioning, but said they also need a thorough understanding of the case.

“This may require very direct questions that seem insensitive,” she said.

Because McKell’s new reform exempting sexual assault survivors from medical malpractice requirements is not retroactive, alleged victims like Lancaster will continue to go before prelitigation panels for at least two more years — based on the filing deadlines for medical malpractice cases.

To Lancaster, sharing her story with the panel brought back the trauma she had experienced after the alleged assault.

“This is on my soul,” she said. “It’s on the depths of me that I will spend forever healing and trying to fathom why someone would do this to someone.”

If you need to report or discuss a sexual assault in Utah, you can call the Rape and Sexual Assault Crisis Line at 801-736-4356. Those who live outside of Utah can reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673.

Help ProPublica and The Salt Lake Tribune Investigate Sexual Assault in Utah

Mollie Simon contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

Frances Goldin, Rabble Rousers & A NYC Housing Struggle Wins — Cooper Square Community Land Trust

The Laura Flanders Show — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 14:42:59 +0000

This content originally appeared on The Laura Flanders Show and was authored by The Laura Flanders Show.

Never Trust a Member of the Parasite Class™

Mickey Z. — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 16:39:05 +0000

One of my favorite New Testament stories can be found in John 2:13-16:

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple courts, he found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves, he said: ‘Get out of here.’

Scion of a predatory lineage of parasites, George W. Bush claims to love Jesus and even went as far as proclaiming June 10, 2000, to be “Jesus Day” in Texas.

On that day, he pronounced: “I urge all Texans to answer the call to serve those in need. By volunteering their time, energy or resources to helping others, adults and youngsters follow Christ’s message of love and service in thought and deed.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, Dubya also signed into law a little something called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA).

This totalitarian salvo is one of the many ways the whole “Jesus Day” thing came back to bite Bush the Lesser in the ass.

You see, the AETA specifically targets anyone who “intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property (including animals or records) used by animal enterprise, or any real or personal property of a person or entity having a connection to, relationship with, or transactions with an animal enterprise.”

Reminder from Matthew 21:12-13: “Jesus entered the Temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,’ he said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers.’”

Yep, thanks to the AETA, when someone asks “What would Jesus do?” you could accurately answer: at least a year.

But a much better response is:

Reminder: The meek shall inherit the earth…

The post Never Trust a Member of the Parasite Class first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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

Legislators Vote to Fix Utah Law That Made It Hard for Some Sexual Assault Survivors to Sue

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 13:00:00 +0000

by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune

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

This story discusses sexual assault.

Ninety-four women whose sexual abuse lawsuit against a Utah OB-GYN was thrown out of court last year are celebrating a victory this month. But it’s a victory tinged with irony.

Last week, the Utah Legislature passed a bill that will — if signed by Gov. Spencer Cox — put their rallying cry into law: Sexual assault is not health care.

The change, however, will not help the women, whose case was dismissed because Utah judges and appellate courts have interpreted the state’s current law to mean sexual assaults by health care providers are considered part of medical treatment. That meant their allegations had to be filed under the more restrictive rules of the state medical malpractice act.

The new law would reform medical malpractice law to exclude sexual assault. It would not be retroactive, which leaves the women hoping that the Utah Supreme Court will reverse the dismissal of their case on appeal.

Still, Brooke, one of the women suing the OB-GYN, Dr. David Broadbent, said it felt like a victory that their case will change how future victims will be treated if they decide to sue their abuser in court. Brooke is using only her first name to protect her privacy.

“It just felt like we were really a part of this,” Brooke said. “I’m so glad that the legislative side of the law corrected this huge problem, fixing that gap in our legal system that 94 women essentially fell through. We’ll fill it in for future people in this situation.”

Brooke alleges that Broadbent groped her in December 2008 while she was hospitalized after experiencing complications with her first pregnancy. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

The bill’s passage follows a recent investigation by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica, which detailed how survivors who had been sexually abused by health care workers were treated more harshly in Utah’s civil courts than those harmed in other settings. Their cases had to be filed within two years, and they faced a $450,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases. Both those restrictions are now likely to be lifted, and those who allege sexual assault in medical settings have the same legal standing as those who allege abuse in other settings: no damages cap and a four-year filing deadline.

Limits on medical malpractice awards are routine around the country, initially in response to concerns — largely driven by insurance companies — that the cost of health care was rising in the 1970s because of frivolous lawsuits and “runaway juries” doling out multimillion-dollar payouts. But Utah’s insistence that victims of intentional assaults like sexual abuse face the same caps is far less common.

The women who sued Broadbent alleged that he inappropriately touched their breasts, vaginas and rectums, hurting them, without warning or explanation. Some said he used his bare hand, instead of a speculum or gloves, during exams; one woman alleged that she saw he had an erection while he was touching her. His actions were not medically necessary, the women allege, and were instead “performed for no other reason than his own sexual gratification.”

