This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
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Investigative journalists Taya Graham and Stephen Janis break down the insider knowledge surrounding Joe Biden’s decline—and how the Democratic Party’s culture of silence, conformity, and caution may have sealed its own fate. From the “get in line” politics that killed bold policy and risk-taking to focus groups calling Democrats “sloths,” Stephen and Taya explore why Biden was protected despite clear signs of decline, the Democratic Party’s aversion to bold candidates, what Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump had in common, and why the Dems just spent $20 million just to learn how to talk to men.
Produced by: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Written by: Stephen Janis
Studio: David Hebden
Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, this is Taya Graham, along with my reporting partner, Stephen Janis.
Stephen Janis:
Hey, Taya. How are you doing?
Taya Graham:
I’m doing great.
Stephen Janis:
Good, good.
Taya Graham:
And I want to welcome everyone to the Inequality Watch Real News React. It’s a show where we challenge the conventional wisdom touted by the mainstream media and use our perspective as reporters to provide some alternative explanations for some of the hard to understand happenings in America and throughout the world.
And today, that means unpacking the great Joe Biden conspiracy.
Stephen Janis:
It is a great conspiracy, Taya, a real conspiracy.
Taya Graham:
I mean, really, it was like a Weekend at Bernie’s-like conspiracy, actually Weekend at Bernie’s sequel.
Stephen Janis:
Let me chime in. For people who don’t know, Weekend at Bernie’s is a movie where a man dies and his younger friends carry him around because they don’t want people to know he’s dead. So it’s like a corpse at a party.
Taya Graham:
Yes. That sounds very morbid, but it was actually a funny movie, or at least back when I watched it.
Stephen Janis:
Exactly.
Taya Graham:
And if you read some of the recent reports about just how out of it Biden was, it sounds like he was the grandpa who fell asleep at the dinner table at Thanksgiving.
But along with these revelations about the depth of Biden’s declining cognitive abilities comes a much more important question: Why was a man who couldn’t function after 5:00 PM allowed to run an entire country, and why didn’t anyone who supposedly had access tell the truth about it? And that’s what our show will discuss today. And our answer, which we’ll share soon is probably not what you expect.
But first, let’s get to the facts. Stephen, the discussion about Biden’s inability to function, according to some of the recently released books, goes back to 2019, involves some really embarrassing moments. I think for example, he couldn’t remember the name of a close aid, or he didn’t recognize George Clooney at a fundraiser that George Clooney was throwing for him.
So what have we learned about Biden’s health while in office, and what do you think the main talking point is there?
Stephen Janis:
We’ll tell you, unlike you and I who basically learned about Biden’s cognitive abilities at that horrific debate, there was a small group of Washington insiders and politicians who now we know knew that Biden was not right. Meaning stretching back to 2020 with congressional Democrats where they’re like, he lost his train of thought. There were a lot of signs.
And so now what happens in Washington when people ignore something right in front of their faces? They do a lot of hand wringing and see who they can blame. The big question is now, well, there’s two big questions right now. Number one, how bad was he, which needs to be clearly established that he was in no position to run a country. And number two, who can we blame so it doesn’t fall on us?
Taya Graham:
Exactly. How will it not be our fault?
Stephen Janis:
Exactly. And that seems to be the biggest preoccupation of Washington and all the Washington insiders is how can I pin this on someone else, and how can I avoid taking any blame? Which is kind of politics as usual.
Taya Graham:
Or to sell a book, which is apparently what CNN’s Jake Tapper is now doing. Did you see how many, gosh, did you see how many ways he tried to sell that book and hawk that book on CNN? It was almost embarrassing.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. Every person talking about Joe Biden, even not about Joe Biden, was mentioning Jake Tapper’s book [crosstalk] —
Taya Graham:
You would’ve thought they were working on commission.
Stephen Janis:
Well, it’s extraordinary because Jake Tapper is a quintessential insider, and the quintessential establishment journalist tends to be a bit of a moralizer, likes to sneer at people, and, of course, was constantly sneering at Trump. But I don’t think he was a person who was out ahead of this story either. He tries to make it seem like he was, but I think a lot of, if you went back, I think he was a person who would give the Republicans a hard time for talking about Biden’s condition, or anyone.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. He’s definitely the type that would’ve pushed back and said that the Republican Party was focusing on the wrong thing. But apparently they were focusing on the right thing. And it was a thing, it was like The Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone was trying to ignore what was right in front of them.
Stephen Janis:
I think this is more about the culture of a party than it is about what the Republicans thought. To me, this is really much more important than Biden, much more important than Biden’s condition, it’s about the culture of a party and why that culture keeps that party from ever winning an election, and, I think, connecting with voters. There’s a lot of things that went on to keep Biden in power that have a lot to do with some of the biggest problems of the Democratic Party.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. It is so much bigger than Biden, and that’s why we have a theory to share of why this really happened,
Stephen Janis:
Which we’ll share shortly, before we go through what I call the conventional wisdom about this.
Taya Graham:
We should take a look at some of the mainstream media explanations that are being touted by pundits. So let’s take a look at some of the reasons that pundits and politicians gave.
So they set up these excuses for Biden running when it’s obvious that he is too old and he’s still getting fierce support from Dem insiders. So what do you think were some of the things that pundits came out with? There were certainly politicians like Rep. Clyburn who even now still defends Joe Biden.
Stephen Janis:
And they certainly haven’t talked much about Dean Phillips, the one guy who ran against Biden, who got thrown out of the party. But I think [crosstalk] —
Taya Graham:
He got thrown under the bus, actually.
Stephen Janis:
I think the general explanation has been that I see that comes out through all the BS is just that he didn’t say anything, she didn’t say anything, so I wasn’t going to say anything even though I knew something and even though I was outraged, and people trying to share secretly or confidential sources, even though I knew something, I couldn’t say anything because they didn’t say anything. So there was this very much, it bumps up against our theory, but really everybody was groupthinking here.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely.
Stephen Janis:
I’m not going to say anything. Well, you say something. No, I’m not going to say anything. You say something. And that, as we’ll get to, says a lot about the Democratic Party at this point.
Taya Graham:
Stephen, the word groupthink encapsulates it there perfectly. But there’s another angle that people are taking, which was that they’re blaming hubris, they’re blaming Biden’s ego.
Stephen Janis:
I don’t think you can rule that out because I’ve seen politicians hold onto city council seats until they’re 90.
Taya Graham:
That’s so true. Yes, [crosstalk] in Baltimore City, yes.
Stephen Janis:
You can imagine the illustrious power of the presidency is nice. One of his aides was going, you don’t give up the plane, you don’t give up the house. And I mean, it’s kind of understandable if small time politics can be a narcotic, being president is probably a wonder drug. You’re going to be high all the time.
But I also think, and this was discussed on another show, which I thought was a good explanation, that Biden had had a career of turning expectations on their head. He was a guy who, I’m always going to push through, I’m going to find a way to do this, and people have written me off before. I think some people are trying to blame the 2022 midterms where the Democrats outperformed or overperformed expectations, and Biden took credit for it. But personal hubris has a lot to do with this. Why do I want to give this up? It’s great being the president. It’s great to be the king.
Taya Graham:
Right. And he also ran multiple times. So he’s always wanted this office and perhaps his ambition overcame what should have been his intelligence, which is that he was supposed to be a transitional president.
Stephen Janis:
And looking back at what’s happened since, it almost ruined his whole legacy. So it’s a good lesson, like, hey, sometimes it’s time to quit. Not always, but sometimes.
Taya Graham:
You think the Democrats would’ve learned that with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but apparently they had to learn this lesson again.
Now, there was another thing they did, which is they blamed his inner circle. So for example, it came out that aides had sought to ensure that he would walk shorter distances or they made sure that he had handrails available when he was mounting stairs, and they had him wear, I think the shoes are called trainers to make sure that he wouldn’t slip. When you have aides essentially baby proofing the world around a politician, I mean, how did someone not speak out? It’s incredible.
Stephen Janis:
Well, it’s weird because a lot of these people who are insiders spend their whole careers, and from my experience as a reporter, they’re like attack dogs. They refuse to look inward. They’re always looking outward. So anyone that mentions anything or says, hey, Biden, he doesn’t perform after 5:00, they get attacked. And these are the attack dogs. And the attack dogs, from what I’ve seen, and I have more experience with Democrats, the attack dogs don’t care about the candidate, what the candidate’s doing, you’re the problem. Anyone who speaks up is the problem. Anyone who writes a story is a problem. It’s always other people who are the problem.
And I’ve seen that fiercely in the Democratic Party. If you buck the narrative you’re going to get — And I think a lot of reporters had talked about that, who wrote about this prior to this moment we’re in now.
So Democrats have these cluster of aides, and Republicans have them too. It’s not a party thing. But I’ve had experience with them. They’re attack dogs. They don’t want to see reality. They think you’re reflecting the wrong reality, even though it’s really actually true. And I think that culture and that, I don’t know, whatever, we don’t care, we’re just going to attack people, we’ll attack the messenger, is pervasive and part of this problem.
Taya Graham:
That’s exactly it. Attack the messenger and not acknowledge the message at all. So you’re showing the anger and the attack dog, but there’s another aspect of it, which is that I think the Democrats were afraid.
Stephen Janis:
Trump has had a huge, profound psychological impact on the Republican Party for a decade now. They are Trump traumatized, and I think they think, well, Trump is this horrible threat to democracy. That’s what the Democrats think. And no matter what we do, we just have to stop it, so we become more risk averse. We are not going to do anything to rock the boat because if we question Joe Biden, we’re just letting Trump in. And I guess I can understand that, but it seems antithetical to the idea you want to beat Trump, but you’re going to have a zombie candidate, or you said you’re going to have a big Weekend at Bernie’s campaign? That’s what I think you get when you become, I think, that enured to the facts. So yeah, that’s a really, really, really important point.
Taya Graham:
OK. Now Stephen, this is our chance to explain our theory as to why Biden was cosseted —
Stephen Janis:
Finally!
Taya Graham:
— And protected and kept in office despite many people knowing that he was no longer capable. And that is the Get in Line theory.
Stephen Janis:
It’s a good theory.
Taya Graham:
OK. It is. Stephen, can you explain this most excellent theory?
Stephen Janis:
OK, so we have covered politics, especially in Democratic state and local, which means our city council, the state legislature, and in the nation’s capital, all levels. And what we have seen in the Democratic Party is what’s called the Get in Line culture that rules the way the party is governed.
And what it means is that you don’t jump out of line, you don’t get ambitious if you’re a candidate, you wait your turn. The way Hillary Clinton came out of the Obama era, and it was her turn. The way Joe Biden emerged from the Democratic establishment. It was his turn because it was no longer Hillary Clinton’s turn. On the local level, I can give you many examples of people who are like, don’t jump the line. Don’t get out of line.
And so sometimes when we talk about democratic politics, we always say Democrats are like all the kids in class who sat at the front of class, always did the assignment —
Taya Graham:
Raise the hand for teacher.
Stephen Janis:
— Never piss off the teacher, gets in line. A lot of Democratic candidates, like our governor, Wes Moore, have these perfect resumes, military service, nothing against that. But they they’re creatures of institutions, and inherently they’re risk averse, and candidates have to get in line.
Now, look at the Democratic example and why this is so important in the case of Biden. Who was our most successful, Taya, electoral president of the past, like, 20 years, right? Who was that?
Taya Graham:
President Obama?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, of course, of course. Now, did he get in line?
Taya Graham:
No, he jumped the line. He sure did. And the establishment Democrats weren’t always pleased about it.
Stephen Janis:
No. They picked Hillary Clinton. And do you remember —
Taya Graham:
Hillary fought him tooth and nail.
Stephen Janis:
Actually, yeah. Do you remember the criticism of him? He’d only been two years in the Senate. Do you remember that criticism?
Taya Graham:
Yes, absolutely.
Stephen Janis:
Right. So the Democrats, in their conventional get in line, it would’ve been Hillary Clinton’s turn, which they tried really hard, but Obama was just too good a candidate and was able to beat her. And then they have this huge electoral success. And then when they go back to their Get in Line policy, which has Hillary Clinton, Biden, and then Biden’s hanging on because all the Get in Line people didn’t want to say anything about it, then you have two out of three losses, two Trump, which who, whether you support him or not —
Taya Graham:
Well, wait a second here. Now you’re coming to a really important point here, which is that when you mentioned that President Obama was not a Get in Line candidate and yet he managed to shoot to the front of the line because of his personal charisma and his ability to campaign, President Trump was also not a get in line guy.
Stephen Janis:
Oh, you taught me.
Taya Graham:
At the time the Republican Party was absolutely [crosstalk] aghast.
Stephen Janis:
Oh my God, Republican establishment was like the Democratic establishment. They didn’t want this guy. He was crazy to them and they didn’t want him, but he didn’t get in line.
Taya Graham:
He sure didn’t.
Stephen Janis:
Hardly. No one wanted him to run. And I think we can all remember that when he ran, because the Republican establishment had Jeb Bush, low… I don’t want to say that.
Taya Graham:
Low energy Jeb?
Stephen Janis:
Low energy Jeb Bush, and people like that being touted.
Taya Graham:
That was kind of sad.
Stephen Janis:
No one thought Trump had a chance, but he jumped the line just like Obama.
Taya Graham:
Wait a second, couldn’t Bernie have jumped the line?
Stephen Janis:
Oh, Bernie’s a line jumper.
Taya Graham:
Yeah.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
They really had to hamstring him when he was originally running.
Stephen Janis:
In 2016 with the super delegates.
Taya Graham:
And that really upset a lot of loyal Democrats who felt that Bernie Sanders’s campaign was hamstrung from the inside, that the party attacked him.
Stephen Janis:
We were in South Carolina in 2020 when the Democratic establishment rose up. We witnessed it like a wave and said, not your turn, Bernie, not your turn. It’s got to be Joe Biden. He’s the next in line.
And you could see the results. The results speak for themselves. There’s a disconnect between Democrats and voters because the party is so orderly and so unwilling to take a risk and so unwilling to really conjure policies of any sort. They don’t want to say anything. They don’t want to say Medicare for all like Bernie Sanders says. Why do you think people support Bernie Sanders? Because he’s willing to say Medicare for all. Many Democrats are afraid to say it because of the implications with donors, et cetera.
But the Get in Line candidate and the Get in Line culture is fierce in the Democratic Party locally and nationally. Look at AOC trying to jump ahead [in the] Oversight Committee.
Taya Graham:
Oh, that’s right.
Stephen Janis:
And Connolly, who’s…
Taya Graham:
I mean, you know.
Stephen Janis:
He died.
Taya Graham:
With all respect.
Stephen Janis:
With all due respect.
Taya Graham:
With all due respect, but he was an older gentleman, and obviously not in good health, and instead of picking a young, popular candidate like AOC, they chose him. What does this say about the Democrats when they make choices like this?
Stephen Janis:
AOC would’ve been the jump the line candidate, and AOC would’ve been a bold move. And Democrats keep thinking now with Trump being excessively bold, that somehow they have to be excessively conservative. The real dynamic here is are we going to be a centrist party or a leftist party? That’s not really the right question. Are we going to be a bold party that offers something to people, or are we just going to be the same old, same old who’s next in line, who’s going to run, and who’s going to end up losing again to whomever?
I think you had some interesting information, right, about a focus group that the Democrats did?
Taya Graham:
Yes, there was the… Oh gosh. Well, actually, yes. Let me tell you about this New York Times article.
Stephen Janis:
I really want to hear about it
Taya Graham:
— Media. I wrote about it, and they said The New York Times basically unleashed this brutal analysis. So they have someone who’s done over 250 focus groups for the Democratic Party. And one of the ways they try to really tease out how people think of the party is to ask them, if you had to choose an animal to represent the party, what animal would it be? OK. So for Republicans, they choose like apex predators, they’re like sharks and tigers and stuff. Guess what they choose for Democrats?
Stephen Janis:
I don’t want to hear it.
Taya Graham:
You don’t. It’s terrible. Slugs, sloths, tortoises.
Stephen Janis:
Are you kidding?
Taya Graham:
Does that not speak to all the things we’ve talked about, about Democratic inertia, Democratic institutionalism, calling them a tortoise?
But what was really, now, this is actually kind of sad, I feel bad for the focus group, the gentleman who did the focus group, because he finally got someone to name a different type of animal for the Democrats, and the person said, a deer. And he’s like, oh, wow, that’s interesting. Why did you choose deer? And the guy said, a deer in headlights.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
What does that tell you?
Stephen Janis:
That tells me everything I need to know. But it tells me what we’re already talking about here, and this is very important to remember: the Democrats are afraid. They have no bold proposals, they have no vision, and they’re spending $20 million. What’d you say they spent? $20 million?
Taya Graham:
They were spending $20 million sitting in a luxury hotel to discuss the best way to talk to regular people. So that’s also another great Democratic take.
They also are planning — I was just looking at another article — They’re also planning on pouring a lot of money into influencers. And I think there was an excellent criticism from More Perfect Union, and they said maybe the Democratic Party should actually have a unified platform and unified policy positions and a bold policy platform before you start trying to create your own little influencer group. Maybe you should all be on the same page first.
Stephen Janis:
But paying consultants to do something that you haven’t done yourself, you can’t create a character, or you can’t create a person who people will put their faith in.
Taya Graham:
Well, they keep on saying, we need a Joe Rogan for the left, or we lost Joe Rogan, wow do we fix this? So they’re trying to create a model instead of realizing that, for example, Sen. Bernie Sanders, he went on Joe Rogan, he went on Andrew Schulz, he went on Theo Von. And these folks aren’t necessarily… You could argue that some of them are Republicans, some of them are libertarian, or some of them are just independent. And they were open to Bernie. Why? Because of his authenticity, because of his bold ideas, and because he stays on point. I think that’s something that a lot of people really respect about Sen. Sanders.
Stephen Janis:
You can go back to the 1990s and watch.
Taya Graham:
You can go back to the 1990s and hear him talking about oligarchs then. So I think people really appreciate that authenticity and honesty from a candidate.
Stephen Janis:
So if the Democrats have been a bold party and not a stand in line party, Bernie Sanders might be president right now. If he’d been nominated in 2020, I mean, he could have won. You can’t rule that out.
Taya Graham:
But the question here is will the Democrats learn their lesson? Will they allow some line jumpers?
Stephen Janis:
I don’t think so. No. Just the fact that they’re having focus groups paying $20 million instead of [crosstalk] finding a candidate —
Taya Graham:
How absurd is that.
