Some things are eternal (Marxists would say “transhistorical”) truths. A will always equal A. (That remains true even if it doesn’t require cutting the top income tax rate, as Ayn Rand oddly seemed to think.) The Toronto Maple Leafs will never win the Stanley Cup. And center right commentators will criticize Karl Marx in weird ways without engaging with the substance of his work.
Human rights organizations and civil society groups condemned the detention of Tunisia’s former top anti-corruption official on financial charges as a politically motivated campaign of revenge aimed at silencing defenders of the nation’s fading democratic institutions.
Chawki Al-Tabib, 62, the former head of the National Anti-Corruption Authority and a past president of the Tunisian Bar Association, was ordered imprisoned by an investigating judge on charges of money laundering, abuse of office, and the embezzlement of public funds. The judge also ordered a freeze on Al-Tabib’s assets, Tunisia’s state-run news agency, TAP, reported on Tuesday.
The official narrative claims the suspected abuses date back to Al-Tabib’s tenure leading the anti-graft agency between 2016 and 2020. However, rights groups and legal advocates argue that the charges are a fabricated pretext to punish a vocal leader.
The local chapter of the nongovernmental organization Avocats Sans Frontières (Lawyers Without Borders) firmly rejected the arrest warrant, describing the prosecution as blatant “judicial harassment.”
The group stated that targeting Al-Tabib is a clear instance of a broader “policy aimed at taking revenge on defenders of the independence of constitutional bodies and the repeated attempts to silence the voice of defense for prisoners of opinion.”
The Intersection Association for Rights and Freedoms echoed these fears, stating that the arrest, which followed an April 10 police summons, “raises serious concerns about the existence of systematic practices aimed at exhausting and wearing him down through successive prosecutions.”
The detention has sent shockwaves through Tunisia’s legal community, which has increasingly found itself in the crosshairs of the state.
Boubaker Ben Thabet, the current head of the Tunisian Bar Association, issued a statement wholly rejecting the imprisonment of his predecessor, noting that Al-Tabib was jailed “without interrogation and before conducting an investigation into the case.”
Additionally, the Tunisian Human Rights League demanded Al-Tabib’s immediate release, condemning the arrest warrant as a “flagrant violation of law.”
Al-Tabib is no stranger to the government’s aggressive tactics. Following a sweeping seizure of emergency powers by President Kais Saied in the summer of 2021—a move critics have widely decried as a “self-coup” — Al-Tabib was placed under house arrest for 40 days.
During that period of political upheaval, Saied dissolved the National Anti-Corruption Authority, shut down the national Parliament, and dismantled the Supreme Judicial Council, effectively consolidating one-man rule.
Since the 2021 emergency measures, President Saied has continued to rule by decree. International and domestic rights groups have repeatedly warned that his ongoing dismantling of oversight institutions, coupled with the rising frequency of legal proceedings against civil society leaders like Al-Tabib, is fueling a systematic and dangerous rollback of Tunisia’s hard-won democratic gains.
The United Nations just released its 2025
Coverage of climate change in MediaCloud’s U.S. news database peaked at 3.4% of content in October 2021. This was in the run-up to the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, held from Oct. 31 to Nov. 13, and was at the time the world’s fourth-warmest October on record, although now it’s only the seventh-warmest. Coverage reached its nadir in January 2026, at just under 1%, and as of March 31, 2026, sat at 1.1%.
The term “climate crisis,” which carries with it a more urgent connotation than the more familiar “climate change,” has nearly disappeared from media lexicon. The term, which averaged 0.4% of coverage in 2021, reaching its peak in November 2021 at 0.7%, has averaged 0.1% of content in the first quarter of 2026.
Though it has never approached the usage of “climate change,” there was a time when the terms “crisis” or “emergency” to describe the heating planet were popularized in media and political lexicon, Public Citizen reported. In 2019, activist Greta Thunberg declared in a tweet:
It’s 2019. Can we all now please stop saying “climate change” and instead call it what it is: climate breakdown, climate crisis, climate emergency, ecological breakdown, ecological crisis and ecological emergency?
Months later, The Guardian changed its style guide to “introduce terms that more accurately describe the environmental crises facing the world.” The editors explained:
Climate change is no longer considered to accurately reflect the seriousness of the overall situation; use climate emergency or climate crisis instead to describe the broader impact of climate change.
