Chris Hedges's Blog, page 512

Pope Calls Death Penalty Unacceptable in All Cases

VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis has decreed that the death penalty is “inadmissible” under all circumstances and that the Catholic Church must work to abolish it, changing official church teaching to reflect his view that all life is sacred and there is no justification for state-sponsored executions.

The Vatican said Francis had approved a change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church — the compilation of official Catholic teaching — to say that capital punishment constitutes an “attack” on the dignity of human beings.

Previously, the catechism said the church didn’t exclude recourse to capital punishment “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” Previous popes have upheld that position, while urging an end to the practice.

The new teaching, contained in Catechism No. 2267, says the previous policy is outdated, that there are other ways to protect the common good, and that the church should instead commit itself to working to end capital punishment.

“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme means of safeguarding the common good,” the new text reads.

It said today “there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes.” New systems of detention and sanctions have been developed that don’t deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption, it added.

“Consequently, the church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide,” reads the new text, which was approved in May but only published Thursday.

Francis has long railed against the death penalty, insisting it can never be justified, no matter how heinous the crime. He has also long made prison ministry a mainstay of his vocation and even opposes life sentences, which he has called “hidden” death sentences.

On nearly every foreign trip, Francis has visited with inmates to offer words of solidarity and hope, and he still stays in touch with a group of Argentine inmates he ministered to during his years as archbishop of Buenos Aires.

The death penalty has been abolished in most of Europe and South America, but it is still in use in the United States and in several countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Just this week Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey could soon move to reinstate the death penalty, which it had abolished in 2004 as part of its bid to join the European Union.

In an accompanying letter explaining the change, the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office said the development of Catholic doctrine on capital punishment didn’t contradict prior teaching but rather was an evolution of it — a defense to fend off critics who have already accused the pope of heresy for challenging past doctrine on capital punishment.

Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the change aims to “give energy” to the anti-death penalty movement and “to encourage the creation of conditions that allow for the elimination of the death penalty where it is still in effect.”

Francis is not alone. Perhaps the most famous Roman Catholic anti-death penalty campaigner is Sister Helen Prejean, whose book “Dead Man Walking” — about her spiritual ministry to a man on death row — helped fuel opposition in the U.S. to capital punishment.

In addition, plenty of Catholic organizations are active in the anti-death penalty campaign, including the Sant’Egidio Community, which together with Italian authorities always lights up Rome’s Colosseum whenever a country abolishes capital punishment.

In a statement Thursday, Sant’Egidio said the change served “as another push to the church and Catholics, based on the Gospel, to respect the sacredness of human life and to work at all levels and on every continent to abolish this inhuman practice.”

It was precisely Francis’ citation of the Gospel, however, that sparked criticism from some on the Catholic right, who cited Scripture in arguing that Francis had no authority to change what previous popes taught.

“He is in open violation of the authority recognized to him. And no Catholic has any obligation of obedience to abuse of authority,” tweeted the traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli.

Some on social media questioned the timing of the announcement, given that the Vatican and the Catholic Church is under extraordinary fire once again over clerical sex abuse and how bishops around the world covered it up for decades. The U.S. church, in particular, is reeling from accusations that one of the most prominent U.S. cardinals, Theodore McCarrick, allegedly abused minors as well as adult seminarians.

“Coming in the midst of the sex abuse revelations, the timing is curious… and more fury is not what the Church needs at this moment,” noted Raymond Arroyo, host of the Catholic broadcaster EWTN.

Francis announced his intention to change church teaching on capital punishment in October, when he marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of the catechism itself. The catechism, first promulgated by St. John Paul II, gives Catholics an easy, go-to guide for church teaching on everything from the sacraments to sex.

At that 2017 ceremony, Francis said the death penalty violates the Gospel and amounts to the voluntary killing of a human life, which “is always sacred in the eyes of the creator.”

He acknowledged that in the past even the Papal States had allowed this “extreme and inhuman recourse.” But he said the Holy See had erred in allowing a mentality that was “more legalistic than Christian” and now knew better.

Amnesty International, which has long campaigned for a worldwide ban on the death penalty, welcomed the development as an “important step forward.”

“Already in the past, the church had expressed its aversion to the death penalty, but with words that did not exclude ambiguities,” said Riccardo Noury, Amnesty Italia spokesman. “Today they are saying it in an even clearer way.”

In addition, he praised the clear indication of the church’s commitment to the cause beyond doctrine.

“There seems to be also a desire to see the Catholic Church take an active role in the global abolitionist movement,” he added.

___

AP writer Simone Somekh contributed.

Bipartisan Dysfunction Puts the World at Risk

All of humanity is being put at risk by the duopoly of Democrats and Republicans opposition to dialogue with Russia. The combination of Russophobia and the Democratic Party’s compulsion to criticize Trump’s every action, even when he accidentally does something sensible, is preventing the two largest nuclear powers, with the two most advanced militaries in the world, from working together to create a safer and more secure world.

President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin finally met for a lengthy meeting. Not much was accomplished, but it might be the beginning of an important dialogue, which could have significant positive impacts.

Russia and the United States are involved in many conflicts where de-escalation is possible if a working relationship is established. There are global crisis situations that could be reduced if the two nations work together, and bring other nations with them, to confront those problems.

Unfortunately, the reaction by members of the political duopoly and media to the Trump and Putin meeting is preventing progress urgently needed by the world. Hurdles are being created to prevent continued dialogue. For example, Russiagate delayed this first meeting and is making detente difficult to achieve.

Partisan Democrats are calling Trump a traitor for even meeting with Putin. They treat Robert Mueller’s indictment, timed just before their meeting, of Russian intelligence officials as if it were a conviction, not an accusation. It is unlikely these cases will ever be brought to trial so we are unlikely to see the evidence. Robert Mueller has a history of “misleading the public as he did when he was FBI director and claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

There are too many potential conflicts that could lead to war and too many crisis situations impacting millions for the United States and Russia not to be talking. Presidents Trump and Putin should meet again. Before their next meeting the two governments should negotiate progress on at least the following issues so their talks will be meaningful:

Reversing the nuclear arms race and working to rid the world of nuclear weapons, as Reagan and Gorbachev considered. As a beginning, extend the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) treaty between the US and Russia that came into effect in 2011 and expires in 2021, unless extended.
Ending the war in Syria, with both countries agreeing to leave so that the Syrian people can decide their own future.
Stop the escalation in Iran, develop a framework that will avoid war, end sanctions and allow Iran to rejoin the world economy.
Negotiating a peace agreement in Korea that all the nations who signed the Korean War truce can sign, i.e. the United States, Russia, China, and North Korea as well as South Korea.
Reducing the potential for conflict in Ukraine on Russia’s border.
Reducing NATO troops on the southern and western borders of Russia.
Keep weapons out of space as China and Russia have been proposing.

