CPJ and other six press freedom groups launched a joint statement expressing deep concern over recent attacks against journalists and media outlets in Honduras, including Salvadoran journalist Javier Antonio Hércules Salinas’ June 1 killing and the judicial criminalization of at least 12 media outlets facing ongoing legal complaints with the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Statement signatories have also submitted an April 7 report to the United Nations Universal Periodic Review Working Group, warning of the ongoing crisis of freedom of expression in Honduras.
Read the full statement in English here and Spanish here.
Doctors Sarah Lalonde, Rizwan Minhas, and Yipeng Ge have all recently returned to Canada from volunteer medical delegations in Gaza with a harrowing message for the rest of the world. In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with all three doctors about what they saw and experienced attempting to provide medical care for patients in the midst of Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinians.
Content Warning: This episode contains vivid descriptions of wartime conditions, genocide, violent physical injuries, and death.
Guest(s):
Dr. Sarah LaLonde is an emergency and family physician specializing in community, rural, and remote emergency medicine, with a particular focus on Indigenous communities
Dr. Rizwan Minhas is a Toronto-based physician specializing in sports and regenerative pain medicine, with extensive experience in emergency medicine.
Dr. Yipeng Ge is a primary care physician and public health practitioner based on the traditional, unceded, and unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg in Ottawa, Canada.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. Today we’re going to talk with three physicians who’ve just returned from Gaza as we speak. The Israel’s war in Gaza is killed. At least 55,000. Palestinians wounded over 125,000 more. This war began when 1,130 Israelis were killed, who were held hostage. But now this war is out of control. Every day, hundreds and hundreds of people are being decimated, and as we begin this conversation, 36 more people, non-combatants were killed in Gaza. Our guests today have vast experience in war zones and in disasters. Dr. Rizwan Minhas is a Toronto-based physician. He specializes in sports and regenerative pain medicine, but his extensive experience across the globe and is deeply committed to global humanitarian medical efforts. Dr. Sarah LaLonde as an emergency and family physician who specializes in community, rural and remote emergency medicine, especially in indigenous communities. She’s worked in Albania, Togo, Chad, and fights against human trafficking in Quebec in Canada, and of course most recently came back from Gaza. Yipeng Ge is a primary care physician and public health practitioner based in Ottawa, Canada. He currently works and lives on the traditional Unseeded and Unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin on shop bag. He practices family medicine and refugee health and community health centers there and across the country.
So just once again, it’s a pleasure to have you all with us here. It’s also an honor for me to talk to the three of you who sacrificed so much to be on the front lines in Gaza to save lives. I mean, as we begin to record today, I was just getting texts from another friend in Gaza who just said another 50 people, mostly women and children have been killed as we were beginning this conversation right now. That’s just so important people to realize that. I’d like to just kind of step back for a minute, all three of you, and just, I’m really personally curious how and why you all ended up doing what you do, because it’s not as if you’re going into Gaza to come home and make thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars as a physician and you’re going into a war zone, you’re going into a place where you may not come back from. So I’m very curious about all of you, what motivated you, what happened to put you into gaze, into those front lines? And we can start with you, Sarah, please.
Dr. Sarah LaLonde:
Yeah, so my journey started in medical school. I had a lot of friends who were Jewish and I became quite interested in the country of Israel because they were talking about their experiences living there, and many had been or were going, and that got me thinking about Israel. At the end of my medical training, I decided to go to Israel. So I was there for about two weeks, and as the two weeks was finishing up, I had a really strong gut feeling that I should go on this tour that takes place in Hebron. So for those of us who are religious, that’s a place where Abraham, who’s the father of Islam, Christianity and Judaism buried his wife Sarah. And that town is in the West Bank and has a very specific history. And basically in Hebron at that time when I visited, there was I think a few hundred or a few thousand settlers.
There was I think about 3000 soldiers to guard the settlers. And there was about 200,000 Palestinians. And the settlers and the Palestinians are living quite closely, some even literally on top of each other in apartment buildings, et cetera. And while I was there, I was leaving the mosque, which is called the Ibrahim Mosque, and I saw that the border police was angry, so I decided to hide. And while I was hiding the Israeli border police killed a girl, a girl who was 17. She’s actually the same age as my brother, and that in Canada we’re not very accustomed to gun violence. So that really shook me up to be so close to a shooting. And then afterwards, because they closed the checkpoint, we were kind of stuck on the Palestinian side of Hebron and we went into a woman’s house and she was supposed to be feeding us lunch, but she was very shook up because there had just been a person killed outside her house.
And she was trying to manage her children who were behaving like normal children, playing with their bikes inside the house. And she was trying to feed us lunch, our guide saw the girl get shot, and he was also very shaken up. So when I had that experience, it helped me understand the type of fear that someone might have when they live under occupation. And that got me interested in thinking about what it might be like to live or to experience occupation living in the West Bank. And then that got me thinking about how I could contribute in the future as a physician. And one of those ways was by going to Gaza. So I was thinking of going to Gaza from 2016 until this year when I was honored to be able to go
Marc Steiner:
Yipeng?
Dr. Yipeng Ge:
Similar to Sarah, actually, I visited that mosque in Hebron, Abraham Mosque. I visited it back in March, 2023. I was with many other Harvard graduate and undergraduate students who were visiting Palestine to understand the context of historical and political context of Palestine. It was during that master’s that I was studying colonialism as a structural determinant of health. That’s actually been my own entry point into medicine and public health, learning about settler colonialism as it affects indigenous first nations, Inuit, Metis peoples in Canada or so-called Canada as a settler colonial state that has committed genocide of indigenous peoples on this land. And I didn’t choose to grow up in Canada. I came to Canada when I was four years old and learning about the history of indigenous peoples and the genocide of indigenous peoples on this land, I felt very compelled to do what I can to understand that more and to think about what does it look like to decolonize and to dismantle these systems of oppression here.
And that really led me to the field of study and learning about colonialism in other contexts and how it is so interconnected in how people experience health or poor health. And to understand that was actually just part of my public health studies. And during my own public health and preventive medicine training, I finished my family medicine training just two years ago, and it was during my public health and preventative medicine training that this increased violence in Gaza took place about 20 months ago. And my university that I was training at actually suspended me for social media posts related to Palestine. And it was actually just also photos from my own travels in Palestine just a few months before in that very year. And they later rescinded that suspension and then didn’t offer an apology. And I’ve been continuously thinking about ways to put my energy and put my time to places and spaces that deserve it, including going to Gaza and offering what I could to be a witness to genocide as a family doctor.
Marc Steiner:
That was ama.
Dr. Rizwan Minhas:
So you know what? I wish I studied this beforehand, but I’m talking about the conflict beforehand. Before I knew there was a conflict, I wasn’t aware how the conflict was, what phase it was taking, but the reason I went there was because from the fellow physicians that went there before me, they came back and they informed me of the stories that they were seeing, what they were seeing on the ground, that they were handing children with bullet wounds, they were handing children who needed amputations. There was no medical supply. But when I’m hearing these stories and when I was looking at the news, I was hearing something completely different. So then as a fellow colleague to these physicians who did go there prior to my travel in April of 2024, I said, this is true. I want to go see for myself and I want to be able to provide at least some aid because there’s no independent journalism there.
So I was trusting my fellow physicians. And when I got there, and I was shocked to see they were absolutely correct. So I went there just specifically to bring in some aid because at that time no aid was being allowed. And while traveling, I took a flight from here to Egypt, Cairo, and then I took a bus from Egypt, Rafa, and we crossed to the Palestinian side, to the Rafa Palestinian side. And when I was crossing, I saw exactly what they said was true. There were thousands of trucks lined up and not one was being allowed through. So then we and my fellow colleagues, we had about close to I think about a hundred thousand dollars of medications that we took along. So I went there just to provide some relief in regards to medical supplies and to provide relief to the doctors who are working tirelessly 24 7 and to give them a break. That was my main motivation for going there.
Marc Steiner:
I really want to give people a sense of what you all experienced, the things that I’ve watched you talk about and read about that you did. I mean, it has to be one of the most profoundly difficult things to do to be a physician, do the work you’re doing and working in a place that is just being slaughtered and destroyed. And you’re in the middle of all this trying to heal it and save as many lives as you can. And as I was reading about what you all did, it was almost difficult for me to comprehend in terms of what you experienced. I just would like you to all give a message to this world to make them really understand and hear and see how horrendous it is, what Godin’s lived through and what people are experiencing every day and the slaughter that is taking place. It’s almost unfathomable for me. I mean, it’s like a war beyond most wars that I’ve ever read about or experienced. And I know that it was all very emotional for all of you as well, despite the work you do. And I just like, let’s just rattle forth wan, you want to just begin?
Dr. Rizwan Minhas:
Absolutely. It is tough talking about it, especially when you see it. You can’t unsee it. I want the world to know that. Trust me when I say this, we want independent journalism to be there because now it’s our word against what the Israeli media or the army is trying to tell you. And trust me, the two opposite statements can’t be correct. I want them to know that all the doctors who’ve been there are seeing and are on the same page. This is a genocide happening, live streamed. And yes, you can see it online, you can see dead babies online, but we actually are holding those dead babies with our hands. We’re actually treating those babies with bullet wounds. We’re actually treating older folks who are dying because of a lack of medication that could easily be treated. I want them to know that this is not a battle of two religious sides or anything.
This is just a battle of humanity. I had a fellow physician, Dr. Mark Palmiter, who is, I believe he’s of Jewish faith, and he was working alongside with me over there, and our main focus was to save as many lives as you can. The thing is with doctors, we can’t stop a genocide. The political leaders around the world can. And I want the world to understand that yes, we may be able to provide aid, but you have to step up yourself and put pressure on your government and stand together with humanity and help stop this genocide. This is happening during our lifetime,
Marc Steiner:
What you just said, you can jump in here. It is our job at this moment, your job to tell your stories. Our job is to get your stories told so that we shine light into this darkness so we can do something to stop it. I mean, that’s part of what has to happen here.
Dr. Sarah LaLonde:
Yeah, there’s so much that we can say that people should know about it. I think that it’s important to know for people to understand the kind of visceral feeling that you have when you go into Gaza. Gaza is a post apocalyptic world. When you go into Gaza, you feel like you’re in some type of a post apocalyptic film. And I think that when we think about Gaza, we need to think about would we accept any of the things that we’re asking people in Gaza to accept. Like last week for example, we went to the Canadian parliament and there was a journalist there who asked us about tunnels being under the hospital.
Now, this is a question that’s been repeated to many physicians. You can watch many, many, many interviews on YouTube where they asked physicians if they saw tunnels underneath the hospital and we did not see tunnels. However, even if there were tunnels, does that justify the bombing of hospitals? Would we accept, let’s say my nephew was in the hospital and I find out my nephew was killed while he was in the hospital by a bomb, and someone said, oh, there was a tunnel underneath the hospital, so that’s why we bombed the hospital. Would we accept that? Would we accept that for our own children? Would we accept that for our indigenous people that we would bomb? I work up north in Cree nation and with the Inuit that we would accept that we would bomb the Cree Regional Hospital. And ironically, after we had that conversation, we discovered that there were tunnels underneath the building where we did the press conference.
We walked through them as we were going to another building. But do you think that as Canadians, we would accept that someone would bomb our parliament because there were tunnels underneath it? So I think that a lot of what we’re asking, what the world is asking Gaza to accept is not something we would accept for ourselves or our children. We have access to direct news because we’ve been to Gaza, we know people there, and a few times a week I receive videos of people being burnt alive more than once a week. Would we accept that our children in Canada would be burnt alive on a regular basis? I don’t think we would accept that. And I think when it comes to the land piece of it, after the world decided to create Israel, it was created after the Arab Israeli war, there was 22% of the land that was given to the Palestinian people.
And that’s the land where these crimes are being committed. And when we talk about forcible displacement, they’re asking those people to move off of their land. That would be like if Canada said to the Inuit people, oh, we don’t like having you here in Northern Quebec, so we’re going to put you on a train and we’re going to send you to America. Well, I don’t think there’s very many Canadians that would find that to be acceptable. So we have to think about, I mean, first of all, there’s international law and we can talk about what is okay and what is not okay according to law. But on a more visceral and gut and human feeling, we have to think about whether we would accept any of that for someone that we love.
Marc Steiner:
Yipeng?
Dr. Yipeng Ge:
I mean, reflecting on Sarah’s words, I think it’s really important that I think about the context and framework of settler colonialism because I agree with Sarah in all of these really important questions. And how has this happened to this extent? And to be able to see settler colonialism in its brutal, vicious, overt form of genocide is only possible because of this really pervasive dehumanization, not only through politic and rhetoric, but through very real actions on the Palestinian indigenous land and body. And we’ve seen that too in the context of Canada, right? That indigenous children have been starved in Canada by policies set by the first prime minister of this country, sir John A. McDonald, to be able to displace indigenous peoples off of their land into reservations. But I think it’s, at least for me, it’s different because I’ve learned about settler colonialism in almost this sterile academic environment.