In 2026, this terminology is arguably more applicable now than it has ever been. The years 2015 to 2025 were the hottest on record. Yet while The Guardian continues its policy, it appears increasingly isolated.
Under a president who called climate change a “con job” at the U.N., and whose Environmental Protection Agency edited its Climate Change Science page to blame global heating on debunked “natural causes” theories like changes in the Earth’s orbit and volcanic activity, news media should be redoubling their efforts to tell climate change stories with accuracy.
Instead, one cannot help but notice a correlation between Trump’s second presidency and dwindling media attention to the climate. From January 2021 through November 2024, climate pieces were an average of 2.2% of total news content per month. From December 2024, after Trump was elected, through March 2026, climate pieces averaged more than 46% lower, at 1.2%.
The lack of recent coverage is not for lack of newsworthy climate stories. In addition to the release of the 2025 U.N. report, in March alone:
The U.S. and Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran is causing global oil and gas price shocks — and is being reported as the worst energy crisis in history, topping the crises of the 1970s and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to Fortune. With the war dominating headlines — the terms “Iran” and “war” made up 10.5% of U.S. news coverage in March, per MediaCloud’s data — there were plenty of opportunities to discuss the war’s impact on climate.
While 5,012 stories in MediaCloud’s U.S. news database mentioned Iran and oil or gas prices during March 2026, only 219 (4.4%) mentioned those topics in relation to renewable energy or climate change.
Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, spoke at the 2026 Green Growth Summit in Brussels, explaining that a just transition from fossil fuels is not only an environmental imperative, but also an economic and national security one:
Sunlight doesn’t depend on narrow and vulnerable shipping straits, wind blows without massive taxpayer-funded naval escorts, [and] renewable energy allows countries to insulate themselves from global turmoil and to sidestep might-is-right politics.
Renewables like solar and wind are less beholden to geopolitics than fossil fuels, which are vulnerable to volatile shipping lanes and international relations in the specific regions of the world they are produced. Once solar panels and wind turbines are installed, they allow for energy to be produced locally and predictably. As a result, their prices remain stable over time, Global Witness reported.
Solar and wind have also been cheaper than fossil fuels for quite some time. A 2025 report from financial services firm Lazard found that utility-scale solar and wind have been the cheapest generation sources for 10 years, even without tax subsidies.
This is not the first time in recent years the corporate press failed to make the connection between war-inflated gas prices and the need for renewable energy. In June 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, U.N. sanctions on Russian oil led to a global shortage, causing the national gas price average to top $5 a gallon. Out of 93 nightly news episodes in June 2022 that discussed gas prices, only 18 made even a passing climate connection, and only one made a pro-climate argument, FAIR reported.
What’s more, as Mark Hertsgaard and Giles Trendle wrote for The Nation, “Modern warfare is inextricably linked with climate change.” Whether or not a war is fought over oil, the authors note, it cannot be fought without it. If the world’s militaries were a country, they would have the fourth-largest national carbon footprint.
Modern warfare emits astronomical amounts of carbon, which causes extreme heat and other dangerous weather events that impact livelihoods and destabilize economies — conditions that lead to more war.
And warfare also has immediate environmental and public health impacts, some directly linked to fossil fuels. After Israel attacked Iran’s oil facilities, black rain fell in Tehran. The heavy metals and toxic chemicals unleashed have the potential for major public health ramifications, leaching into food supplies and waterways in addition to air. Health risks from this pollution include lung problems, heart problems and cancer.
Climate change does not occur in a vacuum. It is relevant to virtually everything that happens on Earth, from natural disasters to your weekly expenses. Studies show that 80% to 89% of people worldwide want to see stronger action on climate change from their governments.
It is news media’s responsibility to reflect reality and to address the concerns of the communities they serve, regardless of the priorities of the administration in power. Failing to mention climate change where it is relevant will not stop it from occurring, but inattention will surely make it worse.
This story is part of the 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now.
The post Climate Coverage Plunges, Though Crisis More Dire Than Ever appeared first on Truthdig.
Protecting the integrity of the (A)GPL is an essential component in
protecting user freedom.
An international police sweep dismantled a leading Balkan Cartel drug trafficking cell Wednesday, arresting 12 suspects tied to the intercontinental smuggling of more than 4.2 tonnes of cocaine and cannabis.
Around 100 police officers executed arrests and searches across Montenegro and Germany, supported by authorities in Austria and Spain. Among the dozen arrested was a “high-value target” apprehended in Montenegro, according to Europol.
