Fearless, Adversarial Journalism – Spoken Edition

When news broke that thousands of current and former Border Patrol agents were members of a secret Facebook group filled with racist, vulgar, and sexist content, Carla Provost, chief of the agency, was quick to respond. “These posts are completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see — and expect — from our agents day in and day out,” Provost said in a statement.

The fur industry is relying on a small phalanx of vocal supporters who have rallied across the country to prevent a ban on fur products, often inflaming the debate with accusations of hypocrisy and racism. Many of the impassioned defenders of fur hats and mink coats, however, have received undisclosed financial support for their activism.

An American organization founded by tech giants Google and IBM is working with a company that is helping China’s authoritarian government conduct mass surveillance against its citizens, The Intercept can reveal. The OpenPower Foundation — a nonprofit led by Google and IBM executives with the aim of trying to “drive innovation” — has set up a collaboration between IBM, Chinese company Semptian, and U.S. chip manufacturer Xilinx.

A specter is haunting the House of Representatives: the specter of primaries. All the powers of the status quo have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter. Blacklists have been drawn up; arms have been locked. The ferocity with which House Democratic incumbents have rallied around each other reached absurd new dimensions this week. With Crisanta Duran, the first Latina state House speaker in Colorado history, challenging Rep.

On April 1, 2018, the U.S. military carried out an airstrike near El Buur, a town in central Somalia. A press release issued by U.S. Africa Command a day later announced that the attack killed five “terrorists” and destroyed one vehicle. In reality, these “terrorists” included a civilian woman and a child. AFRICOM, however, told the world a different story.

Lawmakers in Pennsylvania have quietly muscled power away from reformist District Attorney Larry Krasner, passing new legislation giving authority to the state’s attorney general to prosecute certain firearms violations in Philadelphia — and nowhere else in the state. The provision will expire in two years, or just after Krasner’s first term ends.

In the video, self-appointed border guards have rounded up hundreds of migrants and forced them to sit near an active train track in New Mexico. Armed with rifles, the militiamembers point bright flashlights into the immigrants’ faces as the exhausted and disheveled adults and children turn their eyes downward to avoid the glare.

Activists hold photos of migrant children who died trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border on June 27, 2019, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images In September 2015,images circulated of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi’s tiny body washed up on a Turkish beach; that week, donations to refugee aid charities soared.

Derrick Hathaway served multiple tours in Kosovo, contributing to a NATO peacekeeping mission aimed at preventing ethnic cleansing. While Hathaway envisioned his Marine mission as a humanitarian one, he soon became ashamed of his work.In the course of mapping safe routes for NATO forces, Hathaway’s platoon would perform no-knock home raids to search for weapons or contraband, leading to tense confrontations with frightened families. “It was martial law,” Hathaway said.

Subscribe to the Intercepted podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Radio Public, and other platforms. New to podcasting? Click here. Philosopher Srecko Horvat discusses the historical lessons we can learn from the guerrilla struggle against fascism waged by the Partisans in Yugoslavia during World War II. Horvat also talks about the recent surge in extreme right-wing political forces in Europe and what that trend and Julian Assange’s case mean for the future of democracy.

The first three slides of climate scientist Peter Kalmus’s plenary speech to Shell’s Powering Progress Together conference were intended to gauge audience reactions. First, he would have asked attendees if they are “concerned about climate breakdown.” Then, to raise their hands if they are “EXTREMELY CONCERNED” about it.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who was elected last year on a radical reform platform, has taken a huge new step in that direction, establishing a unit to tackle wrongful conditions and abuse by the police. The Conviction and Incident Review Unit, whose staff will report directly to Bell, will review past convictions where defendants claimed innocence as well as investigate police shootings and allegations of police misconduct.

The Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with a plan to sharply reduce and ultimately phase out experimental testing on lab animals. In an undated internal memosent in late June to assistant administrators, EPA chief Andrew Wheeler explained that the agency will cut its funding for experiments on mammals in half by 2025.

Muslim prisoners in a room in the Serb-run detention camp at Trnopolje, northwest of Banja Luka, Bosnia, on Aug. 12, 1992.

The era of smoky backroom deals and political power brokers in charge of the Democratic Party could come roaring back in Milwaukee next year, when thousands of party faithful convene to formally select the party’s presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention.