Palau’s largest newspaper is being sued for defamation by the company of President Surangel Whipps Jr’s father, just days ahead of general elections in the Pacific nation.
Surangel and Sons alleges “negligence and defamation” by the Island Times and its editor Leilani Reklai for an article published on Tuesday with “false and unsubstantiated allegations,” owner Surangel Whipps Sr said in a press release on Thursday.
Reklai has rejected the company’s allegations and said the “lawsuit is trying to control how media here in Palau tells a story”, a news article about the case in the Island Times reported on Friday.
“I feel like we are being intimidated, we are being forced to speak a certain narrative rather than present diverse community perspectives,” said Reklai, who is also a stringer for BenarNews.
The Micronesian nation of 17,000 people — 650 km north of Papua New Guinea — goes to the polls on November 5. Whipps Jr’s rival is his brother-in-law Tommy Remengesau Jr, who was president from 2001 to 2009 and 2013 to 2021.
The controversy comes after Palau was top of the inaugural 2023 Pacific Media Freedom Index of 14 island countries that highlighted the region’s media facing significant political and economic pressures, bribes and corruption, as well as self-censorship.
Island Times editor Leilani Reklai . . . fears the lawsuit could have serious consequences for the media in Palau and bankrupt the newspaper. Image: Stefan Armbruster
Island Times reported on Friday the suit is seeking compensation and punitive damages and that the company asserts the “monetary awards should be substantial enough to prevent similar conduct from the newspaper and Reklai in future”.
Surangel and Sons financial details — leaked from the country’s tax office — were posted on social media last weekend, prompting heated online debate over how much it paid.
A new corporate and goods and services tax system introduced by Whipps Jr’s government is currently being rolled out in Palau and its merits have been a focus of election campaigning.
The company in a statement said its “privacy rights had been violated,” the tax details were obtained illegally, posted online without consent, and some of the figures had been altered.
Motivation ‘confusing voters’
“The motivation behind the circulation of this document is clearly for misinformation and disinformation to confuse voters. In the end Surangel and Sons is not running for office. Unfortunately, it has been victimised by this smear campaign,” the company posted on social media.
Island Times in a 225-word, front-page story headlined “Surangel & Sons condemns tax report leak as privacy violation” reported the company’s statement on Tuesday. It also quoted financial details from the leaked documents and accompanying commentary.
Whipps Jr. in a press conference on Wednesday accused the Island Times of publishing disinformation.
“Island Times continues to print political propaganda, it’s not accurate,” Whipps Jr said, calling for a correction to be published.
The lawsuit against the paper and its editor was served the next day.
Whipps Jr’s spokesperson told BenarNews any questions related to the lawsuit should be directed to the parties involved.
Eightieth birthday celebrations for Surangel Whipps Sr (left) with his son Surangel Whipps Jr in February 2020. Image: Diaz Broadcasting Palau screenshot BenarNews
Surangel and Sons was founded in 1980 by Whipps Sr, who also served as Palau’s president briefly in 2005 and for two years from 2007.
Business ‘offers everything’
The privately-owned business “offers everything from housing design and automotive repair to equipment rentals, groceries, and scuba gear” through its import, sales, construction and travel arms, the company’s website says.
Previously as CEO, Whipps Jr transformed the company from a family store to one of Palau’s largest and most diversified businesses, employing more than 700 people.
His LinkedIn profile states he finished as CEO in January 2021, after 28 years in the position and in the month he became president. His spokesperson did not respond to questions from BenarNews about if he still retains any direct financial or other links to the company.
Surangel and Sons said the revelation of sensitive business information threatens their competitive advantage and puts jobs at risk.
Palau’s Minister of Finance Kaleb Udui Jr told the president’s press conference on Wednesday an investigation was underway, a special prosecutor would be appointed and apologized for the leak to the company.
“I would hope the media would make extra effort to help educate the public and discourage misinformation and breaches of privacy of the tax office and any other government office,” Udui said, confirming the tax documents had been altered before being posted on social media.
He said tax office staff have previously been warned about leaks and ensuring data confidentiality, as breaches negatively impact the confidence of foreign investors in Palau.
Explanation rather than leak
Whipps Jr added that the newspaper should have explained the tax system instead of reporting the leaked information.
He also accused Island Times of failure to disclose a paid advertisement in this week’s edition of the paper for his political opponent.
“I’m disappointed in the Island Times, because there was an article that was not an article, a paid advertisement,” Whipps Jr said about a colourful blue and yellow election campaign graphic.
Island Times told BenarNews it was not usual practice to put “Paid Advertisement” on advertisements but it would review its policy for political campaign material.
Reklai fears the lawsuit could have serious consequences for the media in Palau and bankrupt Island Times, the paper reported.
“If I don’t stand up to this, it sends a signal to all journalists that they risk facing claims for damages for powerful companies and government officials while carrying out their work,” she said.
Palau has two newspapers and four radio stations and enshrined in its constitution are protections for journalists, including a guarantee they cannot be jailed for refusing to disclose sources.
Surangel and Sons said they would no longer sell Island Times through their outlets.
Kamala Harris is blasting Donald Trump for vowing to protect women whether they “like it or not” at the same time he is calling for Republican Liz Cheney to be shot in the face. We get response from The Nation’s abortion access correspondent Amy Littlefield and talk about 10 states with abortion rights on the ballot, including Arizona, Nevada, Florida, South Dakota and Missouri.
When he was in second grade, Alexis Jaimes asked his undocumented parents who they would be voting for in the upcoming elections. “They said they couldn’t, and I found that so strange,” Jaimes, now a 30-year-old teacher, told Truthout. “Why can’t they, but others could?” On election day, Santa Ana, a city in the greater Los Angeles region, will be voting on whether its 24 percent…
Republicans have ramped up an anti-transgender fear campaign for the 2024 election, hoping to sway voters in their favor. Many ads focus on incarcerated transgender individuals and gender-affirming care, with millions of dollars funneled into anti-trans messages during prime-time sporting events. Others target Democratic Senate and House candidates, claiming they would “allow men into women’s…
In the final days before the presidential election, roughly 2,000 volunteers from all around the country are spending hours calling voters across 19 states. Their objective? Get people who care about climate change to the polls, particularly those who didn’t show up in the last presidential election.
You might expect that this volunteer force, gathered by the nonprofit Environmental Voter Project, would talk about a particular candidate. After all, Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat who cast the deciding vote for the biggest climate bill in Congress’ history, contrasts sharply with former President Donald Trump, a Republican who rolled back dozens of environmental protections and pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. Though it’s true that most voters who prioritize climate change pick Democratic tickets, phone bankers for the Environmental Voter Project keep their message nonpartisan. In fact, their script doesn’t even mention climate change.
In an election expected to be won by a razor-thin margin, the estimated 8 million registered voters who care about the environment but didn’t vote in 2020 could swing entire states, especially states where the race is expected to be tight. The organization has found 245,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania who care about climate change but seldom turn out to the polls.
“Climate voters and first-time climate voters can absolutely make the difference this fall,” said Nathaniel Stinnett, the Environmental Voter Project’s founder and executive director.
Research suggests that those climate voters who showed up in 2020 had a meaningful influence on the election. Climate change was the top factor that compelled voters under 45 who previously voted third-party, or not at all, to cast their ballots for President Joe Biden in 2020, according to a Navigator Research poll. Another analysis from the University of Colorado, Boulder, found that, hypothetically, Biden would have lost 3 percent of the popular vote if climate change hadn’t played a role in voters’ preferences — enough to tip the election.
Philadelphia residents wait in line around city hall to cast their ballots on October 29, 2024.
Matthew Hatcher / AFP via Getty
Stinnett believes that the climate vote could be critical for this year’s presidential election in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina, the three swing states that have the largest portion of voters who care about the climate but are unlikely to vote, according to the Environmental Voter Project’s modeling. Since 2017, the group reports it has helped convert more than 350,000 previously inactive voters in Pennsylvania into super-consistent voters — in a state that Biden won by just 80,555 votes in 2020. By contrast, it isn’t reaching out to voters in Michigan and Wisconsin, because there aren’t as many non-voting environmentalists in those swing states.
Stinnett said that of the 4.8 million “potential first-time climate voters” that volunteers are targeting in 19 states, almost 350,000 of them have cast their ballots early, which Stinnett sees as a promising sign. That includes 45,000 first-time climate voters in Georgia and more than 33,000 in North Carolina.
Anyone who lists climate change as their top priority is considered a climate voter. But some segments of Americans are more likely to be in this group than others: Democrats, women, young people, Black people, and those with heritage from Asia and the Pacific Islands. “If you are more likely to directly feel the impacts of toxic air and toxic water and extreme weather, well, you’re probably going to care more about the climate crisis and environmental issues,” Stinnett said.
Of course, climate voters have other concerns, too. That’s why volunteers with the League of Conservation Voters have knocked on 2.5 million doors across the country, asking potential voters what matters to them, then explaining how that issue connects to climate change. “You know, us trying to tell them what is important — that can matter, but it’s typically far less effective than asking someone what they care about,” said Pete Maysmith, senior vice president of campaigns at the environmental advocacy group. About 75 percent of the voters the group has talked to say they’re planning to vote for Harris, who the League of Conservation Voters has endorsed.
The group is also making an effort to reach voters online, working with TikTok personalities to reach younger voters and creating digital ads that run on platforms like Hulu and YouTube. One TikTok video features the “Queen of WaterTok” baking macarons decorated with Kamala Harris’ face while talking about the vice president’s efforts to tackle pollution. In a totally different approach, a new digital ad shown to voters in Georgia and North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene conveys the stakes of the presidential election by illustrating how climate-enhanced storms might threaten babies born today. While living through a fire, flood, or hot weather typically has only a slight effect on how people vote, it’s possible a disaster could make a difference in a close race.
The Environmental Voter Project has a different method of nudging climate-concerned voters to the polls. The group hasn’t endorsed a candidate, and they don’t talk to voters about climate change at all. Instead, the group uses tactics rooted in behavioral science to get people to cast their ballots, tapping into the power of peer pressure — like mailing people their voting histories and reminding them that it’s public record. They’ve also been asking voters how they plan to vote — early, by mail, or by Election Day — phrasing the question so as to sidestep the option of not voting.
“All we’re trying to do,” Stinnett said, “is change someone’s behavior, rather than their minds.”
He is the high chief of the Cakaudrove confederacy, the same province as Rabuka.
He contested the December 2022 election as a candidate for the People’s Alliance Party when he received 652 votes.
The Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre coordinator Shamima Ali said Ratu Naiqama was “not fit” to be president.
“Ratu Naiqama has shown time and time again that he is a misogynist who was once suspended from Parliament for two years for making extremely derogatory comments against the late Speaker of the House, Dr Jiko Luveni,” Ali said in a statement on Wednesday before the parliamentary vote.
She also slammed Women’s Minister Lynda Tabuya for endorsing Ratu Naiqama for the president’s role, calling him a “male champion”.
“We would like the Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection to explain instances — where and how — Ratu Naiqama has consistently worked as a male champion to break the cycle of patriarchy in the whole of Fiji,” Ali said.
Earlier this month, Ratu Naiqama came under fire from human rights campaigners in the country for making, what they said, was “racially charged” and “evil” remarks.
The Fiji Times reports the election of Tui Cakau, Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, as the country’s next president “followed a voting pattern that heralds a significant shift from the traditional positions taken by the Government and the Opposition”.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
On October 24, a U.S. presidential candidate told an interviewer, “Our day one agenda… also includes picking up the phone and telling Bibi Netanyahu that the war is over, because it’s basically our proxy war. We control the armaments, the funding, the diplomatic cover, the intelligence, etc., so we can end this in the blink of an eye with a single phone call, which is what Ronald Reagan did when Israel had gone into Lebanon and was massacring thousands of people. So we can do that right now. That’s day one.”
Tragically, the candidate who said that was not Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Most Americans have been persuaded that Stein cannot win the election, and many believe that voting for her in swing states will help elect Trump by siphoning voters from Harris.
There are many other “third-party” candidates for president, and many of them have good policy proposals for ending the genocidal U.S.-Israeli massacre in Gaza. As the website for Claudia de la Cruz, the presidential candidate for the Party of Socialism and Liberation, explains, “Our tax dollars should be used to meet people’s needs — not pay for the bullets, bombs and missiles used in the massacre in Gaza.”
Many of the principles and policy proposals of “third-party” and independent candidates are more in line with the views of most Americans than those of Harris or Trump. This is hardly surprising given the widely recognized corruption of the U.S. political system. While Trump cynically flip-flops to appeal to both sides on many questions, and Harris generally avoids committing to policy specifics at all, especially regarding foreign policy, most Americans understand that they are both more beholden to the billionaires and corporate interests who fund their campaigns than to the well-being of working Americans or the future of the planet.
Michael Moore has published a flier titled “This Is America,” which shows that large majorities of Americans support “liberal” positions on 18 different issues, from a ceasefire in Gaza to Medicare For All to getting money out of politics.
Moore implies that this should be reassuring to Democrats and Harris supporters, and it would be if she was running on those positions. But, for the most part, she isn’t. On the other hand, many third party and independent candidates for president are running on those positions, but the anti-democratic U.S. political system ensures that they can’t win, even when most Americans agree with them.
War and militarism are the most deadly and destructive forces in human society, with real world, everyday, physical impacts that kill or maim people and destroy their homes, communities and entire countries. So it is deeply disturbing that the political system in the United States has been corrupted into bipartisan subservience to a military-industrial complex (or MICIMATT, to use a contemporary term) that wields precisely the “unwarranted influence” that President Eisenhower warned us against 64 years ago, and uses its influence to drag us into wars that wreak death and destruction in country after country.
Apart from brief wars to recover small neocolonial outposts in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait, all now many decades ago, the U.S. military has not won a war since 1945. It systematically fails on its own terms, while its nakedly lethal and destructive power only fills graveyards and leaves countries in ruins. Far from being an effective vehicle to project American power, unleashing the brutality of the U.S. war machine has become the fastest, surest way to further undermine America’s international standing in the eyes of our neighbors.
After so many wars under so many administrations of both parties, neither Republicans nor Democrats can claim to be a “lesser evil” on questions of war and peace, let alone a “peace party.”