The suspects—who allegedly acted as financiers, coordinators and logisticians—are linked to 12 previous seizures across Europe and South America that yielded 2.7 tonnes of cocaine and 1.5 tonnes of cannabis. Europol said the network smuggled the drugs via shipping containers and air routes from countries including Bolivia, Thailand and the United States.
Following the sweep, the Montenegrin Higher State Prosecutor’s Office filed criminal complaints against 10 individuals for offenses including criminal association, unauthorized drug distribution and the illicit weapons trade.
“One suspect ordered and organized the maritime or air transport of cargo with large quantities of narcotic drugs … in Podgorica, Germany, Bolivia, Thailand, Belgium, and the Dominican Republic,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Neither Europol nor Montenegrin authorities specified which faction of the cartel was targeted. However, Montenegro is the notorious home base for the rival Kavač and Škaljari gangs, which have waged a bloody, years-long turf war across Europe fueled by large-scale cocaine trafficking, contract killings and money laundering.
The suspects arrested in Montenegro will appear before a state prosecutor within 24 hours to determine their pre-trial detention.
EFF calls on the Kuwaiti government to immediately release journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin. An award-winning journalist and television host who worked for Al Jazeera for many years, Shihab-Eldin—a dual American-Kuwaiti citizen—was arrested in Kuwait on March 3 while visiting family. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported yesterday that it is believed he has been charged with spreading false information, harming national security, and misusing his mobile phone.
According to the Guardian, Shihab-Eldin published footage of a U.S. Air Force F-15 E Strike Eagle crash, and posted to his Substack about the incident, noting that video circulating online showed local residents assisting the crash survivors.
Kuwait is one of several countries that has recently cracked down on reporting amidst the ongoing war. Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior posted on X on March 3—the same day Shihab-Eldin was arrested—warning people in the country “not to photograph or publish any clips or information related to missiles or relevant locations.” Earlier this month, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) highlighted a new decree in Kuwait banning the circulation of reports that seek to “undermine the prestige of the military” or erode public trust in it.
As reported by local media, the decree states that “those who intentionally publish statements or news or circulate false reports and rumors about military authorities resulting in weakening the trust in them and their morale, in addition to undermining their prestige, are punishable by three to 10 years in jail and a fine between KD 5,000 and 10,000.” The decree also imposes a penalty ranging from seven years to life imprisonment for “authorized people who cause financial loss or damage to the military authorities while carrying out a transaction, operation, project or case or obtaining any profit from such deals.”
In contrast to neighboring Gulf states, Kuwait has historically allowed the press to operate with relative freedom, and even introduced a law in 2020 protecting the right to access information. In practice, however, the government exercises considerable control over the media. Furthermore, there are several laws, including cybercrime legislation introduced in 2016, that restrict freedom of expression.
EFF is deeply concerned that Ahmed has not been seen nor heard from in nearly six weeks. We call on the government of Kuwait to immediately release Ahmed Shihab-Eldin.
On March 1, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps drone-bombed three Amazon Web Services cloud computing facilities in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Apps and banking services were disrupted, leading Amazon to “strongly recommend that customers with workloads running in the Middle East take action now to migrate those workloads to alternate AWS Regions.” The incident marked the first time a cloud center was targeted for destruction in war, opening a new chapter in military history.
For the general public, the turn of events was a wake-up call that warfare has gone digital, and there will be no going back. Big Tech already knew this, and the attacks represent a different kind of wake-up call. U.S. tech giants have worked closely with the Pentagon to facilitate remote-control wars of aggression from the skies, only to find their facilities exposed to counterattacks by cheaper deployments applying the same logic: to wage war remotely without incurring human casualties.
On March 11, the IRGC announced it would attack 29 offices and data centers operated by IBM, Palantir, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and Oracle throughout the Middle East, and on March 31, it threatened to attack 18 (primarily U.S. tech) firms on April 1. While they have yet to carry out the strikes, American tech corporations could sustain billions of dollars in damages if the war escalates.
The integration of Big Tech into U.S.-Israeli military ventures is nothing new. Palantir serviced the Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it tracked and analyzed “patterns of life” for military strikes and helped the Pentagon profile populations with biometrics. A wide variety of American tech giants have also assisted Israeli aggression and apartheid in Palestine, including its genocidal campaign in Gaza.