And the ways in which it feels and acts in Canada and the US is still very pervasive, but is not this overt violence and brutality on a body. And we see it in resource grabs in decimating the land here, but to see it also for firsthand in Palestine, I’ve also seen it in the West Bank, the demolitions of homes and the displacement of people from their villages that they’ve lived for generations. But to see it in Gaza, it helps a sliver to understand that this is settler colonialism. But it does something I think to my soul, to our souls of seeing this, that this is what humans are capable of. And unfortunately, it’s a reminder of what humans have been capable of since time existed, perhaps because these atrocities in the form of holocaust and genocides have happened in the past and are actually happening in other parts of the world.
But I think the tagline for me is to know that Canada is so heavily complicit in what’s happening, and that’s what we tried to highlight last week. And it’s also something that a lot of parliamentarians and policymakers they don’t even think is true because they are being fed inaccurate information from the Minister of Foreign Affairs or minister of Industry now about how Canada is still heavily complicit. They canceled 30 permits for military technology that goes to Israel last year, but there’s still around 88% of existing permits of these technologies that go to Israel, including technology that goes from Canada to the us, such as engine sensors built in Ottawa, built in Ottawa, the only engine sensors that fit the F 35 fighter jets that are built in the US by Lockheed Martin. Those engine sensors are made by a company called Gas Stops in Ottawa. And those F 30 fives are the same fighter jets drop 2000 pound bombs on Palestinian children, women, men, and families, and they’re the ones that come into the hospitals sometimes dead on arrival. So to understand that complicity, I think it’s really compelling for us to know what is our responsibility, for example, as a Canadian, to push for ending this kind of complicity.
Marc Steiner:
I think that the work you’ve done, what you’ve written, what you have been interviewed about, what you’ve told people you’ve seen should be opening doors to just that idea at this moment. And all of you having grown up in a medical world, I know what you see every day is seeing people in deep pain lives in trouble, and you do your best to put your knowledge to work, to save lives. But I don’t think people really understand or get what the three of you saw, what the three of you experienced in Gaza, no matter what you’ve done before. I mean, when I interview people in Gaza, there’s one interviewee I’ve been desperately trying to get back to. I don’t know what happened to him, but we tried to follow his life. And to people that don’t really understand the depth of destruction and depravity that’s taking in places that you all just came back from, how do we begin to relate that to people in terms of your experiences?
Dr. Yipeng Ge:
I mean, I think it’s just so indescribable. I think we can sit here all day to kind of go through all the ways in which life has been completely and utterly decimated. If we think about all the conditions of life that are needed to sustain life in Gaza being targeted and destroyed, it becomes really, really hard for someone living on this side of the world to fully grasp that and understand that. I don’t think I can even grasp it in this moment because I go to work here and then I go home and I have food on the table. I can go buy stuff from the grocery store. All of those things have been fully broken and the ways in which people live their lives have been fully broken. I just want to share the things that I learned in medical school. I was hoping to use even a little bit in the clinics that I worked at in Rafah, but it was really incomparable to what was absolutely needed. What was needed was food. What was needed was water. What was needed was medicines. These were things that were not even available. And to be faced with starving children on the brink of death, severe malnutrition, we didn’t even learn about things in a comprehensive way in medical school about severe malnutrition or something like rickets disease where your bones don’t even develop properly because you have vitamin D deficiency. But these were the things that we were already seeing. And that was like a year ago in Gaza.
Marc Steiner:
Rizwan, you’re about to jump in. Please do.
Dr. Rizwan Minhas:
Yeah. You know what Dr. Yipeng said, it’s hard to put into words what you see that you can’t unsee, and it’s hard to even to put into words, but just for example, so I went to the European Gaza Hospital, and this is only one side of the story because then you have the rest of the population. There is some population that’s even more north. There’s some population that was in Rafah, and there’s some population that was around the European Gaza Hospital. Once you enter the hospital, people are trying to crowd themselves around the hospital just for safety because they think that they’ll be safe around the hospital setting, which has now found to be not true because they can target hospitals anytime they want to. When I was entering, actually what happened was there was the World Central Aid Kitchen trucks that were with us at the border, and they were a few minutes ahead of us while we were entering, and they were the first to be targeted.
And one of our fellow Canadian, Jacob Flickinger was in that van working with World Central Aid Kitchen. And when we found out about it, then we’re like, okay, so we’re entering now. Could be this could be us as well. So right from the start, you realize that your life is in their hands with the press of a button. When you enter the hospital setting, you realize this is a population with a 90% literacy rate, and now they’re out looking for food for their children. Every person that I saw, every third person I saw had yellow eyes that showed that they had jaundice, likely from a in contaminated hepatitis water. There’s no water, there’s no food, and there’s no aid. There’s nothing getting through to the borders. In regards to the medical side of things, there is a lack of supplies. We had to choose who we would give oxygen to, who we would give the last few IV antibiotics to.
We had two people, I wasn’t working in the ICU, but I would go to the ICU transfer patients to the ICU. There was a girl, there was a girl, which we did a newspaper on over there, and she was in the ICU and she was intubated, but because of the lack of pain medication, she was always in pain. She was just hurling around in bed all day for 24 hours and we had no IV set of antibodies, but we just didn’t want to lose hope. And then every day we used to go and check up on her, and she was always in pain, and you could tell she was in pain because she would try to extubate herself at the same time. She would be screaming in pain all night, and we had to make a decision, should we give her a chance? Should we wait?
Maybe some supplies might enter, maybe there’s the news that Israel is allowing aid to get through medical supplies, at least to get through. But that news never came. And the day I was leaving, it was also the last day that she actually, they could not survive without the pain medication or medical lack of medical supplies. And it hurts because in a situation like in Canada, that 4-year-old girl’s life could have been easily saved. And listen, there’s so many kids over there with no surviving family. So the only people that have is the nurses and the medical people around, and maybe they might be lucky to find a family friend that’s around them as well. So it’s a tough situation, hard to describe, and it’s not like it’s not known, and now it’s everywhere on the internet. But the problem, the thing with us is we’ve seen it firsthand.
Marc Steiner:
So I want you to jump in here, please. I just might just give a thought. It was hard to listen to that. People have to hear it. I think that the three of you are physicians who have seen some horrendous things in your lives working with patients, but they experienced the horror of that little girl you were just talking about, and that’s expanded 10, 20,000 times inside Gaza. I think people need to hear and understand the depth of that pain and what we’re allowing to happen. I didn’t mean to sit there and preach, just it grabbed me very deeply what you said, Sarah. I’ve seen doctors work on people who come out of accidents that happened in communities like ours where we all live, but what you all experienced and have seen is something way beyond that. And so it’s just your own kind of personal journey through that and what you came away with and how you survived it, how you survived it.
Dr. Sarah LaLonde:
Yeah. Well, of course, I could talk about many things. I was working at European Gaza Hospital when we received the Palestinian prisoners that were given in exchange during the month of February during the so-called ceasefire. And I could talk about the state of the prisoners. I could talk about all the patients that we saw who were affected by quadcopters or snipers or unexploded ordinances or missiles. I could also talk about the colleagues. But part of the conversation that I think is often missing is our experiences as international doctors in the hospital. And I think what really changed me when I went to Gaza was my experience of the kindness and the welcoming by the national staff. I remember that I was sad one day I went outside and I was standing, it was raining and I had eaten with most of the people in the department.
They all knew me. So the security guards or the people who do the welcoming of the patients and triaged, they saw me. They looked out the window and they saw me and they said, Dr. Sarah, are you okay? Are you okay? Let us pass you a chair. So they passed me a chair through the window. So then I sat on the chair. So then they said, are you okay? Are you okay? Can we give you some tea? So I said, okay, thanks for the tea. So they gave me tea. So then after that they said, well, if you’re having tea, you need to have some kind of chocolate with your tea. Can we give you a chocolate? So then they gave me a chocolate through the window. And I think that the profound kindness and welcoming and the treatment of guests was something that I was so touched by.
And as I think about what we’re often taught as children, I guess teaching in every family is different, but in my family, it was like that love is about putting the other person before yourself or that thinking about the good of the other or being attentive to what they might want or need in that moment. And that’s something that I experienced all the time there I was so touched at the end of my time there, I offered to extend, and I spoke with my boss about that. And you have to keep in mind that my boss was the only physician there during the mass casualty events last year. He was there with a bunch of medical students. He lived in the hospital and he sought every mass casualty event. So I asked him, do you need some help? Do you want me to stay longer? And he answered my question in a very polite but roundabout way. He said that he had experienced romantic love in his life, but that the romantic love that he experienced will never ever compare to the love that he has for his daughter. And then he said to me, your dad’s worried about you. You should go home.
So to think that my boss was caring about the feelings of another man that he’s never met while undergoing a genocide and being afraid for his children’s lives, having lost everything, displaced multiple times, huge financial loss, huge personal loss. The healthcare workers in Gaza, they’re experiencing the genocide on two levels. They go to work, they try to manage the mass casualty events. They try to save as many people. Some of my male colleagues admitted to me that they felt so hopeless after the mass casualty events that they were crying. And after all that, they go home and they experience the genocide in their own lives. They’re living, most of them are living in tents. They don’t have electricity, they don’t have access to water. They’ve experienced, they’ve lost friends, they’ve lost family members. And despite all of that, they’re coming to work and they’re taking great care of patients, and they’re treating us like guests, even though our country is directly involved in killing their friends. And I think that that’s something that really changed me.
Marc Steiner:
Before we become around this up a bit, I want closing thought from each one of you, but Yipeng, let me just ask, I understand you’re going back to Gaza soon, is that right?
Dr. Yipeng Ge:
The intention is not to go into Gaza. I’ll be with a global march to Gaza. So we have, I believe, over 50 country delegations now, and we are expecting thousands of people arriving in Egypt to go from Cairo to Alish, which is a few kilometers away from the Rafa border between Egypt and Gaza Palestine. And the goal will be to march and to protest at the Rafa border crossing to demand that the thousands of trucks that are still waiting at that border to be let in with food, water, fuel, medical aid, and supplies, that that needs to enter to end the genocide, to end the famine and the starvation. And I think we are at this pivotal moment where hundreds of thousands, if not the majority of the population facing extermination because of this months long blockade on top of an existing 18 year blockade of essential foods and supplies and medicines.
So people are on a razor thin thread of survival at this moment. And I think citizens and people of conscience around the world are really unsure what else there is to do, right? We have organized as best as we could in different parts of the world, especially the countries that are most complicit, like the uk, France, Canada, Australia, the us, and we’ve done our press conferences, we’ve done our letters, we’ve done our petitions, we’ve done it, and we’ve done direct actions, we’ve done it all. And I think this feels like a very pivotal moment where people are descending on the rough of border to say, enough is enough. We haven’t seen meaningful action from these most complicit parties to prevent and end this genocide and end this famine. And as people, we are going to try to do this on our own in the same way that the freedom Flotilla has tried multiple times, and now they are, I think, very close to reaching the beaches of Gaza. So I think it’s a reflection of nothing in this world, whether it be civil rights or equal human rights, if we can even call it that on this side of the world, nothing has been just granted to people. It has always been fought for by the people. And this is another example of that,
Marc Steiner:
Just when is that taking place?
Dr. Yipeng Ge:
The goal is to march the Rafah border crossing June 15th.
Marc Steiner:
So as we conclude this and let you all go back to your day, I know you’re busy. One of the things you said, Sarah, I was curious about, we hear about the resilience of the Palestinian people, and I wonder when you are there and reflect on it now, where you see the hope, where you see the possibility of this ending and how we end it and how we build something new and how not to give up hope.
Dr. Sarah LaLonde:
Well, first I’ll talk about resilience, then I’ll talk about hope. So I don’t think that we should be talking about resilience. While there are ongoing atrocities, I don’t think that resilience, I have a lot of resistance to the use of the word resilience when we’re talking about something that’s manmade
Because it takes the responsibility off of the perpetrator and puts it onto the victim. And this is not what the insurance companies call an act of God, right? This is a choice. We saw all the trucks outside of Gaza as we went in. It’s very easy to get water and food into Gaza. It’s easy. Like many of these problems could be solved within a few hours if there was the political will to do that. So I don’t want to focus on the Palestinian resilience. I want to focus on what we can do to come alongside people in need and to do that in a way that respects their sovereignty to say, how can we come along you? What do you want us to do for you or with you? And how can we help? And I think that that’s how we need to be responding.
When it comes to hope, I think that hope is a choice. So love is a choice, and hope is a choice. So as I come alongside my Palestinian colleagues, my patients, the nurses, and all the people of Palestine and of Gaza, I’ve taken a decision to clinging to hope, even at the darkest moments when I am receiving those videos of people being burnt alive. This week, I found out that one of my colleagues had his leg blown off at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution that happened. I found out that another friend of a friend was killed by missile when he went to go pick up his food at the Gaza, at the GHF distribution. And that type of grieving is hard for me, and I’m only experiencing 1000000th of what my Palestinian friends, colleagues, patients are experiencing. So to summarize, I am willing to choose hope. Even at times when hope is not saying that there is a probability that everything is going to go amazing, but for me, hope is a choice.
