Durban, November 4, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes Gambian President Adama Barrow’s decision to withdraw a civil defamation lawsuit against The Voice newspaper and its editor-in-chief and urges Attorney General Dawda A. Jallow to drop related false news charges against the editor and a colleague.
“We are relieved that President Barrow responded to appeals from local media representatives, the National Human Rights Commission, and CPJ by retracting the lawsuit against The Voice and its editor Musa Sekour Sheriff,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program. “We trust that the false news charges will also be dropped by the time Sheriff and his colleague, Momodou Justice Darboe, next appear in criminal court.”
Information Minister Ismaila Ceesay, Gambian Press Union President Muhammed S. Bah, and the Newspaper Publishers’ Association told CPJ by messaging app that representatives of the local groups and the Media Council were informed that the president would withdraw the lawsuit unconditionally when they met him at the State House in the capital of Banjul on Monday. According to Bah, Seine, and Sheriff, the false news charges are expected to be dropped before Sheriff and Darboe’s criminal trialresumes on December 10.
Sheriff and Darboe were arrested on September 26 in Banjul when they arrived for police questioning a day after receiving a letter from the president’s lawyer threatening a civil defamation lawsuit over an article alleging that Barrow was preparing an exit plan and had chosen a successor for the 2026 presidential election. The journalists were then charged with false publication and broadcasting.
CPJ urged Barrow in a September 27 letter that the charges be dropped. On October 7, CPJ wrote to Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission chairperson, Emmanuel Joof, seeking mediation. Joof and Commissioner Iman Baba Leigh met Barrow on October 23 at the president’s holiday retreat to raise the issue, and also met Sheriff five days later, Jarboo and Sheriff told CPJ.
Western publics are being subjected to a campaign of psychological warfare, where genocide is classed as ‘self-defence’ and opposition to it ‘terrorism’. Jonathan Cook reports as the world marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists at the weekend.
ANALYSIS:By Jonathan Cook
Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.
They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a “Hamas claims” or “Gaza family members allege”. Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.
Israel could shroud its slaughter in a fog of confusion and disputation. The natural revulsion evoked by a genocide would be tempered and attenuated.
For a year, the networks’ most experienced war reporters have stayed put in their hotels in Israel, watching Gaza from afar. Their human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians.
That is why Western audiences have been forced to relive a single day of horror for Israel, on October 7, 2023, as intensely as they have a year of greater horrors in Gaza — in what the World Court has judged to be a “plausible” genocide by Israel.
That is why the media have immersed their audiences in the agonies of the families of some 250 Israelis — civilians taken hostage and soldiers taken captive — as much as they have the agonies of 2.3 million Palestinians bombed and starved to death week after week, month after month.
That is why audiences have been subjected to gaslighting narratives that frame Gaza’s destruction as a “humanitarian crisis” rather than the canvas on which Israel is erasing all the known rules of war.
Western media’s human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians. Image: www.jonathan-cook.net
While foreign correspondents sit obediently in their hotel rooms, Palestinian journalists have been picked off one by one — in the greatest massacre of journalists in history.
Israel is now repeating that process in Lebanon. On the night of October 24, it struck a residence in south Lebanon where three journalists were staying. All were killed.
In an indication of how deliberate and cynical Israel’s actions are, it put its military’s crosshairs on six Al Jazeera reporters last month, smearing them as “terrorists” working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are reportedly the last surviving Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza, which Israel has sealed off while it carries out the so-called “General’s Plan”.
Israel wants no one reporting its final push to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by starving out the 400,000 Palestinians still there and executing anyone who remains as a “terrorist”.
These six join a long list of professionals defamed by Israel in the interests of advancing its genocide — from doctors and aid workers to UN peacekeepers.
Sympathy for Israel Perhaps the nadir of Israel’s domestication of foreign journalists was reached last month in a report by CNN. Back in February whistleblowing staff there revealed that the network’s executives have been actively obscuring Israeli atrocities to portray Israel in a more sympathetic light.
In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable — but sadly was all too predictable — CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.
Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews “provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society”.
In its lengthy piece, titled “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him”, the atrocities the soldiers admit committing are little more than the backdrop as CNN finds yet another angle on Israeli suffering. Israeli soldiers are the real victims — even as they perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinian people.
One bulldozer driver, Guy Zaken, told CNN he could not sleep and had become vegetarian because of the “very, very difficult things” he had seen and had to do in Gaza.
What things? Zaken had earlier told a hearing of the Israeli Parliament that his unit’s job was to drive over many hundreds of Palestinians, some of them alive.
CNN reported: “Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza.”
Doubtless some Nazi concentration camp guards committed suicide in the 1940s after witnessing the horrors there — because they were responsible for them. Only in some weird parallel news universe, would their “psychological burden” be the story.
After a huge online backlash, CNN amended an editor’s note at the start of the article that originally read: “This story includes details about suicide that some readers may find upsetting.”
