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Greetings All,
Despite the Herculean efforts of Leonard’s attorneys and doctors, his medical transfer was denied. The BOP has refused to treat Leonard’s vision for over a year. On New Year’s Eve, he was rushed to the hospital when a blood vessel ruptured in his eye. Leonard Peltier is going blind.
If Biden does not grant Clemency, we must hit the ground running. Please see www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org to view the Red Road Home Campaign, designed by Leonard’s lead counsel.
It is our great hope that Biden will grant Clemency and Leonard Peltier can speak on what he faced. Join us as we talk about Leonard Peltier and Indigenous Genocide on January 25th. Registration link:
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-Uy0V_ZDTLm0aQy8XQu9ZA#/registration
Two people who have stood with Leonard for decades and have had a profound impact on the world, Rose Styron and Alex Matthiessen, had an excellent piece published in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/07/joe-biden-leonard-peltiers-clemency
The people holding Leonard have vast resources. The New York Times has begged Rose for her exquisite writing — they would not touch this piece. Neither would the Washington Post. There is a media white-out on Leonard Peltier. The conditions in which he is being held are atrocious under even third-world standards — lockdowns that keep everyone in solitary confinement for weeks at a time. This is not mentioned in the media. State prisons have oversight laws. Federal prisons do not. Federal prisoners are allowed no communication with anyone while in lockdown. Coleman 1 operates in the dark. Please visit our Advocacy page if you would like to know more:
https://www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org/advocacy
Please consider raising your voice. Ask Congress to be Congress and hold these people accountable. If you are overseas, let the Senate Judiciary Committee know what this looks like to other nations. The United States is guilty of human rights violations that should distress everyone. As stated, it operates in the dark. It is time to shine a hard light on what it is doing to our people.
If you want to send a message of solidarity or a good joke to Leonard, he would love to hear from you. He likes the bad jokes also. Please write in 22-point bold font so he can make the words out. Leonard said to tell you all he deeply appreciates your letters, but he would love to be able to read them. Please number the pages in large numbers — the prison gives him copies of letters, and the pages are not in order.
LEONARD PELTIER #89637-132
USP COLEMAN I
PO BOX 1033
COLEMAN FL 33521-1033
Thank you all for your continuous efforts and support of Leonard Peltier. You are appreciated more than you know.
https://www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org/donate
In Solidarity,
Dawn Lawson
Personal Assistant Leonard Peltier
Executive Assistant Jenipher Jones, Esq.
Leonard Peltier Ad Hoc Committee
1-800-901-4413
dawn@freeleonardpeltiernow.org
www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org
Questions and comments may be sent to:
info@freedomarchives.org
To unsubscribe contact:
http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/options/ppnews_freedomarchives.org
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We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.
To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.
Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."
“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer
Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp
To view the film, please visit:
https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation
We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.
Miigwech.
Donate/ActNow:
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Historians Condemn Israel’s ‘Scholasticide.’ The Question Is Why.
By Pamela Paul, Jan. 9, 2025
"... the vote passed overwhelmingly, 428 to 88. Chants of “Free, free Palestine!” broke out as the result was announced." (In spite of the convoluted thoughts and conclusion of author Pamela Paul...BW)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/opinion/israel-gaza-scholasticide.html
Carl Godfrey
The history profession has plenty of questions to grapple with right now. Between those on the right who want it to accentuate America’s uniqueness and “greatness” and those on the left who want it to emphasize America’s failings and blind spots, how should historians tell the nation’s story? What is history’s role in a society with a seriously short attention span? And what can the field do — if anything — to stem the decline in history majors, which, at most recent count, was an abysmal 1.2 percent of American college students?
But the most pressing question at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, which I just attended in New York, had nothing to do with any of this. It wasn’t even about the study or practice of history. Instead, it was about what was called Israel’s “scholasticide” — defined as the intentional destruction of an education system — in Gaza, and how the A.H.A., which represents historians in academia, K-12 schools, public institutions and museums in the United States, should respond.
On Sunday evening, members voted in their annual business meeting on a resolution put forth by Historians for Peace and Democracy, an affiliate group founded in 2003 to oppose the war in Iraq. It included three measures. First, a condemnation of Israeli violence that the group says undermines Gazans’ right to education. Second, the demand for an immediate cease-fire. Finally, and perhaps most unusually for an academic organization, a commitment to “form a committee to assist in rebuilding Gaza’s educational infrastructure.”
“We consider this to be a manifold violation of academic freedom,” Van Gosse, a professor emeritus of history at Franklin & Marshall College and a founding co-chair of Historians for Peace and Democracy, told me, speaking of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The A.H.A. has taken public positions before, he pointed out, including condemning the war in Iraq and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We felt like we had no choice — if we were to lose this resolution, it would send a message that historians did not actually care about scholasticide.”
That kind of impassioned commitment animated the business meeting, typically a staid affair that attracts around 50 attendees, but which this year, after a rally earlier in the day, was standing room only. Clusters of members were left to vote outside the Mercury Ballroom of the New York Hilton Midtown without even hearing the five speakers pro and five speakers con (which included the A.H.A.’s incoming president) make their case.
Sunday’s meeting was closed to the media but attendees and accounts on social media described an unusually raucous atmosphere. I saw many members heading in wearing kaffiyehs and stickers that read, “Say no to scholasticide.” Those opposing the resolution were booed and hissed, while those in favor won resounding applause.
It’s perhaps not surprising, then that the vote passed overwhelmingly, 428 to 88. Chants of “Free, free Palestine!” broke out as the result was announced.
Clearly there was a real consensus among professional historians, a group that has become considerably more diverse in recent years, or at least among those members who were present. One could read it as a sign of the field’s dynamism that historians are actively engaged in world affairs rather than quietly graying over dusty archives, or it may have been the result, as opponents suggested, of a well-organized campaign.
But no matter how good the resolution makes its supporters feel about their moral responsibilities, the vote is counterproductive.
First, the resolution runs counter to the historian’s defining commitment to ground arguments in evidence. It says Israel has “effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system” without noting that, according to Israel, Hamas — which goes unmentioned — shelters its fighters in schools.
Second, the resolution could encourage other academic organizations to take a side in the conflict between Israel and Gaza, an issue that tore campuses apart this past year, and from which they are still trying to heal. At this weekend’s annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, for example, members are expected to protest the humanities organization’s recent decision to reject a vote on joining a boycott of Israel.
Even those who agree with the message of the A.H.A. resolution might find reason not to support its passage. Certainly it distracts the group from challenges to its core mission, which is to promote the critical role of historical thinking and research in public life. Enrollment in history classes is in decline and departments are shrinking. The job market for history Ph.D.s is abysmal.
Finally, the resolution substantiates and hardens the perception that academia has become fundamentally politicized at precisely the moment Donald Trump, hostile toward academia, is entering office and already threatening to crack down on left-wing activism in education. Why fan those flames?
“If this vote succeeds, it will destroy the A.H.A.,” Jeffrey Herf, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Maryland and one of five historians who spoke against the resolution on Sunday, told me. “At that point, public opinion and political actors outside the academy will say that the A.H.A. has become a political organization and they’ll completely lose trust in us. Why should we believe anything they have to say about slavery or the New Deal or anything else?”
The resolution isn’t a fait accompli. The A.H.A. Council, the organization’s governing board, must accept, refuse to concur with or veto the vote. A refusal would send the resolution to the organization’s 10,450-plus membership for a full vote. Instead, at its meeting on Monday, the council punted, issuing a terse statement that its decision will be postponed until the next meeting, sometime within the month. Until then, the A.H.A. will not take an official stance.
“The A.H.A. cannot, does not, and should not intervene everywhere,” Jim Grossman, the organization’s executive director and an opponent of the resolution, noted in a message to members. “As a membership organization, we keep our distance from issues that are controversial within and among our members. And we keep in mind that our effectiveness rests on our legitimacy, our reputation for even-handedness, professional integrity and appropriately narrow boundaries.”
That stance may have already been compromised. The group’s Iraq war statement in 2007, for example, condemned America’s involvement in Iraq and censorship of the related public record while also urging an end to the war. On Ukraine, its statement was more carefully phrased as a rejection of Vladimir Putin’s characterization of Ukraine as part of Russia as being ahistoric.
Those who approved this current resolution may believe they are acting on a moral imperative. But historians are trained to take into account the long view. I would argue that while historians should be free to take part in public affairs on their own, it would be better if the A.H.A. as an institution never weighed in on political conflicts. Some may call this “anticipatory obedience.” I see it as wisely stemming the tide of mission creep and supporting independent thought by scholars.
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2) ‘Completely Dry’: How Los Angeles Firefighters Ran Out of Water
As wildfires roar into residential neighborhoods, firefighters in California and elsewhere are finding that water systems can’t keep up with the demand.
By Tim ArangoMike Baker and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Jan. 9, 2025
Tim Arango reported from Los Angeles, Mike Baker from Seattle and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs from New York.
Capt. Kevin Easton and his firefighting team had already spent hours battling an out-of-control fire sweeping through Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades area, leaving gutted homes in its wake. Then, around midnight, their water lines started to sputter. Before long, the hydrants had run dry.
