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  • The Rainbow Warrior saga. Part 2: Nuclear refugees in the Pacific – the evacuation of Rongelap

    COMMENTARY:  By Eugene Doyle

    On the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior prior to its sinking by French secret agents in Auckland harbour on 10 July 1985 the ship had evacuated the entire population of 320 from Rongelap in the Marshall Islands.

    After conducting dozens of above-ground nuclear explosions, the US government had left the population in conditions that suggested the islanders were being used as guinea pigs to gain knowledge of the effects of radiation.

    Cancers, birth defects, and genetic damage ripped through the population; their former fisheries and land are contaminated to this day.

    Denied adequate support from the US – they turned to Greenpeace with an SOS: help us leave our ancestral homeland; it is killing our people. The Rainbow Warrior answered the call.

    Human lab rats or our brothers and sisters?
    Dr Merrill Eisenbud, a physicist in the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) famously said in 1956 of the Marshall Islanders:  “While it is true that these people do not live, I might say, the way Westerners do, civilised people, it is nevertheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”

    Dr Eisenbud also opined that exposure “would provide valuable information on the effects of radiation on human beings.”  That research continues to this day.

    A half century of testing nuclear bombs
    Within a year of dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US moved part of its test programme to the central Pacific.  Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was used for atmospheric explosions from 1946 with scant regard for the indigenous population.

    In 1954, the Castle Bravo test exploded a 15-megaton bomb —  one thousand times more deadly than the one dropped on Hiroshima.  As a result, the population of Rongelap were exposed to 200 roentgens of radiation, considered life-threatening without medical intervention. And it was.

    Part of the Marshall Islands, with Bikini Atoll and Rongelap in the top left
    Part of the Marshall Islands, with Bikini Atoll and Rongelap in the top left. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

    Total US tests equaled more than 7000 Hiroshimas.  The Clinton administration released the aptly-named Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), report in January 1994 in which it acknowledged:

    “What followed was a program by the US government — initially the Navy and then the AEC and its successor agencies — to provide medical care for the exposed population, while at the same time trying to learn as much as possible about the long-term biological effects of radiation exposure. The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ in a ‘radiation experiment’.

    This impression was reinforced by the fact that the islanders were deliberately left in place and then evacuated, having been heavily radiated. Three years later they were told it was “safe to return” despite the lead scientist calling Rongelap “by far the most contaminated place in the world”.

    Significant compensation paid by the US to the Marshall Islands has proven inadequate given the scale of the contamination.  To some degree, the US has also used money to achieve capture of elite interest groups and secure ongoing control of the islands.

    Entrusted to the US, the Marshall Islanders were treated like the civilians of Nagasaki
    The US took the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1944.  The only “right” it has to be there was granted by the United Nations which in 1947 established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, to be administered by the United States.

    What followed was an abuse of trust worse than rapists at a state care facility.  Using the very powers entrusted to it to protect the Marshallese, the US instead used the islands as a nuclear laboratory — violating both the letter and spirit of international law.

    Fellow white-dominated countries like Australia and New Zealand couldn’t have cared less and let the indigenous people be irradiated for decades.

    The betrayal of trust by the US was comprehensive and remains so to this day:

    Under Article 76 of the UN Charter, all trusteeship agreements carried obligations. The administering power was required to:

    • Promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the people
    • Protect the rights and well-being of the inhabitants
    • Help them advance toward self-government or independence.

    Under Article VI, the United States solemnly pledged to “Protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources.”  Very similar to sentiments in New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi.  Within a few years the Americans were exploding the biggest nuclear bombs in history over the islands.

    Within a year of the US assuming trusteeship of the islands, another pillar of international law came into effect: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) — which affirms the inherent dignity and equal rights of all humans. Exposing colonised peoples to extreme radiation for weapons testing is a racist affront to this.

    America has a long history of making treaties and fine speeches and then exploiting indigenous peoples.  Last year, I had the sobering experience of reading American military historian Peter Cozzens’ The Earth is Weeping, a history of the “Indian wars” for the American West.

    The past is not dead: the Marshall Islands are a hive of bases, laboratories and missile testing; Americans are also incredibly busy attacking the population in Gaza today.

    Eyes of Fire – the last voyage of the Rainbow Warrior
    Had the French not sunk the Rainbow Warrior after it reached Auckland from the Rongelap evacuation, it would have led a flotilla to protest nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.  So the bookends of this article are the abuse of defenceless people in the charge of one nuclear power — the US —  and the abuse of New Zealand and the peoples of French Polynesia by another nuclear power — France.

    Senator Jeton Anjain (left) of Rongelap and Greenpeace campaign coordinator Steve Sawyer on board the Rainbow Warrior
    Senator Jeton Anjain (left) of Rongelap and Greenpeace campaign coordinator Steve Sawyer on board the Rainbow Warrior . . . challenging the abuse of defenceless people under the charge of one nuclear power. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    This incredible story, and much more, is the subject of David Robie’s outstanding book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, published by Little Island Press, which has been relaunched to mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack.

    A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

    Between them, France and the US have exploded more than 300 nuclear bombs in the Pacific. Few people are told this; few people know this.

    Today, a matrix of issues combine — the ongoing effects of nuclear contamination, sea rise imperilling Pacific nations, colonialism still posing immense challenges to people in the Marshall Islands, Kanaky New Caledonia and in many parts of our region.

    Unsung heroes
    Our media never ceases to share the pronouncements of European leaders and news from the US and Europe but the leaders and issues of the Pacific are seldom heard. The heroes of the antinuclear movement should be household names in Australia and New Zealand.

    Vanuatu’s great leader Father Walter Lini; Oscar Temaru, Mayor, later President of French Polynesia; Senator Jeton Anjain, Darlene Keju-Johnson and so many others.

    Do we know them?  Have we heard their voices?

    Jobod Silk, climate activist, said in a speech welcoming the Rainbow Warrior III to Majuro earlier this year:  “Our crusade for nuclear justice intertwines with our fight against the tides.”

    Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific . . . the Rainbow Warrior
    Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific . . . the Rainbow Warrior taking on board Rongelap islanders ready for their first of four relocation voyages to Mejatto island. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    Former Tuvalu PM Enele Sapoaga castigated Australia for the AUKUS submarine deal which he said “was crafted in secret by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison with no public discussion.”

    He challenged the bigger regional powers, particularly Australia and New Zealand, to remember that the existential threat faced by Pacific nations comes first from climate change, and reminded New Zealanders of the commitment to keeping the South Pacific nuclear-free.

    Hinamoeura Cross, a Tahitian anti-nuclear activist and politician, said in a 2019 UN speech: “Today, the damage is done. My people are sick. For 30 years we were the mice in France’s laboratory.”

    Until we learn their stories and know their names as well as we know those of Marco Rubio or Keir Starmer, we will remain strangers in our own lands.

    The Pacific owes them, along with the people of Greenpeace, a huge debt.  They put their bodies on the line to stop the aggressors. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira, killed by the French in 1985, was just one of many victims, one of many heroes.

    A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

    You cannot sink a rainbow.

    Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira
    Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira being welcomed to Rongelap Atoll by a villager in May 1985 barely two months before he was killed by French secret agents during the sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior. Image: David Robie/Eyes of Fire

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Legends of a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific – Octo Mote

    Pacific Media Watch

    West Papuan independence advocate Octovianus Mote was in Aotearoa New Zealand late last year seeking support for independence for West Papua, which has been ruled by Indonesia for more than six decades.

    Mote is vice-president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and was hosted in New Zealand by the Green Party, which Mote said had always been a “hero” for West Papua.

    He spoke at a West Papua seminar at the Māngere Mountain Education Centre and in this Talanoa TV segment he offers prayers for the West Papuan solidarity movement.

    In a “blessing for peace and justice”, Octo Mote spoke of his hopes for the West Papuan struggle for independence at lunch at the Mount Albert home of New Zealand activist Maire Leadbeater in September 2024.

    He gave a tribute to Leadbeater and the Whānau Community Centre and Hub’s Nik Naidu, saying:

    “We remember those who cannot eat like us, especially those who oppressed . . . The 80,000 people in Papua who have had to flee their homes because of the Indonesian military operations.”

    Video: Nik Naidu, Talanoa TV


    Blessings by Octo Mote.               Video: Talanoa TV

    On Saturday, 12 July 2025 Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford will open the week-long Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) exhibition at the Ellen Melville Centre Women’s Pioneer Hall at 3pm.

    https://www.facebook.com/events/1856900961820487/

    Poster for the Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995 exhibition
    Poster for the Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995 exhibition, July 13-18.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • We Will Never Forget that the BBC Has Helped to Enable a genocide

    A damning report has now confirmed what many of us already knew: that the BBC’s reporting of Israel’s war on Gaza is far from impartial.

    The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) analysed the BBC’s coverage of the 12 months following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023. Their huge report reveals a clear dynamic: “the marginalisation of Palestinian suffering and the amplification of Israeli narratives.”

    The report showed that, despite the killing of 34 times more Palestinians, the BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage, interviewed more than twice as many Israelis as Palestinians (1,085 v 2,350), and shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian one (2,340 v 217).

    Complicit in genocide

    The report, which examined over 35,000 pieces of content produced by “the world’s most trusted broadcaster,” is full of similarly shocking evidence. But perhaps the most deplorable is the BBC’s failure to report confessions of genocidal intent by Israel’s leaders. Not a single BBC article reported Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu’s biblical “Amalek” reference – a people the Jews were commanded by God to annihilate – or president Herzog’s claim of Palestinian collective responsibility. Just 12 out of 3,873 articles bothered to mention former defence minister Gallant’s statement in which he referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, ordered “a complete siege on the Gaza strip”, and promised “we will eliminate everything”. Genocidal intent is notoriously difficult to prove when classifying an act as genocide, yet here are Israel’s own leaders, readily admitting their intention to wipe out an entire people.

    Peter Oborne, one of several journalists to question the BBC about the findings in the report during a parliamentary meeting, said: “You never educated your audience about the genocidal remarks, and according to this report, on one hundred occasions, one hundred occasions, you’ve closed down the references to genocide by your guests. This makes you complicit.”

    Lack of crucial context

    Oborne’s brilliant tirade, which can be viewed here, also flagged the BBC’s failure to report on two Israeli military doctrines – the Hannibal directive and the Dayiha doctrine – which provide essential context to understanding Israel’s response to the 7 October attacks.

    The Hannibal directive allows the Israeli military to use any force necessary to prevent its soldiers from being captured and taken into enemy territory – even if that means opening fire on those captives. A major investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that the procedure was activated during the 7 October attacks, and a UN report concluded that at least 14 Israeli civilians were deliberately killed by their own army on that day as a result of the directive. But as Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigation – and barred medical professionals and others from doing so – we do not know the true figure. A year-long investigation by Electronic Intifada, however, found it to be in the hundreds.

    The BBC has also never mentioned Israel’s Dahiya doctrine. Named after a Beirut suburb that was decimated by Israel in 2006, the Dahiya doctrine is the use of disproportionate force to destroy civilians and everything that supports them so that they will never again contemplate resistance. It is a form of collective punishment – and unquestionably a war crime – that has been applied to Gaza over the past 20 months. The BBC’s decision not to ever mention this doctrine is, as Oborne calls it, “a grotesque omission”, for it provides fundamental context to Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza following 7 October.