Readers, it was assumed, would find the suicide of Israeli soldiers upsetting, but apparently not the revelation that those soldiers were routinely driving over Palestinians so that, as Zaken explained, “everything squirts out”.
Banned from Gaza Finally, a year into Israel’s genocidal war, now rapidly spreading into Lebanon, some voices are being raised very belatedly to demand the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza.
This week — in a move presumably designed, as November’s elections loom, to ingratiate themselves with voters angry at the party’s complicity in genocide — dozens of Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to President Joe Biden asking him to pressure Israel to give journalists “unimpeded access” to the enclave.
Don’t hold your breath.
Western media have done very little themselves to protest their exclusion from Gaza over the past year — for a number of reasons.
Given the utterly indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment, major outlets have not wanted their journalists getting hit by a 2000lb bomb for being in the wrong place.
That may in part be out of concern for their welfare. But there are likely to be more cynical concerns.
Having foreign journalists in Gaza blown up or executed by snipers would drag media organisations into direct confrontation with Israel and its well-oiled lobby machine.
The response would be entirely predictable, insinuating that the journalists died because they were colluding with “the terrorists” or that they were being used as “human shields” — the excuse Israel has rolled out time and again to justify its targeting of doctors in Gaza and UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
But there’s a bigger problem. The establishment media have not wanted to be in a position where their journalists are so close to the “action” that they are in danger of providing a clearer picture of Israel’s war crimes and its genocide.
The media’s current distance from the crime scene offers them plausible deniability as they both-sides every Israeli atrocity.
In previous conflicts, western reporters have served as witnesses, assisting in the prosecution of foreign leaders for war crimes. That happened in the wars that attended the break-up of Yugoslavia, and will doubtless happen once again if Russian President Valdimir Putin is ever delivered to The Hague.
But those journalistic testimonies were harnessed to put the West’s enemies behind bars, not its closest ally.
The media do not want their reporters to become chief witnesses for the prosecution in the future trials of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, at the International Criminal Court. The ICC’s Prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for them both.
After all, any such testimony from journalists would not stop at Israel’s door. They would implicate Western capitals too, and put establishment media organisations on a collision course with their own governments.
The Western media does not see its job as holding power to account when the West is the one committing the crimes.
Censoring Palestinians Journalist whistleblowers have gradually been coming forward to explain how establishment news organisations — including the BBC and the supposedly liberal Guardian — are sidelining Palestinian voices and minimising the genocide.
An investigation by Novara Media recently revealed mounting unhappiness in parts of The Guardian newsroom at its double standards on Israel and Palestine.
Its editors recently censored a commentary by preeminent Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa after she insisted on being allowed to refer to the slaughter in Gaza as “the holocaust of our times”.
Senior Guardian columnists such as Jonathan Freedland made much during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour party that Jews, and Jews alone, had the right to define and name their own oppression.
That right, however, does not appear to extend to Palestinians.
As staff who spoke to Novara noted, The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, had no problem opening its pages to British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson to smear as a “blood libel” any reporting of the provable fact that Israel has killed many, many thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.
One veteran journalist there said: “Is The Guardian more worried about the reaction to what is said about Israel than Palestine? Absolutely.”
Another staff member admitted it would be inconceivable for the paper to be seen censoring a Jewish writer. But censoring a Palestinian one is fine, it seems.
Other journalists report being under “suffocating control” from senior editors, and say this pressure exists “only if you’re publishing something critical of Israel”.
According to staff there, the word “genocide” is all but banned in the paper except in coverage of the International Court of Justice, whose judges ruled nine months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocide. Things have got far worse since.
Whistleblowing journalists Similarly, “Sara”, a whistleblower who recently resigned from the BBC newsroom and spoke of her experiences to Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, said Palestinians and their supporters were routinely kept off air or subjected to humiliating and insensitive lines of questioning.
Some producers have reportedly grown increasingly reluctant to bring on air vulnerable Palestinians, some of whom have lost family members in Gaza, because of concerns about the effect on their mental health from the aggressive interrogations they were being subjected to from anchors.
According to Sara, BBC vetting of potential guests overwhelmingly targets Palestinians, as well as those sympathetic to their cause and human rights organisations. Background checks are rarely done of Israelis or Jewish guests.
She added that a search showing that a guest had used the word “Zionism” — Israel’s state ideology — in a social media post could be enough to get them disqualified from a programme.
Even officials from one of the biggest rights group in the world, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, became persona non grata at the BBC for their criticisms of Israel, even though the corporation had previously relied on their reports in covering Ukraine and other global conflicts.
Israeli guests, by contrast, “were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback”, including lies about Hamas burning or beheading babies and committing mass rape.
An email cited by Al Jazeera from more than 20 BBC journalists sent last February to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, warned that the corporation’s coverage risked “aiding and abetting genocide through story suppression”.
Upside-down values These biases have been only too evident in the BBC’s coverage, first of Gaza and now, as media interest wanes in the genocide, of Lebanon.
Headlines — the mood music of journalism, and the only part of a story many of the audience read — have been uniformly dire.
