As Europe’s summer music festival season rolls out, mainstream media and governments are struggling to keep Palestine solidarity off the stage. In its coverage of Glastonbury Festival, the BBC focused on censoring the Irish rap group Kneecap over their staunch pro-Palestinian stance – only to be met by a wave of artists who used their platform to call for a free Palestine and to demand broadcasters share real news about the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Among them was the British duo Bob Vylan, who led the crowd in chanting “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF,” denouncing war crimes committed by the Israeli army, including the starvation of children and the killing of civilians in humanitarian aid lines.
Note: Another long opinion piece in the local rag, Lincoln County Leader, June 18, 2025.
First, though, let me explain. The idea is to not just rattle my fellow citizens’ cages, those self-imposed prisons of the mind. It’s my own journalistic and controlled demolition of the grand narratives this country has foisted on a public that has not only become unsuspecting, but absolutely habituated into brands, and consumer dialogue, talks about trips to Costco or Costa Rica, it’s all the same fucking 24 pack of paper towels to throw at hurricane victims in Puerto Rico.
This is the spawn of Nazis, the good Germans, the guy who is now a Jew, who was trained by Jew York Jews like Roy Cohen, and alas, his grandkiddos are Jewish, and that daughter is Jewish, and the mafia in his Minyan is composed of Jews and even freak Zionists like RFK, Jr.
It is a sickness that isn’t just one chapter in the DSM-V: Victoria Nuland and cookies, man.
What is the DSM-5?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, often known as the “DSM,” is a reference book on mental health and brain-related conditions and disorders. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is responsible for the writing, editing, reviewing and publishing of this book.
The number “5” attached to the name of the DSM refers to the fifth — and most recent — edition of this book. The DSM-5®’s original release date was in May 2013. The APA released a revised version of the fifth edition in March 2022. That version is known as the DSM-5-TR, with TR meaning “text revision.”
IMPORTANT: The DSM-5 and DSM-5-TR are medical reference books intended for experts and professionals. The content in these books is very technical, though people who aren’t medical professionals may still find it interesting or educational. However, you shouldn’t use either of these books as a substitute for seeing a trained, qualified mental health or medical provider.
Additionally, the APA also publishes books that supplement the content in the DSM-5-TR. Examples of these supplement publications include the DSM-5 Handbook of Differential Diagnosis and DSM-5 Clinical Cases.
What is the purpose of the DSM-5?
The first step in treating any health condition — physical or mental — is accurately diagnosing the condition. That’s where the DSM-5 comes in. It provides clear, highly detailed definitions of mental health and brain-related conditions. It also provides details and examples of the signs and symptoms of those conditions.
In addition to defining and explaining conditions, the DSM-5 organizes those conditions into groups. That makes it easier for healthcare providers to accurately diagnose conditions and tell them apart from conditions with similar signs and symptoms.]
[Photo: While Ronald Reagan demonized the welfare system as a whole in familiar terms, his ire was largely directed toward single mothers, and his racially coded language was sufficient to make clear his overarching intentions.]
All these things, these economic things, they are on people’s minds. The chaos of Trump and Company, as he plays out his dictator role, all of that is on everyone’s minds.
The cost of being poor is rising. And it’s worse for poor families of color. Great headline.
But the point of my short op-ed was to discuss how the silence of this genocide is deafening, in fact, defeating. This has a deep deep psychological effect on those who might have cared to speak up and who are distressed by the murder incorporated on a mass murder scale that the Jews in Israel are undertaking.
But the empire of chaos is about that chaos, and the chaotic nature of our news cycle with the demented POTUS and his even more demented cabinet members and his MAGA mutt followers, that this imploding diesel belching engine has thrown so many people into discombobulation syndrome.
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
The poor and forgotten nations of the world can blame their downward spiral on an emerging world order that Samir Amin in this brilliant essay calls the “empire of chaos.” Comprised of the United States, Japan, and Germany, and backed by a weakened USSR and the comprador classes of the third world, this is an empire that will stop at nothing in its campaign to protect and expand its capitalist markets.
The interview with Professor Samir Amin was conducted on 6 May 2018 in Beijing, by Professor Lau Kin Chi and Professor Sit Tsui Jade. Professor Amin criticized monopoly capitalism and the collective imperialism of the Triad (USA, Europe, and Japan). He analyzed the current major challenges to China. He strongly suggested that China should not join financial globalization, but on the contrary, keep capital account and exchange rate under control, as well as maintain collective ownership of land and the small peasantry. These were great weapons against financial globalization. He also discussed the possibilities of building people’s internationalism.
Even as Israeli violence becomes more visible, politicians like Ben Gvir are welcomed as honoured guests in the US
‘The crimes [in Gaza] are so egregious that are being carried out… The attempt to cover them up and whitewash them is failing’ Since 7 October, western media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza has come under intense scrutiny, particularly for the language and terminology used by many outlets. As a result, the coverage has been accused of bias against Palestinians effectively providing cover for Israel’s war on Gaza. To delve into this, we’re speaking to Assal Rad, an Iranian-American scholar of the modern Middle East and fellow at DAWN, who’s also made it her mission to call out and ‘fix’ misleading headlines. Her widely shared posts earned her the title of ‘headline fixer’, turning this into a trend of its own online.
