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Democracy Now! speaks with Dr. Adam Hamawy, one of around 20 American medical workers trapped in Gaza after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. A plastic surgeon and Army veteran, Hamawy is on a volunteer mission with the Palestinian American Medical Association at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Like many Gazans, the U.S. medical workers are now facing dehydration and other deadly health conditions. “We’re continuing to do our job. … It’s tiring, but this is exactly what we need to be doing,” says Hamawy, who calls on President Biden to stop supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza. “If my best friend is a serial killer, I’m going to stop being his friend.” Hamaway describes treating “massive” injuries to civilians in Khan Younis, where much of the city has been destroyed and vandalized in Hebrew. “It’s going to haunt all of us. … I’m here. I see it with my own eyes. At some point in time, everyone is going to see it.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The police fatal shooting of Win Rozario, a 19-year-old Bangladeshi teen who lived in Queens, New York, has set off protests and demands for justice from the family. Rozario had called 911 in late March asking for help as he experienced a mental health crisis, but two New York police officers who arrived at the family’s home shot him at least four times within minutes after entering the Rozario residence. The NYPD claimed Rozario “came at” the officers with a pair of scissors when they fired at him, but police body-camera footage shows he was standing on the other side of the kitchen, several feet away from the officers, as his mother desperately tried to shield her son. “He needed help, and what they did instead was kill him,” says New York City Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who represents the city’s 39th Council District. She also discusses progressives’ ongoing efforts to pass a ceasefire resolution at City Council to demand an end to the war in Gaza, as well as Mayor Eric Adams’s crackdown on asylum seekers.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Ralph welcomes back medical journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Jean Carper, to elaborate on her latest book, “100 LIFE OR DEATH FOODS: A Scientific Guide to Which Foods Prolong Life or Kill You Prematurely.” Plus, the latest news about Boeing and the UAW.
Jean Carper is a medical journalist, and wrote “EatSmart” (a popular weekly column on nutrition, every week for USA Weekend Magazine) from 1994 until 2008; she is still a contributing editor, writing health and nutrition articles. Ms. Carper is also a former CNN medical correspondent and director of the documentary Monster in the Mind. She is the best-selling author of 25 books, mostly on nutrition and health. Her latest book is 100 LIFE OR DEATH FOODS: A Scientific Guide to Which Foods Prolong Life or Kill You Prematurely.
The reason I wrote the book was that I knew there is no other book like this. Nobody has taken a scientific look at all the studies that are being done on specific foods with conclusions as to how they are going to affect longevity. It is a totally new field. It really only started several years ago where scientists are getting interested in this. I thought of all the things that would be the most interesting about a food, and whether or not you wanted to eat it would be, “Oh, how long does it prolong my life? Or on the other hand, is it likely to shorten my life?”
Jean Carper
Less-developed countries with their natural food from over the history of their cultures are very often far superior [in longevity studies] to the so-called corporatized Western diet.
Ralph Nader
In Case You Haven’t Heard with Francesco DeSantis
1. The International Criminal Court at the Hague is preparing to hand down indictments to Israeli officials for committing war crimes. The Guardian reports the indicted are expected to include authoritarian Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, among others. These indictments will likely focus on Netanyahu’s strategy of intentional starvation in Gaza. Yet, lest one think that the United States actually believes in the “rules based international order,” they have touted so frequently, the Biden administration will not allow these indictments to be effectuated, baselessly claiming that the ICC does not have jurisdiction in Israel. Democracy Now! reports State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told the press “Since this president has come into office, we have worked to reset our relationship with the ICC, and we are in contact with the court on a range of issues, including in connection to the court’s important work on Darfur, on Ukraine, on Sudan, as well. But on this investigation, our position is clear: We continue to believe that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the Palestinian situation.” Former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth – who has faced retribution for his past criticism of Israel – called this “the height of hypocrisy.”
2. Even as the United States shields Israel from international legal consequences for its crimes, an internal state department memo indicates the American diplomatic corps is increasingly skeptical of the pariah state. Reuters reports “senior U.S. officials have advised Secretary of State Antony Blinken that they do not find ‘credible or reliable’ Israel’s assurances that it is using U.S.-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law.” This memo includes “eight examples of Israeli military actions that the officials said raise “serious questions” about potential violations of international humanitarian law…[including] repeatedly striking protected sites and civilian infrastructure; “unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage”; taking little action to investigate violations or to hold to account those responsible for significant civilian harm and “killing humanitarian workers and journalists at an unprecedented rate.”” The State Department however will only release a “complete assessment of credibility” in its May 8th report to Congress.