The OB-GYN’s attorney, Chris Nelson, has said they believe the allegations against Broadbent are without merit. He declined to comment further, saying they will present their case in court.

The new law doesn’t open an avenue for these women to refile their case. Their hope remains with the Utah Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear their appeal of District Judge Robert Lunnen’s ruling dismissing their case.

“Sexual Abuse Is Not Health Care”

In arguing for the new law in the House, bill co-sponsor Rep. Nelson Abbott said the shorter, two-year filing deadline for medical malpractice can be particularly difficult for those who have been sexually assaulted. An abuser may try to assure them that the inappropriate behavior was part of a medical treatment, he explained, and it can take time for the victim to understand they were sexually assaulted.

“I think we can all agree that sexual abuse is not health care,” Abbott said on the House floor. “To create extra burdens or difficulties is really not fair to the patient. I think that’s why we’re carving out those exceptions to try to help those patients in those difficult situations.”

Fixing the law was particularly urgent in Utah because of the broad way its medical malpractice law is written and how it has been interpreted by judges, said state Sen. Mike McKell, who co-sponsored the bill.

State Sen. Mike McKell presented a bill to the Senate in February that would give those who allege sexual assault in medical settings the same legal standing as those who allege abuse in other settings. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Any acts “arising” out of health care are considered part of a practitioner’s treatment under Utah law, which means any related claims must be filed under the medical malpractice act. Judges and appellate courts have ruled, for example, that a teenage boy was receiving health care when he broke his leg while hiking in a wilderness therapy program, as was a woman who was allegedly groped during a chiropractic exam.

Both of those plaintiffs’ lawsuits were dismissed because they were not filed as medical malpractice claims.

McKell said he thinks Utah judges have interpreted the malpractice act incorrectly.

“We need to be careful when we draft legislation. Words like ‘arises out of’ create a broad interpretation,” he said. “I think it's tragic the way it happened.”

Patients sexually assaulted by health care providers face different challenges in other states. In Wisconsin, for example, an appellate court ruled that a physician groping a patient and having an erection was not medical malpractice. But there, the distinction hurt the victim’s case, because Wisconsin’s filing deadline for medical malpractice is longer than an intentional injury lawsuit. She lost her ability to sue.

Utah’s bill sailed through the state Legislature with little opposition. It received a unanimous vote in the Senate and only three nay votes in the House. The legislation had the support of the Utah Medical Association, which lobbies on behalf of state physicians, as well as an association of trial lawyers called the Utah Association for Justice.

Beau Burbidge, with the Utah Association of Justice, said he believed the legal challenges these women faced was an unintended consequence when the medical malpractice law was put into place decades ago.

McKell talks with personal injury attorney Beau Burbidge, center right, after the two presented McKell’s bill to a House committee on Feb. 28. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

“Nobody contemplated that a health care provider who sexually assaults a patient should be protected in some way by that act,” he said during a committee hearing. “The act is meant to protect health care providers providing good-for-the-community health care. Not rape. Not sexual assault.”

Broadbent’s accusers filed their lawsuit last year after one former patient, Stephanie Mateer, spoke out publicly about feeling violated during an examination more than a decade prior. She said Thursday that she “couldn’t be happier” that legislators took action in response to their lawsuit’s dismissal. The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not identify alleged sexual assault victims, but Mateer agreed to the use of her name.

“When I first spoke out about what happened to me, I had no idea that it would have such a massive and far-reaching impact,” Mateer said. “I never imagined that it would lead to the passing of this law, which increases the rights and safety of everyone receiving medical care in the state of Utah.”

Stephanie Mateer (Bethany Baker/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Brooke said she and the other women knew that the law change wouldn’t benefit them personally, but they wanted to advocate for it in hopes it could help prevent future abuse.

“It’s not about taking anyone down. It’s not about trying to win settlements,” she said. “It’s about trying to right a wrong that happened, whether that’s changing the law or through getting our justice in the courtroom. But that’s the goal that everyone is seeking.”

“Hiding Under White Coats”

Although he recognized that the plaintiffs suing Broadbent wouldn’t benefit from the new law, McKell, the Senate sponsor, said he did not write the bill to be retroactive because he worried the law could be found unconstitutional if it allowed older cases to be reopened.

The Utah Supreme Court in 2020 struck down a similar law that reopened a window of time where survivors of childhood sexual abuse could sue their abuser in civil court. Those victims previously had until they were 22 years old to sue.

The law, passed in 2016, was a recognition by state lawmakers that childhood sexual assault has long-lasting effects on victims and that it could take decades of healing before someone is ready to sue their abuser. But Utah's high court found it unconstitutional, saying that a filing deadline, called a statute of limitations, was a “vested right” of a defendant that state legislators could not take away.

The 94 women who sued Broadbent are now hoping that the Utah Supreme Court will reverse Lunnen’s ruling and allow them to continue their lawsuit against Broadbent and two hospitals where he had delivered babies and where some of the women say they were abused.

