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Category: Media

  • Israel destroys only a quarter of Gaza tunnels in 18 months of deadly war

    The New Arab

    The Israeli military has reportedly only destroyed 25 percent of tunnels used by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, say security sources.

    According to Israel’s Channel 12, the sources said that a vast network of tunnels remain in the Gaza Star despite 18 months of a ferocious Israeli onslaught, with many extending from Egypt — which shares a 12-kilometre border with the besieged Palestinian enclave.

    The Israeli military claimed it has been focused on tunnels used for attacks rather than those used to store weapons or as command centres.

    The security officials, cited by Channel 12, also said that face-to-face fighting with Hamas members had reduced, with groups fleeing into tunnels.

    The Israeli military has been waging a war against the Palestinian group for more than 18 months, while also attacking civilian areas and facilities, with Israel often boasting over how many fighters they have killed and how much of their infrastructure has been destroyed.

    The military claim to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters. However, at least 80 percent of casualties have been civilians, according to experts.

    This also comes as Israeli forces remain stationed at the Philadelphi crossing between Egypt and Gaza — a narrow strip of land occupied by the military since May of last year.

    Corridor to remain buffer zone
    Last month, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the corridor would remain a buffer zone despite Egyptian demands for the Israeli army to withdraw.

    Katz said the Israeli military would remain there to “counter ammunition and weapons smuggling” taking place through tunnels which connect the two pieces of land.

    Katz even said that he had seen a number of functioning tunnels in the area. The minister was quoted as saying: “I saw with my own eyes quite a few tunnels crossing into Egypt; some were closed, and several were open.”

    Tunnels have connected Gaza with Egypt as far back as the 1980s, but grew significantly in size and quantity following the Israeli economic blockade imposed on the territory in 2007.

    The tunnels serve as a means to smuggle goods such as food, medicine and fuel supplies due to the siege. Weapons and cash have also been smuggled through the tunnels since.

    Israel has repeatedly sought to dismantle such tunnels, destroying dozens every year. Israel also restricts the importation of construction material to prevent Hamas from building any more tunnels.

    Israel continues to wage its war on the Gaza Strip, killing over 5,900 Palestinians since 7, October 2023. It has stepped up its attacks on the Palestinian enclave since March 18 following the collapse of a truce killing well over 1500 people since, according to the Health Ministry.

    Republished from The New Arab under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Health workers call for NZ government to join global demands for ambulance massacre inquiry

    Asia Pacific Report

    Health workers spoke out at a rally condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the latest atrocity against Palestinian aid workers today, calling on the New Zealand government to join global demands for an independent investigation.

    They were protesting over last month’s massacre of 15 Palestinian rescue workers and the destruction of their ambulances in Gaza’s Rafah district under heavy fire.

    The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has called for an independent international inquiry into the “deliberate killing” of 8 ambulance medics, 6 civil defence workers and 1 UN worker reportedly executed by the Israeli forces on March 23.

    Their ambulances were destroyed and buried together with the bodies of the victims in a shallow grave a week after the crews went missing.

    One PRCS paramedic, Assaad al-Nassasra, was reported to be still missing.

    Among the speakers in the rally in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square, Amnesty International’s Audrey Van Ryn said: “These killings must be independently and impartially investigated and the perpetrators held to account.

    “Medical personnel carrying out their humanitarian duties most be respected and protected in all circumstances.”

    Health worker Jason Brooke read out a message from the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Jagan Chapagain, in response to the killing of the Palestinian first-responders.

    ‘Their ambulances were clearly marked’
    “I am heartbroken. These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians. They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked,” said Chapagain.

    “They should have returned to their families; they did not.”

    Fourteen of the Palestinian aid workers killed by Israel in March 2025
    Fourteen of the Palestinian aid workers killed by Israel last month. The 15th is still missing. Graphic: Al Jazeera/Creative Commons

    Their bodies were discovered a week later by fellow workers. A video from one of the slain Palestinian Red Crescent medics contradicting the lies propagated by Israel’s military that the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”

    These first responders were not mistakenly misidentified. They were travelling, clearly visible in red crescent marked ambulances with their lights on. They posed no threat.

    According to the United Nations, at least 1060 healthcare workers have been killed in the 18 months since Israel launched its genocidal offensive in Gaza.

    “Whether it’s first-responders and medics, health workers or reporters, not only are these workers being targeted with impunity by the IOF, but their deaths seem to barely cause a ripple,” said Brooke, who was greeted with cries of shame.

    “Where is the condemnation of our politicians? Our media?”

    ‘Dehumanisation of Palestinian life’
    “As the Palestinian poet and author Mohammed El-Kurd suggests, what we are witnessing is the dehumanisation of Palestinian life.

    “Israel only has to mention the word ‘Hamas’ and the indoctrinated look-away. As if resistance to genocide itself were a crime — the punishment a life predetermined for death.

    “Genocide does not distinguish between civilian, aid worker, health worker, reporter and militant. All are condemned.”

    Medical personnel, medical transport, hospitals and other medical facilities, the injured and sick are all specifically protected under international humanitarian law.

    The devastating Gaza massacre represents the single most deadly attack on Red Cross or Red Crescent workers anywhere in the world since 2017.

    Secretary-general Chapagain said: “The number of Palestine Red Crescent volunteers and staff killed since the start of this conflict is now 30.

    “We stand with Palestine Red Crescent and the loved ones of those killed on this darkest of days.”

    PSNA advocate Janfrie Wakim
    PSNA advocate Janfrie Wakim . . . “We mourn those thousands of innocent people . . . who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives.” Image: Asia Pacific Report

    ‘Palestine wants freedom to live’
    Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) advocate Janfrie Wakim called on the crowd to give each other “high fives” in recognition of their solidarity in turning up for the protest in the 79th week since the war began.

    “I like the sign in front of me: ‘Palestine wants the freedom to live while Israel has the freedom to kill!’ she said.

    “We mourn those thousands of innocent people  — some with families here and in Gaza and the West Bank — who made the ultimate sacrifice with their lives, and the thousands unaccounted for in rubble and over 100,000 injured.

    "Palestine wants the freedom to live"
    “Palestine wants the freedom to live while Israel has the freedom to kill!” . . . a placard at today’s Auckland solidarity rally. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    “Mostly women and children.

    “The humanitarian workers who have been murdered serving humanity.”

    Wakim said the genocide had been enabled by the wealthiest countries in the world and Western media — “including our own with few exceptions”.

    “Without its lies, its deflections, its failure to report the agonising reality of Palestinians suffering, Israel would not have been able to commit its atrocities.”

    All fatalities women and children
    Meanwhile, the United Nations reports Palestinian women and children were the only fatalities in at least three dozen Israeli air strikes on Gaza since mid-March, as it warned that Israel’s military offensive threatened Palestinians’ “continued existence as a group”.

    Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Friday that the office had documented 224 Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for displaced people in the Gaza Strip between March 18 and April 9.

    “In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children,” she said.

    The findings come as Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed more than 1500 Palestinians since the Israeli military broke a ceasefire in March, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reports Al Jazeera.

    A German official was the latest to call for an independent probe over Israel’s killing of the 15 medical aid workers.

    An investigation into Israel’s killing of paramedics must be carried out independently, said German Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Assistance Luise Amtsberg.

    “This alleged violation of international law must not go unpunished,” Amtsberg said in a message on social media platform Bluesky.

    Israel’s ‘distortion’ straining ties
    “The investigation must be carried out quickly and independently, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice as soon as possible. The Israeli government and judiciary have a duty here,” she said.

    Israel’s distortion of the event was “once again” straining ties between Germany and Israel, she added.

    Myriam Laaroussi, an emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, told Al Jazeera from al-Mawasi, an area west of Khan Younis that houses thousands of displaced Gaza families, that the health system had been destroyed.

    Due to the Israeli blockade, the supplies needed to treat patients were lacking and had left children in Gaza vulnerable to disease, she said.

    The desalination unit was not functioning any more due to Israel’s decision to cut electricity, which had decreased the capacity to retain good hygiene and was leading to outbreaks of polio and scabies.

    “We see that it’s a ‘slow death’ for many Palestinians, with shortages of food and water leading to a loss of weight and medical issues,” she said.

    The ceasefire had been an opportunity to scale up the capacity of the different health facilities, but it had been too short to have enough effect, and now health facilities were being attacked again.

    A "Free free Palestine" placard
    A “Free free Palestine” placard at today’s Auckland solidarity rally. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • How Russia Recruits Chinese Fighters For Ukraine War Using Social Media Ads


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • This Is An All-Out War On The First Amendment

    There are reasons that the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, is an opaque entity for many people. The fact that there is a federal agency setting the terms for media companies’ operations conflicts with many Americans’ understanding of the press corps as a group of brave, independent individuals looking to tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may.

    There are, in fact, many community-supported, differently structured news outlets doing just that. But, listeners know, the big major papers and stations and channels we may look to for news are owned and sponsored by big profit-driven corporations that share the status quo–supporting interests of other big profit-driven corporations.

    The post This Is An All-Out War On The First Amendment appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Media Watch: Fake news websites hijack Taiwan’s mainstream media

    TAIPEI, Taiwan – On March 30, a headline in Taiwan’s China Times sparked widespread controversy: “U.S. Media Reveals: Taiwan Tried to Use Pompeo to Woo Trump, Biotech Firm Paid US$5.9 Million – Major Flop.”

    The report claimed to cite a bombshell investigation by U.S. broadcaster MSNBC, revealing that Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, had attempted to build ties with U.S. President Donald Trump through his ex-Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo – only for the effort to backfire due to strained relations between the two Americans.

    The story was widely republished by prominent Taiwanese media outlets, including broadcaster TVBS and ETtoday, and was featured in the high-profile TVBS talk show “Situation Room.” It even made the front page of China Times’ print edition the following day.

    But there was a problem: the story wasn’t from MSNBC.

    Taiwanese mainstream media outlets cited
    Taiwanese mainstream media outlets cited “MSNBC” for its reporting. But the story was not from MSNBC.
    (China Times, TVBS and ETtoday)

    Fake news website

    Keyword searches found no such article existed on the network’s website – nor in any other reputable American news outlet.

    A spokesperson for MSNBC confirmed that MSNBC has no connection to MSNBC24.

    The website of MSNBC24 appears to be poorly maintained. Articles are all authored by a single name, “Rose Wells.” Many feature the same generic landscape photo, and key site links like “About Us” or “Contact” redirect to the homepage.

    A closer look at the MSNBC24’s registration information – which was registered in 2021 – shows that it is linked to eight other suspicious websites, including “abcnewsnow.uk,” which uses a design nearly identical to MSNBC24 and seems to impersonate American broadcaster ABC News.

    AFCL also found that the nine websites, including MSNBC24, shared the same Google Analytics, of GA, code “UA-174559896.” GA codes are used to monitor website traffic, and each code links to a specific tracking account.

    When multiple sites use the same code, their visitor data is collected in one account – suggesting that the sites are operated by the same individual or organization.

    AFCL also found that the nine websites, including MSNBC24, shared the same Google Analytics, of GA, code “UA-174559896,” which is used to monitor website traffic, and each code links to a specific tracking account.
    AFCL also found that the nine websites, including MSNBC24, shared the same Google Analytics, of GA, code “UA-174559896,” which is used to monitor website traffic, and each code links to a specific tracking account.
    (AFCL)

    A comparison of two websites shows that both MSNBC24 and abcnewsnow.uk published articles on Jan. 8 about the “secret history” of former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen – content that Taiwan’s national security agencies flagged as AI-generated disinformation aimed at interfering with Taiwan’s elections.

    Another linked site, “businesslly.com,” collaborated with abcnewsnow.uk to publish a negative story about Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire and political dissident who exposed alleged corruption within the Chinese Communist Party, leading Beijing to label him a criminal and pursue him aggressively.

    The article, titled in broken English, was nearly a word-for-word translation of a fictional story found on Wattpad, a user-generated writing platform.

    The content published on these three websites – and others linked to them – shares a common trait: they consistently push pro-China, anti-Taiwan disinformation.

    The content published on MSNBC24 and others linked to it shares a common trait: they consistently push pro-China, anti-Taiwan disinformation.
    The content published on MSNBC24 and others linked to it shares a common trait: they consistently push pro-China, anti-Taiwan disinformation.
    (AFCL)

    ‘Slime media’

    Postdoctoral researcher Li Wei-Ping of the University of Maryland’s journalism school says MSNBC24 fits the profile of “slime media,” also known as “pink slime journalism” – fake news websites masquerading as legitimate outlets, often designed to manipulate political discourse.

    “The website mimics the naming conventions of real local U.S. news outlets, a tactic that shows a high level of familiarity with the American media ecosystem,” Li said.

    The scale of such operations is staggering. According to a 2024 Guardian report, over 1,265 fake local news websites now exist in the U.S. – outnumbering the country’s 1,213 remaining daily newspapers.

    Many are funded by political groups and aim to sway public opinion during elections.

    Li emphasized the importance of checking a media outlet’s “About” section and verifying journalists’ credentials, urging reporters to remain vigilant.

    “Don’t rush to amplify ‘exclusive scoops’ without verifying the source – especially if it comes from a site you’ve never heard of.”

    “It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game,” Li warned.

    Edited by Taejun Kang.

    Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Dong Zhe and Zhuang Jing for Asia Fact Check Lab.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Trump’s “Pincer Attack” on Journalism Is Working. But There’s Hope.

    David Folkenflik occupies a unique role at NPR: He’s a journalist who writes about journalism. And that includes the very organization where he works, which is once again being threatened by conservatives in Washington.

    The second Trump administration has aggressively gone after the media in its first few months. It’s kicked news organizations out of the Pentagon. It’s barred other newsrooms from access to the White House. And Trump supporters in Congress are targeting federal funding for public media.