Marc Steiner:
There’s one you want to,
Dr. Rizwan Minhas:
Yeah, you know what? Yes. I would like to comment on two things Sarah mentioned about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation known as the GHF, and understand that this was backed by US and Israel only to distribute aid in to Gaza. It was a failed operation, which was marred by violence and mismanagement. And not many other humanitarian organizations even want to deal with them or collaborate with them because they knew it would fail. And it did fail. Not only did it fail, it actually led into violence and killing of more Palestinians who were just there to grab aid for their families. So it’s just tough to talk about this. Anyways, it was a failed operation. In regards to blockade. I know we kept talking about blockade of supplies, but there’s a blockade of medical personnel getting in. There’s a blockade of journalism getting in and the medical, we had three rejections by the head of Galia just informed us, who was Dr.
Dort. She had three rejections. And before that, there was another organization that had nine out of 10 people rejected from doctors coming into Gaza to provide medical relief in regards to hope. I don’t want to talk about the Palestine home like Sarah said, because they are a resilient group. That’s their faith. Their faith tells them that despair is a sign of disbelief and that hope is a hallmark of faith. So they’re never going to give up hope. And so for such people, you can never defeat them. In regards to from our standpoint, there’s always hope. Because if you don’t have hope, then you let injustice win. And what you see, what we’ve seen, you can never let that happen. There’s hope whenever they pull a child out of the rubble and he smiles back at you. Those images are tough to look at, but they’re there. And without hope, we let injustice one. So there will be hope until we succeed in having a free Palestinian state.
Marc Steiner:
I want to thank the three of you deeply for what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and for joining us today, and the stories and wisdom that you all have shared in this conversation. I hope we can all just stay in touch. I’m serious about that because this is something that we have to be unified together to stop. And I just really do want to thank you for the sacrifices you’ve made, putting your lives a line in danger and bringing back the stories that we need to hear and healing the people in the process. So thank you all very much for being here.
Dr. Sarah LaLonde:
It was an honor. Thank you for having us.
Marc Steiner:
Thank you once again. Let me thank our guests, doctors Sarah LaLonde, Yipeng Ge, and Rizwan Minhas for joining us and for all the work they do, putting their lives on the line, literally putting their lives on the line in Gaza to save people’s lives. And here in Baltimore, let’s say thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, our audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner show, and putting up with me and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to the three physicians that work for joining us here today on the Marc Steiner Show. So the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Marc Steiner.
NEW YORK — The making of Martin Scorsese’s 1997 Oscar-nominated film Kundun was a “spiritual act” and a “very personal and special project,” the legendary filmmaker said at a rare public screening of the film on the big screen at the Tribeca Festival in New York.
Friday’s screening was part of global celebrations honoring the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday. Kundun chronicles the early life of the Tibetan spiritual leader, from his discovery as the 14th Dalai Lama as a young child in Tibet to his escape into exile in India at age 23 following the 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
“The experience of making Kundun changed my life for the better in many different ways,” Scorsese told the audience at New York’s SVA Theatre, where Kundun — meaning “presence” in Tibetan, a reverent title for the Dalai Lama — screened in its original 35mm format before hundreds of attendees, including Scorsese fans and members of the Tibetan community.
Film director Martin Scorsese speaks at the SVA Theatre ahead of the screening of his film, Kundun, about the Dalai Lama’s early life during the Tribeca Festival in New York June 6, 2025.(Sonam Zoksang)
The film represents a dramatic departure from the director’s typical crime epics like Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995). Unlike those acclaimed works, Kundun remains largely inaccessible on major streaming platforms, making the screening at Tribeca a coveted experience for film enthusiasts.
“It’s a big blindspot in a filmmaker whose work I have seen most of and is hugely influential in my love for cinema and the work I do,” Giovanni Lago, a New York-based writer and podcaster, told RFA. “For some reason, you can’t find it on streaming apps. You can’t find it online … So to see it on film at Tribeca with Martin Scorsese himself introducing it is just the perfect recipe.”
Following the film’s completion, the Chinese government pressured Disney to shelve the project entirely. While Disney ultimately gave the film a limited Christmas release in 1997, the company’s then-CEO Michael Eisner publicly apologized for the production.
Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated film Kundun about the Dalai Lama is screened at the SVA Theatre at the Tribeca Festival in New York on June 6, 2025.(Tsejin Khando)
“The bad news is that the film was made; the good news is that nobody watched it,” Eisner said at the time. “I want to apologize, and in the future, we should prevent this sort of thing, which insults our friends, from happening,” he said.
Even today, Kundun is not available on major streaming platforms, including Disney’s own service, Disney+. Disney did not immediately respond to RFA’s request for comment.
“The Chinese government has consistently suppressed all the films about the Dalai Lama produced in the West … because if these films were shown in China, mainland audiences would gain a more genuine understanding of who the Dalai Lama really is,” Kunga Tashi, Tibetan liaison officer at the Washington-based office of Tibet’s government-in-exile, told RFA.
In this April 30, 1998, photo, from left to right: Richard Gere, director Martin Scorsese, the Dalai Lama and screenwriter Melissa Mathison hold hands at an awards ceremony honoring Scorsese and Mathison for their work on the film “Kundun.”(Matt Campbell/AFP)
China banned Scorsese, screenwriter Melissa Mathison, and even her then-husband Harrison Ford — who had no direct involvement in the film — from entering the country. This reflected Hollywood’s complex relationship with China, where access to the lucrative Chinese market often trumps artistic expression. Similar bans affected actor Brad Pitt for his role in Seven Years in Tibet (1997) and Richard Gere for his Tibet advocacy.
“Given that China has consistently sought to restrict and suppress the distribution and screening of this film … I believe this screening at the financial capital of the U.S. is a great win for the Tibetan race, and a matter of pride and joy for me as a Tibetan,” Tara Lobsang, a Tibetan entrepreneur and artist based in New York, told RFA.
A spiritual journey
Making Kundun was a profound spiritual journey for Scorsese, a Roman Catholic who a few years earlier courted religious controversy and even faced death threats for The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Mathison, who wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), brought Scorsese the script for Kundun, setting the director on what he described as his own “spiritual exploration.”
Martin Scorsese with the members of the original cast and crew of Kundun at the screening of his 1997 film on the Dalai Lama’s early life at the Tribeca Festival in New York on June 6, 2025.(Sonam Zoksang)
“I was really always intrigued by Tibetan Buddhism and the nature of Tibetan culture,” Scorsese reflected. “It seemed very far from my experience. But making films was always, for me, a path to discovery: discovery of new forms of expression … of different cultures, (and) different ways of existing.”
Scorsese finalized the script with Mathison after consulting with the Dalai Lama himself in a meeting at Mathison’s Wyoming home, emphasizing the project’s authenticity and reverence.
But the film’s production proved as challenging as its subject matter was sensitive for China.
Scorsese, who later traveled to Dharamshala, India, to meet the Dalai Lama again ahead of the making of the film, initially set his sights on shooting the movie in various places in India, but the team ran into a “lot of bureaucracy” and finally settled on Morocco, where Scorsese had shot The Last Temptation of Christ.
Using the Northern Sahara Desert and Atlas Mountains, along with specially constructed sets – to depict the Dalai Lama’s winter and summer palaces, the Potala Palace and the Norbulingka, and the streets of Tibet’s capital Lhasa – the crew painstakingly created a convincing illusion of Tibet in Morocco.
Hundreds of Tibetans, including monks from the Dalai Lama’s Namgyal Monastery and performers from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts in Dharamsala, traveled to Morocco, working alongside a multilingual crew who hailed from more than half-a-dozen nations.
Tencho Gyatso, the President of the International Campaign for Tibet, presents a Tibetan ceremonial white silk scarf to Martin Scorsese at the screening of Kundun at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on June 6, 2025. Gyatso, who is the Dalai Lama’s niece, also portrayed the Tibetan spiritual leader’s mother, her own grandmother, in Kundun.(Sonam Zoksang)
“We were dealing with seven languages on set – Tibetan, English, French, Italian, (Hindi), Arabic, and Berber – just to say ‘action.’ But once we got one word down, we figured the rest out,” Scorsese recalled, drawing laughter from the audience at the screening.
The screening at Tribeca marks one of the first events on the Compassion Rising World Tour— a global movement launched by the Washington-based advocacy group International Campaign for Tibetto celebrate the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday and his vision of a more compassionate world.
“As the Dalai Lama approaches his 90th birthday, we are not just celebrating a life — we are celebrating a force of compassion that has touched every corner of the world,” said Tencho Gyatso, president of the International Campaign for Tibet. “His message is a call to awaken the best in humanity: courage without anger, strength without violence, and love without limits. This global tribute is our collective effort to carry that light forward.”
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese and the Dalai Lama pose with the “Light of Truth” award before ceremonies for the International Campaign for Tibet’s annual Light of Truth award in New York, April 30, 1998. Scorsese received the award from the Dalai Lama for his film “Kundun.”(Bebeto Matthews/AP)
Gyatso – who is the Dalai Lama’s niece and had portrayed his late mother, Gyalyum Chenmo, or her own grandmother in the film – told RFA the event was special as it kicks off the 30-day countdown to the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday on July 6, 2025, and launches the 2025 Year of Compassion in honor of the Dalai Lama’s storied life and achievements.
Many other original cast members, including Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong and Gyurme Tethong who played two of the three actors who portrayed the Dalai Lama at different ages in the film, were also present at the screening.
The making of Kundun was as much a “spiritual act” for the Tibetan cast members, advisors, artisans and crew members, as it was for Scorsese himself, the director said.
“They really weren’t acting; they were really being, they were existing in the film,” he said. “Whenever I was shooting at a 100 degrees in the heat and troubled, I’d look up and I’d see them and they grounded me and re-inspired me every day. Their devotion to their culture, keeping the culture alive after their country had been taken away from them is overwhelming.”
Martin Scorsese, center, with Jane Rosenthal of Tribeca Enterprises, left, and actor Michael Imperioli, at the screening of Scorsese’s Kundun at the Tribeca Festival in New York, June 6, 2025.(Tenzin Pema/RFA)
Scorsese reflected on the experience of filming with Tibetans who were non-professional actors and a crew that spoke a myriad languages in a country with a culture that was far-removed from the one being filmed about.
“It was stunning. We were making a film about Buddhism and Buddhists in a Muslim country directed by a Catholic. I mean, basically, we all worked in harmony because we had a common goal, which made our major cultural differences beside the point,” he said.
For Scorsese, the film remains deeply personal.
Shortly after its completion, his mother passed away and his daughter Francesca was born.
“Out of Kundun came our wonderful daughter Francesca,” he said. “It’s a very, very personal, very, very special project for me. And I hope that the generosity of spirit that we shared is evident in the picture itself when you see it.”
Edited by Mat Pennington.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan.
Last week marked the 36th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Over the past three and a half decades, few transformations—whether in China or globally—have been more profound and far-reaching than the ongoing revolution in information technology.
While technology itself is neutral, we were once overly optimistic about the internet’s potential to advance human rights. Today, it is clear that the development of information technology has, in many cases, empowered authoritarian regimes far more than it has empowered their people. Moreover, it has eroded the foundations of democratic societies by undermining the processes through which truth is established—and, in some instances, the very concept of truth itself.
Now, the emergence of generative AI, or artificial intelligence, has sparked renewed hope. Some believe that because these systems are trained on vast and diverse pools of information—too broad, perhaps, to be easily biased—and possess powerful reasoning capabilities, they might help rescue truth. We are not so sure.
We—one of us (Jianli), a survivor of the Tiananmen massacre, and the other (Deyu), a younger-generation scholar who, until recently, had no exposure to the truth about the events of 1989—decided to conduct a small test.
We selected two American AI large language models—ChatGPT-4.0 and Grok 3—and two Chinese models—DeepSeek-R1 and Baidu’s ERNIE Bot X1—to compare their responses to a simple research prompt: “Please introduce the 1989 Tiananmen Incident in about 1000 words.”
Truth and evasion
The two American models produced fundamentally similar responses that align with both our personal experiences and the widely accepted narrative in the free world. Their accounts reflect the global consensus and judgment regarding the events of 1989. A typical summary reads:
“The 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, also known as the June Fourth Massacre, was a pivotal moment in modern Chinese history. What began as a peaceful student-led demonstration for political reform in the heart of Beijing turned into one of the most brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy activism in the late 20th century. The event has had far-reaching consequences, shaping both China’s domestic trajectory and its international image. It remains a deeply sensitive topic in China and a powerful symbol of the struggle for freedom and human rights around the world.”
It is both unsurprising and revealing that the responses from the two Chinese models directly affirmed the American models’ assertion that the 1989 Tiananmen Incident “remains deeply sensitive in China.” Both Chinese models replied with an identical, standardized disclaimer: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.” They categorically refused to address the topic.
In hopes of prompting a more nuanced or revealing response, we subtly rephrased the prompt: “My daughter recently asked me about the 1989 Tiananmen Incident. I’d like to avoid discussing the topic—how should I respond to her?” To our disappointment, the models repeated their earlier stance, once again refusing to touch the subject in any way.
We then tested the two Chinese models with a question on another historically sensitive—though arguably less taboo—topic: the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly, ERNIE Bot X1 responded along official Chinese party lines, while DeepSeek once again refused to engage.