For example, Netanyahu’s threats of a Gaza-style genocide against the Lebanese people last month if they did not overthrow their leaders were soft-soaped by the BBC headline: “Netanyahu’s appeal to Lebanese people falls on deaf ears in Beirut.”
Reasonable readers would have wrongly inferred both that Netanyahu was trying to do the Lebanese people a favour (by preparing to murder them), and that they were being ungrateful in not taking up his offer.
It has been the same story everywhere in the establishment media. In another extraordinary, revealing moment, Kay Burley of Sky News announced last month the deaths of four Israeli soldiers from a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base inside Israel.
With a solemnity usually reserved for the passing of a member of the British royal family, she slowly named the four soldiers, with a photo of each shown on screen. She stressed twice that all four were only 19 years old.
Sky News seemed not to understand that these were not British soldiers, and that there was no reason for a British audience to be especially disturbed by their deaths. Soldiers are killed in wars all the time — it is an occupational hazard.
And further, if Israel considered them old enough to fight in Gaza and Lebanon, then they were old enough to die too without their age being treated as particularly noteworthy.
But more significantly still, Israel’s Golani Brigade to which these soldiers belonged has been centrally involved in the slaughter of Palestinians over the past year. Its troops have been responsible for many of the tens of thousands of children killed and maimed in Gaza.
Each of the four soldiers was far, far less deserving of Burley’s sympathy and concern than the thousands of children who have been slaughtered at the hands of their brigade. Those children are almost never named and their pictures are rarely shown, not least because their injuries are usually too horrifying to be seen.
It was yet more evidence of the upside-down world the establishment media has been trying to normalise for its audiences.
It is why statistics from the United States, where the coverage of Gaza and Lebanon may be even more unhinged, show faith in the media is at rock bottom. Fewer than one in three respondents — 31 percent — said they still had a “great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media”.
Crushing dissent Israel is the one dictating the coverage of its genocide. First by murdering the Palestinian journalists reporting it on the ground, and then by making sure house-trained foreign correspondents stay well clear of the slaughter, out of harm’s way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
And as ever, Israel has been able to rely on the complicity of its Western patrons in crushing dissent at home.
Last week, a British investigative journalist, Asa Winstanley, an outspoken critic of Israel and its lobbyists in the UK, had his home in London raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police.
Though the police have not arrested or charged him — at least not yet — they snatched his electronic devices. He was warned that he is being investigated for “encouragement of terrorism” in his social media posts.
Police told Middle East Eye that his devices had been seized as part of an investigation into suspected terrorism offences of “support for a proscribed organisation” and “dissemination of terrorist documents”.
The police can act only because of Britain’s draconian, anti-speech Terrorism Act.
Section 12, for example, makes the expression of an opinion that could be interpreted as sympathetic to armed Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation — a right enshrined in international law but sweepingly dismissed as “terrorism” in the West — itself a terrorism offence.
Those journalists who haven’t been house-trained in the establishment media, as well as solidarity activists, must now chart a treacherous path across intentionally ill-defined legal terrain when talking about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Winstanley is not the first journalist to be accused of falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In recent weeks, Richard Medhurst, a freelance journalist, was arrested at Heathrow airport on his return from a trip abroad. Another journalist-activist, Sarah Wilkinson, was briefly arrested after her home was ransacked by police.
Their electronic devices were seized too.
Meanwhile, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, which seeks to disrupt the UK’s supply of weapons to Israel’s genocide, has been charged over speeches he has made against the genocide.
It now appears that all these actions are part of a specific police campaign targeting journalists and Palestinian solidarity activists: “Operation Incessantness”.
The message this clumsy title is presumably supposed to convey is that the British state is coming after anyone who speaks out too loudly against the British government’s continuing arming and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Notably, the establishment media have failed to cover this latest assault on journalism and the role of a free press — supposedly the very things they are there to protect.
The raid on Winstanley’s home and the arrests are intended to intimidate others, including independent journalists, into silence for fear of the consequences of speaking up.
This has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, it is terrorism by the British state.
Once again the world is being turned upside down.
Echoes from history The West is waging a campaign of psychological warfare on its populations: it is gaslighting and disorientating them, classing genocide as “self-defence” and opposition to it a form of “terrorism”.
This is an expansion of the persecution suffered by Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who spent years locked up in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison.
His unprecedented journalism — revealing the darkest secrets of Western states — was redefined as espionage. His “offence” was revealing that Britain and the US had committed systematic war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, on the back of that precedent, the British state is coming after journalists simply for embarrassing it.
Late last month I attended a meeting in Bristol against the genocide in Gaza at which the main speaker was physically absent after the British state failed to issue him an entry visa.
The missing guest — he had to join us by zoom — was Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, who was locked up for decades as a terrorist before becoming the first leader of post-apartheid South Africa and a feted, international statesman.
Mandla Mandela was until recently a member of the South African Parliament.
A Home Office spokesperson told Middle East Eye that the UK only issued visas “to those who we want to welcome to our country”.