3. On Tuesday, the Guardian reports, an army of NYPD officers – including hundreds of armed officers in riot gear and heavy vehicles such as police busses, MRAPs, and “the Bear,” a ladder truck used to breach upper story windows – stormed the campus of Columbia University and carried out mass arrests at the college’s Hamilton Hall – which had been non-violently occupied by students and renamed Hind’s Hall after Hind Rajab, a six-year old Palestinian girl murdered by the IDF. Hamilton Hall was among the buildings occupied by anti-Vietnam War Protesters during the Columbia Uprising of 1968. Mayor Eric Adams used as a pretext for this militarized police action a claim that the student protest had been “co-opted” by “outside agitators”; there has been no evidence presented to support this claim. The NYPD also threatened to arrest student journalists, and the Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb, per Samantha Gross of the Boston Globe, and videos show the cops arresting legal observers and medics. Columbia University President, the Anglo-Egyptian Baroness Minouche Shafik, has requested that the NYPD continue to occupy the Morningside Heights campus until May 17th.
4. At the University of California Los Angeles, the New York Times reports “U.C.L.A. asked for officers after a clash between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and counterprotesters grew heated overnight.” This misleading report fails to clarify that, as Alejandra Caraballo of Harvard Law puts it “the police stood aside and let a pro Israeli lynch mob run wild at UCLA. They did nothing for two hours as violent Zionists assaulted students, launched fireworks into the encampment, and sprayed mace on students.” The accompanying videos must be seen to be believed. This is yet another glaring example of media manipulation on behalf of Zionist aggression against non-violent student protesters.
5. In the nation’s capital, a peaceful pro-Palestine encampment at the George Washington University continues to hold in the face of increasing pressure. The Washington Post reports that the university requested the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to clear the encampment last week, but the cops demurred. The Post article cites an unnamed D.C. official who “said they had flashbacks to June 2020, when images of mostly peaceful protesters being forcefully shoved out of Lafayette Square by U.S. Park Police officers with batons and chemical irritants made national news.” The university has issued temporary suspensions and did attempt to clear the encampment over the weekend, but failed to do so. Now however, congressional Republicans are heaping pressure upon the university and District of Columbia Mayor Bowser. According to the GW Hatchet, “[Representatives] Virginia Foxx and James Comer — who chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, respectively — wrote [in letter to Bowser and MPD Chief Pamela Smith] that they were “alarmed” by the Metropolitan Police Department’s reported refusal to clear the encampment.” and threatened to take legislative action. Senator Tom Cotton, infamous for his New York Times op-ed calling for the deployment of the national guard to shut down Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, sent a letter to Bowser on Tuesday, writing “Whether it is due to incompetence or sympathy for the cause of these Hamas supporters, you are failing to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens by letting a terrorist-supporting mob take over a large area of a university…Your actions are a good reminder of why Washington, D.C. must never become a state.” So far, the District’s leadership has exercised a rare and commendable restraint. One can only hope that continues.
6. Looking beyond individual campuses, the Appeal reports over 1,400 students and staff have been arrested at “protest encampments or…sit-ins on more than 70 college campuses across 32 states during the past month.” This piece followed up on these arrests by contacting prosecutors and city attorneys’ offices in every one of these jurisdictions – and found that “only two offices said they would not charge people for peacefully protesting.” These were “ Sam Bregman, the prosecutor for Bernalillo County, New Mexico, [which] includes the University of New Mexico’s Albuquerque campus….[and] Matthew Van Houten, the prosecutor overseeing Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.” Incredibly, this piece was published even before the recent mass arrests at Columbia and the City College of New York, which are estimated at nearly 300, per CNN.
7. Bringing the civil war within the Democratic Party on this issue into full view, the College Democrats of America – the official student outreach arm of the DNC – has issued a statement commending the “heroic actions on the part of students…for an end to the war in Palestine…[and] for an immediate permanent ceasefire.” This statement goes on to say “Arresting, suspending, and evicting students without any due process is not only legally dubious but morally reprehensible,” and excoriates the White House for taking “the mistaken route of a bear hug strategy for Netanyahu and a cold shoulder strategy for its own base,” noting that “Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent ceasefire…more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party.”