Even before the 21st century, modern American tech giants like Microsoft, HP and IBM scored contracts with U.S. and Israeli forces. This is to be expected, as war requires all sides to incorporate as much advanced technology into their militaries as possible to defeat the other side. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, however, have made digital technologies more critical than ever on the battlefield. Just this year, AI was used in the operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and to select targets in Iran. According to experts, Palantir’s AI-based Maven Smart System likely misidentified the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab as a military target. The attack, which occurred on Feb. 28, the first day of the U.S.-Israeli bombings, killed at least 168 people, over 100 of them children.
American tech corporations could sustain billions of dollars in damages if the war escalates.
All of this led Iran to describe data centers as legitimate military targets. On April 1, the IRGC reportedly stated, “Since the main element in designing and tracking assassination targets is American ICT [integrated control technology] and AI companies, in response to these terrorist operations, from now on the main institutions effective in terrorist operations will be our legitimate targets.” It urged employees and nearby residents to “distance themselves from their workplaces.”
Iran may have been bluffing, as it has yet to expand its attacks beyond its initial strikes on AWS. But it’s also true that the role of data centers in the Iran war is a cloudier affair than described in Iran’s statement. First, it is not clear how local data centers are being used in the war. According to reports, it is possible that cloud-based military operations are sourced from data centers outside the Persian Gulf region, which would be sensible given that data centers are out in the open and exposed to physical attacks.
Second, tech giants have developed technologies designed to safeguard the U.S. military from reliance on centralized clouds — a point that has not received much attention, if any, in popular accounts. For instance, Microsoft has noted that data collection and analytics at the “edge” — a technical term for a digital device that produces and consumes the information itself (e.g., a smartphone or local server) — is key to the battlefield. Imagine a small server in a drone that collects data itself without piping it back to a data center. “With those same analytics,” Microsoft said in 2019, “that same intelligence can live in a small box with the computing power of the cloud, like, for instance, inside that drone, then we can obtain those same insights. And, yes, it’s a real thing. And it’s happening today. That’s a lot of power that can provide a lot of protection for you and me, but also for that crucial tactical plan.”
While it is clear data centers play a key role in U.S. military campaigns, it’s less clear how the U.S. and its allies integrate edge computing into them.
Third, it’s been reported that large “hyperscale” data centers may be used by commercial and militaries, but little is known how much of this mixed use occurs. Amazon has an “AWS Top Secret” cloud service that appears to be physically separated from commercial data centers. This, again, seems sensible: It would be a monumentally stupid move if Iran could undermine U.S. military operations by simply drone-bombing commercial data centers out in the open in nearby countries. Journalists have done a poor job interrogating this point.
Fourth, we cannot be certain how much Iran or other future adversaries will care about the military role of American tech facilities when picking targets in the Middle East. While Tehran has couched its data center attacks and threats in military terms, the centers are also expensive units critical to the economic interests of their owners and the countries hosting them. Destroying a data center or regional office can exact economic costs in the millions or billions, much like energy or water infrastructure.
Iranian attacks on data centers come at a time when Persian Gulf states are diversifying their economies by shifting investments into AI (including the use of AI for oil exploration and production). Sometimes deemed “family-owned gas stations,” these oligarchic satellites aim to reduce their long-term reliance on oil by collaborating with American tech firms. In the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion for a minority stake in AI and cloud company G42 (one of Iran’s tech targets). The two companies say they will invest $1 billion “to boost AI skills in the UAE and broader region,” with Microsoft Azure as a backbone AI service provider.
Big Tech infrastructure will become prime military targets in 21st century warfare.
For its part, Saudi Arabia, which declared 2026 the Year of Artificial Intelligence, has multibillion-dollar military and tech deals with the U.S., including plans to invest over $100 billion in AI via a collaboration named Project Transcendence and the construction of a national AI backbone called Humain. Last November, the White House said Saudi Arabia would commit a “nearly $1 trillion investment … into U.S. infrastructure, technology, and industry,” up from $600 billion pledged earlier in the year. Other partnerships and investments worth billions are spreading across the region.
Running in parallel, the U.S. is successfully pressuring its Middle Eastern allies to cut some ties with Chinese tech. “We cannot work with both sides,” G42 CEO Peng Xiao told the Financial Times in 2023. The report said, “G42 had never had ‘deep AI research relationships’ with Chinese partners ‘because, frankly speaking, they’re not leaders in this domain,’” according to Xiao. Last November, the U.S. authorized the sale of $1 billion in high-level AI chips to G42 and Humain to “promote continued American AI dominance and global technological leadership.”