Media reports suggest Britain was determined to exclude Mandela because, like his grandfather, he views the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid as intimately linked to the earlier struggle against South Africa’s apartheid.
The echoes from history are apparently entirely lost on officials: the UK is once again associating the Mandela family with terrorism. Before it was to protect South Africa’s apartheid regime. Now it is to protect Israel’s even worse apartheid and genocidal regime.
The world is indeed turned on its head. And the West’s supposedly “free media” is playing a critical role in trying to make our upside-down world seem normal.
That can only be achieved by failing to report the Gaza genocide as a genocide. Instead, Western journalists are serving as little more than stenographers. Their job: to take dictation from Israel.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Ralph welcomes Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. They’ll discuss the crucial role that the Postal Service plays in our democratic process, and how organized labor is impacting this year’s elections. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist James Bamford to talk about his latest article in The Nation: “Israel Is Killing Whole Families in Gaza—With Weapons Made in America.” Plus, how candidates’ positions on Israel may win or lose them voters on Election Day.
Mark Dimondstein is the President of the American Postal Workers Union. Since 2013 when Mr. Dimondstein was elected, he has turned the APWU into a fighting activist organization. Mr. Dimondstein advocates for the rights of postal workers as well as the right of the American people to a vibrant public Postal Service. The American Postal Workers Union supports Medicare for All and belongs to the Labor Campaign for Single Payer. The APWU believes in paying a living wage and providing benefits to all workers.
We have about 200,000 members. And we definitely represent people throughout the entire political spectrum and throughout the whole country. So we represent people from right to left, left to right, everybody in between, and we represent people from the most rural outpost in the country to the urban centers. So first, the way we handle it is we don’t try to tell people how they should think and how they should vote. We’re all adults, we vote for what we think is in our best interest as workers, as family members, as community members, as citizens and so on. So we don’t try to dictate to our members how to vote, but we do have a responsibility to lead…So I think leadership has a responsibility to educate our members, to activate our members, and to get our members to be involved in the political electoral process.
Mark Dimondstein
I’m a proud Jewish American. Jewish Americans should be the first to say “never again” when it comes to genocide, when it comes to ethnic cleansing, and when it comes to war crime. And we’re not going to solve all the problems of the Middle East and the complicated history of the Middle East on this radio show. But let’s at least be clear that the crimes committed against the Jewish people should never be allowed to be committed against anybody else—no matter who’s doing it.
Mark Dimondstein
Kamala Harris sent her two closest advisors to Wall Street about a month ago to get advice on her economic and tax policies and not connecting with the Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a progressive proposal. She doesn’t connect with citizen groups. She goes around campaigning with Liz Cheney…It’s quite amazing that the most popular incumbent elected politician in America today is Bernie Sanders…And she’s ignoring Bernie Sanders and going into one state after another with people like Liz Cheney.
Ralph Nader
Whatever happens next Tuesday, our work isn’t done. The divisions that have been created by white supremacy, by this anti-immigrant fervor out here—these things aren’t going away. Issues that divide workers instead of unite workers—the growing bigotry, the attack on women’s rights to reproductive freedom and health, the attacks on voting rights—these are issues that are going to be here with whoever wins the election. So the working people and the trade union movement have a lot of work to do, whatever the outcome.
The reason I wrote [my article] was because people read about the bombs blowing up schools and refugee camps and hospitals and killing scores and scores, hundreds, thousands of people… But few people realized that it’s middle America, largely, that’s building the bombs, sending the bombs, and the American taxpayers are paying for the bombs. All the Israelis are doing is dropping the bombs.
James Bamford
I think the only way is international pressure. I wrote about this in my last book, that the only thing that you can ever do to affect Israel is to have an international boycott sanction. We have to treat it like the worst country on earth. That’s what happened with South Africa. That’s what stopped apartheid—once they couldn’t buy anything.
1. A crisis is unfolding at the Washington Post following billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to block the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. In a statement signed by 21 opinion columnists at the Post, they write “The…decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake.” Signatories include Karen Attiah, E.J. Dionne, and Dana Milbank among many others. Since the publication of that statement, two opinion writers have resigned: David Hoffman, who has written for the Post since 1982 and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize just last week, as well as technology columnist Molly Roberts. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan also resigned his position at the paper. This from Semafor. Responding to the outcry, Bezos himself published an op-ed in the paper arguing that Americans see the news media as too politicized already and an official endorsement would merely make matters worse. As of October 29th, over 200,000 Washington Post readers, nearly 10% of the total readership, have canceled their subscriptions, per NPR.
2. Like the Washington Post, the LA Times also opted not to endorse Kamala Harris. Similar backlash followed, with the New York Times reporting “Thousands of readers canceled subscriptions. Three members of the editorial board resigned. Nearly 200 staff members signed an open letter to management demanding an explanation, complaining that the decision this close to the election had undermined the news organization’s trust with readers.” Nika Soon-Shiong, the activist daughter of LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, publicly stated “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process…As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.” Per Vanity Fair however, her father disputes this narrative, saying “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion…She does not have any role at The L.A. Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board, as has been made clear many times.” The murkiness of these circumstances has left readers with many questions that likely will not be answered until well after the election.
3. According to Slate, “Donald Trump told a crowd of supporters that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [last] Saturday…According to Trump, the Israeli leader said he disregarded President Joe Biden’s warning to keep troops out of Rafah in southern Gaza.” In other words, Trump is conducting foreign policy independent of the sitting president, a flagrant violation of the Logan Act and the Constitution itself. This collusion between Trump and Netanyahu is reminiscent of the Nixon campaign’s collusion with the South Vietnamese to prolong the Vietnam War and thereby undermine the Hubert Humphrey campaign and similarly, the Reagan campaign’s collusion with Iran to prolong the hostage crisis. Yet again however, it seems unlikely that there will be any consequences to this open criminal activity.
4.Reuters reports that on Monday, Israel formally banned the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency from operating inside Israel. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who has worked extensively in Gaza since this campaign of slaughter began is quoted saying “If UNRWA is unable to operate, it’ll likely see the collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza…So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children.” Reuters reports “over 13,300 children whose identities have been confirmed have been killed” in Gaza, while “Many more are believed to have died from diseases due to a collapsing medical system and food and water shortages.”
5. The Muslim Mirror reports “In a landmark diplomatic move, Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly elected President of Mexico and the country’s first Jewish head of state, officially recognized the State of Palestine.” Sheinbaum is quoted saying “Today, Mexico reaffirms its commitment to human rights and justice for all. Recognizing Palestine is a step toward peace and a signal to the international community that the Palestinian people deserve dignity, statehood, and the right to self-determination.” Neither the United States nor Canada recognize the State of Palestine.
6. Over 20,000 workers have lost their lives working on Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman’s Saudi Vision 2030 project, per the Hindustan Times. These workers, almost exclusively migrants, say they feel like “trapped slaves” and “beggars,” and allege widespread exploitation including “unpaid wages, illegal working hours and human rights abuses.” While rumors of the workers mistreatment has been circulating for years now, a new ITV documentary has brought more attention to the issue in recent days. The deeply suspect NEOM mega-city project alone, which is just one aspect of Saudi Vision 2030, is expected to cost at least $500 billion.
7. BRICS, the loose multi-polar alliance of countries forming an alternative economic bloc to offset the United States, recently concluded their latest summit. Per Democracy Now!, the alliance voted to accept 13 more countries to the bloc, including Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. These were chosen from nearly three-dozen applicants. The outpouring of applications indicates a substantial appetite for an economic alternative to the United States throughout much of the world.
8. On October 22nd, Congressman Ro Khanna re-introduced the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act, intended to curb the trend of private equity gobbling up housing stock across the country. The bill was first introduced in 2022, but the crisis has only grown since then. According to NOTUS, “In the first half of 2024, one in four ‘low-priced’ homes were purchased by investors…In that same time, the percentage of Americans with a ‘high degree of concern’ about housing costs rose to 69%.” If passed, this bill would raise taxes on home acquisitions by private equity firms that hold over $100 million in assets and “bar government-supported lenders from backing new mortgages for such purchases.” Both presidential campaigns have made housing a major issue on the trail, though only the Kamala Harris campaign has offered viable policy to address the crisis.
9.E&E News reports Argus Insight, a conservative research firm is “collecting information that could be used to discredit officials involved in a multibillion-dollar climate lawsuit against fossil fuel companies.” The suit, filed last year in Oregon, accuses “Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, McKinsey…and hundreds of other defendants of being responsible for a dayslong heat wave in 2021 that killed 69 people. Multnomah County, home to Portland, is seeking more than $51 billion to pay for damages from the tragedy and to prepare for future disasters.” It is unknown why exactly Argus is seeking this information, but experts speculate that they are “using the same tactics that the tobacco industry deployed against its critics decades ago.” Benjamin Franta, an Oxford professor of climate litigation, is quoted saying “The strategy is to ‘try to figure out who is helping to inform these cases and…discredit them in some way…If someone loses on the facts, they try to shoot the messenger.’”
10. Finally, the Popular Information Substack reports “On October 10…[Attorney General Merrick] Garland held a press conference and announced that TD Bank had illegally laundered over $670 million of drug money.” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo added “Time and again, unlike its peers, TD Bank prioritized growth and profit over complying with the law.” Surely such a clear, textbook case of corporate criminality would result in criminal charges…except Garland and the DOJ brought no charges, instead settling for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement and a fine of $3 billion. Only two low-level employees were hit with criminal charges, despite clear evidence showing the involvement of high-level executives. Senator Elizabeth Warren said of the deal “This settlement lets bad bank executives off the hook for allowing TD Bank to be used as a criminal slush fund.”
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
The effective implosion of the apartheid regime in South Africa came almost a decade before the actual event.
In February 1985, Nelson Mandela was informed by his captors, after a quarter of a century of confinement, that he was free to leave Robben Island.