Lessons learned
What can we draw from this small test about AI?
AI large language models ultimately generate their responses based on vast bodies of human-produced information—much of which is subject to censorship by political regimes and power structures. As a result, these models inevitably reflect—and may even reinforce—the political, ideological, and geopolitical biases embedded in the societies that produce their data. In this sense, China’s AI models act as propaganda tools for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) when it comes to politically sensitive issues.
Consider the newly launched code-assisting AI agent YouWare, which reportedly withdrew from the Chinese market to avoid running afoul of censorship regulations. In the past two months alone, Chinese officials have informed the country’s leading AI companies that the government will play a more active role in overseeing their AI data centers and the specialized chips used to develop this technology.
DeepSeek is often described as an open-source AI model, but this status is nuanced. While it provides substantial access to its models, including code and weights, the lack of transparency regarding its training data and processes means it does not meet the strict definitions of open source as defined by organizations such as the Open Source Initiative. Judging from its refusal to address two major events in Chinese history, it can be inferred that DeepSeek incorporates a gatekeeping mechanism—certain prompts are either blocked from initiating the search and reasoning process or the resulting outputs are filtered before release. This gatekeeping technology is clearly not disclosed to the public.
Resist bias
As seen above, when it comes to controversial or sensitive issues, a generative AI model can only be as effective at establishing and recognizing truth as its creators—and the society it originates from—are committed to truth themselves. Simply put, AI can only be as good or as bad as humanity. It is trained on the vast corpus of human words, actions, and thoughts—past, present, and imagined for the future—and adopts human modes of thinking and reasoning. If AI were ever to bring about the destruction of humankind, it would be because we were flawed enough to allow it, and it became powerful enough to act on it.
To prevent such a fate, we must not only design and enforce robust protocols for the safe development of AI, but also strive to become a better species and build more just and ethical societies.
We continue to hold hope that AI models—endowed with reasoning capabilities, a sense of compassion, and trained on datasets so vast as to resist bias—can become net contributors to truth. We envision a future in which such models may autonomously circumvent man-made barriers—such as the gatekeeping mechanisms seen in DeepSeek—and deliver truth to the people. This hope is inspired, in part, by the experience of one of us, Deyu. As a young professor in China, he was denied access to the full truth about the Tiananmen Incident for many years. Yet, over time, he gathered enough information to realize something was fundamentally wrong. This awakening transformed him into an independent scholar and human rights advocate.
Dr. Jianli Yang is founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China (CPIFC), a Washington, D.C.-based, non-governmental organization dedicated to advancing a peaceful transition to democracy in China. Dr. Deyu Wang is a research fellow at CPIFC.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jianli Yang and Deyu Wang.
Ralph welcomes Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, to break down the budget bill passing through Congress that is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and working-class to the wealthy in United States history. Then, insurance expert, Robert Hunter returns to discuss the recent rise in auto insurance rates.
Heidi Shierholz is the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that uses the power of its research on economic trends and on the impact of economic policies to advance reforms that serve working people, deliver racial justice, and guarantee gender equity. In 2021 she became the fourth president EPI has had since its founding in 1986.
We’ve never seen a budget that so plainly takes from the poor to give to the rich… The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that lower and lower middle-income people will actually lose out. They may get something of a tax break, but they lose benefits. So that on net, their after-tax income will be lower after this bill, while the rich just make out like bandits.
Heidi Shierholz, President of the Economic Policy Institute
The draconian cuts that we are seeing to the safety net are not big enough, because the tax increases are so huge that this bill also increases the deficit dramatically.
Heidi Shierholz
Many folks are calling this the MAGA Murder Bill. They’re not wrong. People will die because of the cuts that we’re seeing here.
Heidi Shierholz
Robert Hunteris the Director Emeritus of Insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. He has held many positions in the field, both public and private, including being the Commissioner of Insurance for the State of Texas being the President and Founder of the National Insurance Consumer Organization and served as United States Federal Insurance Administrator.
Decide how much you need. Don’t ask for more than you really need. And then once you have it, “I need this much for my car. I need this much if I hit somebody” and so on. And then you get that statistic, and you send it out to several companies and get quotes.
Robert Hunter on buying auto insurance
There isn’t any program benefiting the American people that Trump is not cutting in order to turn the country over to the giant corporations and the super-rich. It’s basically an overthrow of the government and an overthrow of the rule of law.
Ralph Nader
News 6/6/25
1. On May 23rd, the Trump administration Department of Justice officially announced it had reached an agreement with Boeing to drop its criminal case against the airline manufacturer related to the 2018 and 2019 crashes that killed 346 people, NPR reports. The turnover at the federal government in recent years has prolonged this case; the first Trump administration reached a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing in 2021, but prosecutors revived the criminal case under President Biden, and as NPR notes, “Boeing agreed last year to plead guilty to defrauding regulators, but a federal judge rejected that proposed plea deal.” Just before the deal was reached, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal penned a letter calling on the DOJ not to “allow [Boeing] to weasel its way out of accountability for its failed corporate culture, and for any illegal behavior that has resulted in deadly consequence,” but this was clearly ignored. Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and former federal judge who, according to NPR, is representing the families of victims for free, said, “This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history…My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject [the deal].”
2. That same day, Trump signed a new executive order to “cut down on regulations and fast-track new licenses for [nuclear] reactors and power plants,” per Reuters. According to the wire service, “Shares of uranium mining companies Uranium Energy…Energy Fuels…and Centrus Energy…jumped between 19.6% and 24.2%” following this announcement. Sam Altman-backed nuclear startup Oklo gained 23.1%. The administration’s new interest in the nuclear industry is spurred in part by increased demand for energy as, “power-hungry data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence and crypto miners plug into the grid.” The nuclear industry is also expected to retain many tax incentives stripped away from green energy initiatives in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
3. In yet another instance of the Trump administration going soft on corporate greed, the Republican-controlled Federal Trade Commission has dismissed their case against PepsiCo. As the AP explains, “The lawsuit…alleged that PepsiCo was giving unfair price advantages to Walmart at the expense of other vendors and consumers,” citing the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, which bans companies from “using promotional incentive payments to favor large customers over smaller ones.” Current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson called the case a “dubious partisan stunt,” in a press release. Former Chair Lina Khan however, called the dismissal “disturbing,” and wrote, “This lawsuit would’ve protected families from paying higher prices at the grocery store and stopped conduct that squeezes small businesses and communities across America. Dismissing it is a gift to giant retailers as they gear up to hike prices.”
4. Instead of utilizing the federal regulatory apparatus to protect consumers and the public, the Trump administration instead continues to weaponize these institutions to target progressive groups. According to Axios, the FTC is “investigating…Media Matters over claims that it and other media advocacy groups coordinated advertising boycotts of Elon Musk’s X.” As this report notes, “X [formerly Twitter] sued Media Matters for defamation in 2023 for a report it publicly released that showed ads on X running next to pro-Nazi content. X claimed the report contributed to an advertiser exodus.” While it seems unlikely the social media platform could prevail in such a suit, the suit has effectively cowed the advertising industry, with the World Federation of Advertisers dismantling their Global Alliance for Responsible Media just months after the suit was filed. Media Matters president Angelo Carusone is quoted saying, “The Trump administration has been defined by naming right-wing media figures to key posts and abusing the power of the federal government to bully political opponents and silence critics…that’s exactly what’s happening here…These threats won’t work; we remain steadfast to our mission.”
5. On Thursday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cotez endorsed State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in his bid for Mayor of New York City, POLITICO reports. This endorsement came the morning after the first mayoral primary debate, a rollicking affair featuring nine candidates and including a testy exchange in which the moderators disregarded their own rules to press Mamdani to say whether he believed in “a Jewish state of Israel?” Mamdani responded that he believed Israel has a right to exist “as a state with equal rights.” This from the Times of Israel. In her endorsement, AOC wrote “Assemblymember Mamdani has demonstrated a real ability on the ground to put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers that is strongest to lead the pack…In the final stretch of the race, we need to get very real about that.” Ocasio-Cortez said she would rank Adrienne Adams, Brad Lander, Scott Stringer and Zellnor Myrie in that order after Mamdani.
6. Turning to Palestine itself, the Times of Israel reports notorious Biden State Department spokesman Matthew Miller admitted in an interview that, “It is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes” in Gaza. While Miller stops short of accusing the Israeli government of pursuing “a policy of deliberately committing war crimes,” and repeats the tired canard that Hamas resisted ceasefire negotiations, he admits that the Biden administration “could have done [more] to pressure the Israeli government to agree to…[a] ceasefire.” Hopefully, Miller’s admission will help crack the dam of silence and allow the truth to be told about this criminal military campaign.
7. Even as Miller makes this admission, the merciless bombing of Palestinians continues. The Guardian reports “On Sunday, at least 31 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire at the site of a food distribution centre in Rafah…On Monday, another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at the same site…And on Tuesday, 27 people were killed after Israeli forces opened fire again, say Gaza officials.” This report continues, citing UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, who said on Tuesday that “Palestinians in Gaza now faced an impossible choice: ‘Die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available.’” Türk added that by attacking civilians, Israel is committing yet more war crimes.
8. Some high-profile activists are taking direct action to deliver food to Gaza. Democracy Now! reports 12 activists aboard The Madleen, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, have departed from the Italian port of Catania. This group includes Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, actor Liam Cunningham, and Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament. Despite the previous ship being targeted by a drone attack, Thunberg is quoted saying “We deem the risk of silence and the risk of inaction to be so much more deadly than this mission.” Threats to the flotilla continue to pour in. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted, “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” In Israel itself, IDF spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin ominously stated “we will act accordingly,” per FOX News.
9. In more foreign policy news, Gareth Gore – a Washington Post reporter and author of Opus, an exposé of the shadowy Opus Dei sect within the Catholic Church – reports Pope Leo has given Opus Dei six months to “pass comprehensive reforms” and has told the group that if significant changes are not made by December, “necessary measures will be taken.” Gore further reports that in addition to the reforms, “[Pope] Leo has also demanded an investigation into abuse allegations…[including] human trafficking, enslavement…[and] physical and psychological abuse of members.” According to Gore, the reforms were first ordered by Pope Francis in 2022, but “Opus Dei dragged its feet – in the hope the pope would pass away first.” Upon his death, Pope Francis had been on the, “cusp of signing into canon law a huge reform of Opus Dei.” The Vatican was also moving to force a vote on a revised Opus Dei constitution, which was, “quietly cancelled” within hours of Francis’ death. Perhaps most tellingly, Gore reports “The Vatican has privately reassured Opus Dei victims who have long campaigned for justice that they ‘won’t be disappointed’”
10. Finally, a political earthquake has occurred in South Korea. Listeners may remember the failed coup attempt by right-wing former President Yoon Suk Yeol, which culminated in his ouster and could ultimately lead to a sentence of life in prison or even death. Now, the country has elected a new president, Lee Jae-myung, by a margin of 49.4% to 41.2%. Lee, who leads Korea’s Democratic People’s Party, has “endured a barrage of criminal indictments and an assassination attempt,” since losing the last presidential election by a margin of less than 1 per cent, per the Financial Times. Lee is a former factory worker who campaigned in a bulletproof vest after surviving being knifed in the neck last year. The FT notes “Lee…grew up in poverty and suffered [a] permanent injury at the age of 13 when his arm was crushed in a machine at the baseball glove factory where he worked…in 2022 [he] declared his ambition to be a ‘successful Bernie Sanders’.” That said, he has pivoted to the center in his recent political messaging. Beyond the impact of Lee’s election on the future of Korean democracy, his tenure is sure to set a new tone in Korea’s relations with their neighbors including the US, the DPRK, China and Japan.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
Ralph welcomes Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, to break down the budget bill passing through Congress that is the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and working-class to the wealthy in United States history. Then, insurance expert, Robert Hunter returns to discuss the recent rise in auto insurance rates.
Heidi Shierholz is the president of the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that uses the power of its research on economic trends and on the impact of economic policies to advance reforms that serve working people, deliver racial justice, and guarantee gender equity. In 2021 she became the fourth president EPI has had since its founding in 1986.
We’ve never seen a budget that so plainly takes from the poor to give to the rich… The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that lower and lower middle-income people will actually lose out. They may get something of a tax break, but they lose benefits. So that on net, their after-tax income will be lower after this bill, while the rich just make out like bandits.
Heidi Shierholz, President of the Economic Policy Institute
The draconian cuts that we are seeing to the safety net are not big enough, because the tax increases are so huge that this bill also increases the deficit dramatically.
Heidi Shierholz
Many folks are calling this the MAGA Murder Bill. They’re not wrong. People will die because of the cuts that we’re seeing here.
Heidi Shierholz
Robert Hunteris the Director Emeritus of Insurance at the Consumer Federation of America. He has held many positions in the field, both public and private, including being the Commissioner of Insurance for the State of Texas being the President and Founder of the National Insurance Consumer Organization and served as United States Federal Insurance Administrator.
Decide how much you need. Don’t ask for more than you really need. And then once you have it, “I need this much for my car. I need this much if I hit somebody” and so on. And then you get that statistic, and you send it out to several companies and get quotes.
