This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Since 1565, the Philippines has been in the grip of one imperialist power after another. Even after independence, the archipelago remains a kind of functional US colony. Now, territorial conflict in the South China Sea could turn the Philippines into a battleground for US-China war. Josua Mata joins Solidarity Without Exception to discuss the Philippines long history of colonization and resistance.
Production: Ashley Smith
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Ashley Smith:
Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception. I’m Ashley Smith, who along with Blanca Misse, are co-hosts of this ongoing podcast series. Solidarity Without Exception is sponsored by the Ukraine Solidarity Network and produced by The Real News Network. Today, we’re joined by Josua Mata to discuss the Philippines, a country caught in the crossfire between the US and China over hegemony in the Asia Pacific.
Josua Mata is the General Secretary of the Filipino Labor Federation, SENTRO, which organizes workers across many sectors in the country. The Philippines has long been a battleground between empires fighting for dominance over the Asia Pacific. The US replaced Spain as the country’s colonial overlord in 1898 through President William McKinley’s Spanish-American War. The US used that war to seize control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, projecting its imperial power over the Americas and Asia. Japan drove out the US during World War II, imposing its own brutal dominance over the country, only to be replaced after its defeat by the United States.
Ever since, Washington has used the Philippines as a base to project its hegemony in Asia. Today, the country is caught between the intensifying conflict between the US and China in the region. The Philippines elite has historically been a willing collaborator with the US. Washington backed the country’s dynastic families, including the notorious dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, until it was overthrown in the People’s Power Revolution in 1986. Because the uprising did not have a party of its own to lead a thoroughgoing transformation of society, the liberal elite were able to hijack the revolution.
While they did reestablish democracy and kick out the US military bases, they enacted Washington’s neoliberal reforms that have driven the country into debt and devastated the living standards of the working class and peasantry. They also collaborated with the US in challenging China’s construction of military bases in the South China Sea. China established those bases to project its regional power, control shipping lanes, and secure access to fisheries and drilling rights to the undersea oil and natural gas reserves.
The Philippines challenged Beijing’s encroachment into what it regarded as its sovereign territory, winning a case under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in The Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration. China has not recognized or obeyed that decision, stoking what has become a semi-militarized conflict between China and the Philippines. But amid spiraling poverty, the masses of the country grew disappointed with the liberal elite, opening the door to the return of authoritarian forces.
Far-right populist Rodrigo Duterte won election in 2016. He launched his so-called War on drugs that massacred tens of thousands of people, escalated the government’s brutal repression of the Muslim separatist groups in Mindanao, and tilted the Philippines toward China in the hopes of securing investment as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative. After the end of his term in office, Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte, ran as the vice president on the presidential ticket of Marcos son, Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr.
Their joint dynastic ticket one handily, but the pact between the families has fallen apart. Marcos has back to the US and permitted the International Criminal Court to arrest Rodrigo Duterte and place him on trial in The Hague for the mass killing he carried out in his so-called war on drugs. Now, Sara Duterte is mobilizing protests against Marcos, thrusting the country towards political conflict between dynastic elites.
Amidst this conflict, the Marcos government is whipping up nationalism against China’s ongoing encroachment on its seas. The Trump administration is pouring fuel on the fire. It dispatched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia to escalate the US confrontation with China. He promised to back the Philippines, Taiwan, and other countries in the region against Beijing. Thus, the Philippines has become yet another flashpoint between the US and China in their ongoing rivalry.
In this podcast, Josua Mata lays out an alternative approach for working people. He advocates progressive internationalism. He calls for the demilitarization of the region, international solidarity from below against both imperial powers as well as the region’s elite, and the transformation of the contested seas into a commons to be shared by the region, and developed in the interests of the people and our planet. Now on to the discussion with Josua Mata.
The Philippines has been a battleground of empires, various imperial powers, really for centuries. And I really couldn’t help but think about that when President Trump and his inaugural address referred to President McKinley and the Spanish American War, which the US used to take over the Philippines and impose a brutal occupation and semi or direct colonial rule of the country for decades. So what is the history of the Philippines’ experience of colonization by different imperialist powers and how have Filipinos resisted?
Josua Mata:
Well, we normally would start the history of the Philippine labor movement by tracing it all the way to the time that we were struggling against pain. In fact, the working-class hero, Andres Bonifacio, is considered as a working-class hero, primarily because he was the one who founded the revolutionary organization that fought Spain after 300 years of colonial rule.
And to be honest, that revolution have already won almost all the territories in the country except for Manila, particularly the fort, the world city of Manila, and some small parts in the provinces. But primarily, the Katipunan, which was what it was called them, was already able to liberate most of the areas from Spanish colonial rule. However, that was also the time when the American colonial project started, and it started with the coming of Commodore George Dewey and where they staged our mock naval battle in Manila Bay.
And then they took over Fort Santiago, pretending to have a firefight with the Spaniards, just to give them the semblance that they are really fighting for their dignity, when if fact it’s really a mock bottle. And then they started fooling the Filipino forces then by telling them that this is something that they came to the Philippines to help the revolution. Of course, the Philippine Republic was already declared as an independent country then. But then, as soon as George Dewey was able to amass enough resources coming from, enough reinforcements, I mean, coming from the US, then they started to have this really brutal fight with the Filipino revolutionaries.
Eventually, of course, we were overtaken by more superior technology and much more better trained American soldiers who were fresh from their experiences in practically decimating the Native American Indians in North America. So, a lot of the things that they did here in the Philippines were actually efforts to perfect what they have learned in killing the Native American Indians. And in turn, what they learned from the Philippines are exactly the same things that they brought with them to Vietnam.
So, to answer your question quite clearly, how was the Filipino experience when it came to American imperial control? Well, the simplest answer is that we were the first Vietnam. So Japan came in, and then the Americans, of course came back with MacArthur’s promise of, “I shall return.” And he did return, but unfortunately when he did, he was more interested in making sure that the elites that he had befriended when he was still the security advisor of Manuel L. Quezon, that was the first president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, he was more interested in making sure that the elites are able to regain their power, their prestige, and even their economic wealth, to the point that he was so eager to pardon everyone who practically collaborated with the Japanese.
And that is so unlike the practice that he demonstrated. That’s so unlike what he did when he was the proconsul of Japan, where he literally punished everyone who had ties with the military’s Japanese empire, except of course, the Japanese leaders who have very strong ties with those who amass so much wealth plundering every country in this part of the world. So, the so-called Yamashita gold, this actually historical reality, and it is suspected that MacArthur readily pardoned many of the Japanese war criminals in exchange for some share of that looted gold. So, those are two very different approaches.
So for example, as soon as they returned to the Philippines, one of the first things that the US government did was to help the elite to destroy the armed Huk Rebellion, which is essentially an armed group controlled by the old Communist Party, who were fighting with the peasants who wanted, of course, to have a control over the land that they have been historically cultivating. That’s so contrary to what MacArthur did in Japan, where one of the first thing he imposed was punishing, undergoing agrarian reform in order to dismantle, partly, also to dismantle the Zaibatsus that armed the imperial government of Japan. It’s a contrasting way of dealing with a colonial country, and obviously it has to do with the loyalties of MacArthur to the elites in the Philippines.
Ashley Smith:
So, in the wake of World War II, the Philippines eventually achieves a kind of nominal independence, but with serious control by the United States through military bases, through economic domination.
Josua Mata:
That’s right. And that’s one of the biggest problems, the so-called parity rights that Americans imposed on the Philippines, wherein American capitalists would have the same rights as Filipinos in running their business in the country, or even in exploiting our natural resources. And that was one of the nastiest things that made sure that even if we have nominal independence, the country practically continues to serve as a colony, a new colony of the US, if you like.
Ashley Smith:
So, now we’re in a situation where the United States is still the predominant power in Asia, but it faces a rival for its dominance in the form of China. And the Philippines is caught in the middle of this conflict between the US and China. And China in particular has been trying to assert its control of the South China Sea, and with that, islands fisheries, undersea natural resources, oil, natural gas, and shipping lanes. And the Philippines has been caught in between the US and China. So, what is the character of this conflict between the United States and China, and what impact has it had on the Philippines?
Josua Mata:
Well, clearly this is a fight between two imperial powers, and the Philippines is being caught between them, and that’s not a good place to be. On the one hand, the US, because of its historical ties to the country, and because it has an existing mutual defense treaty with the Philippines, it is dangling this promise that they would come to the aid of the Philippines if it is attacked militarily by a foreign aggressor, in this case, for example, China.
But interestingly, actually, for many presidents in the past, it was so difficult for them to be very categorical about coming to the aid of the Philippines, to the point that you’re not really sure whether the US would actually support the Philippines or not. And with Trump around, many are obviously now having a problem because nobody knows if Trump would actually lift a finger to help Filipinos. And why would he, when he’s so preoccupied with ejecting everyone who is not a white American in his own country? Why would he then spend time, energy and resources and American lives to save Filipinos? So that’s a big question mark.
Now, that is putting the current government in a quandary because it casted its lot with American power, and it started having a much more robust, if you like, stance to US intervention and intrusion, if you like, in our part of the world. Now, that’s problematic for them because now they have been supported by the previous government of the US, the Biden administration, to stand fast, fight back. Now they’re not so sure whether the Americans would really come to their support. And I think that clearly is the problem, because in the first place, why did they decide to side with the US in this conflict and eventually be used as a pawn of one imperial power as against another rising imperial power?
Now, having said that, China on the other hand, is obviously keen on making sure that it can exercise its own manifest destiny in this part of the world. They have been very, very clear, if the US run the Americas throughout history as if it’s its own backyard, they should have the, “Same right to do that,” quote, unquote. Which then puts Filipinos, particularly the fishermen who have traditionally been going out to those parts of the South China Sea, which we now call the West Philippine Sea, in order to do their livelihood. And prior to this conflict, it has been said that Filipinos, Taiwanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, even Indonesians were all free to gather resources peacefully and in coexistence when there was no conflict. But then, now that’s not possible because China was asserting its nine-dash lines, which is now back to 10-dash lines in a very, very aggressive manner.
But in the meantime, rather than call for sobriety and call for making sure that there’s no potential for any flashpoint that could lead to war, unfortunately my country, the government, my government opted to bring in and invite more military arrangements, not only with the US, but also with several other countries like Japan, Australia. Now they’re forging now another agreement with New Zealand. They’re trying to forge an agreement with Germany as well as in India. And what would that mean? It means that this would only lead to more militarization of that part of the world. And with more naval forces loitering in that area, then you have an ever-increasing possibility of having a flashpoint that could lead eventually to war. So, this is a very, very dangerous moment for all of us.
Ashley Smith:
One thing I wanted to get you to talk a little bit more about was the Philippine elite and how it has vacillated the Duterte government, which was the predecessor to the current Marcos Jr. government, tilted seemingly towards China, and then Marcos has swung back to the United States pretty decisively. And what explains this vacillation, and also how is it related to the kind of increasing authoritarian nature of the Filipino government itself and its rule over the country?
Josua Mata:
Well, first of all, to be clear, while we have always called the country a democratic country, we have very, very little experience in actual democracy in this country. Ever since we gained our, “Independence,” quote, unquote, from the American empire, our nominal freedom, if you like, we’ve always been ruled by the elites who are much more subservient to the US empire than to anyone else. And the US empire has always been happy to keep them happy, our elites happy, as long as they allow the US bases to continue untouched in this part of the world, for a longest time. That changed somehow when we finally managed to kick out the US bases, but then the economic ties are still so strong.
So let me put it out first. We don’t have much experience in democracy in this country. That’s the first point. The second point I want to say is that our economy has always been designed to serve the needs of capital, particularly, specifically US capital. And most of our elites have almost always directed their economic transactions to be part of the US global capitalist system. However, with the rise of China, it gave an opportunity for some parts of the elites in the country to have their own entry to global trade. But that’s a very small part of the elite, but that was given much more space when Duterte came to power. But let’s not forget that Duterte came to power primarily because he was supported by China, not just financially, but also politically.