    No desire to change

    You only have to look at the representative the BBC chose to respond to the accusations in the report and defend its Gaza coverage to see how little it cares – and how unlikely it is to change. Richard Burgess, executive news editor at the BBC, admitted he’s “not a Middle East expert” and doesn’t claim to understand the doctrines. A rightly exasperated Oborne responded, “Then send someone along who does!” When a senior news editor is asked to justify their organisation’s coverage of what is widely considered a genocide, ignorance of the full facts is truly an appalling defense.

    Soon after the report was released – as if to demonstrate its complete unwillingness to modify its pattern of bias – the BBC announced that its long-awaited documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, would not be aired. The film explores the systematic destruction of Gaza’s health service by Israeli forces as well as the abuse suffered by Palestinian medics. The BBC claimed that broadcasting the film could create “a perception of partiality”. But as former BBC journalist and news presenter Karishma Patel tweeted: “How? This film shows the reality of Israel’s actions. You can’t fling the accusation of bias at realities you simply don’t want on air.” Just as the harrowing documentary on life in Gaza seen through the eyes of Palestinian children was pulled by the BBC months previously, the BBC’s silencing of Palestinian voices appears to be institutional. It’s simply what it does.

    Israel apologists

    And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it does. On 27 June, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a horrific article about the Gaza Health Foundation (GHF) – the controversial Israeli-controlled aid distribution centres. The IDF soldiers Haaretz interviewed confirmed what Palestinians have been claiming for weeks: that soldiers are being ordered to massacre desperate, starving civilians queuing up for food. “It’s a killing field,” one soldier said. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.” Another added, “Sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces…I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire.”

    Did the BBC pick up on this story? Of course it didn’t. It did however publish an ‘explainer’ about the shootings at GHF sites via its Verify service. BBC Verify calls itself a “specialist team of journalists” who “fact-check information, verify video, counter disinformation, and analyse data to separate fact from fake.” But rather than using actual testimony from IDF soldiers to corroborate reports of shootings, their specialist journalists looked at some video footage and concluded that they paint a murky picture: “While the videos show an overall picture of danger and chaos, they do not definitively show who is responsible for firing.”

    The rest of the article reads like a PR piece for the government of Israel: Israeli government spokesman David Mencer is quoted saying that the reports of hundreds of civilians being killed is “another untruth”; Hamas are of course likely responsible; while a GHF spokesperson is “pleased” with its first month of operations. We know the BBC Verify journalists will have read the Haaretz article. That they chose to completely ignore it and concoct this pile of Israel apologia is frankly appalling.

    The truth is coming out

    The BBC obviously has no intention of reforming and will continue to provide cover for Israel’s crimes for as long as it possibly can. But despite their best efforts, the truth about Israel is finding its way out. The documentary that the BBC refused to air has now found a home on Channel 4 in the UK and on Zeteo News worldwide. And the BBC’s attempt to control their Glastonbury coverage by barring pro-Palestinian band Kneecap from their live broadcast, failed spectacularly when punk duo Bob Vylan chose to use their set to condemn Israel’s war crimes, live on air. Lead singer Bobby called out the UK and US for being “complicit in war crimes” and led chants of “free Palestine” and “death to the IDF”, which the crowd enthusiastically shouted back. The crowd’s response, and the fact that a huge number of other artists also spoke out in support of Palestine, suggests the tide is shifting.

    True to form, the BBC swiftly removed Bob Vylan’s performance from iPlayer and released a grovelling statement expressing regret that it hadn’t pulled the live stream and describing Vylan’s words as “deeply offensive” and “utterly unacceptable.” That our state broadcaster is so quick to condemn words but ignores a massacre of unarmed civilians tells you everything you need to know about the BBC – and you can’t help but sense that it is losing control of the narrative. Anyone with any conscience simply cannot agree that calling out a genocide is worse than committing one.

    History will not be kind to the genocide enablers. And thanks to reports like CfMM’s, we will always remember on whose side the BBC stood.

    The post We Will Never Forget that the BBC Has Helped to Enable a genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Greenpeace chief recalls New Zealand’s nuclear free exploits, seeks ‘peace’ voice for Gaza

    Asia Pacific Report

    Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman today recalled New Zealand’s heyday as a Pacific nuclear free champion in the 1980s, and challenged the country to again become a leading voice for “peace and justice”, this time for the Palestinian people.

    He told the weekly Palestinian solidarity rally in Auckland’s central Te Komititanga Square that it was time for New Zealand to take action and recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel over its Gaza atrocities.

    “From 1946 to 1996, over 300 nuclear weapons were exploded across the Pacific and consistently the New Zealand government spoke out against it,” he said.

    “It took cases to the International Court of Justice, supported by Australia and Fiji, against the nuclear testing across the Pacific.

    “Aotearoa New Zealand was a voice for peace, it was a voice for justice, and when the French government bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior here and killed Fernando Pereira, it spoke out and took action against France.”

    He said New Zealand could return to that global leadership as a small and peaceful country.

    New Zealand will this week be commemorating the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 and the killing of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

    Dawn vigil on Greenpeace III
    Greenpeace plans a dawn vigil on board their current flagship Rainbow Warrior III at Halsey Wharf.

    He spoke about the Gaza war crimes, saying it was time for New Zealand to take serious action to help end this 20 months of settler colonial genocide.

    “There are millions of people [around the world] who are trying to end this colonial occupation of Palestinian land,” Norman said.

    “And millions of people who are trying to stop people simply standing to get food who are hungry who are being shelled and killed by the Israeli military simply for the ‘crime’ of being born in the land that Israel wants to occupy.”

    Rocket Lab . . . a target for protests
    Rocket Lab . . . a target for protests this week against the Gaza genocide. Image: David Robie/APR

    Norman’s message echoed an open letter that he wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters earlier this week criticising the government for its “ongoing failure … to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel”.

    He cited the recent UN Human Rights Office report that said the killing of hundreds of Palestinians by the Israeli military while trying to fetch food from the controversial new “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” aid hubs was a ‘likely war crime”.

    “Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid to Gaza has placed over 2 million people on the precipice of famine. Malnutrition and starvation are rife,” he said.

    Israel ‘weaponising aid’
    “Israel is weaponising aid, using starvation as a tool of genocide and is now shooting at civilians trying to access the scraps of aid that are available.”

    He said this was “catastrophic”, quoting Luxon’s own words, and the human suffering was “unacceptable”.

    Labour MP for Te Atatu and disarmament spokesperson Phil Twyford also spoke at the rally and march today, saying the Labour Party was calling for sanctions and accountability.

    He condemned the failure to hold “the people who have been enabling the genocide in Gaza”.

    “It’s been going on for too long. Not just the last [20 months], but actually the last 77 years.

    “And it is time the Western world snapped out of the spell that the Zionists have had on the Western imagination — at least on the political classes, government MPs, the policy makers in Western countries, who for so long have enabled, have stayed quiet in the face of the US who have armed and funded the genocide”

    For the Palestinian solidarity movement in New Zealand it has been a big week with four politicians — including Prime Minister Luxon — and two business leaders, the chief executives of Rocket Lab and Rakon, who have been referred by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation over allegations of complicity with the Israeli war crimes.

    This unprecedented legal development has been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

    On Friday, protesters picketed a Rocket Lab manufacturing site in Warkworth, the head office in Mount Wellington and the Māhia peninsula where satellites are launched.

    Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, leading international scholars and the UN Special Committee to investigate Israel’s practices have all condemned Israel’s actions as genocide.

    Palestinian solidarity protesters in Auckland's Queen Street march today
    Palestinian solidarity protesters in Auckland’s Queen Street march today. Image: David Robie/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • African Stream Is Dead

    On Tuesday, July 1, 2025, African Stream published its final video, a defiant farewell message. With that, the once-thriving pan-African media outlet confirmed it was shutting down for good. Not because it broke the law. Not because it spread disinformation or incited violence. But because it told the wrong story, one that challenged U.S. power in Africa and resonated too deeply with Black audiences around the world. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused it of being a Kremlin front, Big Tech didn’t hesitate, and within hours, the platform was erased from nearly every major social media site.

    The post African Stream Is Dead appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Media Celebrate International Aggression Against Iran

    Rather than condemning this blatant violation of international law, US corporate media commentators gushed over what the Boston Globe (6/24/25) called a “brilliant military operation.” The Wall Street Journal (6/22/25) gave President Donald Trump “credit…for meeting the moment.”

    To the New York Times’ Bret Stephens (6/22/25), Trump made “a courageous and correct decision that deserves respect.” “The president acted before it was too late,” he wrote. “It is the essence of statesmanship.”

    For the Washington Post’s Max Boot (6/25/25), it’s “good news…that both Israel and the United States showed they can bombard Iranian nuclear facilities and other targets at will.”

    The post Media Celebrate International Aggression Against Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Eyewitness account of Rainbow Warrior voyage – new Eyes of Fire edition

    By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal

    Author David Robie and Little Island Press are about to publish next week a 40th anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, a first-hand account of the relocation of the Rongelap people by Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

    Dr Robie joined what turned out to be the ill-fated voyage of the Rainbow Warrior from Hawai’i across the Pacific, with its first stop in the Marshall Islands and the momentous evacuation of Rongelap Atoll.

    After completing the evacuation of the 320 people of Rongelap from their unsafe nuclear test-affected home islands to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, the Rainbow Warrior headed south via Kiribati and Vanuatu.

    After a stop in New Zealand, it was scheduled to head to the French nuclear testing zone at Moruroa in French Polynesia to protest the then-ongoing atmospheric nuclear tests conducted by France for decades.

    But French secret agents attached bombs to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior while it was tied up at a pier in Auckland. The bombs mortally damaged the Warrior and killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Peirera, preventing the vessel from continuing its Pacific voyage.

    The new edition of Eyes of Fire will be launched on July 10 in New Zealand.

    “This edition has a small change of title, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and has an extra 30 pages, with a new prologue by former Prime Minister Helen Clark,” Dr Robie said in an email to the Journal.

    “The core of the book is similar to earlier editions, but bookended by a lot of new material: Helen’s Prologue, Bunny McDiarmid’s updated Preface and a long Postscript 2025 by me with a lot more photographs, some in colour.”

    Dr Robie added: “I hope this edition is doing justice to our humanitarian mission and the Rongelap people that we helped.”

    He said the new edition is published by a small publisher that specialises in Pacific Island books, often in Pacific languages, Little Island Press.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Authorities arrest journalist on unknown charges in central Yemen

    Washington, D.C., July 3, 2025— The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the June 18 arrest of journalist Muzahim Bajaber in central Yemen’s Hadramout Governorate on unspecified charges. 

    The warrant, reviewed by CPJ, was issued by a Specialized Criminal Court and violates Article 13 of Yemen’s Press and Publications Law, which protects journalists from punishment for publishing their opinions unless they violate the law.

    “Bajaber’s arrest is the latest example of the deteriorating press freedom situation in areas controlled by the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG),” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “We call on the IRG to immediately release Bajaber and to allow journalists to do their job without fear of reprisal.”

    Yemen has been mired in civil war since 2014, when Houthi rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, and ousted the government. The Saudi-backed IRG intervened in 2015 in an effort to restore the government to power.

