transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:15] From Seattle, Washington, this is Democracy Now!

Speaker 2:
[00:21] As my sister, I'll take her to her grave and fulfill my duties towards her. But her professional rights are with her ministry and with institutions. There's no charter, no charter, no law in the world, none of them, that allows targeting a journalist.

Speaker 1:
[00:36] Thousands gathered in Lebanon on Thursday for the funeral of the prominent Lebanese journalist, Amal Khalil. Lebanon's prime minister has accused Israeli forces of committing a war crime by first targeting her in an airstrike, then blocking medical crews from reaching her for hours. We'll speak to the committee to protect journalists and go to Beirut to speak with another reporter who knew Amal and was himself injured in an Israeli strike just last month. Then, New York City council member Chia Seh joins us. He was violently arrested earlier this week at a protest against deed theft, a practice that's led to many evictions of long-time homeowners. Finally, maschism, a guide for the perplexed. Professor Quinn Slobodian looks at the ideology of Elon Musk.

Speaker 3:
[01:44] Muskism is the promise of sovereignty through technology that ends up cashing out as a deeper and deeper dependency of both states and people on the suite of products and services that Musk himself offers.

Speaker 1:
[01:58] All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. President Trump says a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon will be extended by three weeks, even as Israel continues to carry out attacks as its forces occupy southern Lebanon. On Thursday, Trump hosted Israel's and Lebanon's ambassadors to the Oval Office for a second round of US facilitated talks. Once again, Hezbollah was not a part of the negotiations. As the talks took place, Hezbollah fighters fired rockets, drones and artillery at Israeli positions as Israeli warplanes and artillery struck multiple towns in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, thousands gathered for the funeral Thursday of Amal Khalil, a correspondent for the daily newspaper Al-Aqbar, who was killed in a series of Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon Wednesday that appeared to target her and her colleague, photographer Zainab Farah. Khalil was the ninth journalist killed by Israeli strikes in Lebanon this year. We will have more on her story after headlines. In Iran, CNN reports the US military is developing new strike options around the Strait of Hormuz in the event that the current ceasefire breaks down. That includes plans to bomb civilian energy and infrastructure sites to pressure Tehran to return to negotiations. On Thursday, Trump said he's under no pressure to end the war. He began with Iran writing on social media, quote, I have all the time in the world, but Iran doesn't. The clock is ticking, Trump wrote. He was also asked if he would consider using a nuclear weapon.

Speaker 4:
[03:55] Why would a stupid question like that be asked? Why would I use a nuclear weapon when we've totally, in a very conventional way, decimated them without it? No, I wouldn't use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.

Speaker 1:
[04:11] Israel's continuing deadly attacks across the Gaza Strip, despite the US brokered so-called ceasefire that was supposed to have taken effect in October. On Wednesday evening, an Israeli airstrike targeted civilians in northern Gaza, killing at least five Palestinians, including three children. And on Thursday, an Israeli strike on a civilian car in a Magassi refugee camp killed three people, including two civil defense workers. Witnesses said the victims were torn to pieces.

Speaker 5:
[04:46] There were no heads, no legs and no arms. We collected the remains from the streets, flesh, bones, and brains off the streets. And no one should fool us by saying there is a ceasefire. There is no information about any ceasefire.