These are seven top priorities for diplomacy between the United States and Russia. There are many other crisis issues that the world is facing that a positive relationship between Russia and the US could ameliorate if not resolve — imagine the potential of a world where peace broke out.

One great hurdle to achieving this progress is the bipartisan view in Congress that favors conflict with Russia rather than a working relationship. Russophobia has been embraced across the spectrum from conservative Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-NC) to liberals like independent Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is in the leadership of the Democratic Caucus.

Democrats have demonstrated their support for conflict in their reaction to the Trump-Putin meeting as well as their reaction to the meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Democratic Senators Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) and Chris Murphy (Conn.)  introduced a bill to prevent Trump from removing US troops from South Korea. On July 26th, the House passed a bipartisan defense authorization that forbid reducing US troops in Korea.  The world wants peace but the United States has two war parties who are both upset by Trump and Putin talking.

Both parties have shown their extreme militarism by passing an irresponsible bipartisan record-breaking military budget. President Trump has shown his desire to  glorify militarism with a military parade. We are working with dozens of organizations to stop the military parade and if it proceeds, we will be part of a mass protest to show the world that the  people of the United States want peace.

US militarism has escalated under Trump with support from both Democrats and Republicans. Achieving detente with Russia could help pave the way for  significant budget cuts and an end to the more than trillion dollar upgrade of nuclear weapons thereby allowing federal spending to be focused on the necessities of the people and the protection of the planet.

It is an imperative for US foreign policy to seek cooperation between Russia and the US to make a more safe, healthy and secure world. To accomplish that the stranglehold of the duopoly war parties must be broken.

A Journalist’s Fight for Asylum and a Free Press

Emilio Gutierrez Soto, a journalist who fled certain assassination in his native Mexico, has just been released from an immigrant detention center in Texas. He and his son Oscar were detained by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) last December, two months after Emilio received an award from the National Press Club, where he publicly denounced the asylum process. Last week, a federal judge ordered both Emilio and Oscar released, noting that evidence suggested that Emilio was targeted by ICE for speaking out. Gutierrez Soto’s case is emblematic of the cruelty of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and asylum-seekers, as well as Trump’s increasingly vitriolic disdain for the free press.

In 2005, Emilio wrote a series of articles documenting corruption in the Mexican army in his home state of Chihuahua. He refused to stop reporting, and, in 2008, received an urgent call from a friend who had heard that Emilio was about to be killed. Emilio grabbed his vital documents and his 14-year-old son, and fled for the U.S. border. Emilio and Oscar were detained for several months upon arrival, then released as his asylum claim made its way through the lengthy process. Speaking at the award ceremony at the National Press Club in October 2017, Emilio said: “The murder cases, the disappearances and the exiles is a constant suffering and source of pain for our families. … Those who seek political asylum in countries like this, like the United States, we encounter the decisions of immigration authorities that barter away the international laws.” Two months later, he and Oscar were arrested.

The National Press Club’s executive director, Bill McCarren, immediately began advocating for Emilio and Oscar. He went to El Paso with Congressmember Beto O’Rourke to meet with ICE. McCarren was told to “tone it down” by the ICE’s local general counsel, Elias Gastelo. McCarren took that to mean that they should be less public in their campaign to support Emilio: “We are here to shed light, when we believe someone is being arbitrarily detained. It is our job to ensure everyone knows his name,” McCarren told “Democracy Now!” shortly after the meeting.

During the seven months of ICE detention, Emilio witnessed firsthand President Donald Trump’s cruel immigration crackdown. “Life in that concentration camp is extremely harsh. What the immigration authorities seek is to finish you off psychologically, and we’re trying to resume our lives in liberty, in semi-liberty,” Emilio told “Democracy Now!” Wednesday, just days after U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama ordered his release. Emilio recounted the anguish he shared with the many parents in detention with him, separated from their children, not knowing if they would ever see them again. More than 700 children still remain separated from their parents.

While Emilio is optimistic following the election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as Mexico’s new president, he remains critical of the current Mexican government: “The Mexican Consulate in El Paso is an agency that is totally at the service of ICE; it does not protect the interests of Mexicans at all. The consul takes great pleasure in being friends with William Joyce, who’s the field director of ICE.”

While Emilio and Oscar are out of detention, they are still under supervision of ICE’s internal security. “We hope that in coming days the immigration authorities, particularly ICE, will return to us our Social Security cards and the other documents that they confiscated from us,” Emilio said. In addition to receiving the National Press Club’s John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, he was also named a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow by the University of Michigan. He is expected to be at the Ann Arbor campus on Aug. 27, but fears that ICE is delaying the release of his documents, preventing him from traveling, to punish him.

“We have such a moral commitment on our part, my son and myself, to raise awareness and foster greater solidarity among human beings as a way of strengthening our peoples, our education and our social conduct. We have a lot of work to do,” he said, adding, “I have a lot to write.”

Emilio Gutierrez Soto and his son Oscar deserve political asylum. Emilio might have been another statistic, one of scores of Mexican journalists killed in the line of duty. But he survived by fleeing to the United States. His hard-earned perspective is needed as a new day dawns in Mexico and anti-immigrant prejudice consumes the White House.

Sense of Smell in Fish Diminishes in Acidic Seas

More acidic seas mean greater dangers for fish. Sea bass tested in oceans with the greater levels of dissolved carbon dioxide expected at the end of the century had their sense of smell dramatically reduced by the change.

Since fish depend on smell to forage for food, avoid predators, recognise each other and identify spawning grounds, the loss of smell could mean a more dangerous world.

British and Portuguese scientists report in the journal Nature Climate Change that they used a mix of physiological and behavioural studies to work out how a valuable commercial species – Dicentrarchus labrax, also known as the European bass or loup de mer – responded to higher levels of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2) in ocean waters.