    Journalists face grave threats in areas controlled by the Houthi, IRG, and Southern Transitional Council (STC). Violations—including arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and unfair trials—are carried out with near-total impunity.

    Bajaber, publisher and editor-in-chief of the independent, Hadramout-based media outlet, Al-Ahqaf Media Platform, was arrested by security forces in the IRG-controlled city of Al-Mukalla. 

    In a separate incident, journalist Ahmed Maher—who was detained in August 2022 by security forces affiliated with the STC and released in January 2025—has recently over the last month been subjected to online incitement and threats, according to Yemeni press freedom and human rights organizations, as well as messages sent directly from the journalist to CPJ. 

    CPJ emailed the Ministry of Human Rights in the IRG for comment on the arrest of Bajaber,      but did not receive an immediate response.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jasmin Lorch, Senior Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, argues for more support to human rights defenders

    Jasmin Lorch in an article of 25 June 2025 argues that European support to human rights NGOs, critical civil society and free media is not merely a “nice-to-have“. Instead, it directly serves European interests due to the important information function that these civil society actors perform. 

    USAID funding cuts have dealt a heavy blow to human rights defenders, critical Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and independent media outlets around the globe. While the damage is hard to quantify exactly, it is clearly huge. For instance, the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy at People in Need estimates that the human rights and media organizations it supports have seen their budgets shrink by 40 to 100% because of the cuts. Based on a USAID fact sheet, meanwhile taken offline, Reporters without Borders (RSF) informed that the dismantling of USAID had affected support to 6,200 journalists, 707 non-state media outlets and 279 civil society organizations (CSOs) working to support free media. The impacts on local civil society are especially pronounced in closed authoritarian contexts where CSOs are both restricted and donor-dependent. In Cambodia, ADHOC, one of the few remaining local human rights organizations, lost 74 percent of its budget and had to close 16 out of its 22 provincial offices. 

    As critical CSOs and independent media outlets struggle to find alternative sources of funding, they face another threat to their survival: Major European donors, including Sweden, have cut down on foreign funding as well, citing their own national needs, including the necessity to invest more in defence. Germany, the biggest bilateral donor since the dismantling of USAID, has recently pledged to better integrate its foreign, defence, and development policy and to more closely align development cooperation with its security and economic interests. Accordingly, there is a significant risk that European donors will (further) cut down on funding for critical CSOs and free media as well.

    However, European donors should consider that continuing to support human rights defenders, critical NGOs and independent media outlets is in their own interest. 

    Notably, these civil society actors serve an important information function. By furnishing insights into human rights abuses, governance deficits and patterns of corruption, they provide European (as well as other) governments with a better understanding of political developments, power relations and regime dynamics in their partner countries, thereby enhancing the predictability of security and economic partnerships. Authoritarian governments. in particular, restrict the free flow of information, while, concurrently, engaging in propaganda and, at times, strategic disinformation. Consequently, European foreign, economic and security policy towards these governments routinely suffers from severe information deficits, including the existence of numerous “unknown unknowns”. To compensate for this weakness, country assessments and expert opinions used by foreign, development, and defence ministries in Europe to devise policy approaches towards non-democratic partner countries often include information provided by independent media outlets, human rights or anti-corruption NGOs. Similarly, European embassies in authoritarian countries frequently draw on the reports and documentations accomplished by local human rights NGOs. 

    In some cases, the information provided by critical NGOs, human rights defenders and independent media outlets – both local and transnational – is highly economically and security relevant, for instance when it serves to unearth patterns of transnational crime. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an investigative journalist network, which also has a media development branch and was heavily affected by the USAID funding cuts, for instance, contributed to the Panama Papers that disclosed the secretive use of offshore tax havens. A recent report named Policies and Patterns. State-Abetted Transnational Crime in Cambodia as a Global Security Threat draws on interviews with journalists and civil society representatives. While expressing disappointment with the ineffectiveness of large parts of the aid community and big counter-trafficking NGOs in addressing the problem, it emphasizes that 

    “the ‘local civil society’ community — grassroots volunteer response networks, human rights defenders, and independent media —have been and remain the lynchpin of an embattled response. These heavily repressed and poorly funded groups have been and remain the primary source of available evidence on the lead perpetrators, their networks, and their modes of operation” (quote on p.3). 

    …The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) emphasizes that “human rights violations, particularly when widespread and systematic, can serve as indicators of an increased risk of conflict, violence or instability“. Accordingly, it emphasizes the potential of United Nations (UN) human rights mechanisms to contribute to crisis prevention. Human rights NGOs and other CSOs provide important inputs into the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the UN Human Rights Council and other UN human rights mechanisms. ..

    Last but not least, establishing partnerships with human rights defenders and critical NGOs also allows European countries to expand their social and political alliances in their partner countries, a diversification that can be highly useful in times of political uncertainty and change. ..

    Support to human rights NGOs, other critical CSOs and free media constitutes an important contribution to democracy and pluralism. However, it also benefits European economic and security interests by enhancing the knowledge base on which European governments can draw when constructing their international alliances. European governments already use the information provided by these civil society actors in various ways, so they should continue providing diplomatic support, solidarity, and resources to them. Moreover, partnerships with human rights, media, and other civil society representatives provide European governments with an important possibility to diversify their international partnerships. 

    Against this backdrop, European support to these civil society actors is not a “nice-to-have” that can easily be dispensed with when funding gets more scarce. It is an important element in ensuring the predictability and reliability of European foreign relations. 

    https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/25/06/2025/no-nice-have-european-support-critical-civil-society-and-free-media

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Fallout: Spies on Norfolk Island – SBS podcast

    Pacific Media Watch

    In July 1985, Australia’s Pacific territory of Norfolk Island (pop. 2188) became the centre of a real life international spy thriller.

    Four French agents sailed there on board the Ouvéa, a yacht from Kanaky New Caledonia, after bombing the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland, killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

    The Rainbow Warrior was the flagship for a protest flotilla due to travel to Moruroa atoll to challenge French nuclear tests.

    Australian police took them into custody on behalf of their New Zealand counterparts but then, bafflingly, allowed them to sail away, never to face justice.

    On the 40th anniversary of the bombing (10 July 2025), award-winning journalist Richard Baker goes on an adventure from Paris to the Pacific to get the real story – and ultimately uncover the role that Australia played in the global headline-making affair.

    The programme includes an interview with Pacific journalist David Robie, author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior. David’s article about this episode is published at Declassified Australia here.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Zimbabwe authorities arrest newspaper editor on charges of insulting the president

    New York July 2, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Zimbabwean authorities to release newspaper editor Faith Zaba, who was arrested on July 1. She is facing charges of “undermining or insulting the authority of the president” in connection with a satirical column.

    “This case sends the message that Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his administration are so fragile that they are easily threatened by a critical column,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo. “It’s also a reminder of this government’s willingness to waste public resources by throwing journalists behind bars. Authorities in Zimbabwe must release Faith Zaba unconditionally and without delay.”

    Police summoned Zaba to appear at the central police station in the capital, Harare, on July 1, where they charged her over the June 27 satirical column about Mnangagwa’s government published in her newspaper, the business weekly Zimbabwe Independent, according to her lawyer, Chris Mhike. Mhike told CPJ that Zaba has been unwell and was “severely ill” at the time of her arrest.

    On July 2, Zaba appeared at the magistrate’s court in Harare, where her bail hearing was deferred to July 3 after the state requested more time to verify her medical history, according to multiple local news reports.

    The “Muckracker” column linked to Zaba’s arrest said that Zimbabwe was a “mafia state,” citing the administration’s alleged interference in the politics of neighboring countries, and said that the current government was “obsessed with keeping itself in power.” Under Zimbabwe’s  Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, Zaba could face a $300 fine or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both, if convicted.

    CPJ has documented an ongoing crackdown on dissent in Zimbabwe, amid political tension. In February, authorities arrested Blessed Mhlanga, a journalist with Alpha Media Holdings, and held him for over 10 weeks on baseless charges of incitement in connection with his coverage of war veterans who demanded Mnangagwa’s resignation. The Zimbabwe Independent is a subsidiary of Alpha Media Holdings.

    A spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Paul Nyathi, did not answer CPJ’s calls and a query sent via messaging app requesting comment.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Lauren Wolfe.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CPJ: Kyrgyz president must veto ‘dangerous’ media law

    New York, July 2, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Kyrgyzstan President Sadyr Japarov to veto a new mass media law that would require all publications to register with the state and heavily restricts any foreign legal entities from founding or owning media outlets.

    Parliament passed the bill, which would allow an authorized state body to decide which media outlets can operate, on June 25, rejecting a compromise draft of the bill that had been the product of two years of negotiations with a working group that included journalists.

    “Considering Kyrgyzstan’s unprecedented media crackdown, Parliament’s last-minute reintroduction of repressive clauses into the new media law bill is dangerous and rightly sparks deep concern for the press,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “We call on President Japarov to give substance to his verbal commitments to press freedom by vetoing this version of the bill and returning it to Parliament so it can pass a version supported by the country’s journalists.”

    The compromise draft was passed in a first reading by parliament in April; in mid-June, deputies reintroduced the disputed clauses before rushing the bill through in two readings on June 25.

    Several journalists and media experts who worked on the compromise draft have asked the government to revert to a version based on the draft.

    If the current version is ratified, “those who will print any criticism or alternative views, will simply not be registered and won’t be able to publish,” Semetey Amanbekov, a member of local advocacy group Media Action Platform, told RFE/RL, adding that it will mean journalism in Kyrgyzstan will come to an end.

    Japarov withdrew a similar draft media law in March 2024 following criticism from journalists and international human rights bodies. 

    Kyrgyzstan’s new media law comes amid a sustained assault on independent reporting in a country previously regarded as a regional beacon for the free press.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iranian media under siege after Israel war, internet disrupted

    Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, July 2, 2025—The dead have been buried and most journalists detained during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel have been freed, but the media are still reeling, as authorities crack down on critical voices and disrupt internet access.

    The state news agency has announced a “season of traitor-killing,” with hundreds of people arrested and at least six executed since the war ended on June 25. Parliament approved a law on June 29 that mandates the death penalty for collaborating with Israel, the United States, or other “hostile” countries – a charge often used to describe media that report critically.

    London-based Iran International TV spokesperson Adam Baillie said the new law would “widen the legal dragnet” against journalists and criminalizes contact with media outlets based abroad.

    Journalists trying to report within Iran also face internet restrictions.

    “We technically have internet, but access to the global web has been cut by half,” Hassan Abbasi, a journalist with Rokna news agency told CPJ from the capital Tehran on July 1, referring to reduced speeds and frequent disruptions.

    Abbasi said internet access was selectively granted during the war. The communications ministry restricted access on June 13, the first day of the conflict, citing “special conditions.” Connectivity was largely restored after the ceasefire.

    “Only large media outlets aligned with the government’s narrative were allowed to stay online,” Abbasi said. “Independent and local journalists like us couldn’t report – many agencies were effectively silenced, he said. “They wanted to cut off access to outside news and stop reports from inside.”

    The June 29 law also banned the use or import of unauthorized internet communication tools like Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, punishable by up to two years in prison.