Robert Hunter on buying auto insurance
There isn’t any program benefiting the American people that Trump is not cutting in order to turn the country over to the giant corporations and the super-rich. It’s basically an overthrow of the government and an overthrow of the rule of law.
Ralph Nader
News 6/6/25
1. On May 23rd, the Trump administration Department of Justice officially announced it had reached an agreement with Boeing to drop its criminal case against the airline manufacturer related to the 2018 and 2019 crashes that killed 346 people, NPR reports. The turnover at the federal government in recent years has prolonged this case; the first Trump administration reached a deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing in 2021, but prosecutors revived the criminal case under President Biden, and as NPR notes, “Boeing agreed last year to plead guilty to defrauding regulators, but a federal judge rejected that proposed plea deal.” Just before the deal was reached, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal penned a letter calling on the DOJ not to “allow [Boeing] to weasel its way out of accountability for its failed corporate culture, and for any illegal behavior that has resulted in deadly consequence,” but this was clearly ignored. Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and former federal judge who, according to NPR, is representing the families of victims for free, said, “This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history…My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject [the deal].”
2. That same day, Trump signed a new executive order to “cut down on regulations and fast-track new licenses for [nuclear] reactors and power plants,” per Reuters. According to the wire service, “Shares of uranium mining companies Uranium Energy…Energy Fuels…and Centrus Energy…jumped between 19.6% and 24.2%” following this announcement. Sam Altman-backed nuclear startup Oklo gained 23.1%. The administration’s new interest in the nuclear industry is spurred in part by increased demand for energy as, “power-hungry data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence and crypto miners plug into the grid.” The nuclear industry is also expected to retain many tax incentives stripped away from green energy initiatives in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.
3. In yet another instance of the Trump administration going soft on corporate greed, the Republican-controlled Federal Trade Commission has dismissed their case against PepsiCo. As the AP explains, “The lawsuit…alleged that PepsiCo was giving unfair price advantages to Walmart at the expense of other vendors and consumers,” citing the 1936 Robinson-Patman Act, which bans companies from “using promotional incentive payments to favor large customers over smaller ones.” Current FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson called the case a “dubious partisan stunt,” in a press release. Former Chair Lina Khan however, called the dismissal “disturbing,” and wrote, “This lawsuit would’ve protected families from paying higher prices at the grocery store and stopped conduct that squeezes small businesses and communities across America. Dismissing it is a gift to giant retailers as they gear up to hike prices.”
4. Instead of utilizing the federal regulatory apparatus to protect consumers and the public, the Trump administration instead continues to weaponize these institutions to target progressive groups. According to Axios, the FTC is “investigating…Media Matters over claims that it and other media advocacy groups coordinated advertising boycotts of Elon Musk’s X.” As this report notes, “X [formerly Twitter] sued Media Matters for defamation in 2023 for a report it publicly released that showed ads on X running next to pro-Nazi content. X claimed the report contributed to an advertiser exodus.” While it seems unlikely the social media platform could prevail in such a suit, the suit has effectively cowed the advertising industry, with the World Federation of Advertisers dismantling their Global Alliance for Responsible Media just months after the suit was filed. Media Matters president Angelo Carusone is quoted saying, “The Trump administration has been defined by naming right-wing media figures to key posts and abusing the power of the federal government to bully political opponents and silence critics…that’s exactly what’s happening here…These threats won’t work; we remain steadfast to our mission.”
5. On Thursday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cotez endorsed State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in his bid for Mayor of New York City, POLITICO reports. This endorsement came the morning after the first mayoral primary debate, a rollicking affair featuring nine candidates and including a testy exchange in which the moderators disregarded their own rules to press Mamdani to say whether he believed in “a Jewish state of Israel?” Mamdani responded that he believed Israel has a right to exist “as a state with equal rights.” This from the Times of Israel. In her endorsement, AOC wrote “Assemblymember Mamdani has demonstrated a real ability on the ground to put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers that is strongest to lead the pack…In the final stretch of the race, we need to get very real about that.” Ocasio-Cortez said she would rank Adrienne Adams, Brad Lander, Scott Stringer and Zellnor Myrie in that order after Mamdani.
6. Turning to Palestine itself, the Times of Israel reports notorious Biden State Department spokesman Matthew Miller admitted in an interview that, “It is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes” in Gaza. While Miller stops short of accusing the Israeli government of pursuing “a policy of deliberately committing war crimes,” and repeats the tired canard that Hamas resisted ceasefire negotiations, he admits that the Biden administration “could have done [more] to pressure the Israeli government to agree to…[a] ceasefire.” Hopefully, Miller’s admission will help crack the dam of silence and allow the truth to be told about this criminal military campaign.
7. Even as Miller makes this admission, the merciless bombing of Palestinians continues. The Guardian reports “On Sunday, at least 31 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces opened fire at the site of a food distribution centre in Rafah…On Monday, another three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire at the same site…And on Tuesday, 27 people were killed after Israeli forces opened fire again, say Gaza officials.” This report continues, citing UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, who said on Tuesday that “Palestinians in Gaza now faced an impossible choice: ‘Die from starvation or risk being killed while trying to access the meagre food that is being made available.’” Türk added that by attacking civilians, Israel is committing yet more war crimes.
8. Some high-profile activists are taking direct action to deliver food to Gaza. Democracy Now! reports 12 activists aboard The Madleen, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, have departed from the Italian port of Catania. This group includes Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, actor Liam Cunningham, and Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament. Despite the previous ship being targeted by a drone attack, Thunberg is quoted saying “We deem the risk of silence and the risk of inaction to be so much more deadly than this mission.” Threats to the flotilla continue to pour in. South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted, “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” In Israel itself, IDF spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin ominously stated “we will act accordingly,” per FOX News.
9. In more foreign policy news, Gareth Gore – a Washington Post reporter and author of Opus, an exposé of the shadowy Opus Dei sect within the Catholic Church – reports Pope Leo has given Opus Dei six months to “pass comprehensive reforms” and has told the group that if significant changes are not made by December, “necessary measures will be taken.” Gore further reports that in addition to the reforms, “[Pope] Leo has also demanded an investigation into abuse allegations…[including] human trafficking, enslavement…[and] physical and psychological abuse of members.” According to Gore, the reforms were first ordered by Pope Francis in 2022, but “Opus Dei dragged its feet – in the hope the pope would pass away first.” Upon his death, Pope Francis had been on the, “cusp of signing into canon law a huge reform of Opus Dei.” The Vatican was also moving to force a vote on a revised Opus Dei constitution, which was, “quietly cancelled” within hours of Francis’ death. Perhaps most tellingly, Gore reports “The Vatican has privately reassured Opus Dei victims who have long campaigned for justice that they ‘won’t be disappointed’”
10. Finally, a political earthquake has occurred in South Korea. Listeners may remember the failed coup attempt by right-wing former President Yoon Suk Yeol, which culminated in his ouster and could ultimately lead to a sentence of life in prison or even death. Now, the country has elected a new president, Lee Jae-myung, by a margin of 49.4% to 41.2%. Lee, who leads Korea’s Democratic People’s Party, has “endured a barrage of criminal indictments and an assassination attempt,” since losing the last presidential election by a margin of less than 1 per cent, per the Financial Times. Lee is a former factory worker who campaigned in a bulletproof vest after surviving being knifed in the neck last year. The FT notes “Lee…grew up in poverty and suffered [a] permanent injury at the age of 13 when his arm was crushed in a machine at the baseball glove factory where he worked…in 2022 [he] declared his ambition to be a ‘successful Bernie Sanders’.” That said, he has pivoted to the center in his recent political messaging. Beyond the impact of Lee’s election on the future of Korean democracy, his tenure is sure to set a new tone in Korea’s relations with their neighbors including the US, the DPRK, China and Japan.
This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.
A federal judge issued an injunction Friday that further delays the transfer of Oak Flat, an Indigenous religious site in Arizona, to a multi-national company that would make it one of the largest copper mines in the world.
More than a week ago, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in the case, allowing a lower court order to stand that approved the transfer. The district court judge in Phoenix called for a 60-day delay to allow advocates for Oak Flat to review an upcoming U.S. Forest Service environmental impact statement.
The motions for the delay came from the San Carlos Apache Tribe and a coalition of organizations such as the Center for Biological Diversity, a local Sierra Club Chapter, and Arizona’s Inter-Tribal Association.
The struggle over Oak Flat’s future has been going on for a decade. The final environmental review was released during the first Trump administration, but then halted during the Biden administration. Back in April, the current Trump administration said it would reissue its environmental review, expected June 16.
The review is necessary for the transfer of the land to Resolution Copper, a project from Rio Tinto and BHP, multinational mining companies.
There has been an issue with accessing this review before its publication. According to Marc Fink, an attorney for the Center of Biological Diversity, it’s customary to see such documents in a legal process.
That hasn’t been the case with Oak Flat.
“In my 30 years, I have never seen this occur,” he said.
The withholding of the review is seen by observers as a sign that the Trump administration wants to fast-track the mine, which would sit directly on top of sacred sites and would mine a thousand feet inside the earth.
The land in question is about 40 miles east of Phoenix in the Tonto National Forest. The Apaches consider it their land, based on the 1852 treaty signed between the nation and the U.S. government, as an outcome of the Mexican-American War a few years earlier.
Amid a current trade war between the United States and China, as indicated by Trump’s tariffs, proponents for Oak Flat are scratching their heads at conflicting national security interests. In a press release by the San Carlos Apache Tribe, chairman Terry Rambler, says that, “Resolution Copper is a major threat to U.S. national security given China’s significant financial influence over BHP and Rio Tinto.”
The United States has only two copper smelters — in Utah and Arizona — and both are at total capacity. Critics surmise that Resolution Copper will likely send raw material to China, where the world’s largest copper refineries exist.
Whether the profit margin is acceptable for Resolution Copper is also a question for the mining corporations. A feasibility study, which looks at whether the costs will scale for net profit gain, hasn’t been conducted yet according to Resolution Copper and can take years. However, if companies identify expenditures as too costly, it is unlikely they would return the title back to Apache homeland under the Forest Service.
The tribal organization Apache Stronghold also filed a separate injunction in the same Arizona court; it was their suit the Supreme Court declined to hear.
Luke Goodrich, Vice President at Becket, a religious rights legal institute who has represented Apache Stronghold, said the fight is far from over.
“The Apaches are never going to stop defending Oak Flat ,” he said. “And we’re continuing to press every possible opportunity in the courts, Congress, and with the President to make sure that this tragic destruction never takes place.”
“The Trump Administration is once again planning to violate federal laws and illegally transfer Oak Flat to the two largest foreign mining companies in the world,”said San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Terry Rambler in a press release.
. Back in April, the Trump administration announced they will reissue its final environmental impact statement, also known as EIS. The Biden administration halted the release of this review in 2021 but its publication is expected June 16. This controversial decision is considered as the final step before finalizing the land transfer to private title.
There has been an issue with accessing this review before its publication. According to the Center for Biological Diversity’s attorney, Marc Fink, the final EIS study and a feasibility study, which looks at the practical costs and management plan has not been shared to Link (biological) and other lawyers. “In my 30 years, I have never seen this occur,” he said.
Aside from land claims, based on the 1852 treaty signed between the Apache Nations and U.S. government, as an outcome of the Mexican-American War a few years earlier. In this legal document, according to the federal government, this is Apache Land.
Amid a current trade war with China, as indicated by consistent tariff setting by the Trump Administration, alongside land title, all parties are scratching their heads at conflicting national security interests. In a press release by the San Carlos Apache Tribe, chairman Terry Rambler, says that, “Resolution Copper is a major threat to U.S. national security given China’s significant financial influence over BHP and Rio Tinto.”
The United States has only two copper refiners in Philadelphia and Phoenix and are at total capacity. This means that Resolution Copper will likely send refining to China, where the world’s largest copper refineries exist. In an op-ed in Real Clear Energy, the executive director of HECHO, known as Hispanics Enjoying Camping, Hunting, and the Outdoors, she writes, “If reducing America’s reliance on hostile foreign powers for critical minerals is a national security priority—a goal that leaders across the political spectrum broadly support—then we should take a hard look at what’s happening at Oak Flat.”
Whether the profit margin is acceptable for Resolution Copper and Rio Tinto is also a question for the mining corporations. A feasibility study, which looks at whether the costs will scale for net profit gain, hasn’t been conducted yet according to Resolution Copper themselves. However, if companies identify expenditures as too costly, it is unlikely they will cease land title back to Apache homeland under the Forest Service.
Apache Stronghold has also filed a separate preliminary injunction in the same Arizona court for a separate date. Luke Goodrich, Vice President at Becket, a religious rights legal institute who has represented Apache Stronghold, says the fight is far from over and they’re also pursuing avenues through every branch of government including Congress and the White House. “This is not over. The Apaches are never going to stop defending Oak Flat and we’re continuing to press every possible opportunity in the courts, Congress, and with the President to make sure that this tragic destruction never takes place.”