Oceanic CO2 has risen by 43% since the start of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began burning fossil fuels at ever-increasing rates, to discharge greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and thus into the seas. By 2100, current levels of this dissolved gas will have more than doubled.

And the researchers found that to detect a scent, under end-of-century conditions, juvenile bass had to be 42% nearer the source.

“First we compared the behaviour of juvenile sea bass at CO2 levels typical of today’s ocean conditions, and those predicted for the end of the century,” said Cosima Porteous of the University of Exeter, UK, who led the research.

“Sea bass in acidic waters swam less and were less likely to respond when they encountered the smell of a predator. These fish were also more likely to ‘freeze’, indicating anxiety.”

The study confirms that economically important species will be affected by changes in ocean water chemistry: as waters warm, fish can migrate to cooler climates, but the impact of acidification will be much the same across the entire planet.

Researchers warned years ago that shifts in what chemists call the pH value of the oceans could seriously affect the citizens of the deep. Carbon dioxide has been implicated in at least one long-ago distant mass extinction event. Increasing acidification threatens corals and other species that employ carbonates. It has been found to alter behaviour or present a hazard to sharks, submarine snails and shrimps, and other species such as sea urchins and rockfish.

Commercial Significance

The new study is hailed as the first to test the olfactory responses of a commercially important species. Although only sea bass were tested, mechanisms of smell in fish are thought to be the same across a wide range of species.

“Their ability to detect and respond to some odours associated with food and threatening situations was more strongly affected than for other odours. We think this is explained by acidified water affecting how odorant molecules bind to olfactory receptors in the fish’s nose, reducing how well they can distinguish these important stimuli,” said Dr Porteous.

And her colleague, Rod Wilson from Exeter, said: “Our intriguing results show that CO2 impacts the nose of the fish directly. This will be in addition to the impact of CO2 on their central nervous system function suggested by others previously, which proposed an impaired processing of information in the brain itself.

“It is not yet known how rapidly fish will be able to overcome these problems as CO2 rises in the future. However, having to cope with two different problems caused by CO2, rather than just one, may reduce their ability to adapt or how long this will take.”

As Climate Turns Deadly, Media Are Stuck in Denial

If you live in California, the effects of climate change loom large this summer. In Southern California, where I live, back-to-back heat waves have enveloped suburbs in triple-digit temperatures for weeks now. In Northern California, a fire that has burned more than 100,000 acres and claimed the lives of several people in Shasta County has been declared the seventh worst in the state’s history.

If it was only the Golden State experiencing such extreme events, we might consider the deadly heat an anomaly. But across the world, thermometers are bursting in a global heat wave spanning from Japan to Algeria, to Greece, the U.K. and everywhere in between. This year is on pace to be among the four hottest years on record. The other three were 2017, 2016 and 2015. There can be no clearer indication that global warming—the predictable outcome of excessive fossil fuel consumption—is a reality, just as scientists have predicted for decades that it would be.

But you wouldn’t know it from most corporate media reports. While there is adequate coverage of heat waves and their effects on people and the environment, only a small percentage of media outlets link the heat to climate change. The watchdog group Public Citizen released a report last week titled “Extreme Silence: How the U.S. Media Have Failed to Connect Climate Change to Extreme Heat in 2018.” It examined media coverage by national and local newspapers, as well as TV networks, between Jan. 1 and July 8 and found that only a small percentage of stories covering extreme temperatures explicitly mentioned climate change. Researchers concluded that “major U.S. media outlets are largely failing to connect these monumental weather events to climate change.” Worse, the report “finds that media were significantly less likely to connect extreme heat to climate change when reporting during a major heat event.”

In an interview with me about this troubling trend, 350.org communications manager Thanu Yakupityage observed, “People are dying. We’re not talking a few people—we’re talking tens of hundreds, of thousands of people who will continue to be affected every year while the media stays silent.”

On Twitter, MSNBC host Chris Hayes offered one explanation for the media’s poor job of covering climate change recently, saying, “Almost without exception, every single time we’ve covered it’s been a palpable ratings killer. [S]o the incentives are not great.” Yakupityage, who told me she was once in a room with Hayes when he said something similar, responded: “If the media is not covering climate change, they’re also not giving people the information they need on how to protect themselves.” In other words, media outlets are betraying the public trust by failing to inform us.

It is tempting to take a head-in-the-sand approach to climate change because it is such a daunting issue for which there seems to be no political will to do what is needed. Books have been written about the human psychological response to climate change. Although the solution for tackling it is obvious—dramatically reduce fossil fuel consumption—moneyed interests and political inaction preserving the status quo give ordinary people the sense that it is an insurmountable problem. As new temperature records are broken each year, we are inexplicably moving toward more fossil fuel consumption rather than less. And there seems to be little we can do to stop this trend.

President Donald Trump, in particular, has added fuel to the fire burning our planet through numerous actions, arguably the worst of which was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. Recently, his administration offered a perverse argument to justify its freezing of gas-mileage standards in cars: More fuel-efficient cars would encourage more people to drive, which  would endanger more lives by increasing car accidents. According to The Associated Press, the government “contends that freezing the mileage requirements at 2020 levels would save up to 1,000 lives per year.” In Trump’s world, global warming poses no real danger. It is no wonder that so many Americans who see the effects of climate change feel powerless.

Another part of the problem with our mass denial about climate change is that we hear constant qualifications in the reporting of extreme weather. Google the phrases “while no single” and “climate change” and you will see a large number of publications that include some variant of the phrase (this one is from a recent USA Today article): “while no single event can be attributed to human-induced climate change. … ” It may be more scientifically accurate to qualify climate coverage of extreme weather patterns, but it is unnecessary to use such language in reports aimed at the layperson. Such language dilutes the soundness of climate science, on which there is overwhelming consensus. It is a concession to climate denialists, who took a page from the tobacco industry’s strategy to successfully sow enough doubt about climate science to coerce journalists and climate scientists into being overly careful when making claims.

Readers of reports who refuse to definitively connect scorching temperatures to climate change might be less likely to take the long-term threat seriously. There is rarely this much rigor in contemporary media coverage of the cause-and-effect aspect of lung cancer’s connection to smoking, for instance. But when it comes to the most important existential crisis of our time, reporters appear to bend over backward to qualify every connection between extreme weather and climate change.