Adam Sorenson, the women’s attorney, argued in an appeal filed Thursday that Utah’s existing medical malpractice law was “not meant to advantage sexual predators hiding under white coats and specialty titles.”

“To think this is even a question, that is an issue being heavily debated, is shocking,” he wrote.

Attorney Adam Sorenson is representing the 94 women who sued Broadbent. (Leah Hogsten/The Salt Lake Tribune)

Sorenson further argued that medical malpractice insurance policies often expressly exclude acts like sexual assault from its coverage, noting that Broadbent’s insurance carrier has also filed a lawsuit asking a judge to declare that his alleged actions are not covered by their insurance policy. It’s “nonsensical,” he wrote, to apply medical malpractice limitations to his clients simply because their alleged abuser is a health care provider.

Attorneys for Broadbent and the hospitals being sued now have a month to file their response. Sorenson estimates a Supreme Court decision won’t come until late fall.

Brooke said she lost hope in the legal system after the judge dismissed their case. Seeing the Legislature’s swift and nearly unanimous support to change the law because of their lawsuit has renewed her hope that the Utah Supreme Court will also take action and let their case move forward.

“I just never thought it would be questioned,” she said. “I never thought this would ever be the situation when I signed the paperwork and decided that this was something that I felt strongly that I needed to be involved in.”

Help ProPublica and The Salt Lake Tribune Investigate Sexual Assault in Utah

Mollie Simon of ProPublica contributed research.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Miller, The Salt Lake Tribune.

A Simple Choice: Social Security or Billionaire Greed

Richard Eskow — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 14:46:17 +0000

Like they used to say in the old neighborhood, some things ain't complicated. If your senator or representative won't tax the wealthy to protect and expand Social Security, then they care more about America's 728 billionaires than they do about the 66 million children, disabled, and older people currently receiving benefits—or the many millions that will follow them. They don't deserve to stay in office if they can't represent their own people.

Social Security is a vast, highly successful program. That makes it sound complicated. It's not. It was built on simple moral and operational principles. Among them was universality, the idea that the program should include everyone, and the notion that everyone should pay their fair share. Unfortunately, the millionaires and billionaires plundering the economy aren't pitching in the way they should.

That makes the choice for our elected officials simple, too: Are you going to make the wealthy step up or are you going to hide behind word-salad speeches and sleight-of-hand legislation? One thing is clear: any politician who expresses concern about Social Security's finances without being willing to tax the rich is a phony. Nothing but a phony.

We're looking at you, Mitt Romney.

The commission that worked on Social Security's finances in the 1980s raised the cap on the Social Security payroll tax, with the expectation that it would capture 90 percent of the income earned in this country. As Linda Benesch notes, however, rising income inequality has caused that number to plummet. As of February 28, 2023, a person making a million dollars per year has finished paying into Social Security for the year. (I calculated that figure for Jeff Bezos once; he was done paying his "fair share" about 28 seconds after the New Year's Eve ball dropped in Times Square!) Moreover, wealthy people earn the lion's share of their income from non-payroll sources like investments and business revenue. That isn't taxed for Social Security at all.

Social Security is a vast, highly successful program. That makes it sound complicated. It's not.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, people making less than $160,200 annually—that is, the vast majority of American workers—will be paying this tax all year.

That's why the idea of "scrapping the cap" on this tax is so compelling. Sen. Bernie Sanders' Social Security Expansion Act would re-impose this payroll tax on income above $250,000 and would add in the kinds of non-payroll income that mainly benefit the super-wealthy. In the House, a bill from Rep. John Larson would scrap the cap on income above $400,000.

Both bills substantially expand Social Security while bringing in substantial new revenue. The Larson bill would provide a sizeable down payment and the Sanders bill would fully fund Social Security, something politicians like Sen. Mitt Romney claim to be concerned about. Romney has wept crocodile tears over the program's expected revenue shortfall for years, but he's ruled out tax increases.

People say we live in a divided country, but Americans are united on this subject. 71 percent of voters polled after the last election want Congress to "protect Social Security and Medicare." The message to Capitol Hill is simple: do your damned jobs.

Romney's proposed bill, which in an Orwellian flourish is called "the TRUST Act," would create "congressional rescue committees" that would meet privately to determine the fate of critical social programs. Since Romney (who is extremely wealthy himself) opposes revenue hikes, that leaves only benefit cuts.

It will take ongoing political pressure to protect and expand Social Security. But it will be a great day when it happens.

Romney and his cosponsors hope to elude responsibility for their actions by hiding behind as-yet-unnamed committee members and their backroom deliberations. That includes some Democrats. The bill's Democratic backers, including Joe Manchin, are more likely than Romney to say that they're open to hiking taxes on the wealthy. But they're supporting a 'bipartisan' process with Republicans who will never go along with that.

These Dems know that. They're trying to have it both ways—sounding reasonable while promoting a process that's designed to lead to cuts and cuts alone.

