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The Intercept

Fearless, adversarial journalism. theintercept.com
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An airstrike in Yemen by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition hit a funeral in October, killing more than 130 people and drawing global condemnation. Yet in the months following that strike, the U.S. doubled the amount of fuel it provided to coalition jets, according to figures obtained from the U.S. military. The numbers underline the fact that U.S. support for the campaign has continued and even increased despite growing attention to civilian casualties and alleged war crimes. In this photo, Yemenis stand on the rubble of houses destroyed in a suspected Saudi-led coalition air strike in Sanaa on June 9. Photo: @afpphoto/@gettyimages #yemen #saudiarabia #war
For someone fleeing violence and hoping to seek asylum in the United States, crossing the border is a gauntlet of possibility and fear. People have reported that border officers told them the U.S. no longer has asylum, that Mexicans and mothers with children are ineligible, that they must go to the Mexican consulate, or already have a visa, among other false claims. In many instances, asylum-seekers were told that the refusal was the result of a change in policy because of Trump. Legal and immigration advocacy groups filed a class-action lawsuit against federal agencies alleging a pattern of misinformation, verbal and physical abuse, intimidation, and outright illegal turn-backs of people requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. In this June photo, an asylum seeker from Usulután, El Salvador holds her baby at Casa Madre Assunta. Photo: Alice Proujansky for The Intercept #immigration #mexico #elsalvador #border
Operation Identification seeks “to give victims their names back, to speak for them when they can’t speak any longer, and hopefully send them back to their families with some dignity restored,” Robert Shults told the Intercept, describing a Texas State University initiative. Shults, a photographer based in Austin, Texas, did not set out to document his state’s crisis of unclaimed dead, at least not directly. His professional area of interest is science and scientists at work; it’s what first brought him to the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State in the winter of 2015 and kept him coming back in the year that followed. Shults’s idea was to assume the role of a “participant observer,” visiting with graduate students each day, sitting in on their classes, accompanying them as they gathered donations for their program, and watching as they learned to untangle complex forensics cases, all the while snapping photos. Photos: Robert Shults #opid #border #immigration
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“Many people are simply happy to be freed of ISIS, while others who have lost their homes or lost their families are asking, what is left for their lives after this?” said Cengiz Yar, an American photojournalist based in Iraq. Three years after Islamic State militants seized Mosul, Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi entered the city to announce its liberation, declaring victory in the 9-month siege even as fighting continued in the last pockets of ISIS-controlled territory. Yar has compiled a visual record of this harrowing period of Iraqi history. These photos document the military operations to retake Mosul, the impact of the war on civilians, and the resilience of Iraqis despite years of bloodshed and totalitarian rule. Photos: @cengizyar #mosul #iraq #war #facesofwar
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Josh Walker fought against ISIS. He almost got killed. Now he’s charged with terrorism. Walker was tired of talking about the crisis in the Middle East; he wanted to help. He joined the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Unit and went to Syria for six months to fight ISIS. When he returned to the U.K., he was arrested and charged under British counterterrorism laws for owning a partial copy of “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a DIY explosives guide. He’s due to go to trial in October, with a possibility of up to 10 years in prison. While he believes he will be exonerated, Walker struggles with the irony that he almost died fighting Islamic State terrorists and is now being treated like a terrorist himself. In this photo, Josh Walker poses in Bristol, England, on June 7. Photo: Andrew Testa for The Intercept #isis #syria #uk
“The biggest problem with U.S. politicians backing the MEK is that the group has all the trappings of a totalitarian cult,” writes Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan. “Don’t take my word for it: A 1994 State Department report documented how Massoud Rajavi ‘fostered a cult of personality around himself’ which had ‘alienated most Iranian expatriates, who assert they do not want to replace one objectionable regime for another.‘” Last weekend, Saudi Prince Turki Bin Faisal, Newt Gingrich, and Joe Lieberman met in the suburbs of Paris to speak on behalf of a group of Iranian exiles, Mojahedin-e Khalq, who were officially designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. government between 1997 and 2012. In this photo, Mariam Rajavi speaks at the annual meeting of the Mojahedin-e Khalq at the Villepinte exhibition center near Paris on July 1, 2017. International political leaders also made speeches to support her. Photo: Siavosh/NurPhoto/@gettyimages #iran #politics