“Completely dry — couldn’t get any water out of it,” said Captain Easton, who was part of a small, roaming patrol of firefighters who were trying to protect the community’s Palisades Highlands neighborhood. Even on Wednesday afternoon — hours after the hydrants had gone dry — there was still no water. Houses in the Highlands burned, becoming part of the more than 5,000 structures destroyed by the Palisades fire so far.
Officials now say the storage tanks that hold water for high-elevation areas like the Highlands, and the pumping systems that feed them, could not keep pace with the demand as the fire raced from one neighborhood to another. That was in part because those who designed the system did not account for the stunning speeds at which multiple fires would race through the Los Angeles area this week.
“We are looking at a situation that is just completely not part of any domestic water system design,” said Marty Adams, a former general manager and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which is responsible for delivering water to nearly four million residents of Los Angeles.
Municipal water systems are designed for firefighters to tap into multiple hydrants at once, allowing them to maintain a steady flow of water for crews who may be trying to protect a large structure or a handful of homes. But these systems can buckle when wildfires, such as those fueled by the dry brush that surrounds Los Angeles’s hillside communities, rage through entire neighborhoods.
As urban growth spreads into wilderness areas around the country and climate change brings more challenging fire conditions, an increasing number of cities have confronted a sudden loss of water available for firefighting, most recently in Talent, Ore.; Gatlinburg, Tenn.; and Ventura County, Calif.
The problem can be especially acute during high-wind conditions, like those Los Angeles experienced this week, when firefighting aircraft could not safely make their usual aerial drops of water and fire retardant.
In Louisville, Colo., as firefighters were nearing depletion of water supplies in 2022, crews took the extraordinary step of pushing untreated water through the system. In 2023, on the Hawaiian island of Maui, firefighters battling a wildfire found their hydrants running dry as flames churned through the community of Lahaina, killing 102 people in the country’s deadliest wildfire in more than a century.
In that case, firefighters were confronted with many homes and pipes being destroyed simultaneously, causing water to gush across yards and streets when firefighters needed it in their hydrants.
Municipal water systems like the one in Los Angeles are designed to handle heavy loads, including those from large fires that might require multiple fire trucks to tap into the system at the same time.
Getting water to the upper reaches of hillside communities like Pacific Palisades can be a challenge. There, water is collected in a reservoir that pumps into three high-elevation storage tanks, each with a capacity of about one million gallons. Water then flows by gravity into homes and fire hydrants.
But the pump-and-storage system was designed for a fire that might consume several homes, not one that would consume hundreds, said Mr. Adams, the former leader of the city’s water department.
“If this is going to be a norm, there is going to have to be some new thinking about how systems are designed,” he said.
Ahead of this week’s dangerous weather conditions, the storage tanks above Pacific Palisades and other hillside communities affected by the fires were filled to capacity, officials said. But as the Palisades fire spread on Tuesday, the first tank there was quickly depleted. Hours later, the second one was empty. The third one was drained by Wednesday morning.
Janisse Quiñones, the chief executive and chief engineer at the city’s water department, said so much water was being pulled from the main water line during the fire that there was less water available to pump up toward the storage tanks.
By Thursday evening, Kristin M. Crowley, the chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, said firefighters had stopped tapping into the hydrants altogether.
“Right now, we’re not utilizing the hydrants,” Chief Crowley said.
She said firefighters were used to running out of water while battling brush fires and had trained for that possibility. Instead, she said, the key tool in battling these fires has been the aircraft that drop retardant and water — assets that were unavailable during the initial phases of the fires because of the high winds.
The supply of water ended up being only one of several challenges, as fire crews across Los Angeles County were overwhelmed by fires on so many fronts. In the Altadena area, where the Eaton fire burned through more than 13,000 acres and as many as 5,000 structures, firefighters also dealt with strains to the water system, but Chad Augustin, the chief of the nearby Pasadena Fire Department, said crews could not have stopped the fire’s early spread even with more water.
“Those erratic wind gusts were blowing embers for multiple miles ahead of the fire, and that’s really what caused the rapid spread of this fire,” Chief Augustin said.
Rick Caruso, the real estate developer and former candidate for Los Angeles mayor who served two stints as president of the Department of Water and Power, said he had a team of private firefighters deployed in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday night, helping to protect a major outdoor retail space he owns, Palisades Village, as well as some nearby homes.
All night, he said, the team was reporting that water was in short supply. He said it would take time to account for the supply problems, but suggested there appeared to be a shortfall in preparation.
“The lack of water in the hydrants — I don’t think there’s an excuse,” he said.
Traci Park, the Los Angeles City Council member whose district includes Pacific Palisades, said the city’s water systems were among several pieces of critically underfunded infrastructure.
“There are environmental catastrophes waiting to happen everywhere with our water mains,” she said, adding that some were a century old. “As our city has grown, we haven’t upgraded and expanded the infrastructure that we need to support it.”
She also raised the issue of the complexity of battling fires that are inherently wildland blazes, sweeping into urban neighborhoods — with firefighters unable to take advantage of wildland firefighting resources, such as aerial drops, that would normally be available to them.
“Our firefighters were out there yesterday fighting a raging wildfire with fire engines and fire hydrants — that’s not how you fight a wildfire,” she said.
Greg Pierce, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies water resources and urban planning, echoed the concerns over water systems that are designed for urban fires, not fast-moving wildfires. But redesigning water systems to allow firefighters to take on a broad wildfire would be enormously expensive, he said.
A more fundamental question, he said, is whether it’s a good idea to rebuild neighborhoods adjacent to wildlands, an issue that has been broadly debated across the West as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of fires on what is known as the wildland-urban interface.
Captain Easton, the 19-year fire department veteran who helped battle the Pacific Palisades blaze, said that there were other complications in addition to water supply, such as delays in getting additional support crews from other areas to the scene.
Los Angeles’s water and power department had sent trucks with additional water tanks to the area, he said, but they were in stationary positions, meaning firefighters had to go retrieve the water and bring it back to the fire.
“That causes problems too, because you get 500 gallons of water and you’ve got a house that’s on fire, you knock it down a lot and then you’ve got to go back and get refilled,” he said.
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3) Israeli Hostage Declared Killed in Gaza as Fears for Captives Mount
Hamza Ziyadne, 23, was abducted in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel alongside his siblings and father, whose body was also recovered this week.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Jan. 10, 2025
'The confirmation of Mr. Ziyadne’s death comes just a day after family and friends buried his father, 53-year-old Youssef Ziyadne, who was also taken hostage. The Israeli military said their bodies been found together in a tunnel under the southern Gaza city of Rafah alongside their dead captors. It was not clear when they were found."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/world/middleeast/israeli-hostage-declared-dead-gaza.html
The Israeli military said on Friday that Hamza Ziyadne, an Arab citizen of Israel held hostage in Gaza, had been killed in the Palestinian enclave, as efforts by mediators to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas to free hostages have seen little success.
Over 15 months after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023 prompted the war in Gaza, around 98 hostages remain in Gaza; roughly 36 are presumed dead by the Israeli authorities.
The confirmation of Mr. Ziyadne’s death comes just a day after family and friends buried his father, 53-year-old Youssef Ziyadne, who was also taken hostage. The Israeli military said their bodies been found together in a tunnel under the southern Gaza city of Rafah alongside their dead captors. It was not clear when they were found.
Before they were found, neither hostage had been designated as presumed dead by Israeli officials, who have sought to use intelligence to assess the condition of the remaining hostages. That was likely to further escalate fears among the families of the remaining captives in Gaza that their relatives might have already suffered the same fate.
It was not immediately clear how the Ziyadnes died: Some hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, while Israel has said that others were executed by their captors. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said on Wednesday — after Youssef’s death was confirmed — that the military was still investigating.
Israel’s Arab citizens, like Mr. Ziyadne, were not spared in Hamas’s attack. At least 17 were killed and several others taken hostage. Around 1,200 people were killed in the assault and 250 taken hostage, according to Israel.
Many, like Mr. Ziyadne, belonged to the Bedouin Arab minority, a group that has long lived on the margins of Israeli society. Historically nomadic herders, many Bedouins now reside in a constellation of cities and hamlets throughout southern Israel, some of which lack basic government services like running water and electricity.
Hamza Ziyadne, 23, was taken hostage alongside his father and two younger siblings, Bilal and Aisha, while at the Israeli kibbutz where his father worked. Bilal, 18, and Aisha, 17, were freed during a weeklong truce in November 2023 in which 105 Israeli and foreign hostages — mostly women and children — were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The Hostages Family Forum, which represents the captives’ relatives, said that Hamza Ziyadne was survived by his wife and two children. In a statement, the group described him as a “nature lover who had a deep affection for animals and was beloved by his friends.”
“Four family members were kidnapped, with only two returning alive,” the group said in a statement. “Youssef and Hamza, who survived a period in the hell of Gaza captivity, could have been saved through an earlier agreement.”
Months of efforts to bridge the gaps between Israel and Hamas on a cease-fire and hostage release deal have failed to bear fruit. Qatar and Egypt have led the talks, which are also being brokered by the Biden administration.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden said that “real progress” was being made in the negotiations, without providing further details. Officials on all sides have repeatedly voiced optimism over a breakthrough over the past several months, only to see hopes dashed a few days later over new obstacles.
