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  • Colombia Faces “One of the Largest Humanitarian Crises on Earth” as Armed Groups Grow Stronger

    Seg extra colombia

    Eight years after the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia between government forces and guerrillas that was meant to end a half-century of conflict, around 5 million Colombians remain internally displaced and a growing number of people live in areas controlled by armed groups. The ongoing violence in the country has pushed many to flee, often by going through the treacherous Darién Gap between Colombia and neighboring Panama. For more on the security situation in Colombia and the state of the peace process, we speak with Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Dr. Manuel Rozental, a Colombian physician and activist who is part of the group Pueblos en Camino, or People on the Path.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • A top Hamas official says the Palestinian militant group is losing faith in the U.S. ability to mediate a cease-fire in Gaza – August 14, 2024

    Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

    Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Friday, Dec. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

    The post A top Hamas official says the Palestinian militant group is losing faith in the U.S. ability to mediate a cease-fire in Gaza – August 14, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.


    This content originally appeared on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • How greener schoolyards benefit kids — and the whole community

    Illustration of swing set with blooming bush in foreground

    The spotlight

    When Lois Brink’s kids were in elementary school, she remembers being struck by how uninviting their schoolyard was. She described it as “scorched earth” — little more than a dirt field coated in “I don’t know how many decades of weed retardant” and some aging play equipment. But Brink, a landscape architect and professor at the University of Colorado Denver, didn’t just see a problem. She saw fertile ground for a solution. Over the next dozen years, she helped lead a transformation of nearly 100 elementary school grounds across Denver into more vibrant, greener spaces, dubbed “Learning Landscapes.”

    Public schools alone cover about 2 million acres of land in the U.S. Although comprehensive data is hard to come by, the “scorched earth” that Brink witnessed is the norm in many places — according to the Trust for Public Land, around 36 percent of the nation’s public school students attend school in what would be considered a heat island. And as with green spaces writ large, a dearth of schoolyard trees and other vegetation tends to be most common in lower-income areas and Black and brown neighborhoods.

    “It really makes sense to think about how those spaces can serve well-being, development, learning, and social cohesion — and also environmental justice and resilience goals that can help a community thrive,” said Priya Cook, director of green schoolyards and communities at Children & Nature Network, one organization working to advance this goal. The org recently published a report looking at how the benefits of green schoolyards translate into economic value, focusing on Denver as a case study and using data from Brink’s work.

    A photo of a schoolyard with trees and bushes, and a bright red and yellow sun pattern painted on pavement. In the bottom right corner is a "before" image of the schoolyard when it was all gray pavement

    A before-and-after image of McGlone Elementary in Denver, one of the Learning Landscapes schools. Courtesy of Lois Brink

    Incorporating factors such as school attendance and academic scores, carbon sequestration and rainwater retention, and overall community health and public safety, the report estimated that communities can reap a more than $3 return for every $1 invested in green schoolyards.

    In Denver, Learning Landscapes schools saw increases in math and writing scores and overall school performance (a measure combining factors such as academic scores and graduation, dropout, and participation rates). And although this research is not definitive, the study stated that “if green schoolyards can improve student achievement in elementary school, they likely have a positive impact on high school graduation rates.” That in turn cascades into improved employment outcomes, and increased tax revenue. The study also concluded that benefits are amplified if green schoolyards are made available to the public. For instance, previous research has shown that property values increase by as much as 5 percent when the properties are within 500 feet of a park.

    For Cook, translating the benefits of greening schoolyards into a monetary value is about more than helping schools think about how to spend their limited budgets – it’s about opening up new avenues of funding. “School districts are notoriously underfunded,” Cook noted. “And this is a strategy that benefits all of society. And so the financing needs to come from organizations in community development, economic development, public health — these sectors that are thinking about the whole child, whole community, society-level outcomes.”

    . . .

    After Brink’s aha moment at her own kids’ school, she decided to get her graduate students at the university involved in designing a better alternative. Realizing the school district didn’t have money to implement their vision, they raised the funds themselves to install a pilot at Bromwell Elementary, the school her kids attended. “Then we realized, when you raise the money for something, the district is much more willing to maybe do things nontraditional and rethink what a schoolyard could look like as a civic space,” Brink said.

    That approach got the school district on board for expanding the initiative to other schools. In 2000, Brink formed the Learning Landscape alliance, a public-private partnership with support from the city, local nonprofits, and contractors that were willing to donate pro bono services to keep costs down. Over the next three years, they worked with communities to design and convert 22 schoolyards in Denver’s industrial crescent.

    “What we were trying to convince the district of is that each schoolyard needs to be a total transformation,” Brink said. Each project was unique, both in its design and in the process it took to implement it. For instance, Brink recalls at one school, many of the parents happened to work in the landscape industry, so they volunteered their time alongside the contractors, laying irrigation and sod. At another school that primarily served Latino students, Brink said, the team designed raised planters that mimicked Aztec geometry.

    In 2003, and then again in 2008, the Denver Public School Board proposed, and citywide voters passed, a ballot measure to set aside funding to expand the conversions throughout the city. “You had a city where 60 percent of the voters didn’t have children. And yet this passed overwhelmingly every time,” Brink said. “It was just really, really great to see that sort of level of engagement.”

    One image shows a brown, empty field and another shows the same field, now green, with trees and a play structure

    Before-and-after pictures from Schmitt Elementary school in 2011. Courtesy of Lois Brink

    All told, between 2000 and 2012, the Learning Landscapes initiative converted every single public elementary school campus in Denver to a green schoolyard, totaling 306 acres.

    And all the while, Brink has been collecting data. In December of last year, she prepared a report for Children & Nature Network analyzing some of the key takeaways from Learning Landscapes (that formed the basis of its study on the economic benefits of green schoolyards more broadly). Among other impacts, the report noted a 7 percent reduction in student mobility (the rate at which students transfer in and out of a school), a $1.3 million boost in state funding thanks to increased student enrollment, and 1,284 tons of carbon sequestered each year across all the green schoolyards.

    . . .

    With all the benefits of green schoolyards, for students, communities, and the environment, it may seem like a no-brainer solution. Still, there are barriers to converting every single schoolyard into a green space — a vision that Children & Nature Network hopes to help realize by 2050, Priya Cook said.