As with so many of America’s problems, from the expansion of corporate and oligarchic power to the generational decline in living standards, the combined impact of decades of Democratic and Republican government is more dangerous, more lasting and more intractable than the policies of any single administration. On no question is this more obvious than on questions of war and peace.
For decades, there was a small but growing progressive wing in the Democratic Party that voted against record military spending and opposed U.S. wars, occupations and coups. But when Bernie Sanders ran for president and millions of grassroots Democrats rallied around his progressive agenda, the Party leaders and their corporate, plutocratic backers fought back more aggressively to defeat Bernie and the progressives than they ever fought to win elections against the Republicans, or to oppose the war on Iraq or tax cuts for the wealthy.
This year, flush with blood money from the Israel lobby, pro-Israel Democrats defeated two of the most progressive, public-spirited Democratic members of Congress, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.
On the Republican side, in response to the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the libertarian Republican member of Congress Ron Paul led a small group of Republicans to join progressive Democrats in an informal bipartisan peace caucus in Congress. In recent years though, the number of members of either party willing to take any kind of stand for peace has shrunk dramatically. So while there are now over 100 Congressional caucuses, from the Candy Caucus to the Pickleball Caucus, there is still not one for peace.
After the neocons who provided the ideological fuel for Bush’s catastrophic wars reconvened around Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Trump tried to “make America’s military great again” by appointing retired generals to his cabinet and characteristically staking out positions all over the map, from a call to kill the families of “terrorists” to a National Defense Strategy naming Russia and China as the “central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security,” to casting himself as a peacemaker by trying to negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea.
Trump is now running against Biden’s war in Ukraine and trying to have it both ways on Gaza, with undying support for Israel and a promise to end the war immediately. Some Palestinian-Americans are supporting Trump for not being the VP for Genocide Joe, just as other people support Harris for not being Trump.
But most Americans know little about Trump’s actual war policy as president. The unique value of a leader like Trump to the military-industrial complex is that he draws attention to himself and diverts attention away from U.S. atrocities overseas.
In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, he oversaw the climax of Obama’s war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which probably killed as many civilians as Israel has massacred in Gaza. In that year alone, the U.S. and its allies dropped over 60,000bombs and missiles on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan,Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia. That was the heaviest bombing since the first Gulf War in 1991, and double the destruction of the “Shock & Awe” bombing of Iraq in 2003.
Most chillingly, the Iraqi forces who defeated the last remnants of ISIS in Mosul’s Old City were ordered to kill all the survivors, fulfilling Trump’s threat to “take out their families.” “We killed them all,” an Iraqi soldier told Middle East Eye. “Daesh, men, women and children. We killed everyone.” If anyone is counting on Trump to save the people of Gaza from Netanyahu and Biden’s genocide, that should be a reality check.
In other areas, Trump’s back-pedaling on Obama’s diplomatic achievements with Iran and Cuba have led to new crises for both those countries on the eve of this election. By moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, bribing Arab despots with ‘Abraham’ deals, and encouraging Netanyahu’s Greater Israel ambitions, Trump primed the powder-keg for the genocide in Gaza and the new crisis in the Middle East under Biden.
On the other side, Harris shares responsibility for genocide, arguably the most serious international crime in the book. To make matters worse, she has connived in a grotesque scheme to provide cover for the genocide by pretending to be working for a ceasefire that, as Jill Stein and many others have said, the U.S. could enforce “in the blink of an eye, with a single phone call” if it really wanted to. As for the future, Harris has only committed to making the U.S. military even more “lethal.”
The movement for a Free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza has failed to win the support of the Republican or Democratic presidential campaigns. But this is not a failure on the part of the Palestinian-Americans we have listened to and worked with, who have engaged in brilliant organizing, gradually raised public awareness and won over more Americans to their cause. They are leading the most successful anti-war organizing campaign in America since the Iraq War.
The refusal of Trump or Harris to listen to the calls of Americans whose families are being massacred in Gaza, and now in Lebanon too, is a failure on the part of the corrupt, anti-democratic political system of which Trump and Harris are figureheads, not a failure of activism or organizing.
Whomever each of us votes for in the presidential election, the campaign to end the genocide in Gaza will continue, and we must grow stronger and smarter and more inclusive until politicians cannot ignore us, no matter how much money the Israel lobby and other corrupt interests throw at them, or at their political opponents.
Whomever we vote for, the elephant in the room will still be US militarism and the violence and chaos it inflicts on the world. Whether Trump or Harris is president, the result will be more of the same, unless we do something to change it. As legendary Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu famously said, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
No American should be condemned for voting for a candidate of their choice, however successfully the Democrats and Republicans have marginalized the very concept of multi-party democracy that the U.S. claims to support in other countries. Whoever wins this election, we must find a way to put peace back on this country’s national agenda, and to make our collective voices heard in ways that cannot be drowned out by oligarchs with big bags of cash.
The British cannot help themselves. They are a meddling island people who conquered huge swathes of the earth in a fictional fit of absentmindedness and remain haughty for having done so. They have fought more countries they can name, engaged in more wars they care to remember. They have overthrown elected rulers and sabotaged incipient democracies. In the twilight of empire, Britain sought, with heavy hearted reluctance, to become wise Greek advisors to their clumsy Roman replacement: the US Imperium.
US politics, to that end, remain a matter of enormous importance to the UK. Interfering in US elections is a habit that dies hardest of all. In 1940, with the relentless march of Nazi Germany’s war machine across Europe, British intelligence officers based in New York and Washington had one primary objective: to aid the election of politicians favouring US intervention on the side of Britain. As Steven Usdin noted in 2017, they also had two other attached goals: “defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they deemed a menace to British security.”
Much of this is also covered in Thomas E. Mahl’s 1998 studyDesperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44, which was initially scoffed at for giving much credence to Britain’s role in creating the office of Coordinator of Information, an entity that became the forerunner of the Office of Strategic Services, itself the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Mahl was, it was revealed in 1999, on to something. In a dull yet revealing study written at the end of World War II documenting the activities of the British Security Coordination office, an outfit established by Canadian spymaster Sir William S. Stephenson with the approval of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, activities of interference are described on a scale to make any modern Russian operative sigh with longing envy. Those roped into the endeavour were a rather colourful lot: the classicist Gilbert Highet, future novelist of dark children’s novels extraordinaire Roald Dahl, and editor of the trade journal Western Hemisphere Weekly Bulletin, Tom Hill.
During Stephenson’s tenure, the office used subversion, sabotage, disinformation and blackmail with relish to influence political outcomes and malign the America Firsters. (How marvellous contemporary.) It cultivated relations with such figures as the 1940 Republican nominee for president, Wendell Willkie. It also offered gobbets of slanted information to media outlets, often produced verbatim, by suborned pro-interventionist hacks. In October 1941, BSC provided FDR a map purporting to detail a plan by Nazi Germany to seize South America, a document the president gratefully waved at a news conference. (The study claims its authenticity, though doubts remain.)
The Democrats are currently receiving the moral and physical aid of volunteers from the British Labour Party, who are throwing in hours and tears for a Kamala Harris victory in various battleground states. Their presence was revealed in a now deleted social media post from Labour’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, noting that somewhere in the order of 100 current and former party staff were heading to the US prior to polling day to campaign in North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
On the other side of the political aisle, Nigel Farage, now Reform UK leader and member for Clacton-on-Sea, has spent much time openly campaigning for Donald Trump. Hardly surprising that he should complain about UK Labour doing what he has been doing habitually since 2016. Walking political disaster and former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, historically the shortest occupant in that office, also put in an appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention to offer what limited support she could.
Trump’s campaign team has taken umbrage at the efforts of Labour Party staffers, enough to file a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC). This is not small beer: any opportunity to allege an unfavourable distortion in votes will be pounced upon. In an October 21 letter to the FEC’s acting general counsel, Lisa J. Stevenson, Trump’s attorney sought “an immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference in the 2024 Presidential Election”. This took “the form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom and accepted by Harris for President, the principal campaign committee of Vice President Kamala Harris.”
The claim makes mention of another effort in the 2016 elections, when the Australian Labor Party furnished the Bernie 2016 campaign representing Senator Bernie Sanders with “delegates to be placed with the campaign”. The ALP covered flights and provided participants with a daily stipend. The FEC subsequently found this to be a provision of campaign services to the Sanders campaign, and determined that it, and the ALP, had violated the foreign national prohibitions. Each received civil penalties of $14,500.
Patel’s announcement, the claim goes on to argue, seems to emulate the overly enthusiastic ALP model. As head of operations, “her LinkedIn posts indicate that she is speaking as a representative of the party.” Her posts supported “a reasonable inference that the Labour Party will finance at least travel and facilitate room and board.”
As regulations stand, FEC rules permit the participation of foreign nationals in campaign activities as long as they remain uncompensated volunteers. If one accepts the narrow reading of the laws according to the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Bluman v FEC, contributions must be of a non-financial nature. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated that party staff have travelled to the US to campaign for Harris “in their own spare time”, staying with other volunteers in the process. By no means is it clear that this did not involve a financial contribution.
Previous public efforts to sway election results in the US by British well-wishers hoping to test the waters have not ended well. In 2004, the Guardian newspaper launched Operation Clark County, a smug and foolish effort to dissuade undecided voters in the swing state of Ohio from voting for the Republican incumbent, George W. Bush. The response was one of unmitigated, volcanic fury. A letter from Wading River, NY captured the mood: “I don’t give a rat’s ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life. If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit.” The letter is coarsening in its finality. “Oh yeah – and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.” Starmer, beware.
Mary Howard-Elley fervently believes illegal immigration in the U.S. is a critical problem that only former President Donald Trump can solve. She says the continuation of his border wall and promised mass deportations will make the country safer. She agrees with Trump’s unfounded claims that Democrats are opening the borders to allow noncitizens to vote, fearing that it could ultimately cost…
It’s been nearly three months since the Venezuelans went to the polls on July 28, and there is still contention domestically and abroad regarding the winner of the presidential election. This is not unexpected.
The US has not recognized the legitimacy of the previous two presidential elections in Venezuela and had announced way before this election that if Washington’s chosen candidate lost, it could only be because of fraud.
The official Venezuelan electoral authority (CNE) declared incumbent President Nicolás Maduro the winner with 52% of the vote. The nearest contender, the US-backed Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, got 43% of the vote.
That outcome was subsequently audited and confirmed by the Venezuelan supreme court (TSJ). Gonzalez claimed that he had evidence that proved he won, but refused to show them to the TSJ, even when he was summoned.
Washington contests the vote
US President Joe Biden had quickly called for new elections in Venezuela. Just as quickly, Biden’s handlers walked that back. The current US position is that the election was for sure fraudulent, but they are waiting for Caracas to issue data on individual polling places before declaring Washington’s designation of the actual president.
The Venezuelan electoral authority has not published detailed vote-count data. Their supreme court’s audit appears to be considered sufficient by the government. As Misión Verdad has noted in various Spanish-language social media, it is common in Latin America for courts to resolve electoral disputes:
Peru 2021 – Keiko Fujimori claimed fraud against Pedro Castillo. The national electoral court certified Castillo a month and a half later.
Brazil 2022 – Jair Bolsonaro challenged Lula da Silva’s victory before the superior electoral court. The court certified Lula 43 days later.
Paraguay 2023 – Two candidates did not recognize Santiago Peña’s victory. The electoral court ratified the results certifying Peña a month later.
Guatemala 2024 – Bernardo Arévalo was certified 5 months after winning the elections, when challenges in the first and second round were settled by the supreme electoral court.
Mexico 2024 – Xólchit Gálvez challenged Claudia Sheinbaum’s victory. The electoral court certified the winner two months later.
Even in the US, when Donald Trump claimed fraud against Joe Biden in several states in 2020, the courts rejected the complaints, and Biden was certified 41 days later.
Moreover, it is a near certainty that the US will not recognize a Maduro government as legitimate irrespective of how well the election is documented. As a UK blogger observes, “The CIA has reacted with disappointment after the world’s largest oil reserves ended up with the wrong leader again.”
Meanwhile, an over enthusiastic Western press claims that the US has already recognized Gonzalez as the legitimate president of Venezuela, despite any such declaration from Washington…yet.
Schemel is arguably among the most qualified people regarding public opinion in Venezuela. His firm, Hinterlaces, takes the pulse of the nation every two weeks. Their polls have been correct, calling most elections in the country within a few points, while most of Venezuela’s other polls have been distorted and politically biased.
Schemel himself is an independent, known for his objectivity. He has not been shy about criticizing the Venezuelan government. On the other hand, he fiercely opposes US unilateral coercive economic measures – euphemistically called sanctions – on his country.
What Schemel reports is that the number one issue on the minds of Venezuelans is not who won the electoral horse race but rather the state of the economy and, more to the point, their personal income. Hinterlaces reports 72% of Venezuelans want to “close the electoral stage and continue working.”
Venezuelans have conflicting views on who won the election. According to a Hinterlaces poll taken on August 9, a significant majority of 59% believe Maduro won. A very divided opposition, Schemel explained, did not have the capacity to mobilize voters.
Both pro-government chavistas and disaffected sections in the broader population are weary of the polarization, longing for national peace.
Polls show a consistently loyal 35% support for the government Socialist Party (PSUV). But even the party faithful seek a more effective and productive socialism.
A hardcore 14% fall into the committed opposition camp. But despite Washington anointing Gonzalez as the leader of a “unified opposition,” there is no one opposition politician that appears to have a dedicated following on the ground, according to Schemel.
Washington’s designated opposition leader, Edmundo Gonzalez, was completely unknown before he was personally chosen to run for the presidency by another US-anointed opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado. She was ineligible to hold public office due to past offenses.
In any case, Gonzalez voluntarily left Venezuela for Spain on September 8, taking the wind out of the opposition’s sails. His departure on a Spanish military plane was negotiated with the Venezuelan government.
US intervention in Venezuela
Gonzalez and Machado have welcomed US sanctions on their country and have called for even harsher measures to force Maduro out of office. In contrast, Hinterlaces reports 63% of Venezuelans believe that leaders who called for sanctions should be prosecuted.