Stephen Janis:
— That has a vision to offer voters, hey, this is what we’re going to do. Politics is, as much as it’s about aesthetics and slogans and everything, it’s still about practicalities. It’s still about envisioning a reality. Maybe you should spend your time finding someone who has a message that people might like, and taking that person and giving them the ability to change and transform this moribund party. You can’t just screech at the top of your lungs. You’ve got to have something to offer people. We’ve written extensively about, we’ll put the articles we wrote about the Democrats having to get something done, which of course they can’t do nationally, but on the local level, we’ll put that link in the comments.
Taya Graham:
Right, we’ve seen it up close.
Stephen Janis:
Democrats have to do something, and they have to stop spending money on consultants, I think.
Taya Graham:
And also they need to learn how to speak to people. One of the things that this article explored, it was a program that they’re creating called SAM. I think it’s like a Strategic Approach to Men. So Democrats are trying to learn how to talk to men. They can’t even talk to the regular public just one-on-one. But folks like Sanders and AOC seem to be breaking through.
Stephen Janis:
That’s what I’m saying. You have to pick the people, the candidates, the people that are dynamic that don’t need to be told how to talk to someone, that actually have a vision that, when they sell it — Well, not sell their vision, but talk about their vision, people are attracted to their vision. So it’s amazing that Democrats keep spending money like this when they’d be better thinking about what is our grand vision and what candidate would actually attract people? What candidate could attract people without having to spend a hundred million dollars on consultants and things like that.
Taya Graham:
You know what, we are not going to pay any money for consultants — Well, as a matter of fact, we should run a poll ourselves. As a matter of fact, we’re going to put a poll down in the live chat and we want to find out how people think about Democrats, if they have any idea on how Democrats can learn to speak to people effectively. What do you think could fix the Democratic Party, if it can be fixed? We would love to know your thoughts in the comments and in that poll. So I’m going to make sure to have a poll in the live chat.
And also, Stephen, for the record, I think we’ve done a pretty good autopsy on the Democratic Party.
Stephen Janis:
I think so.
Taya Graham:
Didn’t cost $20 mil. We did it for free. We shouldn’t have done it for free.
Stephen Janis:
I think it’s pretty clear that they need someone to jump the line, to run, that the Democratic establishment does not want to run, someone with a vision that seems authentic, and someone who’s willing to take risks. You gotta take risks. The risk averse nature of the Democratic Party has turned them into losers in many cases. So yeah, we will be back to breakdown this more, but I think we did a little bit of damage today
Taya Graham:
A little bit, but hopefully the Democrat strategists out there who are spending millions of dollars, maybe they’ll take some time to listen to independent journalists as well as listen to the public, and let them know that they have an authenticity issue and they need to find a way to break the inertia and their Get in Line platform, essentially.
Stephen Janis:
Well, their Get in Line order of things that has led them to…
Taya Graham:
So they’re not considered tortoises anymore.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Well, OK.
Stephen Janis:
That was great!
Taya Graham:
That’s our great free help for the Democratic Party. It didn’t cost $20 million. Maybe they’ll listen, maybe they won’t. But I want to thank everyone who’s watching for joining us for this first of a series of Inequality Watchdog Reacts on The Real News Network. And if you have a topic you’d like us to explore, just throw it in the comments and we’ll take a look. And if you want to see more of our inequality reporting, just take a look for our playlist on The Real News Network channel, and I look forward to seeing you all soon. Right, Stephen?
Stephen Janis:
Yep. We’ll be back.
Taya Graham:
We’ll be back. And as always, please be safe out there.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Twenty-two-year-old software developer Artem Motorniuk has spent his entire life in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, living in the north and visiting his grandparents in the south. It’s been almost four years since he’s seen them in person.
“My grandparents right now are under occupation,” he says. “We can reach them once a month on the phone.”
Motorniuk and his family’s story is a common one in eastern Ukraine. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, the war has devastated both occupied and liberated regions. Over a million people on both sides have been killed or injured in the war, according to recent estimates. Whole towns have been flattened and infrastructure destroyed, leading to almost 6 million people displaced internally and 5.7 million refugees taking shelter in neighboring European countries. For those who remain, the psychological toll is mounting.
“They shoot rockets really close to Zaporizhzhia,” Motorniuk said. “[Last August] they got the region with artillery shells, and they hit in the place where children were just hanging around and killed four children.”
A toy truck is seen outside a children’s cafe damaged by a Russian artillery shell strike in Malokaterynivka village, Zaporizhzhia region, southeastern Ukraine, on August 20, 2024. Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images The conflict has become highly politicized and volatile in recent months. The United States in April signed a deal with Ukraine to establish a joint investment fund for the country’s eventual reconstruction, in exchange for access to its wealth of critical minerals. At the same time, President Donald Trump has increasingly aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin, at one time even questioning which country incited the conflagration, and U.S. attempts to advance a ceasefire have stalled.
Now, just past the three-year mark, the conflict’s long-term costs are becoming more apparent, including the damage to the country’s natural resources. Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone.
The conflict zone: Up to 90% of Ukraine’s wildfires have occurred in less than 20% of the country
Cumulative acres burned during the war: in Ukraine, in the conflict zone, and in conservation areas
But not all rockets explode when they’re shot, and mines only go off when they’re tripped, meaning these impacts will linger long after conflict ceases.
This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequences.
The Serebryansky Forest serves as a strategic passing point for Russian forces and a key defense point for Ukrainian forces. To completely occupy the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russia has to pass through the forest. Holding the line here has allowed the Ukrainians to stop the Russian advance, but at a steep cost.
“The shelling, it’s an explosive wave, the fire makes everything unrecognizable,” a medic with the National Guard 13th Khartiya Brigade told the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in March. “When they get up, the forest is different, it has all changed.”
When you introduce war, you create fires that can’t be effectively extinguished.
“You cannot fly aircraft to suppress fire with water because that aircraft will be shot down,” Maksym Matsala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, explained.
Forests and agricultural land are woven together across Ukraine, meaning wildfires also endanger the country’s food supply. Battle-sparked blazes destroy harvests and eliminate the trees that shelter cropland from drying winds and erosion that can lead to drought — leaving those on the military front lines and Ukrainian citizens at risk of food insecurity.
A forest burns after Russian shelling in July 2024 in Raihorodok, Ukraine. Ethan Swope/Getty Images These forests have also served as a physical refuge for people in Ukraine fleeing persecution or occupation. For generations, local populations sheltered among the trees to avoid conflict with neighboring invaders. This theme continues today, shielding Ukrainians fleeing cities demolished by Russian troops. Fires are threatening this shelter.
Preventative measures like removing unexploded ordnance that could ignite or intensify fires are now unimaginably dangerous and significantly slower when set to the backdrop of explosions or gunfire, said Sergiy Zibtsev, a forestry scientist at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and head of the Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center. In a country as heavily covered in mines as Ukraine, this turns small embers into out-of-control blazes.
Matsala added that forests under these war-ravaged conditions may not ever truly recover. Consistent shelling, explosions, and fires leave a graveyard of charred trees that barely resemble a woodland at all. Consistent fighting since February 2022 has left the Serebryansky Forest an alien landscape.
“The local forest now looks like some charcoal piles without any leaves, and it’s just like the moon landscape with some black sticks,” Matsala said.
In liberated regions of Ukraine, the wildfire management strategy involves removing land mines one by one, a process known as demining. It’s a multistep system where trained professionals first survey a landscape, sometimes using drones, to identify regions where mines are likely to be found. They then sweep the landscape with metal detectors until the characteristic pattern of beeps confirms the presence of one. Next, they must disable and extract it. Even without the risk of accidentally triggering unexploded ordnance, demining in an active conflict zone is incredibly dangerous. Deminers elsewhere have been killed by enemy combatants before. And a misstep can cause an explosion that sparks a new fire, which can spread quickly in Ukraine’s war-denuded landscape. Demining is a “square meter by square meter” process that must be done meticulously, said Zibtsev.
These challenges are what spurred Brian Milakovsky and Brian Roth, two professional foresters with Eastern European connections, to found Forest Release in 2023.
A view of shelling scraps in Serebryansky Forest, in Luhansk, Ukraine in June 2024. Pablo Miranzo/Anadolu via Getty Images The U.S.-based nonprofit helps coordinate and disseminate monitoring research in Ukraine’s forests. Using satellite products that take into account vegetation greenness, Milakovsky, Roth, and their collaborators can identify particular forests in Ukraine that might be under the most stress from fires. Forest Release can then send this information to local firefighters or forest managers in Ukraine so they can tend to those forests first. It also collects firefighting safety equipment from the U.S. to donate to firefighters in Ukraine. Both of these activities allow Forest Release and its Ukrainian counterpart, the Ukrainian Forest Safety Center, to train foresters to fight fires and get certified as deminers.
To make drone-based mine detection more effective and safe, two other American researchers launched an AI-powered mine-detection service in 2020 that’s being used in Ukraine: Jasper Baur, a remote sensing researcher, and Gabriel Steinberg, a computer scientist, founded SafePro AI to tap artificial intelligence to more autonomously and efficiently detect land mines in current and former warzones.
“I started researching high-tech land mines in 2016 in university,” Baur said. “I was trying to research how we can detect these things that are a known hazard, especially for civilians and children.”
Surface land mines, as Baur explained, can seem particularly innocuous, which makes them even more dangerous. “They look like toys,” he said. He and Steinberg worked to turn their research project into a tangible application that would help deminers globally.
SafePro AI is trained on images of both inactive and active unexploded ordnance — everything from land mines to grenades. The model works by differentiating an ordnance from its surroundings, giving deminers an exact location of where a land mine is. When not being trained on images from Ukraine, it learns from images sourced elsewhere that Baur tries to ensure are as close to reality as possible.
Ukrainian soldiers and a tank parole during a period of heavy fighting in the Serebryansky Forest in eastern Ukraine, in June 2024. Pablo Miranzo/Anadolu via Getty Images (left) and Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
“A lot of our initial training data was in Oklahoma, and I’ve been collecting a lot in farmlands in New York,” he said. “I walk out with bins of inert land mines, and I scatter them in farm fields and then I try to make [the conditions] as similar to Ukraine as possible.”
Because a lot of land mines are in fields adjacent to Ukrainian forests, focusing removal efforts at the perimeter can stop fires before they spread. SafePro AI has team members in the U.S., United Kingdom, and also in Ukraine. In fact, Motorniuk, from the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine who also works for SafePro AI as a developer, said that his work has shown him that he can make a difference without picking up a gun. SafePro AI has received funding from the United Nations Development Programme to deploy the technology in Ukraine through humanitarian land mine action organizations. So far, the company has surveyed over 15,000 acres of land, detecting over 26,000 unexploded ordnance.
Much of the protection of Ukraine’s forests in and around the war is predicated on information. Can land mines be located? Can wildfires be slowed or stopped? In a geospatially data-poor country like Ukraine, Matsala highlights that this kind of work, and the creation of robust datasets, is necessary to ensure the survival of Ukraine’s natural ecosystems. It also offers a chance to rethink the country’s forestry in the long-term.
“This is a huge opportunity to change some of our … practices to make the forests more resilient to climate change, to these large landscape fires, and just [healthier],” Roth, of Forest Release, said.
Roth agrees with Matsala that Ukraine’s stands of non-native, highly flammable pine trees pose a prolonged threat to the country’s forests — particularly as climate change increases drought and heat wave risk throughout Europe. In Roth’s opinion, losing some of these forests to wildfires during the war will actually allow Ukrainian foresters to plant less flammable, native tree species in their place.
An aerial view of a charred pine trees forest contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance in September 2024 in Svyatohirsk, Ukraine. Pierre Crom/Getty Images The scientific and humanitarian collaboration unfolding to protect Ukraine’s forests amid war may also provide a record that would allow the country to claim legal damages for ecosystem destruction in the future.
Matsala recalled what happened in the aftermath of the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Amid fighting, invading Iraqi forces destroyed Kuwait’s oil facilities, leading to widespread pollution throughout the region. Although Iraq was forced to pay out billions of dollars to Persian Gulf countries including Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia for both damages and remediation, the payments may not have covered the totality of the environmental impacts. Following the war, neighboring Iran requested millions of dollars in damages for a myriad of environmental impacts, including for acid rain caused by oil fires. The United Nations Compensation Commission ultimately found that Iran had “not provided the minimum technical information and documents necessary” to justify the claims for damages from the acid rain. Matsala worries that without extensive data and reporting on the war with Russia, future Ukrainian claims for environmental reparations might go nowhere.
Whether that tribunal comes to fruition, or the forests are properly rehabilitated, remains to be seen. But the work continues. And with hostilities still happening, and no clear end, it will continue to be dangerous.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How 3 years of war have ravaged Ukraine’s forests, and the people who depend on them on Jun 5, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Chad Small.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Already burdened by years of funding cuts and understaffing, registered nurses who work at Veterans Health Administration (VA) facilities across the country are facing a crisis as the impact of the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce take effect. In this episode of Working People, Maximillian Alvarez speaks with VA nurses and union representatives for National Nurses United about how these cuts, coupled with Trump’s attempt to strip over one million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights, are hurting VA workers, the quality of care they’ve been trained to provide, and the veterans they serve.
Guests:
- Irma Westmoreland, a registered VA nurse in Augusta, Georgia, who currently serves as secretary-treasurer of National Nurses United and chair of the National Nurses United Organizing Committee/NNU-VA
- Sharda Fornnarino, a navy veteran who has worked as a VA nurse for 25 years, and who currently serves as the National Nurses United director of the Denver VA.
Additional links/info:
- National Nurses United website, Facebook page, X page, and Instagram
- National Nurses United – Veterans Affairs website
- NNU Press Release: National Nurses United RNs join Unite for Veterans, Unite for America rally in Washington, DC
- NNU statement on executive order seeking to strip federal employees of their protected union rights
- Eric Umansky & Vernal Coleman, ProPublica, “Internal VA emails reveal how Trump cuts jeopardize veterans’ care, including to ‘life-saving cancer trials’”
- Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “What’s really behind Trump’s war on federal unions?”
Featured Music:
- Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song
Credits:
- Audio Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. The show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our on the ground reporting on the Trump administration’s attacks on the federal workforce and the people who depend on their services. The Department of Veterans Affairs is the second largest department in the United States government. Second only to the Department of Defense as Eric Umansky and Vernal Coleman report at ProPublica, the VA has cut just a few thousand staffers this year, but the administration has said it plans to eliminate at least 70,000 through layoffs and voluntary buyouts within the coming months.
The agency, which is the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States currently has nearly 500,000 employees, most of whom work in one of the VA’s 170 hospitals and nearly 1200 clinics. Documents obtained by ProPublica show Doge officials working at the VA in March prepared an outline to transform the agency that focused on ways to consolidate operations and introduce artificial intelligence tools to handle benefit claims. One Doge document proposed closing 17 hospitals and perhaps a dozen more. Now, VA workers and veterans advocates have been sounding the alarm that these cuts and proposed restructurings could upend services that have already been burdened by years of underfunding and understaffing. And it’s not just the cuts. Workers employed by the VA have joined other unions ensuing the Trump administration over President Trump’s attempts to override the law through executive order and strip more than 1 million federal government employees of their collective bargaining rights.
In an April press release from National Nurses United NNU President Nancy Hagens said the VA nurses rely on collective bargaining to advocate for patient safety and ensure the best care for our veterans, most of whom are over 45 years old and many of whom have a disability. Without these bargaining rights, we risk retaliation for speaking up and holding our employers accountable. Our veterans deserve nurses who can fight for their care without fear. This latest move by the administration is a clear attempt to intimidate us for standing up against its efforts to dismantle and privatize the va, which studies have shown is a better place for veterans to receive care compared to the private sector, we will not be silenced by this bully behavior. And I just want to give a disclaimer up top here that our guests here are speaking as healthcare workers and member officers of National Nurses United.
They are not speaking on behalf of the VA or the federal government. I want to make that very clear. Now, Irma, Sharda, thank you both so much for joining us today on the show, especially amid all the chaos going on right now. I know this is a really hectic time, but our listeners are desperate to hear from y’all about what’s going on in the va. So I’m really, really grateful to y’all for making time for this and I want to kind of dig right in. And before we get to everything that’s been happening under the new administration, I wanted to ask if we could start by having y’all introduce yourselves, tell us more about you and the work that you do at the va, how you got into that work, and let’s give listeners a sense of what it’s been like working as a VA healthcare professional before 2025.
Irma Westmoreland:
Okay, well, I’ll go first. My name is Irma Westmoreland. I’m a registered nurse at the Charlie Norwood va and I’ve been here for 34 years. I started working at the VA because I wanted to work where I could give back to veterans. My mother was a volunteer at the VA for 50 years and one of my earliest memories was being taken into the VA to do bingo parties for our veterans or dance parties for the veterans. And we had to drag all of our friends with us because we needed ’em and it was a great time, but also because my husband is a veteran, many members of my family are veterans or were married to veterans or part of our family and we wanted to give back and support the va. I’ve been doing this, like I said, for 34 years and I wouldn’t do anything else.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And Irma, could you just say a little more about what the on the ground work has been like for you? I know it’s a big question to cover 34 years, but just give us a little sense of the day-to-day work and how that work has changed over the time that you’ve been at the va.
Irma Westmoreland:
I’ve been working at the VA, like I said, for 34 years. My first job was an ICU nurse and I’ve been a manager for a while, IV team manager, med surg manager. And then my latest job and last job at the VA has been as an informatics nurse, which means I’ve been working with physicians and nurses and helping them to learn how to document with our computerized charting system, developing charting tools and assisting them in that way.
Sharda Fornnarino:
So I’ve been a nurse for about 25 years at the Denver va. I started off as an ICU nurse or say a med surg nurse and then eventually evolved into the ICU and it was truly amazing. I worked with some amazing, amazing nurses and then eventually I got injured on the job and then I had to transition from inpatient care to outpatient. And since then I’ve been doing what’s called a float coordinator. I’ve worked in different medical specialties. What that means is I go where there’s people needed. I worked in neurology assisting doctors with procedures. I’ve worked in neurosurgery and I’m currently working in dermatology, assisting with procedures and help running their clinics day to day and connecting the patients with the providers. I would tell you that before all the stuff that’s happening now, the VA was a great place. It’s still a great place to work and the amazing people that I work with, a lot of us are veterans.