    Cost is one obvious one. But even more than the actual dollars, Cook said, it’s often the initiative it takes to bring together diverse stakeholders to make a project happen — what Brink and her students did when they scrapped together the resources to implement their vision in Denver, through a combination of volunteer labor, pro bono services, and public and nonprofit dollars.

    Ironically, Cook noted, a significant barrier to finding the funding for green schoolyards lies in one of their greatest strengths: They’re a multifaceted solution. “Markets tend to underinvest in strategies that produce broad benefits to society,” she said. For instance, if a school, nonprofit, or other funder wanted to make changes to prioritize students’ mental health, it might invest its limited dollars in counseling programs or other targeted interventions, rather than thinking about something like nature access — even though nature access does improve mental health, in addition to other benefits.

    “We have to think differently to pick multi-solving interventions,” Cook said.

    Still, she’s hopeful that the growing body of research on green schoolyards will continue to bring more stakeholders to the fold.

    “I think there’s absolutely more hunger for it,” she said, “and people do it in really ingenious ways. Some places have multimillion dollar investments in a single site, and some places find small grants and they do a lot of surface installations that change kids’ experience every day.”

    — Claire Elise Thompson

    More exposure

    A parting shot

    Areti Bushaw, a former student of Brink’s, now runs a nonprofit called ReGeneration Now that helps to manage the garden at Ellis Elementary, one of the most diverse elementary schools in all of Colorado. The garden also serves the broader community, working in particular with the International Rescue Committee, or IRC, a humanitarian aid and refugee resettlement organization, which has an office nearby. Some plots are reserved for resettled families, and the team distributes free produce to newly arrived refugee families as well as students at the school. “We’ve really taken what Learning Landscapes started and built on it,” Bushaw said. In this photo from an activity day with IRC, youth participants were invited to touch and smell “sensory plants.”

    Five hands reach into a planter, touching green plants that appear to have interesting textures

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How greener schoolyards benefit kids — and the whole community on Aug 14, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Claire Elise Thompson.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • How Amazon “Lied, Spied, Cheated Its Way to the Top”: WSJ Reporter Dana Mattioli


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Monroe Doctrine wrecked Latin America w/Greg Grandin | Under the Shadow, Bonus Episode 4


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • How Amazon “Lied, Spied, Cheated Its Way to the Top”: WSJ Reporter Dana Mattioli

    Seg1.5 guestamazonpackages

    We speak with Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli about her new book, The Everything War, which examines how Amazon came to dominate the U.S. economy through its “scorched-earth” tactics. “I found just a ton of business practices driven by this toxic culture at Amazon, where the company lied, spied, cheated its way to the top,” she says. Mattioli also discusses the threat of antitrust lawsuits to Amazon and other Big Tech firms, political pressure on Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and more.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • How Elon Musk Broke with the Democrats to Spend Millions on Donald Trump’s Reelection Campaign

    Seg1 trumpmusksplit

    The United Auto Workers has filed federal labor charges against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, accusing them of illegally attempting to threaten and intimidate workers who go on strike. The UAW’s complaint comes in response to comments made by Trump during a discussion with Musk Monday on the social media platform X, which Musk owns. The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk is funding a new super PAC to help Trump in swing states and return him to the White House. There have been reports Musk was planning to spend $45 million a month to help elect Trump, but Musk has disputed that figure. Reporter Dana Mattioli says it’s the culmination of Musk’s “remarkable political transformation,” with his break from the Democratic Party largely driven by his anti-union politics and the Biden administration’s ties to the United Auto Workers.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Authorities in Tanzania have cracked down on the political opposition party Chadema


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Workers across the US rally after string of heat-related deaths

    For the last two years, Cecilia Ortiz has worked as a passenger service agent at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. She typically has to walk 10 to 15 miles a day, up and down ramps, pushing heavy wheelchairs and carrying passengers’ luggage. This summer, temperatures have reached over 110 degrees Fahrenheit on the airport’s jet bridges, and yet she says she’s been denied breaks and water by her supervisors. 

    “I have heart failure myself, and it is especially dangerous for me to work in extreme temperatures,” said Ortiz in a press briefing. “I shouldn’t have to work in these conditions. Nobody should.” Accessible drinking water, a cool place to rest, breaks as needed, and training to understand the signs of heat exhaustion, are what Ortiz sees as a “very simple” way to make her workplace more safe during searing temperatures. 

    Airport workers like Ortiz are being joined by laborers in fast-food, retail, and the farm sector this week to demand on-the-job heat protections from employers and the federal government. From Atlanta to Los Angeles, a string of rallies, town halls, and delegations are taking place in 13 cities as laborers and coalitions escalate their demands to elected officials. 

    On Tuesday, service workers rallied at major airports in Charlotte and Phoenix. They called for immediate action from employers to ensure their safety in the workplace, including adequate breaks and access to drinking water during periods of extreme heat.

    In Phoenix, where earlier this year local officials enacted a heat ordinance mandating many of these protections, workers and legislators sounded the alarm that the ordinance has led to inadequate improvements, and questioned how the protections are being enforced. “Why is it after passing an ordinance we’re still asking for the basics? Water. Breaks. These are humans rights,” said City of Phoenix Councilwoman Betty Guardado at the rally. Later this week, laborers across the country will be taking a coordinated water break to signify the need for access to drinking water at work. 

    As human-caused climate change continues to make the planet hotter, extreme heat in the workplace is increasingly becoming a lethal threat. Organizers say “Heat Week” is also spurred by the recent sudden deaths of Wednesday “Wendy” Johnson, a postal worker in North Carolina, and Ronald Silver II, a sanitation worker in Maryland. Both Johnson and Silver are believed to have died, in part, because of on-the-job heat exposure, which kills dozens of workers every year. 

    Service Employees International Union president April Verrett, whose organization is one of the groups helming Heat Week, said that these deaths could have been prevented by safer working conditions, before calling on the Biden-Harris administration to strengthen, finalize and implement a federal heat rule. “Dying on the job is just simply out of the question, and it should never be a part of anyone’s routine. Yet employers are failing to act, and in doing so, they are failing to protect workers’ lives and their health,” said Verrett. 

    “Heat is a silent killer. It is the biggest weather-related killer in our community,” said Representative Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, in the briefing. “I was born and raised in Texas. We know it’s hot, but it’s never been this hot, this early, for this long. So, as the climate crisis worsens, we need to come together and take federal action at the national level, guaranteeing everybody the right to these rest and water breaks.” 