What every person on this planet needs to read and hear about is a clear identification of the climate culprit. In Yakupityage’s words, “The root of the problem is fossil fuels. The root of the problem is our burning of coal, gas and other fossil fuels. If we as a global community can stop [burning] fossil fuels, we can help to reduce the impact of the climate crisis greatly.”

In the meantime, the media also need to focus on resiliency and adaptation to a changing climate. This is not an acceptance of defeat—it is a practical approach. Talking about resiliency and adaptation can save lives while keeping alive the conversation about reducing fossil fuels in the long term. The alternative is to pretend nobody knows why the planet is getting hotter, why there are more deadly wildfires and hurricanes and why there are more record-breaking heat waves every summer.

The deadly effects of climate change are being broadcast all across our lands in fierce flames and blistering heat. Next it will come in the form of superstorms, submerged coastal areas and other disasters. Here in the U.S., we won’t hear much about any of these alarm bells from politicians eager to retain their seats in Congress this November.

Ultimately, political action from the bottom up is what has always led change. To that end, there is a promising lawsuit that rightly targets the government for endangering the future of our children. The Supreme Court on Monday gave the green light to a case being brought by a number of young Americans, aged 11 to 22, against the government over inaction on climate change. The suit was first launched against the Obama administration three years ago and has slowly wound its way through the legal system, even as the effects of human-created climate change multiply around us.

On the activist front, people worldwide are expected to protest climate inaction on Sept. 8. On the website riseforclimate.org, organizers say, “No more stalling, no more delays: it’s time for a fast and fair transition to 100% renewable energy for all.” The fate of our species depends on how loudly we raise our voices and force the issue of climate change onto center stage.

Administration Plans to Slash Fire Science Funding

UTE PARK, N.M.—Bill Allen pointed to a north-facing slope of blackened pine and juniper forest. A thin vortex of pale white ash, picked up by a hot morning wind, rose from the black and gray landscape a wildfire left behind.

“It started right there,” said Allen, a rancher and retired hardware store owner.

Igniting May 31 on mountainous terrain, the fire grew quickly. Soon, more than 600 firefighters struggled to protect about 200 homes along the Cimarron River. When the fire was declared over 17 days later, it had burned 36,740 acres of forest and grassland.

Like all wildfires, the Ute Park Fire was dangerous and expensive. But no one died and crews saved every home – thanks in part to a century of hard-won firefighting know-how.

Science played a vital role in this success story by helping develop the best ways to battle wildfires. But the Trump administration wants to slash federal funding for wildfire science, at a time when forest and brush fires are getting bigger, happening year-round and becoming increasingly erratic.

Federally funded scientists have been seeking new methods and technologies to predict, prepare and respond – critical for safeguarding people and property. They have discovered ways to reduce risks before fires and restore land and waterways afterward. And they explore how fuels, flames, terrain, smoke and weather interact.

Defunding those efforts will endanger lives, researchers told Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

“A wildland fire (budget) cut is a human health cut,” said Donald Falk, a University of Arizona professor who has received research funding from some of the federal programs the White House has targeted.

Last week, the latest wildfire tragedy struck Redding, California, where scientists said a super-hot, tornado-like “fire vortex” reached almost 5 miles high. Six people, including two children, have been killed and more than 1,400 homes and buildings have been destroyed so far in the Carr fire.

Since 1983, about 72,000 fires  have burned the American landscape every year. That number has not grown. But the acreage has – 10 million acres burned last year, which is nearly eight times as much as in 1983.

Nevertheless, fire science funding has been eroding for more than a decade, even before President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts.

Nancy French, a senior research scientist at the Michigan Tech Research Institute who has federal funding, said she is “extremely frustrated, more so than I’ve ever been in my life.”

“You would think with people’s houses burning in California and the concern that we have for air quality that it wouldn’t be hard to find a way to fund someone like me to make sure that my capability is used to help solve some of these problems,” she said.

Interim U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen did not respond to requests for comment about fire research, and the administration’s budget documents contain no explanation for the cuts. But during a Senate hearing in April, she said the administration’s new budget “does reflect hard choices and difficult tradeoffs.”

On-the-Ground Help

Wildland fire science emerges from a small community of physicists, chemists, ecologists, meteorologists and others working for government agencies and universities to understand one of nature’s most violent forces.

The U.S. Forest Service, Interior Department, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and even the Defense Department have roles. Fire research budgets at these agencies, always small and declining for decades, would take a major hit under Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget.

One proposed cut would eliminate the Joint Fire Science Program, a cooperative venture by the Forest Service and six Interior Department agencies. Even if Congress steps in to fund the program, the financial uncertainty already has forced it to suspend new research proposals for next year.

In the past 10 years alone, the program funded 280 projects by 1,045 scientists at various universities and other institutions, with studies designed to meet the needs of local and state firefighters. This year’s budget is $3 million.

The program’s research “is indeed being utilized in decision-making on the ground,” said University of Arizona research scientist Molly E. Hunter, a science adviser to the program.

A U.S. Forest Service sign in Carson National Forest in northeastern New Mexico warns the public of a very high danger of wildfire. Under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2019 budget, the Forest Service’s research and development budget, which includes wildfire science, would shrink by 16 percent, or $46 million.

A U.S. Forest Service sign in Carson National Forest in northeastern New Mexico warns the public of a very high danger of wildfire. Under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2019 budget, the Forest Service’s research and development budget, which includes wildfire science, would shrink by 16 percent, or $46 million. (Randy Lee Loftis / Reveal)

Northern New Mexico’s Ute Park Fire, ignited by an unknown cause, is an example of science’s contributions. Homes, mostly vacation retreats, stayed safe during the fire due in part to a fuel reduction plan that Colfax County adopted in 2008 after studies funded by the federal program.

Bea Day, incident commander of a federal-state wildfire team based in New Mexico, said fire and smoke models developed at forestry department research labs – whose budgets are targeted for cuts – helped map her team’s daily strategy to fight the Ute Park Fire. Also in the toolbox are geographical information systems, global positioning systems, satellite observations, air quality monitoring and other science products.

“We utilize all these tools daily,” Day said in an email.

