Roxie Theater, San Francisco:
February 19th-27th: Film "No Other Land" |
 |
Date: Wednesday, 19 February - Thursday, 27 February Tickets: $14 |
Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community’s mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families – the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice. Nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature Film |
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
URGENT STEP ONE:
Demand EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER & TREATMENT
FOR IMAM JAMIL
The Bureau of Prisons is denying medical treatment to Imam
Jamil Al-Amin, 81 years old, formerly known as H. Rap Brown.
He has a potentially life-threatening growth on his face, on
top of his multiple myeloma (cancer) & other significant
medical issues.
A civil and human rights leader, wrongfully imprisoned for
the past 24 years, he needs Your Help to avoid his
Death By Medical Neglect
CALL TUCSON COMPLEX 520-663-5000
EMAIL WARDEN Mark Gutierrez, mggutierrez@bop.gov
Give Name & Inmate Number: Jamil Al-Amin, #99974-555
Demand they grant Imam Jamil an EMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSFER from United States Penitentiary (USP) Tucson to Federal Medical Center (FMC) Butner for his Immediate Medical Treatment NOW!!
***Deputy Director of BOP [Bureau of Prisons], (202) 307-3198
URGENT STEP TWO:
Tell his Congressional Delegation of his condition, Urge them to use their offices to inquire the BOP & demand that their constituent (Imam Jamil, West End Community Masjid, 547 West End Pl., SW, Atlanta) receive the emergency medical transfer, diagnosis & treatment.
- Email GA Cong. Nikema Williams PressGA05@mail.house.gov
- Email US Sen. Rafael Warnock press@warnock.senate.gov
- Email US Sen. Jon Ossoff press@ossoff.senate.gov
- Email Atlanta City Councilman Jason Dozier jdozier@atlantaga.gov
- Email GA State Rep Park Cannon park.cannon@house.ga.gov
- Email GA State Sen. Sonya Halpern sonya.halpern@senate.ga.gov
This is most urgent step before Step Three: campaigning for Medical Reprieve by the GA Bd. Of pardons & Parole, THE entity standing in the way of freeing Imam from his unjust conviction by granting a Medical Reprieve.
IMAM JAMIL ACTION NETWORK.ORG
216.296.4617
NATIONAL
347.731.1886
MEDIA
252.907.4443
SOUTHERN
347.731.1886
NJ/NY
202.520.9997
WASH., DC
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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)
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
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
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
1) Israel Delays Prisoner Release After Hamas Frees 6 Hostages
Israel was supposed to release 620 Palestinian prisoners soon after the hostages were handed over. Officials gave no reason for the delay.
By Aaron Boxerman and Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 22, 2025
Israel delayed the release of 620 Palestinian prisoners it had pledged to free on Saturday, shortly after Hamas handed over six Israeli hostages, according to an Israeli official and a Palestinian prisoners group. The delay injected a new note of uncertainty over the fragile cease-fire in Gaza that outlined the exchanges.
The Israeli official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the release would be delayed until at least 6 p.m. local time, but did not give a reason. Amani Sarahneh, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, one of the main prisoner advocate groups, said Israel had informed Palestinian officials about the delay.
Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, reported that a decision on whether to proceed would be made after security consultations this evening.
Hours before the hostage releases began, Hamas handed over the remains of Shiri Bibas, the Israeli mother whose capture with her two young sons during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack became a symbol of Israel’s anguish. Hamas delivered a body on Thursday that it initially said was that of Ms. Bibas. But testing in Israel found that it was not hers, angering Israelis and putting pressure on Hamas to hand over the correct remains.
The mood in Israel swung on Saturday between grief and joy as relatives of the hostages being released expressed their condolences to the Bibas family in live interviews. The Israeli military said forensic evidence showed that the boys’ captors had killed them “with their bare hands”; Hamas has said they were killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Hamas handed over five Jewish Israeli hostages in two performative ceremonies and quietly transferred a sixth hostage, an Arab citizen of Israel, at a separate location without large crowds of onlookers.
The first two freed hostages, Avera Mengistu and Tal Shoham, were turned over to Red Cross officials in the southern city of Rafah. Three more were handed over in Nuseirat in central Gaza: Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert and Eliya Cohen. The three were dressed in khaki outfits resembling military uniforms, though none were in military service when they were abducted.
While those two handover ceremonies were highly orchestrated, with masked gunmen escorting hostages onto stages where they displayed release certificates, the scenes were more subdued than during some of the previous releases, when the atmosphere became chaotic.
A sixth hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, who appeared to be in poor health in a video that Hamas released in 2022, was turned over in Gaza City with no ceremony or live broadcast. Mr. al-Sayed and Mr. Mengistu were both captured by Hamas about 10 years ago, and the rest were taken in the October 2023 attack. All six were returned to Israeli territory.
Israel’s release of more than 600 Palestinian prisoners was set to be the largest group of detainees freed at once since the cease-fire began in late January.
But the two sides have failed to reach an agreement on the next stage of the truce, raising fears that the fighting could soon resume.
Israel and Hamas are nearing the end of the first phase of the six-week truce, which is set to expire in early March.
Under the deal, Hamas committed in the first stage to freeing at least 25 living Israeli hostages and the remains of eight more in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel. The handover of all 25 living hostages was completed with Saturday’s releases.
Despite pressure from the Trump administration and mediators like Egypt and Qatar, Israel and Hamas yet to agree on terms to extend the agreement into a second phase.
That would entail an end to the war and the release of the roughly 30 remaining hostages believed to be alive in Gaza in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners.
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were eagerly awaiting the return of their loved ones. The Palestinian prisoners include 50 serving life sentences for involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis. But the list of those to be released also includes more than 400 people detained in Gaza, who have generally been held without formal charges.
The final swap in the six-week truce was set to take place next weekend, when Hamas is expected to return at least four bodies to Israel.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) In Syria, Joy at a Dictator’s Demise Turns Into Fear of Israeli Raids
Villagers say they worry that incursions into border areas of Syria by Israel’s military could turn into a prolonged occupation. Israel says the raids are needed to protect the border.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Feb. 22, 2025
Reporting from Suwaisah and Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah in southwestern Syria
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/world/middleeast/syria-assad-israel-raids.html
Children heading home from school in the Syrian village of Suwaisah, where people fear that Israel’s incursions into their country could become a long-term occupation. Credit...Laura Boushnak for The New York Times
Ruwayda al-Aqaar was sleeping next to her husband and 3-year-old daughter in late December when they were awakened by the sound of approaching tanks and bulldozers. They rushed outside their small house and saw dozens of Israeli soldiers marching into their small farming village, she said.
“I was terrified,” Ms. al-Aqaar said recently in her home in the village of Suwaisah, in southeastern Syria, as her daughter watched “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. “We were afraid of being displaced and forced to leave our homes.”
For weeks, the family and their neighbors feared that Israeli forces would target their village after carrying out similar incursions into towns nearby. Just days after a coalition of Syrian rebels ousted President Bashar al-Assad in early December, Israel invaded border villages in Syria in what it described as temporary measures to protect its own security.
But the Israeli raids continued throughout January and into February, raising fears among Syrians that the incursions could become a prolonged military occupation. The Israeli troops have been targeting villages, particularly ones with military outposts.
In Suwaisah, the Israeli soldiers tore down a small military outpost that had been abandoned by Syrian troops who took their weapons with them after the Assad regime fell. And the Israelis demanded that residents hand over any weapons they may have had. This account of what happened is based on interviews with more than a dozen residents of Suwaisah and Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah, a nearby village that was also raided, as well as photographs they shared from cellphones.
Suwaisah is a village of mostly one-story homes, its residents mostly farmers and herders. It was a little past 7 a.m. on Dec. 25 when the Israelis entered the village and were met by dozens of adults and children, residents said. Some of the Syrians tore off olive branches from nearby orchards as a symbol of peace, they said, adding that none of the residents who went out to meet the Israelis carried weapons.
“Syria is free, free,” the villagers chanted at the soldiers, who were armed with semiautomatic machine guns, “and Israel out!”
The Israeli military raids have terrified the villagers, who, like other Syrians, had celebrated the ouster of Mr. al-Assad and gathered in the streets, playing revolutionary songs and waving flags. But in this corner of Syria, the celebrations quickly dissipated into fear of an encroaching foreign army.
“They ruined our joy,” Ms. al-Aqaar said.
This part of southeastern Syria abuts the Golan Heights, territory that Israel captured from Syria during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and then annexed. The move is not recognized by most of the world, including the United Nations, which considers the land occupied.
Ms. al-Aqaar, like many Syrians in the region, feared that her village might meet the same fate.
Israel has in recent months seized a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights and territory in southwestern Syria — including Mount Hermon, the country’s highest point. It has also has carried out hundreds of airstrikes, destroying Syrian military assets, including tanks, weapons production facilities and air-defense systems, according to Syrian monitoring groups.
The Israeli military says it is acting “in order to protect the Israeli border.” Israel has long seen the Golan Heights as important to its security because it sits on the edge of Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, offering an important military vantage point. There is now concern in Israel that the fall of the Assad regime may have left a security vacuum in the area.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has signaled that the military would occupy the lands it has taken for the foreseeable future, “until another arrangement is found that guarantees Israel’s security.”
Israeli forces continue to conduct cross-border incursions into Syria with bulldozers and armored vehicles, according to Etana, a Syrian reporting and analysis organization. On Jan. 16, an Israeli airstrike struck a Syrian government convoy, killing at least two people, including a mayor, according to Etana and another Syrian monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
They have raided former Syrian Army bases in the southern provinces of Quneitra and Daraa to demolish property, occupy land and demand residents hand over any weapons, Etana reported.
“This available evidence indicates that Israel may be expanding and entrenching its occupation over areas of Quneitra Province,” the group said in a report in January.
Israel’s recent incursions and taking of the buffer zone in the Golan Heights violates the 1974 agreement between the two countries that followed the end of the 1973 war, according to the United Nations. After that conflict, both sides had agreed that U.N. peacekeepers would monitor a 155-square-mile demilitarized zone between their forces.
The Israeli incursions have been condemned internationally. The United Nations said in January that “Syria’s sovereignty, territorial unity, and integrity must be fully restored.”