For months, Israel and Hamas have leveled seemingly irreconcilable conditions for an agreement. Hamas has demanded an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as part of any deal to release hostages. Israeli leaders have said they will not end the war before Hamas is destroyed in Gaza and vowed to maintain overriding security control there.
Michael D. Shear in Washington contributed reporting.
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4) House Passes Bill to Impose Sanctions on I.C.C. Officials for Israeli Prosecutions
The action put the measure on track for likely enactment given strong support for it among Republicans, who now control the Senate, and President-elect Donald J. Trump.
By Karoun Demirjian, Reporting from Washington, Jan. 9, 2025
"The United States has sent Israel shipments of weapons worth billions of dollars since the start of the armed conflict, despite international condemnation of its assault on Gaza and accusations from human rights groups that its actions there are tantamount to genocide. Efforts to broker a cease-fire have eluded the Biden administration. Mr. Trump said this week that if Hamas did not release Israeli hostages by his inauguration, 'all hell will break out in the Middle East.'”
Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in Paris last year. Congressional Republicans have been trying to crack down on the court since May, when Mr. Khan announced he was seeking warrants for Israeli leaders. Credit...Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The House on Thursday passed legislation that would impose sanctions on officials at the International Criminal Court, making a frontal assault on the tribunal in a rebuke of its move to charge top Israeli leaders with war crimes for their offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
The bill instructs the president to freeze property assets and deny visas to any foreigners who materially or financially contributed to the court’s efforts to “investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute a protected person.” Protected persons are defined as all current and former military and government officials of the United States and allies that have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, such as Israel.
The measure is one of several that were pushed through the House by Republicans last year but died in the Democratic-led Senate, and is now all but certain to be enacted now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress and Mr. Trump is taking office on Jan. 20.
Last year, a similar measure drew some bipartisan support in the House but still faced resistance among many Democrats, who joined Republicans in criticizing the I.C.C.’s move to prosecute Israeli leaders but called the sanctions overly broad and ineffective. With Republicans now in charge, the barriers to the bill’s passage appear to have fallen away.
“The I.C.C.’s rogue actions only enable the terrorists who seek to wipe Israel off the map, and they cannot be allowed to stand unchecked,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on the floor this week. “In November, I promised that if Leader Schumer wouldn’t bring the I.C.C. sanctions bill to the floor, Republicans would. And we’ll soon fulfill that promise and have a vote to support our ally Israel.”
The 243-to-140 vote in the House, in which 45 Democrats joined all Republicans to support the bill, reflected the considerable bipartisan aggravation among lawmakers with the court’s decision to pursue Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity alongside the leaders of Hamas, whose deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, started a bloody backlash in the Gaza Strip.
“America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally,” Representative Brian Mast, Republican of Florida and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on the floor. He accused the court of antisemitism, trying to prevent the Israeli military from being successful and of stymying efforts to release Israeli and American hostages being held by Hamas.
“This bill sends an incredibly important message across the globe,” Mr. Mast added. “Do not get in the way of America or our allies trying to bring our people home. You will be given no quarter, and again, you will certainly not be welcome on American soil.”
The United States has sent Israel shipments of weapons worth billions of dollars since the start of the armed conflict, despite international condemnation of its assault on Gaza and accusations from human rights groups that its actions there are tantamount to genocide. Efforts to broker a cease-fire have eluded the Biden administration. Mr. Trump said this week that if Hamas did not release Israeli hostages by his inauguration, “all hell will break out in the Middle East.”
Congressional Republicans have been trying to crack down on the court since May, when its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, announced he was seeking warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and its defense minister at the time, Yoav Gallant, alongside Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza; Ismail Haniyeh, its Qatar-based chief; and Muhammad Deif, its top military commander. The House first passed a bill to impose sanctions on court officials and their associates just two weeks later.
In November, the court issued warrants for Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Gallant and Mr. Deif for war crimes and crimes against humanity. By that point, Mr. Sinwar and Mr. Haniyeh had been confirmed as killed by Israeli forces. Israel has also claimed to have killed Mr. Deif.
Proponents of the bill have argued that the sanctions are a necessary rebuke of the court’s move to equate Israel’s leaders with the top brass of a terrorist group like Hamas. They have also insisted that the measure is an important repudiation of what they see as overstepping by the court, since Israel, like the United States, has not consented to its jurisdiction.
The bill is “critically important not just for our friendship with our ally Israel but for our own national security, the protection of our men and women in uniform,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and the author of the bill, said on the floor. He argued that if the United States failed to impose sanctions on the court, U.S. service members could be targeted for their conduct in foreign conflicts.
The I.C.C., Mr. Roy added, “should have no authority over our people, no authority over the prime minister of Israel.”
Most Democrats objected to the legislation, arguing that it was trying to punish too wide a swath of people for the decision.
“Republicans want to sanction the I.C.C. simply because they don’t want the rules to apply to everyone,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts. “There is no international right to vengeance, and what we are seeing in Gaza is vengeance.”
The International Criminal Court claims jurisdiction over alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide that are committed by citizens of states that have recognized the court or occur in countries that have recognized the court. The Palestinian Territories did so in 2015, a few years after the United Nations admitted Palestine as an observer state.
The United States and Israel were among only seven countries that voted against the creation of the criminal court in 1998. Though both countries later became signatories to its founding document, the Rome Statute, neither country ratified it.
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5) Israel Strikes Ports and a Power Plant in Houthi-Controlled Parts of Yemen
Israel and its allies have escalated strikes against the Houthis to try to force them to stop firing on Israel and Red Sea shipping lanes, but it was not clear whether they would deter the Iran-backed militia.
By Aaron Boxerman and Ismaeel Naar, Jan. 10, 2025
Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem and Ismaeel Naar from Dubai.
Smoke rises from the site of an airstrike in Sana, Yemen, on Friday. Credit...Khaled Abdullah/Reuters
Israeli fighter jets bombed ports and a power plant in Yemeni territory controlled by the Houthis on Friday, the Israeli military said, in the latest attempt to force the Iranian-backed militant group to stop firing at Israel and commercial ships in the Red Sea.
Israel has escalated its strikes on the Houthis in recent weeks in response to repeated attacks by the Yemeni militia, which has been firing on Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
The United States and Britain have also struck Yemen repeatedly in an effort to secure international waterways from Houthi attacks. But it was far from clear whether Israel and its allies could successfully compel the Houthis to end their attacks through a bombing campaign.
Israel’s Air Force bombed the Hezyaz power station near Sana — the Houthi-controlled capital — not far from where thousands of Yemenis had gathered in a weekly solidarity rally with Palestinians. The ports of Hudaydah and Ras Isa, Yemen’s main oil export terminal were also attacked, the Israeli military said in a statement.
Experts have warned that attacking ports like Hudaydah, a major conduit for essential supplies in northern Yemen, could further worsen what is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Rocked by civil war for more than a decade, millions of people in Yemen face the threat of malnutrition, according to the United Nations.
The Israeli military said it had struck targets at sites that were being used by the Houthis for military purposes. One worker at the Hezyaz power station was wounded, according to al-Masira, the Houthi-affiliated broadcaster. There were no other immediate reports of serious casualties.
“The port of Hudaydah is paralyzed and the port of Ras Isa is ablaze,” Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said in a statement. “The message is clear: Anyone who harms Israel will be struck tenfold.”
The Houthis are more than 1,000 miles from Israeli territory and have survived numerous efforts to defeat them since they rose to power in Yemen’s decade-long civil war. The United States designates the Houthis as a terrorist group, and some of its regional allies — like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have targeted them as well.
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 prompted the Gaza war, the Houthis have fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. They have also hampered global shipping by firing at passing commercial barges in a self-declared effort to enforce a blockade on Israel.
Over the past two months, the Houthis have stepped up their attacks, sending Israelis across central Israel rushing for bomb shelters late at night as air-raid sirens blare. On Thursday, Houthi militants fired three drones at Israeli territory; the Israeli military said it intercepted them all.
Israel has bombarded Yemen several times in response — sending its fighter jets more than 1,000 miles to do so — but has struggled to decisively subdue the Houthis. The United States and its allies have also struck the Houthis repeatedly over the past year without decisively deterring them from future attacks.
After the strikes on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said “the Houthis are paying, and will continue to pay, a heavy price for their aggression against us.”
On Friday, Mr. Katz threatened to kill Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group’s leader, as well as its other commanders.
“No one is immune,” Mr. Katz said. “We will hunt you down and destroy the terror infrastructure which you built. Israel’s long arm will reach you, wherever you are.”
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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6) Once the Fires Are Out, California Must Remove Tons of Dangerous Debris
Clearing the toxic remnants of burned buildings around Los Angeles will require a complex and expensive mobilization. California has been there before.
By Mitch Smith, Jan. 11, 2025
When the flames in Los Angeles County are finally extinguished, the region will face the costly, time-consuming and heart-wrenching task of hauling away tons of toxic rubble. Given the scale of devastation in and around America’s second-largest city, that cleanup could become one of the country’s most complex debris removal efforts ever.
In each of the thousands of ash piles where homes once stood, there are remnants of lives upended. But the photo albums and football cards and family heirlooms are intermixed with a noxious cocktail of asbestos, gasoline and lead, a reality that will make cleanup extremely complicated.
