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  • This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

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  • Digging with their bare hands, rescuers in Myanmar have pulled several trapped people to safety in the days following a devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake, videos circulating on social media show.

    In one, a cell phone video taken by two teenage girls, ages 13 and 16, shows them trapped with their 75-year-old grandmother in the cramped darkness of a collapsed apartment building in Mandalay, a city near the epicenter of Friday’s quake.

    Video: ‘We’re trapped in here!’ 75-year-old woman and her two teenage granddaughters call for help

    “We’re trapped in here! We’re trapped in here!” one of them calls out desperately. One girl taps with something metallic on a concrete slab to signal to rescuers where they are.

    Only the light of a mobile phone illuminates the claustrophobic scene. Briefly, we get a glimpse of the grandmother’s bloodied face.

    Their cell phone signals reached residents, who worked feverishly to dig them out. Separate video footage shows a cluster of men lifting chunks of cement with their bare hands. “We’re ready to uncover them!” one shouts.

    The final seconds of the footage shows the three being carried out of the rubble on stretchers on Sunday — a happy ending amid the gloom of the worst earthquake to hit Myanmar in decades.

    The military-run country is ill-equipped to respond to the disaster. It is mired in a four-year civil war that has already displaced 3 million people.

    So far, the quake has killed more than 3,000 people in Myanmar, according to the military junta that took power in a 2021 coup.

    Video: 13-year-old rescued from collapsed monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar

    In another video, a 13-year-old girl named Pan Aye Chon is unearthed from the rubble of a collapsed monastery in Mandalay after three hours of digging by rescue workers.

    While she survived the quake, family members say she’s heartbroken that many of her friends who were with her died.

    When the shaking started midday Friday, the girl ran out of the monastery, but then turned around to go back to try to rescue her friends. Then part of the structure fell and trapped her, family members said.

    Video: Woman rescued from building in Naypyidaw after Myanmar earthquake.

    In the capital, Naypyidaw, a 63-year-old woman was rescued from the rubble after being trapped for 91 hours, or nearly four days, Reuters reported.

    Video showed orange uniform-clad rescuers in white helmets searching the partially collapsed remains of a building before the woman was carried out on a stretcher.

    Reuters was able to confirm the location of the video as Naypyitaw from the buildings, the road layout and the entrance to the hospital, which matched satellite imagery of the area.

    The date when the video was recorded could not be verified independently, Reuters said. However, a Myanmar Fire Services Department statement said the rescue took place on the morning of April 1.

    Edited by Mat Pennington and Malcolm Foster


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.

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  • A person putting lids on small meal trays.
    A food kitchen prepared 1,000 meals for Iftar — before it had to close due to the Israeli blockade. Photo: Farida Algoul

    In Gaza, where the threads of life and death intertwine, and where moments of worship intersect with the horrors of war, people live their daily lives with unyielding resilience. During the holy month of Ramadan, which is supposed to be a time of peace and tranquility, the people of Gaza found themselves surrounded by unending, unimaginable death and destruction.

    Preparing maftoul for the displaced

    Preparing Iftar — the meal at the end of the day when we break our daily Ramadan fast — was a daily struggle, especially for women who bear the primary responsibility of caring for their families. Amid scarce resources, prolonged power outages, and the collapse of essential services, the women of Gaza fought an uphill battle to provide a meal for their families under nearly impossible living conditions.

    Despite the difficulties, we held onto our Ramadan traditions — and as we did, we made sure that we supported each other. Just a few weeks ago, as part of my regular work in a local soup kitchen, I went to the markets to see how I could feed the many displaced people who were forced to flee from the north to central Gaza. For months now, there has been a serious shortage of meat and vegetables.

    All Gazans love maftoul, a Palestinian couscous dish. So together with many other Palestinian women, with minimal ingredients, and with only firewood for fuel, we worked all day to prepare this wonderful dish for the Iftar meal. Making the maftoul is a labor of love that involves moistening the bulgur wheat, coating it with flour, then rolling the grains between your palms to form larger, irregular shapes.

    The maftoul is then cooked with spices, and when available, other vegetables and meat, to create the dish we all love and look forward to eating when we break our fast. On this day, feeling both exhausted and fulfilled, we were able to feed more than 1,000 fasting people.

    Trays of bulgur wheat being prepared for creating maftoul.
    Preparing the bulgur wheat for maftoul. Photo: Farida Algoul

    Sadly, the Israeli blockade forced the soup kitchen to close and we were no longer able to provide Iftar.

    Only bread and tea for Iftar

    Mid-Ramadan, Israel renewed its active genocide of the Palestinian people, conducting airstrikes that resulted in daily massacres of hundreds of people. Once again death and injury were ever-present and inexorable — every single day — for every single Palestinian. There was no escape. Half of the dead were children. The injured were almost less fortunate, forced to endure amputations without the help of anesthesia. We are all hungry, we are all thirsty and exhausted.

    In addition to the scarcity of food, women faced a severe shortage of fuel and firewood. With electricity often cut off for hours or even days, cooking was an exhausting and dangerous task. Many women resorted to burning old clothes, broken furniture, or even plastic to light a fire for cooking. This exposed them to the risk of burns and forced them to inhale toxic fumes that threatened their health and that of their children.

    The cold nights added to our suffering, with freezing winds seeping through the tents. At least eight children, and probably many more, died from hypothermia in the past month. There was also a serious lack of clean water and many children suffered from diarrhea and dehydration. Many families survived only on bread and tea. For some, the Iftar meal consisted of only water. With Israel’s ongoing blockade of all humanitarian aid and the ceaseless, merciless bombing, families’ chances of getting food are shrinking.

    As I walked through the refugee camp where I worked to distribute what little food there was, I saw a different kind of hunger — a hunger for safety, for peace, for an end to this nightmare. People were not waiting for Iftar with excitement; they were waiting for the bombs to stop, for the gunfire to cease.

    Every family in Gaza is living in a constant state of fear, uncertainty, and unimaginable sorrow.