In other words, the United States is aggressively transitioning its Middle Eastern allies from dependent oil barons to digital colonies beholden to the American tech empire. The strategy aims to tighten the grip of Washington over the region, commercially and militarily, even as Trump puts its Gulf allies in the line of fire through the bombardment of Iran.
In March, the Trump administration announced a Cyber Strategy for America, which states that American responses to “cyber threats” will extend beyond the “‘cyber’ realm,” ostensibly to physical attacks. Whether the U.S. succeeds in sustaining its status as a global hegemon, it’s safe to assume that its Big Tech infrastructure will become prime military targets in 21st century warfare.
The post Bombs Over Big Tech appeared first on Truthdig.
On March 25, 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the design of their platforms, awarding $6 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the plaintiff in K.G.M. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. The verdict came one day after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in a separate case for violating consumer protection laws for deceiving users about the safety of its…
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Papua New Guinea’s prime minister sought to tamp down growing national anger and avert a security crisis on Wednesday after soldiers blockaded the country’s main military barracks over allegations of deep-rooted corruption within the armed forces.
The dramatic escalation began Tuesday night when dozens of soldiers formed a blockade around the headquarters of the Papua New Guinea Defense Force (PNGDF) in the capital, Port Moresby. The troops were protesting disciplinary actions taken against military personnel who had blown the whistle on alleged graft and favoritism in the military’s recruitment process.
“I call on all personnel currently involved in these activities to immediately cease, return to barracks, and report to their respective commanding officers,” Prime Minister James Marape said in a press release issued Wednesday morning. “Discipline is the foundation of our Defense Force, and any actions that undermine order and stability will not be tolerated.”
Shortly after the prime minister’s plea for calm, the country’s military chief, Rear Adm. Philip Polewara, issued a sweeping “close camp” order. The directive tightens security and restricts the movements of soldiers at barracks nationwide for one month. By Wednesday afternoon, the tense blockade around the Murray Barracks had been dismantled.
The controversy at the heart of the unrest began last month when footage of new military recruits surfaced on social media. The videos showed recruits – some noticeably older and less physically fit than standard enlistees – squatting and performing a painful exercise known as a “duck walk.” A subsequent video showed recruits being questioned about their enlistment despite exceeding the military’s strict age limits.
The ensuing public outcry prompted allegations that Defense Minister Billy Joseph was directly involved in the irregularities, allegedly favoring recruits from his own political district. Joseph stepped aside earlier this month as the scandal deepened, and Marape announced an independent investigation into the claims.
However, the military’s internal response to the leaks sparked further outrage. Four senior officers were discharged after raising concerns over the recruitment irregularities, according to a Friday report by Inside PNG, a member center of OCCRP.
Four additional soldiers working in the PNGDF’s Records Office, which oversees enlistment, were slated to face disciplinary proceedings on Wednesday.
Seeking to defuse the standoff, Marape announced that the military’s disciplinary processes would be immediately paused while an independent probe is conducted. An active-duty member of the military, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Wednesday’s scheduled disciplinary proceedings did not go forward.
“All officers are to be considered innocent until the full investigation is completed,” the prime minister said, adding that the inquiry will be led by the country’s chief secretary, supported by the state solicitor and an external team. “Those who have raised concerns through proper channels will be protected.”
While Marape characterized the soldiers participating in the barracks blockade as a small faction conducting an “illegal” roadblock, labor advocates and political opponents painted a different picture.
The Papua New Guinea Trade Union Congress argued that the soldiers involved were not criminals, but whistleblowers acting in the public interest. Opposition leader James Nomane pointed the finger squarely at the government, blaming the blockade on what he described as seven years of sustained political interference within the military ranks.
“An unstable Defense Force is a national security crisis,” Nomane said in a statement posted to social media.
The protesting soldiers have laid out several demands. In addition to a truly independent investigation, they are calling for the removal of the PNGDF’s chief of personnel, the reinstatement of the four discharged officers, the permanent dropping of all disciplinary charges against the whistleblowers, and the dissolution of the current defense council.
The internal crisis arrives at a sensitive moment for the Pacific nation’s military. The government is currently in the midst of a major strategic push to nearly double the size of the PNGDF, with plans to expand the force from approximately 4,000 members to 7,000 by 2030.