And the reason is, and this is where it gets weird, the reason is because Duterte is the kind of leader that actually fits perfectly well with the kind of politics that we have in this country, which is a highly personalistic kind of politic, where our politics is essentially dominated by personalities, specifically by family dynasties. For example, in this current Congress, more than 85% of all congressmen are actually part of the political dynasties. Our mayors, about 68% of our mayors are part of political dynasties. We have a president who is a Marcos, his sister is a senator, his son is a congressman, and he’s got several uncles and nieces and cousins who are congressmen and mayors and local government officials. That’s the kind of political system that we have.
And Duterte came to the picture when these political dynasties have started asserting themselves once again in our history with a vengeance. It’s like having political dynasties on steroids at that point in time. But you see, Duterte has had a really bad experience with the US, and because he takes things personally, when he was applying for a visa, he apparently was rejected being given a visa, and that he took that personally. And since then, he has become anti-American and packaging his anti-Americanism as part of a nationalist position in the Philippines. Which is funny, because while he keeps claiming that he is nationalist, the first thing he did was actually, after he declared that he’s no longer with the US empire, he then shifted immediately and told Xi Jinping himself, of China, that now he would depend on China. So that’s really incredible.
And I told you, that’s where it gets funny, because here’s the personal preference of a president that is essentially affecting the entire country. But that link goes deeper if you look more closely, because his family is suspected of having very, very deep links with Chinese businessmen, particularly those who are operating in the shadow economy of China, which means the underground economy, specifically the drugs trade. So, there’s that very strong suspicion in this country, that they’ve always been linked to the Chinese triads. And that’s why he had that preference of being with China.
So, you have here the personal interconnection of political clan who is now using, who is now intent on using their power in order to deepen that connection and to favor the economic interest of their family. But then, we only have one term for presidents in this country, and that was specifically designed to prevent a dictator from ruling us, so that means he only had six years to be a dictator. So there’s a natural limit for dictatorship in this country. So when Marcos won by running a campaign where both the Duterte family and the Marcos family are in close unity, and they call themselves UniTeam, as soon as he won, I don’t think he had any intention of moving away from China.
In fact, what we now know is that he had all the intention to keep going, to keep the relationship going with China. The problem is, he felt insulted after China promised exactly the same things that they promised to Duterte, but they never delivered. So, all the billions of investments that Xi Jinping promised to Duterte, none of it actually materialized. Even the official development programs that they promised, of all the many things that they promised, including massive railway infrastructure, none of that materialized. The only thing that materialized are two bridges that were built by China.
So Marcos felt insulted by that, and that’s from what I heard, is that that’s one reason why he immediately shifted to the US. But I also think it’s because the Marcoses have always been closed to the US. They’ve been trained. The children of Marcos Senior were trained in the US. They never graduated, but they can claim that they have actually stepped inside a US university like Princeton, but I’m not so sure what they learned. But the outlook has always been closer to the US as a family more than anything else. But more importantly, he has also to contend with the fact that the military infrastructure in this country, the military personnel, the ideology, as well as the doctrines that they’re using are all developed using the US influence. So, the military has always been pro-US. So that’s also one reason why it’s not that difficult for Marcos to shift to the US away from China.
So that’s how things are, I mean if you look at why the elites would vacillate between the two countries. But now, it’s important to talk about, so what do the people really know about this conflict? Because the way it is being presented to the public is that this is a fight for national sovereignty. This is a fight for our own freedoms. But the elites, and even parts of the left, has been failing to explain the fact that one of the things that pushed the Philippine government to file a case in the UN was primarily because those who have commercial interests, the Filipino oligarchs who have commercial interests to drill the fossil fuels that are supposedly found in those areas, and they failed to drill because China has been preventing them. That is actually what pushed the country to file an arbitration case.
Now, we all know what happened when the Philippine case was heard, UNCLOS made a decision that favors the Philippines, but now their problem is how could they have it enforced when China doesn’t recognize that decision? And that’s why we are now in this situation, because parts of the elites, parts of the oligarchs wanted to get their hands in the fossil fuels buried in that part of the world. And yet, they’re mobilizing people’s sentiment to support what is necessarily a nationalist position to defend our territory, and that we find very, very dangerous.
Ashley Smith:
Now, let’s talk a little bit more about the conflicts that are happening in this clash over the islands of the so-called South China Sea. Are we headed towards a conflict between the Philippines, backed by the US, with China? How close to an actual military conflict? Because it seems like it’s gotten close and then both have backed off, and then it’s gotten close again. And so we’re kind of feeling like we’re at the edge of a military conflagration.
Josua Mata:
To be honest, I don’t think China wants to start a war. It doesn’t help them. It just won’t help them. And I don’t think US wants to have a war as well, not even the Philippines. So nobody wants to have a war, but let’s not forget that’s exactly the attitude of most world powers before World War I. Nobody wanted the World War I, but then it was too late when everyone realized that European powers were actually sleepwalking into a world war, so that’s exactly what we have right now.
I don’t think anyone wants to have a war, but the fact that you’re increasing militarization in that area, where China has built its artificial islands and then put up naval bases and air facilities for their air forces, and then the Philippines started arming itself as if we have all the money to do it when we can’t even feed our people properly. Now, we’re even looking at the possibility of buying submarines.
So I really don’t understand what’s the plan here, because do we intend to arm ourselves to the teeth, thinking that we can actually frighten the Chinese away? Where is the end game if you try to militarize? And now you’re inviting everyone, all your allies to have military arrangements with you. So all this militarization is the problem, and unfortunately there’s no pushback that I can see, nor do I hear, even among the progressive elements of the society. It’s as if everyone just accepted that there’s no other solution to the problem but to try to arm ourselves, and come up with more military arrangements so that we can all push China out of those islands, and that’s very, very dangerous.
Ashley Smith:
Yeah. So, what impact has this increasing military budget, this sleepwalking dynamic into a military conflagration, what impact has that had on the domestic politics of the Philippines? What impact has it had on working people, both at the ideological level, what people are thinking, and also on the economy of the country and the experience of working class life?
Josua Mata:
Well, let’s start with economy, which is the simplest thing to explain because we’re not a rich country, despite the way many of our economic mismanagers would try to brag, that we are almost at the middle income level country. We are still a poor country. We still have many people who don’t even have access to electricity or access to sanitation. So we still need resources in order to develop the economy so that we can provide material needs of our people.
Now, you have to funnel a huge chunk of that money to military expenditures in order to modernize supposedly our military forces. And so what’s a concrete impact? This year, in 2025, the government just signed, the president just signed a budget, a trillion peso budget. Now it’s like 5 trillion pesos, if I’m not mistaken, and there’s zero budget or zero subsidy for field health. Field Health, that’s the health system in this country, zero subsidy so that they can now use it in order to put more money and more resources into militarization.
But more importantly, because this is an election period, then politicians would want to have a capacity to dip their hands into the coffers so that they can actually buy their way back to power. So that’s the economic impact. We have to shift a lot of our resources, much needed resources away from social expenditure into military expenditure.
Ideologically, for me the bigger problem is that there’s a stark increase or there’s a tendency to encourage nationalist thinking, which again is very dangerous, because for me it means that you put a premium on your own country, and therefore, it prepares everyone to fight anyone else outside of the country. And that obviously is the foundation for war. That’s the psychological preparation for war, if you like.
And who would suffer first and foremost in a war? It’s the working class, specifically the women and the children who are all unarmed, the civilians. And whose interests would this kind of war be waged for? Well, obviously, this is what the oligarchs and the powers that be are not explaining. It’s actually in the interest of the oligarchs who wanted to drill fossil fuel in that part of the world.
So that really is what the government is not explaining to the working class. And that is what we in SENTRO are really explaining to workers. And we are trying to tell everyone that militarization is not the only solution. In fact, militarization is the worst solution that you can ever think of, if it is called a solution in the first place. I don’t think we are in a situation where we only need to choose between Beijing or Washington.
These are false choices. These are imperialist powers who wanted to have the upper hand in the global competition for resources, for markets, et cetera. And both of them will not do anything good for the Filipino people. But then, the elites are forcing the Filipino people to take sides, and these binary choices that they’re presenting are all false choices. I think the more appropriate response should come from an international response, particularly from the labor movement, where the first question that all workers should ask is that, what is it that we can do to make sure that there is no war?
Ashley Smith:
One of the things that is clear in the US-China rivalry, in particular, is that every corner of the earth is affecting every other corner of the earth. You can’t separate any region of the world geopolitically. They’re all interrelated. And in particular, the impact of what happens in Europe has an impact of what happens in Asia.
So right now, Trump is trying to foist a pro-Russian imperialist deal on Ukraine, which basically forces Ukraine to give up 20% of its territory, no security guarantees, which means there’s likelihood for more war, but Trump has pushed for that deal. And many in Asia have thought if Ukraine falls, Taiwan’s next, and then there’s lots of other countries that are in the path. Because what it’s affirmed is a kind of annexationist imperialism by these great powers, the United States under Trump, Putin’s Russia, and Xi Jinping’s China.
On the other hand, people have also said that Trump is trying to strike a deal over Ukraine to redeploy forces of the United States to Asia for a sharper confrontation with China. So, like you said earlier, it’s a little bit hard to figure out what Trump is really up to. What’s the plan behind this deal in Europe and what’s its impact going to be on China? So what’s your take on what is going on there in Europe and what’s impact it’s going to have on Asia?
Josua Mata:
Well, to be honest, as I said, many are now wondering could the country actually rely on the US? Because the country, as I said, it’s locked with the US, but now with Trump and his extremely volatile positioning and highly unpredictable way of conducting foreign policy, nobody actually knows what would happen. So that’s what people are wondering about in this part of the world. And I think that’s a natural result of the strategy when you start casting your luck with the US. So, now you’re in that kind of a dilemma, precisely because you did what you did.
Now, having said that, I think Trump’s positioning in Ukraine right now, whether it pans out or not, already sends a very strong message to everyone else, that you cannot rely on the US, you cannot rely on Trump. And that’s also the reason why I think the Philippine government, particularly the president, is starting to figure out how to recalculate things.
And this is where his statement about, remember we have Typhon missiles here that were deployed by the US. Now, I’m not so sure if we have the nuclear weapons here, nuclear warheads here. Hopefully not because that’s unconstitutional. But we both know that the US, it’s not the first time. If ever the US deploys a nuclear weapon in a country with constitutional bans against nuclear weapons, it’s not the first time. They did it with Japan, right? So without the Japanese government actually knowing about it. So I wouldn’t be surprised.
But having said that, now Marcos is saying, “Oh, I’d be happy to return the Typhon missiles, provided that China, you will stop harassing us and you will respect our rights,” et cetera. So to me, that’s a signal that he’s trying to recalibrate his own positioning, knowing fully well that he can no longer rely fully on what the US will do. So that’s one impact, at least that I can see.
But the worrisome thing for me is that it also tells us that weak countries have no say in solving the problems of this world, but even if these problems are the ones that are faced by these weak countries. I cannot imagine how Ukrainian people right now feel. Their future is being decided by two superpowers without them having any voice at all.
And that’s, I think, also the message to everyone in this part of the world. Whether Trump would launch a much more militarist front, whether Trump would be much more militaristic in dealing with China when it comes to the West or the South China Sea or Taiwan or not, the fact is, it is very clear that he will make the decision without thinking of consulting, whether the Taiwanese people or the Filipino people who would be affected by his decision, and that that’s just not good for anyone.
Ashley Smith:
So now, let’s turn to what progressive forces in the Philippines and what the left and the trade union movement can do. You’re one of the leaders of one of the key unions in the Philippines. So, how should the labor movement, oppressed people, workers more broadly, the peasant movement in the Philippines position themselves in this sharpening rivalry, this instability, the unreliability of the United States? What are the traps that should be avoided, and what are the kind of solutions that the working class movement in the Philippines should put forward?
Josua Mata:
That’s one of the questions that we have been trying to grapple with for many, many years now, since this whole thing started. And we’re still developing our ideas, but one thing is very clear for us at the onset. We can never respond to these problems coming from narrow nationalistic thinking. That, for us, is a disaster, which unfortunately is what the elites are peddling in order to gather more support for their position.
And unfortunately, many in the left in the Philippines, many in the progressive movement, including the left in the Philippines, who are also so steep into nationalist thinking, even in their own ideological moorings, is finding it, because of their own steep nationalist thinking, they are finding it very difficult to step away from that. But that’s the biggest trap, if you like, if you get into this nationalist thinking that, “We should wave the flag and defend those islands as our own.” That’s just going to lead to war.