    No food, no shelter

    My Aunt Hanin and her family, which includes two children with special needs, were left with nothing after their home was completely destroyed. With nowhere else to go, they built a makeshift tent in the Al-Aqsa camp in the northern part of Gaza and have been living without even the most basic necessities of life: no water, no sanitation, and very little food.

    I visited her on the first day of Ramadan and was struck by the deep sadness and exhaustion etched into her features. “I don’t know what to cook for my children,” she told me. “There are no vegetables, no food of any kind. My children have diarrhea and struggle to eat anything solid — they need soup because of their condition.” Her voice began to break, and tears welled up in her eyes.

    I have not seen my Aunt Hanin and her family since the bombing started again. We don’t know where they are and can’t communicate with them since electricity is very scarce and internet is extremely intermittent. I pray that they are safe.

    With thousands of families again forced to flee their homes, and with no schools, mosques, or other shelters left to offer refuge, many families are living in the streets among piles of garbage. Among the women who have sought shelter in garbage dumps is Farah. Displaced from Beit Hanoun, and four months pregnant, she walked barefoot to the center of the Gaza Strip on the twenty-third day of Ramadan, where she has been living in a makeshift tent in a garbage dump. The garbage is toxic and the stench is overwhelming and sickening. Farah miscarried earlier this week.

    The crushing psychological toll

    Beyond food shortages, there is an emotional and psychological weight that is crushing our spirits. We are always afraid, always on the verge of despair. Every mother setting a meager table for Iftar did so with a heart full of grief, knowing that someone was missing. Every father trying to provide for his family struggled against impossible odds. Children who should be excited for Eid were instead traumatized by the horrors they have witnessed.

    We mourned Hossam Shabat, the 23-year-old brave and talented journalist who Israel targeted and succeeded in murdering during Ramadan. In his beautiful last letter to the people of Gaza he implored us “do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting,keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.” So selfless and courageous.

    Today, we weep for his mother and the thousands of other mothers of Gaza whose children have been martyred. Despite their despair, and conscious of God, they did their best to provide Iftar.

    A smiling young man wearing a Press jacket.
    Hossam Shabat. Photo shared on his X account.

    Our thoughts of past Ramadans, some filled with laughter and prayers, were this year drowned out by the cries of mourning mothers and the deafening silence of absence. War darkened our days and stolen the warmth and spirituality of Ramadan. Our memories of past celebrations was bittersweet, as this was not our first Ramadan marred by violence and grief. In 2014, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes; 250 in 2021; last year 2,300; and this year, more than 1,000 so far.

    But before the genocide, no matter how difficult our circumstances, we had at least some food and enough peace for the whole family to gather for the breaking of the fast. Our Iftar meal would start with dates and water, followed by dishes like maqluba, grilled fish, and soup, along with salads and appetizers. The smell of freshly baked bread would fill the houses, and the warmth of family conversations would create an indescribable sense of closeness.

    After Iftar, families would gather to perform Taraweeh prayers at the mosque, while the streets would be filled with worshippers and the beautiful sounds of Qur’an recitation. Children would play in the alleys lit with lanterns, while families exchanged visits, offering traditional sweets like qatayef and knafeh. Though our lives have always been difficult, Ramadan in Gaza is not just about fasting from food — it is about fasting from pain and trying to hold onto hope despite the harsh realities.

    We are just trying to stay alive. Violence and death, pain, hunger, thirst, cold. Despite our depleted bodies and minds, we still work to strengthen our Taqwa; we remained conscious of God. This year during Ramadan we continued to hang lanterns and paint murals on the remains of our demolished walls, in our attempt to create hope amid the devastation. Our fragile existence left us with few choices, but we remained steadfast in our beliefs and our devotion to Ramadan. Insha’Alla we would have some food each day for Iftar.

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    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Farida Algoul.

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  • If you thought SignalGate was bad, wait until you hear about ArchiveGate. Trump illegally fired the National Archivist—the first president in U.S. history to do so since the position was established in the 1930s. This wasn’t just about a change in leadership; it was revenge on the Archivist’s office alerting the DOJ about Trump’s stolen classified documents, which were stored around Mar-a-Lago, a known hub for foreign spies. 

    But it gets worse. Marco Rubio, who is currently the Trump/Putin lackey Secretary of State, is also serving as the acting National Archivist. This unprecedented conflict of interest raises serious concerns. Rubio is juggling three major roles—Secretary of State, head of USAID, and now, National Archivist. This gives him the power to greenlight the destruction of government records, including his own, without any checks and balances.

    The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) plays a vital role in maintaining the integrity of our political system, overseeing the administration of the Electoral College, preserving government records, and ensuring transparency. Now, with Rubio in control, we face the potential destruction of key documents and rewriting of history that could threaten our democracy. It’s another avenue for Trump to lead a coup to stay in power, like his failed “fake electors” scheme to try to overturn the 2020 election. 

    As one listener points out in her commentary, edited for clarity, shared in a recent Gaslit Nation salon, we must stay vigilant of these corrupt moves. ArchiveGate is part of a broader plan to hold on to power. But remember, the people are the ultimate force. Together, we can stop this. 

     

    Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus shows, ad-free episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our group chat, invites to live events like our Monday political salons at 4pm ET over Zoom, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!

     

    Show Notes:

     

    Reject Hypernormalization: Gaslit Nation Launches New Project, Survey https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/survey-reject-hypernormalization

     

    Trump’s firing of the U.S. government archivist is far worse than it might seem: The National Archives and Records Administration does more than just preserve documents: It’s the scaffolding of the American political system. https://www.fastcompany.com/91277620/trump-firing-national-archivist-colleen-shogan

     

    House Dems cite ‘fundamental conflict’ of Rubio’s acting appointments atop USAID and National Archives: Lawmakers’ concerns stem from a March 11 memo instructing USAID employees to prepare for mass destruction of agency records. https://www.govexec.com/management/2025/03/house-dems-cite-fundamental-conflict-rubios-acting-appointments-atop-usaid-and-national-archives/404013/

     

    The ‘fake electors’ and their role in the 2020 election, explained https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/20/fake-electors-charges-trump-2020-election/

     


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  • It’s past time we move to an organizing model that prioritizes rank-and-file members of our unions.