Last week, Canada’s government agreed to pay $10 million in damages to a former Guantánamo detainee and Canadian citizen that the U.S. wrongfully detained and tortured. Khadr was captured in 2002 after being accused of throwing a grenade and killing an American soldier during a firefight at a suspected Al Qaeda compound. He was only 15 when he was captured, making him the youngest prisoner ever held at Guantánamo. The United States has not taken measures to address Khadr’s mistreatment, or that of other wrongfully held detainees at Guantánamo. The U.S. has never compensated, let alone apologized, to any of its post-9/11 torture victims. In this photo, Omar Khadr looks out the window of his home on May 9, 2015, two days after being freed from custody. Photo: Michelle Shephard/Toronto Star/@gettyimages #gitmo #canada
“Sometimes you just think about it and you’re like, what am I doing here? I was born over there and so why am I here?” Alexandra, a 13-year-old U.S. citizen whose parents are undocumented, came from Sacramento to live with her mother in Tijuana in 2015. When their parents are deported, Mexican-American students are forced to choose between educational opportunity in the United States and staying close to their families. Schools in border cities like Tijuana are bracing for a spike in deportations, but they’ve long dealt with students from families in limbo. Photos: Alice Proujansky for The Intercept #mexico #tijuana
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Hacked email exchanges, obtained by The Intercept, between the United Arab Emirates’ Ambassador Yousef Al-Otaiba and a top Obama national security official, Robert Malley, show that the UAE’s ambassador tried to convince Malley that human rights reports of the U.S.-backed bombing coalition in Yemen was unfairly biased. The UAE is a key member of the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war, which has killed thousands of people, destroyed hospitals, food sources, water infrastructure, and left 7 million people on the brink of starvation. Since the email exchange, UAE forces in Yemen have faced heavy criticism for human rights violations, including a botched U.S. Navy SEAL operation that UAE commandos took part in and that killed 10 children. Yemenis stand on the rubble of houses destroyed in a suspected Saudi-led coalition air strike in Sanaa on June 9, 2017. Photo: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/@gettyimages #yemenwar #uae #unitedarabemirates #humanrights
TigerSwan, a private security company behind a surveillance operation targeting the opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline, are being sued by the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board after the discovery that the company had allegedly been working without a license. The complaint describes invasive tactics used by TigerSwan, including “flyover photography,” “surveillance of social media accounts,” placing or attempting to place “undercover private security agents within the protest group,” and coordination with local law enforcement officials. TigerSwan was denied a license to monitor the pipeline partly because the board had questions about its founder's undisclosed arrests. TigerSwan founder James Reese requested an administrative review of the license denial, which was also denied. In this photo, water protectors continue their massive clean-up effort of the Oceti Sakowin camp in Standing Rock, N.D., on Feb. 19, 2017. Photo: Michael Nigro/Sipa/@ap.images #dapl #nodapl #standingrock
Democrats have played into the hands of Republicans, who have worked hard to ensure that the public view health care only through a partisan lens, writes Intercept columnist Mehdi Hasan. Around one in three Americans is unaware of the fact that there is no difference between Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — they are one and the same. Many of these people tell pollsters that they like the ACA but dislike Obamacare. In this March 24 photo, protesters gather across from Trump Tower to rally against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act in Chicago. Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast/@ap.images #healthcare #politics #chicago
“Unfortunately, to put it in one phrase, the Democrats are unable to defend the United States of America from the most vicious, ignorant, corporate-indentured, militaristic, anti-union, anti-consumer, anti-environment, anti-posterity [Republican Party] in history,” Ralph Nader tells The Intercept in an interview. Nader, who’s now 83 and has been been based in Washington, D.C. for over fifty years, has had a front row seat to the Democrats’ slow collapse. Photo: Stephen Voss/@reduxpictures #politics #washington
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