Now, that was very clear for us from the very start. It was also very clear to us that the key issue here are the fossil fuels that are supposedly buried down there, but we’re in the midst of a climate crisis, and this is a real climate crisis. So, are we saying that we’re going to wage a war only to dig up and kill each other, only to dig up those fossil fuels so that we can burn the planet even more? That’s just absurd.
So, people should also sit back and think very clearly, is that the way you want to make use of these resources? Now, obviously we would have to burn some fossil fuels if you want to lift people from poverty, of course. But then, if that’s the case, shouldn’t we be thinking along the lines of, how do we do this in a way where we can minimize the impact on climate? And isn’t it better to think about these resources as something that all of us in this part of the world can use and not just the Filipinos?
I’m a socialist. As a socialist, I’ve always been raised with the thinking that resources are things that we should be sharing with everyone, no matter what your nationality is. So why can’t we think of, so this is second thing that we thought of immediately, is that why can’t we think of these islands of regional commons, where everyone who’s had any claim on it, let’s just all sit down and let’s all agree on how we can make sure that we can make use of these resources in an equitable way?
And then finally, clearly the solution to prevent the intensification or to prevent any potential military conflict, I think the solution is simply to call for a complete demilitarization of that area. And this is where we don’t have any support, even among the progressive groups in this country. Again, it’s because I think of this one-track thinking, that the only solution or the only response that you can present to a bully like China is to present a military solution. That, again, would only lead to disaster.
So these are some of the key things that we’re trying to develop at this point in time. But the problem here is that we still have yet to develop a broader constituency for this thinking, because there are very, very few people who would subscribe to this idea in a situation where nationalist thinking nationalist solutions are so powerful, even among the left in this country.
Ashley Smith:
A couple of final questions I wanted to ask you. First about this moment, because this moment that we’re living through has both these kind of interstate conflicts and inter-imperial conflicts, but it also has been 15 years of explosive struggle from below, pro-democracy movements, national liberation movements, revolutionary uprisings, especially in the Middle East. And a lot of them have not broken through and rebuilt the society in a progressive way, yet.
And one question, because of the Philippines history of intense pro-democracy struggles, explosive pro-democracy struggles, in particular the People’s Power movement that toppled the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos’ father, Ferdinand Marcos, what lessons do you think the left in the Philippines, and more broadly and globally, should people draw from the experience of these struggles, and in particular in the Philippines, from the People Power movement?
Josua Mata:
It’s a perfect question to end this discussion, and I’d like to remind you that in a few days time, we will actually celebrate or commemorate EDSA Revolution. And then this current government, the Marcos government, is trying its darnedest best to make sure that people actually forget it. So, I think the first thing that our first job is to make sure that people don’t forget. That’s the first job. And as we have often heard, the battle, the fight against authoritarianism, dictatorship is actually a fight against forgetting. It’s a fight to make sure that our memory is not left behind or it’s not forgotten. It’s a fight for memory. It’s a fight for historical memory. And that is the first thing that I think we lost as a progressive movement, as part of the left in the Philippines. And so that’s one lesson.
Many people no longer have the idea that the Marcos dictatorship was a really dark moment in our history. Most people may have heard of that and they have probably read of that in our textbook, but they have no clue on what it actually means. To the point that workers, 61% of voters even voted for Marcos during the last election. Now, that really is frustrating, because most of these voters are working class people, and they have forgotten that when the father declared the martial law, the first ones that he arrested were not the politicians. It was the trade union leaders. The first thing that he tried to destroy was not just the democratic systems that we have, but the labor movement that can potentially be an opposition to his martial law. So, the battle for memory, I think is something that we need to keep fighting for.
The second lesson that we can learn from the People Power, the failed People Power Revolution in this country, is that it is always important to make sure that there is an organized mass, an organized force that can provide the backbone, if you like, for the continuous push for social transformation. What we had in the EDSA Revolution was a political moment, a moment where we had the potential to transform society by ushering a thorough going social reform, a social transformation, if you like. The problem is People Power Revolution was largely led by people who were unorganized.
And the only organized forces that you can imagine that you can see during that period where the military and the politicians, the elite politicians. They were the only ones who had the machinery, the organization to make sure that the gains of the revolution could be pushed towards their agenda. Because the dominant left at that point in time, made a mistake of ignoring People Power Revolution because they have this sectarian belief, this Stalinist belief that the only way to wage a revolution in the Philippines is only through armed struggle, nothing more. So that effectively sidelined the Communist Party, which then led to… That was his historical error that led to them being sidelined.
Maybe I should say it this way. My political upbringing was when I joined the EDSA Revolution. I was still a student then, and I was a working student. And I distinctly remember when there was a call for people to come to EDSA. And at that time, many of us didn’t realize what was happening. Many of us didn’t know until much, much later that EDSA was actually started when a coup d’etat, a military coup d’etat of General Ramos and the secretary of defense minister at that time, minister of defense at that time. And really, they were planning a coup d’etat against Marcos because he knew he was dying and they were afraid that it’s the wife, Imelda, now together with General Ver, who would take over. Nobody knew that at that point in time.
And that plot, that coup plot, which they wanted to launch in 1984, was postponed to 1985 because the Americans managed to convince Marcos to hold snap elections. So they postponed it, but then they wanted to do it again, they were discovered by de Marcoses. And that forced Fidel Ramos and Enrile to come out in public, have a press conference and declare that they’re no longer supporting Marcos. The funny thing is, a funny footnote, actually, is that Imelda and General Ver could have nipped that pressy in the bud had one of the aides actually had the gall to disturb them during a party they were having.
No, it’s true, this is true. I think it’s a wedding party. They were having a wedding party and nobody wanted to disturb them. And then by the time they found out about it, it was too late. Enrile and the General Ramos were already able to start mobilizing support for them for their rebellion, if you like. But people heeded the call of cardinal sin. Who supported Marcos for a long time, but then eventually turned away from him. These are people, who are like me at that point in time, who were not organized. And we were there out in the streets. We didn’t sleep, we didn’t take a bath. You don’t eat much, except when there’s food, except that you can always rely on someone giving you food in the streets when we were manning the barricades.
And then when we heard that finally Marcos has left, everybody was so jubilant, everybody was crying, dancing, laughing, and then the first thing that we thought of, “We should sleep.” So we all went home, we slept, not knowing that the elites were up constructing the new system, so by the time that we woke up welcome back, we woke up to a government that’s once again run by the oligarchs. That is the biggest lesson. You don’t wage a revolution, and then on the verge of your victory, you go to sleep.
Which means it only brings us back to what many of us who are practitioners of professional revolutionaries, if you like, it only brings us back to the point that we always know that nothing beats people being organized, knowing fully well, not just what they are against, but what they really want. Because if we don’t have that organization with very clear vision and strategy on how do you want to transform society, then someone else will step in and hijack what we have started.
Ashley Smith:
Exactly. So this podcast is entitled Solidarity Without Exception. So I wanted to ask you about what you think about the popular struggle in the Philippines and its relation to similar ones in Palestine and Ukraine. Because so often, progressives fall into a trap of selective solidarity, siding with some popular struggles but not other popular struggles because of the camp that those struggles happen in, either a Russian or Chinese camp, or as an American camp, and people don’t have universal solidarity with progressive struggles from below. So, in the context that we’re in, of rising inter-imperial antagonism, increasing national oppression, and with that, growing popular struggle of various kinds from below, how do we build a kind of new internationalism that practices solidarity without exceptions? And what are the openings for that kind of internationalism today?
Josua Mata:
I think the problem in the Philippines, for us in the labor movement, is not the kind of problems that you’re facing that you just mentioned. Our problem is that there’s not much solidarity among Filipino working class and the labor movement, simply because people are so tied up with their day-to-day struggles. But don’t get me wrong, when I started the labor movement three decades ago, one of my first international work was actually supporting Burma. It wasn’t called Myanmar then.
So I was supporting Free Burma Coalition, not as an individual, but as part of the labor movement. I was then working as an education officer of the hotel unions, and I was very, very proud that we were providing spaces for the Burmese, the exiled Burmese leaders. Whenever they come to the Philippines, we actually host them, and so that they can meet quietly in one of the hotels that we organize. So, it’s so easy for us to be very, very involved in that kind of solidarity.
But then, looking back, one wonders so why are many trade union leaders then were very supportive of the struggle for Burma, but then when we asked them to look at the situation of the Muslims in Mindanao who were also waging their own war for their freedom, and who were for the longest time were being treated as if they are our own Palestine, then why is it that it’s so difficult for them to support that?
And that was really a nagging question that led my organization to actually have a program to combat the prejudice that many Catholics, if you like, Christians, if you like, against Muslims. Because in the first place, that fight for freedom of the moral people was never a religious fight. It was a completely secular fight for the freedom of people who have never agreed to be part of the country.
So, we realized that it’s not easy for people to readily provide solidarity to them because they have been fooled into thinking that this is a religious war. So we had to launch a massive, within our organization, we had to launch a massive education campaign to address the prejudice and make sure that at the minimum the labor movement should at least be able to ensure that its membership is a constituency for peace. So, that’s the lesson we draw for that.
But the problem for us now is that it’s so difficult for us to get the people to support, for example, the struggle of the people in Ukraine or even in Palestine. We hold rallies, we hold activities, we hold actions, but it’s this small community of activists and believers and not the general public. That is the kind of challenge that we have right now. And I attribute that to the fact that people are so burdened with day-to-day living, that’s just difficult for them to… The bandwidth for solidarity, if you like, is so limited. And that is a challenge that we have to figure out, “Now, how do we address that?”
So yes, having said that, I completely believe that real solidarity is the solution to the problems that we’re facing, even in the West Philippine Sea or the South China Sea, if you like. The starting point in our efforts to develop working class narrative to the so-called China question has always been to understand the workers of China. We firmly believe that there’s no way we can build solidarity with the Chinese working class, unless people understand that they, like us, are workers who are suffering not just the atrocious behavior of capitalists, but they’re also suffering from dictatorship of the Communist Party of China.
Unless Filipino workers starts thinking along those lines, the elites would always have the power to sway them to wave the flag and wage a war against the Chinese people. And that’s going to be a war that will decimate the working class only to profit the oligarchs.
Ashley Smith:
Thanks to Josua Mata for that revealing discussion of the Philippines, its working class struggle against the country’s dynastic rulers, the necessity of the country’s left opposing the US and China’s militarism in the Asia Pacific, and advocating for regional demilitarization. To hear about upcoming episodes of Solidarity Without Exception, sign up for the Real News Network newsletter. Don’t miss an episode.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Ashley Smith.
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This week’s special guest, Adrian Karatnycky, has been on the frontlines for decades fighting for democracy both at home and abroad. In his critically acclaimed book Battleground Ukraine, Adrian traces Ukraine’s struggle for independence from the fall of the Soviet Union to Russia’s genocidal invasion today, drawing important lessons for protecting democracies worldwide. He has worked alongside civil rights legend Bayard Rustin and the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in America. He also supported Poland’s Solidarity movement, which helped bring down the Iron Curtain, and played a key role in preserving Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in the 1990s, when many thought the Cold War had ended.
In part one of their discussion, Andrea and Adrian explore how Europe and the free world can survive the chaos of Trump’s America First isolationism and Russia’s weaponized corruption and election interference. In part two, they discuss the PayPal Mafia’s war on Ukraine as part of a broader global assault on “wokeism” (a.k.a. empathy and democracy), Adrian’s impressions of meeting Curtis Yarvin, and how the war in Ukraine can ultimately end.
A big thank you to everyone who joined the Gaslit Nation Salon hosted by our Security Committee, which shared valuable insights on protecting our digital worlds in these dystopian times. The recording will be available soon on Patreon. Our next salon is Monday, April 14 at 4pm ET, featuring Patrick Guarasci, chief political strategist for Judge Susan Crawford, discussing their campaign’s victory against Elon Musk in the pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The Zoom link will be available on Patreon Monday morning.
Thank you to everyone who supports Gaslit Nation–we could not make the show without you!
EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:
April 14 4pm ET – Live-taping with Patrick Guarasci, chief political strategist for Judge Susan Crawford, discussing their campaign’s victory against Elon Musk in the pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court race!
April 28 4pm ET – Book club discussion of Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower
Indiana-based listeners launched a Signal group for others in the state to join, available on Patreon.
Florida-based listeners are going strong meeting in person. Be sure to join their Signal group, available on Patreon.
Have you taken Gaslit Nation’s HyperNormalization Survey Yet?: https://www.gaslitnationpod.com/survey-reject-hypernormalization
Gaslit Nation Salons take place Mondays 4pm ET over Zoom and the first ~40 minutes are recorded and shared on Patreon.com/Gaslit for our community
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Show Notes:
Battleground Ukraine by Adrian Karatnycky https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300269468/battleground-ukraine/
Exclusive: Russia could concede $300 billion in frozen assets as part of Ukraine war settlement, sources say https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-could-concede-300-bln-frozen-assets-part-ukraine-war-settlement-sources-2025-02-21/
Who is Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s Trump-whisperer: Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, has become a key figure in the Kremlin’s outreach to the Trump administration. https://kyivindependent.com/whos-kirill-dmitriev-putins-trump-whisperer/
Nerd Reich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jiju_ky55EI
This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.
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Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and CREW, sued the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and its Director Russell Vought for taking offline information that shows how OMB directs agencies to spend taxpayer money — information that OMB is required by law to post.
OMB controls agency spending through its “apportionment” of federal funds–that is, legally binding budget decisions about agency expenditures. In the Consolidated Appropriations Acts of 2022 and 2023, Congress required OMB to post on a public website information about OMB’s apportionments of federal spending. Since July 2022, OMB has posted that information publicly, as required by law.
Approximately two weeks ago, OMB took down the website, removing the apportionments database from public view. This move has denied CREW and the American public information that is critically important to keeping citizens informed about the activities of government officials and agencies and to ensuring transparency, ethics, and integrity in government.
“The Trump administration’s removal of information showing its apportionment of federal funds is blatantly illegal,” said Wendy Liu, attorney with Public CItizen Litigation Group and lead counsel on the case. “Taking down this information hides how the Trump administration is spending taxpayer dollars and harms the public’s ability to hold the administration accountable to the American people for its spending decisions.”
“The Trump administration’s illegal removal of the Office of Management and Budget’s apportionment website is yet another attempt to dodge transparency and accountability,” said Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “In the first Trump administration, OMB notoriously abused its apportionment authority to withhold federal funds and undermine Congress’s power of the purse. Without access to the apportionment website, CREW and other organizations cannot monitor for those kinds of abuses and inform the public when they occur. We urge the Court to order OMB to immediately restore this website and stop leaving the public in the dark about how the government spends taxpayer money.”
The full complaint is available here.
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.
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Image by Morgan Housel.
The ability of the wealthy to accumulate more wealth has its ups and downs. However, as shown by the Federal Reserve Board’s (the Fed) Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989, the overall trend has been one in which the wealthiest .1% have succeeded at growing their share of the nation’s wealth. According to the Fed figures, by the end of the Biden presidency, the .1%’s share of the nation’s wealth reached 13.8%, increasing by over 60% from 8.6% in the third quarter of 1989 when daddy Bush was in power which is when the Fed figures cited start.
In fact, under each president since 1989, at some point during their term, the share of the nation’s wealth held by the wealthiest .1% reached new heights. Setbacks would follow, but in later years, a new all-time high would be reached. For example, during Junior Bush’s presidency, the Great Recession resulted in a large drop in the .1%’s share of the nation’s wealth. Despite the drop, at the end of Bush’s regime, their share was higher than it was at the end of Clinton’s time in office. During Obama’s and Trump’s presidencies, the share of the .1% became even larger. Biden’s tenure ended with their share reaching its highest point yet.
Many have difficulties protecting the current value of their assets and preventing them from being eroded by inflation. What is “impressive” is that not only have the wealthy .1% been successful at increasing their share of the nation’s wealth, but its total has far outstripped inflation, increasing in nominal dollars more than 121/2 times from 1989 to the end of 2024 from $1.75 trillion to $22.14 trillion while the total nominal wealth of the nation as a whole grew less than 8 times from $20.43 trillion to $160.35 trillion. During this same period, the poorest 50% of the population, almost exclusively members of the working class, saw their nominal wealth increase from $.71 trillion to $4.01 trillion, less than a sixfold increase. Unlike the super wealthy, much of their wealth is tied up in basic necessities such as a place to live.
Below is a table based on the Fed figures showing the high point during one’s presidency and the level of the wealth of the .1% at the end of the fourth quarter of the year right before each new president was sworn in (which may be the same as the high point), and the amount in trillions of dollars.
Many have longed for the days of bipartisanship, lamenting the polarization in our political system. However, what is striking about the Fed’s numbers, whether intentional or not, is the degree of bipartisanship around the .1% capturing a bigger share of the nation’s wealth. People often see Republicans as championing the interests of the wealthy, but the greatest recent increases in the share of the .1%’s wealth occurred during Democratic administrations.
From right before the start of the Clinton administration to its high point, the share of the wealth of the .1% during his time in office increased by 2.6% before declining to a gain of 1.4%. For Obama, it went up 2% after the decline from the Great Recession, and for Biden by .8%. By contrast, in the period covered starting in the third quarter of 1989, under daddy Bush, the increase was .6%. Under the second Bush, it increased 1.6% before tumbling during the Great Recession but still ending higher by .3% than it was at the end of the Clinton administration. The increase in the share of the .1% at the end of Trump’s first regime was .5% despite the pandemic.
Certainly, the increase in the wealth of the .1% during any administration may have much to do with changes in the capitalist economy beyond their control and the policies put in place by their predecessor (that are not reversed) and whose full impact is often realized in the subsequent administration. Bush 2 and Trump oversaw major tax cuts for the wealthy. However, Republican policies have not been alone in helping the .1% better their conditions. Under Clinton, there were tax cuts, much deregulation, and the repeal of sections of the Glass-Steagall Act, and Obama instituted the bailout of the financial industry.
Inequality Among the .1% and the 2025 Losses of U.S. Centibillionaires
Assuming the U.S. population was 340 million at the end of 2024, then the average holding of the wealthiest .1% or 340,000 people came to over $65 million. That is a large amount of money, but $65 million is less than .065% of $100 billion, an amount of wealth, according to the April 4, 2025 Bloomberg Billionaires Index, exceeded by 12 U.S. citizens. In other words, it could be viewed as minute when compared to the wealth of our multicentibillionaires, that as of April 3, according to the Bloomberg Index, included Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, but as of April 4 had one lone member, Elon Musk, as can be seen in the table below.
As a group, these 12 U.S. centibillionaires are experiencing another one of those downturn periods. Using Bloomberg figures, since the beginning of the year, of the wealthiest 12, only Buffet has experienced an increase in the size of his fortune. The remaining 11 have, together for the year as of April 4, lost $359 billion led by Musk, who remains the world’s wealthiest individual despite experiencing a decline in his wealth of $130 billion so far this year, (or $147 billion since January 17, the day Trump was sworn in).[1] Has he been willing to tolerate this huge “sacrifice” because he sees his actions of “disrupting” many peoples’ lives as paving the way for greater gains to make up for his “suffering” from these great losses? Does he deserve to be “admired?” How many people have had the experience, while working in the government, of seeing the value of their wealth drop $130 billion in a short period of time and still remain the world’s wealthiest guy?
Below is a table based on Bloomberg Billionaires Index figures showing what has been happening to the wealth of U.S. centibillionaires.
Don’t shed any tears for the losses these poor folks have suffered. From 2021 to the end of 2024, their nominal wealth increased 82% or by $981.6 billion, far outstripping the rate of gain of the entire .1% during this period that grew 38%, less than half as much. As of April 4, the centibillionares are still up $626 billion from where their nominal wealth stood at the beginning of 2021.
With his fight for tax cuts for the wealthy and other favorable policies for them, despite the recent setbacks, Trump is likely to try to continue the trend of his recent predecessors of providing the .1% with a larger share of the nation’s wealth as he makes America great again while also accelerating the destruction of the environment, enhancing militarism and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe, and fomenting greater alienation and racism along with numerous other social ills.
Notes
1. Since the day Trump was sworn in, as of April 4, despite donating $1 million for Trump’s inauguration, Bezos wealth is down $52 billion, and Zuckerberg’s is down $38 billion. Could Trump be ushering in a revolt by the wealthy against his policies?
The post Has There Been a Bipartisan Effort to Increase the Wealth of the .1%? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rick Baum.
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New York, April 7, 2025–The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is pleased to announce the appointment of Sara Qudah as the new Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Qudah will lead CPJ’s work advocating for press freedom in the MENA region and oversee the organization’s efforts to address the thorny challenges facing journalists there.
“Sara’s extensive and broad experience working with journalists in some of the most challenging environments makes her uniquely qualified to guide our efforts in advocating for press freedom and accountability in the region,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ Chief Programs Officer. “I am delighted to welcome Sara to lead our work in the MENA region and work closely with an incredible team of researchers and advocates.”
“I am honored to join CPJ as the Regional Director for MENA,” Qudah said. “There has never been a more critical role for CPJ’s vital work in the region and I’m eager to work alongside an amazing, insightful group of colleagues to fight for an environment where journalists can do their jobs without fear.”
Qudah brings a wealth of experience at the intersection of media development, advocacy, and journalism. She most recently served as the MENA Program Manager for Internews Network, overseeing a portfolio of programs across the MENA region. Qudah’s career began as a journalist in Jordan, where she worked for Al-Rai newspaper and later became the Editor-in-Chief of 7iber.com. Over the years, Qudah led impactful media programs in Yemen, Sudan, and Morocco, gaining a reputation for developing regionally informed strategies that promote media independence and address evolving challenges to press freedom in the MENA region.
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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.
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New York, April 7, 2025–The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is pleased to announce the appointment of Sara Qudah as the new Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Qudah will lead CPJ’s work advocating for press freedom in the MENA region and oversee the organization’s efforts to address the thorny challenges facing journalists there.
“Sara’s extensive and broad experience working with journalists in some of the most challenging environments makes her uniquely qualified to guide our efforts in advocating for press freedom and accountability in the region,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ Chief Programs Officer. “I am delighted to welcome Sara to lead our work in the MENA region and work closely with an incredible team of researchers and advocates.”
“I am honored to join CPJ as the Regional Director for MENA,” Qudah said. “There has never been a more critical role for CPJ’s vital work in the region and I’m eager to work alongside an amazing, insightful group of colleagues to fight for an environment where journalists can do their jobs without fear.”
Qudah brings a wealth of experience at the intersection of media development, advocacy, and journalism. She most recently served as the MENA Program Manager for Internews Network, overseeing a portfolio of programs across the MENA region. Qudah’s career began as a journalist in Jordan, where she worked for Al-Rai newspaper and later became the Editor-in-Chief of 7iber.com. Over the years, Qudah led impactful media programs in Yemen, Sudan, and Morocco, gaining a reputation for developing regionally informed strategies that promote media independence and address evolving challenges to press freedom in the MENA region.
###
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.
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When Solomon Kahoʻohalahala arrived in Jamaica in mid-March to attend a meeting of the International Seabed Authority, he felt the weight of the moment on his shoulders.
The United Nations agency is in the midst of crafting regulations to govern a new industry for deep-sea mining that involves scraping mineral deposits from the ocean floor, often referred to as nodules. But after three years of advocating on behalf of Indigenous peoples, none of Kahoʻohalahala’s or his colleagues’ recommendations had been incorporated into the latest draft proposal.
“It was disheartening and discouraging for us to be absolutely dismissed,” said Kahoʻohalahala, who is Native Hawaiian from the island of Lanaʻi in Hawaiʻi. “There was no option for us except to make our best case.”
On the first day of the two-week gathering, Kahoʻohalahala urged the nation-state representatives gathered at the International Seabed Authority headquarters to consider Indigenous peoples’ perspectives. And to his surprise, many representatives agreed with him.