Gonzalez ran on a platform of privatizing nearly everything, which runs contrary to most popular sentiment. Hinterlaces reports, for example, that 61% of Venezuelans reject the idea of privatizing PDVSA, the state oil company.
Schemel condemned the nearly one thousand sanctions by the US. What amounts to a blockade has devastated PDVSA, the primary source of funds for public services. Under the impact of US unilateral coercive economics measures, Schemel reports that the role of the state as a guarantor of social welfare has been eroded.
Washington’s “multi-dimensional war,” in Schemel’s words, has led to a decline in the quality of life. This “unfair and unequal” assault has generated anxiety and rage in the population.
The majority, Schemel reports, still favor a mix of socialist and private economic measures consistent with the chavista vision. Some 70% do not believe the opposition can solve the country’s economic problems. This majority wants to see the chavista model work more fruitfully, according to Schemel’s data. They do not want regime change but rather yearn for reconciliation and union.
In about six weeks from now, Venezuela will inaugurate its next president on January 10. Gonzalez, incredibly, claims that he will be back in Caracas to receive the presidential sash.
And what will Washington do? US Vice President Kamala Harris says “we’re not going to use US military” on Venezuela if Maduro doesn’t voluntarily leave office. Such a statement from the vice president of the world’s hegemon is to be welcomed. But the fact that she even thinks that the violent overthrow of a sovereign state is something worth explicitly ruling out itself speaks volumes.
In February 2017, as Donald Trump took office, The Washington Postadopted the first slogan in its 140-year history: “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.
How ironic, then, that it should now be helping to extinguish the flame of American democracy by refusing to endorse a candidate for the forthcoming presidential election.
This decision, and a similar one by the second of America’s big three newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, disgraces journalism, disgraces the papers’ own heritage and represents an abandonment of civic responsibility at a moment when United States faces its most consequential presidential election since the Civil War.
At stake is whether the United States remains a functioning democracy or descends into a corrupt plutocracy led by a convicted criminal who has already incited violence to overturn a presidential election and has shown contempt for the conventions on which democracy rests.
Everyone should cancel their Washington Post subscription after Bezos copped out on a presidential endorsement. It is shameful how far a once great newspaper has fallen. I cancelled today.
Why did they do it? Why would two of the Western world’s finest newspapers take such a recklessly irresponsible decision?
It cannot be on the basis of any rational assessment of the respective fitness for office of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
It also cannot be on the basis of their own reporting and analysis of the candidates, where the lies and threats issued by Trump have been fearlessly recorded. In this context, the decision to not endorse a candidate is a betrayal of their own editorial staff. The Post’s editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, resigned in protest at the paper’s decision not to endorse Harris.
This leaves, in my view, a combination of cowardice and greed as the only feasible explanation. Both newspapers are owned by billionaire American businessmen: The Post by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, and the LA Times by Patrick Soon-Shiong, who made his billions through biotechnology.
Bezos bought The Post in 2013 through his private investment company Nash Holdings, and Soon-Shiong bought the LA Times in 2018 through his investment firm Nant Capital. Both run the personal risk of suffering financially should a Trump presidency turn out to be hostile towards them.
During the election campaign, Trump has made many threats of retaliation against those in the media who oppose him. He has indicated that if he regains the White House, he will exact vengeance on news outlets that anger him, toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he doesn’t like.
Trump threatens to jail political opponents. Video: CBS News
Logic would suggest that in the face of these threats, the media would do all in their power to oppose a Trump presidency, if not out of respect for democracy and free speech then at least in the interests of self-preservation. But fear and greed are among the most powerful of human impulses.
The purchase of these two giants of the American press by wealthy businessmen is a consequence of the financial pressures exerted on the professional mass media by the internet and social media.
Bezos was welcomed with open arms by the Graham family, which had owned The Post for four generations. But the paper faced unsustainable financial losses arising from the loss of advertising to the internet.
At first he was seen not just by the Grahams but by the executive editor, Marty Baron, as a saviour. He injected large sums of money into the paper, enabling it to regain much of the prestige and journalistic capacity it had lost.
Baron, in his book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and The Washington Post, was full of praise for Bezos’s financial commitment to the paper, and for his courage in the face of Trumpian hostility. During Trump’s presidency, the paper kept a log of his lies, tallying them up at 30,573 over the four years.
Against this history, the paper’s abdication of its responsibilities now is explicable only by reference to a loss of heart by Bezos.
At the LA Times, the ownership of the Otis-Chandler families also spanned four generations, but the impact of the internet took a savage toll there as well. Between 2000 and 2018 its ownership passed through three hands, ending up with Soon-Shiong.
Both newspapers reached the zenith of their journalistic accomplishments during the last three decades of the 20th century, winning Pulitzer Prices and, in the case of The Post, becoming globally famous for its coverage of the Watergate scandal.
This, in the days when American democracy was functioning according to convention, led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president.
The two reporters responsible for this coverage, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, issued a statement about the decision to not endorse a candidate:
Marty Baron, who was a ferociously tough editor, posted on X: “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”
Now, of the big three, only The New York Times is prepared to endorse a candidate for next month’s election. It has endorsed Harris, saying of Trump: “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States.”
Why does it matter? It matters because in democracies the media are the means by which voters learn not just about facts but about the informed opinion of those who, by virtue of access and close acquaintance, are well placed to make assessments of candidates between whom those voters are to choose. It is a core function of the media in democratic societies.
Their failure is symptomatic of the malaise into which American democracy has sunk.
In 2018, two professors of government at Harvard, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, published a book, How Democracies Die. It was both reflective and prophetic. Noting that the United States was now more polarised than at any time since the Civil War, they wrote:
America is no longer a democratic model. A country whose president attacks the press, threatens to lock up his rival, and declares he might not accept the election results cannot credibly defend democracy. Both potential and existing autocrats are likely to be emboldened with Trump in the White House.
Symbolically, that The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times should have gone dark at this moment is reminiscent of the remark made in 1914 by Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey:
The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
Democratic leader María Corina Machado and exiled presidential candidate Edmundo González won the top human rights award for representing all Venezuelans who are “fighting for the restoration of freedom and democracy.” | Marcelo Perez del Carpio/Getty Images
The European Parliament on Thursday 24 October 2024 awarded the Sakharov Prize to Venezuela’s opposition leaders. Democratic leader María Corina Machado and exiled presidential candidate Edmundo González won the top human rights award for representing all Venezuelans who are “fighting for the restoration of freedom and democracy.”
The Venezuelan opposition leaders were nominated by the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). The far-right Patriots group rallied behind them after their original candidate, tech billionaire Elon Musk, failed to make the shortlist for the prestigious prize.
After Venezuela’s elections in late July, in which incumbent socialist President Nicolás Maduro declared victory for another term, the European Union’s foreign service said it would not recognize the results because the government had failed to release supporting voting records from polling stations.
The authoritarian Maduro’s disputed declaration of victory sparked massive opposition protests and a violent government crackdown that left more than two dozen people dead and nearly 200 injured.
Later, presidential candidate González — who fled to Madrid during the crackdown — was recognized by the European Parliament as the country’s legitimate leader.
Two other finalists made the shortlist. One was Gubad Ibadoghlu, a jailed Azerbaijani dissident and critic of the fossil fuel industry nominated by the Greens. The other finalist was a joint nomination of Israeli and Palestinian peace organizations Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun. The groups, who announced a partnership in 2022, were nominated by the Socialists and the Renew group.
I was disappointed to find two of my old comrades (avowed Marxists) distributing a video appeal to vote for Harris-Walz to save “American representative democracy” from the threat of Trump “fascism”. Whatever one believes about a possible 2nd Trump presidency, there are enormous defects in said video appeal (which largely repeats the same narrative as do other “Marxist” backers of the Harris-Walz campaign).
Video content. One of said old comrades asserts that disseminating said video will enable people “to be informed”. In fact, it is a disinformation propaganda piece repeating the hypocritical Harris-Walz campaign narrative. It focuses exclusive on Trump and his backers; and it omits all mention of the actual record of the Biden-Harris Presidency and of the Harris-Walz campaign. Misleading arguments and deceitful omissions therein include the following.
(1) It suggests that Trump, if he loses, will launch a second insurrection and attempt a military coup. In fact, Trump’s 2021 MAGA insurrection was possible only because he then was commander-in-chief. With Biden in the Oval Office until inauguration day on January 20, suggestion of a MAGA insurrection and coup is baseless fearmongering; any attempt would be an absolute fiasco (even more so than the one in 2021).
(2) It describes Trump as lacking respect for the rule of law. That is fair; but centrist Democrats, while less blatant, are not much better (and no better at all in foreign policy). In fact, said Democrats expose their own contempt for democracy, by acting to keep the actually progressive Green Party off the ballot wherever they can do so. Moreover, Democrat politicians portrayed Trump’s 2016 win and presidency as illegitimate because of “Russian meddling”, evading their candidate’s flaws and ineffective campaign. Congressional Democrats then conducted a purely partisan impeachment over his temporary hold on appropriated military aid for Ukraine, despite that the preceding Obama-Biden administration had done the same (even if not from such partisan motives). Trump is habituated to respond to attacks with counterattacks. Trump undoubtedly concluded that the Democrats were playing dirty, so why should he not do likewise!
(3) It reports Trump’s promise that he will build an “iron dome” anti-missile system over the US which would destabilizing nuclear deterrence and increase the threat of nuclear apocalypse. One of Trump’s multiple grandiose promises! The video evades the fact that Biden and Harris have already committed the US to a destabilizing nuclear-weapons modernization program [Xiaodon Liang: U.S. Nuclear Modernization Programs (Arms Control Association, 2024 Aug)] while aggressively provoking the other major nuclear power with a proxy war against it in Ukraine. The US has already abandoned crucial arms control treaties (ABM, INF, Open Skies) despite Russian objections; and Harris, like Biden, shows no interest in renewing them.
(4) It says that Trump would pour billions into military spending for the benefit of the merchants of death. He would, but the video minimizes the fact that Biden-Harris is already doing exactly that with their demands for ever increasing military spending, despite that the US is by far the world’s biggest military spender (38% of world total as of 2021 according to SIPRI, and, with other NATO added, it comes to 54%, while Russia’s share is 3.1%).
(5) It complains that Trump would attempt to impose a Pax Americana upon the world. It evades the fact that Biden and Harris are pursuing a new cold war against China as well as the one against Russia, while maintaining hundreds of foreign military bases on every populated continent and continuing the US pursuit of global “full-spectrum dominance”. Here the only meaningful difference between Harris and Trump is that Trump, unlike Harris, wants to end Biden’s new cold war against major-nuclear-power Russia.
(6) It notes that Trump is pro-Zionist and will back the Israeli genocide in Gaza and elsewhere. True, but it evades the fact that Biden and Harris have been funding and equipping said genocidal mass murder, and continue to do so, while vetoing UN resolutions and other efforts to stop it.
(7) It notes that Trump would reverse efforts to replace reliance upon fossil fuels thereby accelerating the coming of climate catastrophe. However, the video evades the fact that Biden-Harris and Harris-Walz have already committed to preserve reliance upon fossil fuels. Although the Biden-Harris regime provides incentives for clean energy (produced for profit by capitalist firms); it also continues existing subsidies for fossil fuels and refuses to take action to curb fossil-fuel extraction. In fact, the US is the world’s top producer of oil and natural gas; and the Biden-Harris team actively facilitates both drilling and fossil fuel exports [Allie Rosenbluth: “Biden’s fossil fuel hypocrisy is betraying the planet,” Al Jazeera, 2023 July].
(8) It speculates that Trump would prevent needed regulation of AI. It evades the fact that the Harris’ campaign platform is silent on this issue (and on much else, likely a concession to anti-Trump neocon Republicans whose votes they are pursuing).
(9) It says that a Trump-Vance administration will serve Wall Street thru deregulation of the economy and undoing of social welfare programs. On this point, Trump would no doubt be somewhat worse than Biden and Harris. He is a deregulator and backer of tax cuts especially for the rich. However, left unsaid is: that most Democrats in Congress and the Harris-Walz campaign are every bit as reliant upon corporate and billionaire donors as is Trump-Vance, and the resulting subservience to capitalist campaign funders is a bipartisan practice. In fact, Harris’ proposed tax reforms, if actually enacted, would be very modest. Moreover, the Keynesian policies of Biden and Harris invariably rely upon private enterprise and consistently avoid seriously offending powerful corporate profiteers.
(10) Omitted is any mention of Trump’s hostility to immigration by poor people of color fleeing impossible conditions resulting from past and current Western imperial interventions and impositions. Why the silence? Biden-Harris, in their 2020 campaign, promised a humane immigration policy in contrast to that of Trump. But, in his 1st year, Biden deported some 20,000 Haitians (more than his 3 predecessors combined over 20 years). The Biden-Harris regime continued Trump’s disingenuous Title 42 rule to shut the border to most would-be immigrants. In 2024, for the sake of political expediency, Biden and Harris capitulated to MAGA Republican demands in a failed bipartisan immigration bill (which Harris promises to resurrect). Biden then issued an executive order which effectively closes the border to most of the desperate migrants and denies access to hearings for nearly all asylum seekers; and Harris defends that action. Centrist Democrat politicians have no principles which they will not abandon for the sake of political expediency.
Fascist repression? The video predicts that a 2nd Trump presidency would be a thoroughly repressive autocracy. It quotes extensively from fascistic Trump advisors (Bannon, Flynn, Thiel, Leo) who make statements suggestive of seeking to undo “American representative democracy” in the interests of ultra-reactionary corporate oligarchs and bigoted “Christian” nationalist theocrats. Certainly, a President Trump would like to be able to exercise CEO-type autocratic power. The video assumes that he would be able to actually do so. Problems with this scenario.
(1) In the video itself, JD Vance complains over the near total lack of oligarch support for the Bannon-Flynn-Thiel-Leo program. In fact, capital rules in this so-called “democracy”; and most capitalist oligarchs (while they may like Trump’s regulatory and tax policies) are not currently willing (unlike in capital-threatened 1920s Italy and 1933 Germany) to jettison pluralist liberal “democracy”.
