PhilipTheBucket

The full text is at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/From_Dictatorship_to_Democracy

Over the years I have had occasion to get to know people who lived and suffered under Nazi rule, including some who survived concentration camps. In Norway I met people who had resisted fascist rule and survived, and heard of those who perished. I talked with Jews who had escaped the Nazi clutches and with persons who had helped to save them.

Knowledge of the terror of Communist rule in various countries has been learned more from books than personal contacts. The terror of these systems appeared to me to be especially poignant, for these dictatorships were imposed in the name of liberation from oppression and exploitation.

In more recent decades through visits of persons from dictatorially ruled countries, such as Panama, Poland, Chile, Tibet, and Burma, the realities of today's dictatorships became more real. From Tibetans who had fought against Chinese Communist aggression, Russians who had defeated the August 1991 hard-line coup, and Thais who had nonviolently blocked a return to military rule, I have gained often troubling perspectives on the insidious nature of dictatorships.

The sense of pathos and outrage against the brutalities, along with admiration of the calm heroism of unbelievably brave men and women, were sometimes strengthened by visits to places where the dangers were still great, and yet defiance by brave people continued. These included Panama under Noriega; Vilnius, Lithuania, under continued Soviet repression; Tiananmen Square, Beijing, during both the festive demonstration of freedom and while the first armored personnel carriers entered that fateful night; and the jungle headquarters of the democratic opposition at Manerplaw in "liberated Burma."

Sometimes I visited the sites of the fallen, as the television tower and the cemetery in Vilnius, the public park in Riga where people had been gunned down, the center of Ferrara in northern Italy where the fascists lined up and shot resisters, and a simple cemetery in Manerplaw filled with bodies of men who had died much too young. It is a sad realization that every dictatorship leaves such death and destruction in its wake. Out of these concerns and experiences grew a determined hope that prevention of tyranny might be possible, that successful struggles against dictatorships could be waged without mass mutual slaughters, that dictatorships could be destroyed and new ones prevented from rising out of the ashes.

I have tried to think carefully about the most effective ways in which dictatorships could be successfully disintegrated with the least possible cost in suffering and lives. In this I have drawn on my studies over many years of dictatorships, resistance movements, revolutions, political thought, governmental systems, and especially realistic nonviolent struggle.

This publication is the result. I am certain it is far from perfect. But, perhaps, it offers some guidelines to assist thought and planning to produce movements of liberation that are more powerful and effective than might otherwise be the case.

Anas Zayed Fteiha, a Palestinian photojournalist in the Gaza Strip, filed a legal claim seeking an injunction against global publishing giant Axel Springer, which he accuses of violating his constitutional rights by falsely portraying him as a Hamas propagandist in Germany’s largest tabloid, BILD.

The filing against a European news organization is a first-of-its-kind legal strategy for a journalist working in Palestine. “I want to prove the truth cannot be erased by false allegations,” Fteiha told The Intercept.

Fteiha’s legal claim, submitted in the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court, stems from a BILD article published on August 5 under the headline “This Gaza photographer stages Hamas propaganda.”

The BILD piece singled out Fteiha, alleging he fabricated images of starving Palestinians to push a Hamas narrative. To underscore this charge, BILD published a picture showing Fteiha kneeling to photograph people in Gaza holding empty pots in front of a metal barrier. BILD framed the scene as an attempt to exaggerate the levels of hunger in Gaza. Later in August, a United Nations-backed body declared a famine in Gaza.

The article claims Fteiha staged the photo and describes him as a “journalist” three times, always in quotation marks.

“In fact it was a genuine moment of human suffering,” Fteiha told The Intercept.

“I could be targeted simply because false reports about me were published.”

Fteiha was at the food distribution site as a freelancer for the Turkish news agency Anadolu and published a range of photographs online from that day. To Fteiha, BILD’s reporting is part of a campaign to discredit Palestinian journalists, he told The Intercept.

“Falsely accusing me of staging propaganda exposes me to threats and undermines the supposed protections afforded to journalists,” he said. “It means I could be targeted simply because false reports about me were published.”

Fteiha is seeking an injunction proceeding, an emergency procedure aimed at reaching a quicker resolution than a typical lawsuit. If granted by the court, the injunction would require Axel Springer to correct the statements in the article that he alleges are false and would oblige the publisher to cover the costs of the legal proceedings brought by Fteiha.

Axel Springer has not responded to questions from The Intercept. A BILD group communications spokesperson said that the company has not yet received Fteiha’s filing and therefore cannot comment on it.

Fteiha’s legal action could test whether German courts are willing to hold one of the country’s most powerful media outlets accountable for defamatory coverage that critics say has fueled the dehumanization of Palestinians. Just days after Fteiha was singled out in the August article, BILD ran the image of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif — who was killed by an Israeli strike hours earlier — with the headline: “Terrorist disguised as journalist killed in Gaza.” The phrasing was later revised to “Killed journalist allegedly was a terrorist.”