That’s really one of the reasons why I started to work at the va. When I got out of nursing school, I was looking at trying to get a job like everybody else, but I really wanted to give back. I served in the military for active duty for four years and I served in the reserves for about eight years and I really connected with the veteran patient. We were always able to joke around, we’re always able to talk about our past service and it’s always heartwarming to, they always enjoy talking about the old times, I should say, where they serve. They enjoy that comradery. There’s something about being in the military, you connect with all these people in just a different level. So that’s one of the reasons that had me join the Veterans Administration and just to know that I work with some really wonderful people and half of them are veterans too. We joke around, we just have this unique bond.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Was there anything about your service that sort of led you to feel like healthcare was where you wanted to give back or was that kind of more of an accident?
Sharda Fornnarino:
Well, I was a Navy corpsman, which is basically like an LPN on the outside. And so I provided a lot of nursing care while I was in the military and I worked in the psychiatric unit where mental health overseas was definitely needed and the nurses I worked with there basically said to Meda, you should really go into nursing. You would do benefit, it’ll benefit you greatly benefit your patients. You really have a knack for connecting with the patients and so you should go into nursing. And so they were really influential. One of my captains was very influential in leading me toward nursing, so I felt that it was eventually a good fit.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Sharda Irma, I wanted to ask if we could just go a little bit deeper and reveal a bit more about the VA healthcare system itself. Because a lot of folks listening to this, especially if they’re not veterans or they don’t have veterans in their family, they don’t know a lot about what goes on in there or how the VA itself is different from the healthcare that say they get. So I wanted to just ask if we could help listeners understand a bit more what the VA healthcare system is, how it works across the country and who it serves.
Irma Westmoreland:
VA care is very special. The care that our veterans need is mostly care for injuries that they served while in combat or while in service. So when a person signs up for the military, we tell them, Hey, if you get hurt, we’re going to take care of you. But what I have found, my husband was in the military for 23 years, he’s retired from the Army, and it’s changed just dramatically over the years about the benefits that our veterans get. So we have shrunk those benefits. Unfortunately, we tell them, Hey, you get hurt. We’re going to take care of you forever. But some of those things have changed, but we do better in the VA more than anywhere else is that we do PTSD, which is mental health care, spinal cord injury care, military, sexual trauma care, care for rehab, rehabilitation people with prosthetics. We do that better than anybody, our care, the nurses and the doctors in the va.
We train every single year. We have to take a course in what kinds of injuries in the different kinds of theaters of war or actions would we expect our veteran to have. So patients from World War I or different from patients from World War II or different from patients that were the Korean War and the Vietnam War and in the skirmishes that follow. And so each year we do that. We train on what kinds of things are we going to look for, what kind of injuries your care in the VA has been researched because the kinds of injuries that our veterans get has changed over time based on the technologies. So now we get a lot more traumatic brain injury, what we call TBI injury. So we need a lot more different and people lose limbs more than and come back more from injuries because of the advances in healthcare.
So we have a lot of rehab care and that care has been researched and studied and it’s also been researched and studied and how we get that care in the va, provide that care in the va and then how it’s provided on the outside. It’s light years better in the VA because our veteran comes to a place where they are around fellow veterans and there is some support from that. But there’s also, we provide care for people who are homeless. We provide care for people who again are spinal cord injury or people who need supportive care versus nursing home care versus acute care. All throughout the va, we have around the clock veterans care for your whole life. So we call it holistic care.
Sharda Fornnarino:
I would tell you what’s unique about the VA Max is really just to reiterate what Ermo is saying, it does encompass from mental health to any kind of physical injury. So where you would have to go on the outside and go to different areas and go to different hospitals, I feel like it’s a little fragmented in that way. The VA does provide it all encompassing. It’s all usually in the same place. Like my particular va, we have a spinal cord injury center. We have A-P-T-S-D Ascend program, which is an inpatient intensive program, and we have everything. We take care of everything between heart surgeries to minor hernias. So you can see it runs the whole gamut of everything. And we also were affiliated with some nursing home, so the VA has some nursing homes with us. So everything that we’re doing is all together. It’s all in one. The system is completely connected, which is different from the outside. I don’t want to say it’s better or worse, it’s just different. Everything is all there. And so when you see a VA provider, they can see all those things and look in your records and everything is all there where they in one spot where they don’t have to research to find different things or
Irma Westmoreland:
Go to different providers and such. You see a primary care physician right on the outside. So if you see your primary care physician, if you need to see a specialist, you have to farm you out right to somebody else. And then you have to get those records sent back to you. If you go to a facility, if you’re a primary care physician. Now a lot of them are only outpatient. So at a hospital you have to go to a hospital and see a hospital. Intensivist. In our facility, in our facilities in the va, we are 100%, like she said, integrated in that your primary care facility also is your hospital facility also is your other outpatient and specialty facilities. And all of that’s together. Like at the Charlie Norwood VA where I work, we have the same things like she’s talking about, we have inpatient mental health units, we have outpatient mental health care, and we have nursing home care, we have blind rehab centers, spinal cord injury, and all of the acute care and in between.
So all in one place. And we of course we both, we are both in big cities and so we have metro facilities, but we also have clinics that are attached to our facility that are in the rural areas of Georgia. And we even have one into South Carolina from our facility. The same thing that’s going on in Denver. So it’s an integrated thing. And you also have one medical record, which is really key in that everything is integrated no matter where you see. So if my patient was seen in Denver last week and is on vacation in Augusta, Georgia and gets ill, we have the same medical record so we can look at everything that was related to him, anything that happened to him, if he left his medications at home, we can go in and give him a prescription, which we have a pharmacy that gives it out to them right there.
And so our ER doctor, if they come in, ill can see everything that’s happened to them. One of the biggest big things that you said earlier that I want people to really see is it’s the biggest largest integrated healthcare system in the country, and integrated is the key. We are integrated one medical record, one system of how do we do things? One set of care standards for spinal cord injury, one set of care standards for our primary care clinics. And so that’s what makes us so great. We are all doing the same thing. People will tell you, oh, it’s one VA is one va, but that’s not true. We are integrated 100% and that makes us even better than anywhere else. I wish we all had the same thing that the VA offers.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I wanted to ask, in the spirit of walking us up to the current attacks, one of the things that folks in the civilian population have heard over the years about the VA is that it’s underfunded, that there are long wait times, like the typical fodder that you get when someone’s trying to privatize a government agency. Because I’ve been hearing the same stuff in industries across the country, and I’ve been interviewing workers in those industries dealing with chronic funding cuts over years, like education. How many public school teachers have I interviewed over the years who have said, yeah, we have class sizes that are too big and we can’t retain teachers because our funding keeps getting cut and they keep piling more work onto fewer teachers and the same thing’s going on in the railroads, the same things going on in retail. Right? I So I wanted to ask before we take a quick break here, you guys could just, if you had anything you wanted to respond to folks out there who are maybe just thinking about those stories. They don’t know the VA themselves, but they’ve heard that the VA is yet another government run agency isn’t adequate that it’s something wrong with the agency itself. Can you give us an on the ground view of what folks are not seeing when they’re hearing those kinds of stories?
Sharda Fornnarino:
I was just going to say yes, just like teachers. My husband is a teacher, and so we have the continued same woes of anything, any agency that’s funded by the government right now over the years, you’re correct. Our funding has been getting chipped away. And so really what we need, what people are saying, well, what’s wrong with the va? What’s wrong with the fact that we can’t keep getting the ultimate healthcare? We keep hearing about the issues that we’re having in the va. Well, we need the funding is ultimately what we need. We need to get a fully staffed va. We need to get all our funding, not getting leached out to the outside, but bringing back that funds back inside, invest in our va, invest in our staff, invest in our nurses, so that way we can give the best care and protect our veterans moving forward and provide the programs that we have so we’re not short staffed so we can give all the things that we say we want to give.
Irma Westmoreland:
One thing that can go with that is that I would like people to really look at what’s going on in the outside. If in the VA right now across the country, we have our primary care appointments, you can get a primary care appointment with your doctor in less than two weeks. We have same day appointments just like they do outside. They only have a few a day, just like outside. My husband is an army veteran. He was in an outside hospital because he got very sick and was taken there and he had to wait. If he didn’t see a different doctor and not his doctor he was assigned to for cardiology, he would’ve had to wait two and a half months for a cardiology appointment. And that’s on the outside, not as a veteran, but just as an outside person paying a private pain citizen in the va, we have the same kinds of things because we do have those staffing specialties, but we don’t have enough of them either.
So if you’re telling me I have got to send my patient outside, if he can’t get an appointment in 30 days, he’s got to go outside. That way you leach the funding away from the VA and send it to somebody outside because here’s what I’m saying, those doctors outside, they’re going to want to see the VA patient because the VA pays on time every time federal government on time, every time we’re going to pay you. So you’re going to your funds all the time. So those patients still have to wait, you go to send them outside. The appointment outside is longer than the appointment they had to wait for in the va. Correct. It’s ridiculous. Nobody is telling you that. I’m not saying that there aren’t some appointments that you can get faster. I’m not saying that, but what I am saying is many times what we are finding is that those specialty care appointments are just as long wait outside or longer than it is in the inside. And what we see is if you come back to the VA and be seen in the va, your care is faster, quicker, and better. And research has shown over and over that the morbidity and mortality rates and complication rates, death rates of our veterans are much less when we treat them in the VA than when they’re treated outside the va.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Now, Sharda, Irma, we’ve sort of given listeners a bird’s eye view of the state of the VA leading up to 2025. Let’s talk about what the hell has been going on over the past few months, like the attacks from the Trump administration, both on federal agencies including the Department of Veterans Affairs, but also federal workers, many of whom we’ve interviewed on this show and at the Real News Network. There’s been so much happening in just the past few months alone. I wanted to ask if you could just sort of talk us through what the hell’s been going on in your world since the new Trump administration came in. What attacks have been affecting you all and your work directly?
Irma Westmoreland:
What I wanted to say about that is as I represent nurses from all of our VAs that we represent, I hear from across the country what’s going on. And what we have been seeing is that the first set of cuts that came forward was the terminating of probationary employees. And in general, none of those were nurses, registered nurses that I have been able to find. But what we have found is that the terminating of employees and cutting of employees has been all of the support staff kind of folks. So in a hospital where we work, every single person is important, whether it’s the groundskeeper to the housekeeper who cleans the beds and turns over our beds so that we can get them them back to us quickly and put a patient in, whether it’s the dietary staff bringing the food, the respiratory therapist doing Jet N treatments or the physical therapist, every single person is important.
The person who transports our patients or transports our labs down to the lab, all of those people are important. When you cut those people, when the Secretary Collins is saying to everybody that will listen to him and please hear exactly what he’s saying, he’s saying he’s not going to cut doctors and nurses that are front what he’s calling front facing staff. So that means people that are taking care of our patients on our med search units and our clinics and those sorts of things. So he’s not going to cut those people. But if you cut the secretary who’s answering the phone, who is going to answer the phone, it’s got to be the nurse. And when I am having to stop or my nurses are having to stop and answer the phone, when a patient needs something, they have to wait. And that is a problem for us as nurses.
We want to be able to spend our nursing time taking care of our patients, making relationships with them, assessing them so that when I come in to see you, max, if you’re my patient, I’ve had you for eight hours today. I’ve been in and out of your room multiple times. I’ve done my assessment with you, you and I, I’ve had you this my second day. I see you. I come in in a split second. I can tell you there’s something wrong with you. I know if you’re having a problem because I’ve been seeing you. I know I’ve watched you multiple times, I’ve spoken to you. I know in a split second there’s something wrong. We got to get something. What’s happening. I need to assess you. I need to reassess you what’s happening, and that’s what giving me my time to see you does. But also if you call me and you need pain medication, should you have to wait long for that because I’m having to go and take another patient down to radiology because I don’t have anybody to take care of radiology.
And then the nurses that are left on the floor that are taking care of patients got to pick my patients up too. So now instead of my five or six that I have, they’ve now got 10 or 11 or 12 patients they’re listening out for who can do that? Nobody can do that adequately. So what we need is to have adequate funding to fully fund the va. What’s happening with all these cuts and the proposed cuts is to starve the VA of not only dollars but to starve the VA of resources like staffing. When we’ve had these cuts, what people we’ve got freezes have a vacancy. Who’s going to want to come to the VA if they know now I’ve got firings coming, guess who goes first? The police senior who wants to come if they know who’s going to leave their solid job to come and work even in an ancillary job when they know those people are going to be fired first. So that starves us not only of dollars, funding dollars that ARD has been talking about, but also staffing dollars and resource dollars.
Sharda Fornnarino:
Max. I was I thinking about the question and a good analogy. What I can give you is really right now at RVA, we don’t have enough HR staff to even hire or go through the vetting process for an employee that does want to take the chance to come in and work with our veterans. So where a hiring process may take maybe three to four months for the va, it’s now taking longer. We just hired a PA dermatology. It took her 10 months to get onto the va and thank goodness she was dedicated and really wanted to come and work with our staff and our veterans. So she waited it out and was willing to come. But that tells you we can’t give that kind of timely care. We can’t fill these open positions fast enough in order to give that care to that patient. So that’s definitely a problem. And also Secretary Collins, as Irma alluded, they’re not cutting medical doctors, nurses, which thank goodness they’re not. But we don’t send in time of war. We don’t send just our frontline out to battle and then leave all their support people in the back and just behind and cut them out. We need all the support we can get to make the frontline snipers, whoever to be successful in the battle. So that’s how I feel. It’s like we’re going into battle without all our support, if that makes any sense.
Maximillian Alvarez:
No, it makes tons of sense. And I wanted to also impress upon listeners that there is no shortage of need for this healthcare, right? I mean, before COVID-19, the fastest growing sector in the workforce was home healthcare and elder care because we have a generation of folks who are aging out of the workforce who need elder care. These are also veterans of 20th century wars who are going to need that care. But we also have this influx of new veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who are also needing that care. All the while the situation that y’all are describing sounds catastrophic, especially not only for retaining the existing healthcare staff that the VA has, but attracting new workers to join the va. It really does, I think kind of sound the alarm for us because I wanted to just ask if you could say a little more about that from the worker or perspective worker’s point of view, what exactly folks are signing up for if they’re signing up to work at the VA now, and what the hell we’re going to do when folks stop signing up because of all the things we’re talking about here?
Irma Westmoreland:
Well, what we’re going to get is exactly what they’re trying to get. Doge and all of the Trump administration, secretary Collins, they’re trying to the va, that’s what we’re going to get. So you keep taking the dollars and the resources away and then it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Oh, the VA’s not doing their job. We need to streamline the care so we can streamline it. We need to cut 80,000 people so that we can streamline care, but it’s not going to affect that the care we give our veteran is the public stupid. No, they are not. All they need to do is listen to exactly what Secretary Collins says, we’re going to cut 80,000 people, but it’s not going to cut the direct care the patient gets. Let me tell you this. Or the veteran gets, you can’t cut 80,000 anything from any type of job or any type of anything and expect that they’re not to have any effect on the bottom line of a company or the bottom line of the amount of work that you get.
So people right now are afraid. So now we have chaos. They’re talking about, well, should I take a buyout if I can get a buyout because they’re not doing buyouts for a lot of nurses and doctors because guess what? We’re not going to cut them. So they’re not allowing buyouts to happen. They are allowing some early voluntary retirements or retirements, but then we’re going to have these cut staff. So we’re not allowing that to happen. So then people are thinking, am I going to be the person who’s going to be left? So then we have chaos, right? People are worried about their job, they’re afraid. People are scared about the va, scared about coming to work for the VA because what might happen with us, but what’s the bottom line is it’s again a self-fulfilling prophecy that we’re going to cut the VA to the point or cause such chaos that there is an issue and then we’re going to farm that out, right?
We’re going to privatize that, we’re going to farm that out. Then you farm more and more of it out with it goes the dollars to take care of it. When if you had just put those dollars back into the VA and reinvested in the va, we’d have it even better of a system than we have right now. But what will happen is that you get to a point where there’s a tipping point. It’s like a rollercoaster. You go up the hill, up the hill, up the hill, and when you get to a certain point, bam, you’re done. And so it becomes to a point when you tip the scale so far, it then goes over and what happens is they’re going to try to privatize the va, which would be the absolute worst possible thing that could happen for our veteran because our veterans need the care that we give because we over and over again provide the best care for our veteran in the care that they need and the systems that they need.
Sharda Fornnarino:
I can tell you max, that a lot of our veterans over and over will tell us they prefer waiting for the va. They want to be seen at the va. I have veterans every day that tell me they’d rather wait, and sometimes I have to encourage them to go to the outside to make sure they’re getting their care. But really this is why we’re here today is speaking up because of all this chaos that’s happening. We as union, we’re trying to make sure that we’re able to use our voice and say, look, you can’t scare us. We’re here. We’re here to stay. We are here to stand alongside with our veterans and give the best possible care that we can.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I apologize for kind of asking a question about something that you both have already touched on, but I really want to drive this point home for listeners. Could you just say a little more about what the cuts translate to on the ground? Irma, you were talking about the fact that when you don’t have an assistant to take your patient down to another ward to the hospital, you as the nurse got to do that, which means you are not tending to your patients. I want to just tug on that thread a bit more because on this show we talk to workers about their jobs, like the day-to-day reality of what they’re doing. And if we’re talking here about workers providing care and veterans and fellow workers or retired workers receiving care, could we just drive home a bit more like what the quality of care looks like when you are dealing with these impossible circumstances, not only from the recent cuts from the Trump administration, but decades of underfunding and understaffing?
Irma Westmoreland:
Absolutely. One of the things we’ve had is not just cuts in where we’re at right here, but logistics, which are the people that buy our supplies and then the people that bring them up to the units. So we have had shortages of supplies where we just came through the holiday weekend, Memorial Day weekend a couple weekends ago, and so we are supposed to have enough supplies on Friday afternoon to get you through till Tuesday morning of supplies. And routinely what we have is that there are supplies that are missing. We don’t have enough supplies, we don’t have people to get them. I’m running, I’m sending people to go to another unit. I’m on the phone calling down to the emergency room. I had a nurse explain to me. One of my nurses said, look, I didn’t have urinals. I mean just something just crazy that we have majority of veteran male staff patient, so I didn’t have urinals.