    This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Jacob Goodwin.

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  • Protesters rally outside of the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building headquarters of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on February 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
    Labor Notes logo

    This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on Mar. 28, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

    In his broadest attack on federal workers and their unions to date, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced an Executive Order that claimed to end collective bargaining rights for nearly the whole federal workforce. Early estimates have the move affecting 700,000 to 1 million federal workers, including at the Veterans Administration and the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, Interior, Justice, Treasury, Health and Human Services, and even Agriculture.

    This gutting of federal worker rights has the potential to be a pivotal, existential moment for the labor movement. It is a step that recognizes that the Trump administration’s rampage against the federal government is hitting a roadblock: unions.

    Much remains to be seen: How quickly will the government move to execute the order? How much of it will stand up to challenges in court? Members of the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), who have been protesting ongoing firings and cuts, are holding an emergency organizing call on Sunday, March 30.

    ECHOES OF PATCO

    The move echoes past attacks on federal and public sector unions, including President Ronald Reagan firing 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Reagan’s move signaled “open season” on the labor movement, public and private sector alike.

    The dubious mechanism that Trump is using to revoke these rights involves declaring wide swaths of the federal workforce to be too “sensitive” for union rights.

    The Executive Order claims that workers across the government have “as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”

    Historically the interpretation of this has been much narrower. While CIA operatives have not been eligible for collective bargaining, nurses at the Veterans Administration have. These rights have been law since the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, and in various forms for years prior, starting with an executive order by President Kennedy in 1962.

    For example, the Veterans Administration has the largest concentration of civilian workers in the federal government, with more than 486,000 workers. The Trump Executive Order declares all of them to be excluded from collective bargaining rights.

    A MILLION WORKERS AFFECTED

    The order names 10 departments in part or in full, and eight other governmental bodies like agencies or commissions, ranging from all civilian employees at the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency to all workers at the Centers for Disease Control (a part of the Department of Health and Human Services) and the General Services Administration.

    Federal unions immediately denounced the Executive Order, promising to challenge it in court. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, said in a statement that AFGE “will fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members, and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks.”

    It is unclear how quickly the federal government and its various agencies will act to nullify contracts and all that come with them.

    At the Transportation Security Administration, where collective bargaining rights were axed in recent weeks, the impact was felt immediately: union representatives on union leave were called back to work, grievances were dropped, and contractual protections around scheduling were thrown out the window.

    Some protests already in the works may become outlets for justified anger about the wholesale destruction of the federal labor movement.

    Organizers with the FUN, a cross-union network of federal workers that has jumped into action as the crisis has deepened, are organizing local “Let Us Work” actions for federal workers impacted by layoffs and hosting the Sunday emergency organizing call March 30.

    National mobilizations under the banner of “Hands Off” are also already planned for April 5.


    This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Joe DeManuelle-Hall.

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  • Two new Data for Progress surveys find that Democratic voters are deeply dissatisfied with party leadership and favor a more combative approach to opposing President Donald Trump. When asked to grade the Democratic Party’s response to Trump, 70% of Democratic voters gave the party a C or below, with 21% giving it an F.

    The surveys, conducted among Democrats and Independents who lean Democratic, find that voters want a party leadership focused on fighting back against Trump and advocating for working-class Americans.

    A strong majority of Democratic voters (61%) say Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is not doing enough to oppose Trump, and 51% believe he lacks a clear, long-term strategy. After reading about Schumer’s vote in favor of the Republican spending bill, a majority (51%) of Democratic voters believe Senate Democrats should select a new leader, compared to just 34% who think Schumer should remain in his role.

    “Democratic voters are sending a clear message: they want leaders who will fight Trump and put working people first,” said Danielle Deiseroth, Executive Director of Data for Progress. “The base is tired of weak opposition and business-as-usual politics. This level of discontent is unsustainable for a Party looking to build back in the wake of major losses — at a certain point, Democratic leaders will need to show voters that they are taking a stronger stance against Trump, or step aside for someone who will.”

    Additional key findings:

    • Democratic voters are divided on who they believe leads the party, with 17% naming Vice President Kamala Harris, followed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (15%), former President Barack Obama (15%), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (11%), and “no one” (11%).
    • 66% of Democratic voters prefer a Senate leader who will fight harder against Trump and the Republican agenda, while only 14% prioritize bipartisan compromise.
    • By a +44-point margin, Democratic voters support older leaders retiring to make way for the next generation.
    • Democratic voters overwhelmingly support funding programs like health care and housing, even if it increases the deficit (63%-34%), and prioritize fighting for the working class over corporate interests.
    • While Democratic voters strongly support legal challenges (81%), public engagement, and voter registration drives to oppose Trump, they are less supportive of tactics such as interrupting major Republican speeches.

    Read the full polls here

    .

    This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.


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  • Mahmoudkhalil theencampments

    The new documentary The Encampments, produced by Watermelon Pictures and BreakThrough News, is an insider’s look at the student protest movement to demand divestment from the U.S. and Israeli weapons industry and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The film focuses on last year’s student encampment at Columbia University and features student leaders including Mahmoud Khalil, who was chosen by the university as a liaison between the administration and students. Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident, has since been arrested and detained by immigration enforcement as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to deport immigrants who exercise their right to free speech and protest. “Columbia has gone to every extent to try to censor this movement,” says Munir Atalla, a producer for the film and a former film professor at Columbia.

    We speak with Atalla; Sueda Polat, a Columbia graduate student and fellow campus negotiator with Khalil; and Grant Miner, a former Columbia graduate student and president of the student workers’ union who was expelled from the school over his participation in the protests. “Functionally, I was expelled for speaking out against genocide,” he says. All three of our guests emphasize their continued commitment to pro-Palestine activism even in the face of increasing institutional repression. The Encampments is opening nationwide in April.