    A group of people rally outside of an airport
    At a rally on Tuesday, August 13, outside of Charlotte Douglas International Airport, service workers call on lawmakers to hold corporations accountable for putting their health and lives at risk.
    Service Employees International Union

    In July, the U.S. Occupational and Health Safety Administration proposed a federal rule that would mandate employers provide indoor and outdoor workers with cool rest areas, drinking water, and breaks once temperatures approach 80 degrees Fahrenheit. But that rule hasn’t yet been finalized, and it still faces a likely lengthy review, additional revisions, potential legal challenges, and an upcoming presidential election that could derail the political will to get it done. Casar said elected officials on every level need to do more to ramp up the urgent push for heat protections. 

    This is particularly important given that some policymakers are pursuing legislation that goes in the other direction, noted Casar — referring to a law signed last summer by Governor Greg Abbott that barred Texas cities from enacting local worker heat protections. A similar law went into effect in Florida this year. The proposed OSHA rule, he stressed, if finalized, would “override laws like Governor Abbott’s that get rid of heat protections.” 

    “We could have these heat protections codified in federal law this month, if the Republican Speaker of the House would put this up for a vote … but we can’t hold our breath,” said Casar. (In fact, House Republicans have put forward spending bills that would hamper OSHA’s ability to enforce existing rules.) 

    The offices of Governor Abbott, and Congressman Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, did not respond to requests for comment.

    Last week, Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, blasted the Biden administration for not doing enough to address the impacts of extreme heat. Beyond advocating for an OSHA standard, Gallego has also put forward legislation that would add extreme heat to FEMA’s list of major disasters, The Hill reported. “Once again, the Administration is all talk, no action when it comes to extreme heat in Arizona,” Gallego said in a statement following a speech made by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who deigned extreme heat in Phoenix a “public health crisis.” 

    “When hurricanes or tornadoes hit, federal officials offer resources, but with heat they just offer advice,” said Gallego. Others, like Senator Alex Padilla — a Democrat from California — have also pressed the administration to implement the proposed OSHA rule. “With climate change shattering heat records every summer, holding employers accountable to provide commonsense heat-stress protections has only become more critical,” Padilla told Grist. California is one of six states that have enacted heat protection rules for outdoor workers.

    In June, Shae Parker was working at a convenience store in Columbia, South Carolina, when she suffered from extreme heat exhaustion because of brutal temperatures and a lack of access to free water. “I had to leave work on a gurney. I was vomiting. I was profusely sweating, light-headed, nauseous. It was unbearable,” said Parker. “We only get one body … we want to go home to our families at the end of the day.” 

    Lourdes Cardenas, a farmworker in Fresno, California, has also grappled with the consequences of sweltering heat. This summer, she has endured multiple 110 degrees Fahrenheit days in the fields; which, compounding with a lack of water, shade, and not enough breaks, led her to experience dizziness and dehydration on numerous occasions. Despite raising the alarm to her supervisors, water still isn’t easily accessible, and she and her coworkers work nowhere near shaded areas. “The heat has been really difficult, and every year it gets worse,” said Cardenas in Spanish. 

    “We ought to be able to have the right to have water, the right to have shade, the right to have rest from the heat. But that’s not the case,” she said. “I know that one job is not worth my life.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Workers across the US rally after string of heat-related deaths on Aug 14, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Ayurella Horn-Muller.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Jonathan Cook: Israel is in a death spiral – who will it take down with it?

    Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye

    There should be nothing surprising about the revelation that troops at Sde Teiman, a detention camp set up by Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, are routinely using rape as a weapon of torture against Palestinian inmates.

    Last month, nine soldiers from a prison unit, Force 100, were arrested for gang-raping a Palestinian inmate with a sharp object. He had to be hospitalised with his injuries.

    At least 53 prisoners are known to have died in Israeli detention, presumed in most cases to be either through torture or following the denial of access to medical care. No investigations have been carried out by Israel and no arrests have been made.

    Why should it be of any surprise that Israel’s self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” uses torture and rape against Palestinians? It would be truly surprising if this was not happening.

    After all, this is the same military that for 10 months has used starvation as a weapon of war against the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.

    It is the same military that since October has laid waste to all of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as destroying almost all of its schools and 70 percent of its homes. It is the same military that is known to have killed over that period at least 40,000 Palestinians, with a further 21,000 children missing.

    It is the same military currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world.

    No red lines
    If there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to brutalising Palestinian civilians trapped inside Gaza, why would there be any red lines for those kidnapped off its streets and dragged into its dungeons?

    I documented some of the horrors unfolding in Sde Teiman in these pages back in May.

    Months ago, the Israeli media began publishing testimonies from whistleblowing guards and doctors detailing the depraved conditions there.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to the detention camp, leaving it entirely unmonitored.

    The United Nations published a report on July 31 into the conditions in which some 9400 captive Palestinians have been held since last October. Most have been cut off from the outside world, and the reason for their seizure and imprisonment was never provided.

    The report concludes that “appalling acts” of torture and abuse are taking place at all of Israel’s detention centres, including sexual violence, waterboarding and attacks with dogs.

    The authors note “forced nudity of both men and women; beatings while naked, including on the genitals; electrocution of the genitals and anus; being forced to undergo repeated humiliating strip searches; widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape; and the inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers”.

    There are, according to the investigation, “consistent reports” of Israeli security forces “inserting objects into detainees’ anuses”.

    Children sexually abused
    Last month, Save the Children found that many hundreds of Palestinian children had been imprisoned in Israel, where they faced starvation and sexual abuse.

    And this week B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group monitoring the occupation, produced a report — titled “Welcome to Hell” — which included the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians who had emerged from what it called “inhuman conditions”. Most had never been charged with an offence.

    It concluded that the abuses at Sde Teiman were “just the tip of the iceberg”. All of Israel’s detention centres formed “a network of torture camps for Palestinians” in which “every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering”. It added that this was “an organised, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.

    Tal Steiner, head of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which has long campaigned against the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees, wrote last week that Sde Teiman “was a place where the most horrible torture we had ever seen was occurring”.

    In short, it has been an open secret in Israel that torture and sexual assault are routine at Sde Teiman.