(2) Trump is a notorious liar with both threats and promises (largely BS which his hardcore MAGA base loves to hear). He promises a massive increase in good jobs for workers; he will not deliver. He promises stable affordable prices for consumer essentials; but his promised tariffs would actually increase said prices. He threatens to veto a 15-week national abortion ban; who will trust that he would actually do so? Would he roll back some existing progressive reforms? He would try; but, absent a compliant Congress, not all that he threatens.
(3) Trump is a reactionary demagogue who has found success in pandering to bigotry. Nevertheless, his only real loyalty is to his narcissist self. He craves popular adoration. So, he would promptly abandon any policies which would bring strong and widespread public opposition (just as he has been wavering on the abortion issue). Moreover, institutional resistance would thwart any attempt to install a full-blown autocratic regime or all-out repression of dissent.
(4) Democrats have utterly failed, even when in control of Congress and the Oval Office, to prevent a considerable evisceration of such limited “democracy” as once existed in the US. They have taken no action to remake the rogue-dominated Supreme Court. Even with trifecta control of the federal government, they failed to enact needed legislation: for police accountability, for voting rights protections (including to stop gerrymanders or even to mandate proportional allocation of Presidential electors), for campaign finance (including legislative reversal of Citizens United), and so on. They refused (under Obama) to enact the pro-labor Employee Free Choice Act even when they had trifecta control of the federal government including filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate. Moreover, it is the effects of the Democrats’ decades of embracing neoliberal economic policy which created the level of popular discontent which Trump-MAGA reaction has successfully exploited. Furthermore, half the “states” have been captured by MAGA Republicans who have already taken advantage of federal government inaction and reaction in order to enact some bigoted and anti-democratic policies. Can anyone credibly show that a Harris-Walz administration would actually take the requisite measures (which Democrats failed to take during previous opportunities) in order to reverse much, if any, of that?
(5) Whatever Trump would do to suppress dissent would provoke a powerful popular resistance and thereby spur badly needed revolutionary organizing. Meanwhile, progressives’ reliance upon centrist Democrats effectively discourages organizing for revolution or even for decisive action against MAGA reaction.
Choice. The Harris-Walz campaign had 2 choices: (1) center-right alliance with neocon imperialists (Dick and Liz Cheney, John Bolton, et al) and genocide-backing Zionists; or (2) center-left alliance aligning with the social justice advocates for human rights in Palestine, Lebanon, Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, et cetera. It chose the former. Although a Harris Presidency would be a little less oppressive domestically then one led by Trump, there is no reason to believe it would be any less oppressive and murderous in its foreign policy.
“Antifascist united front”! In the US, many avowed “socialists” (claiming to be anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-genocide, pro-social-justice, et cetera) are advocating for a “broad anti-fascist united front” in support of the Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton campaign in order to block Trump from another 4 years in the Oval Office. There are 2 possible evaluations of that policy: (1) it is a surrender to genocidal imperialism; or (2) it is a necessary compromise to prevent systemic repression of our struggles for social justice. Problems with said “united front”.
(1) This “united front” rests upon unquestioning acceptance of the Democrat fearmongering campaign narrative. For reasons provided in 2 above, this a highly dubious premise.
(2) Given the Harris-Walz choice to ally with the rightwing neocon Republicans and spurn the anti-genocide social-justice voters; said united front, with its proponents’ refusal to condemn the Biden-Harris foreign policy and immigration practice, is a surrender to genocidal imperialism. In fact, many of the avowedly Marxist anti-imperialist organizations which are pressing for left unity behind the Harris-Walz campaign have actively embraced US imperialism as they also back Biden’s new cold war against Russia.
(3) The united front with Harris et al to block Trump from regaining the Presidency is a tactical move, but one whose proponents evidently have not connected to any strategic plan, certainly none which its proponents (so far as I have seen) have presented. They do not explain how blocking Trump will eliminate MAGA reaction or other obstacles in the way of advance toward revolutionary people power, or even securing basic democratic civil liberties (which have also come under attack from Biden and other Democrat office-holders: witness repression of campus protests, prosecutions of journalists and whistle-blowers, refusal to pardon unjustly-held political prisoners). They seem not to recognize that tactics divorced from strategy is a recipe for ultimate failure. Suppose Harris wins; will MAGA go away? What will prevent the MAGA party, led by a more astute and articulate Vance, from winning in 2028 or 2032? The anti-Trump obsessives do not even raise the question. Neither do they say how they will get the Democrats to actually act to roll back MAGA power in the red states or in the Supreme Court. They evidently have no strategic plan. They simply obsess over the odiousness of Trump and the bigotry of his MAGA base while unquestioningly accepting liberal Democrat fearmongering that he will exercise unconstrained repression against the left. In fact, unless Democrats obtain decisive control of both houses of Congress (very unlikely) along with the Presidency, they will continue to be too weak and too indecisively fickle to be able to undo MAGA rule in the red states or in the Supreme Court.
Strategy. What is a correct strategy and tactics? Consider the following!
(1) Any strategy must be formulated in accordance with the ultimate objective. For revolutionary socialists the ultimate objective is comprehensive social justice (economic, environmental, civil rights, human rights, international). That will require replacing the capitalist social order (in which the prime societal imperative is the selfish pursuit of private gain and the accumulation of private wealth by predatory means, producing a ubiquity of social evils). The needed replacement is a progressive social order (socialism wherein the societal imperative will be the satisfaction of human and social needs).
(2) The long-term strategic plan under pluralist liberal capitalist pseudo-democracy must be to build a revolutionary social justice movement to force concessions (progressive reforms) from the capital-subservient regime. Priority must be: for reforms to empower the people (the working class and its allies) and to impose constraints upon the exercise of power by capital, not for liberal-reformist ameliorative measures to keep down discontent and the populace politically passive. These struggles for concessions must be used to draw people into struggle against the capital-serving regime so as to educate them as to the obscured realities of capitalism and thereby build a growing revolutionary social justice movement.
(3) Also necessary are temporary and limited alliances (tactical united fronts) with capitalist political factions (centrist liberals and sometimes with illiberal reactionaries [*]) on issues where said ally is actually committed to the fight for some useful enactment.
[*] Example. The anti-imperialist left should ally with Trump and his MAGA Republicans in advocating for cutting off US funding for Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
(4) Even if a strategic united front against MAGA fascism were appropriate, its proponents’ current practice is fundamentally wrong. Our task can never be to build a progressive voter constituency for capital-serving centrist Democrat politicians. It must always be to build/organize the independent (of all capital-serving parties) revolutionary social justice movement fighting for its current strategic objective whether that be: (a) preventing or undoing fascistic repression, or (b) obtaining people-empowering and capital-constraining reforms so as to enable the people (the working class and its allies) to eventually seize state power.
(5) Even if backing Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton were truly necessary and appropriate, then the correct policy would be to inform our listeners as to the capital-subservient genocidal-imperialist perfidious nature of said centrist party while also explaining why and how its election would contribute to our cause. When one goes silent on imperialism while backing extreme imperialist politicians, one abets their imperial crimes against humanity. If we do not tell the truth (the whole truth) to our listeners, they will eventually stop listening thereby leaving us with no following. Dimitrov, laying out policy for the popular front against fascism [in his Main Report delivered at the Seventh World Congress of the Communist International” (1935)] noted that “Communists, of course, cannot and must not for a moment abandon their own independent work of Communist education, organization and mobilization of the masses.” And as Mao stated [in On Policy (1940)], “United Front policy is neither all alliance and no struggle nor all struggle and no alliance, but combines alliance and struggle”.
Conclusions. The aforementioned video is simply devoid of any critique of Biden’s unjust policies or of the Democrat campaign’s endorsement thereof. My avowedly Marxist and anti-imperialist old comrades, using said video to win votes for said campaign, are, in effect, conducting a whitewash in pursuit of a win for the Harris-Walz-Cheney-Bolton center-right ticket. In portraying the perfidious centrist Democrats as saviors of progress and “democracy”, they neglect, even undermine, efforts to build the revolutionary social justice movement.
In my opinion, the liberal “socialist” assertion, that a Trump win in November will be the end of progressive political activism and anti-capitalist resistance in the US, is mistaken. It is what centrist Democrats (and their rightwing Republican allies) want us to believe. Nevertheless, we should take precautions. Accordingly, my prescription is to oppose both lawless ultra-reactionary Trump and genocidal imperialist Harris for commander-in-chief (by voting for genuine progressive Jill Stein). Democrats are already vilifying Stein and her voters as facilitators of a possible Trump win. In fact, if the Democrats lose because of the numbers of progressives voting for a real progressive, it will be their own fault on account of their genocidal and other anti-people policy choices. Moreover, it will send them a message that they need to actually earn the votes of progressive left voters rather than continue to take those votes for granted. As for precautions, I advocate asking people to vote for all Democrats (however genocidal, imperialist, and capital-subservient) in Congressional races so as to deny Trump and his MAGA Republicans complete domination of the federal government. Given the anti-people policies of both major parties, a largely ineffective divided federal government is somewhat to our advantage.
The report, which follows an October fact-finding mission to Georgia, highlights the “climate of fear” under which journalists operate following the passage of a Russian-style “foreign agents” law and issues recommendations on key challenges faced by independent media, including physical attacks, intimidation campaigns, and impunity.
As the U.S. presidential election goes into its final sprint, efforts to portray one candidate or the other in a good or bad light are increasingly evident. In this vein, we see Donald Trump called a fascist, including by Kamala Harris and John Kelly, former Trump chief of staff. Meanwhile, Harris is doing her utmost to disassociate herself from the Biden presidency. This is so even though what she stands for is essentially the same as what both Biden and Trump stand for. Namely, to strengthen the police powers at the disposal of the president to provide U.S. control of unfolding events both at home and abroad. As we see in Palestine, Lebanon, on the U.S. southern border and even in the crude assaults on civil rights — all in the name of national security and maintaining the kind of order the U.S. stands for — this is giving rise to the use of extreme violence. Both within the U.S. and across the entire world, the peoples reject not only the use of violence to solve problems but, most definitively, the use of extreme violence which is abhorrent.
Due to the people’s rising consciousness about all of this, a consciousness which exists independent of their individual wills, a feature of this election is the failure of the “Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils” argument. This is the argument routinely used to promote the view that the only choice citizens have is one despicable candidate over the other. For some time, the argument has been an integral part of state-organized disinformation to stop the people from setting their own agenda and plan.
It is interesting how in this election there is no attempt to even present these candidates as representatives of the people, though they claim to be “for the people.” Instead, they are presented as the agents of change. It is even said that this one or that one provides “more space for resistance.”
Everything is done to avert any discussion on what kind of change the people need and what kind of change these candidates stand for. To be debated is what either one may or may not do and say but not what they are already doing and what this tells of where the rulers as a class and the country are headed.
Everyone is to be diverted from thinking and action, analyzing how best to advance and unify the movements of the peoples for change which favours their interests. It shows that establishing the starting point for discussion among the people is key if change is not to be a casualty in this election once again.
In this regard, the idea that the role the U.S. working class and people can play is to choose the “lesser of two evils” is not catching fire as it did in the 2016 election where one candidate, Trump, was painted as a “fascist” and the other, Hillary Clinton, was painted as a “progressive,” her use of extreme violence abroad completely silenced. Those pushing this campaign were clearly shocked when Clinton lost the election to Trump following which they declared the “uneducated white working class” to be racist, fascist, homophobic and many other slanders. It was an attempt to further divide working people from coast to coast.
The more the peoples’ movements tackled the blatant injustices on all fronts, the more attempts to divide the people by those claiming to be progressive and “politically correct” were left behind. All of this is now to be dismissed. The advances and increased unity of the peoples’ movements are to be ignored. Kamala Harris is to be the people’s champion now, a champion promoted and backed by the same ruling factions which supported Hillary Clinton against Trump in the 2016 election and Biden against Trump in the 2020 election.
Unfolding events and unity in action of the peoples from all walks of life exposed these various efforts of the rulers as false and disinforming, designed by those with state-backing to split the peoples’ ranks. Instead of stopping their attempts to label people on a racist and false basis, now the notion of “voting blocs” is promoted night and day. The claim is individual votes can somehow be aggregated into blocs — the Black vote, the Latinx vote, the youth vote, the women’s vote, the racist voters, the homophobic voters, the LGBTQ2S+ votes, the progressive voters and so on.
The promotion of “voting blocs” and how they will line up, and organizing on this basis continues but is such a fraud that it does not hold sway. The promotion of the fraudulent idea of “voting blocs” is linked to the promotion of “issues” the rulers declare the people of the United States care about. The existence of these “voting blocs” has been proven to be a figment of the imagination of the rulers and their candidates and elections time and time again but, nonetheless, they persist in declaring what the “issues” are and linking these “issues” to “voting blocs.” They do not permit the people to play any role in deciding anything.
Workers, women and youth and the forces fighting against racial discrimination and for justice over the past decades especially are fed up with these efforts to divide the people on a racist and fabricated basis and secure support for aggression and wars abroad and repression at home.
To deal with this, in this election a diversion is to present “extremes” as a problem and measures are consistently taken to criminalize those seen to be extremist when they uphold the rights of the peoples. According to Trump, the extreme “left” is a menace while the Harris forces say the danger comes from Trump and his right-wing “extremists.” And Trump himself is again called a fascist while Harris, who supports genocide in Palestine in the name of Israel’s right to self-defence is not.
Harris is presented as a “new way forward” even though she espouses what is essentially the worn out neo-liberal “third way” as originally presented by Tony Blair and his New Labour in Britain, and taken up by the Clintons and others who have caused disasters both at home and abroad. So too Barack Obama, the Liberals in Canada headed by Justin Trudeau, and liberal think-tanks and pundits desperately try to block change by claiming they stand for change, women’s rights, human rights, a green environment and more.
A key part of this “third way” is the promotion of the view that the executive power knows what is and is not good for the country and the entire world. Under its aegis, political parties have been destroyed and everyone must fend for themselves. In the name of defending human rights, free speech and democracy, “colour revolutions” for regime change are organized when countries uphold their sovereign right to determine their own affairs. This “third way” is the same old way of preserving the existing state structures which keep the people out of power.