And in December, Geir Pedersen, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, called on Israel to halt its “very troubling” military attacks.
Ahmed al-Shara, the leader of Syria’s new government, has criticized Israel for its incursion, saying it was a violation of the 1974 armistice agreement.
Shadi al-Mleihan, a journalist who lives in Suwaisah, said he was among those who confronted the Israeli forces when they entered his village in December.
“We have been in a war for nearly 14 years,” he said. “We don’t want another war.”
In addition to destroying the outposts, the soldiers demanded that residents hand over any weapons in the village, Mr. al-Mleihan and other villagers said.
“They said you need to announce from the mosque speakers that we want all the weapons and if you won’t we have a megaphone,” Badir al-Krayat, Ms. al-Aqaar’s husband, said the soldiers told them. “We said, ‘We don’t have weapons; we are farmers.’”
As villagers confronted some soldiers, other troops were leveling the outpost, some olive trees and a small municipal building, several residents said. Two hours later, the soldiers withdrew toward Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah, setting their sights on another abandoned Syrian military outpost there, residents said.
There, villagers gathered around the former outpost and sat on top of other structures in an effort to prevent the Israeli forces from destroying them. Then, according to multiple residents and a human rights group, Israeli troops fired on unarmed civilians.
At least five civilians, including a child, were wounded, according to residents and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Israel military said it “does not target its operations against civilians or civilian infrastructures.” In response to questions, the military said it “operated near the village in order to neutralize military infrastructures which posed a threat” to its forces.
“Several groups were observed approaching I.D.F. personnel in the area,” the military said. “After calling on the crowd to stand back and maintain a safe distance, individuals continued to advance towards the forces that responded with warning shots solely aimed at the air.”
Khalid al-Aaqal, 17, a high school senior, said he was among those shot in Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah in late December. He said he and other villagers went to confront the Israeli troops, “and they started shooting” at the villagers’ feet with semiautomatic machine guns.
“We didn’t think they would shoot at us because we didn’t have any weapons,” Mr. al-Aaqal said.
His cousin was shot in the foot, Mr. al-Aaqal and his mother said, and when Mr. al-Aaqal went to rescue him, Mr. al-Aaqal was hit in both legs.
“They drowned our celebrations with their incursion,” said Alaa al-Aawad, 24, who was shot in the ankle and spoke as he lay on a pile of thin mattresses, his left leg propped up on a pillow.
Villagers in Suwaisah and Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah said they were anxious about what comes next. The Israeli forces have left, but residents said they could still see them moving on two nearby mountain tops that the soldiers have seized.
“We don’t know what their goal is,” Hassan Muhammad, 32, who was one of the protesters who confronted the soldiers in Al-Dawayah Al-Kabirah, said of Israel. “But we as a people, our goal is to protect our lands. We just got rid of one tyrant and we don’t want another to come here and occupy it.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) In Trump’s Alternate Reality, Lies and Distortions Drive Change
Condoms for Gaza? Ukraine started the war with Russia? The president’s manipulations of the truth lay the groundwork for radical change.
By Peter Baker, Feb. 23, 2025
Peter Baker is covering his sixth presidency and wrote a book about President Trump’s first term. He reported from Washington.
President Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office on Friday. Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times
The United States sent $50 million in condoms to Hamas. Diversity programs caused a plane crash. China controls the Panama Canal. Ukraine started the war with Russia.
Except, no. None of that is true. Not that it stops President Trump. In the first month since he returned to power, he has demonstrated once again a brazen willingness to advance distortions, conspiracy theories and outright lies to justify major policy decisions.
Mr. Trump has long been unfettered by truth when it comes to boasting about his record and tearing down his enemies. But what were dubbed “alternative facts” in his first term have quickly become a whole alternative reality in his second to lay the groundwork for radical change as he moves to aggressively reshape America and the world.
If the U.S. Agency for International Development is stupid enough to send prophylactics to a Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza, he claims, then it deserves to be dismantled. If recruiting people other than white men to work in the airline sector compromises safety, such programs should be eliminated. If China controls the strategic passage through the continent, the United States should take it back. If Ukraine is the aggressor, it should make concessions to Moscow.
“One of the biggest presidential powers that Trump has deployed is the ability to shape his own narrative,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a Princeton history professor and editor of a book of essays about Mr. Trump’s first term. “We have seen repeatedly how President Trump creates his own reality to legitimate his actions and simultaneously discredit warnings about his decisions.”
Taking his real-estate hucksterism and reality-show storytelling into politics, Mr. Trump has for years succeeded in selling his version of events. The world according to Mr. Trump is one where he is a master of every challenge and any failure is someone else’s fault.
He claimed to have built the greatest economy in history during his first term so many times that even some of his critics came to accept that it was better than it really was. He dismissed intelligence reports that Russia intervened in the 2016 elections on his behalf so often that many supporters accepted his denial.
Most significantly, Mr. Trump has waged a four-year campaign to persuade Americans that he did not lose the 2020 election when in fact he did, making one false assertion of widespread fraud after another that would all be debunked yet still leave most Republicans convinced it was stolen, according to polls.
At the same time, he has recast the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by supporters trying to stop the transfer of power from a “heinous attack,” as he originally termed it, to a “day of love,” as he now calls it. This revised interpretation helped him rationalize pardoning nearly 1,600 people who were charged, including many who had beaten police officers.
“Trump is a highly skilled narrator and propagandist,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present” and a historian at New York University who specializes in fascism and authoritarianism. “Actually he is one of the most skilled propagandists in history.”
Dr. Ben-Ghiat said what made Mr. Trump’s “easily refutable lie” about the 2020 election so remarkable was that he was “working not in a one-party state or authoritarian context with a controlled media, but in a totally open society with a free press.”
But she and other scholars said some of Mr. Trump’s themes resemble those seen in authoritarian states. “The kind of propaganda and disinformation that we see now is not particularly new and not dependent on the internet,” said Benjamin Carter Hett, a historian of World War II at Hunter College. “Exactly the same kind of thing happened in the very diverse and lively German press of the 1920s and 1930s.”
Mr. Trump’s aides have long recognized his penchant for prevarication and either adjusted or eventually broke with him. John F. Kelly, his longest-serving White House chief of staff in his first term, has said that Mr. Trump would tell his press aides to publicly repeat something that he had just made up. When Mr. Kelly would object, saying, “but that’s not true,” Mr. Trump would say, “but it sounds good.”
Stephanie Grisham, who served as a White House press secretary in the first term, once recalled that Mr. Trump would tell aides that “as long as you keep repeating something, it doesn’t matter what you say.” And that trickled down to the staff. “Casual dishonesty filtered through the White House as though it were in the air-conditioning system,” she wrote in her memoir.
Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump ally who served briefly as his White House communications director, said on Friday that Mr. Trump believes dishonesty works. Mr. Trump, he said, is at “50 years of distorting things and telling lies and he is at 50 years of getting away with it, so why wouldn’t he make the lies bigger and more impactful in this last stretch?”
The exaggerations and falsehoods serve a strategic purpose. While Mr. Trump won a clean victory in November, including in the popular vote, which he lost in 2016, he did not win a majority and his 1.5-percentage-point margin was one of the lowest since the 19th century. But he regularly says that he won a “landslide victory,” which serves not just to stroke his ego but to assert an expansive popular mandate for his agenda.
Mr. Trump, who repeatedly disparaged media fact-checking during last year’s campaign, does not back off after misleading statements and lies are exposed. Instead, he tends to double down, repeating them even after it’s been reported that they are not true.
After reporters determined that the $50 million for condoms story was untrue, Mr. Trump not only repeated it, he increased the supposed total to $100 million. Nor did he back down after falsely claiming that U.S.A.I.D. had provided grants to media organizations as “a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats,” even after learning the money was simply for subscriptions.
Likewise, Mr. Trump made his claim about diversity programs and air safety the day after the midair collision of a passenger jet and Army helicopter in Washington without an ounce of proof, nor did he ever follow up with any. And while a Hong Kong company operates two of five ports adjacent to the Panama Canal, he continues to say the passage is controlled by China when in fact Panama operates it.
And to support his effort to rescind the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, Mr. Trump keeps saying that the United States is “the only country in the world that does this,” even though it has been repeatedly reported that in fact more than 30 countries do.
“Opponents end up arguing about his narratives regardless of how grounded they are in fact,” said Dr. Zelizer. “This has put President Trump in a perpetual position of advantage since he decides the terms of debate rather than anyone seeking to stop him.”
In Mr. Trump’s facts-are-fungible world, conspiracy theories at times are given as much weight as tangible evidence and those who traffic in them are granted access that no other president would give. Just this past week, he talked about going to Fort Knox to see if the nation’s gold really is there, indulging a fringe suspicion that it is somehow missing.
Invited to accompany Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Europe was Jack Posobiec, a far-right influencer who promoted the lie that Democrats were running a pedophile ring out of a Washington pizza parlor, a lie that inspired an armed man to burst in and open fire to save the supposed victims. Mr. Posobiec ended up not going but later accompanied Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump’s blame-the-victim revisionism over Ukraine in recent days has been among the most striking efforts to translate his alternative reality into policy. Over the course of several recent days, he said that Ukraine “started” the war with Russia in 2022 and called the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a “dictator without elections,” while absolving President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, an actual dictator who had invaded his neighbor. He went even further on Friday, saying, “It’s not Russia’s fault.”
By undercutting public sympathy for Ukraine, Mr. Trump may make it easier for him to strike a peace agreement with Mr. Putin giving Russia much of what it wants even over any objections by Mr. Zelensky or European leaders. Since Mr. Zelensky is a dictator responsible for the war, this reasoning goes, he deserves less consideration.
One of Mr. Trump’s claims about Ukraine offers a case study in his mythmaking. He said that the United States has provided $350 billion in aid to Ukraine, three times as much as Europe, but that much of the money is “missing” and that Mr. Zelensky “admits that half of the money we sent him is missing.”
In fact, the United States has allocated about a third of what Mr. Trump claimed, even less than Europe, and none of it is known to be missing.