And make no mistake: that's the play. Romney's bill uses a well-worn playbook for trying to cut popular programs. As the bill's summary says, "Congress must use specified expedited legislative procedures to consider legislation that is approved and submitted by the rescue committees." In other words, it gets rushed to the floor for a vote for an immediate up-or-down vote, without committee review or the chance to revise it.

That's an attempt to circumvent democracy. Public trust in our democracy has plunged to frightening lows as the wealthy buy more and more custom-designed legislation. The TRUST Act is designed to make an undemocratic and unaccountable political process even more undemocratic and unaccountable.

That's what the Simpson/Bowles Deficit Commission tried to do during the Obama administration. It's part of the old anti-government playbook laid out by billionaire Pete Peterson and the astroturf anti-social-welfare organizations he funded for decades. One pro-TRUST congressional Dem even used a Peterson-funded, consultant-designed phrase to defend his actions. If I hear the words "we have kicked this can down the road for too long" again I won't be responsible for my actions. Maybe somebody's can should get kicked, but it ain't yours or mine.

Maybe somebody's can should get kicked, but it ain't yours or mine.

Don't count the double-talkers out. There's a lot of money riding on this, and it's all with the billionaires. It will take ongoing political pressure to protect and expand Social Security. But it will be a great day when it happens. Taxing the wealthy will have other benefits, too. It will strengthen the social contract when the public sees their country's oligarchs being forced to assume some responsibility for the society that enriched them. It might reduce their stranglehold on politics a little, too.

This country's billionaires gainedmore than $2.1 trillion in wealth since the pandemic began and now have total estimated riches of $5.1 trillion. Meanwhile, almost half of all Americans aged 55 and older have no retirement savings at all. The average person on Social Security only gets $1,688 per month. And you're trying to tell us that's what this country can't afford?

As we used to say in the old neighborhood: Get outta here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Richard Eskow.

Don’t Trust Wall Street With Nursing Homes

Jim Hightower — Fri, 17 Feb 2023 06:50:01 +0000

There are industries that occasionally do something rotten. And there are industries like Big Oil, Big Pharma, and Big Tobacco that persistently do rotten things. Then there is the nursing home industry — where rottenness has become a core business principle. The end-of-life experience can be rotten enough on its own, with an assortment of More

The post Don’t Trust Wall Street With Nursing Homes appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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

Journalism at crossroads but must ‘stick to principles’ to regain trust, warns TDB’s Bomber Bradbury

Sri Krishnamurthi — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 18:38:13 +0000

SPECIAL REPORT: By Sri Krishnamurthi for Asia Pacific Report

It has been a decade since The Daily Blog (TDB) came into being informing all and sundry of the political machinations in New Zealand.

Run by the Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury it serves the left of politics.

It had almost five million page views in 2022.

“We had just under five million page views last year,” Bradbury told Asia Pacific Report.

The TDB audience . . . just under 5 million. Image: TDB screenshot APR

“We have professor Wayne Hope from the AUT School of Communications; we have associate professor Susan St John from Auckland University, who is a poverty campaigner; John Minto who is a well-known political activist; and we have Mike Treen, a union boss.”

And they also have one of the country’s leading left analysts, Chris Trotter.

“We have anywhere between 10 to 20 bloggers,” Bradbury said.

TBD has been one of the go to blogsites for the political left.

“I think the idea when we set it up in 2013 was to provide an alternative commentary on the leftwing of opinion shapers,” he said.

Bradbury, who studied English at Auckland University and became a journalist on the job, believes debate is essential when discussing politics.

“I think we enjoy robust debate,” he said.

Nor does he blindly carry a candle for the leftwing government of the day even though he professes to belongs to the left.

The Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury . . . “What we’re seeing is the fracturing of the media world in New Zealand, and there are people who don’t believe in mainstream media anymore.” Image: TDB screenshot APR

“I think you have to be critical of everyone in power regardless of whether they are on your side or not,” said Bradbury, who was given his moniker “Bomber” by the Auckland University student newspaper Craccum.

“If you are writing commentary about the politics of the day you have to equally scathing for when the left are in, or the right are in, or you don’t have any credibility.

“We (TBD) are able to talk about things that are going on in politics and that is happening 24-48 hours ahead of the mainstream media; so I think people that are hungry to find out what is going on and have better oversight into the New Zealand political system can? So they come to us before you see it turn up in the mainstream media.”

He believes that journalism must be held to account.

“We have an obligation if you are the Fourth Estate to hold the powerful to account and the most powerful is the government of the day,” said Bradbury.

Public Interest Journalism
He said the government must provide for more investment in Public Interest Journalism (PIJ).

PIJ, a programme which started three years ago and is set to be concluded this year, needed to be continued, Bradbury said.

“I think it is a good start for the problem we have always had in New Zealand which is the market driven model, which is audience based advertising. We have always had too small a population to be able to support good journalism.

“But, there needs to be a lot more investment in public journalism for it to work.”

Nor does he see it, as many perceive it, as the government attempting to purchase favours from the media.