That article, too, is mentioned in the filing: “It seems that [Axel Springer] is promoting a narrative portraying journalists in Gaza as accomplices of Hamas.”

Fteiha’s claim, filed by German press lawyer Ingrid Yeboah with support from the European Legal Support Center, rejects BILD’s assertions that Fteiha staged or manipulated his images and that he masquerades as a journalist. It argues that the BILD reporting includes “gravely defamatory and life-threatening statements” that constitute a violation of Fteiha’s “general right of personality” under German constitutional law, which protects individuals against defamation.

BILD never sought Fteiha’s comment before publication, his filing alleges, despite claiming otherwise in the article. BILD’s communications director Christian Senft told The Intercept: “As a matter of principle, we do not comment on our sources or editorial processes.”

The article, the filing says, insinuates that Fteiha deliberately withheld photos showing men at the food distribution site in order to distort reality and bolster a “constructed narrative” serving Hamas.

Yet before the BILD article was published, Fteiha had already posted several images from the day in question — depicting men as well as women and children waiting for food — as a report by Der Spiegel showed.

The filing argues that BILD deliberately withheld this fact in order to maintain its narrative that a Gaza-based journalist was spreading Hamas propaganda.

BILD further attempted to link Fteiha to Hamas, he alleges, by citing an Instagram image he co-published that reads “Free Palestine” — describing this as Fteiha’s “mission” — and by framing his freelance work for Anadolu as “subordinate to Turkish President and Israel-hater Recep Tayyip Erdogan.” Both examples, the filing argues, were wrongfully presented as evidence of political extremism intended to delegitimize Fteiha.

Before the BILD article came out, the liberal news outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung, or SZ, published a piece titled, “How real are the images from Gaza?” BILD referred to the article as it questioned the authenticity of photos taken by journalists in Gaza. The SZ article consulted experts and published the same image of Fteiha photographing civilians behind a metal barrier.

Although SZ did not mention Fteiha by name, the article — together with BILD’s — was quickly amplified on social media by Israel’s foreign ministry. Pointing to the German coverage as proof that Hamas manipulates global opinion, the ministry branded Fteiha an “Israel- and Jew-hater” serving Hamas.

The U.S–Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation quickly joined in, followed by major Israeli outlets such as The Times of Israel, Ynet, and the Jerusalem Post. Israeli President Isaac Herzog echoed the fabrication narrative as well, holding up the photo of Fteiha at a conference in Estonia and citing German press reports. “It was all staged,” Herzog declared.

Christopher Resch, a spokesperson for Reporters Without Borders Germany, said that German media appeared eager to amplify Israel’s campaign to delegitimize a Palestinian journalist.

“Newsrooms should always — especially when it comes to war reporting — apply the highest professional and ethical standards and never report carelessly,” Resch said. “If media reports can be used to legitimise criminal decisions by the Israeli military, one can assume they will be used.”

Fteiha’s legal action followed an application for a cease-and-desist order that Yeboah filed on September 1 demanding that BILD retract the contested statements and cover Fteiha’s legal costs, while reserving the right to seek further damages.

Axel Springer’s lawyer Felix Seidel rejected that request in an official letter on September 4, arguing that “after reviewing the facts and legal situation, [we] inform you that we do not intend to comply with the demands of your client.”

According to the filing, the BILD article violated multiple standards of German press law. The filing alleges the story contained false claims, including that Fteiha had not distributed the images in question and was merely posing as a journalist. It further argues that under German law, suspicion reporting is only permissible if backed by careful research, a minimum factual basis, and a clear indication that the allegations are unproven. It notes that the subject must be given the chance to comment before publication — all requirements that, the filing says, BILD ignored.

Fteiha continues to work in Gaza despite the Israeli military’s heavy bombing and imminent ground invasion of in Gaza City. “I believe my role as a journalist is to bear witness to what is happening and to convey the truth to the world — no matter the cost,” he told The Intercept.

The Trump administration has already added nearly $40 billion in new federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal in 2025, a report released Tuesday finds, sending an additional $4 billion out the door each year for fossil fuels over the next decade. That new amount, created with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act this summer, adds to $30.8 billion a year in preexisting subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. The report finds that the amount of public money the U.S. will now spend on domestic fossil fuels stands at at least $34.8 billion a year.

The increase amounts to “the largest single-year increase in subsidies we’ve seen in many years — at least since 2017,” says Collin Rees, the U.S. program manager for Oil Change International, an anti-fossil fuels advocacy organization and author of the report.

The U.S. has been subsidizing fossil fuel production for more than a century. Many of the tax subsidies logged in the report — including a tax break passed in 1913 that allows companies to write off large amounts of expenses related to drilling new oil wells — have been on the books for decades.