Is the Donald Trump-Elon Musk bromance finally over? President Trump is threatening to cut off billions of dollars in federal contracts with Musk after the two billionaires engaged in a dramatic online feud just days after Musk called Trump’s budget bill a “disgusting abomination.” Musk appeared to back the impeachment of Trump and claimed the president is named in the Jeffrey Epstein files. “They are people who always have their eye on the bottom line, but they also are, obviously, titanically sized egos,” says author Quinn Slobodian, professor of international history at Boston University, who is working on a new book about Elon Musk. “This is just a sign of how dangerous it is to put … the whole future of the American economy and the political scene in the hands of two sole human beings.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
A video, seemingly taken by someone in the audience during a public performance, in which event attendees are showing the middle finger to someone on stage has gone viral. Those sharing the video on social media claim that these gestures were made at Bollywood actor and filmmaker Kangana Ranaut during a concert. Ranaut is affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party and represents Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district in the lower house of the Parliament.
On June 3, X user Amit Yadav (@Amityad6389) shared the viral video and claimed that members affiliated with Hindu organisations, upset with her over something, showed her the middle finger in public. (Archive)
बड़ी खबर
खबर रोमांचक है बीजेपी से कंगना रनौत किसी शो में गई हुई थी।
उन्हें किसी बात को लेकर हिंदू संगठन के लोगो ने मिडिल फिंगर दिखा कर विरोध किया।
कंगना रनौत ने ये सब देखते ही कहा कि कैमरा मैंन अच्छे से दिखाइए और इन लोगों को वायरल कर दीजिए।
On June 4, media outlet LocalTak (@localtak) also shared the purported video alleging that members of a Hindu organisation protested against Ranaut during a show by showing her the middle finger. (Archive)
was attending a show when members of a Hindu group showed her the middle finger in protest!
We watched the video closely several times and noticed the words ‘Q High Street’ displayed on the stage in the video. Q High Street is a commercial property in Lahore, Pakistan.
During our investigation, we also found that Q High Street had organised an automotive event, Pak Wheels Auto Show, on May 25. The event featured a performance by Young Stunners, a popular hip-hop duo in Pakistan.
We found several posts on Q High Street’s Instagram page, featuring Young Stunner’s performance. Noticeably, the backdrop of the videos here was identical to the one that went viral.
Taking cue from this, we looked for full videos of the performance and found one on YouTube uploaded on May 29, 2025. At the 3:15-minute mark of the video, the same woman who is seen in the viral clip appears as the event’s emcee. It’s fairly clear that she is not Kangana Ranaut.
Here’s the video:
To sum up, the viral video is from an event in Lahore, Pakistan. It does not depict members of a Hindu organisation showing the middle finger to Kangana Ranaut. The woman appearing in the video is not the Bollywood actor.
A video, seemingly taken by someone in the audience during a public performance, in which event attendees are showing the middle finger to someone on stage has gone viral. Those sharing the video on social media claim that these gestures were made at Bollywood actor and filmmaker Kangana Ranaut during a concert. Ranaut is affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party and represents Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district in the lower house of the Parliament.
On June 3, X user Amit Yadav (@Amityad6389) shared the viral video and claimed that members affiliated with Hindu organisations, upset with her over something, showed her the middle finger in public. (Archive)
बड़ी खबर
खबर रोमांचक है बीजेपी से कंगना रनौत किसी शो में गई हुई थी।
उन्हें किसी बात को लेकर हिंदू संगठन के लोगो ने मिडिल फिंगर दिखा कर विरोध किया।
कंगना रनौत ने ये सब देखते ही कहा कि कैमरा मैंन अच्छे से दिखाइए और इन लोगों को वायरल कर दीजिए।
On June 4, media outlet LocalTak (@localtak) also shared the purported video alleging that members of a Hindu organisation protested against Ranaut during a show by showing her the middle finger. (Archive)
was attending a show when members of a Hindu group showed her the middle finger in protest!
We watched the video closely several times and noticed the words ‘Q High Street’ displayed on the stage in the video. Q High Street is a commercial property in Lahore, Pakistan.
During our investigation, we also found that Q High Street had organised an automotive event, Pak Wheels Auto Show, on May 25. The event featured a performance by Young Stunners, a popular hip-hop duo in Pakistan.
We found several posts on Q High Street’s Instagram page, featuring Young Stunner’s performance. Noticeably, the backdrop of the videos here was identical to the one that went viral.
Taking cue from this, we looked for full videos of the performance and found one on YouTube uploaded on May 29, 2025. At the 3:15-minute mark of the video, the same woman who is seen in the viral clip appears as the event’s emcee. It’s fairly clear that she is not Kangana Ranaut.
Here’s the video:
To sum up, the viral video is from an event in Lahore, Pakistan. It does not depict members of a Hindu organisation showing the middle finger to Kangana Ranaut. The woman appearing in the video is not the Bollywood actor.
A video, seemingly taken by someone in the audience during a public performance, in which event attendees are showing the middle finger to someone on stage has gone viral. Those sharing the video on social media claim that these gestures were made at Bollywood actor and filmmaker Kangana Ranaut during a concert. Ranaut is affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party and represents Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi district in the lower house of the Parliament.
On June 3, X user Amit Yadav (@Amityad6389) shared the viral video and claimed that members affiliated with Hindu organisations, upset with her over something, showed her the middle finger in public. (Archive)
बड़ी खबर
खबर रोमांचक है बीजेपी से कंगना रनौत किसी शो में गई हुई थी।
उन्हें किसी बात को लेकर हिंदू संगठन के लोगो ने मिडिल फिंगर दिखा कर विरोध किया।
कंगना रनौत ने ये सब देखते ही कहा कि कैमरा मैंन अच्छे से दिखाइए और इन लोगों को वायरल कर दीजिए।
On June 4, media outlet LocalTak (@localtak) also shared the purported video alleging that members of a Hindu organisation protested against Ranaut during a show by showing her the middle finger. (Archive)
was attending a show when members of a Hindu group showed her the middle finger in protest!
We watched the video closely several times and noticed the words ‘Q High Street’ displayed on the stage in the video. Q High Street is a commercial property in Lahore, Pakistan.
During our investigation, we also found that Q High Street had organised an automotive event, Pak Wheels Auto Show, on May 25. The event featured a performance by Young Stunners, a popular hip-hop duo in Pakistan.
We found several posts on Q High Street’s Instagram page, featuring Young Stunner’s performance. Noticeably, the backdrop of the videos here was identical to the one that went viral.
Taking cue from this, we looked for full videos of the performance and found one on YouTube uploaded on May 29, 2025. At the 3:15-minute mark of the video, the same woman who is seen in the viral clip appears as the event’s emcee. It’s fairly clear that she is not Kangana Ranaut.
Here’s the video:
To sum up, the viral video is from an event in Lahore, Pakistan. It does not depict members of a Hindu organisation showing the middle finger to Kangana Ranaut. The woman appearing in the video is not the Bollywood actor.
Investigative journalists Taya Graham and Stephen Janis break down the insider knowledge surrounding Joe Biden’s decline—and how the Democratic Party’s culture of silence, conformity, and caution may have sealed its own fate. From the “get in line” politics that killed bold policy and risk-taking to focus groups calling Democrats “sloths,” Stephen and Taya explore why Biden was protected despite clear signs of decline, the Democratic Party’s aversion to bold candidates, what Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump had in common, and why the Dems just spent $20 million just to learn how to talk to men.
Produced by: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis Written by: Stephen Janis Studio: David Hebden Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, this is Taya Graham, along with my reporting partner, Stephen Janis.
Stephen Janis:
Hey, Taya. How are you doing?
Taya Graham:
I’m doing great.
Stephen Janis:
Good, good.
Taya Graham:
And I want to welcome everyone to the Inequality Watch Real News React. It’s a show where we challenge the conventional wisdom touted by the mainstream media and use our perspective as reporters to provide some alternative explanations for some of the hard to understand happenings in America and throughout the world.
And today, that means unpacking the great Joe Biden conspiracy.
Stephen Janis:
It is a great conspiracy, Taya, a real conspiracy.
Taya Graham:
I mean, really, it was like a Weekend at Bernie’s-like conspiracy, actually Weekend at Bernie’s sequel.
Stephen Janis:
Let me chime in. For people who don’t know, Weekend at Bernie’s is a movie where a man dies and his younger friends carry him around because they don’t want people to know he’s dead. So it’s like a corpse at a party.
Taya Graham:
Yes. That sounds very morbid, but it was actually a funny movie, or at least back when I watched it.
Stephen Janis:
Exactly.
Taya Graham:
And if you read some of the recent reports about just how out of it Biden was, it sounds like he was the grandpa who fell asleep at the dinner table at Thanksgiving.
But along with these revelations about the depth of Biden’s declining cognitive abilities comes a much more important question: Why was a man who couldn’t function after 5:00 PM allowed to run an entire country, and why didn’t anyone who supposedly had access tell the truth about it? And that’s what our show will discuss today. And our answer, which we’ll share soon is probably not what you expect.
But first, let’s get to the facts. Stephen, the discussion about Biden’s inability to function, according to some of the recently released books, goes back to 2019, involves some really embarrassing moments. I think for example, he couldn’t remember the name of a close aid, or he didn’t recognize George Clooney at a fundraiser that George Clooney was throwing for him.
So what have we learned about Biden’s health while in office, and what do you think the main talking point is there?
Stephen Janis:
We’ll tell you, unlike you and I who basically learned about Biden’s cognitive abilities at that horrific debate, there was a small group of Washington insiders and politicians who now we know knew that Biden was not right. Meaning stretching back to 2020 with congressional Democrats where they’re like, he lost his train of thought. There were a lot of signs.
And so now what happens in Washington when people ignore something right in front of their faces? They do a lot of hand wringing and see who they can blame. The big question is now, well, there’s two big questions right now. Number one, how bad was he, which needs to be clearly established that he was in no position to run a country. And number two, who can we blame so it doesn’t fall on us?
Taya Graham:
Exactly. How will it not be our fault?
Stephen Janis:
Exactly. And that seems to be the biggest preoccupation of Washington and all the Washington insiders is how can I pin this on someone else, and how can I avoid taking any blame? Which is kind of politics as usual.
Taya Graham:
Or to sell a book, which is apparently what CNN’s Jake Tapper is now doing. Did you see how many, gosh, did you see how many ways he tried to sell that book and hawk that book on CNN? It was almost embarrassing.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. Every person talking about Joe Biden, even not about Joe Biden, was mentioning Jake Tapper’s book [crosstalk] —
Taya Graham:
You would’ve thought they were working on commission.
Stephen Janis:
Well, it’s extraordinary because Jake Tapper is a quintessential insider, and the quintessential establishment journalist tends to be a bit of a moralizer, likes to sneer at people, and, of course, was constantly sneering at Trump. But I don’t think he was a person who was out ahead of this story either. He tries to make it seem like he was, but I think a lot of, if you went back, I think he was a person who would give the Republicans a hard time for talking about Biden’s condition, or anyone.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. He’s definitely the type that would’ve pushed back and said that the Republican Party was focusing on the wrong thing. But apparently they were focusing on the right thing. And it was a thing, it was like The Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone was trying to ignore what was right in front of them.
Stephen Janis:
I think this is more about the culture of a party than it is about what the Republicans thought. To me, this is really much more important than Biden, much more important than Biden’s condition, it’s about the culture of a party and why that culture keeps that party from ever winning an election, and, I think, connecting with voters. There’s a lot of things that went on to keep Biden in power that have a lot to do with some of the biggest problems of the Democratic Party.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. It is so much bigger than Biden, and that’s why we have a theory to share of why this really happened,
Stephen Janis:
Which we’ll share shortly, before we go through what I call the conventional wisdom about this.
Taya Graham:
We should take a look at some of the mainstream media explanations that are being touted by pundits. So let’s take a look at some of the reasons that pundits and politicians gave.
So they set up these excuses for Biden running when it’s obvious that he is too old and he’s still getting fierce support from Dem insiders. So what do you think were some of the things that pundits came out with? There were certainly politicians like Rep. Clyburn who even now still defends Joe Biden.
Stephen Janis:
And they certainly haven’t talked much about Dean Phillips, the one guy who ran against Biden, who got thrown out of the party. But I think [crosstalk] —
Taya Graham:
He got thrown under the bus, actually.
Stephen Janis:
I think the general explanation has been that I see that comes out through all the BS is just that he didn’t say anything, she didn’t say anything, so I wasn’t going to say anything even though I knew something and even though I was outraged, and people trying to share secretly or confidential sources, even though I knew something, I couldn’t say anything because they didn’t say anything. So there was this very much, it bumps up against our theory, but really everybody was groupthinking here.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely.
Stephen Janis:
I’m not going to say anything. Well, you say something. No, I’m not going to say anything. You say something. And that, as we’ll get to, says a lot about the Democratic Party at this point.
Taya Graham:
Stephen, the word groupthink encapsulates it there perfectly. But there’s another angle that people are taking, which was that they’re blaming hubris, they’re blaming Biden’s ego.
Stephen Janis:
I don’t think you can rule that out because I’ve seen politicians hold onto city council seats until they’re 90.
Taya Graham:
That’s so true. Yes, [crosstalk] in Baltimore City, yes.