The dollar figures cited for U.S. aid to Ukraine can vary depending on how government officials present them, what time period they cover and whether they include humanitarian and economic assistance.
How did Mr. Trump arrive at his claim? The White House did not respond to a request for elaboration. But it appears that Mr. Trump was referring to a recent interview with Mr. Zelensky that the president or his staff either misunderstood or distorted.
In the interview, Mr. Zelensky was asked by The Associated Press about exaggerated numbers and he corrected them. “When it’s said that Ukraine received $200 billion to support the army during the war, that’s not true,” Mr. Zelensky said according to a translation by Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet. “I don’t know where all that money went.”
Mr. Zelensky was not saying that there was $200 billion and that he did not know where all of it went. He was saying there never was $200 billion in the first place. Even Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, has indicated no concern over missing money, saying that “we have a pretty good accounting of where it’s going.” Indeed, the vast bulk of U.S. aid approved for Ukraine has been in the form of weapons, not cash.
But that does not comport with the official line at the White House. Once Mr. Trump makes an assertion, those who work for him — and want to keep working for him — are compelled to tailor their own versions of reality to match his. Even if it requires them to abandon previous understandings of the facts.
So there was Michael Waltz, the former Republican congressman from Florida now serving as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, pressed last week to reconcile his past comments about who was responsible for the war in Ukraine with his boss’s current position.
A reporter read aloud from an opinion column that Mr. Waltz had written in 2023 stating that “Putin is to blame, certainly, like Al Qaeda was to blame for 9/11.” Mr. Waltz was asked if he still believed that or whether he now shared Mr. Trump’s assessment that Ukraine had started the war.
“Well,” Mr. Waltz said carefully, “it shouldn’t surprise you that I share the president’s assessment on all kinds of issues. What I wrote as a member of Congress was as a former member of Congress.”
And so, Mr. Waltz’s actual reality gave way to Mr. Trump’s alternative version.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) Israel and Hamas Trade Accusations of Violating Fragile Cease-Fire
Hamas criticized Israel’s decision to delay the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, amid growing tensions and concerns for the future of the truce in Gaza.
By Isabel Kershner, Reporting from Jerusalem, Feb. 23, 2025
Israel and Hamas on Sunday accused each other of violating the already fragile Gaza cease-fire deal after Israel delayed the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be exchanged for hostages.
The office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the prisoners would not be freed until the release of further hostages “has been assured,” and Hamas committed to letting them go without “humiliating ceremonies.”
The growing tensions come after a week of mutual recriminations and strained nerves on both sides. The delay raised more questions about the future of the cease-fire for Gaza, with a temporary, six-week truce set to expire on March 1.
There is no clarity yet about a possible extension, or even whether serious negotiations have begun. Some members of Israel’s right-wing government are pressing for a resumption of the fighting after the initial phase of the cease-fire, which has provided a brief lull in the devastating war set off by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
On Saturday, Hamas released six Israeli hostages, the last living captives set to be freed in the first phase of the cease-fire. Earlier it had handed over the remains of four hostages, including those of Shiri Bibas and her two young children, who were all taken alive during the 2023 assault.
Israel was supposed to release 620 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in return, the largest group of detainees to be let go since the cease-fire in Gaza began last month, but it delayed the move, citing what Mr. Netanyahu’s office described as Hamas’s “cynical exploitation” of the hostages for propaganda purposes.
Late Saturday, dozens of Palestinian families, their faces somber, left a venue in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank where some prisoners were supposed to appear, after waiting there for hours in the hope of reuniting with their loved ones. Many families said they had received no official communication regarding the delayed release, relying instead on media reports and word of mouth.
Hamas has been releasing hostages in performative ceremonies aimed at showing that it is still in control of Gaza, a practice that many Israeli officials have condemned. On Saturday, five of the six living hostages were paraded on a stage, flanked by masked gunmen, prompting outrage in Israel. One hostage was seen on a stage kissing the heads of masked gunmen, as if in gratitude. His relatives later said he had been instructed to do so by a Hamas cameraman.
Anger was further inflamed when Hamas published a propaganda video footage on Saturday night showing two other Israeli hostages who had been forced to watch three of their fellow captives being released.
Repeatedly putting their shorn heads in their hands, the pair pleaded on camera for their freedom. Rights groups and international law experts say that a hostage video is, by definition, made under duress, and the statements in it are usually coerced. Israeli officials have called past Hamas videos a form of “psychological warfare,” and experts say their production can constitute a war crime.
In a statement Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of violating its agreement with Israel and said the prisoner releases would be postponed “until the release of the next hostages has been assured, and without the humiliating ceremonies.” On Thursday, Hamas is supposed to hand over the bodies of four more dead Israelis under the terms of the initial phase of the cease-fire.
Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a subsequent statement on Sunday that Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to delay the prisoner releases “reflects a deliberate attempt to disrupt the agreement.” Mr. Al-Rishq also accused Israel of humiliating Palestinian prisoners and detainees during the release process, mistreating them “until the very last moments” and banning their families from holding celebrations.
Dozens of the prisoners slated to be released are serving life sentences for deadly attacks in Israel, while others had not been formally charged.
The recriminations came after an already turbulent week. On Thursday, Hamas returned four bodies it said were those of hostages who had died in captivity, among them that of Ms. Bibas. But forensic testing by Israel determined that the body was not hers. Late Friday, Hamas transferred another set of remains, which Israeli officials confirmed early Saturday as those of Ms. Bibas. The kidnapping and deaths of Ms. Bibas and her young children have become a symbol of Israeli grief and anguish.
Adding to the uproar, the Israeli authorities rejected Hamas’s assertions that Ms. Bibas’s young sons, Ariel, who was 4 when he was abducted, and Kfir, who was not even 9 months old, were killed in Israeli airstrikes, saying that an autopsy had shown that their captors had killed them “with their bare hands” then tried to make it look like they had died in a bombardment.
Dr. Chen Kugel, Israel’s chief pathologist, said on Saturday night that there was no evidence that Ms. Bibas, who was 32, had been killed in a bombing. He did not elaborate or present evidence for the assertion.
Hamas on Saturday accused Israel of lying regarding the fate of the Bibas family, without explaining the discrepancies. Israel’s military has said Ms. Bibas and her sons were held captive by a smaller armed group in Gaza, the Mujahideen Brigades.
About 60 hostages remain in Gaza, about half of them already assumed to be dead, according to the Israeli government.
The Hamas propaganda video of the two captives begging for their release unleashed a maelstrom of emotions in Israel, including a glimmer of hope for their families.
“I saw my son for the first time in 16 months,” Ilan Gilboa-Dalal, the father of Guy Gilboa-Dalal, one of the two hostages in the video, told Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. “I heard his voice for the first time. For me, that gives me a bit of air, knowing that he’s okay,” he said.
On the other hand, he added, there was “nothing more cruel” than forcing his son and his friend, Evyatar David, the second hostage in the car, to watch the release ceremony.
Galia David, the mother of Evyatar, told Army Radio: “The consolation in that is that Evyatar and Guy are alive. But I could see through his eyes into his soul, and he is agonized.”
The two hostages in the car and the three on the stage were all abducted from a music festival, the Tribe of Nova, near the border with Gaza during the October 2023 attack.
Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting from Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Gabby Sobelman from Rehovot, Israel.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) For Fearful Immigrants, It’s the Card They All Want Right Now
Distributed by a legal aid group, the “red card” lays out key rights and protections. Demand for them has surged since President Trump returned to office.
By Miriam Jordan, Feb. 23, 2025
Miriam Jordan, the national immigration correspondent, reported from San Jose, Calif., and Los Angeles.
The card was intentionally designed to be red, a color associated with “Stop” and that calls to mind the card that soccer referees use to eject players. Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times
It is the size of a credit card, comes in 19 languages and is in the pockets and purses of millions of immigrants.
The red card, as it is known by its bearers, lists a collection of practical tips and legal rights for immigrants who might find themselves targeted by federal agents.
Though the card has been around for almost two decades, interest in it has exploded over the last month amid a wave of anti-immigrant edicts from President Trump during his first days back in the White House. The nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center has received orders from across the country for several million cards, a demand its printing contractor has rushed to meet.
Eliseo, a carpet installer in Northern California, keeps one in his wallet and another in his truck’s glove compartment. His wife, Maria, stores hers in the sleeve on the back of her cellphone. Their 13-year-old son, a U.S. citizen, has distributed them to classmates.
“You show agents the card,” said Eliseo, a father of three who has been in the United States for decades. “It does the talking.”
Like other undocumented immigrants interviewed for this article, he spoke on the condition that he be identified by only his first name.
Every person in the United States, regardless of immigration status, is guaranteed certain protections under the Constitution. The card highlights some that are particularly relevant to undocumented immigrants, including the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and the Fourth Amendment right to refuse entry to the home unless an agent has a warrant signed by a judge.
But as fundamental as those rights are, they have created friction in the fight over how the country should address illegal immigration and how the authorities should treat the millions of undocumented people who live and work in the United States.
For many of those immigrants, asserting the rights outlined on the red card could be the difference between being deported and staying in the country. For Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies trying to deliver on the president’s pledge to carry out mass deportations, those same rights are a roadblock.
“They call it ‘Know Your Rights,’” the president’s so-called border czar, Thomas D. Homan, said last month on CNN. “I call it, ‘How to escape arrest.’”
Immigration was a defining issue for Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, and he returned to the White House promising a crackdown. In the administration’s early days, ICE highlighted immigration raids and deportation flights, but federal agents have struggled to meet the president’s expectations. Mr. Homan and others have blamed local officials, immigrant-rights groups and the news media for hindering enforcement efforts.
Though deportation actions have yielded fewer arrests than promised, they have nonetheless stirred widespread fear and spurred efforts to ensure immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, understand their legal protections. Organizations have been holding “know-your-rights” sessions to teach immigrants that they can withhold personal information and refuse to sign any documents. The proliferation of the red cards underscores the growing anxiety, and the expanding efforts to counter it.
Since the election, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, which is headquartered in San Francisco, has received orders for about nine million cards, more than in the previous 17 years combined. Most of the orders are from nonprofits that provide them to schools, churches, clinics and food banks, which then distribute them to immigrants.
