6
12
6
Three current Pentagon officials decried a new War Department policy designed to restrict press freedom. Under new rules, the Department of War said it would forbid reporters from gathering any information that had not been approved for release and would revoke press credentials from any journalists who did not obey.
A 17-page document laying out the new guidelines says that journalists who wish to report from the Pentagon must sign agreements restricting their movement in the building and stipulating that they will not obtain or possess unauthorized material.
“DoW remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” the department’s Orwellian memorandum states.
Experts and current Pentagon officials call the rules an egregious assault on the freedom of the press.
One defense official who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity called the new policy a “mockery of American ideals.” Another likened it to policies seen in some of the most repressive and unstable nations on the planet. “The idea they want editorial control over the press is something I expect from a banana republic not the United States,” that official told The Intercept. A third said it was Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s latest assault on accountability, referencing his earlier efforts to kneecap the military’s lawyers.
“This is a direct assault on independent journalism at the very place where independent scrutiny matters most: the U.S. military,” National Press Club President Mike Balsamo said in a statement. “If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting. It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”
In a Friday post on X.com, Hegseth said that “the press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility,” and that reporters would have to “wear a badge and follow the rules — or go home.”
The Department of War responded to questions about the new policy from The Intercept with a boilerplate statement. “These are basic, common-sense guidelines to protect sensitive information as well as the protection of national security and the safety of all who work at the Pentagon,” said chief War Department spokesman Sean Parnell.
“Agreeing not to look where the government doesn’t want you to look and, by extension, not to print what it doesn’t want you to print, is propaganda, not journalism,” Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Intercept.
“The government isn’t only seeking to restrain specific documents it contends pose a unique threat, it’s seeking to restrain everything it doesn’t want the public to know.”
Stern noted that the government is legally barred from requiring journalists to trade their right to investigate the government in exchange for reporting access.
“This policy operates as a prior restraint on publication which is considered the most serious of First Amendment violations. As we learned in the Pentagon Papers case, the government cannot prohibit journalists from public information merely by claiming it’s a secret or even a national security threat,” Stern said, referencing a landmark 1971 case in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of the New York Times and others to publish a classified Defense Department study of the Vietnam War. “This is worse in a way, because the government isn’t only seeking to restrain specific documents it contends pose a unique threat, it’s seeking to restrain everything it doesn’t want the public to know. That is fundamentally unAmerican.”
Hegseth’s Pentagon pledged earlier this year to “always deliver on our promise of transparency.” In February, Hegseth booted several mainstream news organizations from their offices at the Pentagon, including CNN, NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, in favor of conservative mouthpieces, like Breitbart, Newsmax, and One America News.
[
Related
Hegseth Leads Push to Punish Military Service Members Over Charlie Kirk Comments](https://theintercept.com/2025/09/17/military-hegseth-charlie-kirk-social-media-speech/)
While not specifying any outlets by name, the defense official who said the new policy mocked American ideals expressed worry that some reporters would self-censor to curry favor with the War Department. “Some of these so-called journalists are a joke,” the official said.
Balsamo noted that the latest media crackdown “comes at a time when the nation is witnessing a devastating hollowing out of defense trade publications, just as rigorous, independent coverage of military and national security issues has never been more essential.”
Regular press briefings by the Pentagon press secretary or his deputy – a staple of previous years – have been abandoned in favor of propaganda pumped out by Hegseth, Parnell, and press secretary Kingsley Wilson. Wilson repeatedly replies to questions from The Intercept with variations on the phrase: “Nothing for you on that.”
Early in his tenure, Hegseth shared classified information about forthcoming air strikes in Yemen in a private Signal group chat that included his wife. He also disclosed attack plans in a separate Signal chat that included the editor of The Atlantic.
The Pentagon was also embarrassed by a leak to the New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk would receive a briefing on the military’s war plans concerning China. That briefing was called off and led to an investigation.
The new press policy coincides with the Department of War’s political correctness crusade in the wake of the killing of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. The military is taking disciplinary action against both enlisted troops and officers over social media posts they view as taking the wrong stance on Kirk’s legacy.