    The abuse is so horrifying that last month Israel’s High Court ordered officials to explain why they were operating outside Israel’s own laws governing the internment of “unlawful combatants”.

    The surprise is not that sexual violence is being inflicted on Palestinian captives. It is that Israel’s top brass ever imagined the arrest of Israeli soldiers for raping a Palestinian would pass muster with the public.

    Toxic can of worms
    Instead, by making the arrests, the army opened a toxic can of worms.

    The arrests provoked a massive backlash from soldiers, politicians, Israeli media, and large sections of the Israeli public.

    Rioters, led by members of the Israeli Parliament, broke into Sde Teiman. An even larger group, including members of Force 100, tried to invade a military base, Beit Lid, where the soldiers were being held in an attempt to free them.

    The police, under the control of Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler leader with openly fascist leanings, delayed arriving to break up the protests. Ben Gvir has called for Palestinian prisoners to be summarily executed — or killed with “a shot to the head” — to save on the costs of holding them.

    No one was arrested over what amounted to a mutiny as well as a major breach of security.

    Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, helped whip up popular indignation, denouncing the arrests and describing the Force 100 soldiers as “heroic warriors”.

    Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.

    Three soldiers freed
    Already, three of the soldiers have been freed, and more will likely follow.

    The consensus in Israel is that any abuse, including rape, is permitted against the thousands of Palestinians who have been seized by Israel in recent months — including women, children and many hundreds of medical personnel.

    That consensus is the same one that thinks it fine to bomb Palestinian women and children in Gaza, destroy their homes and starve them.

    Such depraved attitudes are not new. They draw on ideological convictions and legal precedents that developed through decades of Israel’s illegal occupation. Israeli society has completely normalised the idea that Palestinians are less than human and that any and every abuse of them is allowed.

    Hamas’s attack on October 7 simply brought the long-standing moral corruption at the core of Israeli society more obviously out into the open.

    In 2016, for example, the Israeli military appointed Colonel Eyal Karim as its chief rabbi, even after he had declared Palestinians to be “animals” and had approved the rape of Palestinian women in the interest of boosting soldiers’ morale.

    Religious extremists, let us note, increasingly predominate among combat troops.

    Compensation suit dismissed
    In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a compensation suit from a Lebanese prisoner that his lawyers submitted after he was released in a prisoner swap. Mustafa Dirani had been raped with a baton 15 years earlier in a secret jail known as Facility 1391.

    Despite Dirani’s claim being supported by a medical assessment from the time made by an Israeli military doctor, the court ruled that anyone engaged in an armed conflict with Israel could not make a claim against the Israeli state.

    Meanwhile, human and legal rights groups have regularly reported cases of Israeli soldiers and police raping and sexually assaulting Palestinians, including children.

    A clear message was sent to Israeli soldiers over many decades that, just as the genocidal murder of Palestinians is considered warranted and “lawful”, the torture and rape of Palestinians held in captivity is considered warranted and “lawful” too.

    Understandably, there was indignation that the long-established “rules” — that any and every atrocity is permitted — appeared suddenly and arbitrarily to have been changed.

    The biggest question is this: why did the Israeli military’s top legal adviser approve opening an investigation into the Force 100 soldiers — and why now?

    The answer is obvious. Israel’s commanders are in panic after a spate of setbacks in the international legal arena.

    ‘Plausible’ Gaza genocide
    The ICJ, sometimes referred to as the World Court, has put Israel on trial for committing what it considers a “plausible” genocide in Gaza.

    Separately, it concluded last month that Israel’s 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of aggression against the Palestinian people. Gaza never stopped being under occupation, the judges ruled, despite claims from its apologists, including Western governments, to the contrary.

    Significantly, that means Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation. Or, to put it another way, they have an immutable right to self-defence against their Israeli occupiers, while Israel has no such right against the Palestinians it illegally occupies.

    Israel is not in “armed conflict” with the Palestinian people. It is brutally occupying and oppressing them.

    Israel must immediately end the occupation to regain such a right of self-defence — something it demonstrably has no intention to do.

    Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICJ’s sister court, is actively seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes.

    The various cases reinforce each other. The World Court’s decisions are making it ever harder for the ICC to drag its feet in issuing and expanding the circle of arrest warrants.

    Countervailing pressures
    Both courts are now under enormous, countervailing pressures.

    On the one side, massive external pressure is being exerted on the ICJ and ICC from states such as the US, Britain and Germany that are prepared to see the genocide in Gaza continue.

    And on the other, the judges themselves are fully aware of what is at stake if they fail to act.

    The longer they delay, the more they discredit international law and their own role as arbiters of that law. That will give even more leeway for other states to claim that inaction by the courts has set a precedent for their own right to commit war crimes.

    International law, the entire rationale for the ICJ and ICC’s existence, stands on a precipice. Israel’s genocide threatens to bring it all crashing down.

    Israel’s top brass stand in the middle of that fight.

    They are confident that Washington will block at the UN Security Council any effort to enforce the ICJ rulings against them — either a future one on genocide in Gaza or the existing one on their illegal occupation.

    No US veto at ICC
    But arrest warrants from the ICC are a different matter. Washington has no such veto. All states signed up to the ICC’s Rome Statute – that is, most of the West, minus the US — will be obligated to arrest Israeli officials who step on their soil and to hand them over to The Hague.

    Israel and the US had been hoping to use technicalities to delay the issuing of the arrest warrants for as long as possible. Most significantly, they recruited the UK, which has signed the Rome Statute, to do their dirty work.

    It looked like the new UK government under Keir Starmer would continue where its predecessor left off by tying up the court in lengthy and obscure legal debates about the continuing applicability of the long-dead, 30-year-old Oslo Accords.

    A former human rights lawyer, Starmer has repeatedly backed Israel’s “plausible” genocide, even arguing that the starvation of Gaza’s population, including its children, could be justified as “self-defence” — an idea entirely alien to international law, which treats it as collective punishment and a war crime.

    But now with a secure parliamentary majority, even Starmer appears to be baulking at being seen as helping Netanyahu personally avoid arrest for war crimes.

    The UK government announced late last month that it would drop Britain’s legal objections at the ICC.

    That has suddenly left both Netanyahu and the Israeli military command starkly exposed — which is the reason they felt compelled to approve the arrest of the Force 100 soldiers.