Caryn Shapiro, a high school teacher in Columbus, Ohio, said that she had handed out cards in nine languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Pashto and Ukrainian. “The kids, no matter what their status, are terrified of ICE,” she said.
On a recent day, the printing company contracted to produce the cards was churning them out by the hundreds of thousands. “Our whole staff is working on red cards,” said Troy Jones, who co-owns the company, Printed Union, in San Jose, Calif.
In one room, a printer was spitting out 12,000 sheets per hour, each with 84 cards in Chinese. In another room, boxes of cards labeled “Ukrainian” and “Russian” sat side by side on a rack. Stacks in Arabic, Farsi, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Punjabi and Tigrinya were ready to be packed, and the first batches in Amharic, Khmer and Portuguese would soon be shipped.
A computer generated labels for orders — to both red and blue states. “It’s literally every single state you can imagine we are shipping to,” said Mr. Jones, after taking a call from a nun in Minnesota requesting 250 in Spanish. “People need these as fast as possible.”
Immigrants from Alabama to Alaska have been packing information sessions. TODEC, a legal-aid organization in Southern California, has distributed about 500,000 cards and held a training class this week titled, “The Power of the Red Card,” which drew 300 participants.
“The red card is a very, very powerful tool,” Sandra Reyes, an educational coordinator at TODEC, said at the session.
“You might get nervous if an agent stops you,” she said. “Just take the card out and read it, or hand it over without uttering a word.”
After attending a TODEC event last month, an undocumented construction worker said that he was stopped by agents en route to church on Feb. 2.
When the worker, Luiz, 40, was asked if he had “papers” he handed the agents the red card and said nothing, he recalled. After he was ordered out of his car, the agents pressured him to disclose his immigration status, Luiz said. He said he remained silent and shook his head when asked if he had been in trouble with the law.
Luiz said that after they reviewed his Mexican identification card from his wallet, the agents checked his record and let him go. “The red card saved me,” he said. “I tell all my friends, just show the card and shut up.”
Mark Silverman was a lawyer with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center when he hatched the idea of the card in 2006, after a spate of immigration raids at workplaces fueled fear among immigrants.
The goal was to make the card small enough to slip into a wallet or a pocket. It was intentionally red, a color associated with “Stop” and that calls to mind the card that soccer referees use to eject players.
“I never predicted that the card would have such a long life,” said Mr. Silverman, who retired in 2018, “or ever be in such great demand.”
In California’s Central Valley, a fieldworker named Felipe was driving three co-workers to harvest lettuce on a recent Sunday before sunrise.
When agents pulled them over, Felipe, a 49-year-old immigrant and father of three children born in the United States, grabbed the card from his dashboard.
The agent scrutinized it and looked annoyed, Felipe said.
Another agent pressured the men to divulge their immigration status. Felipe produced only his California driver’s license.
“What do you want from us?” he recalled telling them. “We aren’t criminals. We have rights.”
Soon the men were back on their way to work.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) America Loses Its Soul When It Rejects People Fleeing Danger
By Dina Nayeri, Feb. 23, 2025
Ms. Nayeri is the author of “The Ungrateful Refugee” and “Who Gets Believed?”
Oyow
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be “civilized.” It’s not caring for one’s own; animals do that. It’s not making music and art; cave men drew and sang. It is, I believe, to live with a moral standard that takes into account our fellow man, and to ask: What do we owe one another, and what do we owe strangers?
For me, to be civilized boils down to being willing to work against our own lesser interests in order to alleviate greater suffering, no matter the sufferer’s identity or relationship to us. It is a high standard, but it is not heroism, which is putting one’s own life in real danger for another.
After World War II, a large group of lawmakers decided to codify this principle of humanitarian duty into international law. Nonrefoulement (from the French “fouler,” meaning “to trample”) is the idea that vulnerable people, once arrived on safe shores, should never be sent back into danger. Put simply, it is the premise that the least we can do is not knowingly send someone out to die. It is this idea that was challenged by the first Trump administration, with its “Remain in Mexico” policy, which denied responsibility for asylum seekers. Now, in his second term, President Trump has not only reinstated that harmful policy but also suspended thousands of existing asylum cases, and canceled appointments and even flights for refugees already cleared to enter the United States. All of this goes against a contract this country signed 58 years ago.
One hundred and forty-five countries signed the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention (the United States signed on to the bulk of the convention’s requirements in 1967, including those on refoulement), which states: “No contracting state shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
The language in the treaty was designed to be all-encompassing, and to acknowledge that there will always be refugees fleeing persecution. The vaguest protected category, “particular social group,” was added by a Swedish delegate who worried that some people who deserve shelter would not fit into the existing categories. How could anyone when this language was drafted, just six years after the horrors of the Holocaust, foretell whom the next atrocity would target? “Particular social group,” then, was written as a catchall, to make sure everyone who needed refuge would be covered by the legal language.
In 1988, my family fled Iran and landed in the United Arab Emirates. After nearly a year, we were recognized as refugees by the U.N.’s High Commissioner on Refugees and sent to a camp in Italy. There we sat for another six months or so, waiting and submitting to “credible fear” interviews, wherein asylum seekers must prove to an immigration office that the danger back home is real, not imagined. My mother explained to the officers that her Christian conversion was apostasy according to Islamic law, and that before we escaped, she had been imprisoned, interrogated and told she’d be executed. As we told our story, I sensed that our interlocutors’ aim was to save us, not to send us away. Later, too, I saw American neighbors and friends embracing this moral duty, a responsibility and an instinct to protect lives more vulnerable than their own.
But in the United States and in Europe of late, it seems as if government lawyers have treated the Refugee Convention like a checklist of obligations to reinterpret and wriggle out of rather than a sacred principle that bound together a shellshocked world after the savageries of the Holocaust. The spirit of a broad and inclusive refuge has slowly been replaced by a narrowing of those categories to allow as few as possible to qualify. During the first Trump administration, Jeff Sessions, who was then attorney general, argued that women fleeing domestic violence did not qualify for protections as a social group. As ugly as that is, Mr. Trump is once again engaging in mass refoulement, turning away refugees who meet the strict criteria.
The writers of the original treaty tried to articulate something like: We can’t know what evil will come next, but when it does, we peaceful nations will shelter its survivors. Twenty-first-century lawyers have reinterpreted that to mean, essentially: We will shelter survivors, but only from the kinds of evil that we are legally forced to care about.
After receiving asylum in 1989, my mother, brother and I were resettled in Oklahoma. Pastors often asked us to share our story in their churches, and my mother gratefully did the rounds. It felt humiliating, but I liked the language of their sermons: We were “chosen,” our journey a “miracle,” our lives a part of “God’s plan.” I loved these words because they meant we were special. One sweet, grumbly old church man, though, didn’t seem to think we were special at all. When we were at his house, he teased me about my accent, the books I hadn’t yet read, my love of stewed spinach and yogurt. And yet he absolutely believed that bringing us out of Iran was God’s work. Now I understand that this man had a higher-order morality than all those who praised our faith, or our value: He didn’t think we were extraordinary or anointed. He just thought that every life deserved saving.
This standard has eroded in America and across Europe. We’ve become baser, more self-serving, jealously guarding our spaces. These days, so much of our talk about migrants and refugees is about how much they do for our economies, for our communities and for our culture. But what about the sanctity of human life? America, this shining city on a hill, is now sending people back to face torture and death, en masse, despite our obscene resources. Just this month we began shipping the most vulnerable to Panama; including Iranian Christians, facing the same risks my family did 36 years ago. The firmer our door remains shut, the more our language has become about exceptional people, deserving people and merit.
I don’t think, for meritorious people, this is a very difficult promise to keep, for our gatekeepers and for all of us: We don’t send wretched people back into danger. Even if it costs us money. And certainly not for some hypothetical fear for ourselves. We do this because we’re civilized, and born lucky, and life is the minimum we owe to our fellow man.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) 5 Takeaways From Germany’s Election
Friedrich Merz and his party won, Elon Musk didn’t seem to move voters, and more lessons from an early German vote with big implications for Europe.
By Christopher F. Schuetze and Jim Tankersley, Reporting from Berlin, Feb. 24, 2025
Germany is getting a new chancellor. Its current leader is heading out of power, but his party probably will stick around in a diminished capacity. And the Trump administration’s efforts to influence the vote don’t seem to have done much.
Sunday’s election, which came months ahead of schedule after the country’s governing coalition crumbled late last year, produced a few surprises and a lot of suspense.
By early Monday morning, the results seemed clear enough to indicate that the center-right Christian Democrats would be able to lead Germany with only one coalition partner, returning the country to the more durable two-party form of government that has led it for most of this century.
Here are five takeaways from the returns.
Merz is the likely new chancellor.
The largest German turnout in decades gave the most votes to the Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian Social Union. That almost certainly means the next chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, a businessman who flies his own private plane and has long coveted the top job.
Mr. Merz lost a power struggle to lead the Christian Democrats early in the 2000s, to Angela Merkel, who went on to serve 16 years as chancellor. Voters soured on her legacy, though, including an ill-fated plan to rely more heavily on Russia for natural gas and the decision to keep Germany’s borders open in 2015 and begin welcoming what would be millions of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
After the Christian Democrats fell out of power in 2021, Mr. Merz assumed leadership of the party and drove it to the right on migration and other issues. He was most comfortable campaigning on the economy, promising to peel back regulations and reduce taxes in a bid to reignite economic growth.
Mr. Merz is tall and sometimes stern, with a dry wit. Polls suggest that only about a third of the country believes he will make a good chancellor. Even some of his own voters said on Sunday that they are not enamored of him. But if he can quickly forge a government, he has a chance to step into a leadership vacuum in Europe as it struggles with the strains on its relationship with the United States under President Trump.
Trump and NATO were on the ballot.
When Vice President JD Vance gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference last week chiding the European political establishment for excluding extreme parties, he jolted the once-sleepy election campaign awake. If Mr. Trump’s threats of a trade war and less military protection had already been worrying Germans, the speech and the president’s subsequent U-turn on Ukraine caused a near panic in Germany.
Among German voters, 65 percent are worried that Germany is helpless against President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, according to a poll released on Sunday afternoon.