The Pentagon’s actions are part of an all-out war on freedom of speech by the Trump administration. President Donald Trump recently filed a $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times — which a federal judge threw out Friday, calling the complaint “improper and impermissible” in its current form. Trump also sued the Wall Street Journal in July for an article chronicling his relationship with the disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump previously sued CBS News and ABC News over their coverage of him, extracting $16 million settlements from each. This week, ABC apparently bowed to threats from chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr over remarks that Jimmy Kimmel, the host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” had made in the wake of Kirk’s killing. The network pulled Kimmel’s late-night show from the air “indefinitely.”
Stern said that the Trump administration, like its predecessors, often leans on vague national security claims to avoid having lies exposed*.*
“Perhaps there are so many embarrassing documents at this point that it’s too difficult to keep finding bogus reasons to keep each of them secret,” Stern said. “Maybe that’s why the administration is taking more of a wholesale approach to concealing records that may show wrongdoing, corruption and incompetence.”
The post Unnamed Pentagon Officials Ridicule Hegseth’s Plan to Stop War Department Leaks appeared first on The Intercept.
From The Intercept via this RSS feed
6
Mexican Trade Unions for Palestine March Against Gaza Genocide
(mexicosolidarity.com)
On Saturday, September 21, in Mexico City a march against the Gaza genocide made its way from the Angel of Independence to the Benito Juárez Hemicycle, which has been transformed into a center of Palestinian solidarity since an anti-monument for Palestine was added last month. The march was organized by a coalition of 300 of Mexico’s trade unions and Palestinian solidarity organizations, and made five demands of the Mexican government:
In the face of all this barbarity and recovering the best traditions of history by breaking diplomatic relations with dictatorships such as those of Francisco Franco in Spain, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, or Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, the manifesto of the Coordinator of Trade Unions for Palestine presented the following list of demands:
Demand that the Mexican government sever diplomatic, commercial, military, and cultural relations with the Zionist State of Israel. Cancel the Israel-Mexico Free Trade Agreement. Prohibit the acquisition of any military, police, or security products or services.
Express our complete solidarity with the Palestinian people and support their right to their own state, in accordance with their sovereign decision, without any external interference. Stop the genocide!
Conduct an intensive educational campaign within the ranks of ourtrade union organizations to inform them of the criminal nature of the Zionist State of Israel and the just struggle of the Palestinian people for their national liberation.
Promote various mobilizations, supported by the broadest sectors of the Mexican people, to condemn the Zionist regime of Israel, supporting international sanctions against Netanyahu and his genocidal government. Zionism is a danger to humanity!
End the criminal blockade of food, water, and medicine carried out by theoccupying forces, using hunger as a weapon of war. We will seek the best ways to deliver our support to the Palestinian population and demand that the Mexican government promote this policy within the United Nations Security Council.
Photos by Jay Watts.
Mexican Trade Unions for Palestine March Against Gaza Genocide
September 21, 2025
The march was organized by a coalition of 300 of Mexico’s trade unions and Palestinian solidarity organizations, and made five demands of the Mexican government.
Agrifood Exports Fall Due to Trump’s Policies
September 21, 2025September 21, 2025
The closure of the US to Mexican beef, coupled with the compensatory quota imposed on tomatoes, caused a 4.3% drop in the value of Mexican agricultural exports in the first seven months of 2025.
Clicks September 21
September 21, 2025
Our weekly roundup of Mexican political stories in the English and Spanish language press, including decades of the drug war, Aytozinapa, a historic Grito, Zedillo’s debt, Global Sumud Flotilla, TV Azteca debts, and Canada and Mexico.
The post Mexican Trade Unions for Palestine March Against Gaza Genocide appeared first on Mexico Solidarity Media.
From Mexico Solidarity Media via this RSS feed
33
Israel’s tactic is tried and tested. Before or after it has attacked, maimed or killed anyone it wants to ‘take out’, it calls them Hamas. As these lines are written, Israel is deploying the same smear campaign against the Global Sumud Flotilla, the magnificent people – including doctors, lawyers, journalists, students, workers and parliamentarians – who are sailing toward the blood-soaked Gaza coast to break Israel’s siege of a devastated land on which its genocide of two million Palestinians is proceeding at a mechanical, ruthless, calculated pace.