John Cissel, who retired this year as the program’s director, called the Trump administration’s move to end the program a major mistake.

“It seems so short-sighted, especially with a program that’s so meticulously constructed,” he said. He said his decision to retire wasn’t related to Trump’s budget cuts.

The research “has changed the culture and knowledge base around wildfire,’’ said Zander Evans, a scientist and executive director of the nonprofit Forest Stewards Guild, a group of foresters.

The Trump administration has offered no reason for targeting the Joint Fire Science Program. It’s among dozens of areas the White House has proposed slashing or eliminating science funding.

As in the White House’s 2018 budget request, only the Pentagon, Department of Veterans Affairs and NASA would get increased research funding in 2019.

Fire appears only once in the White House’s explanation of its 2019 research and development budget: “In the wake of natural disasters, including a devastating hurricane season and catastrophic forest fires, it is more important than ever to invest in the tools necessary to predict, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from natural disasters.” There’s no mention of wildland fire science.

In the budget proposal, the Forest Service’s spending for all research would drop by 16 percent, or $46 million, from the 2018 level. Interior Department science spending would decrease 21 percent, or $205 million.

Research at NOAA would decline by 26 percent, or $220 million, in the proposed budget. Included would be shutting down NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory, which studies how smoke, radioactive materials and other human health threats travel in the atmosphere.  NOAA also would stop supporting a computer model that predicts smoke travel during a fire.

NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said in an email that the agency “made tough choices to reduce a number of programs.” He did not respond to a question about how NOAA made the choices.

Scientist and former wildland firefighter Timothy Ingalsbee said the White House won’t save money by cutting fire research. Fires cost more, he said, when science can’t guide prevention and firefighting.

“It makes absolutely no sense,” said Ingalsbee, executive director of the advocacy group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “It doesn’t even make dollars and cents.”

Trees ‘Burn Like a Blowtorch’

As summer approached, New Mexico’s Cimarron Canyon looked ready for a big fire. The weather was hot. Monsoon rains were weeks off, and a stiff wind stripped away any moisture left after winter brought less than a quarter of normal snowfall.

The grasses, ponderosa pines and pinyon-juniper forest were dry and loaded with years of fuel. Junipers are shrubby, aggressively invasive trees so explosively flammable that firefighters call them “little gasoline bombs” and “gasoline on a stick.”

“They burn like a blowtorch,” said Allen, the rancher.

Rancher Bill Allen surveys the aftermath of the Ute Park Fire in northeastern New Mexico. Allen said he knew this year’s conditions – high temperatures, severe drought, strong winds and a buildup of highly flammable vegetation – were likely to lead to a major blaze. (Randy Lee Loftis / Reveal)

For years, federal fire research programs have focused on finding the best ways to manage junipers and other fuels. Experts urge people in fire-prone country to remove junipers near their homes.

Following that advice, Allen has been thinning junipers on his 3,400-acre Ute Creek Ranch, including a 20-acre patch that lies south of U.S. Route 64, not far from homes.

“It didn’t burn because we had taken out the junipers,” he said.

As the Ute Park Fire wound down, the Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Response program moved in to advise local officials on erosion control. Such work has benefited from research funded by the Joint Fire Science Program. Colfax County also can consult groundbreaking work on social and psychological impacts of wildland fire.

“Cimarrón,” a Spanish word for “wild,” came to describe the geography and history of Colfax County. The Cimarron River, running 698 miles to the Arkansas River, has carved dramatic vistas through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Since 1939, about 1 million scouts and leaders have encountered the wild at the Boy Scouts of America’s Philmont Scout Ranch, which covers 140,177 acres around Ute Park and the village of Cimarron. Nearly three-fourths of the Ute Park Fire was on Philmont land. Extreme fire danger has prompted Philmont to close its backcountry activities for the first time in its history.

Cimarron Canyon has seen bigger fires – one in 2002 burned about 92,500 acres – but the Ute Park Fire was closer to the village, coming within a mile. In five hours, it had grown to 1,500 acres; in seven hours, 4,500 acres. It kept growing. The night sky was ablaze.

“It looked like hell was out there,” said Shawn Jeffrey, Cimarron’s village administrator.

Officials ordered Cimarron evacuated for four days. For those who stayed to feed and support fire crews, such as Jeffrey and Village Councilor Laura Gonzales, just breathing was hard. Smoke behavior has been a special interest of the Joint Fire Science Program, including research to improve smoke warnings and learn how smoke harms people.

“The smoke was horrific,” Gonzales said. “You could see when the wind would shift and the fire would rotate.”

Studying a Shifting, Growing Threat

Natural fires can help maintain a healthy ecosystem, but today’s bigger, hotter and longer-lasting fires can kill trees, sterilize soil and burn down entire towns. Bigger fires also make more smoke, which kills about 339,000 people worldwide a year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

The disturbing trends in wildland fire have several causes. People start 90 percent of wildfires, accidentally or intentionally, and more people are moving to fire-prone places. In addition, decades of suppressing every small fire have left lots of fuel for big ones – the “wildfire paradox.”

Climate change from human activities, chiefly burning fossil fuels, is raising temperatures and contributing to droughts, especially in the West and Southwest. While the Trump administration discounts climate change risks, scientists and firefighters warn that fires in a hotter, drier climate are more unpredictable and might defy today’s strategies.

“There is a great deal of uncertainty,” the University of Arizona’s Hunter said.

Wildland fire science isn’t simple physics or chemistry. Imagine a laboratory, miles wide, where every minute, infinite variables form infinite new combinations – any one of which might kill you.

“Fire science isn’t rocket science; it’s more complicated,” Daniel Godwin, a wildland firefighter and ecologist in Colorado, said in an online discussion of the Joint Fire Science Program’s budget cut.

It takes money, he said, to do the studies that will keep communities and the environment safe under shifting conditions.

Slopes burned by the Ute Park Fire loom over the village of Cimarron, N.M., one of thousands of U.S. communities at risk from wildland fire. Wind stirs a cloud of ash from the ground. (Randy Lee Loftis / Reveal)

Among the Joint Fire Science Program’s most promising current offspring is the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment, an eight-year project to improve knowledge of wildfire smoke. Scientists at universities and federal agencies imagined throwing a massive data-collection effort at selected fires, using Lidar, radar, ground monitoring, aircraft, satellites, weather and atmospheric measurements all at once. That has never been done before.