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  • Seg1 encampments

    We’re joined by the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights and critic of U.S. foreign policy. He serves as executive producer for the new documentary The Encampments, which follows last year’s student occupations of college campuses to protest U.S. backing of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. He tells Democracy Now! why he got involved with the film and the roots of his own activism, including the making of his song “Hind’s Hall,” named after the Columbia student occupation of the campus building Hamilton Hall, which itself was named in honor of the 5-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab. Rajab made headlines last year when audio of her pleading for help from emergency services in Gaza was released shortly before she was discovered killed by Israeli forces. “We are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution,” Macklemore says.


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  • Photograph Source: Alan Turkus – CC BY 2.0

    The well-prepared, abundantly funded Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025’s implementation overwhelms all that has come before. The ill-prepared, leaderless Democrats and opposition are stymied to stop it. No March on Washington like the 1963 March for civil and political rights or the 1967 March against the Vietnam War will slow down the Trump steamroll. Neither the high price of eggs nor Wall Street jitters have had any effect.

    What to do? Could courts be the deciding factor to halt the United States slide towards fascism?

    Rules are essential to any organized society. Ever since Hammurabi’s Code written laws have existed. Although the idea of rules may be a fiction unless they are physically implemented, their very existence since at least 1750 BC shows how societies have historically sought to govern themselves. When Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social network last month; “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” he directly challenged the relevance of laws. The man who twice swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution placed his saving the country above the law. Trump’s attacks on the judiciary and its role in government checks and balances are more than a constitutional crisis; there is now a societal crisis between liberalism and fascism.

    Having consensual rules and implementing them are fundamental to stable societies. The Dominican Republic, for example, has had 32 constitutions since its independence in 1844. The United States, on the other hand, has had one constitution since 1789; it is the oldest written national constitution in force in the world and has been amended only 27 times. The U.S. Constitution is the constitutional gold standard; it has had international influence. The 1848 Swiss Constitution, for example, is in many ways a cut and paste of the U.S. one, something my Swiss friends don’t like to admit.

    The implementation of the written law or commonly agreed upon laws such as in the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom separates liberal societies from fascist states. Fascism revolves around an authoritarian leader who believes he is the incarnation of the nation; someone who acts individually as if he had no obligations to obey society’s laws.

    In a very short period of time, President Trump has shown that he has no intention to respect the rule of law and uphold the oath of office he took on January 20, 2025. An example: A federal judge ruled that the government should not deport Venezuelan men to El Salvador without due process. The deportation went ahead anyway. “If anyone is being detained or removed from based on the administration’s assertion that they can do so without judicial review or due process, the president is asserting dictatorial power and ‘constitutional crisis’ doesn’t capture the gravity of the situation,” a Columbia University law professor was quoted in The New York Times.

    Trump then called for the impeachment of the judge who made the ruling. “If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

    Supreme Court Chief Judge John Roberts, in an unusual public statement indirectly rebuking Trump’s threat, said that “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” the Republican appointed Justice declared. “The normal review process exists for that purpose.”

    Where will the confrontation between Trump and the judiciary lead? The federal judge, James Boasberg, moved to hold the government in contempt for not following his order. “The government again evaded its obligations,” he wrote. Not following judge’s decisions is a Trump Administration pattern. In refusing to provide Judge Boasberg with details of the mass deportation, the Department of Justice argued that “This is a case about the President’s plenary authority, derived from Article II and the mandate of the electorate,” and that “’[J]udicial deference and restraint’ are required to avoid undue interference with the Executive Branch.”

    Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also threatened the courts. “We do have authority over the federal courts,” he said at a press conference. We can eliminate an entire district court,” he boasted.

    “The problem with this administration is not just acute episodes like what is happening with Judge Boasberg and the Venezuelan deportations,” another law professor was quoted in The Times’ article. “It’s a chronic disrespect for constitutional norms and for the other branches of government.”

    Trump and Musk are moving to consolidate presidential power at the expense of the Constitution’s separation of powers. In addition to the deportation ruling, CNN reported; “[A] judge in Rhode Island hearing a dispute over a government-wide freeze…added a cautionary footnote: ‘This is what it all comes down to: we may choose to survive as a country by respecting our Constitution, the laws and norms of political and civil behavior…Or, we may ignore these things at our own peril.’ A judge in Seattle declared in a separate case; ‘It has become ever-more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals.’”

    As far as the case involving the United States Institute of Peace (USIP); DOGE and Washington D.C. police forcibly entered its building, evicting the USIP president George Moose and others. “I’m very offended by how DOGE has operated at the Institute and treated American citizens trying to do a job that they were statutorily tasked to do at the Institute,” District Judge Beryl Howell said. “I mean, this conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigation, using armed law enforcement from three different agencies … to carry out the executive order… with all that targeting probably terrorizing employees and staff at the institute when there are so many other lawful ways to accomplish the goals [of the executive order] …Why?” Howell asked. “Why those ways here — just because DOGE is in a rush?”

    (For more information on the USIP case, you can listen to Rachel Maddow at https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP82XFM5w/)

    Whatever protests are organized against the MAGA president, whatever MAGA failures occur because of the price of eggs, inflation/recession or the downslide on Wall Street, the legal battles taking place warrant close attention. According to Bloomberg News, “[I]n the first four weeks of the new administration, at least 74 lawsuits were filed, and of those, 58 were brought in federal district courts in Washington, Boston, Seattle and suburban Maryland.”

    Cases will soon reach the Supreme Court. Judges Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts seem prepared to break with the conservative majority to join the three liberal judges. If that happens, there will be more than a just a constitutional crisis. The confrontation between Trump and the courts will be a tipping point between liberalism and fascism.

    As Harvard Law Professor and constitutional expert Laurence Tribe eloquently stated in The Guardian; “The president, abetted by the supine acquiescence of the Republican Congress and licensed by a US supreme court partly of his own making, is not just temporarily deconstructing the institutions that comprise our democracy. He and his circle are making a bid to reshape the US altogether by systematically erasing and distorting the historical underpinnings of our 235-year-old experiment in self-government under law.”