“We kind of treat each of these properties as its own hazardous waste cleanup site,” said Cory Koger, a debris expert with the Army Corps of Engineers who has responded to several major wildfires, including the fire that destroyed much of Lahaina, Hawaii, in 2023.
The immediate focus in Southern California is putting out the wind-fueled fires that have burned for days, destroying thousands of structures, scorching thousands of acres and killing at least 11 people. But once the threat has passed, attention will more fully shift to dealing with debris fields in hard-hit areas like Altadena and Pacific Palisades, where homes that stood for decades burned down in minutes and where the charred remains of Jeeps and Cadillacs line the streets.
“Recovery planning really begins as soon as the fire starts,” said Jenn Hogan, the deputy director for disaster debris recovery operations at CalRecycle, a state agency that focuses on waste management and climate. “Once the fire is contained, you’ll start seeing a lot of those recovery resources hit the ground.”
Mark Pestrella, the Los Angeles County public works director, described a “tremendous amount of debris” that had already made its way into local reservoirs and filtration systems, hurting water quality. He said the debris was being moved in some cases to help firefighters maneuver through hard-hit areas, but stressed that the most significant handling and removal of the detritus would take time.
The process will be at once familiar and altogether unique. Even in a calamity-weary state where destruction has become so common that officials now refer to a “fire year” rather than a “fire season,” there is no playbook for what happened this week, when several blazes roared simultaneously in dense urban settings.
It is too soon to know the extent of the damage or the cost of cleaning up, but recovery experts struggled to name a disaster analogous to the one unfolding in Los Angeles. There were parallels, some said, to the 2017 Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa, Calif., or to a major earthquake or hurricane hitting an urban area, but nothing that seemed to provide a fitting model for the cleanup ahead. Some Californians said the destruction brought to mind a deadly 1991 fire in Oakland that destroyed more than 2,000 structures, or the Camp fire in 2018, which devastated the town of Paradise.
Unlike in some rural areas or mountain towns hit by fires, which might be hard to access with heavy machinery, recovery crews in Los Angeles will have the advantage of robust road infrastructure and a large local work force. But experts said they anticipated challenges in finding landfills to take the huge quantities of toxic material that will need to be “burrito-wrapped” in plastic and hauled away, as well as in managing the flow of high-bed dump trucks and other heavy equipment in a city already notorious for its traffic.
“If it takes two hours to dump a load, I mean, do the math on 1,000 properties,” said Alyssa Carrier, the founder and chief executive of AC Disaster Consulting, a private emergency management company that has worked on wildfire responses in Colorado, Florida and Oregon. “One house could be 15 loads,” she added, “so that’s going to be one of the biggest challenges.”
Cleanup generally occurs in distinct phases over several months. After an initial assessment of damage, workers wearing full hazardous material gear remove dangerous items in clear view. Later, crews return to haul away ash, burned trees and other remaining debris. Before rebuilding begins, officials test the soil to ensure that no toxins remain from the fire.
Ms. Hogan said it was not yet clear whether CalRecycle, which has helped manage cleanup from many of the state’s largest fires, would be part of the debris removal effort in Los Angeles. In fire cleanups where the state agency assists, homeowners are able to have their land cleared of debris for free, though some still choose to hire their own crews.
The cleanup process is filled with dangers. Bryan Schenone, the director of the emergency services office in Siskiyou County, Calif., a rural area that has seen a series of devastating fires, including the Mill fire in 2022, said common household items become an environmental threat when they burn. Propane tanks or loose ammunition can explode and present a safety risk.
“Imagine what’s in your garage: all the paint, all the chemicals underneath your sink,” Mr. Schenone said. “That leeches into the ground, and that all has to be cleaned up and becomes a toxic footprint.”
Another challenge, experts said, is securing landowner permission, parcel by parcel, for workers to enter the property and begin the cleanup. There can also be delays as officials line up work crews and dump sites, or when nesting season for birds requires work to be paused on certain properties. It can be painful, officials said, to tell residents that they should not return to search for mementos in the rubble.
As destructive wildfires become more common because of climate change, a muscle memory has developed among the government officials and private contractors who respond to calamity after calamity.
Each of those disasters has its own complexities, but many of the processes and lessons are the same. And no state has as much practical expertise in responding to wildfires as California, which even publishes a handbook on how to make fire-scarred parcels safe to inhabit again.
“This is probably the worst scenario but the best location,” Dr. Koger of the Army Corps of Engineers said of the Los Angeles fires. “Because the state of California has the resources and the knowledge and the historical knowledge to perform this safely and effectively.”
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7) ‘We’re in a New Era’: How Climate Change Is Supercharging Disasters
Extreme weather events — deadly heat waves, floods, fires and hurricanes — are the consequences of a warming planet, scientists say.
By David Gelles and Austyn Gaffney, Published Jan. 10, 2025, Updated Jan. 11, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/climate/california-fires-climate-change-disasters.html
As Los Angeles burned for days on end, horrifying the nation, scientists made an announcement on Friday that could help explain the deadly conflagration: 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history.
With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.
The firestorms ravaging the country’s second-largest city are just the latest spasm of extreme weather that is growing more furious as well as more unpredictable. Wildfires are highly unusual in Southern California in January, which is supposed to be the rainy season. The same is true for cyclones in Appalachia, where Hurricanes Helene and Milton shocked the country when they tore through mountain communities in October.
Wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster. Storms are getting bigger and carrying more moisture. And soaring temperatures worldwide are leading to heat waves and drought, which can be devastating on their own and leave communities vulnerable to dangers like mudslides when heavy rains return.
Around the globe, extreme weather and searing heat killed thousands of people last year and displaced millions, with pilgrims dying as temperatures soared in Saudi Arabia. In Europe, extreme heat contributed to at least 47,000 deaths in 2023. In the United States, heat-related deaths have doubled in recent decades.
“We’re in a new era now,” said former Vice President Al Gore, who has warned of the threats of global warming for decades. “These climate related extreme events are increasing, both in frequency and intensity, quite rapidly.”
The fires currently raging in greater Los Angeles are already among the most destructive in U.S. history. By Friday, the blazes had consumed more than 36,000 acres and destroyed thousands of buildings. As of Saturday, at least 11 people were dead, and losses could top $100 billion, according to AccuWeather.
Although it is not possible to say with certainty as any specific weather event unfolds whether it was worsened or made more likely by global warming, the Los Angeles fires are being driven by a number of factors that scientists have linked to fire weather and that are becoming increasingly common on a hotter planet.
Last winter, Southern California got huge amounts of rain that led to extensive vegetation growth. Now, months into what is typically the rainy season, Los Angeles is experiencing a drought. The last time it rained more than a tenth of an inch was on May 5. Since then, it has been the second-driest period in the city’s recorded history.
Temperatures in the region have also been higher than normal. As a result, many of the plants that grew last year are parched, turning trees, grasses and bushes into kindling that was ready to explode.
That combination of heat and dryness, which scientists say is linked to climate change, created the ideal conditions for an urban firestorm.
“Wintertime fires in Southern California require a lot of extreme climate and weather events to occur at once,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “And the warmer the temperatures, the more intense the fires.”
A third factor fueling the fires, the fierce Santa Ana winds, which blow West from Utah and Nevada, cannot be directly linked to climate change, scientists say. But the winds this week have been particularly ferocious, gusting at more than 100 miles per hour, as fierce as a Category 2 Hurricane.
Fires across the West have been getting worse in recent years. In 2017, thousands of homes in Santa Rosa, Calif., burned to the ground. The next year, the Camp fire leveled more than 13,000 homes in Paradise, Calif. In 2021, roughly a thousand homes burned near Boulder, Colo.
And from the boreal forests of Canada to the redwood groves of Oregon, large fires have been incinerating vast areas of wilderness.
“In the last couple years we’ve seen an increase in extreme weather events and increasing amounts of billion-dollar disasters,” said Kaitlyn Trudeau, a senior research associate focused on wildfires and the West Coast at Climate Central, a nonprofit research group. “It’s very clear that something is off, and that something is that we’re pumping an insane amount of carbon into the atmosphere and causing the climate systems to go out of whack.”
As the Los Angeles fires consumed some of the most valuable real estate in the world, an unfolding tragedy became fodder for political attacks.
President-elect Donald J. Trump blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, for the disaster. Mr. Trump inaccurately claimed that state and federal protections for a threatened fish had hampered firefighting efforts by leading to water shortages.
And on Thursday, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and an ally of Mr. Trump, inserted himself into the debate over the role climate change plays in wildfires.
“Climate change risk is real, just much slower than alarmists claim,” Mr. Musk wrote to his 211 million followers on X, the social media site he owns. He said the loss of homes was primarily the result of “nonsensical overregulation” and “bad governance at the state and local level that resulted in a shortage of water.”
Those claims were rebutted by scientists, who noted that, as humans continue to warm the planet with emissions, extreme weather is becoming more common.
In Los Angeles, residents displaced by the fires watched in exasperation as the unfolding disaster was politicized.
“People are just wanting to blame somebody else,” said Sheila Morovati, a climate activist who lives in Pacific Palisades and saw her neighborhood burn. “What about all the dryness? What about the temperatures? There’s so many pieces that are all pointing back to climate change.”
News that 2024 was the hottest year on record was hardly a surprise. The previous hottest year was 2023. All 10 of the hottest years on record have come in the last decade.