Speaker 1:
[05:00] Hamas said in response that Israeli strikes in Gaza constitute a criminal escalation, unquote, that undermines commitments to the ceasefire. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a child during an army raid on the city of Nablus. The boy, Yusuf Sameh Ashteya, was just 15 years old. Senate Republicans have voted to advance a budget blueprint that would increase funding to ICE and Border Patrol by an additional $70 billion for the rest of Trump's term. The vote came early Thursday after an all-night marathon session known as a Votorama. It bypasses a Democratic filibuster by using the Senate's reconciliation process. The budget measure now heads to the House of Representatives, where Republican leaders are seeking to pass it without change. Democrats have refused to fund ICE and Border Patrol, leading to a partial government shutdown since mid-February. They're demanding limits on immigration enforcement, including barring raids at schools and hospitals, a ban on federal agents' use of federal facial coverings, body cameras and requiring judicial warrants to enter private property. The Justice Department is moving forward with Trump's request to revoke the US citizenship of hundreds of people who were born in foreign countries. DOJ officials are targeting nearly 400 US citizens, calling it the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history. These cases are extremely unusual, and denaturalization has so far only been pursued when a person is accused of obtaining US citizenship through fraud or convicted of certain crimes. The naturalization process is extremely rigorous, and applicants are subjected to arduous vetting before even being approved. The New York Times reports the Trump administration is considering a plan to deport hundreds of Afghan refugees who assisted US forces during the US invasion of Afghanistan, sending them to the Democratic Republic of Congo, or a third country they have no ties to. More than 1,000 Afghan refugees, many of whom served as US interpreters, have been stranded in Qatar for over a year, since Trump officials halted their resettlement to the US after they were evacuated from Afghanistan. The group includes over 400 children and family of US service members. The U.S.-based aid group, Afghan Evac, said refugees now have to choose between possibly being deported to a third country or be returned to Afghanistan under Taliban rule where they could be killed. Advocates are demanding the release of an Iranian Ph.D. student who was detained earlier this month and has been transferred to multiple ICE jails. Yusuf Azizi was taken outside of his home after a return from dropping off his 11-year-old daughter at school and 3-year-old son at daycare. Both of his children are US citizens. He and his wife have lived in the US for over a decade. Azizi has reportedly been detained across ICE jails in Louisiana, Texas and now Arizona. Advocates say they believe he's being targeted over media appearances in which he provided commentary on U.S.-Iran relations. In related news, DropSite News has confirmed two Iranian women detained by ICE are not related to the late Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, like Trump officials claimed. Hamida Soleimani Asfar and her daughter Serena Hosseini were arrested earlier this month at their home in Los Angeles. At the time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that two women were relatives of Soleimani. But a review of Iranian birth records and other personal documents by DropSite found no connection to Soleimani or his extended family. The Trump administration is refusing to release them. In Michigan, hundreds of immigrants detained at the ICE North Lake facility in Baldwin launched a hunger and labor strike earlier this week, denouncing medical neglect, prolonged confinement and other dangerous and inhumane conditions. The action was reported by the advocacy group No Detention Centers in Michigan, which said an estimated 200 immigrants had joined by Tuesday. Since Trump returned to office, there's been at least one reported death at the for-profit facility, which is operated by the private prison company GeoGroup, as well as multiple suicide attempts. The Philadelphia City Council has approved a series of measures that would limit ICE operations. The ICE Out legislation ends local collaboration with ICE in raids and arrests, shields private personal data from being shared with federal immigration agents, bans ICE agents from entering hospitals, libraries and other city facilities, among other prohibitions. The ICE Out bill was introduced by Philadelphia Councilmembers Kendra Brooks and Ru Landau. Councilmember Brooks spoke as the room erupted in cheers.

Speaker 6:
[10:35] This legislation shows that Philadelphia fans are not afraid to stand up to the Trump administration. We are not afraid to stand up to our neighbors, and we do not take kindly to bullies who try to intimidate people in our communities.

Speaker 1:
[10:56] To see our interview with Philadelphia City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, go to democracynow.org. A court in Kuwait has acquitted U.S.-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shahab-Eldin on charges of spreading false information and harming national security after he posted about the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran on social media. Shahab-Eldin is expected to walk free from a Kuwaiti prison today, capping 52 days behind bars. He was arrested March 2nd after he shared photos and videos of a US fighter jet that crashed in Kuwait on his sub-stack page, content that was not exclusive to him and had appeared on other platforms. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Shahab-Eldin's arrest as part of a much wider crackdown on online journalism and free expression in Gulf nations. A US. Army Special Operations soldier involved in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been arrested and charged with illegally betting on his ouster on the polymarket prediction market. The Justice Department says Master Sergeant Ganon Ken Van Dyke earned more than $400,000 on the trades. He faces charges including unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, the theft of non-public government information, and commodities and wire fraud. At the White House Thursday, a reporter asked President Trump about the indictment. Trump responded, I'll look into it.

Speaker 4:
[12:33] The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino. And you look at what's going on all over the world and Europe and every place they're doing these betting things, I was never much in favor of it. I don't like it conceptually, but it is what it is.

Speaker 1:
[12:50] President Trump is a longtime casino magnate whose businesses filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection four times between 1991 and 2009. His son Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to the two leading prediction markets, the Polymarket and Cal-She. President Trump's son Eric Trump is touting a $24 million Pentagon contract awarded to the robotics firm Foundation Future Industries, where he serves as chief strategy adviser. The contract will fund testing of its phantom humanoid robots for future military applications. Here's Eric Trump speaking on Fox Business about the deal.

Speaker 7:
[13:35] You know I got involved with crypto in a very big way because we had to win that digital revolution. We have to win robotics in the United States of America.

Speaker 1:
[13:44] Democratic lawmakers have blasted the deal as a clear example of nepotism and corruption. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote, quote, Is the Pentagon just a cash machine for Trump's kids now? This looks like corruption in plain sight, Warren said. The data mining firm Palantir is calling on the United States to reinstate the military draft, saying free and democratic societies need hard power to prevail. Palantir's call came as part of a 22-point manifesto celebrating the virtues of US power and warning Silicon Valley has lost its sense of direction. It also argues some cultures are inferior to others and blames Europe for demilitarizing after World War II, arguing, quote, the post-war neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone, unquote. The manifesto was based on the writings of Palantir's chief executive, Alex Karp. It prompted more than 200,000 people in the United Kingdom to petition the government to break contracts with Palantir, with some members of parliament comparing it to the ramblings of a supervillain, unquote. Palantir is a major US government contractor, holds a contract with the US. Army worth up to $10 billion over the next decade. In more tech news, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, says it will lay off 10 percent of its workforce. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects many of Meta's white collar jobs to be replaced by AI-powered systems. Shareholders of Warner Brothers Discovery have approved a $111 billion merger with David Ellison's Paramount Skydance. If the deal is approved by federal regulators, it will create a media conglomerate unrivaled in US history, spanning news, sports, movies, video games, theme parks and more, all controlled by Paramount chairman David Ellison, a vocal supporter of President Trump. On Thursday, members of Congress joined protesters on the National Mall, close to where David Ellison hosted a lavish invitation-only dinner to honor President Trump at the US. Institute of Peace, ahead of the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend. This is Craig Aaron, president of Free Press and Free Press Action.