The study seeks to understand the fuels; the smoke’s makeup, behavior and movement; and the chemical changes along the way.

“It’s designed to measure the full spectrum of the fire,” said Tim Brown, a research professor at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, and an architect of the project.

Such knowledge could vastly improve computer models for firefighting – for example, letting incident managers send a drone ahead of a fire to map fuels with fresh data.  Then a model could accurately predict where flames and smoke would go. That could save lives, property and money.

This fall, researchers expected to start their crucial fieldwork, measuring prescribed fires that federal land managers planned anyway but had agreed to schedule to coincide with the experiment. Now, the field study is on hold, and it’s unclear when or whether it will happen. Brown said researchers knew the effort would depend on fickle annual funding but were willing to take the chance.

“There’s a lot of passionate scientists that would still like to carry this forward,” he said. “We’re going to keep trying.”

In an email, Forest Service spokeswoman Dru Fenster said the service had found money to get the researchers for the modeling project some data from other projects. But without the Joint Fire Science Program, she added, the experiment itself is unfunded.

In April, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the ranking Democrat of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, pressed Christiansen, the interim Forest Service chief, on the wisdom of slashing wildfire science as climate change worsens fires. Christiansen didn’t deny climate change’s role or fire science’s importance in her response.

“Our scientific capability is very essential for us to be able to look out ahead and know what we’re facing and then, on the back end of these catastrophic events, how we can best recover the landscape and the communities,” Christiansen said.

The Forest Service’s research budget – including its fire sciences laboratories – already was suffering before Trump. Years of cuts have decimated science staffs, said the University of Arizona’s Falk, who studies fire ecology and resilience in a changing world. For instance, the Joint Fire Science Program used to get about $13 million a year, but took a steep drop in 2011, never to recover. Last fiscal year, it got $6 million; this year, half that.

“There’s no policy being advanced here,” Falk said. “This is 100 percent ideological knee-jerk reaction to any spending.”

Cissel, the program’s retired director, blamed the pre-Trump funding decline on a 40-year federal retreat from science and an Obama-era internal change that had the effect of making fire science compete with the firefighting budget.

“Operational firefighting is reactive,” he said. “Research is proactive. It’s harder to see the proactive, so there’s been a lot of pressure on research budgets.”

Local officials, researchers and foresters in some of the country’s most fire-prone regions – where the quality of fire science can mean life or death – have asked Congress to restore the funding.

In places such as Cimarron, it comes down to knowing how to handle surrounding forests and grasslands so that fire, while inevitable, is also manageable – one of the Joint Fire Science Program’s most vigorous research lines.

“We’ve been working with the local ranchers,” said Jeffrey, the village administrator. “There’s still a lot of fuel out there.”

It also means knowing how a big fire, such as the one in Redding, with its danger and fear, affects people – another area the science program has made a priority. Gonzales, the village councilor in Cimarron, remembers seeing a lot of frightened neighbors.

“We didn’t know – were we going to have to leave?” she said. “It put the scare in a lot of people.”

This story was originally published by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.

Pennsylvania Diocese Names 71 Accused of Child Sex Abuse

HARRISBURG, Pa.—A Roman Catholic diocese on Wednesday identified 71 priests and other members of the church who had been accused of child sex abuse and said it was holding accountable the bishops who led the church for the past 70 years, announcing their names will be stripped from all church properties.

At a news conference to detail the church’s actions, Harrisburg Bishop Ronald Gainer apologized to those who were abused, the Catholic faithful and the community and expressed his “profound sorrow.”

“Many of those victimized as children continue to suffer as survivors from the harm they experienced,” said the bishop, who was appointed in 2014.

With its announcement, the Harrisburg Diocese became the second of six dioceses under investigation by the state to get out in front of a pending grand jury report on clergy sex abuse. The Erie Diocese released its own findings on clergy abuse in April.

The release of the nearly 900-page state grand jury report has been held up by challenges by some priests and former priests. The state Supreme Court ruled last week a version with some names blacked out can be made public as early as next week. The court said it identified more than 300 “predator priests” in the six dioceses.

Gainer said that the Harrisburg Diocese was making public the names of all those who faced allegations of child sex abuse but that it did not determine whether they all had merit, though some of those on the list have been convicted of crimes. He said no one on the list is currently in the ministry.

In a public letter, Gainer said shortcomings in past investigations and record-keeping made it difficult in many cases to assess credibility or guilt or even determine the underlying conduct. In a few instances, people who were cleared of allegations by the diocese or police were not listed.

The Harrisburg list includes 37 priests, three deacons and six seminarians from the diocese, nine clergy members from other dioceses and 16 from religious communities. Gainer said the conduct was classified as indecent behavior, inappropriate behavior such as kissing and inappropriate communication with children.

Most of the allegations date from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the diocese said.

Gainer said church leadership had failed to protect children by not adequately responding to all the allegations of sexual misconduct over the years.

State Rep. Mark Rozzi, a Democrat from the Reading area, called the decision a step toward transparency and urged Gainer and other church leaders to support legislation to eliminate the statute of limitations on civil and criminal child abuse cases.

“They’ve done all this on the heels of the grand jury report coming out. Still, nonetheless, they did it and that part is great,” he said. Rozzi, who was sexually abused by a priest as a boy, supports legislation to repeal the time limits on lawsuits and criminal charges, and to establish a two-year window during which lawsuits from past abuse could be filed.

The Harrisburg diocese is compiling a list of buildings and other properties named to honor clergy members and plans to remove the names of anyone accused of abuse, including all bishops going back to 1947.

The church also is waiving any confidentiality rights the diocese obtained while reaching abuse settlements over the years, Gainer said. The number of such settlements and their dollar values were not disclosed.

The church is adopting a series of new procedures to deal with complaints and to help protect against future abuse, the bishop said.

Any new complaint will be immediately forwarded to local authorities, background checks will be conducted on people working for the church, including volunteers, and all employees will be required to take part in training on how to recognize and report abuse, the diocese said.

Court documents have revealed that the pending state grand jury report, the work of a two-year investigation, includes allegations of obstruction of justice by people “associated with the Roman Catholic Church, local public officials and community leaders.”