    The post Respect for the Law is the Strongest Weapon Against Fascism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Daniel Warner.

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  • New Delhi, March 27, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the arrest of journalist Dilwar Hussain Mozumdar for reporting on a protest over alleged financial misconduct at a bank run by northeastern India’s Assam state government.

    On March 25, Mozumdar, a reporter with the local digital outlet The CrossCurrent, covered a protest outside Assam Co-operative Apex Bank, after which he was summoned to Panbazar police station in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city, and arrested.

    “The arrest of Dilwar Hussain Mozumdar is a blatant attempt to intimidate and silence independent journalism,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “Authorities must immediately release Mozumdar, drop any pending charges against him, and cease using legal harassment to muzzle journalists reporting on issues of public interest.”

    The CrossCurrents has been consistently reporting on financial issues at the bank, where Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is a director.  

    A Press Club of India statement and a Facebook post by Mozumdar said that the journalist questioned the bank’s managing director, Dambara Saikia, and then received a call from the police as soon as he left the bank, telling him to report to the station.

    Authorities have filed two cases against Mozumdar. In the first, a security guard at the bank accused him of making offensive and derogatory remarks, in violation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, The CrossCurrent’s editor Arup Kalita told CPJ. 

    In the second, Saikia alleged that Mozumdar unlawfully entered the bank’s office, attempted to steal documents, disrupted operations, and threatened employees, Kalita added. 

    Mozumdar was granted bail in the first case and was scheduled for release on Thursday. However, he was rearrested by the police in connection with the second case, Kalita said. Mozumdar plans to apply for bail in the second case on Friday.

    At a news conference on Thursday, Chief Minister Sarma denied that press freedom had been violated, defended Mozumdar’s arrest, and said that those working for independent online portals were not real journalists as they lacked state accreditation. 

    CPJ’s emails to Assam police and the Assam Co-operative Apex Bank requesting comment did not receive any responses.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • New York, March 27, 2025 — Following the White House’s decision to ban Associated Press (AP) reporters from covering White House media events, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has joined the amicus brief filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) outlining how the Trump administration’s decision violates the First Amendment.

    In an alarming retaliation against the free press in the United States, on February 12, 2025, the Trump administration barred AP from covering White House events and accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One after its decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico by its internationally known name. 

    RCFP filed the amicus brief on February 24, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asserting that the exclusion of the AP from accessing White House events on the basis of its editorial viewpoint violates the First Amendment. CPJ and News/Media Alliance joined as co-amici on March 24, 2025.

    “The Trump administration’s arbitrary ban of AP’s access to media events stifles freedom of speech and violates the First Amendment at a time when independent journalism is most needed,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “AP’s essential reporting ensures news outlets around the world can keep their audiences informed. The Trump administration must adhere to its stated commitment to freedom of expression and refrain from retaliating against news organizations for their independent editorial decisions.”

    National and international newspapers, radio stations, and television broadcasters rely heavily on the AP’s reporting to deliver the news to an audience of four billion viewers each day. The White House’s decision effectively blocks media outlets’ from delivering the news to this audience.

    This decision is part of a concerning pattern of retaliation against the media in the first weeks of President Trump’s administration. 

    ###

    About the Committee to Protect Journalists

    The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide. We defend the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ten years ago, 21 young people filed a long shot lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that it wasn’t doing enough to protect them from climate change. Their campaign came to an end this week without a court victory, but having made a different kind of impact: They brought an innovative legal approach to the climate fight that has inspired similar cases, at least two of which have been successful.

    The case, Juliana v. United States, has “forever changed the legal paradigm,” said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, which represented the youth. It “ignited the global youth climate movement,” she said, “and forced a reexamination of children’s rights in the context of climate change.”

    The plaintiffs argued that, by supporting the production and burning of fossil fuels, the federal government violated their constitutional right to “life, liberty, personal security, dignity, bodily integrity, and their cultural and religious practices.” The case endured fierce pushback from the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered its dismissal twice — once in 2020 and again in May 2024.

    On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to reinstate the complaint, ruling that the youth had not shown that they have standing to sue the government. That dashed the last remaining hope that the suit could move forward.

    Although Juliana wasn’t the first youth-led climate lawsuit — six were filed worldwide between 2011 and 2015 — it precipitated a rapid increase in such cases. By one count from the nonprofit ClimaTalk, young people filed 18 cases between 2016 and 2020 and at least another half dozen since then. Like Juliana, many argued that governments have an obligation to address climate change to defend individual freedoms, such as the right to life or to a healthy environment. 

    Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said Juliana made clear that U.S. “federal courts are not going to embrace a constitutional right to a stable climate system” — a point Judge Andrew Hurwitz of the Ninth Circuit made when he noted in a 2020 opinion that “the plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government.” For that reason, Gerrard said, such cases may fare better in states that have written environmental rights into their constitutions.

    Those states include Montana and Hawaiʻi, where Our Children’s Trust has won landmark victories. The first came in Montana when a judge ruled that the 16 youth who sued the state over its support of the fossil fuel industry have a constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” The state Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in December when it ruled that the state must consider climate impacts when reviewing fossil fuel projects.

    Last June, Our Children’s Trust reached a historic settlement with the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation that requires it to decarbonize transportation by 2045. The unprecedented agreement also mandates that the agency work to mitigate climate change, align its investments and clean energy goals, and plant at least 1,000 trees annually. Mesina D., one of the 13 plaintiffs in the case, attributed that victory to “the blueprint laid by the Juliana youth plaintiffs.”

    “Thanks to these 21 Americans, young people everywhere now know they can raise their voices and demand the protection of their constitutional rights to life and liberty,” she said in a statement.