Speaker 8:
[16:14] And this incredible concentration of media power, the idea that one company could own two of the five biggest movie studios, that it could own CNN and CBS and HBO and a big piece of TikTok, all under one corporate umbrella, is just too much media power in too few hands.

Speaker 1:
[16:35] At the Hague, judges at the International Criminal Court Thursday confirmed murder charges against former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte as crimes against humanity, formally paving the way for him to stand trial. Judges ruled prosecutors have presented substantial evidence that Duterte created, funded and armed death squads that killed as many as 30,000 people in so-called anti-drug operations. And the White House Thursday formally reclassified cannabis as a Schedule 3 substance, paving the way for the Food and Drug Administration to study its medicinal uses. For over half a century, the drug was listed under the US. Controlled Substances Act as a Schedule 1 substance, a list that includes heroin, ecstasy and peyote. The reclassification, however, does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under federal law. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in Seattle, Washington. We begin today's show in Lebanon. On Thursday, President Trump announced the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire will be extended by three weeks. Despite the announcement, Israel is continuing to carry out deadly strikes in southern Lebanon. On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed five people, including the prominent Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil, a correspondent for the daily newspaper Al-Aqbar. Khalil and her colleague, photographer Zineb Faraj, were reporting from southern Lebanon when an Israeli drone struck a car near them, killing two civilians, Amal and Zineb, then sought shelter in a nearby building. But Israel then struck that building as well in what's been described as a double tap strike. Rescue and medical workers rescued Zineb Faraj, but came under fire before they could rescue Amal. They were prevented from returning to the site for hours. Amal Khalil died by the time her body was recovered over six hours later. She at least the ninth journalist killed in Lebanon this year. The Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, accused Israel of the, quote, deliberate and consistent targeting of journalists in an effort to, quote, conceal the truth of its aggressive acts against Lebanon, unquote. The Lebanese prime minister, Nawaf Salam, called the killing a blatant war crime and a crime against humanity, unquote. On Thursday, thousands gathered for the funeral of Amal Khalil. At the funeral, the Lebanese reporter Ibrahim Dawi recounted learning about the death of his colleague.

Speaker 5:
[19:26] At exactly 11 p.m., one of my friends in the army called me. He told me, Ibrahim, step aside for a bit. My heart skipped a beat. He told me, there's bad news. He said, Amal is gone. I said, you must have found her. Amal is strong. Amal is a hero. Amal knows how to hide. She has 20 years of experience in wars. She knows where to go. I said, are you sure Amal was killed? He said, yes, Amal was killed.

Speaker 1:
[19:50] Amal Khalil's brother Ali also spoke out at her funeral on Thursday.

Speaker 2:
[19:59] Amal, after all, she's not just my sister and not just a member of our family. Amal is a journalist, a media professional. There is a ministry responsible for her, a ministry that demands her rights. It's not me personally who demands them. As my sister, I'll take her to her grave and fulfill my duties towards her. But her professional rights are with her ministry and with institutions. There's no charter, no charter, no law in the world, none of them, that allows targeting a journalist.

Speaker 1:
[20:27] Amal Khalil was 43 years old. She'd worked as a reporter for 20 years. Al Jazeera reports Amal had previously received direct threats from an Israeli phone number on WhatsApp warning her to stop reporting. In 2024, Amal Khalil told local media she'd received an Israeli death threat warning her to leave southern Lebanon or risk decapitation.

Speaker 9:
[20:57] I received direct targeting on my phone from the Israeli Mossad. They threatened to kill me. They literally said, We will separate your head from your shoulders if you don't leave from the south. They advised me to leave the south.

Speaker 1:
[21:10] This is Democracy Now, democracynow.org. I'm Amy Goodman in Seattle, Washington, with Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan.

Speaker 10:
[21:20] Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

Speaker 1:
[21:26] Well, we're joined now by two guests. Steve Sweeney is the Lebanon Bureau Chief for RT, the Russian news channel. He was injured in an Israeli strike last month. He's in Beirut. In Paris, we're joined by Sara Kouda, the Middle East and North Africa Regional Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Sara, let's begin with you. You have a new article headlined, We Had Amal Khalil by Her Hands Grip. Then Israel Murdered Her. Can you lay out what you understand happened on Wednesday?