In its report this spring, the Erie Diocese identified more than 50 priests and lay people accused of child sexual abuse.

The other dioceses investigated are in Pittsburgh and Greensburg in the western part of the state and Allentown and Scranton in the east. They collectively minister to more than 1.7 million Catholics.

Previous investigations have found widespread sexual abuse by priests in the state’s two other dioceses, Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown.

Protesters Arrested During ‘Stop Kavanaugh’ Action in D.C. (Video)

It may seem as though the path is clear for Brett Kavanaugh to take a seat on the Supreme Court, but on Wednesday a group of protesters showed up in Washington, D.C., to send a different message. Converging at the Philip A. Hart Senate Office Building, “Stop Kavanaugh” demonstrators registered their resistance to President Donald Trump’s chosen replacement for outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy, and local police officers were deployed to join them for the occasion.

Also on the scene was Truthdig correspondent Michael Nigro, who livestreamed the event on Truthdig’s Facebook page. That footage is posted below; later, we will add Nigro’s photos and additional coverage to this story. Watch the video below—and watch this space for updates.

Trump Order on ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Is Illegal, Court Says

SAN FRANCISCO—President Donald Trump’s executive order threatening to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with immigration authorities is unconstitutional, but a judge went too far when he blocked its enforcement nationwide, a U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the order exceeded the president’s authority.

“Absent congressional authorization, the administration may not redistribute or withhold properly appropriated funds in order to effectuate its own policy goals,” Chief Judge Sidney Thomas wrote for the majority.

But he also said there wasn’t enough evidence to support a nationwide ban on the order and sent the case back to the lower court for more hearings on that question.

An email to a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department was not immediately returned.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick said in November that the order threatened all federal funding and that the president did not have the authority to attach new conditions to spending that was approved by Congress.

The ruling came in lawsuits filed by two California counties — San Francisco and Santa Clara. The executive order potentially jeopardized hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the two counties, Orrick said, citing comments by Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions as evidence of the order’s scope.

The Trump administration said the order applied to a relatively small pot of money that already required compliance with immigration law.

Government attorney Chad Readler had told Orrick that the order applied to only three Justice Department and Homeland Security grants that would affect less than $1 million for Santa Clara and possibly no money for San Francisco.

During arguments before the 9th Circuit in April, Thomas asked what the court was supposed to make of statements by Trump and his administration about wanting to withhold money from sanctuary cities.

Thomas also questioned whether the order would be constitutional if it applied to all types of funding, as the lower-court judge found.

Readler said the order was much narrower, and the judges should not focus on comments by the president or other administration officials.

The executive order is part of a push by the Trump administration to crack down on cities and states that generally don’t comply with U.S. immigration authorities.

The administration has sued California over three laws aimed at protecting immigrants in the country illegally. It also has moved to block a key public safety grant from going to sanctuary cities and states.

The Trump administration says sanctuary jurisdictions allow dangerous criminals back on the street. San Francisco and other sanctuary cities say turning local police into immigration officers erodes the trust needed to get people to report crime.

Both Sides in Syrian Conflict Use Media to Stereotype Women

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of its Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world dedicated to pursuing truth within their countries and elsewhere.

During the seven years of the Syrian conflict, two very different depictions of women have developed in the state and opposition media, but critics say neither depiction reflects the realities of Syrian women’s lives. To fill that gap, news outlets are emerging to present women in a more accurate way.

State media, which supports the regime of President Bashar Assad, shows women in a secular light—often using models to represent outgoing, free and modern women. During the conflict, state media has begun depicting women in stronger social roles, although many call this coverage a propaganda ploy that ignores poor, marginalized women.

Meanwhile, the opposition media paints women as mothers—passive and dependent, wearing scarves. That media usually describes a woman in relation to her marriage, her husband or her “martyred” children.

However, media outlets have appeared that not only depict women in a balanced way but also work to support their rights and roles. These include Radio Souriat (Syrian Women’s Radio), which operates in regime-held areas, and Enab Baladi, an opposition newspaper.

State Media Portrayals

State media—and private media related to the regime—traditionally portrayed women in three ways: as wives and mothers; modern, outgoing women who worked mainly in art and media; or hardworking women in rural environments.

Although dozens of women worked in business, industry, law and even the military, women leaders were rarely seen in the Syrian media unless they were well-known personalities such as first lady Asma Assad or held official positions such as parliament membership.

After the Syrian uprising in March 2011, state media began to change some stereotypical images of Syrian women. While images of caring, loving women have continued to appear, state media now is apt to feature women in relation to the war. For example, it often focuses on the powerful woman who urges her sons to join the military to defend the country against terrorists.

Stories feature women overcoming wartime challenges by working in fields that are new to women in Syria—for example as waitresses or truck drivers. However, marginalized poor women rarely are seen on Syrian official media. Many say this reflects the general policy in the country of denying economic and social problems.

Since the war began, state media has concentrated on other new images as well: women as leaders—especially of programs designed to build skills during the war—and women fighters who have joined the Syrian army. Women are depicted as being empowered, open-minded and secular. This year for Mother’s Day, Asma Assad honored a group of women fighters along with their mothers. Her entire message at a reception she held was about strong Syrian women who are equal in power to Syrian men.

According to critics, the empowering image presented by regime media falls short—and constitutes propaganda rather than real reform. Laila, a Syrian freelance journalist who preferred to use a pseudonym for security reasons, says that in general women continue to be portrayed as dependents who can’t do anything without the help of a man.

“The stereotyping still persists, but what has changed is that the Syrian women’s voice has become louder, more organized and systematic, compared to a random voice before 2011,” Laila says. “I think that Syrian women are now more capable of knowing what channels to use and whom to coordinate with in order to make sure their voices are heard.”

Laila says that current state media coverage, including the increased reporting on presentation of the women leaders, serves propaganda goals because the regime is trying to showcase its secular pro-Western values in contrast to its opponents’ traditional values.

Laila also criticizes the regime’s focus on “cool,” active women who represent the modern face of the Syrian regime. “I am keen to show the Syrian woman as an independent human being,” she says. “She has her own dreams, capacities and needs. I have not faced direct objections, but I often hear comments from editorial boards such as ‘Why this coverage now? Who would listen or read it? Let us find more exciting examples of women.’ ‘Exciting’ here often means a modern, beautiful and unveiled woman.”