    ‘Journalists are not enemies of the state’

    “The arrests, internet disruptions, and intimidation of journalists during and after the Iran-Israel war reflect a troubling continuation of Iran’s ongoing efforts to control the media,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “These acts of censorship undermine press freedom and create fear among those trying to report the truth. Journalists are not enemies of the state.”

    Smoke rises from the building of Iran's state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 16, 2025. (Photo: AP)
    Smoke rises from Iran’s state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 16. (Photo: AP)

    Since the war began, CPJ has documented the following incidents:

    • On June 15, journalist Saleh Bayrami was killed by an Israel airstrike on Tehran.
    • On June 16, journalist Nima Rajabpour and media worker Masoumeh Azimi were hit by an Israeli airstrike on state-owned broadcaster IRIB’s headquarters and died the following day.
    • On June 17, freelance photojournalist Majid Saeedi was arrested in Tehran while photographing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on IRIB’s headquarters. He told CPJ he climbed to a high point to capture images of smoke when police detained him and later transferred him to Evin prison.

    “The next day, a judge reviewed my case in the prison courtyard, where officials brought over a chair for him to sit on,” Saeedi added. “He said that because I had a valid press ID and authorization, there was no issue, and he ordered my release.”

    • On June 21, Iran International TV reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had detained the mother, father, and younger brother of one of its presenters to pressure her into resigning.

    In a June 27 email to CPJ, spokesperson Baillie confirmed that the family members had been released but described the incident as “a profoundly worrying turning point in the type of action taken by the IRGC and security forces against the families of Iranian journalists abroad.”

    People ride on a motorcycle past Evin Prison in Tehran on June 29, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
    People ride past Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 29, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike. (Photo: WANA via Reuters/Majid Asgaripour)
    • On June 23, Israeli forces bombed Evin prison, which houses at least six journalists, including Iranian-American Reza Valizadeh. Authorities reported 71 deaths, including prisoners, but did not release names. One person with knowledge of Evin prison told CPJ that all the detained journalists were safe and had been transferred to other prisons.
    • On June 24, the online outlet Entekhab News was blocked for “disruptive wartime reporting.” The judiciary said the outlet was undermining public security through its critical coverage. On June 30, it was unblocked.

    CPJ’s emails requesting comment from Iran’s foreign affairs and information ministries did not receive any replies.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Soran Rashid.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iranian media under siege after Israel war, internet disrupted

    Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, July 2, 2025—The dead have been buried and most journalists detained during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel have been freed, but the media are still reeling, as authorities crack down on critical voices and disrupt internet access.

    The state news agency has announced a “season of traitor-killing,” with hundreds of people arrested and at least six executed since the war ended on June 25. Parliament approved a law on June 29 that mandates the death penalty for collaborating with Israel, the United States, or other “hostile” countries – a charge often used to describe media that report critically.

    London-based Iran International TV spokesperson Adam Baillie said the new law would “widen the legal dragnet” against journalists and criminalizes contact with media outlets based abroad.

    Journalists trying to report within Iran also face internet restrictions.

    “We technically have internet, but access to the global web has been cut by half,” Hassan Abbasi, a journalist with Rokna news agency told CPJ from the capital Tehran on July 1, referring to reduced speeds and frequent disruptions.

    Abbasi said internet access was selectively granted during the war. The communications ministry restricted access on June 13, the first day of the conflict, citing “special conditions.” Connectivity was largely restored after the ceasefire.

    “Only large media outlets aligned with the government’s narrative were allowed to stay online,” Abbasi said. “Independent and local journalists like us couldn’t report – many agencies were effectively silenced, he said. “They wanted to cut off access to outside news and stop reports from inside.”

    The June 29 law also banned the use or import of unauthorized internet communication tools like Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, punishable by up to two years in prison.

    ‘Journalists are not enemies of the state’

    “The arrests, internet disruptions, and intimidation of journalists during and after the Iran-Israel war reflect a troubling continuation of Iran’s ongoing efforts to control the media,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “These acts of censorship undermine press freedom and create fear among those trying to report the truth. Journalists are not enemies of the state.”

    Smoke rises from the building of Iran's state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 16, 2025. (Photo: AP)
    Smoke rises from Iran’s state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 16. (Photo: AP)

    Since the war began, CPJ has documented the following incidents:

    • On June 15, journalist Saleh Bayrami was killed by an Israel airstrike on Tehran.
    • On June 16, journalist Nima Rajabpour and media worker Masoumeh Azimi were hit by an Israeli airstrike on state-owned broadcaster IRIB’s headquarters and died the following day.
    • On June 17, freelance photojournalist Majid Saeedi was arrested in Tehran while photographing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on IRIB’s headquarters. He told CPJ he climbed to a high point to capture images of smoke when police detained him and later transferred him to Evin prison.

    “The next day, a judge reviewed my case in the prison courtyard, where officials brought over a chair for him to sit on,” Saeedi added. “He said that because I had a valid press ID and authorization, there was no issue, and he ordered my release.”

    • On June 21, Iran International TV reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had detained the mother, father, and younger brother of one of its presenters to pressure her into resigning.

    In a June 27 email to CPJ, spokesperson Baillie confirmed that the family members had been released but described the incident as “a profoundly worrying turning point in the type of action taken by the IRGC and security forces against the families of Iranian journalists abroad.”

    People ride on a motorcycle past Evin Prison in Tehran on June 29, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
    People ride past Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 29, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike. (Photo: WANA via Reuters/Majid Asgaripour)
    • On June 23, Israeli forces bombed Evin prison, which houses at least six journalists, including Iranian-American Reza Valizadeh. Authorities reported 71 deaths, including prisoners, but did not release names. One person with knowledge of Evin prison told CPJ that all the detained journalists were safe and had been transferred to other prisons.
    • On June 24, the online outlet Entekhab News was blocked for “disruptive wartime reporting.” The judiciary said the outlet was undermining public security through its critical coverage. On June 30, it was unblocked.

    CPJ’s emails requesting comment from Iran’s foreign affairs and information ministries did not receive any replies.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Soran Rashid.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Iranian media under siege after Israel war, internet disrupted

    Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, July 2, 2025—The dead have been buried and most journalists detained during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel have been freed, but the media are still reeling, as authorities crack down on critical voices and disrupt internet access.

    The state news agency has announced a “season of traitor-killing,” with hundreds of people arrested and at least six executed since the war ended on June 25. Parliament approved a law on June 29 that mandates the death penalty for collaborating with Israel, the United States, or other “hostile” countries – a charge often used to describe media that report critically.

    London-based Iran International TV spokesperson Adam Baillie said the new law would “widen the legal dragnet” against journalists and criminalizes contact with media outlets based abroad.

    Journalists trying to report within Iran also face internet restrictions.

    “We technically have internet, but access to the global web has been cut by half,” Hassan Abbasi, a journalist with Rokna news agency told CPJ from the capital Tehran on July 1, referring to reduced speeds and frequent disruptions.

    Abbasi said internet access was selectively granted during the war. The communications ministry restricted access on June 13, the first day of the conflict, citing “special conditions.” Connectivity was largely restored after the ceasefire.

    “Only large media outlets aligned with the government’s narrative were allowed to stay online,” Abbasi said. “Independent and local journalists like us couldn’t report – many agencies were effectively silenced, he said. “They wanted to cut off access to outside news and stop reports from inside.”

    The June 29 law also banned the use or import of unauthorized internet communication tools like Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service, punishable by up to two years in prison.

    ‘Journalists are not enemies of the state’

    “The arrests, internet disruptions, and intimidation of journalists during and after the Iran-Israel war reflect a troubling continuation of Iran’s ongoing efforts to control the media,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “These acts of censorship undermine press freedom and create fear among those trying to report the truth. Journalists are not enemies of the state.”

    Smoke rises from the building of Iran's state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 16, 2025. (Photo: AP)
    Smoke rises from Iran’s state-run television after an Israeli strike in Tehran on June 16. (Photo: AP)

    Since the war began, CPJ has documented the following incidents:

    • On June 15, journalist Saleh Bayrami was killed by an Israel airstrike on Tehran.
    • On June 16, journalist Nima Rajabpour and media worker Masoumeh Azimi were hit by an Israeli airstrike on state-owned broadcaster IRIB’s headquarters and died the following day.
    • On June 17, freelance photojournalist Majid Saeedi was arrested in Tehran while photographing the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on IRIB’s headquarters. He told CPJ he climbed to a high point to capture images of smoke when police detained him and later transferred him to Evin prison.

    “The next day, a judge reviewed my case in the prison courtyard, where officials brought over a chair for him to sit on,” Saeedi added. “He said that because I had a valid press ID and authorization, there was no issue, and he ordered my release.”

    • On June 21, Iran International TV reported that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had detained the mother, father, and younger brother of one of its presenters to pressure her into resigning.

    In a June 27 email to CPJ, spokesperson Baillie confirmed that the family members had been released but described the incident as “a profoundly worrying turning point in the type of action taken by the IRGC and security forces against the families of Iranian journalists abroad.”

    People ride on a motorcycle past Evin Prison in Tehran on June 29, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
    People ride past Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 29, after it was hit by an Israeli airstrike. (Photo: WANA via Reuters/Majid Asgaripour)
    • On June 23, Israeli forces bombed Evin prison, which houses at least six journalists, including Iranian-American Reza Valizadeh. Authorities reported 71 deaths, including prisoners, but did not release names. One person with knowledge of Evin prison told CPJ that all the detained journalists were safe and had been transferred to other prisons.
    • On June 24, the online outlet Entekhab News was blocked for “disruptive wartime reporting.” The judiciary said the outlet was undermining public security through its critical coverage. On June 30, it was unblocked.

    CPJ’s emails requesting comment from Iran’s foreign affairs and information ministries did not receive any replies.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Soran Rashid.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Difference between “News”-Reporting and News-Reporting

    On July 1, CBS ‘News’ and Yahoo News headlined “Comparing the Medicaid cuts in House and Senate ‘big, beautiful bill’,” and presented news that was actually an analytical or “opinion” article which was 860 words of gobbledygook that enumerated minor differences between the House-passed and the Senate-passed versions of Trump’s budget-and-tax bill that he insists must be on his desk to sign on July 4th and that in BOTH versions increases spending on ‘Defense’ (aggression) and cuts billionaires’ taxes and cuts health care and disability coverage for the nation’s poor in order to pay for a tiny percentage of the thereby-increased federal deficit — the bill increases the suffering of the poor in order to increase the profits to firms such as Lockheed Martin and to reduce the taxes on those firms’ controlling billionaires, but none of this information was so much as even mentioned in that 860-word ‘news’-report.

    The most up-voted and least down-voted of the 650 reader-comments to it at Yahoo News as-of this writing was only 94 words but vastly more informative than that 860-word CBS ‘News’ story was:

    George

    So every one of you Medicaid recipients who voted for Trump can congratulate Trump and every MAGA member of Congress for either stripping you of health care or making it more difficult to qualify while these guys you voted for have 100% coverage that costs them nothing for life. The money they’re ripping from you is going to help pay for a tax break to people like Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, who just spent $50 million on his wedding reception. Make America Great Again for the billionaires by taking from the poor and disabled.

    That too is analytical about Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” but it is meaningful instead of meaningless from the standpoint of informing the public about the realities that the public needs to know in order to be able to carry out intelligently their voting-responsibilities.