On Sunday night in a post-election debate between leaders, Mr. Merz quickly brought up the threat that Germany and Europe face because of the new U.S. administration.
“It has become clear that the Americans, at least this part of the Americans, this government, is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,” he said. “I am very curious to see how we approach the NATO summit at the end of June — whether we are still talking about NATO in its current state or whether we need to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly.”
Musk did not seem to sway voters.
The hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, doubled its vote share from four years ago, largely by appealing to voters upset by immigration. In the former East Germany, it finished first, ahead of Mr. Merz’s party.
The AfD’s vote share appeared to fall short of its high-water mark of support in polls from a year ago, however. Many analysts had been expecting a stronger showing, after a sequence of events that elevated the party and its signature issue.
The AfD received public support from Mr. Vance and an endorsement by the billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk. It sought to make political gains out of a series of deadly attacks by migrants in recent months, including in the final days of the campaign.
But that boon never materialized.
The surprise of the night
Reaction to the recent attacks and the support from Trump officials may have even mobilized a late burst of support to Die Linke, the party of Germany’s far left, which campaigned on a pro-immigration platform, some voters suggested in interviews on Sunday.
Two months ago Die Linke was dying. Sahra Wagenknecht, its most popular member, started a new party last year that was more friendly to Russia and tougher on migration. Many followed her, thinking that she was the future. Die Linke languished at 3 percent.
But Die Linke managed to turn things around in just months, thanks to a new pair of charismatic and social-media savvy leaders and the alienation that many young voters feel with mainstream parties. It surged to what appeared to be nearly 9 percent of the vote and more than 60 seats in Parliament.
Its campaign events started attracting so many young people that they became must-see affairs, as much dance party as political rally.
The party leaders became social media stars. Heidi Reichinnek, who is credited for much of the turnaround, told a crowd on Sunday night that they owed their success to the many volunteers who went from door to door talking to people about pocketbook issues. Ms. Reichinnek told supporters they “did everything right.”
Scholz is out, but his party marches on.
Despite polling predicting his third-place finish, Chancellor Olaf Scholz had insisted until the very end that he would somehow retain his job. He was wrong. His Social Democratic Party won a record-low 16 percent, coming in third place. Though Mr. Scholz will continue as a caretaker chancellor until Mr. Merz is sworn in, he is widely expected to step down from active politics.
His party will live on, though. It will very likely slip into the familiar role of junior partner in a government led by the conservatives. The so-called “grand coalition” supported Ms. Merkel through three of her four terms, and it could be Mr. Merz’s best shot for a stable government in a tumultuous time for Germany.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) Dr. Oz: How His Millions Collide With Medicare
The TV celebrity and Trump nominee has pledged to divest from most of his financial interests. But they touch nearly every corner of health care, from insurance to blood pressure cuffs and vitamins, leading experts and lawmakers to doubt he could make impartial decisions.
By Reed Abelson and Susanne Craig, Feb. 24, 2025
A screenshot from a YouTube version of one episode from Dr. Oz’s TV shows, in which he promoted private Medicare plans offered by TZ Insurance, a company that paid for promotions akin to infomercials. Credit...via YouTube
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity TV doctor nominated by President Trump to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, has been a relentless promoter of controversial private insurance plans for older Americans.
“I’d be signing up,” he told viewers, directing them to a call center in an episode that is still available on his YouTube channel.
What Dr. Oz did not tell the audience was that he made money from touting the plans, known as Medicare Advantage. The for-profit company operating the call center, TZ Insurance Solutions, paid to be featured.
Dr. Oz even became a licensed broker for TZ Insurance in almost every state, according to regulatory filings newly unearthed by The New York Times, with the idea that he could sell plans directly to viewers.
He may be one of America’s best-known daytime TV personalities, or “America’s doctor,” as Oprah Winfrey called him. But little is known about exactly how he monetized his fame over the years. All told, his business and family ventures are valued in the neighborhood of roughly $90 million to $335 million.
An examination by The Times of his myriad financial interests revealed not only opaque ties with the industries he may soon regulate but also a coziness with health care companies that lawmakers have already highlighted in questioning his independence.
He has made tens of millions of dollars hawking dietary supplements on his show and on social media, often without any mention of his financial interest. He has been paid by medical device firms and health-related ventures, and his money was invested in a dizzying array of businesses. Many of those companies would be affected by any decisions he would make in the government post and many already benefit from agency funding.
In an attempt to avoid conflicts, Dr. Oz disclosed on Wednesday in ethics filings that he would sell his interests in more than 70 companies and investment funds. Those include as much as $600,000 in stock in UnitedHealth Group, the giant conglomerate that is the nation’s largest provider of private Medicare plans; as much as $5 million in Inception Fertility Holdings, a privately held company that operates a chain of clinics; and as much as $100,000 in HCA Healthcare, the sprawling for-profit hospital chain.
In addition, he indicated that he would sell as much as $26 million invested in Amazon, which has a vast reach that now includes One Medical, a primary care venture for in-person and virtual patient needs; an online pharmacy; and the sale of health-related products and devices through its gargantuan retail platform. (The exact value of Dr. Oz’s various holdings is not known because the disclosure forms allow asset values to be listed under a wide range.)
Dr. Oz also pledged in the filings to resign from paid advisory positions and to sell holdings in a digital stethoscope company, a pharmaceutical research and technology firm and a cardiology practice.
Still, he has several limited liability companies — Oz Works and Oz Property Holdings among them — and the nature of their operations is not known. He has no plans to close them and the filings state that he would remain an official at some. In the ethics agreement, he pledged not to “participate personally and substantially in any particular matter in which I know that I have a financial interest” or seek a waiver.
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics, said Dr. Oz’s financial filings struck her as “the appearance of disclosure without disclosure.”
“You can sell assets, and if you have a specific contractual agreement you can end it,” she said. “But I can’t even tell from his disclosures what direct or indirect arrangements he has.”
The sheer breadth of his financial entanglements has prompted some ethics experts and lawmakers to express doubts about his independence, particularly over companies from which he received millions of dollars for endorsing their products and services.
Christopher Krepich, a spokesman for Dr. Oz, declined to respond to a detailed list of questions from The Times about Dr. Oz’s business ventures. He would only say that Dr. Oz was cooperating with the Office of Government Ethics, which reviews the finances and interests of presidential nominees, and would comply with the agency’s rules.
If the Senate confirms Dr. Oz, 64, to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, he would wield immense power, overseeing health insurance coverage for nearly half of all Americans and a budget of about $1.5 trillion in annual spending. Given his advocacy of Medicare Advantage, Dr. Oz would have the authority to expand the privatization of the government program as he and many Republicans have urged.
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to soon schedule Dr. Oz’s confirmation hearing.
Government spending toward the private Medicare plans amounts to about $500 billion a year. The plans have been heavily scrutinized, faulted by lawmakers and regulators for systemic overbilling and unjustified denials of payment for patient care. The very agency Dr. Oz would run recently cracked down on overpayments and forced insurers to be more transparent when they refuse to pay for patients’ care.
The insurance industry has heavily lobbied against new rules that regulators have proposed in their efforts to rein in abuses, and insurers frequently challenge the government in court.
For instance, the brokerage industry successfully blocked new Medicare changes that would have imposed tighter caps on overall payments to brokers from companies like TZ Insurance as a way to curb overly aggressive marketing tactics.
Still, Medicare Advantage remains popular with millions of consumers, and Dr. Oz once advocated extending its reach to employer plans. Insurers have already begun pressing the Trump administration to expand funding for Medicare Advantage.
In recent years, supplement companies have captured much of Dr. Oz’s attention. In 2023, he joined iHerb, an online seller of vitamins and supplements, as an adviser and spokesman. In the new financial filing, his investments in iHerb represent one of his largest financial holdings, worth anywhere from $5 million to $25 million.
In the ethics agreement, whether Dr. Oz would extricate his interests from iHerb remains murky: Experts who reviewed it for The Times said the wording held open the possibility that even once he is at the helm of the agency, Dr. Oz might retain some iHerb stock until the company goes public or is bought. Either way, he stands to make significant money from his stake in iHerb.
Like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s new health secretary, Dr. Oz is critical of the nation’s overreliance on drugs and surgery as treatments for chronic illness over diet and fitness. (Mr. Kennedy, 71, disclosed recently that his health insurance was provided by a Medicare Advantage plan.)
“He’s got big ambitions for the health of the country, honestly,” said Andy Slavitt, who served as the acting agency administrator under President Barack Obama. Mr. Slavitt, a former UnitedHealth executive, said that Dr. Oz “very much wants to do the job as a physician and focus on quality.”
A Family’s Financial Ties
Dr. Oz was born in Cleveland to a wealthy Turkish American family. His father, Mustafa, was a thoracic surgeon who died in 2019. He has familial links to one of Turkey’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Atabay, that was founded by his maternal grandfather. It makes ingredients for medications, including opioids, that are currently sold in the United States.
It does not appear that he had an ownership stake in the company, although he has had contact with top health officials in Turkey along with his uncle, who was once Atabay’s chairman.
In 2018, the uncle, Bülent Atabay, owned the lion’s share of the company, while his mother, Suna, owned a much smaller piece, according to a Turkish commercial registry notice, the latest available.
After graduating from Harvard and receiving his medical and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz became a successful cardiothoracic surgeon at what was then known as Columbia-Presbyterian in New York. He was famously part of a team that performed a heart transplant in 1996 on the brother of Joe Torre, the former Yankees manager.
He and his wife Lisa of nearly 40 years are fabulously wealthy by almost any measure.
She is among numerous heirs to one of the nation’s largest private companies, Asplundh Tree Expert, which provides tree removal and related services for utilities and municipalities. The couple’s stakes in Asplundh were worth between roughly $11 million to $52 million, according to the latest financial filings.
Dr. Oz parlayed his career as a surgeon into a multi-million-dollar business that catapulted him into Americans’ living rooms and enriched him and his family.
He developed a TV persona, appearing in 2004 on “Oprah.” That morphed into the long-running “Dr. Oz” show, which aired from 2009 until early 2022.