I’m calling around to every single unit to see who’s got some extra so I could run down to the found. I found four in the er. They gave me two of the four they had. So we run to do that. I had a nurse anesthetist tell me a story where they had to hold an OR case in the waiting room in what we call our holding room because they didn’t have the supplies that they knew were ordered for the case. They had to leave our facility, go to the other facility, which is about 10 minutes away, 10 15 minutes away, go up to the dock, warehouse dock, search through the stuff in the warehouse till they found the tray. They needed to take care of that patient and come back. And that is unfortunately not just an isolated story because there’s also shortages of supplies like normal sailing that have been national shortages across the country just because of shortages in medical supplies overall.
So it’s not just people, us not being able to get it. It has to do with what They’re not available in some cases, but we have shortages in those kinds of staff and so it does affect our patients, but what we have is that nurse anesthetist who knew what they were looking for, who knew what they needed and was able to go find it and go get it, they went and did it. Right? So that’s what you have for our nurses, what charter was saying, us as the union, we stand with our nurses. We are going to be standing with our nurses and they’re going to be standing with us and our veterans so that we know what they need so we can stand up and say, this is not right. This shortage shouldn’t have happened, this incident should not have occurred. So that our nurses don’t feel afraid to stand up and speak out for their veterans and speak out for our patients and their working conditions. And that’s really important to us as a union to make sure that these nurses have the way to do that and have a way to feel good about doing it so they know they’re not retaliated against when they do that.
Sharda Fornnarino:
I mean, the day-to-day work has been affected for the nurse between what Irma mentioned before of answering the phone. They need to grab a tray for their patient. Now their patient can eat again. They may been not been able to eat because of an impending procedure, but now they said, okay, well no, now you can eat. So now they have to run down to the kitchen and get their tray. Sometimes we are going down to the supply area to get supplies because they don’t have a supply tech to come up and bring up the supplies that we need, things like that. It takes away from the bedside care that we could be doing going in and checking on our patient. Those are the things that we need.
All these jobs are important to help support taking care of this patient that’s sitting on that bed, laying in that bed. So all these different jobs that people are saying that, well, maybe that’s okay, or maybe we can cut that or, oh, it’s only whatever. It’s never an only, it’s we all work together as a team. Whenever we take care of a patient, it is a team dynamic. Whenever there is a wheel, a cog in the wheel that’s missing, it’s a problem. So having these people leave because maybe they’ve decided to take the deferred resignation program or doing an early retirement or having an opening for more than a year and that position get cut because they can’t recruit. Having all these things are kind of leading to the demise and we have to fight back against this. We have to fight back against the privatization. We can’t do this anymore. We really need to make sure that we have all the people in the right places doing all the things that we need to take care of that veteran in the bed.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Now, Sharda, Irma, with the last kind of 10 minutes that I’ve got you both here, I want to focus in on the union itself and talk about where NNU fits into the current attacks on federal workers across the board and the unions fighting back against it. We’ve interviewed folks here on this show and at the Real news, people working at the CFPB folks working for the National Park Service. I mean, cannot stress enough how broad these cuts have been to the federal workforce, but also how much of an impact it’s going to have if Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to eliminate collective bargaining rights for all these federal workers. What that is going to mean for federal unions, federal workers, and all of us who depend on their labor. So I wanted to kind of ask if you could talk about the attacks on Federal Union collective bargaining rights and how that connects to everything we’ve been talking about here. Why should folks listening to this, I guess care, it’s a blunt question, but why should folks care about the administration attacking your union’s ability to collectively bargain at places like the va?
Irma Westmoreland:
Well, let me just tell you right up front that President Trump’s order, if it’s enacted, will take away the federal bargaining rights for over a million federal workers. And he said from his own lips that the reason he’s doing it is because those are the people that stand up and fight against him. And so the Federal Union in itself or any union, us especially, we are standing up enforcing our contracts, enforcing our nurses’ rights to stand for their patient and to talk about issues that are going on and to make sure that our nurses are treated fairly and that we have adequate support to provide the care that we need for our veterans. And that’s our main job. Nurses, nurses, working conditions and our patients. Those are the two things that we stand for. And if I have told people over and over again that the federal workforce is a federal union, right?
If they decide to take it to say that we no longer are exclusively the nurses in the VA because they can never tell me I’m not a union member, they can never tell me that I’m not a union member. What we want folks to know is that the nurses are the union. I am the nurse, I am the union. It is not the contract. It is not the building. It is not where we’re at. It’s because us as workers are going to continue to ban together. We have joined the other five national unions in the VA to file a national, two national cases in the court against this cuts to try to stop the federal work. But what it is is just it’s union busting at its finest, right? That’s all it is. Union busting at its finest, but we are not giving up. We will always be here.
We will always be helping our nurses. We will always be doing it. Whether I have to do it at my lunchtime, whether I have to do it after hours, I’m going to still be doing it. And so are all our other nurse leaders. We are going to be assisting our nurses and helping them to navigate through the system so that they can still stand up for their patients because it will be harder. It won’t be as easy. It will be harder because you won’t have the same protections that you have with a contract right now of doing that. But let me tell you what you will have. You will have nurses and a union who will stand behind our nurses and we will be helping them every single day, every single minute of the day. We’re not going anywhere.
Sharda Fornnarino:
That’s right. Max Irma said, it’s so eloquently we are not going anywhere. But ultimately with nurses and the union, we’re representing and trying to fight for not just the nurses and the patients, it’s for their safety, their safety in working conditions. We talk about the working condition. We got to make sure that things are getting cleaned up, that our patients are safe, but not just the patients. The nurses are safe. We deserve to be able to go into work and not have to worry about will there be enough police officers to help me in the emergency room if a patient started to act out. We need to know that we are going to always be safe and be treated fairly and not allow people to step on us as we go along about our day. We did lobby recently for the VA and Play Fairness Act during Federal Lobby Day. And right now we’re continue to speak up. We’re supporting the United for Veterans Rally on Friday just to stand along the veteran and the VA nurse standing along. We’re speaking up, we’re doing our part. And the nurses all know that the nurses are all standing together and making sure they show that we’re a united front.
Irma Westmoreland:
And I would like to just say as related to that, the Unite for Veterans and Unite for America rally that’s happening at the National Mall on July the sixth. If you’re anywhere around that area, come out, join us. We’re going to be there with veterans groups and other labor groups that are going to be there rallying to bring issue to this. This is Friday, June the sixth. Did I say July? Sorry, June the sixth. It’s June the sixth. Friday two o’clock. We’re going to be there. I’m going to be speaking and lots of other people are as well. We have done congressional briefings, rallies all around the country talking about these issues, bringing them forward with our veterans groups, with our congressmen. We need the people who are listening to this podcast to call their congressmen, to call their senators and tell them to stop these cuts to the va.
They need to stop it. They need to pass the Employee Fairness Act to give us full bargaining rights, but they need to stop these cuts. They need to enact a law that will make sure that we have bargaining rights in the federal government for all federal workers, the whole million that they’re trying to take away, not just the ones for the va, but all of us. We need people to call their congressmen, call their senators, tell them this is not right, fully fund the va, whether it’s for internal resources, external resources, what we need to make sure we can care for our veterans every single day. Those veterans stood on the line for us and it’s time for us to stand on the line for them, come join us. And
Sharda Fornnarino:
We as nurses, we will not abandon our patients, we will not abandon our veterans.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And we will include information about that rally in the show notes for this episode. And I myself will try to get down there on Friday so that we can do an on the ground follow-up to this podcast. So stay tuned for that. And with the last kind of minute or two that I have you both here, I wanted to just sort of ask if you had any more notes about what folks listening to this can do to help and why they should get involved here. I mean, I think one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen in the national consciousness around unions and union workers since the time I started this show is that more and more people have learned to understand unions not as a special class of workers who have something that we don’t, but workers who have more power in key industries that we all depend on.
And people have learned to see the struggle of their fellow workers and union workers, especially as fights that involve their interests, right? So folks who don’t want to fly on janky Boeing jets that are going to fall out of the sky have learned to support the machinists who build those planes who are fighting against the company and all of its cost cutting corner, cutting crap. Same thing for the railroad workers. If you don’t want to train to derail in your backyard, like in east Palestinian, Ohio where we’ve been interviewing residents there, then folks have learned to support the railroad worker unions who are actually fighting against the companies that are putting all of us at danger with their cost cutting their corner, cutting to serve their Wall Street shareholders, so on and so forth. People have learned to see healthcare worker unions as important because our quality of care across the country has been going downhill over my lifetime.
And so if you want that care to improve, and you don’t want insurance companies just telling you that you don’t need this operation or that you got to support the workers who are actually fighting for that quality of care. And so I think there’s something really going on here where folks are identifying their common interests with the struggles that workers and unions are waging. But I wanted to ask in that vein for folks out here listening who maybe they’re not in a union, maybe they don’t have a connection to the va, but they are a working person just like you and me. Why is this important for them to care about what’s happening to the VA and what can supporting the union do to address the issues that all of us care about in this country right now? So any final notes you had on that and then we’ll wrap.
Irma Westmoreland:
Okay, max, I’ll give you a 32nd thing. And what I want to tell you is that workers need to realize that all of the things that they value right now, paid vacation, social security, sick leave, any of those things all came from workers uniting together with the public and fighting for those things. And right now, this fight that the federal workers are going through is just the tip of the iceberg. If the federal worker, this goes through and it happens and the federal workers lose their union, they’re going to come for the private unions next. And then what’s next? Your rights. We need to stand together with workers and healthcare workers and the federal unions because they are the people that are on the line right now fighting to make sure that you have healthcare, that you need adequate healthcare for our veterans, our teachers unions are out there. They’re fighting for you to make sure that your students are educated adequately. We need safe patient staffing ratios like they have in California, federal standards of staffing so that it isn’t related to the insurance company, that we need Medicare for all, for every person to have healthcare available to them as a human right in this country. And those are the righteous fights the unions are doing for you right now, every day, day in and day out that you may not see.
Sharda Fornnarino:
What we want people to do right now is, yeah, we need them to call their congressmen and tell them they do not want these cuts to happen. Last week I spoke to a veteran who was a little displeased with the fact that he had to wait so long to go see a provider on the outside and they had some issues connecting, getting records and all these things, and he wanted to voice me all his concerns that was happening, that he’s actually seeing right now the effects of some of these cuts. And I did explain to him, well, sir, this is what’s happening. This department has reduced in size. And so of course this was going on. And what can you do is contact your local congressman, contact your senators, let them know you don’t want this to happen. And unfortunately at that time, he said, well, if I felt like it would work, then I would do something. And what I told him is that if you don’t do something now, then when will you have a voice to do it? I encouraged him to use his voice now and stop what’s going on and to let his congressional people know what his best interests are and to help support him. And at the end of the conversation, he understood because if we lose his fight now, then where does it stop?
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Sharda Fornnarino and Irma Westmoreland of National Nurses United. And I want to thank you all for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work that we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism, lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News newsletters so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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There is a boat sailing to Gaza right now. It carries aid for the people of Palestine. And it is called the Freedom Flotilla.
It is a sign of solidarity. A sign of resistance. Against Israel’s war on the people of Palestine. Against the death, and destruction and pain. A sign of international resistance against the Israeli genocide.
On board is Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, and 11 others from around the world.
“12 people are here on board, to break the siege and to create a people’s humanitarian corridor. To take whatever aid we can carry. And to say that we do not accept a genocide. We do not accept ethnic cleansing. And we will not stay silent.”
That’s Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila.
The goal is to break Israel’s siege of Gaza and deliver much needed humanitarian aid. Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2007, strictly controlling the entry of supplies, goods, and aid into the region.
On board the ship is rice, flour, baby formula, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, and medical supplies.
This is not the first time they have tried to sail to Gaza.
One month ago, another ship, also sailing as part of the Freedom Flotilla, was attacked by drones. 15 years ago, another group of ships were attacked. Israeli forces killed 10 people on board. Injured dozens. And arrested everyone.
Greta Thunberg spoke to the public shortly before they set sail on June 1.
“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying. Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity. And no matter how dangerous this mission is. It is no where near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of a live-streamed genocide.”
“We just want to say that this isn’t just about getting food into Gaza. It’s also about breaking the medical seizure of doctors. Bringing in doctors and medical equipment. And I just have a few messages to all of the doctors and nurses in Gaza that are doing amazing work. Not just the local doctors, but the international doctors. We see you. We see the work that you’re doing on there and the reporting that you’re doing on the ground.”
The Freedom Flotilla left from Sicily, Italy, on June 1. It’s a seven-day voyage. If all goes as planned, they will arrive to Gaza this weekend.
“We need you to keep all eyes on deck. To follow the mission. And to keep putting pressure on your respective governments and institutions to demand an end to the genocide and occupation in Palestine.”
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Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
I have no words to describe the dire situation in Gaza. We’ll be following the progress of the Freedom Flotilla closely over the coming days.
If you liked this story, please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I’ll add links in the show notes.
You can support my work and this podcast, plus check out exclusive pictures, videos and stories on my Patreon. That’s Patreon.com/mfox.
This is Episode 42 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
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“We know that for 78 years, not a single bottle of water, not a single piece of bread enters Gaza. So we are going on a small boat called Madleen that fits 10-12 people, carrying whatever humanitarian aid we can carry, carrying all the people that wants to go there, and go into Gaza, not because we think that a few boxes we will be able to take will make a difference… we know that this is just a drop in the ocean, but we are going to open a people’s humanitarian corridor.”
This is episode 42 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.
Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.
You can find more information on the Freedom Flotilla at https://freedomflotilla.org/
On their Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gazafreedomflotilla
Or X: https://x.com/GazaFFlotilla
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Having grown up in the Southeast, I’ve always loved a good summer thunderstorm. Sure, thunder can be loud and sometimes scary, but I associate storms with a feeling of coziness. We would seek shelter in the safety of our home, me and my brother hoping the power would go out (it often did) so we’d have an excuse to light candles and eat ice cream before it melted.
Fireworks, on the other hand, I have come to loathe. Now, living in a city, each 4th of July I feel hostage to the relentless booms and the trail of smoke they leave behind.
“Noise” is generally defined as any unwanted sound, or sound that interferes with our ability to hear other things — and it is a form of pollution associated with myriad health impacts. I’m sure many of you will relate to the feeling of annoyance, stress, even anger that can arise from being subjected to nuisance noise. But noise is also often deeply connected to other environmental ills, not always as obviously as smoky fireworks. Many things that cause loud, obnoxious noise also cause harmful air pollution: planes, trucks, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, construction, demolition. A world built on fossil fuels is noisy. Some advocates are fighting back — championing not only our right to live in clean communities, but also in peaceful ones.
“It’s really unbelievable, how much noise impacts so many people,” said Mary Tatigian, who founded a group called Quiet Florida to advocate against noise pollution in 2021, when street and air traffic noise in her community skyrocketed. A registered nurse for 30 years, she began to learn more about the health impacts of the chronic noise she was confronted with.
“Not only does it cause hearing problems, it’s a cardiovascular issue,” she said. “Your heart rate rises, your blood pressure rises. It’s almost like a fight-or-flight system.” Noise exposure can disrupt sleep and increase levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in the body. It may also bring psychological impacts, like increased anxiety and irritability. “We use the term ‘learned helplessness,’ where you just feel you’re subjected to this noise, all the time, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Tatigian.
Tatigian has lived in the small city of Naples, Florida, for around 40 years, and the same house for the past 25. “Four years ago, it was like the floodgates opened,” she said. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the local population ballooned. Cars with modified exhaust became more common on the roads, and air traffic to and from the Naples Airport — primarily from charter jets — went nuts. “I happened to be in a flight path. I had no idea I was in a flight path,” she said.
She got a noise meter on her deck, and found that the low-flying planes overhead ranged from 60 to 85 decibels — 85 decibels is the threshold at which regular sound exposure can begin to cause hearing loss, according to the National Institutes of Health. Tatigian estimates that she hears as many as 60 to 70 planes in a day.
In the 1970s, when many environmental hazards were coming into focus and the country was passing legislation to address them, noise was considered among those issues. The Noise Control Act of 1972 established a national mandate to “promote an environment for all Americans free from noise that jeopardizes their health and welfare,” as well as funding research and education around noise. But the EPA stopped funding the program in the ’80s under the Reagan administration, instead shifting responsibility to state and local governments.
“Our knowledge and actions around noise basically stalled,” said Jamie Banks, the founder and president of a nonprofit called Quiet Communities, which Tatigian is also involved with. Since then, efforts to manage noise in different states and localities have been spotty, Banks said, and regulations that do exist, like laws banning modified exhaust on vehicles, are seldom enforced. Quiet Communities brought a lawsuit against the EPA in 2023 to try and compel the agency to uphold the 1972 noise law, which is still on the books. “The EPA has mandatory responsibilities defined under that law that are not being carried out,” Banks said.
The case has yet to be heard, and she isn’t certain what the outcome will be. But Quiet Communities is also working to create more grassroots momentum for solutions that offer an array of benefits — quiet among them. “We certainly do work on noise as a problem, but we also want to promote quiet as a valuable natural resource, and one that frankly is endangered,” said Banks.
The group has collaborated with a sustainable landscaping certification group called American Green Zone Alliance to help municipalities, parks, and universities transition to electric lawncare equipment, for instance. A growing number of towns and cities have passed ordinances banning gas-powered leaf blowers, a notorious source of both air pollution and nuisance noise — but Banks is also somewhat leery of this approach, which can have an outsize impact on small businesses and has led to pushback from lawncare professionals.
“Trying to regulate in this area can bring landscapers and the public and municipalities into conflict,” she said. “That’s something that really has to be done in a thoughtful and careful way that engages all stakeholders.”
Erica Walker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University’s School of Public Health and the founder of a research organization called Community Noise Lab, studies how noise pollution intersects with other systemic issues. “Usually noise is not happening in isolation. It’s just a physical stimulus to represent urban imbalance or community imbalance,” said Walker. “If we’re saying noise creates negative cardiovascular health outcomes, it’s not just noise. It’s socioeconomics, it’s air pollution, it’s water quality, it’s visual quality.”
Having studied noise and other forms of pollution for over a decade, she said she can tell a lot about a community and its stressors by the way it sounds. A nearby highway, for instance, has a distinct sound pattern — if she hears that, she knows what the air will smell like (exhaust), and what the night sky will look like (lit up by billboards).
It’s well documented that low-income communities of color are more likely to be situated near environmental hazards. And, like a highway, those hazards often come with noise pollution as well. In a 2017 paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers found that poorer communities with a high percentage of nonwhite residents were more likely to face higher noise exposures. The differences became more stark the more racially segregated communities were.