Speaker 11:
[22:07] Yes, of course. Thank you, Amy, for having me. So the circumstances surrounding Amal Khalil's death, really, it raises multiple overlapping concerns. Amal was on an assignment with her colleague Zainab. They were heading to the south, to Bint Jbeil, and on their way, there was a strike close by to them. So they ran away and sheltered in a building. And then this is where the building where they were sheltering was a strike, as you mentioned. And it was known that those two journalists were sheltered and trapped inside this building. Zainab managed to, sorry, Amal herself, she managed to call her family and call the Lebanese army to inform them about their situation. And yet the Red Cross was not able to get to them in time and rescue Amal. At the beginning, the Red Cross was able to go there. They were able to rescue two civilians and Zainab. But then under fire, they had to leave, because also Amal was deep under the rubble. So they have to leave. And when they tried to come back, they were blocked. Eventually when they were able to go there, she was killed, she was dead, and it was too late. If this obstruction did not happen, we might have Amal alive between us today. But because of the obstruction, she is killed today. And this is what makes this constitute of a war crime and requires an international investigation. Otherwise, the killing of Amal would be the same as the over 260 journalists who has been killed by Israel over the three past years with full impunity.

Speaker 10:
[24:01] And Sarah, of course, the Israelis continue to deny that they target journalists. Sarah, what do you make of the fact that Amal herself had claimed that she had gotten threats from an Israeli number in the past and that she was told to stop reporting?

Speaker 11:
[24:20] Israel has a pattern in denying these claims and also smearing journalists saying that they are terrorists and they attacked them and killed them because they are terrorists and a threat on Israel. So this is not new. And for Amal being a threat, several journalists, including the Journalists Union in Lebanon, they were aware of these threats and they saw the messages. So they are not claims. They are true. They are correct. And Israel has this pattern since 2023, threatening journalists. We have seen this with Anas El-Sharif in Gaza, with Hamza al-Dahdouh in Gaza, and with other journalists around the region.

Speaker 10:
[25:05] I also like to bring in Steve Sweeney to the conversation. A British correspondent for Russia Today. You were at Amal's funeral. You knew her. Could you talk about her?

Speaker 12:
[25:20] Well yes, I mean, the brutal killing of Amal Khalil is not only a tragedy, but as the previous speaker said, it's a war crime. Now Amal had been working in the field for 20 years since the 2006 war. She was very well known. She was very well loved by everybody. We call her the Queen of the South and she belonged to the people. She was, what she did was incredibly unique. This work that she was doing, raising the voices of the people, particularly in the south of Lebanon. She would go from village to village speaking to them and they were telling their stories about the brutality that had been meted out to them for decades by the Israelis. So she was a very, very powerful voice. She was an experienced journalist as well. When we heard the news that she had been caught up in the Israeli airstrikes and that she was trapped under the rubble, we were all waiting with bated breath really to see what happened. And as we've heard, the Israelis blocked those rescue efforts. They attacked the emergency services, the civil defense workers, the Lebanese army to stop them from retrieving the body. And Amal herself had received some very serious death threats from the Israelis over the years threatening to behead her, warning her to keep out of the south. Now it's a testament to her steadfastness of not just of Amal actually, of all of those journalists working in the south of Lebanon that they're refusing to leave the field. Now this is what Israel is trying to do. It's trying to prevent the truth from being reached by a much, much wider audience to see the war crimes that are being carried out there on a daily basis. Now our crew, the RT crew, myself and my colleague, Ali Riddes-Baty, we were also targeted in an airstrike reporting from the Chasmia Bridge. Now Israel consistently says that it doesn't target journalists. It's repeated this again since they killed Amal. But you have to remember, Israel has the most advanced military technology in the world, but it also has the most advanced surveillance technology in the world. It uses artificial intelligence, for example. It knows every single car number plate, every single vehicle. It reads our messages. It listens to our conversations. This is why we talk about these strikes being deliberately targeted. Now in our case, they claim that it wasn't, but there's absolutely no doubt in our mind that this was an attempt to kill us. You can see from the footage where the missile strikes the bridge, the bridge was already destroyed. It was no longer, there was no military objective in targeting the bridge. We had also consulted with the Lebanese Army who have a barracks or a base at the end of the bridge. And they said, yes, it's perfectly safe. It's fine for you to go and film. Now had that bridge been under threat at any stage during our time on the bridge, then the Israelis would have got a message to the Lebanese Army via UNIFIL. This is generally what happens in those situations, asking them to pull away and withdraw. Pull away from the bridge, and then they'll get back in touch to let them know that it's safe. So the attack on us, the killing of Amal, and then just a few weeks ago, we had the killing of Ali Schwabe, Fatima Fattuni, and Mohammed Fattuni, again, in a targeted strike. Israel again admitted to carrying out that strike. They said that they were targeting Ali Schwabe. They said that he was a member of Hezbollah's elite Radwan force. Now, again, this is inconceivable. The photograph that they published, as Fox News discovered when they asked the IDF, they admitted that it was photoshopped and they didn't have any other evidence. But this is part of a pattern that we've seen with the smearing of journalists. They've tried it again with Amal. They've said that she was in the field. She was giving out Hezbollah positions. She'd come from Hezbollah military positions, this kind of thing. Exactly the same narrative that we saw being played out in Gaza, where they've killed hundreds of journalists. Now, Israel, for all that it says, it's killed more journalists in the past, well, since October 2023, than were killed in the First World War, Second World War, Vietnam War, Afghan War and Iraq Wars combined. So it's a complete fallacy to say that they don't target journalists. The issue is mainly that if any other country had committed acts of these massacres of journalists in the way that Israel does, any other country in the world would find themselves isolated on the world stage. They'd be subjected to sanctions, arms embargoes, trade embargoes. But instead, the opposite is happening. The killing of journalists is continuing, while the most powerful nations on the planet, including the United States and Britain, continue not only to give the political support, but the military support to enable these acts to be carried out. So they are equally as culpable for the deaths of Amal, for the deaths of Ali, Fatima and Mohammed. They are equally as culpable as Israel. They are the ones that load the gun, while Israel pulls the trigger.