By the time he flew from the Caribbean back to the Pacific the following week, Kahoʻohalahala felt relieved and hopeful. The ISA had agreed to give him and other Indigenous advocates up until 2026 to come up with further recommendations. Moreover, the International Seabed Authority declined a request from the Pacific island country of Nauru in Micronesia to set up a process to evaluate their application to mine the high seas, and reiterated the authority’s previous commitment to finalizing the mining regulations before allowing seabed mining to proceed.
“That was very, very uplifting,” Kahoʻohalahala said.
But no sooner had Kahoʻohalahala departed Jamaica than he’d heard the news: The Metals Company, a Canadian seabed mining company, announced it is working with the Trump administration to circumvent the international regulatory process and pursue mining in the high seas under a 1980 United States law.
Gerard Barron, CEO of The Metals Company, said that the company believes they have enough knowledge to manage environmental risks. They plan to submit applications to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to mine the deep seas within the next three months.
“We’re encouraged by the growing recognition in Washington that nodules represent a strategic opportunity for America — and we’re moving forward with urgency,” he said.
The move unleashed harsh criticism from more than 40 nation-states, from the United Kingdom to China. Leticia Carvalho, the secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority, said that international law of the sea that gives the agency authority over mining in the high seas “remains the only universally recognized legitimate framework.” In other words, the U.S. doesn’t have the right to permit seabed mining beyond its national boundaries.
“Any unilateral action would constitute a violation of international law and directly undermine the fundamental principles of multilateralism, the peaceful use of the oceans and the collective governance framework established under UNCLOS,” she said, referring to the United Nations Convention the Law of the Seas.
The U.S. Congress approved the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980 as an interim measure to govern seabed mining on the high seas “until an international regime was in place,” according to an analysis last year by the Congressional Research Service. Two years later, the United Nations Convention the Law of the Seas was adopted, establishing the International Seabed Authority. But the U.S. has never signed onto UNCLOS and while no companies have commenced mining under the 1980 Act, it remains U.S. law.
Barron at The Metals Company replied to Carvalho and other critics that the reality is “commercial industry is not welcome at the ISA.”
“The Authority is being influenced by a faction of States allied with environmental NGOs who see the deep-sea mining industry as their ‘last green trophy,’” he said, “with the explicit intent of killing commercial industry and leaving the aspirations and rights of developing states that took the initiative to sponsor private companies as roadkill.”
Proponents of deep-sea mining like Barron emphasize that seabed mining would supply cobalt, manganese and other critical minerals to make batteries for electric vehicles and could accelerate the global transition from gas-powered, carbon dioxide-polluting cars to cleaner battery-powered vehicles.
But many scientists and environmentalists have raised strong objections to the industry that would irrevocably strip large swaths of the ocean floor, killing rare sea creatures and removing irreplaceable nodules that took millions of years to form. The environmental opposition that Barron describes comes from an array of groups including Greenpeace, which granted Kahoʻohalahala its official observer status to enable him to participate.
The same players are expected to get involved in the U.S. permitting process, which will require public input and environmental reviews. During the Obama administration, the Center for Biological Diversity sued the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration for giving a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin exploratory permits for deep-sea mining within the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a nodule-rich region south of Hawai’i. The first Trump administration reached a confidential settlement with the environmental nonprofit that required the federal government to conduct an environmental impact statement before any of the Lockheed licenses could proceed.
Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the settlement additionally requires NOAA to publish any proposed seabed mining licenses on regulations.gov and give the public the opportunity to weigh in.
Maureen O’Leary, a spokeswoman for NOAA, declined to make anyone at the agency available for an interview or address how recent staffing cuts might affect the permitting process, but confirmed mining applications will undergo a vetting process.
“The process ensures a thorough environmental impact review, interagency consultations and opportunity for public comment,” she said.
Kahoʻohalahala is still grappling with what this new path toward seabed mining will entail, but said he’s worried that it’ll enable mining in close proximity to his home of Hawaiʻi where the industry has been preemptively banned under state law.
The Metals Company’s shift in strategy reflects the success of Kahoʻohalahala and other Indigenous and environmental advocates at the ISA, but it also underscores the commitment by industry players to seek the most expedient path to commercialization. Already, The Metals Company has spent over half a billion dollars on research, and the New York Times reported the company is both low on cash and has a limited ability to borrow. The companyʻs CEO Barron said in his initial public statement that he believes the U.S. would give the company a “fair hearing.”
But opponents of deep-sea mining fear that the company will have outsized sway with the Trump administration, which is reportedly weighing an executive order to fast-track the seabed mining industry and has a longstanding pattern of fast-tracking pipelines and other extractive projects despite environmental concerns.
Thereʻs also the question of what it means for the U.S. to assert control over international waters in defiance of decades-old international law.
“This attempt to bypass international law treads into murky waters,” Sakashita said. “Mining in the sea beyond national boundaries without authorization from the International Seabed Authority should be illegal. Even though the U.S. deep sea mining law purports to have licenses available, it cannot be used as a runaround international law that applies in the high seas.”
While it’s yet unclear what will happen next with NOAA’s deep-sea mining permitting process, Kahoʻohalahala hasn’t paused his advocacy since leaving Jamaica. He flew straight to French Polynesia where he helped urge the president to sign onto a letter opposing deep-sea mining. Now Kahoʻohalahala is preparing to fly to France in June for a U.N. oceans conference to continue to ensure his community’s concerns continue to be taken seriously.
“The timing of this meeting puts it at a really critical time for the ocean,” he said. “We cannot miss this opportunity.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The deep-sea mining industry got tired of waiting for international approval. Enter Trump. on Apr 4, 2025.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Anita Hofschneider.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project building, Seattle. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions
+ Trump and Rubio would have deported Tom Paine for writing seditious pamphlets as a “citizen of the world” and not the US. As it was, Paine died a pariah in the country he did so much to liberate, condemned as a heretic and Jacobin. Only six people attended his funeral in New York City, and the great radical essayist William Cobbett felt compelled to sail over to the States, dig up his bones, and take them back to the UK because the US had betrayed Paine’s vision for the country and its own revolution.
+ If you wanted to know what the US was like under Jim Crow and the Red Scare, you’re getting a glimpse of it right now.
+ Kilmar Abrego Garcia came to the US in 2012 to escape being recruited into a Salvadoran gang that had terrorized his family for more than two years. In 2016, he met his future wife, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, a US citizen living in Maryland. They eventually moved in together and Kilmar helped raise her two children. They later had a child together. Each of the three kids had some form of disability. Kilmar, according to Jennifer, was an attentive and devoted father to all of the children. He held a steady job, he stayed out of trouble, and then he was busted in 2019 while waiting to apply for a job at Home Depot and accused of being a member of the M-13 gang in Long Island, where he’d never been. During his hearing, Abrega adamantly denied any gang ties. The cops said they arrested him because “he was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie and that a confidential informant advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the Westerns clique.”
Jennifer Vasquez Sura wrote in a deposition that she was so fearful Kilmar would be deported that she arranged for them to get married while he was in jail: “I coordinated with the detention center and a local pastor to officiate our wedding. We were separated by glass and were not allowed physical contact. The officers had to pass our rings to each other. It was heartbreaking not to be able to hug him.”
Relying on the bogus testimony from a confidential informant, the immigration judge issued a removal order but barred his deportation to El Salvador, agreeing that there was a serious threat to Abrego Garcia’s life if he was returned home. The judge ordered his release and required him to regularly check-ins with ICE, which Abrego Garcia faithfully did.
So things stood until March 12, 2025, when ICE agents stopped Abrego Garcia’s car as he was driving his 5-year-old son home from school. He was cuffed, told his immigration status had been revoked and that he would be deported. The agents took him to a detention center in Baltimore. When Kilmar was finally able to talk with Jennifer on the phone, he told her the ICE agents once again accused him of being a member of M-13, saying bizarrely they’d watched the family frequently visit a certain restaurant and that they had photos of Kilmar playing basketball.
On the morning of March 15, Kilmar called Jennifer again to let her know he’d been transferred to Louisiana. “That call was short and Kilmar’s tone was different,” Jennifer wrote in her deposition. “He was scared. He was told he was being deported to El Salvador. He was told he was being deported to El Salvador to a super-max prison called ‘CECOT.’” Jennifer hasn’t heard from him since.
Then, on Monday of this week, the Trump administration admitted in a court filing that Abrego Garcia had been deported to El Salvador in violation of a court order. By accident, they claimed, the result of an “administrative error:” (Which sounds like the excuse for everything that happened in the last two months.) “On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error.” Even so, the Trump administration argued the court had no power to order the return of Kilmar from the custody of the nation that he had fled 13 years ago in fear for his life.
The entire case against Kilmar, dating back to 2019, has the smell of a frame-up. When Kilmar’s lawyers attempted to contact the detective who filled out a form in 2019 accusing him of links to MS-13, they discovered that the police department had no record of his arrest. Even more damning, the detective who filled out the fatal form had been suspended.
Despite the outrageous facts of the case, instead of admitting their grotesque error, the Trump administration went on the offensive, sending JD Vance out to smear Kilmar on FoxNews, where he called him “a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here. He had also committed some traffic violations; he had not shown up for some court dates. This is not exactly ‘father of the year’ here.” Trump’s Jesus-worshipping press spokesperson Kathline Leavitt threw even more toxic slime at Kilmar, calling him a “criminal,” a “foreign terrorist,” and a “heinous individual.”
All lies.
Abrega Garcia has no criminal record and his wife and kids miss him and worry about his fate in Naghib Bukele’s lethal dungeon.
+ In 2024, José Gregorio González came to the US from Venezuela to donate a kidney needed to save the life of his brother José Alfred Pacheco, who suffers from late-stage renal failure. But before the operation could take place, González was swept up by an ICE raid in Chicago that a neighbor described as “an ambush.” González’s request for asylum had been denied, but an immigration judge had allowed him to stay in the US for the time being because Venezuela was refusing to accept any deportation flights from the US. González hadn’t any criminal history in the US and wasn’t served with a warrant at the time of his arrest. After public outrage over his detention, Gonzalez was temporarily released until after the operation could take place, at which time he would be deported.
+ The Washington Post explains that this is far from the only case where noncitizen relatives have been deported while caring for relatives with terminal illnesses, though not as terminal as the sickness of the country that is deporting them:
Last month, a child brain cancer patient in Texas and her four siblings — all U.S. citizens — were deported to Mexico along with their undocumented parents who had removal orders as the family was en route to a Houston hospital for her treatment. An undocumented Mexican woman in the Los Angeles area fared better — ICE arrested her in February, but an immigration judge allowed her to post bond as she was the caregiver for an American daughter with bone cancer.
+ According to a report in Pro Publica on deportation flights, “flight attendants received training in how to evacuate passengers but said they weren’t told how to usher out detainees whose hands and legs were bound by shackles.”
+ Here’s a continually updating map tracking the people who have been disappeared by ICE…
+ The Internal Affairs Department for Customs and Border Patrol found that a Chinese woman who Border Patrol had arrested for overstaying her visa hung herself in a cell and was not found for nearly two hours, even though written records noted there had been multiple welfare checks on her. Were the records falsified? Will there be an Internal Affairs Department at CBP next week?
+++
+ CNBC’s Jim Cramer on the eve of Liberation Day, making the right (if obvious) call for once: “I can’t think of a dumber day to buy stocks than today.”
+ Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs…
+ James Surowiecki, author The Wisdom of Crowds:
Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn’t actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us. So, we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is. It’s also important to understand that the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers. South Korea, with which we have a trade agreement, is not charging a 50% tariff on U.S. exports. Nor is the EU charging a 39% tariff.”
+ Trump hit the Falkland Islands, a British territory in the Atlantic off the coast of Argentina, with tariffs of 41 percent, 31 percent more than for Britain itself. This is slightly less surreal than the tariffs he slapped on two islands in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica uninhabited by humans. No matter how objectionable they might be to the islands’s avian community of Rockhopper Penguins, Wandering Albatrosses, Storm Petrels, and Subantarctic Skua, the tariffs Trump imposed on Heard and Macdonald Islands may be viewed as a kind of victory for animal rights: “I’m taxed. Therefore, I am.”
+ We go live to the Macdonald Islands for reaction from the local population to the imposition of 20% tariffs by the Trump administration…
+ Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada: “The relationship Canada had with the United States is over.”