    Top prass pretexts
    Under a rule known as “complementarity”, Israeli officials might be able to avoid war crimes trials at The Hague if they can demonstrate that Israel is able and willing to prosecute war crimes itself. That would avert the need for the ICC to step in and fulfil its mandate.

    The Israeli top brass hoped they could feed a few lowly soldiers to the Israeli courts and drag out the trials for years. In the meantime, Washington would have the pretext it needed to bully the ICC into dropping the case for arrests on the grounds that Israel was already doing the job of prosecuting war crimes.

    The patent problem with this strategy is that the ICC isn’t primarily interested in a few grunts being prosecuted in Israel as war criminals, even assuming the trials ever take place.

    At issue is the military strategy that has allowed Israel to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age. At issue is a political culture that has made starving 2.3 million people seem normal.

    At issue is a religious and nationalistic fervour long cultivated in the army that now encourages soldiers to execute Palestinian children by shooting them in the head and chest, as a US doctor who volunteered in Gaza has testified.

    At issue is a military hierarchy that turns a blind eye to soldiers raping and sexually abusing Palestinian captives, including children.

    The buck stops not with a handful of soldiers in Force 100. It stops with the Israeli government and military leaders. They are at the top of a command chain that has authorised war crimes in Gaza for the past 10 months – and before that, for decades across the occupied territories.

    What is at stake
    This is why observers have totally underestimated what is at stake with the rulings of the ICC and ICJ.

    These judgments against Israel are forcing out into the light of day for proper scrutiny a state of affairs that has been quietly accepted by the West for decades. Should Israel have the right to operate as an apartheid regime that systematically engages in ethnic cleansing and the murder of Palestinians?

    A direct answer is needed from each Western capital. There is nowhere left to hide. Western states are being presented with a stark choice: either openly back Israeli apartheid and genocide, or for the first time withdraw support.

    The Israeli far-right, which now dominates both politically and in the army’s combat ranks, cares about none of this. It is immune to pressure. It is willing to go it alone.

    As the Israeli media has been warning for some time, sections of the army are effectively now turning into militias that follow their own rules.

    Israel’s military commanders, on the other hand, are starting to understand the trap they have set for themselves. They have long cultivated fascistic zealotry among ground troops needed to dehumanise and better oppress Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But the war crimes proudly being live-streamed by their units now leave them exposed to the legal consequences.

    Israel’s international isolation means a place one day for them in the dock at The Hague.

    Israeli society’s demons exposed
    The ICC and ICJ rulings are not just bringing Israeli society’s demons out into the open, or those of a complicit Western political and media class.

    The international legal order is gradually cornering Israel’s war machine, forcing it to turn in on itself. The interests of the Israeli military command are now fundamentally opposed to those of the rank and file and the political leadership.

    The result, as military expert Yagil Levy has long warned, will be an increasing breakdown of discipline, as the attempts to arrest Force 100 soldiers demonstrated all too clearly.

    The Israeli military juggernaut cannot be easily or quickly turned around.

    The military command is reported to be furiously trying to push Netanyahu into agreeing on a hostage deal to bring about a ceasefire — not because it cares about the welfare of Palestinian civilians, or the hostages, but because the longer this “plausible” genocide continues, the bigger chance the generals will end up at The Hague.

    Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want not only to continue the drive to eliminate the Palestinian people but to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

    That included the reckless, incendiary move last month to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran — a provocation with one aim only: to undermine the moderates in Hamas and Tehran.

    If, as seems certain, Israel’s commanders are unwilling or incapable of reining in these excesses, then the World Court will find it impossible to ignore the charge of genocide against Israel and the ICC will be compelled to issue arrest warrants against more of the military leadership.

    A logic has been created in which evil feeds on evil in a death spiral. The question is how much more carnage and misery can Israel spread on the way down.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The ‘Korean Wave’ already crashed on Cuba

    Even before South Korea and Cuba established bilateral relations earlier this year, K-pop had gained a following in the communist island.

    The spread of K-pop worldwide is often characterized by the somewhat outdated term “Hallyu” or the “Korean Wave,” crashing into audiences in countries where Korea, or its pop culture had previously not been on the mainstream radar. 

    It was a term well suited for the early 2000s in South Korea’s neighboring Asian countries, and the post Gangnam-style 2010s in Europe and the Americas. 

    But in the current era ruled by acts like BTS and NewJeans, it is reasonable to say that the wave has already crashed everywhere it possibly could have.

    RELATED STORIES

    North Koreans shocked as Cuba establishes ties with South Korea

    N Korea reduces Cuba coverage as its ally enhances ties with South

    K Pop Cuba.JPG
    Cuban K-pop fans rehearse ahead of a festival in April 2024, in Havana, Cuba. (RFA Korean)

    When RFA Korean traveled to Cuba to gauge reactions to Seoul and Havana redefining their relationship, they also found that K-pop had already made inroads into the Americas’ socialist stronghold.

    With no official relations between the two countries, the fanbases in Cuba developed organically, owing in large part to the open internet policy enjoyed by Cuban citizens and the government’s less stringent control over what the people can watch or listen to, a stark contrast to South Korea’s rival, socialist North Korea.

    Pyongyang has often touted its relationship with Havana as that of two socialist brethren bound by an ongoing struggle against U.S. imperialism. 

    Though Cuba’s new relationship with South Korea may have North Korean officials bristling, many in Cuba welcome warmer ties with the South and like the crash of the Korean Wave years ago, they see it as a completely natural development.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Eugene Whong for RFA.

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  • J.D. Vance, MAGA don’t represent Appalachia w/Beth Howard & Hy Thurman | The Marc Steiner Show


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  • The Russian Defense Ministry says its forces have halted an effort by Kyiv’s troops to expand a weeklong incursion into Russia’s Kursk region – August 13, 2024

    Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

    The United Nations Security Council meets at the United Nations headquarters, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)

    The post The Russian Defense Ministry says its forces have halted an effort by Kyiv’s troops to expand a weeklong incursion into Russia’s Kursk region – August 13, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.


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  • Who Are the Venezuelan Opposition? Leonardo Flores & Alejandro Velasco Debate Election Aftermath


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  • ‘Venezuela is facing a coup attempt’ after contested election: Andreína Chávez


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  • The state rep who sparked Colorado’s fire recovery

    Hello, and welcome back to State of Emergency, a limited-run newsletter about how disasters are reshaping our politics. I’m Jake Bittle, a reporter for Grist, and I’ll be writing this newsletter along with my colleague, Zoya Teirstein.