A training session held by the Syrian Female Journalists Network. The organization works to empower both male and female journalists and also publishes research on women in the Syrian media. (Syrian Female Journalists Network)

State media continues to present an inaccurate portrayal of women for several reasons, says Rula Asad of the Syrian Female Journalists Network (SFJN), which works to connect media and the women’s movement in Syria. Rula says editorial boards are often composed solely of men who perpetrate patriarchal attitudes, and news staff don’t learn how to deal fairly with gender issues in the media.

Opposition Coverage

Most of the Syrian opposition media either stereotypes women or neglects their stories, according to an SFJN report titled “Women in Emerging Syrian Media.” The study found coverage of women in opposition Syrian media included less than 200 articles between 2011 and 2016.

A good example is the opposition-controlled television station Aleppo Today. In a period of two months, from April to June 2018, only one of its videos showed women as active members of society. The footage featured a demonstration by women in a small town in northern Syria. The video covering the story was only 45 seconds long, well shy of the videos that focus on men; those commonly run at least two minutes.

Women were found to have rarely appeared on the popular Aleppo Today Facebook page. When they did, they usually were speaking about their marriages, their children, being the mother of a “martyr” or various iterations of these themes. Aleppo Today reported on a number of workshop events that taught women about things like governance, management and media, but even this reporting effort was flawed. All of the trainers, supervisors and judges distributing certificates to the shy, covered trainee women were men. Instead of questioning why there weren’t any women giving out certificates, the male reporter praised the efforts of the men. He insinuated that those efforts were a gift to women—not merely a small and necessary step taken in the direction of equality.

When Syrian women appear in the opposition media, they are mostly depicted as victims. They’re often standing in front of the camera screaming for help from anyone who will listen—the Arab states, Muslims around the world or the international community. The image of mothers who lost one or more sons is also dominant. If they are not victims or related to victims, women are often shown making handcrafts, a suitable job because it can be done at home without the need to go out and mix with men.

The SFJN report says most opposition media define women by their relationship to men—as sisters, daughters, mothers or wives. The report also points out false assumptions made by opposition media. These include: Women can’t fight; they are weak and incapable and require men’s help; women’s successes are due to their beauty, not their talent; and women belong in the private sphere taking care of the home and raising children, even if that home is in a refugee camp.

“Even when [opposition media is] covering stories about their courage or resilience, women tend to be highlighted as powerful because they coped without their dead men guardians,” SFJN Executive Director Asad says. “This kind of coverage of women is not poor only on the quantitative level, but it is also harmful on the qualitative level, as it serves only to reinforce gender biases and stereotypes.”

The representation of women in opposition photos and videos is also harmful, according to Rula Asad. If a woman is pictured in the center of an image, she is usually crying, hiding her face and not communicating with the audience. Otherwise she is in the background, “which implies that women’s role is minor,” Asad says.

Dr. Maya AlRahabi is a physician, pioneer Syrian feminist and co-founder of the Syrian Women’s Political Movement, which promotes gender equality. She takes issue with the conclusions of the SFJN report, saying: “It’s unfair to consider that the new media continued stereotyping women. Many journalists tried to break this after the uprising, and are still in constant contact with me and other feminists, trying to take our perspective on stories and channel our opinions to their audience.”

Dr. AlRahabi blames the stereotyping problem on an international patriarchal system that especially harms women in the developing nations—and that is much bigger than the Syrian media. She points to the United Nations as an example. It “pictures Syrian women as powerless victims without highlighting our active role inside Syria or neighboring countries where there are plenty of bright examples [of] … Syrian women’s work,” she says.

Emerging Media

Since the beginning of the war, media outlets with a mission to break down stereotypes and to support Syrian women have emerged in both regime and opposition territory.

Initially, the opposition newspaper Enab Baladi published articles filled with stereotypical images and language. However, it began to change noticeably in 2015, not only in the language it uses but also in the topics it covers relating to women.

“We [began to] cover the positive examples of women and showcase their success stories,” says Editor in Chief Jawad Sharbaji. “We don’t describe women in their relationship to a man—as the daughter of, wife, sister or mother. We care for gender balance when choosing our sources and experts, and we are cautious to avoid using stereotyping adjectives or specifying traditional gender roles.”

Sharbaji says the new policy emerged after the newspaper staff met with content consultants and attended international workshops on issues such as gender coverage and objective journalism. Also, in 2015 more women came to work at Enab Baladi.

A cover of Enab Baladi, an opposition newspaper that has become more cognizant of the language it uses to describe women and of the topics it covers relating to women.

Among other accomplishments, the staff published a series of articles about the positive and negative changes Syrian women experienced during the war. Enab Baladi also published videos and articles as part of a campaign celebrating “Women Defending Human Rights,” which launched on International Women’s Day 2017.

In regime-held territory, Radio Souriat is also dedicated to breaking down stereotypes about women. The station seeks to initiate change in Syrian society through community building, promoting the empowerment of women in public life and developing media discourse about gender issues.

Radio Souriat works to create an accurate image of Syrian women based on women’s needs and the station’s feminist agenda. “A Syrian woman can be a housewife, and also a public figure,” says Rana, a Radio Souriat staff member who uses a pseudonym for security reasons. “We cannot ignore any of her roles, and we try to focus on them all, beside supporting her in gaining all her social, economic and legal rights.”

Along with radio programing, Radio Souriat publishes videos on social media. One program portrayed Syrian women in new roles that cut through stereotypes—a singer, a young woman riding a bicycle, a woman working in public affairs. That became complicated because of social restrictions, Rana says. “Our society is still dominated by traditional … ways of thinking.” The singer, who performs in a veil, “was so worried and asked not to show her face or mention her full name, for fear of her family and society,” she says.

Rana summed up the barriers that slow progress when it comes to media portrayal of women. “It is not that easy to break down the taboos that dominate not only women but the whole Syrian society,” she says. “Syrian media is still in its first steps toward this. It still needs a lot of work in order to raise awareness inside the community about accepting others, and about the importance of women in all positions, including decision-making ones.”

Syrian journalist Alaa Youssef (a pseudonym used for security reasons in the war-torn country), a mentee in Truthdig’s Global Voices series, contributed to this article.