    The ‘news’-media should fire the ‘journalists’ such as Caitlin Yilek who wrote that CBS ‘News’ article and hire ones such as ‘George’ who is not merely far pithier but far more informative. Then these ‘news’-media will become news-media.

    Today at another of my articles, “America’s Republicans’ Hatred of the Poor,” I got a reader-comment about the type of elected public-office-holders that we get from such a billionaires-controlled press:

    nameless

    Eric, at the very beginning of the lock down, I attended a zoom round table set by Steve Kirsch, a former Silicon Valley executive. I forgot his name but the guest was a West Point Graduate. And he said in Sacramento, there was  a bill that was about to be passed that was not to the benefit of the population at large. So a bunch of voters gathered with picket signs asking for the bill not to be passed, and ready to get together and talk about it right at the front of whatever they call that place. Well, guess what happened? The thugs who refer to themselves as “our” law makers and legislators closed the doors behind them completely ignoring the protesters, went Inside and passed it anyway!!!!! This is what the cattle in this country refer to as “democracy”.

    If the amount of money to one’s name is what determines one’s worth, then drug dealers, contract killers, murderers and child traffickers should be allowed a piece of the pie, and why not, let’s allow the drug cartel a seat in the Congress!!! LOL. All of these criminals get a piece of that pie, so why not allow the other Party a piece of their pie?! One of the DAs who were after Trump was caught to have no less than 15 million $ in one of her bank accounts, her official salary being like only a mere 100K$ a year!!! I mean you cut the mortgage payment, car payment, food, etc., and there will be virtually nothing left. But she has 15 million $ in the Bank!!!! Where did she get that from if not from drug money laundering, bribes and what have you?…They are all criminals. Thank you for Lincoln’s priceless speech. Awesome!!!

    People tell me that my proposed solution to such problems as these is ‘too radical’ but have none of their own to propose instead. I can’t respect anyone who merely complains and who just ignores that the prevailing governmental and political rottenness REQUIRES a radical solution. So, if you don’t like mine, then please contact me and tell me why and tell me your own. And if you like mine, then tell me so, because all that I’ve gotten so far is people who still think that competitive elections by the public are essential in order to have a democracy, and who ignore the massive data proving that to be rabidly false. It seems that everybody is so elitist they can’t get out of that groove, not even to CONSIDER an alternative to it. In ‘democratic’ politics, the natural result is for the scum — no ‘elite’ — to rise to the top. Does NOBODY yet recognize this fact — not even with people such as Biden and Trump being in the White House? This is NOT a passing phenomenon; it has been like this ever since 1945 and is getting worse over time. How much worse does it have yet to be before people start opening their minds to the reality and acting on it?

    The post The Difference between “News”-Reporting and News-Reporting first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Bradbury Group features Palestinian journalist Dr Yousef Aljamal, Middle East report and political panel

    Asia Pacific Report

    In the new weekly political podcast, The Bradbury Group, last night presenter Martyn Bradbury talked with visiting Palestinian journalist Dr Yousef Aljamal.

    They assess the current situation in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and what New Zealand should be doing.

    As Bradbury, publisher of The Daily Blog, notes, “Fourth Estate public broadcasting is dying — The Bradbury Group will fight back.”


    Gaza crisis and Iran tensions.     Video: The Bradbury Group/Radio Waatea

    Also in last night’s programme was featured a View From A Far Podcast Special Middle East Report with former intelligence analyst Dr Paul Buchanan and international affairs commentator Selwyn Manning on what will happen next in Iran.

    Martyn Bradbury talks to Dr Paul Buchanan (left) and Selwyn Manning on Iran
    Martyn Bradbury talks to Dr Paul Buchanan (left) and Selwyn Manning on the Iran crisis and the future. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Political Panel:
    Māori Party president John Tamihere,
    NZ Herald columnist Simon Wilson
    NZCTU economist Craig Renney

    Topics:
    – The Legacy of Tarsh Kemp
    – New coward punch and first responder assault laws — virtue signalling or meaningful policy?
    – Cost of living crisis and the failing economy

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Kari Lake targets press as senior adviser for U.S. Agency for Global Media

    After President Donald Trump began his second term, senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media Kari Lake joined Trump in taking steps to intimidate leakers and news outlets that have covered him and his administration unfavorably. We’re documenting her efforts in this regularly updated report.

    Read about how Trump’s appointees and allies in Congress are striving to chill reporting, revoke funding, censor critical coverage and more here.

    This article was first published on July 1, 2025.

    June 25, 2025 | Kari Lake urges Congress to eliminate Voice of America, gut oversight agency

    June 25, 2025 | Kari Lake urges Congress to eliminate Voice of America, gut oversight agency

    Kari Lake, senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on June 25, 2025, and urged Congress to gut Voice of America and the other federally-funded news organizations that she oversees.

    During the hearing, which was titled “Spies, Lies, and Mismanagement: Examining the U.S. Agency for Global Media’s Downfall,” Lake said in her opening statement that USAGM was unsalvageable, later referring to it as “a rotten piece of fish.”

    “Within days in my role as senior adviser, it became increasingly clear that reform was nearly impossible,” Lake said. “The agency was incompetent and mismanaged and deeply corrupt, politically biased and, frankly, a serious threat to our national security.”

    Lake went on to defend proposed cuts to the agency and the global news organizations it funds, including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio y Televisión Martí. She also called on members of Congress to amend the laws mandating VOA’s existence.

    “What is going out on VOA airwaves — it’s outrageous, and it has to stop,” she said, adding that much of the reporting being published by VOA and other USAGM-funded outlets is “biased” and “corrupt.”

    Lake’s statements mirrored those made by President Donald Trump since at least 2023. In a late-night executive order on March 14, 2025, Trump eliminated all USAGM functions not required by law. The following day, the White House posted a news release that railed against “the Voice of Radical America” and the director of VOA confirmed that nearly the entire staff of the news organization had been suspended.

    A federal judge ordered the administration to halt efforts to fire or furlough employees at the news agency at the end of March, and another judge reversed VOA’s closure April 22, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.”

    Lake appealed the ruling two days later, blocking operations at the outlet from restarting and, days before the June Congressional hearing, issued hundreds of termination notices to VOA and USAGM staff.

    The layoffs were rescinded June 27 after errors were discovered that could have derailed efforts to dismantle the organization, according to The New York Times.

    No news has been published on VOA’s website since March.

    Back to Top


    This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Chris Hedges: Gaza’s Hunger Games – how Israel is weaponising starvation

    ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

    Israel’s weaponisation of starvation is how genocides always end.

    I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of General Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead — I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides — and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs cut off food supplies to enclaves such as Srebrencia and Goražde.

    Starvation was weaponised by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in 1932 and 1933.

    It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in the Second World War. German soldiers used food, as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps.

    “There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman writes in The Ghetto Fights. “The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.”

    And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.

    This tactic is as old as warfare itself.

    Ordered to shoot
    The report in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot into crowds of Palestinians at aid hubs, with 580 killed and 4,216 wounded, is not a surprise. It is the predictable denouement of the genocide, the inevitable conclusion to a campaign of mass extermination.

    Israel, with its targeted assassinations of at least 1400 health care workers, hundreds of United Nations (UN) workers, journalists, police and even poets and academics, its obliteration of multi-story apartment blocks wiping out dozens of families, its shelling of designated “humanitarian zones” where Palestinians huddle under tents, tarps or in the open air, its systematic targeting of UN food distribution centers, bakeries and aid convoys or its sadistic sniper fire that guns down children, long ago illustrated that Palestinians are regarded as vermin worthy only of annihilation.

    The blockade of food and humanitarian aid, imposed on Gaza since March 2, is reducing Palestinians to abject dependence. To eat, they must crawl towards their killers and beg. Humiliated, terrified, desperate for a few scraps of food, they are stripped of dignity, autonomy and agency. This is by intent.

    Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, explained to Middle East Eye his nightmarish journey to one of four aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The hubs are not designed to meet the needs of the Palestinians, who once relied on 400 aid distribution sites, but to lure them from northern Gaza to the south.

    Israel, which on Sunday again ordered Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, is steadily expanding its annexation of the coastal strip. Palestinians are corralled like livestock into narrow metal chutes at distribution points which are overseen by heavily armed mercenaries. They receive, if they are one of the fortunate few, a small box of food.

    Al-Ajouri, who before the genocide was a taxi driver, lives with his wife, seven children and his mother and father in a tent in al-Saraya, near the middle of Gaza City. He set out to an aid hub at Salah al-Din Road near the Netzarim corridor, to find some food for his children, who he said cry constantly “because of how hungry they are.”

    On the advice of his neighbour in the tent next to him, he dressed in loose clothing “so that I could run and be agile.” He carried a bag for canned and packaged goods because the crush of the crowds meant “no one was able to carry the boxes the aid came in.”

    Massive crowds
    He left at about 9 pm with five other men “including an engineer and a teacher,” and “children aged 10 and 12.” They did not take the official route designated by the Israeli army. The massive crowds converging on the aid point along the official route ensure that most never get close enough to receive food.

    Instead, they walked in the darkness in areas exposed to Israeli gunfire, often having to crawl to avoid being seen.

    “As I crawled, I looked over, and to my surprise, saw several women and elderly people taking the same treacherous route as us,” he explained. “At one point, there was a barrage of live gunfire all around me. We hid behind a destroyed building. Anyone who moved or made a noticeable motion was immediately shot by snipers.

    “Next to me was a tall, light-haired young man using the flashlight on his phone to guide him. The others yelled at him to turn it off. Seconds later, he was shot. He collapsed to the ground and lay there bleeding, but no one could help or move him. He died within minutes.”

    He passed six bodies along the route who had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

    Al-Ajouri reached the hub at 2 am, the designated time for aid distribution. He saw a green light turned on ahead of him which signaled that aid was about to be distributed. Thousands began to run towards the light, pushing, shoving and trampling each other. He fought his way through the crowd until he reached the aid.

    “I started feeling around for the aid boxes and grabbed a bag that felt like rice,” he said. “But just as I did, someone else snatched it from my hands. I tried to hold on, but he threatened to stab me with his knife. Most people there were carrying knives, either to defend themselves or to steal from others.

    Boxes were emptied
    “Eventually, I managed to grab four cans of beans, a kilogram of bulgur, and half a kilogram of pasta. Within moments, the boxes were empty. Most of the people there, including women, children and the elderly, got nothing. Some begged others to share. But no one could afford to give up what they managed to get.”

    The US contractors and Israeli soldiers overseeing the mayhem laughed and pointed their weapons at the crowd. Some filmed with their phones.

    “Minutes later, red smoke grenades were thrown into the air,” he remembered. “Someone told me that it was the signal to evacuate the area. After that, heavy gunfire began. Me, Khalil and a few others headed to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat because our friend Wael had injured his hand during the journey.

    “I was shocked by what I saw at the hospital. There were at least 35 martyrs lying dead on the ground in one of the rooms. A doctor told me they had all been brought in that same day. They were each shot in the head or chest while queuing near the aid center. Their families were waiting for them to come home with food and ingredients. Now, they were corpses.”

    GHF is a Mossad-funded creation of Israel’s Defense Ministry that contracts with UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions, run by former members of the CIA and US Special Forces. GHF is headed by Reverend Johnnie Moore, a far-right Christian Zionist with close ties to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.