This is just a watered-down version of what I really would love to write every day, and in a sense have the public square to discuss this silence, this mute echo of silence has pushed a collective insanity and amnesia into the populous.
The silence is deafening, here on the coast, and throughout most of the land. Forget about large universities and valiant young people and some faculty protesting the genocide which by many expert accounts — not cited in so-called legacy media – are 100,000 murdered civilians.
Targeted assassinations of journalists and of medical workers? And the AMA is silent. The American Medical Association represents hundreds of thousands of doctors.
“We’re seeing hospitals being bombed, ambulances being bombed, doctors and other medical workers being targeted and shot. The AMA is the sixth-largest lobbying organization in the United States, it’s bigger than Boeing. It’s bigger than Lockheed Martin, it’s bigger than the National Rifle Association. They have a tremendous amount of domestic and international influence, and because they carry such weight within the realm of health care, we felt it would be appropriate for them to use their voice in this way.”
Emily Hacker, a member of Healthcare Workers for Palestine, outlined that an important reason healthcare workers want the “AMA and all other healthcare institutions to be involved in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine” is that “the US can spend billions and billions of dollars on bombs and bullets, but there are 26 million Americans with no health insurance and 150 million Americans rely on Medicare or Medicaid.”
“People can’t afford their insulin, but there’s always money for bombs,” Hackerarticulated.
Cognitive dissonance is more than just interesting as a theory to study. In our daily lives we for the most part are silent. Hands down. No discussion of Israel’s genocide and the United States’ and Britain’s complicity because most Americans are dangerously poorly educated.
Miseducated. Brainwashed.
This is what many call “deep” or “master narratives” – that somehow the settler colonial apartheid state of Israel is the most democratic state in the Middle East. I witnessed genocide silence at the Yachats Commons June 1, where we listened to Oregon Black Pioneers presenter Zachary Stocks discuss the origin of black exclusion laws in our state as well as the pro-slavery mentality that dominated many of the state’s politicians and newspaper editors.
Good stuff he presented to a largely greying and older population. We did get some land acknowledgment from Joanne Kittel, known for her work around the Amanda Trail.
“For those of you who travel through Yachats, I ask you to pay respect to and honor the Alsea, Siuslaw, Lower Umpqua and Coos people who lost their lives as a result of their forced incarceration and mistreatment in Yachats, Waldport and Florence areas. The Amanda Trail that connects Yachats to Cape Perpetua is a spiritual and solemn path that remembers in perpetuity.” Joanne Kittel wrote this as a blurb for a book, Seeking Recognition: The Termination and Restoration of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, 1855-1984 by David R.M. Beck.
No moment of silence for Gaza? It would have been appropriate.
Deep, grand, meta or master narratives are dominant or commonly-shared stories within a society or culture. They are tools for shaping a collective idea or consciousness about who we are as a society, culture or people. Master narratives also limit our understanding of context and historical causes and effects, and they’re deployed to perpetuate stereotypes or dominant ideologies.
Erasing knowledge and context is the coin of the realm now especially with a shallow and sallow-minded president. This POTUS isn’t the be-all and end-all, but for the past five months people have been scrambling to anticipate his administration’s brand of proto- or neo-fascism. Erasing Black Medal of Honor winners or Jackie Robinson’s portrait from various locations and websites is just the tip of the iceberg of flipping around of history.
“A good Indian is a Dead Indian.” Or, from the other POTUS, Teddy Roosevelt: “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York. “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
And now why is it the genocide of our times is never discussed in public or around dinner tables? Imagine that during World War Two not a word about Nazism or fascism in Italy and Spain. Silence? The price of bacon?
A Jewish Canadian journalist, many reading this might not know, Aaron Mate, says it bluntly about that Grand Narrative of Israel and Judaism: “Everything I Was Taught… Was a Lie” He says the indoctrination of how Israel is this grand democracy and mothership for all Jews starts early.
“This Jewish state commits genocide in our name. It’s a moral obligation to resist this,” Mate states.
It is more than bizarre and Orwellian, this current rampant ideology of “silence is transparency and lies are truth.”
Doctors, nurses, and medics are murdered and hospitals bombed. And no one in mixed company discusses Gaza, the genocide, the dehumanization of Palestinians, which is a dehumanization for us all.
Doctors? I have MDs in my family and I was a pre-med student for a while. Here is an anonymous statement I agree with, from a doctor condemning the American Medical Association’s complicity:
“As a doctor, I am saying loud and clear I am against all war and especially GENOCIDE. AMA and all our medical institutions that have remained silent and practiced unethical silencing, doxxing, firing of peace supporters or those speaking up for Palestine cast a long shadow of shame on our great profession.”
Ontario’s education ministry supposedly bans “political” bias, but with the TDSB, that “bias” means banning support of Palestinian rights: Zionism is not apparently “political”! The most disturbing aspect is that these damaging CIJA-developed recommendations will probably be attempted at school boards across Canada.