Speaker 1:
[30:38] Steve Sweeney, just to be clear on that day in March, I wanted to go to a short clip of what happened to you.

Speaker 12:
[30:47] Further rocket attacks were reported against Nahria. On a minute.

Speaker 1:
[31:00] So, that's Steve Sweeney, Lebanon bureau chief for RT, the Russian news channel, Israeli airstrike right behind him. And I also wanted to ask you, Steve, about the Lebanese president weighing in, in the case of Amal. Aid workers tried to get to her. They had gotten to Zineb. She had a terrible head wound. But explain what happened, about a sound bomb and live ammunition. And the Lebanese president, Aoun, said that the Lebanese Red Cross should be able to save her after hours, where they could not?

Speaker 12:
[31:43] Well, yes, that's right. This statement from the Lebanese presidency and again from the prime minister in Aos Elam, denouncing the attackers' war crimes. President Aoun said, of course, that the civil defense workers, the emergency workers should be able to get to the journalists as they were trapped under the rubble. Now, there's been some criticism levelled at the pair of them, at Joseph Aoun and now Aos Elam. What people are saying is, well, there's, at the moment, there's this discussion around sovereignty, there's these so-called peace talks and negotiations. But President Aoun had to effectively beg Israel to allow the emergency services to enter what is essentially Lebanese sovereign territory to rescue Lebanese citizens. So there's some criticism that's been levelled at him by other journalists, by Amal's family as well, because she lay under that rubble for seven hours whilst the emergency services were blocked from entering. They were attacked, yes, with soundbombs, with live ammunition. Even when Zainab Faraj was rescued, when she was being taken to the hospital, that ambulance came under fire. You can see and you can find these images on social media if you don't have them. But there are bullet holes in the ambulance that took her to hospital. Now, this is nothing new. The attacks on emergency workers are nothing new. This is something that's been happening fairly consistently, particularly in the south of Lebanon. Since the Israeli escalation on March 2nd, there's been nearly 2,500 people killed. And around 100 of those are emergency workers. Now, we've seen in that period, they called it a ceasefire. But during that time, it's really just this announcement of the three additional weeks by Donald Trump. Essentially it's an extension allowing Israel to carry out more war crimes in the south. So, they created this so-called yellow zone, which is the Gaza-style yellow zone, which means 55 settlements, border towns, villages are effectively cut off. The local people, the people that live there, are not being allowed to return. Their homes are being detonated. Entire settlements have been completely destroyed. Hospitals have been destroyed. Ambulances have been set on fire. Schools have been detonated.

Speaker 1:
[34:12] Steve, we have to break, but I wanted to go back to Saracuda to finally ask you about another story the Committee to Protect Journalists has been closely following. A court in Kuwait has just acquitted the US. Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shahab-Eldin on charges of spreading false information and harming national security after he posted about the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran on social media. He's expected to walk free from a Kuwaiti prison today, capping 52 days behind bars, posting video that others posted, including the national networks here in the United States. Can you explain what happened and what he faced and what you think will happen today?

Speaker 11:
[34:56] Thank you, Amy. It's very difficult to move from a very tragic and sad story to another good one. Finally, Ahmed Shahab-Eldin has been acquitted from the charges against him. At CPJ, we are so relieved for this information. We do not have a lot of information from his international legal team on what will happen and what's going to happen today or the coming days. But it is known that he has been fully acquitted from all charges against him. Ahmed Shahab-Eldin was visiting his family during the Iran War. It is known that since March 2nd, he stopped posting or appearing in public. It was known also that on March 3rd, he was arrested because he reposted on his social media accounts a video that was taken and verified by other international media outlets. And he just reposted this video. He was arrested because of that. And, of course, one of the charges on him was anti-state charges, because the Kuwait, just like other Gulf countries, they forbidden any kind of media footages, the geography or reporting on what was happening during the Iran war in the Gulf.