    The organisation has also contracted anti-Hamas drug-smuggling gangs to provide security at aid sites.

    As Chris Gunness, a former spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) told Al Jazeera, GHF is “aid washing,” a way to mask the reality that “people are being starved into submission.”

    Disregarded ICC ruling
    Israel, along with the US and European countries that provide weapons to sustain the genocide, have chosen to disregard the January 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which demanded immediate protection for civilians in Gaza and widespread provision of humanitarian assistance.

    "It's a killing field" claim headline in Ha'aretz newspaper
    “It’s a killing field” says a headline in the Ha’aretz newspaper. Image: Ha’aretz screenshot APR

    Ha’aretz, in its article headlined “‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid” reported that Israeli commanders order soldiers to open fire on crowds to keep them away from aid sites or disperse them.

    “The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning,” Haaretz writes. “According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night — ahead of the opening — it’s possible that some civilians couldn’t see the boundaries of the designated area.”

    “It’s a killing field,” one soldier told Ha’aretz. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

    “We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces,” the soldier explained, “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”

    He said the deployment at the aid sites is known as “Operation Salted Fish,” a reference to the Israeli name for the children’s game “Red light, green light.” The game was featured in the first episode of the South Korean dystopian thriller Squid Game, in which financially desperate people are killed as they battle each other for money.

    Civilian infrastructure obliterated
    Israel has obliterated the civilian and humanitarian infrastructure in Gaza. It has reduced Palestinians, half a million of whom face starvation, into desperate herds. The goal is to break Palestinians, to make them malleable and entice them to leave Gaza, never to return.

    There is talk from the Trump White House about a ceasefire. But don’t be fooled. Israel has nothing left to destroy. Its saturation bombing over 20 months has reduced Gaza to a moonscape. Gaza is uninhabitable, a toxic wilderness where Palestinians, living amid broken slabs of concrete and pools of raw sewage, lack food and clean water, fuel, shelter, electricity, medicine and an infrastructure to survive.

    The final impediment to the annexation of Gaza are the Palestinians themselves. They are the primary target. Starvation is the weapon of choice.

    Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Micronesian Summit in Majuro this week aims to be ‘one step ahead’

    By Giff Johnson, editor, Marshall Islands Journal/RNZ Pacific correspondent in Majuro

    The Micronesian Islands Forum cranks up with officials meetings this week in Majuro, with the official opening for top leadership from the islands tomorrow morning.

    Marshall Islands leaders are being joined at this summit by their counterparts from Kiribati, Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau.

    “At this year’s Leaders Forum, I hope we can make meaningful progress on resolving airline connectivity issues — particularly in Micronesia — so our region remains connected and one step ahead,” President Hilda Heine said on the eve of this subregional summit.

    The Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia have been negotiating with Nauru Airlines over the past two years to extend the current island hopper service with a link to Honolulu.

    “Equally important,” said President Heine, “the Forum offers a vital platform to strengthen regional solidarity and build common ground on key issues such as climate, ocean health, security, trade, and other pressing challenges.

    “Ultimately, our shared purpose must be to work together in support of the communities we represent.”

    Monday and Tuesday featured official-level meetings at the International Conference Center in Majuro. Tomorrow will be the official opening of the Forum and will feature statements from each of the islands represented.

    Handing over chair
    Outgoing Micronesian Island Forum chair Guam Governor Lourdes Leon Guerrero is expected to hand over the chair post to President Heine tomorrow morning.

    Other top island leaders expected to attend the summit: FSM President Wesley Simina, Kiribati President Taneti Maamau, Nauru Deputy Speaker Isabela Dageago, Palau Minister Steven Victor, Chuuk Governor Alexander Narruhn, Pohnpei Governor Stevenson Joseph, Kosrae Governor Tulensa Palik, Yap Acting Governor Francis Itimai, and CNMI Lieutenant-Governor David Apatang.

    Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Baron Waqa is also expected to participate.

    Pretty much every subject of interest to the Pacific Islands will be on the table for discussions, including presentations on education, health and transportation. The latter will include a presentation by the Marshall Islands Aviation Task Force that has been meeting extensively with Nauru Airlines.

    In addition, Pacific Ocean Commissioner Dr Filimon Manoni will deliver a presentation, gender equality will be on the table, as will updates on the SPC and Secretariat of the Pacific Region Environment Programme North Pacific offices, and the United Nations multi-country office.

    The Micronesia Challenge environmental programme will get focus during a luncheon for the leaders hosted by the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority on Thursday at its new headquarters annex.

    Bank presentations
    Pacific Island Development Bank and the Bank of Guam will make presentations, as will the recently established Pacific Center for Island Security.

    A special night market at the Marshall Islands Resort parking lot will be featured Wednesday evening.

    Friday will feature a leaders retreat on Bokanbotin, a small resort island on Majuro Atoll’s north shore. While the leaders gather, other Forum participants will join a picnic or fishing tournament.

    Friday evening is to feature the closing event to include the launching of the Marshall Islands’ Green Growth Initiative and the signing of the Micronesian Island Forum communique.

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Bill Moyers Was A Truth-Teller, Not A Stenographer For The Powerful

    My dear friend, Bill Moyers, died yesterday.

    He was the finest interviewer I’ve ever worked with, probing, fearless, and profoundly attuned to both the fragility and the enduring promise of democracy. With a rare combination of moral clarity and intellectual generosity, Bill devoted his life to illuminating the dangers that threatened the democratic imagination and nurturing its most humane possibilities. His work was never about spectacle or self-regard; it was about awakening the American conscience.

    Bill began his journey into the public eye as a young press secretary for President Lyndon B. Johnson, where he was thrust into the center of political history.

    The post Bill Moyers Was A Truth-Teller, Not A Stenographer For The Powerful appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why manufacturing consent for war with Iran failed this time

    COMMENTARY: By Ahmad Ibsais

    On June 22, American warplanes crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped 14 massive bombs.

    The attack was not in response to a provocation; it came on the heels of illegal Israeli aggression that took the lives of more than 600 Iranians.

    This was a return to something familiar and well-practised: an empire bombing innocents across the orientalist abstraction called “the Middle East”.

    That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.

    There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.

    But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?

    In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.

    Victimhood serving narrative
    Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.

    And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.

    Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.

    Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.

    Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.

    Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.

    Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.

    Bias over Palestinian deaths
    A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.

    Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.

    The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.

    Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.

    Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.

    It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.

    And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.

    Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’
    But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.

    This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.

    Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.

    But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.

    After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment

    The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.

    They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.

    Low social justice spending
    At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.

    And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.

    Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.

    They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.

    The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.

    The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.

    ‘Don’t drop bombs’
    And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.

    Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.

    But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.

    Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.

    Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Eugene Doyle: Why Asia-Pacific should be cheering for Iran and not US bomb-based statecraft

    ANALYSIS: By Eugene Doyle

    Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month.

    The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and isolate Iran. Regime change or pariah status are both acceptable outcomes for the US-Israeli dyad.

    The good news for my region is that Iran’s resilience pushes back what could be a looming calamity: the US pivot to Asia and a heightened risk of a war on China.

    There are three major pillars to the Eurasian order that is going through a slow, painful and violent birth.  Iran is the weakest.  If Iran falls, war in our region — intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely.

    Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs.

    “Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.

    That could change, particularly for the Australians, in the kind of unfamiliar flash-boom Israelis experienced this month following their attack on Iran. And here’s why.

    US chooses war to re-shape Middle East
    Back in 2001, as many will recall, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, was visiting buddies in the Pentagon. He learnt something he wasn’t supposed to: the Bush administration had made plans in the febrile post 9/11 environment to attack seven Muslim countries.

    In the firing line were: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, Gaddafi’s Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the biggest prize of all — the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    One would have to say that the project, pursued by successive presidents, both Democrat and Republican, has been a great success — if you discount the fact that a couple of million human beings, most of them civilians, many of them women and children, nearly all of them innocents, were slaughtered, starved to death or otherwise disposed of.

    With the exception of Iran, those countries have endured chaos and civil strife for long painful years.  A triumph of American bomb-based statecraft.

    Now — with Muammar Gaddafi raped and murdered (“We came, we saw, he died”, Hillary Clinton chuckled on camera the same day), Saddam Hussein hanged, Hezbollah decapitated, Assad in Moscow, the genocide in full swing in Palestine — the US and Israel were finally able to turn their guns — or, rather, bombs — on the great prize: Iran.

    Iran’s missiles have checked US-Israel for time being
    Things did not go to plan. Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman pointed out this week that for the first time Israel got a taste of the medicine it likes to dispense to its neighbours.

    Iran’s missiles successfully turned the much-vaunted Iron Dome into an Iron Sieve and, perhaps momentarily, has achieved deterrence. If Iran falls, the US will be able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden only salivated over — a serious pivot to Asia.

    Could great power rivalry turn Asia-Pacific into powderkeg?
    For us in Asia-Pacific a major US pivot to Asia will mean soaring defence budgets to support militarisation, aggressive containment of China, provocative naval deployments, more sanctions, muscling smaller states, increased numbers of bases, new missile systems, info wars, threats and the ratcheting up rhetoric — all of which will bring us ever-closer to the powderkeg.

    Sounds utterly mad? Sounds devoid of rationality? Lacking commonsense? Welcome to our world — bellum Americanum — as we gormlessly march flame in hand towards the tinderbox. War is not written in the stars, we can change tack and rediscover diplomacy, restraint, and peaceful coexistence. Or is that too much to ask?

    Back in the days of George W Bush, radical American thinkers like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld created the Project for a New American Century and developed the policy, adopted by succeeding presidents, that promotes “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces”.

    It reconfirmed the neoconservative American dogma that no power should be allowed to rise in any region to become a regional hegemon; anything and everything necessary should be done to ensure continued American primacy, including the resort to war.

    What has changed since those days are two crucial, epoch-making events: the re-emergence of Russia as a great power, albeit the weakest of the three, and the emergence of China as a genuine peer competitor to the USA. Professor  John Mearsheimer’s insights are well worth studying on this topic.

    The three pillars of multipolarity
    A new world order really is being born. As geopolitical thinkers like Professor Glenn Diesen point out, it will, if it is not killed in the cradle, replace the US unipolar world order that has existed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

    Many countries are involved in its birthing, including major players like India and Brazil and all the countries that are part of BRICS.  Three countries, however, are central to the project: Iran, Russia and, most importantly, China.  All three are in the crosshairs of the Western empire.

    If Iran, Russia and China survive as independent entities, they will partially fulfill Halford MacKinder’s early 20th century heartland theory that whoever dominates Eurasia will rule the world. I don’t think MacKinder, however, foresaw cooperative multipolarity on the Eurasian landmass — which is one of the goals of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) – as an option.

    That, increasingly, appears to be the most likely trajectory with multiple powerful states that will not accept domination, be that from China or the US.  That alone should give us cause for hope.

    Drunk on power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has launched war after war and brought us to the current abandonment of economic sanity (the sanctions-and-tariff global pandemic) and diplomatic normalcy (kill any peace negotiators you see) — and an anything-goes foreign policy (including massive crimes against humanity).

    We have also reached — thanks in large part to these same policies — what a former US national security advisor warned must be avoided at all costs. Back in the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “The most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran.”

    Belligerent and devoid of sound strategy, the Biden and Trump administrations have achieved just that.