    A young man wearing a suit sits at a table with a name tag reading "Mr. Piper" in front of him
    Aji Piper, one of the plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States, speaks at a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in 2019. Mark Wilson / Getty Images

    Many of them are doing just that. Olson said she’s helping Our Children’s Trust litigate or develop eight more state-level climate cases. She’s also working with the Juliana plaintiffs to decide whether to bring their case before an international venue like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which could issue a nonbinding, but nevertheless symbolic, decision. That would mirror a strategy 16 children attempted in 2019 when they brought a climate change petition against five countries under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. (The U.N. told them in 2021 to begin by suing their native countries and return if they lost.)

    That’s not to say anyone’s given up on federal action. Because the Ninth Circuit dismissed the case without prejudice, the plaintiffs are free to try again. “These claims are not closed by any means,” Olson said. Our Children’s Trust is already working on a federal case that she hopes to launch soon.

    James May, an emeritus law professor and founder of the Global Environmental Rights Institute at Widener University Delaware Law School, agreed that another lawsuit is worth a shot so that constitutional rights claims can be heard on their merits.

    He also believes the Juliana case was a “huge missed opportunity” for the Biden administration, which talked a lot about the need to address climate change but whose Justice Department repeatedly asked judges to dismiss the case. The administration “didn’t have to agree that there was a constitutional right that had been violated,” May said, but it could have settled the case by agreeing to take concrete steps to address greenhouse gas emissions.

    “The Obama, Trump, Biden, and [second] Trump administrations fought this case harder than any case in American history,” May said. “It sounds so dramatic, but it’s true. Never before has the federal government sought interlocutory relief to the extent it did in this case.”

    In a statement, the Department of Justice welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision as the end of what it called a “long saga” that “has tied up the United States in litigation.” Adam Gustafson, the acting assistant attorney general of the department’s environment and natural resources division, also said in the statement that “the Justice Department is enforcing our nation’s environmental laws and safeguarding America’s air, water, and natural resources. Cases like Juliana distract from those enforcement efforts.”

    Despite the setback, the work of those 21 youth and the pioneering case they brought radically reshaped the climate fight by engaging young people and more broadly mobilizing the environmental movement. Since 2015, more than 80 members of Congress, including senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders, have endorsed legislation affirming the climate- and environment-related rights of children and filed amicus briefs in Juliana. More than 400 organizations supported the lawsuit, and 350,000 people signed petitions calling for courts to hear it. The case is being taught in law schools, and it has inspired books and the Netflix documentary Youth v. Gov.

    “Hats off to the litigants,” May said. “They literally changed the world.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world’s biggest youth climate lawsuit lost in court, but it ‘changed the world’ on Mar 27, 2025.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Joseph Winters.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Some ruminations on that Signal chat.

    The news outlets seem to be focused particularly on the incompetence indicated by the leaked Signal chat involving Trump’s top advisors having an emoji-filled discussion about how and when they were going to bomb Yemen.  The story is that having such a top-secret chat on a messaging app and accidentally inviting the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine to join all indicates scary levels of incompetence among the leadership of the world’s preeminent military power.  And this is obviously true.

    But there are other stories that this incident speaks to, that aren’t being as widely analyzed in the news.  Which is the fact that these top advisors seem to have fully immersed themselves in a form of self-deception, and it is not an act.  They are, apparently, not playing the part of being deluded nationalists, they are actually fully delusional.  They didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid, they seem to have been raised on it, and now they’re swimming in it.

    Hearing about how they discuss the geopolitics they’re apparently responding to, they seem to actually believe that NATO is a defensive organization, that the US is somehow protecting Europe, that the US has been taken advantage of by Europe, and that the US has regularly been engaged in a form of self-sacrifice through the practice of being the world’s policeman, which seems to involve the thankless task of protecting shipping lanes for the benefit of Europeans.

    It’s just one example of the type of conversation that presumably must take place often, that the public isn’t privy to.  But just being privy to this one conversation seems to very much bolster the observation many of us made a long time ago, that this new crop of far right leaders in the US seems different from many of those from previous generations, in that they appear not to be using propaganda as a tool to get the public to support their duplicitous policies, but they believe the propaganda themselves.

    We in the US live in a society governed by money, which is obvious to any reasonable observer of how things work in the US.  But at the same time, we can all hear politicians from both parties regularly rejecting such basic observations out of hand, claiming they govern on behalf of the public, rather than the corporate elite, even though they accept massive amounts of corporate donations and then proceed to do things like cut taxes on the rich and eliminate regulations and oversight bodies that get in the way of corporate profits.

    We’ve never had much democracy in the alleged fatherland of modern democracy.  It’s always been rule by the rich.  We’ve never had much free speech in the home of the First Amendment.  It’s always looked good on paper, but not been effectively enforced in practice, when the speech involved is critical of the establishment.

    The propaganda has always been patently false.  But increasingly, it seems, it is internalized and believed as factual by the heirs to the creators of the propaganda machine.  This Signal chat is evidence of a degree of self-deception, of a sort of blowback of the propaganda machine, that seems somehow even more alarming than if these advisors were lying and knew they were lying.  If they believe their own propaganda, what else will they believe next?

    The propaganda that these advisors are all steeped in is largely rooted in the propaganda of the so-called Cold War.  Much of it is also rooted in pre-Cold War propaganda, but the bulk of it comes out of what we now know of as the Cold War era, so it seems like a useful exercise to review the basic precepts of the American propaganda version of Cold War reality, and contrast it with the actual motivations for US policies, for which the Cold War was mostly a wild story invented to justify policies that were otherwise extremely difficult to justify.

    According to the propaganda version of reality, the US has long been beneficently looking after the welfare and security of its allies in places like Europe, spending lots of money to fulfill the role of being the world’s policeman, for the benefit of the world.  The reality has been much more about serving US imperial and corporate interests, and compelling Europe to participate in this project.  The new rulers say they’re done being helpful, and now just want to serve US national interests, by which they mean the interests of the US corporate elite.  What they truly seem to be confused about is how the institutions they’re actively dismantling used to serve those interests in a somewhat less direct way, too.

    Let’s go over some of the major developments over the past century or so that might help inform our understanding of what might be going on here in the minds of Trump’s advisors, in terms of the reality vs. the propaganda version of it.