Speaker 1:
[36:26] You have talked about his arrest. The CPJ has, as part of a much wider crackdown on online journalism and free expression in Gulf nations, Sara.

Speaker 11:
[36:39] That's true, because since the war started, from day number one, since the Iran war started late February this year, almost every single Gulf country has put out new rules and new laws that are restricting freedom of expression. They banned taking photographs or publishing anything or even speaking in a very casual way, not in a journalistic manner about what is happening. Those are very concerning because we are talking about countries that already have a tight grip on the press and freedom of expression. When they even tighten this more and put out more laws that are restricting journalists and freedom of expression and citizen journalists, we are talking about a severe decline in freedom of expression in countries that the people, the citizens are in much need for verified information to know what is happening around them. So we are also depriving the information consumers from their right to know what is happening.

Speaker 1:
[37:48] Sarah Kouda, I want to thank you for being with us, Middle East and North Africa regional director at the Committee to Protect Journalists. And I want to thank Steve Sweeney, the Lebanon Bureau Chief for RT. He was speaking to us from Beirut, she from Paris. Coming up, New York City Councilmember Chiosé. He was violently arrested earlier this week at a protest against deed theft, a practice that has led to many evictions of longtime homeowners. Stay with us. Thank you. This is Democracy Now, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan González. Four people were arrested Wednesday in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn after gathering in support of Carmela Charrington, a resident fighting eviction from her longtime family home. Supporters gathered in front of a brownstone on Jefferson Avenue as marshals arrived to carry out the eviction. When they couldn't get through, police were called. Brooklyn Councilmember Chiosé was among those police arrested. He was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed as protestors chanted, Who do you serve? Who do you protect? Homeowner Carmela Charrington and local housing advocates say the sale of her property to investors in 2024 was a form of deed theft, a criminal practice where predatory speculators use forgery, deceit or fraud to illegally transfer ownership on paper and sell properties without the knowledge or full understanding of rightful owners. Bedford-Stuyvesant is a rapidly gentrifying, historically black neighborhood where elderly homeowners are often targeted by speculators. From 2014 to 2023, officials reported 1,500 complaints of deed theft in Brooklyn alone. The new owners of the Brownstone 227 Group LLC call the allegations of deed theft unequivocally false, pointing to the decisions of two New York state judges and the conclusion of the Attorney General's office, which called it a complex property dispute rather than deed theft. But advocates for Ms. Charrington, including New York City Councilmember Chiosay, say residents should not be evicted until all legal avenues have been exhausted. He's calling for a moratorium on evictions in cases where deed theft is suspected. Just this morning, Mayor Zoran Mamdani established the Office of Deed Theft Prevention, saying, quote, The theft of a home is the theft of a family's future. For more, we are joined by New York City Councilmember Chiosay in New York. Thanks so much for being with us. Can you start off by talking about why you were arrested and why you were there in Bed-Stuy this week?

Speaker 13:
[41:43] Well, first and foremost, good morning, Amy. Thank you so much for having me on. When I got a call from my constituent, Ms. Charington, she called in panic. Their marshals were at her door. She's a grandmother. There is a seven-month child that was in the house. As a council member and also as a human being, I found it to be my responsibility to show up and see how I could support, at least delay the eviction of her and her family. When I arrived on the scene, there were marshals, there were police officers. A crowd began to grow. More officers arrived at the scene. I tried to talk to the marshal to see if we could buy some time, engage in multiple conversations with Ms. Charington and her lawyer, to see if we could present a stay on evictions. When the marshal started moving in, in my soul, I could not let that take place. I could not see a family, a black family, within Bed-Stuy removed from a home. So I stood in front of the house. The marshal, several officers, you know, approached me, attempted to arrest me, body slammed me on the ground, cuffed me, and brought me into a police vehicle, which drove me to the local precinct.

Speaker 10:
[42:55] And, Councilman, could you talk about this whole issue of deed theft and the role of conservators and this particular group, 227 Group LLC, which has bought so far 119 properties in black and Latino neighborhoods?

Speaker 13:
[43:13] Absolutely. So as we see neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, Southeast Queens, Harlem become more desirable in the eyes of real estate companies and real estate brokers, we're seeing a rise in deed deft across our communities. Deed deft is basically the practice of stealing one's home through paper, using fraudulent schemes of forging signatures, or using even family members as a means to steal or occupy one's home to then sell it for millions of dollars. Again, as these properties are becoming more expensive, as more folks, white folks are moving into these neighborhoods, these homes are seen as more desirable and lucrative for these real estate institutions. And that's why deed deft has been rising. That's why communities like mine have not only been seeing rampant displacement and gentrification, but also an attack on homeowners to force them out of their homes.

Speaker 10:
[44:08] And could you talk as well about a particular Brooklyn attorney, 68-year-old Sanford Solny, who was convicted last year of 13 counts of third-degree criminal possession of stolen property. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for stealing 11 deeds. What's the significance of his case?