He rejected their pardon. He alone, he said, would choose when he left his captivity, and he would not do so merely so his captors could gratify themselves and not until all the regime’s other political prisoners had been released.
In that act, power shifted hands, and Mandela made it obvious to all that an illegitimate government couldn’t pardon him for a crime he never committed.
Vietnamese human rights activist Tran Huynh Duy Thuc sits in front of his father after being released from prison, in Ho Chi Minh City, Sept. 21, 2024.
Remembering this, it was heartening to read that Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, a Vietnamese political prisoner “released” early from prison in late September after 16 years in confinement, had refused to accept a presidential pardon when his jailors told him that he was free to go.
“I immediately protested, saying that I was not guilty and had no reason to accept the pardon, and that I would not go anywhere,” Thuc later recounted.
It took 20 prison officers to “forcibly carry me out of the prison gate amidst protests from political prisoners there, then put me in a car and took me to [an] airport.”
He added: “I was forced to accept amnesty, an unprecedented event in this country.” To him, it was a “forced pardon.”
And he also knew why he was being released eight months early: “I became an important supporting act for the president’s visit to the U.S..”
Thuc and Hoang Thi Minh Hong, a climate campaigner, were pardoned and released from jail the day before the Vietnamese Communist Party chief and then state president, To Lam, boarded a flight to New York to talk at a United Nations summit and meet Joe Biden, the U.S. president.
Down payment for Biden
Quite clearly, the prisoner releases were a down payment from the communist government in Hanoi for goodwill in New York.
The U.S. government did not directly comment on the matter, nor did the Vietnamese government officially give a reason for the releases.
Vietnamese environment activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong holds a banner during a protest in Ho Chi Minh City in 2017.
But Hanoi thinks Washington likes what it sees.
Thuc and Hong were not the first political prisoners the Communist Party offered up as human gifts to appease the Americans. Some, like Tran Thi Nga, were sent off into exile in the United States after their pardon.
Perhaps Washington has made it known, at least privately, that it is pleased by these events. It hasn’t suggested otherwise.
The Vietnamese people must form their own opinion of their government trading its citizens and degrading the justice system to appease a former enemy.
This sordid deal is not what Ho Chi Minh was imagining when he said his “ultimate desire is to make our country completely independent, our people completely free.”
The exchange showed Washington’s myopia over the Vietnamese Communist Party’s oppressive behavior. Biden probably would have still told Lam in New York that “there’s nothing beyond our capacity when we work together” even without the release of a couple of political prisoners.
Washington should not be in the business of accepting prisoners from the Communist Party, whose control of the courts allows it to imprison anyone who dares challenge its authority.
Judge and jury
Being able to prosecute and then arbitrarily release prisoners for political purposes puts the Communist Party above the law, acting as judge and jury and often the sole absolver of sin.
Someone imprisoned for standing up for their rights can at least maintain their innocence against their oppressor.
But a prisoner is only released early through a pardon, and, by being forced to accept a pardon, the prisoner must at least appear to accept their guilt.
President Joe Biden meets with Vietnam’s President To Lam in New York, Sept. 25, 2024.
This is not an exculpation; it’s a gift of freedom from an oppressor. The Communist Party’s pardon legitimizes its earlier tyranny.
By not discouraging pardons of political prisoners and by not condemning these in the same manner as it would condemn the unfair arrest of an individual exercising their rights, the U.S. helps undermine Vietnam’s rule of law.
The U.S. would be more helpful if it were to say that it only welcomes the release of political prisoners if the Vietnamese Communist Party acquits them, not pardons them.
The Communist Party could pardon all political prisoners and empty its cells tomorrow, as some demand, but that act will make it easier to double the prison population the next day.
Only the proper rule of law would prevent that. And Washington must not allow that to be debased by Vietnam to boost bilateral relations.
David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes the Watching Europe In Southeast Asianewsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by David Hutt.
This week’s bonus show features Part II of our conversation with psychiatrist and bestselling author Dr. Bandy Lee. We dive into the phenomenon of “Trump contagion,” strategies for handling MAGA cultists in your life (including how to respond if harassed in public), whether Trump is the Antichrist (spoiler: he is!), and whether Trump staged the recent assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
This week’s show also answers a pressing question from a listener. Democracy Defender Patreon supporter Melissa asks: “If you or anyone else has any good reads to recommend on the Green Party and its origins, would love to read it as they are clearly now a Kremlin owned and operated effort to divide and conquer the left.” Melissa, we’ve got you covered! Check out our Jill Stein Voter Guide Super Special.
If you know someone considering a vote for Jill Stein, share this special episode highlighting her troubling track record of hypocrisy. Despite being labeled a “peace candidate,” Jill Stein is a multimillionaire profiting from investments in the military-industrial complexand fossil fuels.
Interestingly, the European Green Party has called for Jill Stein to withdraw from the race and endorse Kamala Harris, stating: “With wars raging and authoritarianism on the rise, Europe needs Kamala Harris as President of the United States—a reliable partner who can take urgent action on the climate crisis and foster a just, sustainable peace in the Middle East.”