8. Moving beyond Palestine, hard as that is, the American Prospect is out with a chilling new story on Boeing. This report documents how the late Boeing whistle-blower John “Swampy” Barnett – who died under deeply mysterious circumstances during his deposition against the aviation titan last month – was ignored, mocked, and harassed by his corporate overlords. When he tried to raise the alarm that Boeing’s practices could be in violation of Section 38 of the United States Criminal code “The whole room…burst out laughing.” When he found planes riddled with defective and nonconforming parts and tried to report it, a supervisor emphatically declared “We’re not going to report anything to the FAA.” Yet even more than Boeing’s rancid corporate culture, this piece takes aim and corporate criminal law – specifically the Y2K era AIR 21 law which “effectively immunizes airplane manufacturers…from suffering any legal repercussions from the testimony of their own workers.” Per this law, “the exclusive legal remedy available to aviation industry whistleblowers who suffer retaliation for reporting safety violations involves filing a complaint within 90 days of the first instance of alleged retaliation with a secret court administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that lacks subpoena power, takes five years or longer to rule in many cases, and rules against whistleblowers an astounding 97 percent of the time, according to the Government Accountability Project.” No wonder Boeing acts as though they are above the law.
9. The United Auto Workers union continues to rack up victories. On Tuesday, More Perfect Union reported “ Mercedes-Benz has abruptly replaced its U.S. CEO in an effort to undercut the union drive at Mercedes’s plant in Alabama…In a video shown to workers…new CEO Federico Kochlowski admits that ‘many of you’ want change and [promised] improvements.” As Jonah Furman, Communications Director for UAW, notes “Mercedes workers have already:
— killed two-tier wages
— gotten their UAW pay bump
— [and] fired their boss
and they haven’t even voted yet!
If that’s what you get for just *talking* union, imagine what you can win when you *join* the union.”
Moreover, UAW President Shawn Fain issued a statement decrying the mass arrests of anti-war protesters, writing “The UAW will never support the…intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice…This war is wrong, and this response against students and academic workers, many of them UAW members, is wrong…if you can’t take the outcry, stop supporting this war.”
10. Finally, the New York Daily News’s Chris Sommerfledt reports “[New York City’s] largest cop union [the Police Benevolent Association] is suing Police Commissioner Ed Caban and Mayor Adams for implementing a new “zero tolerance” policy on NYPD officers using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.” The fact that the PBA is suing this ardently pro-cop mayoral administration is alarming enough, but the fact that enough NYPD officers are using steroids to warrant this policy – and enough for the union to step in on their behalf – raises an even more alarming question: how many roid-rage fueled NYPD cops are terrorizing marginalized people on the streets of New York City? Perhaps this could explain some of the NYPD’s outrageous, disproportionately violent behavior in recent years.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
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This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Parliamentary elections in Belarus are being viewed as a dress rehearsal for the presidential election that is scheduled to take place next year in which the country’s authoritarian leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, is expected to be the only viable candidate.
Lukashenka’s pledge to run again — repeated on February 25 after he cast his ballot — was not seen as an off-the-cuff comment.
“Tell them (the opposition) I’ll [run],” Lukashenka said in response to a question about the 2025 presidential election, according to BelTA, adding that there could be pressure from the opposition to hold elections sooner, but voters should not worry because the elections will be carried out “the way it is necessary for Belarus.”
The expectation is that there will be no real opposition candidates in the race, and if there is an alternative to Lukashenka, it will be only a nominal one. Lukashenka has been in power since 1994, and under his rule, Belarus has become an increasingly repressive state, being called by some Western diplomats “Europe’s last dictatorship.”
Election authorities in Belarus said earlier that all 110 mandates of the lower parliament chamber had been occupied following the tightly controlled parliamentary elections held on February 25, which were held under heavy securityamid calls for a boycott by the country’s beleaguered opposition.
The Central Election Commission said that voter turnout was nearly 74 percent amid reports of people being intimidated into going to polling stations against their will.
The vote was criticized by the U.S. State Department, which called it a “sham” election held amid a “climate of fear.”
Only four parties, all of which support Lukashenka’s policies, were officially registered to compete in the polls — Belaya Rus, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the Party of Labor and Justice. About a dozen parties were denied registration last year.
The Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.
Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who has claimed her victory over Lukashenka in the 2020 presidential election was stolen, described the elections as a “farce” and called for a boycott, saying the regime had only allowed “puppets” onto the ballot.
Tsikhanouskaya on February 26 took part in a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, reminding the council that the situation in Belarus remains serious and that thousands of political prisoners suffer in prisons in inhumane conditions.