    Can Asia-Pacific avoid being dragged into an American war on China?
    Turning to our region, New Zealand and Australia’s governments cleave to yesterday: a white-dominated world led by the USA.  We have shown ourselves indifferent to massacres, ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression launched by our team.

    To avoid war — or a permanent fear of looming war — in our own backyards, we need to encourage sanity and diplomacy; we need to stay close to the US but step away from the military alliances they are forming, such as AUKUS which is aimed squarely at China.

    Above all, our defence and foreign affairs elites need to grow new neural pathways and start to think with vision and not place ourselves on the losing side of history. Independent foreign policy settings based around peace, defence not aggression, diplomacy not militarisation, would take us in the right direction.

    Personally I look forward to the day the US and its increasingly belligerent vassals are pushed back into the ranks of ordinary humanity. I fear the US far more than I do China.

    Despite the reflexive adherence to the US that our leaders are stuck on, we should not, if we value our lives and our cultures, allow ourselves to be part of this mad, doomed project.

    The US empire is heading into a blood-drenched sunset; their project will fail and the 500-year empire of the White West will end — starting and finishing with genocide.

    Every day I atheistically pray that leaders or a movement will emerge to guide our antipodean countries out of the clutches of a violent and increasingly incoherent USA.

    America is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Tomorrow gives birth to a world that we should look forward to and do the little we can to help shape.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israeli soldiers ‘ordered’ to fire at Gaza aid seekers – 70 killed across Strip

    The New Arab

    Israeli soldiers have said that they were ordered to open fire at unarmed Palestinian civilians desperately seeking aid at designated distribution sites in Gaza, a report in the Ha’aretz newspaper has revealed.

    The report came as 70 Palestinians were killed across the Gaza Strip — mostly at aid sites belonging to the widely condemned Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — in the last 24 hours.

    Soldiers said that instead of using crowd control measures, they shot at crowds of civilians to prevent them from approaching certain areas.

    One soldier, who was not named in the report, described the distribution site as a “killing field,” adding that “where I was, between one and five people were killed every day”.

    The soldier said that they targeted the crowds as if they were “an attacking force,” instead of using other non-lethal weapons to organise and disperse crowds.

    “We communicate with them through fire,” he continued, noting that heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and mortars were used on people, including the elderly, women and children.

    The increased attacks, particularly those targeting aid-seekers, come as Gaza’s government Media Office said at least 549 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces while trying to get their hands on emergency aid in the last four weeks.

    ‘Evil of moral army’
    Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara described what was happening in Gaza was more than the genocode.

    “It is the evil of the most moral army in the world,” he said.

    Israeli forces continued their attacks across the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least three Palestinians in an attack on Khan Younis, in the south, while also heavily bombing residential buildings east of Jabalia in the north.

    Medical sources also said a Palestinian fisherman was killed, and others wounded, by Israeli naval gunfire off the al-Shati refugee camp, while he was working.

    Gaza’s Ministry of Interior responded to the attacks with a statement, accusing Israel of “seeking to spread chaos and destabilise the Gaza Strip”.

    Malnutrition soars
    Gazans have continued to desperately seek aid provided by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, despite the hundreds of people killed at its sites, as malnutrition soars in the territory.

    Two infants have died this week due to malnutrition and the ongoing blockade on Gaza.

    "It's a killing field" claim headline in Ha'aretz newspaper
    “It’s a killing field” claims a headline in Ha’aretz newspaper. Image: Ha’aretz screenshot APR

    For weeks now, health officials in the enclave have raised the alarm over the critical shortage of baby formula, but aid continued to be obstructed.

    The two infants were buried on Thursday evening, after they were pronounced dead at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Medical staff said the cause of death was a lack of basic nutrition and access to essential medical care.

    One of the infants, identified as Nidal, was only five months old, while the other, Kinda, was only 10 days old.

    Mohammed al-Hams, Kinda’s father, told local media that children are dying due to severe malnutrition, sarcastically labelling them “the achievements of Netanyahu and his war”.

    “Not a second goes by without a funeral prayer being held in the Gaza Strip,” he continued.

    Malnutrition ‘catastrophic’
    On Wednesday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said the humanitarian situation in Gaza had reached “catastrophic” levels, noting that there had been a sharp increase in malnutrition among children, particularly in infants.

    According to Palestinian official figures, at least 242 people have died in Gaza due to food and medicine shortages, with the majority of them being elderly and children.

    Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 61,700 Palestinians since October 2023. The war has levelled entire neighbourhoods, and has been called a genocide by leading rights groups, including Amnesty International.

    In Auckland last night, visiting Palestinian journalist, author, academic and community advocate Dr Yousef Aljamal spoke about “The unheard voices of Palestinian child prisoners”.

    Dr Aljamal, who edited If I Must Die, a compilation of poetry and prose by Refaat Alareer, the poet who was assassinated by the Israelis in 6 December 2023, also described the humanitarian crisis as a “catastrophe” and called for urgent sanctions and political pressure on Israel by governments, including New Zealand.


    Soldiers admit Israeli army is targeting aid seekers       Video: Al Jazeera

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • War Propaganda, State Controlled Media, And The End Of African Stream

    Every accusation is a confession when war propaganda is being spread by the state and its minions in corporate media. That adage is especially true when corporate media in the west use the term “state controlled” when they want to make the case for wars of aggression and to discredit those nations they label “adversaries.” If anyone is controlled by the state, it is the networks and major newspapers that can be counted on to march in lock step and repeat every narrative that is used to justify U.S. actions around the world.

    There is no stronger state control of media than in the United States and the collective west.

    The post War Propaganda, State Controlled Media, And The End Of African Stream appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Media Did Their Best to Scare Voters Away From Zohran Mamdani

     

    They tried. Oh, did the media try.

    The declared victory for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor highlights many things. The power of his campaign, the popularity of his ideas, the importance of grassroots get-out-the-vote mobilization, and the tepid reception for Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as the state’s governor due to a myriad of sexual harassment allegations, all contributed to the surprising—to corporate media, anyway—result.

    Earlier this month, FAIR’s Raina Lipsitz (6/13/25) responded to a New York profile (5/20/25) that attempted to undermine Mamdani’s record. In the home stretch of the primary race in the latter half of June, the pressure against Mamdani increased, featuring thoughtless dismissals of his ideas, selective memory and factual inaccuracy in the service of lowering Mamdani’s electoral chances.

    That Mamdani emerged from this mess victorious exposes the out-of-touchness of establishment media outlets that twisted like pretzels to scare voters away from the 33-year-old phenomenon. (Readers should know that I ranked Mamdani first in the primary and contributed to his campaign. I’m not unbiased when it comes to who I want to see as mayor, but the analysis of the media that follows, I believe, will withstand scrutiny.)

    ‘Uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges’

    New York Times: Our Advice to Voters in a Vexing Race for New York Mayor

    The New York Times‘ attack (6/16/25) on Zohran Mamdani was accompanied by an image centered on the World Trade Center.

    The New York Times editorial board (6/16/25) argued that “Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges.” They explained:

    He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.

    At least one poll shows that a rent freeze is overwhelmingly popular (City and State, 4/15/25), and they’re far from unheard of: Rent freezes were a key policy victory under Mayor Bill de Blasio (City Limits, 6/28/16; Politico, 3/15/17; WNBC, 6/17/20), a mayor whose candidacy the board (9/5/17, 11/2/17) had enthusiastically supported.

    The landlord class, which has organized against Mamdani’s campaign (Jacobin, 6/23/25), no doubt agrees with the Times‘ argument that if we don’t let rents go up, housing will be unaffordable—though 12 years of steady increases on regulated rentals under the tenure of Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t seem to make it easier to get an apartment here.

    And is the grocery store pitch such a crazy idea? The rising cost of food, despite the Times’ framing, is a very real problem for New Yorkers (Daily News, 5/1/25). The city operates public housing, homeless shelters and  hospitals—and a public education system that delivers daily meals to more than 900,000 students.

    The Times (12/12/24) positively explored the idea of city-owned stores in its news pages, citing how cities like Chicago and Atlanta were exploring similar missions. But when Mamdani proposes it, the editors present it as a sign of kookiness.

    ‘The disorder of the past decade’

    Murders in New York City 1928-2023

    The New York Times (6/16/25) accused Mamdani of showing “little concern about the disorder of the past decade”—a time period when there were fewer killings in New York City than at any time since the 1950s (chart: Wikipedia).

    The paper continued:

    Most worrisome, he shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city’s working-class and poor residents. Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.

    What disorder is the board talking about? We can guess they mean crime, but the homicide rate in New York City for the past ten years is the lowest it’s been since the 1950s. It’s true that Mamdani believes in police reform. The Times editorial board used to champion this cause (7/13/20, 9/13/20), even endorsing a reform-minded democratic socialist defense attorney for Queens district attorney five years ago (6/18/25).

    Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project, suggested that—”given that crime rates are at or near historic low”—the Times‘ “disorder” is likely “the presence of homeless mentally ill people on the subway and other public spaces.” But, he argues:

    Ironically, Mamdani and to some extent [Comptroller Brad] Lander are the candidates who have actual plans to address the kind of disorder that pearl-clutching Times readers are worried about. They understand that the solution to this decades old problem is not endlessly using police to cycle people through jails and hospitals, but instead to develop actual supportive housing and other essential social services.

    The Times has capitulated to neoliberal austerity, which accepts that cities have no choice but to cut services and turn the real estate market over to billionaires, and then use policing to manage the chaos that ensues.

    As for the idea that Mamdani is somehow just a candidate for “elite progressives” but not the “working-class and poor,” the Times’ own interactive map shows a more nuanced story. While it’s true that Cuomo did well in, for example, the impoverished South Bronx, in Manhattan he won the monied districts like Tribeca and the Upper East and West Side, while Mamdani carried lower-income neighborhoods like Harlem, Washington Heights and the Lower East Side. Mamdani’s funding came mostly from small contributions—he had seven times as many donors as Cuomo (New York Times, 5/6/25)—whereas Cuomo was heavily funded by billionaires and the real-estate industry (City, 6/26/25).

    ‘A quality of magical realism’

    Atlantic: The Magic Realism of Zohran Mamdani

    The Atlantic‘s Michael Powell (6/18/25) said Mamdani’s campaign was “exuberantly disconnected from actual government budgets and organizational charts.”

    The Atlantic published two anti-Mamdani articles, with two of them warning that Mamdani is too inexperienced to earn the people’s vote and that his ambitious proposals can’t be achieved. (A third went after his support for the phrase “globalize the intifada—6/24/25.) Former Times writer Michael Powell (6/18/25), like the Times editorial board, scoffed at the grocery store idea, saying, “How would he pay for his most ambitious plans? Tax the rich and major corporations.” His colleague Annie Lowery (6/12/25) joined in:

    He is a leftist in the Bernie Sanders mold, with a raft of great-sounding policies. Free buses! Free childcare! Cheap groceries! Frozen rents! But a lot of these are impractical at best. Free buses would deprive the MTA of needed revenue. Free childcare would require a mammoth tax hike that Albany would need to approve, which it has shown no interest in doing.

    Similarly, Powell pompously asserts that “Mamdani’s candidacy also has a quality of magic realism, a campaign exuberantly disconnected from actual government budgets and organizational charts.”