The peoples are demanding and fighting for change in their favour and striving to ensure the election does not divert and disrupt this striving and their growing unity. Campaigns like “No Votes for Genocide” and “Abandon Killer Kamala” are evidence of this, as are continuing actions on campuses, in cities and towns, large and small, in support of Palestine and for an arms embargo and ceasefire now. The issue of U.S./Zionist genocide remains front and center.
Workers from all sectors of the economy are bringing forward answers, as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic, as strikes by health care workers, Boeing workers and East Coast longshoremen indicate. Working people can better govern the country but political power is kept out of their hands. Elections are designed to hide this while ensuring power and institutions of government remain in the hands of the private oligopolies with their pro-war, anti-social agendas.
It is the U.S. working class and people continuing their battles for the rights of all, at home and abroad that represent the modern democracy needed today. Refusing to be drawn into the pro and con debates of the election campaigns and advancing the fight for empowerment by persisting in defiantly speaking in our own name and refusing to allow the rich and their candidates to speak for us — will carry forward the fight for change that favours the people.
Boeing workers strike rally, October 15, 2024, day 33 of their strike.
The World Uyghur Congress will elect a new president and 34 other officials during its general assembly starting Thursday in Sarajevo, despite unprecedented harassment and threats from the Chinese government to disrupt the meeting.
The harassment has scared off potential candidates for the leadership of the Uyghur advocacy organization, with only one person — Turghunjan Alawudun — running for president, said Dolkun Isa, who has been in the role since November 2017.
Alawudun, 58, a German citizen who lives in Munich, has been involved in the WUC since its inception in 2004. He is currently one of the organization’s four vice chairman of the executive committee
“He has been faithfully serving the WUC since its foundation,” Isa said of Alawudun. “He is highly reputable and respected by the Uyghurs in the diaspora.”
The Oct. 24-27 gathering in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, will bring together about 176 Uyghur delegates from 27 countries, including the United States.
They will select a new president, three vice presidents, an executive committee chairman, four vice chairmen and 16 commission chairs.
Uyghur genocide
Based in Munich, the WUC is the largest and most prominent organization seeking to promote democracy, human rights and freedom for Uyghurs, 12 million of whom live in Xinjiang, a vast region in northwestern China.
It aims to use peaceful means to chart the political future of East Turkistan — Uyghurs preferred name for where they live.
For years, China has systematically oppressed the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, herding 1.8 million of them into concentration camps and subjecting many to forced labor. Many of the mostly Muslim Uyghurs have been arrested and imprisoned for contacting relatives outside of China or observing Muslim practices.
The U.S. government and other Western parliaments have labeled China’s treatment of the Uyghurs a “genocide,” and the United Nations concluded in an exhaustive report that China may be guilty of crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.
Turghunjan Alawudun, who is running for World Uyghur Congress president, is seen in an undated photo. (RFA)
But China designates the WUC a terrorist organization, accusing it of conspiring with separatists and religious extremists to plan terror attacks and seek Uyghur independence. It also deems Isa, a human right defender, a terrorist.
The nominee for chair of the WUC’s executive committee — another important position — is Rushan Abbas, 57, executive director of an activist group, Campaign for Uyghurs, based in Washington, Isa said.
Intimidation
The WUC’s general assembly comes amid heightened threats on possible candidates for leadership positions.
Both Alawudun and Abbas faced slander, intimidation and threats since they nominated themselves for the positions, the WUC and Abbas told RFA.
China threatened Alawudun’s relatives who live in the city of Aksu in Xinjiang, saying they would face reprisals if he ran for the WUC presidency, the organization said.
In a statement issued on Oct. 18, the WUC outlined the threats and harassment by China intended to disrupt the organization’s general assembly. They included pressure by the Chinese Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina to cancel the meeting and threats to arrest Isa, a German citizen, while he is in Sarajevo.
Rushan Abbas, executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs, holds a photo of her sister, who is imprisoned in a Chinese camp, during a rally in New York on March 22, 2021. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP)
Ongoing threats against candidates and their families is one reason why there is only one person running for president, Isa said.
“Some withdrew from their candidacy after China threatened their loved ones in our homeland,” he said.
“Some younger activists who are qualified to run stated they are not ready for it,” Isa said. “But I believe the Chinese threat played a key role. It is difficult for them to bear the persecution coming from China.”
The Chinese Embassy didn’t answer phone calls or reply to written requests by Radio Free Asia to comment on the threats and harassment outlined by the WUC.
Candidate requirements
Those running for president must have served the WUC for at least seven years, be fluent in at least two foreign languages, and possess significant global credibility in the world and among Uyghurs.
They also must have paid WUC membership fees consistently and have not traveled to China or territories under Chinese control since 2009. Their direct relatives cannot have any connection to Chinese entities or companies.
The WUC also said China used proxy organizations — foreign groups that oppose the WUC or ones that are “Uyghur” in name but believed to be doing China’s bidding — to spread fear and uncertainty about the safety of the participants and to threaten to disrupt the conference’s proceedings.
“Some of our delegates were warned by the security agency in their country not to attend the assembly,” Isa said. “Some were not able to come due to visa issues. But they will all attend and vote online during the election this Saturday.”
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Edited by Malcolm Foster and Roseanne Gerin.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur.
At least one tactic in this year’s election subversion playbook is clear. Step one: before Election Day, file a slew of lawsuits making baseless allegations of bloated voter rolls, unlawful voting, and problematic election procedures. Step two: if right-wing activists are unhappy with election results, point to those previously filed cases to justify demands to halt certification or change…
Helene and Milton, the two massive hurricanes that just swept into the country — killing hundreds of people, and leaving both devastation and rumblings of political upheaval in seven states — amounted to their own October surprise. Not that the storms led to some irredeemable gaffe or unveiled some salacious scandal. The surprise, really, may be that not even the hurricanes have pushed concerns about climate change more toward the center of the presidential campaign.
With early voting already underway and two weeks before Election Day, when voters will decide between Vice President Kamala Harris, who has called climate change an “existential threat,” and former President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” Grist’s editorial staff presents a climate-focused voter’s guide — a package of analyses and predictions about what the next four years may bring from the White House, depending on who wins.
The next administration will be decisive for the country’s progress on critical climate goals. By 2030, just a year after the next president would leave office, the U.S. has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels, and expects to supply up to 13 million electric vehicles annually. A little further down the line, though no less critical, the country’s climate goals include reaching 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035 and achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
As you gear up to vote, here are 15 ways that Harris’ and Trump’s climate- and environment-related policies could affect your life — along with some information to help inform your vote.
Robert Nickelsberg / Contributor
Grist / Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images / Grist
Your energy mix
Over the last year or so, utility companies across the country have woken up to a new reality: After two decades of flat growth, electricity demand is about to spike, due to the combined pressures of new data centers, cryptocurrency mining, a manufacturing boom, and the electrification of buildings and transportation.
While the next president will not directly decide how the states supply power to their new and varied customers, he or she will oversee the massive system of incentives, subsidies, and loans by which the federal government influences how much utilities meet electricity demand by burning fossil fuels — the crucial question for the climate.
Trump’s answer to that question can perhaps be summed up in the three-word catchphrase he’s deployed on the campaign trail: “Drill, baby, drill.” He is an avowed friend of the fossil fuel industry, from whom he reportedly demanded $1 billion in campaign funds at a fundraising dinner last spring, promising in exchange to gut environmental regulations.
Vice President Harris is not exactly running on a platform of decarbonization, either. In an effort to win swing votes in the shale-boom heartland of Pennsylvania, she has reversed course on her past opposition to fracking, and she has proudly touted the record levels of oil and gas production seen under the current administration. Despite the risk of nuclear waste, the Biden administration has also championed nuclear power as a carbon-free solution and sought to incentivize the construction of new reactors through subsidies and loans. Although Harris says her administration would not be a continuation of Biden’s, it’s reasonable to expect continuity with Biden’s overall approach of leaning more heavily on incentives for low-emissions energy than restrictions on fossil fuels to further a climate agenda.
In 2022, the Biden administration handed the American people a great big carrot to incentivize them to decarbonize: the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. It provides thousands of dollars in the form of rebates and tax credits for a consumer to get an EV and electrify their home with solar panels, a heat pump, and an induction stove. (Though the funding available for renters is slim, it is also out there.) In 2023, 3.4 million Americans got $8.4 billion in tax credits for home energy improvements thanks to the IRA.
If elected, Trump has pledged to rescind the remaining funding, which would require the support of Congress. By contrast, Harris has praised the law (which, as vice president, she famously cast the tie-breaking vote to pass) and would almost certainly veto any attempts by Congress to repeal it. As a presidential candidate, she has not said whether she would expand the law, though many expect she would focus on more efficient implementation.
But while repealing the IRA might slow the steady pace of American households decarbonizing, it can’t stop what’s already in motion. “There are fundamental forces here at work,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “At the end of the day, there’s very little that Trump can do to stand in the way.”
For one, the feds provide guidance to states on how to distribute the money made available through the IRA. More climate-ambitious states are already layering on their own monetary incentives to decarbonize. So even if that IRA money disappeared, states could pick up the slack.
And two, even before the IRA passed, market forces were setting clean energy on a path to replace fossil fuels. The price of solar power dropped by 90 percent between 2010 and 2020. And like any technology, electric appliances will only get cheaper and better. It might take longer without further support from the federal government, but the American home of tomorrow is, inevitably, fully electric — no matter the next administration.
Matt Simon
Senior staff writer focusing on climate solutions
Your home insurance premiums
Whether they know it or not, many Americans are already confronting the costs of a warming world in their monthly bills: In recent years, home insurance premiums have risen in almost every state, as insurance companies face the fallout of larger and more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, and hailstorms. In some states, like Florida and California, many prominent companies have fled the market altogether. While some Democrats have proposed legislation that would create a federal backstop for these failing insurance markets — with the goal of ensuring that coverage remains available for most homeowners — these proposals have yet to make much headway in a divided Congress. For the moment, it’s state governments, rather than the president or any other national politicians, that have real jurisdiction over homeowner’s insurance prices.
Near the end of the presidential debate in September, when both candidates were asked about what they’d do to “fight climate change,” Harris began her response by referring to “anyone who lives in a state who has experienced these extreme weather occurrences, who now is either being denied home insurance or is being jacked up” as a way to counter Trump’s denials of climate change.
Traditional homeowner policies don’t include flood insurance, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency runs a flood insurance program that serves 5 million homeowners in the U.S., mostly along the East Coast. Homeowners in the most flood-prone areas are required to buy this policy, but uptake has been lagging in some particularly vulnerable inland communities — including those that were recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. Project 2025, which many experts believe will serve as the blueprint to a second Trump term (though his campaign disavows any connection to it), imagines FEMA winding down the program altogether, throwing flood coverage to the private market. This would likely make it cheaper to live in risky areas — but it would leave homeowners without financial support after floods, all but ensuring only the rich could rebuild.
Jake Bittle
Staff writer focusing on climate impacts and adaptation
Marli Miller / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Your transportation
The appetite for infrastructure spending is so bipartisan that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in 2021, has become more widely known as the bipartisan infrastructure law. But don’t be fooled. A wide gulf separates how Harris and Trump approach transportation, with potentially profound climate implications.
Harris hasn’t offered many specifics, but she has committed to advancing the rollout out of the Biden administration’s infrastructure agenda. That includes traditional efforts like building roads and bridges, mixed with Democratic priorities including union labor and an eye toward climate-resilience. The infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act include billions in spending to promote the adoption of electric vehicles, produce them domestically, and add 500,000 charging stations by 2030. They also include greener transportation efforts aimed at, among other things, electrifying buses, enhancing passenger rail, and expanding mass transit. That said, Harris has not called for the eventual elimination of internal combustion vehicles despite such plans in 12 states.
Trump has also been sparse on details about transportation — his website doesn’t address the issue except to decry Chinese ownership. During his first term and 2020 campaign, he championed (though never produced) a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. It focused on building “gleaming” roads, highways, and bridges, and reducing the environmental review and government oversight of such projects. He has favored flipping the federal-first funding model to shift much of the cost onto states, municipalities, and the private sector. Ultimately, Trump seems to have little interest in a transition to low-carbon transportation — the 2024 official Republican platform calls for rolling back EV mandates — and he remains a vocal supporter of fossil fuel production.
Tik Root
Senior staff writer focusing on the clean energy transition
Your health
Rising global temperatures and worsening extreme weather are changing the distribution and prevalence of tick- and mosquito-borne diseases, fungal pathogens, and water-borne bacteria across the U.S. State and local health departments rely heavily on data and recommendations on these climate-fueled illnesses from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC — an agency whose director is appointed by the president and can be influenced by the White House.
In his first term, Trump tried to divorce many federal agencies’ research functions from their rulemaking capacities, and there are concerns that, if he wins again in November, Trump would continue that effort. Project 2025, a sweeping blueprint developed by right-wing conservative groups with the aim of influencing a second Trump term, proposes separating the CDC’s disease surveillance efforts from its policy recommendation work, meaning the agency would be able to track the effects of climate change on human health, like the spreading of infectious diseases, but it wouldn’t be able to tell states how to manage them or inform the public about how to stay safe from them.
Harris is expected to leave the CDC intact, but she hasn’t given many signals on how she’d approach climate and health initiatives. Her campaign website says she aims to protect public health, but provides no further clarification or policy position on that subject, or specifically climate change’s influence on it. Over the past four years, the Biden administration has made strides in protecting Americans from extreme heat, the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S. It proposed new heat protections for indoor and outdoor workers, and it made more than $1 billion in grant funding available to nonprofits, tribes, cities, and states for cooling initiatives such as planting trees in urban areas, which reduce the risk of heat illness. It’s reasonable to expect that a future Harris administration would continue Biden’s work in this area. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote on the IRA, which includes emissions-cutting policies that will lead to less global warming in the long term, benefiting human health not just in the U.S. but worldwide.
But there’s more to be done. Biden established the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity in the first year of his term, but it still hasn’t been funded by Congress. Harris has not said whether she will push for more funding for that office.