The international community’s response to the crisis in Belarus and similar repressive regimes should be decisive and unwavering, she said, and any actions taken against these regimes should have a real impact on the ground.
The general elections were the first to be held in Belarus since the 2020 presidential election, which handed Lukashenka a sixth term in office. More than 35,000 people were arrested in the monthslong mass protests that followed the controversial election.
Ahead of the voting in parliamentary and local council elections, the country’s Central Election Commission announced a record amount of early voting, which began on February 20. Nearly 48 percent of registered voters had already voted by February 24, according to the commission, eclipsing the nearly 42 percent of early voting recorded for the contentious 2020 presidential election.
Early voting is widely seen by observers as a mechanism employed by the Belarusian authorities to falsify elections. The Belarusian opposition has said the early voting process allows for voting manipulation, with ballot boxes unprotected for a five-day period.
The Vyasna Human Rights Center alleged that many voters were forced to participate in early voting, including students, soldiers, teachers, and other civil servants.
“Authorities are using all available means to ensure the result they need — from airing TV propaganda to forcing voters to cast ballots early,” said Vyasna representative Paval Sapelka. “Detentions, arrests and searches are taking place during the vote.”
The Belarusian authorities stepped up security on the streets and at polling stations around the country, with Interior Ministry police conducting drills on how to deal with voters who might try to violate restrictive rules imposed for the elections.
For the first time, curtains were removed from voting booths, and voters were barred from taking pictures of their ballots — a practice encouraged by activists in previous elections in an effort to prevent authorities from manipulating vote counts.
Polling stations were guarded by police, along with members of a youth law enforcement organization and retired security personnel. Armed rapid-response teams were also formed to deal with potential disturbances.
Lukashenka this week alleged without offering proof that Western countries were considering ways to stage a coup and ordered police to boost armed patrols across the country in order to ensure “law and order.”
For the first time, election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were denied access to monitor the vote in OSCE-member Belarus.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Park Jin Chul was still high on meth and slightly drunk when he spat into his hand and held it out in front of Ri Kwang Hyuk’s face.
“Eat this,” he ordered his junior non-commissioned officer.
Kwang Hyuk thought about submitting to his former classmate, who had once looked up to him but who now outranked him in the North Korean army.
But he had seen enough. Jin Chul was still the slacker he was back then, and he was only leading this unit because he came from a higher-status family. He talked down to his men and ordered them around like servants.
Defiantly, Kwang Hyuk stood motionless.
“Fine, if that’s how it is,” Jin Chul said as he grabbed Kwang Hyuk by the throat and slammed him against the wall.
Life in the North Korean military is very much like this scene from recently released short film “Two Soldiers,” said defector-turned-director Jeong Haneul, who had been a soldier when he escaped to the South across the demilitarized zone in 2012.
But the main point of his 23-minute film is not so much to reveal hardships facing soldiers but more to illustrate the unfairness of North Korea’s songbun system of ascribed status, he said.
It was this caste-like system that drove Jeong to risk everything to get to South Korea, where he became a film director.
“I titled the film ‘Two Soldiers’ to show through the lives of soldiers how differences in class and songbun exist as discrimination,” Jeong told RFA Korean.
Caste based on loyalty
Those with the highest songbun are descended from people who fought alongside national founder Kim Il Sung against colonial Japan prior to and during World War II, and have demonstrated through multiple generations that they are steadfast in their loyalty to the North Korean leadership.
These people are also the most privileged and can expect a fast track to membership in the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, which almost guarantees them cushy government jobs, the best education for their children, and expensive homes in the best parts of the capital Pyongyang.
Meanwhile those with the lowest songbun are descendants of those who collaborated with Japan during the colonial period, or criminals.
They have almost no hope of ever joining the party and they aren’t even allowed to visit the capital without a rare invitation from the government. They are given the most menial jobs and have little access to higher education.
An image from “Two Soldiers,” to movie Haneul made the movie to show how differences in class and songbun exist as discrimination. (Courtesy Jeong Haneul) In essence, those with low songbun are paying for crimes or lapses of loyalty committed by their grandparents or even great-grandparents, and those with high songbun are often reaping the rewards that they did not earn.
North Korea’s mandatory military service, which, for men, is now seven years but was 10 years until recently, brings people of all strata of society together, but those from the lower status must fall in line or else, Jeong said.
Sick of this system, Jeong sneaked away when the senior officer at his border guard post was taking a midday nap. Normally, a fence surging with 2,200 volts of electricity would have prevented such an escape, but it had collapsed in a recent typhoon.