“We sound like a broken record but only because the records keep breaking,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which monitors global temperatures. “They will continue to break until we get emissions under control.”
But the world is not getting emissions under control. In fact, last year countries released record amounts of planet warming gases into the atmosphere, even as the consequences of climate change have become painfully clear. U.S. efforts to cut emissions largely stalled last year.
The inevitable result: more heat and more extreme weather.
In late September and early October, Hurricane Helene, which scientists said was made worse by climate change, roared across the Southeast, unleashing deadly floods and landslides in several states, including North Carolina.
Months earlier, researchers showed that the devastating floods that swamped Porto Alegre, Brazil, would not have been so severe were it not for human caused global warming.
In May, scientists found the fingerprints of climate change on a crippling heat wave that gripped India, and found that an early heat wave in West Africa last spring was made 10 times more likely by climate change.
On Friday, parts of the South that are not used to winter weather, including Atlanta, saw sleet and snow, disrupting travel and canceling flights. But it’s unclear whether the recent blast of cold air that has led to plunging temperatures across the Southeast and Gulf Coast states was caused by a warming climate.
“We just don’t see robust increases in severe cold events,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research organization. “If anything, they’re decreasing.”
While Southern California is no stranger to fires, the events of the past week have exposed the region’s inherent vulnerabilities.
As the first fires started, fierce winds pushed the flames through canyons loaded with dried-out vegetation and into homes built in the so-called wildland-urban interface, areas where neighborhoods abut undeveloped wilderness. Both of the areas in the Los Angeles region that suffered the greatest losses, Pacific Palisades and Altadena, were in such fire-prone areas.
Art delaCruz, the chief executive of Team Rubicon, a nonprofit organization that mobilizes veterans and other volunteers to assist after disasters, was at home in Los Angeles when the fires broke out. His house is safe for now, and he is now preparing to deploy volunteers who will help clear roads and distribute aid.
Team Rubicon was founded after a group of former Marines went to Haiti to volunteer after the devastating earthquake in 2010. But Mr. delaCruz said that most of the disasters his organization responds to around the world now are linked to climate change.
“It’s simple physics,” he said. “Warmer air holds more water. The storms are increasing in frequency. The storms are increasing in severity. And the damage is just unbelievable.”
There is no rain in the forecast for Los Angeles for at least another couple weeks. But scientists are already concerned about what will happen when the rains do arrive.
In 2018, the wealthy enclave of Montecito, Calif., just north of Los Angeles, was devastated by mudslides after torrential downpours fell on hills that had recently burned.
“If we get intense rainfall on those burn scars, then we’re going to add insult to injury and have debris flows,” said Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
Heat waves. Drought. Fires. Superstorms. Floods. Mudslides. These are the growing threats of a rapidly warming world, and scientists say nowhere is entirely protected from the effects of climate change.
“We think sometimes that if we live in a city, we’re not vulnerable to natural forces,” Dr. Schmidt said. “But we are, and it comes as a huge shock to people. There’s no get out of climate change free card.”
Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.
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8) Israel’s Campaign in Syrian Border Area Prompts Fears It Plans to Stay
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s order for Israeli troops to “take over” a buffer zone with Syria upended decades of relative calm along the de facto border between the two countries.
By Aaron Boxerman, Reporting from Jerusalem, Jan. 11, 2025
Israeli soldiers have raided Syrian border villages, prompting nervous residents to huddle in their homes. They have captured the country’s highest peak, have set up roadblocks between Syrian towns and now overlook local villages from former Syrian military outposts.
The stunning downfall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad, closed a chapter in the country’s decade-long civil war. But it also marked the start of an Israeli incursion into the border region, which Israel has called a temporary defensive move to protect its own security.
Thousands of Syrians now live in areas at least partly controlled by Israeli forces, leaving many anxious over how long the campaign will last. Israeli troops have detained some residents and opened fire during at least two protests against the raids, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitor.
At least some Syrians now say they fear the Israeli presence could become a prolonged military occupation.
“We’re the only part of the country that didn’t truly manage to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime — because even as the tyrant fell, the Israeli military came,” lamented Shaher al-Nuaimi, who lives in the border village of Khan Arnabeh, which has been raided by the Israeli military.
Israel and Syria have fought multiple conflicts, but for decades, the border separating the two has been largely quiet. They last went to war in 1973, when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. Afterward, both sides agreed to create a demilitarized buffer zone patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers that served as a de facto border.
But when Syrian rebels drove Mr. al-Assad from power on Dec. 8, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel ordered his country’s troops to “take over” the buffer zone, home to a number of Syrian villages. He called it a temporary move to “ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border with Israel” amid Syria’s internal upheaval and after the Hamas-led surprise attack from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, that left some 1,200 people dead in Israel.
Israeli forces quickly seized the peak of Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in Syria, and advanced along the length of the buffer zone and beyond it. Around the same time, Israel said it conducted hundreds of airstrikes around the country targeting fighter jets, tanks, missiles and other weapons belonging to Mr. al-Assad’s government.
The continued military campaign, particularly the ground operation in the de facto border area, has prompted international accusations that Israel is violating the decades-old cease-fire. Several groups still hold territory in parts of the country in addition to the new Syrian government in Damascus, with Turkish forces in effect controlling areas along the northern border and a Kurdish autonomous region in the northeast.
The Israeli military is operating in the border area “now similarly to the West Bank, in that it can go in and go out anywhere it wants and arrest whomever it wants,” said Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a phone interview.
Some Syrians said they hoped for good relations with Israel, citing their shared animosity toward Iran, which backed Mr. al-Assad’s regime. Israel also provided medical care to some Syrians inside Israeli-held territory during the decade-long Syrian civil war, including those from the border area.
“The medical treatment broke through some of the enmity that people felt,” said Dirar al-Bashir, a local leader in the border region of Quneitra.
But Mr. al-Bashir and others also said that if Israel’s operation became a protracted occupation, that would ignite further violence in a country exhausted by years of civil war. Israel already controls much of the Golan Heights, territory once held by Syria that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed in a move not recognized by most of the international community.
“We want peace, but the decision makers in Israel seem to think that they will achieve everything by force,” said Arsan Arsan, a resident of a Syrian village outside the buffer zone who has helped coordinate between U.N. officials and local residents. “If they push people into a corner, things will explode, just as they did in Gaza.”
Israeli officers have also entered villages to meet with local leaders and demand that they gather up all of the weaponry in their towns and hand it over to the Israeli military, according to seven residents. The towns mostly complied with the order, leading Israeli soldiers to take out rifles by the truckload, they said.
Israel did not respond to requests for comment on specific accusations by local residents. But the Israeli military said on Wednesday that its forces have seized and destroyed weapons that formerly belonged to the Syrian army, including anti-tank missiles and explosive devices.
Syrian residents and local leaders in the border area also said that Israeli military vehicles have damaged water pipes and electrical cables around some villages, causing blackouts and water cuts.
Turki al-Mustafa, 62, said there had been no running water in his town, Hamidiyeh, since Israeli troops entered the buffer zone. He said that troops had allowed some water to be trucked in, but had set up roadblocks around the town, ordering residents to enter and leave only at designated hours.
Cellphone reception has also become spotty in the buffer zone since the Israeli incursion, according to Ahmad Khreiwish, 37, a resident of the town of Rafeed, making communication difficult.
“Everyone is now living with this dread about the Israeli military,” he said. “We don’t want things to escalate between us. We just want safety and security.”
Some Syrians have protested the Israeli military presence, organizing demonstrations in at least four villages. Two residents of the town of Sweisa said Israeli soldiers had opened fire and injured several people during a protest there on Dec. 25.
“They were unarmed and chanting slogans against Israel’s deployment in the area,” one of the residents, Ziyad al-Fuheili, 43, said of the protesters. “At first, the soldiers shot in the air, but when the crowd kept marching toward them, they fired at the demonstrators.”
Israel’s military said that its forces had fired “warning shots” in Sweisa and that it was looking into reports that civilians had been harmed.
Even before Mr. al-Assad’s fall, Israel worried about Iran-backed militias gaining a foothold along the Syrian border. Israeli warplanes regularly struck Iranian officials and their allies in Syria as part of the yearslong shadow war between the two sides.
The decision to send in troops reflects concerns about the prospect of surprise attacks on Israel, like the one that prompted the 1973 war, as well as the 2023 assault from Gaza. That prompted Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, along with Israeli airstrikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria well before Mr. al-Assad’s ouster.
“Israel is closely monitoring the situation in Syria, and will not jeopardize its own security,” Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, said this month. “We will not allow another Oct. 7 on any front.”
Syria’s new leadership has criticized the Israeli military moves. Critics abroad, including several Arab states and France, have called Israel’s actions a violation of the decades-long truce and called on Israel to withdraw. Egypt accused Israel of “exploiting Syria’s current instability to expand its territorial control and impose a new reality on the ground.”
Israel’s officials say they will only withdraw after “new arrangements” are in place along the border. Given the chaotic internal situation in Syria, that could take months or even longer.
In Kodana, a small Syrian village just outside the buffer zone, Israeli armored vehicles arrived just a few days after Mr. al-Assad’s fall, according to the mayor, Maher al-Tahan. He said the Israeli troops told village leaders to broadcast a message over mosque loudspeakers ordering Kodana’s roughly 800 residents to turn over any weapons.