But Walker has also studied how socioeconomic factors feed into people’s perceptions of noisiness. In 2015 and 2016, she helped run a survey in Boston that focused on experience rather than objective measures of loudness. The results showed that simply having a higher percentage of nonwhite residents in an area made people perceive their neighborhood as louder, as did other factors like proximity to a housing project. The majority of the survey respondents were white.
“I’m a Black person, right? There’s a stereotype that we’re loud — everyone has that stereotype,” Walker said. “It was just really interesting to see, statistically, some of these stereotypes that we don’t really think about until we encounter them coming up in the data.”
In contrast with other forms of pollution, perception in fact has a lot to do with how we experience noise and how that may impact our well-being. It gets back to that definition of noise — “unwanted” sound.
“As a community noise researcher, I am steadfastly anti-quiet. I don’t believe in quiet,” said Walker. Absolute quiet, in many instances, is an unattainable and even undesirable goal. (Like my positive experience with thunderclaps — a loud sound, but one I don’t experience as “noise.”) And enforcing quiet may cause harm to groups of people who want certain types of sound, Walker said. For example, fights over noise have erupted in gentrifying communities where traditions like playing music come into conflict with new residents’ expectations. In the pursuit of quiet, “we have castigated people,” Walker said. “We have ignored cultural elements of noise. We have shut practices down that are part of the acoustical culture of a community, because we thought it was too loud.”
She’s anti-quiet, but pro-peace — an alternative where everyone in a community is able to negotiate around sound that they want and sound they can live with.
That compromise can be difficult in practice. Mary Tatigian said she has received quite a lot of negative feedback since she began advocating with Quiet Florida, “from people who like to modify their exhaust, or have loud cars, or to fly their jets all over.” A couple of years ago, after her work was featured on TV, she said she was inundated with vulgar comments — “and I’m not a prude, by far,” she added. Some of it was even threatening.
People may be quick to defend their right to make as much noise as they want. But in Tatigian’s view, communities also have a right to be able to access peace and quiet. “At the very least, a person should have that inside their home,” she said.
In the near term, two measures that Tatigian is advocating for in her Florida community are more dispersed flight paths to the regional airport, so that one community doesn’t have to bear the brunt of the air traffic pollution burden, and a noise camera system that could help enforce laws about excessively loud cars — similar to cameras that catch cars speeding through red lights.
But her long-term vision of a healthy, peaceful community would involve cleaner technologies, she said — like more electric vehicles, which are known for being quiet since their engines don’t require combustion to run. She also envisions more public transit as a part of the solution, as well as a better rail system that could help displace short-distance, regional flights. “You have to think outside the box,” she said.
For Walker, the vision of what a healthy community looks like is entirely dependent on the culture, context, and priorities of a place. “I think a thriving community could be loud,” she said. “A thriving community is not necessarily quiet, but it’s in a rhythm.” There’s a predictability, and a sense of security, she said. Whatever sound there may be — from music, from children playing, from the vibrations of nature — is not unwanted.
— Claire Elise Thompson
More exposure
- Read: more about the history of the Noise Control Act of 1972, and our current understanding of noise pollution (Undark)
- Read: about the latest type of infrastructure plaguing communities with noise pollution: cryptocurrency mining centers (The Week)
- Read: about efforts to silence go-go music in D.C.’s gentrifying neighborhoods — and the countermovement to preserve it (The Georgetown Voice)
- Read: about how climate change is impacting the soundscape of the natural world, from birdsong to frog croaks (Grist)
A parting shot
It’s not just human health that’s impacted by excessive noise. Wildlife can be harmed by it as well, notably creatures like bats and whales that use echolocation to navigate their environments. Some developers and land managers have taken steps to mitigate the effects of human-caused noise on wildlife. This photo shows water buffalo passing under a railway, equipped with noise deflectors, in Nairobi National Park in Kenya.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A world built on fossil fuels is loud. Here’s how advocates are defending peace and quiet. on Jun 4, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Early this month, after some equivocation, President Donald Trump briefly endorsed the idea to hike taxes on the wealthiest Americans in his budget proposal to Congress. Economists were quick to point out the meager impact a new millionaire tax bracket would have on the ultra-rich, particularly in the context of other proposed tax cuts that would offset any pain points for them. Still, the backlash from Republican members of Congress was swift. They spurned the proposal and instead advanced breaks for wealthier Americans. Last week, that version of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives and headed to the Senate.
Tax policy isn’t the only way that this bill proposes to further widen the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Though the more than 1,000-page megabill will look somewhat different once it advances through the Senate, analysts say that there are three food and agricultural provisions expected to remain intact: an unprecedented cut to the nation’s nutrition programs; an increase of billions in subsidies aimed at industrial farms; and a rescission of some Inflation Reduction Act funding intended to help farmers deal with the impacts of climate change.
If they do, the changes will make it harder for Americans to afford food and endure the financial toll of climate-related disasters. They will also make it more difficult for farmers to adapt to climate change — from an ecological standpoint and an economic one. Overall, the policy shifts would continue Trump’s effort to transform the nation’s food and agricultural policy landscape — from one that keeps at least some emphasis on the country’s neediest residents to one that offers government help to those who need it least.
Ever since the inception of the federal food stamps program in 1939, when it was created during the Great Depression to provide food to the hungry while simultaneously stimulating the American economy by encouraging the purchase of surplus commodities, what’s now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has been falsely portrayed as a contributor to unemployment rates and politicized as an abuse of taxpayer dollars.
A vast body of research has found the opposite: roughly 42 percent of SNAP recipients are children, more than half of adult recipients who can work are either employed or actively seeking employment; the program’s improper payments are most often merely mistakes made by eligible workers or households, not cases of outright fraud; and the benefits keep millions of Americans out of poverty.
A sign outside of a grocery store in 2023 welcomes those on food assistance in a Brooklyn neighborhood that has a large immigrant and elderly population.
Spencer Platt / Getty ImagesRight now, more than 40 million Americans are enrolled in SNAP, an anti-hunger program written into the farm bill and administered through the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. The federal government has always fully paid for benefits issued by the program. States operate the program on a local level, determining eligibility and issuing those benefits, and pay part of the program’s administrative costs. How much money a household gets from the government each month for groceries is based on income, family size, and a tally of certain expenses. An individual’s eligibility is also constrained by “work requirements,” which limit the amount of time adults can receive benefits without employment or participation in a work-training program.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cuts to SNAP now being proposed could amount to nearly $300 billion through 2034. An Urban Institute analysis of the bill found that the cuts would be achieved by broadening work requirements to apply to households with children and adults up to the age of 64; limiting states’ ability to request work-requirement waivers for people in high unemployment areas; and reducing the opportunities for discretionary exemptions. But most unprecedented is how the bill shifts the financial onus of SNAP’s costs onto states — increasing the administrative costs states have to cover to up to 75 percent, as well as mandating that states pay for a portion of the benefits themselves.
If the Senate approves the proposed approach to require states to cover some SNAP costs, the Budget Office report projects that, over the next decade, about 1.3 million people could see their benefits reduced or eliminated in an average month.
The burden of these changes to federal policy would only cascade down, leading to a variety of likely outcomes. Some states might be able to cover the slack. But others won’t, even if they wanted to: Budget-strapped states would then have to choose between reducing benefits or sharing the costs with cities and counties. Ultimately, anti-hunger advocates warn, gutting SNAP will undoubtedly increase food insecurity across the nation — at a time when persistently high food costs are among most Americans’ biggest economic concerns. As communities in all corners of the country endure stronger and more frequent climate-related disasters, the slashing of nutrition programs would also likely decrease the amount of emergency food aid that would be available after a heatwave, hurricane, or flood — funding that has already been reduced by federal disinvestment.
Sweeping cuts to SNAP would also constrain how much income small farmers nationwide would be able to earn. That’s because SNAP dollars are used at thousands of farmers markets, farm stands, and pick-your-own operations throughout the country.
Groups like the environmental nonprofit GrowNYC helped launch the use of SNAP dollars at farmers markets in New York almost two decades ago, and have since built matching dollar incentives into their business model to encourage shoppers at the organization’s greenmarket and farmstand locations to spend their monthly food aid allotments on fresh, locally grown produce.
The program “puts money in the farmers pockets,” said Marcel Van Ooyen, CEO of GrowNYC, and “helps low-income individuals access healthy, fresh, local food. It’s a double-win.”
He expects to see the bill’s SNAP cuts result in a “devastating” trend of shuttering local farmers’ markets across the nation, which, he said, ”is going to have a real effect both on food access and support of the farming communities.”
While the ethos of this bill can be gleaned by counting up the proposed cuts to social safety nets like SNAP, looking at the legislation from another perspective — where Trump wants the government to spend more — helps to make it clearer. These dramatic changes to nutrition programs would be accompanied by a massive increase in commodity farm subsidies.
The budget bill increases subsidies to commodity farms — ones that grow crops like corn, cotton, and soybeans — by about $50 billion. Commodity farmers “typically have larger farms,” according to Erin Foster West, a policy campaigns director specializing in land, water, and climate at National Young Farmers Coalition. A trend of consolidation toward fewer but more industrial farm operations was already underway. Less than 6 percent of U.S. farms with annual sales of at least $1 million sold more than three-fourths of all agricultural products between 2017 and 2022. The Trump plan might just help that trend along.
Earlier this year, the USDA issued about a third of the $30 billion authorized by Congress in December through the American Relief Act to commodity producers who were affected by low crop prices in 2024. Because the program significantly limited who could access the funding, it funneled financial help away from smaller farmers and into the pockets of industrial-scale operations. An April report by the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute concluded the $10 billion bailout for commodity farmers “was probably not justified.”
Later in their report, the American Enterprise Institute authors note that lobbyists representing commodity farms have already begun pushing for more subsidies because of the fallout of the Trump administration’s tariffs.
Then they pose a question: “Does the Trump administration need to give farmers further substantial handouts, especially when it is doing nothing for other sectors and households significantly affected by its policy follies?”
The budget bill, with its $50 billion windfall for commodity farms, may be its own answer.
This September will mark the deadline for the second consecutive year-long extension that Congress passed for the farm bill, the legislation that governs many aspects of America’s food and agricultural systems and is typically reauthorized every five years without much contention. Of late, legislators have been unable to get past the deeply politicized struggle to agree on the omnibus bill’s nutrition and conservation facets. The latest farm bill was the 2018 package.
The farm bill covers everything from nutrition assistance programs to crop subsidies and conservation measures. A number of provisions, like crop insurance, are permanently funded, meaning the reauthorization timeline does not impact them. But others, such as beginning farmer and rancher development grants and local food promotion programs, are entirely dependent upon the appropriations within each new law.
Farmer Jacob Thomas pulls plants as he prepares for a farmers market the next morning on April 25, 2025 in Leavenworth, Kansas. He had a grant for a new distribution warehouse that was rescinded then regranted. Now he’s scared to proceed for fear it will be rescinded again.
Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post via Getty ImagesTrump’s tax plan contains a slick budgeting maneuver that takes unobligated climate-targeted funds from the agricultural conservation programs in President Joe Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, and re-invests that money into the same farm bill programs. The funding boost provided by the IRA was designed to reign in the immense emissions footprint of the agricultural industry, while also helping farmers deal with the impacts of climate change by providing funding for them to protect plants from severe weather, extend their growing seasons, or adopt cost-cutting irrigation methods that boost water conservation.
On its surface, the inclusion of unspent IRA conservation money in the tax package may seem promising, if notably at odds with the Trump administration’s public campaign to all but vanquish the Biden-era climate policy. Erin Foster West, at the National Young Farmers Coalition, calls it “a mixed bag.”
By proposing that the IRA funding be absorbed into the farm bill, Foster West says, Trump creates an opportunity to build more and longer-term funding for “hugely impactful and very effective” conservation work. On the other hand, she notes, the Trump megabill removes the requirements that the unspent pot of money must fund climate-specific projects. Foster West is wary that the removal of the climate guardrails could lead to more conservation money funneling into industrial farms and planet-polluting animal feeding operations.
The House budget package also omits many of the food and agricultural programs affected by the federal funding freeze that would typically have been included in a farm bill. Those include programs offering support to beginning farmers and ranchers, farmer-led sustainable research, rural development and farm loans, local and regional food supply chains, and those that help farmers access new markets. None of these were incorporated into the Republican megabill.
“It’s just a disinvestment in the programs that smaller-scale, and beginning farmers, younger farmers, tend to use. So we’re just seeing, like, resources being pulled away,” said Foster West.
Moreover, up until now, several agricultural leaders in Congress have expressed confidence about passing a new “skinny” farm bill, to address all programs left out by reconciliation, before September. Provisions in the Trump budget bill may erode that confidence. By gutting funding for SNAP and increasing funding for commodity support, two leading Republican farm bill priorities, the need for GOP legislators to negotiate for a bipartisan bill diminishes.
Banners showing images of President Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln hang on the side of a U.S. Department of Agriculture building in Washington, D.C., in May 2025.
Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty ImagesInherent to the farm bill are provisions set to incentivize Congress to break through its own gridlock. If neither a new farm bill nor an extension is passed ahead of its deadline, some commodity programs revert to a 1930s and 1940s law, which helps trigger what is colloquially known as the “dairy cliff” — after which the government must buy staggering volumes of milk products at a parity price set in 1949 and risk spiking milk prices at the supermarket. Trump’s tax package would suspend this trigger until 2031.
Under Trump’s vision, encoded in the tax bill, U.S. food and agriculture policy would “cannibalize” itself, according to Mike Lavender, policy director at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. The policies meant to make better food more available to more people, and support the producers that grow it, in other words, could make way for a world in which fewer people will be able to farm — and to eat.
“It’s an irresponsible approach to federal food and farm policy,” Lavender said. “One that does not support all farmers, does not support the entire food and farm system.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s budget bill is on the verge of transforming how America eats on May 30, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.
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This content originally appeared on VICE News and was authored by VICE News.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Parán is a small Indigenous community in the hills of Huaura, in central Peru.
It’s far from the highway, along a winding dirt road that’s carved along harrowing precipices.
Up here, the air is cool… and their town of adobe and cinderblock homes is nestled on the side of the mountain.
As are their fields of duraznos. Peach trees, which cover the terraced hillsides down into the valley and up toward the craggy peaks.
This has been their home and the life-blood for generations. The people here are simple. Humble. They hold on to tradition. Women wear colorful dresses, the same sewed and worn by their grandmothers before them. Men’s hands are calloused and strong from long days toiling in the fields.
It only rains during the rainy months, which turn the hillsides green. And then, slowly they fade to brown throughout the year. The residents of Parán get their water for their homes and their peaches from the precious springs that dot the mountain.
Life slows down, here.
But they have had to battle.
In 2012, the Canadian mining company Lupaka Gold acquired an old mine and set to turn it back on. They called it the Invicta Mine.
Lupaka Gold would extract precious minerals. Gold and silver.
The company met with other nearby communities. It made agreements. But not with the people of Parán… even though Parán had the most to lose.
See, Parán sits down the mountain from the entrance to the mine and on the outside of the mountain where the mine is operated. When the mine workers blast, at night in particular, the people of Parán feel it. Their homes shake and rumble. They awake from their dreams.
And the residents of Parán fear the upgraded mine will contaminate their only water source—the springs that flow from the mountain that feed both their groves of peach trees and their families. The springs that flow from the very mountain where the mine is located.
And so, when the Invicta mine opened and its trucks began to rumble up and down the windy roads with precious metals extracted from deep inside, the people of Parán said, “no.”
They blockaded the road leading to and from the mine. They hauled logs and rocks onto it, and refused to move. Day and night they remained. The mine trucks sat idle. So Invicta took action. They sent in thugs to attack the roadblock. And attack they did. Firing live rounds. The Parán protesters fled down the mountain to their homes.
But if this act was meant to scare, all it did was unite Parán unanimously that they would fight.
They held a community meeting. Everyone decided. All adult men and women, that they would join in the roadblock. They split into teams of 30 to 40 people each. And they returned to the roadblock even stronger. Each team would spend 24 hours there. They would camp overnight, then the next team would arrive and they would switch. Day after day. Month after month. Together, the Parán people stood.
But the mine pushed back. As did the Peruvian police. In the beginning of 2019, they sent in a brigade of 200 officers that was meant to end the roadblock once and for all.
Still the people of Parán resisted. But at a great toll. During the operation, a police officer shot a man. A community member. The nephew of one of the community leaders.
Nehemías Román Narvaste.
A great loss.
But finally, also, came victory… The community held on. Lupaka Gold agreed that their losses due to the Parán roadblock and the mine shutdown were too great and that they would close the mine.
The people of Parán had won.
“Yes, whenever, there’s a problem, everyone participates, women and men,” says community leader Leonel Roman Palomares. “We decide what to do in a meeting. And everyone decides together with one voice.
“In that sense, we’re very united,” he says. “Whenever there’s anything that may harm the community. We are very, very united. And this community has been through a lot.”
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In 2020, Lupaka Gold took the state of Peru to court under the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement for lost profits. It is demanding the state pay it $100 million in lost profits for the closure of the mine. The decision is expected in the coming weeks.
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Hi folks, thanks for listening.
I’m your host Michael Fox.
I visited Parán last month, spoke with residents and shot some pretty incredible drone footage of the community and their surrounding peach fields. You can also check out exclusive video and photos of the community on my patreon. Patreon.com/mfox. I’ll add a link in the show notes.
This is episode 39 of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.
As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.
Parán is a small Indigenous community in the hills of Huaura, in central Peru. They are peach farmers. Their orchards line the mountainside. The same mountain where a new Canadian mine, known as Invictus, was beginning to operate. They feared for their future and that the mine would contaminate their precious springs, their only source of fresh water for their town and their peach trees.
In 2018, they began an around-the-clock roadblock against a new mine. When they were attacked by armed thugs, they held a community meeting and the entire village—all adult men and women—agreed to participate in the protest against the mine.
They were finally successful.
This is episode 39 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
You can see exclusive pictures, drone footage, and pictures of the Parán community in Michael Fox’s Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow his reporting and support his work.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.
Resources
You can find out more about Lupaka Gold’s case against Peru through the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement over the Invicta Mine here: https://gtwaction.org/egregious-isds-cases/#lupakagoldvperu
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Once temples of learning where new generations of students sought to advance their futures, Gaza’s universities have all been destroyed by Israel’s genocidal annihilation of the Gaza Strip, and many students and faculty have been killed. In this on-the-ground report, TRNN speaks with displaced Palestinian students and parents about the systematic destruction of life and all institutions of learning in Gaza, and about their reactions to Palestine solidarity protests on campuses in the West and around the world.
Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Transcript
CHANTINGS:
Free free Palestine!
HAY’A ADIL AGHA:
I saw the protests at Columbia University. There were protests in solidarity with Gaza. The police arrested more than 100 students. They were in solidarity with the students of Gaza. They arrested many teachers and students. There was also a university in Atlanta where the head of the philosophy department was arrested. The police used tear gas and rubber bullets to suppress these protests and demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza.
HAY’A ADIL AGHA:
Of course, when we see all this, we feel a sense of pride and gratitude. We want to thank them for standing with us. We thank the free people of the world—professors and students—for standing with us. Who stood with the students of Gaza, despite the repression, despite the arrests they stood with us, and this has helped us a lot.
I am Haya Adil Agha, 21 years old, a fourth-year student at the Islamic University in Gaza. The Department of Science and Technology, specializing in smart technologies. The technology club was like a second home to us. There was a club president, we had club members, My classmates and I used to spend most of our time at the university. We had different groups and organized events. We would come up with innovations and new ideas for students. I used to spend most of my time at university with friends. We would discuss projects, questions and assignments and study together. If the professors were available you could go and ask them questions. So I used to spend all my time at University and they were the best years of my life —the last two years before the war. Exactly three days before the war—two weeks into the first semester. My professor requested that I present on a subject. So I prepared a PowerPoint presentation and handed out a summary to the students. I got up and began presenting. I had no idea that this would be my last presentation at university. Three days later, the war began. It destroyed our dreams, destroyed our future, destroyed our aspirations. All our memories now have no meaning. The place is gone and nothing is left.
UM MOHAMED AWADH:
Our dreams and everything else we ever wanted was destroyed with our homes. Even our dreams were destroyed. Everything in our life was destroyed. It used to be a really good area. It used to be a place for the youth to study and pursue their dreams. Look at the extent of the destruction. I mean it’s just rubble. Even learning has been banned here. We’ve started to dream about the simplest of things. Just to eat. The dreams of our children have become as basic as filling a bottle of water. They dream of reaching a soup kitchen. These are simple things. They have been robbed of their right to education. Their right to healthcare. They have been robbed of a lot.
HAY’A ADIL AGHA:
I lost contact with some of my friends because they were killed at the beginning of the war. Of course, this impacts me because every day, you hear that a classmate was killed, that a professor at your university was killed. This has a profound impact on us as students. Many professors were killed, too. I can’t list them all. And I lost contact with many others because it was the university that used to bring us together. The war has driven us apart, so I couldn’t stay in touch with them. We were constantly displaced, moving from place to place. There was no internet and no electricity. I was forced to take my laptop outside to charge it. This was a big risk because, as an IT student, my most important tool is my laptop. As well as this, there was no internet. I had to travel far to get to the closest spot with internet. to be able to download lectures and slides to be able to study. I came back to the university after seeing it from afar. I had planned to visit briefly and then leave. When I saw it, I got depressed. I had seen it in pictures, but I wasn’t expecting this level of destruction. When I first arrived, I was so upset and angry. Everywhere I looked, I remembered things: This is the building where I used to sit; this is the corner where my friends and I used to hang. This is the building where a certain professor used to be. We would always go to ask him questions, and he would respond. All of the memories came back—so it affected me really deeply. My university—the place where I used to dream, where I spent two years of my life, the best two years of my life—was gone. I had been counting down the years until graduation. And just like that, it disappeared in the blink of an eye. In one day, the university was gone without a trace.
HANI ABDURAHIM MOHAMED AWADH:
The suffering in our lives—lack of water, food, and drink—is unbearable. You can see, the children, they have been robbed of everything. In the whole of the Gaza strip, from one end to the other, there is no safe place. Here used to be students and a university, all the people of Gaza used to study here. Now: it’s become ruins. All of it is just ruins. There’s nothing to be happy about. No reason to be happy.
HAY’A ADIL AGHA:
People have been forced to burn books. Firstly, there’s no gas—the occupation has stopped gas from entering Gaza. But people still have to fulfill their daily needs. There’s no gas, but people still need to cook and heat water. And on top of that, people have lost their source of income. So people can’t afford to buy wood or paper. so in the end they have been forced to burn the university library books. Of course they have been forced to do this. You have to understand people’s circumstances.
ALAA FARES AL BIS:
I have been displaced about 18 times. We left under fire, under air strikes. I mean, we couldn’t take anything with us—we left running for our lives. With ourselves and our children. There’s no food, no drink, no water, no proper sleep, no proper shelter. We are living amidst rubble. We ask the whole world to have mercy on us and to bring a ceasefire in Gaza.
CHANTINGS:
Free free Palestine!
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Belal Awad, Leo Erhadt, Ruwaida Amer and Mahmoud Al Mashharawi.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The post Abuse by and of Public first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones.
Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes.
Searching and hoping.
The crunch of the ground beneath their feet. The harsh wind whipping at their clothes. The hot sun on their faces.
“For us there was no wind, there was no cold, there was no heat, there was no hunger,” Violeta Berríos says.
Her partner, Mario Argüelles Toro, was a taxi driver and a local leader in the Socialist Party. It was his death sentence.
Mario Argüelles Toro was detained and tortured just weeks after the September 1973 coup d’état by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.
On October 19, 1973, Mario was taken from prison, executed, and disappeared alongside 25 others for their support for the former democratically elected President Salvador Allende.
Executed during what they called the Chilean army’s “Caravan of Death.”
The men’s partners and mothers responded, transforming their sadness into action.
They founded the Group of Family Members of the Politically Executed and Disappeared Detainees of Calama.
They took to the desert, scratching at it each day, demanding that it reveal its secrets.
And after years, finally, it did.
In 1990, in a place called Quebrada del Buitre, or Vultures Gorge, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth.
This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years. But most of their bodies were no longer there.
Just as the women were getting closer, General Augusto Pinochet had ordered their remains dug up, removed and buried someplace else. An evil scavenger hunt, in which the rules are rigged and the dice are staked.
Between 1990 and 2003, the women would find the partial remains of 21 of the victims.
Today, a memorial lives on a hillside just off highway 23, heading east out of Calama.
This was once barren desert for miles, but it now lies beneath a sea of wind turbines. The sun burns overhead. The wind threatens to knock you over.
The memorial is in the shape of a circle. Almost like a small amphitheater, with stairs leading down. In the middle is a patch of dry Atacama earth. Rocks and small marble stones are laid there in the shape of a cross. Pink and red flowers have been placed throughout. Pink concrete columns rise into the air. Each of them bears a name inscribed on a little plaque. The name of each of those who was detained, tortured, executed and disappeared here in the Atacama desert.
This is the location of the mass grave, where the women of Calama finally found the fragments of bones that proved their loved ones had been here.
Behind the memorial is a crater in the ground, where the grave was opened, and where they exhumed what they could. Rocks, in piles or in tiny circles, mark the locations where parts of their loved ones were found.
The memorial is a sentinel in the desert. A beacon of memory. Memory of lives lost. Of the horror and the pain of the past. But also the memory of the women’s determination. Their hope and struggle. Their resistance in the desert…
The women are still searching for and demanding justice.
For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones — their husbands and partners who were ripped from them, detained, tortured, executed, and disappeared in the weeks following Chile’s US-backed 1973 coup d’état.
Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes, searching and hoping.
And finally, in 1990, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth. This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years.
This is the May Week of the Disappeared — a week to remember and honor those who have been forcibly disappeared and the fight for truth and justice for their families.
This is episode 38 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
You can also follow Michael Fox’s reporting and support his work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.
Written and produced by Michael Fox.
Resources:
Filmmaker Patricio Guzman’s masterpiece of a documentary, Nostalgia for the Light: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556190
Spanish singer Victory Manuel wrote a song for the Women of Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pkzzsK-uuA
Mujer de Calama Afeddep Calama Dictadura Chile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6hG5m3BYhw
Acto de conmemoración de Afeddep a 45 años del paso de la Caravana de la Muerte por Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__pUZR-68OE
Memorial for the Disappeared Detainees of Calama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2D6-es9Nnw
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
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This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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NYC Women’s March Jan 21, 2017 (Image by David Andersson) The mainstream media seems to be waiting for a clash between Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and U.S. President Donald Trump. Both figures embody starkly different visions of the present moment. Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first woman president and a self-described humanist, enjoys an approval rating around 70% and stands in constant tension with her northern neighbor. Trump, by contrast, has taken a right-wing, macho, discriminatory posture—an attempt to impose dominance on the world through fear and bullying.
Sheinbaum’s election marks a significant step forward for women, especially in a country historically defined by machismo. Who would have imagined, even a few decades ago, that Mexico—a deeply patriarchal society—would elect a woman to its highest office?
Her presidency is not just symbolic; it is a declaration of new values. During a press conference in Mexico City on January 31, 2025, a reporter asked President Sheinbaum about the historical significance of designating 2025 as the Year of Indigenous Women.
Her response was breathtaking in its clarity and force. She calmly broke with conventional political rhetoric, beginning with, “Why not?” Then she continued:“Indigenous women represent a vindication; they are the origin of Mexico, and we have never recognized them in the way we are recognizing them now. The question is: why does this seem strange?”
When the reporter asked whether there was another reason behind the designation, she replied:
“Of course—there is a historical reason, a reason of social justice. Indigenous women have been historically the most discriminated against and the least recognized. And now we are claiming justice for all women, and from the beginning, who do we have to recognize first? Indigenous women, who for years have been forgotten in our history. That is the reason. So perhaps the real question is: why does it seem strange that we celebrate 2025 as the Year of Indigenous Women? There is no other reason—this is enough.”
Sheinbaum’s answer encapsulates the essence of the ongoing revolution in women’s roles—breaking glass ceilings and honoring those whose voices have been silenced for generations. It’s not just about power; it’s about recognition, healing, and justice.
Just a hundred years ago, women around the world were largely confined to the domestic sphere, often spending decades of their lives giving birth, raising children, and, in many cases, dying shortly after menopause. In the early 1900s, life expectancy for women in the U.S. was about 48.3 years (compared to 46.3 years for men). By 1950, it had increased to around 71 years, and by 2000, to nearly 80. These numbers reflect advances in healthcare and a radical shift in the quality and autonomy of women’s lives.
The real revolution, however, took place not in statistics but in everyday life. Women began stepping out of the home and into public life—not as a coordinated movement, but through millions of individual acts of courage and determination. Day by day, they did things they hadn’t done the day before. They pushed boundaries—seeking education, financial independence, and visibility in all sectors: sports, entertainment, academia, science, and politics. They opened doors that had long been closed and refused to turn back.
This transformation manifests differently across cultures but follows similar patterns. In the economic sphere, for instance, China’s tech industry now boasts that 41% of companies have at least one female founder, surpassing the representation in many Western countries. In family structures, about 21% of mothers in the United States were single mothers in 2023, reflecting women’s increased ability to form families on their own terms. In governance, the European Union now mandates gender parity in its governing bodies, institutionalizing what began as individual women’s political aspirations.
Perhaps most telling are the migration patterns that reveal women voting with their feet. How many women, for example, have migrated alone from South America to cities like New York, fleeing machismo and seeking a better life for themselves and their children? These personal journeys represent millions of individual revolutions in consciousness—women deciding they deserve more than traditional structures offered them.
While this quiet revolution has transformed many institutions, others remain resistant to change. Religious organizations, in particular, have often been among the last bastions of male dominance. One of the major challenges awaiting the new pope is the Catholic Church’s exclusion of women from the priesthood and senior leadership roles. How can it still be justified, in 2025, that half of humanity is denied full participation in one of the world’s most influential spiritual institutions?
So, how did this transformation unfold—this unstoppable movement toward equality? Importantly, it didn’t emerge from political parties. Both the left and right lagged behind when it came to women’s rights; for a long time, even so-called progressive movements failed to treat women with the respect they deserved. And today, political and religious forces in many countries are actively working to reverse this progress, as seen in the erosion of abortion rights in parts of the United States.
What makes this revolution so extraordinary is how it differs from violent political revolutions of the past. There were no firing squads, gulags, or mass exile of opponents. Women changed society by transforming themselves and their immediate environments—step by step, generation by generation—creating new possibilities for life, work, and community. And they did so without tanks, nuclear threats, concentration camps, or revenge.
This is a revolution of consciousness—a profound shift in how half of humanity perceives itself and its possibilities. It has unfolded through presence, creativity, and persistence rather than through domination. In leaders like Sheinbaum, we see not just the fruits of this revolution but its continuation—a vision of power based not on fear but on recognition, not on domination but on justice. It is shaping a future not just for women, but for all humanity.
The post The Quiet Revolution: Women, Power, and the Transformation of Our Time first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by David Andersson.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately. Our meeting, and subsequently this interview, came about because we met–briefly–at a mutual friend’s wedding in New York in 2024. We then met, again, the next day when a different mutual friend introduced us. In the spirit of that community, I do have a couple of questions from some of our mutual friends and my personal writing community who I read your debut novel with. But I wanted to first ask, what has the role of community played throughout your writing life?
I think community has been very central to, if not my writing practice, I would say very much the characters and ideas that I’m trying to explore in my book, [Masquerade]. I do have an MFA, and I think the primary motivation of enrolling in such a program is to find that community and structure. That was something I did when I was in New York City. I was at Queens College, a CUNY (City University of New York) school. I really enjoyed my time with my peers. I think that was the first place where I felt: okay, this is the beginning of my journey of not just [calling] myself a writer and not really [doing] anything about it, but [starting] to work towards actually producing fiction and producing more work that I was submitting and putting out into the world. Masquerade takes place primarily in New York City. I started writing [the book] in March 2020, right around the beginning of the pandemic. It was during a time when I knew I was about to leave to go to Tokyo for my PhD. I ended up getting to Japan in fall of that year and, I would say, a bulk of the book was written while I was getting settled in Tokyo and reflecting on the 12 years of time that I’d spent in New York and thinking about the relationships and the friendships I had and the ways in which those shaped me as a person throughout my 20s and into my 30s. Not all the things in the book necessarily directly correlate to my own experience. I think, in some ways, I did draw on a lot of formative experiences and relationships that made me think or feel differently about myself or about the city or about just existing in the world as a queer person. I think those are all the elements that were swirling about in the background when I was working on the first draft of the manuscript.
In your acknowledgements, you shared that some friends read partial drafts of a novel and then you said, “Though I abandoned that sapling of a story long ago, many of its seeds drifted onward, found fertile soil again, and bloomed into this present work.” With that in mind, how or what do you consider failure, and how have you found success in it?
I think as a writer, I don’t know if anything–I mean, this is going to sound very hokey, but like, maybe there’s no such thing as failure. I started really writing short stories probably towards the end of my undergrad years. Then, I had some time after I graduated and before I enrolled in an MFA program where I was doing other academic stuff. I was working and still writing but I didn’t quite have a sort of end goal in mind. I would say, over the years I’ve written quite a bit of work that never made it, so to speak. That was either rejected from many journals or was like a full length novel manuscript that I never got off the ground and, well, I guess you could look at those past works as possibly failures or whatnot. I think it’s true that as a writer and somebody who’s engaged in any kind of craft, the repetition and the diligence that you have to practice in approaching the work is maybe the most important part of being that person or embracing that role. So I feel like all the things that I wrote before that didn’t really go anywhere were great training grounds for myself in terms of both the actual mechanics of putting words to the page and also just understanding more about my own rhythms as a creative person. My own tendencies and idiosyncrasies. I think that’s the other thing that I’ve really struggled with over the years and really couldn’t figure out how to manage until this novel. How do I actually finish something of this length? What does my work schedule look like? Like, what’s feasible for me, individually? I think so many writers have different pieces of advice about this, right? But I feel like you really have to kind of come to a self understanding and just [assess] the things that you have going on in your personal life, your creative life and make accommodations for all of that. I think it took me years and years to actually figure out how to do that for myself.
You’ve mentioned in past interviews that you’ve struggled with follow through. That is something I struggle with too. You just spoke about diligence and practice and I wonder what that actually looks like in terms of figuring out how to follow through with something? What did that diligence and practice look like for you, in a more practical sense?
I think, for me, having a vague timeframe in mind like, okay this is going to be a novel and I want to finish it, let’s say, a year from now or something like that. Then, essentially, I worked on Masquerade in a period of my life when I had relative flexibility in my day-to-day schedule because I was a student again. Apart from some of the academic work that I was doing, I set aside time every day, every weekday, to sit down and write and I would plant myself at my desk. It would probably be no longer than two to three hours, at most. But I think just creating that physical routine was so important so that once I eased into that rhythm, it became more natural for me. Some days I could only get out like, a paragraph or less than that, and other days felt great. If I could get a page or so, that was amazing. I realized that, personally, I’m somebody who really thrives on structure and routine. Once I sort of instilled in myself that this is going to be a habit that I’m going to carry forward from now until completion, then I think it’s something that I can commit to, not easily but at least spiritually.
I think in all the years prior, even during the MFA program, I look back on it now and I think I’d always wanted to write a novel. I think I just didn’t understand what it looked like in practice. So I’d have these ideas, I’d work on stuff in sort of like bursts, and get out some pages, and maybe get out a significant number of pages, but then very quickly lose steam. I know lots of other writers, maybe [Haruki] Murakami is most famous for this, but, you know, writing a novel is kind of like running a marathon or whatnot, right? It’s about stamina and maintaining a pace, but also knowing when to ease up and when to push yourself during that process.
Did the habit change or evolve after the Masquerade project ended?
Yeah, after I finished the first draft, I kind of let it sit for a little while before I went back to edit. In the years since that, honestly, I didn’t keep up a very good writing practice. I think that I was, of course, navigating publishing things: finding an agent, then editing the work. So, I felt quite busy, I had my hands full with that and also my academic stuff. I think, more recently, starting in January this year, I’ve returned to sort of planting myself at the desk every morning to work on a new project. And that has felt familiar and good.
Some of my favorite parts of Masquerade are in your scene building. You’ve mentioned in previous interviews that the space of a scene is very important to you. From a craft and technical standpoint, what was the development process of these scenes? Where did you start, what were the things you were looking at as you tried to, for a lack of a better term, make it “better?”