    On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Folkenflik talks to host Al Letson about this unprecedented moment for journalists, why more media outlets seem to be bending the knee to the Trump administration, and how journalism can begin to win back public trust.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson

    Listen: Trump’s FCC chief opens investigation into NPR and PBS (NPR)

    Read: Meet the New State Media (Mother Jones)

    Read: The Media and Trump: Not Resistance, But Not Acceptance (Mother Jones)

    Watch: PBS and NPR leaders testify on federal support for public broadcasting in House hearing (PBS NewsHour)

    Follow us on Instagram @revealnews

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

  • Palestinian Christians Reject US Catholic Bishops Collaboration With Pro-Israel Group

    Palestinian Christians are condemning a move by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to collaborate with a leading pro-Israel advocacy group on an online tool that aims to define Palestinian resistance as antisemitic.

    In a letter sent late last month from Kairos Palestine to the USCCB Committee’s head, Bishop Timothy Broglio, sixteen Palestinian Christian leaders representing Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant denominations and church organizations express their deep disappointment regarding the USCCB’s endorsement of the American Jewish Committee’s online resource, Translate Hate.

    The post Palestinian Christians Reject US Catholic Bishops Collaboration With Pro-Israel Group appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “All Governments Lie”: Why We Need a Radical and Independent Free Press Now

    Media scholar Carl Jensen was deeply influenced by the independent muckraking journalists of the twentieth century—so much so that he founded Project Censored at Sonoma State University, in 1976, in the wake of the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal, as a watchdog organization focused on exposing “the news that didn’t make the news.” Project Censored began in a sociology course Jensen taught at Sonoma State, but quickly evolved into a national effort to promote independent journalism and news literacy. The Project produced an annual list of the most important investigative news reports, which attracted attention—and praise—from some of Jensen’s best-known contemporaries, including broadcast journalists Walter Cronkite and Hugh Downs, reform activist Ralph Nader, and a contemporary muckraker, investigative journalist I.F. “Izzy” Stone.

    Jensen’s purpose was not to tear down so-called “mainstream” media outlets but to constructively criticize their news judgment. By showing what the major media missed, or even “censored,” he hoped to improve what he saw as the lifeblood of democracy: a truly free press. Industry professionals didn’t always take kindly to such criticism, which led Jensen to turn his critique into a systematic study of what they did cover. He discovered a morass of fluff, sensationalism, and pap—what used to be called “yellow journalism” in the early 1900s. Jensen called it Junk Food News in 1983. He saw that the public would ultimately pay the price for the major media outlets’ myopic focus and critical omissions in the form of accelerating civic decay. Sadly, he wasn’t wrong.

    Today, we are awash in 21st-century versions of junk food news, as produced by corporate media and propagated on social media. Worse, we are also subject to ‘round-the-clock infotainment and propaganda masquerading as journalism, what Jensen’s successor, sociologist Peter Phillips, called News Abuse in the early 2000s (now also referred to as malinformation). Of course, numerous media critics and scholars—including Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Ben Bagdikian, Neil Postman, and Robert McChesney—have long warned against rising levels of mis- and disinformation, increased consolidation of media ownership, and their combined toll on press freedom and a well-informed public. In the last decade, with the moral panic around the weaponized epithet of “fake news,” these challenges have spawned a cottage industry of so-called fact-checkers—supposedly objective third parties trying to reverse the troublesome trend of declining public trust in the Fourth Estate.

    However, most of those efforts have been exposed as Trojan horses for re-establishing corporate media dominance in a digital era of podcasts, TikTok, Instagram reels, and “tweets” (or “posts” as they are now called on X). As Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker bemoaned last year at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, news industry leaders are losing control of the narrative (emphasis added):

    If you go back really not that long ago, as I say, we owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well. If it said it in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, then that was a fact. Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news, and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying. So, it’s no longer good enough for us just to say, this is what happened, or this is the news. We have to explain– almost like explain our working. So, readers expect to understand how we source stories. They want to know how we go about getting stories. We have to sort of lift the bonnet, as it were, and in a way that newspapers aren’t used to doing and explain to people what we’re doing. We need to be much more transparent about how we go about collecting the news.

    “Lift the bonnet.” “Explain to people what we’re doing.” It’s almost as if the public wants more fact-based, transparently sourced reporting in their news, not partisan propaganda. And, go figure, in a rabidly consumerist culture, they want receipts too. Tucker seems to agree, though the corporate media and their advertisers/investors from Big Pharma, Big Tech, the Military-Industrial Complex, and other powerful institutions whose narratives the public is questioning, likely do not. For Tucker and other gatekeepers, this public scrutiny is inconvenient, perhaps even impertinent, but also a market reality news organizations must now at least pay lip service to addressing. Perhaps this is what has contributed to record-low levels of approval and trust of the news media among the public.

    Indy Journalism Can Build Public Trust While Fighting Fake News

    Media scholars have described this conundrum as an epistemic one, the ushering in of a “post-truth” world “in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The mis- and disinformation ecosystem that has emerged in this post-truth climate has establishment institutions from the WEF to Congress and the mass media themselves clutching pearls. Even the American public has come to believe that the lack of trustworthy information is a greater threat than terrorism. With the return of Donald Trump to the presidency, these concerns, along with increasing existential attacks on journalists and the news media itself, including ABC, CBS, NPR/PBS, and even the Associated Press as “enemies of the American people,” are growing rapidly and in unprecedented ways.

    There certainly are major issues with corporate media and establishment outlets, which we at Project Censored have documented for nearly half a century. However, our critiques are not meant to undermine major media for partisan gain. Instead, the Project’s criticisms of corporate news expose systemic gaps and slant in coverage, in order to pressure the nation’s most prominent news outlets to use their massive budgets and influence to serve the public good, rather than private interests, by holding corporate and government abusers of power accountable. Given the well-documented limitations of corporate media, we support a robust, independent, and public media system, because a commercial, for-profit model cannot “tell the people what is really going on,” as George Seldes once put it. The solution to our present journalistic woes does not lie with industry leaders, biased fact-checkers, or Big Tech content moderators. It rests on critical media literacy and a fiercely independent free press.

    In support of this proposed solution, Project Censored advocates for a healthy democracy by promoting news literacy education, especially by providing hands-on training in critical media literacy for students, through our curriculum, student internships, and Campus Affiliates Program, each of which distinguishes Project Censored from other news watch organizations and press freedom groups. Further, each year, Project Censored also recognizes some of the best independent journalists, reporting factually, transparently, and ethically in the public interest, pointing out that these are among the best advocates of news literacy, literally teaching by example. So, ironically, the very solutions to the revitalization of our failing Fourth Estate are its most radical independent practitioners, not their owners/employers or meddling partisan outsiders. History shows this to be the case, and we should listen to what the past can teach us.

    “All Governments Lie”

    Among the many books Jensen published, one of the most significant might be Stories That Changed America: Muckrakers of the 20th Century. In it, he collected exemplary work by nearly two dozen legendary journalists, his selection of the previous century’s most significant truth-tellers, including excerpts from decisive reports by Ida Tarbell (The History of the Standard Oil Company), Lincoln Steffans (The Shame of the Cities), Upton Sinclair (The Jungle and The Brass Check), George Seldes (In Fact), Edward R. Murrow (In Search of Light), and I.F. Stone (I.F. Stone’s Weekly). As Jensen wrote, “Their words led to a nationwide public revolt against social evils and [decades] of reforms in antitrust legislation, the electoral process, banking regulations, and a host of other social programs.” The reporting Jensen collected in Stories That Changed America continues to inspire those of us who believe journalism can make a difference.

    “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out,” the iconic muckraker “Izzy” Stone once wrote. But Stone had great faith in the power of the press to expose and counter those lies. We need brave, independent journalists and newsrooms to tackle the most controversial and suppressed issues of our era. Stone relentlessly exposed governmental prevarications and injustices throughout his career. He also saw the shortcomings of his own profession, to the point of resigning from the National Press Club in 1941, rather than kowtowing to its racism and political sycophancy. After realizing he had limited influence in the establishment press, he started I.F. Stone’s Weekly and dared to report the truth on his own. He took on McCarthyism at a time when his peers were being attacked, arrested, deported, and disappeared. He fought for truth and peace in the face of the unjust, murderous conflicts of the Cold War, especially in Vietnam. Sound familiar?

    Governments lie. Stone’s insight is timeless, but it seems more relevant than ever in 2025. The Trump administration and its enablers bombard us daily with lies and half-truths, what Reporters Without Borders has characterized as “a monumental assault on freedom of information.” At best, the establishment press seems capable of little more than chronicling the barrage; at worst, they capitulate to it.

    The notion of a press “watchdog” on a governmental leash did not begin with the current administration—as Jensen and his students at Sonoma State noted in 1976 looking back on the eve of Richard Nixon’s re-election, no major news outlet even mentioned the Watergate scandal—and the roots of a subservient press reach back to the earliest history of American journalism on the presidency. But the return of Trump to power is a nadir for many of our cherished freedoms, including those of the First Amendment, which links freedom of speech and press with the rights to assemble and petition—and the public, our democracy, needs journalism that can help us awaken from what historian Timothy Snyder has described as a “self-induced intellectual coma” that is characteristic of  “the politics of inevitability.”

    The Izzy’s Are Coming!

    Calling out counter-democratic measures is one way to resist the onslaught of authoritarianism. A free press provides the means for this, but people need to act in response. Rather than complain that “the left” needs a media power like Rupert Murdoch’s to “compete,” we should open our eyes and support the amazing people and organizations doing this invaluable work already. Project Censored highlights the most important but under-reported independent news stories each year, promoting the work of independent journalists, news outlets, and press freedom organizations that exemplify “media democracy in action.” Their work embodies the very spirit of resistance and amplifies the voices of those trammeled by oligarchs and would-be despots.

    The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College shares this ethos, supporting independent media as a bulwark against everyday injustices and creeping tyranny. Among the only academic centers of journalism in the United States focused solely on independent media, each year, PCIM honors the leading independent journalists of our time with its Izzy Award, named in honor of I.F. “Izzy” Stone. April 30 marks the seventeenth annual award ceremony, which will also be the occasion for numerous muckraking journalists and free press organizations to convene and build coalitions, strengthen solidarity, and fight to protect our democratic republic from anyone, whether they bat for Team Red or Team Blue, who would subvert it for their own private gain.

    The Izzy Award celebrates the practice of radical muckraking journalism in the public interest, and its continuing relevance in our current Gilded Age of Big Tech plutocracy. The work at PCIM and Project Censored reminds us that we cannot wait for change to simply emerge; we must create it ourselves. If past is prologue, we also have much to learn from and pass on to the next generation, whose experiences and voices will inform and express the stories that change America again, to paraphrase Jensen.

    Now is not a time for cowering; it is a time to exhibit what political activist and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg called civil courage, regardless of the odds. Or, as Izzy noted, it is time “to defend the weak against the strong; to fight for justice; and to seek, as best I can to bring healing perspectives to bear on the terrible hates and fears of [humankind], in the hope of someday bringing about one world, in which [people] will enjoy the differences of the human garden instead of killing each other over them.”

    Hear, hear. Let’s not get lost in the smoke of the hashish blown in our faces by elite media and government actors. Let’s instead recognize and support the reportorial canaries in the coal mines, from the climate crisis and Kafkaesque raids on the vulnerable among us to the dismantling of education, attacks on the arts, and an ongoing genocide. Let’s act on the information independent journalists share at their own risk, for we ignore them at our own.

    The post “All Governments Lie”: Why We Need a Radical and Independent Free Press Now first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Nicaragua’s Opposition Media Welcome Trump’s New Tariffs – and Ignore How They Were Calculated

    Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

    Five countries in Central America, together with the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, have a free trade agreement with Washington, but this didn’t protect them from the punitive tariffs announced on President Trump’s “Liberation Day.”

    A minimum 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US will hit low-income countries throughout the region. But exports from Nicaragua have been saddled with an even higher tariff of 18 per cent. Delighted opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government have blamed it, rather than Trump, for the country receiving this additional penalty. However, simple examination of the figures shows that Nicaragua’s tariff was calculated in the same way as every other country’s.

    Before examining the opposition media’s error-strewn reports, this article first explains the background: how the tariff was set, whether it is legitimate and how US-Nicaragua trade is changing. Then it turns to the opposition’s mistakes and explains how they are using Trump’s actions to bolster their attacks on Nicaragua’s government and people.

    How the tariffs were set

    Trump’s chart of tariffs has two sets of figures for each country: the “tariffs charged to the USA” and the “reciprocal tariffs” to be imposed this month. Bizarrely, the “tariffs charged to the USA” do not relate to actual tariffs charged on US imports. Instead, they are the product of a calculation based on each country’s trade gap with the US. For most countries, the value of these “tariffs charged” has been set at 10 per cent, on the basis that the US has no trade deficit with them, or only a small one. All of these countries (including Nicaragua’s neighbors) are hit with a “reciprocal tariff” of 10 per cent on their exports to the US, from this month onwards, even if they buy more from the US than they sell to it.

    However, a higher “tariff charged” is calculated for countries with which the US is judged to have a bigger trade deficit. For each country, the White House looked up the deficit for its trade with the US in goods for 2024, then divided that by the total value of the country’s exports to the US. Trump, to be “kind”, said he would offer a discount, so halved that figure. The calculation was distilled into a formula.

    For example, these are the figures for China:

    1) Goods trade deficit (exports from the US minus imports): – $291.9 billion

    2) Total goods imported to the US from China: $438.9 billion

    3) A ÷ B = – 0.67, or 67 per cent

    4) Half of this is 34 per cent, the new tariff being applied to China.

    Based on this formula, the small African country of Lesotho was saddled with the highest “reciprocal tariff” of 50 per cent, while several major SE Asian countries were also hit with very high tariffs.

    How Nicaragua’s tariff was calculated

    Nicaragua’s “reciprocal tariff” was calculated in the same way. According to US trade figures, in 2024 US goods exports to Nicaragua were $2.9 billion, while US goods imports from Nicaragua totaled $4.6 billion. The US goods trade deficit with Nicaragua was therefore – $1.7 billion in 2024.

    The calculation was therefore: trade deficit (- $1.7 billion) ÷ imports ($4.6 billion) = – 0.37, or 37 per cent, halved to produce a “reciprocal tariff” of 18 per cent.

    This means that from April 9, there will be a new tax of 18 per cent on Nicaraguan goods sent to the US, payable as a customs duty on their arrival by the company or agency importing the goods.