Since then, the Israeli military has brought generators and set up makeshift barracks in the hills overlooking Kodana, he said. But since most of Kodana’s wells sit on those hilltops, he and other residents said, they have turned to buying expensive trucked-in water rather than pumping it out of the ground.
“The Israeli military must leave as soon as possible,” Mr. al-Tahan said. “As long as they stay here, the problems on both sides will simply continue to grow.”
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9) Tulsa Massacre Was a ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack,’ Federal Report Says
The Justice Department’s conclusion follows an investigation of the 1921 atrocity in Oklahoma in which up to 300 Black residents were killed.
By Audra D. S. Burch, Jan. 11, 2025
Audra D.S. Burch writes about race and identity and spent time in Tulsa to report on the centennial of the 1921 race massacre.
The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, in which a prosperous Black neighborhood in Oklahoma was destroyed and up to 300 people were killed, was not committed by an uncontrolled mob but was the result of “a coordinated, military-style attack” by white citizens, the Justice Department said in a report released Friday.
The report, stemming from an investigation announced in September, is the first time that the federal government has given an official, comprehensive account of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood. Although it formally concluded that, more than a century later, no person alive could be prosecuted, it underscored the brutality of the atrocities committed.
“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings and locked the survivors in internment camps.”
No one today could be held criminally responsible, she said, “but the historical reckoning for the massacre continues.”
The report’s legal findings noted that if contemporary civil rights laws were in effect in 1921, federal prosecutors could have pursued hate crime charges against both public officials and private citizens.
Though considered one of the worst episodes of racial terror in U.S. history, the massacre was relatively unknown for decades: City officials buried the story, and few survivors talked about the massacre.
The Justice Department began its investigation under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the agency to examine such crimes resulting in death that occurred before 1980. Investigators spoke with survivors and their descendants, looked at firsthand accounts and examined an informal review by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the F.B.I. In that 1921 report, the agency asserted that the riot was not the result of “racial feeling,” and suggested that Black men were responsible for the massacre.
The new 123-page report corrects the record, while detailing the scale of destruction and its aftermath. The massacre began with an unfounded accusation. A young Black man, Dick Rowland, was being held in custody by local authorities after being accused of assaulting a young white woman.
According to the report, after a local newspaper sensationalized the story, an angry crowd gathered at the courthouse demanding that Mr. Rowland be lynched. The local sheriff asked Black men from Greenwood, including some who had recently returned from military service, to come to the courthouse to try to prevent the lynching. Other reports suggest the Black neighbors offered to help but were turned away by the sheriff.
The white mob viewed attempts to protect Mr. Rowland as “an unacceptable challenge to the social order,” the report said. The crowd grew and soon there was a confrontation. Hundreds of residents (some of whom had been drinking) were deputized by the Tulsa Police. Law enforcement officers helped organize these special deputies who, along with other residents, eventually descended on Greenwood, a neighborhood whose success inspired the name Black Wall Street.
The report described the initial attack as “opportunistic,” but by daybreak on June 1, “a whistle blew, and the violence and arsons that had been chaotic became systematic.” According to the report, up to 10,000 white Tulsans participated in the attack, burning or looting 35 city blocks. It was so “systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence,” the report said.
In the aftermath, the survivors were left to rebuild their lives with little or no help from the city. The massacre’s impact, historians say, is still felt generations later.
In the years since the attack, survivors and their descendants and community activists have fought for justice. Most recently, a lawsuit seeking reparations filed on behalf of the last two known centenarian survivors was dismissed by Oklahoma justices in June. In recent years, Tulsa has excavated sections of a city cemetery in search of the graves of massacre victims. And in 2024, the city created a commission to study the harms of the atrocity and recommend solutions. The results are expected in the coming weeks.
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10) Far From the Fires, the Deadly Risks of Smoke Are Intensifying
Researchers see a growing health danger from the vast plumes of pollution spawned by wildfires like the ones devastating Los Angeles.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, Jan. 11, 2025
Pacific Palisades, Calif., on Tuesday. By some estimates, wildfire smoke causes some 675,000 premature deaths annually. Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times
It kills more people each year than car crashes, war or drugs do. This invisible killer is the air pollution from sources like cars and trucks or factory smokestacks.
But as wildfires intensify and grow more frequent in a warming world, the smoke from these fires is emerging as a new and deadly pollution source, health experts say. By some estimates, wildfire smoke — which contains a mixture of hazardous air pollutants like particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, ozone and lead — already causes as many as 675,000 premature deaths a year worldwide, as well as a range of respiratory, heart and other diseases.
Research shows that wildfire smoke is starting to erode the world’s progress in cleaning up pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, as climate change supercharges fires.
“It’s heartbreaking, it really is,” said Dr. Afif El-Hasan, a pediatrician who specializes in asthma care at Kaiser Permanente in Southern California and a board director of the American Lung Association. Wildfires “are putting our homes in danger, but they’re also putting our health in danger,” Dr. El-Hasan said, “and it’s only going to get worse.”
Those health concerns were coming to the fore this week as wildfires ravaged the Los Angeles area. Residents began to return to their neighborhoods, many strewed with smoldering ash and rubble, to survey the damage. Air pollution levels remained high in many parts of the city, including in northwest coastal Los Angeles, where the air quality index climbed to “dangerous” levels.
Los Angeles, in particular, has seen air pollution at levels that could be raising daily mortality by between 5 to 15 percent, said Carlos F. Gold, an expert in the health effects of air pollution at the University of California, San Diego.
That means current death counts, “while tragic, are likely large underestimates,” he said. People with underlying health issues, as well as older people and children, are particularly vulnerable.
The rapid spread of this week’s fires into dense neighborhoods, where they burned homes, furniture, cars, electronics and materials like paint and plastic, made the smoke more dangerous, said Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay Area and the executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health.
A recent study found that even for homes that are spared destruction, smoke and ash blown inside could adhere to rugs, sofas and drywall, creating health hazards that can linger for months. “We’re breathing in this toxic brew of volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hexavalent chromium,” Dr. Patel said. “All of it is noxious.”
Intensifying and more frequent fires, meanwhile, are upending experts’ understanding of smoke’s health effects. “Wildfire season is no longer a season,” said Colleen Reid, who researches the effects of air pollution from wildfires on heath at the University of Colorado Boulder. “We have fires all year round that affect the same population repeatedly.”
“The health impacts are not the same as if you were exposed once, and then not again for 10 years,” she said. “The effects of that is something that we still don’t really know.”
A United Nations report from 2022 concluded that the risk of devastating wildfires around the world would surge in coming decades. Heating and drying caused by climate change, along with development in places vulnerable to fire, was expected to intensify a “global wildfire crisis,” the report said. Both the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires have more than doubled in the past two decades. In the United States, the average acreage burned a year has surged since the 1990s.
Now, pollution from wildfires is reversing what had been a decades-long improvement in air quality brought about by cleaner cars and power generation. Since at least 2016, in nearly three-quarters of states in the U.S. mainland, wildfire smoke has eroded about 25 percent of progress in reducing concentrations of a type of particulate matter called PM 2.5, a Nature study in 2023 found.
In California, wildfire smoke’s effect on air quality is offsetting public health gains brought about by a decline in air pollution from automobiles and factories, state health officials have found. (By releasing carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases into the atmosphere, wildfires are themselves a big contributor to climate change: The wildfires that ravaged Canada’s boreal forests in 2023 produced more greenhouse gases than the burning of fossil fuels in all but three countries.)
”It’s not a pretty picture,” said Dr. Gold of U.C. San Diego, who took part in the Nature study. If planet-warming gas emissions continue at current levels, “we’ve got some work that suggests that mortality from wildfire smoke in the U.S. could go up by 50 percent,” he said.
One silver lining is that the Santa Ana winds that so ferociously fueled the flames in recent days have been blowing some of the smoke toward the ocean. That stands in contrast to the smoke from the 2023 Canadian wildfires that drifted to New York and other American states hundreds of miles away, causing spikes in emergency room visits for asthma.
At one point that year, more than a third of Americans, from the East Coast to the Midwest, were under air quality alerts from Canadian wildfire smoke. “We’re seeing new and worsening threats in places that are not used to them,” Dr. Patel, the pediatrician, said.
The new normal is bringing about changes to health care, Dr. Patel said. More health systems are sending out air quality alerts to vulnerable patients. In the small community hospital where she works, “every child that comes in with wheezing or asthma, I talk to them about how air pollution is getting worse because of wildfires and climate change,” she said.
“I teach them how to look up air quality, and say they should ask for an air purifier,” Dr. Patel added. She also cautions that children should not participate in cleanup after a wildfire.
Scientists are still trying to understand the full range of wildfire smoke’s health effects. One big question is how much of what researchers know about vehicle exhaust and other forms of air pollution apply to wildfire smoke, said Mark R. Miller, a researcher at the Center for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh who led a recent global survey of climate change, air pollution and wildfires.
For example, exhaust particles “are so small that when we breathe them in, they go deep down into our lungs and are actually small enough that they can pass from our lungs into our blood,” he said. “And once they’re in our blood, they can be carried around our body and start to build up.”