The next day, he encountered a South Korean soldier on the southern side of the border and told him he wanted to defect.
As of 2024, the total number of North Korean escapees to have entered South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War is 34,078.
Jeong is among around only 400 who crossed the land border to South Korea and lived to tell the tale. Most take a much more circuitous route through China and Southeast Asia, from where they fly to Seoul.
Elements of truth
The film “Two Soldiers,” which debuted on Jan. 21 and can be viewed on YouTube, is based loosely on Jeong’s own experience.
His family were laborers, relatively low on the social ladder, so his time in the army was similar to that of the protagonist Kwang Hyuk.
Jin Chul, the arrogant and abusive higher ranking soldier in the film, is based on a schoolmate with whom Jeong served whose uncle was a high-ranking military official.
The classmate would brag that he would be a member of the party only five years after being discharged, easily get a recommendation to attend the prestigious Kim Il Sung University and become a party official upon graduation – making him one of the elite.
Soldiers drink imported whiskey – a rarity in North Korea – in a scene from the film “Two Soldiers.” (Two Soldiers) “He was also able to be assigned a sleeping position wherever he wanted, and I remember his untanned face, ” he said. “[He even] disappeared for several days during training to rest at his uncle’s house in Pyongyang and then came back.”
In the movie, the privileged Jin Chul, whose uncle is a big shot political official, doesn’t even bother wearing his full uniform. When Kwang Hyuk arrives, Jin Chul orders Kim Kwang Il, a private under his command whom he treats like a servant, to bring some whiskey and food for him and his old schoolmate.
Kwang Hyuk questions whether it is wise to be drinking openly while they should be on duty, but Jin Chul explains that he’s the boss, and if Kwang Hyuk sticks with him, he can get preferential treatment.
Though soldiers aren’t supposed to have any visitors, Jin Chul’s girlfriend arrives in a Mercedes Benz convertible, and she delivers him a supply of “ice,” the North Korean street name for crystal meth.
Jin Chul later passes out on his bunk in the middle of the day after binging on meth. He uses the half-empty bottle of Ballantine’s whiskey as a makeshift pillow.
Intentionally exaggerated
Jin Chul’s portrayal could be seen as over the top, but Jeong says that is deliberate.
“I intentionally exaggerated the setting in the movie, but considering my experience in military life, North Korea is capable of doing more than that,” he said
Jeong, as a laborer, was in a better situation than farm workers, he said. In order to get off the farm, they would have to be recommended to a military school that trains officers or a security college that trains security agents after discharge.
During Jeong’s service, an order was issued to “reduce the number of former farm workers recommended to military schools,” which closed off many opportunities for them.
“This kind of discrimination is not anyone’s fault,” he said. “The North Korean authorities who created that system are the cause.”
While he was making “Two Soldiers,” Jeong said he was often reminded about his experience during bootcamp.
“I missed my parents so much and thought about my hometown a lot,” he said. “My weight was 45 kilograms [99 pounds]. I was almost malnourished.”
His lack of freedom was stifling, Jeong said.
“I was unable to do anything or go anywhere. There was no one on my side and I felt completely isolated,” he said. “I cried endlessly in the blowing autumn wind. I was hoping that someone would take me away and that someone would recognize me.”
Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Hyunju and Mok Yong Jae for RFA Korean.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Myanmar’s junta gave life sentences to six men, lawyers told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday.
In a five-day military trial ending Monday, a tribunal sentenced the men for alleged acts of terrorism.
The punishment is especially harsh because they were sentenced in an area under martial law, one lawyer said.
“If they can hire a lawyer for cases like these in civil courts, the maximum prison sentence is just 10 years,” he told RFA.
The Northwestern Military Command tribunal found them guilty of supporting their local People’s Defense Force and related activities prohibited under the country’s notorious counter-terrorism laws.
The trial started on Thursday in Sagaing region in northwest Myanmar, where those accused include people from four townships.
Pale township’s Zayar Myo and Than Zaw Linn, Shwebo township’s Min Khant Kyaw, Banmauk township’s Than Naing Oo and Indaw township’s Hein Min Thu and Zaw Myint Tun all live in areas under harsh military law.
Heavy punishments have often been imposed by the military just on suspicion after martial law was declared in Sagaing region, an official of the Yinmabin township’s People’s Defense Force said.
“If anyone is even suspected of supporting the revolution without participating, severe punishments are handed down. They [the junta] are above the law,” he said.
Given the large presence of anti-junta groups in the area, some resistance soldiers say the military has begun arresting people without any due cause.