    How Nicaragua might contest the tariff

    It seems unlikely that Trump will bend to pressure on the tariffs. However, at least in theory, there are three ways in which Nicaragua might argue that the tariff is wrongly imposed:

    1) Nicaragua’s Central Bank shows a smaller trade gap with the US. According to the Central Bank’s figures for 2024, Nicaragua’s exports to the US totaled $3.7 billion, not $4.6 billion, while its imports from the US totaled $2.7 billion, giving a trade gap of $1 billion, not $1.7 billion. On the basis of Trump’s tariff formula, the result should have been a 14 per cent tariff, not 18 per cent, if Nicaragua’s trade figures are correct. (A possible explanation for the difference may be the way that goods, originating in Nicaragua, are processed in other Central American countries before arrival in the US.)

    2) Although most Central American countries import more from the US than they export to it, Costa Rica also has a trade surplus with the US, amounting to $2 billion, bigger than Nicaragua’s, yet it is only being penalized by the standard “reciprocal tariff” (10 per cent).

    3) Most importantly, as the Guatemalan government pointed out, under the CAFTA-DR trade treaty new tariffs are illegal (under both US federal and international law). The treaty prohibits new tariffs or customs duties between the seven member countries. Therefore, all six of the other countries that are parties to CAFTA-DR are entitled to challenge the US for breaching it.

    Action by CAFTA-DR members is complicated by the fact that Nicaragua is not only worst hit by the tariffs but is also a country that the US would like to exclude from the treaty completely, a point picked up below.

    Changing significance of Nicaraguan exports to the US

    Nicaragua’s Central Bank divides its trade figures between “merchandise” and products from free trade zones (principally, apparel). This, as we will see, confused the opposition media. This is the breakdown:

    + Exports of merchandise (e.g. gold, coffee, meat, etc.) totaled $4.2 billion in 2024, with the US accounting for 38.7 per cent of these, or $1.62 billion.

    + Exports from free trade zones were lower ($3.5 billion) but the proportion going to the US was much higher (59 per cent, or £2.08 billion).

    + Of Nicaragua’s total exports, at $7.7 billion, $3.7 billion went to the US (48 per cent).

    + Exports provide 39 per cent of Nicaragua’s annual income or GDP.

    + Exports to the US therefore account for a significant 18 per cent of GDP.

    These figures exclude services, such as tourism and transport, where trade between Nicaragua and the US is roughly in balance (unlike Guatemala and Honduras, with whom the US has a strong trade surplus in services).

    Exports to the US have fallen slowly from over 50 per cent of the total two years ago, as the government looks for other markets. Exports to the Republic of China, for example, were four times higher in 2024 than in 2022, but (at $68 million) are still a small proportion. There are other growing export markets, of which the most notable is Canada (now the second biggest buyer of Nicaraguan merchandise).

    The Nicaraguan government’s response to the tariffs is likely to involve continued efforts to diversify trade and keeping a watchful eye on the effects on different sectors of the economy. Producers of products like coffee and gold may be less affected as they already have diverse markets. On the other hand the apparel sector, which until this month enjoyed zero tariffs on its $2 billion exports to the US, is geared to the US market and might find greater difficulty in mitigating the tariff’s effects.

    Celebration and misinformation in opposition media

    Nicaragua’s opposition media, long financed by the US government, admit that they have been hit by Elon Musk’s cuts. How they are now funded is unclear. However, prominent opposition activists enjoy salaried employment in US universities and think tanks, where they call for sanctions that would hit poor Nicaraguans. Naturally, they welcomed Trump’s announcement.

    Errors in reporting on the tariffs showed opposition journalists’ unfamiliarity with Nicaragua’s economy. Confidencial, in a piece translated and reproduced in the Havana Times, claimed that the tariff imposed on Nicaragua ignored a trade surplus “of $484 million in favor of the US” which “has been growing in recent years.” This completely ignored exports to the US from the free trade zones. The same error was made a day later by Despacho 505.

    According to Confidencial, the reason for the higher tariff on Nicaragua (and on Venezuela, hit with a 15 per cent tariff) was to punish their authoritarian governments. In reality, the higher tariffs on both countries resulted from the application of Trump’s formula, but this deliberate misrepresentation was to be repeated.

    In an “analysis” for Confidencial on April 4, Manuel Orozco painted the 18 per cent tariff as specifically aimed at the Nicaraguan “dictatorship” (again, linking it with Venezuela). Orozco is a former Nicaraguan now living in Washington, working for the Inter-American Dialogue, an NGO funded by the US government and its arms industry. It is most unlikely that he was unaware of how the tariff was calculated; misleading his readers strengthened his argument that the higher tariff was a purely political move.

    Further articles in Despacho 505 and Articulo 66 also blamed political factors without explaining the arithmetic behind the tariff. In La Prensa, activist Felix Maradiaga wrongly remarked that the US accounts for over 60 per cent of Nicaragua’s exports. According to him, the supposed weakness of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government means the country will struggle to cope (he disregards its remarkable resilience in dealing with the much heavier economic consequences of the 2018 coup attempt and the 2020 pandemic).

    Then, also in Confidencial, opposition activist Juan Sebastián Chamorro made the claim that the new tariffs, which of course he welcomes, are entirely compatible with the CAFTA-DR trade treaty. He argued that Washington’s action is justified on grounds of “national security.” This echoes the absurd classification of Nicaragua (during the first Trump administration, continued by Biden) as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

    Opposition media are trying to present the new tariff as the first round of the stronger sanctions on Nicaragua that they have been urging Washington to adopt. They do this regardless of their illegality under the CAFTA-DR trade treaty or wider international law. The possibility of going further – excluding Nicaragua from the treaty – was trailed by Trump’s Latin America envoy, Mauricio Claver-Carone, in January, although he was careful to note the difficulties. But if this were to happen it would delight the opposition even further.

    Obsessed with promoting regime change in Managua, these anti-Sandinista activists disregard the effects of tariffs and trade sanctions on ordinary Nicaraguans. On “Liberation Day” Trump showed his indifference to the millions of people in low-income countries whose livelihoods depend on producing food and other products for export to the US. The likes of Orozco, Maradiaga and Chamorro behave in just the same way.

    The post Nicaragua’s Opposition Media Welcome Trump’s New Tariffs – and Ignore How They Were Calculated appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Perry.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Never our intention to mock Jesus’ – Naked Samoans respond to backlash over controversial poster

    By Susana Suisuiki, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Pasifika comedy troupe Naked Samoans is facing a backlash from some members of the Pacific community over its promotional poster.

    In the image, which has now been taken down, the Naked Samoans depicted themselves as the 12 disciples surrounding Jesus, a parody of The Last Supper.

    Several Pasifika influencers condemned the image online, with one person labelling it “disrespectful”.

    However, Naked Samoan group member Oscar Kightley told RNZ Pacific Waves he did not anticipate the uproar.

    Oscar Kightley talking to RNZ Pacific Waves.

    The award-winning writer has addressed the backlash as they gear up to perform at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival in Auckland next month.

    The Samoan-New Zealand actor said it was never their intention to hurt people.

    “This month, 27 years ago, was our first-ever show, and we’ve been offending and upsetting people ever since, really. But we didn’t expect [the backlash].

    Checks, balances ‘let us down’
    “We saw the reaction [to the poster], and we saw how it was being taken, it was never our intention to mock Jesus or God or the Last Supper. But when we saw that that’s how it was being taken by some in our community, we made the decision to take it down.”

    “We took it down as soon as we knew that it was causing upset.”

    Responding to the online criticism that “they should have known better”, Kightley said “we should have known that some people would take it that way”.

    “Our robust system of checks and balances badly let us down in this sense,” he said.

    “We could understand how some people would have looked at this and went, ‘you guys have gone too far’, and even though we didn’t mean it, we all went to Sunday school, understand the reverence that that image and that scripture has.

    “But we weren’t trying to comment on the scripture.”

    He said even though they took the image down, due to the nature of the internet it would remain online “forever now”.

    “I think as long as people spread it, people will be raged and raised by it.

    “But my message [to those who are offended by it] is, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

    “And maybe think about Jesus’s teaching in John 8:7.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Open letter to NZME board – don’t allow alt-right Canadian billionaire to take over NZ’s Fourth Estate

    OPEN LETTER: By Martyn Bradbury, editor and publisher of The Daily Blog

    NZME directors ‘have concerns’ about businessman Jim Grenon taking editorial control

    NZME’s directors have fired their own shots in the war for control of the media company, saying they have concerns about a takeover bid including the risk of businessman Jim Grenon taking editorial control.

    In a statement to the NZX, the board said it was delaying its annual shareholders meeting until June and opening up nominations of other directors.

    NZME . . . RNZ report on NZME's directors "firing their own shots'
    NZME . . . RNZ report on NZME’s directors “firing their own shots in the war for control of the media company”.

    Grenon, a New Zealand resident since 2012, bought a 9.3 percent stake in NZME for just over $9 million early in March.

    NZME is publisher of a number of newspapers, including The New Zealand Herald, as well as operating radio stations and property platform OneRoof.

    Within days of taking the stake, Grenon had written to the company’s board proposing that most of its current directors be replaced with new ones, including himself, and said the performance of the company had been disappointing and he was wanted to improve the editorial content.

    NZME has now told the stockmarket it had concerns whether Grenon’s proposals were in the best interests of the company and shareholders. — RNZ News

    Dear NZME Board,

    I was once a columnist for The New Zealand Herald, but I’m too left wing for your stable of acceptable opinions and now just run award-winning political podcasts instead.

    The Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury
    The Daily Blog editor and publisher Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury. Image: TDB screenshot APR

    Normally as board members of a financialised media company in late stage capitalism with collapsing revenue thanks to social media, you don’t generally have to consider the actual well being of our democracy.

    Let me be as clear as I can to you all.

    You hold in your hands the fate of Fourth Estate journalism and ultimately the democracy of New Zealand itself.

    As the largest Fourth Estate platforms in the country, your obligations go well beyond just shareholder profit.

    Alt-right billionaire Jim Grenon has in my view been extremely disingenuous.

    The manner in which NZME has been sold as underperforming so that the promise of a quick buck from OneRoof seems the focus point is made more questionable because I suspect Grenon’s true desire here is editorial control of NZME.

    His relationship with a far-right culture war hate blog that promotes anti-Māori, anti-trans, anti-vaccine, climate denial editorial copy alongside his support for culture war influencers suggest a radicalised view of the world which he intends to implement if he gains control.

    Look.

    NZME is right wing enough, your first editorial in The New Zealand Herald was calling for white people to start war with Māori, Mike Hosking is the epitome of right wing commentary and the less said about Heather Du Plessis Allan, the better, but all of you acknowledge that 2 + 2 = 4.

    Alt-Right billionaires don’t admit that.

    Alt-right billionaires tend to lean into divisive culture war rhetoric and are happy to promote 2 + 2 = whatever I say it is.

    You cannot allow alt-right billionaires with radicalised culture war beliefs take over the largest media platforms in the country.

    This moment demands more than dollars and cents, it requires a strong defence of independent editorial content, even when that editorial content is right wing.

    The NZ Herald, Heather and Mike are without doubt right wingers, but they are right wingers who pitch their argument within the realms of the real and factual.

    Alt-right billionaires do not do that.

    If NZME is taken over and the editorial direction takes a hard right culture war turn, you will be dooming NZ democracy and planing us on a highway to hell.

    You must, you must, you must stand against this attack on editorial independence.

    Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Nicaragua’s Opposition Media Welcome Trump’s New Tariffs

    Five countries in Central America, together with the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, have a free trade agreement with Washington, but this didn’t protect them from the punitive tariffs announced on President Trump’s “Liberation Day.”

    A minimum 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US will hit low-income countries throughout the region. But exports from Nicaragua have been saddled with an even higher tariff of 18 per cent. Delighted opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government have blamed it, rather than Trump, for the country receiving this additional penalty. However, simple examination of the figures shows that Nicaragua’s tariff was calculated in the same way as every other country’s.

    The post Nicaragua’s Opposition Media Welcome Trump’s New Tariffs appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Mainstream Undercounting 0.6 Million Gaza Deaths

    Dear Honorable Member,

    Australians will vote to elect a new Federal Government on 3 May 2025. For decent Australians the major issue is the Gaza Genocide, the US-backed, Zionist Israeli mass murder of about 0.6 million Indigenous Palestinian children, mothers, women and men,  and unforgivable Mainstream Australian complicity in this appalling and ongoing atrocity. The Australian Labor Government with Coalition support has been complicit in the Gaza Genocide in 20 ways and lies for Apartheid Israel in 35 ways.

    Mainstream media (with the exception of the Guardian and the Independent) undercount Gaza deaths by a factor of 10 – egregious genocide-ignoring, genocide-denial, holocaust-ignoring and holocaust-denial. Holocaust-ignoring is far, far worse than repugnant holocaust-denial because the latter at least permits public refutation and public debate (subject to Mainstream gate-keepers of course).

    As of 20 January 2025, the expertly estimated 553,000 Gaza deaths from violence and imposed deprivation included 391,000 children, 52,000 women and 112,000 men. Palestinian deaths in the century-long Palestinian Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust now total 2.7 million, with 0.2 million being from violence and the remainder from imposed deprivation. Deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust from violence and deprivation totalled 5-6 million (eminent Jewish Zionist British historian Professor Sir Martin Gilbert, Oxford University, Jewish History Atlas and Atlas of the Holocaust).

    2025 Australian Election Fraud: Mainstream Australia ignores, minimizes and threatens truth-telling about the Gaza Genocide and Palestinian Holocaust.

    Australia has an excellent compulsory and preferential voting system in which a valid vote for candidates for the government-determining  House of Representatives means recording preference for all candidates in numerical order, with second preferences being considered if a candidate fails to gain 50% or more of the primary vote. Australians will choose between Labor (presently in Government), the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition (presently in Opposition), pro-climate action Teal Independents, other Independents, and those protesting the Gaza Genocide — the Greens, Senator Lidia Thorpe, Senator Fatima Payman’s  Australia’s Voice party, and Socialists.