Zoya Teirstein
Staff writer covering politics and the intersection between climate change and health
Trump’s immigration agenda could also affect food prices. If reelected, the former president has said he will expel millions of undocumented immigrants, many of whom work for low pay on farms and in other parts of the food sector, playing a vital role in food harvesting and processing. Their mass deportation and the resulting labor shortage could drive up prices at the grocery store. Meanwhile, Harris promises to uphold and strengthen the H-2A visa system — the national program that enables agricultural producers to hire foreign-born workers for seasonal work.
But the winner of the 2024 election can determine how badly climate change batters the food supply in the long run — primarily by controlling greenhouse gas emissions.
Frida Garza
Staff writer focusing on the impact of climate change on food and agriculture
Ayurella Horn-Muller
Staff writer focusing on the impact of climate change on food and agriculture
Grist / Leonard Ortiz / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images
Your drinking water
“I want absolutely immaculate, clean water,” Trump said in June during the first presidential debate this election season. But if a second Trump presidency is anything like the first, there is good reason to worry about the protection of public drinking water.
During his first term in office, the Trump administration repealed the Clean Water Rule, a critical part of the Clean Water Act that limited the amount of pollutants companies could discharge near streams, wetlands, and other sources of water used for public consumption. “It was ready to protect the drinking water of 117 million Americans and then, within a few months of being in office, Donald Trump and [former EPA administrator] Scott Pruitt threw it into the trash bin to appease their polluter allies,” former Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a press release.
While in office, Trump also secured a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which last year tipped the court in favor of a decision to vastly limit the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate pollution in certain wetlands, forcing the agency to weaken its own clean water rules.
A Harris administration would likely carry forward the work of several Biden EPA measures to safeguard the public’s drinking water from toxic heavy metals and other contaminants. For example, in April, the EPA passed the nation’s first-ever national drinking water standard to protect an estimated 100 million people from a category of synthetic chemicals known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” which have been linked to cancer, high blood pressure, and immune system deficiencies. Enforcing the new standard will require the agency to examine test results from thousands of water systems across the country and follow up to ensure their compliance — an effort that will take place during the next White House administration.
“As president,” Harris’ website says, “she will unite Americans to tackle the climate crisis as she builds on this historic work, advances environmental justice, protects public lands and public health, increases resilience to climate disasters, lowers household energy costs, creates millions of new jobs, and continues to hold polluters accountable to secure clean air and water for all.” Project 2025, the policy plan drawn up by former Trump staffers to guide a second Trump administration’s policies, indicates that a future Trump administration would eliminate safeguards like the PFAS rule that place limits on industrial emissions and discharges.
Just this month, the EPA issued a groundbreaking rule requiring water utilities to replace virtually every lead pipe in the country within 10 years. With funds from Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law, the agency will also invest $2.6 billion for drinking water upgrades and lead pipe replacements. Harris has previously spoken out about the dangers of lead pipes, stating at a press conference in 2022 that lead exposure is “an issue that we as a nation should commit to ending.”
The success of these and other measures will rely on a well-staffed EPA enforcement division, which may end up being one of the most insidious stakes of this election for environmental policies. Budget cuts and staff departures during the first Trump administration gutted the EPA’s enforcement capacity — a problem that the agency has spent the past four years trying to mend. Project 2025 “would essentially eviscerate the EPA,” said Stan Meiberg, who served as acting deputy administrator for the EPA from 2014 to 2017.
Lylla Younes
Senior staff writer covering chemical pollution, regulation, and frontline communities
Your clean air
President Biden’s clean air policy has been characterized by a spateof new rules to curb toxic air pollution from a variety of facilities, including petroleum coke ovens, synthetic manufacturing facilities, and steel mills. While environmental advocates have decried some of these regulations as insufficiently protective, certain provisions — such as mandatory air monitoring — were hailed as milestones in the history of the agency’s air pollution policy. Former EPA staffer and air pollution expert Scott Throwe told Grist that a Harris- and Democratic-led EPA would continue to build on the work of the past four years by enforcing these new rules, which will require federal oversight of state environmental agencies’ inspection protocols and monitoring data.
Project 2025 proposes a major reorganization of the EPA, which would include the reduction of full-time staff positions and the elimination of departments deemed “superfluous.” It also promotes the rollback of a range of air quality regulations, from ambient air standards for toxic pollutants to greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.
What’s more, a growing body of research has found that poor air quality is often concentrated in communities of color, which are disproportionately close to fossil fuel infrastructure. Conservative state governments havepushedback against the Biden EPA’s efforts to address “environmental justice” through agency channels and in court — efforts that will likely enjoy more executive support under a second Trump administration.
Lylla Younes
Senior staff writer covering chemical pollution, regulation, and frontline communities
Your public lands
Under the Antiquities Act of 1906, a national monument can be created by presidential decree. The act can be a useful tool to protect important landscapes from industries like oil, gas, and even green energy enterprises. Tribal nations have asked numerous presidents to use this executive power to protect tribal homelands that might fall within federal jurisdiction. During his first term, Trump argued that the act also gives the president the implicit power to dissolve a national monument.
In 2017, Trump drastically shrunk two Obama-era designations, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, in what amounted to the biggest slash of federal land protections in the history of the United States. At the time, Trump said that “bureaucrats in Washington” should not control what happens to land in Utah. While giving back local control was Trump’s stated rationale, tribes in the area, like the Diné, Ute, Hopi, and Zuni, had been working for years to protect the two iconic and culturally significant sites. Meanwhile, his decision opened up the land for oil and gas development. While not all tribal nations are opposed to oil and gas production, tribal environmental advocates are worried that a second Trump term will erode federal environmental regulations and commitments to progress in the fight against climate change.
Since 2021, the Biden administration has put more than 42 million acres of land into conservation by creating and expanding national monuments. This includes the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, a new monument spanning a million acres near the Grand Canyon — the kind of protection that tribal activists for years had worked to prevent industrial uranium mining. And just this month, Biden announced the creation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary — a 4,500-square-mile national marine sanctuary to be “managed with tribal, Indigenous community involvement.”
But Harris might not continue that legacy. While she has remained silent about what she would do to protect lands, she has been vocal about continuing the U.S.’s oil and gas production as well as a push for more mining to help with the green transition — like copper from Oak Flat in Arizona and lithium from Thacker Pass in Nevada — both important places to tribal communities in the area. Tribes have been subjected to the adverse effects of the energy crisis before — namely dams that destroyed swaths of homelands and nuclear energy that increased cancer rates of Southwest tribal members — and without specific protections, it’s easy to see green energy as a changing of the guard instead of a game changer.
Taylar Dawn Stagner
Indigenous affairs reporting fellow
Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images
Your next climate disaster
Congress controls how much money the Federal Emergency Management Agency receives for relief efforts after catastrophic events like hurricanes Helene and Milton, but the president holds significant sway over who receives money and when. A second Trump administration would likely curtail some of the climate-focused resiliency projects FEMA has pursued in recent years, such as cutting back money for infrastructure that would be more resilient against hazards like sea level rises, fires, and earthquakes. Republican firebrands, like Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania, have decried these projects as wasteful and unnecessary.
Under the Stafford Act, which governs federal disaster response, the president has the power to disburse relief to specific parts of the country after any “major disaster” — hurricanes, big floods, fires. In September, Trump suggested that he might make disaster aid contingent on political support if he returns to office, promising to withhold wildfire support from California unless state officials give more irrigation water to Central Valley farmers. Harris has not given an explicit indication of how she would fund climate-resiliency or disaster-response programs, though she has boosted FEMA’s recovery efforts following Helene and Milton.
Jake Bittle
Staff writer focusing on climate impacts and adaptation
Your understanding of climate change
The United States has long been a leader in research essential to understanding — and responding to — a warming world. The government plays a key role in advancing climate science and providing timely meteorological data to the public. Neither Trump nor Harris address this in their platform, but history yields clues to what their presidency might mean for this vital work.
Trump has consistently dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and downplayed scientific consensus that it is anthropogenic, or driven by human activities. As president, he gutted funding for research, appointed climate skeptics and industry insiders, and eliminated scientific advisory committees from several federal agencies. Thousands of government scientists quit in response. (In fact, still reeling from Trump’s attacks, new union contracts protect scientific integrity to combat such meddling.) His administration censored scientific data on government websites and tried to undermine the findings of the National Climate Assessment, the government’s scientific report on the risks and impacts of climate change. If reelected, Trump would almost certainly adopt a similar strategy, deprioritizing climate science and potentially even restructuring or eliminating federal agencies that advance it.
Harris has long supported climate action; she co-sponsored the Green New Deal as a senator and, as vice president, cast the deciding vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which bolstered funding for agencies that oversee climate research. As part of its “whole of government” approach to the crisis, the Biden administration created the National Climate Task Force, with the EPA, NASA, and others to ensure science informs policy. Although Harris hasn’t said much about climate change as a candidate, climate organizations generally support her campaign and believe her administration will build on the progress made so far.
A lot goes into calculating the energy rates you see on your monthly electric bill — construction and maintenance of power plants, fuel costs, and much more. It’s pretty tough to draw a direct line from the president to your bill, so if you’re worried about your energy costs, you’d do well to read up on your local public utility commission, municipal electric authority, or electric membership cooperative board.
What the president can do, though, is appoint people to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC — the board of up to five individuals who regulate the transmission of utilities across the entire country. As the U.S. continues to shift away from fossil fuels, a fundamental problem stands in the way: The country’s aging and fragmented grid lacks the capacity to move all of the electricity being generated from renewable sources. In May, FERC, which currently has a Democratic majority, approved a rule to try to solve that issue; it voted to require that regional utilities identify opportunities for upgrading the capacities of existing transmission infrastructure and that regional grid operators forecast their transmission needs 20 years into the future. These steps will be essential for utility companies to take advantage of the subsidies offered in the IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law.
The rule is facing legal challenges, which like much else in U.S. courts, appear to be political. So even if Harris wins November’s election, and maintains a commission that prioritizes the transition away from fossil fuels, the oil and gas industry and the politicians who support it will not acquiesce easily. If Trump wins, he’d have the chance to appoint a new FERC chair from among the current commissioners and to appoint a new commissioner in 2026, when the current chair’s term ends. (Or possibly sooner.) Although FERC’s actions tend to be more insulated from changes in the White House because commissioners serve six-year terms, a commission led by new Trump appointees would most likely deprioritize initiatives that would upgrade the grid to support clean energy adoption. Trump’s appointees supported fossil fuel interests on several fronts during his previous term, for instance by counteracting state subsidies to favor coal and gas plants.
Emily Jones
Regional reporter, Georgia
Izzy Ross
Regional reporter, Great Lakes
Grist / Mario Tama / Getty Images
Your trash
Some 33 billion pounds of plastic waste enter the marine environment globally every year, and the problem is expected to worsen as the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries ramp up plastic production.
Perhaps the most important step the next president could take to curb plastic pollution is to push Congress to ratify and implement the United Nations’ global plastics treaty, which is scheduled to be finalized by the end of this year. The Biden administration recently announced its support for a version of the treaty that limits plastic production, and, though Harris hasn’t made any public comment about it, experts expect that her administration would support it as well. Meanwhile, a former Trump White House official told Politico this April that Trump — who famously withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in his first term — would take a “hard-nosed look” at any outcome of the plastics negotiations and be “skeptical that the agreement reached was the best agreement that could have been reached.”
The Biden administration has also taken some positive steps to address plastic pollution domestically, including a ban on the federal procurement of single-use plastics. Experts expect that progress to continue under a Harris administration. In 2011, as California’s attorney general, Harris sued plastic bottle companies over misleading claims that their products were recyclable. As a U.S. senator, she co-sponsored a Democratic bill to phase out unnecessary single-use plastic products.
Joseph Winters
Staff writer covering plastics, pollution, and the circular economy
Your votes
After decades of failed attempts to tackle the climate crisis, Congress finally passed major legislation two years ago with the Inflation Reduction Act. Not a single Republican voted for it.
Elections aren’t just important for getting the legislative power needed to enact climate policies — they’re also important for implementing them. The IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure law, another key climate-related law, are entering crucial phases for their implementation, particularly the doling out of billions of dollars for clean energy, environmental justice, and climate resiliency. Trump, having vowed to rescind unspent IRA funds if elected, seems poised to hamper the law’s rollout, slowing efforts to get the country using more clean energy.
But it’s a mistake to imagine that only federal elections matter when it comes to climate change. Eliminating greenhouse gases from energy, buildings, transportation, and food systems requires legislation at every level. In Arizona and Montana, for example, voters this year will elect utility commissioners, the powerful, yet largely ignored officials who play a crucial role in whether — and how quickly — the country moves away from fossil fuels. State legislators can also open the door to efforts to get 100 percent clean electricity, as happened in Michigan and Minnesota after the 2022 election. Even in a state like Washington with Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, who once campaigned for the White House on a climate change platform, votes matter — climate action is literally on the ballot in November, when voters could choose to kill the state’s landmark price on carbon pollution.
Depending on what happens with the presidential and congressional races, state and local action might be the best hope for furthering climate policy anyway.
Kate Yoder
Staff writer examining the intersections of climate, language, history, culture, and accountability
Your global outlook
During his first term, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a global commitment to reduce the burning of fossil fuels in an effort to curb the worst impacts of climate change. “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” he said from the Rose Garden of the White House in 2017. Trump didn’t entirely abandon global climate discussions; his administration continued to attend global climate conferences, where it endorsed events on fossil fuels.
The Biden administration rejoined the Paris Agreement and pledged billions of dollars to combat climate change both domestically and abroad, but a second Trump administration would likely undo this progress. Trump says that he would pull out of the Paris Agreement again, and reportedly would also consider withdrawing the U.S. from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a 1992 treaty that’s the basis for modern global climate talks. Harris is expected, at least, to continue Biden’s policies. Speaking from COP28 in Dubai last year, an annual United Nations climate gathering, she celebrated America’s progress in tackling the climate crisis and petitioned for much more to be done. “In order to keep our critical 1.5 degree-Celsius goal within reach,” she said, “we must have the ambition to meet this moment, to accelerate our ongoing work, increase our investments, and lead with courage and conviction.”