Director of Education LaTouche, and Trustees:
Many of us have been disappointed by the TDSB’s highly political pro-Israel actions for years, but the actions this year (the trustees’ secret discussion and support of the “Affirming Jewish Identities & Addressing Antisemitism” report not to mention it’s support of the discredited “Nova Music Festival Exhibit” and dismissing of “No Other Land”!) have crossed a line of what should be acceptable by any school board.
I read the “Affirming Jewish Identities” report and believe that, if it were implemented, it would damage all non-Jewish students by giving Jewish students and staff the power to complain about what should be Charter- protected speech (and action). Its recommendations could be entitled, No Jew may be offended. The Toronto TDSB’s efforts to ensure students are exposed only to (political!) Zionist perspectives are described.
I attended the Nova Exhibit when I read that TDSB had sent students there and was appalled by the pornographic propaganda: tales that had been thoroughly documented as untrue before this exhibit was constructed. My experience visiting the Nova exhibit are described here.
I spent hours trying to find the Trustees’ discussion about this report in the public February meeting, but realized that that discussion had been held secretly and with voting results that were not visible. I understand that holding secret discussions like that is not legal in Ontario. On February 24th, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms sent a complaint to the Waterloo Catholic District School Board (WCDSB) that its secrecy in a public meeting was unconstitutional.
My attempts to find out the status of the possible implementation of this report have been disappointing, with no response to calls to my trustee, the head trustee, or my letter to Education Director LaTouche. I have had the impression for the last several years that if a member of their public does not agree with TDSB’s Zionist agenda, no Trustee or employee feels any obligation to have any contact with them. The TDSB looks as if it is run like a little fiefdom with no responsibility to deal with any dissent from those who voted them in.
As things now stand, I would not want any child in our family to attend a TDSB school until it shows that it is fully compliant with Charter rights and the implications of international humanitarian law in Canada. It is unacceptable that children in at least one TDSB school have been subjected to racist hatred: “Kids in Gaza deserve what they get.” TDSB’s “anti-racism” program should deal with all racism together, not piece-meal.
A Hungarian law banning content about LGBTQ+ people from schools and primetime TV has been found to violate basic human rights and freedom of expression by a senior legal scholar at the European court of justice.
The non-binding opinion from the court’s advocate general, Tamara Ćapeta, issued on Thursday, represents a comprehensive demolition of the arguments made by the Hungarian government defending its so-called childprotection law, passed in 2021.
To boil it all down (and the speakers here have never yet been found to be wrong about this war, which they have been analyzing ever since 2016): the only way that America and its allied countries can now avoid a total defeat in this war is by directly going to war themselves against Russia. Though that would not start out as being a nuclear war, what would the loser in the conventional war then do? Would it surrender? Or would it instead initiate nuclear war against the side that has won the conventional war (which would then become World War Three)? And why are the stakes in this war (possible annihilation of civilization) not even being discussed in U.S.-and-allied media? Is this the media that would be the media in a democracy, or instead in a dictatorship?
There already are indications that the U.S. and its allies are intensively preparing for WW3. Is this because there is a public demand for these multi-trillion-dollar measures, or is it instead because the individuals who are in control over our governments (and their news-media) want these expenses by their Government? Why are people not pondering these questions? But perhaps the reason is that they’re not being informed that this is even happening. And why aren’t they?
UK and Israel are part of this empire, and at 7:45-20:30 in this video is the U.S.-UK-Israel plan laid out and documented (see especially the map at 17:57) for the completion of their final solution to the Palestinian problem in Gaza. Then, from 29:00 till 34:00 is a truthful description of how the U.S. Government’s ceaseless craving to conquer both Russia and China — and to continue providing the weapons that Israel uses to exterminate Gazans — is increasingly foreclosing any other (any peaceful) paths by which America’s economy can even grow.
U.S.-and-allied major media say that alternative viewpoints are presented by them, but why are THESE alternative viewpoints NOT among the “alternatives” (I would instead call them truths) that they present? Why are these ‘viewpoints’ censored-out by them? How and why is that done? Is this a democracy? Or is it something else?
Few Western voices have braved the gates of Gaza during Israel’s ongoing military assault. Fewer still have returned to tell the story. Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American writer and humanitarian, is one of them.
In this sobering episode of “The Watchdog,” Abulhawa sits down with host Lowkey to describe the irreversible psychological toll of witnessing Israel’s war on Gaza from inside the Strip and the political price of telling the truth in the West.
“I wish I never left,” she says, recounting her time in Gaza earlier this year. “I left thinking I was going to come back in a couple of months to resupply and bring back in medicines and supplies.”
Online censorship in China by some regional governments is even more aggressive than enforcement of the national-level ‘Great Firewall’ by the central government, according to a recent study and local sources.
The Great Firewall Report (GFW Report) highlights how the central Chinese province of Henan has adopted its own provincial firewall which is less sophisticated and robust than the central government’s but more volatile and aggressive, blocking significantly more websites than the national-level censorship system.