    It’s almost a truism that disasters offer an opportunity for positive change. That’s the idea behind President Joe Biden’s promise to “build back better” after the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s also the reason FEMA has poured billions of dollars into post-disaster adaptation projects. But in the five years I’ve spent covering climate disasters, I have almost never seen a place change for the better after a big flood or wildfire. Displaced victims scatter to hotels and rental apartments, developers and local lawmakers rush to rebuild everything the way it was, and no one gets any safer or more resilient even as the underlying risk increases.

    A home burns after the fast-moving Marshall wildfire swept through Louisville, Colorado, on December 30, 2021.
    A home burns after the fast-moving Marshall wildfire swept through Louisville, Colorado, on December 30, 2021. Marc Piscotty / Getty Images

    The suburbs of Boulder, Colorado, which lost more than a thousand homes to the devastating 2021 Marshall Fire, are an exception to this rule. After the fire, a young council member named Kyle Brown leapt at the chance to fill a vacancy in the state Legislature, running on a promise to speed up the languishing rebuild. After taking office, he worked with survivors to draft and pass a suite of landmark bills that protect fire survivors and ensure future wildfires do less damage. In just one term, Brown has helped make Colorado a national leader on fire resilience.

    As I reported this week, passing these bills required Brown to take on a host of powerful institutions at the state Capitol — insurance companies, banks, mortgage servicers, landlords, and even homeowners associations. He might never have succeeded were it not for the tireless advocacy of a group called Marshall Together, which brought hundreds of fire victims from neighboring towns together on the workplace messaging app Slack. The founder of the group, a lawyer named Tawnya Soumaroo, conceived it less as a charity or neighborhood association than a political lobby: She studied up on housing and insurance law, collected stories from her displaced neighbors, and lobbied legislators the way a trade group or farm bureau might do. As the fire survivors flexed their political clout, industry groups backed off, and Brown’s bills passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

    Extreme weather events don’t just destroy homes and buildings, they also alter how people relate to each other and to their government.

    These Boulder suburbs are denser and wealthier than many wildfire-prone areas, and it’s likely thanks to that privilege that residents such as Soumaroo had time and resources to organize after the disaster. But many of the biggest reforms they passed are forward-looking rather than retroactive, which means the survivors of the Marshall Fire won’t benefit from them. Future fire victims in Colorado, though, will enjoy strong protections from predatory behavior by mortgage lenders and insurance companies, which could mean the difference between rebuilding in one year or five years.

    It’s a powerful example of the dynamic we’re going to explore in this newsletter: Extreme weather events don’t just destroy homes and buildings, they also alter how people relate to each other and to their government. In Boulder, unlike in so many other places, that change was for the better.

    A focus on fire

    Kyle Brown was the lead sponsor on 26 bills during his first term as a Colorado state representative, and half of those concerned either the Marshall Fire recovery or future fire resilience. Even though these bills challenged established industries like insurance and banking, almost all of them passed, and with bipartisan support. Brown had just as much success with his fire legislation as he did with other legislation on more anodyne subjects, such as bingo permitting and virtual marriage ceremonies.

    A Grist sankey diagram showing the dozen bills related to the Marshall Fire and wildfire resilience that were introduced by Kyle Brown, a freshman Colorado state representative. In his first term, he introduced 12 fire-related bills.

    Read the full story on the surge of lawmaking that followed the Marshall Fire.

    What we’re reading

    Should Biden do more on heat?: U.S. Representative Rubén Gallego, a Democrat running in a close race for Senate in Arizona, blasted the Biden administration for not doing more to tackle the threat of extreme heat.
    .Read more

    Oregon wildfires become a campaign issue: As wildfires in Oregon burn thousands of acres, a Democrat challenger in the congressional district that surrounds Bend is attacking incumbent Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer for voting against billions in wildfire-protection funding.
    .Read more

    Hurricane déjà vu in Florida: Hurricane Debby drenched northwest Florida last week, striking the same areas hit by Hurricane Idalia last year. The hurricane also brought flooding to Tampa as early voting began in Florida state primaries.
    .Read more

    Hot-weather voting in Tennessee: Election officials in Shelby County, which includes the city of Memphis, said hot weather was dragging down voter turnout in a primary election for state and local races in the area.
    .Read more

    Tim Walz, climate veep: Minnesota governor Tim Walz hails from a state that is immune from many big climate disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires. But as my State of Emergency co-writer reports, Kamala Harris’ running mate has an impressive record of passing big green laws in his purple state.
    .Read more

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The state rep who sparked Colorado’s fire recovery on Aug 13, 2024.


    This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

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  • Who Are the Venezuelan Opposition? Leonardo Flores & Alejandro Velasco Debate Election Aftermath

    Seg venezuela debate

    Turmoil continues in Venezuela after July’s contested election, in which both President Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan opposition claimed victory. The National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner with 51% of the vote, but the opposition has released thousands of vote tally sheets online that, if authenticated, suggest a landslide win for Edmundo González. Maduro has tasked the country’s Supreme Court with verifying the electoral results, though critics question the court’s impartiality. Meanwhile, dueling protests have taken place in Caracas and other parts of Venezuela as international rights groups have denounced a crackdown against demonstrators by government forces, including some 2,000 reported arrests. But Maduro and allies say it is the opposition that has led widespread attacks, causing the deaths of at least 25 people during protests after the July 28 election. For more on the crisis in Venezuela, we speak with Leonardo Flores, a Venezuelan political analyst, activist and founding member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network, and Alejandro Velasco, associate professor at NYU, where he is a historian of modern Latin America.


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

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  • Singapore power plant suspension may leave more of  Myanmar in the dark

    Singapore’s Sembcorp Industries has suspended operations at its 225 MW power plant in central Myanmar’s Mandalay region because of “escalating civil unrest” after pro-democracy insurgents opened up a new front in their war against junta forces in the area.

    “Sembcorp’s priority is to ensure the safety of its employees,” the company said in a statement on Monday, adding that it had informed Myanmar’s Energy Ministry of the suspension of operations at the plant in Myingyan.