“I don’t see it as the government buying the media, I know that is a common critique that is used and brought up, but I don’t see it as black and white as that,” Bradbury said.

“We need to have public money go into journalism and there needs to be better checks and balances as to how that money is getting out there.

“There is a problem there, but overall I think that you can’t get a well-funded Fourth Estate that critiques the government of the day without having the state invested in that.”

He is advocating for a campaign to promote the benefits of better public interest journalism.

“We need a public service campaign similar to the one we have on our beaches where we have the ‘swim between the flags’ mantra.

“There has to be more public journalism funding to a vastly different group of media players and, by getting that funding they are able to show a little flag and we have a public campaign where we talk about ‘reading between the flags,’ so they know what they are reading is accurate and true.”

TVNZ-RNZ merger
Although the government has now shelved the TVNZ-RNZ merger after five years of work and many millions of dollars, Bradbury said it was only needed to see what was happening out in the public to realise people did not trust mainstream media.

“I think that the reason why we should have the merger is because we need to have a baseline public broadcasting that people can trust,” Bradbury said.

“We have all seen with real horror what happens when a large chunk of your population no longer believes certain agreed truths and we saw that on Parliament lawns last year.

“It is important to have public broadcasting that is trusted and believed because if we don’t have that it is very difficult to find common ground.

The emergence of rightwing radio — The Platform
“What we are seeing is the fracturing of the media world in New Zealand, and there are people who don’t believe in mainstream media anymore; people who have moved away from it and are searching out their own news,” Bradbury said.

“That’s fine as long as those media that are operating adhere to the basic values of journalism and stick to them.”

Jacinda Ardern
In the TBD Bradbury shared an excerpt from a podcast from TDB’s The Working Group which was rated as the best podcast in New Zealand in August last year by the Sunday Star-Times.

Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury convening The Working Group podcasts. Image: TDB screenshot APR

Bradbury related a story from January 24 the week that former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had to endure:

“Matt McCarten tells us a story of how at the end of last year, Jacinda and [her preschool daughter] Neve went out for a coffee with a friend of theirs at a cafe just in their private capacity. The way any mum with their daughter does every weekend.

“However, when Jacinda and their friend and Neve had settled down at a table, two people walked into the cafe after learning of Jacinda being in there, and started screaming at Jacinda and Neve telling them how they intended to hurt and kill Neve and Jacinda.”

“No mother should have feral lunatics screaming death threats at them and their child in a cafe.”

— TDB’s The Working Group

The TDB Working Group of 24 January 2023, Matt McCarten at 41m 46s.

“No doubt there was a tsunami of vileness that I don’t think I have seen in my political life that hit Jacinda,” said Bradbury.

“There was danger with forcing her out the way the angry right activists did, but the danger for them was that it was going create a backlash from the political swing voters who are 50+ female, tertiary educated.

“They would have seen the way Jacinda was forced out and they would have been quite angry with that; and we saw that in the first polls which saw Labour jump back up into the lead was a result of a political backlash.”

Radical social media
With the fracturing of media there has now developed radicalism on social media.
“Now we have a level of radicalism at play within social media,” Bradbury said.

“There are some strident leftwing voices and we’ve certainly seen some middle class identity politics and their de-platforming campaign; and we also have very extreme rightwing bloggers who are taking the debate in a very conspiratorial place which is very dangerous and polarising to the political debate in this country.

“We need healthy debate, but is it healthy when people in that debate have nothing but malice and spite to trade and are actually creating problems and not providing any solutions.”

Journalism
Bradbury believes journalism is at a crossroads but its principles must be upheld.

“Journalism is one of the most important careers in a democracy right now, and I bring it back to the misinformation and disinformation we have seen on so many online formats,” Bradbury said of the covid-19 pandemic years.

“If you can’t trust the material you’re reading, and if you have a citizenship that doesn’t know what is true anymore, then the basic standard of your democracy, the entire foundation that we are built on crumbles.

“So journalism is as important now than ever before.

“This is why we need a strong public service, this is no longer a nice-to-have, because I believe journalism is under so much threat because the alternative is voters who don’t know what is real and what is not.”

Roll on the election on October 14 and once again TBD will be at the forefront.

As a postscript, Bradbury was asked how was TBD faring financially.

He laughed before offering: “We get by, we are here for this election, we’ve been around for 10 years and I am always surprised that there is still a need for it.

“I’ll keep blogging as long as there is a readership for it.”

Sri Krishnamuthi is an independent journalist, former editor of the Pacific Media Watch project at the Pacific Media Centre and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Sri Krishnamurthi.

Whistleblowers Take Note: Don’t Trust Cropping Tools

Nikita Mazurov — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 12:00:59 +0000

An iconic scene from the sci-fi comedy series “Red Dwarf” meant to parody the absurdist fetishization of image forensics — in which TV and movie characters are able to perform seemingly magical image enhancements — contains one crucial kernel of truth: It is, in fact, possible to uncrop images and documents across a variety of work-related computer apps. Among the suites that include the ability are Google Workspace, Microsoft Office, and Adobe Acrobat.