    Of the present 226 Federal MPs (75 Senators and 151 Members of the  House of Representatives or MHRs) it appears that only the 15 Greens, ex-Green Senator Lidia Thorpe and ex-Labor Senator Fatima Payman  strongly demand an immediate end to the Killing and Occupation by genocidally racist Apartheid Israel – shame, Australia, shame. Labor voted at the UNGA for a Ceasefire and an end to the Occupation, for which it was condemned by the fervently pro-Israel Coalition and was also falsely condemned as “anti-Israel” and “anti-semitic” by Apartheid Israeli PM  Benjamin Netanyahu (for whom the International Criminal Court [ICC] has issued an arrest warrant for war crimes). However Labor shamefully Abstained from a UNGA Resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal within 1 year. The Coalition is far worse than Labor on the Gaza Genocide and unforgivably declared (like the US and Hungary) that it would not enforce ICC arrest warrants  for child-killing  Zionist Israeli war criminals Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.

    Decent Australians are speaking out about the Gaza Genocide. Thus, for example, (1) Professor Stuart Rees (founder of the internationally prestigious Sydney Peace Prize and author of Cruelty or Humanity ) and colleagues ask that Australians should Vote for Humanity. (2) The Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN): “Vote with Palestine. Palestine is on the ballot this election. With the federal election just weeks away, we have a crucial opportunity to elect representatives who will take a stand for justice and accountability. Together we can make ending Australia’s support for Israel’s genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation a priority at the ballot box. Sign the People’s Pledge for Palestine today, and your local election candidates will be notified.” (3) The anti-racist Jewish Council of Australia demands an end to the Killing and Occupation. (4) Over 500 anti-racist Jewish Australians endorsed a full-page Mainstream newspaper advertisement stating “Jewish Australians say NO to ethnic cleansing.” (5) For details of prominent anti-racist Jews including such Australian Jews, Google “Jews Against Racist Zionism.” (6) Hundreds of  anti-racist Jewish Australians protested the Gaza Genocide outside the Victorian Parliament wearing T-shirts stating (White text on Black): “JEWS for a FREE PALESTINE” – I wear this T-shirt everywhere and am gratified by the enthusiastic public support from total strangers, decent men and women of Australia. (7) Senator Fatima Payman’s “Australia’s Voice” party. (8) “Muslim Votes Matter.”

    In 2024 I published a huge book, Gideon Polya, Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation & Palestinian Genocide. The sub-title lists 6 key actions for a Free Palestine for all its Jewish, Indigenous Palestinian and other inhabitants as well as the 7 million Exiled Palestinians who should be permitted to return to the country of their forebears for 4 millennia. Decent Australians simply cannot support candidates rejecting these humane propositions. The key action is “End… Human Rights Denial”: all human rights  can and should be immediately restored to all the Indigenous Palestinians by the simple stroke of a pen and this would be utterly unexceptional to decent people. However, the genocidally racist Zionists won’t agree to this: they want all the land of Palestine, plus other lands between the Nile and the Euphrates, but not the Indigenous inhabitants who are to be killed, expelled or confined forever to  crowded concentration camps.

    Instead of demanding an immediate end to the Killing and Occupation, Federal and New South Wales Labor Government and Coalition Opposition MPs have excited “antisemitism hysteria”, and “terrorism hysteria” and passed draconian laws threatening critics of Australia-violating and genocidally racist  Apartheid Israel and its Zionist supporters with fines and imprisonment. The fervently Zionist  Victorian Labor Government and Coalition Opposition MPs promise more of the same. To Coalition-supported war criminal Netanyahu “anti-Israel” is “anti-Semitism” and support for “terrorism.” However, Australians criticizing  Apartheid Israel and its supporters now do so under the cloud of  a potential 2 years’ mandatory imprisonment for  asserted “anti-Semitism” and 6 years’ mandatory  imprisonment for asserted support for ”terrorism.” For 57 years Apartheid Israel has denied Occupied Palestinians all the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human  Rights and is now successfully threatening the free speech of Australians. With the collaboration of university vice chancellors this Zionist threat to free speech now extends to the academics and students of all 39 taxpayer-funded Australian universities, this also jeopardizing Australia’s huge A$40 billion per annum Education Export industry.

    Backed by both Labor and the Coalition, Australia belongs to the all-European, genocide-complicit, anti-Semitic and holocaust-ignoring International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic and anti-Arab anti-Semitic by falsely defaming anti-racist Jews, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims as assertedly “anti-Semitic” for condemning Apartheid Israeli crimes. The IHRA is also egregiously holocaust denying by ignoring all WW2 holocausts other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust, notably (deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in brackets)  the WW2 Sinti and Roma Holocaust (1 million), the WW2 Polish Holocaust (6 million), the WW2 Soviet Holocaust (23 million), the European Holocaust (30 million), the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35-40 million Chinese deaths under the Japanese, 1937-1945), and the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death fort strategic reasons in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Odisha by the British with food-denying Australian  complicity). Indeed the IHRA ignores some 70 genocides and holocausts (Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, “US-imposed, Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”). Over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations have rejected the  IHRA Definition of Antisemitism.

    Instead of listening to the humane and expert opinions of numerous outstanding and patriotic anti-racist Jewish Australians from Sir Isaac Isaacs (first Australian-born  Governor General of Australia) to Professors Peter Singer, Dennis Altman and Eva Cox (Google “Jews Against Racist Zionism”), Labor, the Coalition and the Mainstream  (cowardly, stupid and ignorant at best) pander to the false and racist assertions of mendacious and fanatical Zionists with fervent support for Australia-violating Apartheid Israel. Of course those supporting Apartheid Israel are supporting the vile, neo-Nazi crime of Apartheid. Those supporting Apartheid are utterly unfit for decent company, public life and public office in a one-person-one-democracy like Australia.

    I am a Jewish Holocaust-impacted,  anti-racist, Jewish Australian with a sole national allegiance to the land of my birth, Australia. I come from a very famous Ashkenazi Jewish Hungarian family (ask any mathematician or surgeon). Ashkenazi Jews represent most Jews and are not Semitic, descending from  non-Semitic Turkic Khazar converts to Judaism in about the 9th century CE. Indeed DNA analysis shows that I am mostly Ashkenazi Jewish but with zero Middle Eastern (Semitic)  contribution. Like other anti-racist Jews in Australia I am subject to vile, false and damaging defamation by Zionist fanatics. Anti-racist Jewish Australian are also subject to false defamation by Mainstream media and politicians who shamelessly ignore anti-Jewish anti-Semitism against anti-racist Jews (the very best of Jews) and routinely indulge in anti-Jewish anti-Semitism themselves by falsely conflating the  grossly human rights-violating and genocidal actions of Apartheid Israel with all Jews (this falsely defaming anti-racist Jews and tarnishing the wonderful 3 millennial Jewish humanitarian  tradition from the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ “love thy neighbour as thyself” to wonderful present-era Jewish humanitarians from Hannah Arendt to Howard Zinn).

    Zionist and pro-Zionist holocaust denial: Mainstream undercounting of 0.6 million Gaza Genocide deaths from violence and deprivation. 

    Data published by expert epidemiologists in the leading medical journal The Lancet  indicate that 64,260 Gazans had been killed violently in 9 months i.e. 110,670 by 20 January 2025 (after 15.5 months of killing). However  also estimated in The Lancet, deaths from imposed deprivation may exceed violent deaths by a factor of 4 times i.e. 442,680 by 20 January 2025 (the start of the now Israeli-broken Ceasefire). It is thus estimated that deaths from violence and imposed deprivation total 553,000 (23% of the pre-Gaza Massacre Gaza population of 2.4 million).

    Because infants are highly vulnerable, under-5 infant deaths represent 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation in impoverished countries (Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”), and it can be estimated that  the 553,000 Gazan deaths from violence and imposed deprivation by 20 January 2025 include 391,000 children, 52,000 women and 112,000 men. Indeed US President Trump  informed by the immense informational resources of the American State has asserted that only 1.7 million Gazans  remain and because 0.1 million have fled to Egypt this implies that 0.6 million have been killed, this being in agreement with the estimates from data published in The Lancet.

    Danish analyst and author Søren Roest Korsgaard has estimated 810,204 Gaza deaths by 4 April 2025 using the median value of 5.2 non-violent deaths per violent death from 13 conflicts, this corresponding to 698,000 Gaza deaths by 20 January 2025 (Søren Roest Korsgaard, “Quick analysis: Counting the Dead in Gaza,” Rethink Government, April, 2025).

    However Western Mainstream media ignore the estimate of about 0.6 million Gaza deaths deriving from the data of expert analyses published in the leading medical journal The Lancet and instead overwhelmingly presently report a 10-fold underestimate of about 50,000 Gaza deaths.

    Famed American consumer advocate and social analyst Ralph Nader has commented cogently on this extraordinary “undercounting” of Gaza deaths in interview with famed anti-racist Jewish American journalist Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!)  and in an analysis published in the August/September 2024 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen and placed on the US Congressional Record: “The following probative evidence and professional assessments point to a death toll of over 300,000 Palestinians in Gaza with that number at least doubling by end of the year. Why then is the reviled Hamas’ official death count now at about 41,000, accepted by the mass media and most governments, regardless of their view for or against the genocide in Gaza? Hamas is vested in an undercount to temper accusations by their own people that it has not protected them. (Hamas badly under-estimated the total savagery of the Israeli response to its October 7 attack through a mysteriously collapsed multitiered Israeli border security complex.) The Israeli government also prefers an undercount to temper the rising level of international condemnation and boycotts”   (EXPOSING THE GAZA DEATH UNDERCOUNT, BY RALPH NADER. HON. JOHN B. LARSON OF CONNECTICUT IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Tuesday, October 1, 2024)

    Notable exceptions to this genocide-complicit Mainstream Media “undercounting” are The Guardian (Professor Devi Sridhar, chair, global health, University of Edinburgh, “Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza,” Guardian, 5 September 2024:  ) and The Independent Australia (Dr Gideon Polya, “For science’s sake, vote the Coalition last,” Letters, Independent, 3 April 2025:

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. For science’s sake, vote the Coalition last.

    Nearly 2,000 top scientists, all members of the prestigious U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, including Nobel Prize winners, have just issued an open letter urgently warning about the Trump Administration’s “wholesale assault on U.S. science”.

    They are saying that the actions threaten America’s health, economy and global leadership in research.

    In Australia, the anti-science, anti-universities, climate criminal and Trumpist Coalition promises to sack 41,000 public servants (many of whom are scientists or science-informed) and, when previously in office, sacked 40,000 university staff by cutting university funding.

    Further, the Coalition refuses to act on International Criminal Court (ICC)-issued war crimes arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, threatens exiting the ICC, and has praised pathologically mendacious Trump as a “big thinker” over his plan to completely ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Indigenous Palestinian inhabitants.

    Trump estimates 1.7 million surviving Gazans from a pre-war population of 2.4 million in agreement with expert estimates in the leading medical journal The Lancet of about 0.6 million killed by violence and imposed deprivation.

    Kindness and truth constitute the key ethos of humanity, and decent Australians will be compelled to put the Coalition last.

    Dr Gideon Polya
    Macleod, VIC

    Final comments.

    The World must respond to the shocking 10-fold “undercounting” of the Gaza Genocide deaths by US, Western and Australian Mainstream media. As a Jewish Holocaust-impacted Jewish scholar I am inescapably bound by the key moral imperatives of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and indeed of some 70 genocides and holocausts: “zero tolerance for lying”,  “zero tolerance for racism”, “bear witness” and “never again to anyone”. Silence is complicity. The silence of Mainstream journalists is shocking but understandable – they submit to management or get sacked. However in Gaza extraordinarily courageous Palestinian journalists are being killed at a frightening rate by the genocidal Zionist Israelis.

    On 27 March 2025 I sent the following letter to major Mainstream Australian media (it was not published but is published here as an example of what Mainstream Australian media don’t want their readers to see, hear about or think about: “Australian Mainstream media lying & censorship”:

    “The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports 1,671 journalists killed worldwide in the 32 year period 1993-2025 for which the average world population was 6,800 million, this indicating “0.0077 journalists killed per year per million of population”. The anti-racist Jewish American web magazine Mondoweiss reported (25/3/2025): “Hossam Shabat and Mohammad Mansour were the latest Palestinian journalists to be assassinated in Gaza. Responsibility for their killings rests in part on their Western colleagues who have failed to accurately cover Israel’s genocidal assault… Since October 2023, at least 208 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces… it is a systematic campaign to eliminate witnesses”. The average population of Gaza in the 1.46 year period of 7 October 2023- 25 March 2025 was 2.4 million (pre-war) + 1.7 million (now, according to Trump) /2 = 2.05 million, this indicating “69.5 journalists killed per year per million of population”,  9,026 times greater than the world average. A scientist and prolific humanitarian writer, I have been rendered invisible in Australia by Zionist defamation, but I am proud that I have defended (necessarily overseas) some 40 humanitarian and variously eminent and maltreated Australian truth-tellers. World silence permits the Gaza Genocide. Silence is complicity”.

    The World responded to the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre by Apartheid South Africa (69 Africans killed) by imposing rigorous and ultimately successful global sanctions on the neo-Nazi Apartheid regime. In response to the mass murder of 600,000 Gazans so far (about 9,000 times more than the 69 killed in the Sharpeville Massacre) the World must likewise apply rigorous Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) not just against genocidal Apartheid Israel but against all people, politicians, parties, collectives, companies and countries supporting this genocidally racist and child-killing Apartheid pariah state.

    In the 3 May 2025 Australian elections decent Australians will vote topmost for candidates supporting Palestinians human rights (the Greens, Socialists, Lidia Thorpe, and Fatima Payman’s Australia’s Voice), put the Coalition last (for the unforgivable crime of refusing to enforce ICC arrest warrants on  war criminal mass murderers of 0.6 million Gazans) and put Zionist-subverted Labor in between.

    Yours sincerely, Dr Gideon Polya, Melbourne.

    The post Mainstream Undercounting 0.6 Million Gaza Deaths first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Nicaragua’s Opposition Media Welcome Trump’s New Tariffs

    Five countries in Central America, together with the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean, have a free trade agreement with Washington, but this didn’t protect them from the punitive tariffs announced on President Trump’s “Liberation Day.”