He touted the benefits of healthy living, but also drew sharp criticism for his public support of unfounded claims on a wide range of health and medical topics. In 2014, The BMJ, formerly The British Medical Journal, analyzed 40 episodes of Dr. Oz’s show and concluded that fewer than half the health recommendations were supported by evidence.
That year, a Senate consumer protection panel grilled him about endorsements of certain “magic” weight-loss products. Former Senator Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, scolded him, saying “the scientific community is almost monolithic against you in terms of the efficacy of a few products that you have called miracles.”
Dr. Oz conceded that his claims often “don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact.”
During the Covid pandemic, Dr. Oz used his high-profile medical persona to espouse a highly questionable treatment. He appeared on Fox News more than two dozen times talking about the benefits of the malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments for Covid and was influential in persuading Mr. Trump of their value despite sparse evidence.
He backtracked only after a study showed more patients were dying when treated with the hydroxychloroquine than those who were not taking it. Further studies proved the drug to be ineffective against Covid. Dr. Oz defended his position, saying he put patients first and argued the politics around Covid left many treatments to be “regularly discounted by the medical establishment.”
Over the years, his peers have publicly denounced him for some of his dubious medical claims. “He has made clear that he will put enriching himself above all else, even in instances where people’s health is endangered,” a group of about 150 physicians, “Real Doctors Against Oz,” wrote in opposing his Senate candidacy in 2022.
And at Columbia, where he spent much of his medical career performing heart surgery and teaching, he remains a complicated figure. The university refused to fire him in 2015 after a group of doctors urged it to sever ties, describing Dr. Oz as “guilty of either outrageous conflicts of interest or flawed judgments about what constitutes appropriate medical treatments, or both.”
Dr. Oz responded at the time that he never promoted products for financial gain and argued that those seeking his ouster “have big ties to big industry.”
The Hidden Hand
On his daytime show, Dr. Oz frequently and vaguely referred to companies he promoted as trusted sponsorship partners. Those words might not have registered with millions of his viewers, but they meant that the companies paid to be featured on his show in ways that were akin to an infomercial.
MedicareAdvantage.com, operated by TZ Insurance, was one such trusted partner.
A spokesman for TZ Insurance said it paid Sony Pictures Television for the promotion on his daytime TV show and cut ties with Dr. Oz in 2022, the same year that the television show ended and he was campaigning for the Senate.
The spokesman for TZ said that it had registered Dr. Oz as an insurance broker as part of a marketing strategy for him to speak directly to customers, but that didn’t happen.
Still, Dr. Oz remains licensed as a broker in more than 20 states. Last year Wisconsin pulled his license over failure to pay $996.15 in state taxes on unspecified income, according to public records and a spokeswoman for the state. That has since been paid, state officials said.
Another trusted partner was Omron, a maker of blood pressure monitors. It announced it had “joined forces” with the Dr. Oz show in a 2010 news release though neither the show nor the company have revealed the financial details of their arrangement.
In an episode available on his YouTube channel, Dr. Oz wore scrubs and featured Omron’s device to explain the virtues of taking your blood pressure. He worked with Walmart to get Omron device coupons for consumers and provided them to his audience.
Omron’s foundation has been a generous donor to Dr. Oz’s personal charity, HealthCorps, giving more than $250,000 since 2016, according to tax records reviewed by The Times.
An Omron spokesman said it too paid Sony and the company had “no current ties” to Dr. Oz.
Omron’s business, however, relies partly on Medicare, which pays for its blood pressure monitor in some circumstances, and he would oversee requests for expanded coverage.
But ethics experts say these endorsements may be particularly problematic. “His history is more than just ownership,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a watchdog group. Even if Dr. Oz divests his stocks and discontinues financial relationships with these companies, he should recuse himself from issues with the businesses he was paid to advise or promote, he said.
The Business of Wellness
For years Dr. Oz used his show to promote dietary supplements, often making unsubstantiated claims about their effectiveness. He described selenium supplements as the “holy grail of cancer prevention” and hailed green coffee extract as a “magic weight-loss cure.”
At a hearing in 2014, when senators confronted him with his exaggerated statements about weight-loss products, he responded, “My job on the show, I feel, is to be a cheerleader for the audience.”
Dr. Oz was often a paid cheerleader. In 2012, he became a spokesman for Usana Health Sciences, a supplement company in Utah.
Usana also was referred to as a trusted sponsorship partner on his TV show. The company’s products were featured prominently and consumers could buy them through his TV website, according to a regulatory filing. Dr. Oz was also deeply involved in the company, attending Usana corporate events to rally employees.
“Usana’s global effort to seek out health solutions knows no bounds,” Dr. Oz proclaimed in one promotional video.
What money Dr. Oz and his show made from the Usana relationship is unclear; Dr. Oz and the company declined to comment. But in a court filing in 2018, the plaintiff in a trademark infringement case against Usana claimed the supplement company paid more than $50 million in the previous five years for promotion on the Dr. Oz show.
Usana said its relationship with the Dr. Oz show ended in 2022, the year the show went off air. A year later he struck up a relationship with iHerb, whose other big-name pitchman is Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight champion.
There is little public information about iHerb, which is privately held and says it is “a multi-billion-dollar eCommerce platform.”
In the last few years without his daytime show, Dr. Oz has relied heavily on his social media accounts — Instagram, TikTok and X — where he pitched iHerb to millions of followers. He recommended supplements that he said would promote hair growth and smoother skin. Olive oil, which iHerb sells, “might be able to actually help with Alzheimer’s.”
In a letter, Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, urged federal regulators to examine Dr. Oz’s posts, saying he did not always make clear his financial ties to iHerb, and to investigate whether he violated government policy by making “undisclosed endorsements and product advertisements.”
After Mr. Trump picked him in November to lead the Medicare-Medicaid agency, Dr. Oz did not drop his enthusiasm for iHerb. Over Thanksgiving, he promoted the company’s supplements on Instagram as a way to reduce stress.
Under the private Medicare plans, customers are allowed to buy over-the-counter medicines and supplements through debit or prepaid cards, another potential conflict for Dr. Oz because of his history with iHerb and other supplement companies.
And he has not shied from making the most personal of appeals for these products.
In social media posts, Dr. Oz is pictured with his mother, who has Alzheimer’s, and claimed that iHerb supplements he sent her were among the steps that had “probably slowed” the progression of her disease.
Even if he were to recuse himself from agency coverage of products like iHerb’s, his endorsements would continue to linger online.
Teddy Rosenbluth, Safak Timur and Christina Jewett contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) Gaza Truce Could End in Days, With No Extension Agreed. What Happens Next?
Less than a week before it expires, Israel and Hamas have failed to agree to extend the cease-fire in Gaza. Here’s how the deal could still continue — and what happens if it doesn’t.
By Patrick Kingsley and Ronen Bergman, Feb. 24, 2025
The reporters have followed the cease-fire negotiations since the opening weeks of the war.
"...according to the agreement, the truce can only formally roll over if both sides agree to end the war. But Israel and Hamas have such differing visions of a postwar Gaza that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been unwilling to even restart talks."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/24/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-ceasefire.html
Palestinians waiting in Ramallah on Sunday after Israel delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners. Credit...Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Israel and Hamas agreed to a six-week cease-fire in January, there were hopes that it would evolve into a longer and more stable truce.
Now, those hopes are dwindling.
Both sides have accused each other of breaking the terms of the existing deal, which have allowed for the exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Over the weekend, Israel delayed the release of several hundred prisoners, protesting the humiliating manner in which Hamas had paraded hostages before handing them over.
With just days before the current truce elapses on Sunday, the sides have yet to begin negotiations for an extension.
Steve Witkoff, the Mideast envoy for the Trump administration, said he would return to the region on Wednesday to push for a new truce.
While a brief extension is possible, the likelihood of a long-term arrangement — preventing the revival of fighting — seems remote.
Both sides have preconditions that make it hard to reach a permanent resolution. Israel’s leaders say they will only end the war once Hamas no longer exerts military and political power in Gaza. Hamas has indicated it could give up some civil responsibilities but its leaders have largely dismissed the idea of disarmament, at least in public.
Here’s how we got here, and what could happen next.
What was supposed to happen?
The deal struck in the final days of the Biden administration allowed for an initial six-week truce, which ends on March 1. The sides agreed to use that time to gradually exchange roughly 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for 33 hostages captured by Hamas and its allies during their raid that ignited the war in October 2023.
The two sides were supposed to use the six weeks to negotiate the terms for a permanent truce that would have begun as soon as March 2. Those negotiations were expected to focus on who should govern postwar Gaza, as well as the release of roughly 60 other hostages.
Though punctured by disruptions, most of the exchanges have gone roughly to plan. The negotiations for a second phase have not. They have yet to begin in earnest — even though, under the terms of the January agreement, they were supposed to conclude by this past Sunday.
That failure is partly because, according to the agreement, the truce can only formally roll over if both sides agree to end the war. But Israel and Hamas have such differing visions of a postwar Gaza that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been unwilling to even restart talks.
Do Hamas and Israel want to restart the war?
Weak and isolated, Hamas has avoided explicit calls for a resumption in hostilities, even if the group has made war more likely by refusing to surrender.
By contrast, Mr. Netanyahu directly stated on Sunday that Israel was ready to resume fighting if Hamas would not disarm itself voluntarily. In a speech to soldiers, Mr. Netanyahu said he was only open to negotiations on the terms of Hamas’s surrender.
Many Israelis want the prime minister to agree to an extended truce in order to free the remaining hostages, even if it comes at the expense of keeping Hamas in power. But Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition allies see a defeat of Hamas as a bigger national priority and are pressing him to restart the conflict.
Is Israel getting ready for a new offensive?
The Israeli military has already made extensive preparations for a new and intense campaign in Gaza, according to three defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely.
The officials said the new operations would include the targeting of Hamas officials who siphon off aid supplies meant for civilians, as well as the destruction of buildings and infrastructure used by the Hamas-run civilian government.
While the plan has yet to be approved by the Israeli cabinet, two of the officials said they believed that only President Trump could dissuade Mr. Netanyahu from renewed war.
What does President Trump want?