+ A piece in the Financial Times calculated the expected inflationary impact of Trump’s tariffs and the measures taken in retaliation…
USA: +5.5%
Canada: +2%
Mexico: +0.8%
Netherlands: +0.3%
Belgium: +0.1%
Brazil: 0%
UK: -0,1%
Spain: -0.1%
France: -0.2%
Poland: -0.4%
Germany: -0.4%
South Korea: -0.4%
Italy: -0.4%
Ireland: -0.5%
Japan: -0.6%
India: -0.7%
China: -0.7%
+ I don’t know if this means China and India will emerge as the big winners, but it sure seems clear who the biggest loser is. Over to you, Beck, uh, Beck, you’re up, c’mon, man…
+ There’s broad support across Europe for retaliatory tariffs against the US, with Denmark, not surprisingly, leading the way.
Denmark: 79%
Sweden: 72%
Spain: 70%
Germany: 69%
UK: 71%
France: 68%
Italy: 60%
+ Gold hit a new record high at $3,160 an ounce after Trump’s tariff announcement. Somebody should check his and Elon’s pockets on their way out of Fort Knox.
+ The Nasdaq just experienced its worst-performing quarter since Q2 2022. It was down 11% from January through March.
+ Goldman Sachs said it sees Trump tariffs spiking inflation, stunting growth and raising recession risks.
+ The seven largest single-day Dow Jones point drops in American history
1. Trump, March 16, 2020: -2,997.102. Trump, March 12, 2020: -2,352.603. Trump, March 9, 2020: -2,013.764. Trump, June 11, 2020: -1,861.825. Trump, April 3, 2025: -1,679.396. Trump, March 11, 2020: -1,464.947. Trump, March 18, 2020: -1,338.46
+ The Financial Times should revisit these two financial parasites to see how they feel about their “liberation” after the bloodbath on Wall Street…
+ Laleh Khalili: “They are probably hedging against the market and making money from the volatility.”
+ As usual, Laleh is correct.
+ Todd Vasos, CEO of Dollar General, said that consumers “only have enough money for basic essentials.” Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that only 62% of Americans could come up with $2,000 in case of an emergency, the lowest on record,
+ At least 70 percent of retirees in the US reported having credit card debt, an increase of thirty percent from four years ago.
+ A Redfin analysis found that the top one percent of Americans have enough money in the bank to buy 99% of the homes in the US and that the top 0.1% could afford to acquire every single home across the nation’s 25 largest metro areas, from San Antonio to New York City.
+ According to Gallup, at least 81% of Americans view foreign trade as an opportunity for economic growth, jumping 20 percentage points since last year. Those seeing it as more of a threat to the U.S. economy have fallen by half, down to 14%.
+ OK, I know what you’re thinking: Bill Kristol is almost always wrong about everything, but perhaps not about this thing…?
+ Kristol now occupies a position to the Left of 93% of the elected Democrats on Capitol Hill.
+++
+ In his new book on the 2024 election, Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, Chris Whipple gets Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, to paint Biden as physically spent, mentally confused and out of touch throughout the campaign, and at one point seemed to believe himself to be the head of NATO instead of the US.
+ Here’s Whipple’s account of the preparation for Biden’s debate with Trump:
At his first meeting with Biden in Aspen Lodge, the president’s cabin, Klain was startled. He’d never seen him so exhausted and out of it. Biden was unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. Halfway through the session, the president excused himself and went off to sit by the pool.
That evening Biden met again with Klain and his team, [Biden aides] Mike Donilon, Steve Richetti, and Bruce Reed. ‘We sat around the table,’ said Klain. ‘[Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders.’
Klain wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the US. ‘He just became very enraptured with being the head of Nato,’ he said. That wouldn’t help him on Capitol Hill because, as Klain noted, ‘domestic political leaders don’t really care what [Emmanuel] Macron and [Olaf] Scholz think.’
…
25 minutes into the second mock debate, the president was done for the day. ‘I’m just too tired to continue and I’m afraid of losing my voice here and I feel bad,’ he said. ‘I just need some sleep. I’ll be fine tomorrow.’ He went off to bed.
The president was fatigued, befuddled, and disengaged. Klain feared the debate with Trump would be a nationally televised disaster.
+ Musk spent millions in an attempt to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. He lost badly and Susan Crawford ended up not only defeating her Musk-financed opponent but trouncing Kamala Harris’ 2024 numbers across every political kind of county in the state:
Counties Harris Won by More Than 15 Points
Harris 70%
Crawford 77%Counties Harris Won by More 5- 15 Points
Harris: 53%
Crawford: 62%Counties Harris Won Within 5 Points
Harris: 48%
Crawford: 56%Counties Trump Won by 5-15 Points
Harris 46%
Crawford 52%Counties Trump Won by More than 15 Points
Harris: 38%
Crawford: 43%
+ In the 34 special Congressional elections during the Trump era, the Democrats’ 22-point over-performance in Florida’s 1st district is their best yet, and their 16-point over-performance in the 6th District of Florida was tied for 6th-best. Still, they lost both elections.
+ Trump on Andrew Cuomo and the NYC mayoral race: “I’ve always gotten along with him.” Of course, he has.
+++
+ The Trump administration is seeking to reduce the amount of congressional oversight of weapons exports, assuming there’s any oversight at all, after the Biden year. The plan is to increase to $23 million from $14 million for arms transfers and rise to $83 million from $50 million for the sale of military equipment, upgrades, training, and other services.
+ One of the schemes Trump is exploring to annex Greenland involves the US somehow paying Greenlanders more than the $600 million a year subsidy that Denmark pays. “This is a lot higher than that,” a Trump official told the Washington Post. “The point is, ‘We’ll pay you more than Denmark does.’”
+ The Washington Post on the lax security of Trump’s National Security team: “Members of President Donald Trump’s National Security Council, including White House national security adviser Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts. The use of Gmail, a far less secure method of communication than the encrypted messaging app Signal, is the latest example of questionable data security practices by top national security officials already under fire for the mistaken inclusion of a journalist in a group chat about high-level planning for military operations in Yemen.”
+ Here’s some economic news to celebrate: Shares of Nike Sweatshops, Inc. are down 12% post-Liberation Day and down 28% in the last month!
+ Following Trump’s after-hours tariff announcement, the price of gold shot up to $3,200 an ounce, the highest in history. Somebody better pat down the pockets of Trump and Musk on their way out of Fort Knox…
+ According to Barchart, the top one percent of US earners have now amassed more wealth than the entire American middle class combined.
+ Pro Publica: Last year, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and accused the Consumer Fin Protection Bureau of terrorizing tech firms. It turns out a firm he backed—Greenlight, a debit card company for kids!—was being investigated by the CFPB for not allowing kids to immediately access funds.
+++
+ The Washington Post on the mass firings at HHS: “Some government health employees laid off Tuesday were told to contact Anita Pinder with discrimination complaints. But Pinder, the director at the Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, died last year.”
+ CNN’s Kayla Tausch: “At the HHS building in Rockville, employees describe learning they were laid off when their badge doesn’t work – and then having to do a “walk of shame” by others in line. “Could they have picked another day other than April Fool’s Day?” one tells me.”
Screengrab from X of workers being turned away from the HHS building in Rockville, Maryland.
+ Carol Miller, public health nurse, El Partido Verde activist, and CP contributor: “I worked in that building for two years and with programs based in that building for decades. This is the location of the Public Health Service providing nearly all the government programs for the people; Indian Health Service, Community Health Centers (care for more than 30 million people a year), Maternal and Child Health, National Health Service Corps (places health care providers in communities), Office of Rural Health, HIV/AIDS, and others.”
It’s quite a price the country’s going to pay for the kicks some people get out of “owning the libs.”
WIRED: “A senior scientist at NIH tells WIRED the impact of Tuesday’s layoffs was sheer “chaos,” with the firings of the lead investigators projected to widely impair and impede diverse ongoing research ranging from mechanisms within cells in the brain to human patients with neurologic conditions.”
+++
+ A Gallup survey reports that nearly every American uses products that involve artificial intelligence (AI) features, but two-thirds (64%) don’t realize it.
+ This kind of ignorance makes it that much easier for people like Sam Altman and Elon Mush who want to replace workers and, eventually, humans themselves with AI and robotics.
+ Welcome to the machine…
+ A couple of Sundays ago, Saahil Desai, an editor at The Atlantic, drove a Tesla Cybertruck around Washington, DC and was given the finger at least 17 times.
+ The Tesla board’s response to the Take Tesla Down campaign to a move to Take Musk Down From Tesla…
+ Just 45% of tech workers got a raise last year, according to the job site Dice–that’s a decline of 10 percent from 55 percent of tech workers who got raises in 2023.
+ A movement of Jah people…
+++
+ Trump has succeeded in convincing more Republicans (and quite a few Democrats) than ever before that Canada and the EU are no longer allies of the US but “enemies.” According to a piece in The Economist, nearly 25% of Republicans (and 7% of Democrats) now view Canada as an “enemy” nation, compared to 3% of Republicans and Democrats in 2016. Meanwhile, close to 30% of Republicans (and 5% of Democrats) now see the EU as an “enemy”, up from 17% of Republicans and 3% of Democrats last year.
+ The Economist: “Trump repeatedly claims that the European Union was ‘formed in order to screw the United States.’ Canada, America’s northern neighbor and second-largest trading partner, is “one of the nastiest countries.” Russia was “doing what anyone would do” when it bombed Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during a pause in American intelligence sharing.”
+ No country in Europe currently holds a positive view of the US…
Denmark: 10%
Sweden: 28%
Germany: 30%
France: 32%
+ The genius of French provincial cooking is its ability to make the best food out of whatever’s available, including the worst cuts of beef, offal even…But the French would never raise their cattle in industrial feedlots where the animals stand nearly motionless in their own piss and shit for a year, shot up with hormones…
+ Benedicte de Perthuis, the French judge who ruled French neo-fascist Marine Le Pen ineligible for the 2027 elections after her conviction on embezzlement charges, is now under police protection following a wave of death threats and online doxxing.
+ Finnish President Alexander Stubb, after golfing with Trump: “The half-ceasefire has been broken by Russia, and I think America and my sense is also the president of the United States, is running out of patience with Russia.”
+ The construction of private bunkers in Spain has increased by 200%, as fears of a European war spread.
+ It took Nixon to go to China and Trump to unite three longtime enemies–China, Japan and South Korea–against the US. Bravo, genius!
+ There’s been what’s described as a “bloodbath” of firings at Trump’s National Security Council. But not over the fallout from Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s security breaches. Instead, the dismissals seem to be at the behest of the conspiracy-mongering Trump intimate Laura Loomer, who met with Trump in the Oval Office earlier in the week and presented the president with her “research” that several members of Waltz’s staff were “neocons” who had slipped through the vetting process.
+ Jeet Heer: “I’m sorry, but an administration where people get fired because Laura Loomer doesn’t like them is not going to be a stable government.”
+ Hypocrisy, arrogance and ineptitude are virtues in this administration not fireable offenses…”Members of Trump’s National Security Council, including national security adviser Michael Waltz, have conducted government business over personal Gmail accounts, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and interviews with three U.S. officials.”
+ Mike Waltz may unwittingly become the Daniel Ellsberg of the Trump administration. Politico reported this week that Waltz had set up at least 20 Signal chat groups to “respond to crises across the world”…many of them he and Trump provoked, presumably.
+ Last week, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent a memo to his staff describing how the DOJ is, in the spirit of DOGE, considering closing the Antitrust Division’s field offices in San Francisco and Chicago…”In the spirit of DOGE”… i.e., “At the behest of our Tech Overlords.”
+ Here’s a more critical “leak” than the one to Goldberg…
(The pervasive episodes of parapraxis among the leaders of the GOP may end up being what saves the country from complete and utter ruin…)
+ David French, who’s about as far to the right as you could have gotten, pre-MAGA: “In some parts of American Christianity, the theology is so flawed, and the culture is so broken, that evangelicals don’t see Trump contradicting their values at all — he’s exactly like the men and women who lead their church.”
+ On St. Patrick’s Day, Trump invited fellow convict, MMA fighter and failed boxer Conor MacGregor to the White House to promote his “Make Ireland Great Again” campaign for president. It wasn’t received well by the Irish…
+++
Jefferson Morley and Oliver Stone at House hearing on JFK assassination.