Unsurprisingly, as dozens of boats converged from all over the Mediterranean on a common course toward Gaza, the Israeli propaganda machine began to scream ‘Hamas!’ at the top of its lungs, plastering in red the words ‘HAMAS FLOTILLA’ on photographs depicting its boats. “This is not humanitarian. This is a jihadist initiative serving the terror group’s agenda,” screeched Israel’s Foreign Ministry. But that’s not all.
If you googled the words “Global Sumud Flotilla” on Saturday, the search results you got could have been written by the Israeli propaganda machine. They include sponsored websites with titles such as “The Flotilla’s Real Goals… How are ‘humanitarian’ campaigns exploited?”, “Unmasking The Sumud Flotilla” and “Are ‘humanitarian’ flotillas just propaganda? Read the facts.” Anyone who reads further in search of the promised ‘facts’ is exposed to the clincher smear: Hamas is behind the flotilla.
It is, of course, no coincidence that Google plays the role of megaphone on behalf of the Israeli genocide machine. Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territories, along with its genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is Big Tech’s ideal laboratory and testing ground. As Francesca Albanese’s report ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide’ to the United Nations revealed, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, along with Microsoft, Amazon and Palantir, have been expanding their cloud capital services at a breathtaking pace. Face recognition software, target selection algorithms and automated execution systems are being tested in real-time, at will, and with fewer ethical constraints than in experiments on laboratory rats. Big Tech could not be happier!
But enough on the political economy of genocide and Big Tech’s complicity in it. What we have here, now, is an active smear campaign which is unfolding in preparation for a strike at the brave people sailing toward Gaza to save our souls – to proclaim loudly and clearly ‘NOT IN OUR NAME’ on behalf of you and me.
These people, our people, are about to be attacked, abducted, imprisoned or worse. Their smearing is the first act in a fresh Israeli war crime. This is not the time for analysis but for action. This is the time to sound the alarm bells, to do whatever it takes to increase Israel’s discursive and propaganda losses from ‘taking out’ the brave women and men of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
View this post on Instagram
The first thing we need to do is to tell the world the truth about the people on board the flotilla. To counter their depiction by Israel as jihadists hell-bent on the destruction of the Jews. And the best way of doing this is by letting them speak in their own words. Words like those of David Adler, my friend, comrade and associate, who sent us a long letter explaining why he boarded in Tunis the good ship ‘Family’, alongside Novara Media’s Kieran Andrieu, to set sail for Gaza. In his letter, David said:
“We are now reaching the two-year mark of this genocide: two years scrolling through unbearable images of slaughter, two years witnessing our governments enable it, two years feeling powerless to stop them.
Coming from a Jewish family in the United States, I experience that feeling as acute outrage: crimes against humanity committed in my name, for my ‘safety’, with the symbolism that once adorned my synagogue. My identity, for me, thus implies a special responsibility to do whatever I can to stop the killing, save lives, and confront the State of Israel that distorts my identity for its genocidal agenda.”
This is the kind of person that the Israeli Foreign Ministry describes as an antisemitic terror supporter. Normally, it would be merely a smear, at worst incitement to others to ‘take out’ David, to leave him unmourned if some crazed gunman takes a shot at him, thinking he got a terrorist. But, no, this is not what Israel is doing.
As you are reading this, Israel is preparing to violate international law by attacking their vessels. Put differently, Israel is in the business of inciting itself to take out David and his flotilla fellow travellers. Only we can stop them. How? By making enough noise, raising consciousness sufficiently now so that the cold, calculating minds of the Israeli genocide functionaries understand that taking our people out will cost them more in propaganda brownie points than they will gain.
As always, it is up to us. Let’s stop Israel’s attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla now!
From Novara Media via this RSS feed
12
Trump Wants a Base in Afghanistan. Rest of World Wants U.S. Bases Out.