The president has made several competing demands in recent weeks, variously calling for sustained peace, renewed war, as well as the expulsion of Gaza’s two million residents. The clearest recent signal from his administration was that it was seeking a temporary extension to the truce, perhaps involving a few more hostage-for-prisoner exchanges.
On Sunday, Mr. Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Mideast envoy, said in an interview with CNN that he would return to the region on Wednesday to prolong truce’s first phase. He later told CBS that he would spend five days touring Egypt, Israel, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to build momentum toward an extension. Mr. Witkoff also said that he believed it was possible to achieve a longer agreement.
If there’s no extension, will fighting immediately resume?
Not necessarily. The initial deal said that the “temporary cessation of hostilities” could be sustained beyond the March 1 deadline as long as Israel and Hamas were still negotiating over the terms of a permanent cease-fire. That allows for some wiggle room: If the sides do return to negotiations over a formal extension, the truce can technically continue even if the talks are far from a resolution.
Still, there will be fewer guardrails to keep the truce from collapsing. During the initial cease-fire, the sides were motivated to sustain the deal through several crises because every passing week allowed for the exchange of more captives. That arrangement suited both Israel and Hamas — every liberated hostage brought relief to the Israeli population, while Hamas’s prestige was bolstered among Palestinians every time a prisoner was released.
Those swaps are set to end on Thursday, with the release of four more Israelis, most likely captives who have died, for several hundred Palestinians. Unless new exchanges are arranged, both Hamas and Israel will have fewer reasons to keep the truce going.
When is the truce’s biggest stress test?
There is particular concern about what happens after March 8.
In the January deal, Israel agreed to withdraw its forces by that date from the Gaza-Egypt border. But Mr. Netanyahu explicitly said last year that Israel would never pull back from the area, known in Israel as the Philadelphi Corridor, leading to predictions that he would break the terms of the cease-fire.
If those forces do not withdraw, the Israeli defense officials say they expect that Hamas may fire rockets at Israel, giving Israel a pretext to retaliate.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) Americans Are Expecting Higher Prices. That Could Unnerve the Fed.
More Americans are starting to brace for higher prices as President Trump’s policies begin to take effect.
By Colby Smith and Ben Casselman, Feb. 25, 2025
Economists say that the longer inflation remains elevated, the greater the chances that consumers and businesses will start to readjust their expectations. Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Fresh off the worst inflation shock in decades, Americans are once again bracing for higher prices.
Expectations about future inflation have started to move up, according to metrics closely watched by officials at the Federal Reserve. So far, the data, including a consumer survey from the University of Michigan and market-based measures of investors’ expectations, does not suggest that price pressures are perceived to be on the verge of spiraling out of control.
But the recent jump has been significant enough to warrant attention, stoking yet more uncertainty about an economic outlook already clouded by President Trump’s ever-evolving approach to trade, immigration, taxation and other policy areas. On Tuesday, a survey from the Conference Board showed that consumer confidence fell sharply in February and inflation expectations rose as Americans fretted about the surging price of eggs and the potential impact of tariffs.
If those worries persist, it could be a political problem for Mr. Trump, whose promise to control prices was a central part of his message during last year’s campaign. It would also add to the challenge facing policymakers at the Fed, who are already concerned that progress against inflation is stalling out.
“This is the kind of thing that can unnerve a policymaker,” Jonathan Pingle, who used to work at the Fed and is now chief economist at UBS, said about the overarching trend in inflation expectations. “We don’t want inflation expectations moving up so much that it makes the Fed’s job harder to get inflation back to 2 percent.”
Most economists see keeping inflation expectations in check as crucial to controlling inflation itself. That’s because beliefs about where prices are headed can become a self-fulfilling prophecy: If workers expect the cost of living to rise, they will demand raises to compensate; if businesses expect the cost of materials and labor to rise, they will increase their own prices in anticipation. That can make it much harder for the Fed to bring inflation to heel.
That’s what happened in the 1960s and 1970s: Years of high inflation led consumers and businesses to expect prices to keep rising rapidly. Only by raising interest rates to a punishing level and causing a severe recession was the Fed able to bring inflation fully back under control.
When prices began rising rapidly in 2021 and 2022, many forecasters feared a repeat of that scenario. Instead, inflation expectations remained relatively docile — rising only modestly, and falling quickly once inflation began to ease — and the Fed was able to bring down inflation without causing a big increase in unemployment.
“The No. 1 reason why that scenario didn’t play out was that, even though inflation went up quite a bit, expected inflation by most measures only went up a little bit,” said Laurence Ball, an economist at Johns Hopkins University. “That’s the big difference between the 1970s and the 2020s.”
Now, though, there are hints that Americans are anticipating higher inflation in the years ahead. Persistent price pressures driven in part by a surge in the costs of eggs and energy-related expenses coupled with concerns about the impact of tariffs are among the factors to have pushed consumers’ expectations for inflation over the next 12 months to their highest level in more than a year, according to the long-running survey from the University of Michigan.
More concerning to economists, consumers’ expectations for inflation in the longer run — which tend to be more stable over time — experienced their biggest one-month jump since 2021 in February. The increase cut across age and income levels, suggesting inflation fears are widespread.
Expectations in the Michigan survey have risen before, only to fall back in subsequent months. And the recent results have shown a huge partisan split — inflation expectations have risen sharply among Democrats since the election, but have fallen among Republicans — leading some economists to discount the results.
Inflation expectations have also risen among political independents, however — a significant development because their assessment of the economy is typically more stable, said Joanne Hsu, who leads the Michigan survey.
Other measures paint a mixed picture. The Conference Board’s survey showed rising concerns about inflation in both January and February, but another from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in January did not. One closely watched measure of investors’ inflation expectations has been edging up, but another one has not. Both measures are based on yields on U.S. government debt — when investors expect inflation to eat away at the value of their bond holdings, they demand a greater return to make up for it. Surveys of businesses and of professional forecasters have found little if any evidence that inflation expectations are rising.
But economists said that the longer inflation remained elevated, the greater the chances that consumers and businesses would start to readjust their expectations. What central banks fear most is if those expectations become “unanchored,” or move enough to suggest little confidence that over time inflation will return to the 2 percent target. That risk appears more prominent now than it did a few months ago. Progress on inflation has stalled in recent months and President Trump has pursued policies that many economists believe are likely to push prices higher, such as imposing tariffs and restricting immigration.
“The data does show that inflation expectations appear to be well anchored, but if I were at the Fed, I wouldn’t assume that or take that for granted,” said Richard Clarida, a former Fed vice chair who is now at Pimco, an investment firm.
Officials at the central bank have so far downplayed concerns about inflation expectations. Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said the latest survey from the University of Michigan “wasn’t a great number,” but reflected just one month’s worth of data so far.
“You need at least two or three months for that to count,” Mr. Goolsbee, who casts votes on policy decisions this year, said on Sunday.
Alberto Musalem, president of the St. Louis Fed and a voting member, was also emphatic that inflation expectations were under control while talking to reporters last week. Mr. Musalem described the Michigan data as “one metric amongst a variety of metrics that has shown a little uptick.”
Despite this confidence, the Fed has put additional interest rate cuts on hold for the time being. Officials not only want more evidence that inflation is in retreat but have also said a solid economy affords them time to wait and see how Mr. Trump’s plan will impact the trajectory for consumer prices, the labor market and growth more broadly.
Minutes from the most recent policy meeting in January showed that policymakers expected some impact on consumer prices from Mr. Trump’s policies. But how the central bank should respond remains a big point of debate.
Some, like Fed governor Christopher J. Waller, have argued that the central bank can “look through” the economic impact of policies like tariffs. But that stance hinges on a number of factors, most crucially that such levies lead to only a one-off increase in prices and that expectations across businesses and households remain in check.
But according to Charles Evans, who retired as president of the Chicago Fed in 2023, that could be a risky strategy, especially in light of the inflation surge that followed the Covid-era economic shock.
“That’s the same transitory story the Fed and everybody was saying in 2021,” he said. “You would think that policymakers would be a little more reluctant to lean on that.”
Already, Mr. Evans said that seeing inflation expectations move up somewhat made him “a little nervous,” especially in light of his concerns that businesses might be more inclined than in the past to pass along higher prices to their customers. For those reasons, he expects the Fed to stay “cautious” about further interest rate cuts this year.
John Roberts, who most recently served as a top staff member in the division of research and statistics at the Fed before joining Evercore ISI, added that the central bank might be inclined to forgo cuts entirely this year if inflation expectations did not improve from current levels. At this point, he already sees “a little bit of unanchoring here.”
After the release of the latest University of Michigan data on Friday, economists at LHMeyer, a research firm, pushed back their timing for the next Fed cut from June to September.
There is also another risk: If Mr. Trump moves to erode the Fed’s independence, or threatens to do so, that could undermine confidence in the central bank’s ability to bring inflation under control, leading inflation expectations to rise.
Last week, Mr. Trump sought to expand his reach over the Fed as part of a broader effort to wrest greater control of congressionally designated independent agencies. The executive order targeted the central bank’s supervision and regulation of Wall Street and carved out its decisions on monetary policy. But the expansive nature of the order stoked concerns about how much further Mr. Trump’s encroachment on the Fed’s independence could eventually go.
“That’s the most dangerous scenario,” Mr. Ball said, adding that even the threat of political interference could make the Fed’s job more difficult. “The Fed’s ability to control expectations could be impeded not only by the Trump administration taking over, but also by the fear that might happen.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
11) Government Workers Who Have Lost Their Jobs Worry About Their Housing
The abrupt firings have left federal workers and contractors throughout the country in flux, with many distressed over how they will pay the mortgage or rent.
By Matt Yan, Feb. 25, 2025
Cameron McKenzie is one of many federal workers who was recently fired. Credit...Jonno Rattman for The New York Times
After losing his job at the U.S. Forest Service, Cameron McKenzie was worried about finding a new job. But first, he had a more immediate concern: How was he going to pay the mortgage?
He’s done the math — finding another job in the environmental sector could take months — and keeping up with the nearly $2,700 monthly payment on his three-bedroom home in Blairstown, N.J., will be a challenge, if not impossible. “Even on unemployment,” said Mr. McKenzie, 27, who worked as a community engagement specialist, “I’m not going to be able to make my mortgage payment.”