Local sources told Radio Free Asia that the heightened restrictions at the provincial government level may reflect uncertainty about instructions from higher authorities, leading to “excessive blocking” to avoid blame for failing to carry out their duties.
GFW Report is a censorship monitoring platform, primarily focused on China. During one experiment its researchers ran between Dec. 26, 2023 and March 31, 2025, they found that the Henan Firewall blocked 4.2 million domains, about six times that of the 741,542 at the national level.
Since 2023, netizens in Henan had reported a rise in the number of websites that were inaccessible in the region but accessible elsewhere in China, the study found.
“This localized censorship suggests a departure from China’s centralized censorship apparatus, enabling local authorities to exert a greater degree of control within their respective regions,” researchers Mingshi Wu at GFW, Ali Zohaib and Amir Houmansadr at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Zakir Durumeric at Stanford University, and Eric Wustrow at the University of Colorado Boulder wrote in the GFW Report published in May, “A Wall Behind A Wall: Emerging Regional Censorship in China.”
But the phenomenon extends beyond Henan, sources inside China told RFA.
Local governments in neighboring Hebei, another central Chinese province, as well as those in Tibet and Xinjiang have been operating similar censorship systems as the one reported in Henan for at least four years, Zhao Yuan, a network engineer based in Hebei, said.
“In the past, we could access overseas websites that were not blocked by the national firewall,” Zhao said. “Now, even virtual private networks (VPNs) in Henan and Hubei don’t work.”
While the national-level firewall, known as the Great Firewall, targets more news and media sites, in line with China’s long-standing policy of censoring politically sensitive information, the provincial-level firewall systems, like the one in Henan, blocks domains focusing on topics like the economy, technology, and business, GFW Report researchers found.
The Chinese Communist Party has, in recent years, emphasized a multi-pronged approach to censorship, including the management of all types of propaganda at the domestic and international level through a framework known as “territorial management” and implementation of “digital stability maintenance” measures, such as policing of sensitive content online on dates deemed politically sensitive by the government.
“Local governments have taken the initiative to establish local blocking systems, indicating that the top leaders are increasingly vigilant about the flow of information,” Wei Sicong, a Beijing-based political observer, said.
Commuters wearing face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus browse their smartphones inside a subway train in Beijing Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021. China’s internet watchdog cracked down on online speech and issued a new requirement that bloggers and influencers have a license before they can publish on certain topics.(Andy Wong/AP)
‘Turning off the whole world’
Researchers at GFW found that the Henan firewall monitors and blocks traffic leaving and entering the province, as opposed to the national-level censorship system that is focused on traffic entering and exiting the country.
Other sources in the region told RFA that the heightened restrictions at the provincial government level suggest lack of clear legal know-how about how to enforce instructions from higher-ups.
“Officials would rather block more and more than take responsibility. So the result you see is ‘turning off the whole world’,” network engineer Zhang Jianan said.
GFW Report researchers said their analysis showed no regional censorship in other areas they studied, such as Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai, and Jiangsu.
In Henan and Hebei, however, local residents told RFA that even the websites of some foreign universities are inaccessible, as a result of which they turn to VPNs and other circumvention tools to bypass government censorship and surveillance.
“Some classmates can connect in Beijing and Shanghai, but we can’t in Zhengzhou and can only rely on circumvention software,” Zhang, a student at Henan’s Zhengzhou University, said.
Hebei-based network engineer Zhao said, “The censorship is getting stricter and stricter. We can’t even connect to some foreign university websites.”
RFA found that as early as December 2023, a university in Henan province sought to purchase a “public opinion monitoring system,” specifically aimed at international students, students and dissidents, and had conducted an open bidding process.
Henan University of Science and Technology had laid out a 2024-2025 budget of 120,000 yuan (or US$16,657) for the public opinion monitoring service system to provide 24/7 real-time monitoring, early warning analysis and crisis response of public opinion information on the entire network, covering news websites and social media platforms such as Weibo and Douyin, the university’s website showed.
When RFA contacted the university, a teacher confirmed they are using an old monitoring system and that they have now started a bidding process for a new one.
Edited by Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang and Tenzin Pema for RFA.
For several years, Amy Stelly has been partnering with the Louisiana State University School of Public Health in New Orleans to monitor air quality next to the Claiborne Expressway, a busy highway that runs northwest of the city’s iconic French Quarter. At a community meeting in April, Stelly, who runs an organization called the Claiborne Avenue Alliance Design Studio, was excited to unveil…
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced new visa restrictions that he claims are targeted at foreign officials who perpetuate “censorship” of Americans on social media platforms — while his agency, under his direction, is scouring the social media accounts of immigrants in the U.S. for dissent. In a statement announcing the policy on Wednesday, Rubio cited supposed concerns over free…
What happens when the most powerful people give up on the future — but still control the schools? To understand what’s happening in education today — the banning of books, the rise of AI that surveils and dehumanizes learning, the outlawing of honest lessons on race and gender, and the criminalization of critical thought — we must look beyond the classroom and name the dystopia being built…
Microsoft has implemented a policy blocking employee emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” or “genocide” on its internal Exchange servers, Drop Site News reported on 22 May.