In early September, seven people in Sagaing region were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including life in prison. One People’s Defence Force officer said the accused had no connection to any local resistance group.
In the seven months following the implementation of martial law, the Myanmar military arrested and imprisoned 30 Ayadaw township residents and sentenced 10 Indaw residents to death and life in prison.
Calls to Sagaing region’s junta spokesperson Sai Naing Naing Kyaw seeking comment on the sentences went unanswered.
Fourteen townships in Sagaing region, including Pale, Shwebo, Banmauk and Indaw have been under martial law since February 2023, shortly after the military extended its emergency rule nationwide.
Since then, military courts have sentenced 285 civilians to prison terms, according to pro-junta broadcast groups on the messaging app Telegram.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The U.S. Department of State condemned Beijing in a statement Friday for secretly imposing a life sentence on a Uyghur folklore expert and ethnographer who disappeared in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region nearly six years ago.
Rahile Dawut was tried and convicted in December 2018 for the crime of “splittism,” a U.S.-based rights group reported last week, citing a source within the Chinese government.
The State Department statement said Dawut and other Uyghur intellectuals were unfairly imprisoned for their work to protect and preserve Uyghur culture and traditions.
“Professor Dawut’s life sentence is part of an apparent broader effort by the PRC to eradicate Uyghur identity and culture and undermine academic freedom, including through the use of detentions and disappearances,” the statement said, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
Tourists take photos near a tower at the International Grand Bazaar in Urumqi in western China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as seen during a government organized trip for foreign journalists on April 21, 2021. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein/AP It called on Beijing to end “genocide and crimes against humanity” against Uyghurs and other minority groups, and to honor its commitments to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“We continue to call on the PRC government to immediately release Professor Dawut and all individuals who are unjustly detained,” the statement said.
Anthropologist
Dawut, 57, is the creator and former director of Xinjiang University’s Minorities Folklore Research Center. She penned articles in international journals and several books about Islamic sacred sites in Central Asia.
An anthropologist by training, she mysteriously disappeared in December 2017, the same year that Chinese authorities launched a mass incarceration campaign in Xinjiang.
People walk past a police station in Urumqi, the capital of China’s far west Xinjiang region, on April 21, 2021. A prominent Uyghur scholar specializing in the study of her people’s folklore and traditions has been sentenced to life in prison, according to a U.S.-based foundation that works on human rights cases in China. Credit: Dake Kang/AP After years of silence on her case, RFA Uyghur learned in July 2021 through interviews with employees at the university that she was in fact among the many other members of the Uyghur intellectual and cultural elite who were detained in 2017, and she was sentenced and jailed in 2018.
China has detained as many as 1.8 million Uyghurs in detention camps constructed in 2017. Beijing first denied the existence of the camps, but later described them as vocational training or re-education centers aimed at combating terrorism in Xinjiang.
Western governments and rights groups have accused China of targeting of intellectuals, artists, teachers and cultural figures in an effort to erase the Uyghur identity, with many coming to the conclusion in 2021 that Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs and other minorities was genocide. China rejects the accusation.
Edited by Malcolm Foster
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Eugene Whong.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The world is in the grips of a dangerous heat wave that has sent temperatures skyrocketing to deadly levels throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. Unless urgent action is taken to reduce carbon emissions, the United Nations says, Earth could pass a temperature threshold in the next decade when climate disasters are too extreme to adapt to. We speak with longtime climate journalist Jeff Goodell, author of the new book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, about how the climate crisis is raising temperatures, the toll such heat can have on the human body, and how “heat is the primary driver for this climate transformation we are undergoing right now,” fueling natural disasters such as floods, wildfires and more.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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As guilt mounts over humanity’s inaction in the face of the climate crisis, industrialized capitalists have adapted their tactics to meet the demands of a more environmentally conscious market; by selling the image of sustainability!
Touted as the green transportation of the future, demand has exploded for electric cars. This has, in turn, increased the demand for lithium and other rare earth metals, with corporations rushing to open as many new mines as possible. Indigenous elders have been at the forefront of resistance to this latest wave of extractive capitalism, particularly in Peehee Mu’huh also known as Thacker Pass, Nevada, where the Ox Sam Indigenous Women’s camp has been resisting the construction of what would be North America’s largest lithium mine.
Later, subMedia’s nihilist weather droid, UV-400 brings us the latest updates in the climate crisis with a global weather report. Included are record-breaking wildfires in Canada, a heatwave and devastating floods across China and an earthquake in Haiti.