    A minimum 10 per cent tariff on exports to the US will hit low-income countries throughout the region. But exports from Nicaragua have been saddled with an even higher tariff of 18 per cent. Delighted opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government have blamed it, rather than Trump, for the country receiving this additional penalty. However, simple examination of the figures shows that Nicaragua’s tariff was calculated in the same way as every other country’s.

    Before examining the opposition media’s error-strewn reports, this article first explains the background: how the tariff was set, whether it is legitimate and how US-Nicaragua trade is changing. Then it turns to the opposition’s mistakes and explains how they are using Trump’s actions to bolster their attacks on Nicaragua’s government and people.

    How the tariffs were set

    Trump’s chart of tariffs has two sets of figures for each country: the “tariffs charged to the USA” and the “reciprocal tariffs” to be imposed this month. Bizarrely, the “tariffs charged to the USA” do not relate to actual tariffs charged on US imports. Instead, they are the product of a calculation based on each country’s trade gap with the US. For most countries, the value of these “tariffs charged” has been set at 10 per cent, on the basis that the US has no trade deficit with them, or only a small one. All of these countries (including Nicaragua’s neighbors) are hit with a “reciprocal tariff” of 10 per cent on their exports to the US, from this month onwards, even if they buy more from the US than they sell to it.

    However, a higher “tariff charged” is calculated for countries with which the US is judged to have a bigger trade deficit. For each country, the White House looked up the deficit for its trade with the US in goods for 2024, then divided that by the total value of the country’s exports to the US. Trump, to be “kind”, said he would offer a discount, so halved that figure. The calculation was distilled into a formula.

    For example, these are the figures for China:

    1. Goods trade deficit (exports from the US minus imports): – $291.9 billion
    2. Total goods imported to the US from China: $438.9 billion
    3. A ÷ B = – 0.67, or 67 per cent
    4. Half of this is 34 per cent, the new tariff being applied to China.

    Based on this formula, the small African country of Lesotho was saddled with the highest “reciprocal tariff” of 50 per cent, while several major SE Asian countries were also hit with very high tariffs.

    How Nicaragua’s tariff was calculated

    Nicaragua’s “reciprocal tariff” was calculated in the same way. According to US trade figures, in 2024 US goods exports to Nicaragua were $2.9 billion, while US goods imports from Nicaragua totaled $4.6 billion. The US goods trade deficit with Nicaragua was therefore – $1.7 billion in 2024.

    The calculation was therefore: trade deficit (- $1.7 billion) ÷ imports ($4.6 billion) = – 0.37, or 37 per cent, halved to produce a “reciprocal tariff” of 18 per cent.

    This means that from April 9, there will be a new tax of 18 per cent on Nicaraguan goods sent to the US, payable as a customs duty on their arrival by the company or agency importing the goods.

    How Nicaragua might contest the tariff

    It seems unlikely that Trump will bend to pressure on the tariffs. However, at least in theory, there are three ways in which Nicaragua might argue that the tariff is wrongly imposed:

    1. Nicaragua’s Central Bank shows a smaller trade gap with the US. According to the Central Bank’s figures for 2024, Nicaragua’s exports to the US totaled $3.7 billion, not $4.6 billion, while its imports from the US totaled $2.7 billion, giving a trade gap of $1 billion, not $1.7 billion. On the basis of Trump’s tariff formula, the result should have been a 14 per cent tariff, not 18 per cent, if Nicaragua’s trade figures are correct. (A possible explanation for the difference may be the way that goods, originating in Nicaragua, are processed in other Central American countries before arrival in the US.)
    2. Although most Central American countries import more from the US than they export to it, Costa Rica also has a trade surplus with the US, amounting to $2 billion, bigger than Nicaragua’s, yet it is only being penalized by the standard “reciprocal tariff” (10 per cent).
    3. Most importantly, as the Guatemalan government pointed out, under the CAFTA-DR trade treaty new tariffs are illegal (under both US federal and international law). The treaty prohibits new tariffs or customs duties between the seven member countries. Therefore, all six of the other countries that are parties to CAFTA-DR are entitled to challenge the US for breaching it.

    Action by CAFTA-DR members is complicated by the fact that Nicaragua is not only worst hit by the tariffs but is also a country that the US would like to exclude from the treaty completely, a point picked up below.

    Changing significance of Nicaraguan exports to the US

    Nicaragua’s Central Bank divides its trade figures between “merchandise” and products from free trade zones (principally, apparel). This, as we will see, confused the opposition media. This is the breakdown:

    • Exports of merchandise (e.g. gold, coffee, meat, etc.) totaled $4.2 billion in 2024, with the US accounting for 38.7 per cent of these, or $1.62 billion.
    • Exports from free trade zones were lower ($3.5 billion) but the proportion going to the US was much higher (59 per cent, or £2.08 billion).
    • Of Nicaragua’s total exports, at $7.7 billion, $3.7 billion went to the US (48 per cent).
    • Exports provide 39 per cent of Nicaragua’s annual income or GDP.
    • Exports to the US therefore account for a significant 18 per cent of GDP.

    These figures exclude services, such as tourism and transport, where trade between Nicaragua and the US is roughly in balance (unlike Guatemala and Honduras, with whom the US has a strong trade surplus in services).

    Exports to the US have fallen slowly from over 50 per cent of the total two years ago, as the government looks for other markets. Exports to the Republic of China, for example, were four times higher in 2024 than in 2022, but (at $68 million) are still a small proportion. There are other growing export markets, of which the most notable is Canada (now the second biggest buyer of Nicaraguan merchandise).

    The Nicaraguan government’s response to the tariffs is likely to involve continued efforts to diversify trade and keeping a watchful eye on the effects on different sectors of the economy. Producers of products like coffee and gold may be less affected as they already have diverse markets. On the other hand the apparel sector, which until this month enjoyed zero tariffs on its $2 billion exports to the US, is geared to the US market and might find greater difficulty in mitigating the tariff’s effects.

    Celebration and misinformation in opposition media

    Nicaragua’s opposition media, long financed by the US government, admit that they have been hit by Elon Musk’s cuts. How they are now funded is unclear. However, prominent opposition activists enjoy salaried employment in US universities and think tanks, where they call for sanctions that would hit poor Nicaraguans. Naturally, they welcomed Trump’s announcement.

    Errors in reporting on the tariffs showed opposition journalists’ unfamiliarity with Nicaragua’s economy. Confidencial, in a piece translated and reproduced in the Havana Times, claimed that the tariff imposed on Nicaragua ignored a trade surplus “of $484 million in favor of the US” which “has been growing in recent years.” This completely ignored exports to the US from the free trade zones. The same error was made a day later by Despacho 505.

    According to Confidencial, the reason for the higher tariff on Nicaragua (and on Venezuela, hit with a 15 per cent tariff) was to punish their authoritarian governments. In reality, the higher tariffs on both countries resulted from the application of Trump’s formula, but this deliberate misrepresentation was to be repeated.

    In an “analysis” for Confidencial on April 4, Manuel Orozco painted the 18 per cent tariff as specifically aimed at the Nicaraguan “dictatorship” (again, linking it with Venezuela). Orozco is a former Nicaraguan now living in Washington, working for the Inter-American Dialogue, an NGO funded by the US government and its arms industry. It is most unlikely that he was unaware of how the tariff was calculated; misleading his readers strengthened his argument that the higher tariff was a purely political move.

    Further articles in Despacho 505 and Articulo 66 also blamed political factors without explaining the arithmetic behind the tariff. In La Prensa, activist Felix Maradiaga wrongly remarked that the US accounts for over 60 per cent of Nicaragua’s exports. According to him, the supposed weakness of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government means the country will struggle to cope (he disregards its remarkable resilience in dealing with the much heavier economic consequences of the 2018 coup attempt and the 2020 pandemic).

    Then, also in Confidencial, opposition activist Juan Sebastián Chamorro made the claim that the new tariffs, which of course he welcomes, are entirely compatible with the CAFTA-DR trade treaty. He argued that Washington’s action is justified on grounds of “national security.” This echoes the absurd classification of Nicaragua (during the first Trump administration, continued by Biden) as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

    Opposition media are trying to present the new tariff as the first round of the stronger sanctions on Nicaragua that they have been urging Washington to adopt. They do this regardless of their illegality under the CAFTA-DR trade treaty or wider international law. The possibility of going further – excluding Nicaragua from the treaty – was trailed by Trump’s Latin America envoy, Mauricio Claver-Carone, in January, although he was careful to note the difficulties. But if this were to happen it would delight the opposition even further.

    Obsessed with promoting regime change in Managua, these anti-Sandinista activists disregard the effects of tariffs and trade sanctions on ordinary Nicaraguans. On “Liberation Day” Trump showed his indifference to the millions of people in low-income countries whose livelihoods depend on producing food and other products for export to the US. The likes of Orozco, Maradiaga and Chamorro behave in just the same way.

  • Image credit: Trump on “Liberation Day” [Photo: White House]
    • The post Nicaragua’s Opposition Media Welcome Trump’s New Tariffs first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel ‘deliberately targeting’ journalists in Gaza, says Australian author after latest killings

    Pacific Media Watch

    Israel has been targeting journalists in the occupied Palestinian territory with more intensity since October 7, 2023, says Australian journalist and author Antony Lowenstein.

    Pointing to studies that tracked the number of media workers killed in conflicts, he told Al Jazeera: “The number of journalists killed in Gaza is greater than that of all conflicts in the last 100 years combined.”

    Lowenstein, author of the landmark book The Palestine Laboratory, which has been translated into several languages and was the basis of a recent two-part documentary series, cited a study by Brown University’s Cost of War project.

    Australian author Antony Loewenstein
    Australian author Antony Loewenstein . . . “The lack of international outrage speaks volumes about how suddenly the press have a hierarchy of who is important.” Image: AJ screenshot APR

    He added that the figures pointed to a “deliberate targeting of journalists”.

    Among Western countries, “there is far more interest if China, Russia and Iran target journalists but far less if Israel does”, Lowenstein said.

    “The lack of international outrage speaks volumes about how suddenly the press have a hierarchy of who is important, and Palestinians are not top of that list.”

    Israel’s war on Gaza ‘worst ever conflict for reporters’
    An Israeli attack that killed two people, including a journalist, in Khan Younis comes days after the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University said Israel’s war on Gaza was the “deadliest” for media workers ever recorded.

    The US-based think tank, in a report published on April 1, said Israeli forces had killed 232 journalists since October 7, 2023.

    That averages 13 a week.

    It means that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia and the US war in Afghanistan combined.

    Since the report’s publication, at least two more journalists have been killed.

    They are Helmi al-Faqawi, who was killed yesterday, and Islam Maqdad, who was killed on Sunday along with her husband and their child.

    "Press silence = violence", says a New Zealand solidarity for Gazan journalists poster
    “Press silence = violence”, says a New Zealand solidarity for Gazan journalists poster at a rally last week. Image: JFP

    Meanwhile, the Gaza Government Media Office said that the number of media personnel killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 2023 had risen to 210 after the killing of al-Faqawi.

    Al-Faqawi was among at least two people killed when Israeli warplanes bombed a tent for journalists near a hospital in Khan Younis.

    At least seven people were wounded in the attack.

    In a report published on April 1, the Watson Institute’s report said Israeli forces had killed 232 journalists since October 7, 2023.

    This figure apparently included the West Bank and Lebanon as well as Gaza.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Bougainville president condemns ‘dangerous’ AI-generated fake video of scuffle with Marape

    RNZ Pacific

    Autonomous Bougainville Government President Ishmael Toroama has condemned the circulation of an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated video depicting a physical confrontation between him and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape.

    The clip, first shared on Facebook last week, is generated from the above picture of Toroama and Marape taken at a news conference in September 2024, where the two leaders announced the appointment of former New Zealand Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae as the independent moderator for the Bougainville peace talks.

    It shows Toroama punching Marape from a sitting position as both fall down. The post has amassed almost 190,000 views on Facebook and more than 360 comments.

    In a statement today, President Toroama said such content could have a negative impact on Bougainville’s efforts toward independence.

    He said the “reckless misuse of artificial intelligence and social media platforms has the potential to damage the hard-earned trust and mutual respect” between the two nations.

    “This video is not only false and malicious — it is dangerous,” the ABG leader said.

    “It threatens to undermine the ongoing spirit of dialogue, peace, and cooperation that both our governments have worked tirelessly to build.”

    Toroama calls for identifying of source
    Toroama wants the National Information and Communications Technology Authority (NICTA) of PNG to find the source of the video.

    He said that while freedom of expression was a democratic value, it was also a privilege that carried responsibilities.

    He said freedom of expression should not be twisted through misinformation.

    “These freedoms must be exercised with respect for the truth. Misusing AI tools to spread falsehoods not only discredits individuals but can destabilise entire communities.”

    He has urged the content creators to reflect on the ethical implications of their digital actions.

    Toroama also called on social media platforms and regulatory bodies to play a bigger role in stopping the spread of misleading AI-generated content.

    “As we move further into the digital age, we must develop a collective moral compass to guide the use of powerful technologies like artificial intelligence,” he said.

    “Truth must remain the foundation of all communication, both online and offline.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Trump funding cuts on media impacts on independent Asia Pacific outlet

    Pacific Media Watch

    One of the many casualties of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “soft power” that enabled many democratic media and truth to power global editorial initiatives has been BenarNews, a welcome contribution to the Asia-Pacific region.

    BenarNews had been producing a growing range of insightful on powerful articles on the region’s issues, articles that were amplified by other media such as Asia Pacific Report.

    Managing editor Kate Beddall and her deputy, Imran Vittachi, announced the suspension of the decade-old BenarNews editorial operation this week, stating in their “Letter from the editors”:

    “After 10 years of reporting from across the Asia-Pacific, BenarNews is pausing operations due to matters beyond its control.

    “The US administration has withheld the funding that we rely on to bring our readers and viewers the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines and island-states and territories in the Pacific.

    “We have always strived to offer clear and accurate news on security, politics and human rights, to shed light on news that others neglect or suppress, and to cover issues that will shape the future of Asia and the Pacific.