Stephen Janis:
You can imagine the illustrious power of the presidency is nice. One of his aides was going, you don’t give up the plane, you don’t give up the house. And I mean, it’s kind of understandable if small time politics can be a narcotic, being president is probably a wonder drug. You’re going to be high all the time.
But I also think, and this was discussed on another show, which I thought was a good explanation, that Biden had had a career of turning expectations on their head. He was a guy who, I’m always going to push through, I’m going to find a way to do this, and people have written me off before. I think some people are trying to blame the 2022 midterms where the Democrats outperformed or overperformed expectations, and Biden took credit for it. But personal hubris has a lot to do with this. Why do I want to give this up? It’s great being the president. It’s great to be the king.
Taya Graham:
Right. And he also ran multiple times. So he’s always wanted this office and perhaps his ambition overcame what should have been his intelligence, which is that he was supposed to be a transitional president.
Stephen Janis:
And looking back at what’s happened since, it almost ruined his whole legacy. So it’s a good lesson, like, hey, sometimes it’s time to quit. Not always, but sometimes.
Taya Graham:
You think the Democrats would’ve learned that with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but apparently they had to learn this lesson again.
Now, there was another thing they did, which is they blamed his inner circle. So for example, it came out that aides had sought to ensure that he would walk shorter distances or they made sure that he had handrails available when he was mounting stairs, and they had him wear, I think the shoes are called trainers to make sure that he wouldn’t slip. When you have aides essentially baby proofing the world around a politician, I mean, how did someone not speak out? It’s incredible.
Stephen Janis:
Well, it’s weird because a lot of these people who are insiders spend their whole careers, and from my experience as a reporter, they’re like attack dogs. They refuse to look inward. They’re always looking outward. So anyone that mentions anything or says, hey, Biden, he doesn’t perform after 5:00, they get attacked. And these are the attack dogs. And the attack dogs, from what I’ve seen, and I have more experience with Democrats, the attack dogs don’t care about the candidate, what the candidate’s doing, you’re the problem. Anyone who speaks up is the problem. Anyone who writes a story is a problem. It’s always other people who are the problem.
And I’ve seen that fiercely in the Democratic Party. If you buck the narrative you’re going to get — And I think a lot of reporters had talked about that, who wrote about this prior to this moment we’re in now.
So Democrats have these cluster of aides, and Republicans have them too. It’s not a party thing. But I’ve had experience with them. They’re attack dogs. They don’t want to see reality. They think you’re reflecting the wrong reality, even though it’s really actually true. And I think that culture and that, I don’t know, whatever, we don’t care, we’re just going to attack people, we’ll attack the messenger, is pervasive and part of this problem.
Taya Graham:
That’s exactly it. Attack the messenger and not acknowledge the message at all. So you’re showing the anger and the attack dog, but there’s another aspect of it, which is that I think the Democrats were afraid.
Stephen Janis:
Trump has had a huge, profound psychological impact on the Republican Party for a decade now. They are Trump traumatized, and I think they think, well, Trump is this horrible threat to democracy. That’s what the Democrats think. And no matter what we do, we just have to stop it, so we become more risk averse. We are not going to do anything to rock the boat because if we question Joe Biden, we’re just letting Trump in. And I guess I can understand that, but it seems antithetical to the idea you want to beat Trump, but you’re going to have a zombie candidate, or you said you’re going to have a big Weekend at Bernie’s campaign? That’s what I think you get when you become, I think, that enured to the facts. So yeah, that’s a really, really, really important point.
Taya Graham:
OK. Now Stephen, this is our chance to explain our theory as to why Biden was cosseted —
Stephen Janis:
Finally!
Taya Graham:
— And protected and kept in office despite many people knowing that he was no longer capable. And that is the Get in Line theory.
Stephen Janis:
It’s a good theory.
Taya Graham:
OK. It is. Stephen, can you explain this most excellent theory?
Stephen Janis:
OK, so we have covered politics, especially in Democratic state and local, which means our city council, the state legislature, and in the nation’s capital, all levels. And what we have seen in the Democratic Party is what’s called the Get in Line culture that rules the way the party is governed.
And what it means is that you don’t jump out of line, you don’t get ambitious if you’re a candidate, you wait your turn. The way Hillary Clinton came out of the Obama era, and it was her turn. The way Joe Biden emerged from the Democratic establishment. It was his turn because it was no longer Hillary Clinton’s turn. On the local level, I can give you many examples of people who are like, don’t jump the line. Don’t get out of line.
And so sometimes when we talk about democratic politics, we always say Democrats are like all the kids in class who sat at the front of class, always did the assignment —
Taya Graham:
Raise the hand for teacher.
Stephen Janis:
— Never piss off the teacher, gets in line. A lot of Democratic candidates, like our governor, Wes Moore, have these perfect resumes, military service, nothing against that. But they they’re creatures of institutions, and inherently they’re risk averse, and candidates have to get in line.
Now, look at the Democratic example and why this is so important in the case of Biden. Who was our most successful, Taya, electoral president of the past, like, 20 years, right? Who was that?
Taya Graham:
President Obama?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, of course, of course. Now, did he get in line?
Taya Graham:
No, he jumped the line. He sure did. And the establishment Democrats weren’t always pleased about it.
Stephen Janis:
No. They picked Hillary Clinton. And do you remember —
Taya Graham:
Hillary fought him tooth and nail.
Stephen Janis:
Actually, yeah. Do you remember the criticism of him? He’d only been two years in the Senate. Do you remember that criticism?
Taya Graham:
Yes, absolutely.
Stephen Janis:
Right. So the Democrats, in their conventional get in line, it would’ve been Hillary Clinton’s turn, which they tried really hard, but Obama was just too good a candidate and was able to beat her. And then they have this huge electoral success. And then when they go back to their Get in Line policy, which has Hillary Clinton, Biden, and then Biden’s hanging on because all the Get in Line people didn’t want to say anything about it, then you have two out of three losses, two Trump, which who, whether you support him or not —
Taya Graham:
Well, wait a second here. Now you’re coming to a really important point here, which is that when you mentioned that President Obama was not a Get in Line candidate and yet he managed to shoot to the front of the line because of his personal charisma and his ability to campaign, President Trump was also not a get in line guy.
Stephen Janis:
Oh, you taught me.
Taya Graham:
At the time the Republican Party was absolutely [crosstalk] aghast.
Stephen Janis:
Oh my God, Republican establishment was like the Democratic establishment. They didn’t want this guy. He was crazy to them and they didn’t want him, but he didn’t get in line.
Taya Graham:
He sure didn’t.
Stephen Janis:
Hardly. No one wanted him to run. And I think we can all remember that when he ran, because the Republican establishment had Jeb Bush, low… I don’t want to say that.
Taya Graham:
Low energy Jeb?
Stephen Janis:
Low energy Jeb Bush, and people like that being touted.
Taya Graham:
That was kind of sad.
Stephen Janis:
No one thought Trump had a chance, but he jumped the line just like Obama.
Taya Graham:
Wait a second, couldn’t Bernie have jumped the line?
Stephen Janis:
Oh, Bernie’s a line jumper.
Taya Graham:
Yeah.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
They really had to hamstring him when he was originally running.
Stephen Janis:
In 2016 with the super delegates.
Taya Graham:
And that really upset a lot of loyal Democrats who felt that Bernie Sanders’s campaign was hamstrung from the inside, that the party attacked him.
Stephen Janis:
We were in South Carolina in 2020 when the Democratic establishment rose up. We witnessed it like a wave and said, not your turn, Bernie, not your turn. It’s got to be Joe Biden. He’s the next in line.
And you could see the results. The results speak for themselves. There’s a disconnect between Democrats and voters because the party is so orderly and so unwilling to take a risk and so unwilling to really conjure policies of any sort. They don’t want to say anything. They don’t want to say Medicare for all like Bernie Sanders says. Why do you think people support Bernie Sanders? Because he’s willing to say Medicare for all. Many Democrats are afraid to say it because of the implications with donors, et cetera.
But the Get in Line candidate and the Get in Line culture is fierce in the Democratic Party locally and nationally. Look at AOC trying to jump ahead [in the] Oversight Committee.
Taya Graham:
Oh, that’s right.
Stephen Janis:
And Connolly, who’s…
Taya Graham:
I mean, you know.
Stephen Janis:
He died.
Taya Graham:
With all respect.
Stephen Janis:
With all due respect.
Taya Graham:
With all due respect, but he was an older gentleman, and obviously not in good health, and instead of picking a young, popular candidate like AOC, they chose him. What does this say about the Democrats when they make choices like this?
Stephen Janis:
AOC would’ve been the jump the line candidate, and AOC would’ve been a bold move. And Democrats keep thinking now with Trump being excessively bold, that somehow they have to be excessively conservative. The real dynamic here is are we going to be a centrist party or a leftist party? That’s not really the right question. Are we going to be a bold party that offers something to people, or are we just going to be the same old, same old who’s next in line, who’s going to run, and who’s going to end up losing again to whomever?
I think you had some interesting information, right, about a focus group that the Democrats did?
Taya Graham:
Yes, there was the… Oh gosh. Well, actually, yes. Let me tell you about this New York Times article.
Stephen Janis:
I really want to hear about it
Taya Graham:
— Media. I wrote about it, and they said The New York Times basically unleashed this brutal analysis. So they have someone who’s done over 250 focus groups for the Democratic Party. And one of the ways they try to really tease out how people think of the party is to ask them, if you had to choose an animal to represent the party, what animal would it be? OK. So for Republicans, they choose like apex predators, they’re like sharks and tigers and stuff. Guess what they choose for Democrats?
Stephen Janis:
I don’t want to hear it.
Taya Graham:
You don’t. It’s terrible. Slugs, sloths, tortoises.
Stephen Janis:
Are you kidding?
Taya Graham:
Does that not speak to all the things we’ve talked about, about Democratic inertia, Democratic institutionalism, calling them a tortoise?
But what was really, now, this is actually kind of sad, I feel bad for the focus group, the gentleman who did the focus group, because he finally got someone to name a different type of animal for the Democrats, and the person said, a deer. And he’s like, oh, wow, that’s interesting. Why did you choose deer? And the guy said, a deer in headlights.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
What does that tell you?
Stephen Janis:
That tells me everything I need to know. But it tells me what we’re already talking about here, and this is very important to remember: the Democrats are afraid. They have no bold proposals, they have no vision, and they’re spending $20 million. What’d you say they spent? $20 million?
Taya Graham:
They were spending $20 million sitting in a luxury hotel to discuss the best way to talk to regular people. So that’s also another great Democratic take.
They also are planning — I was just looking at another article — They’re also planning on pouring a lot of money into influencers. And I think there was an excellent criticism from More Perfect Union, and they said maybe the Democratic Party should actually have a unified platform and unified policy positions and a bold policy platform before you start trying to create your own little influencer group. Maybe you should all be on the same page first.
Stephen Janis:
But paying consultants to do something that you haven’t done yourself, you can’t create a character, or you can’t create a person who people will put their faith in.
Taya Graham:
Well, they keep on saying, we need a Joe Rogan for the left, or we lost Joe Rogan, wow do we fix this? So they’re trying to create a model instead of realizing that, for example, Sen. Bernie Sanders, he went on Joe Rogan, he went on Andrew Schulz, he went on Theo Von. And these folks aren’t necessarily… You could argue that some of them are Republicans, some of them are libertarian, or some of them are just independent. And they were open to Bernie. Why? Because of his authenticity, because of his bold ideas, and because he stays on point. I think that’s something that a lot of people really respect about Sen. Sanders.
Stephen Janis:
You can go back to the 1990s and watch.
Taya Graham:
You can go back to the 1990s and hear him talking about oligarchs then. So I think people really appreciate that authenticity and honesty from a candidate.
Stephen Janis:
So if the Democrats have been a bold party and not a stand in line party, Bernie Sanders might be president right now. If he’d been nominated in 2020, I mean, he could have won. You can’t rule that out.
Taya Graham:
But the question here is will the Democrats learn their lesson? Will they allow some line jumpers?
Stephen Janis:
I don’t think so. No. Just the fact that they’re having focus groups paying $20 million instead of [crosstalk] finding a candidate —
Taya Graham:
How absurd is that.
Stephen Janis:
— That has a vision to offer voters, hey, this is what we’re going to do. Politics is, as much as it’s about aesthetics and slogans and everything, it’s still about practicalities. It’s still about envisioning a reality. Maybe you should spend your time finding someone who has a message that people might like, and taking that person and giving them the ability to change and transform this moribund party. You can’t just screech at the top of your lungs. You’ve got to have something to offer people. We’ve written extensively about, we’ll put the articles we wrote about the Democrats having to get something done, which of course they can’t do nationally, but on the local level, we’ll put that link in the comments.
Taya Graham:
Right, we’ve seen it up close.
Stephen Janis:
Democrats have to do something, and they have to stop spending money on consultants, I think.
Taya Graham:
And also they need to learn how to speak to people. One of the things that this article explored, it was a program that they’re creating called SAM. I think it’s like a Strategic Approach to Men. So Democrats are trying to learn how to talk to men. They can’t even talk to the regular public just one-on-one. But folks like Sanders and AOC seem to be breaking through.