    Progressives are often annoyed by the retort “how are you going to pay for it?” because this question only gets deployed against the expansion of healthcare, education and social services, and not jails, policing and subsidies for business. But it also exposes the superficialities of reporters’ knowledge of city affairs.

    Many years ago, when I was a reporter at the Chief-Leader, a fellow reporter asked then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg why his budget proposal rested so much on the outcome of the city’s negotiations with its unions. His answer was simple: That’s what government is—it’s services for people, staffed by people. Any administration, in short, has to grapple with how to pay for its priorities, whether those priorities are left-wing or right-wing, and that often involves cutting bloat, consolidating functions and increasing revenue.

    Mamdani’s spending plan offends the Atlantic, not because it costs money—the magazine (8/8/21, 3/8/23) has argued against efforts to cut police budgets—but because Atlantic writers and editors don’t like his budget priorities, which validate the New Deal concept of government services for the 99 Percent.

    ‘Undeniably young’

    New Yorker: What Zohran Mamdani Got Right About Running for Mayor

    What Zohran Mamdani got right, according to the New Yorker (6/23/25), is understanding that “social media is where many voters decide if a politician…can be counted on.”

    New Yorker coverage has been fairer to Mamdani than the Atlantic was, but Eric Lach’s interview (6/23/25) with the candidate honed in on a swipe favored by the assembly member’s critics, including the New York article FAIR already responded to: his youth. Lach said:

    Mamdani has been stymied for several reasons that were apparent before primary day. For one thing, he is undeniably young, and he never found a way to reassure voters that he was truly up for the job of managing the city’s agencies, its $100 billion budget, and its 300,000-person workforce.

    Democratic socialist upstarts have often been tagged as unruly whippersnappers who need to stop bothering party elders with competitive primaries. But in a moment where one of the biggest problems of the Democratic Party is its gerontocracy (Newsweek, 12/19/24; The Nation, 5/23/25; Atlantic, 6/19/25), perhaps Mamdani’s ineligibility for AARP membership is a strength.

    Lach continued:

    The new program of public spending he has proposed is predicated on increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations, taxes that would have to be approved in Albany. If the big shots in Albany—never a good bet for anything, politically—refuse him, what would become of Mayor Mamdani? No one can say.

    Warning that Mamdani’s agenda might cause friction with Albany suggests it might be Lach, not Mamdani, who is too new to the subject matter. The tension between state and city government is age-old, and consistent with every administration.

    Once again, Mamdani gets extra scrutiny because of the substance of his agenda. Would Cuomo deal better with the state government he was forced to resign from, with a governor who is the deputy who replaced him? That’s a rhetorical question.

    Right-wing rage

    NY Post: New Yorkers: Get out and vote against the menace that is Zohran Mamdani

    Marvel Comics‘ Daily Bugle used to run headlines like “Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?” The New York Post (6/23/25) is less ambivalent about Mamdani.

    It is not surprising that Rupert Murdoch’s editorial boards savaged Mamdani. The New York Post (6/23/25) called him a  “cheap influencer” and “a babyfaced socialist antisemite who’s never accomplished anything except this so-buzzy campaign.” Likewise, Murdoch’s pro-business Wall Street Journal (6/22/25) claimed that “Manhattanites are warning that Mr. Mamdani’s ruinous utopianism could prompt a flight of talent and capital.”

    But the onslaught from the more centrist outlets is telling: Like the business establishment, they fear progressive economic policies when it comes to housing, education, transit and public safety, despite all overtures to the contrary.

    The good news is that this press assault failed. Perhaps that is because the political advice of the New York Times and Atlantic only still sways opinion in a few enclaves of the upper crust. The rage from the Post, Daily News and Journal probably only reached conservative audiences, who wouldn’t have ranked Mamdani anyway. And perhaps it also is testament to the degree that a grassroots messaging campaign can overcome an onslaught from the corporate media.

    The bad news is that this was only the primary: incumbent Mayor Eric Adams will be running in the general election as an independent, and Andrew Cuomo has left that option open. Monied interests will likely double down, hoping to spread enough fear of a Mamdani-run New York City to help sink his meteoric rise—and elite media are rarely far behind them.


    This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Bill Moyers Dies at 91: PBS Icon on Corruption of Corporate Media and Power of Public Broadcasting


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Mourning Bill Moyers

    Bill Moyers, the esteemed journalist, presidential adviser and philanthropist, died on Thursday at age 91 in New York. In the early 2000s, Moyers played a pivotal role in creating and promoting Free Press and delivered a series of powerful appearances at the National Conference for Media Reform.

    “You will search the dominant media largely in vain for journalists that tell the truth about the fading of the American dream,” Moyers told a crowd of more than 3,000 people assembled at the 2008 conference in Minneapolis. “So it’s up to you to remind us that democracy only works when ordinary people claim it as their own. It’s up to you to write the story of an America that leaves no one out.”

    Moyers called on people to build “a movement to challenge the stranglehold of mega-media corporations over our press and to build alternative and independent sources of news and information that people can trust.”

    Free Press President and Co-CEO Craig Aaron said:

    “Bill Moyers was a legend who lived up to his reputation. Moyers believed that journalism should serve democracy, not just the bottom line. He believed deeply in the power and potential of public media, and he set the standard for public broadcasting by telling stories you couldn’t find anywhere else. He always stood up to bullies — including those who come forward in every generation to try to crush public media and end its independence. We can honor his memory by continuing that fight.

    “Moyers was a giant, who used his wide reach and wise words to lift up the voices of activists and change-makers, including the co-founders of Free Press. It’s no exaggeration to say that Free Press would not exist without Moyers’ support and encouragement. He was among the earliest supporters of Free Press and encouraged many others to join him. His wise and inspirational words motivated generations of media activists.

    “Above all, Moyers was a kind and generous man, mentoring young journalists and activists – including me – and leading by example. We send our deepest condolences to his family, many friends and devoted colleagues, and millions of fans. There won’t be another Bill Moyers, but legions of us will try to carry on his work.”

    The post Mourning Bill Moyers first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Bill Moyers Dies at 91: PBS Icon on Corruption of Corporate Media and Power of Public Broadcasting

    Seg bill

    The legendary journalist Bill Moyers has died at the age of 91. Moyers, whose long career included helping found the Peace Corps and serving as press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, was an award-winning champion of public television and independent media. We feature one of his numerous interviews on Democracy Now! where we discussed the history of public broadcasting in the United States and the powerful role of money in corporate media. “The power of money trumps the power of democracy today, and I’m very worried about it,” he said in a 2011 interview. His comments hold particular resonance as the Trump administration moves to strip federal funding from PBS and NPR today.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Antoinette Lattouf win against ABC a victory for all truth-tellers

    By Isaac Nellist of Green Left Magazine

    Australian-Lebanese journalist and commentator Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case win against the public broadcaster ABC in the Federal Court on Wednesday is a victory for all those who seek to tell the truth.

    It is a breath of fresh air, after almost two years of lies and uncritical reporting about Israel’s genocide from the ABC and commercial media companies.

    Lattouf was unfairly sacked in December 2023 for posting on her social media a Human Rights Watch report that detailed Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.

    Justice Darryl Rangiah found that Lattouf had been sacked for her political opinions, given no opportunity to respond to misconduct allegations and that the ABC breached its Enterprise Agreement and section 772 of the Fair Work Act.

    The Federal Court also found that ABC executives — then-chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, editor-in-chief David Anderson and board chair Ita Buttrose — had sacked Lattouf in response to a pro-Israel lobby pressure campaign.

    The coordinated email campaign from Zionist groups accused Lattouf of being “antisemitic” for condemning Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

    The judge awarded Lattouf A$70,000 in damages, based on findings that her sacking caused “great distress”, and more than $1 million in legal fees.

    ‘No Lebanese’ claim
    Lattouf had alleged that her race or ethnicity had played a part in her sacking, which the ABC had initially responded to by claiming there was no such thing as a “Lebanese, Arab or Middle Eastern Race”, before backtracking.

    The court found that this did not play a part in the decision to sack Lattouf.

    The ABC’s own reporting of the ruling said “the ABC has damaged its reputation, and public perceptions around its ideals, integrity and independence”.

    Outside the court, Lattouf said: “It is now June 2025 and Palestinian children are still being starved. We see their images every day, emaciated, skeletal, scavenging through the rubble for scraps.

    “This unspeakable suffering is not accidental, it is engineered. Deliberately starving and killing children is a war crime.

    “Today, the court has found that punishing someone for sharing facts about these war crimes is also illegal. I was punished for my political opinion.”

    Palestine solidarity groups and democratic rights supporters have celebrated Lattouf’s victory.

    An ‘eternal shame’
    Palestine Action Group Sydney said: “It is to the eternal shame of our national broadcaster that it sacked a journalist because she opposed the genocide in Gaza.

    “There should be a full inquiry into the systematic pro-Israel bias at the ABC, which for 21 months has acted as a propaganda wing of the Israeli military.”

    Racial justice organisation Democracy in Colour said the ruling “exposes the systematic silencing taking place in Australian media institutions in regards to Palestine”.

    Democracy in Colour chairperson Jamal Hakim said Lattouf was punished for “speaking truth to power”.

    “When the ABC capitulated to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby . . .  they didn’t just betray Antoinette — they betrayed their own editorial standards and the Australian public who deserve to know the truth about Israel’s human rights abuses.”

    Noura Mansour, national director for Democracy in Colour, said the ABC had been “consistently shutting down valid criticism of the state of Israel” and suppressing the voices of people of colour and Palestinians. She said the national broadcaster had “worked to manufacture consent for the Israeli-US backed genocide”.

    Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance chief executive Erin Madeley said: “Instead of defending its journalists, ABC management chose to appease powerful voices . . . they failed in their duty to push back against outside interference, racism and bullying.”

    Win for ‘journalistic integrity’
    Australian Greens leader Larissa Waters said the ruling was a win for “journalistic integrity and freedom of speech” and that “no one should be punished for speaking out about Gaza”.

    Green Left editor Pip Hinman said the ruling was an “important victory for those who stand on the side of truth and justice”.

    “It is more important than ever in an increasingly polarised world that journalists speak up and report the truth without fear of reprisal from the rich and powerful.

    “Traditional and new media have the reach to shape public opinion. They have had a clear pro-Israel bias, despite international human rights agencies providing horrific data on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    “Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people around Australia continue to call for an end to the genocide in Gaza in protests every week. But the ABC and corporate media have largely ignored this movement of people from all walks of life. Disturbingly, the corporate media has gone along with some political leaders who claim this anti-war movement is antisemitic.

    “As thousands continue to march every week for an end to the genocide in Gaza, the ABC and corporate media organisations have continued to push the lie that the Palestine solidarity movement, and indeed any criticism of Israel, is antisemitic.

    “Green Left also hails those courageous mostly young journalists in Gaza, some 200 of whom have been killed by Israel since October 2023.

    “Their livestreaming of Israel’s genocide cut through corporate media and political leaders’ lies and today makes it even harder for them to whitewash Israel’s crimes and Western complicity.

    “Green Left congratulates Lattouf on her victory. We are proud to stand with the movement for justice and peace in Palestine, which played a part in her victory against the ABC management’s bias.”

    Republished from Green Left Magazine with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.