That means air pollution affects our entire body, he said. “It has effects on people who have diabetes, has effects on the liver and the kidney, it has effects on the brain, on pregnancy,” he said. What’s still not clear is whether pollution from wildfires has all of those same effects. “But it’s likely,” he said.
Experts have a range of advice for people living in areas with smoke. Keep an eye on air quality alerts, and follow evacuation orders. Stay indoors as much as possible, and use air purifiers. When venturing outside, wear N95 masks. Don’t do strenuous exercise in bad air. Keep children, older people and other vulnerable groups away from the worst smoke.
Ultimately, tackling climate change and cutting back on all kinds of air pollution is the way to reduce the overall burden on health, said Dr. El-Hasan of the American Lung Association. “Can you imagine how much worse things would be if we hadn’t started cleaning up emissions from our cars?” he said. “I’m trying to think, glass half full, but it does break my heart and it does worry me.”
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11) Syria Confronts an Immense Challenge: Justice for Assad Regime Crimes
The rebel alliance that took power has vowed to prosecute senior figures from the ousted government, but accountability will be hard to achieve in a vulnerable, divided and battered country.
By Vivian Yee, Reporting from Cairo, Jan. 12, 2025
A stadium in Damascus, the Syrian capital, last month. The site was used by the Assad regime’s military to fire mortars at rebel neighborhoods. Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
There seem to be no limits to the dark revelations laid bare by the downfall of Syria’s 54-year Assad regime.
Prisons have emptied, exposing the instruments of torture used on peaceful protesters and others considered opponents of the government. Stacks of official documents record thousands of detainees. Morgues and mass graves hold the gaunt, broken-bodied victims, or at least some of them.
Many others have yet to be found.
For these and many other atrocities, Syrians want justice. The rebel alliance that overthrew President Bashar al-Assad last month has vowed to hunt down and prosecute senior regime figures for crimes that include murdering, wrongly imprisoning, torturing and gassing their own people.
“Most Syrians would say they can only achieve closure to bring this dark 54-year era to an end when they bring these guys to justice,” said Ayman Asfari, chairman of Madaniya, a network of Syrian human rights organizations and other civic groups.
But even assuming that the new authorities can track suspects down, accountability will be hard to achieve in a country as vulnerable, divided and battered as Syria. The experiences of other Arab countries whose despotic regimes collapsed testify to the challenges: None of those countries — not Egypt, not Iraq, not Tunisia — succeeded in securing comprehensive, lasting justice for the crimes of earlier eras.
Syria faces some distinctive hurdles. The country’s new de facto leaders come from the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, while the senior ranks of the deposed regime were dominated by Alawites, a religious minority. That means prosecutions for Assad-era abuses could risk fueling Syria’s sectarian tensions.
The justice system was for years little more than a tool for Mr. al-Assad, making it ill equipped to handle sweeping, complex human rights violations. Many thousands of Syrians could be implicated, more than can possibly be prosecuted, raising questions about how to handle lower-level officials.
And after years of war, sanctions, corruption and mismanagement, it is an enormous task just to sort through the damage while transitioning to a new government.
Nine in 10 Syrians live in poverty. Cities lie in ruins. Homes have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were unjustly detained for years or decades. Hundreds of thousands were killed in the fighting. Many are still missing.
Syrians will need time and many discussions to design a sound accountability process, said Nerma Jelacic of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, which has been gathering evidence against Syrian regime figures for years.
“These are things that take time, and they never happen overnight,” she said.
But there is enormous pressure on Syria’s new leaders to begin punishing the old, and the transitional authorities in the capital, Damascus, have promised to do so.
“We will not relent in holding accountable the criminals, murderers and security and military officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Ahmed al-Shara, Syria’s de facto leader, said in a post on Telegram in December. He added that they would soon publish “List No. 1” of senior officials “implicated in the torture of the Syrian people.”
Hunting down such figures will be difficult, if not impossible. Mr. al-Assad has found refuge in Russia, which is unlikely to give him up. Many of his top associates have melted away, with some reportedly in hiding in Lebanon or the United Arab Emirates.
Still, Syrian human rights groups in exile began laying the groundwork more than a decade ago, gathering evidence for prosecutions that were mounted in other countries — and someday, they hoped, in their own.
But Fernando Travesí, executive director of the International Center for Transitional Justice, which has worked with such Syrian groups, cautioned that, before beginning prosecutions in Syria, the authorities should first earn citizens’ trust by building a state that meets their needs.
Doing so would avoid the missteps of a country like Tunisia, where a lack of economic progress in the years after the 2011 Arab Spring revolution left many people embittered and disenchanted. By 2021, Tunisians had turned on their fledgling democracy, throwing their support to a president who has grown increasingly authoritarian. Efforts to bring members of the feared security services and regime cronies to justice are now functionally suspended.
“Any process of truth, justice and accountability needs to be coming from institutions that have some legitimacy and credibility with the population, otherwise it’s a waste of time,” Mr. Travesí said. Providing crucial services, he added, would encourage Syrians to view government as “not a tool for repression; it’s taking care of my needs.”
The transitional government can take basic yet vital steps such as helping refugees who left years ago obtain new identification, adjudicating what should happen to property that was stolen or occupied during the war, and providing stable electricity and running water. It will need to deliver humanitarian aid and economic improvements, though those may only be possible with the help of other countries.
And it must do all this in an evenhanded way, or Syrians might see accountability efforts as selective or politically driven. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003, the United States-led occupation and successive governments purged and blacklisted even junior functionaries in the former ruling party without due process, which analysts said undermined faith in the new system.
“The only way to heal the wounds with the other communities is to make sure they’re fairly represented,” Mr. Asfari said.
The Syrian authorities are signaling that they understand. They have vowed repeatedly to respect minority rights and have promised amnesty to rank-and-file soldiers who were forced to serve in Mr. al-Assad’s military. Most government employees have been allowed to stay on to keep institutions running.
Any prosecution “has to be a good process, otherwise it’ll look like score-settling,” said Stephen J. Rapp, a former international prosecutor and former U.S. ambassador for global justice who has worked on Syrian abuses for more than a decade. “And that can play a key role in reconciling a society and defusing efforts to settle scores, for instance, against the children of parents who committed these crimes.”
In an added complication, some of the documents that will be crucial to mounting any prosecutions have been damaged in the chaos following Mr. al-Assad’s downfall, with regime prisons and intelligence agency archives ransacked, looted or burned, said Ms. Jelacic of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability.
Because Syria remains under wartime sanctions, her group and others trying to safeguard these papers for future use in court cannot operate across much of the country, further jeopardizing their efforts.
The wartime mass graves and torture devices are only the most glaring evidence of abuses overseen by Mr. al-Assad and his father, Hafez.
Nearly every Syrian, in some sense, has been wronged by the former regime. So it is not enough to prosecute individuals for crimes committed during the civil war, say veterans of justice efforts in other countries that underwent political transitions.
Mr. Rapp called for a “larger truth-telling process” that could help “really begin to understand the system of state repression that was Syria for the last 54 years, and this machinery of murder that was Syria” since 2011.
One model could be the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which heard testimony from victims and perpetrators of rights violations, offered reparations to victims, and in some cases granted amnesties.
Ms. Jelacic said Syria would need a broader reckoning with the Assad regime’s legacy that “doesn’t contribute to the divisions, but that it contributes to healing.”
Before trials begin, experts said, Syria should overhaul its police and court systems and build a legal framework to handle rights violations, perhaps creating a special tribunal to prosecute the most serious crimes. An equally urgent priority is finding out what happened to the estimated 136,000 people who remain missing after being arrested by the Assad regime and identifying bodies uncovered in mass graves.
But Syria cannot wait too long to prosecute former regime officials. Slow-moving official justice leaves room for angry people to take matters into their own hands, which could set off cycles of violence and deepen sectarian divisions. Already, scattered revenge killings and threats against minorities who were favored by the Assad regime have been reported.
After Tunisia’s revolution, lengthy delays in bringing cases against former security officials added to citizens’ sense that their new democracy was bankrupt.
Lamia Farhani, a Tunisian lawyer who has long sought justice for her brother’s fatal shooting while he protested the previous regime in 2011, said that her country’s disillusionment had permitted the current president, Kais Saied, to dismantle its democracy.
“We had a nascent democracy that failed at the first storm,” she said. “And all this happened because there was no real reconciliation.”
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12) Israeli Security Chiefs Join Critical Talks for a Cease-Fire in Gaza
Pressure is on to reach a deal that would see Hamas release at least some hostages before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office.
By Isabel Kershner, Adam Rasgon and Ronen Bergman, Jan. 12, 2025
Isabel Kershner and Adam Rasgon reported from Jerusalem, and Ronen Bergman from New York.
A demonstration on Saturday in Tel Aviv calling for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas. Credit...Amir Levy/Getty Images
Israeli security and policy chiefs were expected to arrive in Qatar on Sunday for high-level talks about a proposed cease-fire deal in Gaza that would see hostages released in the final days of President Biden’s term and before Donald J. Trump takes office.
Biden administration officials have been pressing for a deal that would become part of the departing president’s legacy, and Mr. Trump has warned that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if Hamas does not release the hostages before he is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Lower-level negotiations have been underway in recent weeks after months of deadlock.