Speaker 13:
[44:27] Well, first and foremost, two and a half years is not nearly enough that someone should be convicted for stealing multiple homes within New York City or anywhere for that fact. He is just one of the many examples of those who are participating in deed theft. There have only been a couple of folks who have been held accountable and been brought to justice. But there are more deed thieves who are out there. Many of these schemes are complicated and complex, which is why some of these cases take so long to process. And why so many of these individuals and deed thieves who are participating in deed theft are not brought to justice for some time. He is just one of the many who we are advocating to lock up. These are individuals who are participating in violent evictions of homeowners. And we saw an example of that taking place a couple of days ago.

Speaker 1:
[45:18] And, Chiosi, your response to Mayor Zoran Mamdani today, establishing the Office of Deed Theft Prevention, saying, quote, the theft of a home is the theft of a family's future. What exactly will this mean? What kind of resources are going to be put into this office?

Speaker 13:
[45:37] Absolutely. So, before I endorsed Zoran as mayor last year, I had a conversation with him and his team, multiple conversations with him and his team about how important deed theft was to me and my constituency. He made a pledge on the campaign trail to make an investment in opening a mayor's office to prevent deed theft. And today, he's fulfilling that promise. And we've been working with his office over the past couple of weeks of what this office would look like. Generally, it will circumvent communication between the various different city agencies through the state attorney general's office, as well as different district attorney's offices, and making sure that we're not only preventing deed theft and doing educational campaigns for homeowners alike who are worried about how they could be victims of deed theft, but we'll also be providing them with resources on how to defend against deed theft. Looking into how we could hire experienced attorneys who could fight back against these cases. A lot of the cases that we see when it comes to deed theft and when victims come to our office, there's a passing of the buck of who's responsible for holding these deed thieves accountable. This office will circumvent all of that communication and making sure that we are addressing the root cause of this problem and identifying who can truly enforce and prevent deed theft from taking place within our communities.

Speaker 1:
[46:53] Chi-O-Say, I want to thank you for being with us. New York City Councilmember arrested this week as he tried to stop the displacement of a woman in Bed-Stuy from her home. Thank you. Coming up, Muskism, a Guide for the Perplexed. Professor Quinn Slobodian looks at the ideology of Elon Musk.

Speaker 9:
[48:34] Ironic whistling for the melody.

Speaker 1:
[48:47] Billy Bragg singing Tomorrow's Gonna Be a Better Day in our Democracy Now! studio back in New York. I'm Amy Goodman in Seattle for the opening of the film about Democracy Now! Steal this story, please. Juan Gonzalez is in Chicago, where we'll be headed soon. We end today's show with a look at the ideology and influence of Elon Musk, the richest person in the world with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $800 billion. Musk runs rocket company SpaceX, AI startup XAI, electric car maker Tesla, and the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. His political influence extends from using his massive platform to advance controversial ideas, his political donations, as well as his role leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a quasi-governmental agency that oversaw chaotic layoffs and cutbacks across government agencies. In the new book Muskism, A Guide for the Perplexed, authors Quinn Slobodin and Ben Tarnoff look at the world view that shaped Musk and the ideology that's coalesced around him. They call it Muskism, an operating system for the 21st century. In a review of the book, prominent science fiction writer and journalist Corey Doctorow wrote in a review, quote, Muskism doesn't see to exit the state. It seeks to colonize and control it. For more, we're joined in New York by Quinn Slobodin, professor of international history at Boston University, co-author with Ben Tarnoff of Muskism. Thank you so much for being with us. If you can talk about the latest news right now and the empire that Musk has acquired, there's been a lot of news about space in the last few weeks, and particularly start off by talking about SpaceX and what he's doing.

Speaker 3:
[50:47] Yeah, SpaceX is kind of a, you know, a tough wake up call for people who have this impression that Musk had disappeared from the news, had had some kind of feud with Trump, and everything had now passed into the rearview mirror. In fact, we're gearing up for what is going to be likely the largest IPO in history with SpaceX, likely in June, projected to be somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion valuation, which will put it immediately as one of the top 10 biggest companies in the United States, potentially more valuable than Metta. And that's interesting because SpaceX itself has now become a kind of a merger of many of Musk's ventures. XAI, the AI company that was mentioned, is now part of SpaceX. x.com itself is now part of SpaceX itself too. So he's not just building a kind of a rocket company or a satellite company, but what we see is a vertically integrated ideological stack, where he can kind of build an echo chamber from low Earth orbit all the way back to Earth and create a kind of closed loop for the ideology that he wants to push out.

Speaker 10:
[51:57] And, and Quince Lemonia, could you talk some about his, about Musk's childhood, his being raised in South Africa, and the deep commitment that he has to racial hierarchy, industrial self-reliance, and what you call fortress futurism?