A lot of the physical spaces that the characters inhabit in the book are modeled after–or at least, I use as a starting point–spaces that I knew well myself, whether they were places I lived in or homes of friends that I had. I use my memories of those spaces as a blueprint for imagining a scene in there and how characters might move through it, especially when there’s dialog.
I feel relatively comfortable writing dialog, what gets tricker is when you’re in a party scene, or sitting with multiple people and trying to imagine how the dynamics of that room are playing out. I just started watching season three of White Lotus and thinking about how that show is so good at building tension between characters and how people can have dialog with one another that kind of crosses over an awkward space; or, people talk over each other; or, don’t quite understand one another. I’m deeply interested in people, in general. That’s, of course, one of the main reasons I write; so, building and thinking about the sort of environments I wanted to put characters in, spaces that would add something to the scene, add to their understanding of each other or grease the cogs of the dynamic I am trying to produce in some way.
This is a question from a writer friend who read this book with me. We were both curious about how do you decide when to weave in details from the past? Specifically, you have several flashback scenes within the novel. Some that are just a moment, and some that are whole sections devoted to a moment in the past. How did you make those decisions, especially since there aren’t any discernible titles or headers to indicate the switch.
It was a tricky balance. I found that I have a really hard time writing a narrative that stays in one place and one time and unfolds in that space alone. When I write fiction, I always have this tendency or even urge to unpack a little bit of what’s beneath the surface of a particular moment and oftentimes it means revisiting, flashing back, or going to another space or time. You know, dipping our toe in that, in order to provide a better understanding of the present. I tried to balance this in Masquerade.
First, I wrote by instinct. I did have in mind from that beginning that I [wanted to start] in the present day of 2019-ish, New York. And then, a considerable chunk of the middle of the book concerns [the main character] Meadow’s earlier years in the city. So that would be like rewinding to 2009. Although the years are never explicit, that’s kind of the general time frame. I had in mind that I was building a little bit more about the backstory over the years that moved into the present again. For the most part, the flashback chapters were pretty much linear. From the beginning, I was hoping that it would be relatively easy to kind of latch onto. But, as you mention, there are also moments in other parts of the book that are in the present day, where there are brief flashbacks or memories.
I’d have to say, in general, having a good editor is really a huge help to kind of make this movement through time feel understandable and clean. I feel really grateful because I worked not only with my editor Elizabeth DeMeo at Tin House, who gave me wonderful advice [and] helped me massage the beginnings and ends of chapters in particular, but, before we were at Tin House, my agent, Heather Carr, was also somebody who looked at quite a few drafts of the manuscript and also helped me tighten up a lot of things over time. I feel like their support, especially, I was able to really hammer something out that was hopefully readable and kind of smooth for the most part.
Can you say a bit more about the conversations you were having with your editor and agent in terms of structure in the overarching work?
With Heather, we did quite a few pretty dramatic overhauls of the manuscript, this is in part because I also changed a lot over the months. Essentially, the book within a book [concept] was always there, but it [had] a completely different plot and a different set of characters and much more expansive kind of world.
When I first went out querying with the manuscript, it kind of melted down and coalesced into the form that it ended up as in the final novel. Heather was very open, thankfully, to my making these very dramatic changes to the book within the book. But we had lots of conversations about the beginning and the end.
I would say the stuff in the middle more or less has stayed the same. But, I had a hard time thinking about and trying to figure out where would be a good beginning and end. This also involved shifting of timelines a bit. I think in the first version of the manuscript, the Shanghai stuff was at the end of the book, so the book [was] very much in New York the whole time and then moves to Shanghai at the end. Whereas, we flipped it for the version that ended up getting published. I think a lot of questions [were] about how to create dramatic tension because in earlier drafts of the book [Meadow, the main character] doesn’t find the book until chapter three or four. It seems really basic in retrospect that it should be something planted earlier, but for whatever reason I guess I just like to dilly dally and take my time to establish a world first, and then kind of move into the thing. That’s really what we worked on with Elizabeth. It was more so looking at the individual chapters and concretizing the bets within them, trimming some fat. I think she really helped me find the shape of each chapter as a discrete unit of this book.
In addition to being a writer, you are also an editor, a Chinese-to-English translator and, I learned through a mutual friend, you also speak French and Japanese. In regards to language, do you embody a different personality or mindset when you translate, edit, speak or write across languages?
As someone who edits pretty regularly now–I’m working as an editor for The Japan Times–I’ve done a lot of editing of cultural and academic writing over the years. I feel like editing is something that really has helped me gain a lot of confidence in my sensibilities within the English language. I can look at a sentence, a paragraph and try to really imagine all the different possible ways you could spin out and kind of take on different nuances of meaning depending on whether you shift a clause, punctuation marks, whatnot.
I really enjoy that sort of mechanical side of editing that also unlocks a world of creative possibility and different shades of expression. That’s something I feel very happy to be doing in my day-to-day life. With regards to other languages, I translate from Chinese and I think I would probably say that’s the second language I feel most comfortable in. Although, to be honest, I also have a very kind of awkward relationship to Chinese. I think this is something I try to talk about very bluntly as somebody who is a literary translator, but I think there’s oftentimes an idea of a translator [as] somebody who is 100 percent fluent in this language and 100 percent fluent in that language and that’s why they do the work. And I think there are maybe some cases where that’s true, but that’s definitely not me.
I feel pretty comfortable in Chineses and tackling literary translations on my own time. Spending time by myself [and] being able to research and think about and look up words. But I am definitely quite awkward in my spoken Chinese. It’s maybe just me making up excuses, but I have not had a Chinese language environment around me for my entire adult life. My parents live in China and I do spend time there, but it’s never enough time to fully feel grounded. It’s definitely shaped my own sort of ambivalence toward my linguistic capacities. I feel very confident manipulating the English language end of things, but I guess what I’m trying to say is I recognize the need to level up more in Chinese and I’m self aware of my limitations as well.
I know that you also translate Taiwanese manga and have become a fan of Japanese manga. Are there things that work from a storytelling perspective in those stories that maybe don’t work or you haven’t seen in another?
I’m a relatively late bloomer when it comes to manga and anime in general. I don’t think it’s something that I necessarily had a big passion for before I moved to Japan. It’s been a really fun way to explore a certain side of Japanese culture. I really love how emphatic and outlandish the premises for certain anime and manga franchises are. Very interesting, super hyperbolic characters [and] they live in this sort of really crazy world and there’s these rules that you find out about over time that are revealed through the plot lines. I don’t feel like that’s specific to Japanese culture, per se, but I do think it’s very much threaded into what kind of storytelling is popular here. Personally, it’s very inspiring to see and read more of that work. Anime and manga are things that remind me of the sort of infinite potential for storytelling and for that reason, it’s sort of like a creative wellspring that I find really exciting to tap into and think about.
Mike Fu Recommends a Round-Up of NYC establishments that are settings in Masquerade but aren’t named outright:
BCD Tofu House (Koreatown)
Housing Works (SoHo)
Julius (West Village)
Wu’s Wonton King (Chinatown)
Sisters (Clinton Hill)
This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Daniel Sanchez Torres.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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We asked people in Gaza what their thoughts were on US President Donald Trump’s stated plans to “take over the Gaza Strip” and displace the Palestinian population there. This is what they told us…
Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Transcript
Ahed Hisham Raffat Arif:
Who is Trump? Who is this? Where did he appear from? This is a crazy, harmful person. We will not leave Gaza, even if it were the last moment of our lives.
Donald Trump [CLIP]:
The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a proper job with it. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, clear the rubble, and remove the destroyed buildings. We’ll level the area and initiate economic development that will provide unlimited jobs and housing for the people of the region.
Ibrahim Al Fayadh:
Trump’s evacuation plans are nonsense. We will stay until the end. We are losing people daily, yet still we say: “Don’t despair, God is with us” and “be strong and it will end,” and we say to Trump: your words are empty, we in Gaza are steadfast and remain until the end.
Abu Tha’ir:
This plan is new and old. In 1948 they were working on the expulsion of all Palestine from the Gaza Strip and from Jaffa… and everyone knows this. But of course, they weren’t able to empty Gaza City entirely, or erase or remove Palestine. No one would accept this, because it is rejected by the whole world and by the people of Palestine in particular: we refuse it completely. When you pull out a tree by its roots, you kill it. You won’t benefit from it in the future. For a human, who is forced to leave his land, he is being sentenced to death.
Mohamed El Kurdi:
This is the land of our ancestors. We will remain as long as the thyme and olive trees grow, by the grace of God.
Abu Tha’ir:
To be present on the land in Palestine—this is your land—you are rooted here. It’s hard to leave it. Even under threat of death, with force. It’s hard.
Mohamed El Kurdi:
We reject any plan, whether it’s from Trump or Biden—many have tried! God willing, they will fail. They attempted plans with their generals and to evacuate areas, but they have all failed.
Jamal Eid Qater:
We will not leave, because this land is ours. No one can buy or sell us. We are the people of this land. We will not allow anyone to buy or sell us. We won’t leave. Pharaoh himself could come—we won’t leave.
Mohamed El Kurdi:
What was destroyed will be rebuilt. We will rebuild it better, God willing. Abu Tha’ir:
Some left to go to the South but others stayed under fire and death. This shows how strongly people cling to their land. To die and be buried in it is better than to be forced out. The whole world has heard and seen this reality.
Ahed Hisham Raffat Arif:
To us, Gaza is the best country—and the best city—in the world. Despite all the destruction and the blockade, look at Gaza. Gaza is my whole life. I will rebuild my home, my family, and every stone in Gaza. I will rebuild it.
Ibrahim Al Fayadh:
Gaza is my life. My blood. My veins, my breath, my soul. My eyes, my vision. Honourable Gaza.
Abu Tha’ir:
Gaza is the soul, the blood, the body, the breath. Without Gaza there is nothing. Mohamed El Kurdi:
Gaza is the heart, is the soul. It’s the veins filled with blood.
Jamal Eid Qater:
Gaza means everything to me. It’s my mother, my father. She is the loving mother to us. Yes. We won’t leave her.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Ruwaida Amer, Leo Erhadt, Belal Awad and Mahmoud Al Mashharawi.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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On May 8, tensions between India and Pakistan escalated. The previous day, India had launched Operation Sindoor, targeting nine terror bases in Pakistan. Shortly after the military strikes by India, Pakistan retaliated. There was shelling and cross-border firing in several areas of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).
Amid this geopolitical conflict, social media was flooded with reports of drone and missile sightings across both countries. There was panic, and worries over the damage an all-out war could cause. Adding to this chaos was the coverage by several Indian news channels that aired a series of sensational and unverified claims—from Islamabad facing attacks by the Indian armed forces to Pakistan army chief Asim Munir being arrested. As the conflict intensified and public confusion mounted, sections of the Indian media descended into a maddening frenzy.
A May 11 report by Scroll said 21 Indian civilians, including five children, were killed in J&K in the first four days of the India-Pakistan conflict. On May 10, foreign secretary Vikram Misri announced that India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire.
Among all the “news” reports broadcast during the cross-border shelling, one story stood out: the decimation of the Karachi port. Many visuals showing the Karachi port in shambles surfaced on social media and were aired on segments of news channels.
Do These Visuals Show A Wrecked Karachi Port?
Click to view slideshow.The short answer is no. The visuals aired by news outlets (added above) and circulated on social media had nothing to do with the Karachi Port.
For instance, Bengali news channel ABP Ananda aired a clip that apparently showed damage at the Karachi port after it was struck by naval aircraft carrier INS Vikrant. However, an Alt News probe revealed that the footage was actually three months old. Worse, it depicted scenes in Philadelphia after a plane crash. Philadelphia is in Pennsylvania, United States, thousands of miles away from Karachi. The channel also used a screengrab from the viral video in their online report that INS Vikrant had attacked the Karachi port, as well as their X post. However, these were later replaced by generic images of INS Vikrant and a Pakistan flag, respectively. No clarification was issued by the outlet for using the misleading image. The news report and the X post claiming ‘extreme action’ INS Vikrant led to the Karachi port being destroyed are still live.
In another instance, an image purportedly showing INS Vikrant’s strike on the Karachi port was used in online reports of several news outlets, including Zee News, TV9, and Amar Ujala, among others. Alt News found that the image was actually from a 2023 naval drill, not an attack. In fact, the warship featured in the viral photo wasn’t INS Vikrant, but INS Vikramaditya.
Similarly, another visual of an explosion illuminating the night sky and smoke billowing was also circulated with claims that it showed INS Vikrant attacking the Karachi port. Alt News found that the image dates back to 2020 and is of Israel’s airstrike on Gaza. It has no connection to the India-Pakistan conflict.
On the intervening night of May 8 and 9, news outlets had almost established that the Indian Navy had wiped out the Karachi port. It remains unclear whether they picked visuals of attacks and destruction from social media or vice versa. It’s also hard to say which is worse.
Alt News has debunked several such clips shared with claims that they were scenes from the Karachi port.
The Spectacle by Broadcast Media
Late on May 9, many mainstream news channels, such as India Today, Aaj Tak, TV9 Bharatvarsh, ABP and Zee News, declared that the Indian Navy had attacked the Karachi port. They said the international port, where major business happens, was in shambles.
‘Exclusive’ reportage by India Today had commentary from a retired lieutenant general of the Indian Army on the ‘attack’ by the Indian Navy. Tickers flashed ‘Indian Navy attacks Pakistan’s Karachi’ and ‘Exclusive’ across the screen.
#EXCLUSIVE | “India has done a smart thing…”: Retd Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (@atahasnain53) on Indian Navy attacking Karachi@SwetaSinghAT & @SandeepUnnithan join in with more details.#OperationSindoor #IndiaStrikesTerroristan | @GauravCSawant pic.twitter.com/C3rMaEDyeB
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) May 8, 2025
Its Hindi counterpart, Aaj Tak, too, claimed that the Indian Navy had launched an attack on the port. As if the sequence of events and the way they were described were not dramatic enough, a blaring siren played in the background for added theatrics. Senior journalist and anchor Anjana Om Kashyap, whose face has often been associated with the channel, kept telling her co-anchor Sweta Singh that “we” successfully surrounded Pakistan from all sides. The whole production was embellished by ‘representational’ visuals of drones being launched. These representative visuals were later circulated by Pakistan-based media outlets and social media users with claims that they showed the Pakistan Army firing with its multi-rocket launcher near the Line of Control (LoC). However, Alt News fact checked this visual and found that it was sourced from the video game Arma 3.
#BreakingNews : एक्शन में आई भारतीय नौसेना, कराची पर किया हमला#IndianNavy #OperationSindoor #IndiaFightsTerroristan #IndianArmy #IndianAirForce | @anjanaomkashyap | @SwetaSinghAT pic.twitter.com/41HytjDMVE
— AajTak (@aajtak) May 8, 2025
Zee News also said on air that the navy launched an offensive on Karachi with similar siren sounds playing in the background to heighten the drama. During one of these segments, the anchor says, “Karachi port ko tabah kar diya hain nausena ne” (The Karachi port has been demolished by the Indian Navy). This is followed by sounds of applause.
#BreakingNews | समंदर से पाकिस्तान पर बड़ा एक्शन, नौशेरा ने कराची पोर्ट को किया तबाह #OperationSindoor #IndianAirForce #AirStrike #Pakistan #IndiaPakistanWar #JammuKashmir #JammuAttack #DroneAttacks #IndianNavy @ramm_sharma pic.twitter.com/HWQ18r8Ved
— Zee News (@ZeeNews) May 8, 2025
TV9 Bharatvansh’s broadcast said that multiple explosions were heard at the Karachi port. One of the hosts of the segment says in Hindi that before making their moves on the chess board, India set all the pieces beforehand; the preparations were so meticulous that no one had an inkling. It further said that they could not reveal anything more because it would be akin to revealing intel and “we are responsible” unlike the media in Pakistan.
The sound of the siren was used here too. This was an “All-out attack against Pakistan,” the channel said, sharing these updates on X. “Heavy damage to Karachi port due to Indian strike”.
पाकिस्तान के खिलाफ ऑल आउट अटैक जारी
भारत के हमले से कराची पोर्ट पर भारी नुकसान #IndiaPakistanTension | #AirStrike | #OperationSindoor | @nishantchat | @sumairakh | @SumitDefence pic.twitter.com/XY8i8rTUYI— TV9 Bharatvarsh (@TV9Bharatvarsh) May 8, 2025
ABP News, too, claimed that the Indian Navy attacked Karachi. The anchor said that nearly 12 explosions were ‘reportedly’ heard in Karachi.
#WATCH | कराची में INS विक्रांत की कार्रवाई, कराची पोर्ट पर बीती रात हुए कई धमाके .@anchorjiya | https://t.co/smwhXURgtc #OperationSindoor #Pakistan #JammuKashmir #BreakingNews pic.twitter.com/c9347ZOJrX
— ABP News (@ABPNews) May 9, 2025
By May 10, the Directorate General Fire Service, Civil Defence and Home Guards had to issue an advisory directing media channels to refrain from using air raid siren sounds in their broadcast segments. “Routine use of sirens may likely to reduce the sensitivity of civilians towards the air raids sirens,” the directive said.
Trolls Come For The Telly
While the Indian media was busy running these segments and propagating myths about the Karachi port, posts from social media users in Pakistan came as a brutal reality check. At 5:29 am on May 9, one social media user said, “I even woke up after sleeping, but according to Indian media, Karachi had been destroyed and I had died”. On the bulletin by Times Now Navbharat that Karachi port was attacked by INS Vikrant, another user wrote, “I think they put the wrong Karachi location in Google Maps!” One user chimed in saying, “Can someone from the indian navy currently taking over Karachi closest to my location come over I need someone to watch my baby while i pray”? Another user, seemingly confused, asked which Karachi they were showing.
Click to view slideshow.Jibes from Pakistani accounts were one thing, but then came an official statement from the Karachi Port Trust. At 8:40 am on May 9, they said they were “operating normally & securely. All port functions, activities & operations are taking as normal routine activity.” They called the Indian media coverage “completely false and baseless”. (Archive)
An hour before this statement was shared, the port had already said that they were safe and their X account had been hacked. This came barely minutes after a post saying “Karachi Port has sustained heavy damage following a strike by India, resulting in unacceptable loss of property. Emergency response efforts are underway. Updates on restoration will be provided regularly. We stand resilient. #IndianNavyAction #IndiaPakistanWar #KarachiPort” was made from this account. (Archives 1, 2)
To make clear the point that the port sustained no damage, Pakistan-based journalist Sanjay Sadhwani (@sanjaysadhwani2) posted a video of himself standing near the Karachi port at 5:25 am on May 9. (Archive)
How Not To Report During Conflict
This was not a case of a source going rogue or one reporter or channel getting something wrong, which can very well happen. This was a battery of news outlets making viewers believe something completely fictional in a war-like situation. A major port like Karachi being destroyed would have significantly escalated tensions. The blaring sirens and visuals of INS Vikrant may have given viewers a sense that these were sights and sounds from the site of conflict. They had little reason to doubt it since multiple channels were airing it.