    “Only last month, we marked our 10th anniversary with a video showcasing some of the tremendous but risky work done by our journalists.

    “Amid uncertainty about the future, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank our readers and viewers for their loyalty and trust in BenarNews.

    “And to Benar journalists, cartoonists and commentary writers in Washington, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, thank you for your hard work and passion in serving the public and helping make a difference.

    “We hope that our funding is restored and that we will be back online soon.”


    BenarNews: A decade of truth in democracies at risk.    Video: BenarNews

    One of the BenarNews who has contributed much to the expansion of Pacific coverage is Brisbane-based former SBS Pacific television journalist Stefan Ambruster.

    He has also been praising his team in a series of social media postings, such as Papua New Guinea correspondent Harlyne Joku — “from the old school with knowledge of the old ways”. Ambruster writes:

    “Way back in December 2022, Harlyne Joku joined Radio Free Asia/BenarNews and the first Pacific correspondent Stephen Wright as the PNG reporter to help kick this Pacific platform off.

    “Her first report was Prime Minister James Marape accusing the media of creating a bad perception of the country.

    “Almost 90 stories in just over two years carry Harlyne’s byline, covering politics, geopolitics, human and women’s rights, media freedom, police and tribal violence, corruption, Bougainville, and also PNG’s sheep.

    “Her contacts allowed BenarNews Pacific to break stories consistently. She travelled to be on-ground to cover massacre aftermaths, natural disasters and the Pope in Vanimo (where she broke another story).

    “Particularly, Harlyne — along with colleagues Victor Mambor in Jayapura and Ahmad Panthoni and Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta — allowed BenarNews, to cover West Papua like no other news service. From both sides of the border.

    “And it was noticed in Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific region.

    “Last year, she was barred from covering President Probowo Subianto’s visit to Moresby, a move condemned by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

    “At press conferences she questioned Marape about the failure to secure a UN human rights mission to West Papua, as a Melanesian Spearhead Group special envoy, which led to an eventual apology by fellow envoy, Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, to Pacific leaders.”

    PNG correspondent Harlyne Joku (right) with Stefan Armbruster and Rado Free Asia president Bay Fang in Port Moresby in February 2025
    PNG correspondent Harlyne Joku (right) with Stefan Armbruster and Rado Free Asia president Bay Fang in Port Moresby in February 2025. Image: Stefan Armbruster/BN

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Blockbuster Article Prepares Americans For Defeat In Ukraine

    A March 29 article on America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine in The New York Times by Adam Entous “reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” “Understood” is a euphemism. It means the American and global public were lied to.

    The article reveals that the war in Ukraine truly was, as former British prime minister Boris Johnson and U.S. secretary of state Marco Rubio have already said, a proxy war against Russia. U.S. military and intelligence were involved in every stage of the war, including supplying the weapons, the training, the planning, the war-gaming, the intelligence and the targeting.

    The post Blockbuster Article Prepares Americans For Defeat In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • With Hasbara failing, Israel placed Hossam Shabat on a kill list

    While public opinion of Israel plummets, each day the genocide continues without significant repercussions only reinforces that they can ignore this opinion, writes Alex Foley.

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Alex Foley

    Israel announced that Hossam Shabat was a “terrorist” alongside six other Palestinian journalists. Hossam predicted they would assassinate him.

    He survived several attempts on his life. He wrote a brief obituary for himself at the age of 23, carried on reporting, and then on March 24, 2025, Israel killed him.

    For those of us outside of Gaza, helpless to stop the carnage but unable to look away, a begrudging numbness has set in, a psychic lidocaine to cope with the daily images of the shattered bodies of dead children.

    The other pro-Palestinian advocates and activists I speak with all mention familiar brain fogs and free-floating agitations.

    By this point, I am accustomed to opening my phone and steeling myself for the horrors. But learning of Hossam’s death cut through me like a warm knife.

    Through whatever fluke of the internet, many of the friends I have made over the course of the genocide are from the city of Beit Hanoun, like Hossam Shabat.

    One was his classmate. Another walked with him through the bombed-out ruins of the North. Looking upon his upturned face, splattered with three stripes of crimson blood, I could not help but imagine each of them lying there in his place.

    To quote my dear friend Ibrahim Al-Masri:

    “Hossam Shabat wasn’t alone. He carried the grief of Beit Hanoun, the cries of children trapped under rubble, the aching voices of mothers queuing for bread, and the gasps of the wounded in hospitals that no longer functioned as hospitals.”

    Many will remember the video of 14-year-old aspiring journalist Maisam Al-Masri greeting Hossam Shabat in his car, elated that he had not been killed when the occupation first took the North.

    Separated from family
    Hossam remained in Northern Gaza throughout the genocide, separated from his family, in full knowledge that staying and working was a death sentence. His reports were an invaluable insight into the occupation’s crimes, and for that they killed him.

    In death, his eyes remained open, bearing witness one last time.

    The Israeli account is, of course, very different. The Israeli army has claimed that Hossam Shabat was a “Hamas sniper” with the Beit Hanoun Battalion.

    It is the kind of paper-thin lie we have grown accustomed to, dutifully repeated by the Western press. I am no military tactician, but I find it hard to believe that a young man with a high profile who reported his location frequently, including in live broadcasts, would be an effective sniper.

    In the weeks before he was assassinated, Hossam Shabat was tweeting up to a dozen times a day.

    Hasbara killed Hossam Shabat because it’s losing the PR war
    A qualitative shift has occurred over the course of the genocide; Israel no longer seems interested in or capable of convincing the rest of the world that its actions are just. Rather, they are preoccupied with producing increasingly flimsy justifications with the sole aim of quelling internal dissent.

    The Hasbara machine is foundering.

    How could it not? For 17 months we have experienced a daily split screen between the endless stream of atrocities committed against the Palestinians and the screeching histrionics of Zionist influencers. While the people of Gaza endure blockade and bombing, Noa Tishby and Michael Rapaport moan about campus demonstrations.

    The campus encampments are also the subject of a new documentary, October 8, currently in theatres throughout the US. Originally titled October H8te, the film claims to be a “searing look at the eruption of antisemitism in America that started the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel”.

    The trailer is a series of to-camera interviews of the usual suspects, all decrying the lack of support Zionists discovered in the wake of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. They cite social media censorship and foreign interference as reasons for Zionism’s wild unpopularity among college students.

    It never seems to occur to them that it might be Israel’s actions doing the damage.

    In a recently shared clip, former Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, leans into the victim role, fighting through tears that do not come while relaying a story of asking a close friend if she would hide her while the pair were on a walk. Sandberg attributes her friend’s confusion at the question to the woman not being Jewish and not to the fact that it is a frankly absurd thing for a woman worth over $2 billion to ask.

    ‘Disappearing’ student protesters
    The reality is, while Sandberg talks about how unsafe she feels in the US because of the university encampments, the government itself has begun “disappearing” student protesters on her behalf.

    Plainclothes ICE agents are continuing to abduct student activists like Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk at the behest of Betar USA, a far-right militant movement founded by Jabotinsky that has been providing the Trump administration with deportation lists.

    The violent fantasies that Sandberg argues warrant a global outpouring of sympathy for Zionists are being enacted on an almost daily basis against the very students she claims are a threat.

    The hysteria around the encampments has reached a new ludicrous pitch with a lawsuit filed by a group including the families of hostages taken on October 7 against students at Columbia, among them Khalil, whom they allege have been coordinating with Hamas.

    The “bombshell” filing includes such evidence as an Instagram post by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine published three minutes before Hamas’ attack that stated, “We are back!!” after the account was dormant for several months.

    The reasonable person might note that the inactivity on the account coincided with the Summer holidays. They might point out that it seems unlikely Hamas was coordinating with student groups in the US about an operation that required the element of surprise.

    They might even question what the American students could provide that would make such a risk worth it.

    Securing flow of weapons
    But Hasbara is no longer concerned with the reasonable person; its sole purpose is securing the flow of weapons. Despite the government announcing earlier this year that they are spending an additional $150 million on “international PR,” Israel seems increasingly uninterested in convincing anyone other than the Western governments that still back them.

    While public opinion of Israel plummets, each day the genocide continues without significant repercussions only reinforces that they can ignore this opinion.

    This is reflected in the degree to which the goalposts have shifted. First, we were told Israel would never bomb a hospital, then we were shown elaborate schematics of nonexistent subterranean command centres, and now they execute and bury first responders without so much as a shrug.

    The perverse result of Hasbara falling apart is more brazen, ruthless killing.

    While legacy media may still run interference for Israel and universities continue to roll over for the Trump administration, Israel is facing a real threat. It can kill and kill — the number of journalists they have slain far outstrips other major conflicts — but for every Hossam Shabat they kill, there is a Maisam waiting in the wings, ready to shed light on their crimes.

    Alex Foley is a researcher and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a background in molecular biology of health and disease. They are the co-founder of the Accountability Archive, a web tool preserving fragile digital evidence of pro-genocidal rhetoric from power holders. Follow them on X:@foleywoley Republished from The New Arab under Creative Commons.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Can’t Look Away”: New Documentary Examines How Social Media Addiction Can Harm — Even Kill — Kids


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Can’t Look Away”: New Documentary Examines How Social Media Addiction Can Harm — Even Kill — Kids

    Cantlookaway jolt

    Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media is a new documentary that exposes the real-life consequences of the algorithms of big tech companies and their impact on children and teens. In 2022, social media companies made an estimated $11 billion advertising to minors in the U.S., where 95% of teenagers use social media. One in three teens uses social media almost constantly. “These products, they’re not designed to hook us, adults,” says Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle who is featured in Can’t Look Away. “They are designed to hook children.”


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jewish students chain themselves to Columbia gates to protest over ICE jailing of Mahmoud Khalil

    Democracy Now!

    Jewish students at Columbia University chained themselves to a campus gate across from the graduate School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) this week, braving rain and cold to demand the school release information related to the targeting and ICE arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a former SIPA student.

    Democracy Now! was at the protest and spoke to Jewish and Palestinian students calling on the school to reveal the extent of its involvement in Khalil’s arrest.

    Transcript:

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    Here in New York City, Jewish students chained themselves to gates at Columbia University on Wednesday in support of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia student protest leader now in an ICE jail in Louisiana.

    On March 8, federal agents detained Khalil at his university-owned apartment building, even though he is a legal permanent resident of the United States. They revoked his green card.

    I went up to Columbia yesterday and spoke to some of the students at the protest.

    PROTESTERS: Release Mahmoud Khalil now! We want justice! You say, “How?” We want justice! You say, “How?” Release Mahmoud Khalil now!

    CARLY: Hi. My name is Carly. I’m a Columbia SIPA graduate student, second year. And I’m chained to this gate today as a Jewish student and friend of Mahmoud Khalil’s, demanding answers on how his name got to DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and which trustee specifically handed over that information.

    We believe that there is a high chance that our new president, Claire Shipman, handed over that information. And we, as Jewish students, demand transparency in that process.


    Protesting Jewish students chain themselves to Columbia gates.  Video: Democracy Now!

    AMY GOODMAN: What makes you think that the new president, Shipman, gave over his [Khalil’s] information?

    CARLY: There was a Forward article with that leak. And there has not been transparency from the Columbia administration to Jewish students, when they claim that they are doing all of this to protect Jewish students.

    We would like to be consulted in that process, instead of being spoken for. You know, as Jewish students and to the Jewish people at large, being political pawns in a game is not a new occurrence, and that’s something that we very much are here to say, “Hey, you cannot weaponise antisemitism to harm our friends and peers.”

    AMY GOODMAN: And talk about being chained. Are you willing to risk arrest or suspension or expulsion from Columbia?

    CARLY: Yeah, I mean, just for speaking out for Palestine on Columbia’s campus, you know that you’re risking arrest and expulsion. That is the precedent they have set, and that is something that we all know at this point.

    We are now in a situation where, for many of us, our good friend is in ICE detention. And as Jewish students, we feel we need to do more.

    AMY GOODMAN: How did you know Mahmoud Khalil? You said you’re at SIPA. What are you studying there?

    CARLY: Yeah, so, I’m a human rights student, and we were classmates. We were classmates and friends. And it’s been a deeply troubling few weeks. And, you know, everyone at SIPA, the students at SIPA, we really are just hoping for his safe return.

    For me as a graduate in May, I truly hope we get to walk together at graduation.

    AMY GOODMAN: Did he hear that you were out here? And did he send you a message?

    CARLY: Yes. So, it has gotten back to Mahmoud that Jewish students are out here chained to the gate, and he did send a message that I read earlier that expressed his gratitude.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell me what he said?

    CARLY: Yes, I can pull up the message. I don’t want to misquote him. OK.

    “The news of students chaining themselves to the Columbia gates has reached Mahmoud in the detention center in Louisiana, where he’s currently being held. He knows what’s happening. He was very emotional when he heard about it, and he wanted to thank you all and let you know he sees you.”

    SARAH BORUS: My name is Sarah Borus. I am a senior at Barnard College.

    AMY GOODMAN: Why a Jewish action right now?

    SARAH BORUS: So, the government, when they abducted Mahmoud, they literally put — Donald Trump put out a post that said, “Shalom, Mahmoud.”

    They are saying that this is in the name of Jewish safety. But there is a reason that it is four white Jews that were on that fence or that were on that gate, and that’s because we are not the ones that are being targeted by the government.

    It is Muslim students, Arab students, Palestinian students, immigrant students that are being targeted.

    AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond to those who say the protests here are antisemitic?

    SARAH BORUS: I have been involved in these protests for my last two years here. The community of Jewish students that I have found is one of the most wonderful in my life. To call these protests antisemitic, honestly, degrades the Jewish religion by making it about a nation-state instead of the actual religion itself.

    SHEA: My name is Shea. I’m a junior at Columbia College. I am here for the same reason.

    AMY GOODMAN: You’re wearing a keffiyeh and a yarmulke.

    SHEA: Yes. That’s standard for me.

    AMY GOODMAN: Are you willing to be expelled?

    SHEA: If the university decides that that is what should happen to me for doing this, then that is on them. I would love to not be expelled, but I think that my peers would also have loved to not be expelled.