+ If I was this stupid, I wouldn’t want to broadcast it during live coverage of Congressional hearings on JFK’s assassination…
Lauren Boebert: Mr. Stone, you wrote a book accusing LBJ of being involved in the killing of President Kennedy. Do these recent releases confirm or negate your initial charge?
Oliver Stone looking befuddled by the question, whispers in the ear of [my] former Washington Post editor and JFK assassination expert, Jefferson Morley.
Stone: No, I didn’t.
Boebert: Yes, sir you did…
![]()
Stone: “If you look closely at the FILM, it accuses President Johnson…”
Boerbert, excited to the point of giddiness now that she’s finally stumbled on to something profound: “Ok, ok…”
Stone: “Of being part of and complicit in a cover-up of the case. But not in the assassination itself, which I don’t know.”
Boerert, a little unsteady now: “What do you think he was complicit with?”
Stone: The cover-up. How about, for starters, appointing Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA who was fired by Kennedy, to the Commission itself, the Warren Commission. And he goes to almost every meeting, and is pretty much in charge of the Warren Commission from the beginning. Allen Dulles, that’s part of the evidence that pointed to President Johnson, as either incompetent or involved.
Boebert, adjusting her Sarah Palin “sexy librarian” glasses: “Mr. Morley, I think you had something to add to that?
![]()
Morely: “I think you’re confusing…
Boebert: “I may have mis—
Morley: “ROGER STONE with Oliver Stone. It’s Roger Stone who implicated LBJ in the assassination of the president. Not my friend Oliver Stone.”
Boebert: “I may have misinterpreted that.”
+ Rutgers, which has an endowment of more than $2 billion and pays the coach of its mediocre football team $6.5 million a year, is shuttering Raritan, one of the best remaining literary magazines, as part of the University’s “Austerity Agenda.” Raritan’s excellent editor, Jackson Lears, explains…
+ Nick Estes: “Yesterday [Monday], the U of Minnesota deleted the American Indian Studies’ statement on Palestine. (Also deleted was a story about Leonard Peltier’s return home and five other dept statements on Palestine.)” Here’s the now-elided original statement, as preserved by the Wayback Machine…
+ And now we take you live to the Oval Office…
+ Frank Zappa: “Some scientists claim that hydrogen because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.”
+ Here’s Neil Young, writing on his Times Contrarian blog about what it’s like to be a Canadian artist living in the states now:
What’s happening in our America right now: Our rights to free speech are being taken away and buried by our government.
Reporters who do not agree with our government have been banned from interviewing our President. Canadian / Americans like me have had their freedom threatened by activities such as taking private info from their devices and using it to block them from entering our country – ie: If you don’t agree with our government, you are barred from entering or sent to jail. There are many stories in the Contrarian that make this information very clear.
Corporate controlled newspapers and TV are mostly bought and paid for now, to a great degree. The information found there is not complete anymore. Thats why you need to read the Contrarian. Articles published here are not controlled by Corporations, they are supported by the public – you.
Just because you love music, don’t allow your children to lose their freedom. Read here and learn what our government is doing to you. That’s right – our government.
Music is my love and my life. I want that for my children and theirs. That’s why I’m here doing this today instead of just selling you records.
There is plenty of music associated news in The Times Contrarian and you can easily find it here. Choose the Music News section or the World News section at the top of the page. Check out your music and the rest too. Don’t let your knowledge be limited by today’s politics and the controlling Trump agenda that challenges your basic American freedoms. You elected this president. He is your President. Elon Musk? Really? Think about it. He is a threat to America, enabled by our president because of the millions he spent supporting our president’s election.
All Their Ammunition, All Their Money Lost, All Their Bold Invasions, All Their Running Dogs…
Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…
Homeland: the War on Terror in American Life
Richard Beck
(Verso)
The Class Struggle and Welfare: Social Policy Under Capitalism
David Matthews
(Monthly Review)
On Book Banning: or How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy
Ira Wells
(Biblioasis)
Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…
That’s the Price of Loving Me
Dean Wareham
(Car Park)
Letters From the Atlantic
Butcher Brown
(Concord Jazz)
After the Last Sky
Anouar Brahem
(ECM)
Those Who Cannot Dance
“Dance is the universal art, the common joy of expression. Those who cannot dance are imprisoned in their own ego and cannot live well with other people and the world. They have lost the tune of life. They only live in cold thinking. Their feelings are deeply repressed while they attach themselves forlornly to the earth.” – Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
The post Roaming Charges: Welcome to the Machine appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Photograph Source: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine – CC BY-SA 2.0
In a practice that might seem quaint if it weren’t so murderous, the American uniparty is currently assigning party colors to its ‘boutique’ wars in Ukraine and West Asia. While these wars were arguably started by, and are being prosecuted by, the United States, the powers that be in the US have apparently determined that branding them by team color (Red v Blue) would effectively preclude the development of a national anti-war response.
In this light, the (New York) Times recently shat out the second installment of its ex-post recitation of CIA talking points crafted with a method that I call ‘cat-litter journalism.’ The focus of the new Times’ piece is the American war in Ukraine. Should this read as a misstatement to you, that maybe it is a war between Ukraine and Russia, tell it to the New York Times. The gist of the Times piece is that the Americans would have won the war if it hadn’t been for the Ukrainians.
The phrase ‘cat-litter journalism’ refers to the near-random assemblage of earlier reporting by the Times that has been reassembled to convey the illusion that its ‘reporting’ ties to any determinable facts. Deference to authority is another way to describe the piece. Without footnotes and / or links, the assertions made in the piece are a compilation of the least plausible state propaganda of recent years crafted for the post-election political dynamic.
‘In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.’ nytimes.com’ 3/29/25.
For readers upset by the prospect of their favorite war losing its luster, fear not. The political logic of Donald Trump’s rapid policy dump upon entering office is the ethereal nature of Presidential power. For good and not-good reasons, Mr. Trump is about to hit a wall of institutional pushback. Further, his ‘peace through strength’ schtick (borrowed from Richard Nixon) is a serious misreading of the current political environment.
The reason why New York Times reporters are acting like rats fleeing a sinking ship with respect to the CIA’s war in Ukraine is that the Ukraine ship is sinking. Don’t take my word for it. The new US Intelligence Assessment for 2025 states 1) that Ukraine (the CIA) has substantially lost the conflict, and 2) nothing that the West has at its disposal will turn the situation around. Having a chair to sit in when the music stops is the political needle being threaded.
Russia in the past year has seized the upper hand in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is on a path to accrue greater leverage to press Kyiv and its Western backers to negotiate an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks. dni.gov.
The political logic of parsing the war in Ukraine from the genocide in West Asia goes like this, 1) by US calculations, there is no way for the West to prevail in Ukraine, and 2) attending to the denouement in Ukraine when a promise of genocide has been sold to a foreign adversary (Israel) requires operational consolidation. Once the US moves outside of Gaza (it already has), Greater Israel begins to resemble Poland on August 31, 1939.
For those who may have forgotten, here is the leader of the Blue Team telling us that ‘Putin has already lost the war’ in mid-2023. Two years later, the New York Times is belatedly informing us that it was the Ukrainians who lost the war; that the US is blameless, if not heroic, for its ‘support’ of Ukraine; and that maybe the US should have gotten one-million citizens of a more deserving nation killed for the privilege.
That British ‘intelligence,’ MI6, was active in both the Russiagate fraud and in maintaining friendly relations with Ukrainian fascists from 1944 to the present so that they were available for service in Ukraine 2013 – present, argues for ending the Five-Eyes Alliance and criminally charging the Brits for interfering in American elections. The problem is that the Western ruling class has demonstrated itself to be immune from public sanction.
That the leader of the Blue Team was the largest recipient of legal bribes from supporters of Israel in Congress unites him in a deep moral commitment to genocide with Donald J. However, in the American terms of discourse in 2025, Donald Trump ‘got the better deal.’ Miriam Adelson contributed $150 million to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, with $100 million of it reportedly dedicated to improving the lives of Western arms dealers. Joe Biden only got four million dollars for his genocide.
This ‘genocide for hire’ posture of America 2.0, where US foreign policy does the bidding of foreign adversaries in exchange for specific payments to specific politicians, might seem irredeemably corrupt. In fact, it is irredeemably corrupt. However, there is a political term— ‘imperialism,’ that rehabilitates corrupt acts under the nuevo-scriptural precept of ‘kick their ass and steal their gas’ that is emerging from the gold toilet crowd.
Were it not for the earlier ‘coming-clean’ piece from the Times that began in the aftermath of the US – British coup in Ukraine in 2014, the US timeline found in the recent Times article would be inexplicable. How could the timelines match US state propaganda so perfectly given that between the two articles, pretty much everything that the Americans and Brits said about the conflict was later restated in materially different terms?
Further, as the vile, offensive, and yes, fascistic, efforts by the Trump administration to quell domestic rebellion against corrupt acts by politicians taking money from adversarial foreign governments to commit genocide, the ship of state is struggling. Threatening Americans with deportation, imprisonment, and being disappeared for expressing their constitutionally protected right to object to these policies is profoundly anti-American under the existing terms of discourse.
Ominously for we, the people, Donald Trump was able to extract far more money than Joe Biden was for a roughly equivalent genocide (thus far). Yes, under US law, American politicians can take money from adversarial foreign governments which personally benefits them, and not the United States, in exchange for the promise that the US will commit genocide against foreign nationals for the benefit of other foreign nationals. Question: where is MAGA on this?
If any of this suggests a path out of the current mess through electoral politics, the evidence doesn’t support that conclusion. Here is one of the several pieces that I wrote in and around early 2019 where I correctly argued that were Joe Biden to be elected, he would fail to govern and that Donald Trump, or someone worse, would follow Biden. That is what happened. I was right, and the DNC just reelected Donald Trump.
For those who don’t see it yet, Donald Trump is in the process of imploding politically. His economic policies, which share quite a bit with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Ronald Reagan, are ideological— based on a group of like-minded people sitting around making shit up with no one to challenge them. He doesn’t understand basic economics well enough to avoid the catastrophe-in-the-making that his policies will produce.
Firing tens of thousands of Federal workers without a coherent plan to reemploy them both raises the unemployment rate and lowers wages. As I’ve previously written, adding former Federal employees to the unemployment line increases the number of workers vying for a limited number of jobs, thereby leading the most desperate to accept lower wages. Rising unemployment and falling wages is a recipe for electoral defeat.
With respect to liberal fears of a Fourth Reich, ex-CIA Larry Johnson and others familiar with military production argue that the lead time from cold start to having weapons in hand is a decade. When existing facilities can be used, this lead time can be reduced to three years. In its wisdom, the US began firing its skilled manufacturing workforce in the 1970s. Skilled work in 2025 is ‘influencing’ teenagers to buy Viagra for their pet gerbils on YouTube.
When Mr. Trump references ‘peace through strength,’ he asserts that while his aim (‘peace’) is virtuous, his method will be the threatened or actual use of violence to achieve it. The social logic is that the party being threatened has a choice to surrender or be killed. This framing has been used by repressive power for millennia to claim that political repression maintained through violence is ‘peace.’ In so doing, the term is emptied of content. The definition of peace is reduced to ‘not death.’
The political benefit of this approach for empires is that it frames repressive political power as a defense of peace, and its opponents as the instigators of violence. In history, the US is only two generations from the ‘Indian Wars,’ where innocent settlers ‘were overwhelmed and slaughtered by ignorant savages,’ for those who buy Hollywood’s version of the history. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore illustrate the genocidal versions of this view-from-power of ‘peace.’
How the phrase (peace through strength) was heard on the campaign trail by Mr. Trump’s constituents was likely through the anti-historical fantasy that the US has won the wars that it has engaged in since WWII. As actual history has it, it was the Russians who won WWII. Richard Nixon used the term, combined with his claim that he had a ‘secret plan’ to end the US war in Vietnam. He didn’t. Nixon ended up expanding the war to Laos and Cambodia before the ignominious ‘fall of Saigon’ in 1975.