According to No Azure for Apartheid, a group of pro-Palestine Microsoft employees, an automated filter silently prevents such emails from reaching recipients.
The filter became effective on Wednesday following Microsoft’s Build developer conference, which faced repeated disruptions by the activist group, Drop Site added.
Microsoft has faced internal dissent from employees upset over the company’s collaboration with the Israeli military in its ongoing war on Palestinians in Gaza, which scholars widely consider genocide.
After 17 years at Emerson College, I was fired for my activism in support of Palestinian liberation. My last day was October 11, 2024, just over one year into the genocide in Gaza and ongoing ethnic cleansing in occupied Palestine.
Over my time at Emerson, I established my professional home, weathering the financial crash and the pandemic. During my time, I helped organize the professional staff with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and served my peers as a steward. I started a free, public film series with a strong focus on social justice cinema that I successfully ran for over twelve years.
Not one, not two, but three of my books have been removed and banned from the United States Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library by the order of President Donald Trump’s appointed defense secretary and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth. The New York Times reports that 378 others were also removed. Naval students and sailors must feel insulted by Hegseth’s lack of confidence in their intellectual…
The iconic Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warriorwill return to Aotearoa this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original campaign ship at Marsden Wharf in Auckland by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
The return to Aotearoa comes at a pivotal moment — when the fight to protect our planet’s fragile life-support systems has never been as urgent, or more critical.
Here in Aotearoa, the Luxon government is waging an all-out war on nature, and on a planetary scale, climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat.
Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Dr Russel Norman . . . “Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective.” Image: Greenpeace
As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.
Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French government’s military programme and colonial power.
It’s also critical to remember that they failed to stop us. They failed to intimidate us, and they failed to silence us. Greenpeace only grew stronger and continued the successful campaign against nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Forty years later, it’s the oil industry that’s trying to stop us. This time, not with bombs but with a legal attack that threatens the existence of Greenpeace in the US and beyond.
We will not be intimidated
But just like in 1985 when the French bombed our ship, now too in 2025, we will not be intimidated, we will not back down, and we will not be silenced.
We cannot be silenced because we are a movement of people committed to peace and to protecting Earth’s ability to sustain life, protecting the blue oceans, the forests and the life we share this planet with,” says Norman.
In the 40 years since, the Rainbow Warrior has sailed on the front lines of our campaigns around the world to protect nature and promote peace. In the fight to end oil exploration, turn the tide of plastic production, stop the destruction of ancient forests and protect the ocean, the Rainbow Warrior has been there to this day.
Right now the Rainbow Warrior is preparing to sail through the Tasman Sea to expose the damage being done to ocean life, continuing a decades-long tradition of defending ocean health.
This follows the Rainbow Warrior spending six weeks in the Marshall Islands where the original ship carried out Operation Exodus, in which the Greenpeace crew evacuated the people of Rongelap from their home island that had been made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
In Auckland this year, several events will be held on and around the ship to mark the anniversary, including open days with tours of the ship for the public.
The iconic Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warriorwill return to Aotearoa this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original campaign ship at Marsden Wharf in Auckland by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
The return to Aotearoa comes at a pivotal moment — when the fight to protect our planet’s fragile life-support systems has never been as urgent, or more critical.
Here in Aotearoa, the Luxon government is waging an all-out war on nature, and on a planetary scale, climate change, ecosystem collapse, and accelerating species extinction pose an existential threat.
Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Dr Russel Norman . . . “Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective.” Image: Greenpeace
As we remember the bombing and the murder of our crew member, Fernando Pereira, it’s important to remember why the French government was compelled to commit such a cowardly act of violence.
Our ship was targeted because Greenpeace and the campaign to stop nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific were so effective. We posed a very real threat to the French government’s military programme and colonial power.
It’s also critical to remember that they failed to stop us. They failed to intimidate us, and they failed to silence us. Greenpeace only grew stronger and continued the successful campaign against nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Forty years later, it’s the oil industry that’s trying to stop us. This time, not with bombs but with a legal attack that threatens the existence of Greenpeace in the US and beyond.
We will not be intimidated
But just like in 1985 when the French bombed our ship, now too in 2025, we will not be intimidated, we will not back down, and we will not be silenced.
We cannot be silenced because we are a movement of people committed to peace and to protecting Earth’s ability to sustain life, protecting the blue oceans, the forests and the life we share this planet with,” says Norman.
In the 40 years since, the Rainbow Warrior has sailed on the front lines of our campaigns around the world to protect nature and promote peace. In the fight to end oil exploration, turn the tide of plastic production, stop the destruction of ancient forests and protect the ocean, the Rainbow Warrior has been there to this day.
Right now the Rainbow Warrior is preparing to sail through the Tasman Sea to expose the damage being done to ocean life, continuing a decades-long tradition of defending ocean health.