Being able to uncrop images and documents poses risks for sources who may be under the impression that cropped materials don’t contain the original uncropped content.

One of the hazards lies in the fact that, for some of the programs, downstream crop reversals are possible for viewers or readers of the document, not just the file’s creators or editors. Official instruction manuals, help pages, and promotional materials may mention that cropping is reversible, but this documentation at times fails to note that these operations are reversible by any viewers of a given image or document.

For instance, while Google’s help page mentions that a cropped image may be reset to its original form, the instructions are addressed to the document owner. “If you want to undo the changes you’ve made to your photo,” the help page says, “reset an image back to its original photo.” The page doesn’t specify that if a reader is viewing a Google Doc someone else created and wants to undo the changes the editor made to a photo, the reader, too, can reset the image without having edit permissions for the document.

For users with viewer-only access permissions, right-clicking on an image doesn’t yield the option to “reset image.” In this situation, however, all one has to do is right-click on the image, select copy, and then paste the image into a new Google Doc. Right-clicking the pasted image in the new document will allow the reader to select “reset image.” (I’ve put together an example to show how the crop reversal works in this case.)

An original uncropped image in a Google Doc can also be viewed by downloading a “web page (.html, zipped)” version of the document. The uncropped image will then be in the downloaded images folder.

Enterprising users have even written code that makes it easy to see uncropped images. On places like GitHub, they post scripts that can be loaded into web browsers to display uncropped images by default in any viewable Google Doc.

While Microsoft Office, like Google, allows for cropping images, the instructions take care to note that the full images might be preserved: “Cropped parts of the picture are not removed from the file, and can potentially be seen by others.” The instructions provide additional directions for deleting the cropped portions of the image in the apps.

Uncropped versions of images can be preserved not just in Office apps, but also in a file’s own metadata. A photograph taken with a modern digital camera contains all types of metadata. Many image files record text-based metadata such as the camera make and model or the GPS coordinates at which the image was captured. Some photos also include binary data such as a thumbnail version of the original photo that may persist in the file’s metadata even after the photo has been edited in an image editor.

Images and photos are not the only digital files susceptible to uncropping: Some digital documents may also be uncropped. While Adobe Acrobat has a page-cropping tool, the instructions point out that “information is merely hidden, not discarded.” By manually setting the margins to zero, it is possible to restore previously cropped areas in a PDF file.

The key takeaway for would-be whistleblowers, leakers, and journalists working with sensitive sources is to never trust the cropping functionality afforded by professional-level apps and other document and image manipulation software and services. It is always prudent to assume that a cropping operation is nondestructive — the original is maintained — or reversible.

Images and documents should be thoroughly stripped of metadata using tools such as ExifTool and Dangerzone. Additionally, sensitive materials should not be edited through online tools, as the potential always exists for original copies of the uploaded materials to be preserved and revealed.

When dealing with especially sensitive materials that require cropping, resorting to the tried-and-true analog method of using scissors may be the safest approach.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Nikita Mazurov.

‘Like going to the war front’: Nigerian journalists offer tips for covering 2023 elections

Jonathan Rozen — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 20:27:33 +0000

In the early hours of February 1, unknown gunmen set fire to an office of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission and a police station in the country’s southeastern Anambra state. Days earlier, gunmen had attacked and killed soldiers and policemen at checkpoints along a road that connects nearby Enugu and Ebonyi states. The incidents underscored broad security concerns for Nigerian citizens⁠—and journalists⁠—leading up to elections for a new president and federal lawmakers on February 25 and for state governments on March 11.

In light of such incidents, “journalists have to be a lot more careful going into this election,” Janefrances Onyinye Nweze, a reporter who covered the 2015 and 2019 national elections in Enugu, told CPJ, emphasizing that the situation there had become “guerilla warfare.” She advised journalists to “disguise as much as possible” by reducing the visibility of press tags and branding on vehicles. “Somebody has to cover the election at the end of the day, but do your best not to put yourself in harm’s way.”

Janefrances Onyinye Nweze, a reporter currently with TVC News, covered the 2015 and 2019 elections in Enugu state for Solid 100.9 FM. (Photo: Thierry Nyann)

Safety concerns were paramount when CPJ recently spoke to over 50 other journalists and civil society members about the upcoming elections. Interviewees noted that local knowledge was essential for planning how to cover a wide range of potential security threats. Some editors said they would rely on local freelancers to cover difficult areas. Others raised concerns that authorities might disrupt access to communication services or online platforms, as they did previously with Twitter. In recent years, CPJ has documented how security forces, political supporters, and unidentified armed men have attacked, harassed, and denied access to journalists covering Nigerian elections.

As of early February, an election violence tracker compiled by the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and Nigeria-based Centre for Democracy and Development had identified over 4,000 violent incidents and over 11,000 fatalities across the country since January 2022. Alleged perpetrators included supporters of major political parties, local militias, separatist organizations, and militant extremist groups.