With respect to the US proxy war in Ukraine, the precise social logic of Mr. Trump implying that the Biden administration was ‘weak’ in threatening imminent nuclear annihilation in the latter days of the administration begs the question of what the word means? Is ending the world a sign of strength? To whom? Who would be alive to judge the matter, and what would be the consequence of any such judgment?
One might have imagined that Times readers previously burned by its fraudulent reporting regarding Iraq’s WMDs and Russiagate would have felt ‘twice bitten, thrice shy’ with respect to its Ukraine reporting. Implied in the steadfastness of its readership is that getting true information about the world isn’t— is not, why its readers read the Times. Or perhaps, Times readers like their news several years after the fact, when it can be found in the ‘corrections’ section.
The residual purpose of the New York Times is to demonstrate that Pravda in the waning days of the Soviet Union is the model to which the American press aspires. But this is only a ‘press’ story to the extent that the volunteer state media in the US doesn’t require threats to carry water for power. They want to do so. It gives them purpose, and the occasional invitation to the right dinner party.
I wrote early on in the US war in Ukraine that the Ukrainians ‘would rue the day that they ever heard of the United States.’ With the New York Times now blaming the Ukrainians for the American loss against Russia, they join the Palestinians in being tossed onto the garbage heap of empire. So are the Russians. The difference is that the Russians can take care of themselves. That is why American imperialists hate Russia so much. They don’t control it.
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From the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Brendan Carr, chair and senior Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, has joined Trump in taking steps to punish and intimidate news outlets that have covered him and his administration unfavorably. We’re documenting Carr’s 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. 22, 2025.
March 27, 2025 | FCC opens investigation into ABC, Disney over DEI policy
Feb. 11, 2025 | FCC opens investigation into NBC parent over DEI program
Feb. 5, 2025 | FCC opens investigation into California radio station
Jan. 22, 2025 | FCC chair reinstates complaints against three news outlets
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, in a March 27, 2025, letter to ABC and its parent Disney, said the agency had launched an investigation into the company’s promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“Numerous reports indicate that Disney’s leadership went all in on invidious forms of DEI discrimination a few years ago and apparently did so in a manner that infected many aspects of your company’s decisions,” Carr wrote.
While Disney scaled back its diversity efforts in November 2024, Carr indicated that the changes may not have gone far enough. “I want to ensure that Disney ends any and all discriminatory initiatives in substance, not just name,” he added.
Carr specified that the probe will apply to both past and current policies.
President Donald Trump has made eliminating DEI programs a pillar of his second term, signing a Jan. 22 executive order eliminating them in the federal government and pressuring private companies to follow suit.
A Disney spokesperson told Reuters, “We are reviewing the Federal Communications Commission’s letter, and we look forward to engaging with the commission to answer its questions.”
In an interview with Fox News on March 31, Carr suggested that the broadcaster’s license could be at risk, The Hill reported.
“If the evidence does in fact play out and shows that they were engaged in race- and gender-based discrimination, that’s a very serious issue at the FCC, that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license,” Carr said.
ABC News is also facing an FCC investigation into how the broadcaster moderated the debate between Trump and former President Joe Biden, which Carr reopened in January.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, in a Feb. 11, 2025, letter to NBC News parent Comcast, said the agency would launch an investigation into the company’s promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“The FCC will be taking fresh action to ensure that every entity the FCC regulates complies with the civil rights protections enshrined in the Communications Act,” Carr’s letter read, “including by shutting down any programs that promote invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”
President Donald Trump has made eliminating DEI programs a pillar of his second term, signing an executive order eliminating such programs in the federal government on Jan. 22 and pressuring private companies to follow suit. PBS News told employees on Feb. 11 that it was eliminating its DEI office to be in compliance with the administration’s policy.
Tom Wheeler, a former chair of the FCC, told The New York Times that this latest investigation fits a pattern of Carr using the commission’s authority to advance Trump’s political aims.
“It’s clear that what is going on here is — whether it be Comcast and DEI or NPR and PBS, or CBS and the ‘60 Minutes’ interview — is how can you use the coercive authority of regulation to accomplish the goals of your master and mentor, Donald Trump?” Wheeler said.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr launched an investigation into San Francisco, California, radio station KCBS on Feb. 5, 2025, after the station broadcast the locations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during operations in the San Jose area, Fox News reported.
Carr told Fox that he believes KCBS may have violated licensing rules requiring broadcasters to operate in the “public interest.”
Carr had previously opposed the transfer of the station’s license, following Republican scrutiny of the ownership role of billionaire investor George Soros, a Democratic megadonor whose nonprofit now controls the broadcasting outlet.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr informed public broadcasters NPR and PBS on Jan. 29, 2025, that he had initiated an investigation into the news outlets, suggesting that they may have violated federal law by airing commercial advertisements. A copy of the letter was also shared with members of Congress, Carr wrote, because of its potential relevance to ongoing debates.
“In particular, Congress is actively considering whether to stop requiring taxpayers to subsidize NPR and PBS programming,” the letter read. “For my own part, I do not see a reason why Congress should continue sending taxpayer dollars to NPR and PBS given the changes in the media marketplace since the passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.”
That same day, the FCC sent a letter of inquiry to CBS News demanding that the outlet turn over the “full, unedited transcript and camera feeds” from a Kamala Harris interview on “60 Minutes” in October 2024, according to a statement published by the broadcaster.
CBS said that it was working to comply with the inquiry, “as we are legally compelled to do.” The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker was unable to obtain a copy of the inquiry as of press time.
A spokesperson for CBS told Reuters that the news organization submitted the documents to the FCC on Feb. 3. In an interview with Fox News, Carr said he was “open minded as to potential consequences” and that he would consider releasing the transcript in the interest of transparency.
CBS published the transcripts and video that it turned over to Carr on Feb. 5. “They show — consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public — that the 60 Minutes broadcast was not doctored or deceitful,” the outlet wrote.
The Harris interview was the focus of a federal lawsuit filed against CBS on behalf of President Donald Trump, which alleged the network had “doctored” the broadcast in an attempt to influence the presidential election. Trump had demanded the network release unedited tapes and transcripts. CBS has maintained the claims are false and the suit without merit.
Brendan Carr, a Donald Trump appointee and the new chair of the Federal Communications Commission, reinstated complaints against multiple outlets that Trump targeted leading up to and in the wake of the election, alleging their reporting was biased and aimed at swaying favor toward his opponent.
NPR reported that, shortly before leaving office, then-FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel dismissed complaints about appearances by Kamala Harris on CBS’ “60 Minutes” and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and about how ABC News moderated the debate between Trump and former President Joe Biden.
“We don’t have the luxury of doing anything other than making very, very clear that this agency and its licensing authority should not be weaponized in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment,” Rosenworcel said. “This agency should not be the president’s speech police and this agency shouldn’t be journalism’s censor-in-chief.”
Rosenworcel also dismissed a complaint against a Philadelphia Fox station for allegedly promoting lies about election fraud in the 2020 election.
Carr took over as FCC chair on Jan. 20, and reinstated the complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC two days later. In a statement, the agency said that the complaints had been dismissed “prematurely based on an insufficient investigatory record,” according to The Guardian.
Carr had previously demonstrated his willingness to target news outlets based on alleged bias, and he has supported Trump’s calls for NBC, CBS and ABC to lose their broadcast licenses over their alleged mistreatment of him, NPR reported.
This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.
On March 18 Israel broke the Gaza ceasefire and recommenced its full scale assault, siege, and bombing of Gaza. Since then, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and the humanitarian situation is as desperate as ever. Watching mainstream media, however, one would hardly notice.
While US media outlets continue to report below the fold on the daily airstrikes, they are no longer treated as major stories meriting emphasis and urgency. This is especially true for the New York Times and TV broadcast news, which have all but forgotten there’s an unprecedented humanitarian crisis ongoing in Gaza–still funded and armed by the US government.
The paper of record, the New York Times, ran a front page story March 19, the day after Israel broke the ceasefire and killed hundreds in one day, but didn’t run a front page story on Israel’s bombing and siege of Gaza in the 13 days since. (They ran a front page story on April 3 that centered Israel’s military “tactics” in Gaza but didn’t mention civilian death totals.) The Times did find room on March 27 for a front page image of anti-Hamas protests in Gaza which, of course, are a favorite media topic for the pro-genocide crowd as they see it as evidence their “war on Hamas” is both morally justified and, somehow, endorsed by Palestinians themselves.
Like the New York Times, the nightly news shows–CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and ABC World News Tonight–covered the initial bombing and breaking of the ceasefire the day after (ABC News’s lede after Israel killed 400+ in under 24 hours: “What does this mean for the hostages?”), but have subsequently ignored Gaza entirely, with one notable exception. CBS Evening News did a 4-minute segment on March 26 on “allegations” Israel was using Palestinians, and Palestinian children in particular, as human shields and even this was front loaded with bizarre denunciations of Hamas “using human shields”:
Most conspicuous of all was the total erasure of Gaza from the “agenda-setting” Sunday news programs that are designed to tell elites in Washington what they should care about. Gaza wasn’t mentioned once on any of the Sunday news shows–ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union–for the weeks of March 23 and March 30. Despite Israel breaking the ceasefire on Tuesday March 18 and killing more than 400 Palestinians–including over 200 women and children–in less than 24 hours, none of the Sunday morning news programs that have aired since have covered Gaza at all.
Combined with the nonstop “flood the zone” strategy of the Trump White House as it attacks dozens of perceived enemies at once, the US-backed genocide in Gaza is now both cliche and low priority.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday that at least 322 children had been killed and 609 injured since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18.
Whereas the media approach during the Biden years was to spin, obfuscate, blame Hamas, and help distance the White House from the images of carnage emanating from Gaza by propping up fake “ceasefire talks,” the media approach now that Trump is doubling down on Biden’s strategy of unfettered support for genocide appears to be to largely ignore it.
All indications are that Israeli officials were banking on US news outlets normalizing the ongoing genocide of Gaza, assuming–correctly, as it turns out–that the death and despair would become so routine it would take on a “dog bites man” element. Combined with the nonstop “flood the zone” strategy of the Trump White House as it attacks dozens of perceived enemies at once, the US-backed genocide in Gaza is now both cliche and low priority.
By way of comparison, the Sunday shows, nightly news shows, and the front page of the New York Times ran wall-to-wall coverage of the Yemen-Signal group chat controversy. Obviously, administration officials using unsecured channels to discuss war plans is a news story (though not nearly as important as the war crimes casually being discussed) but the fact that Israel recommenced its bombing, siege, and starvation strategy on an already decimated population is, objectively, a more urgent story with much higher human stakes.
With Trump openly endorsing ethnic cleansing, “debates” around how best to facilitate this ethnic cleansing are presented as sober, practical foreign policy discussions–not the open planning of a crime against humanity.
Indeed, Palestinians reporting from Gaza say the situation is as dire as it’s ever been. Israel cut off all aid on March 2 and the bombings have been as relentless and brutal as any time period pre-ceasefire. Meanwhile, with Trump openly endorsing ethnic cleansing, “debates” around how best to facilitate this ethnic cleansing are presented as sober, practical foreign policy discussions–not the open planning of a crime against humanity. “You mentioned Gaza,” Margaret Brennan casually said to Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, the last time Gaza was mentioned on CBS’s Face the Nation, March 16. “I want to ask you what specifics you are looking at when it comes to relocating the two million Palestinians in Gaza. In the past, you’ve mentioned Egypt. You’ve mentioned Jordan. Are you talking to other countries at this point about resettling?”
Witkoff would go on to say Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza would “lead to a better life for Gazans,” to which Brennan politely nodded, thanked him and moved on. Watching this exchange one would hardly know that was being discussed–mass forceable population transfer–is a textbook war crime. Recent revelations by the UN that aid workers had been found in a mass grave have also been ignored by broadcast news. 15 Palestinian rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one,” according to the UN humanitarian affairs office (OCHA) and the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS). This story has not been covered on-air by ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, or CNN.
The ongoing suffering in Gaza, still very much armed and funded by the White House, continues to fade into the background. It’s become routine, banal, and not something that can drive a wedge into the Democratic coalition. This dynamic, combined with US media’s general pro-Israel bias, means the daily starvation and death is not going to be making major headlines anytime soon. It’s now, after 18 months of genocide, just another boring “foreign policy” story.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Adam Johnson.
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