    Starting with World War 1.  The propaganda version is the US got involved in order to save European countries from other European countries, since eventually the Wilson administration decided they liked one side of the war better than the other.

    In reality, the US got involved with the war — quite late — in order to be in a better position to be one of the Great Powers dividing up the spoils of war afterwards.

    The labor movement in the US (and many other countries) was very big and very militant at the time of World War 1.  Repression against union members seeking to speak freely on the sidewalks, let alone organize a strike, was intense, because the labor movement was a threat to the profits of the owners of industry, which the government represented.

    The propaganda version of reality promoted heavily at the time was the problems in society weren’t about workers being unemployed, hungry, working in dangerous conditions, not paid a living wage, etc., but about too much immigration, immigrants being mostly communists and anarchists, or what at the time they identified as “German agents,” or by later in 1917, “Bolsheviks,” or supporters of the Russian Revolution who wanted to create chaos and smash our great democracy, too.

    With World War 2, Americans were willing to sacrifice themselves in tremendous numbers because they were told they were in a war against fascism, defending free peoples from this evil, out of concern for the welfare of humanity — and European humanity in particular.

    In reality, US victory in World War 2 set the stage for a vast expansion of the network of US colonies and neocolonies around the world, which were generally organized for the purposes of wealth and resource extraction that would benefit the rich and immiserate most others.

    With the post-war formation of NATO and beginning of what they called the Cold War, the American propagandists created an atmosphere of fear of their former ally in the fight against Germany, the Soviet Union, pushing the same old 1917-era line about Soviet intentions to attack western Europe, the US, and the rest of the world.  NATO, it was claimed, would be a defensive organization, mainly about defending Europe from the Soviet Union.

    In reality, NATO was created to encircle and “contain” (to use their popular euphemism) the Soviet Union.  Rather than being a defensive organization, it has proven itself to be a way to exert control through very offensive initiatives, from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan to Libya.  It has also demonstrated itself to be very oriented towards expansion, inviting many former Soviet states to join.

    With the rise around the world of Soviet and Cuban soft power in the form of medical missions all over the world, food aid, advisors helping countries develop in various ways, etc., the US formed agencies to engage in the same sorts of efforts, to counter Soviet and Cuban influence, such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy.

    Aside from providing things like food and medicine to some people who benefit from that, at least on the face of it, what has really driven policy for groups like USAID and NED has been the effort to undermine the governments they don’t like, and promote largely false narratives about how things are in the west.  These groups provide so much funding for things like independent journalism in eastern European countries, for example, that they effectively give the impression that in the US, there’s lots of state funding for independent journalism, which of course there is not.

    These groups were not set up in order to feed the hungry and clothe the naked out of the goodness of the hearts of the American political elite that set them up.  They were set up in order to exercise American soft power, for the purposes of promoting US interests, by spreading disinformation, in various forms, about how things really were.

    Copious evidence suggests that US support for Israel has never been about concern within the US leadership about the plight of Jewish people.  The desire for some Jewish people to pursue the Zionist project of stealing the land from the Palestinian people for Jews to occupy was convenient for US imperialists, it was thought, and thus, like other settler-colonial projects, it was supported as a venture that would at least potentially be very profitable in many ways, at least for the ruling few.

    Similarly, US support for Ukraine has never been about supporting the Ukrainian people, but about undermining Russia.  It would be a grave error to assume that there’s any motivation to help Jews or to help Ukrainians involved with US support for Israel or Ukraine.  This is the propaganda.  The reality is about serving US interests, whether that’s about keeping the Suez Canal open for American ships, or keeping Russia out of the mainstream of global commerce in order to make massive profits on the scarce supply of commodities induced by the sanctions.

    Throughout the Cold War period, every war the US got involved with was a war against communism, to contain the expansionist communist menace, and to promote democracy, freedom, and human rights.  Post-Soviet Union, every war the US has gotten involved with has been a war against the irrational, predatory ideology of “terrorism,” and in support of democracy, freedom, and human rights.

    In reality, the millions of civilians killed in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere have all been killed by an invader that treated the entire populations of these countries as their enemy — not at all the sort of war-fighting methods that had a chance of winning the hearts and minds of the populations being bombed — because the point was not to help these countries develop, but to suppress opposition to US hegemony, and make the world safer for unquestioned US corporate domination.  In none of these cases was the US motivated by actually believing they were fighting “communism” or “terrorism” — the leadership knew this was propaganda meant for mass consumption, to justify unjustifiable cruelty and mass murder, in the minds of the domestic population.  There was nothing beneficent about these imperial adventures.  They were all intended to bolster US control over a global order that was set up to benefit the US and other, lesser members of the imperialist club.

    In the minds of Trump’s advisors, however, it seems clear that they believe all of these wars really may have been about protecting the world from communism and terrorism, and now they resent all of this work the US has allegedly done to protect the world from these evils, and now Europe needs to step up and involve themselves more fully in this epic struggle.  It’s all just a fantasy based on a fantasy, but for them, it happened — it seems like they saw it on the History Channel, so it must be true.

    It is the nature of propaganda to be convincing.  Countries around the world that consolidated their national identities and institutions by the middle of the 19th century and developed distinct national narratives and national media have mostly been very successful in instilling in their populations a sense of national identity and purpose that even might be worth fighting and dying for.  For most of this period, though, there has generally been the sense — partially real, partially not, probably — that the leadership is aware that the propaganda is fake, and is meant for public consumption, in order to pacify and control the public.

    That reality is bad enough.  But now we seem to be in a new one, one where reality itself has been entirely thrown out the window, in favor of a fantasy based on Cold War propaganda that has been fully absorbed as truth by a stunningly unqualified collection of incompetent advisors, who are actively making policy based on their completely confused understanding of where we are and how we got here.