CPJ sent questions to Nigeria’s Ministry of Defence and national police about their plans to ensure journalists’ safety during the elections but received no response. At an event last month, Peter Afunanya, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s Department of State Services, a federal security agency, said that their efforts during the elections were geared toward protecting citizens and that journalists should inform security forces of their needs. He also called for journalism that promoted “national unity.”

Here are the views of nine journalists in Nigeria, reflecting some of their security concerns and how reporters can try to address them. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Read CPJ’s Election Safety Kit

Yusuf Anka, a freelance journalist who has reported extensively on pervasive banditry in Nigeria’s northwestern Zamfara state, emphasized the distinct security dynamics in different northern areas.

Nigerian freelance journalist Yusuf Anka. Anka choses to not show his full face in photos for security reasons related to his reporting. (Photo: Anka)

We have this serious infiltration of armed groups. We have smaller groups, ideological, Islamic, not under the umbrella of Boko Haram [an Islamic militant group based in the northeast]. Some think the problems in [a northeastern city like] Maiduguri and Zamfara are the same. Some think [other northern states like] Sokoto state and Yobe state are the same. In case you’re deploying, you need to understand the differences.

The best way to get proper reportage is the use of stringers or community members because in some areas, although elections will be held, non-indigenous members may not be able to [get] access. There is no airport in Zamfara. The best way to get there is from [neighboring Sokoto state].

Journalists trying to understand the situation could [listen to] private radio [broadcasters] in these hostile areas. Areas close to Zamfara’s south with [a] military presence would be safer. But we’ve seen attacks very close to the police and military. Make careful choices of hotels and drivers. Have one person who is only a call away if you have an emergency. There are more abductions at night than day.

Bunmi Yekini, a producer with Radio Now 95.3 FM in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. (Photo: Jonathan Rozen)

Bunmi Yekini, a producer with the privately owned Radio Now 95.3 FM in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, in the southwest, has covered five elections, including the 2015 and 2019 presidential polls. For this year’s elections, Radio Now will have correspondents in nearly every state.

For the presidency, it will be a bit dicey [in Lagos] because it’s going to be shared [in terms of voter support] basically between the Labour Party, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and APC [the ruling All Progressives Congress party]. There is a possibility of violence between supporters.

Radio Now management has already started providing safety kits. We have pepper spray and the press jacket. There is no news that is greater than your life. Do not be the news. Get emergency numbers of security agencies in the vicinity. Make sure your phone is constantly charged, have a power bank and enough [mobile phone] airtime. A designated car is very important; there will be no commercial vehicles. Get to know the area boys [people who live in the area and know the streets intimately]. They can save the day for you.

Abuja-based Daily Trust deputy editor-in-chief Suleiman Suleiman (left) and general editor Hamza Idris (right). (Photos: Suleiman; Idris)

Hamza Idris and Suleiman Suleiman, respectively general editor and deputy editor-in-chief of the privately owned Daily Trust newspaper based in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, as well as Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, who previously worked as the paper’s deputy general editor and left to join the APC campaign, said Daily Trust will have over 100 journalists working to cover the elections across the country.

Idris: The company is holding a series of training [sessions] both online and offline for our reporters on how to cover.

Abdulaziz: Local knowledge helps in terms of safety, but it does not mean that everyone deployed will work in [familiar] places. That is why the training is very important, [as is] collaboration with local partners. Do not be ostentatious, dress in a flashy way, or wear something that is easily identifiable with a group of people, or would mark you as being a stranger.

Suleiman: We have people on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube who are going to be engaging with audiences. Digital safety will be very relevant.

Read CPJ’s Digital Safety tips for online abuse and misinformation campaigns

Nuruddeen Abdallah, editor of the 21st Century Chronicle newspaper based in Abuja. (Photo: Abdallah)

Nuruddeen Abdallah, editor of the privately owned 21st Century Chronicle newspaper based in Abuja, said they will have reporters covering almost all the northern states, as well as major cities in the south. But there are places that he thinks are too dangerous.

I will not be telling [a reporter] to go to Isa town, in [northwestern] Sokoto state; it’s the operational headquarters of [bandit leader] Turji. In [northwestern] Kebbi state, I will not ask [a reporter] to go to the Birnin Yauri area where girls were abducted. Take [north-central] Kaduna state, for example, I will not be sending my reporter to Birnin Gwari town area. In [north-central] Niger state, I will not be sending [them] to Kagara, Mashegu, or Shiroro areas; but they can operate in Minna, Suleja, Lavun, Bida. Another bad place is Maru in Zamfara state. That is where [bandit leader] Ali Kachala [operates].

Agba Jalingo, publisher of the CrossRiverWatch news website in Nigeria’s southern Cross River state. (Photo: CrossRiverWatch)

Agba Jalingo is the publisher of the privately owned CrossRiverWatch news website based in Calabar, the capital of Nigeria’s southern Cross River state.