This follows the Rainbow Warrior spending six weeks in the Marshall Islands where the original ship carried out Operation Exodus, in which the Greenpeace crew evacuated the people of Rongelap from their home island that had been made uninhabitable by nuclear weapons testing by the US government.
In Auckland this year, several events will be held on and around the ship to mark the anniversary, including open days with tours of the ship for the public.
“It’s a chilling feeling,” Tariq explains to me. “Here at Yale, immigration authorities have revoked at least four students’ visas so far.” Tariq Khan is an interdisciplinary historian and lecturer at Yale University. “A lot of students are scared,” he explains. “I have international students in my classes. They’re really worried that their visas might be revoked. The Trump administration’s…
Over the past weekend, several candidates in suburban Texas school districts who opposed book bans won their elections, defeating conservative officials who had supported and implemented such policies in recent years. Book bans in the Lone Star State have largely targeted titles with LGBTQ themes, Black or Brown characters, or authors of the same backgrounds. In the 2022-23 academic year…
The corporate efforts to muzzle “60 Minutes,” the prestigious American television news program, have been publicly exposed by courageous members of its own staff. But mainstream U.S. media reports have underplayed one significant factor: the intense pro-Israel views of Shari Redstone, the billionaire heiress who is the controlling shareholder of Paramount, the CBS TV network’s parent company. Her views have mostly gone unreported, even though she is one of the most powerful media moguls in America, and someone who has already sharply criticized her own network’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump—and many of his most prominent right-wing supporters—are directly linked to some of the most radically pro-war, pro-Israel organizations in the country. These connections form a sprawling web of lobbying groups, tech billionaires, and media figures who consistently promote Israeli interests above those of ordinary Americans.
Why has the pro-Trump right suddenly pivoted from branding itself as a bastion of free speech to openly supporting censorship and state-led crackdowns? This MintPress News investigation uncovers a donor-driven advocacy network driving that ideological shift.
At MIT, I have witnessed firsthand how institutional priorities shift under the weight of political pressures and personal allegiances. My proposal for a course that critically engages via language and linguistics with the realities of settler colonialism vs. decolonization was not simply met with skepticism; it was censored and actively surveilled, doxed, and it is still being delegitimized. My experience is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger, systemic issue that permeates education across the United States. It is a symptom of what I have come to understand as the “Palestine exception,” where conversations surrounding Israel/Palestine are subjected to unique levels of scrutiny and suppression, from academic units, to students’ newspapers and faculty newsletters, to Executive Orders and Homeland Security.
Bill Owens, the executive producer for CBS News’s “60 Minutes” program, announced earlier this week that he would be stepping down from his position as the company moves to encroach on the show’s journalistic independence. Owens — only the third person to hold the role in the show’s 57-year history — had been the executive producer of “60 Minutes” since 2019. His departure comes as the…
Bill Owens, the executive producer for CBS News’s “60 Minutes” program, announced earlier this week that he would be stepping down from his position as the company moves to encroach on the show’s journalistic independence. Owens — only the third person to hold the role in the show’s 57-year history — had been the executive producer of “60 Minutes” since 2019. His departure comes as the…
Host Faramarz Farbod talks with Dr. Maura Finkelstein, writer, ethnographer, anthropologist, and author of The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai (DUP 2019). Dr. Finkelstein was falsely accused of antisemitism and fired last May (2024) from her teaching position at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. We talk about the state of academic freedom, classrooms as ethnographic spaces, decanonization, being Jewish and anti-Zionist in the US, Zionism, Israel, misuses of antisemitism, Islamophobia, empire, and the present moment in history.
Meta Platforms’ Oversight Board on Wednesday sharply rebuked the Facebook and Instagram owner over a policy overhaul in January that cut fact-checking and eased curbs on discussions of contentious topics such as immigration and gender identity. The board, which operates independently but is funded by Meta, urged the world’s biggest social media company to assess…
It is easy to see that authoritarian governance has accelerated in the United States recently. Donald Trump entered office with a flurry of Executive Orders and dubious agreements with major universities and law firms which in effect put them under his control. On April 10 the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, one of 200 men sent to an El Salvador prison under circumstances of very questionable legality. Abrego Garcia differs from the others in that the Trump administration originally admitted that he was deported in error and that they did not have grounds to send him to his home country, El Salvador.
Online dissent is a serious crime in China. So why did a Weibo censor help me publish posts critical of the Communist party?
It is 2013. For four full months, Liu Lipeng engages in dereliction of duty. Every hour the system sends him a huge volume of posts, but he hardly ever deletes a single word. After three or four thousand posts accumulate, he lightly clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released. In the jargon of censors, this is a “total pass in one click” (一键全通), after which all the posts appear on China’s version of X, Sina Weibo, to be read by millions, then reposted and discussed.
He logs on to the Weibo management page, where many words are flagged. Orange designates sensitive words that require careful examination – words like freedom and democracy, and the three characters that make up Xi Jinping’s name. While such words regularly appear in newspapers or on TV, that does not mean ordinary citizens can use them at will.