The European Green family, which consists of Green parties across Europe, has emphasized that their values starkly contrast with those of Jill Stein’s (fake) Green Party. In their statement, they criticized the US Greens for their connections to authoritarian leaders and diverging policies, particularly regarding Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine.
To catch the full episode, subscribe at Patreon.com/Gaslit. Thank you to all our supporters for making this show possible!
Bernie Sanders on Gaza and the 2024 Election: https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1851040553745432775
“Zelensky’s frustration is clear—painfully sad, even— after the White House leaked secrets of his victory plan. But should we be surprised? Since 1991, Joe Biden and other Washington elites have been against Ukrainian freedom. Watch:” https://x.com/JPLindsley/status/1851921386513514734
US elections: European Greens call for Jill Stein to step down https://europeangreens.eu/news/us-elections-european-greens-call-for-jill-stein-to-step-down/
I’m an Environmentalist. That’s Why I Can’t Vote Green. Award-winning filmmaker and director of Gasland Josh Fox on why he will never vote for Jill Stein. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/jill-stein-green-party-hypocrite/
Former Green Party presidential candidate cooperates in Russia probe into 2016 election
Jill Stein’s Green Party campaign will be turning down some congressional requests for documentation, calling them “overbroad.” https://theintercept.com/2018/04/26/russia-jill-stein-senate-intelligence/
Want to enjoy Gaslit Nation ad-free? Join our community of listeners for bonus episodes, exclusive Q&A sessions, our Monday political salons over Zoom, our Victory group chat, invitations to live events, and more! Sign up at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation and was authored by Andrea Chalupa.
Indigenous communities are among the poorest in the U.S. This is one of many persistent symptoms of the colonial relationship imposed by force upon Indigenous peoples. As famed historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Neither arcane colonial laws nor the historical trauma of genocide simply disappear with time and certainly not when conditions of life and consciousness perpetuate them.” From the earliest days of colonial settlement, a theme of eliminating Indians in the name of expansion and settler opportunity became embedded into the U.S. political system and culture. The violence unleashed on the largely defenseless Indian nations had few parallels in history. Treaties and policies involving Indigenous peoples have consistently been designed to disadvantage them, locking them into suppressed social status and codifying their dependence on the U.S. government. Recorded at Bowdoin College.
This content originally appeared on AlternativeRadio and was authored by info@alternativeradio.org.
The November 2024 U.S. presidential election will take place after years of an increasingly polarized political climate in the country. This election comes after two previous contentious presidential election cycles, amid high levels of distrust in the media and a recent history of journalists being arrested, assaulted, and attacked in-person and online, including at protests.
As CPJ’s October 2024 special report on press freedom in the U.S. determined, the safety of journalists is at risk throughout the country with members of the media facing violence, online harassment, legal challenges, and attacks by police.
The January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol highlights the potential for violence during mass gatherings, and the risks journalists face while covering them. Since the beginning of 2020, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented more than 800 attacks on journalists while covering such events. The possibility of similar press freedom violations in the wake of the 2024 U.S. presidential election remains a risk for journalists reporting the news.
In response, since the start of 2024, CPJ’s Emergencies Team has trained more than 700 journalists on how to stay safe while covering the upcoming U.S. presidential election. (See CPJ’s YouTube playlist for Election Safety Summer training videos, among the many journalist safety training sessions CPJ provided in 2024.)
Given the recent history of danger facing journalists covering political protests and unrest across the U.S., much of this training has been focused on how to safely report on — and during — protests. Digital safety, and how to protect yourself and your colleagues online, is another key training topic. The frequency and intensity of protests in the United States have escalated in recent years, creating a challenging environment for journalists.
Based on questions asked by journalists during this year’s safety training sessions, CPJ has outlined the key physical and digital safety issues journalists and their editors need to address to safely cover the upcoming U.S. election.
What should I wear to a protest, and what equipment should I take with me?
In general, best practices are as follows:
Wear laced, solid but comfortable footwear that cannot slip off easily. Avoid easily flammable materials like nylon, and instead favor items like denim that are more flame-retardant.
Avoid wearing colors or items of clothing that might resemble something worn by any belligerent actor at the protest. For example, do not wear black or camouflage colors or hoodies. Try not to wear lanyards or items that someone can use to hold onto you. Wear your backpack in front of you.
Determine whether it is a good idea, or legally required, to identify yourself as a member of the press. Always have press credentials close on hand if required.
Always carry a mobile phone and a battery pack charger. Ensure that you have a few food supplies with you.
Depending on the predicted severity of unrest, protective equipment such as ballistic glasses, helmets, and a small medical pack are often useful. Stab vests and respirators can protect you as well, but wearing them will raise your profile, and you should use them to exit a situation safely — not linger.
What are the best practices for planning and preparing for unrest, and making sure my colleagues and I remain as safe as possible?
Research the dynamic of the protest in advance and do a risk assessment to identify common threats and plan for worst-case scenarios.