It’s risky to carry a visible camera. Rely on small gadgets that you can put on your body.

[Remember] there is no public transport on election day.

The level of violence in Calabar South is very high. Don’t identify yourself as a journalist [there]. If you’re [slightly more north] in Calabar Municipality, you can brandish yourself as a journalist and still be safe.

Rukaiya Ahmed is deputy head of news with the privately owned Radio Ndarason Internationale broadcaster, which in Nigeria covers the eastern states of Adamawa, Yobe, Taraba, and Borno. She is based in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.

We have contact with the INEC [electoral commission] office, with the hope of them giving us kits [including press identification] that will help us conduct [reporting] without hindrance from security operatives. The top officials should make them [officers] know that journalists are part of the society and have to report the happenings. Military and security operatives should not stop journalists.

Musikilu Mojeed, editor-in-chief and chief operating officer with the Abuja-based privately owned Premium Times news site, which covers elections across the country. In addition to armed groups and criminals in various areas, he expressed concern about the conduct of the authorities toward the press.

We hope that the police and military will be fair and neutral, and will allow journalists to move around and do their job as necessary.

We make use of [security] analysis done by CLEEN Foundation, [a Nigeria-based NGO promoting public safety and accessible justice]. Covering an election in this country can be like going to the war front.

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

Auckland’s Great Flood: ‘If you think it was bad before, it’s worse now’ – whānau cope with losses

APR editor — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 22:22:26 +0000

By Ashleigh McCaull, RNZ Te Ao Māori news

A fortnight after the floods in Tāmaki Makaurau and as Aotearoa New Zealand braces for Cyclone Gabriel the reality is setting in for many.

Mother of four Kataraina Toka’s Mount Roskill home is yellow-stickered after being damaged by flooding on January 27.

For now, she is living in a two-bedroom hotel room in Onehunga.

“We’re getting there. It’s hard, it sucks you know being cooped up in somewhere so small with four kids. But better than not having a roof over our heads at all I suppose.”

Toka is looking for a new rental home but like many others is struggling.

“If you think it was bad before, it’s worse now. It’s hard, especially when you know you’ve lost all your ID because somebody dropped their phone in the water or we’ve got no car to get around so it’s just making it to where we can.

“But we’re just grateful for the support that we’ve got.”

Displaced whānau
Māori health provider Waipareira Trust has been helping many whānau in West Tāmaki who have been displaced.

Management lead Jole Thomson said one family in particular stood out.

“Their house was one of the first ones to be red stickered — it was destroyed. Kuia, kaumātua, and they’ve got care and custody over their mokopuna who has special needs and house concerns.

“They’re getting kicked out, basically, of their emergency accommodation.”

Other whānau stayed at schools such as Mount Roskill’s Wesley Primary School which was turned into an evacuation centre when the floods hit.

But some tamariki haven’t been able to return to kura.

Wesley School principal Lou Reddy has noticed the absence of some of his students.

High-risk situation
“We’ve got six that we know are in that high-risk situation where they lost their car, lost their home, are in a temporary housing situation and we haven’t been able to get them here.

“The others, there’s 10 that we haven’t been able to get a hold of at all.”

Wesley Primary School principal Lou Reddy (right) with a team from the Ark Project which has been distributing kai parcels. Image: Ashleigh McCaull/RNZ News

Thomson said that was a common situation, with some whānau no longer having the resources they need.

“We’re working with a number of whānau, helping them pay for things like school uniforms and a lot of that we’re supporting, they don’t want help. I was watching people trying to dry school shoes so the kids could wear them to school.

“But they’d been destroyed, they had been in raw sewage.”

The Ark Project in Mt Roskill, which works to assist vulnerable families, was a massive part of the evacuation effort and organisers estimate it helped more than 5000 people with kai parcels.

Barely anything left
Co-ordinator Peter Leilua said each day they started off with plenty of supplies but by the end there was barely anything left.

The team did not have enough resources to keep providing for whānau, he said.

“That’s our biggest push to the government, Ark needs a lot of that support, because in our community and Wesley, Puketāpapa, Mount Roskill, we got hit the most.

Food collected by the Ark Project in Mt Roskill is piled in a room at Wesley Primary School for distribution in kai parcels following Auckland’s floods. Image: Ashleigh McCaull/RNZ News

Many families were being placed temporary accommodation some distance from their community.

“It’s not just around the corner. They’re placing them at Greenlane, Onehunga, some are out South or East and that’s just too far for them to travel,” Leilua said.

Damage from the flooding has extended beyond financial and material loss.

Thomson said whānau have had to throw away taonga or family treasures.

“The photo albums, the whānau heirlooms, the korowai that have been handed down for generations just absolutely destroyed and that’s heartbreaking for whānau.

“Ashes, you know whānau not knowing how to manage those sorts of things, the remains of their loved ones,” Thomson said.

While whānau such Kataraina Toka’s continue to try to rebuild, many know they’ve got a long journey ahead.