(worldbeyondwar.org)
By Mohammed Abunahel, World BEYOND War, September 21, 2025
Reintroducing Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan is not so much a “return to reason” in foreign policy as it is a symbolic use of a military issue to fuel a domestic mobilization policy based on instigating wars rather than extinguishing them. This is what U.S. President Donald Trump hinted at when he announced, regarding Bagram, “we are trying to get it back,” citing its proximity to China’s nuclear facilities—a proposal that has quickly been rejected by the current Kabul authorities and prompted professional warnings that it could effectively amount to a “re-invasion.”
There is something unknown and terrifying about Trump’s talk of reclaiming Bagram Air Base. It is not a wise, strategic decision; I see it as a continuation of the same chaos that has spawned a thousand disasters.
Reigniting a new war under the slogan of “strategic power” generates nothing but pain, corruption, illusions, and, above all, a distortion of the human spirit. To be clear, a policy that relies on a foreign military presence and bases in lands whose peoples disapprove of it is inherently doomed to failure.
Trump speaks of a “nuclear China,” as if the U.S. base would be a guard against it, or prevent the Chinese from possessing or using nuclear weapons. However, the truth is that China’s nuclear weapons are not in Afghanistan; they are within its facilities, within its borders, and within its internal forces. A base in Afghanistan or anywhere in the world will not alter China’s nuclear capabilities. Still, it will exacerbate political divisions, strain U.S. finances, and tempt the United States’ adversaries to invest in counterstrikes rather than stability.
Who benefits from the presence of the military bases? Security and military companies, contractors, arms industries, and all those who benefit from the massive budgets spent on establishing bases, building airfields, air defense, and maintenance. They propagate the idea of ”security,” but it is security built on fear, the possibility of an enemy, and threats, not peace. When Trump raises the Bagram flag, he uses it as an electoral tool, not as a carefully considered strategic dimension.
Every foreign base means soldiers, equipment, targets, possible airstrikes, the possibility of civilian casualties, the destruction of cities, and the marriage of conflict to blood. The American people are burdened by pension expenses, health care, education, and poverty. Why spend millions on a military base in a country cursed by war? Every civilian death in Afghanistan or in any foreign war is a stain on the conscience of a policy that says, “We are protecting our interests.”
Who will agree to have a military base imposed on their country, even by a superpower? Reclaiming Bagram Air Base means an interference in the sovereignty of a country. This unacceptable military intervention is a humiliation of dignity and will breed resistance, hatred, and perhaps revenge. Who would believe that U.S. policy under the Trump administration respects sovereignty? Instead, it acts as if it were an unaccountable empire.
Afghanistan itself is the biggest lesson. More than twenty years of al-Qaeda, bombs, promises, training of local forces, and financial support. All of this went down the drain. Is the United States trying to repeat the same mistake? Is it trying to reopen a wound that alerted the world that war always leaves indelible losses?
Why do I reject Donald Trump’s policy? Because it reproduces a mentality of “military power above all else,” favoring the spirit of war instead of the spirit of peace. It fuels hatred and extremism, inciting both internal and external polarization. Because it reduces politics to a permanent arena of conflict, rather than treating it as a tool for negotiation, cooperation, or humanity, it exhausts the United States’ internal capacity, accelerates economic drain, and weakens international trust.
I am not neutral regarding this point, and I do not believe that “sometimes we must use force” in this situation. No. War is never the way. The base is never a symbol of pride, but a symbol of wounds. A policy that declares “I want a base” is a policy seeking war, not security.
If Trump thinks that reclaiming Bagram Air Base will give him dominance or make him look powerful, he’s deceiving himself. Real strength lies in admitting mistakes, acknowledging the harm that has been caused, stopping the exploitation of lands that aren’t his, and ceasing to spread fear to fuel wars.
I say no to Bagram, no to the policy of foreign bases, and no to any politician who adopts war as their policy. No to interests built on the blood of peoples, no to money stolen in the name of security, no to force that breaks humanity, no to policies that fuel wars and expose the fragility of slogans.
War is not an option, and bases are not an investment; it is a deception.
The post Trump Wants a Base in Afghanistan. Rest of World Wants U.S. Bases Out. appeared first on World BEYOND War.
From World BEYOND War via this RSS feed
view more: next ›
rss
0 post score0 comment score
joined 2 months ago
MODERATOR OF