But both the Trump and Biden administrations achieved record oil and gas production during their time in office, and Harris opposes a ban on fracking. In order to make a dent in the climate crisis, whoever becomes president would have to reject that status quo and put serious money behind global promises to mitigate climate change. Otherwise, climate change-related losses will just continue to mount — already, they are expected to cost $580 billion globally by 2030.
Anita Hofschneider
Senior staff writer focusing on Indigenous affairs
Congress promised that they would enact strong legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence ahead of the election, but so far those promises have been empty. And with only a few weeks before the election, Congress has no chance of getting anything done. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription […]
With Prabowo Subianto, a controversial former general installed as Indonesia’s new president, residents in the disputed Papua region were responding to this reality with anxiety and, for some, cautious optimism.
The remote and resource-rich region has long been a flashpoint for conflict, with its people enduring decades of alleged military abuse and human rights violations under Indonesian rule and many demanding independence.
Many Papuans remain haunted by past abuses, particularly those associated with Indonesia’s counterinsurgency campaigns that began after Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 through a disputed UN-backed referendum.
For people like Maurids Yansip, a private sector employee in Sentani, Prabowo’s rise to the presidency is a cause for serious concern.
“I am worried,” Yansip said. “Prabowo talked about using a military approach to address Papua’s issues during the presidential debates.
‘Military worsened hunman rights’
“We’ve seen how the military presence has worsened the human rights situation in this region. That’s not going to solve anything — it will only lead to more violations.”
In Jayapura, the region’s capital, Musa Heselo, a mechanic at a local garage, expressed indifference toward the political changes unfolding in Jakarta.
“I didn’t vote in the last election—whether for the president or the legislature,” Heselo said.
“Whoever becomes president is not important to me, as long as Papua remains safe so we can make a living. I don’t know much about Prabowo’s background.”
But such nonchalance is rare in a region where memories of military crackdowns run deep.
Prabowo, a former son-in-law of Indonesia’s late dictator Suharto, has long been a polarising figure. His career, marked by accusations of human rights abuses, particularly during Indonesia’s occupation of Timor-Leste, continues to evoke strong reactions.
In 1996, during his tenure with the elite Indonesian Army special forces unit, Kopassus, Prabowo commanded a high-stakes rescue of 11 hostages from a scientific research team held by Free Papua Movement (OPM) fighters.
Deadly operation
The operation was deadly, resulting in the deaths of two hostages and eight pro-independence fighters.
Markus Haluk, executive secretary of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), described Prabowo’s presidency as a grim continuation of what he calls a “slow-motion genocide” of the Papuan people.
“Prabowo’s leadership will extend Indonesia’s occupation of Papua,” Haluk said, his tone resolute.
“The genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide will continue. We remember our painful history — this won’t be forgotten. We could see military operations return. This will make things worse.”
Although he has never been convicted and denies any involvement in abuses in East Timor or Papua, these allegations continue to cast a shadow over his political rise.
He ran for president in 2014 and again in 2019, both times unsuccessfully. His most recent victory, which finally propels him to Indonesia’s highest office, has raised questions about the future of Papua.
President Prabowo Subianto greets people as he rides in a car after his inauguration in Jakarta, Indonesia, last Sunday. Image: Asprilla Dwi Adha/Antara Foto
Despite these concerns, some see Prabowo’s presidency as a potential turning point — albeit a fraught one. Elvira Rumkabu, a lecturer at Cendrawasih University in Jayapura, is among those who view his military background as a possible double-edged sword.
Prabowo’s military experience ‘may help’
“Prabowo’s military experience and strategic thinking could help control the military in Papua and perhaps even manage the ultranationalist forces in Jakarta that oppose peace,” Rumkabu told BenarNews.
“But I also worry that he might delegate important issues, like the peace agenda in Papua, to his vice-president.”
Under outgoing President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, Papua’s development was often portrayed as a priority, but the reality on the ground told a different story. While Jokowi made high-profile visits to the region, his administration’s reliance on military operations to suppress pro-independence movements continued.
“This was a pattern we saw under Jokowi, where Papua’s problems were relegated to lower levels, diminishing their urgency,” Rumkabu said.
Yohanes Mambrasar, a human rights activist based in Sorong, expressed grave concerns about the future under Prabowo.
“Prabowo’s stance on strengthening the military in Papua was clear during his campaign,” Mambrasar said.
Called for ‘more troops, weapons’
“He called for more troops and more weapons. This signals a continuation of militarized policies, and with it, the risk of more land grabs and violence against indigenous Papuans.”
Earlier this month, Indonesian military chief Gen. Agus Subiyanto inaugurated five new infantry battalions in Papua, stating that their mandate was to support both security operations and regional development initiatives.
Indeed, the memory of past military abuses looms large for many in Papua, where calls for independence have never abated.
During a presidential debate, Prabowo vowed to strengthen security forces in Papua.
“If elected, my priority will be to uphold the rule of law and reinforce our security presence,” he said, framing his approach as essential to safeguarding the local population.
Yet, amid the fears, some see opportunities for positive change.
Yohanes Kedang from the Archdiocese of Merauke said that improving the socio-economic conditions of indigenous Papuans must be a priority for Prabowo.
Education, health care ‘left behind’
“Education, healthcare, and the economy — these are areas where Papuans are still far behind,” he said.
“This will be Prabowo’s real challenge. He needs to create policies that bring real improvements to the lives of indigenous Papuans, especially in the southern regions like Merauke, which has immense potential.”
Theo Hesegem, executive director of the Papua Justice and Human Integrity Foundation, believes that dialogue is key to resolving the region’s long-standing issues.
“Prabowo has the power to address the human rights violations in Papua,” Hesegem said.
“But he needs to listen. He should come to Papua and sit down with the people here — not just with officials, but with civil society, with the people on the ground,” he added.
On October 26, Georgia heads into what is widely viewed as its most critical election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The incumbent party Georgian Dream is pitted against a loose coalition of pro-Western parties united under the Georgian Charter, a roadmap for Georgian integration into the European Union.
Georgia’s relation to the EU is a central issue of the vote. While the population is overwhelmingly in favor of joining the union — the country was granted EU candidate status last year — Georgian Dream has taken a sharply anti-Western turn, sparking fears it is steering the country into neighboring Russia’s embrace. In May, parliament overrode a presidential veto to pass a Russian-style “foreign agents” law, directly targeting the heavily donor-reliant independent press. If Georgian Dream wins the parliamentary election, it has vowed to crack down on what it calls the “collective” opposition, a threat many fear extends to the pro-opposition press.
On a fact-finding mission to Georgia this month with several partner groups, CPJ asked local journalists, advocates, and a journalist turned opposition politician what they feel is at stake in the upcoming vote. Their answers have been edited for length and clarity.
CPJ emailed the Georgian Dream party for comment on the concerns raised by interviewees, but did not receive a reply.
Mamuka Andguladze (Photo: Courtesy of Media Advocacy Coalition)
How important are this month’s elections for press freedom in Georgia?
The upcoming elections represent a critical juncture for press freedom in Georgia. At stake is not only the integrity of our democratic processes but also the very foundation of independent Georgian journalism. In what is already a very challenging landscape, the adoption of the “Russian law” [the “foreign agents” law] poses a severe threat to independent media’s survival. The lawstigmatizes media outlets as “organizations pursuing the interests of a foreign power” essentially as “foreign agents.” It subjects them to invasive monitoring and an obligation to provide authorities with any information they demand, which could threaten outlets’ sources and contacts, making it impossible for them to operate. This is not to mention heavy fines for alleged violations.
Georgian journalists are frequently the target of violence, as we saw during the terrible events of July 2021 [when anti-LGBT demonstrators attacked dozens of journalists] and the tragic death of camera operator Aleksandre Lashkarava [who was beaten at the protests]. They are subject to verbal attacks from officials and orchestrated intimidation campaigns. This creates a climate of fear which diminishes the quality of reporting, as journalists are less likely to investigate sensitive topics. Online harassment and disinformation campaigns against critical journalists and media are rampant. Longstanding issues of impunity for attacks against journalists fuel further violence. The ongoing boycott by the ruling party toward independent and critical media and severe problems with access to official information remain existential threats. Economic pressures are intense, with many outlets struggling for funding.
Despite all these challenges, past experiences — when the media actively covered mass protests against the “Russian law” and contributed to increasing public awareness — give me hope. I have great faith in our independent media and am confident that they are capable of defending their own rights and the historical choice of the Georgian people to join the European family.
Nino Zuriashvili (Photo: Courtesy of Studio Monitor)
Nino Zuriashvili, head of Studio Monitor, an independent outlet making investigative documentaries
What is at stake for independent media in the upcoming elections?
We in Georgia have never had such an important election. After 33 years of independence from the Soviet Union, it’s a shame, but we are once again deciding our direction, our orientation – either we will again be a province of Russia or we will join the European Union as an equal country.
It means we’ll either have a Russian-style government or a European-style one. And we know what they do with journalists in Russia.
What does this “orientation” mean for the media? It’s not just a word. It means we’ll either have a Russian-style government or a European-style one. And we know what they do with journalists in Russia. Dozens of journalists have been killed. Journalists are not free there, they are intimidated, they are forced out of the country. In the media we face two possible futures: independence, the freedom to work and grow, to develop as professionals, or be intimidated, imprisoned, killed, to flee and seek asylum.
What difficulties has Studio Monitor faced under the current authorities, and what problems might you face after the elections?
We already know that if the current government remains in power, Studio Monitor will be a major target of the “Russian law.” We specialize in investigations into corruption, nepotism, and official abuses. We also took the lead in organizing media protests against the “Russian law.” We know that many in the government are irritated by us. A ruling party politician who is widely thought to have organized a campaign of intimidation against opponents of the [“foreign agents”] law publicly named us as a key target. They stencil graffitied “Agents’ HQ” outside our office, put up dozens of posters of me outside our office and outside my apartment with slogans like “No place in Georgia for agents,” and graffitied my car with obscene images calling me a prostitute and an agent. Like many others, I received dozens of abusive calls, swearing at me and telling me to stop calling the [“foreign agents”] law a “Russian law.” They even called my sister and threatened her over my opposition to the law. This all happened at the same time as leading opponents of the law were severely beaten outside their homes. So it was deeply intimidating, even if we continue to resist.
So we know what to expect if the ruling party stays in power. Even if they haven’t used the [“foreign agents”] law ahead of the elections, we know they will start to use it afterwards, and we know that over time, they will make this law more and more strict. We’ve seen how this went in Russia and we know what awaits.
That’s why this election is different. This election will decide our fate. Independent media could disappear.
You left the media earlier this year to become an opposition leader, but you still keep a close eye on the press. How important are these elections for media freedom in Georgia?
These elections are crucial, not just for media freedom in Georgia, but for every kind of freedom. This is not a regular election, where you’re choosing between better or worse governance; it’s about authoritarianism, it’s about choosing between Western civilization or Russia and some kind of political Mordor [the realm of Dark Lord Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”]. Under authoritarianism, there is no special space for different kinds of freedom. And there is no chance that a Russian-backed regime could be favorable to freedoms of speech and the media. That means that everything is at stake in these elections, including perhaps first of all freedom of speech.
If there is no change of government in a few weeks, it means that [independent] media will be shut down. The “Russian law” is about closing down media outlets, closing down critical NGOs. And one of the promises of the ruling party if they win a constitutional majority is to abolish all opposition parties. If they are abolishing opposition parties, what do you think they will do with the media? Georgian media is highly professional, highly devoted, and pretty fearless, so the media is a number one target. If Georgian Dream prevails, there will be no opposition parties, they will be shutting down media and NGOs, and there will be tens or hundreds of political prisoners – as a former political prisoner myself, I know. [Gvaramia served more than a year of a three and a half year sentence in retaliation for his reporting before being released from prison in May 2023.]
How will you reform the press freedom environment if your coalition comes to power?
International pressure played a crucial role in my release, especially the efforts of CPJ. Following this, I set up the Ahali [“New”] party, because I feel I can make more of a difference being directly engaged in politics. When we win – not if – we will open negotiations with the EU, we will repeal any law that is against the European understanding of democracy. We’ve signed a charter pledging to do this, and we will follow it.
Georgian media has been deeply damaged by this regime, especially financially. As former director of Georgia’s leading independent broadcaster, I can say that they have deliberately passed laws restricting the advertising market, which is vital for independent TV, put pressure on broadcasters’ financial backers and on those who place ads. They have hit broadcasters with SLAPP suits [Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation] and fines from the broadcast regulator that is under their control. Not to mention mob violence, incited and orchestrated by the government. Georgian media desperately needs more income, and we need to bolster the media’s financial situation by bringing in special tax regulations and restoring a properly functioning advertising market. And simply more free speech. On paper, Georgia has great laws on press freedom and freedom of speech, on a par with the United States; they just need to be put into effect. We will do that.
Independent media, opposition parties, NGOs, and most importantly – Georgian society itself, especially the young, what we call the BIG generations, “Born In Georgia” [after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991] – we are all united. We must and we will prevail.
Nestan Tsetskhladze (Photo: Anka Gujabidze)
Nestan Tsetskhladze, editor-in-chief of independent news website Netgazeti
How are you viewing these elections in terms of the press’s ability to function?
Independent Georgian media have never had an easy time, but now things are particularly bad. If the law passed in 2024 on “foreign agents”—which we call the “Russian law”—and the law on the protection of “family values” [which allows for fines against media outlets found “promoting” LGBT issues] are not repealed after the elections, these laws — which amount to the legalization of censorship — will prevent independent media outlets from continuing their activities in Georgia, just as happened in Russia after the adoption of similar legislation.
This is the first election out of many that we have covered which could decide our own fate, as journalists and free people in Georgia.
This is the first election out of many that we have covered which could decide our own fate, as journalists and free people in Georgia. So it’s an unusual situation for us too — the result of this election could abolish our profession and everything we’ve been working on for two decades, as journalists and as media outlets. However, I don’t think that will happen, and I believe that the citizens of this country will not choose repression, the disappearance of the media, and civil society.
How is Netgazeti navigating current challenges, including the “foreign agents” law?