    I think Mahmoud would love to not be in detention right now. This is — I obviously worked very hard to get here. So did Mahmoud. So did everyone else who has been facing consequences.

    And, like, while I obviously would prefer to, you know, not get expelled, this is bigger than me. This is about something much more important. And it ultimately is in the hands of the university. If they want to expel me for standing up for my friend, for other students, then that is their choice.

    PROTESTERS: ICE off our campus now! ICE off our campus now! We want justice! You say, “How?” We want justice! You say, “How?” Answer our demands now! Answer our demands now!

    MARYAM ALWAN: My name is Maryam Alwan. I’m a senior at Columbia. I’m also Palestinian, and I’m friends with Mahmoud. I’m here in solidarity with my Jewish friends, who are in solidarity with all Palestinian students and Palestinians facing genocide in Gaza.

    We are all here today because we miss our friend, and it’s inconceivable to us that the board of trustees are reported to have handed his name over to the federal government, and the fact that these board of trustees have now taken over the university.

    Just yesterday, the University Senate at Columbia released an over 300-page report called the Sundial Report, which reveals that the board of trustees has completely endangered both Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish students in the name of quashing dissent and cracking down on protests like never before, eroding shared governance, academic freedom.

    And so this has been a long-standing process over 1.5 years to get us to the point where we are today, where people are getting kidnapped from their own campuses. And we can’t just sit by and let the federal government do whatever they want to our own university without standing up against it.

    So, whatever we can do.

    AMY GOODMAN: And what does it mean to you that it’s Jewish students who have chained themselves to the gates?

    MARYAM ALWAN: It means a lot to me, especially because of all of the rhetoric that surrounds these protests saying that we’re violent or threatening, when, from day one, I was part of Students for Justice in Palestine when it was suspended, and we were working alongside Jewish Voice for Peace from day one.

    The media just completely twisted the narrative. So, the fact that my Jewish friends are still to this day fighting, no matter what the personal cost is to them — I’ve seen the way that the university has delegitimised their Jewish identity, put them through trials, saying that they’re antisemitic, when they are proud Jews, and they’ve taught me so much about Judaism.

    So it just means a lot to see, like, the solidarity between us even almost two years later now.

    AHARON DARDIK: My name’s Aharon Dardik. I’m a junior here at Columbia. And we’re here to protest the trustees putting students in danger and not taking accountability.

    AMY GOODMAN: Why the chains on your wrists?

    AHARON DARDIK: We, as Jewish students, chained ourselves earlier today to a gate on campus, and we said that we weren’t going to leave until the university named who it was among the trustees who collaborated with the fascist Trump administration to detain our classmate, Mahmoud Khalil, and try and deport him.

    AMY GOODMAN: Where are you originally from?

    AHARON DARDIK: I’m originally from California, but my family moved to Israel-Palestine.

    AMY GOODMAN: And being from Israel-Palestine, your thoughts on what’s happening there?

    AHARON DARDIK: There’s never a justification for killing innocent civilians and for war crimes and genocide that’s being committed now. And I know many, many other people there who are leftist Israeli activists who are doing their best to end the occupation, to end the war and the genocide and to end Israeli apartheid.

    But they need more support from the international community, which currently sees supporting Israel as synonymous with supporting the fascist Israeli government that’s perpetrating this genocide, that’s continuing the occupation.

    AMY GOODMAN: Voices from a protest on Wednesday when Jewish students at Columbia University chained themselves to university gates in support of Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia student protest leader now detained by ICE in a Louisiana jail.

    Students continued their action into the early hours of yesterday morning through the rain, even after Columbia security and New York police arrived on the scene to cut the chains and forcibly remove protesters.

    Special thanks to Laura Bustillos.

    Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Karoline Leavitt targets media as White House press secretary

    From the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, has joined Trump in taking steps to punish and intimidate 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 Jan. 28, 2025.

    Feb. 12, 2025 | White House defends AP ban, claims news agency is pushing ‘lies’

    Jan. 28, 2025 | Press secretary echoes media lie accusations

    Feb. 12, 2025 | White House defends AP ban, claims news agency is pushing ‘lies’

    White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the barring of reporters for The Associated Press from multiple events at the White House during a news briefing on Feb. 12, 2025.

    In a letter objecting to the decision, AP Executive Editor Julie Pace wrote that Leavitt had warned the newsroom that its reporters would not be allowed to attend White House events if it didn’t align its editorial standards with President Donald Trump’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

    AP reporters were barred from attending at least four events between Feb. 11 and 13; it was unclear whether AP reporters would also be excluded from subsequent White House events.

    “The actions taken by the White House were plainly intended to punish the AP for the content of its speech,” Pace wrote. “It is among the most basic tenets of the First Amendment that the government cannot retaliate against the public or the press for what they say. This is viewpoint discrimination based on a news organization’s editorial choices and a clear violation of the First Amendment.”

    During a news briefing on Feb. 12, CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins asked whether the decision to exclude the AP was “setting a precedent that this White House will retaliate against reporters who don’t use the language that you guys believe reporters should use.”

    Leavitt replied: “I was very upfront in my briefing on Day 1 that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable. And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America. And I am not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that but that is what it is.”

    The White House Correspondents’ Association quickly condemned the move, according to The Hill. “The White House cannot dictate how news organizations report the news, nor should it penalize working journalists because it is unhappy with their editors’ decisions,” the WHCA said.

    Back to Top

    Jan. 28, 2025 | Press secretary echoes media lie accusations

    While President Donald Trump, in one of his first executive orders, extolled the importance of “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship,” an attitude of hostility toward the press was perpetuated by the White House itself.

    Karoline Leavitt, in her first briefing as press secretary Jan. 28, 2025, pushed Trump’s allegations that outlets had deliberately lied in order to hurt his campaign and administration.

    “We know for a fact that there have been lies that have been pushed by many legacy media outlets in this country about this president, about his family, and we will not accept that. We will call you out when we feel that your reporting is wrong, or there is misinformation about this White House,” Leavitt said. “So yes, I will hold myself to the truth and I expect everyone in this room to do the same.”

    Leavitt also told reporters, “All of you once again have access to the most transparent and accessible president in American history.” But in what appears to be a snub to mainstream media, hard passes and access to the briefing room will also be extended to members of the “new media” — who Leavitt described as “independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers and content creators” — as long as they are producing “legitimate news content.”

    Leavitt did not respond directly to a question about how often she will be giving news briefings, which Trump halted during the second half of his first term, citing unfair media treatment.

    “The president is the best spokesperson that this White House has,” Leavitt said, “and I can assure you that you will be hearing from both him and me as much as possible.”

    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.

  • Evicted PNG settlement fears collective punishment over gang rape and killing

    By Harlyne Joku and BenarNews staff

    Residents of an informal Port Moresby settlement that was razed following the gang rape and murder of a woman by 20 men say they are being unfairly punished by Papua New Guinea authorities over alleged links to the crime.

    Human rights advocates and the UN have condemned the killing but warned the eviction by police has raised serious concerns about collective punishment, violations of national law, police misconduct and governance failures.

    A community spokesman said more than 500 people living at the settlement at the capital’s Baruni rubbish dump were forcibly evicted by the police in response to the killing of 32-year-old Margaret Gabriel on February 15.

    WhatsApp Image 2025-04-01 at 21.44.08.jpeg
    Port Moresby newspapers reported the gang rape and murder by 20 men of 32-year-old Margaret Gabriel . . . “Barbaric”, said the Post-Courier in a banner headline. Image: BenarNews

    Authorities accuse the settlement residents, who are primarily migrants from the Goilala district in Central Province, of harboring some of the men involved in her murder.

    Prime Minister James Marape condemned Gabriel’s death as “inhuman, barbaric” and a “defining moment for our nation to unite against crime, to take a stand against violence”, the day after the attack.

    He assured every effort would be made to prosecute those responsible and his “unwavering support” for the removal of settlements like Baruni, calling them “breeding grounds for criminal elements who terrorise innocent people.”

    Gabriel was one of three women killed in the capital that week.

    Charged with rape, murder
    Four men from Goilala district and two from Enga province, all aged between 18 and 29, appeared in a Port Moresby court on Monday on charges of her rape and murder.

    The case has again put a spotlight again on gender-based violence in PNG and renewed calls for the government to find a long-term solution to Port Moresby’s impoverished settlements.

    Dozens of families, some of whom have lived in the Baruni settlement for more than 40 years, were forced out of their homes on February 22 and are now sleeping under blue tarpaulins at a school sports oval on the outskirts of the capital.

    Spokesman for the evicted Baruni residents, Peter Laiam
    Spokesman for the evicted Baruni residents, Peter Laiam . . . “My people are innocent.” Image: Harlyne Joku/Benar News

    “My people are innocent,” Peter Laiam, a community spokesman and school caretaker, told BenarNews, adding that police continued to harass the community at their new location.

    “They told me I had to move these people out in two weeks’ time or they will shoot us.”

    Laiam said a further six men from the settlement were suspected of involvement in Gabriel’s death, but had not been charged, and the community has fully cooperated with police on the matter, including naming the suspects.

    Authorities however were treating the entire population as “trouble makers,” Laiam added.

    “They also took cash and building materials like corrugated iron roofing for themselves” he said.

    No police response
    Senior police in Port Moresby did not respond to ongoing requests from BenarNews for reaction to the allegations.

    Assistant Commissioner Benjamin Turi last week thanked the evicted settlers for information that led to the arrest of six suspects, The National newspaper reported.

    Police Minister Peter Tsiamalili Junior defended the eviction at Baruni last month, telling EMTV News it was lawful and the settlement was on state-owned land.

    Bare land left after homes in the Baruni settlement village
    Bare land left after homes in the Baruni settlement village were flattened by bulldozers at Port Moresby, PNG. Image: Harlyne Joku/Benar News

    Police used excavators and other heavy machinery to tear down houses at the Baruni settlement, with images showing some buildings on fire.

    Residents say the resettlement site in Laloki lacks adequate water, sanitation and other facilities.

    “They are running out of food,” Laiam said. “Last weekend they were washed out by the rain and their food supplies were finished.”

    Separated from their gardens and unable to sell firewood, the families are surviving on food donations from local authorities, he said.

    Human rights critics
    The evictions have been criticised by human rights advocates, including Peterson Magoola, the UN Women Representative for PNG.

    “We strongly condemn all acts of sexual and gender-based violence and call for justice for the victim,” he said in a statement last month.

    “At the same time, collective punishment, forced evictions, and destruction of homes violate fundamental human rights and disproportionately harm vulnerable members of the community.”

    The evicted families living in tents at Laloki St Paul’s Primary School
    The evicted families living in tents at Laloki St Paul’s Primary School, on the outskirts of Port Moresby, PNG. Image: Harlyne Joku/Benar News

    Melanesian Solidarity, a local nonprofit, called on the government to ensure justice for both the murder victim and displaced families.

    It said the evictions might have contravened international treaties and domestic laws that protect against unlawful property deprivation and mandate proper legal procedures for relocation.

    The Baruni settlement, which is home primarily to migrants from Goilala district, was established with consent on the customary land of the Baruni people during the colonial era, according to Laiam.

    Central Province Governor Rufina Peter defended the evicted settlers on national broadcaster NBC on February 20, and their contribution to the national capital.

    “The Goilala people were here during pre-independence time. They are the ones who were the bucket carriers,” she said.

    ‘Knee jerk’ response
    She also criticised the eviction by police as “knee jerk” and raised human rights concerns.

    The Goilala community in Central Province, 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the capital, was the center of controversy in January when a trophy video of butchered body parts being displayed by a gang went viral, attracted erroneous ‘cannibalism’ reportage by the local media and sparked national and international condemnation.

    The evictions at Baruni have touched off again a complex debate about crime and housing in PNG, the Pacific’s most populous nation.

    Informal settlements have mushroomed in Port Moresby as thousands of people from the countryside migrate to the city in search of employment.

    Critics say the impoverished settlements are unfit for habitation, contribute to the city’s frequent utility shortages, and harbour criminals.

    Mass evictions have been ordered before, but the government has failed to enact any meaningful policies to address their rapid growth across the city.

    While accurate population data is hard to find in PNG, the United Nations Population Fund estimates that the number of people living in Port Moresby is about 513,000.

    Lack basic infrastructure
    At least half of them are thought to live in informal settlements, which lack basic infrastructure like water, electricity and sewerage, according to 2022 research by the PNG National Research Institute.

    A shortage of affordable housing and high rental prices have caused a mismatch between demand and supply.

    Melanesian Solidarity said the government needed to develop a national housing strategy to prevent the rise of informal settlements.

    “This eviction is a wake-up call for the government to implement sustainable urban planning and housing reforms rather than resorting to forced removals,” it said in a statement.

    “We stand with the affected families and demand justice, accountability, and humane solutions for all Papua New Guineans.”

    Stefan Armbruster, Sue Ahearn and Harry Pearl contributed to this story. Republished from BenarNews with permission. However, it is the last report from BenarNews as the editors have announced a “pause” in publication due to the US administration withholding funds.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Stoush breaks out between NZ Human Rights Commissioner and Jewish leader at Parliament

    By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter

    A stoush between the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and a Jewish community leader has flared up following a showdown at Parliament.

    Appearing before a parliamentary select committee today, Dr Stephen Rainbow was asked about his recent apology for incorrect comments he made about Muslims earlier this year.

    “If my language has been injudicious . . .  then I have apologised for that,” he told MPs.

    “I’ve apologised publicly. I’ve apologised privately. I’ve met with FIANZ [The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand] to hear their concerns and to apologise to them, both in person and publicly, and I hold to that apology.”

    The apology relates to a meeting he had with Jewish community leader Philippa Yasbek, from the anti-Zionist Jewish groups Alternative Jewish Voices and Dayenu, in February.

    Yasbek said Rainbow claimed during the meeting that the Security Intelligence Services (SIS) threat assessment found Muslims posed a greater threat to the Jewish community in New Zealand than white supremacists.

    In fact, the report states “white identity-motivated violent extremism [W-IMVE] remains the dominant identity-motivated violent extremism ideology in New Zealand”.

    Rainbow changed his position
    Rainbow told the committee he had since changed his position after receiving new information.