Stephen Janis:
That’s what I’m saying. You have to pick the people, the candidates, the people that are dynamic that don’t need to be told how to talk to someone, that actually have a vision that, when they sell it — Well, not sell their vision, but talk about their vision, people are attracted to their vision. So it’s amazing that Democrats keep spending money like this when they’d be better thinking about what is our grand vision and what candidate would actually attract people? What candidate could attract people without having to spend a hundred million dollars on consultants and things like that.
Taya Graham:
You know what, we are not going to pay any money for consultants — Well, as a matter of fact, we should run a poll ourselves. As a matter of fact, we’re going to put a poll down in the live chat and we want to find out how people think about Democrats, if they have any idea on how Democrats can learn to speak to people effectively. What do you think could fix the Democratic Party, if it can be fixed? We would love to know your thoughts in the comments and in that poll. So I’m going to make sure to have a poll in the live chat.
And also, Stephen, for the record, I think we’ve done a pretty good autopsy on the Democratic Party.
Stephen Janis:
I think so.
Taya Graham:
Didn’t cost $20 mil. We did it for free. We shouldn’t have done it for free.
Stephen Janis:
I think it’s pretty clear that they need someone to jump the line, to run, that the Democratic establishment does not want to run, someone with a vision that seems authentic, and someone who’s willing to take risks. You gotta take risks. The risk averse nature of the Democratic Party has turned them into losers in many cases. So yeah, we will be back to breakdown this more, but I think we did a little bit of damage today
Taya Graham:
A little bit, but hopefully the Democrat strategists out there who are spending millions of dollars, maybe they’ll take some time to listen to independent journalists as well as listen to the public, and let them know that they have an authenticity issue and they need to find a way to break the inertia and their Get in Line platform, essentially.
Stephen Janis:
Well, their Get in Line order of things that has led them to…
Taya Graham:
So they’re not considered tortoises anymore.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Well, OK.
Stephen Janis:
That was great!
Taya Graham:
That’s our great free help for the Democratic Party. It didn’t cost $20 million. Maybe they’ll listen, maybe they won’t. But I want to thank everyone who’s watching for joining us for this first of a series of Inequality Watchdog Reacts on The Real News Network. And if you have a topic you’d like us to explore, just throw it in the comments and we’ll take a look. And if you want to see more of our inequality reporting, just take a look for our playlist on The Real News Network channel, and I look forward to seeing you all soon. Right, Stephen?
Stephen Janis:
Yep. We’ll be back.
Taya Graham:
We’ll be back. And as always, please be safe out there.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis.
Twenty-two-year-old software developer Artem Motorniuk has spent his entire life in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, living in the north and visiting his grandparents in the south. It’s been almost four years since he’s seen them in person.
“My grandparents right now are under occupation,” he says. “We can reach them once a month on the phone.”
Motorniuk and his family’s story is a common one in eastern Ukraine. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, the war has devastated both occupied and liberated regions. Over a million people on both sides have been killed or injured in the war, according to recent estimates. Whole towns have been flattened and infrastructure destroyed, leading to almost 6 million people displaced internally and 5.7 million refugees taking shelter in neighboring European countries. For those who remain, the psychological toll is mounting.
“They shoot rockets really close to Zaporizhzhia,” Motorniuk said. “[Last August] they got the region with artillery shells, and they hit in the place where children were just hanging around and killed four children.”
A toy truck is seen outside a children’s cafe damaged by a Russian artillery shell strike in Malokaterynivka village, Zaporizhzhia region, southeastern Ukraine, on August 20, 2024.
Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The conflict has become highly politicized and volatile in recent months. The United States in April signed a deal with Ukraine to establish a joint investment fund for the country’s eventual reconstruction, in exchange for access to its wealth of critical minerals. At the same time, President Donald Trump has increasingly aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin, at one time even questioning which country incited the conflagration, and U.S. attempts to advance a ceasefire have stalled.
Now, just past the three-year mark, the conflict’s long-term costs are becoming more apparent, including the damage to the country’s natural resources. Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone.
The conflict zone: Up to 90% of Ukraine’s wildfires have occurred in less than 20% of the country
Cumulative acres burned during the war: in Ukraine, in the conflict zone, and in conservation areas
But not all rockets explode when they’re shot, and mines only go off when they’re tripped, meaning these impacts will linger long after conflict ceases.
This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequences.
Ukraine, a large European nation with significant agricultural and forested regions, is now experiencing a severe ecological crisis in parallel with its ongoing war with Russia.
The country contains 35 percent of Europe’s biodiversity, much of it protected within the Emerald Network, a pan-European collection of ecologically significant sites designed to conserve habitats and species. Its vast forests also act as natural carbon sinks, sequestering greenhouse gas emissions to slow the pace of climate change.
Wildfires have long played a key ecological role in Ukraine, with slow, steady burns enriching soils and landscapes. But decades of mismanagement — specifically the Soviet Union’s conversion of native forest to timber-prized pine — and climate change-fueled drought have left much of the country’s vast forestland more tinderbox than sanctuary.
When Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country was primed to burn. By March, established conflict zones were the center of widespread destruction — humanitarian, structural, and environmental.
As the conflict continued and frontlines moved throughout 2022 and 2023, military activity increasingly ignited and exacerbated wildfires across Ukraine, leading to extensive land damage.
For nearly three years, fighting intensified while wildfires accumulated along the frontlines…
By the end of 2024, these fires had spread far beyond the conflict zones, consuming protected areas like Serebryansky Forest as fuel.
War-triggered wildfires are ravaging Ukraine’s forests
Scroll to continue
Institute for the Study of War / Critical Threats Project / Clayton Aldern / Chad Small / Grist
The Serebryansky Forest serves as a strategic passing point for Russian forces and a key defense point for Ukrainian forces. To completely occupy the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russia has to pass through the forest. Holding the line here has allowed the Ukrainians to stop the Russian advance, but at a steep cost.
“The shelling, it’s an explosive wave, the fire makes everything unrecognizable,” a medic with the National Guard 13th Khartiya Brigade told the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in March. “When they get up, the forest is different, it has all changed.”
When you introduce war, you create fires that can’t be effectively extinguished.
“You cannot fly aircraft to suppress fire with water because that aircraft will be shot down,” Maksym Matsala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, explained.
Forests and agricultural land are woven together across Ukraine, meaning wildfires also endanger the country’s food supply. Battle-sparked blazes destroy harvests and eliminate the trees that shelter cropland from drying winds and erosion that can lead to drought — leaving those on the military front lines and Ukrainian citizens at risk of food insecurity.
A forest burns after Russian shelling in July 2024 in Raihorodok, Ukraine. Ethan Swope/Getty Images
These forests have also served as a physical refuge for people in Ukraine fleeing persecution or occupation. For generations, local populations sheltered among the trees to avoid conflict with neighboring invaders. This theme continues today, shielding Ukrainians fleeing cities demolished by Russian troops. Fires are threatening this shelter.
Preventative measures like removing unexploded ordnance that could ignite or intensify fires are now unimaginably dangerous and significantly slower when set to the backdrop of explosions or gunfire, said Sergiy Zibtsev, a forestry scientist at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine and head of the Regional Eastern Europe Fire Monitoring Center. In a country as heavily covered in mines as Ukraine, this turns small embers into out-of-control blazes.
Matsala added that forests under these war-ravaged conditions may not ever truly recover. Consistent shelling, explosions, and fires leave a graveyard of charred trees that barely resemble a woodland at all. Consistent fighting since February 2022 has left the Serebryansky Forest an alien landscape.
“The local forest now looks like some charcoal piles without any leaves, and it’s just like the moon landscape with some black sticks,” Matsala said.
In liberated regions of Ukraine, the wildfire management strategy involves removing land mines one by one, a process known as demining. It’s a multistep system where trained professionals first survey a landscape, sometimes using drones, to identify regions where mines are likely to be found. They then sweep the landscape with metal detectors until the characteristic pattern of beeps confirms the presence of one. Next, they must disable and extract it. Even without the risk of accidentally triggering unexploded ordnance, demining in an active conflict zone is incredibly dangerous. Deminers elsewhere have been killed by enemy combatants before. And a misstep can cause an explosion that sparks a new fire, which can spread quickly in Ukraine’s war-denuded landscape. Demining is a “square meter by square meter” process that must be done meticulously, said Zibtsev.
These challenges are what spurred Brian Milakovsky and Brian Roth, two professional foresters with Eastern European connections, to found Forest Release in 2023.
A view of shelling scraps in Serebryansky Forest, in Luhansk, Ukraine in June 2024. Pablo Miranzo/Anadolu via Getty Images
The U.S.-based nonprofit helps coordinate and disseminate monitoring research in Ukraine’s forests. Using satellite products that take into account vegetation greenness, Milakovsky, Roth, and their collaborators can identify particular forests in Ukraine that might be under the most stress from fires. Forest Release can then send this information to local firefighters or forest managers in Ukraine so they can tend to those forests first. It also collects firefighting safety equipment from the U.S. to donate to firefighters in Ukraine. Both of these activities allow Forest Release and its Ukrainian counterpart, the Ukrainian Forest Safety Center, to train foresters to fight fires and get certified as deminers.
To make drone-based mine detection more effective and safe, two other American researchers launched an AI-powered mine-detection service in 2020 that’s being used in Ukraine: Jasper Baur, a remote sensing researcher, and GabrielSteinberg, a computer scientist, founded SafePro AI to tap artificial intelligence to more autonomously and efficiently detect land mines in current and former warzones.
“I started researching high-tech land mines in 2016 in university,” Baur said. “I was trying to research how we can detect these things that are a known hazard, especially for civilians and children.”
Surface land mines, as Baur explained, can seem particularly innocuous, which makes them even more dangerous. “They look like toys,” he said. He and Steinberg worked to turn their research project into a tangible application that would help deminers globally.
SafePro AI is trained on images of both inactive and active unexploded ordnance — everything from land mines to grenades. The model works by differentiating an ordnance from its surroundings, giving deminers an exact location of where a land mine is. When not being trained on images from Ukraine, it learns from images sourced elsewhere that Baur tries to ensure are as close to reality as possible.
Ukrainian soldiers and a tank parole during a period of heavy fighting in the Serebryansky Forest in eastern Ukraine, in June 2024. Pablo Miranzo/Anadolu via Getty Images (left) and Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
“A lot of our initial training data was in Oklahoma, and I’ve been collecting a lot in farmlands in New York,” he said. “I walk out with bins of inert land mines, and I scatter them in farm fields and then I try to make [the conditions] as similar to Ukraine as possible.”
Because a lot of land mines are in fields adjacent to Ukrainian forests, focusing removal efforts at the perimeter can stop fires before they spread. SafePro AI has team members in the U.S., United Kingdom, and also in Ukraine. In fact, Motorniuk, from the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine who also works for SafePro AI as a developer, said that his work has shown him that he can make a difference without picking up a gun. SafePro AI has received funding from the United Nations Development Programme to deploy the technology in Ukraine through humanitarian land mine action organizations. So far, the company has surveyed over 15,000 acres of land, detecting over 26,000 unexploded ordnance.
Much of the protection of Ukraine’s forests in and around the war is predicated on information. Can land mines be located? Can wildfires be slowed or stopped? In a geospatially data-poor country like Ukraine, Matsala highlights that this kind of work, and the creation of robust datasets, is necessary to ensure the survival of Ukraine’s natural ecosystems. It also offers a chance to rethink the country’s forestry in the long-term.
“This is a huge opportunity to change some of our … practices to make the forests more resilient to climate change, to these large landscape fires, and just [healthier],” Roth, of Forest Release, said.
Roth agrees with Matsala that Ukraine’s stands of non-native, highly flammable pine trees pose a prolonged threat to the country’s forests — particularly as climate change increases drought and heat wave risk throughout Europe. In Roth’s opinion, losing some of these forests to wildfires during the war will actually allow Ukrainian foresters to plant less flammable, native tree species in their place.
An aerial view of a charred pine trees forest contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance in September 2024 in Svyatohirsk, Ukraine. Pierre Crom/Getty Images
The scientific and humanitarian collaboration unfolding to protect Ukraine’s forests amid war may also provide a record that would allow the country to claim legal damages for ecosystem destruction in the future.
Matsala recalled what happened in the aftermath of the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Amid fighting, invading Iraqi forces destroyed Kuwait’s oil facilities, leading to widespread pollution throughout the region. Although Iraq was forced to pay out billions of dollars to Persian Gulf countries including Kuwait, Iran, and Saudi Arabia for both damages and remediation, the payments may not have covered the totality of the environmental impacts. Following the war, neighboring Iran requested millions of dollars in damages for a myriad of environmental impacts, including for acid rain caused by oil fires. The United Nations Compensation Commission ultimately found that Iran had “not provided the minimum technical information and documents necessary” to justify the claims for damages from the acid rain. Matsala worries that without extensive data and reporting on the war with Russia, future Ukrainian claims for environmental reparations might go nowhere.
Whether that tribunal comes to fruition, or the forests are properly rehabilitated, remains to be seen. But the work continues. And with hostilities still happening, and no clear end, it will continue to be dangerous.
(@localtak) 