    The post The Stories We Believe appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Rovics.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The first phone call between Putin and Trump was described as ‘frank’. Putin did it his way, as Frank Sinatra might have said. Say what we like, the Russian leader rejected the proposal for an immediate ceasefire. At the same time, London GPs were sending out text messages asking if people had served in HM Forces, which of course some misconstrued as the preliminaries of a call-up. The UK was meanwhile continuing to support Ukraine despite Putin saying a ceasefire would never work if foreign military aid and intelligence was still being shared. Nor did it help that the mass shutdown of Heathrow Airport after a fire at a nearby electricity substation aroused additional suspicion, conforming as it did to the hybrid form of war so favoured by Russia in Europe. Despite Counter Terrorism Command on the case, a mistake by an electrical engineer wax suggested.

    ‘One Trident sub could ‘incinerate 40 Russian cities’: Why Putin should fear Britain’s nuclear arsenal,’ read another London headline. This was just as US, UK and Turkish defence companies were informed they would be excluded from the new figure of €150 billion ($163 billion) in EU defence funding, unless of course they signed defence and security pacts with Brussels. More remarkable perhaps was Trump welcoming the idea of the US—as a former British colony—re-joining the Commonwealth. ‘I Love King Charles,’ he posted on Truth Social: ‘Sounds good to me!’ An affinity unmatched, it should be said, by the number of British subjects reportedly refused entry into the US despite valid visas.

    ‘So it was these two great leaders coming together for the betterment of mankind,’ rhapsodised US envoy Steve Witkoff about the Trump-Putin confab, ‘and it was honestly a privilege and an honour for me to sit there and listen to that conversation.’ Despite the Times of London reminding readers that Putin had flattered and deceived 5 US presidents, Trump spoke of improved relations, with the two agreeing that negotiations on the 30-day truce should begin ‘immediately’—which our very own wily Sam Kiley of the Independent called ‘an entirely Putin-constructed process.’ Witkoff then confirmed it was Putin who had ordered the Russian military to halt attacks on energy plants in Ukraine, though the actual timing of the Russian hit of the Ukrainian energy infrastructure of Slovyansk in the Donetsk would be disputed by Witkoff. This was before the Special Envoy’s snub of Keir Starmer’s peace efforts in a Tucker Carlson (anti-Zelenskyy, pro-Putin) interview. ‘So bold are Putin’s ceasefire demands,’ came the next London headline, ‘it’s hard to believe he is entirely serious.’

    It was considered no surprise therefore that the Russian leader delayed the call with Trump by more than 50 minutes. Had it been Zelenskyy, we have to assume smoke would have billowed from US ears. Then news reached London of the NHL (National Hockey League) saying it would be ‘inappropriate’ to comment on Russia and the US hosting hockey matches together. At least the more punctual Trump and Zelenskyy chat was termed ‘a very good telephone call,’ much of it ‘in order to align both Russia and Ukraine in terms of their requests and needs.’ Trump even offered to help return the missing 35,000 children from occupied areas of Ukraine, though it remained unclear how he would navigate his own recent funding cut to Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab which was responsible for the database on the mass abductions.

    ‘Obviously this is the world descending into worse and worse standards of targeting civilians,’ said the late UK politician Clare Short about Iraq and Gaza. So much for the presently broken ceasefire in Gaza. A tragedy of such epic proportions, it deserves far more than my feeble mention. (‘Life is the farce we all must play,’ wrote Arthur Rimbaud.) There have been so many instances of Israeli–Palestinian ceasefires that even the most persevering of Egyptian, UN or Qatari mediators must want to walk. Recent temporary truces in 2008, 2014, 2021, 2023 were all shattered. Just like the one last week shortly after UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy stated that Israel was breaking international humanitarian law—before being shut down by his own party. Gazan ceasefires are so fragile that Palestinians must know in their hearts they will be followed by renewed tensions or violence.

    I’ve mentioned in the past WWI Christmas ceasefires returning to slaughter. While the Korean War Armistice of 1953 between North Korea, China, and the UN Command (mainly South Korea and the US) compares favourably to what we might see one day in Ukraine, the Korean War is still just a ceasefire. As for the 1973 Paris Peace Accords which began as a ceasefire, these did end US military involvement but fighting resumed soon afterwards between North and South Vietnam. There was the 1991 Gulf War in which Coalition forces declared a ceasefire after driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. It ended combat operations but tensions remained and eventually led to the 2003 Iraq War. At least in Northern Ireland there was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement between the British and Irish governments, and most Northern Irish political parties, resulting in a political ceasefire that ended decades of sectarian violence. Since 2016 we’ve seen several localised and temporary Syrian Civil War ceasefires brokered by the UN, Russia, and Turkey. The Nagorno-Karabakh ones of 1994, 2020, and 2023 have just been followed by the Swiss Federal Assembly’s National Council and Council of States adopting a resolution titled ‘Peace Forum for Nagorno-Karabakh: The Possibility of Armenian Return.’ In short, ceasefires are everywhere and don’t always last.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine launched a massive drone attack near a Russian strategic bomber base. A vast and portentous apocalyptic cloud was filmed rising immediately afterwards into the sky above Engels, home to Russian Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear capable heavy strategic bombers. This type of thing would have been at least one good reason why those follow-up discussions in Riyadh—for what were the first parallel negotiations since 2022—included Sergei Beseda, former head of the FSB spy agency’s fifth directorate.

    As Russia launched another drone attack on Kyiv this time killing seven people including a five-year-old child, some flights at Heathrow Airport resumed but still with one or two Brits convinced it was sabotage, ignoring the fact cock-ups usually trump conspiracies. It was of course the same week that the death of former KGB colonel turned UK secret agent Oleg Gordievsky was announced, a Russian who influenced far more Cold War policies than Putin before and after he was betrayed by KGB spy Aldrich Ames of the CIA. One of Gordievsky’s MI6 Moscow handlers carried a green Harrods bag and ate a Mars bar in order to confirm Gordievsky’s imminent getaway to him to a UK safe house. Let’s just hope there are no more such shenanigans and nothing but a constructive openness before a nice, long and lasting Easter ceasefire.

    The post Letter from London: Hands Free in the Valley of Death appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Peter Bach.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.