US President Donald Trump and his team is pursuing a white man’s racist agenda that is corrupt at its core. Trump’s advisor Elon Musk, who often seems to be the actual president, is handing his companies multiple contracts as his team takes over or takes down multiple government departments and agencies.
Trump wants to be the “king” of America and is already floating the idea of a third term, an action that would be an obvious violation of the US Constitution he swore to uphold but is doing his best to violate and destroy.
Every time we hear the Trump team spouting a “return to America’s golden age,” they are talking about 60-80 years ago, when white people ruled and schools, hospitals, restrooms and entire neighborhoods were segregated and African Americans and other minority groups had little opportunity.
Every photo of leaders from that time features large numbers of white American men. Trump’s cabinet, in contrast to recent cabinets of Democratic presidents, is mainly white and male.
This is where the US going. And lest any white women feel they are included in the Trump train, think again. Anything to do with women’s empowerment — including whites — is being scrubbed off the agenda by Trump minions in multiple government departments and agencies.
“Women” along with things like “climate change,” “diversity,” “equality,” “gender equity,” “justice,” etc are being removed from US government websites, policies and grant funding.
The white racist campaign against people of colour has seen iconic Americans removed from government websites. For example, a photo and story about Jackie Robinson, a military veteran, was recently removed from the Defense Department website as part of the Trump team’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Broke whites-only colour barrier
Robinson was not only a military veteran, he was the first African American to break the whites-only colour barrier in Major League Baseball and went on to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame for his stellar performance with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
How about the removal of reference to the Army’s 442nd infantry regiment from World War II that is the most decorated unit in US military history? The 442nd was a fighting unit comprised of nearly all second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who more than proved their courage and loyalty to the United States during World War II.
The Defense Department removing references to these iconic Americans is an outrage. But showing the moronic level of the Trump team, they also deleted a photo of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan at the end of World War II because the pilot named it after his mother, “Enola Gay.”
Despite the significance of the Enola Gay airplane in American military history, that latter word couldn’t get past the Pentagon’s scrubbing team, who were determined to wash away anything that hinted at, well, anything other than white, heterosexual male. And there is plenty more that was wiped off the history record of the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, Trump, his team and the Republican Party in general while claiming to be focused on eliminating corruption is authorising it on a grand scale.
Elon Musk’s redirection of contracts to Starlink, SpaceX and other companies he owns is one example among many. What is happening in the American government today is like a bank robbery in broad daylight.
The Trump team fired a score of inspectors general — the very officials who actively work to prevent fraud and theft in the US government. They are eliminating or effectively neutering every enforcement agency, from EPA (which ensures clean air and other anti-pollution programmes) and consumer protection to the National Labor Relations Board, where the mega companies like Musk’s, Facebook, Google and others have pending complaints from employees seeking a fair review of their work issues.
Huge cuts to social security
Trump with the aid of the Republican-controlled Congress is going to make huge cuts to Medicaid and Social Security — which will affect Marshallese living in America as much as Americans — all in order to fund tax cuts for the richest Americans and big corporations.
Then there is Trump’s targeting of judges who rule against his illegal and unconstitutional initiatives — Trump criticism that is parroted by Fox News and other Trump minions, and is leading to things like efforts in the Congress to possibly impeach judges or restrict their legal jurisdiction.
These are all anti-democracy, anti-US constitution actions that are already undermining the rule of law in the US. And we haven’t yet mentioned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its sweeping deportations without due process that is having calamitous collateral damage for people swept up in these deportation raids.
ICE is deporting people legally in the US studying at US universities for writing articles or speaking about justice for Palestinians. Whether we like what the writer or speaker says, a fundamental principle of democracy in the US is that freedom of expression is protected by the US constitution under the First Amendment.
That is no longer the case for Trump and his Republican team, which is happily abandoning the rule of law, due process and everything else that makes America what it is.
The irony is that multiple countries, normally American allies, have in recent weeks issued travel advisories to their citizens about traveling to the United States in the present environment where anyone who isn’t white and doesn’t fit into a male or female designation is subject to potential detention and deportation.
The immigration chill from the US will no doubt reduce visitor flow resulting in big losses in revenue, possibly in the billions of dollars, for tourism-related businesses.
Marshallese must pay attention
Marshallese need to pay attention to what’s happening and have valid passports at the ready. Sadly, if Marshallese have any sort of conviction no matter how ancient or minor it is likely they will be targets for deportation.
Further, even the visa-free access privilege for Marshallese and other Micronesians is apparently now under scrutiny by US authorities based on a statement by US Ambassador Laura Stone published recently by the Journal
It is a difficult time being one of the closest allies of the US because the RMI must engage at many levels with a US government that is presently in turmoil.
Giff Johnson is the editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and one of the Pacific’s leading journalists and authors. He is the author of several books, including Don’t Ever Whisper, Idyllic No More, and Nuclear Past, Unclear Future. This editorial was first published on 11 April 2025 and is reprinted with permission of the Marshall Islands Journal.marshallislandsjournal.com
Freedom of speech at the Marshall Islands High School
Messages of “inclusiveness” painted by Marshall Islands High School students in the capital Majuro. Image: Giff Johnson/Marshall Islands Journal
The above is one section of the outer wall at Marshall Islands High School. Surely, if this was a public school in America today, these messages would already have been whitewashed away by the Trump team censors who don’t like any reference to “inclusiveness,” “women,” and especially “gender equality.”