    He said was disappointed he had “allowed [his] words to create a perception there was a prejudice there” and he would do everything in his power to repair his relationship with the Muslim community.

    “Please be assured that I take this as a learning, and I will be far more measured with my comments in future.”

    But Rainbow disputed another of Yasbek’s assertions that he had also raised the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.

    “It’s going to be really unhelpful if I get into a he-said-she-said, but I did not say the comments that were attributed to me about that. I do not believe that,” Rainbow said.

    “I emphatically deny that I said that.”

    ‘It definitely stuck in my mind’ – Jewish community leader
    Yasbek, who called for Rainbow’s resignation yesterday, was watching the select committee hearing from the back of the room.

    Speaking to reporters afterwards, Yasbek said she was certain Rainbow had made the comments about Afghan refugees.

    “It was particularly memorable because it was so specific and he said that he was concerned about the risk of anti-semitism in the community of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.

    “It’s very specific. It’s not a sort of detail that one is likely to make up, and it definitely stuck in my mind.”

    Yasbek said the race relations commissioner and two Human Rights Commission staff members were also in the room and should be interviewed to corroborate what happened.

    “There were multiple witnesses. I am concerned that he has impugned my integrity in that way which is why there should be an independent investigation of this matter.”

    Philippa Yasbek.
    Alternative Jewish Voices’ Philippa Yasbek . . . “there should be an independent investigation of this matter.” Image: RNZ

    Raised reported comments
    Speaking to RNZ later, FIANZ chairman Abdur Razzaq said he raised the commissioner’s reported comments about Afghan refugees when he met with Rainbow several weeks ago.

    “I raised it at the meeting with him and he did not correct me. At my meeting there were other members of the Human Rights Commission. He did not say he didn’t [say that].”

    Razzaq said it was up to the justice minister as to whether or not Rainbow was fit for the role.

    “When you hear statements like this, like ‘greatest threat’, he has forgotten it was precisely this kind of Islamophobic sentiment which gave rise to the terrorist of March 15, rise to the right-wing extremist terrorists to take action and they justify it with these kinds of statements.”

    “[The commissioner] calls himself an academic, a student of history. Where is his lessons learned on this aspect? To pick a Muslim community by name… he has to really genuinely look at himself as to what he is doing and what he is saying.”

    Minister backs Rainbow: ‘Doing his best’
    Speaking at Parliament following the hearing, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said he backed Rainbow and believed the commissioner would learn from the experience.

    “The new commissioner is doing his best. By his own admission he didn’t express himself well. He has apologised and he will be learning from that experience, and it is my expectation that he will be very careful in the way that he communicates in the future.”

    Goldsmith said he stood by his appointment of Rainbow, despite the independent panel tasked with leading the process taking a different view.

    “There’s a range of opinions on that. The advice that I had originally from the group was a real focus on legal skills, and I thought actually equally important was the ability to communicate ideas effectively.”

    Speaking in Christchurch on Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said Rainbow had got it “totally wrong” and it was appropriate he had apologised.

    “He completely and quite wrongfully mischaracterised a New Zealand SIS report talking about threats to the Jewish community and he was wrong about that.

    “He has subsequently apologised about that but equally Minister Goldsmith has or is talking to him about those comments as well.”

    ‘Not elabiorating further’
    RNZ approached the Human Rights Commission on Thursday afternoon for a response to Yasbek doubling down on her recollection Rainbow had talked about the supposed antisemitism of Afghan refugees in West Auckland.

    “The Chief Commissioner will not be elaborating further about what was said in the meeting,” a spokesperson said.

    “He’s happy to discuss the matter privately with the people involved,” a spokesperson said.

    “Dr Rainbow acknowledges that what was said caused harm and offence and what matters most is the impact on communities. That is why he has apologised unreservedly and stands by his apology.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Red Crescent Palestinians massacre: Global rule of law masquerade is over

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Joe Gill

    It is difficult to be shocked after 18 months of Israel‘s genocidal onslaught on Gaza.

    Brazen crimes against humanity have become the norm. World powers do nothing in response. At best, they put out weak statements of concern. Now, the US does not even bother with that.

    It is fully on board with genocide.

    Israel and the US are planning the violent ethnic cleansing of Gaza, knowing full well that no one will stop them.

    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) are sitting on their hands, despite what appeared to be significant rulings last year on Israeli war crimes by the ICC and on the “plausible risk” of genocide by the ICJ.

    Israeli anti-Zionist commentator Alon Mizrahi posted on X this week:

    “As Israel and the US announce and begin to enact plans to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, let’s remember that the International Court of Justice has not even convened to discuss the genocide since 24 May 2024, when it was using very blurry language about the planned Rafah action.

    “Tens of thousands have been exterminated since then, and hundreds of thousands have been injured. Babies starved and froze to death, and thousands of children lost limbs.

    “Not a word from the ICJ. Zionism and American imperialism have rendered international law null and void. Everyone is allowed to do as they please to anyone. The post-World War II masquerade is truly over.”

    Under the US Joe Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the smirking US spokesperson Matt Miller would make performative statements about “concern” over the killing of Palestinians with weapons they had supplied. (They would never use a word as clear as “killing”, always preferring the perpetrator-free “deaths”).

    Today, under the Donald Trump regime, even the mask of respect for the rituals of international diplomacy has been thrown aside.

    This is the law of the jungle, and the winner is the government that uses superior force to seize what it believes is theirs, and to silence and destroy those who stand in their way.

    Brutally targeted
    Last week, a group of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), civil defence and UN staff rushed to the site of Israeli air strikes to rescue wounded Palestinians in southern Gaza.

    PRCS is the local branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which, like the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa), provides essential health services to Palestinians in a devastated, besieged war zone.

    Alongside other international aid groups, they have been repeatedly and brutally targeted by Israel.

    That pattern continued on March 23, when Israeli forces committed a heinous, deliberate massacre that left eight PRCS members, six members of Gaza’s civil defence, and one UN agency employee dead.

    The bodies of 14 first responders were found in Rafah, southern Gaza, a week after they were killed. The vehicles were mangled, and the bodies dumped in a mass grave. Some were mutilated, one decapitated.

    The Palestinian Health Ministry said some of the bodies were found with their hands tied and with wounds to their heads and chests.

    “This grave was located just metres from their vehicles, indicating the [Israeli] occupation forces removed the victims from the vehicles, executed them, and then discarded their bodies in the pit,” civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said, describing it as “one of the most brutal massacres Gaza has witnessed in modern history”.


    Under fire: Israel’s war on medics.     Video: Middle East Eye

    ‘Killed on way to save lives’
    The head of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office in Gaza, Jonathan Whittall, said: “Today, on the first day of Eid, we returned and recovered the buried bodies of eight PRCS, six civil defence and one UN staff.

    “They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives. This should never have happened.”

    Nothing happened following previous lethal attacks, such as the killing of seven World Central Kitchen staff on 1 April 2024, exactly one year ago, when the victims were British, Polish, Australian, Palestinian, and a dual US-Canadian citizen.

    Despite a certain uproar that was absent when dozens or hundreds of Palestinians were massacred, Israel was not sanctioned by Western powers or the UN. And so, it continued killing aid workers.

    Israel declared Unrwa a “terror” group last October and has killed more than 280 of its staff — accounting for the majority of the 408 aid workers killed in Gaza since October 2023.

    The international response to this latest massacre? Zilch.

    Official silence
    On Sunday, Save the Children, Medical Aid for Palestinians and Christian Aid took out ads in the UK Observer calling for the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel in the wake of renewed Israeli attacks in Gaza: “David Lammy, Keir Starmer, your failure to act is costing lives.”

    The British prime minister is too busy touting his mass deportation of “illegal” migrants from the UK to comment on the atrocities of his close ally, Israel. He has said nothing in public.

    Lammy, UK Foreign Secretary, has found time to put out statements on the Myanmar earthquake, Nato, Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the need for de-escalation of renewed tensions in South Sudan.

    His last public comment on Israel and Gaza was on March 22, several days after Israel’s horrific massacre of more than 400 Palestinians at dawn on 18 March: “The resumption of Israeli strikes in Gaza marks a dramatic step backward. Alongside France and Germany, the UK urgently calls for a return to the ceasefire.”

    No condemnation of the slaughter of nearly 200 children.

    In response to a request for comment from Middle East Eye, a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson said: “We are outraged by these deaths and we expect the incident to be investigated transparently and for those responsible held to account. Humanitarian workers must be protected, and medical and aid workers must be able to do their jobs safely.

    “We continue to call for a lift on the aid blockade in Gaza, and for all parties to re-engage in ceasefire negotiations to get the hostages out and to secure a permanent end to the conflict, leading to a two-state solution and a lasting peace.”

    As this article was being written, Lammy put out a statement on X that, as usual, avoided any direct mention of who was committing war crimes. “Gaza remains the deadliest place for humanitarians — with over 400 killed. Recent aid worker deaths are a stark reminder. Those responsible must be held accountable.”

    Age of lawlessness
    The new world order of 2025 is a lawless one.

    The big powers and their allies are committed to the violent reordering of the map: Palestine is to be forcibly absorbed into Israel, with US backing. Ukraine will lose its eastern regions to Vladimir Putin’s Russia with US support.

    Smaller nations can be attacked with impunity, from Yemen to Lebanon to Greenland (no US invasion plan as yet, but the mood music is growing louder with every statement from Trump and Vice-President JD Vance).

    This has always been the way to some extent. Still, previously in the post-war world, adherence to international law was the official position of great powers, including the US and the Soviet Union.

    Israel, however, never had time for international law. It was the pioneer of the force-is-right doctrine. That doctrine is now the dominant one.

    International law and international aid are out.

    In the UK last Thursday, a group of youth activists were meeting at the Quaker Friends House in central London to discuss peaceful resistance to the genocide in Gaza.

    Police stormed the building and arrested six young women.

    Such a police action would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but new laws introduced under the last government have made such raids against peaceful gatherings increasingly common.

    This is the age of lawlessness. And anyone standing up for human rights and peace is now the enemy of the state, whether in Palestine, London, or at Columbia University.

    Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Oman, Venezuela and the US, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His Masters was in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics. Republished from Middle East Eye under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • First Nations Foreign Policy: A Fundamental Contradiction

    This post was originally published on IndigenousX.

  • Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing The Media Industry

    The arrival of COVID-19 in the United States kicked off an ongoing period of job insecurity within the media industry. In April 2020, the New York Times reported that about 37,000 news company employees had been laid off, furloughed, or had their salaries reduced since March of that year.

    This instability was still evident in 2024, with media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, the Messenger, and HuffPost undergoing major layoffs and closures.

    An October 2024 report from the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc. found that 13,279 media jobs had been cut that year. This included 3,520 cuts in the broadcast, digital, and print news industry—the most since 2020.
    Job insecurity has helped spur the rise of worker-owned journalism cooperatives like Flaming Hydra, Aftermath, Racket, and RANGE. According to the Poynter Institute, “[a]t least six worker-centered [news] outlets launched in 2024 alone.”

    The post Worker-Owned News Outlets Are Changing The Media Industry appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US media refuses to say what Yemen’s fighting for


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • NZ protesters honour killed Gaza journalists – ‘targeted’ say press freedom groups

    Pacific Media Watch

    Global press freedom organisations have condemned the killing of two journalists in Gaza this week, who died in separate targeted airstrikes by the Israeli armed forces.

    And protesters in Aotearoa New Zealand dedicated their week 77 rally and march in the heart of Auckland to their memory, declaring “Journalism is not a crime”.

    Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old correspondent for the Al Jazeera Mubasher channel, was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his car in the eastern part of Beit Lahiya, media reports said.

    Video, reportedly from minutes after the airstrike, shows people gathering around the shattered and smoking car and pulling a body out of the wreckage.

    Mohammed Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today television was killed earlier on Monday, reportedly along with his wife and son, in an Israeli airstrike on his home in south Khan Younis.

    One Palestinian woman read out a message from Shabat’s family: “He dreamed of becoming a journalist and to tell the world the truth.

    “But war doesn’t wait for dreams. He was only 23, and when the war began he left classes to give a voice to those who had none.”

    Global media condemnation
    In the hours after the deaths, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Palestinian press freedom organisations released statements condemning the attacks.

    “CPJ is appalled that we are once again seeing Palestinians weeping over the bodies of dead journalists in Gaza,” said Carlos Martínez de la Serna, CPJ’s programme director.

    “This nightmare in Gaza has to end. The international community must act fast to ensure that journalists are kept safe and hold Israel to account for the deaths of Hossam Shabat and Mohammed Mansour.

    “Journalists are civilians and it is illegal to attack them in a war zone.”

    Honouring the life of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat
    Honouring the life of Al Jazeera journalist Hossam Shabat – killed by Israeli forces at 23 and shattering his dreams. Image: Del Abcede/APR

    In a statement, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed it had targeted and killed Shabat and Mansour and labelled them as “terrorists” — without any evidence to back their claim.

    The IDF also said that it had struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad resistance fighters in Khan Younis, where Mohammed Mansour was killed.

    In October 2024, the IDF had accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists working for Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant arm of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

    Al Jazeera and Shabat denied Israel’s claims, with Shabat stating in an interview with the CPJ that “we are civilians … Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth.”

    In its statement condemning the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, the CPJ again called on Israel to “stop making unsubstantiated allegations to justify its killing and mistreatment of members of the press”.

    The CPJ estimates that more than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, making it the deadliest period for journalists since the organisation began gathering data in 1992.

    However, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says it believes the number is higher and, with the deaths of Shabat and Mansour, 208 journalists and other members of the press have been killed over the course of the conflict.

    Under international law, journalists are protected civilians who must not be targeted by warring parties.

    Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in its genocide in the blockaded enclave since October 7, 2023.

    The Israeli carnage has reduced most of the Gaza to ruins and displaced almost the entire 2.3 million population, while causing a massive shortage of basic necessities.

    The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

    Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.

    New Zealand protesters wearing "Press" vests in solidarity with Gazan journalists
    New Zealand protesters wearing mock “Press” vests in solidarity with Gazan journalists documenting the Israeli genocide. Image: Del Abcede/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.