Finally, in so-called Peru, Indigenous warriors seized oil tankers in yet another flare up of the ongoing tensions with Canadian oil company PetrolTal.
For more information on the Ox Sam Indigenous Women’s Camp visit OxSam.org.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by subMedia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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We mourn the loss of Daniel Ellsberg, singularly principled truth-teller, activist and “patriarch of whistleblowing” who exposed the murderous lies of the Vietnam War – with, it turns out, the help of his 13-year-old son – and spent the next 50-plus years bearing righteous witness to “the human consequences (of) what we’re doing” – our wars, ravages of the planet, dalliance with nuclear mayhem. A fierce ally of “those who care about the others,” he grew weary but never hopeless, insisting, “One candle lights another.”
“My dear father, Daniel Ellsberg, died this morning June 16 at 1:24 a.m., four months after his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer,” wrote his son Robert. “His family surrounded him as he took his last breath. He had no pain and died peacefully at home.” His father’s time since his diagnosis was largely happy: “Just as he had always written better under a deadline, it turned out he was able to ‘live better under a deadline’ – with joy, gratitude, purpose (and) perhaps a feeling of relief that the fate of the world no longer depended on his efforts.” He “didn’t feel there was any tragedy attached to dying at the age of 92,” and remained true to his vision till the end. In May, he spoke with his usual eloquence and acuity to Politico about the deadly impact of America’s ceaseless imperialist adventures, duplicitous arrogance and warmongering in the specious name of democracy – the same issues that stirred him to oppose those in seemingly unassailable power more than five decades before.
Ellsberg was a military analyst with a Harvard doctorate, a resume from the right-wing RAND Corporation and high-level security clearance when in 1964 he became an advisor to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who years after forging “McNamara’s War” decried his own actions as “terribly wrong” – a mea culpa many dismissed. “His regret cannot be huge enough to balance the books for our dead soldiers,” said one critic who somehow elided the brutal reality of a war that also cost billions of dollars and millions of lives other than 60,000 American ones. “The ghosts of those unlived lives circle close around Mr. McNamara.” Meanwhile, from his first day at the Pentagon – the day of the Tonkin Gulf encounter used as a pretext for Congressional approval of the war – through two years spent on the ground in Vietnam, including with Marine patrols, to working on the damning report now known as the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg came to consistently view Vietnam as an immoral and unwinnable war almost wholly built on lies.
That report, says Robert, convinced him the war was “not just a problem or a mistake, (but) a crime that must be resisted.” He didn’t release the Pentagon Papers because “he was offended merely by its chronicle of lies…He was offended by the crimes those lies were protecting – they were lies about murder.” As a child, Robert said his father “tended to talk to me about ‘grown-up’ things”: the Vietnam War, the perils of nuclear war, history, empire, non-violence, “the human capacities for evil and for changing the world.” (He was also “wildly funny,” had memorized many favorite poems, loved magic, music, movies and nature, especially the ocean.) One day in 1969, Daniel took him out to lunch and told him about his plan to copy secret documents in hopes of helping end an untenable war. “He’d been sharing with me books and writings by Gandhi, Thoreau, Martin Luther King, so I understood what he was talking about,” he said. “He asked if I would help him. So that afternoon I spent the day at a Xerox machine copying documents. I was thirteen.”
At the time, Robert “didn’t fully comprehend the implications. It was something my father asked me to do, and I admired him so much, I would have done anything he asked.” Later in life, Daniel explained himself: “Feeling he would soon go to prison, possibly for the rest of his life, he wanted to leave me with the example there could come a time when one might be compelled to make a sacrifice (for) the sake of a greater good. My father did not teach me to ride a bike or catch a baseball. But he wanted to pass along that lesson.” Working with anti-war activist Anthony Russo, Ellsberg went underground to distribute documents to the media, and on June 12, 1971, the New York Times published the first in a series of history-making, Pulitzer-winning Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg surrendered to arrest June 28; at 15, Robert was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury; Ellsberg was ultimately indicted under the Espionage Act and faced up to 115 years in prison. But two years later, the charges were dismissed when toadies for Nixon, livid at “the son-of-a-bitching thief,” were found to have burglarized Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office as part of a “neutralization” scheme.