While some progress has been made, disagreements remain on several key points, including the timing and extent of Israel’s redeployments and withdrawal from Gaza and its willingness to ultimately end the war, according to several officials and a Palestinian familiar with the matter. They were speaking on the condition of anonymity because the talks are being held in secrecy and they were not authorized to discuss details publicly.
Representatives of the departing and incoming U.S. presidents have been cooperating on the issue, the Biden administration has said, while Qatar and Egypt are mediating between Israel and Hamas.
Brett M. McGurk, Mr. Biden’s Middle East coordinator, was already in Doha, the Qatar capital, putting together the final details of a text agreement to present to the two sides, Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, said on “State of the Union” on CNN on Sunday.
“We are very, very close and yet being very close still means we’re far because until you actually get across the finish line we’re not there,” Mr. Sullivan said.
Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s intended Middle East envoy, met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel on Saturday. On Friday, Mr. Witkoff was in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and met the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, for talks that focused on efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza, according to Qatar’s Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office announced late Saturday that he had discussed the issue with Israel’s security chiefs and with negotiators from both the departing and incoming American administrations. He also instructed Israel’s top negotiators — including David Barnea, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency — to leave for Qatar with the goal of advancing a deal, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said.
Disagreements between Israel and Hamas remain on the fundamental issue of the permanency of a cease-fire, with Mr. Netanyahu still unwilling to declare an end of the war as part of a three-phase agreement that was laid out by Mr. Biden last May.
Israel is insisting on a vaguer formula that leaves room for ambiguity, according to the Palestinian familiar with the matter and two Israeli officials. Another official familiar with the matter said the Americans were supposed to provide mediators with a guarantee that the United States would work to bring the war to an end, though Israel has not agreed to any exact phrasing.
Hamas is also demanding detailed maps from Israel showing where it will withdraw to, but Israel has not provided them, according to the officials and the Palestinian familiar with the matter. They added that disagreements remain about the timing of an Israeli troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land abutting Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Nearly 100 hostages who were seized during the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, remain in Gaza, out of roughly 250 who were taken. Israel believes at least a third of the remaining hostages are dead.
Israel and Hamas have both shown signs of wanting to resolve the outstanding issues, as pressure mounts from the United States and the Israeli public. Last week Hamas representatives indicated that the group had approved an Israeli list of 34 hostages to be released in the first stage of an agreement.
But Israel said last week that it had not received any information from Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list, which includes those it considers the most vulnerable and urgent cases: women and children, men over 50 and several sick or injured hostages.
Israel has demanded a list from Hamas of which hostages remain alive. Without that, Israeli officials say, there can be no agreement on how many Palestinian prisoners Israel would be willing to release in exchange for them. As of Sunday morning, Israel had not received a list of live hostages, according to one of the officials familiar with the matter.
The body of one of the hostages whose name appeared on the list of 34 — Youssef Ziyadne, 53, an Arab citizen of Israel — was located last week by Israeli forces in a tunnel in Gaza along with the remains of his son, Hamza Ziyadne, who was also captured during the 2023 attack.
The Israeli military brought the remains of both men back to Israel for burial.
Mr. Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said that Mr. Biden would have a call soon with Mr. Netanyahu but stressed that the main obstacle to a deal has been Hamas.
“We are not by any stretch of the imagination setting this aside,” Mr. Sullivan said. “There is a possibility this comes together. There’s also a possibility, as has happened so many times before, that Hamas in particular remains intransigent.”
Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington.
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13) Charles Person, Youngest of the Original Freedom Riders, Dies at 82
In 1961, he and 12 other civil rights activists were nearly killed for trying to integrate interstate bus terminals across the South.
By Clay Risen, Jan. 11, 2025
Charles Person at his home in Atlanta in 2011. He was an 18-year-old college freshman when he first became involved in the civil rights movement. Credit...David Goldman/Associated Press
Charles Person, the youngest of the 13 original Freedom Riders who traveled from Washington to Birmingham, Ala., in 1961 in an effort to integrate interstate bus terminals across the South — and who were nearly beaten to death for doing so — died on Wednesday at his home in Fayetteville, Ga. He was 82.
His daughter Keisha Person said the cause was leukemia.
Mr. Person was an 18-year-old freshman at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, when he first became involved in the civil rights movement, joining the thousands of students across the South who were marching against Jim Crow laws and sitting in at segregated lunch counters.
His first arrest, during a sit-in at an Atlanta restaurant, was in February 1961. When he returned to campus, he saw an ad from the Congress of Racial Equality looking for volunteers for a trip by commercial bus from Washington to New Orleans. Along the way, the ad said, they would test a recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation in bus terminals that served interstate travelers.
Because of his age, Mr. Person had to obtain his father’s permission to apply. (His mother flatly refused.) He was accepted, and after training in nonviolent techniques, he and the others — six other Black riders, including the future congressman John Lewis, and six white ones — left from Washington’s Greyhound station aboard two buses.
Mr. Person was paired with an older white rider, James Peck. Their job was to enter the terminals so Mr. Person could try to use the white restroom while Mr. Peck entered the Black restroom. Then they would order food at the designated white and Black lunch counters.
Their first test, in Fredericksburg, Va., was uneventful, save for a few ugly stares from white people in the depot. But in Charlotte, N.C., Mr. Person was almost arrested when he tried to have his shoes shined in a white part of the terminal.
Things became tense in Atlanta, the last major stop before Alabama. Several white men boarded and sat among the Black riders, who, against custom in the Jim Crow South, were seated throughout the bus instead of in the back.
The next stop was Anniston, a small town in eastern Alabama. The station was closed, but the driver stopped anyway. Another bus had been firebombed outside town, he said. If they wanted to proceed, the Black riders would have to move to the back.
When they refused, he left the bus. The white men who had boarded in Atlanta, members of the Ku Klux Klan, then viciously attacked the riders; both Mr. Person and Mr. Peck were knocked unconscious before being dragged to the rear.
“They threw us to the back of the bus,” Mr. Person said in a 2021 interview on the podcast “Book Dreams.” “One eyewitness said they stacked us like pancakes.”
With racial hierarchy restored, the bus proceeded to Birmingham. It was Sunday, May 14 — Mother’s Day. A crowd of white people, including scores of Klansmen, awaited the riders.
They left the bus and gathered their bags. Mr. Peck and Mr. Person were supposed to be the first to enter the terminal. Mr. Peck, looking at Mr. Person’s bloodied face and shirt, hesitated. But Mr. Person said, “Let’s go.”
At first, the crowd inside the station thought Mr. Person had assaulted Mr. Peck. When Mr. Peck said the two of them were friends, several men pulled him into a hallway and began beating him with a pipe. Someone grabbed Mr. Person, too, but after a few minutes he was able to break away.
By then the station was engulfed in violence, with Klansmen setting upon riders with abandon. Mr. Person managed to catch a city bus, then made his way to the home of the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a leading figure in the city’s civil rights community.
Over the next few hours, more Freedom Riders, including Mr. Peck, made it to Mr. Shuttlesworth’s home. Most doctors did not want to treat them for fear of retribution, but they eventually found medical care.
They struggled to find another bus willing to take them to New Orleans. They finally boarded a plane. After a few days of speeches and meetings, Mr. Person flew back to Atlanta.
The first Freedom Ride was over, but others had already begun — some 400 people joined the campaign in total, many of them facing beatings and prison along the way. But it worked: On May 29, President John F. Kennedy’s administration ordered the desegregation of all interstate bus terminals.
“It really was the template for citizen politics in the 1960s,” said Ray Arsenault, the author of “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice” (2006). “A lot of what came after — the antiwar protests, the women’s movement — all drew on these ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”
Charles Anthony Person was born on Sept. 27, 1942, in Atlanta. His father, Hugh, was a hospital orderly, and his mother, Ruby (Booker) Person, was a domestic worker.
A gifted math and science student, Charles was accepted to M.I.T. but, without a scholarship, could not afford to attend. He also applied to Georgia Tech, a public university, but was rejected because of his race. He enrolled at Morehouse College, a historically Black institution, with plans to become a nuclear engineer.
When he returned from the Freedom Rides, he told his mother he wanted to continue being part of the civil rights movement. She urged him try a different form of service by enlisting in the Army, which was a safer option at the time.
He joined the Marines instead. He served two years in Vietnam but spent most of his career at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba, as an electronics expert. He retired in 1981.
His first marriage, to Carolyn Edith Henderson, ended in divorce. He married Jo Etta Mapp in 1986. Along with their daughter, Keisha, she survives him, as well as their son, Brandon Swain; three children from his first marriage, Cicely Person, Cammie Person and Carmelle Searcy; his siblings, Joyce Clark, Susan Person and Michael Person; and two grandchildren.
After returning to Atlanta, Mr. Person started his own electronics business and later worked in technical support for the city’s public schools.
He also became locally involved in civil rights activism. In 2022, he wrote “Buses Are a Comin’: Memoirs of a Freedom Rider” with Richard Rooker.
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, he and Pete Conroy, who helped create a national monument around the Freedom Rides, founded the Freedom Riders Training Academy, which draws on the 1961 campaign to teach nonviolent protest.
“My sense is that he had very little ego,” Mr. Arsenault said. “He didn’t want to get any credit. But he never changed his ideals.”
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