And all this despite some Indian journalists, such as WION foreign affairs editor Sidhant Sibal, clarifying that there was “No Indian Navy Action at Karachi.”
No Indian Navy Action at Karachi. The Indian Navy, of course remains operational in the Arabian sea.
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) May 8, 2025
In a press briefing on May 9, foreign secretary Vikram Misri, colonel Sofiya Qureshi, and wing commander Vyomika Singh gave updates on Pakistan’s drone attack and India’s subsequent military retaliation. At no point during this did they say anything about military action by the navy or any ‘offensive’ launched in Karachi.
Even on May 11, Indian Navy vice admiral AN Pramod said that Indian Navy warships “remain deployed in the northern Arabian Sea in a decisive and deterrent posture with full readiness and capacity to strike select targets at sea and on land, including Karachi, at a time of our choosing”. He did not once mention that the navy had carried out an attack.
It’s hard to find a word that fully captures the reportage that unfolded late on May 8. It was not only embarrassing and irresponsible, but absurd.
A country’s citizens, teetering on the edge for any updates on what was happening, were led to believe that India was launching offensives in areas of civilian habitation in Pakistan and using warships as a final blow to ‘attack’ a major port. All this when the Indian defence forces kept reiterating that their military strikes were non-escalatory, focused and measured. An average citizen could have been panic-sticken and afraid. And then to be told that none of it happened is slightly bizarre.
In future, the ‘destruction’ of the Karachi port will serve as an example of what not to do when reporting in sensitive times of conflict.
The post The fictional strikes on the Karachi port and what it says about Indian media appeared first on Alt News.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.
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The United States Department of Agriculture says it will restore climate-related information on its websites, following a lawsuit filed earlier this year by agriculture and environmental groups that say farmers rely heavily on these critical resources to adapt to warming temperatures.
In January, following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the USDA’s communications office instructed employees to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change” and flag other pages that mention climate for review — a policy first reported by Politico. The following month, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York, or NOFA-NY, joined the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group in suing the agency to republish the pages, which included information about federal loans for farmers and an interactive climate map.
This week, the USDA filed a letter to a U.S. district judge in the Southern District of New York saying that it “will restore the climate-change-related web content that was removed post-inauguration, including all USDA web pages and interactive tools enumerated in plaintiffs’ complaint.” The agency said it would also comply with federal laws with respect to “future publication or posting decisions” involving the scrubbed climate information. The letter came days before a hearing regarding the plaintiffs’ move for a preliminary injunction was scheduled to take place.
NOFA-NY, an organization that advocates for sustainable food systems and assists growers with adopting organic farming practices, called the USDA’s about-face “a big win” for its members.
“I have to say that, for as much as farmers have been through in the past couple of months, this felt really good,” said Marcie Craig, the association’s executive director.
NOFA-NY and the other plaintiffs are represented by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
The fact that the USDA agreed to restore its climate resources online without a court order and before the scheduled hearing “reinforces what we knew all along,” said Earthjustice associate attorney Jeff Stein, “which is that the purge of climate change-related web pages is blatantly unlawful.”
The development marks a rare moment of optimism for U.S. growers, who have faced numerous setbacks from the Trump administration. Since January, the administration has sent shockwaves through the agricultural sector as it paused federal grant and loan programs that supported local and regional food systems and farmers’ climate resiliency efforts. The administration also froze funding for rural clean energy programs, only to unfreeze it with caveats, creating headaches and financial stress for growers. Federal funding cuts have also threatened the status of agricultural research, including projects designed to boost sustainability in the face of climate change.
A farm in Massachusetts that saw its USDA grant to build a solar installation frozen by the Trump administration.
David L. Ryan / The Boston Globe via Getty ImagesIn the face of these roadblocks, Craig noted that her optimism tempered with a healthy dose of skepticism. “I think we all bear a level of cautious optimism about what actually comes to fruition on this action,” she said. As of Thursday, the USDA has restored pages about the Inflation Reduction Act and rural clean energy programs, while other pages remain offline, according to Earthjustice. But Craig agreed with Stein that the USDA’s decision to restore resources that help farmers adapt to climate change without a hearing or court order is a “positive” sign.
The purge of climate web pages, along with the federal funding freezes, have been “crippling” for farmers, said Craig.
NOFA-NY staff often responded to growers’ questions by sharing the USDA’s online resources. One particularly helpful tool, said Craig, was a page about loans for “climate-smart agriculture,” or farming practices that help sequester carbon or reduce emissions, on the website of the Farmers Service Agency, a subagency of the USDA. The page included a chart that listed the practical and environmental benefits of different climate-smart agriculture techniques, as well as federal funding opportunities to help farmers implement these practices.
It was a “really great example of very specific, clear information” on climate adaptation, “very user-friendly,” said Craig.
Even if those funding sources were technically still available to farmers this winter and spring, the fact that web pages referring to those grants and loans were scrubbed made them inaccessible, she added.
A few days before the USDA filed its letter to the judge, the agency had alerted the plaintiffs’ lawyers of its decision to reupload its climate data, according to Stein. In its letter on Monday, the USDA said most of the content should be back online over the course of the following two weeks; the department also committed to filing a joint status report with Earthjustice and the Knight First Amendment Institute in three weeks to update the court on its progress.
The hearing that the USDA and the plaintiffs were set to attend later this month has been adjourned. But, Stein said, the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction — which, if granted by a judge, would have ordered the USDA to put back up its climate-related web pages — is still pending. That means that, should the USDA not make progress toward republishing its climate resources online over the next few weeks, the plaintiffs have another way to push their demands forward.
“We want to make sure that USDA in fact follows through on its commitment,” said Stein.
Editor’s note: Earthjustice and the Natural Resources Defense Council are advertisers with Grist. Advertisers have no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Trump’s USDA tried to erase climate data. This lawsuit forced it back online. on May 15, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Frida Garza.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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India on Wednesday rejected China’s renaming of 27 places in Arunachal Pradesh as a “vain and preposterous” move, saying its northeastern border state, which Beijing claims is part of Zangnan or southern Tibet, remains an “integral and inalienable” part of the country.
On Sunday, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs released its fifth batch of “standardized” names for over 27 places in Arunachal Pradesh – including mountains, mountain passes, rivers, residential areas, and a lake – in its latest attempt to bolster its claim over the territory that Beijing claims is Chinese territory and part of historical Tibet.
“We have noticed that China has persisted with its vain and preposterous attempts to name places in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement.
“Consistent with our principled position, we reject such attempts categorically. Creative naming will not alter the undeniable reality that Arunachal Pradesh was, is, and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India,” Jaiswal added.
China’s latest move to rename places in the Indian border state comes despite recent attempts by both nations to improve diplomatic ties, after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Russia last October shortly after their governments reached an agreement over a disputed area along their shared border.
That came after prolonged tensions, when thousands of Indian and Chinese troops faced off in June 2020 at three or four locations in the western Himalayas. India accused Beijing’s forces of intruding into Indian territory, although China denied it.
The two countries fought a border war in 1962, and China has mounted a long-standing campaign to assert its claim over areas held by India.
In 2017, China released its first list of standardized names for six places. Thereafter, it has carried out three more such renaming attempts, with new names for 15 places released in 2021, for 11 places in 2023, and 30 places in 2024.
In response to India’s condemnation of China’s latest move, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the Chinese government’s efforts to “standardize” the names of certain places in the region “is fully within China’s sovereignty.”
“The Zangnan region belongs to China,” Lin said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
India and China have made competing claims on territory along the disputed 1,130-kilometer (700-mile) border, known as the McMahon Line, between Tibet and the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.
India recognizes the McMahon Line, a boundary line drawn between Tibet and British India as agreed during the Simla Convention in 1914, as the international border. China, on the other hand, maintains that the boundary with India has never been delimited and claims areas south of the McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh as southern Tibet.
An Indian Army soldier stands guard at a post in Tawang near the Line of Actual Control with China in the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, Oct. 20, 2021. (Money Sharma/AFP)Sriparna Pathak, professor of China studies at the O.P. Jindal Global University in Haryana, India, and a former consultant at India’s foreign ministry, characterized China’s effort to change names as “cartographic aggression” – an attempt to boost its claims and normalize its occupation of regions it claims as its own.
Kalpit Mankikar, fellow for China Studies at the New Delhi, India-based Observer Research Foundation, highlighted China’s recent attempts to push its allies to use “Xizang,” instead of Tibet, to refer to the formerly independent country it annexed in 1950.
He said it is another example of Beijing’s strategy to rename places and ensure their consistent usage to erase Tibetan identity and further its narrative that Tibet has always been a part of China.
“This has been the fifth time that China has renamed places in Arunachal. And this is also part of the larger scheme of things, where it calls Tibet ‘Xizang’… so this is a long, long-drawn strategy,” Manikar said.
Edited by Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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By Devin Watkins of Vatican News
Only four days have passed since his election to the papacy, and Pope Leo XIV has made it a point to hold an audience with the men and women who were in Rome to report on the death of Pope Francis, the conclave, and the first days of his own ministry.
He met media professionals in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall yesterday, and thanked reporters in Italian for their tireless work over these intense few weeks.
The newly-elected Pope began his remarks with a call for communication to foster peace by caring for how people and events are presented.
- READ MORE: Vatican: RSF hails Pope Leo XIV’s commitment to press freedom, calls for concrete action
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He invited media professionals to promote a different kind of communication, one that “does not seek consensus at all costs, does not use aggressive words, does not follow the culture of competition, and never separates the search for truth from the love with which we must humbly seek it.”
“The way we communicate is of fundamental importance,” he said. “We must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images; we must reject the paradigm of war.”
Solidarity with persecuted journalists
The Pope went on to reaffirm the Church’s solidarity with journalists who have been imprisoned for reporting the truth, and he called for their release.He said their suffering reminded the world of the importance of the freedom of expression and the press, adding that “only informed individuals can make free choices”.
Service to the truth
Pope Leo XIV then thanked reporters for their service to the truth, especially their work to present the Church in the “beauty of Christ’s love” during the recent interregnum period.He commended their work to put aside stereotypes and clichés, in order to share with the world “the essence of who we are”.
Pope Leo XIV calls for release of journalists imprisoned for ‘seeking truth’ Video: France 24Our times, he continued, present many issues that were difficult to recount and navigate, noting that they called each of us to overcome mediocrity.
Facing the challenges of our times
“The Church must face the challenges posed by the times,” he said. “In the same way, communication and journalism do not exist outside of time and history.“Saint Augustine reminds of this when he said, ‘Let us live well, and the times will be good. We are the times’.”
Pope Leo XIV said the modern world could leave people lost in a “confusion of loveless languages that are often ideological or partisan.”
The media, he said, must take up the challenge to lead the world out of such a “Tower of Babel,” through the words we use and the style we adopt.
“Communication is not only the transmission of information,” he said, “but it is also the creation of a culture, of human and digital environments that become spaces for dialogue and discussion.”
AI demands responsibility and discernment
Pointing to the spread of artificial intelligence, the Pope said AI’s “immense potential” required “responsibility and discernment in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all, so that it can benefit all of humanity”.Pope Leo XIV also repeated Pope Francis’ message for the 2025 World Day of Social Communication.
“Let us disarm communication of all prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred,” he said. “Let us disarm words, and we will help disarm the world.”
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomed the Pope’s commitment and has issued five concrete recommendations to the new head of the Catholic Church and Vatican City.
As censorship, misinformation and violence against journalists are on the rise worldwide, RSF has called on the Holy See to maintain a strong, committed voice for press freedom and the protection of journalists everywhere.
“The fact that one of Pope Leo XIV’s first speeches addressed press freedom and the protection of journalists sends a strong signal to news professionals around the world. RSF salutes Pope Leo XIV’s commitment to press freedom and calls on him to build on his declaration with concrete actions to promote the right to information,” said RSF director-generalThibaut Bruttin.
Devin Watkins writes for Vatican News. Republished under Creative Commons.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by ProPublica.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Today, House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee released the text of their tax bill, which would provide massive tax giveaways to billionaires and big corporations. The Republicans’ bill would be paid for by making massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition for children, and other vital programs. In response, Americans for Tax Fairness, released a new analysis unpacking the committee’s plans for the Trump tax bill and sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to repeal this deeply harmful bill.
“The House GOP has revealed in broad daylight that their tax bill is a clear scam—one that hands out massive giveaways to their billionaire and corporate donors off the backs of their constituents with a price tag of over $5 trillion,” said David Kass, ATF Executive Director. “The plan’s massive cuts to vital programs like Medicaid and SNAP will drive up healthcare and food prices for millions of workers and families, while billionaires pocket the money and the national debt soars. Working and middle-class families—and future generations—shouldn’t have to pay higher prices simply to enrich billionaire elites and the politicians in their pocket.”
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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On October 20, 2022, Jeffery Nang, chief of the Rumah Jeffrey people in Malaysia, went to a community meeting and was handed a letter by a government official in Sarawak, a state on the island of Borneo in Malaysia. The letter was an eviction notice for Nang and the 60-some members of Rumah Jeffrey, who are members of the broader Indigenous Iban people of Borneo.
Leave their forest within 30 days, the official notice said, or risk charges against anyone who remained.
The letter was dated six days earlier. The clock had already started ticking.
The notice contended the Rumah Jeffrey people were violating the law by living within a “protected forest.” They had less than a month to demolish all their crops, tear down their longhouse and remove all of their belongings, and get out.
But although the eviction notice cited the land as a “protected” area, Nang knew there was more to the story. Five months earlier, Nang had received a visit from an official from a company called Zedtee Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of a logging company called Shin Yang Group. According to Nang, a company official told him they needed some of their forest for timber. Sarawak wood is often imported into countries like the United States, Japan and South Korea where it is sold as furniture, flooring, and wood pellets that are burned for fuel.
Nang said he never reached an agreement with Zedtee regarding the forest or any potential relocation or payment. Instead, for nearly three years, his people have been at a standoff with authorities, as they resist the eviction levied without their consent or compensation.
That’s according to a new investigation published last week by Human Rights Watch that concludes the Rumah Jeffrey community is being wrongly evicted, in violation of Malaysia’s laws, as well as in violation of their international rights as Indigenous peoples to consent to extractive projects on their land.
Various studies have shown that deforestation is a leading contributor to climate change, leading to less rainfall, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and warmer temperatures. Research also indicates that protecting Indigenous land rights helps both save forests and protect biodiversity. But despite global pledges to stop deforestation, the problem continues to worsen.
Luciana Téllez Chávez, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the Rumah Jeffrey’s experience reflects a broader problem of Indigenous rights being disregarded in the region. There are relatively few legal protections for Indigenous peoples in Sarawak compared with other state governments, but her investigation found that even the few legal protections, such as requirements for companies to get certified, are not being met.
“There is a sense that a lot of the deforestation that happens in Sarawak is legal just because the law is so permissive of this type of activity,” she said. “What we’re trying to show is that even the modest protections that exist for Indigenous lands are not respected and this is one example of that.”
Indigenous peoples who want to stay on their land must prove their presence through a specific colonial-era aerial land survey, Chávez said. But the survey itself is classified.
“That’s just absurd,” she said. “It’s just incredibly difficult for communities to advocate for their rights because all this critical environmental information is secret.”
Chávez said Human Rights Watch worked with university researchers to access the survey data and prove that even by that arbitrary criterion, the Rumah Jeffrey have valid land claims.
Neither Zedtee nor the Shin Yang Group responded to messages seeking comment. The Sarawak Forest Department did not respond either to inquiries, but said in a letter to Human Rights Watch that it is committed to best practices in forest management.
“The Sarawak Government remains committed to Sustainable Forest Management through its forest management certification policy and best forest management practices,” the agency said. “This commitment applies to both natural and planted forests, ensuring adherence to strict standards and best practices.”
Despite not receiving consent from the Rumah Jeffrey people, Zedtee proceeded with removing trees from the forest, Human Rights Watch found. A study by researchers at the University of Maryland and the organization Global Forest Watch estimated that the subsequent logging removed nearly eight hectares of forest, or the size of nearly 20 American football fields.
Nicholas Mujah is the general secretary of the Sarawak Dayak Iban Association, a community group representing Indigenous Iban communities like the Rumah Jeffrey in Sarawak. Mujah said there are hundreds of court cases dealing with land disputes in Sarawak because evictions to make way for deforestation are growing more common.
“This type of modus operandi is very, very rampant in Sarawak,” he said.
So far, the Rumah Jeffrey community is resisting eviction. The village of about 60 people relies on the forest and nearby river for fishing, hunting, gathering, and growing food. Moving away would force them to leave two cemeteries where their ancestors and loved ones are buried, as well as a waterfall that they consider sacred.
“The land is very, very significant to the livelihood of the Iban people in Sarawak,” said Mujah.
Human Rights Watch investigators found that the Rumah Jeffrey people did not have an opportunity to provide input in the eviction process, nor do they have an avenue to overturn it.
Mujah hopes the international community helps provide some hope. At the end of this year, the European Union is putting into effect new regulations that will allow companies to be fined for deforestation on their product supply lines that occurred after 2020, whether or not it was technically legal. The law, Chávez says, is a “game-changer,” and could put pressure on the state of Sarawak and the Malaysian government more broadly to better respect Indigenous rights in order to protect a lucrative export industry.
Ideally, Chávez wants the Sarawak government to revoke its eviction notice. Human Rights Watch also called upon countries like the U.S. and Japan to enforce existing laws against importing wood that was felled through illegal deforestation or human rights violations. Finally, Chávez hopes Sarawak adopts stricter legal standards to protect communities like the Rumah Jeffrey.
“The Sarawak legal system is incredibly discriminatory against Indigenous peoples,” she said.”The local laws are not on par with the international standards with the rights of Indigenous peoples and they truly facilitate the appropriation of Indigenous land.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Deforestation and illegal evictions threaten Malaysia’s Indigenous peoples on May 12, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