Mr. McKenzie’s termination was among thousands of federal job cuts, part of a purge of the work force under an executive order signed by President Trump. The abrupt firings have left federal workers and contractors throughout the country in flux, with many distressed over their housing.
The effect of the layoffs has been palpable, especially in the Washington area, where there are more than 300,000 federal government employees. Rumors have swirled that the firings are causing the area’s housing market to crash after videos began circulating on social media.
Lisa Sturtevant, the chief economist at Bright MLS, a multiple listing service, said that it is too soon to tell if the D.C. market has been shaken by the layoffs because “it hasn’t had enough time to filter into the housing market,” she said. In the first two weeks of February, there were 2,829 new listings in the D.C. area, which is “virtually unchanged” from the same time period last year, with 2,820 listings, according to a report by Bright MLS. During the week that ended Feb. 23, the number of new listings was up 12.9 percent over the same period last year, according to another report by Bright MLS.
Workers like Mr. McKenzie are already rethinking their futures in terms of their careers and where they will live.
“I’m going to have to sell my house,” he said.
As a presidential management fellow who started his job in February 2024, Mr. McKenzie was still on probation, and Mr. Trump’s order has been carried out by targeting the most recent hires who do not receive the same protections as more veteran federal employees. An estimated 200,000 workers are considered probationary employees, which typically means they had worked for the federal government for less than a year. As of Feb. 20, at least 19,340 probationary employees had been cut, according to a tally by The New York Times.
Landing a government job has long been viewed as a path to job security, economic stability and upward mobility. As of March 2024, around half of federal workers made between $50,000 and $109,999, according to the Pew Research Center, which relied on data from the Office of Personnel Management. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers in the United States was $1,192, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Shernice Mundell, who was recently fired from the Office of Personnel Management, said her monthly mortgage on her townhouse in Edgewood, Md., is $1,200 and took up about one-third of her biweekly paycheck, she said.
But she thought she had a secure future ahead of her. She was first hired in August 2024 in the disputed claims department and became a health insurance specialist in November 2024, after that position opened up and her supervisor referred her to that job.
“I was on the track to do what I set out to do,” said Ms. Mundell, 47, who is a Local 32 union member of the American Federation of Government Employees. “But now everything is all upside down.”
Her mortgage for this month is already paid for, but she’s still unsure about how to pay it for March. She has filed for unemployment assistance, which she said would cover her mortgage but not other expenses like utilities, her phone bill and HOA fees.
While she waits to hear if her unemployment benefits are granted, she has some funds in savings, as well as friends and family who are willing to help her. “I’m not completely afraid that I’m going to be homeless,” she said.
Still, it’s a jarring turn of events.
She bought her home as a single mother with three children in 2013 for $103,000, which she called “a huge accomplishment.”
She’s currently applying for new jobs and hopes something will pop up soon. She still wants to move. “It’s still my dream,” she said. “This is like the first chapter of my life. The way I see it, I still have another chapter to live.”
Nathan Barrera-Bunch, who was a management analyst at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, worries that he is now farther away from not only renting a nicer apartment, but also owning a home.
He said he and his fiancé currently live in a small basement apartment in Northwest D.C., moving there in 2020 because it was larger than their last place, and the rent was around the same, $2,000 a month, which the two split equally. Buying a home wasn’t an immediate priority, but he was still putting money away to hopefully start a family and buy a home one day.
But Mr. Barrera-Bunch, 36, said losing his job will eat into their savings. “There’s sort of all these dominoes that are starting to fall in an already expensive place to live in,” he said. “And so, this has upended our plans for housing and home and buying and all of that.”
He recalled visiting the nation’s capital for the first time at 18, and hoping to live there one day. He’s lived in Washington full time for just over 10 years now. “This is home now,” he said.
But staying in Washington might not be feasible. It all depends, he said, on whether his fiancé, who still works for the federal government, can keep his job and if Mr. Barrera-Bunch can find a new one. If they move, they could move to Puerto Rico or Florida, where his fiancé has family living.
For now, like many others, the uncertainty lingers, and he will just have to wait and see what happens. Mr. Barrera-Bunch said that he believes he will be OK and will hopefully find a job somewhere, but he is more concerned about people who don’t have other means of support.
“I’m fearful for the stability of the community here in D.C.,” he said. “There’s so many different communities that people are connected to in D.C., and so many of those are just about to be very, very disrupted.”
Mr. McKenzie, who worked at the U.S. Forest Service, said he and his husband are planning to list their New Jersey home — which his husband first purchased in 2022 for $215,000 — in May, when there’s more greenery to make it more attractive to potential buyers.
“It meant a lot for us to have accomplished something that not many people in our age group had accomplished by such an early point in our lives,” he said. “And then now, it kind of feels like we’re walking that accomplishment back a little bit.”
Though they used to split the mortgage payments, Mr. McKenzie took on the task when his husband started law school. He estimated that around half of his $87,000 salary was going toward the payments and a construction loan the couple took out to cover renovations.
They now plan to rent for a year and then figure something out. Mr. McKenzie said he and his husband have enough savings for about two months, but most of it is being put toward getting the house ready to sell. He said his brother-in-law recently moved in with them and pays them rent. Having that help, he said, is “like the only reason I wouldn’t be out on the street.”
As a presidential management fellow at the U.S. Forest Service, Mr. McKenzie was on a two-year probation. He thought he was in the clear with his prestigious position — the agency only hires 12 to 15 fellows per year.
His one-year work anniversary was Feb. 10. He was fired a week later.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
12) How Far Do Trump’s Cuts to Science Reach? To the Ends of the Earth.
The National Science Foundation has fired workers at the office that manages polar research, raising fears about a reduced U.S. presence in two strategic regions.
By Raymond Zhong, Feb. 25, 2025
The Ceremonial South Pole marker near Amundsen-Scott Station, the research base administered by the National Science Foundation. Credit...Jeff Capps/National Science Foundation
Kelly Brunt wasn’t the only federal employee to be laid off this month while traveling for work. But she was almost certainly the only one whose work trip was in Antarctica.
Dr. Brunt was a program director at the National Science Foundation, the $9 billion agency that supports scientific advancement in practically every field apart from medicine. As part of the Trump administration’s campaign to shrink the federal government, roughly 10 percent of the foundation’s 1,450 career employees lost their jobs last week. Officials told staff members that layoffs were just getting started.
Yet the office where Dr. Brunt worked has an importance that goes beyond science.
The Office of Polar Programs coordinates research in the Arctic and Antarctic, where the fragile, fast-changing environments are of growing strategic interest to the world’s superpowers.
By treaty, Antarctica is a scientific preserve. And for decades, U.S. research — plus the three year-round stations, the aircraft and the ships that support it — has been the bedrock of the country’s presence there.
Of late, though, “countries such as Korea and China have been rapidly expanding their presence, while the U.S. has been sort of maintaining the status quo,” said Julia Wellner, a marine scientist at the University of Houston who studies Antarctic glaciers.
The Office of Polar Programs has long been understaffed, said Michael Jackson, who worked as an Antarctic program director for the agency until retiring late last year. Aging planes and facilities, plus flat budgets for science, have snarled the pace of research. “Right now we are capable of doing maybe 60 percent of the science that we were capable of doing” 15 years ago, Dr. Jackson said.
If the Trump administration slashes science funding, American researchers could collaborate more with other nations’ polar institutes, as many already do, Dr. Wellner said. “But those other countries have their own scientists,” she said. “I don’t think South Korea or the U.K. is just going to make room for all of us.”
When asked how the layoffs of polar scientists would Foundation program officers help decide which projects like these are most worthy of federal funding. Often they are seasoned scientists themselves: Dr. Porter is an expert in atmospheric and oceanic science who has worked at Columbia University. representative declined to comment.
When the agency fired Dr. Brunt and other employees last week, she was heading home after spending over a month at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Another program director who was laid off, David Porter, had been supporting scientists embarking from New Zealand on a 10-week expedition in the Southern Ocean. Other teams were gearing up to drill ice cores, take seismic measurements, measure ultraviolet radiation and more.
Foundation program officers help decide which projects like these are most worthy of federal funding. Often they are seasoned scientists themselves: Dr. Porter is an expert in atmospheric and oceanic science who has worked at Columbia University.
Dr. Brunt’s N.S.F. employment was probationary because she became a permanent worker only six months ago, she said. Before that, she spent three years at the agency on temporary assignment from NASA and the University of Maryland. In total, she has 25 years of experience as a glaciologist and 15 Antarctic field seasons under her belt.
“I want to dispel this rumor that this is a bunch of people who are sitting around sucking off the government milk bottle,” Dr. Jackson said. “These are people that had well-established careers in academia, and they decided that they wanted to come to N.S.F. and give something back to the U.S. taxpayers.”
Dr. Jackson also doesn’t buy the idea that eliminating federal workers will root out fraud and abuse. “By removing the program officers at the front lines, you’re actually removing the very thing that you want to have there in place to make sure that no fraud and abuse is happening,” he said.
For scientists in the field, their program officer might also be their first point of contact when issues arise, said Twila Moon, the deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
“Maybe you’re having trouble with some of the logistics,” Dr. Moon said. “Maybe your instruments aren’t getting to you on time, or there’s been changes in the field flights that you need to think about.” Fewer officers mean more scientists at risk of snags or challenges, she said.
The geopolitical significance of Antarctica might help shield it from the administration’s most severe cost-cutting, said Dawn Sumner, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Davis, who studies microbes in Antarctic lakes. “The only way you can have a presence in Antarctica is through science,” Dr. Sumner said.
Even so, much of that science is motivated by the need to address human-caused global warming, a subject that President Trump and his allies have long denigrated as a nonissue.
Dr. Wellner of the University of Houston finds it “appalling” that Antarctic scientists might someday have to avoid mentioning climate change to receive federal funding. Still, she said, researchers in Texas, Florida and other states long ago figured out how to sidestep official taboos around climate.
“We talk about sea-level rise in Texas all the time,” Dr. Wellner said. “You don’t have to talk about ‘climate.’ It’s just ‘sea-level rise.’”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