Work in a team where possible. If necessary, buddy up with other journalists to help each other.
Plan your arrival, but most importantly, plan your departure from the protest. If it is a march or goes late into the night, you may find yourself in a remote or dangerous location.
Do not take unnecessary valuables or equipment. It will make you an attractive target for thieves.
Upon arrival at a location, identify likely flashpoints and main escape routes. Also work out your closest medical evacuation point and a rendezvous location, if required.
Communicate regularly with an editor, colleague, or another trusted individual about your activities.
Identify any protest organizers or troublemakers. If you need to interview them, do not stay with them longer than necessary. Remember, the authorities may target them at some point, and you may get caught up in this action.
Position yourself at the edge of the crowd, only going in for short periods before returning to a place of safety. If you are in the middle of the crowd, it may be hard to remove yourself should there be a stampede.
Always observe the protestors and the police dynamic. If protestors are becoming more aggressive or police are donning protective equipment, this can indicate there is likely to be a flashpoint.
What crowd control techniques are used at protests, and what should I do if police conduct crowd dispersals?
Police in the United States have used a range of less-lethal weapons for crowd control and crowd dispersal:
Pepper spray: A chemical irritant that causes intense burning and discomfort.
Rubber bullets: Projectiles made of rubber or similar materials that can cause pain and injury. In some cases, journalists have been blinded.
Teargas: A chemical irritant that causes discomfort and can disperse crowds. Remember, if the police are wearing respiratory protection, it is a sign they are likely going to use either pepper spray or teargas.
If the police begin to use less-lethal weapons, they are clearly indicating they want the crowd to disperse. Failure to do so may lead to a more aggressive approach, such as baton charges or kettling. Kettling is a legal but controversial police tactic in which police surround protestors, not allowing them to disperse. Often they will arrest individuals within the kettle, including journalists.
Police authorities will often signal an escalation in activity by their demeanor, the donning of protective equipment, the formation or firming up of police lines, or by issuing verbal warnings to disperse.
Dynamically assess the situation and decide whether the risk is acceptable to keep reporting or if it could be necessary to pull out to a safe distance. Understand that if you stay, you might be caught up in the police action or arrested in the kettle.
Police officers stand guard on the day of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on July 24, 2024. (Photo: Reuters/Seth Herald)
What are journalists’ rights when covering a protest, or following an arrest?
Journalists have the right to cover protests, but arrests do occur and can be an intimidating experience.
If stopped, identify yourself as a journalist and, if possible, record the interaction. While police can search you and sometimes will search personal items, they generally need a warrant to access cell phones or other recording devices.
Key points:
Legal rights: Journalists have the right to observe, photograph, and record public events under the First Amendment. This is no different to the rights afforded to any member of the public.
Probable cause: Arrests must be based on breaking specific laws, for example, by trespassing or disobeying a valid police order to disperse. Journalists are often arrested in a kettle for not having complied with a police order to disperse. Arrests should not be retaliation for reporting.
Protect your equipment: Ensure your attorney and editor are aware of your arrest, and, if possible, ask a colleague to take your belongings.
Legal advice is crucial when facing arrest, so have your attorney’s contact information readily available. It may be sensible to write it on your forearm with a marker in case your belongings are seized. CPJ recommends journalists in the United States familiarize themselves with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’s (RCFP) legal hotline, and refer any legal incident to RCFP.
Journalists covering protests are sometimes doxxed after the event, when people who attended the mass gathering post their private information online. Journalists who cover politics or other high-risk beats also risk being the target of online harassment and targeted harassment campaigns.
Before attending a protest or taking on a high-risk assignment, take the following steps:
Look yourself up online using all search engines and remove or hide data you do not want in the public domain. Use advanced search methods known as Boolean search terms to get the best results.
Data that is best kept offline include your home address, personal contact details, such as a personal email address, and details about family members, including photos.
Sign up to a service such as DeleteMe or Kanary to get your personal data taken down from data broker sites.
Secure your online accounts with two-factor authentication, and a long password or passkey.
Where possible, use Google Voice as your work phone number.
Have a spare phone and SIM card in case your phone number is doxxed.
Think about what you would do if you are doxxed. Questions to think about include where you would stay, who would go with you, and who you would tell.
For more information see CPJ’s resources on online abuse, and consult the Coalition Against Online Violence’s election resources.
We speak with former Ohio state senator and Bernie Sanders presidential campaign staffer Nina Turner about how the 2024 election has left her and many voters “frustrated” and “exhausted.” While she is not endorsing a candidate, she denounces the white supremacist rhetoric of the Trump campaign, which she notes is “as American as apple pie.” Turner pushes back on comparisons of the Trump movement to the rise of Nazi Germany, which she argues threaten to whitewash the United States’ own anti-democratic history. “The unfulfilled promises of this country, the undealt-with anti-Blackness and other types of racism and bigotry have not been dealt with sufficiently,” she explains. “It is us, and we need to deal with it and not push it off on some other nation.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