Netgazeti has not registered as a “foreign agent.” This is our editorial decision because we believe that continuing our journalistic activities under the label of a “foreign agent” damages our professional reputation and portrays us as a media outlet without editorial independence, which is not the case. In addition, working under such a label endangers the physical safety of all journalists working here. So far, we have not been fined for not registering as “agents,” but we will appeal any such step at the European Court of Human Rights. We intend to legally fight for our rights as long as possible while continuing to inform the Georgian people.
We in the media are not burying our heads in the sand during the pre-election period; we do not artificially balance the news, and we do not pretend that the results of the elections are irrelevant. No, we are saying that the worst times will come for journalism if the authorities who support Russian-style laws remain in power and wish for us, independent media and citizens, to disappear. Independent online media do not have a lot of resources for this, unlike the official propaganda, but we do everything we can. And I personally believe that we will be able to hold fair elections and stay in this country. We have worked hard for this for many years, and we are not afraid.
Max Miller is a man of many contradictions. He is a man who presents himself as a “heterodox populist” fighting on behalf of the people of Ohio to “hold Washington accountable” yet, clearly, is beholden to the Republican establishment. In fact, Miller’s positions on important issues are virtually identical to that of George Bush and Dick Cheney. From his undying support for seemingly unlimited foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel to his dogmatic support for fiscal conservatism (including increasing work requirements for working class Ohioans through the Fiscal Responsibility Act), Miller has shown that he is a populist in name only.
For a man who claims to be a supporter of former President Donald Trump and his running-mate J.D. Vance, this is quite a conundrum. Contrary to the beliefs of Neoconservative-leaning Republicans like Miller, the Trump-Vance ticket has embraced authentically America First positions when it comes to reckless funding for Ukraine and sympathy for American workers. Unfortunately for Miller, it seems that his party is leaving him behind and this could prove detrimental for him in his upcoming bid for reelection.
While some pollsters believe that Miller is “almost certain to win in Ohio’s 7th district,” most, if not all, of these polls ignore the atypical nature of the race itself. Instead of simply facing one challenger in the general election, Miller is facing two. First, Miller is facing Democratic challenger, Matthew Diemer, who lost against Miller in the previous election cycle and will likely lose again. Second, Miller is facing the newly-independent former U.S. Representative and Cleveland mayor, Dennis Kucinich, who could truly shake up the election.
Kucinich, a veteran anti-war politician who ran for President in 2004 and 2008, is a true populist who may be able to secure considerable votes from disaffected America First Republicans, Libertarians, and anti-establishment left wingers critical of U.S. military adventurism. This united front coalition of figures such as Ron Paul, Jimmy Dore, Judge Napolitano, Aaron Maté, and Kim Iverson could prove detrimental for Miller in a general election if Kucinich plays his cards right. Additionally, Kucinich was the former campaign manager for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign. Kennedy, who has since dropped out of the race and aligned himself with Trump, may be one of the reasons why Trump has not openly endorsed Miller as he once did in 2022.
Ultimately, Rep. Max Miller’s politics are misaligned with the shifting priorities of the America First movement. His loyalty to the GOP establishment on issues like foreign aid and fiscal conservatism undermines his claim to populism. Meanwhile, Dennis Kucinich presents a compelling alternative for anti-war voters across the political spectrum. As Miller clings to outdated Republican talking points, he risks alienating the very base he claims to represent. This race may well turn into a referendum not just on Miller’s record, but on what it truly means to stand for “America First.”
At the 57th Human Rights Council session, civil society organisations share reflections on key outcomes and highlight gaps in addressing crucial issues and situations. Full written version below:
States continue to fail to meet their obligations under international law to put an end to decades of Israeli crimes committed against the Palestinian people, including the genocide in Gaza, and most recently Israel’s war on Lebanon. States that continue to provide military, economic and political support to Israel, while suppressing fundamental freedoms such as expression and assembly, as well as attacking independent courts and experts, and defunding humanitarian aid (UNRWA), are complicit in the commission of crimes. We urge the Council to address the root causes of the situation as identified by experts and the ICJ, including settler-colonialism and apartheid, and to address the obligations of third States in the context of the ICJ’s provisional measures stressing the plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and the ICJ advisory opinion recognising that ‘Israel’s legislation and measures constitute a breach of Article 3 of CERD’ pertaining to racial segregation and apartheid. The General Assembly adopted the resolution titled “The Crime of Genocide” in December 1946, which articulates that the denial of existence of entire human groups shocks the conscience of mankind. We remind you of our collective duty and moral responsibility to stop genocide.
States have an obligation to pay UN membership dues in full and in time. The failure of many States to do so, often for politically motivated reasons, is causing a financial liquidity crisis, meaning that resolutions and mandates of the Human Rights Council cannot be implemented. Pay your dues! The visa denials to civil society by host countries is a recurring obstacle to accessing the UN; and acts of intimidation and reprisals are fundamental attacks against the UN system itself. The right to access and communicate with international bodies is firmly grounded in international law and pivotal to the advancement of human rights. In this regard, we welcome the action taken by 11 States to call for investigation and accountability for reprisals against individually named human rights defenders. This sends an important message of solidarity to defenders, many of whom are arbitrarily detained for contributing to the work of the UN, as well as increasing the political costs for perpetrators of such acts. We welcome progress in Indigenous Peoples’ participation in the work of this Council as it is the first time that they could register on their own for specific dialogues.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution that renews the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change by consensus.
We also welcome the adoption of the resolution on biodiversity sending a clear call to take more ambitious commitments at the sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity and acknowledging the negative impact that the loss of biodiversity can have on the enjoyment of all human rights, including the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. We welcome that these two resolutions recognize the critical and positive role that Environmental Human Right Defenders play. We also welcome the adoption by consensus of the resolutions on the rights on safe drinking water and sanitation; and the resolution on human rights and Indigenous Peoples.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on equal participation in political and public affairs which for the first time includes language on children and recognises their right to participation as well as the transformative role of civic education in supporting their participation. We also welcome the recognition that hate speech has a restrictive effect on children’s full, meaningful, inclusive and safe participation in political and public affairs.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution from rhetoric to reality: a global call for concrete action against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The resolution contains important language on the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action as well as the proclamation by the General Assembly of a second International Decade for People of African Descent commencing in 2025. We welcome the inclusion of a call to States to dispense reparatory justice, including finding ways to remedy historical racial injustices. This involves ensuring that the structures in society that perpetuate past injustices are transformed, including law enforcement and the administration of justice.
We welcome the adoption of a new resolution on human rights on the internet, which recognises that universal and meaningful connectivity is essential for the enjoyment of human rights. The resolution takes a progressive step forward in specifically recommending diverse and human right-based technological solutions to advance connectivity, including through governments creating an enabling and inclusive regulatory environment for small, non-profit and community internet operators. These solutions are particularly essential in ensuring connectivity for remote or rural communities. The resolution also unequivocally condemns internet shutdowns, online censorship, surveillance, and other measures that impede universal and meaningful connectivity. We now call on all Sates to fully implement the commitments in the resolution and ensure the same rights that people have offline are also protected online.
Whilst we welcome the attention in the resolution on the human rights of migrants to dehumanising, harmful and racist narratives about migration, we are disappointed that the resolution falls short of the calls from civil society, supported by the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights of Migrants, for the Human Rights Council to set up an independent and international monitoring mechanism to address deaths, torture and other grave human rights violations at borders. Such a mechanism would not only support prevention and accountability – it would provide a platform for the people at the heart of these human rights violations and abuses to be heard. The study and intersessional mandated in this resolution must be used to enhance independent monitoring and increase access to justice.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on Afghanistan renewing and strengthening the mandate of the Special Rapporteur. Crucially, the resolution recognises the need to ensure accountability in Afghanistan through “comprehensive, multidimensional, gender-responsive and victim-centred” processes applying a “comprehensive approach to transitional justice.” However, we are disappointed that the resolution once again failed to establish an independent accountability mechanism that can undertake comprehensive investigations and collect and preserve evidence and information of violations and abuses in line with these principles to assist future and ongoing accountability processes. This not only represents a failure by the Council to respond to the demands of many Afghan and international civil society organisations, but also a failure to fulfil its own mandate to ensure prompt, independent and impartial investigations which this and all previous resolutions have recognised as urgent.
We welcome the renewal of the Special Rapporteur on Burundi.
We welcome the renewal of the Special Rapporteur’s mandate on the human rights situation in the Russian Federation. The human rights situation in Russia continues to deteriorate, with the alarming expansion of anti-extremism legislation now also targeting LGBT+ and Indigenous organisations being just the latest example of this trend. The Special Rapporteur has highlighted how such repression against civil society within Russia over many years has facilitated its external aggression. The mandate itself remains a vital lifeline for Russian civil society, connecting it with the Human Rights Council and the broader international community, despite the Russian authorities’ efforts to isolate their people.
We welcome the resolution on promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka renewing for one year the mandate of the OHCHR Sri Lanka Accountability Project and of the High Commissioner to monitor and report on the situation. Its consensual adoption represents the broad recognition by the Council of the crucial need for continued international action to promote accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka and keeps the hopes of tens of thousands of victims, their families and survivors who, more than 15 years after the end of the war, continue to wait for justice and accountability. However, the resolution falls short in adequately responding to the calls by civil society. It fails to extend these mandates for two years which would have ensured that the Sri Lanka Accountability Project has the resources, capacity and stability to fulfill its mandate.
We welcome the renewal of the Fact Finding Mission on Sudan with broader support (23 votes in favor in comparison to 19 votes last year, and 12 votes against in comparison to 16 votes last year). This responds to the calls by 80 Sudanese, African, and other international NGOs for an extension of the mandate of the FFM for Sudan. We further reiterate our urgent calls for an immediate ceasefire and the prompt creation of safe corridors for humanitarian aid organisations and groups, and to guarantee the safety of their operations, as well as our call on the UN Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Darfur to all of Sudan and create effective monitoring and reporting mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the embargo.
We welcome the renewal of the mandates of the Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela (FFM) and of OHCHR for two more years. The deepening repression at the hands of government forces following the fraudulent Presidential elections in July has made evident the vital importance of continued independent documenting, monitoring and reporting by the FFM and its role in early warning of further human rights deterioration. We are pleased that OHCHR is mandated to provide an oral update (with an ID) at the end of this year. This will be key ahead of the end of the term of the current presidency on 10 January 2025. This resolution is an important recognition of and contribution to the demands of victims and civil society for accountability.
We regret that the Council failed to take action on Bangladesh. We welcome Bangladesh’s cooperation with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights including by inviting the Office to undertake investigations into allegations of serious violations and abuses in the context of youth-led protests in July and August, as well as positive steps by the interim government. However, we believe that a Council mandate would provide much needed support, stability and legitimacy to these positive initiatives at a time of serious political uncertainty in the country.
The Council’s persistent inaction and indifference in the face of Yemen’s escalating human rights crisis is deeply troubling. Since the dissolution of the Group of Eminent Experts, and despite years of mounting atrocities, we have yet to see the type of robust, independent international investigation that is desperately needed. Instead, the Council’s approach has been marked by half-measures and complacency, allowing widespread violations to continue unchecked. Despite the precarious humanitarian situation, the recent campaign of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention by the de facto Houthi authorities and recent Israeli bombardments, Yemen has increasingly become a forgotten crisis. The current resolution on Yemen represents this failure. Technical assistance without reporting or discussion is an insufficient response. The decision to forgo an interactive dialogue on implementing this assistance is an oversight, undermining the principles of accountability and transparency. We welcome the inclusion of language in the resolution recognizing the vital role of NGO workers and humanitarian staff who the Houthis have arbitrarily detained. We call for the immediate and unconditional release of those who continue to be detained for nothing more than attempting to ensure the rule of law is respected and victims are protected. We urge this Council to act decisively, prioritize the creation of an independent international accountability mechanism, and place civilian protection at the forefront of its deliberations on Yemen.
We continue to deplore this Council’s exceptionalism towards serious human rights violations in China committed by the government. On 17 August, the OHCHR stressed that ‘many problematic laws and policies’ documented in its Xinjiang report remain in place, that abuses remain to be investigated, and that reprisals and lack of information hinder human rights monitoring. We welcome the statement by the Xinjiang Core Group on the second anniversary of the OHCHR’s Xinjiang report, regretting the government’s lack of meaningful cooperation with UN bodies, the rejection of UPR recommendations, and urging China to engage meaningfully to implement the OHCHR’s recommendations, including releasing all those arbitrarily detained, clarifying the whereabouts of those disappeared, and facilitating family reunion. It is imperative that the Human Rights Council take action commensurate to the gravity of UN findings, such as by establishing a monitoring and reporting mechanism on China as repeatedly urged by over 40 UN experts since 2020. We urge China to genuinely engage with the UN human rights system to enact meaningful reform, and ensure all individuals and peoples enjoy their human rights. Recommendations from the OHCHR Xinjiang report, UN Treaty Bodies, and UN Special Procedures chart the way for this desperately needed change.
Finally, we welcome the outcome of elections to the Human Rights Council at the General Assembly. States that are responsible for atrocity crimes, the widespread repression of civil society, and patterns of reprisals are not qualified to be elected to this Council. The outcomes of the election demonstrate the importance of all regions fielding competitive slates that are comprised of appropriately qualified candidates.
Signatories:
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
Following a concerted campaign led by ISHR together with other civil society partners, Saudi Arabia was just defeated in its bid to be elected to the UN Human Rights Council!
America’s Lawyer E119: Major corporations and their lobbyists have found a loophole that allows them to wine and dine members of Congress without violating federal laws prohibiting those activities. The FBI has been caught AGAIN, spying on American citizens that were protesting against the military industrial complex, and this time they tried to prosecute them […]
A new study has found that there’s something definitely off about YouTube’s video recommendation algorithm, and left-leaning videos get recommended far less than videos from right-leaning creators. Plus, Democrats are warning their base that the polls could be wildly off base and that Donald Trump could over perform the polls like he did in 2016 […]
Due to the people’s rising consciousness about all of this, a consciousness which exists independent of their individual wills, a feature of this election is the failure of the “Vote for the Lesser of Two Evils” argument. This is the argument routinely used to promote the view that the only choice citizens have is one despicable candidate over the other. For some time, the argument has been an integral part of state-organized disinformation to stop the people from setting their own agenda and plan.