    “Security measures are in place to safeguard the plant in the meantime and relevant stakeholders are being notified,” it said.  “Sembcorp will look to resume operations at the plant as soon as reasonably practicable once conditions are safe.”

    The gas-fired Myingyan Independent Power Plant is about 100 km (62 miles) southwest of Mandalay city.

    On Saturday, militias operating under the civilian shadow National Unity Government, which opposes Myanmar’s junta, launched operations in three new townships in Mandalay region, including Myingyan. 

    The groups, called People’s Defense Forces, or PDFs, have captured dozens of junta positions, including major towns like Singu and Mogoke, across the region in partnership with larger ethnic minority insurgent forces.

    RELATED STORIES

    Rebels capture 9 posts in Myanmar’s Mandalay region, open new front
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    Sembcorp Industries is backed by the Singapore government-owned investment firm Temasek. Its US$300 million Myingyan operation is one of the largest independent gas-fired plants in Myanmar, employing more than 70 workers and supplying electricity to five million people. 

    The plant, built under an agreement with the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, began supplying electricity in 2018.

    The Sembcorp Myingyan Power Company agreed to run the plant for 22 years, before transferring it to the Myanmar government, with Sembcorp saying it would “help to play a key role in meeting the country’s growing demand for electricity.”

    Sembcorp announced it was shuttering the plant after PDF forces launched attacks in the Taungtha Natogyi and Myingyan townships on Saturday, including an attack on a junta base only about six kilometers (four miles)  from the power plant.

    More power cuts expected

    The company did not say exactly when it suspended operations but the Yangon Electricity Supply Corporation said Sembcorp’s plant and another nearby one ceased operations at around noon on Tuesday. It warned of reduced power supplies.

    Radio Free Asia called Mandalay region’s junta spokesperson Thein Htay for more information, but he did not answer by the time of publication. 

    A former Myingyan member of parliament for the ousted National League for Democracy told RFA that power cuts could be expected.

    “Now that Sembcorp has been suspended, the amount of power supplied nationwide will be significantly reduced,” said Aung Myo Lat. 

    “There may be more power cuts than before and the electricity may decrease a lot. That’s just something else we’ll have to deal with.”

    Sembcorp_ipp_img1.jpg
    Sembcorp Myingyan Independent Power Plant in Myingyan township, Mandalay region is seen in this undated photograph. (Sembcorp Industries Ltd)

    Myanmar’s economy has been in crisis since the military overthrew an elected government in 2021, with electricity and petrol shortages among the problems the population is grappling with.

    While ethnic minority insurgents have promised to protect Chinese investments, the fighting in the Mandalay region this week has been near a natural gas and oil pipeline running from Myanmar’s coast across the country into China.

    PDF forces are battling the military in Madaya, Thabeikkyin, Patheingyi, Myingyan, Taungtha and Natogyi townships in the Mandalay region, according to the PDF groups.

    Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Kiana Duncan and Mike Firn. 


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

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  • Gas flaring in the Amazon threatens human rights now and in the future


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  • Silicon Valley oligarchs are ALL IN for Trump. What’s their endgame? w/Paris Marx


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  • The Spectrum of Political Violence: Inciters, Threat Makers & Enactors


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  • ‘The EPA has lied to us!’: East Palestine still dealing with toxic fallout from train disaster


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  • Homicide: Success on the Street/National Food Museum

    So far this year, the city of Boston has recorded a grand total of 8 homicides while the similarly populated city of Washington D.C has had 110. Professor Thomas Abt, founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction explains what Boston is doing right. Plus, noted nutrition expert, Michael Jacobson reveals his latest project, The National Food Museum, to promote critical thinking about food’s impact on health, the environment, farm animal welfare, social equity, global and domestic hunger, and how the food industry and politics affect what we eat.

    Thomas Abt is the founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction (VRC) and an associate research professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Professor Abt is the author of “Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence—and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets” His work is cited in academic journals and featured in major media outlets, both print and video. His TED talk on community violence has been viewed more than 200,000 times.

    Here’s the important thing to remember. It’s not just about police, and it can’t just be about police… It’s also important to have balance… So, while you’re engaging these high-risk individuals, these people who are most likely to shoot or be shot, you need to back up those warnings of enforcement with offers of support and services. And that’s something that’s happening in Boston.

    Thomas Abt

    When you look at correlations between the restrictiveness of state laws and about how many guns there are, it’s about the access to guns. And when access to guns is particularly easy, that’s when you have higher rates of violence. Now, in D.C. they have restrictive gun laws, but they’re closer to states that have much more permissive laws, particularly in the South. And no city is an island.

    Thomas Abt

    While you’re hearing a lot of fear mongering out there about violent crime. The truth is that we have erased that massive surge that happened during the pandemic. And that’s very good news.

    Thomas Abt

    Michael Jacobson holds a PhD. in microbiology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he co-founded and then led the Center for Science in the Public Interest for four decades. Dr. Jacobson is the author of “Salt Wars: The Battle Over the Biggest Killer in the American Diet.” And he is the founder of the National Food Museum.

    Some of the exhibits will focus on how healthier diets could improve our health, how better farming techniques could improve the climate. And there’s that intersection between climate and health. I thought of making a cow a symbol for the museum. Or maybe an anti-symbol, because meat-eating is a major contributor to disease; and it’s a major contributor to climate change and other environmental issues and animal welfare issues, of course. The museum will get into those.

    Michael Jacobson

    There are so many fascinating issues related to food. You know, I think about the history of the human diet, going back to the Stone Age, say 10 or 12 ,000 years ago, and the future of the human diet. It would be wonderful to have an exhibit, showing how diet has changed and may well change in the next 75 years, when many kids just growing up will still be alive.

    Michael Jacobson

    And in addition to all the wonderful improvements that you’re going to exhibit and inform people about once this museum gets underway, you want people to enjoy it and have fun. That’s what you’ve always been about, Mike.

    Ralph Nader

    In Case You Haven’t Heard with Franceso DeSantis

    News 8/7/24

    1. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz who presided over the passage of an impressive list of progressive priorities in Minnesota, arrayed a broad coalition of Democratic leaders behind his bid for the VP slot, including organized labor, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. His key rival, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, faced increasing scrutiny over his support for anti-public school vouchers, his history of anti-Palestinian racism, and involvement with the shady cover-up in the death of Ellen Greenberg. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler praised the selection of Walz, writing in a statement “By selecting Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, Kamala Harris chose a principled fighter and labor champion who will stand up for working people and strengthen this historic ticket.”