For the next half-century, an indefatigable Ellsberg wrote, lobbied, protested, got arrested almost 100 times, and spoke up against climate change, nuclear proliferation, the erosion of civil rights for black, poor, queer, other marginalized people, and the hidden, dirty truths of an imperialist country “addicted to waging aggressive war” too often made invisible. Speaking with The Intercept after the Iraq War began, Ellsberg referenced heartfelt 9/11 coverage by newspapers that ran headshots and anecdotes about the victims – what made them human, what people remembered of them. “Imagine if the Times were to run a page or two of photographs of the people who burned on the night of ‘shock and awe,’ to say, ‘Look, each one had friends, parents, children, each made their mark in some little way in the world, and these were the people we killed.’ Of course it’s never happened – nothing like it,” he said. “I am in favor, unreservedly, of making people aware what the human consequences are of what we’re doing – where we are killing people, what the real interests appear to be, who is benefiting.”
That kind of transparency “is not impossible,” he felt, given a social media where “people can be their own investigative journalists.” But he was dismayed to realize that, while such action may help, “It’s very far from being a guarantee anything will change.” Conceding Americans being lied to by government and complicit media are “surely less responsible (than) the ones doing the lying,” he lamented “a first approximation that the public doesn’t show any effective concern for the number of people we kill in these wars.” Vitally, concealed from them “is that they are citizens of an empire that (claims) the right to determine who governs other countries” – and if we don’t approve of them, to remove them. “Virtually every president tells us we are a very peace-loving people (for whom) war is not our normal state,” but “that of course does go against the fact that we’ve been at war almost continuously.” He returned, again, to lies, notably those that encourage Americans to support war “convinced we’re better than other people.” “As a former insider, one becomes aware it’s not difficult to deceive people,” he said. “You’re often telling them what they would like to believe.”
Over time, he could grow disheartened that, “While admiration for brave whistleblowers might be widespread, actual emulation is scarce.” But news of his illness, now death, sparked a grateful outpouring for “a hero of truth,” “a great man” whose “courage is imperishable.” On his father’s 80th birthday, Robert wrote of his legacy, “In the chronicle of conscientious actions, one candle lights another.” Thus has he followed in his upright footsteps: An activist, editor, theologian, he’s written books about saints, prophets and “witnesses for our time,” arguing, “Courage, holiness, goodness are contagious.” In a piece for Father’s Day written before Daniel’s death, he recalls several productive, Trump-era years helping him edit The Doomsday Machine, a 2nd volume of memoirs Daniel had long struggled to finish, because, “Now is not the time to give up.” Nor was it ever. His father never “retired” from his belief in peace and protecting the world’s creatures, or from his self-declared mission to stand with “those who care about the others – (they) are my tribe.” “He was not what you would call a ‘person of faith,’” says Robert of his father. “He was happy to think of himself as a person of hope…It was a form of action, a way of life.” May his memory be for a blessing.
Robert and Daniel Ellsberg in April on “the last trip to the beach,” which Daniel loved. Photo courtesy of Robert Ellsberg
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Abby Zimet.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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We speak in depth with journalist Jonathan Eig about his new book, King: A Life, the first major biography of the civil rights leader in more than 35 years, which draws on unredacted FBI files, as well as the files of the personal aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to show how Johnson and others partnered in the FBI’s surveillance of King and efforts to destroy him, led by director J. Edgar Hoover. Eig also interviewed more than 200 people, including many who knew King closely, like the singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. The book has also drawn attention for its revelation that King was less critical of Malcolm X than previously thought.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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In Part 2 of our interview with journalist Jonathan Eig about his new book, King: A Life, the first major biography of the civil rights leader in more than 35 years, he talks about King’s early life and father; King’s formerly enslaved grandparents; the FBI’s push for him to abandon colleagues who were communists; and his opposition to the Vietnam War and launch of the Poor People’s Campaign just before he was killed. “We need to remember the radical words he spoke, and not just the safe ones,” Eig says. In Part 1, we looked at how the book draws on unredacted FBI files, as well as the files of the personal aide to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, to show how Johnson and others partnered in the FBI’s surveillance of King and efforts to destroy him, led by director J. Edgar Hoover. Eig also interviewed more than 200 people, including many who knew King closely, like the singer, actor and activist Harry Belafonte. The book has also drawn attention for its revelation that King was less critical of Malcolm X than previously thought.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Do you think there’s no good protest music these days? So did Mat Ward, until they started looking for it.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Independent filmmakers offer a vital portal into the struggle against the theocratic regime.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
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In his book, ‘The Truth About Wuhan’, Huff claims that the pandemic was caused by the US government’s funding of coronaviruses in China
This post was originally published on The Asian Age | Home.