However, these messages painted by MIHS students are very much in keeping with Marshallese society and customary practices of welcoming visitors, inclusiveness and good treatment of women in this matriarchal society.
But don’t let President Trump know Marshallese think like this. — Giff Johnson
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Meta compromised U.S. national security and freedom of speech to do business with China, a company whistleblower testified before U.S. senators.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former global policy director at Facebook, told the U.S. Senate on Wednesday that Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg personally designed and implemented a content review tool for Facebook that was used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The tool, according to her, would automatically submit a Facebook post for review by a “chief editor” whenever it received over 10,000 views.
“One thing the Chinese Communist Party and Mark Zuckerberg share is that they want to silence their critics. I can say that from personal experience,” Wynn-Williams said at the congressional hearing.
This tool was operational in both independent Taiwan and China-controlled Hong Kong, where the Chinese Communist Party has been expanding its united front efforts.
China’s united front work combines influence, interference, and intelligence efforts to shape its political landscape. The country’s United Front Work Department is involved in activities ranging from controlling the Chinese diaspora and silencing dissent to gathering intelligence, promoting investment, and enabling technology transfer.
Sarah Wynn-Williams takes an oath before testimony to the U.S. Senate, April 9, 2025.(Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
Meta has disputed the claims by Wynn-Williams. Spokesperson Andy Stone told the AFP news agency that Wynn-Williams’ claims were “detached from reality and full of false allegations.”
“We [Meta] currently do not offer any services in China,” he said.
However, even though Meta’s platforms are banned in China, the company still makes a significant amount of revenue from Chinese businesses that advertise to global audiences. Meta’s financial filings indicate that China is one of its biggest sources of ad revenue outside the U.S.
Wynn-Williams also disclosed that Meta once considered building a data center in China – an action she warned could have endangered the personal information of American users. She added that Meta employees had briefed Chinese officials on Meta’s AI technologies.
The so-called “chief editor,” she said, was to oversee post content originating from Chinese-speaking regions such as China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
The editor had the power to not only review viral content but also to shut down Facebook services entirely in specific regions including Xinjiang or during sensitive dates such as the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
According to Wynn-Williams, Chinese officials had reportedly tested the tool and even offered suggestions for its “optimization.”
“We must ensure you can block or filter images we don’t want people to see,” she said, quoting the communist party officials’ feedback for Facebook’s content moderation.
Facebook has a troubling track record on content moderation according to Ethan Tu, founder of Taiwan AI Labs, a non-governmental organization specializing in artificial intelligence and information warfare in Asia.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, our lab noticed that many posts highlighting Taiwan’s pandemic success were censored on Facebook,” Tu told Radio Free Asia.
“However, false information about the U.S.’ COVID situation written in Chinese was not taken down.”
He stressed that the shadow ban on Facebook is a real issue, given that he had once made posts discussing Huawei and cybersecurity that resulted in zero reach, indicating an invisible suppression.
“During the Hong Kong anti-extradition protests in 2019, we also observed that posts related to the movement or democratic activism started disappearing all of a sudden. It seemed as if someone was deliberately censoring them,” he said.
Former Facebook staffer Wynn-Williams said the social network began making hundreds of content moderation decisions related to China even before 2009. By 2018, the platform had already been in direct discussions with the Chinese government for four years.
This contradicts Zuckerberg’s 2018 congressional testimony in which he claimed that since Facebook had been banned in China since 2009, “the company couldn’t be certain how Chinese laws would be applied to its content.” Wynn-Williams called the statement “inaccurate.”
“This is a man who wears many different costumes,” Wynn-Williams said.
“We don’t know what the next costume’s going to be, but it’ll be something different. It’s whatever gets him closest to power.”
Tu said Taiwan AI Labs’ research showed that only 1.6% of takedowns were related to disinformation or hate.
“The majority were tied to politically sensitive topics,” he said.
“What was once believed to be content moderation for stopping misinformation or hate speech turned out to be mostly about political sensitivity.”
Following Wednesday’s hearing, Senator Josh Hawley said he would further investigate whether Meta misled Congress during previous testimonies and would review additional internal documents provided by Wynn-Williams.
“This is just the beginning. We are going to get the truth,” Hawley said.
Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Alan Lu for RFA.
Mary E. Gallagher, dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, wrote University of Chicago Professor and In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi on Saturday morning to tell her that her upcoming keynote speech was canceled.
“We were unaware of your planned lecture, and since this conference overlaps with two other annual events on campus, we cannot provide security at short notice,” Gallagher wrote in an email. “For this reason, we respectfully request that you do not participate in the conference.”
Abdelhadi is a widely celebrated academic, organizer, author and journalist. She frequently speaks on campuses across the country and from 2023-24 was a faculty fellow at Notre Dame.
, with TR meaning “text revision.”