Fossil fuel subsidies have proven notoriously difficult to undo, even with a determined administration. After campaigning on ending tax breaks for Big Oil, President Joe Biden’s 2021 budget pledged to raise $35 billion over 19 years by eliminating certain fossil fuel subsidies; one of his first executive orders tasked agencies with getting rid of those subsidies. (“I don’t think the federal government should give handouts to Big Oil,” he said at a press conference announcing the order.)

But the phaseouts of these subsidies were nixed during climate legislation negotiations with then-senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who was the key swing vote in the Senate at the time and a recipient of fossil fuel money with lengthy ties to the coal industry. Meanwhile, the Inflation Reduction Act — the resulting compromise between Manchin and Democratic leadership, which was passed in August of 2022 — gave additional boosts to the fossil fuel industry in the form of subsidies for oil-and-gas-friendly technologies, like carbon capture and storage and certain types of hydrogen made with natural gas.

“What happens is you have these policies in place, and then you have a constituency that strongly advocates and lobbies for them, it becomes harder and harder to unwind them, which I think is the situation that we’re in today,” says Matthew Kotchen, a professor of economics at Yale University, who was not involved in the new analysis.

That cycle is continuing in the new administration. Fossil fuel companies spent millions of dollars getting Trump elected last year; one report from the advocacy group Climate Power puts the total number at $445 million. Those companies are seeing benefits as the administration pursues an aggressive deregulatory agenda, hobbles renewable energy projects, and downplays the importance of climate change. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the president has taken to calling oil CEOs following their appearances on TV.

“It’s no secret that Trump and the Republicans are on the side of the fossil fuel industry and very much vice versa,” says Rees. “The fossil fuel industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting Republicans and Trump elected. They then presented their wish lists. Nearly everything on those wish lists was fulfilled, and in fact, they got a bunch of additional goodies that weren’t even in those wish lists.”

The new research builds on past work from Oil Change International, which last did the math on national fossil fuel subsidies in 2017, finding then that $20 billion was going out the door to the industry each year. To compile the new report, Rees and his colleagues combed through a variety of federal governmental sources on the amount of money going to the oil, gas, and coal industries each year.

The question of what, exactly, constitutes a federal subsidy is the topic of some debate. Environmental groups tend to have a broader scope in tallying up public money spent on fossil fuels, including federal money not distributed directly to oil companies. Conservative groups, meanwhile, take a much narrower approach. (For its report, Oil Change International used the definitions of subsidies set by the World Trade Organization in calculating domestic funding to fossil fuels.)

Due to a lack of transparency across the federal government, the calculations in this report are “likely to be an undercount,” Rees says. “There’s probably some things that we missed — some corners of the budget that are funding fossil fuels in different ways.”

The $4 billion in new yearly subsidies comes largely in the form of allocations contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed this summer. One of the biggest new subsidies — an expansion of the tax credit for carbon capture and storage — is, ironically, related to provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Trump campaigned on reversing. (The One Big Beautiful Bill Act did, however, crack down harshly on tax credits for wind and solar, carrying out part of Trump’s campaign promise.)

Carbon capture and storage is the process of capturing CO2 emissions and injecting them deep underground. The oil and gas industry has for decades injected CO2 underground to help recover difficult reserves that don’t respond well to traditional drilling methods. Environmentalists have long argued that the logic of replicating an oil and gas technique as a climate solution is seriously flawed — especially considering that a company could reap a climate tax credit from injecting CO2 that will then be used to create more fossil fuels.

In the original Inflation Reduction Act, which significantly expanded the existing carbon capture tax credit, there was a price differential baked into the tax credits: Producers got more money per ton of CO2 they sequestered underground without any oil production involved, and less for CO2 used specifically to produce more oil and gas. But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated this differential, allowing producers to collect on the full credit even if they are using CO2 to produce more fossil fuels. The total expansion of tax credits for carbon capture in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the analysis found, could send out more than $1.4 billion of public money to oil and gas companies each year.

The types of federal subsidies addressed in this report are just one kind of boost the government gives dirty industries. The analysis does not address state and local tax breaks for fossil fuel companies, nor does it add up international financing from publicly funded U.S. entities to overseas fossil fuel companies and projects. (Just before he left office, President Biden backed a limit on funding for dirty investments made by the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a part of the executive branch that facilitates the export of U.S. goods and services. President Trump promptly encouraged the Bank in April to resume funding for coal projects abroad.)

The fossil fuel industry also benefits financially from not having to address the negative side effects of their products: Coal companies don’t have to deal with the health impacts from people breathing polluted air, for example, while oil and gas companies don’t need to think about damages from extreme weather juiced up by climate change caused by their product. Kotchen, the Yale economist, calculated in a 2021 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that a small handful of U.S. oil, gas, coal, and diesel giants, by not having to pay for the damage they cause, get $62 billion in what he calls “implicit subsidies” per year.

I asked him if, given the major environmental rollbacks overseen by the Trump administration, he’d expect that figure to increase if he redid his analysis in 2025. “The environmental externalities are higher, and production has gone up,” he says. “I think [the number] would be a lot higher.”