    2. In the UK, the new Labour government continues sending mixed signals on their Middle East policy. Last Friday, the Daily Mail reported the government had implemented a “secret arms boycott,” of Israel, supposedly “freez[ing] applications for new weapons export licences.” Yet on Monday, the Middle East Eye reported that the government has denied this report and maintains that “there has been ‘no change’ in its approach to export licences.” The Guardian adds “Although [British] military exports to Israel were only estimated at £18.2m last year, an arms embargo is widely perceived as an appropriate and powerful means to register disapproval of Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians.”

    3. The Canary, a left-wing British new outlet, reports “During the early hours of the morning of Tuesday 6 August, six Palestine Action activists were arrested after they broke inside and damaged weaponry inside the highly secured Bristol manufacturing hub of Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems.” According to this report, the group “used a prison van to smash through the outer perimeter and the roller shutters into the building,” and “Once…inside, they began damaging…machinery and Israeli quadcopter drones.” As the Canary notes, “Elbit System…supplies up to 85% of Israel’s military drones and land-based equipment.” Palestine Action issued a statement on this protest, writing “As a party to the Genocide Convention, Britain has a responsibility to prevent the occurrence of genocide. When our government fails to abide by their legal and moral obligations, it’s the responsibility of ordinary people to take direct action.”

    4. Semafor reports “In January, The Wall Street Journal made an explosive claim: Quoting ‘intelligence reports,’ the paper reported that not only had 12 members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, taken part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, but 10% of the relief agency’s 12,000 workers in Gaza had ties to militant groups.” Yet, “months later, the paper’s top editor overseeing standards privately made an admission: The paper didn’t know — and still doesn’t know —whether the allegation, based on Israeli intelligence reports, was true.” As Semafor notes, the fact that this story was “based on information [the paper] could not verify is a startling acknowledgment, and calls into question the validity of the claims.” This unconfirmed story resulted in more than a dozen nations – among them the US, the UK, and Germany – freezing their funding for UNRWA, totaling $450 million.

    5. Federal News Network reports “The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday approved… funding the Defense Department at $852.2 billion, a 3.3% increase over fiscal [year] 2024.” In other words, another year, another $10 billion for the Pentagon. In 2023, the Department of Defense failed its sixth audit in a row, per Reuters.

    In more positive news, this has been a banner week for consumer protection action at the federal level.

    6. On August 2nd, the FTC reported “On behalf of the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice sued video-sharing platform TikTok, its parent company ByteDance, as well as its affiliated companies, with flagrantly violating a children’s privacy law—the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act—and also alleged they infringed an existing FTC 2019 consent order against TikTok for violating COPPA.” Specifically, “The complaint alleges defendants failed to comply with the COPPA requirement to notify and obtain parental consent before collecting and using personal information from children under the age of 13.” FTC Chair Lina Khan is quoted saying “TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids’ privacy, threatening the safety of millions of children across the country…The FTC will continue to use the full scope of its authorities to protect children online—especially as firms deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to surveil kids and profit from their data.”

    7. On August 1st, the Consumer Product Safety Commission ruled that online retail titan Amazon qualifies as a “distributor” and “therefore bears a legal responsibility for recalling dangerous products and informing customers and the public,” per NPR. This report continues to say this decision “stems from a lawsuit filed by the CPSC against Amazon in 2021 over a slew of [unsafe] products offered on the retailer’s platform… [including] children’s sleepwear that didn’t meet federal flammability standards, carbon monoxide detectors that failed to detect carbon monoxide and sound their alarms, and hair dryers that didn’t protect against electrocution when immersed in water. Amazon sold more than 418,000 units between 2018 and 2021.” Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director at U.S. PIRG is quoted saying “This order is about making sure Amazon is just as accountable as every other company that sells products to consumers who often think that if something is for sale, it must be safe.”

    8. AP reports “Coca-Cola…said Friday it will pay $6 billion in back taxes and interest to the Internal Revenue Service while it appeals a final federal tax court decision in a case dating back 17 years.” This lawsuit began in 2015 and centered around how the beverage giant “calculate[s] U.S. income based on profits amounting to more than $9 billion from foreign licensees and affiliates.” The company has been enjoying increased profitability this quarter, reportedly “boosted by product price increases.”

    9. “The D.C. attorney general is suing online ticket provider StubHub for allegedly adding surprise fees onto a needlessly long checkout process in violation of local consumer protection laws,” the Washington Post reports. Specifically, this suit alleges “StubHub deceives customers by offering them an incomplete price at first, then making them go through a purchase process that can involve more than 12 pages — with a timer to impart a sense of urgency — and adding extra fees.” The office of Brian Schwalb, the D.C. AG, alleges StubHub has “[extracted] an estimated $118 million in hidden fees,” from District consumers, using “drip pricing” – described by the FTC as “a pricing technique in which firms advertise only part of a product’s price and reveal other charges later as the customer goes through the buying process.” This model is illegal under the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act.

    10. Finally, “The Justice Department and several dozen state attorneys general won a sweeping victory against Google Monday as a federal judge ruled that the search giant illegally monopolized the online search and advertising markets over the past decade,” per POLITICO. In a lengthy ruling U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google “locked up some 90 percent of the internet search market through a partnership with Apple to be the default search provider in its Safari web browser, alongside similar agreements with handset makers and mobile carriers such Samsung and Verizon. Mehta also found that Google disadvantaged Microsoft in the market for ads displayed next to search results, allowing it to illegally dominate that market as well.” Judge Mehta further stated that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Attorney General Merrick Garland commented “This victory against Google is a historic win for the American people…No company — no matter how large or influential — is above the law. The Justice Department will continue to vigorously enforce our antitrust laws.”

    This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.



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  • The Toledo Water Crisis: How Big Agriculture poisoned a whole city’s water supply


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  • JD Vance: Silicon Valley’s puppet? w/Paris Marx


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  • Project 2025 Private Training Video: Advancing the President’s Agenda


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  • Project 2025 Private Training Video: Working with the Media


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  • Project 2025 Private Training Video: The Administrative State


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  • Project 2025 Private Training Video: The Art of Professionalism


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  • I’m Speaking – The Grayzone live


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