Speaker 3:
[52:16] Yeah, so what we try to work out in the book is where he gets this idea of the state as a kind of technologically enabled fortress that needs to be constantly reinforced and buttressed against external enemies and internal enemies. It turns out that late apartheid South Africa is kind of a perfect prototype for this version of organizing society and economic forces. In late apartheid South Africa, we think of it naturally as a very backward place, politically explicitly engineered to reinforce racial hierarchies, but they were also very high-tech country. They're importing nuclear technology from the United States and Israel. They built out their own bomb. They were using IBM mainframes to actually sort out populations and conduct the very practice of apartheid. They built out their own auto industry inside of South Africa. So it became a kind of enclosed enclave economy, which was nevertheless still plugged in to a global economic marketplace. And this is what Musk has been able to sell to, a vision of a kind of civilizationally hierarchical, technologically enabled enclave approach to the world in which states and then households too are sold products to protect them in a time of civilizational breakdown. And Musk then ideologically is incentivized to push more and more fears and anxieties out there to therefore produce more of a demand for the products he will sell to you to harden yourself against the coming unrest, the coming storm that he predicts is around the corner.

Speaker 10:
[53:54] And yet you have this contradiction that on the one hand Musk companies depend so much on government support or subsidies and yet he is trying to deconstruct government at the same time.

Speaker 3:
[54:08] Yeah, I mean, this was really the incentive for us to write the book is we feel like we needed a kind of a new narrative for this new era that had been entered into with big tech and digital capitalism for a while now we've been talking about libertarianism and even cyber libertarianism as if this is the main way to understand Silicon Valley that it's about Ayn Rand it's about visions of colonizing Mars but in fact at least since the rollout of ChatGPT in 2022 the big tech companies now realize they need a much closer relationship to the state than they had before if you're going to build out the kind of data centers that they are building out if you're going to have to have federal land opened up to new construction enormous sources of water new sources of energy you can't just do the kind of asset light version of social media style platform capitalism that they did for many years in the time of Web 2.0 you need to fuse with the state and someone like Peter Thiel you know pioneered this when he made his alliance with Trump in 2016 already but now as we know the rest of the Silicon Valley leadership class has followed behind literally standing and sitting behind Trump at the inauguration so any vision that this is libertarian I think is now not helpful it's a period of what we call state symbiosis a period of selling sovereignty as a service and as we know most recently by the Palantir Manifesto and the fast tracking of Project Maven into the military software and technology of war fighting in the United States to time when the fates of the state and the fates of these companies is now extremely wound up with one another and we need to sort of understand that dependency that's been produced because SpaceX too will be fast tracked into the index indexes so that people's pension funds, college retirement funds, all of these sort of things are now going to be part and parcel of often the quite vicious and xenophobic visions of the founder CEOs like Elon Musk.

Speaker 1:
[56:12] This is Elon Musk talking about an imagined future built on AI and robotics in which there's no money and everyone could get a free trip to Saturn.

Speaker 14:
[56:22] It's really the only path to amazing abundance is AI and robotics. Now wouldn't it be amazing if you could buy a trip to Saturn? Frankly, if you just have a trip to Saturn, I think things will be free in the future. It sounds nuts, but if you've got an AI and robotics economy that is anywhere close to a million times the size of the current Earth economy, literally any need you possibly want can be met. If you can think of it, you can have it. So I think Ian Banks, in his culture books, has it pretty much right, where there actually isn't money in the future and there's abundance for everyone. If you can think of it, you can have it.

Speaker 1:
[57:02] So in your final comments, Professor Slobodin, if you can talk about what he's saying and the changing goals of SpaceX from colonizing Mars to orbital AI data centers.

Speaker 3:
[57:15] Yeah, I mean, it almost has to make you laugh to hear these kind of low energy efforts he makes that seem to be just sort of free associating, what he hopes will be enough of a distraction that people won't actually look, A, what his empire is being built on, and B, what day-to-day he pushes out on his platform, X, which has now really become a megaphone for a far-right international. I mean, he's talking there about endless abundance and travel to Saturn. But what he talks about from day-to-day on X is the need for remigration, the dangers of racialized immigration, the dangers of falling white birth rates. Palantir's Manifesto talks about cultural hierarchies. So one has to look more at the day-to-day production of what they're doing, and more importantly, as you suggest, what the products are that they're actually building. So SpaceX now, its valuation is based on this idea that he's going to be able to put AI data centers in space, totally untested technology, but also that he'll be able to ramp up something called Starlink Mobile, so that he'll be able to provide direct-to-device and direct-to-laptop internet and connectivity for perhaps the entire planet. At which point, he's able to keep the legacy media, as he calls it, keep independent media sources like Democracy Now! out of the conversation and produce a kind of hermetically closed loop in which people are forced to then ingest the ridiculous things that he says on stage, like the kind that we just saw.

Speaker 1:
[58:39] Quinn Silbodian, professor of international history at Boston University, co-author of Muskism, A Guide for the Perplexed. That does it for today's show. I'll be appearing at several theatrical openings of the new documentary about Democracy Now! Steal the story, please. Tonight in Seattle, tomorrow at two screenings in Portland, Oregon. Then back to the IFC Center in New York. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan González.